We Have a Look at the Latest Xbox bundle

The Xbox One Kinect is an incredible thing. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve wanted to fight the in-game characters one-on-one instead of relying on moves and combos.

“If I didn’t have to rely on these buttons so damn much” I frequently grumble, “I’d grab that monster and kick it in myself!”

 

For example: the fat bloke from Pokemon. In every single version of that game, there’s some fat chug blocking your way until you’ve done something he wants you to do. If some fat fool did that here in the real world, your average gamer would simply not stand for it. I’m not an especially violent person, but I have things to do, y’know?

 

Maybe that’s how Team Rocket and that lot get started? Perhaps they grew tired of the many, many road blocks in their path, rocks that turn out to be Geodudes, Bug Catchers and Snorlax after sodding Snorlax, maybe one day they just had enough. They are cat lovers after all and cat lovers can’t be bad people, can they?

 

Well, with the Kinect, your body is the controller. When you’re boxing or fighting, its your own fist you’re swinging, when you’re running, its your own legs you’re pumping. Now, the Xbox one with kinect bundle is putting all of these great things in one place, making it easier than ever to get playing the greatest gaming innovation since Sonic 2 allowed you to push down and ‘B’ in order to get up hills without running all the way back where you came from.

 

Yes, you read that right, the Xbox one with kinect bundle represents the future of gaming. You can, at last, take matters into your own hands. Finally you can play a game without having to rely on buttons, sticks, gizmos or combos, you can play an organic and natural feeling game and also get in a bit of a workout, even if it does make you look like kind of a d*ck (our advice is to close the curtains first). Yep, the future is here and its Kinect-shaped…I know what you geeks are thinking, because I’m thinking it too, we’re one step closer to the invention of the Holodeck…Yay!  

Jay & Silent Bob Return to the UK

Filmmaker, writer and occasional actor Kevin Smith, together with his comedy partner Jason Mewes, will be making their long-awaited return to the UK, in order to promote their new animated film, with a series of live shows in June and July.

The shows will begin with a screening of the new feature ‘Jay & Silent Bob’s Super Groovy Cartoon Movie’, followed by an informal Q&A session and then a live recording of the pair’s regular podcast ‘Hollywood Babble-On’, where they will be joined by ‘Family Guy’ voice actor Ralph Garman.

Smith and Mewes have visited the UK on a number of occasions, perhaps the most memorable being their first series of live shows in London, Manchester and Edinburgh, which was captured on film for the popular ‘Teabagging in the UK’ tour DVD.

Jay & Silent Bob, the crude and colourful alter egos of Smith and Mewes, first appeared in Smith’s 1994 debut film ‘Clerks’. The duo played a pair of drug dealers who spent every day outside the Quick Stop (the store in which the story takes place) peddling their wares.

Since then, Jay & Silent Bob have appeared in almost all of Smith’s movies, albeit to varying degrees. In 1997’s ‘Chasing Amy’, they only appeared in one scene (although Silent Bob actually had an extended monologue). However, in 2001’s ‘Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back’, they were the central protagonists, whilst main characters from Smith’s previous movies were shifted to occupy background roles, effectively reversing the formula.

The characters have also appeared in comic books, an animated series, music videos and even made a baffling cameo in the movie ‘Scream 3’.

‘Jay & Silent Bob’s Super Groovy Cartoon Movie’ was written by Smith and produced by Mewes. It features appearances by Smith regulars Walt Flanagan, Scott Mosier and Bryan Johnson, as well as Smith’s wife, actress Jennifer Schwalbach and comic book icon Stan Lee.

Ralph Garman, ‘Batman: The Animated Series’ voice artist Kevin Conroy and English novelist Neil Gaiman will also appear in the film.

The tour dates announced so far are:

June 29 – Birmingham O2 Academy


July 1 – London Eventim Apollo


July 2 – Bristol Colston Hall


July 3 – Manchester O2 Apollo

Tickets went on sale on Friday14^th March at 9AM.

SOURCES

http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/showbiz/news/a557013/kevin-smiths-jay–silent-bob-to-tour-uk.html

http://www.theguardian.com/stage/2014/mar/12/jay-and-silent-bob-uk-tour-kevin-smith

http://www.metalhammer.co.uk/news/jay-and-silent-bob-announce-uk-tour/

BT Broadband Named (and Shamed) as officially the UK’s “Most Complained”

BT has come in at number one in a list of the most complained about broadband/TV providers in the UK, it was revealed today.

The report, published by Ofcom, covers the amount of complaints lodged over the last three months of 2013. The figures are totalled by offsetting the number of complaints Ofcom received against the total number of customers paying for the service. 

The result marks the first time that EE has not topped the list in over a year. However, it is worth noting that they did not do well.

Ofcom received 32 complaints for every 100,000 fixed-broadband customers. The issues discussed were mainly with persistent technical faults or else poor customer service.

According to the report’s executive summary, “On average, Ofcom receives just under 300 telecoms complaints a day from consumers. Such complaints are likely to be made where a consumer has been unable to resolve an issue with their provider to their satisfaction”.

