Easily the best advert on TV right now. Saw this for the first time tonight and loved it. It’s ads like this that stand out from the rest. It’s well thought out with a catchy tune and makes the viewer laugh. Couple all this with some retro puppet action and they’ve got a winning formula.
There are few things that get me more annoyed than politics, when I watch the news or read the paper you can guarantee that the stories that will annoy me the most will have a political element to them.
I recently read an article that really really annoyed me, SNP set 20-seat Westminster goal . Basically the SNP or Scottish National Party would like to get 20 seats in parliament at the next general election. In itself not a problem, but it is the motive behind this goal that I despise. Their motive is that with the Conservatives gaining a lot of ground on Labour in the polls the SNP anticipate a hung parliament and they feel that 20 seats would give them a key position in Westminster. SNP leader Alex Salmond said in a BBC Scotland webchat
“We could make Westminster dance to a Scottish jig.”
Hold on just one bloody minute, they already have a National Assembly in Scotland, do we English get any chance to make that “dance to an English jig”? Do we hell as like. Why is there a Scottish Assembly which decides on matters which only affect Scotland, yet we in England still have to have all our decisions made by Westminster where people in Scotland can influence policy which does not affect them? Please tell me how that is fair.
Why is education better in Scotland with smaller class sizes and lower University fees? Because the English subsidise them.
Why is healthcare better in Scotland, with people having access to life saving cancer drugs, and drugs that prevent eyesight loss through macular degeneration? Because the English subsidise it.
Why is £1800 more of tax payers money spent per Capita in Scotland than in England? because England subsidises it.
This all seems a little unfair on the already over stretched English tax payer, why should a small group of people get the most money from the Chancellor, rather than the vast majority of people who generate this money. Perhaps because the previous Chancellor and the current PM is Scottish, as well as seemingly half the cabinet, this may go a long way towards explaining the discrepancy in public spending between the two countries.
So, the solution, with North Sea oil revenues declining sharply of late Scotland is in even less a position to support itself, meaning even more tax money will have to be diverted from Westminster towards Edinburgh, this then would seem to be the ideal time for a complete devolution of power, move control of Scotland to Scotland, along with responsibility for funding their own public spending. This would cut the burden of support on England and he English taxpayer, meaning better facilities and greater spending on England.
Why not do it, the Scottish seem to bang on about devolution of power on a fairly regular basis, why not give it to them, cut them loose. Stop this half hearted approach that we’re currently stuck with.
Well, that time of year came round where I have to decide on what new phone to get. Not being the sort of person to rush into a technology purchase uninformed I spend a lot of time debating and comparing all the options before finally making a decision. Seriously I will most likely give less thought to my child’s name than phones and other such tech things. I finally decided on the Nokia N95 and toddled off to the T-Mobile shop to get it. Except since I’m on a discount contract through my old job I cant have the N95, so on a whim I decided the N73 would probably suffice too, and went for that, horray hours of work down the drain.
As it turns out however things are not all bad. The N73 is actually a pretty good phone, it’s a smart phone, which is lovely, but not a big silly “look at me with my smart phone and touch screen, I have to use a stylus to control it but that doesn’t matter because it makes me look like an important cock”, but a subtle “yeah, I’ve got a smart phone, what of it?”
It’s a standard Symbian S60v3 affair, which fairly well apes the usual mobile phone interface. In most respects on initial glances it looks like my old Nokia 6280. However when you dive into the phone itself it becomes apparent that this is not normal phone. From the inclusion of PDF readers and office document viewers, to a flash viewer for the web it’s clear that this phone can do a lot more than just calls and texts. The real power comes from being able to install other applications on it though. For example, for some strange reason Nokia left out an auto keylock funciton. No worries, someone has coded one for you. Want Google Maps? Just install the application from Google’s website and you then have a local Google map client which can use your mobile masts to triangulate your location on the map. Throw in with that things like the Opera browser, and even Doom, not some cut down version of Doom either, a Symbian 60 application running the original Doom wad files. Throw into the mix a native Gmail client, an internet radio client produced by nokia and you have a very nice starting point for a great phone.
