I don’t mean to sound callous, but I am, so that’s how it comes out*

I’ve just received an email forward asking me to look out for a missing kid called Reachelle Marie Smith. As with 99% of these things, the email’s a load of nonsense: while it is indeed based on a real case, the girl didn’t go missing from Woking (as claimed; another version says it happened in Australia); she went missing from North Dakota. She isn’t three; if she’s still alive – which, quite frankly, is really bloody unlikely – she’ll be seven. Etc etc etc.

This Washington Post story might be useful if you’ve received the version of the mail telling you to look out for Leigh Cowen who “may be en route to Kansas”. He’s not en route to Kansas any more, and hasn’t been since 2006.

Leigh Cowen, 22, was found Tuesday inside a van on a gravel road at the Upper Souris National Wildlife Refuge, authorities said. Cowen appeared to have killed himself by carbon monoxide poisoning.

If you really, really must forward every tear-jerking email demanding people check their sheds for missing kids (and here’s a hint: you really, really shouldn’t), at least forward the right bloody information.

* When I’m in a bad mood I tend to channel Bill Hicks.

CES 2010: technology and a horrible bum disease

I’ve been following the more interesting developments at this week’s CES gadget frenzy, and naturally I’ve been writing about them too. First up, comparing Steve Ballmer to anal unpleasantness.

Every day, Apple shareholders wake up and thank their lucky stars that their chosen firm’s CEO isn’t Steve Ballmer. The Gordon Brown of tech could make even the Apple Tablet as desirable as some horrible bum disease.

Also, how tech can make teenagers’ lives miserable.

Parental controls are in everything. They’re in your Sky box, in your games console. They’re in Windows 7 and Snow Leopard. If they want to, your folks can even prevent you from doing anything vaguely interesting or useful on your iPhone in case you might see a word such as “tits”. And now they’re in your car.

Isn’t that awful?

Not to mention, Why Apple and Google should show at CES.

What we’d like to see is for Google and Apple to embrace CES, to join in the fun, to remember that consumer electronics are first and foremost about entertainment.

It’d be brilliant – the tech Glastonbury, and we don’t mean one of the rubbish years where everyone pretends to like Tom Jones.

They could heckle Steve Ballmer, deliver jaw-dropping keynotes and wake up in strange rooms with Steve Jobs missing, a baby in the cupboard and Mike Tyson’s tiger in the bathroom.

Last but not least: why comparing Android versus iPhone to PC versus Mac is, well, a great big load of shite.

“Technology tastemakers are thrilled with the platform’s open-ness”, Blodget asserts, waggling an accusing finger at Big Bad Apple and its treatment of developers. That’s irrelevant. Ogg Vorbis is open and thoroughly approved by technology tastemakers. When was the last time anybody without a beard ripped their CDs into that format?

And while risible, Apple’s treatment of the odd developer is only of interest to a few developers.

Is Android pretty nifty? Will it gain market share? Will a few iPhone refuseniks buy Nexus Ones? Yes, definitely and undoubtedly. Is the iPhone about to tank? Don’t be silly.

Buying books online for Xmas? I’d avoid Waterstone’s if I were you

I’m beginning to suspect that Waterstone’s online isn’t really cut out for the book selling business. The site’s nice. The prices are okay. The selection’s pretty good. That’s all fine. It’s just the getting-books-to-your-house bit that seems to have been designed by complete fucking numpties.

I ordered four books in mid-November, three of which were in stock and the fourth of which was due for publication that Friday. As expected, the order confirmation said, “Ooh, one of your books isn’t out yet. Once it is we’ll send the entire order to you”. Fine, I thought, and waited for the order to turn up.

And waited.

And waited.

And waited.

So I checked online. All four books were out of stock, said the order tracking page.

I emailed customer services.

Our website is wrong, customer services said. Three of the four books are in stock. The fourth one, the one that hadn’t been published when you ordered, isn’t in stock yet. Don’t worry, though. At 14 days, even if the fourth book hasn’t turned up, the other three books will be sent to you.

The books weren’t sent out on day 14. I checked online. All four books were out of stock.

I emailed again.

The website is wrong, customer services told me.

What they told me was this.

