Interesting Valve Related Shizzle

Just booted up Steam to start pre-loading the L4D2 demo and the Update News page advertised this job.

Valve are looking for software engineers to develop web apps eh? I wonder what for. Know what would be awesome? If they were developing a browser-based Steam client.

One of the things that is kinda shitty about the Steam client is it’s in-built Internet Browser (looks to be IE6 in a custom frame) that is used to access the Steam-store from within the client. It’s slow and unwieldy that basically shit, if Steam were developing a browser-based client then they could use the native browser for accessing the store and thus be miles faster.

It’d also be a fuck-tonne cool if I could use such a browser-based client to download some of the smaller of my Steam games to my girlfriends computer without actually having to install the full Steam client on her machine and use the Steam-cloud to access my save games and play where I left off while she’s out playing Hockey.

Of course I could be way way way off the mark here. They could be looking into a browser-based game, or simply looking to improve their existing Steam store with some modern JavaScript based shenanigans. Only time will tell.

freedoms_stain, wants it to be the browser client thing , out.

Incredulous

It’s the only word I have:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8339223.stm

To summarise, the House Speaker (Commons, British Parliament) got his knickers in a twist because an MP read an excerpt of a letter sent to him from his smartphone or PDA in the Commons (I take it that’s what was meant by “blackberry like device”).

How backwards is that? In the digital age MPs are discouraged from using technology to enhance their efficiency. They can read and send emails from them, but when it comes to referencing notes it’s paper or naught?

Honestly? Give them all a Netbook for use in the Commons, we can afford it now they’re not all claiming £400 a month for food they never ate.

Have some fucking sense.

freedoms_stain, In-fucking-credulous, out.

IM Conundrum

I use Pidgin to IM, I first came across it during the brief period I used Ubuntu, Pidgin was the default IM program packaged with the OS. I liked it. Minimal interface, tabbed chat window, multi-protocol, no ads, basic core features yet extensible for those who need/want extra stuff. A nice program basically.

Nice, but not perfect. One thing I notice with Pidgin is that messages sent to and from MSN contacts often have trouble getting thorough. It’s tempting to blame this on MSN, but when your friends tell you that it’s only you they’re getting frequent bounce-backs from or it’s only you that’s experiencing a high level of bounce-backs then you’ve got to seriously consider that the issue might be the client rather than the network. Although of course the possibility remains that the MSN network deliberately handles traffic to/from non-MSN clients poorly in an effort to drive those non-MSN client users back to an MSN client.

I really don’t want to go back to an MSN client with all the mess, the ads, the bullshit features I don’t want etc etc, and crucially the fact that it’s single-protocol and won’t allow me to connect to both my MSN accounts simultaneously – which is a must for me. So we look for an alternative.

Two come up in the initial search, Digsby and Trillian (4.1 beta).

Digsby has some interesting unique features, unfortunately the current build (as far as I can tell from the support forums) appears to have issues with both 64 bit Operating systems and Windows7. As a Windows7 64 bit user that pretty much rules out Digsby in the immediate future.

What I like about the Trillian 4.1 beta is the Windows7 optimisation with full support for the new Taskbar features including jump lists. Unfortunately bad experiences with previous versions of Trillian (admittedly at least 2 years ago if not longer) and the fact that Trillian comes in Pro (paid-for) and Free versions, the free version lacking various features from the Pro version.

So neither of these clients look like the perfect solution for me. So I implore the WWW, got any suggestions?

freedoms_stain, staying Purple, out.

Why Am I Not Surprised?

I have this sort of a hypothesis regarding sceptics of science, basically if someone is sceptical of any one particular scientific standpoint then they are more likely to be sceptical of other scientific standpoints, furthermore these people also tend to lean heavily towards a right-wing political view.

The “scientific standpoints” in question tend to be those where a certain amount of controversy exists – although the controversy is often an artificial construction of people who are opposed to the standpoint for reasons other than scientific. Examples include opposition to Evolution by people who have religiously motivated reasons for opposing the theory rather than scientific and opposition to Climate change based on economic or convenience issues rather than genuine opposing science.

Case study: Christopher Booker, an article of whom I addressed last week. I was curious to see if Booker fit the hypothesis, I already knew he was a Climate sceptic based on that single article, but would he prove to be sceptical on other scientific issues, and where would his political views lie?

