Thursday Next

Taking both Ethan and Deans comments... Since this is regarding the nature of the Catwoman content, spoilers abound. The game's story is complete without the Catwoman content. Yes, Catwoman's appearances are deus ex machina without it but you aren't playing Catwoman's story, you're playing Batman's. At no point is there a situation where Batman suddenly appears in a new area after a significant period of time (a la Deus Ex:HR) nor are you told that certain content must be acquired separately as in Dragon Age (that bloke in your camp) or Assassin's Creed (missing memory sequence). As for whether content was cut or developed separately, what's the standard of proof for that? Take Mass Effect 2, the extra rooms on the Normandy really pissed a lot of people off, some thought the content was cut, others thought that it was done to niggle the completionists and force them into buying more stuff. So what do you do? Weave your content in to the game so that it dovetails nicely and get accused of cutting content? Or bolt something on the end and get slammed for poorly thought out DLC that adds nothing to the core experience? If the publisher publicly produced balance sheets showing that Catwoman content had an entirely separate P&L would you accept that it is extra content and not cut content? As I said, it seems that publishers can't win. You lock pirates out of content so that the new purchasers get a benefit and it gets spun as punishing poor disadvantaged pre-owned purchasers. Yet a lot of people here are insisting that you need to reward customers and not punish pirates. Here's a final question, how, as a publisher would you attempt to reward paying customers without "punishing" pre-order purchasers? I promise if you come up with a decent idea I'll share it with whomever I can and see if it flies (unless you'd prefer I didn't of course, please indicate either way).

Feels like publishers are damned if they do/damned if they don't. What's the difference between providing more content for paying customers in the form of DLC as an incentive not to pirate and locking out content to squeeze more money out of pre-owned buyers? Seems that some people were critical of Arkham City for locking out Catwoman content. Personally I got a pre-owned copy of AA for Christmas so I was more than happy to drop the extra £7 or whatever it was for the content.

I think that airing cupboards are dying out even in the UK. They principally rely on heat escaping from the hot water system which is, obviously, inefficient. As lagging improves and energy efficiency increases generally, the actual cupboards are nowhere near as warm as they would have been when this was common practice say 15years back.

Why not just have police stop and search any unoccupied passenger vehicles? Cars are made to take people places. Vans are used to take things places with the people who use those things. Only trucks / goods vehicles have a redundant human component. Unmanned goods vehicles could all have to have registered "flight plans". Any unregistered, unmanned goods vehicle or any unmanned passenger vehicle would be stopped.

I'll get a PS4. I have a PS3, I'm on the PSN and I've got a load of PS1 titles and minis downloaded. Much like Android I am tethered to the PlayStation by my content, and to a lesser degree by my friends list. I mostly get games new, so this won't have a huge impact. If the publishers / MS are foolish enough NOT to include some form of Used Game Pass then they really need to sort out their business people cos that is a hell of a missed opportunity. I don't really see how it work though. The disc has to be useable offline so MS have to assume that there are consoles out there that have never and will never connect to XBL, so how do you verify your codes? Even if the machine comes with a way to ID all the codes how will MS know if a unique code has been burnt or not? If codes are not unique, then all you need do is find the code by googling for it.

I don't feel comfortable with the idea that people should not be able to sell copyright in its entirety. If I create something and decide I want to sell it wholesale to a company then why should a law restrict that freedom? As Yante says, if a contract was formed under duress or some other illegal coercion then of course it should be thrown out, and the IP returned to its creator. But, if the creator decides that they actually just don't want to honour their contract, then tough. Copyright is the right of the creator to control their content. It is not the right of the world in general to consume that content. Just because it exists does not mean that anyone has a right to have access to it or that a publisher is wrong for sitting on the content.

but we all love to hate on EA/Origin.... :'(

If we're going on past form, it's as likely that someone would do this in a deliberate effort to get banned and therefore get themselves some kudos for being one of the Bioware Oppressed as it is that Bioware deliberately banned someone they knew to be above the minimum age. As Maritan pointed out, there are plenty of faked bans out there. By the same token there have been some genuinely bad bans too. Taking this example on its own. I think the ban was justified as the user claimed to be under 13. A quick chat with CS would have seen it overturned.

The ban is clearly an honest mistake. The person who got banned could easily have it overturned, instead they have decided they'd prefer to use it to do some shit stirring, that's fine. I don't think it warrants scrubbing every offensive or suspicious post against a list of known memes. If I was still working behind a bar, someone who looked borderline 17/18 came in and showed me some ID but then later he came up and said "I can't believe you've been serving me drinks when I'm only 16." I'm gonna kick the guy out at that point. I'm not going to risk losing my premises license just because the guy might have been joking. As for filtering out younger players, given how much people piss and moan when EA try to collect the data needed to actually run a game, I would love to see the shit storm that would emerge if we started asking for some form of verifiable ID from everyone to ensure that only over 16's or 13's or whatever were allowed to play.

