70% of casual gamers are females 40+ years old

"Quality" analysis and reporting not at all influenced by marketing or complete rubbish?.

70% of casual gamers are females 40+ years old by ZDNet's ZDNet Research -- "“Middle-aged" women rule the $458 mln US online casual game market, Real Networks and PopCap found. 70% of casual gamers are females over the age of 40.

Are these just lies fudged for marketing?

I can't see how this is a ZDNet research article, when they refer to a Yahoo article that clearly refers to separatete research done by RealNetworks Inc. and PopCap Games. RealNetworks doesn't provide any ready access to such research that I could find. PopCap Games has a press release which describe the survey conducted by Information Solutions Group who appear to be nothing more than a web page hosting company, which is probably just a company with the same name. Yellow pages has "Information Solutions Group 425-373-1111, 227 Bellevue Way NE, Bellevue, WA 98004" but no URL. Odd for an internet research company not to have a web presence.

This alleged "research" has been cited a number of times from many different web sites: Gamasutra, Lexdon, GamePlanet, GameDaily, etc.

The articles also refer to Dr Carl Arinoldo who apparently is an author. Amazon tells me he may not be a doctor, or published before his got his PhD. He has two books on their list: How to Control Your Eating and Essentials of Smart Parenting. If he was a psychologist for 25 years I would have thought that he would have been using the "Dr" for his books. Maybe amazon strip off titles like "Dr". I found 3 articles recorded in PsychInfo by a Carlo Arinoldo, but nothing else. Not very prolific (or I am looking in the wrong places).

Many of the articles say "Leading publisher and developer of casual titles, PopCap Games" and also "leading market research firm Information Solutions Group". Firstly I have an issue about the definition of "casual games" and then that PopCap Games is the leader of said game genre. Secondly, how is Information Solutions Group a "leading" market research firm? I can't even find the buggers. What does "leading" mean?

Now for the results. It is all crap, or at least the interpretation of the results by ridiculous media organisations like ZDNet are crap. To start with, the survey was biased towards females; of the 2191 totarespondentsts, 528 were male and 1,663 were female. Comparisons between gender would have to be done exceedingly carefully, which Arinoldo would have done, I'm sure. If you look at the press reports that cover the numbers well enough (like Lexdon) you will see that all sorts of interesting information can be extracted from the results, but not what the ZDNet is masturbating over. The media headlines highlight the lack of education of the reporters. Or the deceptive intent of marketing.

To me this sounds like an attempt to market advertising space to companies that would like to target the 40+ year old female group. Possibly even selling some PopCap games to companies who focus on this demographic. I have nothing to back this up, it is just my feeling.

Spam junk email

Freaking junk email, otherwise known as spam has been a growth industry from the early days of the internet.

How do these evil junk emailers get your email address?
* Your ISP might stupidly post a list of their clients' email addresses (yours) on a web page
* You sign up for any service on the net, and they request your email address as part of registration
* You give your details to a company like Telstra, for a product or service that they provide
* You post a message to a bulletin board or newsgroup using your real email address
* You have a web page and want to include information such as contact details, including your email address. The spammer has software that reads the pages on the internet and collects all the email addresses it find.

Damned annoying. My ISP gave me a free email account that I *NEVER* use or give out. I don't like being tied to an ISP address as it causes problems when I change ISPs. GMail, Yahoo, Hotmail all provide excellent services for free. Use them! These services even filter out the spam email quite nicely. Since I never use this account, or give the details to anyone, imagine my surprise when I accidentally logged in and found it full of junk mail. Since nobody had the details except for me and the ISP then I assume the ISP sold the details or they stupidly left them around somewhere.

I have a very old Yahoo email account that I freely give out when registering for anything and this account receives nearly 6000 spam messages a month. I have heard of worse, but I have not been truly prolific about spreading this address. Fortunately Yahoo provides some excellent spam filtering and this account is still usable.

Spam comes via the telephone too. I moved house and got a new land line telephone number. I had to give the number out to a couple companies to have the power connected, insurance, the bank. Then I started getting junk telephone calls the second day I had the number. They already knew my name. At least one of these "respected" companies (Telstra, Energex, WestPac) is selling my details. I know that Credit Card points collecting schemes like FlyBuys recently altered their privacy policy in order to "share" my information.

Sure, Australia might cause a lot of stress to the telemarketers, but then maybe they have that karma coming their way. Come on, I mean, if someone had Telemarketer written on their T-Shirt, would you really slow down your vehicle when you saw them cross the road?

The toughest is the web page deal. If you have a web page, you usually want to include your email address. Spammer programs just trawl the web and harvest these email addresses at will. What are the alternatives? Well have a nice email script program that has your web server send the email. This is awkward for the emailer as they no longer have a nice email program formatting the text and they don't have a record in their email software that the message was sent, or what they said.

