The 2nd Era of the Internet

THE DARK PATH THE INTERNET HAS TAKEN

I think somewhere along the line back there we passed an invisible border whilst living on the internet. Maybe someone will pinpoint where it all began in hindsight, but the Internet as I knew it from 1996-2003 was a free country. It was it's own country without laws, owned by nobody outside it, but owned by every nationality, and now it's not.

Someone on the outside decided they could 'regulate' the internet - probably westerners in America and the UK who thought that they 'owned it', this space where the developed world can meet, that isn't even really a physical, tangible place. It's like how I imagine Heaven (I don't believe in an actual Heaven), but this strange dimension, removed from the world, yet overlayed on top of it and with little paths of access, or windows to look at it, called computers.

Anyway. Some things I find distressing:
1. Copyright laws,
2. people claiming 'Tweets' are some form of public speaking that you can be jailed for if you say something wrong (but who governs what 'words' are the wrong ones? - hence the removal of free speech),
3. People saying Anonymity online is wrong, and I think the government are even now trying to sneakily find ways to make nobody online allowed to be Anonymous. This is so wrong, I have lived my life on the web using Pseudonyms / Web nicks/Aliases, as have many others. Actually, I think it was only Facebook that popularised the idea of giving your full name out online, instead of using your Web name. So this must partly be Facebooks fault. The other blame may fall on Formspring & Tumblr, wherein you have question boxes that give you the option to 'Respond with your Web Alias OR respond Anonymously'. And people who believe in cyber-bullying have said that being 'Anonymous' allows you to say what you want. Of course you can, just like wearing a mask in a theatre production. That doesn't mean we should CONFISCATE the masks. Anonymity is also a way the victims of attacks can protect themselves from harm, and people don't seem to realise this.

4. Today I saw also that the popular web-browser add-on 'Adblocker' is being demonised by some people saying 'blocking ads is theft' ....see here: [link]

My thoughts on this article: This is wrong, to me. Not allowing people to stop this horrifyingly intrusive practice from entering their lives, and people on the other end thinking it totally works and that they can't make money without using it on us. I'd like to believe people can make money if they wish to, without forcing products and logos down our throats and into our minds, daily.

 People saying 'Blocking Adverts is theft' this is just nonsense! I disagree completely. Adverts are invasive, privacy destroying horrible little things and the Internet is starting to become so full of such fake, meaningless laws, that I can see masses of people would start going to jail for nothing. I do not like to see this. If we don't want Ads in our life that should be a fair and reasonable right.

Goddamnit they're gonna make me into a campaigner before long. Advert invasiveness has gotten so bad. I don't care who uses it at work, it's wrong and I want it illegalized. I do use AdBlocker. I disagree completely that Blocking Adverts is Theft.
The reason Youtube was a good replacement for TV was
  a) wider variety of non-company-made content
  b) there USED TO BE no adverts
  c) real choice.
Sorry for the rants. I am angry that our rights/personal freedom/freedom of the internet has been abused the last 15 years. It's not better.

So yeah I feel angry about this. It seems every week I am seeing a new story about how people are trying to control, regulate, and abuse the internet making it less and less of a free country all the time.
What I find most disturbing is the people taking charges/being jailed for saying words and having views on the internet. Anything said online that doesn't suit the ideas of government/businesses with power/majority public view (minority thoughts, which to be represent good people) gets constrained and in the end attacked by law. Law on the internet has become a frightening thing to me. I didn't think I lived in the sort of society where if you said something people disagreed with, you'd be imprisoned, but now I have an extreme worry that things I say or do online that are 'normal' will be suddenly covered by a newly invented criminal act of somesort that I know nothing about!

It seems like they are inventing new laws everyday under our noses, in an attempt to 'regulate the internet' because they can't understand it, and when someone swears or confesses a view that doesn't fit in with their lifestyle (which, with all humans being unique to each other due to our frames of reference, we all have) on a comment board or post, the typically offended rich people with power attack the individual they don't understand by finding a law that says what they've done is wrong. Eventually there's going to be plenty to choose from, a bit like choosing the right tool for the job. The job of getting rid of people they find offensive, who are probably just innocent.

Now I wanna be able to talk freely, but I can't. Not on the internet, because I know if a person who makes laws thinks my views are dark or unpatriotic they might put me in a box. A prison cell. Take away my freedom. Because I used my free speech, but they've found a way to illegalize free speech without explicitly telling us they've done it.

Is it even safe to use Twitter without moderating your thoughts? I worry that it isn't, so I have to present 1/4 of myself. I've always used Twitter as a 'Thought-dump'. Now I see the governments and the people who make the laws think Twitter isn't the inside of a brain (as it is to me) but more like the equivalent of standing on a soapbox in a crowded street doing public speaking.

This distinction between Twitter being the inside of my head (to me) and the outside using projected voice (to them) is worrying.  Because now not only are they beginning to regulate our free speech, they are beginning to regulate (and invent laws for) my thoughts.

