Australian Federal Election 2007/08

While normally I would confine my blog posts to gaming and entertainment stuff, with a vast amount of free time I have become concerned about politics. I have become (as much as possible) alarmed about the media coverage of the forthcoming federal election. This is because of two factors, one the media's biased reporting favouring the Labor party, and two the American Presidential style of political analysis occurring.

While I could be considered a coalition voter, I have been tempted to swing my vote because I have felt John Howard is becoming a bit old and stale. Looking at the possibilities has highlighted one major thing, Australia is not led by a single person and a comparison between the parties needs to be drawn. With that being said I have disliked a few of the political decisions being made which include the higher education systems, the entire Telstra mess, and I am not clear I like workplace agreements. Alternately the Labor system is reliant on unions for which I have no control over and the track record of the Labor party is horrendous for a strong economy. Also I think as a party the coalition are more unified then the Labor party with its many factions.

In Summary, if this was an American style debate over the preferred leader, then Rudd would probably beat Howard. However in Australia the party is as important as the leader, and in such a comparison then Howard wins every time. It is interesting to note that last time I would have voted for Labor under big "Kim" if it weren't for the fact he was representing Labor.

In conclusions, while the representative for the party is important, defining a working structure for the party is also a big factor in getting my vote. Sadly Labor is hindered by two many factors and won't get my vote this time. Plus media you suck....

Harry Potter and Die Hard 4.0

Recently I went to see the fifth Harry Potter movie in the cinemas. I nice experience, as I was looking forward to the movie and was not disappointed. I think it was worth waiting for. My only negative comment would be that I was sad I could not get a gold class ticket, either way it was fun.

Yesterday I went to see the new die hard movie. While it was full of action and things happening, I was disappointed in its lack of realism. Unlike Harry Potter where realism in not terribly important, Die hard must cling to some resemblance of reality. Clearly a fighter jet chasing a truck at almost road level down a highway is just stupid. Secondly once you get past the endless hacker crap, which entailed the usual array of mythical user interfaces and cinema l33t speak, it was hard to focus on the story. The other comment would be if someone gets thrown through a wall, then hit by a car, they will at least have broken something....wake up you studio jerks!

Lastly I would say the paying $17.50AUD for an adult ticket is just robbery. While I would never encourage theft, the cost here may be an indication into why people don't go to the movies. For Harry Potter I didn't mind but for just the normal studio crap like die hard.... ggggrrrr!

PSN Game Demo: Ridge Racer 7

I have recently seen some new content on the PSN here in Australia, including some game demos. I have downloaded both "Ridge Racer 7" and "Resistance: Fall of Man". After playing Ridge Racer for a little while I am very glad I didn't waste my money on the full version.... while the graphics are ok (nothing to get excited about), the game play seems choppy and slightly strange. When you go around corners and hit the walls with your car, for some reason the graphics "jump". Also with collisions with other cars, it appears as if they don't actually touch each other, yet the other cars pushes mine. Quite frankly it looks as if they bought a graphics engine that works but haven't used the correct models, textures, physics engine... Bottom line, IMO don't buy this game.

As for the other game mentioned, I am still downloading this and will offer my opinion later in another entry.

C&C3 Tiberium Wars

I recently purchased Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars from EA Games and have experienced the best and worst of modern computer gaming. The first issue is that once it was installed, I tried to play the game and it loaded without any picture. So after trying several things I reset the machine and tried to patch the game, success! The game now ran with out an issue. After playing the game for several hours and enjoying it immensely, I turned up the graphics and it still looked great!

Now hear is where it gets messy, after I quit the game, I wasn't able to restart it without receiving a D3D error message. My solution, reset the system, which then allows me to load up the game with out an issue - and play for hours. Now if I run no other applications between exiting C&C3 and restarting it I still receive an error message.... sounds like stellar programming to me.

Firstly, my computer is able to run the game as it meets the sys requirements and at times is able to play it. Secondly I am not alone with such problems as evidence by online forums posts here and here. Even with the latest 1.05 patch I still have a problem. For a cost of $100AUD I am disappointed, slightly angry, but still prepared to wait a little while for a patch to resolve this problem. EA better pull their finger out else I will put my finger up.... When the game did work it was fun.

