There is a lot of agreement that on the Internet, the lowest form of life live in the You Tube comments threads. There's a lot to be said for this, but I think it's fair to say you can find worse on Facebook.
To gain objectivity on this it's important to remove yourself from the issue of the day that happens to be the topic of the Facebook group in question and look at what is being written.
It's venomous stuff. I watch people I consider friends joining such groups and can't help but click the link. I never like what I see. I can't decide whether these friends just joined based on the title and didn't read the wall, but if they did read it and still want to be associated with it, it becomes harder for me to want to be associated with them.
These groups are usually about one or both of two things. Hate of a group of people based on belief X or hate of an individual based on something they have done.
I should be able to look at "let's kick all muslims out of England" vs "Get the scum that killed Rhys Jones" and see some sort of a difference, but I don't. One at it's extreme would probably advocate a genocide whilst the other at it's least extreme advocates a murderer going to jail. It shouldn't be hard to see which of these two statements is more rational and supportable by a reasonable person. Once you actually look at the group behind the title, that objectivity gets buried behind walls of hate filled language. The topics wander, no question. The former had a wall post about us (England I guess) bombing them (anyone's guess - Muslimland?) in their country, which if you'll recall was not the topic. The latter was from memory a long string of people describing in graphic detail how they would kill the perpetrator. The vague original group name means this is technically on topic, but who is it helping?
When it's about a child being killed or abused it's particularly hard to read. Groups such as these are void of a goal in general. Nobody is on the other side of the argument. If I had to guess i'd say these groups comprise a gathering of seemingly irrational people with a small peppering of rational ones because many rational people take one look and decide not to touch it with a ten foot pole. I am one such person. I can't decide whether my friends are or not. I rarely see them having left a wall post either way, but the act of joining in itself says something. Don't assume that joining a group doesn't associate you with the beliefs of people in that group. There may not be a clear definition of what a Facebook group is actually supposed to represent in the so called real world, but if you imagine a community centre, rows of chairs and motivational speakers with agendas you're probably close. Imagine the people in these rows shouting out some of the things you've seen on walls of these groups. Do you want to be in this room? Would you put your name on a list of members?
Some of it is hard to fathom. Child kills child. Child murder, even by child, is the worst thing imaginable, so even though the killer was a child, the group decides this other child must die too. I can't take seriously a group of people that want to inflict a vigilante death penalty on a kid... Unless of course that kid has the evil gene. Then I think we should burn him. Sound stupid? Try reading a few of these groups, and if you agree with me, consider not joining them. In six months time when your name and picture randomly appears in the first few members shown, you have no idea what that top wall post just below it will say. Groups are fine, but not for this!
Saturday, January 31, 2009
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
My Problem with the Windows 7 Taskbar
I don't expect i'm the first person to piece this conclusion together. In fact, I hope thousands of beta testers have done so and made noise about it. I just can't seem to find any, but this is one of those topics that seems difficult to search for.
The Taskbar, in trying to be more dock like now holds on to applications I want quick access to when they're closed. This is great. The concept of the new Taskbar is sound. The implementation is not flexible, or perhaps, not yet, or at very least not clearly.
There are a plethora of Windows applications that opt to live in what until 2009, everybody called the System Tray. Windows 7 calls this the Notification Area. Whether this is really a change or whether this was always the technical name I have no idea, but this area is certainly repurposed in 7 for the type of use that it got way back before everyone decided they should put an icon down there. Yahoo and AOL, i'm frowning at you.
My Twitter tool of choice is twhirl and it provides a perfect example of the problem i'd like to illustrate.
I open twhirl. I like it and want easy access, so I choose to "pin it to taskbar" in 7. I now have a launcher twhirl icon down there when I close the application. I click it, and as my settings dictate, the application starts with an open window. The same taskbar area now becomes a running twhirl application - at this precise point we're seeing classic behavior since Memphis back in 95 (or was it 94/96?) right here.
I'm now aware that some german dude actually SPAT at @techcrunch's face then ran away, courtesy of Hugh MacLeod, which I ponder and absorb.. seems a little extreme... and i'm ready to get on with some work. A click of the cross in twhirl like most applications will close it completely. You could argue it's then accessible to me on the taskbar, but unfortunately, it's no longer going to notify me of new tweets, quite simply because it won't be running, so instead I choose to minimise it. It is at this point things go wrong. It heads down and right to the Notification Area.