With this in mind, I can't look forward to neuroscience.

I think this is closer to what I had in mind for the fiction book I was almost going to write called 'A Thought-War Is Coming.'   ...it's like an exploration of a world at war not using weapons, but mind-invasion.

Still not sure whether I should do some of this for NaNoWriMo 2012 this November.
It seems relevant, but I can never tell which people think like I do about this stuff.

Rant over. For now.

Projecting the Future

  

WHY YOU SHOULD NOT LIMIT YOUR VISIONS OF THE FUTURE

So, I was talking to my Father today about the decline of the retail industry, and how he says a business is unfeasible in the current economic situation because, for small independent shops, the High Street shopping centre is dying, and Supermarkets are taking over, monopolising products, and kids are all staying at home getting deliveries from Amazon and internet shopping more than going out.

He said he thought this was definitely the future, and the only future. I put forward that this seemed pessimistic, and made the point that the future isn't a set thing that you can know. I mean, you could follow the trends and try to see the world and get an overview of everything, but you can't know the entire world, there's always going to be unpredictable things going on that you can't see, and thus can't predict the trend of.
For instance, my Dad doesn't really observe the culture of Youtube vloggers, which reveals a very different picture of the younger generations to me, a lot more optimistic. They are still getting out on the High Street, and travelling, using their smart-phones [read as: handheld computers] to stay online. The real world feeds into their digital experience, with photography, travel, friends and vlogging or tweeting. An emergent trend (especially with the promises of 'Augmented Reality' glasses - a possible successor to mobile smartphones) is that the kids are taking their digital world outside with them, and mixing it with the sights of the real world by tagging digital meanings onto locations and such. This was one area of the world that my Father missed, because although he tries to stay ahead of the times, he limits his intake of knowledge to certain areas (as, I'm sure, do I - but opposing ones).  We all see our own versions of the world, based on what our overview allows us to predict.

The best way to get around this if you want to be a Futurist, as I like to think of myself, and following the examples of people such as H.G.Wells and Arthur C. Clarke, is to present multiple kinds of future. Not sticking to one single Dystopia or Utopia, but presenting varying stories of possible outcomes, based on the unpredictable events in the world which could easily slip one direction or another.

Just like my Dad tells it, (future #1) a Supermarket mega-corporation dominated town could exist, with one lone, fat shop standing in the centre serving as the only depot in town to get goods.

But to limit yourself to one predicted view of the world is unlikely to prove you correct, so why not try to see some other futures:

#2. The collapse of the Supermarkets, due to a mistake of their making (by monopolising milk from Farmers who used to sell to many businesses besides Supermarkets that are now gone) making them give up on selling their produce as they do not make enough for worth.

#3. The Amazon-dominated internet-to-home delivery option overtakes Supermarkets, leaving no shops at all, but a need for increase in delivery drivers and vehicles, and perhaps new infrastructure instead of roads to take the added traffic to the homes of many individuals.

#4. The public backlash against the Supermarket monopoly grows, and by principle many shoppers cease going to Superstores, as indie stores promise to purchase all the products their regulars require.

#5. Amazon sales and deliveries crumple as science-led invention allows most people to create the products they want in their own homes, 3D printers thrive, and efficient compartmentalisation and tutorial guides allows physical items to be built from scratch provided raw materials (in lower diversity) are purchased. In food: arrival of Synthetic Meat leads to no more slaughtering of Farm animals, converting them all to a surplus of pets and Professional chemists as a new primary vendor of meat-based food.

...obviously some things I have chosen to see appear fanciful, and others more worrying, but there are multiple twists and turns in the pathways of an uncountable mass of people (no, not just 7 billion, uncountable) - how can we know what will happen? The best way to 'predict the unpredictable' is the way that Weather people at the Meteorological Office do it, by providing thousands of different models of what could happen and picking the most likely few and mixing them - which even then as we know, is never that accurate.

-Des

Working in Retail

WHY YOU CAN'T ALWAYS RANT ABOUT YOUR DAY
(And Why You Should Anyway)

So, I work in Retail. It's the only long-term job I've had, and as such over the years I've picked up trends and persistent similarities in the daily happenings of 'The Shop'.

Now for any of you that have been a customer, but haven't worked retail before, you may only know one side of the story. You may know what you want out of your shopping experience, and will also probably have come across the saying 'The Customer Is Always Right' - a phrase oft-uttered from Manager to Assistant, regarding how to treat everyone who comes into the Shop. And we do, at least we try to, abide by this mantra.

You likely will believe that there is a Right and Wrong way to be served, as a customer. What you may not know is that the person behind the till is in fact a human being (until the day when robots replace us, obviously) and as such, despite our solid devotion to serving you, we think there is a Good and Bad type of customer.

