Category: Microcode

Computers, gaming, and anything else of relevance.

Team Fortress 2 is…

~ Inquisitor

…just as fun as all the promotional videos up until now have suggested, at least on my first play through 2fort.

I am, of course, completely inexperienced in multiplayer gaming: TF Classic, Counter-Strike and Unreal Tournament came out when I was still stuck on a 56K modem, a device completely unsuitable for TCP/IP based gaming, and as such I never got into the scene and all my FPS skills are trained towards the one-player experience. Now of course I have near-enough-20Mbit broadband, a high-end graphics card from two and a half years ago and spare time, all perfect breeding grounds for multiplayer gaming. And if you pre-order the Orange Box now off Steam (which unfortunately adds VAT so you get charged about £25 for it) you have TF2.

The design of TF2 is a masterstroke – they’ve taken big inspiration from Pixar and used cel-shading to create a game-specific reality. It uses exaggerated movements and expressions. This therefore differentiates it from all those over-realistic Battlefield-type games (which the original TF2, started before Half-Life 2 and then disappeared, was intending to be; Battlefield before Battlefield) and provides a unique gaming experience – a multiplayer team shooter that’s not afraid to be fun, whatever the consequences of that may be. It’s exhilarating.

So all this goes to say – if you spot me on a TF2 server and inevitably end up killing me, I will hopefully get better some day…

In a way, it proves that we’re working

~ Inquisitor

419eater and scamwarners are currently being DDoSsed by what may be the Storm/Zhelatin gang, Russians for hire with a botnet comparable to military supercomputers. Apparently CastleCops et al are being hit as well.

So the Russians are into 419 scamming as well. I should really be more surprised…

XBMC: making it sing (Part 2 – Configuring)

~ Inquisitor ~ 43 Comments

Configuring XBMC to play back your media is something that can seem from its description to be somewhat complex. It really isn’t. What I’m going to describe in this article is the process of:

  • Exposing your media in a way it’s safe for the Xbox to obtain
  • Setting XBMC up so that it can see it as you want it
  • Getting it playing

Continue reading “XBMC: making it sing (Part 2 – Configuring)” →

Bioshock: coming soon

~ Inquisitor

The Bioshock demo is out. For the 360.

Unfortunately, I don’t own a 360. I have an original Xbox and a desktop PC; I mostly game on the desktop (I do play emulators and Burnout 3 on the Xbox, however). Happily it looks like there will be a PC demo; the 360 demo is getting a rapturous reception (no pun intended) from the gaming blogs.

I can hardly wait, actually; I’ve been waiting for a System Shock 2 follow-up for a long time and this is the best we’re going to get. Hopefully this time it might even catch on with the general public.

Edit: The Bioshock demo is now out for the PC, and the game is out in the States. Us Brits get it on Friday because games always come out on Friday. Regardless, the demo is marvellous and I highly recommend at least giving it a try (as long as you have a NVIDIA 6600+/ATI X1600+ card – it’s an Unreal 3.0 game and requires Shader Model 3.0). I highly recommend using a torrent instead of going through fileplanet et al, however, it’s 1.8GB and that’s way too big to be waiting in one of their POS advertorial queues for.

I’m hoping I can get a Collector’s Edition, actually.

An open letter to Virgin Media

~ Inquisitor ~ 5 Comments

A complaint letter I sent recently, posted without comment.

I have been a Telewest customer since August 2003. I’ve had pretty much the same package ever since then – now branded TV L/broadband L/phone M. I was very happy with Telewest’s service quality and the breadth of the service.

Since the takeover by ntl and the rebranding as Virgin Media, I have been experiencing a number of issues:

1. The complete inability to supply what was a previously excellent 4Mbit broadband connection between January and April 2007. This was apparently due to an overloaded UBR, causing slowing even at off-peak times to 300Kbit/s and below – making sites such as youtube completely unusable. Upload speed, on the other hand, was perfectly fine (and exceeded download speed a lot of the time).

The fact that there seemed to be a complete lack of updates on this major fault internally – your helpful newsgroup support were continually only able to tell me that the repair was in “planning” and couldn’t find out any more than that – was the largest annoyance here. My broadband connection is very important to me, much more than any of the other services I take from VM, and it was simply not worthy of the £25/month I paid for it – especially since in my area competition from local loop unbundled services (eg. Be Unlimited or Sky) is just a call to BT away.

