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Tuesday, November 25, 2008
I'm going to be brief here, but I have to say that 2008 has not been a good year for science fiction. No, I'm not talking about bad movies or lack of good books or anything like that, I'm talking about much greater losses: in March we lost Sir Arthur C. Clarke, one of the greatest writers in the genre, and now, in November, we lost Michael Crichton. It's so weird, Michael Crichton was young (66 years old), looked a lot younger than that and seemed to be well and fit, but unfortunately what nobody knew is that he had cancer and was fighting a private fight with it, which he has lost. I remember reading The Andromeda Strain when I was a kid, it was the second book of sci-fi that I remember reading, right after Isaac Azimov's I, Robot, and those two books got me hooked. And I don't even consider him "just" a sci-fi writer, because he had so many other great novels that escaped this genre, like Rising Sun and The Great Train Robbery, and I liked them all. I would like to pay my respects to him and to say that I am very sad for this loss, the second great loss to sci-fi and to good literature this year.
Monday, November 03, 2008
I have just bought a Dell Vostro 1510 laptop at work for my own use and I thought it would be interesting to write a review about it now that I have used it for a week or so, although my "thing" is not really reviewing equipment. Since I consider myself quite an advanced user, I think I can do this. :) You should know that I'm moving from a Sony Vaio VGN-A215Z, so that's what I'll be comparing it to. First of all, let me say that I prefer Dell to Sony when it comes to laptops and computers in general, for simple reasons: I can change and tweak the hardware configuration of a Dell computer when buying it a lot more than with Sony, and I can get better configurations with Dell for a lot less than Sony. Although Sony laptops do look cool, Dell now has a line of computers that also look cool (the XPS line), and I wouldn't spend £200 more with Sony just so my laptop looks cool. If I really wanted to look cool, I would buy a Mac. :D I had a really old Dell laptop before that Vaio, and it worked great for a long time. Actually, it's still working, although pretty slow (it's a Pentium III), but for basic operation it works just fine, although it is quite heavy (it weights more than 3 kilos). This new one is obviously a much better machine, a lot better than the Vaio as well and it has been working quite well so far. Its design is somewhat simple and not too fashionable, except for the top (which you'll really only see when it's closed) that is glossy black and it does look nice. But, hey, it's a Vostro and the same configuration with an XPS would cost me almost an extra £100 (and it would have longer battery life and less weight, but...), and since the company I work for is paying for it, I'm not spending on looks. It is a little lighter than my "old" Vaio, but like I mentioned, for a little more I could get a lighter laptop, but I don't carry it around that much, only when I travel and it's not a heavy weight for that. It is running Windows Vista Business SP1, and it's doing it quite well, not freezing, running everything smoothly and quickly, multi-tasking like the Vaio's Centrino never really could, so no complaints there. My current complaints are about design. Although I'm not wanting to look cool or fashionable or anything like that with my laptop, I do want practicability and efficiency, and I can already spot some problems there. First, the speakers are on the sides, beside the keyboard, which looks odd but mainly takes space from the keyboard. And there lies my main problem with this laptop. Although the keys are regular sized, there are less keys due to the keyboard being narrower because of the speakers, but I guess that with some time I'll get used to the small Ctrl and the placement of the Shifts and all that, but I'll never forgive them for taking out the Home and End keys. Oh, yes, you do have that functionality, by pressing Fn + Left Arrow (Home) or Fn + Right Arrow (End), but that means using two hands (the Fn key is on the other side of the keyboard) and pressing two keys for these simple but very useful operations. I catch myself having problem with that every 2 minutes. I do love the DVD drive not having a tray. It works like a charm and it's one less part to brake or to take space, although when Windows hangs and don't eject your CD, you'll need a reboot to get it out of there, and I suppose that if your laptop fails completely you'll have to open it to get your CD or DVD back, but how many times has that happened to you? It also has plenty of USB ports (4) and cool touch-buttons for music, and also a SD card reader. I don't like that, if setup to sleep when you close the lid, it sleeps when the lid still has some 20 degrees to finish closing. I guess that's all I have to say about it so far. It's a good machine, specially if you want good performance but you don't want to spend a lot of money. If you have a little more to spend, I would suggest going for the XPS line before even looking to buy a Sony Vaio, and if you still have more money and you want to look really cool, buy a MacBook Air. :) I bought a 15.4" screen because I didn't care for the weight, but there are lighter 13" versions (the Dell Vostro 1310), and the 13" XPS is absolutely great as well.
