Programming Hardware vs Programming Software

I think after all these years of being a hardware engineer looking at the world of software engineering with a mixture of scorn, pity, bafflement and incomprehension I've put my finger on a fundamental truth.
First some background:
Hardware engineering has no problem with parallelism and concurrency. In fact all the languages used rely on this so that it can be synthesised into hardware with relative ease. However The development pace is regarded as relatively slow.
Software engineering is (mostly) built around the model of a von Neumann model of a processor randomly accessing memory. For better or for worse most languages are one way or another linked to C's assumptions and models. Now maybe it would be more correct to describe it as Turing architecture, but let's move on. These systems and ways of thought have huge problems with parallelism, but exhibit relatively rapid code development. The model of one thing must happen before another is one that is easy to deal with and therefore debug.
What strikes me is this falls down in complex systems where you actually are quite happy with things happening at the same time, but I haven't been able to put this into words. It became clear to me today trying to reverse engineer some C code that I didn't understand that I am going about this the wrong way.
I like a system to have clearly defined boundaries. A chip has input and output busses. You cannot from outside a chip package get inside and modify the internal registers without going through the interface, it just physically isn't possible. Well defined interfaces are not only desirable, they are all that is physically possible.
Now if you talk to a software engineer they will say they like well defined interfaces too. They like structured code and hate things that cause spaghetti. I realised today that if that were true then the world of software would be very different.
At the most simple level it is considered a good thing that I can in some code initialise a bunch of data structures and then call a do_frame() function that accesses unknown elements of a variety of objects and produces a result. Worse than that there are many situations where hidden away in hundreds of lines of code is a little reference to an object that pulls in the thing that does all the work. Throw in globals, pointers and complex objects and the aim seems to be not only to abstract out the complexity (which is good) but abstract out the functionality (which is bad). This is I think the important point that in most hardware I have seen because there is a data flow and interfaces are isolated even if you have abstracted the complexity you have to show the functionality. A hardware block cannot sneakily change the contents of your SDRAM unless you explicitly connect it up.

Now don't think that I'm trying to say hardware methodology is superior, also don't try and say that this is the difference between good code and bad code. Perhaps it is good language vs bad language, but whenever I complain about C's memory model and the dangers of how it handles structures and pointers I am told that that sort of functionality is possible in any useful language. Granted verilog will allow you to do cross hierarchy references of the type that will allow you to break hierarchy, but the syntax to do that is so obvious and rarely used that it stands out like a sore thumb when it is used and therefore isn't used except in very rare circumstances. Languages like C seem to hide this sort of trickery and therefore programmers embrace it, or at least excuse it's existance.


So I guess that has been my epiphany, that software is written to hide complexity in all its forms. Hardware has its complexity constrained by the physical need to have defined interfaces and so has complexity hidden by use of hierarchy.
As a side note I've long thought that each individual engineer will make things just as complicated as he is able to understand it. Even when they try and make things simpler they'll often do that to reflect what they think is complex potentially introducing what another person would see as extra complexity to achieve this. Further given those two forces a system will converge to be slightly more complex than the team of people working on it can comprehend. I take great pride in trying to make things simple, but realise that often I must spend so much time trying to break things down that I can't see the wood for the trees. Sometimes you read others code and it is complex, but succinct.
Well I guess if this was easy then anyone could do it.

Embryo/Abortion Rant

I wrote this a while ago as a rant after an online discussion and i never got the chance to post it. So here it is:

A human embryo has the potential to become a human being. An embryo has no claim to humanity other than the DNA/other gubbins it contains. Change the DNA for another chunk of DNA and you no longer have a human.
So does the information in the DNA count as humanity? I hope not, if we have sequenced the DNA of a human, then each copy of this I delete puts me as a murderer.

You cannot make judgement based on something's potential. The obvious example is I have the potential to be a murderer, but you don't arrest me. Any woman is equipped to be a prostitute, but you don't send her to jail.

When the day comes that we can take a computer representation of a cell and hook it up to a machine which will spin a cell from that, then every computer in the world will have the potential to be a father/mother.

Is it intelligence then? I'd argue most dogs show more intelligence than a new born baby, so why do they have different rights? How about disabled adults who either mentally or physically can't perform functions we'd expect of a human.

