Monday 26 December 2011

F$&K OFF VALVE

So, I won't be playing Saints Row now.. >.<

I got it bought for me as a present and it wanted me to download 9gb F£$KOFF VALVE. If you can't get a game RIGHT on RELEASE so it can be installed without downloading 9gb f-off.

Anti-piracy.. cool, fine.. Microsoft Activation, don't like it but hey its ok its only a couple of KB connection and its finished..

Steam prime target for Virus Creators

There are a few basic things a virus must do to be successfull:
  • Replicate and
  • Remain Hidden,
These are two of the most important. Industry seeks to prevent these things happening. However, some vendors make a virus's life much much easier (Steam/Value j'accuse).

One method for limiting viral harm is limiting exposure. This can, in most instances, be done simply by only allowing connections to known secure IP addresses. This means that any virus incomming has also circumvented the security of a secure peer.

Sadly, this is made impossible by some product designs. Steam being the worst case. Internet load balancing should not be happening at the user client (in Steam client this is the case). Regional internet servers should be setup and DNS resolution should load balance within a small range of IP addresses for each area / network region. So, for example, Steam requested in Chicago should not be contacting an address in China (as an example found happening using Windows Update) for an update. It should be load balanced between up to 10 servers within a sensible range.

Steam just appears to try to load balance between 100's of servers. It could be possible they may have 100's of servers within my region, I am however exceedingly dubious of this (I don't think so).

Anyway, the point is, because steam connects to a massive range of IP addresses it is not easily possible to secure against viral attack, since either one must learn every single IP used by steam or just give up and allow Steam total free communications (inviting it as a great launch platform for any form of viral infection. Infect the process with the most permissions and or the most freedom).

The second evil of steam is it cannot run in a non elevated state.

I actually find myself HOPING someone targets Steam because they are behaving like Tyrants.

Oh, and yes.. Windows Update is nearly as bad (but at least I could conceivably mangage Windows Updates Manually).

Friday 2 December 2011

Modern Gaming Industry standard business practices styfles economy

It occured to me today that the way modern gaming products launch (in legal terms) is completely designed so that they might reap any revenue which comes from the game. This, at first glance, makes complete sense. They put in the effort, they should be receiving the appropriate reward.

Then, I thought on this. The manor in which they seek to "protect there investment" almost excludes any other business (unless that business is going to be paying them a healthy fee and secondly divulge entirely their enterprise up front in case they where having to be already going to do that).

So, in short, its quickly not viable for others to produce related items for profit.

I only really noticed this on realising how MineCraft has had the opposite effect with its approach. The relative openness of the developer and his company has lead to many, many spin-off "developments" which may or may not earn each person a seperate profit.

Basicly, to my mind here, the lesson is simple. Less restrictive practices and looser licencing lead to economic boom.

Tuesday 8 November 2011

A random cartoon...

More Microsoft Tricks! (makes me want to hug open source.. poor as it makes me)

So, Microsoft want us to upgrade our internet browser. From what I can figure out their *strategy* to get us to upgrade goes as follows:
  1. End Support
  2. Try to force the upgrade upon us via Windows Update (if possible)
  3. Update all their webpages so they use a feature of the new browser, which just happens (*cough bullshit*) to break compatibility with their oldest brower still compatible.
  4. Provided other "security updates" to 'related' parts of the operating system which *cough* again just happen to slowly break their oldest browser in increasingly annoying and agravating ways (example with IE 7, alignments suddenly different for same pages.. Suddenly the arrow keys no longer work for scrolling pages etc, previously smooth scrolling replaced by jagged glitchy scrolling).
  5. If any user notices these facets, they will say "Please update your browser to resolve this issue, thank you".
  6. Make the browser completely (artificially) incompatable with their next operating systems.
So, there you go.. if anyone reading this knows a Microsoft Executive who is be behind (or in support of) these "ideas" please, please, please do something just a little nasty to them (hide their car keys, erase their address books, factory reset their phone).

Let me know you have in comments and make my day ;).

Thursday 3 November 2011

Cancel is NOT Undo! Damnit!

Reciently I've had a few problems with my PC which necessitated some reinstallation. So I needed to reinstall a few programs. I had the files already inplace and just needed to restore the registry settings. So I run the install, and ooh nice it put the settings back =) hurray. I don't need to put in the other 4 CD's to complete the install, i'll just cancel the install here and all will be good.

So, I hit cancel.. .the "£(*$ application starts REMOVING all the files. OMG! Cancel, Cancel!!!! NOT UNDO. >.<

Wednesday 19 October 2011

Life, don't talk to me about Life

That of course was a quote made my "Mavin the paranoid Android" from the The Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy (HHGTTG).

Still, right now I'm so tired of the pointless fight. People aren't valued, effort is only valued for the rewards it brings to the person the effort is made for. Good ideas go unrealised because people need to keep paying for bad ideas because once someone thought it was a clever idea to ensure that a "popular" or "clever" idea remained profitable and somehow unextractably entangled it to some life essencial so we became forced to continue to pay for the bad idea.