Friday, August 29, 2008
I was reading this article on BBC today, online maps 'wiping out history', and I couldn't believe what I was reading. For me, this is just another example of someone who cannot cope with the fact that the Internet is changing their jobs, just like the librarian I wrote about in this other article. This article now is about the president of the British Cartographic Society, Ms Mary Spencer, saying that the Internet maps are leaving important landmarks that are part of History out, and that people will miss that, but that is so not true! Online maps probably have a lot more landmarks than regular paper maps, and they do have the historic landmarks such as churches, museums and others, and also the restaurants, pubs, and much more. They're just not displayed all at the same time due to a nice resource that is the dynamic way they are presented (and because that would be impossible to read), contrary to the static way a paper has to be. This has a disadvantage, I guess most people would say: the person using the map has to ask for it, but at least Google Maps and Google Earth have presented the users with several options to even show whatever has been marked in a certain area, even if you haven't asked for something in specific. I'm going to talk more about Google Maps than Live Maps and the others because it's what I'm used to use more. So, if you search for the Royal Albert Hall in Google Maps, it will tell you where it is (check it here), and or course, it will show you a photo of the place, its address, telephone number, web site, and a lot of information a regular map wouldn't. But I get the point, if I wasn't looking for the Royal Albert Hall specifically I wouldn't see it in the map straight away as a point of interest... that is, if I'm not looking at the satellite view, since this case in particular would show me a big and interesting ceiling in that area which would make me wonder what it was, and Google Maps would have told me. But that's easily solved, let me explain how. If you're in Google Maps and you don't know what you're looking for in a certain area, you can do the widest and wildest searches possible, for example, you could search for places of interest, South Kensington, London. That search would come up with the Royal Albert Hall, the Science Museum and the Natural History Museum that Ms Spencer said that were missing, plus Harrods, and a lot of other points in the surrounding areas which a regular map wouldn't even think about showing. Another missing landmarks pointed by Ms Spence were some churches, like the Worcester Cathedral. Well... I searched for churches, Worcestershire and there you go... Google Maps came with a list of 1580 churches near Worcestershire, UK, including the first in the list, the Worcester Cathedral. My point is: don't tell me the information is missing from those maps, because it isn't. It takes some getting used to, such as everything else. Just like looking at a paper map, you need to learn some conventions, such as that a cross symbol represents a church, and several others, and I would say that our modern online maps are easier to learn. Ms Spencer said that "[online maps are] diluting the quality of the graphic image that we call a map", but I say it is actually increasing a lot the quality, presenting us with simultaneous street maps, satellite image, and even geographical and geological information. She also mentions that "the consequence will be long-term damage to future generations of map readers, because this skill is not being taught in schools" but I believe that the only thing happening is that the skills are changing and perhaps that is not being grasped by the cartographic society, because online mapping and specially the easy access to satellite images are definitely a threat to their profession as it is, in a certain way, and it is causing changes to it, and almost everybody is resistant to changes. I always liked maps as a child and I played a lot with my Atlas, "travelling" around the world, and I remember downloading the first version of Google Earth, and how many hours I spent "travelling" to different places and finding interesting information, and a lot more information than I could find in my Atlas. I still do that today, and although I had fun and learned with "regular" maps, I think I learned a lot more with the modern online maps. Although the mentioned Open Street Map is a very interesting initiative, I don't see it as something different from Google Maps, since Google Maps (and a lot of the others) let you share your information as well, adding places and all, and having corporations behind these maps is not necessarily something bad.