The icon on the taskbar reverts to a launcher! If the application allowed it, clicking this would launch another instance. Because it doesn't, clicking it does nothing. The only way I get twhirl back is to click the little Notification Area arrow and click the twhirl icon in there. I can also then choose to show it in the tray section eliminating one click. As soon as I click the notification icon, the taskbar launcher becomes a running application again.
So, what purpose does putting twhirl on my taskbar serve? Launching it first time, then taking up space for no further gain. To keep click count down I actually end up with two twhirl icons in the bottom 30-40 pixels of my screen. One on the taskbar and one in the Notification Area.
That's the essence. Application developers can easily work around this by reworking their applications to use the taskbar in the traditional way and stay away from the tray, but maybe Microsoft could help. How about that little list of options under Customize in the Notification Area against each little icon gave me the option to "Pin to taskbar". Unless MS realise that these two areas need to be able to relate, I fear many applications will never behave ideally pinned to the taskbar. Enough said.
Two more taskbar gripes in fewer words:
1. I can't pin just anything down there. File shortcuts head into a catchall context menu under Explorer, an icon which I probably don't want there at all. Control Panel shortcuts won't pin at all. I used to keep a shortcut to "Sound" down there to switch quickly between speakers and HDMI output. No way to do this here short of reinstating a quick launch toolbar down there, which is a messy solution, though it works.
2. Frequent Firefox occurrence. You browse and end up downloading something. You don't close the Download window. Hours later you close your browser window(s) leaving just the Download window. Firefox is still running, but that's fine with you. In the past I could now relaunch Firefox and the remainder of the instance would resurrect itself. Indeed I can still do this from any normal shortcut to firefox.exe or by launching it directly, however I can't launch it from my preferred pinned icon on the taskbar because until that last window is closed, the still running application remains. I must close the Download window to obtain my launcher icon to launch from scratch. Actually by far the best thing to solve this would be for Mozilla to stop creating a taskbar placeholder for every single window in Firefox that would be better off a child, so I won't so much fault Microsoft here.
Disjointed, but there's a real interface problem here. I hope the taskbar isn't final yet.
The Taskbar, in trying to be more dock like now holds on to applications I want quick access to when they're closed. This is great. The concept of the new Taskbar is sound. The implementation is not flexible, or perhaps, not yet, or at very least not clearly.
There are a plethora of Windows applications that opt to live in what until 2009, everybody called the System Tray. Windows 7 calls this the Notification Area. Whether this is really a change or whether this was always the technical name I have no idea, but this area is certainly repurposed in 7 for the type of use that it got way back before everyone decided they should put an icon down there. Yahoo and AOL, i'm frowning at you.
My Twitter tool of choice is twhirl and it provides a perfect example of the problem i'd like to illustrate.
I open twhirl. I like it and want easy access, so I choose to "pin it to taskbar" in 7. I now have a launcher twhirl icon down there when I close the application. I click it, and as my settings dictate, the application starts with an open window. The same taskbar area now becomes a running twhirl application - at this precise point we're seeing classic behavior since Memphis back in 95 (or was it 94/96?) right here.
I'm now aware that some german dude actually SPAT at @techcrunch's face then ran away, courtesy of Hugh MacLeod, which I ponder and absorb.. seems a little extreme... and i'm ready to get on with some work. A click of the cross in twhirl like most applications will close it completely. You could argue it's then accessible to me on the taskbar, but unfortunately, it's no longer going to notify me of new tweets, quite simply because it won't be running, so instead I choose to minimise it. It is at this point things go wrong. It heads down and right to the Notification Area.
The icon on the taskbar reverts to a launcher! If the application allowed it, clicking this would launch another instance. Because it doesn't, clicking it does nothing. The only way I get twhirl back is to click the little Notification Area arrow and click the twhirl icon in there. I can also then choose to show it in the tray section eliminating one click. As soon as I click the notification icon, the taskbar launcher becomes a running application again.
So, what purpose does putting twhirl on my taskbar serve? Launching it first time, then taking up space for no further gain. To keep click count down I actually end up with two twhirl icons in the bottom 30-40 pixels of my screen. One on the taskbar and one in the Notification Area.
That's the essence. Application developers can easily work around this by reworking their applications to use the taskbar in the traditional way and stay away from the tray, but maybe Microsoft could help. How about that little list of options under Customize in the Notification Area against each little icon gave me the option to "Pin to taskbar". Unless MS realise that these two areas need to be able to relate, I fear many applications will never behave ideally pinned to the taskbar. Enough said.
