I really wish it would stop giving me Mark Twain quotes. He’s so pretentious.

For the curious, create a file with this in it:

fortune | gmessage -font "georgia 10" -file - -wrap -center -geometry 520x180 -title "Fortune Cookie" -buttons Close -default Close

Then make it executable and add it to the start up programs in gnome (or whatever you use).

They are just another right wing conservative newspaper of the establishment. It’s targeted at the masses, so it’s often sensational.

I was in a fish and chip shop browsing it’s trash, when I came across something rather peculiar. There was an article about whether the Sikh article of faith the Kirpan should be banned in schools. The Kirpan resembles a blunt dagger. A parliamentary inquiry has suggested that it (along with other religious articles, such as crosses, the hijab, etcetera) should be allowed in high schools like they already are. There is a blown up picture of a Kirpan (the blade is normally only 3 inches, in the pic it’s ~5 inches). Above the blade is the title “Is it OK to take this to school?”.

The tone of the article basically uses the dagger as a way to subtly attack the right of cultural freedom for non anglo students. The Herald Sun excels in this kind of subtle racism. Picking out targets which can be distorted and sensationalised, while disguising it as a mere informative article.

Anyway.. Right next to this article, as a way to distort the message even further they put the following mini article:

Lobby calls for guns in schools

Sunday Herald Sun, June 10, 2007. Page 14.

Gun lessons will be introduced into primary schools if the Victorian firearms lobby has it’s way.
The state’s biggest pro-gun group wants children as young as 10 to be given firearms safety lessons and a chance to shoot.
Combined Firearms Council of Victoria president Bill Paterson said controlled use of real guns would counter damage done to children who use firearms for virtual killing in video games [emphasis added].
A $200,000 government pledge for gun safety education in this years state Budget should be used to fund the program, Mr Paterson said.
But parent groups have criticised the scheme, saying it would not be appropriate for primary schools and city-based secondary students [well duh... but why 'city'? is it okay for country kids?].
Under the scheme, children would undertake supervised shootings at shooting ranges.

I don’t have link to this article, as I couldn’t find it on their website, but it’s word for word from the printed paper as referenced, minus the parts in square brackets.

These gun lobby people are clearly insane.

Some things to note; in Australia there are very strong gun restrictions and gun culture here is very limited. Very very few children will ever grow up to even see a gun (other then those of the police), let alone hold one. The suggestion of the gun lobby is obviously ridiculous, and the Herald Sun think so too. It’s something so stupid it’s not even print worthy, except for the contrast it provide to the main story. They include this solely to place allowing the religious symbol in schools in the same context as allowing guns in schools.

It’s much more subtle than it sounds once already de-constructed. This sort of manipulation is why I only read newspapers in fish and chip shops. The internet is where the real news is.

The thing that struck me most about it was the way they use the line about video games, considering the rhetoric on video game violence flying about these days. “Video games harm our children!” has entered the common vernacular, it’s an assumption. With no evidence ever shown on this, it holds a place in everyone’s mind that there has to be some truth to it.

This line works in two ways, those who believe it are swayed to believe children must be protected, no one is expected to believe guns are a good idea, this line just enforces the protection against ‘weapons’ even more, and thus powers the negativity of the main article.

The other way it works, threw me for a bit. I like video games and obviously think this anti video games hysteria is absurd, this promotes even more negativity to the gun lobby’s idea. This unknowingly gave me an instant negative reaction to the main article in that context, before I knew what a Kirpan was.

It’s interesting that the gun lobby was actually taken advantage of in this. They look pretty ridiculous with their suggestion. They’ve already got a reputation in Australia for being lunatics no one listens to, they’re not powerful at all (as opposed to their comrades in US).

I think the Herald Sun is promoting this for the sake of sensationalism as well as pushing their other agendas. If the Kirpan was to get banned, they would change their tune, they would say that it’s not fair that this is banned while Muslims can wear Hijab’s.

They’ve been promoting public bigotry and racism towards non white-anglos since they first printed. Every mainstream media in the country jumped on the bandwagon when France banned head scarves in schools. Saying it represented a positive move for a secular state, when really it represents intolerance.

They’ve attacked this issue over and over again, trying to make it an issue. This is partly because their form of sensationalism unfortunately sells papers, and partly because they operate to fit an ideology. They’re owned by News Corp, which is Murdock whose empire is remarkably consistent in it’s reporting (see fox news).

If it wasn’t for the gun lobby snippet, I’d be inclined to believe that the journalist was simply towing the mainstream line without noticing. With it, it’s too intentional.

There’s nothing quite like a throwaway line about video games to get me motivated about something.

It seems to be some kind of web TV application. Much like Democracy, but built around Azureus and less TV centric.
Looking over their site I noted that you can download Tomb Raider within it. That’s not really that amazing since there’s been torrents for it since before it’s official release, but I was surprised to see it advertised on the main site.

