Cathedral row over computer war game
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The Church of England considers legal action after Manchester Cathedral is featured in a Sony  war game.
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Back in September we reported on the legal battle between Valve and Vivendi surrounding the &quot;cyber cafÃ©s&quot; issue where Valve served Sierra On-Line, the then-Half-Life publisher, in August 2002, suing for copyright infringement in violation of the
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By JILL LAWLESS  LONDON - Sony Corp. apologized Friday to the Church of England for a violent computer game that features a bloody shootout inside an Anglican cathedral.
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THE row over the appointment of Dr Jeffrey John as the Dean of St Albans is threatening to erupt again following a report on homosexuality within the Anglican Church.
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Tycho:  I should have all the science lined up by the end of the week, ready to stuff into the piano black lozenge I've obtained to celebrate my return to personal computing.  Wish me luck; I've never before had the opportunity to fry four processors at once.       I know things.  Specifically, things that may be of interest to you.  For example, I know if playing Eye of Judgment online is an onerous as it might seem.  It is not!  I cannot express my relief.    Well, let's try.  In my last, vast expose, I broke down a card's unique language and expressed some misgivings about online play - ultimately just accepting it, because what they're trying to do is so weird that there's no prior art.  Essentially, you "register" your thirty card deck with the system itself, where it is stored and named for future use.  This process is extremely straightforward:  it is simply a matter of you laying your cards anywhere on the mat, a few at a time.  It will probably take two minutes if you really keep on it.  Then, you jump online, choose what nation you want to play for, and track down a partner.  At this point, the game will "draw" you your five card hand by showing you the card art onscreen.  You get one Mulligan (or redraw), but if you like your hand you move into the game proper.  We laid out our deck by element, face up, and this smoothed the turn to turn process considerably.      In the build we have, and I hope this is changed for release, it shows you these cards in a single file line without their name or text - just the art.  Once you got familiar with these images, slightly modified from their card format, it's pretty quick - but the names should be displayed on this screen.  You can use the controller to pull up the names, but let's be serious - at no point should the player be forced to interact with a mundane controller once the game is underway.     You should know that the game really wants a well-lit environment.  You don't need a flare gun or anything, but we didn't have what we needed before and certain squares would slow down the game flow with partial reads that would only resolve after several attempts and minute card adjustments.  I should state that here in the office, we removed all the overhead lights, installing a single track of illumination that we point at the ceiling, where lights used to be.  We tend to transform any place we live into a cave.  So, our scenario might be somewhat atypical.    Also, I know if playing Rock Band with all the instruments off of a USB hub is onerous.  You will be happy to know that it is not - we played said instruments spread out on an actual stage, and found it more than satifactory.  The reality is that the drum kit already needs its own wire, so it isn't as though the future had actually arrived anyway.  Plus, the mic isn't wireless either. This makes the contrived brouhaha over wired guitars a fairly transparent traffic ploy.    This is a matter quite apart from Microsoft's reticence to play ball with unique, third party hardware.  And when I say "play ball," I'm taking about the shakedown operation they've got going licensing their wireless technology, which either makes products for their system more expensive or (in the salient case of Rock Band) results in them bundling a wired controller for the same price as a wireless one on a competitor's system.  This is the last holiday they can get away with this sort of thing...  right?
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(InfoWorld) - A long-simmering debate in Germany about banning violent computer games is burning again after an aloof teenager on Monday stormed his former high school, shot five people and later killed himself. The disgruntled 18-year ex-pupil from Emsdetten, Germany, near the Dutch border, was described by students and teachers as a youth with no friends who liked guns and played violent computer shooting games. The incident brought back memories of a shooting rampage in the eastern German city of Erfurt in 2002 when an alienated former pupil -- and computer games player -- shot 16 people, mostly teachers, and later himself. It has also rekindled the simmering debate in Germany on whether violent computer games should be banned. "The government is currently reviewing whether the current legislation for protecting minors needs to be revised and plans to announce its finding by the end of 2007," said a spokesman for the Federal Ministry of Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth. "The Emsdetten shootings will likely impact these discussions." Family Affairs Minister Ursula von der Leyen addressed the German parliament earlier on Tuesday and has been holding talks with policy makers throughout the day, the ministry spokesman said. The minister is expected to make a public announcement later in the evening. Numerous politicians have expressed outrage over the school shootings and continued access to violent PC games. Brandenburg state Interior Minister JÃ¶rg SchÃ¶nbohm said in an interview with the German media that "killer games" encourage violent behavior and are contributing to an escalating rate of brutality among young people. The minister called the current practice of voluntary regulation by game publishers and distributors inadequate. Lower Saxony Interior Minister Uwe SchÃ¼nemann called for a ban on the distribution and development of violent computer games in Germany. Dieter WiefelspÃ¼tz, a member of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and an expert on family policy, conceded that not everyone who plays such games "automatically becomes a mass murderer" but, like the ministers, also called for a ban on "killer games." WiefelspÃ¼tz isn't alone in the SPD. A majority of members in his party have been lobbying for months for major changes in federal laws aimed at protecting minors, including an outright ban on violent computer games. And the opposition parties Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and Christian Social Union (CSU) agree that changes are necessary to the current laws governing entertainment software. But members of the Green Party warned of putting all the blame on computer games. Volker Beck, a parliamentarian member of the Green Party, said young people need to acquire media competence and learn how to use computers, including PC games, in a sensible way. Following the shoot-out in Erfurt, the German government revised its legislation on protecting minors, requiring, for instance, that all computer games and video movies be subject to a mandatory age-rating plan. Some legislators are also calling on ISPs (Internet service providers) to take a more active role in controlling the information provided over their systems. The Emsdetten teenager who killed himself used the Internet not only to inform a chat group of his shoot-out plans but also to purchase weapons, including guns and bombs, through a German weapons portal.