The three books that we told you were in stock weren’t in stock even though the website said they were in stock when you placed the order. They’re not in stock, and when we said three of the four books were in stock we were wrong because they weren’t in stock and they aren’t in stock. We don’t know when you’ll receive those books because they’re not in stock.

The other book, though, the fourth book that wasn’t in stock because it hadn’t been published and then it just wasn’t in stock, when we said it was out of stock we were wrong because that one is in stock and in fact it’s been despatched to you.

When will I get my other three books? It is a mystery!

So, yeah. If you’re ordering stuff for Xmas, Waterstones might not be the smartest choice.

That’s not a paywall. That’s a taking-the-piss-wall

After reading Mupwangle’s comment regarding The 4 of Us (in the Anorak’n'Roll thread further down the page), I decided to try and find out from the horse’s mouth why the band went completely off the radar in the mid-90s. There isn’t much online, but I did find a link to a recent interview in Hot Press (Ireland’s equivalent of the NME) that might have been worth reading. Unfortunately it turns out that the piece is behind a paywall, and there’s not even an extract, not even a paragraph, to indicate whether it’s going to be worth paying to read. So how much does Hot Press expect me to pay?

This article is now part of the hotpress.com archive. To access this article you need to subscribe to hotpress.com for the bargain price of €20 or be a subscriber to Hot Press Magazine.

Even by Irish standards, twenty euros seems rather pricey.

Who needs facts when you have faith?

There’s a truly extraordinary article by AN Wilson in today’s Daily Mail which, after something of an online storm, has been tweaked – so it’s no longer illustrated with a picture of Hitler, as it was this morning.  I’m not going to link to it because I’m increasingly convinced that the Mail runs really crazy stories for no other reason than to boost traffic.

It’s incredible, though.

The trouble with a ’scientific’ argument, of course, is that it is not made in the real world, but in a laboratory by an unimaginative academic relying solely on empirical facts

Imagine people relying solely on empirical facts!

Mr Wilson then compares scientists with their empirical facts to Dr Mengele, and suggests that Science = Hitler. I’m not making this up.

The only difference between Hitler and previous governments was that he believed, with babyish credulity, in science as the only truth

Here was me thinking one of the differences was that Hitler was a crazy motherfucker. Apparently not.

I am not suggesting that any British scientists are currently conducting experiments comparable to those which were allowed in Nazi Germany or in Soviet Russia. But I see the same habit of mind at work in Professor Nutt and his colleagues as made those mad scientists of the 20th century think they were above the moral law which governs the rest of us mortals.

Professor Nutt dared to suggest that government drugs policy was based on politics rather than reality. That’s not quite Mengele.

In fact, it is the arrogant scientific establishment which questions free expression. Think of the hoo-ha which occurred when one hospital doctor dared to question the wisdom of using the MMR vaccine.

That’ll be the hoo-hah which occured when one doctor made shit up and newspapers ran with it, seriously damaging the vaccination programme for no good reason and exposing children to potentially fatal illnesses. The worst offender? Yes, the Daily Mail.

The point here is not whether he was right or wrong

He was wrong. And here we are, years later, still suggesting that Wakefield is a victim rather than an offender (with pure intentions, perhaps, but the effect was still parents abandoning vaccination and exposing children to unnecessary risks). Scientists? It’s the newspapers we should be scared of.

Vaccines bad, m’kay?

Here we go again. Malcolm Coles argues that media reports are doing an MMR, this time with the cervical cancer vaccine:

Let’s be clear. The only reason parents are worried, boycotting the vaccine, and demanding suspensions of the vaccination program is because the media whipped up a storm with no evidence whatsoever.

Lily Allen, Halo 3 ODST

Today’s Guardian reports that Lily Allen’s blog had been removed due to online abuse, but neglects to mention that the abuse was over her own copyright infringement.

Earlier in the day Lily Allen, one of the few younger artists to speak out against online piracy, said she was dropping her public campaign against copyright theft because “the abuse was getting too much”. She had set up a blog “It’s Not Alright” – in reference to her first album Alright, Still – collating artists’ views after her comments that “filesharing is a disaster” for new talent. In its statement last night the FAC, expressed support for Allen and condemned “the vitriol that has been directed at her in recent days”.

