Archive for February, 2006
Sod technology. Here’s a puppy
Never mind Apple announcing stuff or Microsoft’s new handheld PC - what really matters on blogs is pictures of puppies. Heeeeeeeeeeere’s Megan!
More Google censorship
This time it’s video, according to Andrew Orlowski at the Register:
The internet search giant’s video service is blocking US viewers from seeing an innocuous piece of Iraq footage that Google delivers to internet users in the rest of the world without any problems…
Google has little cause to prohibit the clip on grounds of taste - after all, under the banner of promoting “citizens media”, it cheerfully serves up “happy slapping” footage of school thugs beating up science students, and some impressive ejaculation shots from porn videos.
Update
Paul points out that the no-US thing was the uploader’s choice, not Google’s. And he has a link to prove it.
Stop! Bloggin’ time!
MC Hammer is blogging on Blogspot.
Do doo de doo, de doo, de doo. Etc.
eBay food: sucks
I wouldn’t have thought of using eBay to buy food, but apparently lots of people do - and according to a press release I’ve just got from Trading Standards, some of the stuff they’re buying isn’t up to scratch.
73% OF FOOD BOUGHT IN EBAY SURVEY UNFIT FOR SALE IN UK SUPERMARKETS
Tighter controls on selling food on the internet are needed after a survey found that 73 per cent of the goods bought on eBay failed food laws, local authority trading standards officers warned today.
Of the 89 products bought, 65 of them - including coffee, fruit cake, herbs and sweets - would not have been fit for sale in a British supermarket, mainly because of inadequate labelling.
Faulty labelling could be fatal to those with nut allergies, while council trading standards officers were also sent dried meat in substandard packaging, sweets with excessive colouring and a “home-made” fruit cake that arrived mouldy.
Of the 65 failed goods, 12 of the products failed to meet laws on ingredients and two failed to match their advertised description.
51 foodstuffs failed to meet labelling laws: including sweets, meat products such as salami and beef jerky, home-made cake, green tea, herbs and spices. There were also concerns about seaweed and honey, unusual fungi and mushrooms.
There’s more, but you get the gist. I like this wee footnote, though:
Other foods that failed to meet trading laws included: tinned deep fried insects from Thailand with high zinc content; Persian saffron that was not of the quality demanded of its age; and Ethiopian coffee beans with no labelling.
Tinned deep fried insects?
P.S. sorry for any site-feed weirdness: I’m writing a tutorial on integrating various bits and bobs into blogs, and had to test ‘em. Hence appearing and disappearing posts with embedded games…
Nifty Mac media software
I’m very impressed by MediaCentral: it’s free and while it doesn’t have the graphical polish of Front Row, on both my Powerbook and my Mini it’s considerably faster than Apple’s program.
Torrent sites under legal attack
The MPAA [has] filed lawsuits against Torrentspy, Isohunt, Torrentbox, Niteshadow and Bthub. This could have a huge impact on the Bittorrent community since Torrentspy and Isohunt are two of the most frequently visited torrent sites.
But on the other hand, Isohunt and Torrentspy are torrent search engines and DO NOT host any torrents so the MPAA may have a hard time to built a strong case.
Recycling bad ideas
Squander Two recently wrote about a bizarre bit of council nonsense: for reasons tenuously connected with recycling, his local council is no longer collecting rubbish every week. Now, my council’s at it too: from April, rubbish will be collected fortnightly rather than weekly, “to encourage recycling”. It’s got sod-all to do with recycling, of course, it’s cost-cutting by a council that’s spent thousands on bizarre red pavement things on some of Scotland’s most pock-marked roads.
What’s really annoying about the move is that I’m already a good little recycler - so much so that I got an extra recycling bin, because I’m just recycling crazy, me. But unfortunately my non-recyclable rubbish fills a dustbin once a week, so under the council’s new wheeze it looks like I’ll have to fill my car with bin bags every second week and drive eight miles to the nearest tip - a completely wasteful journey. But I’m a good little environmentalist so rather than undertake a sixteen-mile round trip to get rid of my rubbish, I think I’ll dump it in a local councillor’s garden. Much more environmentally friendly.
Automated phone system hell
I’m on Radio Scotland’s MacAulay and Co tomorrow morning to talk about the dubious joys of companies’ automated phone systems. If you can think of any particularly stinking examples of badly designed or badly implemented electronic operators that really don’t want you to speak to a human, I’m sure the show would welcome your emails or texts (contact info’s in the link)…
Sky-high wi-fi must die
Tech writer Kieren McCarthy’s posted a typically angry rant about the insane cost of wi-fi access points, and he’s hit the nail on the head: how on earth can firms justify hotspot access charges of £6 per hour when you can have 24/7 broadband in your house for less than £20 per month?
At £6 an hour, the real cost of Net access (and just for one person) is a staggering £4,500 a month.
I’m in the rather ridiculous situation of having never, ever, ever used a wi-fi hotspot when I’m out and about, despite having a wi-fi enabled phone. I’m buggered if I’m paying six quid to check my email.
It’s particularly galling when you look at what, say, a BT Openzone hotspot actually costs to run. If you go for openzone in a box, you pay £200 to share your broadband connection - which only has to be a 512Kbps connection. Even businesses - who pay more for broadband than mere mortals - won’t pay much more than £20 per month for that kind of connection. Where they’re getting stiffed is on the vouchers, of which they only get to keep 25% (according to the BT openzone site, anyway).
Kieren’s right. We’re being screwed.
Studios sue Samsung
For some time, the techie’s DVD player of choice was a Samsung, thanks to a ridiculously easy hack that disabled region coding and enabled you to watch US DVDs on a UK player (or vice versa). Now, it seems that Samsung is being sued by Hollywood studios because “one of its DVD players can be used to avoid encryption technology”. Apparently the suit is on behalf of 20th Century Fox, Paramount Pictures, Time Warner, Walt Disney and Universal.
I’m surprised it’s taken them so long. Back in October 2004, I wrote about DRM for PC Plus:
if you go on holiday to the US, there’s no law that says you can’t bring a few cheap DVDs home with you, but if you play a US disc in a UK player it won’t work. That’s because of region coding, which designates the US as Region 1 and the UK as region 2; a region 1 player will not play region 2 discs, and vice versa.
Region coding is ridiculously easy to bypass, but the way in which it’s been implemented means that if you disable it, you also disable your DVD player’s copy protection system - which is an offence. In effect, the DRM that’s designed to prevent illegal copying also prevents you from doing something perfectly legal, and the law prevents you from hacking your player to exercise your consumer rights.
The law, once again, is an ass.