WMPoweruser.com reports that a NES emulator has been blocked from Windows Phone 7‘s store. Matt Bettcher ported an open-source emulator to the platform, but Microsoft advised him it won’t be allowed on Marketplace.

Bettcher has started a campaign on YouTube, but good luck in changing Microsoft’s mind. Not only is Nintendo notoriously litigious, but Bettcher admits the current code is “unoptimised” (running as low as 10 frames per second), and so it’s hardly a shock Microsoft’s taken the decision it has.

The WMPoweruser.com article points to Apple allowing a number of emulators on its App Store, which include Commodore 64 and ZX Spectrum, along with Sega’s own Mega Drive single-app ‘ports’, but these are fully licensed and released with the blessing of the IP owners. By contrast, Nintendo’s already feeling the strain in the handheld market, with the DS losing marketshare to iOS devices. Nintendo’s hardly likely to allow the dark horse in the smartphone race (backed by Microsoft’s gaming network) to release NES IP when it can do so itself (again and again) for its own mobile gaming systems.

Hat tip: iPhone Games Bulletin

So, Vince Cable says what everyone’s thinking—that Rupert Murdoch needs taking down a peg and his takeover of BSkyB needs to be stopped. And then he’s stripped of the role, humbled, and watches as the BSkyB takeover became the responsibility of Jeremy Hunt. Well, gosh, I WONDER WHAT HIS DECISION WILL BE? (Hint: Armando Iannucci links to a Hunt article that may as well be titled “Why I wuv Rupert and want to have his babies”.)

Cable was, of course, stripped of the role for making Rupert Murdoch cry and for being impartial, and not at all for going against Tory wishes to see the BBC killed by its commercial rival. After all, it’s not remotely hypocritical to demote Cable when David Cameron referred to the prospect of BBC cuts as ‘delicious’. Clearly, that little nugget wasn’t at all impartial and wrong.

And it’s not like The Labour Party comes out of this smelling of roses either. It had the perfect opportunity to play bipartisan politics and also to appeal to Lib-Dem MPs and voters alike. It doesn’t need Murdoch until 2015, and could have reduced his power over media and the voters. Instead, Ed Miliband leapt on the chance to smack Cable and score a couple of short-lived politics points, saying “Vince Cable should have gone”. Rather than weakening the government, this likely strengthened it, but it has weakened one of the few people in Cabinet seemingly trying to at least some things that aren’t entirely reprehensible.

So screw you, David Cameron and your Tory buddies for so openly going against the wishes of the people and tearing down one of your government’s best MPs time and time again.

Screw you, Nick Clegg for not having the balls to back one of your own, instead choosing to provide a ‘united front’ that will see your party wiped from Parliament in 2015 (well, apart from you, because you’ll likely be wearing blue by then).

And screw you, Ed Miliband for proving you’re just like every other tosspot Labour leader, playing reactionary politics when you had yet another opportunity to do something different.

Ricky Gervais on WSJ’s Speakeasy:

It’s strange that anyone who believes that an all-powerful all-knowing, omniscient power responsible for everything that happens, would also want to judge and punish people for what they are.

Amen to that.

Apologies about linking to the Daily Mail, but it broke a story yesterday on the UK government’s plan to auto-block EVIL PORN from your internet access if you’re UK-based, unless you request access under an ‘opt in’ system.

SO THAT’S GOING TO WORK WELL THEN!

• Communications Minister Ed Vaizey has already managed to fire off the Mr Weasel card, saying that the government will legislate if ISPs don’t block porn first. This cunningly flings the inevitable PR shit-storm that’s going to happen at the ISPs. Nice.
• The UK government has a long history of being technically inept, and so if it does get involved in any way, this will become even more of a disaster.
• How will it be determined what is ‘porn’ anyway? Is The Sun porn, with its Page 3 girls? If so, it has to be auto-blocked. If not, equivalent ‘porn’ sites would have to remain unblocked. Unless—SHOCK!—the UK government somehow rattles off some bullshit about credible publishers (i.e. UK MP mates with deep pockets) being exempt.
• Who’s going to create and maintain the blacklists? There are quite a few sites on the internet. There’s literally no way that every single porn site will be caught; more to the point, there’s every chance innocent sites will be caught. I await Wikipedia being blocked to everyone with trepidation.
• What’s to stop the list being used for targeting? “Well, Dave at 37 is clearly a perve, because he opted in to porn. Let’s do a surprise raid and take his equipment away for weeks. MWAHAHA!”
• Young kids seeing porn isn’t great, obviously, but what about violence? Plenty of that online, and yet Vaizey didn’t even mention that.
• Young kids seeing porn isn’t great, obviously, but what about parental responsibility? How about looking after your kids and watching what they’re viewing? How about learning about internet controls before planting your kid alone in a room with access to the web?
• The ONS states that the majority of households in the UK do not have dependant children, and so this scheme will block for the minority (although I suspect it will appeal to Middle England voters—gosh, I wonder if that’s the real reason behind this bullshit?).
• What’s next? What else will our ‘big society’ and supposedly anti-inteference government decide we shouldn’t have access to, ‘for our own good’?

