Nick.

A very quick post. GameTraders Carillon City are selling Playstation 3 consoles for $799 until the end of the month. That’s $200 off RRP! Dharmesh (the owner) is crazy! Crazy I say!

GO3 was an awesome experience; it was only 3 days, but it really felt like a week!

The main highlight for me was definitely the conference. I played a strong role in suggesting potential speakers and the final line-up contained a lot of game developers that I really admire (and some that I now have a new level of respect for). My favourite talks were very introspective and honest, and communicated the internal processes which go into designing and developing games.

I hope to find time to write more about the conference, but for now I’ll direct you to the PerthNorg GO3 blog and PALGN’s excellent coverage, and post a few photos.

Note: Keep reading to see some photos. Also check out the photos on Hideo Kojima’s blog!

Continue reading “GO3 wrapup”

I’ve posted before about Interzone Games possibly setting up in Perth. Since then… they have… and I’m working for them.

Due to an NDA I can’t really say much more than that. However, I can provide a few (publically available) details on the company and some general feelings on what it’s like to work for the only large games developer in Perth. Here’s all I’m going to say about the company:

Interzone Games is an MMO publisher based in the USA with a development studio (its first) here in Perth. It recently announced that it’s licensing BigWorld (an MMO middleware platform).

So I guess that gives you some idea of the company I work for and the technology I work with. Now for some general feelings. Hmmm… it’s pretty exciting to be working for a new company. People are joining every week and this creates a very dynamic work environment. Being part of a company in these early stages provides a unique vantage point from which to view the company’s growth, and I appreciate this opportunity.

Note: Wow. I just read this post and it came off as really dry. It’s not really; I’m just not sure what to say!

It’s been a long time since my last post (and even that one was quite a bit after the one before it). I will try to post a bit (over the next week or so) about recent goings-on including:

• My new job at Interzone Games!
• Keeping it real with OneTwenty
• The GO3 Conference and Electronic Entertainment Expo

As you can see, a lot of things have been happening recently and really cutting into my internet time. I don’t expect to have much time for posting in the near future, but if you add me to your feed reader or keep reading Planet OneTwenty, I’m sure to pop up now and then. 🙂

The ABC News website is reporting that after five months of investigation eight teenagers are beeing charged for “procuring sexual penetration by intimidation, manufacturing child pornography, and assault”.

For those not familiar, this is clearly referring to those involved in what Wikipedia calls the 2006 Melbourne teenage DVD controversy. I was surprised that this has taken so long; all the teenagers were in the video (the police clearly have a copy) and many have myspace profiles. Hopefully, they have just been gathering as much evidence as possible to mount a strong case.

The main point of public information on the case comes from an October 2006 report on Today Tonight. The report includes footage of these kids harrassing a developmentally delayed girl. It only includes a brief clip, but it’s still very disturbing. The video commentary from the boys included:

Everyone is scared to go first. They don’t want any diseases.

The report mentions that in the full video they forced her to perform a “sex act”, set fire to her hair (3 times, once using a aerosol), threw urine on her, and urinated on her. It also mentions that in the video the kids attack a taxi, bully drunks, make bombs, and drop flairs on a sleeping homeless person.

I assume that they haven’t yet been detained (?) and I wonder what the kids have been up to in the last five months. I’m also surprised that for such abhorrent behaviour, they still garner support from some “friends” on myspace. Supportive arguments seem to be based on “you don’t know the whole story” (it’s a media beatup) or “something else is to blame” (parenting, the school system, the media, etc.)

I think Johnny Knoxville put it well when he was asked by a reporter what he thought about these “Jackass inspired stunts”:

What the **** are you talking about? Jackass inspired stunt? We’re not evil. We’re not mean-spirited. We don’t ****. I mean, those guys, shoot those little bastards.

I think this is a rare case in which I really don’t need the whole story. I cannot fathom any situation in which the above is acceptable. I’m not sure about “shoot those little bastards”, but we should sure as hell keep these people far away from those they would victimise.

I spent an hour or so playing Guitar Hero II at a friend’s place the other day. It’s a great party game, but there is something that tends to slow things down ever-so-slightly: Left-handed players need to set the “left-flip” option when it’s their turn to play (and right-handed players need to remember to turn it off when they take over!).

There’s got to be an easier way… then it hit me… and I decided to write an open letter to the hardware and software developers of the Guitar Hero series:

Dear Red Octane and Harmonix,

Please consider integrating automatic handedness detection into your guitar controllers and guitar games.

A simple mercury switch should do the job. It could be mounted such that when the switch is on, the guitar is being held in the left-handed orientation. This could automagically set the in-game handedness option at the start of each song. (Then left-handed people won’t have to worry about manually setting the “lefty-flip” option.)

You could also consider making your controller more symmetrical, or at least including alternative mount points for the strap. (The guitars sit a little weird when used left-handed.)

Best regards,

– Nick Lowe

The fact that having to set the lefty-flip option slows down gaming must have occured to the developers. They moved the option from the main menu (in Guitar Hero) to the in-game menu (in Guitar Hero 2); this saves a lot of time, but it could be even better!

Update: I got a cautiously positive response from Harmonix:

Hey Nick,

Thanks for writing in with your ideas. I’ll post this to our internal
boards and see what people think. We have a few lefties here.

