Recently in Stupid Category

It has always amazed me with arrogance of some people. This week whilst going about one's own normal leisure activities, in this case taking a short detour through on of the local "GAME" stores in Glasgow, I happened to overhear a conversation between a very english person and the store staff.

He had read the notice offering 2 games for £20 with any XBOX360 hardware, which he was reading as meaning ANY hardware that had XBOX360 stamped on, and in particular the £9.99 Play & Charge pack he had in his hands.

At which point he turned round to the girl who was working there and asked here. Barely had she said no, and he was asking to speak to the manager! His argument with the manager being that the sign said "any XBOX360 hardware", and he had in his hands XBOX360 hardware. Of course the manager disagreed and said what he had in his hands was a peripheral (and quite correctly). To which our official twat replied, "no its hardware, I'm an electrical engineer".

As far as the store manager was concerned what was in his hands was "a piece of wire that's compatible with an XBOX360"

At this point I had to vacate the premises before I started laughing hysterically at the twat.

I'm starting to empathise with Greg Dean's UPS woes (Real Life Comics 29th July 08 -1 August 08).

So my Xbox has RRoD'ed and is meant to get shipped off to somewhere in Germany for fixing. Off I go to UPS' web site to request a pick up which I make for after 9am and before 12, so as I'm not having to take a whole day off work.

Their system turns round and says you'll have to say 1pm in order to get it collected, fair enough, 9 - 1 ok. And so I arrange a 1/2 day off work...

This morning, I'm up at 9am, box all packed and by the door, and start passing the time of day. It should be mentioned that in the flat I currently have NO (real) food (another story about discovering all the eggs had gone off :-( ), but I figure it should be ok, cos I'll be out by lunch time and grab some food.....

Roll on 12:45...still no sign....

13:15...OK best phone work and say I'll need the whole day off (which fortunately I still have enough holidays to cover!)

13:40...OK now it's just taking the piss, Phone UPS, give them my collection request number and say "yes I was expecting it to be collected by 1pm" LIKE I ASKED AND WAS CONFIRMED!!!....and get told (I quote) "You'd expect it to be like that, but it'll be some time during the business day..."

WTF!?!?!?! So why have a "Latest collection time" you freaking eejits!!!

[Article from Boing Boing Gadgets]

Just read this article by Joel Johnson off BB Gadgets, and I have to say that I agree with him on every point that he makes, and with his overall wish for MobileMe.

I'd be perfectly happy to pay $100 a year for over-the-air syncing if MobileMe allowed me to use other services than those from Me.com.

Of course I’ve not actually manage to get MobileMe working on my iMac, as clicking the “Synchronise with Mobile Me” check box makes it go blue for a while, it claims its registering the computer, then stops, randomly reverts back to its original state and still no syncing…funnily enough though it works on my 4yr old G4 iBook.

It occurs to me that there maybe a fair number of people posting about O2's efficient and wholely applaudable management of the iPhone launch, who haven't read O2's Terms and Conditions for the use of their website:

View image

I draw particular attention to parts of section 2 of Content, namely:

Is defamatory of any person, entity or organisation

Is otherwise offensive in the opinion of O2 (UK) Limited

Relates to the conduct of a business

Once again gamer's favourite lawyer type, Jack "Take Two" Thompson is back in the news, this time for walking out of his disbarment hearing.

He is making the claim that the Judge, one Dava Tunis, does not have the authority to hear his case.

I'm curious then as to just *who*, JT thinks, has the authority? Any mortal ones?

[Via Kotaku]

I was almost certain that this said "15+ Online Tools For The Perfect Porn"

So our illustruous leaders have decided that what teenagers need is a "Britishness" day, and requiring oaths of allegience to the Queen.

I can see *so* many young people being engaged by this notion

It really goes to show that politicians are completely out of touch of what engages anyone nowadays.

Via Boing Boing

Phil from the UK anti-ID-register group NO2ID sends in this nugget -- note the call to action there. We've got a sensitive government document revealing the British government's plan to trick us into a database state and we need as many copies as possible, as quickly as possible!

If you mirror this document, please add a link to it in the comments for the post.

Funnily enough I wasn't too bothered about having to carry an ID card, but now I am...so congratulations to the Gov for that!

So I had a thought today walking along the road, if the MPAA (and others like them) want manufacturers of things like cameras to include a system that would prevent the camera recording if it picks up an embedded signal, sure this would have knock on effects.