Life (by which I mean human effected / created life) seems full of examples of this (indeed these things thrive on this):
  • American Laws..
Seemingly if any "bill" is put forward for consideration and is seen to be a potentially "popular" proposition, everyone tries to find a way to Tac on their unpopular little proposal in the hope that people want the good enough to pay for the crap that comes with it (whilst making the crap they add seem plausably connected).
  • Loans (Banks),
Sure, you can have that money.. just give it us back (*small print* with 10% extra repayment per day you don't).
  •  Most Business
Hey, buy this.. its great and just LOOK how cheap it is (*small print* accessories not included, battery must be replaced weekly, must use OUR model of battery/ink/credits/web-site).
Hell, maybe this is the whole of life. Though, looking at nature, it tends to come with more rewards than traps.

The funny thing is, life is full of examples of how people really value other people. Its just disconnected, it only goes so far and then starts going in reverse (that is, for example.. I value you, you value you friend, your friend values their friend.. good. Though, your friends, friend hates you. You hate your friends, friend, friend. So on). Everyone generally has good reasons for why the like or don't like another person (value or not. If we define here good as making sense to them and their definition of good).

Trying to think about all this just hurts the brain. So, everyone, value everyone.. if you can't see their value, value that they give everyone else a greater sense of value by showing exactly how valuable they are by comparison.. thusly, appriciate them.

As for the people providing definite negative value, the ones killing, bombing, opressing, claiming their way or the highway ect. ect. Well, we can't appriciate them, but we can pity them and remember how their example shows just how bad people are when they don't value or appriciate even one.

Tuesday 27 September 2011

People, please stop funding web-crime!

Someone, they are nameless, are paying unscrupulous companies to advertise their products. They may not even know these companies are unscrupulous.

Here is the short tip version:

DO NOT PAY ANYONE FOR HITS!

Hits on your website do not equate to customers or even often remotely interested parties. There seems to be an entire industry built around taking money from people who equate hits on their site to customer awareness or product sales.

Let me explain paitiently.

There is a massive number of ways in which a person may attract "hits" to their website. Howeve, the only quality hit is the hit from a person who has arrived at your site in search of a service or product you are offering. This type of hit is very hard to get because of the MILLIONS of companies out there being PAID by third parties to get ANY kinds of hits to their customers sites (customers who may infact by dying for your services are being redirected to a million sites with people offering them nothing they want). Unscrupulous advertisers are very successfull in this ends. These sites get millions on millions of people directed to them because they are conned, fooled, tricked and otherwise mislead into arriving at these sites. The action of a person thus, conned, fooled, tricked is (in 99% of cases I susspect) to immidiately leave the site and try to find what they ACTUALLY where looking for.

Now, some people paying for web-advertising are slightly better informed, they realise that 'How long a person views your page is an indication of interest' and ask for only these hits to be counted (since this is a measure which can be taken). However, again, unscrupulous companies have this covered! They simply trick the web-public into clicking their advert but avoid the user actually realising they are viewing the advert to it appears they viewed it for a long time (because they either didn't notice it was there or the window appeared under other windows). The customer may be shown a quite "compelling" legitimate" advertisement for their product to add to the fraud.

So, therefore, the length of time each "clicker" spent viewing your page becomes a nonsense as well.

So, stop paying for clicks!

Pay for results! Google has a reasonably solid system to ensure you get quality clicks. However, watch out, because a number of third party companies re-selling Google services can easily warp this system by "trickyly" created pages.

I recommend that whenever you enter into a contract with a company for web advertising, that you contractually only pay them based on the sales comming directly through their advertising program, proven ideally by individual customer acknowledgement or sufficiently by unique ID references placed in the advertising campaign.

If you do go with a clicks only advertiser, should you be lucky enough to get sales from the campaign, you are still hurting your company image over because as millions of misdirected people may see your company as "unscrupulous" as well (since the trick lead them to your company name).

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PEOPLE STOP PAYING FOR CLICKS.. PAY FOR RESULTS.

As my final note, its interesting that this kind of "commerical activity" is entirely LEGAL. I also feel the law should be updated to make "misleading" online an offence against the law.

Saturday 24 September 2011

Argg, Game Designers!

So I officialy luv MineCraft (and this is just a little frustration outlet, so on the off chance Notch comes accross this post, really luv your work to date). Though I officially loath realism in games! Its a game damn it, if I wanted real life I'd go out and fix my crippled social life (crippled by lack of realism in games making them so compelling hehe ;).

The latest update to MineCraft is overshadowed by the damn annoying hunger system. Its something close to what Diablo was like when you had to buy you arrows (tiring and a reason not to play) (ED: Though in general Notch seems to agree with this POV based on his webpage "If something ever doesn't feel fun, I'll remove it").

Fine, people want more point to the game. Well, find a point thats FUN not tedious. I mean who enjoys actually having to find food? Eating, sure, cooking sure, but actually FINDING.

I can't state emphatically enough, hunger in MineCraft is just annoying. If you want to motivate me not to spend so much time underground, put something on the surface I want to come up for.. like wood.. oh you already have that! well leave us damn alone >.<

Yours,
Disgruntled MineCrafter.

ps. MineCraft is still 99% awesome. Only one major bitch, its a miracle!