The camera is nice and take a good photo, with the usual amount of shutter lag, but that is only in the order of what I’m used to from previous phones. the flash is bright and the zoom good, combine that with the Carl Zeiss optics and it’s a very good handy snapper. Of course it will never have the clarity of my Canon Ixus 50 but it’s very good for when I’m caught short without a camera.
Now the negatives, it does go through battery fairly fast, it needs charging about every 48 hours. I have heard people say that smart phones have been prone to crash, well mine has not crashed once, so I’m happy on that front. Some people have commented that smart phones are slow and clunky, well I will admit it is a little slower than some other phones I’ve used, but not by much. Besides, if you want a phone that never crashes and is lightening fast get a Nokia 1200, bloody luddites, I’m sticking with my N73.
I know for those who live in earthquake prone zones it’s nothing, but at 00:56 UTC an earthquake of magnitude 4.7 hit the UK. The US Geological Survey puts the epicentre at 53.321°N, 0.314°W which is about 45 miles from me. I felt some shaking, doors and shook and bottles rattled. Luckily there has been no structural damage to my house. The UK Geological Surveywebsite is unsurprisingly currently unavailable, as is the European-Mediterranean Seismological Centre site, but I will check it out and post a further update when it’s back up and I get a moment.
*UPDATE* The British Geological Survey now have their findings in PDF format for your reading pleasure
*UPDATE* The British Geological Survey is reporting that the earthquake measured 5.2 on the richter scale and the epicentre was Market Rasen, Lincolnshire at a depth of 10Km. After shocks measuring up to 1.8ML were felt after the event.
Most of the time I’m a fairly happy and content person, but every so often someone does something that really winds me up. For example Internet Exploder only sites really annoy me, HP’s Channel Services Network site only works correctly in IE. Firefox, Opera and other all fail to render it correctly. Is it beyond the powers of HP, one of the largest technology companies in the world to write standards compliant code? Of course it bloody isn’t but they just can’t be bothered to do things right.
I also find myself quite annoyed by a lot of things the government and it’s minions say and do. Appointing Michael Martin as speaker of the house, for example, mean that an incompetent buffoon who deserves to be removed from the post for his disgraceful conduct. At times during commons debates he seems to have very little grasp on what is going off, and since his position is to enforce and keep some kind of decorum, knowing what’s happening would seem like a key part of his role. During the newly appointed Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg’s second PM’s questions The Speaker completely forgot to call his name. The Speaker has to have wigged clerks pass him advice during parliamentary debates, nothing immediately wrong with a bit of advice but this is becoming all too regular. Besides if the man at the top needs constant pointers on how to do his job, you have to wonder how well suited to the task of advising him the people below him really are.
I could go on down this line but I’d be moving at a tangent away from my main point, which is the latest piece of legislation to come from Whitehall regarding ISPs policing their users. The government has said that ISPs who do no take steps to curb illegal downloads of music and films will face legal sanctions. The suggestion is that ISPs operate on a disconnection after ‘three strikes’ rule. Under the proposals, the first strike would be an e-mail warning from the ISP with the second strike resulting in suspension and finally termination of contract on the third strike.
It would seem that the Labour party has been receiving some rather large donations from the BPI and FACT.
Really how can this be enforced? An ISP would have to block access to every site thought to be offering links to illegal music of films, but this would not do anything to counter the so-called “deep web“. Therefore this would have to be paired with a policy of inspecting individual packets traversing their networks and then block users based on this data. However false positives would be a major problem for all approaches. What recourse would users have if they were wrongly identified as downloading illegal music? What happens when multiple people share the same network, who gets banned? If the person whose name the account is in then another account with another ISP could be opened in a different name.