Let me explain, that I am not the best example of a Shop Assistant. I try my absolute best, but due to conflicts between my science-philic nature and the dastardly un-scientific nature of some of the products we sell [but that's a whole other story], I often come off looking like Bernard Black from the TV sitcom Black Books, or Dante from Kevin Smith's film Clerks.

I see a lot of customers on our busy days. They are a varied, often eccentric bunch, and 80% of the time they are good-natured, friendly, and just want to get what they came in for along with a little 'community banter'.
And that's great. It's just that other 20% of the time though, that bothers me. The finnicky, stressful times.

I have my own list of ways a customer can hinder workflow, a list gathered from several years of observing copied behaviour, somehow shared by very different kinds of people. Most of these actions take the form of:

• - incorrect expectations of how the shop runs (coming in when we're shut / expecting us angrily to be medical practitioners when we're not)

• - misunderstandings of personality (telling loud jokes as a way of avoiding answering questions that will help them find the product they want quicker / cutting us off in mid-explanation) 

• - slowing down of proceedings (adding to already complete transactions repetitively / coming in and looking furiously at the shelf for something they have forgotten, and asking us what it is that they want)

...and et cetera.  Of course a lot of this is natural, the blundering way strangers who've just met each other get confused at each others' pace and fail to gel. But the inability to see that the person trying to help them is human like themselves often fires up these simple misunderstandings into angry infernos of confrontation.


Unfortunately, bad customers are only the tip of the problem-iceberg. We, the Shop Assistants, will also often critique the systems put in place by the Managers, in their godlike place. See, just because a Manager tells you they've set up a new rule, and just because, yes, it IS our duty to follow it, doesn't necessarily mean the system is a Good Idea for the shop efficiency.

• -Putting more new stock on shelves impacts shelf-space and ease of access.

•  -Moving a product impacts the customer's already fragile sense of shop geography, and creates more "where is it?" scenarios, or worse still, none, meaning a customer will leave the shop thinking we have none of what they want. 

•  -A voucher scheme will slow us down at the till, and 2 for 1 offers / free mug with product offers will often get forgotten without a digital till system that knows these offers. 

Managers often get furious with their own staff for things that their new rules and systems have broken. No wonder your employees come home stressed and go in search of places to vent. But there's the other problem. If you want to vent, or talk about how you dislike work to a friend, or online in social networking, or here on a blog, you may be reprimanded or fired.

Supermarkets want to cover it up. It's "Bad for business" in the eyes of the heads. They want to censor their little employees from saying such human things as "boy, I had a bad customer in today." or "the new leaflet system is bollocks, it makes work more difficult." - No matter how true these things are, or how much an individual employee wants to express them as the reason they feel so shit about work, it's tip-toeing on a minefield when a Manager googles their store name.

So I googled it myself .... "I hate where I work."

You do see the discussions, trying to get a foothold. But there are also fleeting glimpses of authority overwatch. A newspaper article growls about how Waitrose had to close a Facebook group wherein people were ranting about the cons of where they work.

This pointed me to Facebook where I searched 'Waitrose' and found all the popular groups with high numbers of users closed, and a mass of new, nearly empty groups with low numbers of users, still open, (...for now). These 'Groups' are pages opened by public people, but are easily eclipsed by 'Pages' the more official zone of Waitrose, likely set up by the authoritarian company heads, emblazened higher on the list, with a choice of a 'Like' button (but never a 'Dislike'), spewing ads and good reviews of the store.

All businesses like to monitor online content like this. They like to silence any bad images about them, to present a false, heavenly, perfect image to anyone who searches their name - and they have the money and power to do so. But never the sense to think about what this means.

They may try to present a good image of themselves online, these Retail giants like Tesco, Waitrose and Morrissons, but if they deny their own employees the right to say what's wrong with where they work, and silence them from letting their customers hear these rants about not only the conditions of the stressed people who serve them, but the Assistants' view on them, the customer themselves, the company could unexpectedly be suffering.

I would like to present a view that stems from the way PC Software Developers of the mid-90s dealt with their products and customers' needs with a moral and generous attitude. From Microsoft, to Hardware drivers, to Game patches, that era featured a world where, yes, things frequently broke and went wrong with PCs, but out of that turmoil arose an attitude of user-friendly help and fixing things that was exceedingly co-operative, with Forums arriving for troubleshooting, bugfixes panned-on by Programmers, and the public sharing information on how to fix issues.

Now, firstly, I don't know how we've lost that in the digital world, and frankly I'd like to see it come back, but secondly - why the hell can't it be applied to the management of things in the physical world? Like Supermarkets & Shops? Old set-in stone ideas seem to permeate the world of Retail, and if only the heads could all face their employees and tell them it is now totally acceptable to bitch about what's fucked up in the company, to let loose on a specialised "Only say what's broken" Forum, (and not only that, but that there'll be new team set up to tear down any new rules that aren't actually working) - you'd soon see the 90s Software Developer attitude rise again, and make the job of working in Retail seem a lot more open & friendly.