No, there is no scientific answer to when a human becomes a human; you might as well ask where a rainbow starts.

Weaponising Space

I'm for it.

I say this first because everyone else seems to be against it, so let me first acknowledge what I believe are the problems with weaponising space and causing a new arms race.

Valid Problems

1. It'll be expensive
2. It may cause WWIII
3. Could be very bad for diplomacy/international reputation
4. It could divert attention away from more productive developments.
   

Erm that's about it that I can think of, granted the second problem is a big worry, but MAD has worked so far...

Invalid Problems

1. Ideas about keeping space as a pristine wilderness
2. Space should be only for research and peaceful use
   

Well first off anyone who thinks the first really just does not realise how big space is, nore the concept of light speed. There will always be more wilderness.
As for the second, that's a symptom of watching too much star trek; if the singularity ever occurs then maybe, just maybe we'll be rid of wars. Until that day man will always be at war with each other.

So what do I see as the advantages of weaponising space.

1. I believe that getting the military into space is probably the quickest way to get humanity into space.
2. Space development has been lacking recently mostly because the general population asks why spend money in space. Protecting yourself or conquering others would be a good reason to.
3. Compare the merits of being the first and the last to develop a military technology.

Let's take 1 first:
I think the most important thing for humanity as a species is survival. Second I think comes quality of life. getting humanity into space will achieve both of these; maybe not in the short term, but certainly in the long term.The military is well known for throwing all resources available at an endeavour and being somewhat careless about individual human lives for the greater cause. This may be what is needed to get early space technology working.
Hopefully 2 should be obvious.
As for point 3: From machine guns, to rifle factories to atomic weapons; wouldn't you want to be among the first to do this

A final point was that for the first few countries to do it, weaponising space might be expensive, but look at how lucrative the arms trade is to Britain, France, USA, Russia...

Seagate Warranty

I would complain to Seagate directly about this, but there doesn't seem to be an appropriate forum.

For years I've used the Seagte Barracuda drives, particularly for my raid arrays and on the occasional times I've had failures (2 failures out of a dozen drives I believe) they've replaced them without fuss. They have been the most reliable drives I've ever had and over the years I've had a few...

It seems that seagate is reducing its warranty from 5 years to 3 years It seems most of their returns happen in the first 3 years, so that's all they need to cover. This is rubbish in all senses. For a start if they don't get many in their last 2 years, then it can't cost them much can it? Also there are a few reasons I buy seagates, the first and most important being the 5 year warranty. Of course in the past I have had really good experience with their low failure rate and their returns procedure when they do fail, compared to my experience with Western Digital and Maxtor they are fantastic in both these regards.

Given all this I have 3 ways to protest:
* Write this winge
* Restrict my Seagate purchases to the models that still have a 5 year warranty (if this is still possible)
* Go the opposite route and stop paying extra for what I consider decent drives and go back to buying the cheapest possible drives I can and rely on my raid array and backups to save me when I have lots of failures.

Granted by myself I can do nothing, but as always if everyone does at least one of these and doesn't buy the crap they are now peddling then it can only be for the best to show them what the consumer wants.

It occurs to me that maybe I am an odd user: I don't track the computer upgrade cycle, my desktop is over 5 years old and still works fine for what I use it for. My newest computer is my server (3 years old) that got bought simply for it's I/O system needed by the raid card I had bought (PCI-X). However I buy new drives for the raid array every year or so. Still the drives I bought 3 years ago are still in use either in the array or as part of my backup system, they are still VERY useful and would be really annoyed if they failed tomorrow; for seagate to state that 3 years is the useful life of a drive is to me repugnant.

So I'm voting with my feet!

Motorbikers are nuts...

... and I should know, I'm one of them, and passionately so (as I have mentioned before).

And I'm not just talking about nuts in the 'achieving questionable rewards for clear and present dangers', I'm talking about the sheer kind of pants on head lunacy that should have me checking into an insane asylum as soon as I could walk there.

