SOME Japanese innovations strike us as a little bit strange. But here鈥檚 one
that Feedback heartily applauds, and can鈥檛 wait to see catch on in Britain. John
Egan tells us that passengers on the Shinkansen bullet train must send and
receive their mobile telephone calls from the partitions between the carriages
rather than from their seats.
On Japanese trains, it seems, you are not forced to listen to intrusive
one-way conversations about some stranger鈥檚 shortcomings at work or (as Feedback
was forced to overhear the other day) disgusting details about their medical
condition.
COMPUTER games, many women have complained, are strictly for the boys. It is
not just the bang-bang, blow-鈥檈m-up scenarios of many games that alienate women,
but also the bevies of bikini-clad beauties who usually provide the female
component of the games.
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Now it turns out that for Maxis, one of the more 鈥渟ocially responsible鈥� game
makers, it鈥檚 not just a man鈥檚 world, but a straight man鈥檚 world. In November it
fired Jacques Servin, one of its programmers who had secretly inserted a group
of muscular guys, wearing minimal male bathing suits, into a game called
SimCopter. To make matters worse, he proceeded to have the guys kiss each
other.
SimCopter, following on the heels of the very successful SimCity and SimAnt,
is a nonviolent adventure in which you pilot a helicopter and, among other
things, rescue people trapped in burning skyscrapers. Players who reach the 10th
level of this game were to be rewarded, Maxis says, with a crowd of grateful
citizens, fireworks and a brass band. Thanks to Servin, 鈥渢he brass band was
replaced鈥�, as the firm coyly put it.
This 鈥淓aster egg鈥�, as such hidden bits of code are called by programmers,
went undetected until at least 78 000 copies of SimCopter had flown the coop.
Maxis admits that hiding Easter eggs is popular among programmers in the game
business, but says: 鈥淢axis has always prided itself on creating engaging
software the whole family can enjoy.鈥�
MEANWHILE there are signs that the above-mentioned antipathy of girls towards
computer games may not last much longer. And who better to lead females to a
more cyber-sympathetic future than that fairest and most perfect example of
their sex, Barbie?
That鈥檚 right. Barbie has invaded cyberspace. A new computer game, the Barbie
Fashion Designer, is storming the market in the US, and looks set to do the same
here. Produced by Mattel Media, the Barbie CD-ROM is outselling leading,
mainstream computer games such as Command and Conquer鈥擱ed Alert.
Total sales in the US are now approaching 500 000 and the manufacturers are
crowing. Barbie, they say, 鈥渉as effectively created a new market category for
girls鈥� software鈥�.
BILL GATES founder and chairman of Microsoft and now arguably the richest man
in the Universe, turned up at a computer show in Las Vegas at the end of last
year to launch Windows CE. This is the stripped-down version of Windows 95 that
will run on a new generation of hand-held or pocket PCs, due in the shops in the
next few months.
For the launch conference, Microsoft hired the suitably enormous theatre in
the Treasure Island Hotel, where the suitably famous Cirque du Soleil performs
nightly.
Although the building holds around 1500 people, there were still not enough
seats for everyone. So some journalists who had flown from Europe to attend had
to take part in a lottery, with numbers drawn from a hat to decide who got in.
(Feedback got in anyway by posing as the head of research of a European
electronics company that had designed the chips for the CE handhelds.)
Gates gave a lengthy presentation, reminding us that the launch took him full
circle because 15 years previously he had written 鈥渕ost of the code鈥� for the
Tandy/Radio Shack (TRS) Model 100. This was the first ever A4-sized portable
and, just like the new hand-helds, it had all its operating software frozen into
ROM (read-only memory) chips.
The TRS 100 was widely used by journalists and engineers who needed to write
text on the move. But there was one thing about the ubiquitous machine that
infuriated those who used it. When asked to print out text, the TRS 100 failed
to send a linefeed command to the printer to move the paper down at the end of
each line. So unless the printer could be set to add its own linefeed, or users
knew how to write their own extra code, the Gates code made the printer
overwrite the same line of text over and over again. Instead of a page of text
it produced a single thick black line of ink.
Here at last was Feedback鈥檚 opportunity to find out why this was, from the
horse鈥檚 mouth. Unfortunately, having made his ex cathedra statements, Gates
disappeared. Instead of a question-and-answer session with the famous man, the
circus put on a show. Although impressed by the performance, Feedback would have
gladly traded it for the opportunity to ask the man who wrote the TRS 100 code
whether the missing linefeed was a bug, or whether the young Gates had a good
reason for making his first customers jump through a technical hoop.
But then, those who have since used DOS and Windows might be excused for
wondering whether Gates has always worked on the principle that customers should
be made to jump through the odd technical hoop.
FOCUS Multimedia recently published 11 new titles in its Focus Essential
range of CD-ROMs. One of these, Dr Ruth鈥檚 Encyclopedia of Sex, is
described as 鈥渁n interactive guide to sex for people of all ages鈥�.
Two questions spring to mind: What does the word 鈥渋nteractive鈥� mean in this
context? And do they really mean all ages?
FINALLY, here is another piece of product information supplied by a
manufacturer for the 鈥渉ard of thinking鈥�, as Shaun Denney calls them. The other
day Denney bought some windscreen de-icing spray for his van and was relieved to
see, written boldly across the bottle, 鈥淪pray works in sub-zero temperatures鈥�.
Just as well, really.