And what of the customers? When it's public knowledge that a customer isn't superior to the person serving them, then perhaps the morale and happiness levels would rise more still, and we wouldn't have to fake our daily smiles from behind the counter.

(Until the robots replace us, which they shouldn't, ever.)



-D

The Muffin Zoetrope

THE FALL OF FILM TRAILERS

Film Trailers. Lovely as they can be, I have a bone to pick with them. To start off, I'll have to pay homage to my first experiences at the cinema seeing Trailers at the start of films in the mid-90s: these were amazing times. Often, although you didn't know whether or not the film you were seeing was going to be good, there was the additional pre-show excitement of seeing a bunch of 5 or so Trailers for other upcoming films. Speedily editing, fast cutting with climactic action music and slicing, crunching sound effects, Trailers took the Best Bits out of a film and smooshed them together in a Zoetrope of thrill.

As time went on, Trailers successfully followed this same formula, but it became clearer what the flaws of this flashy promotion were. These trailers often out-shone the films they were promoting, indeed, it was true that ripping all the best scenes out of a movie and showing them off within a couple of minutes essentially meant that when you saw the actual film, you were watching the boring bits in-between the blink-and-you'll-miss-it profound amazement moments. In the 2000s, this flaw reached critical mass when films like 'Open Water' were essentially just a long version of their own trailer.

Not only this, but enigmatic horror films that went by the mantra "the less you show, the more scary it is" hypocritically showed most of their film in 1 teaser trailer, 2 main trailers, a pre-release making-of featurette and 5 TV spots.

 Then there is imagination. There was a furore surrounding the overhyping of the 2nd and 3rd Matrix movies before they were released. The Matrix (the original film) shocked audiences by providing them with a slice of its gritty sci-fi world. A world which, we only saw a fraction of, and yet our imaginations were racing... in our minds, those of us that were fans, saw the plot going to a different place (and you could apply this to many other things, the Star Wars prequels for instance). It's amazing what the creativity of our own varied and unique consciousnesses can make up, and when the Trailers for The Matrix 2&3 (Reloaded, and Revolutions) came out, we had basically written the plot in our own heads. ALL the things that SHOULD happen, and that COULD happen, right there, filling the gaps between every shot in the Trailer. We had invented it. But it was not to be, and as majestic in scale as these 2 films were, they could not compete with the much larger visions that a multitude of us, commenting on their Trailers had had.

I will mention music also, for I am a big fan of 'Nine Inch Nails', the punchy Industrial band, which some smart Hollywood exec has heard, and seen fit that it should be 'cathartic Trailer music'. So they pick these, undoubtably cool, and darkly atmospheric tracks, and they put them over movie teasers like '300' and 'Terminator Salvation' - it has the desired affect of making us go "fucking wow, I'm definitely seeing this" (and, don't get me wrong, 300 was a good flick), but after watching the images in the Trail' being scored by NIN, my mind was making the movie out to be 10 times better than it actually was. And also - there's no NIN in the actual movie, which is anticlimactic. (In fact the only place you're likely to find NIN in an actual movie is a sinisterly-edited Tony Scott film.)

On Youtube today (which has stupidly allowed itself to be consumed by advertising, much alike the burden carried by TV programmes), you may start watching the Trailer for a film you want to see, only to find yourself greeted by a pre-Trailer ad-break that selects random advertising to throw in your face before you get to see the Trailer, which is itself, ironically, advertising. Also, I have noticed that sometimes the randomisation that selects an advert to force you to watch before seeing your Trailer of choice, is often, the Trailer for the same film.

Similarly, when sitting in a cinema, the pre-film Trailers (which, unlike in the 90s, now lag behind a 15-minute block of product-placement advertising) turn out to be for the film you are about to see. Isn't it questionable logic to see a Trailer for a Film followed immediately by the Film itself? Are we treating films like food, perhaps, like the supermarket Free-Sample Muffin taster tray, in front of all the rows of on-sale Muffins on the shelf? Is that how we're meant to think of them? If so, what if I'd seen the Muffins on the shelf and said "hey I like the look of those, I'm definitely going to buy some later", only to have the Free-sample Lady trying to force-feed me Muffins while I make my way through the vegetable aisle, shoving muffins down my throat everywhere I go? Don't you think that when I finally get back to the cake aisle, I might not only have lost my appetite for Muffins, and also have felt pretty violated?

DVDs used to be lovely and free from advertising and Trailers when they first came out - you could watch features to do with the film in the menu, and occasionally SELECT trailers of other films to watch if you wanted to. But then DVDs somehow fell prey to the VHS disease, with pre-menu Trailers bunged onto the disc, up in your face, usually unskippable.

I'm waiting for people to get wise about Advertising (and remove it...from life) and one of the branches of that much longed-for ideal consists of getting wise about Trailers.