John Smith, 28, who has been a BT customer since 2011, shared his own experiences with us, “It was infuriating” he said, “I told the adviser I was having problems connecting to the Internet in my home office – and he told me to set my computer up in the hallway! When I baulked at his suggestion, he simply told me that he’d offered me a solution to the problem and that I’d refused to take it, so the fault was with me!”

The man Mr. Smith spoke to was, according to his account of the nearly two-hour phone call, a supervisor. Apparently, the supervisor also refused point blank when Mr. Smith requested that an engineer be sent out to assess the problem first hand. “I came to him for help and he all but called me an idiot. Even more annoyingly, I was actually promised an extra installation for free by one person, only to later be told by another that I’d need to pay £130”.

“BT is disappointed with the results,” said Libby Barr, managing director of BT customer service. She went on to say that, “BT is the fastest-growing business by far in the UK for both pay TV and broadband, and as we process more transactions we have unfortunately suffered more disruption than companies with static or declining customer bases.”

However, Virgin Media, who actually had the lowest number of complaints in the study, responded by noting that it too had increased its customer base in 2013.

SOURCES

http://stakeholders.ofcom.org.uk/market-data-research/other/telecoms-research/complaints/q4-oct-dec-2013/

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-26757049

 

Facebook Undergoes Gender Transformation

Representatives from social media site Facebook have announced that they are adding several new site options, which will allow users to effectively customize their gender.

This action was taken after Facebook employees consulted members of 5 leading gay and transgender advocacy groups.

There will now be around 50 new options, including ‘bi-gender’, ‘transgender’ and ‘androgynous’. It will also be possible for users to choose whether the site refers to them as ‘he’, ‘she’ or ‘they’.

Facebook engineer Brielle Harrison told the press that, “There’s going to be a lot of people for whom this is going to mean nothing, but for the few it does impact, it means the world,” However, as of 2011, there were an estimated 700,000 transgender adults in the US, so this decision is likely to positively effect a sizeable amount of people.

Gender is not the same concept as sex, or even sexuality, yet the general public erroneously considers all of them to be interchangeable. Whilst a person’s sex simply refers to their sexual organs, the term ‘gender’ actually describes their social role within a broader cultural context.

For example, a person who considers him/herself to be bi-gender can often feel trapped when forced to conform to a culturally enforced ‘male’ or ‘female’ gender role. Bi-gender people generally exhibit traits indicative of multiple sexes, or occasionally create alternate personas for both their male and female sides.

People who describe themselves as transgender feel that a sex-based description is an incomplete one. They do not appreciate the rigid definition of ‘male’ or ‘female’ being thrust upon them and prefer instead to define themselves. This is, of course, totally independent of a person’s sexual orientation. It is possible for a heterosexual male to identify as a female (and vice versa).

For another example, intersex individuals are people born with a variation in their sex characteristics, making them neither male nor female in terms of biology. Often, these people find our cultural enforcement of gender roles to be stifling and deeply emotionally unsettling. 

As of this week, Facebook’s English-speaking users will have the option to define themselves by these, or a multitude of other gender-based characteristics. The decision will allow users “to express themselves in an authentic way” according to Facebook.

This move reflects the growing exposure that LGBT groups and individuals are getting within contemporary culture. The Transgender Law Center in San Francisco stated that they were “thrilled” by the news. They are likely not alone.

SOURCES

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-26177050

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersex

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Which Major Discoveries led to the Invention of the Two-Way Radio?

(Asked by ‘Scottish’ Pete from Woolwich)

Hey Pete, how’s everything? Thanks for your question.

…And what a question it is. The modern two-way radio, which is a direct descendent of the WW2-era Walkie-talkie, first became recognizable in the years just before the outbreak of World War 2. Its origins are an interesting story in their own right (but I’ll condense it here).

Three names are usually mentioned with regards to the invention of the walkie-talkie…

The first is Canadian inventor Donald Hings (1907 – 2004), who invented an early version of the technology back in 1937 (although it wasn’t widely acknowledged or used). Then, there’s American inventor Al Gross (1918 – 2000), who patented the name ‘walkie-talkie’ for his own invention a year later in ’38. Because of the ubiquity of the name, Gross became the best known ‘inventor’ of the technology at the time, even though it had technically existed for 12 months beforehand. However, this isn’t to detract from Gross’ claim, because his version of the walkie-talkie was actually quite different from Hings’ (despite operating on the same essential principles).

Then, there’s Dan Noble (1901 – 1980), a Motorola employee who, although he definitely did not invent the technology, certainly did lead the team that created the widely used WW2-era walkie-talkies. Hings’ version of the technology wasn’t used by the military until 1942, which led to Dan Noble being credited with the invention.

So, make of that mess what you will…

Now, to go back further (and get to the meat of your question), here is a list of discoveries that led to the creation of the two-way radio.