Sunday, June 22, 2008
Once upon a time there was a little girl called Privacy. Privacy had a rough childhood, having suffered a lot while trying to grow up, and being invaded and broken several times. Her mother, Civil Liberty, tried to create a better environment for her whenever it was possible, but Government, a man hungry for power, was always trying tear little Privacy into pieces. The thing was that Privacy had the keys to several places that Government wanted to go to but Privacy wouldn't open the doors all the time. Whenever Government got too close to forcing Privacy to open doors she didn't want to, Civil Liberty would be called and came to protect Privacy, although it wasn't always possible for Civil Liberty to be there and Privacy ended up giving away some keys, sometimes, but that's life. Then the Internet was bourn, and the Internet gave a big boost to Liberty's cousin, Anonymity, which was then able to provide easier ways for Privacy to live and keep her keys, and everything was beautiful for a while. But nothing goes unchanged in life. Nice little tail, isn't it? I wish I could say that Privacy lived happily ever after, but we're not there yet so I can't say it, and from the way things look right now, that is definitely not the end of it. Unless we do something to stop all this nonsense. I'm talking about the brilliant idea (insert sarcastic laugh here) detailed in this BBC article of some ministers of the UK to hold information of every phone call made and e-mail sent in the UK. I've been meaning to write about this for a while now but it is such an important issue that I've been postponing it to try to write well about it. As mentioned by a Home Office spokesman, data is really a crucial tool for protecting national security and preventing crime. What he fails to mention is that its privacy is also crucial for the people's freedom, and although the Government can make promises about how this data will be used, once it is in their hands they can change their promises and History tells us that they will always change their promises over time. Another concern is how this can fall into the wrong hands, even while the Government is still just trying to do good with it (in theory), and the recent leaks of data that happened from within the Government don't help. There has been some criticism already about how secure this data will be when held, and that it "should only be held if - and only if - it can be demonstrated that an appropriate system of checks and balances is in place and the security of the information being stored is of paramount concern", but I say it should not be held at all! One thing that is a common place for whoever works with data security is that nothing is ever 100% secure. An unplugged computer, turned off and held inside a safe is still subject to a security break. The possibilities might be slim, but they are never zero. The data about phone calls and emails today are virtually secure because it is scattered between companies that unless presented with a court order, can't provide them to anyone. If we continue down this path, we will soon be in a society that is much like the one in George Orwell's 1984, or, to quote something more recent, Alan Moore's V for Vendetta. Put together this hit against privacy with the path they are taking towards censorship with movies and games, and what you have is a nice recipe for a huge Big Brother Awards. It is incredible that this is happening in a country like the UK, where because of its culture, size, geographic location and history, people are used to freedom, and this is very noticeable: it was one of the first things I came to appreciate when I first moved to London, and I don't even come from a place with freedom problems! Because the people from here are used to freedom I trust that they will not let this happen. The ministers and MPs must remember that they are there to represent the people and that the people can take them out of their positions if not happy with their actions. And I hope that people also remember that.
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
I just can't believe that Nintendo did this mistake. It's just unbelievable that such a great company, in days like today with all these discussions about how games affect our lives and how they should be regulated, especially with children, did not take into consideration the possibility of a child getting a wrong BMI evaluation from its Wii Fit. But as unbelievable as it sounds, that is exactly what happened, like reported by BBC in its "Parents' anger at keep fit game" article: a kid got a wrong BMI evaluation by Wii Fit, saying that she was over weight and needed to loose 4 pounds. Nintendo should know better. Wii Fit got rated by PEGI as 3+ (except for Portugal, where it is 4+), so basically anybody that can talk can play it, so this should have been taken into consideration within the game, either adjusting the BMI calculations to fit kids, or at least by telling the players under a certain age that the results might not be accurate for them, or that they should talk to their parents before doing anything. And that game in particular can tell the player's age because it asks for it! So the statement of the company saying that "the resulting figures may not be entirely accurate for younger age groups due to varying levels of development" should be in the game! Making this comment afterwards makes them look even worse because then they know about it but didn't make the game react accordingly. Although I do think that this mother is right with her complaint and that Nintendo did make a mistake, this will give ammunition to people that want to censor games and give them ratings that are not appropriate. I've written two articles already about all this "game rating" discussion and I'm sure I'll write many more because it doesn't look like this will get sorted out soon, if ever, but I just wish it would and Nintendo might has just made it harder.
Friday, May 16, 2008
I, together with the majority of the 60 million people living in the UK, watch TV on a regular basis, and I am not here to complain about the declining quality of TV over the years or the general quality of TV ads, as you might think due to the title of this article. I actually think that we do have good TV ads in place today, together with some bad ones as there will always be, and today's TV experience can be pretty selective, with satellite and on demand content, which makes watching good TV a possible choice. I am here to ask a question: do the TV networks think we get deaf when the ads kick in???
I am asking this because most of the channels I watch, if not all, put the volume up so much when there's an interval for ads that I have to keep putting the volume down whenever the show I'm watching goes to the interval, and back up when it comes back, and that is really really annoying. I guess they think most people will get up and go do something else during the intervals and they need to listen to the advertisements from farther, which I don't know if it is true but it is certainly not the case for me. What ends up happening is that I turn the volume down so much during the intervals that I don't get to watch the ads at all, therefore ruining the purpose of the whole thing for the network and the sponsors of the shows. And also managing to keep me annoyed, which also ruins the purpose of watching TV (but I keep watching it anyway...).
