Archive for January, 2007
Conversations with eBay customer support (includes swearing)
Remember my eBay problems, where they spotted and removed fraudulent transactions wrongly pegged to my account and promised to credit the listing fees? They’re still ongoing, and my account is still locked. I’m beginning to wonder if their customer support centre was designed by Kafka:
6 Jan: I send a nice email to eBay support: “Um, I’ve written to you about this several times… what’s going on?”
7 Jan: Email from Sally Thompson. “I have arranged to credit the fee…” I reply and say thanks.
25 Jan: Email from eBay. Pay the listing fees or we’re calling the bailiffs. I email: “I’m getting really fed up with this: you promised on 6 January to remove the fraudulent fees from my account and it still hasn’t happened…”
26 Jan: Email from Daniel R, explaining how to click hyperlinks in My eBay.
26 Jan: Angry email from me, pointing out that I can’t use those hyperlinks because, as I’ve pointed out seven hundred times, they’ve locked me out of my account and everything but email is unavailable. “Hi Daniel. You’ve completely ignored my email and given me useless information: I can’t access any of the account stuff because my registration has been suspended - because a credit ebay promised to make months ago still hasn’t been made.”
28 Jan: Email from Brian W. What’s my user ID? What invoice numbers? Summoning every last ounce of patience I provide my user ID yet again and point out that I can’t access any account information, because it’s been locked. As I may have mentioned.
29 Jan: Email from eBay. Pay the listing fees or we’re calling the bailiffs. Then an email from Daniel R. It’s the same email he sent me on 26 Jan, telling me how to click on the links that aren’t available to me because my account has been locked. I manage to reply without using the words “fuck”, “fucking”, “couldn’t find your own fucking arse with both fucking hands” and “you fucking bunch of incompetent bastards, what the fuck is wrong with you people?” and politely suggest that we might make more progress if eBay actually read emails before replying to them.
Tune in next week for another exciting episode!
Should Apple licence OS X to Dell?
There was an interesting op-ed by Doug Mohney in The Inquirer yesterday, which suggested that the launch of Vista provides a good opportunity for Apple - if it licences OS X to Dell.
However, Vista is being beaten like a dead horse by the mass media – most of them already are enthralled to the God of Jobs if you read between the lines, so Microsoft could make nuclear fusion work tomorrow and they’d give it a lukewarm review at best. The consensus view out of the babbling punditry is “Don’t buy Vista today, unless you have to buy a new computer tomorrow.”
On that front, I think the babbling pundits are right. Heh.
So what about Apple?
If Apple was serious, and I mean really serious, about gaining more PC market share, they’d realize they need to license/sell their operating system to another hardware manufacturer or two. Sure, Apple’s tried the license route before with mixed results, but it’s about time to bite the bullet, look into the mirror, and realize they should try something bold.
Apple should license their operating system to Dell.
Mohney isn’t suggesting that Apple should make OS X available to any PC user; the dangers of that (such as hardware incompatibilities or really crap machines ruining Apple’s reputation) have been talked to death for years. Rather, he’s suggesting that Apple could team up with a single PC manufacturing firm to make decent clones, expanding OS X’s market share without diluting the core Apple brand. It wouldn’t be an Apple Mac: it’d be a Dell Mac. Dell’s good at churning out PCs, so if Apple laid down strict criteria about what should and shouldn’t go into a clone you could get decent non-Apple Macs competing in different markets to Apple Macs. Does anyone really think Dell is capable of making something as sexy as a MacBook or as iconic as the iMac?
I’m sure Mohney will be inundated with angry emails, but I do wonder how many of the senders will have reacted similarly to suggestions a few years back that Macs should run Intel chips. I think his idea’s fascinating.
A few thoughts about buying Windows Vista
I’ve spent a few months living with various builds of Windows Vista, from betas to the final release, but don’t worry - I’m not going to duplicate the millions of column inches that have already been dedicated to it. Instead, here’s a few bits of advice for people who would like to buy it.
- The best way to get Vista is pre-loaded on a PC, because it’ll save you a fortune. If you are buying a new PC, though, make sure it *is* pre-loaded. The upgrade voucher process is overly complicated, very time consuming and supremely annoying.