I'll skip the obvious stuff to begin with for why we're so pencil up nostril idiotic and head right for some of the kickers:

Many people (myself included) originally got into motorbiking in some way related to the image. Forget it, you'll always be looked down on. If you're just starting then all you'll hear is about when you've first got your knee down. Then it's all about if you haven't had an accident then you've not pushed yourself hard enough. If you ride a tourer then everyone takes the piss out of you. If you ride an all rounder then it's all about when you get your superbike, if you get one of those then it's all about when you get a bigger one, even if you end up on the biggest fastest current bike then it'll be from the wrong manufacturer. But that's pretty standard in life, you can't please everyone, you'll always always have to be doing something just to keep still.

On the road you are the lowest of the low. Well apart from acceleration, but here is where we fall down:

• Least protected (except cyclists who don't bother to wear any protection). Cyclists even get their own lane - which bikers don't
  
• Less grip than a car - so you corner slower
  
• No inherent stability - if you make a mistake, you're probably coming off.
• Least visible - small, blocked by others

Everyone claims the community is so friendly, so welcoming, yet as soon as you try and get into it, you realise that you never match up to their requirements.

Now onto some of the more obvious reason we're so idiotic:

• Vulnerable in the extreme; both in accidents and to the elements.
  
• Buying the bike is the first of your expenses, add on helmet, gloves, summer protective clothing, winter protective clothing, waterproof over suits, upgraded under armour, thermal underwear, boots (summer, winter and casual), bike security, luggage, bike cover, alternate visors, helmet/clothing for pillion, the list just goes on and on!
• Picking up a pillion is often an exercise in logistics rather than a favour to offer to someone
  
• The training is never over - there's always another level!
• Carrying anything larger than a large hat is problematic to impossible.

But yet I still do it. Why?
I can only say that if only because it's almost as much fun/pleasure as sex but without the guilt and your partner is eternally willing. Although as said above, you need a much greater quantity of protective clothing for this...

Housing Shortage

Why is there one?

Lack of land to build on is the reason often given. Builders who get permission to build a new housing estate then build as many as they can as close as they can for minimum cost vs return. And max return is I believe proportional to the number of rooms a house can claim to have.

Ok that explains why they don't build houses with the very useful/essential item of a cellar, even though it would be worth its weight in gold for most people and add minimum cost to the price of the house (at least I believe this is try, perhaps this is a case of citation needed).

So why not build about 2 stores, one fo the first things a lot of people do when getting a house is to turn the loft into an attic room, so there is clearly desire for it. My guess comes down to planning regulations again. That said the new development near us some houses do have 4 floors, but they are mainly flats so...

All this bugs me, because underground is so well insulated that is effectively perfectly insulated - hell if you dug deep enough you'd have as much free heat as you could ever want ;-) So there should be every reason to dig out at least one layer of cellar if not several. As for building higher, well gardens are that small these days, and many are paved/decked over so the reasons for keeping them in sunlight fall down.

So I would say that if the government wants to improve the housing sitation, get them to build cellars and encourage them to build taller houses.

Witches Of Eastwick - In Ipswich

This weekend we went to see the Witches of Eastwick production in Ipswich. Quick summary, I enjoyed it, but there were so many ways it could have been better.

Let's start with some background and disclaimers on my part:
My first exposure to Witches was to crew the show for The Festival Players in Cambridge.
My second exposure was that when I liked the show so much I got the soundtrack from Amazon (the west end version was all they had). This compared poorly to the Festival Players version as although without a doubt the quality of the singing was better, it had far less soul and wasn't half as much fun to listen to. Also they didn't have on it one of the best songs of the show: "The Glory Of Me" instead they had "Who's the Man"; this is fine though as that reflected the original run of things, not the re-worked one.

And so now we get on to Saturday's performance, I was almost giddy with anticipation, the first time actually seeing one of my favourite shows (when you're running the fly tower for a show you may not be able to actually watch it, but you can still enjoy it). So lets first get onto the stuff that was good about the show and make the inevitable comparison to the production that I was involved with:

• The singing was better than either production(including the west end version). For once when the witches sang "Perfectly in Tune" they actually were. And as for a Darryl who could actually sing - well that was a wonderful change from the west end version.
• The set was produced to the high standard you would expect from a professional touring show
• The wealth of new songs might not have been what I was expecting, but they brought fresh light onto a show I thought I new very well.