So I guess that as with many other means of trying to enforce something that people have not asked for, this one is not only annoying but also a failed one, and the only ones who can't see that are the TV networks. Actually, I'm making a big leap here assuming it is really a failed one and that most people don't get up during the adverts. So, to add at least some facts to this article, I'm stopping now and asking people in my office what they do. Pause here.
Ok, so I've asked people around here (not many people, and definitely not a statistically reliable sample, but who cares?) and 71% of them wait for their show to start again (unless they need to go to the toilet), and 29% will definitely get up. Of the people who wait in front of the TV, more than half change channels quickly because the adverts are too annoying, and I'm suspecting here that part of that annoyance is because of the unbearable loudness. So my theory might as well be correct, that turning the volume up during the adverts is just making people annoyed and it's not being effective in getting the commercial message to people.
Hey, I'm not saying that we should get the commercial message, I don't want people to go buying things they don't need. It would be much better if we could watch TV without any ads, but since we can't, we might as well try to get them to be less annoying! But this is exactly where TV differs more from the Internet: even if all of you (three people - hi mom! hi dad!) who are reading this agree with me, there is no easy way to get the message to the TV networks and try to make them change. But if by any chance you have a contact with the guy with the hand on the volume button there, please, put some sense into him. :D
And, by the way, what's with adverts for dental products? Do they have to be so bad all the time???
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
Today I read the news that Sir Arthur C. Clarke died yesterday, aged 90. I can't begin to say how sad that makes me, and I decided to write a little about it here, my way of showing my respects to him.
From the great Science Fiction authors that had a big influence in my childhood and my teenage years and that helped shape the geek I am, he was the last one alive. I can't help thinking that from now on there won't be new books by him, that his production of amazing stories that would bring me not only a lot of entertainment but also a lot of knowledge, is no more.
Also, I can't think of anyone that is still writing and that is as good as these writers that I've always praised, and that makes me even more sad. Good Science Fiction is really hard to come across, and these authors that I'm talking about are Philip K. Dick, which died when I was 2, Robert Heinlein, which died when I was 8, Isaac Azimov, died when I was 12, and now Arthur Clarke.
No more new books by these guys, and actually, except of Arthur Clarke, there hasn't been new books by these guys since I started reading them, so, whenever I thought about all that, I always thought "well, there's still Arthur Clarke to create a lot". And he did create a lot, over 100 books. But, again, it is sad that there will be no more. And now I don't have a backbone to guarantee me good Science Fiction books to come anymore.
Of course, William Gibson is still alive and many others, and I count on them to be this good and keep writing, but Sir Arthur Charles Clarke will certainly be missed by me.
Farewell, and I hope that when you got to wherever you are now, you could have said "Oh my God, it's full of stars!"
Tuesday, December 04, 2007
I'm always paying attention to news related to electronic games since it is not only something I like but something I intend to get more and more involved as time passes. After writing an article about Game Violence, today I read this other article on BBC about a survey with parents (Games content 'concern parents') and I had an idea from it.
The article, as you can read, shows that the survey demonstrated that kids play videogames on their own most of the time and that the parents are the ones that usually choose what games are suitable for their children. It also shows that 43% of the parents are not aware of the ratings systems that exist for games, to determine the suitability of them.
So my conclusion from this survey is that it is the parents' fault that children are playing games with unsuitable contents for them, because they are choosing games without the proper knowledge about the ratings. Like films, games have their own rating and the industry has been doing a pretty good job with it, which takes us nowhere if whoever is choosing the games don’t know about them.
What is it about games that the parents don't get the knowledge about them that fast? This generation of games is also focused on adults, and videogames have been around for quite some time now, so I would think that parents would know them and know what to do with them for their kids. Even if you're new to it, being a parent is having the responsibility of checking and learning about the things your kids are doing and want to do. I hope that when I'm a parent I will be able to select properly the games for my kids and also play with them, to have some fun and also to check what they're playing.
There is a good website about ratings for games, created and maintained by the games industry, at www.askaboutgames.com, where parents can learn about the ratings systems for games, and it's not rocket science; whoever is used to film ratings will see right through it too.
So, let's not blame the games or the game industry for games with violent contents. We don't blame the film industry for violent films; we just don't let the children watch them so why not do the same for videogames? Eliminating violent games is not the solution. I'm not advocating violence or anything like that, but I'm an adult who likes to play games and I don't want the industry to be limited to create games for adults with good and realistic contents. I enjoy the games for kids too, but not only, and I believe in choice, which is what the parents should be making.
