bloodykitty.com

Amazing that I’m doing any blog posts at all, the long anticipated expansion to World of Warcraft , The Burning Crusade, turned up in my mail this week. The Collector’s Edition no less. It sold out ages ago but then Blizzard, at the last moment, released a number of them through their online store. The lands are beautiful. The expansion created two new races, Blood Elves (a more evil version of the Alliance faction Night Elves) and Draenei (good, nature loving peoples who look half demon, ie goat). The males of the two races couldn’t be further apart, the Draenei are a huge chunky broad shouldered lot while the male Blood Elf would put the models in Zoolander to shame, they have the most hiLARious haircuts ever. It looks as if the artists watched too many 1980s New Romantic video clips and the armour is so very Lord of the Rings (which, if you will remember, featured the guy from Frankie Goes to Hollywood). It’s all quite camp, but I think marvellously so:

Meanwhile, the females of the two new races are practically the same build, small and very narrow of hip and thigh. Probably as a reaction to my own real world petiteness, I do wish a little that they had been made bigger, they don’t really feel very substantial, the Blood Elf especially. The Draenei girl isn’t too bad. It’s a bit strange that they went with a more, for want of a better word, mundane body ideal given the interesting sizes and shapes of the previous female builds. But to be fair, these are races who are primarily magicians and healers respectively, so their slightness makes sense. Blizzard actually made the male Blood Elves bigger due to public complaints that the they were too feminine (which then provoked anti-gay complaints) but I haven’t heard any comment on the females.

If it doesn’t mean a general move to smaller and more normal characters in the future, I guess the new additions do expand the range of shapes available. You have the option of having quite pinched faced and evil looking female Blood Elves and I think if you go down that route, the skinniness emphasises their creepiness while the male Blood Elf characters, even with their weight gain, are certainly a bold departure from all the other super-pumped male races in Warcraft.

Here are some screenshots of my Blood Elf, Rubresca and my Draenei, Nubida

More illustrative is this random Blood Elf, skinny as!:

Compare them with my Night Elves, Carmine or Florette (they’d tower over Rubresca)

or the battle-stance loving hips on my Human Mage, Beliandra

The above are the prettiest of the races, but what I like about Warcraft is the ability to play not just pretty characters (thought that IS fun), but strong ones. Check out my Orc, Banca, and my Tauren, Loranda. These be some damn powerful females!

While I was collecting screenshots, I picked up one of Rubresca overlooking a river with her imp (she’s a Warlock). The foggy autumnal tone of the scenery is so lovely. It really is such a beautiful game to play. (As with the others, you need to click on the thumbnail to see it in full size.)

In the huge pile of videos posted to Boing Boing in the last post, I found this story about how photoshop stops you scanning in money because of government petitioning. Well US and EU money at least, they didn’t mention the Australian stuff but it could well be included. So even though there’s plenty of legal things you can do with a scanned image of a banknote, it assumes that you’re going to use it for counterfeiting and just bans you from opening it (or printing anything with it in it depending on your version). Blah!

Here’s a workaround in a video podcase from Deke McLelland using Adobe’s Image Ready which “isn’t very smart”. [link, direct link to podcast]. He also links to RulesForUse.org which is a really simple site that tells you what the law is in your country re: reproduction of currency images.

For a slightly different Christmas present idea, consider getting a number lit up on The Darfur Wall. The idea is that there are 400,000 numbers covering 40 panels which each number representing a person killed in Darfur. One dollar lights up a number of your choosing and each remaining dollar goes to light up another random number. You can name your number with the donator’s name or if it’s a gift, the giftee’s.