However the point I think ISPs will be most concerned about is this effectively removes an ISPs “mere conduit” status as set out in the EU Electronic Commerce Directive (Terrorism Act 2006). “Mere conduit” status means that ISPs are not responsible for the traffic going over their network when they are not aware of the content, for example an ISP cannot be held liable if a terrorist attack is planned via e-mail or Paedophile ring is run on it’s network. The same applies to telephone companies such as BT and other similar organisations such as Royal Mail. “Mere conduit” status relies upon the fact that the carrier has no idea at all what is being carried, they are simply there to deliver the message, regardless of what it is. Without “mere conduit”, ISPs face legal action over traffic that’s outside of their control. This could drive ISPs out of business or drive customers out of the EU to ISPs based elsewhere.
In my opinion ISPs should not inspect any traffic traveling across their networks. I would not expect Royal Mail to open my post or BT to listen in on my phone calls. It violates my privacy as an individual. Nineteen Eighty Four was supposed to be a warning, not a guidebook. How far can an ISP go before they lose “mere conduit” status? Is spam filtering going too far? Messages have to be inspected to perform this task. Would blocking spyware infested machine that were spewing spam constitute waiving “mere conduit” status? Are ISPs which throttle bandwidth to P2P apps going too far towards monitoring traffic on their networks?
Will ISPs want to enforce this legislation? Probably not, but if it’s the law they will have very little choice. Will businesses be exempt from this monitoring. I work for an IT Services company which uses remote VPN links to other businesses including insurance companies, pension companies, banks and accountancy firms. I think some of our customer would be most upset that our ISP and their own was looking at their data. In some cases it may even be illegal for ISPs to inspect data since it could be in violation of confidentiality or data protection laws. Will ISPs even be able to inspect data that is encrypted? The government has clearly not thought this through properly, which leads me to either one of a few conclusions. Either the law will come into force and be ignored by everyone. The law will be shot down in the commons as it should be. The law will come into force, and will be enforced rigorously, then the whole UK Internet will simply melt down.
Which ever outcome actually happens this just goes to prove that the government is either not aware of the implications and practicalities of legislation it is proposing or is fully aware of both of these but chooses to ignore them anyway.
If you feel as strongly about this as I do then I suggest you sign this petition to the UK government.
The EU Competition Commission have conducted anti-trust raids against both Intel and large retailers in Germany and the UK. Intel’s Munich offices were raided on Tuesday and German retailer Media Markt-Saturn and UK retailers DSGi plc.
This comes not long before Intel has to answer to charges alleging that it abused its dominance of the market for processors. Jonathan Todd, a EU Commission lackey spokesman was quoted as saying,
“Commission officials carried out unannounced inspections at the premises of a manufacturer of central processing units and a number of personal computer retailers (believing they) may have violated EC Treaty rules on restrictive business practices and/or abuse of a dominant market position.”
The Commission has powers to fine companies up to 10 percent of their worldwide annual revenue if they are found to have committed competition abuses.
The chair uses repelling magnets to float the seat part of the chair above the base. The company that build the chair, Hoverit, compare the feeling to “floating on a cloud”. However don’t get too excited just yet, obviously huge magnets will have huge effects on TV’s, hard drives, phones and pace makers, so if you plan on buying one, make sure the room you’re going to put it in is suitably large.
The product is going to be launched at the 100th Ideal Home show in London next month and will come with a starting price tag of £5875.
Personally I would love one, what a conversation piece.
While browsing The Pirate bay today, I noticed that they had changed their logo to include a url, http://iwouldntsteal.net/. I thought it might be worth checking it out and they actually have a really interesting video on there, done as a take off of the FACT trailer shown at the start of most DVD’s and films now.