Thursday, November 29, 2007
According to this article from The Seattle Times a librarian from The Great Meadows (N.J.) Middle School blocked the students from accessing Wikipedia and put signs over the computers saying "Just Say 'No' to Wikipedia". I'm writing here to express my indignation to this attitude, which is very radical in my opinion and reflects a wrong way of educating kids that is often repeated by parents.
Is Wikipedia a reliable source? Should students be allowed to cite it in their papers? In one word, I would say NO. Because everybody is allowed to edit Wikipedia, it might reflect opinions instead of just facts and even these might be wrong, so it can't be used as a reliable source. But - and this is a big but - it is a great place to get a general picture of things and to find the actual reliable sources since there is an effort in Wikipedia to give the sources of what is written there, and those can be cited in the students' papers.
Let's take the Vietnam War article, for example. It has 148 notes and several references, all of them referring to books or sites other than Wikipedia. What is the problem in getting to Wikipedia, getting a general picture of the Vietnam War, getting ideas from what is written there and then going to the real sources cited there to check the facts and get other ideas?
Ok, so, for this Wikipedia is a great source, a source of sources if you will, but the librarian (and, from what I recon, teachers too) is saying that the kids will not do that, they will take what Wikipedia is saying for the final truth and that's it, which I believe. Now here comes what I think it's the mistake: because the kids are doing that, they blocked Wikipedia. This is, for me, the same as forbidding your kid to go out of the house because he or she will cross the streets without looking for cars. Kids do that at first, but then you teach them how to do it correctly. My parents never forbade me of using electronic equipments (the stereo, TV, VCR, etc.), for example, something that was usual for other parents to do when I was a kid; instead, they always took the time to teach me how to use the equipment properly.
I think that is the attitude that should be adopted here. Why not teach the students how great Wikipedia may be and what they can and cannot do with it? Teach them that they can search Wikipedia to have an overall view, some ideas, and also to get reliable sources for their papers. That's the attitude that a school should have towards the students and that parents should have towards their children.
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
I've just bought a new digital camera, a SLR, which is very nice. I used to have a film SLR and I basically bought a similar one, but digital. One of the first questions people make me when they find out that I have a new camera is (after asking how many Megapixels it has) how much optical and digital zoom the camera has. This is a much more difficult subject that people would imagine, so I have decided to write a little article on it.
First, let me start by making a strong statement: there is no such thing as digital zoom. Digital zoom is a simulation of zoom done by cropping the image. Look at the image below to get an idea of how it is done. Image 01 on the left is the actual image without any "digital zoom". Image 02 shows the part where we will zoom in, using digital zoom, and finally image 03 is the final "zoomed" image, which is basically the square selected in image 02 stretched to meet the correct size. This stretching is something that most digital cameras don't even do, they just save the little square from image 02 in that small size, which is a basic cropping. When you print your photo it will be stretched to meet the paper size, and that stretching means loosing quality as it is clear on image 03.
So, I can't call that "zoom", for me that is "cropping". Agreed? I always recommend people not to use it. Take the whole photo and crop it later in your computer using Photoshop or something else, which will crop it much better than your regular point-and-shoot camera. SLR cameras usually don't have "digital zoom", I think. At least mine doesn't.
Now let's talk about the optical zoom. When you buy zoom lenses for a SLR camera, what you get in the specs, among other things, is usually the focal length, i.e. 70-300mm. Usually, when you buy a point-and-shoot camera the optical zoom is referred as an "X" value: 12X, 3X, etc. Now that is a very tricky value, let me explain why.
The "X" value is easy to think about because most of us are used to multiply which is what the X stands for. The problem is that the multiplication is not to what we think it will be. When you read on a camera specs that it has 12X optical zoom you think that it will increase the image you can see 12 times, don't you? That's the thing, it might not, and most of the times it doesn't. It does increase the smaller image that those lenses can take by 12 times, but the smaller image is usually smaller than what you see with the naked eye.
For example, the Canon PowerShot S5 IS (great camera, by the way) says that it has a 12X zoom, which is ok because it does increase its farthest image 12 times, but the farthest image has an approximate zoom of 0.72 times relative to the naked eye in that camera which means that its maximum zoom is of 8.64 times (0.72 x 12), again, when comparing to the naked eye. It is still a great zoom, but the number doesn't mean what most people think it would mean.
The problem with this "X" measure is that the base can be different. We can see above that the Canon PowerShot S5 IS has a "starting point" of 0.72 times relative to the naked eye. The Canon Digital IXUS 860 IS on the other hand is advertised having a 3.8X zoom but its "starting point" is of 0.56 times approximately which means that its "real" zoom is of 2.13 times (to the naked eye, always). So if you set your PowerShot S5 IS to 3.8X it will increase the actual image by 2.74 times but your IXUS 860 IS will increase the actual image by 2.13 times when set to the same 3.8X.
