Year: 2004

I’ve just watched the best match of Euro 2004 so far. I was blown away by the excitement of this game, with dozens of shots on goal it was an open game of the type you never see anymore in national games. Teams usually play a far more controlled game nowadays in order to avoid defeat rather than a full expressive game where they push the play at their opponents and drive towards goal.

It wasn’t without controversy though as there was a dubious sending off, incidents when penalties should have been given but weren’t a goal that was allowed through a technicality. The second Dutch goal is a clear example of why the modern offside rule is utterly insane. It has been changed from an objective decision dependent on the relative positions of players to a subjective one where the player is considered offside only if they are gaining an advantage from their position.

Tags: sport

I have just returned home from having seen the amazing documentary by Errol Morris titled The Fog of War (IMDB entry) which tracks the career of Robert McNamara concentrating on his role as the Secretary of Defence for Presidents Kennedy and Johnson. I was deeply troubled by having seen it and it has left me feeling quite pessimistic for the future of humanity.

I’ve never thought of McNamara of being an evil man but there are those that do who blame him for the Vietnam War. I was confused how the man that had had a major part in the prevention of the Cuban Missile Crisis turning into a Nuclear War could have been an instigator in the start of the conflict in Vietnam.

In the light of this and the parts in the film where McNamara is talking about General Curtis LeMay I am reconsidering my views on many world leaders particularly of Bush and Rumsfeld. Not that I am in favour of their policies now just that I no longer considering them evil just wrong. This however does scare me that there are rational people in the world – leading the world even that are capable of making very bad decisions.

Understanding your enemy is a crucial point that has been recommended all the way back starting with Sun Tzu but is continually ignored or not fully explored by military leaders today. US involvement in Vietnam was born out of a paranoia about the spread of Communism and they were fighting for the freedom of the South Vietnamese. The North Vietnamese however didn’t understand this and were convinced that the US were a colonizing power that they would fight till the last man in order to remain free from becoming slaves to the Americans. In turn the US didn’t understand that even if Vietnam was to go Communist they would never ally themselves with China because they considered China to be their biggest and oldest enemy.

There are lessons to be learned here that apply to the current situation in Iraq particularly the motives of the insurgents. What do the insurgents believe of the intentions of the US government? I think it possible that far from being haters of democracy or some such tripe that has been used to describe them that they may in fact believe that the US is really there to steal their oil and colonize their land. They may well believe themselves to be freedom fighters endeavoring to throw of the shackles of a foreign power.

Tags: movies, politics, Iraq, US

DRM or Digital Rights Management is a general term for any of several systems designed to restrict the usage of a copyrighted digital work by the owner of the rights to the work. For example a copy protection system on a CD you purchased to prevent you from making illegal copies. It is a controversial subject as there are many legitimate reasons why someone may wish to make a copy of a copyrighted digital work and they are prevented from doing so due to DRM.

For more see the Wikipedia article Digital Rights Management

Cory Doctorow, science fiction author and technology writer is an advocate of a more coherent stratgey to protecting author’s rights in this new world. He recently gave a talk to Microsoft about his concerns with DRM and their role in the implementation of it in their software products. He has put it into the public domain so read it here, download it, print it and distribute far and wide if you wish.

Tags: DRM

It seems that it isn’t just football fans that become violent after a night of heavy drinking. In the early hours of the morning on the live feed from the Big Brother house a major fight broke out.

Thankfully there was little actual violence because the two would be combatants Victor and Emma were restrained. It seems that Channel 4 got more than they bargained for but what do they expect when they put volatile antagonistic characters in close proximity and then give them lots of alcohol when tensions are already high due to a lack of cigarettes.

I don’t why there has developed a culture of violence in this country. The scenes of violence due to the football are just an extension of a typical Saturday night. The hooligans in Portugal are probably just typical English blokes doing what they would nornally do when they are fucking pissed and that’s get in a fight for no fucking reason.

Tags: sport

I think that I am a fairly prolific reader but I am completely outclassed by this guy who lists the books he’s read so far this year.

Tags: books

From the BBC Becks on the spot.

Beckham’s spot-kick miss against France cost England dear and Gary Tuhill (coach of under-15 side Beecholme Colts) reckons his players could show the national skipper how it’s done – after putting away 46 in one game.

I pity the poor kids in that match it sounds like the penalty shootout was a huge ordeal that would have seemed like it would never end.