I want Filmmakers to think a little more like this: look, if you're gonna have a Trailer for your film, make it small, like a one-off Teaser, maximum of 20 seconds, and DON'T give away your plot in the Teaser, in fact, don't put ANY of your best scenes in. Bullet-point your 20 best scenes in your film, and avoid putting any of them in the trailer. 

The next wise advancement beyond that I would petition for, of course, will be to have NO trailers. Can you imagine the joy of going into a Cinema to see a Film? That's not actually what happens right now. You go to a cinema to pay more for sweet things than you would anywhere else, and see adverts of many kinds asking you to spend, including an advert for the Film you're about to see, and then of course, the Film. (Which technically because of Trailers, you already have seen.)  The thing is, the requirement to constantly create new films in general is dying out at the moment, so a lot of this is too little too late. There's simply too much to fix for such an ageing medium, largely replaced by the more flexible storytelling tool of computer games.

Unfortunately, advertising is flourishing, in the same way a swarm of crop-destroying insects flourishes. More on that story later.

-Des

Irrationality and Omniscience.

Social Networking's effect on Crowd Thought and Irrational views.

It seems so easy to fall into arguments with 'the arrogants' online. You can try it now. Many people you meet or have access to every day can, by misunderstanding or need for superiority, convert your nice words into provocation worthy of their combatitive hatred. You can see it online through messageboards, comments at the end of pictures, Youtube videos, or newspaper articles, in the more un-private areas of the web. The internet enables nothing new, and without it humans would still do exactly the same, it's just that through the internet things are revealed to us. People who were un-enlightened about mass verbal wars before (in the physical world), are suddenly now in a position to be privy to it, able to see all of human behaviour as a whole, even though it was this way long before the web, a just as massive but invisible occurrence. But an occurrence nonetheless.

The world without the internet is analogous to the world without newspapers, TV, or telephones. As you step back to the past in your lovely time-machine, and reverse the advancement of communication tech, you see people look more isolated in the past. They heard less, saw less, were ignorant of more, and were arguably unconcerned about what their neighbours were doing. Ignorance is bliss?

If there's one thing Mass Communication is taking to a climax, it's the ability to SEE and KNOW what EVERYONE is doing, where they are, what they think, what they look like, instantaneously. If the trend continues, we will be omniscient within our own human race. I don't think that will unite us as one mind though, just make us more concerned that we can hear a thousand voices, (like Superman?) instead of raising our own. An individual's words will be more meaningless. The intelligent people will become quieter, and more intent to be offline and disconnected.

We never thought about our ability to regulate our own mass global connection, and as a result we see a million people's private lives and what they contain/how they are different from ours, instead of remembering we have our own life to live. It's distracting.

From trends to advertising to status anxiety (envying the power and wealth of others), the majority of people are plugging their brains into the mass surge, a stormy sea of thoughts. If only it could be displayed in such a pictorial form, then maybe the web-developers would better understand how to channel the flow.


-Des

Blackcats & Orangepads

WHY I LOVE BATTLEFIELD:2142

I'm running up the plain through the snow, running, because I just saw on my Minimap that Silo Number 4 just changed from that friendly blue icon to a sinister red. Those pesky europeans are at it again. On the hill overhead pulls up the square lumbering shape of an EU tank, facing me. As a lone pedestrian of a soldier, I have a few options, the quickest and simplest lined up before my fingers. "Spotted Tank." I yell down the radio. The Tank fires off a shell that I luckily miss by virtue of strafing. Luckily, our team Commander, a godlike eye-in-the-sky is on the ball, as the ground reverberates in a blue shimmer around the tank, it electrically surges - telltale sign of an EMP blast from the level's weapons sattellite. The Tank is temporarily immobilised, giving me a moment of reprieve with which I run around the back of it toward Silo #4. The Tank isn't the only one guarding it. I spot the activity of 3 silhouetted soldiers, glints of orange catching the light as they move between shade. An EU squad. As I lob a deftly-flung grenade in their direction, the Tank beside me wakes up, its swivelling gun springs to life, rotating my way once again. Helpfully, cover is never far from a Silo, and I relocate around the base of a staircased-tower before the turret can face me. From a peep-hole I watch the Tank try to reverse but the Commander is still watching him on sattellite, and calls for an Orbital Artillery Strike. The whistlings through the air of bombs momentarily terrifies all soldiers in the vicinity, indescriminate of team, and everyone bolts for cover - anywhere that can put a roof over their head. The thuds are loud and jarring, relentless for 10 seconds. When silence finally falls, the area where the Tank once stood is a scorched, flaming hulk, but now soldiers begin swarming out from shelter, and the battle for Silo #4 really begins...

This is a segment of what life is like in Battlefield:2142, an online futuristic shooter in which up to 64 human players can join together (via the delights of the internet) and wage war over vast snowy terrains.

