"The Pilot" Worst Dr Who episode I've seen

So this was the single worst Dr Who I've experienced. I was even inclined to go online and see what general opinion was on episodes. I was surprised what I found, the lists mainly included episodes which I either enjoyed or where alright. So it's clear that opinion is well divided.

However, I've just watched 'The Pilot' and WOW was it BAD. The actress who was the main character did well with a very bad story and whilst I haven't taken too her as the new companion, I felt the acting was pretty good. The real problem was with the god awful plot.

It started promisingly with an idea about a sentient ship fuel or oil, leaked from a landed ship and now trying to do its task alone. This was very similar to the concept behind 'Girl in the Wardrobe' which I dearly loved (superb episode) so I felt initially there was some promise, then everything went completely silly (and not in the good Matt Smith way).

First of all this 'ship repair fluid' was able to travel anywhere in space and time. What the &#@($&.

So if it's some sort of sentient repair system, it can easily travel back to the main ship with such powers and get right along with its purpose! If it is some kind of 'rebel' sentient repair system, it doesn't make any more sense then (but at least its some kind of excuse). Next, to add silly on top of silly, when confronted with simply a new enemy, instead of the usual intelligent analysis and cunning, the very first thing the doctor does is drag his whole crew into the middle of a Darlek war-zone *face palm*. WHAT THE F#*K? The Doctor, who is a stallwart protector of his companions, who just LOST to the Quantum Shade the most love companion he had (not to mention Amy Pond, Rose and the other most loved predecessors) he goes and immediately takes his new companions from a completely unknown danger (where in fact they don't actually know their really at risk except by a squinting girl) to face or at least encounter an enemy where he certainly knows they aren't safe. WORSE the episode doesn't end, it just simply fizzles out when the new companion has a quick hand hold with the girl (and don't get me wrong, the lesbian story line is definitely something I appalaud as endaging an alternate lifestyle and audience, but come on, DrWho can be better). Adding the lesbian character is a nice touch but then immediately destroying both her immediate love interests felt really bad. Though whilst a weak way to take that plot aspect, it still had more potential than the main story.

Well I'm just two episodes into Season 10 and fully understand why the Who Hype has died down, its because David Tenant left, Matt Smith managed to push past the loss to do a really good set of seasons, then Peter Capaldi managed to bring back a little of the feel of William Hartnel as well as adding some nice freshness as well. It's just a shame that it's sunk so low.

I was rolling my eyes at all the direct lifts from Harry Potter in season 9 (for those who didn't spot them: Moving Staircases, Dementor, Naiagi, Dark Lord *eyerolls*). Seriously, Davros has a name which induces enough fear without referring to him by Harry Potter references and giving him a snake (who should have been named Nagini since they lifted the rest of the idea) as an assassin.

It's so sad how bad its got, I only hope that as I watch more of Season 10 it perks up.

ED: So I'm watching it again, trying to give it a chance in the light of the rest of season 10. Sadly my opinion is not altered, this was a terrible stumbing start for the producer. On one final note, the effects are more than a little reminisant of Waters of Mars.

Brand new Steam Game and code already registered to another account

My cousin gave me "The Orange Box" (which he had bought some years before and never got around to playing it). I opened the box, entered the CD Key into Steam to be denied installation. As you might also know, Steam doesn't allow to install the game from the DVD media on which it comes and indeed frequently it seems the game isn't even on the DVD, just some parts of the game (if your lucky) and a copy of the Steam client.

What does all this mean? Well it means I now own a heap of useless plastic!

What recourse do I have with Valve?

https://support.steampowered.com/troubleshooter.php?do=view&id=1

So venturing to that link, you find three options:

1. Go back to the original vendor for resolution (since this game was bought years back not possible)
2. Are you sure you didn't just install it already and forget >.<
3. Hey maybe this is a second hand copy? (we won't help)

The problem is that we live in a unique commercial relationship with online vendors. They, legally, can provide us with NOTHING and then make us pay them again.

I grew up in the 1980's and 1990's when vendors provided actual games on actual disks. Once you owned the disk you had the right to install and use the game on one PC. You could finish the game yourself, uninstall the game, sell it to a friend, they could then play the game themselves and this was all within your right as a consumer. Since you bought a copy of the game which you owned.