See also: Nigel Whitfield’s Censorship – Won’t someone think of the adults?

I get how companies have to big up their products, but RIM co-CEO Jim Balsillie needs to lay off the crazy juice. As reported by AppleInsider and others, Balsille got a little over-excited and bullish when RIM beat Wall Street expectations with its quarterly earnings call, and, not for the first time, he decided to take a pop at Apple. The iPad was the target, with Balsille claiming RIM’s PlayBook is “way ahead” of Apple’s device. This being the PlayBook that’s not actually out yet, and won’t be out until March, according to Macworld, an entire month before the iPad 2’s likely to show up.

But what, specifically, makes the PlayBook so special? Balsille eludicated in a rant that some poor bastard at Yahoo transcribed in full. Some highlights follow.

I think the PlayBook redefines what a tablet should do.

Fair enough. It’ll be great to have some massive competition for the iPad, to kick Apple’s arse and ensure it continues to innovate. Do tell us exactly how you’re ahead…

I think we’ve articulated some elements of it

You’ve “articulated some elements of it”. Uh, OK. That sounds… positive.

and I think this idea of a proprietary SDK and unnecessary apps—though there’s a huge role for apps—I think is going to shift in the market, and I think it’s going to shift very, very quickly.

Those would be the unnecessary apps that are selling like hot cakes? And the proprietary SDK demanded by devs furious at Steve Jobs when he initially told them to bugger off and make web apps? Uh, OK.

And I think there’s going to be a strong appetite for web fidelity and tool familiarity.

Areas the iPad utterly fails in, what with its excellent web browser and consistent, usable interface, along with increasingly strong support from the likes of Google with web apps designed to work better on the iPad than any other platform.

Now, how do you align or go over the top on carriers and content providers? Well, we have different strategies, and that’s fine, and there may be room for more than one model, who knows.

It’s good that you’ve thought this through. You’re making Steve Jobs’s responses during Apple’s earnings calls look shoddy and ill-prepared by comparison. (Top tip: “Who knows?” doesn’t make for a confident-sounding co-CEO when you use it once. When it’s seemingly your favourite phrase, you need to be locked in a cupboard until you can learn to speak without embarrassing your entire organisation.)

And, you know, it’s a very dynamic market. Plus, there’s enormous growth and shifts happening around the world, you know.

The biggest shifts being from analysts who said the iPad would fail and who are now trying to pretend that they knew from the start it’d be huge, along with people who claimed Android tablets would immediately wipe the floor with the iPad, despite, in the main, not actually being much better than something you’d wipe from your arse.

How many fronts people want to take on contention, that’s a question you can ask. Do you want to go over the top of banks, do you want to go over the top on content, do you want to go over the top on carriers, do you want to go over the top on video content providers? I mean, who knows, you know? What part of it’s good strategy and what part of it’s a bridge too far? I mean, who knows?

And who knows what you’re talking about at this point? I’m pretty sure I don’t. More worryingly, I’m pretty sure you don’t.

There’s a lot of moving parts, but I think we’re just well ahead on the PlayBook, well ahead internationally, and extending very very well.

This being the PlayBook that’s being released in March 2011, remember.

And so, people can have their views on sentiment, but when is it a good entry strategy, and when is it a bridge too far? Who knows? We have turbulent ecosystem right now. How do you work with banks, how do you work with carriers, how do you work with content, how do you work with enterprise ecosystem?

How do you work with a co-CEO who doesn’t know what they’re talking about? Still, RIM’s certainly ahead in terms of babbling, ‘something exciting that might happen in the future, if its own bluster is to be believed’ and in looking at something successful in a market it wants to enter and yelling ‘you’re doing it wrong’ while the competition makes money hand over fist.