Category: Microcode

Computers, gaming, and anything else of relevance.

Why, the incompetent…

~ Inquisitor

There’s been a long-running saga regarding the use of a website with which junior doctors are forced to apply for the medical specialisations they will remain in for the rest of their working lives. Not only has the government screwed up by actually banning the site from knowing, you know, the qualifications of the applicant, but this website is horrendously designed, known to be somewhat crashy, and it turns out is full of security holes. Channel Four have been revealing one a day.

So it’s only the latest in the long-running saga of this government using unaccountable independent contractors to do the IT work that the Civil Service should be doing and getting kicked in the balls again and again and again – as if the various disasters at the Child Support Agency, EDS’s NHS cash-sink, the tax credits system, the Passport Agency and much much more never counted for anything at all. The contractors responsible for this, according to the Google cache of the MTAS site, are “Methods Consulting Ltd and Jobsite UK (Worldwide) Ltd”; Methods’ website is, surprise surprise, flashy and devoid of content.

This is funny. The situation, however, is not – there’s no other way to apply for a training post now other than to use MTAS, despite the fact that it would probably be easier and cheaper for everyone to go back to writing a hundred different covering letters. Sad, isn’t it?

Update: And you can’t blame Microsoft for this either… Apache 1.3.37 on Linux. Just to show that you can screw up anything on any operating system. Oddly, the site appears to be hosted on the contractor’s own netblock rather than a UK government one, which I would have thought would be a no-no for anything sensitive like, you know, NHS job applications, but hey…

One year of “The Hard Sell”

~ Inquisitor

Today is the one-year anniversary of the point at which I decided to move to blog software that didn’t suck – in this case, wordpress.com.

Am I glad I did so? Definitely. Here, my Xbox modding article has been read by a few thousand people, many of whom actually seem to be happy with it. And I don’t have to edit HTML manually anymore, which means I can post more; I haven’t posted as much as I really intended to over the year (my drafts list is proof of that) but at the very least I have managed over a hundred posts, which is much better than before. Some are even good.

So I’d like to thank everyone for reading, and add a list of highlights to come:

  • No ranting Nick Love post. People know that I don’t like him anyway, there seems to be no extra rioting in the streets and besides the reviews for Outlaw really have said it all.
  • Instead, more event live-blogging and culture reviews – I need to hone instant blogging skills anyway (and stop unintentional spoonerisms creeping in). Eurovision itself will be covered live, and I shall bring in more political content. I will be covering the Scottish elections from a “which-evil-should-I-vote-for” perspective.
  • More Xbox modding content as well – the remaining parts of my XBMC guide and a look at emulation.
  • The usual news story discoveries, and occasional PS3 bashing. But everyone expects that, don’t they? (Latest rumour: European PS3 won’t play NTSC games. If it’s true, Sony’s “region-free” stance is proven to be a total and utter lie, although that’s been pretty much proven already by their restrictions on playasia et al. Stay tuned! Thankfully, it’s not true: this probably resulted from someone trying games on a demo unit rather than the retail one. Even still, once you consider what they did to Lik-Sang and their restrictions on PlayAsia…)

So stay tuned – it’s all in progress. It just might take a little while for it to get out of there. In the meantime, there’s always my del.icio.us bookmarks – in which most of my one-liner blogging now takes place; right now, I’m off.

XBMC: Making it sing (Part 1 – Setup)

~ Inquisitor ~ 29 Comments

I’ve noticed for a while that my grossly inadequate XBMC setup guide is one of the most popular articles on this blog, and it’s something that has long required rectifying. XBMC has been changed a lot recently, and it’s now moved to a different configuration system – plus, if you want XBMC to talk with Windows Vista, you require a 2007 version.

Thus, I’ve created here an all-new XBMC setup guide – Vista-safe, up to date, and with absolutely no XML editing required. This, however, will be done as a series of parts:

  1. Installation and updating (which follows)
  2. Setting up your sources list
  3. The little things

Continue reading “XBMC: Making it sing (Part 1 – Setup)” →

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.

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.

The pros and cons of iPhone

~ Inquisitor ~ 9 Comments

Well, I guess every single blogger in the world has already done an iPhone story, but I might as well.