- Look carefully at the various versions. I reckon Home Premium and Ultimate Edition are the ones to have. Avoid Home Basic at all costs.
- If you’re thinking of upgrading an existing PC, check the driver status. Not everyone has updated their device drivers, and in particular some top-end graphics card drivers aren’t vista-ready yet (or at least, they weren’t a few days ago). This is particularly important if you’re a keen gamer. That said, Vista’s installed drivers are pretty comprehensive and support most common hardware.
- Check software too. Some programs - security ones in particular - will need patched before they can run under Vista, and other programs - such as gadget manufacturers’ software - will detect Vista, go in a huff and refuse to work.
- Be realistic about your PC. If it chugs with XP, it’ll chug even more with Vista. But reports of massive hardware requirements are often exaggerated. I’ve ran it happily and speedily on a dirt-cheap Acer laptop and a year-old Dell that cost £500 last summer.
And that’s it. As I’ve blogged before, I’ve changed my tune on Vista: while first impressions suggest it’s just XP in nicer trousers, there’s a lot of good stuff under the hood and the Premium and Ultimate editions are packed with goodies. In addition to all the features that have been endlessly covered elsewhere, I really like what it offers laptop users: easier and better networking, superb power management features and a dedicated control panel for mobile stuff. If you buy it the right way, I think you’ll love it.
Dreamgirls. Aieeeee!
I’m on various mailing list free ticket things, so I went to see Dreamgirls at the cinema tonight. Not the smartest thing I’ve ever done.
It’s particularly disappointing because the first fifteen minutes are brilliant. The music in the early bit of the film is fantastic and really nails the sheer grunt of R&B, and Eddie Murphy is a revelation. After a few songs I really started to think “wow, this could be a musical that doesn’t suck!” - at which point it went all Andrew Lloyd Webber and started to suck so much that I’m amazed it didn’t pull planes from their flight paths and through the roof of the cinema. Put it this way: Mrs Bigmouth won’t hear a bad word against Beyonce Knowles, but post-movie she was using words I didn’t realise she even knew.
X-ray cameras on lampposts. This is a spoof… right?
New Mac ads with Mitchell & Webb
Apple’s latest “get a Mac” ads feature Mitchell and Webb. Maybe it’s a sign of my increasing fogeyism that I identify more with Mitchell.
On a related note, I’ll be on BBC Radio Scotland’s MacAulay and Co this morning (at about 9.45, ish) to settle the PC versus Mac argument through the medium of dance. The last part of that sentence is a lie.
Games: too expensive for impulse buys
Mr Biffo’s column in the new issue of EDGE (it’s not online, sorry) raises the thorny issue of game prices among other things, and he makes some good points - the gaming industry is right that films get income from the cinema before they hit DVD and games obviously don’t, but the industry doesn’t tend to mention that even the biggest, shiniest, most expensive game has a budget that wouldn’t cover the catering bill on a typical movie - that sort of thing, but I think he’s hit the nail on the head when he suggests that at £50, games are too expensive to take a punt on.
I’m currently loving Lost Planet: Extreme Condition (it’s very Japanese, and I mean that in a good way) but I swithered before buying it - the demo didn’t put across the sheer nuttiness of it, and if I hadn’t read EDGE’s fairly glowing review I probably wouldn’t have bought it at all. I’ve got Rainbow Six Vegas waiting for when I finally finish LP, and that’s it.
I’ve spent ages looking at other titles but again and again, the price puts me off. At £40 to £50 I’m not willing to take a risk on a game I’m not sure I’ll even like, either because it’s terrible (Perfect Dark Zero), tedious (the 360 version of Far Cry) or just something I’m not into (Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter).
Part of the problem is that there are some truly terrible games out there. That’s not just a matter of taste - while I don’t get GR:AW, I can see why others love it - but of plain truth. I give you Sonic The Hedgehog on the Xbox 360 which, according to the gaming press and the entire internet, would be an atrocity at £5 but is a threat to the very fabric of humanity at £50. A quick look at Rotten Tomatoes or any intelligent games magazine shows that there are many, many more.
