Fox News "expert" gets taste of her own medicine

Let me try to condense this story, particularly for the non-gamers out there in my vast audience.

There's an Xbox 360 game called Mass Effect. It's a space opera-type game where you can go all kinds of places and have your character do all kinds of things.

One of those things is to get involved in a relationship with a human (or alien) and have a tryst with them. The scenes involved are PG-13 level at worst. I've seen naughtier material on Desperate Housewives.

Well, some right-wing blogger, without playing the game, started calling the Xbox the "Sexbox" and railed against Mass Effect for showing graphic sex scenes and full nudity. Game bloggers then picked up on this and forced the guy into multiple retractions.

THEN, Fox News, always eager to stir up controversy with nothing to back it up, tried doing the same story. They got a woman named Cooper Lawrence to be the on-camera "expert" and decry Mass Effect for having such filth in a game marketed to young children (it's not, of course, it's rated M for mature). Obviously had never played the game, never seen the game, might not even know what a videogame was if it hit her in the head.

Now, the Intertubes are getting their revenge in a juvenile but poetically just manner. They are entering hundreds of reviews of her book on Amazon.com, decrying it for being filled with filth and smut and inappropriate images. Of course, no one's read the book, but just like Ms. Lawrence on Fox, that's not stopping them from having an opinion of it.

Aeropause: Gamers Trash Amazon Rating

Fix Windows MBR with Ubuntu

Like I said, the most random things will drive me to post to this blog... like this quick howto from Ars on how to fix a Windows master boot record with an Ubuntu live-boot CD. I recently screwed something up on my new Windows machine that hosed the MBR, and went through a much more annoying process to fix it. Do it like this instead.

ArsGeek: How to fix your Windows MBR with a Ubuntu liveCD

HD-DVD death knell gets louder

Paramount had posted a denial of the Financial Times report that I posted in my last entry, about their having an escape clause from their exclusive HD-DVD support.

Well, now Daily Variety has confirmed that an escape clause does indeed exist, and also reports that Universal has let its HD-DVD exclusivity contract lapse.

In matters such as movies, I think I'd believe Daily Variety more than Financial Times. Now if Apple throws in with Blu-Ray as is widely expected at next week's Macworld Expo, that'll just about be it. Very interesting that everyone thought the war would last through at least 2008, but now it looks like it's almost over for HD-DVD.

Blu-ray could win high-def battle (Daily Variety)

HD news a-plenty

Well, since I just received Harry Potter 1-5 in HD-DVD for Christmas, and picked up Serenity and Monty Python's Meaning of Life in Amazon's buy-one-get-one-free offer, that means it's time for HD-DVD to bite the dust.

First, Warner Bros. comes out a week ago and drops support for HD-DVD. Then the HD-DVD group cancels their Consumer Electronics Show press conference. There's rumors that Apple will announce their first Blu-Ray-enabled Macs at next week's Macworld Expo.

And today I see this report from Financial Times (via Kotaku) that claims that Paramount, the only studio supporting HD-DVD exclusively, has an "out" in their contract that allows them to drop HD-DVD support if Warner does.

Not looking good for HD-DVD, and I guess I better start reading up on how to crack AACS on my discs so I can future-proof them.

On the local HD front, one of Maria's Xmas gifts to me was the green light to purchase a new HDTV. I sold my old one via Craig's List, literally in less than an hour (I priced it aggressively), and brought home a nice new 42" LCD 1080p TV last night. Man, does MythTV look good running at 1920x1080p! Xbox looks good too but I'm seeing some interference via component, so I think I'm going to switch to running it via VGA instead. Wait, I ordered the VGA adapter already, so I AM going to switch, no thinking about it.