Category: Idiots

Sony’s PS3-sized hole keeps on getting deeper

~ Inquisitor

So at the current count, the European PS3 is going to be more expensive than the US or Japan, the British PS3 is going to be more expensive than most of Europe or Ireland, the PS3-only games are going to suck until Metal Gear Solid comes out and you’re not going to be able to play all your old PS2 titles, although you’re going to be able to play ‘some’, because they’ve done a “cost reduction” (without actually reducing the cost).

Even more infuriating is that while one of the very few good decisions Sony have made with the PS3 is to make PS3 games region free, this doesn’t apply to the PS2 part of the system. As a result, you can’t play our PS2 games on an American PS3, but you will be able to play more of the American games. Lovely.

If you really must have a PS3, you can buy a British PS2 (now £50 from ASDA) and an American 60GB PS3 for less than the £425 you’ll be screwed by if you buy a single PS3 here, even when you include VAT and Customs charges. It’ll probably arrive before the launch too. Such a shame that Sony keep on threatening retailers who try and sell even a control pad over here (and apparently perfectly legally, too) – why would you want to encourage them, anyway?

Anyway, a price comparison worth pointing out: the US Xbox360 Premium pack is $400 (£204.74). Adding VAT to that, you get £240.57. Considering shipping costs from the US that you’d have to cover, the British price of £269 actually starts to look reasonable, especially when you consider that bundles are starting to show up at around that price with actual games in it – and, what’s more, there’s actually more than one 360 game you’d want to own. When Microsoft are playing fairer than the competition, Sony really need to consider exactly why they’re in the wrong and how to get themselves out of it before the PS3 sinks them.

Sugababes vs. Girls Aloud – a match made in hell

~ Inquisitor ~ 2 Comments

It may be for charity, but it’s just wrong. I’m no Aerosmith or Run-DMC fan, but the original “Walk This Way” retooling worked, in its own way, because of the massive differential between the two bands’ styles. Sugababes and Girls Aloud are basically the same, so it doesn’t work at all; it’s lacking in both musical talent and enthusiasm, and the lack of enthusiasm is the real killer. This simply should not be allowed to exist.

I’m reserving opinion on the Kaiser Chiefs album for now; it’s getting terrible reviews from those who’ve heard the leak, “Ruby” is annoying and below-par, and worse than that it got a glowing X&Y type review from Q magazine, but that doesn’t make a difference until I’ve actually heard the thing. Song titles like “Love Is Not A Competition (But I’m Winning)” do not make me hopeful.

The Brit Awards 2007: how do we fix it?

~ Inquisitor ~ 2 Comments

Why should I even bother going after the Brit awards? After all, they’ve always been out of step, out of taste and completely irrelevant throughout all the years they have existed, even back when they were the BPI awards.

Well, mainly because a lot of the awards are voted for by the general public, and those that aren’t show a depressing lack of talent. For instance, the Best British Male this year is James Morrison, one of the many Blunt clones that are starting to pollute the charts, and amongst those nominated was Lemar who, let me remind you, came third in his “reality” show for a reason. The two decent nominees, Jarvis Cocker and Thom Yorke, both of whom released excellent solo albums last year, of course had no chance of winning.

Best International Breakthrough Artist, voted for by “MTV viewers”, gave us the pathetic, forgettable Orson over the musically interesting Gnarls Barkley. Best British Single had a truly terrible selection of nominees, all to a man (and they were only men) soft-rock garbage – depressingly including the resurrected Take That, who won, and probably deserved to over that lot. Best International Album was the Killers’ seriously inferior “Sam’s Town”, over Bob Dylan; the Killers also took Best International Artist over Bob, which on the basis of “Modern Times” is somewhat of a travesty.

What I don’t get about the Brits is that the BPI could, if it wanted to, award music that didn’t suck. It would be as easy as getting the right jury in. For instance, the best award by far is the one given out by Radio 2 listeners, Muse as best British live act (which they undoubtedly are right now); previous pleasant surprises by public vote have included the famous 1999 Belle and Sebastian “Best British Newcomer” win, rigged by their fanbase and ironically given out after their third album. So the Brits really needs better targeted public voting, and a better nominations stage – if Radio 2 and/or 6music listeners could nominate an “alternative Brit” award, for example, things would be a lot more interesting on stage.

And why isn’t there an award for hard rock and metal, anyway? Even the Grammys, boring as they are, give out awards for Best Metal Performance, which is often won by people like Tool. That would be a lot more fun than giving Oasis an award for outstanding contribution to British music (which obviously means, from the context, “ripping off other people’s riffs and being able to sustain it for two albums”.) Having an award with Iron Maiden competing is guaranteed to up the tempo a bit, although if it’s awarded the same way as the current system bloody Razorlight would probably win. They used to have Best Dance Act, awarded well to people like Massive Attack and the Prodigy; it became Best Urban Act, awarded to people like Joss Stone and Lemar, before dying this year.

