Archive for the ‘Rants’ Category

Overused buzzwords

Friday, June 4th, 2010

We’ve all been there – something that’s been heavily marketed and it just gets your goat, it feels wrong.

Organic

A long time ago I first realised I suffered from this problem (of being narked by marketers who promoted nonsensical terms) when they came about with the fantastically useless word on food products ‘organic’. Well, you don’t say? The only other type of substance that’s not organic that I’m aware of is metallic, and that’s definitely not edible in quantities large enough to see. Simply put, anything that’s organic is or was once alive and composed of organs or organelles. So essentially, everything you eat is organic. Why couldn’t they find some better term to use? Insecticide free? Not quite the same ring to it as may be, but nevertheless a lot more accurate.

Then there was this other fantastically annoying term which luckily, is now dying out.

Credit Crunch

My goodness. What does it even mean? Some kind of breakfast serial that counts towards an educational module? I don’t know. How about: ‘recession’? They used it? Good. Why bother making up sensationalistic nonsensical terms then!

Anyway, this brings me rather roughly to…

HD

Yes. HD. Do you know what it means? I don’t. ‘High-definition’ can mean almost anything, depending on where you are at the time. It can relate to sound, video and even physical things. Within the past six years or so, the term has been stolen for use in the video media industry. But even then, HD can mean any number of possible things. Essentially, a company or entity decides that the products they’re currently selling are ‘Standard Definition’. This then gives them the right to name anything successively ‘High Definition’. So, where TV is concerned SD is that of a DVD – 720 x 576 pixels. If that’s standard definition, what’s VHS? Anyway this means HD is anything above that, and there are a LOT of possible flavours: 720i, 720p, 1080i, 1080p. These being 1280 x 720 and 1920 x 1080 pixels respectively. Now, most HD TV broadcasts are merely 720i, the lowest possible version oh ‘High Definition’. Blu-ray on the other hand is the ‘full’ 1080p.

Then you come to buying a television. Now, most people know they ‘have to have’ a ‘High Definition’ television these days, but most are also unaware of the difference. This allows manufacturers to be unscrupulous; they’ve coined the term ‘HD Ready’ which makes you THINK you can use it to watch HD television. And you’d be right. But you may as well buy DVDs and not Blu-ray if the ‘HD Ready’ TV you buy is only 1280 x 720i. And I can tell you, there’s a very visible difference between 1080p and 720i (on a display that can handle 1080p of course).

Is all this choice good for consumers? No. It’s good for manufacturers who are trying to get the most money out of you for the least amount of cost and that’s called business. Business doesn’t like consumers, only shareholders.

Where was I? Ah yes. This HD stuff is all rubbish anyway – I was playing games on my PC back in 1998 that were a resolution of at least 1024 x 768 – High enough to be classed today as ‘High Definition’, and higher resolution than DVD which had only come out the previous year. What will the next generation of HD be called, ‘Ultra High Definition’? And after that? Super high? It’s like the 80s again. Super.

What resolution is a cinema film? HD? Why yes, yes it is! That’s why they’ve been getting ansi lately and trying to ‘invent’ (bring back) things like 3D. Admittedly, 3D these days is all about polarisation and not different colours so it looks much better. But where’s next for film? Clearly, we’re heading towards something like the holodeck straight out of Star Trek.

Buzzwords

So there you have it. A buzzword is a word said to make you think “Cool, I must have it!” and yet it is completely meaningless (or effectively useless because it doesn’t mean much). Contrast this with the term ‘Jargon’ which the news media have been banging on about for ages regarding Computers. A lot of this ‘Jargon’ however are actual words with proper meanings – Gigabyte, RAM etc. Would you describe any other profession as being full of jargon? It’s not that the meaning of the word is incorrect, just that they use it like it’s some sort of terrible thing. Every profession needs and has its own set of terminologies.

Rant over.

Tags: , , , , ,
Posted in Rants | 2 Comments »

Digital Economy Bill

Tuesday, March 30th, 2010

Picture the scene:

A group of young pupils on a school trip to an old war cemetery. Pupils, encouraged by their teachers, use paper and crayons to create ‘rubbings’ or as the government and corporate industry see’s it ‘copies’ of the content of the gravestone.

A policeman enters.