Now the law having been made into a joke, we own precisely nothing (oh, a peice of plastic with a copy of the steam client).

So, if you buy a game in the shop, better install it in the week of launch or you will lose the game and Steam will care ZERO.

I looked about online and I can see there are advertised "Steam Wallet Code Generators" which presumably randomly generate potential keys for people to type into steam and see what game they get for "free" at the expense of the future buyer of the DVD disk.

Internet Sheriffs. We the people... we need to make the law online

I am surveying the state of the internet with regards to law, and the state I find is something akin to the law found in the Wild West of America during it's worst years of corruption.

I was considering the matter, and we, all the peoples of the internet are letting ourselves be implicitly ruled and overruled by greedy corporations.

What I decided needs to happen is we need to establish some decent and publicly agreeable laws in an online crowd supported fashion and popularise these decent and people serving laws in a way that they can be presented to governments around the world as a fait accompli complete and with massive support and popular backing, so as the American constitution was founded so, we the people, being the people of the planet earth can establish an internet which doesn't support greedy, money grabbing techniques and practices but is a return to form of a place of freedom of speech and protection of human rights and dignity.

So, I figured I'd try starting the effort here and see if I can't bring some of you good people along this journey.

To start this great en-devour (which I admit might die right here on this first blog post if insufficient people care about this issue) I will state a simple set of aims:

1. To establish a set of laws and principles to protect the dignity, privacy and rights of the individual to control and ensure any published works concerning themselves are accurate, factual and written with a balanced perspective.
2. To provide a structured method of legal recourse to combat and eliminate propagandist and unscientific publications which can shown to be an untruthful attack on an individual or an unreasonable breach of their rights to privacy (to wit, the right to have their address not be publicly available excepting agreed lawful usage).
3. To restrict the freedom of expression act to matters provable to be either strictly true in the scientific sense or purely a matter of opinion relating to some provable truth and where matters are non-provable the article must emphasise such fact clearly and unambiguously.
4. To re-establish responsibility upon publishers, especially corporate publishers, to require to provide physical copies of paid software which can be installed and used from a physical medium without recourse to require internet activation and also to force said companies to always provided any paid update in a similar manor.
5. To prevent and deny online rental and licensing software agreements which seek to force the customer into a monopoly relationship with the vendor (aka Cloud Computing). 
6. To establish a stable system of online purchase tied closely only to actual demonstrable costs published for the customer to review (for example, if the software vendor is required to pay a fee for hosting their solution, it should be disclosed to the customer and be the only exception to the rental / licensing agreement).
7. To restore to consumers statutory rights regarding paid for softwares such that no legal agreement can cancel or otherwise dismiss those right by contract and the consumer cannot surrender the rights.
8. To make software giants responsible for and conscious of issues of customer privacy and choice.
9. To deny artificial requirement for internet connection for services and to prevent the creation of internet services specifically and singularly designed to deny the end user the ability to run the solution in an offline manor.
10. To enforce ALL software providers to provide a valid and manned contact email address and a minimum turn around on responses to queries with legal ramification (indicated by some simple tag within the email subject), giving them 28 days to respond before they enter an illegal stance there by denying the "noreply@" style email addresses and other mechanisms to ignore so called "troublesome customers".
11. To define "lock in" solutions in the form of App Stores as de-faco monopolies and therefore to be regulated and controlled by local government to ensure fair representation within the medium of all peoples.
12. Force solution providers to provide a base license agreement containing minimal legal content designed purely for the insurance of meeting legal obligation which is mandatory and deemed reasonable. Then any additional 'agreements' must be optional and not impact the primary use of the service, there by providing fair use and not an 'everything or nothing' agreement as we find today.

I realise these are lofty aims and they undermine present (I argue institutionally corrupted) business practices.

Who's with me?

Suspicious Breakages of Post Support Microsoft Operating Systems

In 2015, I had 2 computers at the peek of correct configuration and function, these where respectively a Windows XP machine and a Windows Vista machine.

These two PC's where fast performing, well configured and virus protected.

At this time, I emigrated back to New Zealand leaving these PC's shutdown.

Four years later, I return home, boot up the XP PC and it's still working well. So I set it up for my mother, automatic updates later and the system slows down to a crawl and the internet randomly disconnects. No viruses, no Mal Ware, JUST Microsoft F**KING UP my system (I have to believe deliberately breaking the out of support systems).