The BPI are, of course, conservative and scared of controversy; the awards weren’t transmitted live between the 1989 Sam Fox disaster (although almost all of the problems with that were technical rather than personal) and now, and probably won’t be again for a while after they stupidly invited Russell Brand in. But controversy is all people ever remembers about the Brits – Sam Fox, the KLF and Extreme Noise Terror ‘dead sheep’ moment, Jarvis Cocker’s stage invasion, Chumbawumba and Prescott. They really shouldn’t be scared of it – a good award ceremony always has a few surprises in store, which is why moments like the Belle and Sebastian win are so memorable.

That appears to be, unfortunately, the way the British music industry works, so we probably won’t see it fixed for a while, if ever. Interestingly, the best British album award was given to the Overrated Bloody Arctic Monkeys, who won the Mercury prize a few months ago. The Mercurys are so much more credible than the Brits, aren’t they?

Nigel Humphries is an idiot

~ Inquisitor ~ 3 Comments

“In fact, it makes us feel a bit guilty that we haven’t campaigned hard enough on the legitimate front against the things that we oppose, to do with criminalising and bullying motorists, and because of our failure to campaign hard enough, somebody’s had to resort to this.”

[Nigel Humphries, Association of British Drivers. Quoted in BBC News Online, “Letter bomb injures DVLA worker“]

No-one’s “had to resort” to anything. Motorists aren’t a persecuted minority, they’re the majority; thankfully the true minority are pillocks like you who think that just because you’re in a car immediately absolves your responsibilities towards anything else, and scumbags like this letter bomber (whatever the aim may be.) The ABD, for example, campaigns against ANPR cameras – the entire aim of which is to make motorists safer by spotting uninsured and stolen cars and taking them off the road, since anyone who’s ever had their car stolen or been hit by a stolen or uninsured car will testify to the hell it is getting compensated.

Over 3000 people a year die in motoring related incidents, with the largest percentage being other car users. Honestly, it’s really depressingly like the US Christian Right’s claiming persecution by “liberal establishment” when they’ve got one of their own as President and Fox/CNN/et al; motorists already get far too little examination by the mainstream.

Google for their website and you’ll find global warming denial, doing the usual stupid quote mining. As an added bonus, they quote Kary Mullis, a creationist, astrology freak and HIV denier. Brilliant minds at work there. Honestly, why are they even getting airtime?

The PS3 price chart

~ Inquisitor

NTLewest has managed to solidly screw up my connection for a number of days (it still isn’t working quite as quickly as would be expected for a 4Mbit connection), so sorry all. In the meantime, I’m going to bash the PS3 again, because Sony have just released the official prices for Europe and have explained their screwing of Europeans as being due to VAT and ‘retailers’ (never mind that most British retailers are desperate to offer discounts on everything else in order to compete with Tesco et al). So here’s a little comparison table for the 60GB version…

  • USA: $599.00, €462.47, £303.69
  • Continental Europe: €599.00, $775.82, £393.34 (29.5% increase on US price)
  • Ireland: €629.00, $814.68, £413.04 (36% increase on US price, 5% increase on European price)
  • UK: £425.00, $838.27, €647.21 (40% increase on US price, 8% increase on European price, 3% increase on Irish price)

Right. It’s all to do with VAT. No matter that the highest VAT rate in Europe is held by Denmark and Sweden at 25% (the lowest are Luxembourg and Cyprus at 15%), which doesn’t explain the hike. No matter that Sony have used the VAT excuse for their Irish price gouging despite the fact that the Irish rate is 21%. And no matter that the British are the most expensive of the lot, despite a 17.5% rate.

If Sony weren’t threatening importers, it would be cheaper to bring one over from the US even if you got stung by Customs. They’re all coming from the same factories in China through the same container ships going through the same places, and the PS3 has a full multi-voltage power supply. Plus, since you’re going to play it on a HDTV anyway, there isn’t even a PAL/NTSC issue.

No, Sony is ripping us off on price. It doesn’t help that they don’t have any good games yet either, really. Avoid until the games come and the price goes down, at least; at this rate, the PS3 deserves to be as unpopular in Europe as the Xbox360 is in Japan.

Advice for The Sun (they love it, no really)

~ Inquisitor

If you headline a story this way (not the David Gest one):

PERVHUNT.COM

Don’t be surprised if someone checks to see if you own it, finds that you don’t, registers it and then uses it against you (linked to the Sun Page 3 website on an 18-year old model’s leering profile.) Nice one, anonymous Popbitch reader.

And what’s it with the use of that Sarah Payne photo right now? It was even on the front of the Guardian this morning. It’s just a form of crude emotional blackmail really, and this kind of story is too important for that. But with our media climate the way it is, at least we can have a laugh sometimes.

[via Media Guardian diary, 17 November 2006, free registration required.]