James Clark Maxwell (1831-1879), a mathematical physicist (and one of a seemingly endless line of genius Scotsmen) demonstrated that electromagnetic waves could propagate in free space in his 1865 paper ‘A Dynamical Theory of the Electromagnetic Field’ (of which the most famous fan was Albert Einstein). This led German physicist Heinrich Hertz (1857 – 1894) to build on Maxwell’s pioneering work by conclusively proving the existence of electromagnetic waves in 1887.

After that, Serbian-American inventor, physicist, vegetarian and absolute genius Nikola Tesla (1856 – 1943) demonstrated the transmission of radio frequency energy in 1892. After that, Italian inventor Guglielmo Marconi (1874 – 1937) built a wireless system capable of transmitting signals over unprecedented distances in 1895 – which is pretty much the birth of radio.

This was an important area of study at the time; the first wireless telephone conversation took place in 1880 and was made by Alexander Graham Bell (1847 – 1922), who was another Scot, incidentally. A lot of people were working on similar technology, so it would not have been unlike the ‘space race’ of the 50’s and 60’s at the time.

Marconi went about taking over pretty much all business related to the invention of the radio (which was, eventually, credited solely to him) and, by 1907, he had established the first commercial transatlantic radio service (and also pretty much screwed Tesla out of any/all royalties he would have been owed. Nice).

Thanks to the work of Julio Cervera Baviera (1854 – 1929) the Spanish army became the first to use radio for military purposes (at least, as far as I’m aware, anyway) in the early 1900’s.

Canadian inventor Reginald Fessenden (1866 – 1932) (who also helped to develop sonar and TV, incidentally), invented AM radio (no, not the ‘Breakfast Show’ –it means that more than one station can broadcast signals) when, on Christmas Eve 1906, he played some violin and read from the Bible.

Eventually, all ships were equipped with radio transmission capability, with Marconi owning a total monopoly over ship-to-shore communication. Ship-to-shore contact became a subject of increased awareness and importance following the Titanic disaster of 1912 and radios began to be seen even more as a crucial safety measure in all areas of industry as a result. Look up the 1913 ‘International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea’ (it has a Wikipedia page, I just checked) for more info.

Skipping forward a bit, now. Throughout the 1930’s, there were a ton of minor (and major) improvements made to the technology, more than a few made by Marconi and his engineers. Some really clever people made their mark on the fledgling technology here, but if I mention them all, we’ll never get to the end.

Oh, by the way, FM radio was subsequently invented by American electrical engineer Edwin Armstrong (1890 – 1954) in 1933.

By the late 30’s, Hings comes into the picture, as does the rising spectre of a terrifyingly advanced Nazi Germany. The race was on to have the best equipped armies out there fighting the Axis powers and the allies wisely put a huge amount of manpower into the development of portable radio communication. It was a decision which led directly to the rapid co-opting of Hings and Gross’ work, as well as the later improvements made by Noble.

This is a long and fascinating story (about which many books have been written), but, as a ‘potted history’ of sorts, I hope that answers your question. 

Which Major Discoveries led to the Invention of the Two-Way Radio?

What police earpieces are available to civilians

There are quite a few police earpieces on the market right now, Renée, so the high likelihood is that whatever you need, someone, somewhere will be selling it. If it helps, I’ll give you a bit of an overview…

If you’re in the market for an overt earpiece, or even if you fancy something a bit more discreet (like, um, a covert earpiece), you’ll certainly be able to find it on the World Wide Web. Police organizations across the world employ a wide variety of communications equipment, from ‘listen only’ devices to PTT (Push To Talk) earpieces and, as I said, a significant portion of that equipment is available for consumer purchase.

Covert earpieces can be wireless or wired and consist on an in-ear receiver and a hidden mic. The wireless models start at about £200 (240EUR), but the better models will set you back about £500 (607EUR). The more basic ‘wired’ models (the ones with the familiar coiled tube) are FAR cheaper, usually costing around £20 (24EUR).

The tube can fit into your ear canal either via a ‘mushroom tip’ (which blocks the ear canal entirely – hence the name, as there isn’t ‘mushroom in your ear’ once you wear it! Groan), or a ‘gel insert’ (I haven’t got any jokes for this one, sorry!) that is a little less invasive. The mushroom tip tends to block out ambient sounds, not unlike noise-cancelling headphones, while the gel inserts allow more background noise to bleed in. Both types work equally well and frankly it comes down to a matter of personal choice.

Finally, we come to the shapes: the two main shapes that police use are ‘G’ shape and ‘D’ shape. The G shape looks, well, a bit like a ‘G’ and slips over the top of the ear, whilst the ‘D’ shape hooks round the back of the ear and resembles, you guessed it, the letter ‘D’. Once again, this is a matter of personal preference, but according to my reading, the G is considered more comfortable by most users.

The Motorola MTH800 and Sepura SRH series are among the most widely used police radios.

I hope that little info-bomb helps you, Renée. Police communication equipment tends to be sturdy, reliable and high performance, so it is the logical choice for security or surveillance work. It can also be available at very fair prices, which means that everybody has access to decent equipment.

Thanks for your question! 

What police earpieces are available to civilians