Too big, and too small
Possibly the two most annoying things in the nerdy universe are at either end of the scale. At one end, are the stupid Mac Mini “competitors” which turn up on Engadget/Digg/Gizmodo, each one smaller than the other, each more useless than the other. Few of them have optical drives, which is useless, few have a processor faster than 1.5ghz a sort of speed reached 4 years ago and more. Some even lack a harddrive. Honestly, what is the point.
At the other end of the scale are the holographic optical drives, supposed to compete with blu-ray and HD-DVD and supposed to hold 1tb or so. Once again they are pointless, they will cost the earth, be slower than harddrives and not be as succesful as blu-ray and HD-DVD anyway. Come developers, stop trying to make the biggest/ smallest and do something useful.
Too Much Crap
I hate “forward this” Emails. Here is one of the best I have seen recently:
> >>> >>Date: Fri, 04 Nov 2005 19:59:48 +0000
> >>> >>Four more of these
> >>> >>Hey it is Andy the director of MSN, Tim Buiski, sorry for the
> >>> >>interruption
> >>> >>but MSN is closing the system down because too many
> >>>inconsiderate people
> >>> >>are
> >>> >>taking up all the names, we only have 578 names left, if you
> >>>would like
> >>>to
> >>> >>close your account, then do not send this message out, if you
> >>>would like
> >>> >>to
> >>> >>keep your account, then send this message to everyone on your
> >>>contact
> >>> >>list.
> >>> >>This is no joke, we are really shutting down the servers.
> >>> >>Send it,
> >>> >>thanks,
> >>> >>Tim Buiski,
> >>> >>WHO EVER DOES NOT SEND THIS MESSAGE, YOUR ACCOUNT WILL BE
> >>>CLOSED AND
> >>>WILL
> >>> >>COST £10.00 A MONTH TO USE, SEND THIS TO EVERYONE ON YOUR LIST
> >>
> >>_________________________________________________________________
> >>MSN Messenger 7.5 is now out. Download it for FREE here.
> >>http://messenger.msn.co.uk
> >>
> >
> >_________________________________________________________________
> >Be the first to hear what’s new at MSN - sign up to our free
> >newsletters! http://www.msn.co.uk/newsletters
> >
>
>
> Checking your Hotmail e-mail has never been so rewarding Click here to find out more
What a load of bunk, I can’t believe people are stupid enough to forward these, and believe them! There is no way that Microsoft would send out MSN info in this way. 578 addresses left, nonsense, a pay for service no nonsense, the director would just say “Hi, it’s Andy” and most of all, I hate the >>> bits, what are they for????? I’m also less than fond of “add yourself to my birthday calender” and “Join me on Bimbo (I mean bebo). So just don’t forward these!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Add comments if you can think of more nonsense.
Thank God for internet media
A few days ago, I found myself wondering why I bother to watch the news anymore. Part of the reason may be because it saves me from having to read all the individual news stories, and also because watching it on the internet gives me eyestrain. Anyway, I was really really annoyed to find that the top story was some guy in the US government, with a funny name (Lewis Scooter-Libby) had had to resign over some legal truth bending about exposing CIA agents (yawn). I will stop here to save you from dying of boredom. This is strange, seeing as I can’t see why us in the UK will be interested in American political advisers resigning, I doubt if that much fuss would be made in the States, if Tony Blair was exposed as a child sex abuser, which is a lot more interesting. That’s why I’m very glad to be able to escape from the interminable boredom of resigning American advisers and into the world of badger cams catching criminals, Xbox’s being released 22months ahead of the PS3 and robots with skin. Well at least they are amusing and I can always find out about the Asian Earthquake as well. All I have to put up with now is John Peel day (every day), so on you bike Lewis. Or should that be scooter?
Simile Generator
It’s called an idea generator, but I found that the end result is more like fancy similes than ideas. It takes a while, is a waste of time but is an interesting idea. Pite they didn’t execute it too well.
Watizit
P2P is not friendly…
Every day there is another lawsuit about someone getting busted for downloading loads of copywritten material from BitTorrent, they are then forced to pay a huge amount of money to some phonographic institution to make up for it. However even if they are forced to spend thousands of pounds, it still doesn’t make up for all the stolen material. So now lots of big companies have come up with a new take on P2P, like a subscriber service, or perhaps a service that blocks copywritten material. Yeah, great, but haven’t these people realised that a vast majority of the traffic on P2P networks is ILLEGAL, sharing copywritten material, or explicit content. They might like to think that you will want to use it as a cheap download hosting thing, or to promote your unsigned bands new single. The problem is that people don’t, they want free music. They might also like to think that you will use it to share your pictures with family, but we have email for that and we don’t want any old chap getting hold of them. No, if they are really intent on stopping piracy, they might as well ban P2P altogether, it hardly matters, seeing as there will be a replacement technology in about 5 minutes. Fortunately that technology will be open source, so everyone will be able to have even more of a laugh when Microsoft arrives on the scene 5 years late as per normal.
Gooooooooooogle
Some people have too much money to throw around;
here’s the proof. That’s with 11 o’s, by the way. I mean, check out the source code - 86 characters! And who would be mad enough to do this?? Why, it’s
Michael Pasqualone from Australia! No, I’ve never heard of him either, actually. Oh well. (I am disproportionately fascinated by the fact that somebody would pay to do this kind of thing).
London Terrorist Attack
Weird out here. Not many people around. Those that are look really annoyed. The road’s sealed off. Just photographers and tv crew, with a helicopter circling round. I just hope there aren’t anymore bombs around London. All this death and destruction to make a point.
London was in a jubilant mood yesterday;
winning the Olympic bid put a smile on many people’s faces, and the first day of the
G8 in Gleneagles, Scotland, although met by violent protesters, presented a hope for an end to poverty in Africa and action on climate change.
However, the mood suddenly dropped this morning, when terrorist bombs were let off around the city. The whole of London came to a standstill after numerous tube stations were bombed and a bus exploded. A
Flickr photo pool has been set up for people to share news, pictures and condolences. Live video coverage is available on the BBC’s
live video feed (click Watch BBC News in Video).
Google News has over 1000 stories on the matter.
As I write more than 33 are already dead. Love, luck and life from everyone here.
UPDATE: The
Wikipedia page has been growing all day,
updated at least 3 times a minute, and contains probably all the information you could ever want on the issue.
UPDATE 2: This post has been virtually rewritten.
Gmail for Web Hosting
At Seekers on Friday, someone suggested using Gmail storage space for hosting a website. I am not sure if there is an attachment size limit, but if there is it should be pretty high judging by the amount of space they give you. With attachments on Gmail you download them, and that gives you an address of the file, you could then use that address, for hosting files for a website. If it would work in practice or not I don’t know; but that will be something to do today.
UPDATE:The picture within this post is hosted on Gmail.
ANOTHER UPDATE:The picture in the post only displays on my computer; you need the gmail login cookie for it to work.
P.A.T.R.I.O.T
Following september the 11th, the USA passed an act allowing the secret services huge amounts of freedom over the various ways they collect information on suspects. This act, called the P.A.T.R.I.O.T act allows the secret services access to literally billions of phone, medical, financial and student records with very little judicial oversight. It also broadens their power over internet and phone surveillance.They will have permission to perform searches without warrants and without ever informing the subject of their search. (more…)