Two more taskbar gripes in fewer words:
1. I can't pin just anything down there. File shortcuts head into a catchall context menu under Explorer, an icon which I probably don't want there at all. Control Panel shortcuts won't pin at all. I used to keep a shortcut to "Sound" down there to switch quickly between speakers and HDMI output. No way to do this here short of reinstating a quick launch toolbar down there, which is a messy solution, though it works.
2. Frequent Firefox occurrence. You browse and end up downloading something. You don't close the Download window. Hours later you close your browser window(s) leaving just the Download window. Firefox is still running, but that's fine with you. In the past I could now relaunch Firefox and the remainder of the instance would resurrect itself. Indeed I can still do this from any normal shortcut to firefox.exe or by launching it directly, however I can't launch it from my preferred pinned icon on the taskbar because until that last window is closed, the still running application remains. I must close the Download window to obtain my launcher icon to launch from scratch. Actually by far the best thing to solve this would be for Mozilla to stop creating a taskbar placeholder for every single window in Firefox that would be better off a child, so I won't so much fault Microsoft here.
Disjointed, but there's a real interface problem here. I hope the taskbar isn't final yet.
Friday, January 16, 2009
Getting my goat, grinding my gears...
I'm in an okay mood, but two things are irritating me this evening.
Freecycle.
Seagate.
Freecycle because despite the fact that it seemed to be working, has actually not worked.
Seagate because despite the fact that it seems to be working, it's probably going to stop soon.
I have no interest in obtaining other people's offers. There's no space, and I have pretty much what I need. The concept of Freecycle is fine. Why waste something that someone else can use on a landfill site. Fine. I don't even care about the people that technically abuse the good natured nature of the offerings by taking then selling on. All I wanted to do was rid myself of my VHS collection.
My 7200.11 is my second. The first started having problems from day one, and it was replaced. I had a choice to take a refund and shop elsewhere but chose not to. Today, the web reports that these drives are failing in large numbers. Rumour has it new drives are fixed before shipping, but no firmware upgrade exists, though it's widely believed a firmware issue, and by no means a new one, which happens at boot up and renders the disk intact but undetectable, useful only to expensive data recovery services.
I offer my VHS collection, about 20 tapes of Simpsons, Red Dwarf - stuff people like to watch. Three people respond very quickly. I offer them to the first person, but receive no response back. I offer it to the second and again, no response. The third responds, but has failed to show up to collect them at the agreed time.
The drive doesn't contain much of personal value. It was supposed to be a place to store music, TV and backup important files away from my main almost full drive. That unfortunately means that it was supposed to be the drive that I would rely on not to fail if the other one did. The music is mirrored elsewhere, but the video files are far too large. Now I can lose them in one fell swoop. The only thing I can really do is buy yet another drive to back this one up.
I take too long over emailing. I must get messages just right. This means my time spent sorting out freecycle is in excess of an hour. This is time that could have been better spent. I'm baffled as to why three people eagerly respond to tell me they want what i'm offering, then don't follow through. I think there must be a psychological barrier for some with this service. If it's of no value to me, then they're doing me the favour. At very least, the whole transaction can be very casual. I should be lucky that I don't have to drive to the recycling centre.
Freecycle is a glorified collection of Yahoo! groups. Another internet forum. If three of it's members are anything to go by, not exempt from everything that is wrong with Internet forums. Little else to say on that.
Seagate is one of the two biggest names in storage. It has failed to respond to this mass failure entirely so far. The damage is done. If next week I get a firmware upgrade I will still never go near them again. Mean time between failures is fine for statistical analysis but when you sell millions of time bombs disguised as ways to store data, the very second you fix it (again, it is rumoured to be fixed on newly shipped drives), fix it for everyone! Many hundreds of thousands of potential explosions are on drives in the hands of people perfectly capable of flashing firmware. Waiting just guarantees a continued stream of customers circling then ditching into the plug hole until the day the fix comes in, and that's customers that are affected already AND customers that are lucky enough not to experience the problem. I am now going to limit switching on my server machine because statistically speaking, the fewer times I turn this on until I figure out what to do, the less likely I am to suddenly be confronted with a missing drive and that sickening feeling that even though I knew this was going to happen, I somehow haven't fully protected myself against it. On the other hand, it's on now, so the hardcore types would tell me I shouldn't switch it off again. At the moment it's 100% in my hands. Problem is, I have nowhere to move the data to, unless you want me to burn 30 DVD's, half of which will likely fail to restore later.
