I might be looking forward to Win 7

There are quite a few things I've always wanted Windows XP to do..

1. Drastically cut down all the bloat....

Stop the constant race to use up all the resources of new faster chipsets and RAM it can... (IE games machines, Linux, Mac OS were perfectly capable of fancy-schamanzy effects without having to use masses of RAM and graphics cards.) The OS should be using as little as of a 'puters hardware as it can - and get out of the way of the programmes the user needs to use.

This should be true of all programmes - not just windows - but everyone seems intent on cramming in as many bells and whistles and bloat as they can with every new version - without ever addressing old bugs and stability and reliability. This has been bugging me for years... Adding endless patches and updates just add to the bloat... but add to the bloat is what they all love to do. *sigh*

3. Be able to move around the open programs tabs on the task bar - like you can the tabs on firefox.

4. I've always wanted to be able add my own bits and progs and rearrange stuff to the explorer window thingy. (I'm sure there are official names for these things but I have no idea what they are.)

5. Control exactly what gets added to my start up. God - I want to kill Quicktime - Adobe Reader - RealPlayer - even Open Office - for adding their shit there without ever asking if I want them there. The arrogant resource hogs.

I want my 'puter to boot up as fast as possible so I can do my things - not have other people pre-decide what they think I'll be doing for me.

6. I hope Windows 7 is as easy to network as they claim - I've never be able to get anything working with XP or Win 98 - it was all nightmareishly stupid and complicated to set up. I've failed to get a win 95 to connect to a win 98 box or a XP box using a parallel cable - I've failed trying to get a laptop to connect to a XP box using a cross ethernet cable... All the 'easy to set up' built-in Windows help screens were worse than useless. You want it to work like you plug in a USB thumb drive works. Bing-bing - you're connected. It should only be difficult if you're at work and security is a concern. But at home... jeez give me a break. You shouldn't need an advanced computer degree to link up a couple of computers and external hard drives and printers etc.


PDC 2008 - Webmonkey

Noooooooo! Don't gooooo!

Grumble grumble grumble.

They'd better bring back Doctor-Donna for a spell too just to make up for this bad news...

BBC NEWS | Entertainment | David Tennant quits as Doctor Who

Brainy Robots To Lead To Longer Unemployment Lines?

I read this short piece in Wired - and all I can think is - 'what the hell is wrong with Americans'. When I was growing up as a kid - this is the sort of thing we were promised would be happening in the future. That machines and automation would be doing a lot of the more tedious work - that we'd be only working a few days a week - yadda yadda yadda. So feel my horror that when I grow up I found myself in a world were - despite computers now being everywhere - people are actually working longer hours than before - for relatively a lot less pay. That's those who do work - because no one has managed to figure out yet that if those in jobs did have a shorter working week - then we would have less unemployed people.

Anyhow - the bit that really got me in the article was 'sounds a lot like socialism doesn't it?' God, the majority of Americans are so totally brainwashed by their masters (their media, their politicians, their bosses, their lecturers, their school teacher, their parents -etc.) that they can barely think of any other way of organising their lives. There's this knee-jerk reflex remark. It's really deeply pathetic.

(I heard the 'we've afraid of socialism' remark uttered quite a few more times by republicans in the run up to the US presidential election on the news.)

And anyway - we don't seem anywhere that close to robots and AI yet. Or are we?


Brainy Robots To Lead To Longer Unemployment Lines? | Gadget Lab from Wired.com

Oily

"How Big Oil's Lobbyists Contributed to Big Finance's Crash"

So I'm watching the news this morning... apparently - after going up and up and up- and Mr Bush asking the OPEC countries to increase production to bring prices down... Now because prices have been coming down because of the economic slow down, they're cutting production by 1.5 million barrels to - er... keep prices high. Well, they'd say at a level that's profitable for them. Those diamond-encrusted ipods oil sheiks buy for their daughters don't pay for themselves.

It's funny how monopolies work isn't it? No sign of any greed there then.

Meanwhile in this part of the country bus fares are set to go up - because of the high fuel costs... why? when fuel prices have gone down... oh because they buy stocks ahead of time and they bought it when it was more expensive... *sigh*. Isn't anyone looking into bringing horse-drawn carriages back yet?

teh suck

If it wasn't for all my bad luck - I'd have no luck at all...


A camera died.
uh-oh - total disaster!

Another of my cameras -an Olympus UZ550 is very ill.

A gadget I bought didn't work and I haven't got around to returning it yet...

the laptop died:

and if you were wondering why I hadn't been uploading as many photos as usual...

and an attempt to install the drivers for a printer/scanner ended up killing my main already ailing old 'puter for good...

teh suck - it just keeps on coming, and coming, and coming...