Sadly as people may know I was a little slack on posting at times this year. I enjoyed writing my 2005 tech review, hopefully people enjoyed reading it, but when 2006 came round there was simply nothing posted. I didn’t write anything. In hindsight this was a mistake, so this year I have decided I will write a tech review, and so without any further ado, here is my 2007 tech review;
10. Windows Vista
Ooh controversial. Does Windows Vista deserve to be on here? Some will say yes, some will say no, but the fact that Microsoft managed to finally get such a large project out of the door is an achievement in itself. Although my most anticipated feature was sadly missing Vista is in most respects a step forward from Windows XP. Yes it runs slower, but then it has many more security features in place than XP. A lot of software is yet to support it, but from the bigger development houses you want to look at who’s to blame. The big boys with top MSDN accounts have had access to Vista builds for well over a year before launch and so have no excuse. While now most software is compatible only a small few developers are still whining on about their difficulties in getting their software to work.
Undoubtably Vista is the way forward, people like Dell may be offering XP as a BTO option but for how much longer? Microsoft can pull the plug on that whenever they want to, so as the saying goes, ‘Get with the program’
9. 21CN
BT’s 21CN simply stands for 21st Century Network, and that pretty well sums up what it is. With their grand plan, they are moving the UK’s old Public Switched Telephone Network based on a digital rework of old analogue technologies, over to a VoIP solution. 21CN will allow BT to completely revamp the services they offer both businesses and home users. Many larger businesses already use VoIP systems internally and the move to an IP based transit system instead of the traditional PSTN will make the whole implementation easier.
This whole project will cost BT £10 billion in capital expenditure over the next 5 years, but should set all of the UK up for faster broadband and pave the way for many more IP based services.
8. CentOS
Taking the RedHat source code, removing all the branding throw in a little love, recompile and distribute a free binary compatible RHEL clone. Sounds nice? Well it is, the CentOS guys have been doing this for quite some time now, but only recently receiving recognition for their efforts with some web hosts staring to offer CentOS on their dedicated servers as an option. I have played with CentOS and it’s a lovely distro, I have plans to use it on some servers sometime next year, and I chose it because I want RHE, but without paying for the branding and support contract.
7. Ubuntu
In 2007 Ubuntu really has gone from strength to strength and marked itself out as the Linux distro of choice for the desktop. Built in WPA detection, native NTFS read and write support, and includes Compiz and Beryl for all of you whole like your eye candy. I have used Ubuntu and it is incredibly easy to get to grips with.
As a brand Ubuntu has almost become synonymous with desktop Linux and the fact that they will send you discs to pass onto your mates isn’t half bad either. With Dell now giving its customers the option to have Ubuntu preinstalled on some of their systems I see only bigger and better things for Ubuntu in 2008.
6. Intel Quad Core
2007 was the year that Intel’s ‘Core’ chips finally completely destroyed the competition. AMD released the rather pathetic Barcelona to try to gain some point back but was met with underwhelming reviews. Having used a Core 2 Duo for the last year on my iMac I can say with certainty that Intel have the formula for success at hand, so slapping two Core 2 Duo cores together must be a step in the right direction. The thermal envelopes for the Quad core parts is generally lower than the old P4 chips, as show here and here.
With AMD’s Phenom nowhere to be seen and Intel’s quad core parts batttering Barcelona on both price and performance fronts, coupled with Intel’s soon to be seen 45nm processes, the future looks bright, and very small.
5. Asus Eee PC
An ultra-portable PC for £215? Madness you say? Not so, the Asus Eee PC tips the scales at only 928g and runs a custom Linux distro. It ships with Firefox and OpenOffice and is a great machine if, like the majority of the world seems to, all you want is a machine to do a few letters on and surf the net. It comes complete with a webcam built in, 802.11g as standard, so really what more do you want? For probably most of my uses of a computer that would be fine, since I seem to spend most of my time either surfing the net or working on documents, it only lacks in the ability to do the other part of my time, gaming and video encoding. Otherwise, it’s a great machine that deserves some great kudos.
4. Windows Home Server
Windows home server seems like one of those technologies that should be a given for Microsoft to produce. A simple yet powerful server product that can run on hardware that is well below the bar as far as current PC performance goes.