As it turns out it was an official torrent by Eidos. Weird or what? Actually a trial version, it’s lets you play the first 60 minutes. I wonder if you download the whole game and then unlock the rest, or is it just a demo. It’s a unique approach to combating piracy though.

Eidos has also released Tomb Raider on Steam, along with other titles. It seems they’ve decided the best way to prevent piracy is to give an official paying alternative which is more convenient. The music industry could learn from that.

When EMI announced they’d offer their catalogue to online music stores DRM free, I couldn’t help but wonder if they were influenced by Stardock’s Galactic Civilizations DRM free approach (which worked really well for them).

In contrast, Ubisoft was releasing all their games with Starforce at the time. Apparently King Kong was a great game, but didn’t sell so well. The absurd copy protection put a lot of people off.

I think the companies that experiment with new options will be rewarded.

I wanted to give Vuze a spin, but clicking on the download link directed me to 2.5.0.4 of Azureus. I guess there’s no linux version yet. It must depend on more then just Java, being a video app.

It’s just so…. Fantastic…. The art… The geekiness… Words suck yet again. I’ve practically fallen in love with Kimiko. Darn it.

I mean look at these ones:

comic a
comic b
comic c
comic d

I think it’s weeklyish. It’s worth the wait.

I don’t know if it’s official story line canon or not (like the books are also a grey area), but it’s fun to see what Martha would write about in between shows.

The load times are terrible though for the battles. They seem to get longer the more you play, so maybe it’s a memory leak, or just win2k.

Easy mode is far too easy, so I guess I’ll have to restart again. It takes a few restarts I think to get the hang of how to tackle things. The first thing you need to research is some real guns. Then to make them you need metal, so you have to send out scientific and technician teams build geology probes and mines.

The resource aspect is a nice addition.

The one thing I found most disappointing is you don’t get to hire your own men, you start with 22 or so, and work with them. Maybe we do later but I’m not holding out hope.

I’m not sure if I’ll go back to it, it’s so time consuming. The battles are so far in mostly open areas, which doesn’t have much cover.

The xcom battles I remember best were the first ones in the farms, in the dark, where seeing an insectoid for the first time was actually scary. This game doesn’t seem to be scary, but maybe that’s because I played on easy mode after being massacred on normal (because I hadn’t researched weapons quickly enough).

Also, the researching doesn’t seem to provide the same sense of satisfaction. Instead of take different paths on increasing sophistication, each choice seems to branch off every time. Too many choices, not enough benefits from each choice.

I really loved xcom. I loved building my own bases, training and looking after my favorite troops, sending out interceptors. I loved having the planet view from which to coordinate the defence of earth.

I’m hoping this satisfies some of those glorified memories. Hopefully much the way that Tomb Raider Anniversary completely lived up to the hopes and expectations generated from my memories of the original (it really is the best remake of any game I’ve played, the bar is low on that score though).

It’s just about downloaded now…

I think one of the stand-out scenes for the whole show was when Captain Jack Harkness kissed the real Captain Jack Harkness from the past. They really look liked they’d fallen in love. Not to mention it being a damn great story.

Actually they more acurately, pashed, or maybe snogged. No.. I think pashed fits best. In the most traditional “I love you and I’ll never see you again” movie style. Which is usually done really badly in crap blockbusters, but in this it was really emotional and inspiring. You don’t see that between two men very often. Yay for Torchwood!

It’s to blog! We blog because we can Really it’s just a scrapbook online. Who needs a good reason to keep a scrapbook?

And really I don’t give a shit that stumbleupon was bought by ebay. Google already knows everything about my habits, a lot more then SU does. Ebay probably only bought SU for the data. They want to make more intelligent targeted ads. I’m against that on principle, but in practice I don’t give a shit. It just doesn’t spark any anger. Maybe somewhere someone’s written a good article on why it’s bad, I’d possible look at it.

Taking things to their Sci Fi conclusion… There is the argument that maybe then our ads would be more tasteful. It’s not a very good one, when privacy and abuse of information are at stake. Still, imagine a world where we wouldn’t get horrible banner ads for finding high school friends (I never want to see any of them again), etc etc. Surely intelligent advertising would know that I don’t give a shit about most of the things they try to push. But… If this was possible it still wouldn’t happen, ad networks would instead use their power to push on us unreasonable wants and desires, whether we want them or not.

Imagine if an ad network knew you were against the war, and bombarded you with propaganda which pretended to be left, but was really just soft right (aka BBC, ABC), but not only that, it was targeted, specifically crafted to persuade you based on the way you think. If advertising networks became that sophisticated there is no way that they wouldn’t used politically. Explicitly or implicitly.

I guess I answered that question myself. Targeted ads are a bad idea, but as long as there is still distributed accessible communication channels, aka blogs, indie news, Democracy TV, etc, I’ll continue to ingore the ads. If ads get more sophisticated in their manipulation, I’m positive I’ll get better at ignoring them.

I still don’t give a shit about Ebay/SU though. I don’t have an emotional investment in it.

I really can’t be bothered feeling out of place tonight.