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Viacom = Big Evil, Judge = Insane

Published
by
Jack
on July 4, 2008
in Blog and Technology
. 0 Comments

Fair enough Viacom is going after money from its interlectual property or however they want to justify it but in the long run they have damaged themselves beyond repair. 

Firstly, they image wasn’t all that great, and they completely miss the point of the internet. For example, by allowing clips to be uploaded of ‘their’ material they generate more hype and buzz and most importantly more viewers, yet again late to the party reaction. Insert foot into mouth and take the people to court.

Secondly, they have forced Google’s hand, by releasing the data on what IPs and therefore people have viewed on Youtube to Viacom, this is illegal at least in the UK, under the data protection act. It sets a very scary president one that brings us very close to the Orwelian 1984 set up. I wish somebody takes this up and fights back, the days when the big companies could dictate what happens in the world should be over, seemingly not.

eBay Selling Fakes - No it couldn’t possibly be…

Published
by
Jack
on June 30, 2008
in Blog and Technology
. 0 Comments

The online auction site has been ordered to pay compensation by a judge in Paris for allowing users to trade counterfeit items

Via Times Online

Louis Vuitton sues eBay, for selling ‘luxury’ fakes. First question what took so long, and what makes them think they have any possibility of winning or even settling the lawsuit.

I think its laughable that companies still think they can get away with such stupid lawsuits, the bottom line is the profits can’t be all that good, on their end.

Staminee de Garre (Beer Bar), Brugge

Published
by
Jack
on June 28, 2008
in Blog
. 0 Comments

Staminee de Garre (Beer Bar), Brugge is categorically one of the best places in Europe.

Why?

13% House Beer - Its so strong you can only buy three glasses.

http://beeradvocate.com/

Perfect...
Looks can be decieving...


www.thisinternetisnot.easier

Published
by
Jack
on June 28, 2008
in Blog and Computing
. 0 Comments

ICANN is full of good ideas, especially on how people use the internet.

The net’s regulator, Icann, voted unanimously to relax the strict rules on so-called “top-level” domain names, such as .com or .uk.

The decision means that companies could turn brands into web addresses, while individuals could use their names - BBC NEWS

Despite the fact it opens up a whole slew of stupid domains, it means you can no longer guess a domain name by picking the brand and adding .com or .co.uk it also means domain squatting is going to get more and more common, even if initially domains cost six figure sums.

ICANN - The idea is stupid, work out a better way, and try to find some way of regulating domain squatting not making up stupid ideas and justifying them by saying it will make the internet easier to use, because it will not!

How not to survive the onslaught of WWDC.

Published
by
Jack
on June 9, 2008
in Blog and Technology
. 2 Comments

Twitter has come under attack for being a great service that has a poor record of up time Link1 - TechCrunch, Link 2 - TechCrunch. Well news on the street is Twitter survived the several thousand posts it recieved during WWDC, including my own meager posts. But at what cost.

I laughingly joked that the next feature for twitter to disable to ensure it stayed up, was to turn off twittering. In reality it was nearly at that point the following features were cut for the duration of the Keynote:

 

  • @ Replies
  • Everyone Tab
  • Archive Tab
  • Public Timeline
  • Limit number of API requests from 30 Request Per Hour to 10
  • Updates by SMS
  • User Deletion and Restoration 
It seems to me that the vast majority of the functionality of twitter was culled to ensure uptime, the community was just lobotomised with no thought. I applaud twitter for staying online, but it shouldn’t have cost the features that make Twitter, Twitter and not just some meta-blogging platform.
Twitter has got plenty of issues with scaling, if anything WWDC has proved that twitter cannot scale with demand. To use a analogy, a TV station does not cut the commentary of a football match because the system cannot cope with the demand, this is essentially what Twitter did to the community.
It looks like we were spot-on with our estimate of ten times the normal traffic today. Our preparations held and Twitter stayed up! Only one unexpected disruption occured and that was a network problem in our data center which caused a few minutes of service distruption some time after Steve Jobs’ keynote. With that single distruption, our uptime during the event was 97.3%
I love Twitter, and despite the fact I don’t really get it yet. I don’t want to see it disappear because it couldn’t handle its popularity.

 

WWDC 08 Predictions - One More Thing?

Published
by
Jack
on June 9, 2008
in Blog
. 0 Comments

Ok So heres my predications:

  • iPhone 2, 
  • iPhone App Store
  • New Firmware for existing iPhones
  • New Version of OS X 10.6 - Snow Leopard - Nice and shiny none feature release
  • New Cinema Displays
  • Updated Macbook Pro’s 
  • Twitter will die - Twitter Blog
  • Lets not forget the one more thing that no one guesses, my money is on a Yellow Submarine iPhone and all the Beetles back catalogue on iTunes

Once your lucky, Twice your stupid.

Published
by
Jack
on June 5, 2008
in Blog and Technology
. 0 Comments

BBC1 will be web-streamed live through BBC.co.uk as of next year, according to the broadcaster’s director general Mark Thompson.

BBC1 is internet bound

Hoping to capitalise on its impressive iPlayer service the Beeb has decided why not go back to the 90’s and try something they know doesn’t work.

People simply do not want to watch TV in a linear sense anymore, the only content thats worth streaming are sports events, I there isn’t much chance of that happening soon.