The children are arrested for copyright infringement, the Teacher arrested for letting it happen.

How is this the same as the Digital Economy Bill?

Although it’s true that a digital copy of something is indistinguishable from the original, it is not necessarily true that everyone who file-shares does so illegally, nor that anyone whose connection is used for this purpose knows about it.

Consider the house with multiple renters. The music industry comes along and accuses them of downloading music. There’s six people in the house. They’re banned from using the internet again. They are internet professionals. Their life is over. Their next-door neighbour was the real thief, hacking the WEP encryption of their router, so set long ago because their Wii only supported WEP at the time.

I agree; something needs to be done about ‘illegal’ file sharing. But the laws and business models in use today are all too old. I may download a song on bittorrent. The music industry will be on the door of the people who supplied it to me. But I may own the song and just want a copy for my iPod, maybe I’m too lazy to rip the disc myself. But wait? We’re not supposed to rip CDs anymore? But they wouldn’t stop us doing that… no-one would buy CDs anymore. And EVERYONE would download them illegally.

I own A LOT of DVD and Blu-ray.

I’ve seen several downloaded / pirated films. What’s the difference between a DVD and a pirated DVD? I can have the film on my computer with a pirated copy, ready to watch whenever I like. I’m not forced to sit through three minutes of copyright warnings ON A FILM I JUST PAID FOR with a pirate disc. Essentially; Films, Music and Games I ACTUALLY BOUGHT have a nasty little problem. They ALL try to prevent me from copying them, with unskippable warnings and crude anti-copying devices.

And they wonder why people don’t want to buy the bloody things?

How do we solve it then?

The problem is, the entire business model set and our industrial infrastructure is not setup how it needs to be to irradiate this problem.

Have you heard of steam? Steam is an online games platform that allows me to install steam powered games on my computer without the need for me to insert the game disc every time I feel like playing. THIS is the future. A massive digital distribution network needs to be created and refined to allow purchasing online. It’s sad, but modern video and game shops will eventually go bust. Of course, people can still copy media in this model. Which is why we also need something else: distributed computing. When I buy a computer in future it should just be a terminal. A display. All rendering and processing should happen online in the cloud. This removes ownership and copy problems. But this solution is way, way off in the future.

What can we do now? Well, I can tell you one thing. Pissing off the hands that feed you is never a good idea.

In this age where anyone can distribute anything, we need to cut out the middle men. No more record labels, no more book or film publishers. Just you and me, sharing our creations with each other.

Tags: , , , , , ,
Posted in Ramblings, Rants | 2 Comments »

Drivers

Sunday, May 31st, 2009

It’s been a lovely sunny weekend and I’ve done many things. Progressed a little on my Peltier electronics project, succeeded in interfacing a Velleman K8055 (VM110) with PHP so I can control devices in my home anywhere in the world (blogs on those two to come) but right now I feel like a little rant.

Learners

I have a great respect for learners – people who are on the road to learn how to drive, most of us were there once. There’s always a few reckless people who’ll go out and drive without a licence, which is why I respect learners above most other road users – you know for sure they have a right to be there.

Everyone else

Soon after I passed my test and started driving on my own I noticed one very catching thing: Very few people seem to know how to drive properly. I’d had my suspicions, indeed it was already known that most people don’t know how to use their indicators. I recall standing on a pavement once, the rain coming down hard, no umbrella having been caught short, barely able to see through the rain on my glasses, waiting for a car approaching me at speed to pass, so I could cross. But it never did pass. After elongating my stand in the rain do you know what that driver did? Oh I bet you can guess. They flew around a corner, no indicators in sight. Could this have been because they didn’t see me so didn’t think they had to indicate? Could it be because they thought indicators are only for other cars, or perhaps all of their orange lights were broken? No, we know the sort of person that was. They’re the sort of person who doesn’t bother to indicate for anyone, the sort of person who kick babies for fun.