Wednesday 31 August 2011

Software Vendors giving me Terrets

ED: Please note. I am not normally a person who swears or respects swearing but sometimes, with enough annoyances, I guess we all need to sometimes. This IS one of those time and appologies to anyone reading (please don't read if swearing offends).


>.<

F**KING BL**DY G*D DANM F**CKING WAN*ERS!!!!

I am SO fucking sick of software vendors. I've wasted the majority of the day today trying to fucking get control of my own goddamn PC.

First, I can't associate the application I want, placed in the location I desire, with the file type that it uses (since they have gone mad for AppID's and so forth requiring application to be installed and registered with the system). This should have been a fucking trivial task and indeed if I revert back to Window XP it bloody is trivial (how I miss when Microsoft where there to serve the customer [or at least pretended]) .

Why the fucking hell is RPC being used for local traffic application (so I know why, but still in principal)! Lazyness seems to be the simple god-damn answer. They know that there will be senarios where a person will need to do some task or other over RPC so they just write it always to use RPC. Which would be absolutely FINE if local RPC used function calls. NO local RPC has to use local TCP traffic (again, LAZY, no specialisation for a case).

Saturday 27 August 2011

G19 YouTube player rendered worthless by Google Ad's

Installed the latest G19 software for my keyboard. Looks slick, pleasantly surprised about the UI improvements.

However, the single most usefull feature of the G19 keyboard (the G19 YouTube player) has been rendered worthless because, 3 seconds into whatever clip you choose to watch Adverts appear taking up 1/4 of the entire (already small) display and worse, you have no way of "clicking" to close the Ads.

The result? the in keyboard YouTube player is worthless.

YouTube in player Adverts (Ad's) - Say NO!

So i'm sick of YouTube. The in player Ad's is the last straw!

Don't get me wrong, I don't object to Ad's, but I do object to Ad's interrupting and f**king obscuring my vision. Since we still have choice, lets choose to move somewhere where their decient:

Check out this long list of similar style sites:

http://www.reelseo.com/list-video-sharing-websites/

Microsofts mission these days is to prevent choice!

So, i'm trying to do something simple. I have installed my choice of Media Player application where I want it put (in the Documents folder) and so I make use of the nice feature Microsoft added a while back "Open With..." to make it my default media player for AVI files.

Short version it. Doesn't work.

Never mind, its easy enough to make a file association, always has been. Quick tweek of the registry.

Yep, there we go.. shows up and its all good.

Still doesn't f**ing work.

What happens is, it always, regardless of whats set, runs Windows Media Player!

Now I could f**ing go and unregister the DDE conversations and any other way it might be completing the association (explorer extensions.. whatever) but the simple fact is it shouldn't be so f**king hard in the first place. No value has been added and its eliminated choice. Congratulations again Microsoft on maintaining your monopoly through screwing your customers! well f**ing done :P.

Sunday 21 August 2011

Fucking GOD DAMN Microsoft!!! >.<

Short version:

Performed full system backup using Windows Vista Ultimate. After backup to external drive containing other important similar backups, external drive now has 3 time more free space before backup began!

Microsoft Backup has DELETED all my OTHER system backups >.&lt.. To quote a Kiwi "Fucking A!"

Thursday 18 August 2011

Lost in Life

I have the skills to work anywhere. The practicality though is that life and work tends to tie a person to a place or area and usually the place or area in which they live. Thing is, as of this time, I am still residing with my family so I don't have a place. I have a local. I don't need to always be near my family.

I need something, someone to give me a reason to be somewhere. The person I would choose to define that is Alex and I would be happy wherever I was with her. Problem is, I can't be anywhere with her without her support and encouragement to be there with her as more than just her friend. Such encouragement is not forthcomming and infact negitive reinforcement is present (it lost me my last job because I paniced in the second stage interview because all I could think about was what she said before the interview "I don't think its a good idea for you to get the job".. "You can hope you get it, I will hope you don't"... "I want you to be out of my place by Tuesday").

So, I don't have any reason to be anywhere. I have lots of minor "whims" of places to be. I have friends in New Zealand, California, Lancashire and I have Alex, the one person in this world who gives me a sense the world is truely worth living for on the South Coast.

There isn't any pressing reason to be nearer any of my friends, excepting Alex and she is the love of my life (sometimes I so feel like the love of hers, usually when arriving at that point soon after I remember all the things she has said, especially "you are the one person I would never go out with" and "I will Marry someone else, I will have kids with someone else"). So why am I still utterly and uncontrollably in love. I have no doubt in that love, I know its right and I know its complete. Sometimes I don't doubt she loves me as much, though everything she says goes against this sense and I don't have complete and utter conviction she loves me completely (though I am she does love me, I am just not sure she loves me with her whole heart as I love her.. and what she says suggests very strongly, possibly unequivibly she doesn't love me. Yet sometimes how she acts suggests contrary to what she says. Lies are HELL, they make a person doubt the truth).

Where do I go now? I know wherever it is, its not here. I don't belong here any longer, I don't fit. I sort of fit in NZ but how much.

