Reilly2040's Blog

So this morning, there was only one Sun vendor, operating from a booth/box thing standing outside the tube station.

Who says bitching online doesn’t accomplish anything

Time to break out the “rant” tag

This time its about newspapers on our public transport. I grab a Metro everyday, but other companies have started to decide they want a piece of that circulation. And my main rant is the disruption its causing when you’re trying to actually use the public transport. I’m pretty blinkered when its 5 o’clock and I want to get home, in that I just want to get into the station, and onto a train (tube or otherwise). However its starting to become a fine art.

The number of people the Sun have got flogging their papers at the tube stations is absurd. Hillhead tube station’s currently got three of them. Its a small station, and its a quiet time of day, there’s just no need for that many people there thrusting newspapers in your face. Apparently its the same at Cesnock station.

And yesterday one guy helpfully positioned himself right in front of the barriers to try and flog the paper to people, meaning you practically had to shove past him to get to the tube.

And at lunch I noticed an Evening Times seller setting up right at the entrance to the Bunchanan Street escalators.

This is going to get soooo much worse if its not nipped in the bud.

Its already a pain in the neck dodging past the people with free Records at the station doors when you’re trying to catch your train at night. At least the Records are free but do they really need to position themselves right by the main entrance to cause maximum disruption? Especially given how busy the main entrances to the stations can get.

Honestly, the Metro have by far the best system. They just set up bins in each station, and you can go over and grab a paper, or ignore them and get on with your day. Heck of a lot better.

So, I woke up this morning to find GMTV covering this story on children using social networking sites.

Now fortunately the BBC’s story comes across more balanced, but GMTV have always had a whiff of scare-mongering when it comes to their online stuff, especially social networking sites. Their story laid the blame for the whole thing squarely at the feet of the social networking sites (at least, that was how it seemed to me). No comment was passed on parental responsibility in these matters, which fortunately is mentioned in the BBC’s article.

At the end of the day, I do think there’s a tendancy in this country at the moment for parental responsibility to be shifted onto anyone other than the parents that can be blamed. Look at the recent scandals involving video games. Parents continually complaining about the lack of certification on games, when most of them do infact include a rating that they’ve voluntarily subscribed to, or (in the case of the more adult games like GTA or indeed, the infamous Manhunt) actually use the more familiar BBFC logos.

While I appreciate that technology moves along quickly, I do think parents have to accept their responsibility to try to keep up-to-date with these things. Manhunt’s a great example, because of all the parents saying “but we didn’t know it wasn’t appropriate!”. Its got scary cover, its clearly a violent game from its description (from Amazon’s product description: “Manhunt explores the depths of human depravity in a vicious, sadistic tale of urban horror”) and its got an 18 certificate logo on the front. What more do you need?

However with other things, such as social networking, I think there’s a clear need for eduction of parents. Listening to the horror stories on GMTV this morning of kids as young as 8, locked in their room sharing all their secrets on Facebook, I couldn’t help but think that parents need to be more aware of these sites, and how to change the privacy settings. Ok, their kids could then reset them, but (and I rant as someone with no experience of parenting here), surely if the parent is aware of these things, it’ll be easier for them to keep tabs on their child’s online safety? And is it really appropriate for young kids to have their own PC in their room anyway?

What about information leaflets regarding software for restricting what content children can look at online?

I guess the main point I’m trying to say, is *yes* as the article points out, sites such as Facebook can do things like setting privacy settings by default and the like (although I’m unsure how exactly they’d verify a childs age). But I think there’s still a lot of fearmongering going on with parents and the online world as a whole. And while parents need to step up and try to learn about these things, I do think there’s scope to make it easier for parents to have access to the education they need.

Of course, even if education, leaflets or whatever was readily available, you have to wonder how many of them would read it, versus running around blaming everyone else…

Right. Rant time.

So, having now got back into Oblivion, I noticed there was a new DLC (Downloadable Content – new game features and quests basically) available. I duely paid my $1.89 for it (something I’ve never quibbled about) and downloaded the installer. A chore in itself, as in order to download it the following sequence of events happens:

In Firefox I buy the module. This is a success. Thunderbird downloads my receipt email, which has a link to the installer. I then click on the link. This however opens Internet Explorer, which won’t let me download the installer because I’m not authorised.

So instead (having thankfully left my Firefox window open), I copy and paste the link into Firefox, and it downloads happily. Presumably there’s some sort of security cookie involved. In which case, why can’t I just get a download link on the original webpage?

Anyway, so job’s done? Install and away I go?

Nope. Instead on running the installer, the security software being used throws a wobbly and crashes out. A quick search of the official forums reveals this is a common problem, and instead I must faff around rebooting into Safe Mode to install it.

What? Didn’t I just buy this and jump through hoops to download it? Now I’ve got to jump through hoops to install it as well? And after all these hoops it still demands my serial code before it installs.

And they wonder why people turn to torrent sites and illegally downloading stuff? Its because its easier half the time.

I don’t mean to single out Oblivion downloads of course. We all have to sit through that “Piracy is bad, mmmm’kay?” trailer on our legally-purchased DVDs these days. We can’t skip it and jump straight to the movie we’ve purchased. Nope, instead we need to be beaten around the head with an anti-piracy message first.

Of course, if we’d got a pirated copy, then we’d already be watching the film. The pirates are laughing at us at this point.

I also had a run in when my copy of Neverwinter Nights (yup, my legally purchased copy) wouldn’t run on my new PC drive. You guessed it, the anti-piracy software on the CD didn’t like my DVD-drive. The response from the software company (not Bioware I hasten to point out – the company responsible for the anti-piracy guff): “well, use another drive then”. Very helpful.

The music industry is finally starting to figure out that this kind of nonsense just encourages piracy and results in bad press. DRM-free music is starting to spring up all over the place. While I appreciate the need of companys to protect their products, how long is it going to take before they realise that perhaps punishing those of us who’re supporting them isn’t a good way forward?

Well, I bought The Ship yesterday, largely because it was cheap and looked like fun.

Gah! Why didn’t I notice it needed Steam for installation??? I’d have saved myself so much grief.

Steam’s one of these anti-piracy systems I file straight under “penalises legal owners”, right next to CD copy protection systems (I’ve had my run in with their tech support people before when my copy of Neverwinter Nights didn’t work on my DVD drive).

I don’t see why I should need to have a net connection to register a game I’ve legally bought with a company database, just to play it. Not to mention getting stuck with yet another application sitting in my system tray, using up resources just to check for patches for a couple of games. I can do that myself thanks.

So, annoyingly, my copy of The Ship didn’t come with a CD Key. Granted, this is more the publisher’s fault than Steam’s, but it started me off ranting anyway. The end result being that my brand new, legally bought game is now a rather fetching coaster. If I’d downloaded an illegal copy, I bet I’d have been sitting playing it last night.

I’ve emailed tech support, but I’m just going to go and swap it at the shop for another copy as I’ve not heard back from them.