Now of course we have the problems with the show

• Marti Pellow was being a ham. The fact that the audience applauded him simply for walking on stage was a very bad start, but the fact that he carried on acting like a spoilt attention seeking child throughout the show almost ruined it for me, was it not for his stunning rendition of some of the songs I could never have forgiven him for his shoddy and unconvincing performance. I was not the only one who totally lost belief that Darryl as played here was capable of seducing these women. For those who didn't see it, he frequently rubbed various body parts in a very exaggerated manner that was as idiotic and unconvincing as it was inappropriate. This man has clearly read all the worst bits of Michael Green.
  
• The tech was very very limited. No arrival of Darryl through a trap door, no flying witches, only a few seconds of the self playing cello (and that was pretty pathetic), no pretty much anything; they even cut the exploding tennis ball and the frying pan kill. If an amateur group can do these things on our budget, for a single show run then that's the least I'd expect from a professional company doing multiple show runs.
  
• The lighting design was very basic - I have done better myself in Edinburgh in a 2 hour get in; and I am no lighting designer, just an enthusiastic amateur.
• The three witches never really gelled as a trio, individually their performances were the best I have seen/heard, however they didn't convince as a whole.

So all in all the individual performances were very good, together and with very harshly cut back tech they failed to deliver what I'd expect from even an amateur production, never mind a professional one.

Edit:
So after reading some online reviews in a few different places, this has brought me to a simple set of conclusions: Either they saw a different show, we are looking for different things/find different things entertaining, or all critics are idiots - which I'm sure they'd agree counted for me.
Thinking about it more the show was about Witches - it needed the Magic; which they cut out all of it. It needed great music and dialogue, a lot of which they cut out for new music (which might yet grow on me and is subjective so I'll save judgement). It needed charisma from Daryl most importantly he needed to be believable that he could seduce those women and I'm sorry that even if i had been a teenage girl with a crush on Marty, his idiotic gyrations and pissing about on stage would have instantly turned me off. As a 30 something man who always was suspicious of him anyway it was a sure fire way to blame him for the failure of the shows in my eyes, and the eyes of everyone who saw it.

Webcomics

So I thought a repository of the comics I like or dislike and why. This will be an ongoing post as I'm always discovering new things; however as i discover new ones they'll probably get their own post as appropriate.

Where appropriate I'll link to the first comic in the series that I find funny/worthwhile reading. This is important for some comics as some don't get going for a while (xkcd in particular). I've broken down the comics into rough categories, obviously many of them cross multiple categories so I won't obsess over which should be in which.

Geeky Comics
So since I've started with xkcd lets put that one first. Very sciency and geeky and a big fan of using the alt text in order to convey a further joke. If you have the slightest bit of geek in you, you should read this.
In a similar vein is Irregular Webcomic. This again uses geeky humour and science as regular plot points but goes into great depth with some explanations sometimes in more detail than you could imagine. there are a number of set themes that he uses and probably the best archive system of anything out there on the net.
And whilst we're in the geeky vein how could I not mention Nukees. One of the oldest comics on the web and certainly some of the weirdest humour/plots I have know. Still it's good fun.
Of course there is also GPF. Although it is beginning to show its age a bit...

Space Comics
Ones that have space travel as their main theme, it seems to be quite a common theme.
The utterly classic freefall. Still running after over a decade, still scientifically accurate and still yet to have anything resembling significant plot action occur. Ok that's a bit too harsh, but I nominate this webcomic for the award of "Slowest plot development ever".
Ever wanted a spoof of Battlestar galactica, star trek, star trek, heroes and goodness knows what else in one place? Well either way there's Legostar Galactica.
Finally there's outrim. Placed last for 2 reasons: First I've only just started reading it, and second because it strongly overlaps with the next category. Another comic that tries to get bits of it's science accurate and where it is inaccurate it is at least sufficiently implausible that it just might happen.

Animal Comics
A massive theme seems to be one a world of intelligent animals in place of humans.
The origin of this genre must be found close to Kevin and Kell. From which I am sure many others have taken a lead. There's also Sherman's Lagoon, Pearls Before Swine and Get Fuzzy that I recommend.

Story Comics
Most webcomics have a story, but these I class here as being story first and comic second.