That is why when you buy a SLR you usually don't find the "X" in the lenses specs, only the focal length. The "X" figure is useful though, when related to the naked eye image, because we can relate to it better, so here is how you calculate it from the focal length. On a 35mm camera (the usual film camera) a 50mm focal length gives roughly a 1X image, so all you need to do is divide the focal length of your lenses by 50 to have the "X" number, meaning that a 200mm focal length gives a 4X image. The problem with digital cameras is that the image sensor (CCD) has a different size than the film; it is usually smaller than 35mm, meaning that 50mm will not provide a 1X image anymore, it will be bigger. The smaller the CCD, the bigger the image a 50mm will make. To find out the "X" number for your lenses in your digital camera the equation is: X = (35 / CCD) x (FL / 50), where CCD is the size of the CCD in mm and FL is the focal length of your lenses in mm.
SLRs will usually have a bigger CCD because bigger CCDs will give you a better quality of image. On the other hand, to have a big zoom you will need lenses with bigger focal lengths, meaning these lenses will be more expensive. For example, a Nikon D40 has a CCD size of 23.7mm while the Canon PowerShot S5 IS has a CCD size of approximately 5.83mm. The lenses that come with the PowerShot S5 IS are 06-72mm and those 72mm will give a real zoom of 8.64X ((35 / 5.83) * (72 / 50)) and the 06mm will pull up to 0.72X. If you put the same lenses on the Nikon D40, you will get a real zoom of about 2.13X with the 72mm but your image will have a much better quality. To have the same zoom as a PowerShot S5 IS you would need lenses with a focal length of 292.53mm, that is, a 300mm to round it up, and that is going to cost you much more than that 72mm of the PowerShot.
So everything is a trade off, of course, meaning that if you want top quality combined with a big zoom you will need top lenses and you will pay top money for them. On the other hand, most people will find that the Canon I used as an example here (the PowerShot S5 IS) will give them quality enough and a big zoom. Canon also compensates its smaller CCD with more pixels (8MP) to improve the quality of the photo, while the Nikon D40 will give you a really nice quality for its photos but it has fewer pixels (6.1MP) to keep its price lower, basically. Note that in my opinion 6.1MP is more than enough for people printing photos up to 8x6" which is bigger than most people will usually print.
That's it, I hope I've helped. Keep in mind that the number of Megapixels isn't always the most important thing in a digital camera, especially when you're over 5MP and that digital zoom doesn't exist and finally that if you really want to get into it you should also know what kind of lenses your camera has and what kind of CCD sensor it has. If you don't want to get into it, take the camera for a trial and shoot some photos, some inside, some outside, some of people and some of close objects, to give it a good try and see if that's the camera you want. Print the photos in a shop to see the real quality of them, and then buy your camera. :)
Oh yeah, and my new camera is a Nikon D40. Brilliant!
Thursday, November 15, 2007
Hi there everyone.
I'm just writing to let everybody know that I am consolidating my blog with my fotolog and my YouTube into one place alone, where I will also post small things, links and news. This is my Tumblr, which you can access in http://fceotto.tumblr.com. All of these will remain being updated for the moment at least, but the consolidated results will be presented there.
The RSS feed for this one can be accessed here: http://fceotto.tumblr.com/rss
See you there!
Thursday, October 11, 2007
I've been trying not to get into this subject because it's just like discussing football or religion but reading this article today I couldn't help myself. The UK government is doing (another) study about the effects of violent computer games on children and young people. My guess is that the results will be either inconclusive or presented in a way that allows people to doubt them because one of the interested parts was responsible for them as well.
While reading the opinions I give here, please take into consideration that I know nothing about psychology and I don't have children. But I do know games and I've played them since I was a kid. I've even studied them and learned how to make them, although I can't call myself a game designer or a game developer (not yet, anyway).
Let's take the case of Stefan Pakeerah who was horribly murdered by a friend with a claw hammer. I am very sorry for this kid and for his parents and friends and of course I don't support whoever it was that committed the murder but what strikes me as odd is that Stefan Pakeerah's mother "called for violent video games to be banned" because the kid who confessed to the murder played Manhunt.
