So, since I uploaded my photos of Cyprus to the blog gallery, I’ve noticed a ton of spam to my thesanto catch-all, with one thing in common. They have titles like: “interesting nald old sfj Cyprian dza li”.
Apart from the fact that it screams “I’m spam, please delete me!” and my spam filter does indeed junk most of them before I see them, if somebody did write a crawler to pick up keywords that might make you open an email, they could at least get the suffix correct, it’s “Cypriot”.
Please correct your spam bots accordingly.
I noticed Ajaxlife yesterday on Raph Koster’s blog, and today Richard put up an article about it also. Richard’s article however prompted some interesting thoughts on the current state of the UK Gaming industry, and more specifically, the education of those who presume to continue the development of it.
There’s been some soul-searching in the UK computer games industry recently, on account of how we’ve slipped from third to fourth place in computer game development, having been overtaken by Canada. The government has come in for criticism for not being willing to give UK computer game developers the tax breaks that other countries give their developers. The government’s response is to (re-)propose a Games Academy to train more graduates so they can subsequently head off to the USA and Canada to work.
There is a indeed a problem with education regarding computer games in the UK, namely that it doesn’t exist. The reason it doesn’t exist is because of the same, age-old problem: computer games aren’t academically respectable.
Source: QBlog (The full thing is well worth a read)
He goes on to make the point that currently there is no University in the UK (excepting to some degree Essex, who hopefully by now have stopped making games students study such “fascinating” subjects as circuit board design and assorted other electronic calculations I’ve long since forgotten) that would teach you computer game design, as opposed to computer game implementation, 3D object creation etc…
This was the problem I faced when looking for a masters program, and the reason I ended up applying and being accepted to ITU in Copenhagen. Of course, after graduating from that course I’ll face the same problem, namely where to go to actually work in the industry. I’m kind of hoping by that time there will be some interest in UK universities that may lead to research/teaching positions, as I will continue to avoid going to America (and their draconian gambling legislation — not ready to give up that source of income just yet!), but I’m not convinced. As Richard suggests in his article, it will all come down to whether they can get funding in the end.
A few weeks ago I wrote an article for this site on whether the word “nigger” was only offensive when said by a white person. Recent days, and recent developments, would suggest that Channel 4 do consider this to be the case.
Digital Spy report:
Charley received a warning from Big Brother for using racially offensive language last week.
The 22-year-old was called to the Diary Room for a telling off, after she used the racial slur “nigger” twice in one night. On one occasion, the former lapdancer told her fellow housemates that she used the phrase “easy nigger” as a greeting to a Chelsea footballer in a nightclub.
The incidents and subsequent warning were not aired on the nightly highlights programme or the live feed.
In response, Channel 4 stated:
Charley used the N-word as a black woman to refer to another black person. We judged her use of the term different from Emily’s. But Big Brother called her to the Diary Room to remind her that this word could cause offence.”
So, when a white person says it, they get evicted, and when a black person says it, they get a warning that goes un-aired on television, and barely mentioned in the press.
Unsurprisingly, Emily is to file an official complaint against Channel 4. Hopefully it succeeds.
I wonder if Channel 4 / Endemol were trying to go for the dictionary definition of “double standard”.
So, I recently purchased a HTC S710 smartphone, and today went to install some GPS software on it. I went with the free (+£7.99 for navigation) software from Smart2Go, who were recently purchased by Nokia. Having downloaded the initial software fine, hooked up to my GPS fine, and downloaded original map data over a wireless connection without problems, I downloaded the MapLoader from the Smart2Go site.
This produced a download entitled “Nokia MapLoader 1.1″ which I dutifully installed, followed the instructions and attempted to run, only to be faced with the error message “”The map data on your device is not compatible with the map data available through Nokia Map Loader”. I googled, and googled some more, but nobody seemed to find a solution. I noticed on one of the web sites that Nokia had “upgraded” MapLoader from 1.1 to 1.0 relatively recently, so I thought I’d try “downgrading” mine.
Et Voila. I found MapLoader 1.0, which was also without all Nokia branding. And it worked perfectly, I’m now set up with maps for Denmark and Cyprus to save on data costs of any over-the-air mapping downloads. Should you have the same problem, you can download the clean version from here.
More on the S710, and any thoughts on the GPS system (Navicore slim) or other accessories will be posted in the next few days.
So, since I uploaded my photos of Cyprus to the blog gallery, I’ve noticed a ton of spam to my thesanto catch-all, with one thing in common. They have titles like: “interesting nald old sfj Cyprian dza li”.