This is the only place i can put Sam and Fuzzy. It's a weird comic, but it has its moment. The NDA enforcing robot being one of my favourites. What can I say? I liked it so much I bought the T-Shirt, not to mention the explicit cowbell...
Then there is afterlife blues created by the same people who did the epic Miracle of Science. Afterlife has yet to get going, but if MOS is anything to go by, we are in for a real treat.

Mad Scientist
Mad science seems to be a staple of webcomics, so here are a few of the main ones in my life:

Miracle of science I previously mentioned in the story section, but happily fits here.
The definition of this genre would be the excellent Casey and Andy. Unfortunately finished now, but the author has other projects so we can hope...
Of course considering all this mad science where would life be without some radioactive panda - smaller and infused with atomic energy. A cast complete with mad scientists, zombies, mad robots, werewolves and runaway genetic experiments.
For somewhere in between surreal and out of this world you can't go wrong with a bit of Bob the angry flower.

Gaming
Ever played D&D? Well, I love this concept; imagine a world where Tolken never existed and the story of lord of the rings came about only as part of a D&D adventure. After this the same people who did irregular webcomic went and did this superb parody of Star wars EP1.
now I have mixed feelings about Ctrl alt delete. At times it is very funny. At other times it is as far removed from humour as i can imagine. I won't dissect it, others have done so far better, especially the unstoppable Yahtzee. Suffice to say I think it's worth the read.
However one gaming comic I cannot find funny no matter how hard I try is penny arcade. I just don't get their references and even my flatmate going out of his way to point me at the best of the strips (in his opinion) didn't give me strips I found funny. Never mind, each to their own.

Unclassified
Not sure where these fit in the grand scheme of thing.
I always look to Wellington Grey for some insightful commentary on modern society.
Not sure how the tales of baby dragons fits into the grand scheme of high art, but dragontails is a joy to read to a gaming geek or fans of certain mangas.
Of course life from the perspective of a serial killer has its ups and downs. And for a usually subtle, often blatantly disturbing look on life, there's a softer world.
If slightly sick humour is your thing, have a look at Edible Dirt. In a similar vein is the Perry Bible Fellowship.
And finally in an example of how things should be done, Garfield how it should have been! Yep that's it, the best thing to happen to Garfield is to remove him from the strip.

Atheist Bus Campaign

I got to thinking about the success of the Atheist Bus Campaign prompted by this article.
Now the only thing I have against the plan is that the word "probably" in the advert isn't a strong enough word to convey the meaning, and "almost certainly" doesn't quite flow right. However unless you're going to do a parody with something like the Invisible Pink Unicorn I don't see how you can make the improbability of a god more clear. I do think that the original author knocked the nail on the head though when she said:

"It tells you that, [...] a man with a beardy face is going to be upset with you, for ever, because you've refused to acknowledge his existence, despite the fact that he's too antisocial to come down here and say hi."

Unfortunately that's a little long for an advertising campaign.
It's clear to me that if god did exist as part of our society he would be locked up immediately. If one needs more confirmation of how antisocial, criminal and dangerous god would be in modern society, a quick read of The Skeptic's Annotated Bible should do the trick. God is clearly racist, homophobic, sexist, pretty much every ist there is. He seems to approve of incest, infanticide and ritual sacrifice.
But that's surely the problem with modern day values, social reality and ethics; people are trying to apply the values of 4000 years ago to the current day and it just doesn't work.

Which brings me back to an old thought of mine; to me you become an adult when you arrive at decisions based upon a set of choices you yourself have made rather than because someone else has told you to do it. Children have to be told what to do often with the explanation of "because i say so" and this is fine when the child doesn't have the life experience to make fully informed decisions. Likewise there are times when adults have to follow similar orders be it in following bureaucracy rules that make no sense (unless you see the big picture which possibly no-one can), or in a military hierarchy where orders must be followed blindly for a multitude of reasons. However I see the ability to think for yourself as that quality that defines humanity and I see religion as acting against this.
Fundamentally I think that is it, an atheist wonders how anyone can think for themselves and not see that god is a fantasy, and a theist wonders how anyone can have the presumption and arrogance to presume how they want the world to behave.

