The Tlog - a technology blog

Since at least the beginning of this week, Amazon.co.uk lists every PC or console game as “This item can only be delivered within the UK”. Other people are also complaining about it.

I’ve bought dozens of games from them during the last few years, and I had been mostly satisfied with their service, but if this is really a policy change (and not a temporary error in their site), it will be very annoying. There are other stores in Europe, but few have such a large catalog as Amazon.

I buy most of my games online, since I my two consoles are from Nintendo, and Portugal is an anti-Nintendo country; stores seem to think that “Nintendo is for kids”, and skip a lot of games, not to mention having them months behind the rest of Europe.

The French and German Amazons are not an option, since i don’t want games in French or German (I wouldn’t even want them in Portuguese, my native tongue. Games, like anything related to computers, should be in English, thankyouverymuch.).

Game.net may be an option. But let’s see if Amazon has really changed their policy (their “we ship to…” page still lists most of Europe as destinations for games) or not.

BTW, Amazon.com (the US one) has long shipped games to the US only. Maybe .co.uk is following suit? If so… I thought one of the great things of the Internet was that you could order products from anywhere; why is Amazon moving backwards?

nfl picks

Apparently, it stinks to high heaven. Who’d have guessed?

Love the reviews.

P.S. - please don’t buy it. Any money that imbecile gets will be used for more censorship and fear-mongering.

P.P.S. - apparently, Jack is now threatening to sue Amazon if they don’t remove the negative reviews!

Really, you have to read this Ars Technica article. It’s almost unbelievable.

Excerpt:

Jack Thompson, a Florida lawyer who became infamous in 1988 for accusing Janet Reno of being a closeted lesbian with a drinking problem and a strong candidate for blackmail, has recently been making waves with his crusade against the video game industry. Earlier this year, he launched a wrongful death lawsuit against Take Two Interactive and Rockstar Games, makers of the Grand Theft Auto series, claiming that the video game was directly responsible for 18 year-old Devin Moore’s shooting of three police officers in 2003.

Jack recently appeared on CBS’s 60 Minutes trying to drum up support for his efforts. However, this publicity was apparently not satisfying enough for him, as he went on to try and create more outrage on his own. Attempting to emulate Jonathan Swift, he issued a “Modest Proposal” that offered a US$10,000 reward to anyone who would create a video game featuring Osaki Kim, a father whose son was beaten to death with a baseball bat by a 14-year-old gamer. The game would feature Kim extracting brutal revenge on the video game industry itself, including beating game company executives to death, removing their heads and urinating on their brain stems.

And the best comes after that…