I am tired of being perfectly suited for jobs and being turned down based on dumb pre-conceptions. I've heard "spotty employment history" quoted a few times and reciently "over confident" was sited. Over ****** confident! Course I am, I have 15 years of experience and I can work to develop anything on Microsoft platforms. I just need a job I can believe in and when one comes along they seem to have trouble believing in me.

Story of my life, beside family, only one person has ever put their complete faith in me and they still believe. Its just a shame we don't work together.

I need a reason to be somewhere, I need something to believe in that can't/won't let me down.... I know, I know... I am hearing it too... I, I, I, I .. Me, Me, Me, Me.... The sad thing is though, what "Me" wants is someone to believe in who will believe in me, someone who believes in the me I know. Alex sees the real me, though she chooses to not believe (or not to love me as her life partner).

AGGGGG! life.

I don't even know what I want anymore. Alex is all I want/need except that she refuses, is unable, cannot accept me and choose me as hers. How can I want another Alex? shes irriplaceable, shes everything. What can I want / need now?

Saturday 13 August 2011

Update on Life

I am looking now at all the evidence which is piling on about the girl who is still for me the love of my life and I am seeing that whilst there may have been a way we could have been together (could I go back and fix lots of little stupid mistakes) the chances of us being a couple where so remote, so tenious that it wouldn't have happened in 999,999 out of a million outcomes.

Knowing this doesn't really help me, she is still the love of my life.

Is the lesson here to be carefull who you let yourself love? To not love too early?

I am not sure. Had I tried not to love her, it might have changed things for the better, though equally it might have left me filled with regret at not trying hard enough as someone else stepped into place.

Its strange, but a pattern keeps repeating with us. We get closer, she pushes me away, I try to stay confident and we reach a "level" where she doesn't want others but isn't choosing me. She communicates us just being friends. She will meet someone who she will be more keen about. She will, for a while, be good and favour me over all others. She will even not want to see this other interest in her life and spend her time with me. She will want me along with her, but then the "interest" will want to push for "them" time. She can't be said to be leading me on, at least not verbally as her position is clear. Though emotionally, she really doesn't know her position.

It should be over, I should be moving on... I can't.

I need to be saved from myself I think.

Saturday 18 June 2011

And the "Damn Stupid Design" Award goes to....

My friend owns a laptop which now has a broken screen. Laptop is fine otherwise.

Now, this shouldn't be a problem, just plug in an external monitor and boot the PC but either ATI or Microsoft have implemented a stupid **** display driver which keeps automaticly switching to ONLY the BROKEN internal screen. Even if you boot the system with the lid closed, which would toggle OFF the screen as a device option it still makes the internal screen the ONLY screen.

Its stuff like this which wastes hours of otherwise productive time (oh or boosts the economy by forcing consumers to replace equipment).

Sunday 5 June 2011

FaceBook still letting us down

I connected to some random site today and was annoyed and alarmed to see my basic FaceBook details (photo and name) appearing on the site. I had no prior connection to the site and didn't wish one.

In the past, it has been reasonably simple to prevent this type of thing, but because its a way for bussiness to make money Microsoft and other have been making it "Harder and Harder" to keep yourself "private" (or, as they will sell it, easier and easier to share).

I never wanted to really be a part of FaceBook but I have friends that did and I am there friend and joined for there sakes. I think I should leave for mine.

Tuesday 31 May 2011

Tired of shit search results

I am so sick of wading through piles, and piles of shit to find what I am looking for. Google, have been quite good for not having too much "shit" but these days, everyone seems to have jumped on the Google waggon and succeeded in bogging it down with crap (though to be fair, the results are still superior). I feel sorry for Google really, they have some very good results generally, but they are searching "everything" and it seems sometimes theres more crap than good out there.

Its reached a crux point where I'm getting so sick of repeaters, advertisers, buzz-worders, re-posters, spammers and all the other web-based scum that is currently from the POV of search results pervading the internet (I don't resent mis-information even as long as genuinely delivered... its deliberate misinformation to support advertising that hacks me off).

Heres my list of "Waste of time Web Pages" for everyone else to add to their firewall block list (using httx so I am not linking to these **** and upping their hit count):

Site(s): httx://www.thebigresource.com/, httx://excel.bigresource.com/
Reason: Content Repeater (zero added value, lots of added ad's). Worse still they don't even repeat all the damn content, just the first post! >.<

Site: httx://www.eggheadcafe.com/
Reason: This website, whilst providing some usefull links, often justs forwards and repeats content from other sites. Better than most sites, this site does not provide enough value to be worth your attention (e.g. one is better looking for the source of its information).

Site: httx://www.canbal.com/
Reason: Content repeater.

If I could get enough people willing to sponser me, people who are simply looking for a search engine with ethics and veted content we could all bring our heads together and build a search engine whos content is 100% vetted and free of all the types of web-shit which makes searching painful (or maybe someone can post me a link to an existing one which is free from crap).

I can see all the things which makes this proposition tricky. It could never be an "exaustive" search engine with billions of pages indexed. It might be a "quality" search engine with 100's of thousands of "reputable" and "vetted" pages which provide "information" and "what it says in the tin" advertising (if any).

