Category: Media

TV, Internet news, Web 2.0 and anything that doesn’t fit into the other categories.

A rather oblivious howler

~ Inquisitor

Simon Jenkins doing a “Damn those uppity scientists, having their profession destroyed by shitty “with it” GCSEs and chronic underfunding and having the cheek to protest about it” piece for the Guardian (I’m sure they employ him just to piss people off):

My own science O-level included trigonometry, advanced algebra and differential calculus, and related them to physics, engineering, statics and dynamics. I can not remember any of it, nor have I found the slightest use for it. I imagine more people use Latin than trigonometry.

Uh, Simon, quite a lot of people use trig – to take an appropriate example, if you’re pointing missile A at WMD facility B you’re going to need to work out what bloody angle it needs to point in. Is that a howler or what?

It’s a totally useless article on an interesting debate: as someone studying for a science degree entirely due to excellent teachers in high school, although in the much less compromised Scottish system (where combined science splits into chem/physics/biology at GCSE-equivalent rather than at A-level equivalent), I feel that people should have more opportunities to encounter science at school, whether segmented or not. At the same time, this science GCSE sounds terrible: whether it will actually be any good when taught is a different matter, but it doesn’t sound like it’s there to lay down the basics as a good intro science course should do. Shame, huh?

Incredibly, even the cesspool that is Comment is Free manages to produce an interesting comment discussion, proving that even it can be redeemable sometimes. And this is the kind of thing that Ben Goldacre usually has for lunch; if only the Guardian let him write more often.

Truth from fiction

~ Inquisitor

Sony Europe’s Jamie MacDonald:

Q: What would you say to consumers who like Sony and want to buy your products, but perhaps feel that because they’re in Europe they’re always last in line?

A: European consumers have shown that historically they don’t mind that, because they end up buying as many PlayStations, if not more, than the US and Japan. In Europe, it doesn’t seem that the release of our platforms after the US and Japan – in the long run – affects how consumers feel.

In other words: “Europe will take it as hard as we want to give it to them.” Nice of them to admit it.

Sony’s PS3 strategy really is a disaster waiting to happen, and a lot of it is the fault of SCE marketing: arrogant and obtuse, managing to put out exactly the messages they’re trying to dispel. They claim revolutionary graphics; those “screenshots” that aren’t renders look like Xbox-360 screenshots, or only slightly better. They claim a full online environment; every manufacturer is making their own, just like with the PS2, and most probably won’t be Xbox Live level. They claim their controller is entirely original; but it’s just a Dual Shock without the shock and with a tilt, as opposed to the real Wiivolution (which manages both). They’ve even forced a pro-PS3 magazine to take down a video of the system booting up.

And, of course, Sony is still stuck in the Dark Ages of European Pricing, as they are with the PSP. £425 (for the 60GB model) does not equal $599 (the US price for the 60GB model), it equals $800; we’re being stiffed by over a hundred pounds at current exchange rates. It doesn’t equal €599 either, although that’s only a £25 extra Ripoff Britain stiffing by SCEE (how nice of them) – and that one can’t account for VAT either.

[In the meantime, the Xbox-360 HD-DVD drive is £119, which is basically the US price ($199) plus VAT. Microsoft are being friendlier to us than Sony. Now that’s weird.]

Of course, Sony can still rescue themselves if they make decent games and people decide that they want the console, but by the current look of things they really don’t deserve it. Especially since the PS3 isn’t “coming out” until March, although it isn’t really coming out until then anywhere (only 400,000 units to the USA = instant $2000 eBay sales, you can count on it.) But right now, they’re screwed, and they’re doing it to themselves. If only they hadn’t said it would be out this year, and if only they didn’t exaggerate or screw Europeans on pricing, things might be going better for them… might.

[via Engadget.]

Your privacy diminished, again

~ Inquisitor

So we’ve just given in to the American demands for flight data.

Now, I can just about see why they’d want to know the names of people coming into their country, but they get that anyway when they look at your passport, along with DOB, a photograph of you, and currently biometrics of you as well. Why on earth they need to know whether you ate the fish or the chicken, or your credit card number, on the other hand… Isn’t that just overkill?

South West Trains have some bloody cheek

~ Inquisitor ~ 16 Comments

Anyone who’s ever had the misfortune to travel on South West Trains will have been rather aggrieved that they were allowed to keep their franchise, despite being one of the worst performing train companies in the country and despite the fact that many better performing franchises have had theirs taken away (eg. the National Express Scotrail franchise, which was awarded as best in the country a couple of times and still had their franchise taken away and given to First). They also have a big overcrowding issue: they control several of the big commuter routes into London and commuters loathe them (check out that “Megaplaint” Word document – wow!)

So what have they thought of to solve overcrowding? Bear in mind that SWT have brought in new trains that suck even compared to the new trains on other British lines. This is something they could, of course, have forseen, since it has been the most heavily overcrowded train company ever since its inception. What have they thought of?

They’re ripping out the seats.

Does Brian Souter have blackmail material on Blair or something? Honestly.