Special report: How our economy is killing the Earth

After the Berlin wall came down and Soviet Russia shortly afterward... I remember thinking at the time - "well, Capitalism is next." Of course everyone else in the world - went along thinking "Whoooo - capitalism has won - whooooo. Greed is good. Therefore the best form of capitalism is unfettered free market laissez faire Capitalism. Full steam ahead!". Ending with the utterly
bizarre belief that a country's best interests are served by allowing a very small handful of individuals to become super-rich (-and get away with paying less and less in any taxes) while the number of poor grow and grow...

It's taken a few years for the cracks to show - Capitalism is nothing but adaptable - but we're all now reaping the folly of the last 20 years.

I wouldn't care so much if the writing wasn't on the wall for all the world to see for decades. One of the glaring examples being the Energy Oil crisis of the 70s. There was a brief blip when America had to endure sudden sky high oil prices - and they endured a few power cuts. It should have been then when masses of research and development should have been poured into alternative cleaner energy production. But the OPEC countries brought the price of oil down again and the world breathed a sigh of relief and went on it's wasteful gas-guzzling ways... Ending with such things as the popularity of the 4x4 SUV as fashion accessory and now shortly after China and India wanting to copy everything it's seen happening in America and Europe for the past 40 years. (IE. Everyone there having their own motor car.) Just at the time when we in the West should maybe copying what China used to do and replacing a lot of it's cars with bicycles!

Anyway - my point is we're about 20 years behind were we should be with greener technologies. Too busy partying I guess.

Special report: How our economy is killing the Earth - opinion - 16 October 2008 - New Scientist

Make-Believe Maverick : Rolling Stone

What the hell is wrong with Republicans - and why do people keep voting for them?

Make-Believe Maverick : Rolling Stone

pointless outside broadcasts

It's 6.35 in the morning. I'm watching the GMTV news - having a change from the BBC news. They - the pair of newscasters sat on the sofa in the studio are, over a link, talking about the Global financial crisis with a female newscaster stood outside Number 10 Downing street. But why? It's early in the morning all the politicians will either be at home still in bed or just getting up. Other to provide a backdrop for her there is no reason for that woman to be out there whatsoever.

This little quirk that ALL news shows have fallen into the habit of has been annoying me for years now. It's just so pointless and stupid.

Jamie Jamie Jamie

TV scoop Review.

Felicity Lawrence in the Guardian review.

Just the premise of 'The ministry of Food' in the trailer adverts for the show had my mind firing off woeful connections:

Jamie the mockney chef being all swearingly patronising and condescending diving in and blaming the victims for their ignorance and unwillingness to do something about bettering themselves.

The whole notion of the chattering middle-classes who already have a niche career for themselves running around telling the classes under them how they should running their lives. Which has been a big drive behind all of the Blair years. Without ever doing anything concrete that helps makes a lasting difference for the better.

The idea that if only people would learn to cook from fresh ingredients that alone would change a local community... oh, how naive.

Anyone with half a brain knows that it's very expensive to eat properly - ask any university student - (but obviously not a catering University student).

There's an anecdote I remember from a TV chat show I saw years ago (Wogan I think)...

A woman asked a TV chef person (I can't remember who) why health food cost twice as much as supermarket fare - the chef said well, you live twice as long - so it's worth it. But the chat show host (Wogan?) said - 'but that means you're paying four times as much for your food as the rest of us.'

9/11 Was Big. This Is Bigger.

"The current economic debacle is far more likely to be seen by historians as a true global watershed: the end of one period and the beginning of another. The financial chaos has brought down the curtain on a wide range of basic and enduring tenets also closely linked with the Reagan era, those associated with neoliberal economics, the system that the Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz has called "that grab-bag of ideas based on the fundamentalist notion that markets are self-correcting, allocate resources efficiently and serve the public interest well." Already this crisis has seen not just our enemies but even some of our closest allies wondering whether we are at the beginning of the end of both American-style capitalism and of American supremacy."


9/11 Was Big. This Is Bigger. - washingtonpost.com

Wal*Mart shutting down DRM server,

"Hey suckers! Did you buy DRM music from Wal*Mart instead of downloading MP3s for free from the P2P networks? Well, they're repaying your honesty by taking away your music."

Wal*Mart shutting down DRM server, nuking your music collection -- only people who pay for music risk losing it to DRM shenanigans - Boing Boing

undoing Thatcherism - years later

Why'd I say this? Well, guess who was behind the idea of abolishing school meals in the first place? Forcing schools to bring in outside cheap catering firms...

A mean-spirited cost-cutting exercise that's led to a bad diet for kids and part of the reasons behind the rise in childhood obesity.

BBC NEWS | Scotland | Free meal plan for Scots pupils

[While I'm at it should I mention that the current credit crunch/banking crisis/house price meltdown also have their roots way back in the 80s free market economy that Thatcherism kick-started? Looks like everyone's being forced into having a big re-think on all that too. Albeit all way, way too late...]