Dungeons and Dragons

Ok so I'm a geek, I know this, I embrace this, I wouldn't want to be anything else.
But people who play D&D were looked down on even by me. However in the traditions of "Try everything once except incest and Morris dancing", when my flatmate invited me to join in one of his campaigns I decided to give it a try so that I could at least scorn it with justice.

I was quite surprised how much I enjoyed it.
I'd best describe it as a mix of boardgames, story telling, and that most important piece - roleplaying. I think it's this last characteristic that attracts the scorn because the other elements seem to be things that most people will gladly admit to enjoying; after all, lots of people enjoy a good game of Monopoly, many people enjoy reading a good book, and people who attempt to write fiction are often admired even if they aren't successful or good at it.

But let's not worry why it has such a poor image let's get onto the game itself:
The DM had a basic story that he had in mind that extracted from the game environment itself was the sort of thing you might have found as the opening to any cheesy fantasy novel. Villagers in danger, goblin raiding parties, heroes have to go and save the day, heroes go off and after a number of confrontations and puzzles return to the town and find that a greater force has come and destroyed the town while they were away.
Not the finest or most thrilling piece of fiction ever, but as a framework it served the purpose of getting people into the swing of things.
Then you had the battles: Your character was created with a number of weapons/spells you could choose from and during battle you could use these at various times to win the day. The success of any attack chosen by rolling dice. This part in itself was quite tactical and fun and if it was a board game that wasn't fantasy based (with the stigma that has attached) I think many people would enjoy it.
Then there was the role playing - well many actors do this as part of their training. I found this getting into character to be a very useful exercise and quite an interesting experience and certainly helped me in my other fiction writing efforts. So again this was all useful
Overall a great experience, so when that campaign ended and our DM wanted a break he asked if I wanted to take over; in the interests of trying it out I went ahead and did.

Being a DM I would say was a very different experience. I went and read up online as much as I could and all the advice I could find emphasised preparation and a willingness to be flexible with your players. So I did. I had multiple plot lines ready to explore, side quests ready if needed. Lists of spare character names, spare battles ready to throw at them, puzzles if needed, the whole shebang.
Good job too because the players never did anything I expected them too. It was enough to drive me insane - but it was great fun too to try and second guess them, even moreso when you were trying to think how to motivate them into shooting themselves in the foot and they did. I found myself enjoying pulling their strings a little too much as for example you had one of the character's playing a religious zelot who you could get to do some things the player himself wasn't keen on, but his character would do this thing, so he had to do it.

With the previous plot having been a bit of a cliche, I tried to make mine a bit more intricate; choosing to have my players in a conflict between chaotic good and lawful good (an elven Lord who wanted to protect the forest against a human Lord who wanted to advance civilisation) . The point was at any point the players were having to work out which side their heroes would support, occasionally coming into conflict with each other.

So all in all, lots of fun, but a huge consumer of time. I would like to do it again, but not sure how I will get the chance - there are other things that are more important. I can certainly see how it gets the bad image it has but I also believe that the image is pretty much the bad thing about it. Well it also encourages you to sit indoors, eat snacks and drink beer as opposed to getting out into the world. However it also encourages you to socialise with your friends and gives you a reason to meet up and explore parts of your character you might not otherwise do.
As with all things, just don't let it get an obsession/your life and it has a lot of potential; give it a go and you might enjoy it, what is there to lose?

Suzuki sv650s

So a month or two ago while my normal bike was broken I ended up with a hire bike; a Suzuki SV650 S. Suffice to say for my purposes it's rubbish and for almost any purpose I can think of, it's rubbish. I wanted a bike for long motorway trips with panniers that I could fit on - you know a replacement for my bike that was being fixed. What the SV650 is is very much a toy, and a broken one at that.
Well I'll rephrase using an analogy. Imagine a Golf GTI with the bottom of the range diesel engine in it. The engine in the bike is a twin so very torque-y, which would be great for touring or town work were it not for the riding position which feels like something off WSB - totally uncomfortable. The riding position has you leaning over in a sport bike position and for someone of my height this means a lot of my body weight is on the handlebars, which is a recipe for pain. Out around country lanes it's certainly very responsive, but runs out of power just where you need a sporty bike to have it. For example trying to overtake someone on it, it just doesn't have the power to accellerate once you get to 50+.
In summary for blasting around empty country lanes by yourself it's brilliant. For overtaking a car in front of you doing 50 it's rubbish. For taking a passenger it's rubbish. For having luggage on it's rubbish. For motorway riding, it's rubbish.

