Government technology failures.

Well this is a double barrelled post. Following the recent announcement of the government's "plans" to put age-ratings on websites, I felt I had to add my voice to those at El Reg regarding the idiocy of the government.

How, exactly, does the government expect to enforce their new internet ideas? The interweb is not a thing that anyone owns or controls, it is a living, breathing organism (virtually). No one can control it, only what someone access's over it. See also the great firewall of China. The is no other way of "policing" the in internet. Full stop.

And whats with the constant losses of data. How fucking hard is it to encrypt disks/drives/laptops? I do it to protect sensitive info (bank details etc, not that I write them down, its just a precaution) in the event of theft, so why can't the government do it? It's not that hard. Time for new contractors. Then there's the issue of the spying that they do on all of us, but don't get me started on that. See El Reg and Old Holborn for rants on that.


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Mortal Kombonk

Will only make sense to those who have played TF2

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=IBrFTDGjSVw&feature=related

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Christmas Songs

Well as we all know, Christmas has come and gone. I'm currently staying up at my Dad's in Melton, Suffolk. Before that I was visiting my grandparents in Leamington Spa.

Father drove me across from Leamington to Melton, and I, as I always do when I'm not driving, started to go to sleep. I didn't get very far along that road. Radio 2 was on, and it was that old git that yaps away at 6pm on Sundays or whatever time it was. I was counting, he played 30 (I kid you not) Christmas songs IN A ROW. I'm not one to act the scrooge, but thats just fucking ridiculous. 1 or 2 every now and then is fine, even enjoyable, but 30 in a row is taking the piss. On the start of the 30th, I sat up like a lion had fucking bitten me and jabbed the "CD" button on the car's headunit with considerably more force than was required. I fell asleep contented 5 minutes later.

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iPhail

Wow, this grows quick.

Well my next rant is on the infamous JesusPhone... Yeah, thats right, the Apple iPhone.

I can understand the initial hype regarding this device. Apple was expanding to do something completely new (to them) and were trying to tap into the mobile communications industry. Can't blame them for that. But would this phone ever have sold if it weren't for the Apple branding? This blogger thinks no, and heres why...

1. The iPhone was marketed as a business communications tool. However, it lacks/lacked one very important ability: It couldn't work with Microsoft Exchange without some changes to the network that most IT departments would wet themselves laughing at, then show you the door. Bye bye business customers. This also leads me very nicely onto my next point...

2. The above problem could be very easily worked around if Apple had given people the opportunity to program new applications for it from the word go. But, they didn't. They left an otherwise reasonable device completely worthless (from the techie's point of view). Obviously, since version 2.0 of the OS, there is now the apps store, although most of the things I have seen on there a cheap, flashy gimmicks. There seem to be very few genuinely usefull applications among them. I may be wrong on this (as I don't have a iPhone), so feel free to correct me. This is a very bad negative on the iPhone's point of view when you consider the power offered by Microsoft's "Windows Mobile" platform and RIM's "Blackberry" devices.

3. What does Joe Bloggs look for in a phone? Usually its this: Phone (obviously), MP3 player (which, I have to admit, the iPhone covers very well), a camera and 3g. The iPhone lacked 3g and a decent camera. This was a MAJOR turn off for the average user. Even if they hardly ever used these features, they seem to be comforted by their presence.


I know I've skipped over a lot of things, but these are the bits that come to the forefront of my mind. So, thats the reason that without the Apple "cool factor", this overpriced device would have fallen flat on its face.

Mice

Tried to buy a mouse recently? No, I don't mean the kind that eats its way through the cardboard cereal boxes, I mean the kind which connects to your computer and lets you move the cursor around.

I bought one a few weeks ago and bloody happy with it I am, too. It's a Microsoft Bluetooth Notebook Mouse 5000.

The problem with finding a good mouse is that it now seems impossible to find a good sized mouse. I have large hands, which means that using small mice cramps my hands. As far as I know, this applies to the rest of the world as well. I have a friend who is quite short, 5 feet 2 inches and even SHE can't use small mice. So why is every mouse available on the market today made as small as humanly possible? When I did some limited design, one of the key points was to know about the suitable ergonomics for the product. And yet here are all these tiny little mice which are far smaller than the average person's hand. They're impossible to use, the resolution tends to be shockingly poor and the construction is similarly shoddy. I've also seen square mice. Who here honestly has square hands?

I think that there needs to be a rethink on mouse design, as the small ones, to put it bluntly, are fucking useless.

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Spammers

Wow, this blog lives for two minutes and I already have something to moan about.

Spam (and Spammers)

Now this isn't going to be your usual rant about how much it pisses me off or how much I get. No, this post is about the subjects...

A quick dive into gmail's spambox pulls up two very common subjects: Penis enlargement and Get-out-of-debt schemes.

It seems to me that this is a pretty poor choice of topics. Penis enlargement pills are hardly the sort of thing that I'm likely to buy just because some mailserver sent me some info on it. You don't see posters in the street/shop windows advertising Viagra or one of its many counterparts. This is because the people who are after this kind of thing go out and find it for themselves. You either need it, or you don't. If you don't, an advertisement is HIGHLY unlikely to make you buy it. The same is true for debt plans. If you need one, you're going to go out and find one. If you aren't in debt then no amount of advertising is going to make you get one.

So why use these topics then? I've no idea. Would anyone like to enlighten me?

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New blog

New blog, new year (soon)

This is where I will be posting everything that amuses me, repulses me, dismays me and just generally pisses me off.