Anyone else spot the irony of artists criticising the vitriol directed at, er, copyright thieves? It’s hard to disagree with my esteemed colleague Karl Hodge on this one:

http://bit.ly/4xE2qg – Lily’s blog down, comments gone, her wolf-cry of abuse taken at face value, discussion ends, revisionism begins.

The link he’s included is to The Word magazine, which shouts “misogyny” – even though the abuse was largely on other sites, not Allen’s; the abuse only became intense when she ignored reasonable comments; and the abuse is a fraction of the shit heaped on Lars Ulrich over Napster. As far as I’m aware, Mr Ulrich is not a lady.

It’s pathetic, really: the official story is already that brave copyright fighter Lily Allen had to take down her blog after the nasty internet people called her names, when the real story is that confused copyright infringer Lily Allen deleted her blog in a fit of pique after internet people caught her “stealing” other people’s content.

Fuck’s sake.

Meanwhile, the turkeys have overwhelmingly voted in favour of Christmas. Or rather, the artists have voted in favour of three-strikes against file sharers. This will, of course, mean the end of illegal file sharing and the return of bloated musical profits, and is in no way a Canute-esque stand that won’t change a bloody thing. At least Canute was trying to prove that he *couldn’t* stop the tide.

On a completely different note, Halo 3 ODST is an interesting (flawed) experiment. I don’t think I’ve played a first-person shooter inspired by Rashomon before, and it’s an interesting way of telling a story in an action game. But by god, it’s a short story. If someone as crap at gaming as me can get through it in a few hours, l33t players will no doubt get through it in ten minutes. As Mupwangle has rightly pointed out, that’s because it was originally a Halo 3 expansion pack; unfortunately it hasn’t been priced accordingly.

It’s still fun though, if you like wandering around in the dark listening to jazz.

Perhaps it’s Scotland’s politicians that need “rebalancing”

Oh joy, the new Scottish booze legislation comes into force today. Supermarkets are reorganising their displays, pubs are spending thousands of pounds on applying for new licenses (which, in the case of North Lanarkshire, mean some 25 pubs won’t legally be able to sell booze from today due to delays in the application process. Council says don’t worry, cops say WE WILL BUST YOU) and staff will require mandatory training to make sure they don’t encourage drinkers to have another drink. Imagine it! Pub staff asking if you want another drink!

Apparently the move, which makes my life that little bit more annoying by preventing me from buying wine or beer when I do my normal 8am shop (you can’t buy booze before 10am now, which I’m sure will prevent alcoholism) is about “rebalancing” Scotland’s relationship with booze. There’s another bill along on Thursday which will flout EU law by trying to impose price controls on booze too. Rebalancing, again.

Which reminds me of a story.

Barney is a decorator, and he cracks me up. A while back he was telling me about a woman whose house he was working in, or trying to work in: she had one of those really yappy little dogs, and it was driving Barney daft. She did apologise for the dog’s incessant barking, and said she had no idea why it was so hyperactive.

“Oh, I know why it is,” Barney said. “It’s out of balance.”

“Balance?”

“Yeah. Sometimes their wee heads get out of balance, and they become really bad tempered. Easy to fix, though.”

“Really?”

“Yep.”

“How do you fix it, then?”

“Well, what you need is a little bit of metal. Lead’s best. And what you do is, you put the lead into the dog’s ear and that rebalances it.”

“My goodness! So how do you get the lead into their ear?”

“With a FUCKING GUN!”

I can’t help thinking some of our elected representatives would benefit from a similar procedure.

Mr Ballmer goes to Cupertino

Yesterday, Steve Jobs went to Microsoft. Today, I’ve put Steve Ballmer in the top job at Apple. Can I get through an entire article without mentioning the monkey dance?

Ballmer may be best known online for his infamous Monkey Dance

That’ll be a no, then.

Steve Jobs has moved to Microsoft

Not really. But what would he do if he was there? Let the fun commence:

Unless Windows Mobile 7 is a ground-up rebuild – which we doubt – then Mr Jobs would can it, put the entire development team into a dungeon and refuse to let them out until they built something insanely great.

I love this kind of stuff. Tomorrow – Ballmer goes to Apple!