Edit: Oh well, qwghlm got there before me. Much more interesting detail (including the link to the relevant Popbitch thread) there.

“Britishness” at its “best”

~ Inquisitor

Vandalising a WW2 memorial with swastikas and the SS symbol (as well as spraying what I can only assume from the context was JEWS OUT over a few nearby premises.) Wow, they really must love our country, musn’t they? You have to wonder what goes through British Nazis’ minds; it must be some form of obtuse doublethink.

And then there was the Nick Griffin/Mark Collett decision. Collett at least deserves prosecution for his part in maintaining the R*dw*tch hitlist (name starred out for obvious Google-related reasons), and this fact – given by both Channel Four’s Young, Nazi and Proud and the BBC Secret Agent programme – has never been capitalised upon despite R*dw*tch being run by an actual bona fide terrorist group and having caused many violent attacks against those listed on it. The fact that he wasn’t even charged over that is somewhat infuriating.

Admittedly, this government has done naff all against the various ALF/ELF/SHAC hitlists, anti-abortion hitlists, Christian Voice’s BBC hitlist and various others – they seem just not to care. Even the US has done more – these sites were ruled illegal by the Planned Parenthood/ACLA decision over the “Nuremberg Files” – so it’s not like the Home Office couldn’t get it shut down if it wanted to. Why it doesn’t, much like why it doesn’t go after the animal rights versions that cost millions to the taxpayer, is beyond me.

Now, I usually take a free speech position; scumbags are there to be refuted and ignored, not jailed. But hitlists are not valid free speech; they are threats against people and property which the site owners obviously intend to be acted on (in the way the Nuremberg Files greyed and scored out dead abortion doctors, for instance.) They contain information which is not meant to be public, sometimes even things like credit card numbers.

It’s basically terrorism – we’ll list you and you could just get a bunch of thugs wanting to stab you on your porch someday, just for saying “Nazis are bad, mmkay?”. At the very least, it’s much more of a terrorist act than some guy who has the “Attempt To Blow Something Up In A Completely Inaccurate Way Handbook” on his hard drive, which this government seems to find no problem prosecuting. There are some things it’s just impossible to get.

I’ll leave you with an obvious question drawn from the Griffin/Collett trial: since when was “we’ll show those ethnics the door” not racist, anyway?

Added: But Scaryduck does have it right on…

History repeating

~ Inquisitor

One of the most famous denigrating myths about a rock star is Phil Collins divorcing his (second) wife “by fax”; it wasn’t exactly the divorce, but it was ugly and it did end up in the Sun.

Interestingly, something similar has now happened, entirely for real: Britney Spears told her husband she was divorcing him by Blackberry. And, this being the modern era, the video’s on YouTube. Don’t you just love watching history in the making?

It’s a wonder how Britney manages to stage-manage this stuff perfectly: just when her husband is promoting his bandwagon-jumping worthless hip-hop album, and just after she’s had a second kid, she dumps him. And, of course, she’s got interest all over the Internet because Federline has always been seen as a hanging coat-tail; now she’s Fed-less, she’s got promotion for her upcoming album, he’s got promotion for his, she gets the kids, he gets paid off, they’re happy. You’ve got to admire the gall.

One wonders what exactly those fundamentalists are on about when they talk about sanctity of heterosexual marriage, though.

Daily Star ignorant; sun comes up in morning

~ Inquisitor

Courtesy Media Guardian (free registration may be required):

The Daily Star last night pulled a page that mocked Muslim law by turning the tabloid into the “Daily Fatwa” following a newsroom revolt.

Well, doesn’t sound too promising from the title; sounds suspiciously like someone’s trying to be funny and failing miserably. Any details?

The page included a “Page 3 burqa babes special” showing a woman in a niqab, as part of a feature billed as “How your favourite paper would look under Muslim law”.

The page also contained a blank editorial stamped with the words “censored” and “Allah is great” while across the top of the page were the words “no news no goss no fun”.

A competition told readers to “Burn a flag and win a Corsa”, while a picture of the US president, George Bush, was accompanied by a caption “death to infidels”.

Oh dear. Not going into the complexities of Islamic law, but it does vary heavily based on religious interpretation; viz-a-viz the differences between Taliban-controlled Afghanistan at one end and the UAE on the other. Yesterday’s Guardian had a fine article in G2 by Zaiba Malik, who wore the niqab (Taliban-style one-fit full-cover garment) for the day, experienced the usual racism and despite trying hard didn’t find anyone else wearing it; she points out Quranic verses defending her non-niqab position.

One can safely surmise that whoever did write the Star article was, at the very least, a total fool, but glad to see that Star journos had the sense to use the union to right the wrong. It sounds very much like poor inaccurate stereotyping of the sort that simply pisses people off and gladdens the hearts of racists and other idiots. There are many valid reasons to criticise fundamentalist Islam, many of them the same as the reasons I criticise fundamentalist Christianity, but these aren’t them.