2. The reorganisation of the TV packages. I am not someone who complained about the loss of Sky One; as a matter of fact, the way VM dealt with the loss of Sky One had my full support and may well have prevented me from cancelling due to the broadband fault. However, I have been irritated by the recent, unheralded and unwarned of change to the TV L package that has seen the removal of MTV Hits, The Box and VH1 Classic and their replacement with MTV UK and VH1. I accept that these are “better” brand names for a TV package, but this brings the number of channels that show music videos without filling half the screen with opaque junk or relying on useless celebrity programming to zero (from one: VH1 Classic). With the price rise in TV L, the gain of just one channel (Bloomberg, which doesn’t interest me) and the fact that certain channels which are free to air on satellite are only on the XL package on VM (Zone Horror, for example) I’m finding this very hard to take.

3. While I do appreciate the free weekend calls on basic telephone line rental, per-minute billing is intrinsically unfair. Switching back from the fairer per-second billing has been another annoyance, especially since it was hidden on the small print of the flyer.

4. The introduction of bandwidth shaping on broadband services: I don’t disagree with the need for curbing heavy users on what is after all a shared connection, I just disagree with the fact that no-one has actually been told about it. Sure, the newsgroups know and it’s all over the user support websites, but I haven’t received any email telling me about this major change in my broadband service’s provision from unlimited 4Mbit to unlimited 4Mbit between midnight and 4pm, and I feel that it is entirely unacceptable that only those who read the newsgroups or support forums know about it.

5. The special deals being given to customers who complain about the loss of Sky One are particularly irritating right now. This is it in a nutshell: there are forum threads pretty much everywhere on the net right now encouraging people to call into VM, complain about the loss of Sky One (which, of course, they don’t really care about, otherwise they’d already have Sky) and get a better deal.

There are people getting L broadband/XL TV/L phone for £35/mo – this apparently exists as an internal designation called “package 9”. I’m paying £47.50/mo for L/L/M, and £12.50/mo is a considerable amount of money for me to be paying more for an inferior service. If you’re going to give deals to people, don’t hide them – give them to everyone. Personally I would be very happy with this, but I’m not sure how long I’m going to be in a VM area (my university course is finishing soon) and do not want to be tied down to a 12-month contract that I might not be able to keep to.

6. Your email support web form (at http://help2.virginmedia.com/assets/html/
customer_feedback/customer_feedback_querytype_2.html) only accepts a certain number of characters in a message. This of course is mentioned nowhere on the web form itself and the textbox accepts many more; thus when trying to send this letter electronically I received an autoreply telling me that “due to a technical issue we only received part of your email”. Since you do not provide a real email address for receiving customer messages, this has forced me into sending this by postal mail. Providing an actual email address read by people would be the best option here, but please at least fix this problem.

(From the two days late auto-responses I’ve been getting to my cut off complaints it appears to strip line spaces from the text as well, which would have made this letter unreadable in any case.)

7. The most recent irritation, however, has been the emailed announcement about the change to broadband technical support services from free (through 150) to a 25p/minute premium rate number. Even considering that you will not be allowed to put people on hold, the various calls I made to you over issues that were entirely your fault in the early part of this year would have made about £10+ in extra income if they were charged for in this way – the time taken up by various computer rebooting, etc., despite the fact that it was the equipment provided by Telewest that obviously was not working.

Your competition in my area and in most other cable areas, Be Unlimited ADSL2+, has a freephone support service. Sky has an 0870 number. Premium rate support is simply unacceptable ethically; I am not going to pay 25p/minute for issues which are your fault. If this policy stays I am afraid that, despite everything, I will have to cancel service.

8. In a sense then the main problem I am having with VM that I didn’t have with Telewest is the lack of information. Faults are in planning for months, TV packages are changed without any warning, broadband packages are changed without warning, “package 9” only is known about through hearsay, the entire way my phone is charged was changed in the small print, and then when you try to complain the email web form silently cuts off most of your message. When Telewest did things like that they sent letters or emails, or at least gave slightly more information than “it’s in planning” when you asked them why. I’ve never had a fault that lasted more than 24 hours before the takeover. And support for their products was always free.

What I would like, therefore is for my service to improve back to the level it was for my first three and a half years as a customer. If you can’t do that, then I and others like me will be forced into alternatives, and I really don’t want to have to do that; while I’ve got too much of an ethical conviction to go to Sky (or lie to you that I want to go there), these don’t apply to BT and ADSL2+ LLU. I know how good my service can be. Can you get it back?

First time in ages…

~ Inquisitor

Manhunt 2 has been refused a certificate by the BBFC. Rockstar get a chance at an appeal.

