An article in today's Sydney Morning Herald details a opinion piece in the Jakarta Post written by a board member of the Victor Chang Foundation.
The piece is controversial because it suggests that smoking can be healthy for you, you can read the Herald's write up about it here
What’s awesome about this story is that it proves that Indonesia is still not under government control and, unlike Australia, is NOT a Nanny state!
Sure the message is wrong, but if you’re stupid enough to believe claims like this then I’d like to put you in touch with a Nigerian prince who needs your credit card details in order to launder his money!
Later on in the article we get two cents worth from yet another lobby group - this one is called Action on Smoking and Health (A.S.H. geddit!) you know - I gotta start my own lobby group because this is clearly the growth industry in this country at the moment.
Monday, March 29, 2010
Saturday, March 20, 2010
Atkinsons in the 80's
While gamers here in Australia have issues with politicians using violent videogames as a scapegoat for societies ills (that's right boat people - you've got the night off!) and while anyone with a passing interest in the whole 'R18+ rating for games' affair will have more than a passing interest in tonight's SA election, it's interesting to look at how they dealt with it (some 16 years ago) in America when video games like Mortal Kombat and Night Trap went from the gaming press to the tabloid headlines with their salacious and graphic violence.
1UP's Ray Barnholt went and reviewed C-SPAN (think A-PAC) footage of the US Senate hearings on Video Game violence.
Check it out - Things I Learned From the 1993 Game Violence Senate Hearing - it's an interesting read - particularly for the way that Nintendo aggressively clung to the notion that video games were only for kids, a philosophy that almost brought them undone for the two succeeding generations.
1UP's Ray Barnholt went and reviewed C-SPAN (think A-PAC) footage of the US Senate hearings on Video Game violence.
Check it out - Things I Learned From the 1993 Game Violence Senate Hearing - it's an interesting read - particularly for the way that Nintendo aggressively clung to the notion that video games were only for kids, a philosophy that almost brought them undone for the two succeeding generations.
Monday, February 1, 2010
iPad - What is the point??
As more stuff comes out about Apple's new handheld device - the iPad, a shitstorm has erupted between Adobe and Apple over the revelation that the new device will not support Flash technology.
Flash, for anyone who's been living under a rock for the past ten years is the software that runs embedded video and animated applications on your web browser. Anytime you look at a video on Facebook or YouTube or a newspaper website - you're using flash
In this Article Apple honcho Jobs is quoted as saying that Adobe Flash is a bug-ridden software that causes Macs to crash therefore he won't supported it, putting aside that Apple has promoted the Mac as virtually indestructable and by inference unable to crash, a more likely excuse is that supporting Flash technology would allow a lot of content providers to bypass Apple's App Store thereby cutting the company out of their lucrative profit share.
So here we have a touch screen device, with no connectivity to PC's a virtually proprietary Sim Card, that runs a limited selection of programs and has little to no customisation, I'll pass thanks.
Interestingly the same article quotes Nintendo president Satoru Iwata, known mostly for his reality-defying statement about what consumers want, here he actually hit the proverbial on the head...
"It was a bigger iPod Touch"
Iwata FTW
Flash, for anyone who's been living under a rock for the past ten years is the software that runs embedded video and animated applications on your web browser. Anytime you look at a video on Facebook or YouTube or a newspaper website - you're using flash
In this Article Apple honcho Jobs is quoted as saying that Adobe Flash is a bug-ridden software that causes Macs to crash therefore he won't supported it, putting aside that Apple has promoted the Mac as virtually indestructable and by inference unable to crash, a more likely excuse is that supporting Flash technology would allow a lot of content providers to bypass Apple's App Store thereby cutting the company out of their lucrative profit share.
So here we have a touch screen device, with no connectivity to PC's a virtually proprietary Sim Card, that runs a limited selection of programs and has little to no customisation, I'll pass thanks.
Interestingly the same article quotes Nintendo president Satoru Iwata, known mostly for his reality-defying statement about what consumers want, here he actually hit the proverbial on the head...