The key to developing multiplayer war sims like this is to have a system of balanced character 'Classes' that each have a rock-paper-scissors effect upon coming into contact with an opposing class. Every team of 30 or so soldiers can pick 1 of 4 character loadouts, Assault, Support, Engineer, and Recon, with the further option of 'applying' in each game to become Commander (until the game ends, or democratic mutiny occurs). The 4 classes all have different situational traits that help them exploit the flow of the battle, and a lack of too many of one kind is a weakness in the whole team.
For instance, you need en Engineer to repair vehicles and mechanical machines, as well as do damage to enemy vehicles. You need a Sniper(recon) to allow striking soldiers to advance, and whereas the Supportist can replenish ammo, the Assault class of soldier carries healthpacks and has the ability to effectively resurrect friendlies in the field, using the claw-like defibrillator.

The whole of Battlefield's gameplay revolves around not only your skill with witty strategy, but also this Balance of situational classes, and your adaptation to gizmos that can only outdo each other in certain ways.

It is this that makes BF2142's gameplay frantic, intelligent and exciting. Over time, you learn that when you pull a gadget out of your pocket, you have a certain role to play to benefit your allies pushing forward through hellish, hostile valleys of death. The only way to win is to be cunning, and apply everything you've got to the unusual ambushes that are thrown at you.

But BF2142 is so dense, and manages to boil down a lot of complexity into simple systems that it would be an injustice to say I could describe everything.

The Art & Sound design is breathtakingly well-done, with a world apparently turned to permanent Winter, with hard-hitting technological soundscapes lending it a rather 'Battle Of Hoth' feeling, which sells the the game as somewhere you exist in to do your harrowing military job. But in all honesty, you are often far too busy or having too much fun to pay attention to these wonderful aesthetics, in danger (as you are) from imminent death at every turn. Although surrounded by this solidly conceived world it is hard not to feel immersed.

Replayability in BF2142 is mostly offered to you in an RPG-style 'levelling-up' system, as you gain ever higher Ranks in answer to your increasing experience and cleverness in battle. These Ranks are not just a pretty label - as each one allows you to purchase a weapon or tool from a hidden technology tree. The more prestigious you get from your mad antics - the more varied are the contents of your backpack.

Some of the highlights of things you'll want to play with in the game include the 'Pilum', an enormous rifle that spits out vehicle-killing pellets but is slow to reload per shot, a deployable Sentry-turret (á la Aliens) that you leave behind to mow down anyone walking in front of its rabid muzzle, Grenades that vacuum up all nearby mines, and toys like the hugely useful infantry-spotting radar - a sticky transmitter you can slap on a wall that will beam local life-signs to your map for easy location of hidden troops.

And no mass war sim would be complete without vehicles! The stand-out feature of the game are the 'Walkers', bipedal stomping machines much alike ones we're used to seeing in Return Of The Jedi, but chunkier. The air is guarded by Gunships (think helicopters combined with fighterjets) and slower weaker Dropships (the fat APCs of the sky) as well as Titans (enormous flying mobile bases, like the S.H.I.E.L.D. 'Helicarrier' of Marvel comics).
Back on the ground, the Walkers pale into insignificance compared to the standard Tanks, of which one, on the PAC side, is a very manouvreable strafing Hovertank.

In the end, Battlefield:2142 is such a vast and beautiful game that relies on Balance and nuances of play to lend it its feel, and that is something that really has to be experienced first-hand, but, for the fast-paced tactical gamer, it's fantastic long-lived fun.

Go forth and advance through the ranks! Wreak havoc!

-Des

Joy of the Jedi

A LOOK AT DARK FORCES 2: JEDI KNIGHT

It hits you right at the start, after a beautifully-orchestrated live action cinematic flies you through a complex maze of vertical skyscraper edges embellished with the occasional passing whale of a commerce ship, and after meeting the man who you'll be playing, Kyle Katarn, having harsh words with criminal thugs in a grimey downtown bar, you're thrust into gameplay in the dark streets of Nar Shadaa, a location of Star Wars un-addressed by the films, but already known to hardcore fans of the Expanded Universe of books based beyond the events of Return Of The Jedi.

Jedi Knight brings its own fragrance to the darker edges of Star Wars. Playing through will give us glimpses of the cold world of machines and industrialism forged by the now-dying Empire, with steel corridors of always vertigo-inducing surroundings, onto more outdoorsy landscapes such as Kyle's family home of Sulon.

My own fondness and memories of this game go deeper than the apparently now-dated graphics engine, which evokes more atmosphere in my mind than any new and spangley 3D console title you dare to mention. The pixelly hard polygon shards that go to form the scenery are beefed up by some hauntingly-retro (and often funny) sound effects, which provide the game with a tough edge that is sorely lacking from its sequels.