Anyway, so I boot the Vista PC and Windows DreamScene is suddenly no longer running. I re-enable the component, it runs for a few mins then lags out. I had used Windows DreamScene for many years before and never encountered one single issue with the product! I have / can-attest-I-have no hardware issues and the many previous years of faultless running is not any kind of daydream.

I can't believe people are accepting Windows 10 from such a corporation. I am a Microsoft Developer (for my sins) and the underlying OS is sound, the problem appears to be they have employed measures to ensure you won't remain satisfied with an older product (since they have blatantly added 'features' to make software deliberately bad / faulty after their chosen lifespan. I will experiment with setting my clock back 5 years and see if that fixes all the issues, unless Windows Updates snuck on)

Software vendor tricks to invade our privacy

Let's take a look at Visual Studio 2017. It's being made available generally, but lets look not at the solution but precisely how it's being made available and the general pattern of disgusting behavior of the modern software age.

I will outline the pattern rather than the specifics, since the pattern applies generally to many vendors.

1. Vendor creates some tool and attempt to engender a market desire for the tool (fair enough)
2. Vendor provides some Stub Executable to gain access to the tool. The key features of this stub are:
• Contains nothing of value or use to yourself 
• It's primary aim is to make sure the vendor has all your details without giving anything away
• It will invoke several internet requests and connections to the vendor providing them with many details about your system (none of which they will tell they are sending except in a vague way to meet privacy laws).
• It (eventually) downloads other components, many of which are completely unnecessary for your task, but essential for the vendors ongoing profiling of you.
• Often, the stub will even reconfigure your system to ensure the vendors program can always connect to the vendors systems whenever your online (without any prompting or asking).
3.  If your fortunate, after the Stub finishes it's dissection of your system and sends its analysis to the vendor, you may receive a version of the software you actually desired when you downloaded the stub executable. Though a very real possible outcome is that you are denied download due to the analysis made.

Now, all this information the vendor is getting is what older generation know to be "their market value". Advertisers and other marketing companies resell or pay (depending) for information about us as potential consumers of their products (and need to know this information to be a success). It is valuable information to have and retain, though for us, it is a cost to give it away (since a person unaware of my habits provides prices based on their desire to sell, but someone aware of my usages, can provide prices based on my documented needs (if they know I need something, they know they will be able to charge more and I won't have much of a choice but to pay). So I hope you can understand how giving away your details results in higher costs for yourself! Normally, this 'value' (our private information which may be used to identify what we want and need) is ours to control, since we have rights to privacy and choose with whom we share knowledge, so for example typically we are happy to let a relative know what we like so they could potentially buy us a better suited gift or let a friend know so they can select activities we may be interested in and let us know about them. Once these software's get on our system, we give up these 'rights' (and usually by implicit legal agreement via some privacy policy, which will make lots of claims of being 'decent' but clearly nothing about not using it to increase our costs).

It wouldn't even be SO bad, if we just gave away the information at the time of download, but modern software aims to ensure that we are profiled constantly. The value we receive is usually negligible, even to the extent where the software use agreement prohibits us profiting from using the software we get in many, many ways. Though the vendor gets ongoing access to our details, and usually because of the way the software is setup we will find it almost impossible to reasonably use without some kind of 'regular check in' with the vendor.

Google and Apple have taken this to it's ultimate evil by tieing all their services to a device which is, by design, giving out out details 24/7 (e.g. the Mobile Phone).

Having said all that, of course, its up to us how we make use (profitably) of the software we receive, though legally if you look into it, its normally only good for us in so much as it advantages also the software vendor.

I myself am a vendor of software, so I do realise the difficulties of a market place within which their has become a trend of many people providing their efforts free of charge (see Open Source). Open Source is a nice aim, but its at odds with an economic system driven by a need for profit to survive.

So I can, to an extent, understand why software giants wish to use every avenue to ensure profitability and to also protect their investments. The problem I have is that they do that without ethics. If a product asked you politely "if you wouldn't mind sharing" then a person can choose. I know many may point to the Microsoft "Customer experience improvement program" as a laudable example of this, and I do agree, the problem comes in that the only reason that exists is because their are still enough laws that Microsoft cannot blanket get us to agree to give them everything in one agreement, and by providing that mechanism many people not understanding will imagine they only provide information via this avenue. The reality is as soon as we agree to the license we are profiled.