That is odd to me because we all should know better: unfortunately or not (and I'm not here to discuss that) violence is everywhere and it has always been. We can see it on TV, we can see it in Nature, and we can see it in people's acts, art, video games, cinema, pretty much everywhere. If you don't agree with that statement, no problem - I'm not even sure if I agree -, but I'm sure you will agree that violence is present in a lot of different places and that people in general (including children) have access to demonstrations of violence from time to time. That doesn't mean that everybody that is exposed to a demonstration of violence will be violent too. Otherwise everybody would have violent behaviour and that is definitely not true. A lot of kids played Manhunt all over the world and they didn't went out to commit murder, so I'm guessing there must be something else wrong with that kid that confessed to the murder besides playing a violent game, wouldn't you agree? So the trigger could have been the game, a movie, or nothing at all... right?
I have played my share of violent games including some that I shouldn't have, according to their classification. When I was 17 I played Carmageddon, a very violent race game which was banned for minors, and I've played all the Grand Theft Auto games that were released for PC, for instance. These are pretty violent games and you could say that they encourage questionable (not to say worse) behaviour inside the game. The point is that I didn't go out after playing these games to commit crimes and I didn't take my car and started running people on the streets. I didn't even feel that it would be something I'd want to do: it is a lot of fun in the game and I loved all those games but it has nothing to do with my "real life". I've been playing Need For Speed: Most Wanted for a while now, and I go out from home after playing it to drive my car but I don't feel the need to race with it. Got my point?
Blaming a violent game (a movie, book, TV show, music or whatever) for a murder is in my opinion a lame excuse. I'm not denying that they can trigger violent behaviour in some people, but they are not to blame. Anything can trigger violent behaviour in the wrong person. I'm all for classifying correctly the games and making sure that kids don't have access to material they shouldn't but banning a game completely because it is violent is unnecessary. Several studies were already done on the subject of if a game can provoke violent behaviour but a recent journal was published with a meta-analysis of these studies and it basically demonstrated that no current study was reliable enough to provide definite results to one side or the other. To quote an article written about this journal, "the overall conclusion is that there does appear to be a connection between violent games and violent thoughts in a laboratory setting. But the connections between such thoughts and violent behaviour in the lab or elsewhere are tenuous at best. The studies that try to address those questions currently suffer from a lack of a standardized measure of violent behaviour and a lack of sufficient background on other potential influences on the test subjects' tendencies towards violence, such as family environment".
So, since we live in a society where, very intelligently, everybody (and everything) is innocent until proven guilty, until someone actually proves that violent games are a direct path to actual violence, let's not condemn the games, ok?! They are fun and they are cool. :) And I hope my prediction of the results of the new study requested by the UK government is wrong and that this study gets to conclusive results so we can end the discussion.
Wanna play Manhunt 2? :D
Update (2007-10-11 15:02): Please read the article "Playing games with freedom" as well which is much better than mine and with the same point of view (almost). :)
Friday, September 07, 2007
It’s been a long while since I’ve written something here, and I have to apologize for last time. It was the worst post I’ve ever done. It’s not an excuse but it was really late and I was not in a good moment there. :)
I meant to write this a while ago, but I didn't have the time, so despite the fact that the moment is gone now, I'm going to write it anyway, especially because I think the discussion shouldn’t have stopped. Last month another person was arrested in London for stealing a broadband connection. This raised a discussion on if it is right or wrong to arrest people for using someone else's wireless connection without permission, or even better, if stealing wireless is wrong.
Unfortunately, the Communications Act 2003 says that a “person who (a) dishonestly obtains an electronic communications service, and (b) does so with intent to avoid payment of a charge applicable to the provision of that service, is guilty of an offence”, which of course gives legal basis to arrest whoever is stealing a broadband connection. Although it is legal to do this kind of arrest, I’m totally against it and I believe there are more dangerous people out there to be arrested.
Some people are comparing stealing wireless connections to reading a book using someone else’s light or even to reading a newspaper over someone’s shoulder because the stolen person doesn’t really lose anything, but other people are comparing it to getting the apples off of a tree that is inside someone’s yard but has branches hanging out the wall. I think both comparisons are not entirely correct and it has proven really hard for me to find a good analogy of what I think that stealing a broadband connection is. The thing is that when you steal someone’s broadband that person loses momentarily some of its broadband speed.