Apparently in Americaland the "Index Finger" is referred to as the "Pointer Finger". Most curious.

I was not aware of that meme and I am fairly familiar with them, moreso than most people in the company I'd wager. When someone posts something that is a clear violation of the ToS and could land the company in hot water legally speaking, my first port of call is not to go to knowyourmeme.com on the off chance that it is an internet in-joke. I'm sure if the user was to explain to CS that they are in fact over 12 and just told a stupid joke they'd get the ban overturned. It's possible that their data may have been scrubbed though, since it is illegal to keep the data of under 13's.

If you are under 13, the box says you must be 13 to register, the logo on the box says the game is rated 16 and then you go and tell the person running it that you are 13, you deserve your ban for being an idiot. EA has to ban and delete the details of people under 13 when they tell us they are under 13. Retaining the data of under 13's is an offence under data protection laws and could lead to severe consequences. In short, while some of EA's bans on SWTOR may have been a little harsh this one is fully justified.

If Americans tried to do Englishman, Irishman and Scotsman jokes they would all start "Three Australians walked into a bar..."

Yeah, of course, which is why I pay my Council Tax. All I'm saying is that the UK Treasury is not exactly transparent. I'd love to know where my money went cos they take rather a large sum every year.

What about police, fire service, public roads, etc? I've never used the fire service, and haven't had any need for the police in the last decade, besides which these are both funded by Council Tax, not Income Tax. I pay road tax and fuel duty (about 60-80% of the price at the pump is tax) for the roads. So, my income tax just sort of disappears.

This seems rather hilarious coming from someone working for a videogames publisher and developer. Are not a significant portion of those who buys games students? You may care, but acting like every cent of tax money spent on something is your money is ridiculous. How many people pay taxes in Brittain? It is entirely fine if some tax money goes to things you aren't in support of. God knows, it'd be a disaster if the people who don't care about libraries got to decide that we can't have public libraries anymore. The worst bit is I'm studying for my LPC at the moment too. I have an NUS card and everything. Fucking students. Yeah I know, thing is I never use the public health services, I had a student loan not a grant and my state pension isn't going to be worth fuck all by the time I'm old enough to collect it, so I don't really feel like I get anything for the income tax I fork out all the time. On the other hand, I see plenty of people, for example in the public sector, complaining that they aren't going to be getting final salary pensions, or people complaining about having to do "unpaid labour" to get their JSA, or other gripes about people not getting what they feel the State owes them that it gets my back up from time to time and so, my anger (perhaps on occasion unfairly) gets directed toward the most recent / high profile individual / group that has moaned. For a purely anecdotal example of this, when I was at uni in Leeds I knew through a friend this bloke who had been in and out of care, young offenders institutes and prison all his life. He had just got out of prison for a GBH charge (having smashed his then girlfriend's face in for giving him lip) and had been put up by the council in a flat. Now don't get me wrong, this was in Leeds and it was a shitty tower block, the flat had a bed and a chair and that was about it for furniture it was a bit of a dive, but it was clean and it was free. This guy, was complaining that the government were "taking the piss" because they had not yet given him the £3,000 furniture allowance that he was "owed". I'm not saying that all unemployed people, all ex-offenders or even all northerners are like that. But whenever I hear about people complaining about the level of support the state gives them all I hear is that scumbag saying "Where's my cheque for three grand? I'm owed it." and sometimes I just have to vent.

That's my problem with this. In theory it's a good idea, and given the huge numbers of people involved in the scheme, it seems to be absolutely fine for the majority. Most likely because the majority of people are not looking for a career quite so niche as "Museum Curator". It doesn't exactly take a lot to get students marching about things so if this were a majorly broken system I'd expect the streets to be teeming with hipster student wankers. Cait throwing around emotive little snippets like "Unpaid Labour Scheme" and trying to get the whole system torn down by the High Court is throwing the baby out with the bath water. The scheme needs fixing for sure. Work could be restricted to public works such as maintaining parks, temping in council offices or what have you or private businesses could be made to pay in to the scheme, for example by plugging the gap between the government provided benefits and minimum wage. I also hate students, so there. Oh, and as for the "My tax moneys thing." Firstly I was going more for right of centre snobbish rather than hillbilly, and secondly, when you do have a job and you see exactly how much a month is whisked away into the aether it's very difficult not to care about where it goes. (In one bumper month when I received a bonus on top of my salary I paid ~£2,500 in tax. It nearly made me cry).