I'm a dreamer with this, and I know it.. the likely outcome is that shit=money. Whilst people are willing to pay to have their crap crammed down the throat of the consumer in any way (and whilst its possible to make money from this) I can't see it going away.

Give the internet back to Achedimia I say... they might sometimes be a bit stiff, but they deliver!

Monday 16 May 2011

Personal Lessons

Reciently I've been having lots of signal issues with the o2 network which used to be fine here. After a few days with no improvement, I rang up to complain and was told there was a fault and it was down to be repaired.. good news I though, though frustrating still (there was a 72 hour turn around to repair, that sounded promising).

Waited a few days (well over 72 hours) and still having problems (though prehaps they were less exreeme? very subjective). The basic issue is that the signal kept dropping out, going from full strength to no strength to full strength (even though I wasn't even moving).

So, I try calling back, but line quality too bad. So I just decide to email. I get a reply back which was pretty useless as it more or less said "maybe its your phone" a definitive "the network is fine in your area, we suggest a phone replacement" would have been better.

Anyway, this isn't really why I am blogging today.

I was talking to the love of my life (and for those following my blog you will know who this is) and the phone starts cutting in and out again. She had said she was going to have some food soon before and I thought to myself (though didn't think much) I should suggest we go since the signal is awful and your about to eat. The way it came out was "I should go and let you eat since the signals bad". I regretted it the moment I said it, it seems simple enough but heres what the problem is:

  1. It gives the impression that I wanted to end the conversation (wrong impression)


  2. It furthur gives the impression that I am giving up on talking to her because of an inconvinence. That I am "giving up easily" therefore, that I might not care all that much (very wrong impression)


  3. It did not consider her feelings in the matter of going or staying. It in fact did not consider anyone. It was inconsiderate.


  4. If I had thought for longer, I would have realised that I really didn't want to go. To suggest going was supid and against what I infact wanted. To admit that "I should go, given the problems but would stay and only go if it cut out" was infact what I wanted and what was right.

So, as soon as I said this, she didn't sound very impressed (tone of voice). I don't blame her, she had gone to the effort to call me on a known bad line :(.


I was basicly a fool about it. I tried texted first then tried calling back but, obviously, why would she answer? Things will be ok, I know, we've been best freinds for long enough. I just need to store this up in my mind, keep it in my memory and not let myself do something this stupid again! :( Since right now I am sitting here missing her and wondering if she is now talking to someone else who won't go just because theres some line issues (and in the end alot of this is about me worrying about being perfect, because she is so perfect to me). I know she doesn't work like that really, but I think every girl (everyone?) does on some subconsious level.


Anyway, hopefully lesson learned. I'll just have to miss her until we can speak again :(. Also hope that she will want to "bother" to speak to me after it appeared I didn't bother to speak with her when it was a bad line (this is me being hard on myself now... I just miss her :()

Saturday 14 May 2011

Facebook getting out of hand

Now I'm normally not really bothered with FaceBook. I have some friends on there and it just works. Lately though I am so sick and tired of the crap they are pulling.

This post is for all the people out there who are really hating the way facebook is going. I would have done a nice bulleted list of points in complaint on FaceBook itself.. but *sarcasm* Oh wait!

"I can't now make any formatting using line returns with my replys to messages on Facebook!".

*ed. Thought this was systemic but just seems to be with replies. I can see possibly why (for text replies) but FFS only limit me if I choose a text reply.

This is the kind of "crap" FaceBook have been pulling lately changing what was good about FaceBook into whats good for FaceBook.

Well WE (the users) are good for FaceBook, so lets Campaign to have them stop f**king around with stuff that works and also to stop trying to suppress firstly our freedom of expression, secondly our choice for privacy, thirdly who and how we interact with and finally not abusing whatever we post in whatever whim way it takes them.

So, what am I talking about? (for anyone whos not really been using FaceBook or is new to it).

Well, here is a list of things FaceBook has done reciently:


  • Made all profiles Public by Default without overly alerting the FaceBook users that this is the case (so you suddenly find yourself appearing on search engines with a whole list of your friends for the spammers to consume and enjoy).


  • Disabling ability to post line-returns in messages replies (and posts in general, though not universally it seems).


  • Preventing the creation of Groups without others of your friends as members.


  • Automatically culling your friends so you only see news from friends you interact with on a regular basis (again choosing for you who are your friends).


  • Makeing dumb and sometimes offensive suggestions as to who your friends are


  • Assuming if your status is single you want to see 50 adverts for Dating ever time you logon (though to be fair they've always done this, but since I'm complaining lol).


  • Changing the privacy agreement on an ongoing incremental basis to increase how much they can do with your own stuff (fortunately someone spotted the liberty taking option on your uploaded photographs and it got changed).



If anyone else finds this and agrees (or even disgrees) please post me some comments! =)

Wednesday 13 April 2011

Business thinking is killing society! Here is why

  1. Everyone needs to be able to earn money to live.
  2. The minority of people have plenty of money.
  3.  
    The minority wish to keep their money so either seek to avoid spending the money or seek to have the money return to them either faster than they spend or at roughly the same level.
     
