Simple. You do a technical review.

I've noticed a distinct rise in annoying, obtrusive advertising that covers up actual content with lame animations and unwanted noises. Since I got internet at home again I never really ran into those ads for a while. However, I just witnessed a bunch of stick figures hopping out into the middle of a news story to play a round of golf.

As part of Harper's tough on crime policy, the federal government recently passed the Tackling Violent Crime Act, which amended the Criminal Code in various ways, including putting the onus on accused persons to prove their innocence, in a reverse of "innocent until proven guilty." While I have no problem about reducing violent crime, switching the burden over like this, especially onto parties which may not have the resources to compete with the Crown even when they are innocent, is very troubling.

Some sad news out of Australia: Rather than encourage adult gamers to keep up the pressure on South Australia's game and freedom hating Attorney-General, Michael Atkinson, Bethesda Softworks is modifying Fallout 3 for Australia due to the lack of an 18+ rating in that country.

I wasn't able to write a proper flash fiction story this week, but I did write something... Here's a "fiction snippet" which might be inspiring for others as it is for myself.

Despite having never been Outside, he longed to go there. Whereas almost all the other residents of Arcohome didn't care, or even think, about the outside world, Raymond couldn't keep his mind off of it.

Fresh this evening, from the Globe and Mail comes news that Stephen Harper is threatening a fall election because of investigations by the House of Commons ethics committee, over the Conservative Party's funky cash transactions during the 2006 election campaign.

While no actual licensing is available, that Flash processor and player for XNA I discussed last March, Fluix, now has its source available from the creator, who is looking for someone who can take over development of the project. Unfortunately, Scott Graham, the guy behind Fluix, hasn't had the time to work on it, and as far as I know, it's yet to be updated to work right with XNA 2.0, never mind 3.0 (which despite not being released, is out in CTP form).

I hope that we'll be seeing some new life for Fluix soon!

I received an interesting e-mail this afternoon from the OMDC, the crown corporation which manages tax incentives and other programs for the entertainment industry in Ontario. They released a report today, titled Ontario 2012: Stimulating Growth in Ontario's Game Industry. From the report's cover letter:

Something that everyone and his dog have been into on the internet these past couple of years has been social networking and the whole "Web 2.0" thing. There are problems with how it currently works, however. Today, everyone goes to social network portals, such as MySpace or Facebook, and while this may be easier for the less technically apt, it's pretty annoying when everyone's trying to get you to use this or that "app" for your portal of choice.

Everyone's favourite .NET development tool has a new home with Red Gate Software. After eight years of working on .NET Reflector, Lutz Roeder, the original creator of the program, has handed it off to Red Gate in order to move on with his career and explore new opportunities.