There are options, though. If I lived nearer a GAME shop (and I’m assuming they still do their “if it’s shit, bring it back” exchange thing) I might take more risks, but I don’t so I don’t.
Pre-owned games would be another option, or at least they would be if the games shops weren’t so greedy (Pre-owned! £39.99! Bastards!).
Trade-ins would be good if the difference between the original price and the trade-in (or the trade-in and the mark-up when it goes back on the shelf) wasn’t so big. And there’s always eBay, or there would be if my account wasn’t still suspended due to an eBay cock-up. Oh, and eBay prices reflect reviews, so if a game comes out and everyone thinks it’s crap then you’ll be lucky to sell it for 2p.
The problem with all of those solutions is that they don’t bring in any more money for the game publishers. When someone buys a new game at £50 and then trades it in or eBays it, and I buy the pre-owned copy, and play it, and trade it in or eBay it, and someone else buys that, and… three, four or more people are playing the game but only one person’s generating cash for the publishers. When I exchange a full-price game because it sucks, I get a full refund and buy something else, so I’ve played two games but only paid for one.
I know some of you are gamers; what do you think is the right price point for a game? £50? £40? £20? Would lower prices encourage you to take more risks? Should we be allowed by law to punish the people who knowingly sell us bad games, with RRP determining just how much punishment we’re allowed to dish out?
We’re gonna need a bigger boat office
Ah, the glamour of technology journalism. In the Home Office Manual I wrote for Haynes Publishing, I stressed the importance of having adequate space. As you can see, I practice what I preach.
(not pictured: PDA, mobile, cameras, TV aerial for Media Center, headset for Skype, speakers and subwoofer, microwave oven and cuddly toy)
Mobile phones are frying our brains - or at least, they seem to be when we write about them
This story is being widely reported in the mainstream media:
An international team of researchers has found new evidence that long-term use of a mobile phone may lead to the development of a brain tumor on the side of the head the phone is used. In a study which will appear in an upcoming issue of the International Journal of Cancer, epidemiologists from five European countries report a nearly 40% increase in gliomas, a type of brain tumor, among those who had used a cell phone for ten or more years. The increase is statistically significant.
Here’s the research the above story refers to. Again, I’ve emphasised the salient points:
For more than 10 years of mobile phone use reported on the side of the head where the tumor was located, an increased OR of borderline statistical significance (OR = 1.39, 95% CI 1.01, 1.92, p trend 0.04) was found, whereas similar use on the opposite side of the head resulted in an OR of 0.98 (95% CI 0.71, 1.37). Although our results overall do not indicate an increased risk of glioma in relation to mobile phone use, the possible risk in the most heavily exposed part of the brain with long-term use needs to be explored further before firm conclusions can be drawn.
Now, the “do not indicate an increased risk of glioma” bit seems pretty straightforward to me. Unfortunately I don’t have any grounding in stats (I’m barely numerate) so I’d like to ask for help here - can anyone put the odds ratio stuff in the study abstract into plain English? There seems to be a statistical difference between people claiming to have held their mobiles on one side of their head from the other - but I can barely count to ten, let alone translate ORs and confidence intervals.
(Thanks to David for the links)
It’s said that the internet has the collective intelligence of a fourteen year old boy…
…but this Digg discussion suggests 14 is overly optimistic.
The story’s a simple one. As The Sun reports:
“A city investment banker has been humiliated afer photos of her performing oral sex were emailed to her boss and colleagues. The anonymous email also found its way on to the internet… it is understood the photos were stolen from a memory stick that the woman owned.”
Leaving aside the obvious blow job jokes, of which there are many, the Digg discussion’s utterly depressing: while there’s no information in the story about the other person in the video - it could well have been her boyfriend, fiancee, whatever - the tone of the discussion is “what a slut”. While a few more sensible people point out that the email is a really, really shitty thing to do, most are giggling schoolboys (or acting like giggling schoolboys). These three comments are pretty representative:
“A high paid executive in her TWENTIES did not earn her way to that position honorably.”
“But now her “career advancement skills” are known to the world”
how big of a difference is there between a $20 crack whore someone found downtown, and a woman who allows herself to be filmed having sex?
Christ almighty, what century is this?