Based in Windows Server 2003, WHS makes it very simple to share and control media on both the server and the computers connected to it, as well as monitoring the health of both the network and the connected clients. Storage worries are taken care of by WHS, all RAID configs are handled easily as well as backup of the clients to the server. Microsoft really are spot on the money here, and with vendors like HP taking up the baton and running with WHS, MS are onto a winner here.
3. Google Apps
The buzz goes that Google Apps are MS Office killers. Well I actually agree with the buzz, Google’s Apps are fantastic pieces of work. Google provide most of the functionality that’s found within the Office suite from Microsoft, with Gmail, Google Talk, Google Calendar, Google Docs, Page Creator and Start Page all being included for the rather cheap price of nothing. Gmail, we all know and love, Google talk is based on the jabber IM protocol, Calendar does exactly what it says on the tin, Docs mimics the basic functionality of MS Word, Excel and Powerpoint, page creator is a basic GUI web page editor and start page offers a customisable home page.
All this seems a little much for a free package, but then so did Gmail when it was launched, offering 1Gb of storage while other languished around 10Mb. With Google Apps the whole set is portable, any net connected computer can be used to access the same documents, contacts and events as you would on your office or home PC. Simply put, why spend £250 on MS Office when you can have Google Apps for free and take them with you wherever you go?
2. Apple
Apple, consistently developing new products that seem to attract consumers like moths to a flame. That could be there company mantra, the iPhone has had a phenomenal launch worldwide and seen a large uptake, even though it is locked to one network in each region. 30,000 units sold in 5 days since the French launch, 500,000 unit expected to be sold in Europe by the end of the year, and Millions sold in the US, no one could say the iPhone’s sales have been lackluster. Apple also expect to sell 10 million worldwide next year but some analysts put the figure higher.
Leopard has taken off this year too, with a hell of a lot of people, myself included, queuing up outside and Apple store to buy Leopard. Apple claim 2 million copies sold in 2 days at launch, stick that in your pipe and smoke it Vista. It’s especially good going when you consider Apple estimates that there are only 21 million machines worldwide capable of running Leopard.
On top of all that though the new iPod range is stunning as usual and the new iMacs leave little to be desired, Apple made the right choice with Intel and its a decision which is playing off in spades now.
1. Nintendo Wii
Nintendo really had to steal the show here. At the end of last year they managed to create a product which by all accounts has largely outsold all the competition in such a short space of time as to be staggering. VG Chartz really show the big picture as to how well Nintendo are stomping the competition in terms of sales.
The Wii is something everyone wants to play on, when friends come over we all go on the Wii, no matter how old they are or how young. The selection of games still sadly tends to favour mini-games at the moment but things like Zelda and Mario Galaxy are starting to buck that trend. There are a lot of good things to come for the Wii, a lot of large publishers were caught off guard by just how popular the Wii was going to be and as a result they have been behind in development, but now they’re starting to catch up.
Nintendo has brought gaming to the masses with the Wii and do it all at the right price too, and so for that they take the top place in this review.
I hope you all enjoy reading this piece, please comment as you please on it, I always welcome the discussion.
I like the advert, firstly I like Phil Collins, secondly I think the Ad is well executed, but I found these two spoofs rather good too. They tickled me.
I really like the line in the second one, “No Coco, use your potty”
What the bloody hell is wrong with IE you may say, why would Mark, a seemingly nice guy, refer to IE in such a cruel way. Well my friends, this time it is down to IE’s poor handling of modern MIME types.
XHTML web pages should have their MIME types set to application/xhtml+xml instead of the far older text/html. Try using application/xhtml+xml with IE though and it simply does not know what to do. I asks the user if they want to download the file rather than render it like it’s supposed to.
the modern javascript MIME type is also not handled correctly. Instead of the old text/javascript type the newer application/javascript should be used, but instead of working like a modern browser IE simply doesn’t render any application/javascript elements, it just skips over them as though they were not there.