The fact is, it’s beautiful. It’s easily the best looking device Apple have made since the titanium Powerbook G4. The design has that sort of “Why on earth has no-one else thought of that?” feeling that only Apple seem to manage to do well nowadays. It makes the most use of the available space efficiently and prettily, it manages to fit full functionality into that small space, the touch interface appears to be very well thought out and it has a really good screen resolution. The fact that it can go from a normal phone call into a Blackberry-esque email system simply by clicking the right button is fantastic; it’s the big advantage of a touchscreen and they appear to have come up with a version that works.

Plus, it’s got WiFi and Bluetooth 2.0, so you don’t have to pay provider’s nasty internet rates nearly as often as you do with other such phones. This all needs to be factored in when considering its nasty US price ($500 for 4GB/$600 for 8GB, or going through the currency channel £250/£300 over here – although it’ll likely be less because of the British mobile contract system.)

Some of the caveats bloggers are tossing about aren’t really, for instance with regard to the battery life. The “5 hour” life Apple quotes is talk time, which is very different from standby time; the iPhone has so many proximity sensing features it’s almost certain to have a very good standby time, although it isn’t quoted on the technical specs page (although a 16-hour music only time is, which is about as good as my Creative Zen Touch). If left alone, as a mobile most often is, it’ll probably last a whole lot longer.

If we go to Nokia’s website and look up one of its comparable smartphones, for instance the N80, note the listed talk and standby times: the N80 has a talk time of “up to three hours”, two hours less than the iPhone even when GSM-only, while it manages a lot more on standby. The only people who will have their iPhone turn off after five hours are people doing lots of Web hopping and making constant phone calls, and these people will be just as unhappy with an N80. Or how about the Motorola Q (once you get past the obnoxious Flash anim, 4 hours quoted talk time)? Or maybe the Blackberry Pearl (3.5 hours)? The iPhone isn’t at all out of place in this market, really. The only comparable smartphone I could find with a better quoted talk time was the Sony Ericsson W950i, which manages 7h30 on GSM only (but drops to 2h30 on UMTS, which may explain the lack of 3G in the iPhone).

Certainly the iPhone isn’t perfect – the software lockdown is unnerving, although there’s enough unique software on there that finding equivalents for the stuff that isn’t really shouldn’t be a problem, and both the lack of UMTS and “US-only until Christmas” are really annoying – but you really don’t need to bash it for something which is true of every other phone on the market. Cisco willing, the mobile phone market is going to get very interesting from now on as Motorola et al desperately attempt to copy the iPhone’s looks and feature set, and good luck to them. They’re all going to need it.

Rockstar go for the win

~ Inquisitor

Now, I’ve written about the Bully/Canis Canem Edit “controversy” before. The game’s ‘out’ now, and it’s apparently OK (although it apparently has one of those terrible Stealth Missions that plague too many games right now). That’s not the point here, though.

What have Rockstar managed to get into the game that shouldn’t be controversial but somehow is? Well, they’ve built in a sideline teenage dating simulation that just so happens not to care about the sex of the kids doing the dating (which, of course, is something that you choose to do). So, of course, all the usual press is outraged at how Rockstar managed to get sexual content (well, kissing) into a ‘T’ rated game – missing the point that it’s mentioned on the back cover – and outraged about how your character could be gay or bi if you wanted him to be.

Wonderful. Now that’s comedy – this controversy is something I can entirely get behind Rockstar for, it’s entirely a player issue. It’s odd that this could well be the big issue of the game, though, when it’s the only real one Rockstar’s right on (and The Sims can do exactly the same thing), but that’s the press for you.

Quid pro quo

~ Inquisitor

With the “Bully” saga going on and on and on, Rockstar have pulled a rather stunning coup on the British and world media. Now, of course, it’s backfiring on them.

The story so far: Rockstar Vancouver (not Rockstar North of GTA fame, the people who gave you the sequel to “Homeworld“) announce a game called “Bully“, and provide various screenshots of kids giving each other, eg, wedgies. People think it’s going to be a GTA-alike bully simulation game and raise hell.

Rockstar then pull off the wool to reveal it is, in fact, a school survival game in a very jocular 80s Grange Hill-esque tone. People, including the Daily Mail and people involved with anti-bullying charities, ignore the announcement and keep on raising hell. Rockstar repeat the announcement more forcefully, and change the name in European territories to “Canis Canem Edit” (“Dog Eat Dog”, the fictitious school’s motto.) You can guess it: people are still raising hell, despite the fact that the game is complete, has gone through the censors and come out with an ESRB “T” and (more importantly) BBFC 15; it wasn’t intended as a kids’ game anyway.