Barthez out-thought Beckham and it cost England the match so perhaps he does need a bit of practice at not aiming for the same spot whenever he takes one. Unfortunately now he’ll have the dilemma if another penalty opportunity arises. He has confirmed that he will carry on taking them so will he change his spot like people may expect or will he bluff and hit it exactly the same again.

Tags: sport

In this age of European integration and friendly competition on the field of play why not learn some offensive terms for your neighbours through the Wikipedia.

I’m just about recovered from the disappointment of England’s defeat by France in the last couple of minutes of play, but I’m optimistic of the team’s chances against the Swiss and Croatians.

Meanwhile as per usual the drunkenness of football fans has descended into violence.

Football violence descends upon Bath.

FRUSTRATION at England’s heartbreaking last-minute defeat to France spilled over into violence in Bath last night. Pubs across the city centre were packed for the opening game of England’s Euro 2004 campaign.

By 10.45pm the violence had shifted Bath’s railway station as people tried to make their way home by train. At one point, crowds were stopping others getting on to the platform and then a fight involving 15 people broke out on platform two.

Five youths clad in football shirts caused trouble by throwing pint glasses in the car park of the McDonald’s restaurant in Lower Bristol Road at about 11.05pm. At the same time, a woman was reported to be lying unconscious in London Road.

I was actually driving down London Road just about then and it was a lot more than just an unconscious woman I can tell you. It was a full on drunken brawl that spilled into one of the busiest roads in Bath and nearly caused a couple of crashes.

Tags: sport

There are no lions or tigers in Norway.

http://www.weebls-stuff.com/toons/29/

Tags: humour

With the improvements in processing power of modern graphics cards the characters in video games are appearing increasingly lifelike but have now possibly hit a wall. Human beings have over the millions of years of evolution developed an amazing ability to recognize other human beings and are able to discern the difference between real people and fakes. No matter how good the waxworks are at Madame Tussauds they could never be mistaken for a real person because they lack the ‘spark of life’ that humans are somehow able to recognize. The same is true of video game characters and computer generated animations no matter how close to realistic they are they will probably always lack that je ne se quais. The characters appear like dead people that are moving, puppets made of human flesh.

This phenomenon has been termed the ‘Uncanny Valley’ by Japanese roboticist Masahiro Mori and is written about in the article The Undead Zone: Why realistic graphics make humans look creepy by Clive Thompson. Mori used the term in relation to robotics but it is equally applicable to any situation where a representation of life is produced.

The comic book writer and artist Scott McCloud tackles this same problem in his book Understanding Comics. People prefer art in comics where the characters are detailed enough that you can distinguish between the various people but also lacking sufficient detail so that the reader can fill in the blanks and imbue it with life in their minds. But when something is too realistic the reader has less work to do to add life and so focuses on the minor details that detract from the realism.

Tags: comics, games

Last August, Greg Dyke, the former director general of the BBC, announced that the BBC would soon launch its “Creative Archive” — a project to put much of the Beeb’s programs on the Internet, so that the licence-paying British public could have access to it.

This is the most ambitious project of its type ever conceived. A fully realized Creative Archive could transform the BBC’s precious, deep archive into a springboard for a new century of participatory creation by Britons. This project stands to make the BBC the banner-carrier for public service broadcasting in the information age, but if the BBC bends to pressure to scale back its ambition, the Creative Archive could amount to little more than brochureware and failed promise.

You can help: if you’re a license payer, you can join the Friends,, and there will be lots of opportunities in the near future to petition the Beeb, the Governors, the DCMS and Parliament for this — there’s an open letter now that you can sign onto.

Here are some of the elements critical to the creation of a real, useful, relevant Creative Archive:

* It must be broad: drawing from all areas of the BBC’s broadcasting from factual to light entertainment, from drama to sport, and everything in between.

* It must be accessible: files must be made available in open, standards-defined formats without “digital rights management” or other technology locks that will keep Britons from creatively re-using the BBC’s offerings.

* It must be free: Material should be licensed under conditions that do not restrict any licence payer from accessing, storing, modifying or sharing archive material for non-commercial use.

* It must be whole: Material should be provided in its entirety for non-commercial use, not only in excerpted form.

* It must be soon: the BBC’s own internally produced material should be released into the Archive as soon as possible, to prove to the world that the sky won’t fall if you relax your copyright stance.

* It must be complete: the BBC should take steps to clear the rights to the independently produced material in its archive.

* It must be sustainable: the BBC’s new licensing agreements with independents should all include the right for the BBC to make the works available in the Creative Archive for full non-commercial use.

Link

Tags: BBC, copyright, creative_commons, TV