When I play this game, I am struck by how the game manages to truly immerse you in scenarios, despite its age (released in 1997, I believe?) - for instance, take how it can concoct a magic in feeling like a superhero as you slowly accumulate 'Force Powers' such as 'Jump' (which allows you to hold and press a key to launch you into a fantastically extra high jump) to 'Speed' (does what it says on the tin!) and 'Pull' (the amusingness of snatching a Stormtrooper's gun through the air via mindpower, leaving him confused and terrified still makes me chuckle). Then there's the small but enjoyably-balanced array of weapons you find hidden at rare checkpoints, 10 in total, which give a feeling of glee in how they let you to adapt to the situation. All of course tools in a child's toybox, for us, as we suddenly realise we can empower ourselves to our hapless evil foes in the ever-changing geometry of later levels. Your low-yield Thermal Detonator is a simple grenade, which can be dropped down a sewer vent before you follow (to flush out those pesky Grave Tuskens), equally fun to bounce around corners is the Bowcaster (an energy crossbow, similar to Chewbacca's) which you steal from them. Picking up the Rail Detonator will let you fire a sticky-rocket on a 3-second fuse at a passing enemy's head, and watch them flail around in surprise at being glued to an inescapable fate, whilst the joy of exploiting 'Sequencer' Magnetic Mines in a plethora of different ways has to be seen to be believed. (Don't get me started on the antics of Lightsaber-duelling!)

Then there's those enemies. The A.I. - compared to today's standards, leaves a lot to be desired, but it does the job of creating a story-driven world full of sinister soldiers. Indeed, the sound design takes over here in creating character, as does the brightly coloured palette of the foes, which are instantly recognisable - and have their own distinctive connotations upon coming face-to-face with one. The Three-Eyed 'Gran' alien is a common replacement for the Stormtrooper in earlier levels, and will attack you with guns, grenades, or lethal cranium punches. The piglike Gammorrean Guards will try to slice you in two with an axe, whilst Imperial Probe Droids hover out from shadows menacingly and do more damage to you than you do to them. The menagerie persists, as you soon bump into the toughened Trandoshans which hang around the fuel depot, lizards carrying enormous cannons and hissing sinisterly as they see you, to the monsters of the wide outdoor maps, such as Mailocs, frightening mustard-coloured mega-insects that fly from miles up in the sky down to meet you just so they can slap you with their thorny tails.

Jedi Knight puts on a marvellous display of excitement using so little, enlisting its crude early 3D technology to create a real sense of a world that induces story, fun, and thought in the Player that it's hard to see how any clever artist could have squeezed so much juice out of what they had. Not only does it do that, but it has the backup of the rich mythology of Star Wars itself to draw on, as a result you always want to think big about where you are and what you're doing in-game, almost automatically, moment to moment, a feature that complements Jedi Knight's success as a classic PC game.

-Des

Eyes aflame for Prometheus

Preview of Prometheus



So Ridley Scott surprised us all a year ago by making good on his promises to 'do an Alien 5' and 'revisit the origins of the Alien/Space Jockey', his tempting musings were later confirmed by the announcement of the quizzically-titled Prequel 'Prometheus'.

Having said he was 'done with' the Xenomorph creature as a concept, as Scott had seen his terrifying beast un-enigmatically jump through hoops for audiences in 3 sequels and 2 terrible spin-offs, and emblazened in the kid-friendly surroundings of Disneyland (much like the dumbing-down of, I suppose, the Daleks - so when's the new Hitler stuffed toy coming out?), but in the DVD commentary for his 1979 arty sci-fi horror masterpiece, Alien, he said that the mystery of the Space Jockey scene was still unexplored.

Now if you know the film Alien, you will know the scene he's talking about. In the spooky 45-minutes of non-event that provide the prelude to the film, 3 astronauts are tricked into visiting a derelict crashed spacecraft on a remote planet. On board they discover the frightening skeleton of an Alien creature known from then on as the 'Space Jockey' - but never seen in the series ever again. Of course, we are introduced to the plague spawned from the eggs (or perhaps, bombs?) that the dead Space Jockey was carrying in his ship, the Xenomorphs, the 'Alien' acknowledged by the film's title, but in none of the subsequent sequels do we ever understand what the Space Jockey was, or why he was carrying his impossibly dangerous cargo of killer hive animals.

That, from all we can assume about the Trailers now released, will finally be addressed in Prometheus, a not-entirely-direct prequel that ignores the Xenomorphs completely, but builds upon both the established mystery of what we *don't know* about the Alien Saga's universe, and expanding on the already well-known antagonists of 'The Company', Weyland-Yutani Corporation, a business-full of immoral suits and their advisorial androids (Synthetics) who seek to exploit the newly-explored Galaxy's secrets for their own superiority.

I'm looking forward to it. In June this year, on a planet illustrated by the black sands of Iceland (a well scouted shooting location, with a dark Alien sheen!) we will get to see whether or not Ridley Scott can make his comeback to sci-fi and create a serious extension of the layered horror he created in the late 70s.

(And apparently, with minimal use of CGi? Which is always the preferable option!)


-LMF

Reacting at Goons

Right so I think a few things going on right now are a bit abberant and need commenting on.