CertainKey, known for their cryptographic code, have an idea of using graphics on your web page. In the top right corner of this article is an email address in wobbly script. This is actually an image of the text, not the actuall text of my email account. Spammers require the text to be on your web page, not a picture of the text. This should foil the spammers. You may have seen similar sorts of images on web based registration forms that ask you to register and enter the text in the image. This sorts out automated spamming software from real people quite well. The down side is that visually impaired people will still have problems and sending an email isn't as easy as a single click to collect the address.

When registering for a sight you might also consider using a very cool service such as mailinator which gives you a temporary email address for a short period of time.

For day to day use, I would highly recommend getting a free email account from GMail, Yahoo, or Hotmail. All of which provide excellent spam filtering. Only give out your ISP email address if the free email addresses are not accepted (happens occasionally).

Your email software may very well have spam filtering built in, and if it doesn't you should hunt around for alternative software that does. Your ISP should be filtering for spam, and it should be free (you hear that Telstra?!) If not then you should redirect email (which should also be free) to your yahoo or gmail account and let that account do the filtering.

Lastly, never ever buy anything advertised in spam. Never buy anything from a telemarketer or door to door salesman. They rely on 2% of the population using their services and this makes them rich. Just don't do it. Ever.

Anti Virus Software

Anti virus software has been with us since the days of DOS. For the Microsoft Windows people the virus scanning software is pretty much essential for a multitude of reasons.

There has been a claim that at one stage the virus problem was solved. The operating system would make a check sum of every file, securely store this file, and check every program before you ran it to make sure that the file had not been altered. Not exactly sure how effective that method would be, but it certainly sounds like a start. A free community monitored net based registry might be a similar solution. The story continues that the anti virus software companies realised that it is far more profitable to sell subscriptions to a virus signature scanner rather than checksum protect existing software. Being a profit oriented business they went the signature route.

Now with holes appearing in things like the widely used WEP wireless security, RFID tags used in credit cards and passports, the easily crackable US electronic voting system, and CPU level virtualisation with the Blue Pill proof-of-concept undetectable virus, all indicate that security concerns aren't quite at the forefront of the closed source businesses on the hardware front as well as the software front.

In the early days there pretty much was only one virus scanner, McAfee. These days there are a few dozen. The big mother of all scanners comes from the utility consuming company Symantec. In the early days, Symantec Anti Virus, aka Norton Anti Virus was quite good. Nowadays, Symantec is a piece of poop. Bloated resource hungry software that has every chance of kicking your machine over as it does of defending your computer from attacks. We have numerous complaints at work from users about their computer running slow, these are reasonably spec'd machines with 1.5GHz and 256Meg RAM. Basically these systems are just used for word processing and run quite slickly until the corporate edition of Symantec Anti Virus is installed, after which start up and shut down of applications and the operating system takes far too long. I regularly remove Symantec Anti Virus from the software from systems belonging to friends and relatives, replacing with a free software alternative. They are shocked at the speed increase and ask "Why?". My (possibly ill informed) answer is that Symantec is a company of profit oriented business people who have a passing knowledge of programming. They are more concerned about documenting for certification of their code rather than optimising it. They spend far too much money on suits to market their crap than they do on making their software work properly. This is the Microsoft model of software production.

One school of thought is that if you are going to make a new virus then you would make sure it got past the most popular virus scanners: McAfee and Symantec, so you are far better off installing a non-popular brand of scanner.

The question is: which software should you install? I'm glad you asked. There are a wide range of opinions. If you have huge amounts of RAM, the fastest CPU and don't care about the performance drop then Symantec isn't a completely terrible option. However there are many more alternatives out there that are definitely worth thinking about. Popular amongst the squeakers (adolescent computer nerds) is NOD32, it stands up to the big guys very well, regularly rates higher in detection, is exceedingly fast and is very frugal with computer resources. Kaspersky always rates very highly, regularly at the top in most tests. The free Anti Virus software don't always do so well but aren't the worst, except Avira AntiVir which sometimes rates with the big names.

ThePCSpy did an excellent article on what really slows windows down. Briefly, results were no real surprise.

Software that SLOWS your computer the most:
(1) Norton Internet Security 2006;
(2) McAfee VirusScan Enterprise 8;
(3) Norton Internet Security 2007;
(4) Trend Micro PC-cillin AV 2006;
(5) ZoneAlarm ISS;
(6) Norton Antivirus 2002

Free Anti Virus Software:
Avria AntiVir
Avast
AVG (AVG has some ethical issues, and not a very good performer)

Paid for Anti Virus Software:
Kaspersky (avoid)
NOD32
Bit Defender (avoid)
F-Prot
Norman (is not Norton)
Sophos

Reviews of Anti Virus Software:
Virus.gr
av-test.org
Consumer Reports
av-comparitives

Which brings me to the last bit of my discussion. A consumer group "Consumer Reports", who makes claims to be independent from business interests, and I have no reason to suspect otherwise, has taken it upon themselves to test a hand full of the various virus detecting software out there using methods that has the anti-virus companies up in arms. Apparently ConsumerReports created thousands of new computer viruses to see how the various anti-virus software handled detection of viruses that they did not have signatures for. Sounds perfectly reasonable to me. However, some software companies think otherwise. I would put these companies into the small minded, suit-oriented, lounge lizard type companies, but that is just my opinion (like everything here).