To be honest, is anyone really surprised by this? I’ve been expecting it since Rockstar revealed that they’d removed the coercion aspect from the game – basically, removing all the context – and it seems the BBFC feel the same way.

[David Cooke, the BBFC’s director, said that] “the game’s unrelenting focus on stalking and brutal slaying and the sheer lack of alternative pleasures on offer to the gamer, together with the different overall narrative context, contribute towards differentiating this submission from the original Manhunt game.”

Have Rockstar finally gone too far? Well, put it this way, if Jack Thompson hadn’t been sued into oblivion he’d be crowing about this right now as proof that he was right. Shame really.

A spectacular own goal

~ Inquisitor ~ 2 Comments

I’ve just received an email from Virgin Media:

Hello,

From 1st July, our broadband helpline number is changing and from then on it’ll cost 25p per minute to call from a Virgin home phone, plus 10p to connect. Mobiles and other networks may vary. The new number is 0906 212 1111.

That’s “0906” as in “scam”.

Access to technical support, at least on the ex-Telewest side, has always been

  • 0845 local rate for those with a BT line
  • free (through 150) for those with a Telewest line

After July 1, this is no longer the case – customer services on 150 will give you the 0906 number if you have any trouble with your line (or, as has been the case with all my dealings with ex-Telewest tech support, they have a problem they refuse to recognise and/or their equipment has become faulty.) With the standard “reboot your modem, reboot your computer, repeat that the connect light on the modem is not on numerous times to the minimum-wage checklist operative on the other end until they finally get that the modem isn’t getting a signal from the UBR and it’s not your computer” routine that VM’s call centre staff follow, at 25p/min they’ll probably earn about £5 a call. Hopefully the broadband support USENET groups will continue to exist, and they’re certainly better than any of VM’s call centre staff, but with the cost-cutting they’ve been doing I’m not so sure.

Last I remember, not even the ex-NTL people got screwed with a premium rate support number. At least putting people on hold is banned under the premium rate regulations, but having your only recourse for support being an 0906 number is unacceptable under any circumstances – it is anti-consumer, it is an added cost on top of the already overpriced £25/month I am paying for 4Mbit/384K, it is an imbecilic idea thought up by someone who wants to make even more money out of people with real problems instead of caring about fixing them. Telewest already had a line (at a staggering £1/min) for people with spyware problems and other issues not covered by the broadband support service, so the explanation in the FAQ about cost saving does not hold water.

All this is going to do is annoy long-serving customers like me. I’ve already been annoyed quite a bit by VM in recent months; the swapping out of the only good music channel at TV L for MTV and VH1, the major speed issue I and everyone else in my region of Edinburgh suffered between January and April, the small-print switch from per-second to per-minute call billing, the special deals given to those who whine about the loss of Sky One on the cancellations line, the fact that VM only accept email support through a webform that cuts off after a tiny number of characters, and the fact that they still haven’t admitted anything about the speed limiter (which I actually agree with to an extent) to customers in email. At least they sent out a message warning of this.

VM have to be very careful – the local-loop unbundled providers are setting up in cable areas for a reason, because unless VM stop thinking like the penny-pinching NTL of old and start acting the way Richard Branson obviously wants them to instead of just throwing red paint over the infrastructure they stand a real danger of a customer exodus to BT, Freeview or Sky and ADSL2+ LLU. I’m already sizing up the cost of getting an aerial fitted.

I have been a Telewest customer since August 2003. I’ve had the same package all the time, and been very satisfied with it. I never had any serious problems with the service until after the NTL takeover. Now, with this change in the customer support system, they are simply being outclassed by their competition: Sky have 0870 support. Be Unlimited are freephone (0808) and, right now, very technically proficient. They are the competition here. I have a moral objection to Murdoch and Sky, but none to O2 (owners of Be). I even have a BT master box in my flat just ready to re-enable.

The change in the support structure says, quite simply, both that they think we’re all stupid and that the company is desperate for money: this is not a company that I wish to be paying £45/month to. A sad end for what for a long time was the best broadband provider anywhere in the country, is forthcoming I feel unless Richard Branson can force the banks that really own the company to get their act together. I’m not sure that even he can manage that, unfortunately, so it might soon be goodbye.