It's her fault that she did not know that she would have to do this work experience to continue getting her state benefits, it is also her fault that she did not know there is a cooling off period where you can exit the programme without penalty. If you sign up to anything then the onus is on you to understand what you are signing up to. It is not unpaid work. Just because you are in the habit of getting money from the government without having to do anything does not mean that you remain entitled to that money forever. Work experience is not just about learning a new skill. It's as much about having something to put on your CV that says "This person can turn up on time and properly turned out when required to." rather than having a massive blank space spanning years. Another point (mentioned in the November 2011 article referenced below) is that "As part of her placement Reilly has been given training at another company, which will gives her a City and Guilds qualification in retail." No, she was not doing nothing, she was doing her hobby. I don't like the idea of around 1/3 of my wages disappearing every month while someone else gets money to toss about doing something for fun. Further, if you read the article in the Guardian http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2011/nov/16/young-jobseekers-work-pay-unemployment?INTCMP=ILCNETTXT3487 dated 16th November you'll see that there is no mention of her already having some other experience lined up for herself so I am well within my rights to infer that she has subsequently contrived this excuse. There was no trap, she was not tricked except by her own ignorance. The details of the scheme are in the public domain. Including a clause that jobseekers are entitled to pull out of the scheme within the first week. Much as I don't particularly like you (since we're getting personal - I have never to my recollection directly accused you of dishonesty before, I merely stated in the piracy thread that a self serving justification should be viewed as being potentially spurious) I don't think you are stupid. I'm pretty sure that you would have been aware of the "work for your benefits" scheme and so would not have been surprised by this and would have pulled out within the first week when you decided that the scheme did not suit you.

Apologies if you felt that my comments were directed to the unemployed in general. I know a lot of people are genuinely looking for work and I'm not blind to the fact that it is a tough market. We've closed an entire studio here so it's something I'm acutely aware of. I do stand by my comment that there are jobs available (in Guildford at least) but I can't pretend to know the situations in other towns. My comments were really intended to reflect my anger toward Cait and any other people like her. They are quite willing to take the free handout, but when they're asked to do something they don't like to continue receiving it, they kick up a fuss. I completely agree that this system needs tweaking. The placements should at the very least be paid for by the employer, if only for the psychological boost to the employee that comes with receiving a wage packet. I appreciate you taking the time out to fully describe your situation and I understand that everyone's situation is different, but I certainly don't feel that you, or indeed anyone else owes me an explanation and I'm sincerely sorry if what I've said offended anyone here. Unless Cait is a commenter here, in which case she can seriously fuck off.

Everyone takes Battra seriously when he starts harping on about how things were in his day.

I have a BF3 Razer Black Widow. I've mapped ™ © ® £ and € to my programmable keys. (It was glorious subversion of a ridiculously expensive piece of gaming kit, as I created the ™ macro it was as if a million PC gamers cried out, and were suddenly silenced.)

Completely agree there. The sort of work that is required for example, could be limited to working on behalf of the council. Of course then you run the risk of getting mixed up with community service and criminalising people on benefits. However broken the system is though, people shouldn't complain that the "work experience", "unpaid labour" or whatever is not relevant to their chosen career. The benefits system is not there to prop you up until something you fancy comes along, it's to help those who cannot work not those who will not work. Personally, I don't buy that there are not any jobs. I see plenty of advertisements in shop windows, outside McDonalds restaurants, in pubs and bars. There is work out there if you want it and you are willing to do something "beneath you". I take her claims that she has been "seeking paid work" and "would grab a job at Poundland with both hands" with a pinch of salt. I'd love for Poundland to call her bluff and offer her a full time job.

Ok, there's two strands to this: 1. Should Poundland or whoever get free labour and make a half arsed attempt to dress it up as "experience"? - No, they should pay the DWP minimum wage for the hours unemployed people work for them. This money should then (a) be used to fund any benefits the unemployed person is on, be it reduced council tax, cash in hand, whatever and (B) the balance if any should be paid to the person who did the work. 2. Should people who are on benefits be made to do "unpaid" work in order to retain their benefits? - Yes absolutely. If you are taking free money under the claim that there is nothing for you to do to make money, then you should be obliged to do something. Taking Cait specifically. I am vitriolic because I find her incredulous. Officially, she is not claiming her human rights are breached because of where she was made to work, (in fact she makes it quite plain in her statements to the press that she would jump at the chance to work in Poundland), but because she was made to work. Of course I think we all know that if she had been told she had to work at the Museum of Natural History then that would have been just fine and dandy and being made to work would be just fine. Just as Poundland are dressing up work as experience, she is dressing up her annoyance at having to work in Poundland for a fortnight as a campaign for human rights and some sort of stand against the tyranny of a government who had the audacity to ask that she actually do something to continue getting benefits from the state. Rather than dragging the entire system through judicial review why not get these places where she volunteers to sign up to the same scheme as Poundland? That way she can jump through the benefit hoops while doing what she wants, and paving the way for people after her to do the same.