From Digg:
More than 100 security experts from companies like Microsoft and HP as well as anti-virus vendors F-Secure, Kaspersky, McAfee, Sophos, Symantec and Trend Micro signed their names to a declaration denouncing Consumer Reports' methods, stating that it is "not necessary and ... not useful to write computer viruses to learn how to protect against them.

Check out the comprehensive article on The Washington Post.

UPDATE: I had a virus infection which AVG totally ignored. Thankfully other people had different/better software (Sophos) and figured out that I was infected. So I bit the bullet and bought Kaspersky, which is still ranked as best by nearly all measures. Kaspersky found heaps of issues, going back to files that I have not touched for nearly 15 years. AVG never even blinked at these. I can't, in good conscience, recommend AVG anymore.

In the end, I think as long as you have some sort of Anti Virus on windows and you aren't monkeying around with dangerous software from disreputable sites, then you should be ok. The companies will probably also want you to buy other security packages like spyware filters, a firewall, antispam and/or email virus scanners (most virus scanners will scan email), and even parental control software (block naughty web sites). All worth your consideration to one extent or another, just remember that each extra software program will have to be active and running on your computer, using up RAM and CPU time. You don't want to make your computer so secure that it becomes too slow to be usable.

Kind of like the situation in the world, you have a government so concerned with security that they are prepared to sacrifice your freedom, making it very difficult to do anything just so you are more secure.

Or just get a Mac. (free version of Malwarebytes)

Aug 2006 Apple Developers Conference (WWDC)

Uninspiring journalist, Leander Kahney, whines about not being pandered to at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC). Because Leander didn't get any toys he writes some drivel along the lines of "Steve Jobs' keynote speech on Monday was the most uninspiring he's given in recent memory. It hints at the trouble Apple will be in marketing-wise if he ever steps down."

I watched the presentation, and it is the same style and pacing as all the other presentations that Steve Jobs has given except that he lets other people have centre stage for sections.

Leander Kahney went in believing the various rumours and were going around (Apple mobile, video iPod, all Macs updated to Core 2 Duo etc) and because he didn't get his toys, he went away disappointed.

However there was quite a bit of cheering by the developers about what was on offer. Very similar to other key notes. And it is a DEVELOPER'S CONFERENCE, not a gizmo conference. The sessions are aimed at OSX developers, and Leander got bored wondering why they weren't pandering to his need for flashy lights and shiney objects. Poor journalist was disgruntled that he didn't get his video iPod, or that it wasn't an all-Steve show.

Really, after watching the whole keynote from Apples website, I was hyped! I want Webclips, I want the new voice synthesis, XCode3, Spaces, Time Machine, and I definitely want the new iChat! Hot damn that looks sweet. Not to mention the new Mac Pro and XServe.

Watch the keynote and make up your own mind. Warning: you will want to switch.

After you have watched the keynote, you should visit Digg, log in, mark the article as inaccurate.

digg story

I am Spock

My whole life philosophy has now been justified thanks to this online quiz. Yes, I am Spock. This very slow site seems to go up and down, so you may not be able to have your identity confirmed and must continue to live in self doubt until the sysadmins bring their straining servers back up again.
But no! Waiting for the system to come back up is heretical. The people must know which Star Trek character they most resemble, and to this end I have managed to obtain the magic computer words, rearranged them somewhat and produced my own version of the quiz. Yay, bow unto me you plebs of the net.

Spock	85%
Uhura	60%
Will Riker	60%
Mr. Sulu	55%
Data	51%
Deanna Troi	50%
Chekov	50%
Geordi LaForge	50%
Jean-Luc Picard	50%
James T. Kirk (Captain)	50%
Worf	45%
An Expendable Character (Redshirt)	40%
Beverly Crusher	35%
Mr. Scott	35%
Leonard McCoy (Bones)	35%

You are skilled in knowledge and logic. You believe that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.
Take the Star Trek Personality Quiz or the same quiz on my site.

Green Tea

Green Tea contains all sorts of good things, like ... green. And tea.