"It was a bigger iPod Touch"
Iwata FTW
Thursday, January 14, 2010
Conan out
The Daily Beast
Appears to have confirmed that Conan O'Brien has negotiated an exit from NBC and he will be free to appear on other networks without restriction.
I guess this means Leno/Fallon for NBC's late night.
Conan Exit Confirmed
Appears to have confirmed that Conan O'Brien has negotiated an exit from NBC and he will be free to appear on other networks without restriction.
I guess this means Leno/Fallon for NBC's late night.
Conan Exit Confirmed
An R18+ Rating for Video Games
I’m sending my submission today – apart from the questionnaire you can put a statement in there of 250 words or less, here’s what I wrote
I contend, as a parent of young children and someone who has played video games for many years. We need an R18+ rating in Australia.
Adults should be allowed to read, see and hear what they wish.
The argument that R18+ games would somehow end up in the hands of children is completely facile, no matter how hard you try, you cannot regulate against bad parenting and you shouldn’t be penalising the majority of good, responsible parents.
I have several MA15+ games in my collection and there is no way that my kids would ever get to play them, let alone see them in action, just the same as they wouldn’t be allowed to watch adult television or an M rated DVD.
Current consoles also have parental lock-outs on the system, giving you an extra layer of protection when kids get older and craftier.
Finally I wish to address the fact that any change to the classification system requires the agreement of all the attorney-generals in Australia, might I point out that individual states have the ability to further regulate these classifications and they already do.
If you wish to purchase an X18+ rated movie, you can only do so from the ACT or NT, the classification itself is legal, but individual states have barred it from sale.
Individual states that have misgivings about R18+ games could restrict their sale in their own state whilst leaving the other states to decide for themselves.
You might think I’m a bit keen to be going to the trouble to actually put something in writing to the government but currently the wowsers in this country have the censors by the short and curlies (not just in games either but TV has gone backwards from when I was a kid) and they’ll keep making things in this country worse unless the silent majority actually stand up and make their opinions known.
You can download the submission template in PDF or Word format at the following website:
www.ag.gov.au/gamesclassification
I contend, as a parent of young children and someone who has played video games for many years. We need an R18+ rating in Australia.
Adults should be allowed to read, see and hear what they wish.
The argument that R18+ games would somehow end up in the hands of children is completely facile, no matter how hard you try, you cannot regulate against bad parenting and you shouldn’t be penalising the majority of good, responsible parents.
I have several MA15+ games in my collection and there is no way that my kids would ever get to play them, let alone see them in action, just the same as they wouldn’t be allowed to watch adult television or an M rated DVD.
Current consoles also have parental lock-outs on the system, giving you an extra layer of protection when kids get older and craftier.
Finally I wish to address the fact that any change to the classification system requires the agreement of all the attorney-generals in Australia, might I point out that individual states have the ability to further regulate these classifications and they already do.
If you wish to purchase an X18+ rated movie, you can only do so from the ACT or NT, the classification itself is legal, but individual states have barred it from sale.
Individual states that have misgivings about R18+ games could restrict their sale in their own state whilst leaving the other states to decide for themselves.
You might think I’m a bit keen to be going to the trouble to actually put something in writing to the government but currently the wowsers in this country have the censors by the short and curlies (not just in games either but TV has gone backwards from when I was a kid) and they’ll keep making things in this country worse unless the silent majority actually stand up and make their opinions known.
You can download the submission template in PDF or Word format at the following website:
www.ag.gov.au/gamesclassification
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
The Death of Exclusives
There's an interesting editorial today in IGN from Ryan Geddes who ruminates over the announcement that Final Fantasy XIII would be going multiplatform and how it actually stirred him to purchase a PS3
Editorial: Why I Purchased a PS3
"something about a proper new Final Fantasy game appearing on the Xbox 360 felt horribly wrong, like dropping a Ferrari engine into a Buick body. Sure, she'll run, but the soul of the machine would just be off somehow."