Of course, not indicating around a corner is a minor annoyance – it’s not often that failing to indicate at a junction will result in an accident. But there’s one other form of junction where this little flashing orange bulb has a great deal more importance, and it’s one of those places that people still can’t seem to navigate around properly: the roundabout. People drive straight over without indicating. People at junctions don’t know if you’re staying on or coming off, you hold up other traffic, thanks. But it gets worse: People who are indicating that they’re coming off, but are staying on – those cause real accidents. What about people who indicate to stay on but are coming off? That’s annoying for people at junctions, but it’s also annoying for people who follow the lanes of a roundabout properly – those that indicate incorrectly usually don’t. Going right? Right lane. Going left? Left lane. Coming off at the next exit? Cross to left lane after exit preceding the one you want and indicate left. Not hard is it.

Taxis

One thing I’ve noticed specifically is taxis. If they have a fare, they drive slightly under the speed limit, just enough to piss you off. If they don’t they usually up your backside. They also don’t keep to their lanes at roundabouts, in my experience this applies to all taxi drivers. There’s some dual carriage way in Bedford interspersed with roundabouts. Usually, I approach these in the outside lane, as everyone else is a little slow (you’re scared of roundabouts when you can’t drive properly, right?) The problem I have, is that entering a roundabout at the same time as a taxi in the inside lane will usually result in you being cut up. Because they drive straight over and don’t curve with the damn thing. I commuted from Luton to Bedford for 6 months and this happened a couple of times EVERY SINGLE MORNING. Learn to god damn drive you bastards.

Women

Women are known generally to men, to be poor drivers. The fact is, everyone is rubbish. Not just women, but men as well. There, I said it.

Road designers

Sometimes, these guys like to have a little fun. Such as putting a zebra crossing just the other side of a hilly, wide, 40mph roundabout. Generally, it’s not a good idea to put things on the road that a driver might not expect. Nice one Luton Council.

Country roads and villages

Oh dear. Deary deary. If there’s anything worse than someone who drives up your bum all the time, it’s someone who can’t decide if they want to speed, or drive too slowly. There’s quite a lot of country roads dotted about England which have a speed limit of 60mph. There are usually partitioned with small towns and villages where the speed limit is usually 30mph. Often, I’ll find myself come up to someone going annoyingly slowly, usually 40mph whilst in this 60 zone. On narrower winding roads the chances of passing are low. And do you know what annoys me even more? When we hit a 30 zone, but they carry on doing 40. You GOD DAMN BASTARDS. You drive through the 30 zone, a few minutes later than you would  have done whilst watching them disappear into the distance. They disappear over a hill. It’s a 60 zone again, you put your foot down. Just as you get to 60, there they are again. ARGHHHHHH.

Speeders

Now, I don’t generally have anything against speeders. Except when they pull up behind you flashing and bibing, because you’re not going fast enough, even when you’re at the speed limit. One such incident happened to me a while ago on the motorway. A caravan (doing about 68, which is illegal I might add) was overtaking an HGV. Naturally, I was in the 3rd lane attempting to overtake them both, at 70. A BMW pulls up behind me, just at the point where all 3 of us are in a line, HGV, Caravan and Me. Now, I only have a little Ka, it’s acceleration from 70 to anything higher is very poor. So, what does the genius do behind me? He flashes because I’m going too slowly. I made him wait. Next time I’ll brake test the bastard – their shiny BMW’s are more expensive than my Ka after all, and if he goes into the back of me whilst in everyone else’s blind spot, who’s to say he didn’t get impatient. That said…

BMW Drivers

Whilst it’s probably fair to say there are one or two good BMW drivers out there, I’ve never met one of them. Driving along at 70 on very rainy day, so rainy that even with the fastest setting of wiper visibility was poor – 30 metres at best, in the middle lane of the M25 you’d probably have thought to yourself, like me, that nobody would be stupid enough to go even faster – doing 70 was probably risky enough as it was. So guess how surprised I was when a BMW rushed past me in the outside lane – doing at least 20mph more than me. I spent a few seconds wondering how on earth he could see through the rain. Then I realised – he couldn’t. The next thing I saw was his face, as his car was facing mine in the middle lane, me still doing 70. It was all very quick, but he had spun in front of me, across the inside lane and then crashed into the barrier past the hard shoulder. I stopped on the hard shoulder myself as fast as I could, because that’s what you do right? About 10 other people did the same, including one that looked like he’d been clipped. Given the rain and traffic, I’d stopped a good 100 metres away from the scene and decided that with so many other people around there was no point waiting.