They are a registered charity and distribute 100%* of the donations (after PayPal has taken their processing fees) to the following organisations:

• Doctors Without Borders
• Save the Children
• Save Darfur
• Sudan Aid Fund / Eric Reeves

* Unlike One Pixel at a Time where they charge $4/pixel for over 3 million pixels and you can only purchase in minimums of 5. If you read the fine (and greyed out) print they donate only 80% to Living Beyond Breast Cancer, a registered charity, and admit that they are a for-profit organisation. If they make the target then that’s US$2,400,000 profits, after paying any hosting bills, that’s quite a bit of profit. I don’t begrudge an organisation’s need for a certain amount of admin costs and to reasonably pay staff, but if it’s only for a good cause and not to make a tidy profit, why not just register as a charity as the Dafur Foundation has? I’m just surprised how much publicity they’ve got and why no one seems to have asked or explained where the 20% is going.

At least this time they actually mentioned the police (see this) but “text/email us OR the police”, shouldn’t it be AND (well it really should just be the police)? Do these people have no shame? If they then report any information given, that could prejudice firstly the information and subsequent witness reports. I don’t see any public interest in the finer details of what is an extremely tragic and personal incident. If someone has information then the first and only report should be to the police. This is just plain and disgusting voyeurism.

End of school party death crash - National - smh.com.au

Do you know more about the accident? Send information to 0424 SMS SMH (+61 424 767 764), email us or contact Mount Druitt Police, 9625 0000 or Crime Stoppers,1800 333 000.

Malaleuca has a post on saving the environment through commercially profit ventures, including a UNSW program called FATE (Future of Australia’s Threatened Ecosystems) which encourages the harvest of native plants and critters.

I’d like to see our laws changed so that people can have more native mammals as pets. I’m sure there are some species that would be amenable to domestic felicity. It’s stupid, I can have a green tree python if I get the appropriate licence and show some history of being nice to lesser reptiles, budgies and cockies are fair game, but if it has warm blood and fur…

Meanwhile, the local councils have decided that all domestic cats if they aren’t show cats or breeders should be desexed. A motion will be going to state parliament shortly. While I’m all for many things that will reduce the pointless destruction of animals that occurs each year, I don’t think this will have any effect except to further police what you can and can’t do in your own home. People who don’t get their cats desexed and let them roam are probably still going to do it, only now people who for whatever reason don’t desex but keep their cats indoors will be made into transgressors of the law. There are completely valid reasons not to desex your cats, their personality can change (sometimes for the better but it can be a gamble) and any sort of surgery has its risks, also some cats live longer when they aren’t changed (some cats live longer when they are).  Some people might think it’s cruel to keep a cat indoors, and for some cats it is, but it’s beneficial for the environment and usually the cat’s welfare to do so. If you do then I don’t see what it is to anyone except you and your cat whether they are desexed or not. Maybe I just find something really quite disturbing when governments enforce sterilisation even if it is just animals.

At the moment, there’s a special from the cat protection society until mid December where you can desex and microchip your cat for a tiny amount, around $60. They will even pick up your kitty for you. So my only entire kitty (who is always kept indoors because she’s stupid) might just get the snip. I just feel that is should be my choice to weigh up the benefits for her and that incentives to desex are going to work much better than fines that won’t be policed (how on earth can you tell whether a female cat’s been desexed or not? Will I be required on the spot to show a certificate of neutering if a ranger knocks on my door? That just sends shivers down my spine).

Back to the native animal thing, if you want a little furry companion (and there’s a deep seated human need in a lot of us to) it would be nice to have more environmentally friendly options than just introduced species. Then if they go mutiplying it’s a good thing!

The commercial and pay TV networks have banned an LG ad that sells a new TV that can skip ads. It’s basically the same time shifting technology that any DVD recorder with a hard drive has. They’ve had to recut it so the ad focuses on a different message. I can understand the commercial free to air channels and their dinosaurus ostrich head in the sand ways but pay tv already is selling something that lets you skip the ads when you replay, their Foxtel IQ settop box makes it dead easy to program shows to record (it’s like a Tivo, it gives you a schedule for the next week or so, you just have to select them with your remote). Of course, when you replay them, you can fast forward the ads. In fact, it’s the same as VHS video, if you prerecord something, why would you hang around watching the ads? It’s not saying you can just fast forward the ads if you watch it as it’s broadcasting. So we all know everyone does it, you’re just not allowed to say it. So weird.