Mercury Music Prize 2006

~ Inquisitor

So, the albums in competition are low-key numbers from Richard Hawley, Thom Yorke and Isobel Campbell (the former of which should win); “popular act we’ve ignored previously” entries from Muse and Scritti Polliti, the Big Name entry from the Arctic Bloody Monkeys, and the “truly godawful, WTF they put it there over a decent album” entry from Hot Chip. And the real should-be winners, Kate Bush and the Pet Shop Boys, aren’t on the list.

SPOILER WARNING: Unfair winner revealed after the break…

Continue reading “Mercury Music Prize 2006” →

The greed wins out: or does it?

~ Inquisitor

If you don’t want football matches to be shown between 2:45 and 5:15, maybe you might wish not to allow TV companies to broadcast them. This thought has apparently not come to the SPL:

A licensee in Glasgow has been stopped from using a decoder to access and screen overseas broadcasts of Scottish Premier League matches.

The Court of Session in Edinburgh granted an interim interdict against The Spirit Bar in the east end.

[BBC News Scotland, “Licensee handed TV football ban“]

The basic situation is that all games are taped. Through a UEFA ruling, we can’t actually show most games live within the UK (those between 2:45 and 5:15 on Saturdays) because it’ll stop people being extorted by the clubs, but at the same time rights to all the games are sold to countries outside UK jurisdiction which aren’t subject to this limit.

Since the satellites that serve the Middle East are very much accessible from UK skies using a large (but standard) dish, you can entirely legally purchase a subscription from a Turkish satellite provider and thus gain access to SPL/EPL/other non-Sky football. Often with English commentary, too. A few people in the know – mostly satellite enthusiasts and pubs – have taken this up, and the football authorities are not happy.

Sky in particular are furious at this: the fees they charge pub-owners are astronomical (for a lesser service, too – the pub versions of Sky Sports are 4:3, not widescreen) and they don’t want to lose that easy, monopoly income. They’ve actually failed at this in the English courts, but obviously they’ve decided that the Scots might be an easier target.

Going straight to the point: it is not illegal for a pub-owner to posess a foreign decoder, the decoder owner pays the subscription fee to the foreign satellite company, the SPL/EPL/whatever are paid for the rights from the foreign broadcaster, and therefore if it gets picked up in Britain it should be none of their business. All prosecuting people does is shows us

  1. how silly the rule is
  2. how expensive Sky areand, most importantly,
  3. that more people really should do this

Yes! Buy a motorised dish! Screw Sky! Screw £30+ gate fees! Screw the SPL and EPL! And then maybe, just, they’ll see some sense.

Q magazine: as usual, wrong in every possible way

~ Inquisitor

Since when the hell was “I’m Not In Love” a guilty pleasure? And since when was “Life Is A Rollercoaster” anything but dire? I haven’t bought a copy of Q since they started printing paparazzi photos, and this only reaffirms my decision.

BBC Have Your Say is on target for once (and for the most part, thankfully, ignoring Gary Glitter’s inclusion), as people admit their own embarassing guilty ‘pleasures’: “Star Trekkin'”, “Barbie Girl”, “The One And Only”, “Ra Ra Rasputin”, “Remember You’re A Womble”.

My occasionally perverse liking of most things 80s leads me to suggest “Material Girl”. Yes, that “Material Girl”. What’s yours?

Mel Gibson is a drunk, speeding driver

~ Inquisitor

Not so holy now, are you?

The Oscar-winner, 50, was stopped after driving at 87mph in a 45mph zone in Malibu, California.

He failed a breath test, was charged with drink-driving and freed on bail.

Speeding and drink driving. Wow. Definite entrant into my “scumbags” category, especially since he only paid $5000 for his bail (probably because he’s a ‘sleb, or maybe… nah, not in 2006).

In case you’re wondering about my hatred of Mel Gibson: he’s a decentish actor who’s appeared in some decent films (the Mad Max series and Chicken Run) and he should stick to bloody acting instead of inflicting overwrought epics on us. Plus Braveheart comfortably takes the title of my least favourite movie of all time, followed up by Passion of the Christ, a 127-minute long torture scene with majorly uncomfortable homophobic overtones (in the Herod Agrippa sequences) and even more uncomfortable graphic torture (only made bearable with the addition of the Benny Hill music, a bit of a surprise in itself). I have seen Japanese movies which are much more bearable than Passion, despite being more graphic, because it’s obvious that the film-maker isn’t actually enjoying the depiction or (in the case of Takashi Miike), at least, is trying to make a point with it.

So Mel’s been in a lot of stuff I hate and, what’s more, was completely responsible for it, so anything that takes him down a peg is fine by me.

Plus, let’s face it, driving drunk is lame.

UPDATE: Gibson apparently made anti-Semitic remarks:

“The report says Gibson then launched into a barrage of anti-Semitic statements: ‘F*****g Jews… The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world.’ Gibson then asked the deputy, ‘Are you a Jew?'”

Definite scumbag. See Orac for a decent historical discussion.