The thing is this is not the bleeding edge of MIME types. application/javascript was registered by an informational RFC in June 2005. application/xhtml+xml was registered by an RFC in January 2002. These are not new things, in January 2002 IE 6 SP1 had not even been released yet. Microsoft have had a lot of time to get things right with regards to standards.
I want to serve my MIME type correctly on my site. I want to use application/xhtml+xml, but I cant because IE doesn’t support it. So instead I’m having to sort some horrid backwards compatible script out to server text/html for all those Internet Exploder users out there. Please IE users, take this advice, switch browsers to something more standards compliant. Safari for Windows and Firefox are both excellent choices and work far better than IE for web standards compliance. Why should you care about standards? Because if nobody followed any standards on the net then simply put the Internet would cease to exist, fragmenting into incompatible sections where only people using one certain standard could view certain parts of the net. Imagine having to use one browser to read your e-mail, another to do online shopping and then another one to go to a different shopping website. Not nice, so please for the sake of the earth use something other than IE.
The site will be having some modifications made to it tonight. So expect to see theme changes and the associated wierdness that go with that.
I will endevour to get things up and running ASAP.
Cheers
Well, you think you know someone. It just turns out that the former head teacher of my old junior school, who I always thought seemed like an OK bloke, has just been jailed for interfering with the children. The Derbyshire Times reports on the whole filthy story, including some rather candid details about hands in girls knickers.
I could not believe it when I read it, but Neville Lewis, or Mr Lewis as you were to me at the time, you have now been thoroughly named and shamed. 10 months is an appalling sentence though, 8 counts of indecent assault surely warrants something a bit more harsh.
Well, its been about four months since I posted anything seriously on here. I really have let things slip, first it was 1337 Internet, which by the way is still going on, then I went on holiday for 19 days. Next work went tits up and I was working long hours in crap conditions, doing four people’s jobs I might add, so when I got in from work I really didn’t feel like stretching my brain any more.Anyway, enough said, it’s been a while.But never fear, my other half starts back at Uni and has a new job, so i will have more time.
Work is fully staffed again so I’m back at normal stress levels, so expect posts soon.For now though I’ll just spit random nerd words at you allNew iMac, iPhone, Halo 3, Bioshock, Xmas goodies, Massive 2.5″ HDDs, NERDY THINGS.
lol
I understand I’ve been quiet this last week. I have spent most of my downtime working on 1337 Internet and have had very little time to write anything.
I’m off away for a week today and will post when I get back, but check the 1337 site which will hopefully see an update from Ben.
This month I came so close to leaving my trusty ISP Zen for new ADSL2+ provider Be. I chatted to friends who have used Be and after hearing sad reports of awful customer service, problems with hardware and constant disconnects I decided against leaving Zen.
Be could have provided more speed, but in my opinion a good stable connection backed by fantastic service levels are more important.
I seem to remember doing a nerd test some time back and scoring low 90’s out of 100. So like a true nerd I thought I would see if I had leveled up over time. And guess what?
I have
Bonus nerd points should be awarded for the use of the phrase “level up” in this post.
I was most suprised earlier today when performing a quick trace route to Google to test something on my modem when i saw the output below
Traceroute has started …
traceroute: Warning: www.google.co.uk has multiple addresses; using 209.85.129.104
traceroute to www.google.com (209.85.129.104), 64 hops max, 40 byte packets
1 dd-wrt (192.168.1.1) 3.636 ms 7.658 ms 5.475 ms
2 * * *
3 gay-dsl1.wh.zen.net.uk (62.3.83.20) 24.073 ms 90.889 ms 22.237 ms
4 erazmus-ae-0-200.wh.zen.net.uk (62.3.80.201) 24.490 ms 72.865 ms 24.101 ms
The output continues, but notice the name of one of the servers. Nice to see Zen have a sense of humour.
What the bloody hell is wrong with IE you may say, why would Mark, a seemingly nice guy, refer to IE in such a cruel way. Well my friends, this time it is down to IE’s poor handling of modern MIME types.
Loading ...