  4. The majority do not have plenty of money
  5.  
    The majority need money to live on a day to day basis and work to earn money to live, the money they earn to live they spend on things they require (food, accommodation, friends and family). Since it is the Minority with the money, they ensure that for every bit of money the majority "earn" the majority spend it with them or another minority.

Everyone in theory wishes for better (more than they have). Therefore everyone tends, to some extent to behave in a similar fashion, which is:

  • For as little as possible effort, retain as large as possible reward.
This is largely only logical and not in fact always motivated by wanting more reward than is fair or warranted(and besides, the minority people don't like the concept of fair because it limits their ability to exploit their position which is often hard earned or fought for so in some ways who can blame them).

So what actually comes about is everyone becomes a "player" in this ridiculous game. This is all fine as long as we have a referee, which is where the government is supposed to sit. The Government owns the bank and should always be the biggest employer (have the most outgoings) and should have the least monetary incomings (all the incoming to the government should really be the efforts of the people for it). They should be the ones underwriting all our pay checks and ensuring that people can live. In this way this "non-player" keeps the system balanced (in theory).
The problem comes when the referee tries to be like everyone else. That is to say, the government looks to be "profitable" monetarily speaking (rather than placing its profits in progress of the people). Government shouldn't work like a business because all business can only continue profitably in the current climate if there is a renewable source of income in the economy.
The goal of business is as follows :

  • Through an investment in goods, people or services to receive back more money than you pay out. To, therefore, make a profit.
The only way "everyone" can possible make a profit is if, ipso-facto, someone or something (or collection of such) are making a loss (unless money is infinite, which was the role of the government to make this effectively so). In the past, the government was the source and sometimes the sink for all money. This is still in theory true today, but then why is the government "borrowing" billions from the tax payers future and why is the government in "debt"? Partly I suspect its propaganda to get more from the people, but mostly they have bought into the game (stopped running the game). NO you CANT play the game AND run the game. If you play the game, it becomes a free for all and all money evaporates because everyone on the whole play field tries to profit (that can't happen so...).

Everyone has to lose (or some smaller set of people lose really badly. It won't be the minority who lose in the end). What they have done by "taking it from the future tax payer" is pretty much "virtualised" inflation ("oh no, we aren't spending beyond our means. He's (pointing into the crowd) going to pay you in 5 years time" what do you think will really happen?).

Solutions? I can't see one. We can't go back to the old system, it can't account for life. Moving into the "StarTrek" era would be nice, but that doesn't account for some people (e.g. the StarTrek era requires world cooperation).

What I would dearly love to see is an "owning up" but to own up would be to cause a collapse of the system. Systemic collapse is never good, even for a corrupt and evil system (leads usually to rioting, fighting or war). This system is bad, but it's not truly evil.
I guess though, the one thing that's clear in my mind, is the government needs to operate quietly (at a continuing loss) for the people. Perhaps splitting the government into two, one part that seeks to profit (the services part of the government) and one part which will continually run at a loss (the provision for jobs and income).

Monday 11 April 2011

Amazon are Fanstasitc, Highly Recommend them

I was thinking about my last post and that I spend a good amount of time "complaining" on this blog. I realised that I don't enough praise whats good.

Amazon are GREAT the provide an excellent service, they are safe, efficient and really seem to listen to customer feedback. They don't overly spam me with advertisements and they have always delivered on the goods (and on the rare occasion I have had problems I've always been left satisifed with the resolution).

I highly recommend if you have shopping to do, check out Amazon's website.

I'm sure though for most people this is really apparent, but I just wanted to take the chance to praise something good.

Sunday 10 April 2011

Browser Features Override from Web Scripting

I want to make everyone aware of this dangerous ability provided within Microsoft Internet Explorer (and possibly other browsers) with a correctly coded browser script it is possible to "hijack" default browser shortcut keys (such as CTRL-N (New Window). CTRL-F (Find) and replace the standard behaviour with a scripted behaviour).

THIS IS A HUGE SECURITY LOOP HOLE.

Imagine, you search on Google and alight upon a likely looking search result. You goto that page and then decide you want to move to a new browser window, you hit CTRL-N and, unknown to you, the script on the page intercepts your request and opens up a new window in its own script injecting its scripted functionality into the new window (perfectly possible). Now, unless your very familiar with the working of your browser your not aware your still in a page controlled by scripts from your previous page. It would be potentially dangerous to proceed to login to your email.

It admittedly would be hard to make an "exploit" which would not be noticable by someone familiar with browser technology but easy to trick the non-technical user.

This kind of irresponsibility I find really annoying. Having these kinds of features. An external source should not be allowed to override innate features of your browser (for example, although pages should have the ability to know when they are closed. They should not have final executive control of wether the close can be allowed, the page should mearly be notified of proceedings and proceed to obey the user.

However, theres money in taking control away from the end user and theres loss in fixing it.

Wednesday 6 April 2011

Sick to death of Browser Whores (Wars)


Summary:

"I'm Sick & Tired of companies using my internet connection like they own my computer and all its softwares and like I am just an inconvinience getting in the way of them continuing as they wish!"


Let me detail a typical day of bad "free" or "supplied" software.