The Force Unleashed Review

So I got the Force Unleashed a few weeks ago when it was released and have been slowly playing it. How on earth people are raving about this game is beyond me, it commits all the cardinal sins of gaming!

• Jumping puzzles
• Quicktime events
• Rubbish Level design that requires you to complete puzzles IN A CERTAIN ORDER - it's not enough that you have to kill all monster A , then use force lightning to activate Item B then Kill uber-monster C then use force grip on item D, you have to do it in that order or you are trapped. If you choose to kill uber monster C first, then try and move item D then forget it. You must restart the level and kill things in the order the designer intended. Even if you manage to figure all that out (in my case in exasperation by going to a cheat website) they finish it off with a bloody Jumping Puzzle
• Quicktime events
• Rubbish level design that makes it blatantly obvious that you have to destroy item A but no hint that you have to use force grip on item B to set you up for another bloody Jumping puzzle to jump through destroyed item A
• Endlessly re-spawning enemies
• Storyline Cliches that a fan-fic writer would be ashamed to use. Yes I knwo some people have raved about the story and yes I knwo I haven't finished the game yet, however I stand by what I said so far.
  
• Quicktime events for every kill more troublesome than a small mouse
• Scenery that's impossible to tell the difference between a ledge you're supposed to jump onto in order to progress and a pretty backdrop that you can't leap onto and any attempt to do so will plummet you to a quick death
• Buggy Buggy levels/engine. I'm hitting about 3 glitches per session. Be it going to a part of the map that leves you endlessly falling, or the entire screen turning white and all that happens is your character re-draws leaving a trail of you behind it as you move around or getting a monster into a place where you can trap them and attack them to your hearts content, but they never feel any hurt from the attacks you do.
• Suspension of disbelief problems. I mean seriously, I know it would ruin the game play if every single time I used a lighsabre it instantly killed the oponent, but it is seriously hard to suspend disbelief when I have hit this guy with a lightsabre literally 20 times and he still is runniing around looking like I've merely insulted him with a mildly naughty word.
• Further to the lighsabre problem I think they'd be better off if they embraced this problem that the lightsabre is too deadly. You could have foes who knew this and therefore tried to keep you at arms length or used some tactics other than stand as close to me as possible and try to hit me with their blaster. Embracing this problem and comming up with ways around it would make the game interesting and fun. As it is it's more just a case of trying to memorise as many combos as possible and follow a linear path.
• Some of the combos are ludicrous - how on earth is a lightsabre infused with a little bit of force lightening anymore deadly than the lightsabre itself???
• Bloody Quicktime events!!
• The block system is ok for a computer game, but does not tie in with the films at all. While you are blocking blaster shots you are totally vulnerable to all other attacks, you are also incapable of launching a new attack without making youself totally open to new blaster attacks. This means that you can with great ease be pinned down by a bunch of stormtroopers and the only way to escape is to take the odd hit or two while you start dispensing with the stormtroopers. Luke never had this problem!
• And back to the lightsabre - from reading other online reviews I know I'm not the only person who has pretty much given up on the lightsabre and just stuck to a combination of force lightening and force push to get most things done. If the lightsabre is supposed to be the jedi/sith's main weapon then why make it so feable compared to the other powers?
• Object Throw problems - One of the best ways to deal damage seems to be the ability to grab items from the scenery and throw them at your opponents. While I'm sure this works fine on a PC where you have a mouse to control it with finness, on joypad on a console (as I play it) you've more chance of hitting yourself than your enemies, especially of you're having to use an item not directly in line with the enemy.
• Poor Auto-Targetting. For things like force lightening you need to rely on the auto targetting which frequenty sees a nearby flower as more of a threat than the Giant 40 foot high Rancor that is 2 inches behind it.
• Camera with a mind of its own. In front of me I have a horde of stomtroopers, to the left of them there is a a random beast i forget the name of; I am running towards them. So what does the camera choose to look at? You've got it, it swings around to concentrate on a stormtrroper I just dispatched and is now fading away into nothing behind me.
• Inconsistent difficulty. last night I was working through this planet of mushrooms (inventive level design or what?!) And was cutting through the enemies like a lightsabre through a jedi's arm. A blast of lighting or two, or a lightsabre slash, or a force throw would be enough to dispatch any of them. Very easy but still quite fun. Then you get to the end of level boss and he kills me in about 5 seconds and it takes me about an hour of practice to string together a sequence of combos that work to kill him. Now I have no issue with really easy games, or really hard games. If it's genuinly that I'm bad at the game i can accept that and try an improve my technique, but this was just so inconsistent that it was infuriating and felt like the game was suddenly lauging at me.
• Baddies that die when they're damn well ready for it! After the previous end of level baddie I must have got my combo skills up to the mark because I took 95% of the health of this guy in about 10 seconds worth of combos. Clearly the game wasn't happy with this because suddenly any further hits didn't do any harm. Then a new lot of monsters spawned. Killed them quickly. Still can't cause damage to the maion dude. More Monsters spawn. Dispatch them quickly, no harm possible to main dude (even though by their health meter they must have been at about 5% health) And now another monster. Kill That. Finally a last attack of the main dude and my favourite thing - quicktime events to finish him off. Disbelief doesn't just have to be suspended, it's turning blue from a force choke.
• Unskippable cut scenes. I'm fine to make them unskippable the first time, but after the aforementioned sudden encountered difficulty wall, listening to the same cutscene 50 times doesn't do much for your mental state.