Let's hear it once for eBay and Western Digital!
Freecycle.
Seagate.
Freecycle because despite the fact that it seemed to be working, has actually not worked.
Seagate because despite the fact that it seems to be working, it's probably going to stop soon.
I have no interest in obtaining other people's offers. There's no space, and I have pretty much what I need. The concept of Freecycle is fine. Why waste something that someone else can use on a landfill site. Fine. I don't even care about the people that technically abuse the good natured nature of the offerings by taking then selling on. All I wanted to do was rid myself of my VHS collection.
My 7200.11 is my second. The first started having problems from day one, and it was replaced. I had a choice to take a refund and shop elsewhere but chose not to. Today, the web reports that these drives are failing in large numbers. Rumour has it new drives are fixed before shipping, but no firmware upgrade exists, though it's widely believed a firmware issue, and by no means a new one, which happens at boot up and renders the disk intact but undetectable, useful only to expensive data recovery services.
I offer my VHS collection, about 20 tapes of Simpsons, Red Dwarf - stuff people like to watch. Three people respond very quickly. I offer them to the first person, but receive no response back. I offer it to the second and again, no response. The third responds, but has failed to show up to collect them at the agreed time.
The drive doesn't contain much of personal value. It was supposed to be a place to store music, TV and backup important files away from my main almost full drive. That unfortunately means that it was supposed to be the drive that I would rely on not to fail if the other one did. The music is mirrored elsewhere, but the video files are far too large. Now I can lose them in one fell swoop. The only thing I can really do is buy yet another drive to back this one up.
I take too long over emailing. I must get messages just right. This means my time spent sorting out freecycle is in excess of an hour. This is time that could have been better spent. I'm baffled as to why three people eagerly respond to tell me they want what i'm offering, then don't follow through. I think there must be a psychological barrier for some with this service. If it's of no value to me, then they're doing me the favour. At very least, the whole transaction can be very casual. I should be lucky that I don't have to drive to the recycling centre.
Freecycle is a glorified collection of Yahoo! groups. Another internet forum. If three of it's members are anything to go by, not exempt from everything that is wrong with Internet forums. Little else to say on that.
Seagate is one of the two biggest names in storage. It has failed to respond to this mass failure entirely so far. The damage is done. If next week I get a firmware upgrade I will still never go near them again. Mean time between failures is fine for statistical analysis but when you sell millions of time bombs disguised as ways to store data, the very second you fix it (again, it is rumoured to be fixed on newly shipped drives), fix it for everyone! Many hundreds of thousands of potential explosions are on drives in the hands of people perfectly capable of flashing firmware. Waiting just guarantees a continued stream of customers circling then ditching into the plug hole until the day the fix comes in, and that's customers that are affected already AND customers that are lucky enough not to experience the problem. I am now going to limit switching on my server machine because statistically speaking, the fewer times I turn this on until I figure out what to do, the less likely I am to suddenly be confronted with a missing drive and that sickening feeling that even though I knew this was going to happen, I somehow haven't fully protected myself against it. On the other hand, it's on now, so the hardcore types would tell me I shouldn't switch it off again. At the moment it's 100% in my hands. Problem is, I have nowhere to move the data to, unless you want me to burn 30 DVD's, half of which will likely fail to restore later.
Let's hear it once for eBay and Western Digital!
Thursday, January 01, 2009
2009 - What I'll Do
- Eat better
- Exercise
Fucking hell.
- Play the piano.
- Improve my guitar skill level.
- Finally get a proper living room sound setup.
- Figure out my next career step.
- Make more of an effort to better understand important, but far away, happenings.
- Cook more varied meals.
- Isolate myself less at work at lunch time.
- Move into a terraced house giving me more space.
- Try harder to meet people.
- Try harder not to have that argumentative tone in friendly conversation.
- Get into the local music scene.
- Visit more of the UK. None of it is that far away.
- Educate myself better on libertarianism in order to better explain it to others.
- Throw out every VHS cassette.
- Weigh less than eleven and a half stone.
- Put away less alcohol. It's becoming less enjoyable.
- Clean up more.
- Find the best view in Leicester/Leicestershire.
- Stop using standby.
- Don't cave in to climate change propaganda beyond career supporting lip service.
- Walk more and further.
- Code something outside of work. dotnet, java, python, whatever, just do it.
- Keep plants alive.