Live Animal imports (for biological testing) blockades to UK

Recently it has emerged that Animal Rights Activists (similar to PETA) have succeeded in intimidating airlines charged with importing live animals into the UK from breeding houses abroad (mostly mice) from flying into the UK, and essentially a transport blockade is in place.

The animal cruelty protestors are trying to stop cosmetic products used in the make-up industry from being tested on the animals, which is seen as torture.

What the protestors don't see is that a large amount of the mice do not go to the cosmetics industry, but to the UK scientific community who use the mice for biological testing in many varieties of ways, from behavioural science, to brain research, to most importantly our primary way of testing medicines and disease treatments.

The protestors have essentially cut off the majority of UK's imports for this and have kept it secret until now. There are only 2 flights still operating that transfer mice from the breeding facilities overseas to the UK (the mice cannot be cost-efficiently bred within the UK).

Many scientists have now stepped forward to speak out against this blockade, including a politician, Lord Drayson, who was the former Science Minister. The cut-off of live animal imports will stop us developing new medicines and health treatments and, if left unchecked will leave us behind the rest of Europe in research.



Nuclear Power boycotts

Very recently it was the 1-year Anniversary of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear reactor meltdown that happened on east-coast Japan after an ancient design of Nuclear Power Plant was struck by a Tsunami that overwhelmed its' sea-wall defenses.

After the event, foodstuffs farmed in an exclusion area around the plant had to be frozen from being traded, although many of the Farmers around the plant have stay put to look after their animals and crops, which so far have not been seriously endangered.

As an immediate consequence of the meltdown, and steam explosion, Japan shut down 50 other nuclear reactors across the country for safety checks, and Germany shut down 8 of its older reactors permanently. Italy and Switzerland have ceased plans for any future reactors. The US and UK have paused progress, but intend to resume building their powerplants in future after a period.

This is all due to fears over the world's 400 or so Nuclear Fission Reactors, which all have an average age of 27 years, and do not always have reliable backup systems against unpredictable natural disasters.

Because of Climate Change, many countries wish to focus on renewables instead of Nuclear, which has always provided the bulk of our energy needs, but you would need a massive amount of Windfarms/Wave-farms/Solar Power Plants to make up even a fraction of the electricity that Nuclear Plants deliver.

As a result, China, India and France are carrying on with Nuclear as before.

Other countries may need to rely on more dangerous power, such as burning coal (which I gather has killed more in mining and accidents than any other power source).

It is my view that *newer* Nuclear Fission Power Plants are a lot safer (and with more backups in cooling) than the ageing reactors of the 1970s/80s that are still around today, such as Fukushima Daiichi, but we need to allow funding for Nuclear Fusion reactors (notice I have not mentioned this name in my article up to now, it is different from any Nuclear power we have ever used).

Nuclear Fusion is a way of creating the conditions of our Sun down here on Earth at a smaller scale. It only takes a few seconds of a contained Fusion Reactor to generate vast amounts of power for a city's electricity. So far it is in the experimental stages, with prototype power plants such as K*Star, the Z-Machine, and ITER giving us early research into the technology.
The theory has been around for many years, since the 50s even, but the application is slow-going and we've only just gotten close to implementing it safely.

As for renewables, there is no way they are going to reach the quantities needed to provide for the world.



A dumb internet hype train called KONY 2012

A charity group called Invisible Children attempted to harness the Internet recently to target Ugandan warlord Joseph Kony of the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) which covers several countries, Kony attempting to convince groups of people that he is their ruler as appointed by God.

Invisible Children aimed an emotive campaign at the world's social networking network, including a video over popular social sites like Vimeo, Youtube and Twitter, to persuade audiences of the social media generation of 18-24 year olds to be engaged by the colourful and distracting message of the Warlord's ruthless activities.

These activities included abduction of 66,000 or more Children to become soldiers and sex-slaves since 1986.

I think that the audiences of this video in some places got taken in by it and spread the message virally as intended by the Producers, but others were wise to the fact that although it was for a good cause, they were being media-manipulated. The campaign itself was made to play on people's emotions and rally masses of minds without using the correct information, for example the location of Kony and overblowing the size of his force, which is said to be quite small, but also the ability of the 3 countries, Central Africa/Uganda/South Sudan to co-operate in arresting him, when the countries themselves do not get along. Not only this but their armies have been accused of similar attacks on people, which the United States has been condemned for sending in military advisors to support in the search for Kony.

The video oversimplifies conditions in the region, and the difficulties of tackling the task. It also has been called 'irresponsible' for not painting a picture of the present day, but the Uganda of 6-7 years ago, shown as if they were now.

It also distracts a large fraction of the young social media-savvy generation who have less interest in the News from knowledge of more devastating conflicts going on presently such as the massacres in Syria.


-Des

New Journal

Bonjour!

So, I was looking for a more pleasing design of Blog to host my more coherent journals, all opinion, nothing intensely personal. Basically 'articles' containing my views in more of a magaziney format.

So here it is.