Finally, a line in the sand is drawn as Manhunt 2 gets (temporarily) kicked into touch

Banned by the British Board of Film Classification and given an AO rating by the US Entertainment Software Rating Board, Take-Two Entertainment, the game’s creator, has coyly announced it is temporarily suspending plans to distribute Manhunt 2.
However, the company says this is ”a game that fits squarely within the horror genre and was intended to do so„ and the game is a ”fine piece of art„. The BBFC called it a game of ”sustained and cumulative sadism„ and that it ”encourages visceral killing with exceptionally little alleviation or distancing„.
Neither Sony nor Nintendo are impressed. AO games are not permitted on their consoles and as a result it has been restricted from release.
And well Nintendo should, given its biggest plug for the Wii was that you could ‘feel’ the action with the remote control. As such, someone playing Manhunt 2 on Wii (if the game had been released) would enjoy the ‘feel’ of sticking a syringe, a pen, a knife or a shard of glass into a victim’s neck. And let’s not forget the part of the game set in a brothel where the main character is encouraged to kill prostitutes using a variety of objects.
I do wonder if the people behind Manhunt 2 are familiar with the meaning of the word ‘misogynist’. Of course the ‘crew’ at Take-Two are ”squarely within the horror genre„ so perchance they feel that portraying sustained violence against women is acceptable - gosh, even normal!
Defenders of Manhunt 2 could well point to the many horror/slasher movies Hollywood has churned out in the past and claim the game is simply how entertainment has evolved. And if you are going to target violence, you have to ask yourself just what was the final body count from the Rambo movies starring Sylvester Stallone.
Movies though only last for 90 or so minutes, don’t actively encourage participation and physical engagement and do not involve the option of without-a-break watching that can stretch for hours.
Here’s a question for those of you with children. If your son, let’s say he’s 17, announced that to stay awake for an early Sunday morning sporting event he and three friends were going to watch the first three Rambo movies would you object? What if one of your son’s buddies had downloaded an illegal copy of Manhunt 2; would you let them play it?
I wouldn’t, because I think the very concept of Manhunt 2 is morally wrong and I applaud the BBFC for stopping the game in its tracks.
Some people scream censorship. I call the ban common sense.

Posted by Rodney Fletcher June 27, 2007 1:34 PM | Comments (6)

Well it will be in the US on June 29, though not in New Zealand for a while, but here is the real deal with the iPhone.

Apple has entered a market dominated by entrenched players and yet effortlessly (in the publicity stakes) it’s leading from the front - as Apple so often does.
Sure this is its first shot into the cellphone world. But Apple is pushing the boundaries; starting with the touch-sensitive screen that reacts to the flick of a finger. It isn’t the first touch-screen phone. LG Electronics’ Prada touch-screen phone, which uses gesture recognition similar to the iPhone, was launched in Europe and South Korea this year.
However, Apple’s heavily plugging this feature in its US pre-release TV advertising and this is when Joe Public will first remember seeing (or hearing about) a cellphone with a touch screen. Result: in say two years when touch screens are ubiquitous on cellphones, people will think the iPhone was the first touch-screen cellphone.
Intuitive and easy to use products are Apple’s hallmark and we can expect this design philosophy to have driven the work on the phone.
Everything (despite the many leaks to date) will be revealed on the 29th.
Downunder some are saying that the iPhone doesn’t matter. ‘Can’t buy it here, can’t use it here, it’s not 3G. So why should we care.’
Well I care, because it’s Apple.
Steve Jobs, his company and its products have been at the cutting edge of technology since Apple started. The release of the iPhone will further enhance that reputation and just watch other cell phone makers start imitating the iPhone's features.

Posted by Rodney Fletcher June 25, 2007 4:13 PM | Comments (0)

I’m reading Michael S Malone’s book ‘Bill & Dave’ subtitled How Hewlett and Packard Built the World’s Greatest Company.

Interesting revelations to date are that Dave Packard had a penchant for explosives in his teens, though a near miss that nearly cost him his hand redirected his talents to engineering. In his, at times, excitable purple prose the author states; ”In nearly blowing himself up, Dave not only changed his own life, but the world„.

As well, it was a toss of the coin that decided whose name came first with Hewlett-Packard. A touch more gravity and we would have known the company as Packard-Hewlett, PH for short.