- Visit Japan.
- Learn every country on the map.
This is so much more fun than what I did last year. It never occurred to just blurt out a list like this. I'll see how it went on 31/12/09!
Predictions for next year:
- The economic situation will somehow stagnantly stabilise. To the likes of me, things will get a little worse, but not much. Most of the pain will come from prices affected by the value of the pound. The greedier and less well off will fare worse.
- Apple fails to impress launching very little new or exciting. Other companies follow suit.
- Netbooks gain traction despite being given a bad rap. The tech pundits finally realise that it really is true about the majority of people not needing all that computing power.
- Amazon MP3 does better in the UK than it did in the US. iTunes starts to lose market share. Fewer and fewer artists speak out against piracy, whilst secretly wondering how they're going to continue to be rich.
- 2008 was the appetiser for destruction. 2009 will be the undoing of many things. Upwards of 90% of the western population won't notice. Far more of the rest of the world will, but we won't hear about that.
- Gordon Brown's leadership will be called into question yet again, this time resulting in an actual leadership challenge. It barely matters. Barrack Obama's shine will continue to fade, leading the media baffled as to where all the initial support came from or went.
Even if these are pure shit, you must admit, i've nailed the way they're supposed to be written. The format in general is: Prediction > Outcome > Smartarse comment.
It's gonna be a year. Not necessarily a crazy year or a good year, but a year all the same. Will catch you somewhere along the way, no doubt...
Happy New Year!
PS: I'm about a day away from buying a Casio Celviano AP-200. There is damn near no information on this model. If anyone has any pointers, please let me know. The only criticisms i've seen about the sound quality don't match my experience stacking them against the better known low end models eg Yamaha YDP140, Casio Privia 720PX, which both sounded weaker to me.
- Exercise
Fucking hell.
- Play the piano.
- Improve my guitar skill level.
- Finally get a proper living room sound setup.
- Figure out my next career step.
- Make more of an effort to better understand important, but far away, happenings.
- Cook more varied meals.
- Isolate myself less at work at lunch time.
- Move into a terraced house giving me more space.
- Try harder to meet people.
- Try harder not to have that argumentative tone in friendly conversation.
- Get into the local music scene.
- Visit more of the UK. None of it is that far away.
- Educate myself better on libertarianism in order to better explain it to others.
- Throw out every VHS cassette.
- Weigh less than eleven and a half stone.
- Put away less alcohol. It's becoming less enjoyable.
- Clean up more.
- Find the best view in Leicester/Leicestershire.
- Stop using standby.
- Don't cave in to climate change propaganda beyond career supporting lip service.
- Walk more and further.
- Code something outside of work. dotnet, java, python, whatever, just do it.
- Keep plants alive.
- Visit Japan.
- Learn every country on the map.
This is so much more fun than what I did last year. It never occurred to just blurt out a list like this. I'll see how it went on 31/12/09!
Predictions for next year:
- The economic situation will somehow stagnantly stabilise. To the likes of me, things will get a little worse, but not much. Most of the pain will come from prices affected by the value of the pound. The greedier and less well off will fare worse.
- Apple fails to impress launching very little new or exciting. Other companies follow suit.
- Netbooks gain traction despite being given a bad rap. The tech pundits finally realise that it really is true about the majority of people not needing all that computing power.
- Amazon MP3 does better in the UK than it did in the US. iTunes starts to lose market share. Fewer and fewer artists speak out against piracy, whilst secretly wondering how they're going to continue to be rich.
- 2008 was the appetiser for destruction. 2009 will be the undoing of many things. Upwards of 90% of the western population won't notice. Far more of the rest of the world will, but we won't hear about that.
- Gordon Brown's leadership will be called into question yet again, this time resulting in an actual leadership challenge. It barely matters. Barrack Obama's shine will continue to fade, leading the media baffled as to where all the initial support came from or went.
Even if these are pure shit, you must admit, i've nailed the way they're supposed to be written. The format in general is: Prediction > Outcome > Smartarse comment.
It's gonna be a year. Not necessarily a crazy year or a good year, but a year all the same. Will catch you somewhere along the way, no doubt...
Happy New Year!
PS: I'm about a day away from buying a Casio Celviano AP-200. There is damn near no information on this model. If anyone has any pointers, please let me know. The only criticisms i've seen about the sound quality don't match my experience stacking them against the better known low end models eg Yamaha YDP140, Casio Privia 720PX, which both sounded weaker to me.
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