First look: Die Hard 4.0, or “Live Free Or Die Hard”

~ Inquisitor ~ 2 Comments

The first ten minutes have now been released in low-quality, buffery WMV on the website of Yahoo! Japan, and it looks like it’s got about as accurate a take on the power of a group of computer blackhats as Hackers and The Net, and with worse technobabble. This is 2007, for crying out loud…

It doesn’t just look worse than Die Hard with a Vengeance, it looks worse than Speed 2. It looks to be about on the same level as Firewall. That’s not good.

Of course, we can’t judge the full movie on the first ten minutes, but this doesn’t look hopeful at all; and it’s a shame, because I think Bruce and John McClane deserve better than Len Wiseman, a PG-13 rating and a computer-hacker plotline that was outdated when Mitnick got arrested. Nice work, guys.

[via Film Ick.]

Oh, come on

~ Inquisitor ~ 4 Comments

Now I’ve bashed the PS3 as much as anyone, but finally here we have something that Sony doesn’t deserve to be blamed for:

Cathedral row over computer game (BBC News, 9th June 2007)

The Church of England is considering legal action against entertainment firm Sony for featuring Manchester Cathedral in a violent Playstation computer game.

The Church says Sony did not obtain permission to use the interior in the war game Resistance: Fall of Man.

No, and nor should they have.

The game is an apparently flawed, war-based FPS set in an alternate (that is, not real) 1950s where what are either aliens or a biological experiment gone wrong are invading the West, spreading virally. Let’s emphasise that this is not real. Since your objective is to win the war, using ground-based resistance tactics, this of course means that you battle in real-world locations like churches, just like in every other war. That’s what war is.

And forgetting this context, they then make a very horrible comparison:

The Bishop of Manchester, the Rt Revd Nigel McCulloch, described the decision to feature the city’s cathedral as “highly irresponsible” – especially in the light of Manchester’s history of gun crime.

“It is well known that Manchester has a gun crime problem,” he said.

“For a global manufacturer to re-create one of our great cathedrals with photo-realistic quality and then encourage people to have guns battles in the building is beyond belief and highly irresponsible.

For a start, Sony didn’t write Resistance – it was developed by Insomniac Games, the people who came up with Spyro the Dragon, and merely distributed by Sony on their console. Secondly, it’s from what I hear not actually a recreation of the cathedral – it’s a model whose outside look is based on it but internally is fairly different (unsurprisingly, as it’s being destroyed by the enemy when you turn up). And, most importantly, exactly what the hell has Manchester’s gun crime problem got to do with a fantasy game set in an alternate 1950s where you play a resistance member fighting a last-ditch battle against an alien invader?

If Resistance was the British-set equivalent of the 50 Cent game they might have a point, but it’s not and the press should be ashamed at this comparison. It is not encouraging street crime, it is fantasy. Churches are fine to be used offensively in all other media – only a few weeks ago, Doctor Who’s “Lazarus Experiment” episode featured a denouement set in a cathedral, and I didn’t hear any of this lot complaining then – so why not much the same thing in a game?

And besides, they don’t have a leg to stand on over the image issue anyway, legally; buildings are there. It would be like the New York tourism department raising hell because I put a destroyed Statue of Liberty in a counter-terrorism game which, as per Deus Ex, they didn’t do. Hell, it would be much the same as a church complaining about the type of church-based deathmatch level that’s turned up in pretty much every World War II FPS ever made (I played it a lot in one of the variants of Medal of Honour), but they don’t.

Note also that this game has been out since November – it was a PS3 launch title, and as a result sold well because amongst the launch titles only it and Motorstorm were in any way decent (they’ve now been joined by Oblivion, but that’s still pretty much it if you don’t count PS2 games) – and the controversy has only started now. Have the gutter press got tired of Big Brother already?

Error messages of our times: #1

~ Inquisitor

iTunes error message

Today was the day of the iTunes Plus launch. It’s a silly name for a great idea – an easy to use, consumer designed music download service without the DRM hassle, downloading nice enough bitrate AAC files for decent enough prices (especially on certain box sets, the famous iTunes loophole). Sadly, it seems like they’ve underestimated demand somewhat. Currently the iTunes search engine is screwed, returning no results for queries where I know the artist in question is on the ITMS (like The Knife), but audio clips are playing perfectly fine if very slowly. And the service is cutting in and out with errors like the one to the right; I’ve never used ITMS before, but I doubt that’s normal.

It’s amazing what being customer centred can do for your potential audience, isn’t it?

Edit: Noticed a neat DRM-free bargain: Wire’s Pink Flag, Chairs Missing and 154 all-in for £10.99. Even though they’ve apparently confused the latter two, this is an absolute bargain compared to what these sell for in the shops.