This also caught my eye.
”Fairchild [formed in 1957] was a company of legend - perhaps the most extraordinary collection of business talent ever assembled in a start up company. If Fairchild had a corporate culture, it could only be described as volatility incarnate…Not surprisingly Fairchild Semiconductors was a company-as-frat-house: brilliant young engineers and marketers working long days and partying long nights…And somehow, in the middle of it all, they also managed to invent the integrated circuit, the defining product of the late twentieth century, and in the process helped create the modern world.

”The semiconductor industry, as it emerged in the late 1950s and exploded onto the world scene over the next two decades, was the Wild West. Companies stole technology, customers and employees from each other, squabbled in endless lawsuits, and hired and fired thousands of their workers with the quadrennial cycle of chip demand. It was a high-risk game, and it was thrilling. And if it produced a lot of walking wounded, it also offered unimaginable rewards."„

Fifty years or so on and technology has evolved beyond what the most starry-eyed IT engineer of those early Silicon Valley days could have envisaged.
People though, stay pretty much the same.

For further blogs on this book go here

Posted by Rodney Fletcher June 22, 2007 11:03 AM | Comments (0)

Technology vendors like Dell and Microsoft are wooing small business by giving away something precious: advice. It's a very smart business idea that may pay dividends for local resellers.

We don't often sing Dell's praises at Reseller News -- mainly because the giant PC maker bypasses the technology channel which is our raison d'etre -- yet there are some things the company does very well.

For example, Studio Dell provides a wealth of free advice and useful explanations of technical concepts in a very accessible format.

I wrote about this earlier this month in my Sydney Morning Herald Home Office column. The short video programs are an excellent resource for small business owners, home users and even technology professionals.

By offering this kind of information Dell does two things. First, it drags potential buyers to its web site -- which is the online equivalent of getting customers through the door. As anyone who's ever dabbled in online commerce will know -- customer acquisition is key. Once those eyeballs are captured they are only a click or two away from being able to buy stuff.

Second Studio Dell starts the process of building a relationship between the company and potential customers.

I'm not proposing you whip out a digicam and start creating your own Studio Dell-style movies -- that requires a lot of resources -- but it is worth thinking about what information you can give away in order to establish your market credentials. Even something as simple as a top ten list of dos and don'ts can be valuable.

Posted by Bill Bennett June 21, 2007 10:20 AM | Comments (0)

In an experiment that would have made electromagnetic innovator Nikola Tesla proud, researchers at MIT - the one in Massachusetts, not Manukau - have completed a wireless electricity test.

The research team announced last week that they juiced up a 60-watt light bulb using WiTricity, the name the clever MIT folk have given the wireless electricity source they are developing.

The WiTricity was generated using two copper coils, one attached to the bulb and the other to a power source. The power coil emitted a field of magnetism to the unpowered coil, stimulating it to generate a current that powered the light bulb from seven feet (2.1m) away.

The MIT researchers say the WiTricity generated by the coils powered the light bulb in a way similar to magnetic induction, which is used in power transformers so that one coil carries power to another. Using an energy converter, any object near the WiTricity generating coils could be powered.

Now I don’t quite know how this works, but I do understand what it means…

Not only does it explain how the Jedi lightsabres in Star Wars could be powered, it also paints a picture of a completely wireless world.

The MIT researchers reckon that when WiTricity becomes commercially available in a few years, it could be compete with rechargeable batteries on PCs, laptops, cell phones, PDAs (if they stick a while longer) and iPods.

Depending on how the coils are configured, a single WiTricity source could provide power for several laptops or dozens of cell phones, they say.
This means no more cords and bulky batteries, and if coverage becomes universal, no more running out of juice at critical moments - after all we never see Luke Skywalker lightsabre’s running out of power the moment he faces Darth Vader…

What we don’t know yet is what effect the magnetic fields transmitting the wireless electricity will have on the devices - magnets and hard drives don’t mix well, remember. Or, what the effect will be on humans for that matter.

But surely the benefits will outweigh this… won’t it?

Posted by Louis Van Wyk June 14, 2007 2:03 PM | Comments (0)

It’s no secret that gamers are living on the edge of PC technology, driving the need for improved graphics, RAM and overclocked CPU’s. It is therefore somewhat of a concern for Microsoft that very few seem to have made the transfer to the new operating system, Vista

Valve, the company behind massive gaming hits such as the Half Life franchise and Counterstrike, has surveyed its users over Steam, an online engine used to distribute games and patches.

In the survey, 430,000 gamers were asked about the specifications of their systems, and a staggering 93 percent prefer XP over Vista. It is also worth noting that very few of Valve’s customers have made the jump to DirectX10, the new standard from Microsoft, with about one percent of users having installed the new graphics cards.