I wouldn’t like someone speeding down my broadband while I’m using it because I’m a demanding user and I use 100% of what my broadband connection gives me most of the time, but when I’m not using the computer at home, say, during work hours, my broadband use is reduced to a minimum and since I can’t store my bps’s for later, I wouldn’t mind having someone putting it to a good use, and here comes my point: I can, like everybody else, close the access to my wireless connection, and I can leave it open, it is my choice. If I leave it open from 09:00 to 17:00, Monday to Friday, that won’t do me any harm and it might help other people but if these arrests keep happening nobody will use my willingly open connection in fear that they might be committing a crime, and there is no good way for me to advert that during that time I don’t mind other people using my wi-fi connection.
There is also another option which is to set your wireless router with quotas allowing your home computers to use up to 100% of your connection and other computers to use only whatever is free at the moment, so if I’m home, someone connecting to my wireless network won’t be able to use my broadband connection, or will be able to use just 5% of it, but if I’m not home or if I’m using only 10% of it, other people will be able to use the remaining band. That’s actually the perfect solution because “outsiders” will use only the spare band. The down point here is that this is not something simple to set up and not all routers allow this.
But, setting up the protection in a wireless router is quite simple and nowadays all the routers come with instructions to do this on their quick start guides, so if someone has let its own wireless network open, one could assume it was on purpose, on a gesture of good will, wouldn’t you think? It’s like leaving an open tap all day wasting water and then complaining about someone taking a little of the water you’re not using for anything. That’s not robbery, it is good use! The only thing you have to make sure is that people are not leaving you with less water when you need to use it, don’t you agree?
Anyway, I believe that the law has to be adapted for this case, and users maybe need to be a little better informed on how to close their wireless networks or how to share it properly if they want to. A lot of people in the community share their wireless connections because they want to, and this law is making that difficult, in my opinion. And to change this, people need to continue discussing the issue.
Friday, June 15, 2007
What's with Mambo No. 5? ("One, two, three four, five") I mean, it's a great song, I love it, but where's Mambo No. 1? ("Everybody in the car, so come on let's ride") I may be crazy and all that, but I like numbered things to come in a good order... ("To the liquor store around the corner")
Mambo No. 5 is a great song by Pérez Prado, who also wrote Mambo No. 8 - makes you wonder about 6 and 7, doesn't it? ("The boys say they want some gin and juice") We know best the Lou Bega version ("But I really don't wanna") that became really popular in 1999. In this case it's not even that bad, maybe these were Pérez' 5th an 8th attempts, maybe ("Beer bust like I had last week") the others do exist but they were never recorded, who knows? ("I must stay deep 'cause talk is cheap")
Getting to the point, why do some people - or companies - screw up so hard the version numbers of their softwares? Like I said, I like ("Angela, Pamela, Sandra and Rita") numbered things to come in at least an understandable order. An example is the McAffee antivirus that if I remember correctly, at some point had the same product divided into two, one for home users and another one for business. ("And as I continue you know they're getting sweeter") It was the same thing but the business version was "4" - even though it was the first so called "business" - and the home version became "8" despite the fact that the previous one was "6". I'm making up the numbers but the situation was exactly this.
("So what can I do? I really beg you, my Lord") It also became really common for companies to change their versioning numbers to years, thanks to Microsoft with Windows 95, but let's remember that ("To me flirting is just like a sport") although Microsoft uses the years to market their product the internal version remains a sequential number, easy to understand - Windows XP SP2 is version 5.1! That's very acceptable, but others that decided to go with the ("Anything fly, it's all good let me dump it") MS flow used just the years, and after a while decided to go back to numbering, calling it 1.0!!!
Come on... Make some sense at least! Anyway, I'm just wining about nothing... :D If I wasn't so sleepy I would go and look for the actual examples of what I'm talking about, showing the applications with all those versioning problems, but who cares? At this hour, I really don't, sorry! If you know what I'm talking about, than you know... If you don't... well. I promise next time I'll write something better.
So... ("Please set in the trumpet!")
Wednesday, May 30, 2007
This is going to be a quick post... I just have to talk about this, since I've posted something related to it just a couple of days ago.
Oh well... I almost didn't believe it when I read today the headlines saying that "Microsoft waves in Minority Report-style computing era". They're releasing a screen just like the one I was talking about on my last post. Well, not everything like that, just the part about the multi-touch screen, they haven't got to transparent screens yet. It's called Microsoft Surface, and according to the article, it was top secret until now.
It looks beautiful, but the screen on Jeff Han's project looked just a little better, especially because of the way the applications were interfacing with the user. The applications seemed to be completely developed thinking about the multi-touch environment, but while Microsoft's screen has most of the same features, it shows something of an inheritance of the single-touch environment... I don't know, maybe it's just me being a bitch when it comes to MS. :)
Either way, I'm glad to see these technologies coming our way.
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