Thanks,
Sean

_______________________________________________________
Sean Baptiste
Manager of Community Development
Harmonix Music

The aforementioned OneTwenty Video Game Trivia Night is going ahead! Check out the announcement post on OneTwenty Events.

Here’s a copy of the flyer:

There are some thanks extended to our supporters on the events blog, but I also want to thank the events team here. Thanks to Minh, Jason, Jim, and Phil for helping make this happen. 🙂

Update: Turns out k4 were full of crap. Their recent articles are ripped from other sites and still posted under the name Kuljeet M Singh.

Update: k4 Technology have removed the article and banned the “author”.

Update: Removed whois details; those who know how can check for themselves if interested.

As some of you may remember, I won a Welland MediaBank ME-747AP at an IGDA social night last October. I wrote a moderately detailed review with heaps of pictures. It rates very well in Google searches for the device.

This morning I decided to have a quick look online to see if Welland have released a new firmware (to fix some text rendering issues) and I came across this site with an eerily familar image:

That’s exactly the photo I took of the MediaBank box for my review. I kept reading… this is my review! These bastards ripped off my review! I figured that it was probably a splog, created by ripping RSS feed from various sites and presenting them as their own. However, I don’t expose full-content RSS feeds, only summaries.

Their entire article is a blatant copy of my original text and photos. Further reading revealed some slight, but obvious changes. They claim it was written by Kuljeet M Singh on 6 January 2007. They removed the opening paragraph mentioning that I won this at the IGDA social night. Finally, they replaced:

I picked up a 250GB Western Ditigal HDD for AU$92 from NetPlus in Osborne Park

with:

I picked up a 250GB Western Ditigal HDD for AU$92 from FluidTek in Carlingform

Well, that made it pretty obvious this was a deliberate case of copyright infringement. I mean, they ripped and modified the entire article and didn’t even give me credit. That’s not just illegal, it goes against the internet’s own ethical code.

But what can you do right? Especially if they are a foreign company. Oh wait, they pretended to have bought stuff from Carlingform… that’s in Australia… that gives me some recourse. Who are these people again? Checking the top banner of their website:

and checking out whois their website is registered to reveals:

Domain Name………. k4technology.com
Creation Date…….. 2000-11-02
Registration Date…. 2000-11-02
Expiry Date………. 2009-11-02
Organisation Name…. k4technology
Organisation Address. 2 O’neill street
Organisation Address.
Organisation Address. Seven hills
Organisation Address. 2147
Organisation Address. NSW
Organisation Address. AUSTRALIA

…

They are in Australia. Excellent. There are a number of information sheets on the Australian Copyright Council website that give pretty clear instructions on what I can do. The first step is to contact the infringer:

Often people don’t mean to infringe copyright—they may do so through ignorance, or carelessness.

Yeah… this obviously wasn’t careless or ignorant. Next! Ah, a letter of demand:

If this approach doesn’t work, or is not suitable, the next step is usually to send a letter of demand.

That sounds better. I need to make clear demands… I’m thinking: take it down immediately and replace webpage with an apology and link to my review. Actually, forget that. With any webpage there they will still get hits. Maybe just take it down immediately.

If that doesn’t happen, it’s nice to know that there is a fallback option:

Another possibility is to contact the internet service provider (ISP). As a result of the Australia–US Free Trade Agreement, it is in the ISP’s interests to remove or disable access to copyright material on its system if it becomes aware that copyright is being infringed or “becomes aware of facts and circumstances that make it apparent that the material is likely to be infringing”

I don’t really agree with the AUSFTA, but I’ll use it if I need to.

I’m not linking to their website, but you can find “their review” pretty easily via Google. Keep reading for my letter of demand.

Continue reading “k4 Technology blatantly copied and modified my Welland MediaBank ME-747AP review!”

Thanks to the efforts of Jim and Mash and the combined financial support of OneTwenty members, we now have a new server. Behold it’s magnificence:

… or it’s beige-box-ed-ness; you decide. I’ve been setting it up as a mail server and will be migrating services to it over the next week or so.

Online communication is becoming increasing integral in day-to-day life and, unlike other forms of technology (such as mobile phones), it is plausible to operate your own services (using a standard computer with a broadband internet connection). A benefit of operating your own services is that you aren’t dependent on external entities that could misuse or delete your information, or capitalise on their unique position. I’d like for everyone to be able to control their own online information and communication. Currently, it takes a fair amount of expert knowledge, but I hope that people see enough value in it to ensure that changes.

New OneTwenty services after the migration will include email (using RoundCube for webmail), and individual feed readers (using TinyTinyRSS) for OneTwenty members. Existing services that will be migrated include instant messaging (Jabber), blogs (WordPress), and a blog aggregator (Planet). I’ll also be adding photo galleries (ZenPhoto with ZenPress) to any blogs that want it, and I’m considering an iCal aggregator (maybe using PHPiCalendar).

We’ve been planning on running a video game quiz night for quite a while, and Minh recently posted a call for people interested in attending to let us know.

I sent a general email to the PIGMI mailing list and have already been contacted by WALAN (who may be interested in partnering on this event) and GO3 have promised us a few Expo passes to use as prizes (these won’t be the the only prizes mind you!).

If you are interested in attending and haven’t yet commented on the post on OneTwenty Events (linked above), please do so. We need a good estimate of how many people will be attending so that we can organise a venue.