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Blog: It might be sorry for the gruesome shootout in an Anglican cathedral, but the company doesn't have any plans to withdraw the game.
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"War" is a well-known and well-worn term in the tech industry. Witness the browser wars in which Microsoft and Mozilla vie for control over how you view the Web. The gaming wars refer to the three-way fight between Microsoft (a frequent combatant), Nintendo, and Sony, each of which sells a next-gen gaming console that flew off the shelves in the shopping frenzy of the 2006 holiday season.
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The Church of England accused Sony Corp. on Saturday of using an English cathedral as the backdrop to a violent computer game and said it should be withdrawn from shop shelves.
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Tycho:   The foe revealed, Armadeaddon is now almost complete.  Monday will see the promised epilogue, so at this point you have very nearly survived the ordeal.  We have endeavored these past weeks to reward the true "enthusiast," that man or woman who, brow heavy, has faced such cruel abuse at our hand for the last seven years.  It is apparently our policy to honor such dedication one every decade.    Since it was announced a couple days ago, the revelation that MS would be actively courting the hardcore boardgame player is something I've thought about almost constantly.  It may be that you weren't aware there was such a thing as a hardcore player of boardgames if your last experience with the context was playing Sorry! with your sister when you were eight.  Things have progressed.   There's a million experiences in this space I could use to lure you in, but one company in particular - Days of Wonder has already decided to make electronic variants of their tabletop crack, so they occupy a twilight space between the worlds.  I hope they see an opportunity to take their (already completed!) games over to the 360, or that Microsoft offers them a locked case containing an unspecified amount of untraceable U.S. Currency, because I'd love to see this prescient move by MS turn into a new era.   Days of Wonder makes a game called Shadows Over Camelot that could quickly become a dangerous obsession, obscuring biological realities with a single-minded focus on grails.  Well, grail I guess.  There's just the one.    But it's a completely cooperative boardgame, so every player is working toward the same goals - fighting back invasions, questing, all of it.  Except there might be a traitor in the group, determined by a hidden draw, who tries to derail the effort.  He's not always there, but the potentiality of that nefarious force can create unbelievable social tension.    The gaming table's fixed coordinate in space is its asset and its obstacle - managing space and time is actually the primary challenge of any gaming group, as opposed to banishing necromancers, though that also ranks up there.  Boardgames are so rich in design that, when one of these gets dropped in front of them on Live, I think many gamers will be shocked at their sophistication.    My thumbs hurt.  (CW)TB out.
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The Church of England on Saturday threatened legal action against Japanese electronics giant Sony Corp. for using a cathedral as a backdrop in a violent computer game.
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Human GIs to be pawns in deadly man-vs-machine chess game The scientists and engineers of DARPA (The Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency), the Pentagon's gateway to the technological left field, have struck again. The bulgy-bonced battle boffins have decided to sink some cash into an effort to develop a super-intelligent battle computer system which will enable US soldiers to be invincible in the field.â¦
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Sony's video game unit said Wednesday it is talking with the Church of England about a complaint that a famous cathedral is the scene of a violent shooting game for the new PlayStation 3 console.
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Traditionalists and gay Christians are cautious over a call for unity by the Archbishop of Canterbury amid the row about homosexual clergy.
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The Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams sought to assert his authority in the long-running row over homosexuality Friday, warning that Anglicanism would not be dictated to by one church.
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MEMBERS of a church are to debate the ethics of running raffles and tombolas at church fetes.   Some members of the United Reformed Church in Kelvedon, Essex, think that encouraging gambling sends out the wrong message.  (c) 2007 Evening Mail; Birmingham (UK).
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Microsoft is locked in a war of words with Brussels about the launch of its new Windows Vista operating system.