Networks balk at ad for ad-skipping TV - SMH

The ad that you will see tomorrow night for a plasma TV with a built-in digital recorder will be very different from the one electronics firm LG had in mind. The original ad featured a line that would have had universal appeal to TV viewers: “When you replay, you can skip the ads.” But after the commercial and pay TV networks refused to run it LG recut it to include the considerably less catchy line: “And when you replay, you can skip straight back to the action.”

The Dean of Arts sent this round recently:

Sydney University has been ranked in the influential Times Higher Education Supplement 2006 World Rankings as the fifth best Arts/Humanities group in the world (behind Cambridge, Oxford, Harvard and Berkeley). The rankings are based on a number of indicators:
Peer Review (40%)
Recruiter Review (10%)
Staff/Student Ratio (20%)
Citations (20%)
International Faculty/Staff (5%)
International Students (5%)

No idea what all those figures mean and you have to subscribe to the Times Higher Education Supplement in order to view the full specs of their rankings (you can get a 14 day trial free though). So it’s nice to know that I have an Arts degree from a faculty that is currently ranked 5th in the world (though not when I was doing it. Frankly, I think it was better then, we certainly had a lot more course options). Hope this means that the University’s central administration might actually be a little less dismissive of the Faculty and stop forcing it to cut courses and departments (oops sorry, disciplines, they’ve already been merged).
[note this is part of me clearing my inbox so counts as me working!]

Why are you and I surrounded by Idiots (In fact, sometimes I’m not sure about you….) - it’s a website - relaid a couple of reports from security lab F-Secure. Apparently in Japan, “McDonald’s Japan shipped 10,000 MP3 players as prizes in a competition they organized with Coca-Cola” which “were also preloaded with a variant of the QQPass password-stealing trojan” [link]. Bingo, you’ve won your life savings being stolen from you through your online banking.

The other report was that Apple managed to install the RavMonE.exe virus on a “small percentage” of their ipods in the factory. I wonder if it was anything like the “small percentage” of ipods that Apple said had battery and hard drive problems (when I had to return my first one within months because of refusal to charge, the Apple techie said that it was by no means an uncommon problem even though Apple insisted it was only a small number of units that had been affected). Anyway, it’s reported on the Apple website, as F-Secure point out, it is constantly referred to as a “Windows virus” as if somehow the blame lies with Microsoft for creating such a sensitive creature in the first place rather than their own clear negligence.

Roche has published a press release announcing their new advertising relationship with the animated film “Happy Feet”:

Happy Feet presents a wholesome storyline in a wintry backdrop that serves as an ideal platform for communicating to consumers, especially moms, about the flu,” said McGuire. “The Flu Facts campaign represents a new approach for the industry, combining disease awareness and education with pop culture and creativity.” Roche is the only pharmaceutical company partnering with Warner Bros. to feature the Happy Feet characters in advertising. The Happy Feet stars will appear in unbranded Flu Facts print ads beginning in November magazines, with national television ads starting October 23. The television ads include :30 and :60 second spots, which will air on all major networks and cable stations… Happy Feet is slated to hit theatres on November 17, just around the time when cold and flu season begins in the U.S…. Antivirals can help prevent flu following exposure to an infected person, and as a treatment, they reduce the duration of illness. [link]

Of course, Roche manufactures those antivirals. Backup to this campaign is the Flu Facts website, down the bottom there is a Roche logo, but how many people would be scrolling down? If it’s such an important message, why aren’t they just upfront about who is doing it, rather than relying on subconcious associations? Do they think that maybe we won’t trust it because they have a vested interest in us buying more drugs? Hmmm…