Well apparently there is bunch of catechin polyphenols, notably epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG) which is a powerful anti-oxidant that can prevent / cure / who knows what for:
* Cancer
* Alzheimers
* Rheumatoid arthritis
* High cholesterol
* Cardiovascular disease
* Impaired immune function
The FDA of the USA hasn't done any research to confirm any of this. However an article published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition (Vol 83, pp 355-361) stated that drinking more than 2 cups of green tea a day prevented cognitive impairment in the elderly. So if you don't want to go crazy when you're old then drink lots of green tea. However, don't drink it if you're pregnant. A study published with the same journal (Vol 136, pp 1043-1047) showed that rats had improved reference and working memory-related learning abilities. So green tea is also good for rats.

Green, oolong, and black teas are made from the leaves of the Camellia sinensis plant. Steam the leaves and you get green tea, ferment the leaves and you get black / oolong. The fermentation process apparently depletes the catechins, which is bad. Black is bad, green is good.

When I was in China, everyone was drinking green tea. This wasn't the sort of green tea that I was used to in Australia, although the taste was similar. The Chinese (at least in Jiangxi where I was staying at the time) dump this stuff that looks akin to a bunch of finger length stems of grass leaves into a huge cup of steaming hot water and then begin to sip. This was quite strange to me because they were basically drinking hot water. I would grab some chop sticks and begin dunking and swirling the tea about, trying to get the flavour through the water ... and make the grass sink to the bottom. There was a lot of spitting out or chewing and eating of the grass by my Chinese compatriots. After some minutes of stirring and prodding I would have sunk all the grass and have the brew a nice green-yellow shade. It tasted quite nice.

Liptons make some excellent iced tea, and the green tea is reasonably good, but check out how much sugar they put into that thing.

In the Philippines I consumed a large amount of calamansi, which is like (but NOT actually) a kumquat with a hint of lime flavour. And I love it! Nothing better than hot calamansi juice (plus water & sugar) for a sore throat. Liptons was kind enough to produce Honeymansi iced tea, which is tea with calamansi and honey and quite delicious. My partner's mother grows her own calamansi tree and I have been lucky enough to obtain some of the fruits. I have found that green tea, juice from one calamansi and a touch of sugar or drop of honey is an absolutely awesome drink.

Unfortunately, calamansi is not easy to come by, so substituting the juice from quarter of a lime is also quite nice. I don't know if the calamansi/lime juice destroys the catechin goodness of the tea, but hot damn if that aint a nice refreshing drink.

Perfect for sitting in front of the computer all day.

Coffee

Coffee used to make me ill because of an unfortunate association with sea sickness. I have not had coffee since I was very very young. Due to an ordering mistake and dire thirstiness, I had some coffee recently and found that I was not totally repulsed by this beverage anymore. I found that I was more awake. However, after some very limited experimentation with a sample size of 1, I also found that I was less focused, more skitish and possibly depressed somewhat afterwards. Enough effects that I decided I would continue to avoid consuming coffee in the future.

Chai

My Aunt introduced me to Chai a number of years ago. Chai is an awesome blend of tea, milk, spices (cinnamon, nutmeg, vanilla, cloves) and love. Refreshing and goes exceedingly well with toasted fruit bread. I had never heard of it before, but recently I see the stuff available in most coffee shops. Can't keep a nice beverage down. I encourage everyone to try Chai, but don't expect tea or coffee type flavour - it is really different.

Refresh Finder Plug-in AppleScript

I find there are plenty of annoyances with Finder, which is the very limited file browser that comes with OS X. I have already mentioned the bug about changing the colour of the background in a previous post. There are far more usability issues I have with Finder that I ever had with Windows Explorer (or File Manager).

One issue that I have contended with recently was finding "Refresh", the equivalent to Windows F5. I had software generating output and was watching in Finder to see how large the output file was over time. You can Ctrl-Click and select "Get Info" but the one tap function key for refresh does not seem to be available.

After some browsing I found a nice script offered by Eric "Heavyboots" which I reproduce below. His suggestion was to save as an executable apple script app, but I have gone one further and placed the script directly into an Automator plug-in.

Automator > Library(Automator) > Action(Run AppleScript)

tell application "Finder"
 tell front window
  update every item with necessity
 end tell
end tell

File > Save As Plugin >
Save Plug-in As: Refresh
Plug-in for: Finder

Now when you want to refresh in finder you can right click (Ctrl+Click) anywhere (so far as I have tested) in Finder:
Finder > Right Click > Automator > Refresh

Path Finder has solved nearly all of these problems, however it is quite crashy on my system; so much so that it is really cheesing me off to the point where I often just use the basic OS X finder because I need something to work right away. Consequently, when I had a refresh issue with Finder ... I considered using Path Finder only for a second or two before I decided to continue with Finder. Path Finder has its own list of bugs but the added functionality is excellent. Once they iron out the crashing, and get some of the silly errors out of the software I will highly recommend Path Finder as a complete replacement for finder. But definitely not now (July 2006).