This statement in particular got me thinking, especially being a Nintendo fanboy of old, In the older generations especially the 16 and 32/64bit generations console exclusives pretty much defined your choice of system, you weren't going to play Mario anywhere but on a Nintendo machine, you couldn't play the latest Sonic game unless you had the Saturn (BTW did anyone in Australia own a Saturn? I saw one in a shop one time, but it was really invisible throughout the 90s)
Final Fantasy is a game which lived out its formative years (the first 6 games) on Nintendo consoles but when Nintendo locked in a cartridge format for the N64, Square (the makers of Final Fantasy) jumped to Sony to continue their series. I remember this was hhugely controversial at the time and a rift between Nintendo and Square carried on and wouldn't be smoothed over until the GameCube.
Square's issue with the N64 was with the cartridge format, which turned out to be the system's achillies heel, the cartridges had a capacity up to 64MB, by contrast a Compact Disc can hold about 700MB, even DS games can carry about 128MB of information, so the N64 was running new technology on yesterdays medium, Square couldn't make the game they wanted with the memory available.
The recent controversy is over the fact that both Final Fantasy XIII and the latest Metal Gear Solid game will no longer be Playstation Exclusives. Both games are by third party publishers but both have also become synonymous with the Playstation brand (despite the fact that both got their start in the 8-Bit era on the Famicom and MSX respectively)
I can understand why people are annoyed by these storied franchises making appearances on the XBox 360 but this is an irrational feeling, the publishers are only going multiplatform because they want to make money.
The truth is publishers will go where the sales are and any casual reading of sales figures in the past two years will show you that the XBox 360 has a much higher turnout than the PS3 for Multiplatform releases. It's not just the fact that there are slightly more XBox 360's than PS3's in the world (a lot of those could be RRoD replacements!) but the XBox 360 has a phenomenal attach rate (meaning the number of games purchased per system)
I'll be interested to see the sales figures for Final Fantasy XIII in March to see if this trend continues or if the Sony fanboys have got it right with this one!
Editorial: Why I Purchased a PS3
"something about a proper new Final Fantasy game appearing on the Xbox 360 felt horribly wrong, like dropping a Ferrari engine into a Buick body. Sure, she'll run, but the soul of the machine would just be off somehow."
This statement in particular got me thinking, especially being a Nintendo fanboy of old, In the older generations especially the 16 and 32/64bit generations console exclusives pretty much defined your choice of system, you weren't going to play Mario anywhere but on a Nintendo machine, you couldn't play the latest Sonic game unless you had the Saturn (BTW did anyone in Australia own a Saturn? I saw one in a shop one time, but it was really invisible throughout the 90s)
Final Fantasy is a game which lived out its formative years (the first 6 games) on Nintendo consoles but when Nintendo locked in a cartridge format for the N64, Square (the makers of Final Fantasy) jumped to Sony to continue their series. I remember this was hhugely controversial at the time and a rift between Nintendo and Square carried on and wouldn't be smoothed over until the GameCube.
Square's issue with the N64 was with the cartridge format, which turned out to be the system's achillies heel, the cartridges had a capacity up to 64MB, by contrast a Compact Disc can hold about 700MB, even DS games can carry about 128MB of information, so the N64 was running new technology on yesterdays medium, Square couldn't make the game they wanted with the memory available.
The recent controversy is over the fact that both Final Fantasy XIII and the latest Metal Gear Solid game will no longer be Playstation Exclusives. Both games are by third party publishers but both have also become synonymous with the Playstation brand (despite the fact that both got their start in the 8-Bit era on the Famicom and MSX respectively)
I can understand why people are annoyed by these storied franchises making appearances on the XBox 360 but this is an irrational feeling, the publishers are only going multiplatform because they want to make money.
The truth is publishers will go where the sales are and any casual reading of sales figures in the past two years will show you that the XBox 360 has a much higher turnout than the PS3 for Multiplatform releases. It's not just the fact that there are slightly more XBox 360's than PS3's in the world (a lot of those could be RRoD replacements!) but the XBox 360 has a phenomenal attach rate (meaning the number of games purchased per system)
I'll be interested to see the sales figures for Final Fantasy XIII in March to see if this trend continues or if the Sony fanboys have got it right with this one!
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