Conclusion

When you hit 70, you have to retake your driving test to make sure you’re still fit to drive. I’d quite like that to change – once every 3 years everybody should re-take their driving test. Maybe it’ll get some of these toss pots off the road.

Tags: , , , , ,
Posted in Rants | 2 Comments »

Spam

Sunday, May 17th, 2009

As a child, growing up in the 80’s when the Internet was unknown to the masses, spam was a good thing.

Not many people send you mail when you’re young. You’ll get a few cards at Christmas (if your family is of that persuasion) and some for your Birthday, but then there’s nothing. I used to absolutely love it when I was sent something random, whether is was an application to a credit card or a 50p coupon off tampons.

Growing older, you start to realise this junk mail is slightly annoying. Most of the things you’re sent don’t relate to you, are unnecessary or are something you’d never purchase anyway, and so you throw it away usually without reading it. This problem is escalated when you move into a rented house that has had a lot of tenants in a few years; the quantity of addressed junk is phenomenal.

But that’s not why I’m here to talk to you today. My issue is somewhat different – leaflet spam.

A couple of weeks ago, I put a little notice up on my front door that politely asks “No free papers or leaflets please”. This is because I have little time for random toilet paper being put through my door, and it usually ends up straight in my bin. Now, this has been partially successful, in that the child labour force who usually deliver the free papers are obviously well educated, can read the sign and don’t give me a paper. Unfortunately, this isn’t so for the normal leaflet deliverers. I’d always assumed that leaflet deliverers were students or ‘other’ who couldn’t find a real job. But given the amount of leaflets I’ve received post sign I must conclude that the people delivering them are illiterate.

Incidentally, the best way to stop people sending spam to your email address is not to give out your email address in the first place. Give it only to known contacts, don’t use it in websites you’re not familiar with (use a second, throw away email for those) and never publish it in plain text online. If you absolutely must then I’d recommend Google Mail who have a fantastic spam filter.

For your entertainment, here are all of the leaflets I have received so far; their deliverers willingly ignoring my polite request:

  • LA Fitness
  • Christian Aid
  • The Green Party
  • Choudhury Indian Restaurant (Yum!)
  • JS Cars (who have a lovely hotmail address – never tried emailing for a taxi before)
  • Mama Jan Pizza
  • Johns Car Wash (Under new management (!))
  • KHAN Cafe Rooje (heh, reminds me of Kirk: KHAAAAAAAN!)
  • Italian Express Pizza
  • The new unitary council – I’m taking control – I’m voting CONSERVATIVE (I will obey)

Tags: ,
Posted in Advice, Rants | 5 Comments »

Nintendo is better than Sega

Thursday, May 7th, 2009

Many moons ago when I was just a young teen there were many discussions with my fellow peers of which was better: Nintendo or Sega. Nintendo at the time had a more powerful console then Sega, which could produce a higher resolution, more colours and had more channels for sound. This makes Nintendo the clear winner, or does it? Nintendo and Sega manufactured games consoles, they manufactured games and they produced many happy people from it. Such a young mind often finds it hard to grasp that something isn’t necessarily better than something else even though it may appear so on the surface, for they do not understand the concept of personal preference. So perhaps we can see that neither was really better to the consumer; they were equal. Preference is everything, one mans junk is another mans treasure and such.

Those days are long gone, we’re all grown up now aren’t we, able to understand opinion and be happy with it. Or are we?

Mac Vs. PC

Oh dear. Where to begin? Growing up isn’t always as simple as it first appears either, for the teenage debate hasn’t disappeared, it’s merely transformed into another debate. Which is better, a Mac or a PC? Apple advertisements will have you believe that all PC’s run Microsoft Windows, which suffers from crashes, viruses and poor usability. Unfortunately, for a pedant such as myself, this irks me. PC as most people will know, stands for ‘Personal Computer’. This indeed means, that a Mac is also a PC, but let’s gloss over that and assume that Apple assumes that people assume PC stands for IBM based Computer (which ironically, Apple is moving closer to every day).

There’s then the misconception that if you buy a PC, you’ll get Windows, and a buggy copy prone to crashing at that. PC’s however run all sorts of operating systems, the biggest name you may have heard of before being Linux. But that doesn’t matter does it, you already know that Mac’s are better than PC’s, so you’re sold. Apple has a fantastic marketing department that really knows how to sell. Contrast this to Microsoft, whose only saving grace is perhaps that, although their advertisements are usually extremely dire, it’s this that makes them memorable. Songsmith anyone?