The other thing that is really annoying me is that I have been in contact with a few people who have pirated the "Kane" version and aren't having this problem. Which if you listen to the arguments against piracy, quality is one of the biggest concerns, clearly this isn't always the case.

PS3 Firmware 1.80 and Windows Media Player 11 Media sharing

I have recently updated the Sony Playstation 3 firmware to the latest version 1.80. Amongst the new features is the support of media sharing from PC's. Once updated and reset, my Windows machine informed me that it saw a new device, and offered me the chance to share my media with it. Sounded like a nice idea to try on a private 100MB fast ethernet, sadly this was not the case for several reasons.

1. When the network sharing is enabled with WMP11, the network service takes up 50% of my CPU cycles and upto 350MB of RAM.... Which totally slows down my machine.
2. On a fast network connection, the PS3 does not respond quickly when browsing folders or opening large files.
3. Many video formats are not supported.

I think I will give this another go but with other server software running on my PC...

Not nearly as excited about the new firmware as I was before.

Windows VISTA, the release that is not released!

I have read many articles lately talking on how DELL has began to offer systems running Microsoft Windows XP, even after its successor has been released. Possibly not a good sign for any Redmond software engineers. However, with a closer look at the reasons why this is the case may yield some more reasonable answers.

In the organizations I am aware of, Vista had not been deployed due to software compatibility problems. The main candidates include Cisco VPN client and Lotus Notes. There has not been any discussion on staff retraining or any such guff.... While the back room tech boys still protest about Vista (and indeed any Microsoft product), there is still a large demand for it. This will be evident in the months following the expected roll out of service pack 1 in late 2007, when from what I understand many large organizations have planned to migrate their systems. At this point the above mentioned products should be Vista ready, and the adoption of the new windows can start in the enterprise.

Many of the local universities have informed students not to purchase Vista, as there is no software support for it with the current standard operating environment and infrastructure. The situation is similar for other groups. I would imagine the student market alone is a large market segment enough for DELL to continue to offer XP.

When you look back on recent Windows products, for a large part, most of the applications would work on all of them, or with very little change. Vista, as I understand, requires a larger investment in re-engineering. So perhaps the real questions that should be asked is why are developers not targeting Vista with drivers and applications yet, what are they waiting for?

The short answer I assume is probably service pack 1 and demand. For Microsoft, probably not the answr they want, however if they want Vista to succeed, perhaps they should nudge Cisco for a new VPN client and then talk with IBM about updating Lotus.

From a consumers point of you, I didn't notice any thing in Vista that really said "buy me". So if I were to buy a new system, clearly a 64-bit one, I would find with Vista that the drivers just aren't there. The case isn't better for the 32-bit version. So if to remain in the Windows world, XP is the only option - which may only be common opinion and not reality. The Vista capable and Vista ready systems issues are also a problem, another hindrance for Windows 2007 uptake.

Buy the way, "Flip3D", totally lame. WPF and Avalon, consumers are not developers and really don't care about the under pinnings.... I think the Windows team need to re-evaluate their focus group strategies and work more on unifying windows, and get rid of all the new strange UI elements brought forward in XP service pack 2 and Vista. Ask your self, does the security centre with the firewall settings really sit well the rest of windows, or does it look like a 3rd party product latched on the side.

enough rant.... Vista's slow uptake, not probably a dislike of Vista, but a shortage of apps and drivers.

NFS Carbon Completed on PS3

I finally beat NFS carbon on the PS3. I think it was such a big deal to complete it for me, however the rewards suck butts! The final cut scene is only a few seconds long and you don't really get any new kit from it.... Not impressed... I don't think the game has much more going for it now, maybe I shall try it again with a new car class, but really that just seems lame.

The final canyon race with darius was the hardest, however with a top of the line and tuned McLaren and a first canyon pass score of 15000, I won with only 1500 points to spare. I have kitted out a few of the cars with top of the line part and didn't notice a big difference between them. The more expensive cars are only better with no optimizations, how they all seem much of a muchness with all the bits.

Anyways, my first PS3 game conquered! KEWL!