I launch Internet Explorer, which on the whole isn't a bad little browser but a bit target for viruses and malware. It works well for me and is pretty steady. Though, every now and then, I wonder if I want something better (especially when I try to zoom a JavaScript and get junk).

So, I fire up Opera and the whole whoring begins. First of all, without any permission from me or even notifying me it starts downloading something. Its probably an update, but F**K OFF ITS MY SYSTEM ASK >.<. So basicly, Opera could be the best damn browser ever but I would never use the f**king thing. Except blocked to hell and sandboxed in an emergency situation. This is just a single example, other examples are that it connects to unrelated web addresses when I goto a website on the intranet (in a "triggered" behaviour). I don't know or care what its doing. It might even be in my interest, all I care is theres another internet connection I have not asked for or agreed to (agreeing to allow the product to do what it likes in the licence agreement is NOT gaining permission, its avoiding litigation).

This is the problem these days, browser / internet companies feel its "acceptable" even "profitable" to bypass the customers consent portion of the proceedings and go ahead and do whatever THEY want (I can imagine them saying "oh right.. yes.. erm.. now you mention it erm.. yes.. we did it FOR you.. yes.. we know best. Just be a good consumer and continue to download our crap and support our advertising revenues theres a good customer.").

What they want is money and they don't really seem to care all that much how they get it within the bounds of "not spooking the cow" (eg. cash cow) which is the customer.

I'm sick and tired of this crap. Online bussiness built on "what can we get away with" instead of "what can we provide, and how should we charge for it". 

I do admit though its the actions of consumers that have them: 1) getting away with such alot and 2) needing to "get away with it" in the first place as some people treat the web like a gianormous free meal, 3) Undermine decent business by leaving a perfectly good cost effective solution because someone in a web back ally goes "pssst, I can get you that free mate".

I am not anti-free software. I do like my rights and things being my choice.

Mind you, some companies that have got it right on the above can be irritating in other ways. I really like Comodo, I used their Internet Security Solution free version whilst I was between positions and when I was back in work I wanted to buy their full product and support their activities. They couldn't process my debit card and ended up pretty much rejecting my order (not tried to work it out. Just rejected my order. This was on a card I used a day later to buy something 3 times the price with no problems at all from Amazon).

Oh yes! Whilst I'm here Amazon are fantastic. Amazon have continually impressed and proved to be very considerate. Pity they don't provide a browser.

Tuesday 29 March 2011

Microsoft Closing up the operating system API

In the "growth" days of Microsoft, before it was the corporate giant it is today, Microsoft where very keen to get anyone and everyone using their software. One way in which they did this was by providing robust and well supported API's opening up the operating systems to developers and allowing easy extension of existing controls.

Over the last 5 years, Microsoft have been peice by peice clawing back the control of their operating system by slowly and subversively closing off UI accessiblity. This is not an idle claim, review the following examples:
  • Desktop Window Manager (Closed / Private API for all but TRIVIAL operations)
  • Windows Presentation Foundation (Closed / Private API unless you use / buy their .NET development products. See DirectUIHWND control which is replacing many controls in Windows 7).
  • Digital Rights Management (See IP6, Windows Media Player etc)
Now, of course, Microsoft want to still keep customers but at the same time ensure that the customer requires a continuing spend with their organisation. What has changed is they no longer want to keep customers by "giving them a bargin / open development platform". Not happy with the simple continuing spend of O/S upgrades and new technology they want to lock third parties out of certain areas of the operating system (leading to a monopoly control within their own solution with minority access given to the wider development community).

What they are seeking to do, is to tie customers to their product and force customers to use them, and them alone (though this is possibly the goal of most all big business sadly).

Abode I'm sure are partly to blame for this change in behavior. Adobe proved with Flash how a third party could "tie up" a market sector and "force" businesses to pay for their particular solution. The have done this repeatedly, PDF format being another "lock in" technology. Microsoft have tried to "reclaim" this sector with their "Silverlight" like for like solution but its just changing which company your locked into.

Whilst I appriciate all business needs to earn revenue to survive, business which feels it must "shackle" their customers to their solution is at best anti-competitive. Microsoft used to operate based on "incentive", that is, buy in to our solution we offer the best most flexible / simple (best?) solution. They used to do this well.

However, their direction right now is all about tying up the customer. A customer forced to stick to a provider due to artificialy concocted "reasons" (with an engineered technical reason) is not getting the best for their investment (since they no longer have the "power" of choice being locked to a single solution for reasons other than, superior service or reduced costs).

SHAME ON YOU MICROSOFT.

If you really do care about your customers, you will do the following:
  1. Provide FULL documented low level API access to WPF and DWM.
  2. Find OTHER alternative ways to protect your revenue streams. Ones which are based on serving the customer.
Finally don't just do this for the functions you have earmarked as "low profit" or "last generation". Expose and document the whole API (even if its only a one liner on a blog). Sure, you might mark some functions as not being supported yet or as volatile as sensible.

I susspect noone is listening.

I bought into Microsoft as was, I dislike the direction. Google sometimes seem to be inching in similar directions but so far they seem to have tempered this practice and kept it to an acceptable minimum.

Saturday 12 March 2011

A damn good website!