Apple’s are expensive, often two or three times the price of a PC running Windows for the equivalent hardware specification. But Mac’s are also very stable and very secure all of the time which can make it an attractive investment. Microsoft Windows 3.1 never crashes. Really. Windows 95 was an impressive feat of engineering, but that huge jump in code-base comes with costs, and bugs. Windows 95 and 98 were both good operating systems at the time, but their stability was very easily jeopardised when introduced to untested components. Windows you see, runs on hardware manufactured by, well anyone. That’s a pretty hard thing to do. As a Web Developer, I have to make sure my output works correctly in a handful of browsers; Internet Explorer, Safari, Firefox and Chrome at the very least. Writing for four possible platforms is bad enough, but imagine trying to write for thousands.

This is where drivers come in. Drivers are low level applications written by third parties to tell an operating system how to communicate with a piece of hardware. Poor drivers and poor hardware are also the biggest causes of Windows crashes, something I’m sure Microsoft is all too aware of. Apple has been clever here – its operating system already knows the hardware it’s going to be running with in intimate detail as OSX could almost be considered to be an embedded system – it’s specifically made to run on specific hardware. High quality components from well known manufacturers reduce the problem of crashes significantly, but that also drives the cost of a computer up which isn’t a good thing when you’re a salesman. Windows 98 crashed all the time, literally once or twice a day on the first PC I ever purchased from Dixons. Windows 98 crashed roughly once a month on the first computer I built myself.

Windows XP was another massive leap, and Vista again. Both received mixed reactions at launch, people don’t like change even if it’s for the better. I made my latest PC and have Vista installed on it. Since I’ve installed all the drivers correctly for it (which incidentally isn’t many – Vista is absolutely amazing at installing things for you, but then it should be with a multi-gigabyte footprint) it hasn’t crashed in the year I’ve had it.

Mac’s generally look very well designed, PC’s usually look like ugly beige rectangles. There’s a trick here too, especially these days – people love something that’s shiny. Now, not all PC’s are ugly. Mine’s pretty, in a very attractive if slightly expensive Antec case. Trying to buy a good looking PC from the high street is however, a different proposition.

And then there’s software. OSX is a good operating system in many ways, and fails in others. For myself, I don’t like the way windows are only re-sizable from one corner – why the limit? Active and inactive windows are slightly different shades of grey from each other, which I find hard to distinguish. This problem is for me exacerbated by the menu-bar, which is stuck to the top of one display for any application you’re using. I often find myself doing something silly in the menu only to realise it’s not the menu for the application I wanted it to be. Also, Finder has to be one of the buggiest file explorers I’ve come across. But it’s not just Macs that bug me – UAC. What the hell. User Access Control, introduced by Microsoft in Vista is designed to make sure everything I do is secure. But it’s too much. It’s too secure. I’m asked permission to try to view the control panel. Are you sure you really want to do that I’m asked? Yes, yes I’m quite sure of it. Imagine this kind of security in a toilet: You’re trying to wipe your arse, Cancel or Allow? Needless to say, UAC was disabled within ten minutes of my first every install of Vista. At midnight, Vista has a fit. Apparently, changing from 23:59:59 to 00:00:00 is a very labour intensive process. Windows’ file explorer occasionally decides to use large icon view for my mp3 collection, in a folder of thousands, when I’d left it in list view. Why God, why? What possible use could I have for an mp3 icon the size of an American on a McDonald’s diet? And then there’s the versions, as an Apple ad aptly points out, I have a choice of many different versions of Vista, one of which has everything the others have parts disabled. Why wouldn’t I just want the best one? Sometimes, giving people a choice isn’t always a good thing.

And so there you go. Personal preference is everything. I love building things and I love playing games – two reasons I choose to use a ‘PC’ over a Mac. Now stop bitching over which is better, you will never win against personal preference, unless you’re a Nazi and exterminate anyone who thinks differently from you.

And for reference, I love Nintendo; R.I.P. Sega.

Tags: , , , , , ,
Posted in Rants | 1 Comment »