The BBC needs to work on iPlayer and getting the BBC online identity sorted out, its abit of a mish mash at the moment. With iPlayer the BBC struck gold and unless they keep pushing they will become a follower not a leader. I think the best idea would be to can live streaming, and just make iPlayer better they would be forgiven for that.

iTunes Movies - An Inconvenient Truth

Published
by
Jack
on June 4, 2008
in Apple, Blog and Technology
. 0 Comments


It was less then 30 minutes after the official word that iTunes was selling films in the UK store, before I was watching Batman Begins. But is the convenience coming at too high a cost?

In the UK we have become used getting ripped off around every corner, it stinks but we are British so we put up with it. My problem is that some of the films now available particularly Al Gores documentary “An Inconvenient Truth” £10.99 At this point the noveltywore off, I can have this shipped to me from amazon £6.22 in less than two days.

I aren’t apposed to paying £6.99 for a film, but £10.99 for a film that you can buy in the shops for less than £7 I think its pushing it. Us Brits whilst being hard done by after getting the long of the stick for so many years we have all become cynics, and easily see where profiteering is taking place. We saw it with the iPhone, which didn’t do anywhere near as well as planned (see here) We also see it with practically every computer or gadget, when you get nearly 2$US to £1GBP and the prices of things are the same in dollars as pounds you know there is something wrong.

Unless iTunes get more content up in the store and stop stupid pricing, they may just take off. Who am I kidding it will take off whatever apple do, its what their good at. I would like to think that Apple at least get some semblance of order in pricing and price match with the High Street.

How I became Inspector Gadget.

Published
by
Jack
on May 28, 2008
in Apple, Blog, Computing, Ideas, Microsoft and Technology
. 0 Comments

There are certain points in your life where you can’t help but look back on the preceding years. Officially I have now left college on study leave, until 20 June, which is my last day ever. So how the hell did I end up at this point.

My first exposure to a computer was a windows 3.1 machine in 1995, it was god awful but I was only five and young kids and technology don’t really get on. It was a good few years before I got a computer of my own, I ended up with a Pentium 1 MX running Windows 95, which didn’t last long. I couldn’t play any games on it, and it was stable as a long pole with a plate on it. So inevetably it was upgraded to a machine running Windows 98 Pentium 2, with a decent graphics card and MPEG decoder card.

 

Its probably at that point that the bug really caught me, from then on in I had a slew of applications and experiments going on the poor computer, which I still have under my desk. Three computers later and I made the big switch to Mac, something which I haven’t regretted, and still manage to keep up with windows excluding Vista which is almost as bad as 3.1. I also managed to pick up Ruby on Rails and a bit of PHP along the way, and ashamed as I am to say it Visual Basic.

People always ask me how I know how computers work. The simple answer is I have been tinkering with them for far too long. Every computer I have owned has been broken replaced upgraded and attacked by me, leading me to come across practically every common error you can get. Its sad to say but I can usually diagnose a hardware fault before the BIOS has finished its self test at boot up, and a software problem by hitting less then 10 commands.

The trend over the last few years is people are using technology every waking moment, but very few know how the stuff works. I love knowing how it works, and couldn’t really care less about using it. I will strip things down take them to bits, rebuild them, and then maybe use them. Because of this I have a collection of gadgets and gizmos that few other people my age can boast. It also means, that college work can sometimes come a distant second to a new gadget or blog post.

I don’t procrastinate as such, I just love technology to distraction. Wait a minute that is technically procrastinating. I don’t know what career I may choose, convergent technologies mean that practically any field is open to me.

Best bit is I know there will never be a boring job, technology is getting more and more exciting the closer we get to the point on the curve we drop off.  

Confessions of a Serial Soundtrack Collector

Published
by
Jack
on May 17, 2008
in Blog, Ideas, Music and Noteworthy
. 0 Comments

It seems no matter how good a film is, the music that goes with the film is always under appreciated, while there are exceptions to the rule we really should pay more attention to the music, it will make or break a film.

I don’t really know hoe I ended up collecting soundtracks, but two moments that really standout are; tracking down a piece of music used the in 2004 BAFTAs and another piece of music featured in the South Bank Show.

The music from the BAFTAs was probably the easiest to track down, I just emailed them. It took a couple of weeks but they emailed me back answer: Whisper of a Thrill - From Meet Joe Black - Thomas Newman. Within seconds the CD was bought and on its way. Its OK if you can email the people responsible and get them to tell you the music used but in the case of my second hunt, the emailing method wasn’t so fruitful.

After watching the South Bank Show, I had the I must have that music moment and started on my merry way trying to track it down by google to no avail, I had some idea of who the composer could be Craig Armstrong or Thomas Newman, so I loaded the ITV website and sent them an email. I have found since then both ITV and the BBC hate these inquiries and just brush them off, Channel 5 usually give a better response. I got the typical response, “Due to the nature of the way we create our programming there is no record of the music for each program.” I spent another few months searching, and had all but given up hope on finding the elusive piece of music, when i chanced upon a newly upload Craig Armstrong Album on iTunes. I had found it. Finding Beauty - Craig Armstrong within a couple of seconds it was downloaded.

I am sure that there isn’t just me who has these little quests, I am also sure that many people unlike me will give up on finding the song they were looking for. I wish the BBC and ITV would setup websites that listed all the music from each program. I think music companies should be actively encouraging the publishing of music in film and TV, it would earn them some points and make some money.

Since my first encounter with the wonderful world of soundtracks my library has grown from a mere 5 hours to over 22 days (thats528 hours) So much so I now have so much music that the chances are that I hear a piece of music in a film or TV program, I will already have a copy in there somewhere.

The problem is finding it.

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