Response to the BitCoin bullshit

So, reading this kind of CRAP online:

http://www.24businessreport.com/news/en/hiax/index.html

Articles talk about BitCoin being:

• A decentralised currency,
• Not controlled by a government,
• Limited availability

It's complete nonsense, but it's fueling a hype which gullible people are buying into.

1. Anyone can host a bit coin server and generate coins (https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/16654/how-to-get-copy-of-bitcoin-source-code). Thus making it as much a currency as, say, snot or mucus.
2. It IS implicitly controlled by EVERY government, as its entire value is rated by OTHER REAL HARD CURRENCIES. Which means it should be called "Inflation Coin".
3. Whilst technically adhering to the algorithm for the coin may indeed mean there can be limited numbers issued, its like any other form of exchange for worthless items. Every snowflake is unique, but that most anyone can generate them and they are pretty useless in of themselves means anyone placing real world currency into "BitCoins" is either out to exploit their potential for inflating worth (making 12 dollars into 1 million by "magically" people suddenly declaring their now worth that "because of demand").

It's the ultimate in vapor ware, and its any idiot who pays the inflated prices for doing so is either some kind of scammer or the last person in the pyramid. Its like in the housing market, except without a house, or indeed ANYTHING. So its really NOT like that market, except in the stupidity with which one person pays another 1,000,000 for a property clearly worth only 120,000. Except, can you say to yourself after paying 'well I love this bitcoin and the location is perfect, I'm glad I paid this much' or will you be fretting as the price goes down or in suspense as people supposedly will pay you more.

Still, if people can gain 'wealth' by BitCoin anyone can be rich *eye rolls*.

Memories of a primary / childhood romance

When I was in Primary School (and for the reference I went to a school called Town Green Primary school) I never thought about much beside each day and what I wanted to do. At this lovely age I was mostly focused on other people, but I was also a clumsy kind of child so I didn't get along so well with my own age group (who seemed to be very mean to me age 6/7). So, I naturally kept returning to play in the younger kids playground where everyone was more accepting. I remember that I fell into playing with one girl who was very lovely, I was too young at the time to see her for anything besides our play together but I really enjoyed just helping her find daisies and we would work together to make daisy chains and just meet up each break time to play games and make these daisy chains. At that age all I had cared about was joining in and this was a perfectly fun and fulfilling way to spend my breaks. I didn't think about it at the time, but it was just the two of us sitting in a quite spot together doing this happily.

One day, one of the older kids came over to me when we where sitting together and began to tease me for playing girly games. I was upset, because back then things mattered to me what others thought. I was annoyed because I hadn't considered what I was doing only that I was enjoying it and I was immature. So, instead of realising this bully was trouble, I shamefully got angry with the girl I had been playing with for so long for making me look foolish and refused to play with her anymore :(.

I remember I made her cry but I was so angry that I'd been made to look like a fool in front of other, and too childish to blame the others instead. I did of course forget about things in time and move on, but I never really forgot that girl or how happy those times spent together where.

I never really fitted in, and whilst I did okay and had good friends in the younger age group I never really found my place.

I remember when I hit 15, I was on my way home and I had learned (from those types of bully experiences) to ignore people. Especially girls, who had taken to attracting my attention only to loudly for cry 'like I would want your attention' (or some variant there of) so I'd become very reclusive. I was walking up the ramp away from the station, having got off early go to my best friends house. As I walked up the rank, a girl called out 'My friend really likes you'. I was already triggered and ready for this, but this was different in that she was calling out another girls feelings, but I felt sure it was a trick. So I called back, "Well, if she likes me she can tell me herself!" feeling this would put paid the trick. Though, I saw the girl behind her burst into tears and run back down towards the train as I walked away.

I don't know if it was the same girl, but it always felt it was.

I have not had a happy life in terms of people and I really, really regret letting go this wondrous friendship of two people simply happy together. I don't know if she felt the same or if she will even be still single or EVEN recall me. Though if someone recognises either of these tales and went to Town Green school in the 1980's and maybe .... well anyway completely unlikely. The best and worst of me is blogged here. Though, no one is their best and worst rants.

Doggy (missing the girl who played with him without question, pressure or want besides my company and really regretting not realising that value age 6 and 15 respectively)