Despite always chasing the latest and greatest in technology, both software and hardware, gamers belong to a group of people that are inherently hostile to Microsoft. The monopoly in the game space, with little game support for Mac and Linux, means there is little choice for serious gamers.

The gaming community will eventually come around the new operating system, but it will be a move forced by the new DirectX10 standard and tailor-made games for Vista. Gamers will undoubtedly remain unsympathetic to Microsoft, and the inevitable move will come as a result of necessity and not appreciation for the new operating system.

Posted by June 11, 2007 11:23 AM | Comments (0)

At the risk of being labelled a fan boy by the anti-Apple hype brigade such as colleague, Jan Birkeland, I have to admit - despite never actually seeing one, I’d like to have an iPhone.

Sure there has been a lot of hype surrounding Apple’s nearly-released new gadget, as well as anti-hype by the likes of Jan and his reactionary comrades.

And sure it is a silly name - iPod was iconic, but iPhone is plain boring.

And, yes we haven’t seen all the features the iPhone will come with - we don’t even know when it will reach us in Kiwiland or what it will cost here.

But I want one simply because it rolls at least two devices into one.

Unless you’re a metrosexual and have adopted the man bag concept, blokes just don’t have enough pockets to carry all the stuff they want to have on them all day long.

Juggling a cell phone, iPod, wallet, PDA (some people still have them), car keys, business cards and a pack of chewing gum is real hassle.

So if the iPhone removes just one of these, it will be winner in my book.

OK, so other handsets already do this, but there are two reasons I think the iPhone will be a hit with existing iPod users especially.

One, content can be loaded onto the iPhone in the same way as the iPod using iTunes - no weird mobile phone company proprietary software. Let’s not forget it is iTunes that really helped the iPod become the biggest selling digital media player and it should do the same for the iPhone.

Second, the iPhone will hopefully feature a standard headphone jack. This means, like with the iPod, we can use any headphones we want. Again, the headphones that come with most mobile phones, with their horrid proprietary connections, are generally not that great.

On top of all this, the iPhone’s Multitouch interface also sounds rather nifty - no keyboard, just ”soft„ buttons on a touch screen. This should make it easier to use for emailing and web browsing than many smartphones, and may even wean some people off their Blackberries.

So if the iPhone does all this and frees up some space in our already cluttered lives it will rock…

Posted by Louis Van Wyk June 8, 2007 5:07 PM | Comments (0)

Apple fan boys rejoice; on June 29 the long awaited iPhone will come to market. The announcement was not made through the normal channels, no release and no official announcement per se, but three ads running during prime time US television promising a June 29 launch (US only of course).

This is only a product announcement; there are thousands of them every day. Yet you could almost hear the collective sigh of relief from millions of Apple fans and the fruity company’s accountants rubbing their hands with dollar signs in their eyes.

The buildup of the iPhone has been monumental. Not much has been spent in the advertising and marketing department, because no money was needed to create the incredible hype this product has received from the public. By the looks of things, Apple could announce a product like a coffee mug, and millions would get behind it.

It’s alarming.

I’m perhaps not Apple’s biggest fan, but I am certainly not opposed to their products, and I’ll be the first to admit that they come up with some great stuff. Hey, I even own a few of their products, all of which are very, very good.

But how a company can announce a future product, alert the competition to exactly what it is doing and rely on brand loyalty alone is completely foreign to me. It is also a little bit disturbing, knowing that as soon as the phone hits shelves around the world, it will be snatched up by people who know nothing of the features, care little about the connectivity and have read no reviews.

When the gadget press (Gizmodo, I’m looking at you) go to the lengths of comparing other phones to a cardboard cutout of the iPhone, the future hype has gone too far.

I have previously said the iPhone will fail, and I stand by that comment. I’m not here to debate that though, I’m here to express my concerns over a company that relies so heavily on its extremely loyal supporters.

And when the iPhone does come to New Zealand, I believe it will be snatched up in a day or so, even with all the unavailable features and questionable connectivity available to US customers only. The initial reaction will be over-the-top fantastic, but I believe that the consumer market will overpower the hype in the end, and perhaps choose a competitor that meets demands in a better way.

Can Apple rely on the US market only to succeed? I think not, and as in the board game Risk, the key will be to conquer the Asian region, in what will undoubtedly be Apple’s toughest battle to date.

Posted by June 5, 2007 12:09 PM | Comments (1)