At it's heart there's a really good game here if you look hard enough. The new physics engine is very cool, I like the RPG style levelling up system they have in place, and despite all it's flaws I do enjoy playing it, but it could have been so much more. It really is buggier than an autum holiday by a scottish loch - as I say 3 times per session is the average for restarting a level due to a bug in the game. maybe I just explore the maps more than their testers did, but I find that hard to believe since I'm rubbish at finding all those holocrons you get bonuses for finding so I don't think it's that.
There really is a lot to be had out of this game and it does have so much potential that if they'd lost their obsession with jumping puzzles, quicktime events and remembered that a lightsabre is a Jedi's/Sith's main weapon, oh and perhaps tested it! If I can find this many problems without trying then their testing department should be wither sacked, or listened to my senor management. If all that was done you really would have had a great game. I wonder if many of these problems come from the designers both being too close to their own game to see the flaws and from testing it on a PC rather than on the Xbox. It really does have that feel as if how I'm playing it isn't how it's supposed to be played. I feel that like Spore this works better as a technology demonstration than as a full game in its own right.
All of that I could cope with if there was feedback to tell me where I'm going wrong, but for all the work they've clearly put into the physics engine, they seem to have put next to sod all emphasis on the actual gameplay itself and what makes pretending to be a sith warrior fun.

Oh and will someone please tell Lucasarts to lose their obsession with the Star Wars franchise. There are plenty of stories that would allow you to have warrior wizards combined with cool technology - especially if you wrote one for yourself. I can see why they are trying to milk more money out of star wars, I just wish that with this game that doesn't sit well with the rest of the Star Wars canon they'd have shown some inventiveness. Thus follows my commandments to Lucas Arts:

• Do something other than Star Wars
• Test your game on all the platforms you release it for - ideally with people who are rubbish at the game
• Learn that quicktime events aren't fun - I have Rock Band/guitar hero for pattern matching games and they do it much better than you ever could
• Realise that jumping puzzles don't work for console gamers; at best they're a distraction from the main game, at worst they make me long for a dictionary of swear words so I can learn some new ones to hurl at the computer.
• Fix the auto-target algorithm to prioritise based upon enemy threat/HP level
• If you're going to have a camera algorithm that will happily re-orient itself mid battle, try and make it re-orient itself onto enemies that are alive and a threat to you and more of a threat than the one you're currently attacking.
• When writing your storyline, get a 5 year old to read it. If he thinks it's corny and has poor dialogue, then give serious thought to re-working it. Either that or embrace the fact that is a corny story and therefore not the strongest part of the game so don't make such a big deal of it.
• I will admit the Imperial March is one of the coolest bits of music ever written, however this isn't a reason to use it for 1/2 of the soundtrack. Write something new!