They did a similar thing in Australia, where the regulating body allowed them to run these unbranded ads prompting you to talk to your pharmacist about weight loss pills and because there was no brand name, it actually looked like a public health service announcement. It was tagged “Lose Weight Gain Life” which is not that different from our government sponsored “Life Be In It” campaigns. Strangely, there was a lot of green and white and later unbranded green and white packs started turning up in the windows of pharmacies. Lo and behold, Xenical has green and white packaging. Oh wow, I’ve just got all these subliminal impulses to trust it. This is despite criticism from the Dietician’s Association of Australia and the consumer advocate, Choice. Much like the Flu Facts campaign, the campaign had a “Lose Weight Gain Life” website. It now just redirects to the Xenical brand page, but here’s what Pharma Watch had to say about the campaign at the time:

Roche has conducted an extensive advertising campaign for orlistat, which is marketed for weight loss. The campaign included television advertisements, advertisements in magazines, glossy brochures displayed in community pharmacies, a free call number and a web site (www.loseweightgainlife.com.au). In this campaign the public was told the story of ‘Linda’ who took a ‘life-changing decision’ and states ‘I spoke to my doctor about modern innovative approaches to weight loss. That was 18kg ago!’. Other advertisements showed photos of Linda at the swimming pool and stated ‘Two years on and Linda is 30 kilos lighter and a whole lot wiser’. Concurrent mailings to doctors inform them about the ‘Lose Weight Gain Life Program’ which is in its ‘3rd successful year’ and includes reproductions of consumer advertisements and a letter with the logo ‘Xenical Lose Weight. Gain Life’. The advertisements to consumers do not mention the name of the drug and so are not banned under the current Medicines Australia Code of Conduct. The benefits of orlistat are exaggerated as a systematic review of the clinical effectiveness of orlistat found that the mean weight loss observed with orlistat was only 3.2 kg more than with placebo after two years.5The advertising campaign does not link with national initiatives, such as Active Australia, which encourage participation in physical activity. This campaign may raise false hopes in many people and may put general practitioners under great pressure to prescribe orlistat even if not clinically appropriate. [link]

I’m not a big fan of trademarking geographical areas, more correctly “Greece has been trying this with “feta” and has succeeded in Europe).

Anyway, this was on the news today: Starbucks under fire over Ethiopian coffee - CNN.com

LONDON, England (Reuters) — British charity Oxfam has accused Starbucks of stopping Ethiopia trademarking two of its coffee bean types, denying farmers potential income of nearly 50 million pounds. Oxfam said the U.S. coffee shop giant, which had turnover of $7.8 billion in the year to October 1, prevented Ethiopia from securing trademark protection for two of its best-known beans, Sidamo and Harar. Had Ethiopia, one of the world’s poorest countries, been successful, it would have allowed the country to control the use of the beans in the market, giving its farmers more of the retail price and securing an estimated extra 48 million pounds, the charity said.

You should be able to find a letter from the Ethiopian Embassy explaining it more here. I can see their point and apparently it was an application from Starbucks to trademark a name containing Sidamo (but not asking for exclusive use of it) that motivated them to apply. But I’m a little worried about what “giving farmers more of a retail price” actually entails. Surely these are things that should be worked out at the original contract, controlling resale starts to get you into very dubious territory, but one that is becoming more common in this world of ever-expanding IP rights and controls. Anyway, they certainly have more rights to the name than Greece has in controlling feta.

Reminds me of Peter Pan and how the UK government has granted the JM Barrie play PERPETUAL copyright (remember too, as long as you pay your renewal fees, trademarks can also perpetual) because the proceeds go to a hospital. Yes, it is a good cause (and saves taxpayers’ money) but is that reason enough for bad law? At the very least they could have got rid of the more controlling aspects of copyright law and made it purely monetary, ie you had to give X% of profits made on any derivative work rather than allowing for the full copyright rights which include total veto on whether a work gets published or not. Which means that works like the Lost Girls are banned in the UK. Here’s an article on it and another one.

[Edit: This got picked up by the SMH today (27/10/06):

Geographical certification is a better solution than trademarking or geographical indicators because though it still allows the use of the term in a generic form, there is a way for consumers to identify the “real thing” and pay a premium if that’s what they want. Like parmesan or feta, most consumers just want that type of cheese, they don’t need it to actually come from the specific regions but there are some people who do and are willing to pay extra for a guarantee.]