Still in love with my best friend, still "like a brother" to her. I got absolutely "fed up" today because she told me how I was "acting strange" and "scaring her away" which seemed to be based on me being "clingy". I live a good distance from her and she is sharing a flat with her ex-boyfriend (and not as "ex" as I would wish) so of course I am going to get "clingy" *sigh*. So, I searched for some random "fed up" search terms and came to here:

Straight Talking advice on Romance

I have to say that right now I very much love this straight talking site. Its just tempered nicely between advice and "wake up fool".

I am not actually sure I have any ideas to change my situation but I do feel I might understand it alot better.

I just hope the "content replicators" don't "ruin" it by whoring it about with advertisements.

Thursday 10 March 2011

Too many McGyver's not enough Engineers

I like McGyver's they get things done, they do whatever needs to be done in whatever way it can be done given the resources available and sometimes the solutions are just damn genius! Sometimes.

Mostly though, they are short sighted work arounds leaving increasingly bigger messes for Mc Gyver's boss's to sort out.. unfortunately, they are also trying to be McGyver.

We do need McGyver's in this world. The problem is, most all people are being McGyver's.

We need more people to be patient and consiencious observers of life who test their ideas and come up with theories. People who look forward to whats comming next and design for the future and to be built upon, not just always working in the space of Now.

Now is important (for sure), Now is when things get done, now is when things happen! It seems people today equate "progress" with "happening now". That is to say: people don't want to plan things out today and build tommorow, they want to start work right away. This is possibly an admirable trate, but without planning and understanding whats being built and its need we soon end up in the "then" needing a lot more "now".

Society does not support people to work for a better future, but it does support those in the now.

We need a mix, we need to encourage the genius McGyver's into places where they can help the world but managed so they don't just put off a bigger disaster in the future. We need to somehow train the other MyGyver's (the ones building a poor solution in the now for an even worse problem in the future) to be something "other" but which fits with their ability.

Now, my observation. The reason there are so many McGyver's is that business and government rewards that type of behavior and rewards genius and fool hardy with some level of equality (as much as anything is equal in societies built from a history of slavery and opression).

Whats needed is a clear reward, placed in the future, for following a Engineering path. One that a person can see building day by day and one which they can observe the conciquences of returning to be a McGyver.

I'd like to see more "scolarships", more "government funding" in such a way that it makes sense to do things right (not just to do things "profitable" which is certainly not equating to right). Actually when it comes down to it, this is the core of the problem... "profit" in terms of money does not equal "profit" in terms of society and people. It infact means the opposite.

Lets make "profit" in money to "profit" society.

Tuesday 8 February 2011

Do No Reply type emails should be banned.

With the ever rising tide of "phishing" scams why is it that major players are still using "do not reply" email addresses. It seems to me this is basicly saying f**k off to the consumer, your not important enough for us to listen to you but we still want you f**king money now hand it over (even though its worded in the nicest tones possible).

I am making a policy. I am going to generally not deal with any company which emails me anything in the form of a "do not reply to this address" email (that is, anyone I'm not already dealing with *sigh*. I guess you can't change some things).

Say NO to do not reply!

Thursday 20 January 2011

Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 - less good for hardcore coders

In my last position I worked extensively with Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 and generally found it to be a good system. Until receiently...

The short version:

When running in debug mode the system changes pointer values at runtime.

This mostly will go unnoticed because the debugging IDE reports the correct values and even does the correct maths. So if you try doing the following:

((size_t)(&FunctionOne)) - ((size_t)(&FunctionTwo))

If you look at the result in the debugging IDE you might get (real example):

((size_t)(0x011ee0e0)) - ((size_t)(&0x011ee050)) = 0x00000090

However, if you try an apply this in your running code you get instead:

((size_t)(0x011d132f)) - ((size_t)(0x011d137a)) = 0xffffffb5


Now, I get what its trying to do here (at least I think I might) its actually adding a call stub to the functions which probably adds a bunch of debug checks to try and help out a poor developer.

Whats majorly annoying is:
  1. It does not translate the addresses consistantly! So (like in the above example) addresses which where previously ordered top to bottom are transposed to the opposite effective order.  
  2. If you attempted to perform an in memory transfer of this functions data you would copy garbage (or at least not the function proper).
  3. Maths carried out on pointers is completely meaningless (e.g. deriving the length by the difference between two pointers is not possible, though arguably this is bad practice anyway).
  4. Confusing because the IDE reports the correct values, addresses and maths (e.g. results in IDE will not match results of performing exact same math in code).
DoggyDude96a

Saturday 15 January 2011

Left feeling very negatively towards Disney and Pixar

First off, I think these two companies are great. Producing some fabulous stuff.

What I am left spitting bricks over is their damn, up their own arse self advertising at the beginning of their DVD's.

Firstly, I've bought your damn movie, don't force me to watch promotions of your other movies! >.<

Secondly, and this is the biggest annoyance, I got the Toy Story collection as a Christmas present and on every damn DVD theres a spoiler for the third movie and on the second DVD its PART OF THE INTRO TO THE DVD!

Oh my god! F**king annoying.

So, my "Arse Company of the Day award" suprisingly goes to Pixar and Disney DVD division.