Now the latest announcement is that Dixons Stores Group is refusing to stock the game. Considering that they stock the 18-rated, gangs and sex and similar nasties GTA, and hope to stock more of it, that seems a bit much.

Admittedly GTA is popular because it doesn’t take itself remotely seriously (something which both Daily Mail type critics and people who rip it off don’t get at all), but from all the reports I’ve seen the same is true of “Bully“. So basically it’s DSG caving into a media backlash, the same way that Game caved over (Rockstar North’s actually distasteful) “Manhunt” a few years back.

Of course, “Manhunt” was back in Game mere months after they claimed to have removed it, so “Canis Canem Edit” will probably turn up on PC World shelves soon. Nevertheless, it’s the principle of the thing; if you’re going to ban games designed for adults from your shelves, ban them all, not just the ones that get coverage in the Metro. Journalists should realise that for some time the biggest demographic for games has been twentysomethings and older; this was true even back in 1995/6, and this group wants games that might actually cover adult themes (although they might not want all GTA all the time).

Rockstar are, of course, not blameless at all in the issue; they started it, and from the (for once, unintentional) controversy over Hot Coffee they probably knew what they were getting themselves into. But they did it anyway. No-one’s played the game yet; it might be crap for all I know, but the controversy will sell many more copies than the entire UK shipment of Psychonauts.

(And couldn’t they have just called it “Dog Eat Dog”? It’s a lot better.)

If it turns out to be a decent game, all well and good, but this kind of marketing can only be bad for gamers and gaming as a whole; making it seem like a “flash in the pan” medium. And the lack of games that cover adult issues well is very troubling. Nevertheless, gaming is a relatively infant medium rapidly growing up, and hopefully we’ll be at the stage that Psychonauts or a non-franchise game with a decent storyline and great gameplay can sell Big Numbers soon (XBLA, Steam and the Nintendo Wii might help here, and Bioshock looks like it could be interesting.) But we’re not there yet.

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.]

Vista diary #1: Hardware hassles and hard choices

~ Inquisitor ~ 3 Comments

I’ve just installed Vista RC1 on my main desktop machine, and for the first time it’s speedy enough and almost ready to be my main operating system. I’m typing this in Vista IE7 now.

Vista has had a bit of a troubled history for me. I have an Athlon-64 3500+ homebuild machine, with 1GB RAM, a SoundBlaster Live! Platinum 5.1 I paid quite a bit of money for a few years ago, and an NVIDIA 6800GT graphics card – something which should be fast enough for anything much thrown at it (it’s certainly fast enough for Doom 3 and Half-Life 2 at my LCD monitor’s resolution with anti-aliasing on.) Yet previous Vista builds have been horrendously slow, swapping to disc or just unusable.

Much of this seems to have been the fault of two companies: NVIDIA and Creative Labs. NVIDIA have fixed their problems and now their graphics drivers are quick, stable and very much up to the task. Creative have not, and it’s entirely their fault – they have decided not to write any Vista drivers at all for the Soundblaster Live! series, including the 5.1 Platinum I own, in an obvious attempt to make us all buy Audigys and X-Fis (too bad their Audigy and X-Fi Vista drivers don’t work properly, if at all, according to everyone who’s tried them). Microsoft themselves have tried to cajole Creative into writing the needed drivers, with no effect. The end result is that I had to use the kludge that is the kX drivers, and they don’t work too well on Vista.

No more. Now I’ve replaced my long-cable hi-fi link with Xbox Media Center, I no longer need to have two front outputs – one in the rear to my hi-fi, one in the front for my headphones. Now I can plug my headphones directly into the rear, and use XBMC to play music through the hi-fi in the next room. And because I can do that, I can use my NForce4 on-board audio, of which NVIDIA’s RC1 drivers work (if a little minor-buggily).

So when I was swapping a TV tuner today, I yanked out my Live 5.1; the last act in a long struggle, the very final straw for me being the fact that Creative despite all the complaining have refused to change their position (whilst their Audigy and X-Fi drivers still don’t work properly for everyone). So, goodbye Creative; I’ve bought a lot of your stuff over the years, but you’ll never see a penny of my money again. Good riddance to you all.