Here's my hypothesis:

1. MPAA force all camcorder manufacturers to use the system. So you can no longer record off the TV or cinema.
2. Pirates start using alternative cameras (such as hi quality CCTV cameras)
3. MPAA for cctv manufacturers to include the system
4. Criminals break in to things with a picture or video containing the signal
5. CCTV camera ignores the activity

Apparently the copy protection system provided by Starforce installs a driver which runs at the highest level of your computers Operating System, and will restart your computer without warning if it detects any "suspicious" activitiy.

[More Info]

I've always been amazed by the reaction of some players of MMORPG games. As soon as the server goes down for any reason that they weren't told about before they start mouthing off that its shite and that all the developers have been working on "broken content" and not bug fixes. FOR FUCKS SAKE get a freaking grip, I'd like to see any of them keep a system that supports 22,000 people at one up and running without any issues at all.

My personal favourite was from today when Eve went down:

these guys are morons. first they don;t do anything, like reply to our petitions. but they can perform unscheduled reboots of the cluster.

if there's more problems after the new server i'm quitting this. got better things to do then worry if i died or not while their servers crash. other than that this is a wonderful game. i'm loving it. but the problems are too many.

thanx guys. maybe next 10 patches will be bugfixes instead of new broken content.

How is that even helpful? or even reasonable or for that matter HOW does performing an unscheduled reboot make ANYONE a moron? If it goes down take the opportunity to go and do something else, you know what life is don't you...that thing that happens when you're not playing Eve? I'm sure you were able to fill it up with some other activities before the Internet was invented.

And before anyone gives me crap about "I've paid for this", just stop. Yes you've paid, so have I. Be reasonable, for your £15 per month you are getting a very complicated piece of software, the infrastructure and the content. This isn't a freaking board game, if it breaks it is a "little" bit more complicated to fix.

Having played a fair number of MMORPGs, CCP is much better at listening to their players than some of the other companies out there, many of whom have teams larger than CCPs. What you have them do? Reboot the server so you can get back to playing, or answer your petitions and let the game grind to a screaming halt?

So to the Noisy Minority, PUT UP AND SHUT UP. Your game will be back at the same time as the rest of us and we can do without the asinine commentry. As for the rest of us, lets start being less of a silent majority, putting up with the whining of the Noisy Minority.

Just my luck...
And everything was going so well. Last night one of my ASMs got injured. A section of rostra fell on her foot (ouch) and broke her toe.

I guess I have to look on the upside that it wasn't too life threatening and it had to happen eventually. I've been doing shows for 7 odd years now and this is the first major incident to have happened.

On the down side is that I kinda foresaw the incident happening earlier in the evening but it slipped my mind to talk to the people involved to get them to change the way that the rostra had been stacked. And it didn't help that just before I was the one saying that everyone else had bumped in to something and she hadn't. So not only did I not prevent the situation every arising, I actively jinxed her too.

Ironically someone from the NHS had tried to deliver a wheel chair to her earlier...

Anyway shouts out to her, hope she's taking it easy (and writing her essay) and I owe you...well...I dunno...a lot of alcohol probably.

-update-
Oh I should mention that another of my ASMs was clipped by the same bit of rostra but was much less injured, so props to you too!

So apparently everyone's favourite President of the United States has just signed in to law a piece of legislation that makes it illegal to annoy someone anonymously. So I guess on the whole I should stop writing this blog entirely...oh wait I'm not using a psuedonym...yet.

Apparently it was attached on to the end of "must-pass" bill authorising "appropriations for the Department of Justice for fiscal years 2006 to 2009, and other purposes". Umm what other purposes could that be I wonder?

After my posting about my expectations of America's response to the disaster and on the day that America actually asked other countries for help I've discovered that my friends share the same sentiment (its always nice to have a suspicion confirmed when that happens). It is a sad day when (to a certain extent) the world's only super power (well China counts I guess but suffers from China vs. the World) is not able to help itself.

Apparently the EIFF has decided that Camera Phones are a viable way for nasty people to make recordings of films in the Cinema, and so they've banned them from screenings. If you have ever seen the quality of the video taken by a camera phone you'll know that the quality is so low (typically 320x120) that is pretty much unwatchable, and totally un-enjoyable.

This action seems to be a pretty cynical attempt to protect their copyright from a technique which (probably) no one would use. Any copy that a real thief would use would result in a much higher quality (and hence more valuable) copy. So they'll take your phone (and probably make you indemnify them for loss/damage) for no good reason.