I had a strange urge to fire up Flash, and make this:

Can't imagine why I thought it was appropriate..

Apparently, Battlefield 2142 will be bundled with software that tracks your online activities, to deliver targetted in-game advertising.

Fuck That™

When you open the box, a big slip of paper falls out first, preceeding any discs or manuals. The slip of paper says, essentially, that 2142 includes monitoring software which runs while your computer is online, and records "anonymous" information like your IP address, surfing habits (probably via cookie scans), and other "computing habits" in order to report this information back to ad companies and ad servers, which generates in-game ads.

It's a pity, because it looked pretty sweet from the screenshots that I've seen. Never mind though, NWN2 looks rather pretty. I might have to upgrade my system again to play it though...

Update:

According to The Register, "BF 2142 delivers ads by region. The advertising system uses a player's IP address to determine the region of the player, assisting to serve the appropriate ads by region and language. For instance, a player in Paris might be presented with ads in French. The information collected will not be repurposed for other uses."

To mark the anniversary of my last post, I've finally put the new site design live.

Highlights include:

• Categories (finally)
• Tags
• Looks nicer
• ..

Hopefully I'll manage to post more frequently now that there's something that could honestly be described as a CMS behind the site, rather than the 2 very ugly forms that I used previously.

One last thing:

Yaaaaarrrr! Happy Talk Like a Pirate Day!

The following link was emailed around work the other week. It's apparently used as an IQ test for job applicants in Japan.

http://freeweb.siol.net/danej/riverIQGame.swf

Click the big round button on the right to start.
The rules are:

• The father cannot be left with the daughters unless the mother is present.
• The mother cannot be left alone with the sons unless the father is present.
• The thief cannot be left with any of the family members unless the police chap is present
• Only the father, mother, and police chap can operate the raft

It is possible, but takes a bit of working out. Good luck! :)

A post by Matt made me aware of a page about Productivity and information management features in the latest and exciting installment of Microsoft™'s acclaimed Operating™ System™ - Windows™ Vista™.

Matt picked out a few features that he found particularly compelling, and I've picked out my own.

Internet Explorer

Windows Vista includes major enhancements to Internet Explorer. In addition to the security and privacy features and enhancements, Windows Vista Internet Explorer Beta 1 offers an early glimpse of how Microsoft is redesigning Internet Explorer to make everyday tasks easier—for instance, with tabbed browsing, inline search, and shrink-to-fit printing. It also provides new tools to give you direct access to the information you want with built-in support for Web Feeds (also known as RSS, or Really Simple Syndication). Windows Vista Internet Explorer also delivers a simplified and updated user interface, as well as improvements to the platform for Web developers.

Tabbed browsing, inline search, and shrink-to-fit printing, the ability to read RSS feeds directly in your browser? IE7 is sure to leave Firefox in the dust.

Web improvements

Windows Vista includes some commonly requested improvements that provide a rich and flexible platform for Web developers—for example, transparent Portable Network Graphics (PNG), which lets Web designers create compelling overlaid page designs.

Good that Microsoft™ continues its commitment to the latest web standards.

Metro documents

Knowledge workers can securely collaborate by using a new, easy-to-create, XML-based, fixed-format document, code-named "Metro" This format can be created directly from any application, and is simply a page-by-page view of content as it would have been rendered by a printer. Metro documents retain all of the fidelity of the original source material and all the necessary resources such as fonts and images for rendering. In Windows Vista Beta 1, Metro documents do not require you to have the original authoring application to be viewed, but are instead viewable within the included Metro Viewer, which is hosted by Internet Explorer 7 on any Windows Vista computer with the WinFX runtime APIs installed. The Metro viewer can also be hosted by Windows XP computers with Internet Explorer 6, but likewise, WinFX must be installed. While the Metro document format is ideal for sharing content in an application-independent way, it is also an ideal archival format as well. Microsoft is freely licensing Metro, which means that the format can be created and consumed on many different platforms and classes of devices, ensuring that Metro documents will integrate well.

Yet more keen innovation. Imagine, being able to print to a file, and then sharing that file with the people that you work with. With wide cross-platform support, and cunning use of XML, this is sure to catch on.

I think you'll all agree that Open Source can never compete with the powerful development force of Microsoft™