-
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…
-
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…
-
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…
-
Touts’ entertainment
Another festival sells out in record time, and all the tickets end up on eBay; this time it’s the turn of Scots music festival T in the Park, which sold out in an hour. As I write this, one pair of tickets is going for £1,020. I hate ticket touts for several reasons (and not…
-
Trojans: not just for the PC in your life
The “first” OS X Trojan has been discovered, although it’s more of a proof of concept than anything serious. OS X is relatively impervious to viruses and trojans, largely because you need to give programs permission before they can get anywhere serious on your computer. However, this one uses good old-fashioned social engineering by pretending…
-
Fun and games with the RIAA
It’s time for our semi-regular series, “What Bloody Stupid Crap is the RIAA Trying To Pull Today?” Today’s update comes from the EFF, via the Inquirer: As part of the on-going DMCA rule-making proceedings, the RIAA and other copyright industry associations submitted a filing that included this gem as part of their argument that space-shifting…
-
On the impossibility of finding Edge in my local newsagent
As I’ve mentioned before, I’m a magazine junkie: the only reason I freelance is to finance my ever-growing magazine habit, which makes it impossible for me to walk past a newsagent without buying something to read. Since I moved out of Glasgow’s West End (which boasts Barratt’s, a superb newsagent that stocks *everything*), though, I’ve…
-
Mark Mulligan on post-Brits backslapping: “It’s the price, stupid”
As ever, Mark Mulligan from Jupiter Research gets right to the point about UK record sales: UK music sales picked up after a slump not just because of good artists, but because CD prices dropped. And they dropped significantly. It is no coincidence that UK music sales were at their weakest when album prices were…
-
I trust I can rely on your dopes
One of the things that really bugs me is when street teams fill the internet with promotional crap while pretending to be Just Another Punter. It’s something I was going to be talking about on Radio Scotland this morning, but unfortunately time constraints meant we didn’t get to the problem of vested interests editing Wikipedia…
-
Quick product plug
If you’re on a Mac and hate spam, check out SpamSieve. I’m putting it through its paces for a possible review and after just a couple of days use, it’s catching 99% of spam with no false positives.