The first thing I did was of course Google his name. Thereupon I discovered his primary column is in fact the Telegraph these days. A quick glance down his page on the Telegraph reveals a slew of articles challenging the validity of Climate Change as a man-made occurrence while the other predominant issues grinding his gears were all EU-related – revealing a rightwing political outlook (judging by the UK political compass). Additionally one of his Daily Mail articles expresses scepticism over the legitimacy over both taking precautions over Swine Flu (which continues to claim lives world-wide) and the link between BSE in cattle and variations of CJD in humans – yet more scientific scepticism.

A trip to the Booker Wikipedia article reveals the man supports Intelligent Design over Evolution – more scientific scepticism, and claims no scientific evidence for any link between second hand smoke and cancer, despite all the carcinogens proven to be present in the stuff and completely ignoring the potentially greater threat of damage caused by smoking to the cardiovascular system and the evidence presented for that, basically another count of scientific scepticism to his name.

I was quite amused to discover that Guardian blogger George Monbiot has dedicated a prize to Christopher Booker in the field of misrepresentation of Climate issues. The article contains various links to articles discussing Bookers dishonestly (or plain cluelessness) on a variety of environmental subjects. Worth a look.

So, it rather appears that Christopher Booker fits the hypothesis quite nicely then. He’s not alone unfortunately, there are plenty of people out there who’ll oppose science because of discomfort rather than genuine scientific controversy. It’s a sad reality of Humanity.

freedoms_stain, not surprised, but strangely disappointed, out.

Sky Missed A Trick

or the point, not entirely sure which.

To what do I refer? Well the Sky Player of course, an online live streaming and on-demand service that Sky have recently had introduced to the Xbox 360 and will be bringing to the Windows Media Centre later in the year.

To me it sounded like a great opportunity for Sky to provide an alternative to less than legal means of watching premium TV shows, sporting events and movies, unfortunately the way in which Sky want to deliver the service and the pricing involved is unlikely to convert many illegal viewers.

Sky are treating subscription to their online services pretty much exactly like they treat their TV subscriptions, you buy "packs". The minimum pack is £15, the "Entertainment Pack" which contains precisely zero channels I'd find all that entertaining, and curiously doesn't include Sky's flagship channel Sky1, that'd be the one with all the decent programmes on it. To your £15 "Entertainment Pack" you can add Sports (£34) Movies (£32) or both (£42). For some bizarre reason you MUST have the "Entertainment Pack", you cannot just have the Sports and/or Movies Packs. Ok, it's not that bizarre, it's about money, the idea is to artificially inflate the perceived value of the product by packing the good stuff with shit and charging more for it. It's the classic paid-TV butt-fuck "Way-hey, *insert insane number* channels for £30 a month!" But you'll probably only watch a handful of the channels you're actually paying for, so the actual value is poor although may be perceived initially as good because of the sheer number of channels at your disposal.

To cut through the bullshit it's an outdated concept. When it comes to streaming media what is needed is a free choice of programmes to watch exactly when we want to watch them. Live TV streaming is only relevant if the actual programming is live - Sporting events, concerts, live news broadcasts etc. If the pirate community has anything to teach Industry then it's that on-demand is key. Yeah, Sky is providing On-demand streaming for "selected" programs from your subscribed channel packs but it's an aside rather than the focus when it should be the focus.

What I want, and I'm sure I'm not alone, is on-demand access to a massive library of programmes and movies with the option of watching live events if I so desire and crucially only to pay for what I actually watch and what I actually want to watch. When I first heard the Sky player was coming to Xbox and Windows what I hoped was a) That I'd be able to choose a specific set of channels to subscribe to rather than a pre-defined "pack" full of crap  with on-demand access to certain programs or b) I would have on-demand access to anything (be it TV shows, sports, live events or movies) - but only a set limited number of hours of streaming in a given month.

I would quite happily pay Sky £15 a month for 40 hours of streaming under the terms of b) (with the option to purchase more hours if required) but Sky wants to give me 24 hour a day streaming to stuff I don't actually want to watch. Where's the fucking sense in that?

Sky missed the boat on this one, or did they? The truth is there is no one else offering this kind of service in the UK, there's little competition in the streaming domain right now which means they can pretty much do what they like right now. Now all we as consumers can do is hope another service comes along which offers what we want. There were rumours not so long ago that Hulu would begin operating in the UK, if they were to begin offering on-demand streaming of popular shows that tend to get pirated it may kick start a bit of competition between providers to offer the consumer real choice and good value.

freedoms_stain, skyless, out.