Vista’s strong, new antipiracy protections

Mmm.
This is hopeless. I’d like to think that people will boycott the whole damn thing but they won’t, they never do. Corporations dictating law to protect corporations is nothing new but the flagrant smell of it is getting too much to bear.

It’s a 2 second analytical leap to go from “Protecting your video all the way to the output device” to telling you that you can only watch it one time. Not Pause it. Can’t skip the damned commercials. Mustn’t see nudity. Must see graphic violence. Must make a donation to the NRA before being allowed to see the finale.

Ye gods.

They talk about security as if it’s for the users benefit and the sad thing is, people buy into it. The only thing Vista wants to secure is the bottom line for its investors and partnerships. But then, why shouldn’t they? That’s what capitalism is all about.

I throw this out to you: Something Rotten in Denmark

I throw it out to all the people who keep maintaining that crazy-ass laws and new legislations will keep us safe from the armies of terrorists lurking in the shadows, waiting to steal our daughters and blow up our trains.

I support Greenpeace and what they do and stand for. Does that now get me on a government watch-list? I’m no more likely to blow something up than Ghandi (And lets face it, doing that from beyond the grave would draw applause, not criticism…) and yet, under current “legal” practice I’m probably guilty by association now.

I’ve not yet been made a “Victim of Terrorism”, I don’t think blowing things up is a good, justifiable or nice thing to do, but with the rampant lack of perspective and vision displayed by the electorate means pretty soon there won’t be freedoms left to defend.

Before responding, check what category this post is in. You know how it goes.

Take a look at this absolute gem from Microsoft. For someone who does work with current web-standardy type stuff, XHTML, CSS and all that malarky this article should make you either laugh, or scream with rage.
Technical Articles

I particularly like the advised table layout, and the Easy-To-Read uppercase tags.

At least now I don’t have to wait for CSS3!

(That, just in case you missed it, was sarcasm.)

Dubious honour

Tuesday 1108hrs

There are some people at www.marcnjami.com (They don’t get an active hyperlink because they don’t deserve it) who have stolen my Munky favicon WITHOUT ASKING OR CREDITING ME without realising it was mine! This was kindly brought to my attention by a friend on IRC who thought they might have been working in conjunction with me on a gallery script.

The fellow I blasted a rather curt email to has responded kindly and ditched the monkey, comes to the fore that he’d found the icon and several others on the Favicon gallery I was added to a little while ago. Seems that the Favicon gallery might be giving a little too much spotlight to Google Ads and not enough to the fact that you can’t use the icons from that gallery without permission.

Ahhhh, capitalism 😉

Thanks to marcnjami.com for being nice, the internet’s not often an understanding place.

Ten green bottles…

Wednesday 0329hrs

This has nothing to do with bottles. This has everything to do with the thousands of robots, underpaid Americans and bored 13 year old ‘Hax0rs’ that think advertising loans, viagra, herbal viagra, casino viagra, texas holdem viagra, poker, herbal poker and herbal texas holdem viagra loans on my website is going to get them even one more visitor to whatever lousy site they’re touting.

It’s really getting silly. For a while now I’ve had WordPress on ‘Moderate all comments’ mode, meaning I have to look through a list of all comments and yes/no them. I also installed a basic blacklist module to try and crop out some of the rubbish I get blasted with on a 24 hour basis. These things are starting also to fail me, the only corner I can run to now is the newness of wordpress1.5.2, which I shall be doing when I return from Oz.

I have decided to make a list.

  • Complete the new AMM plugin with the assistance of Sozu Web Design
  • Redesign my website slightly and upgrade to WP1.5
  • Finalyl write a working gallery thing so I can get some more photos online

Now, regulars here will remember that I made an eerily similar list some 5 months ago and, evidently, have completely failled to complete it. No more. Sick of idleness I am. Small and green I have become.

Fed up with saying I’ll do thing and not doing things, really this time, I’m going to go ahead and do them. Promise. If I don’t, the herbal loan peddlers deserve everything they get, including interest rates that will stay up for hours.

Legal Smeagol

Thursday 0028hrs

Injustice is rife in the world.

During our (Nicole and myself) time with the gracious Immigration Department, it looked at one point as if we would have to hire an immigration lawyer to act on our behalf in an appeal case.

We were refused legal aid.

I bank, at the end of a month, 100 times less than this shitcan makes in a week. Disgusting.

ID Cards are bad, MKay?

Wednesday 1327hrs

Say No to ID Cards, please, before it’s too late.

Don’t bother coming back at me with “If you don’t do anything wrong you have nothing to hide” or “It’ll help reduce crime” etc. Look hard at yourself if you’re thinking that and you’ll swiftly realise it’s propagandist nonsense. The Nazi’s of WW2 gave people papers. They set fire to anyone who’s paper said “Jewish”, so don’t tell me that everyone having an ID will somehow make the place safer and more just. It will simply sacrifice more freedoms to the God of Government in the name of “Security”, allowing them to shut-down and discriminate against anyone they please. Super systems are great if you can trust the controlling entity with your life (Because lets face it, that’s what is at stake here) but the truth is, you can’t. You cannot, absolutely CAN NOT turn over control of your identity to a faceless and heartless organisation. That’s like asking a random guy in the street to hold a loaded gun to your head before hurling obscenities at him.

What, exactly, are people thinking when they decide to place such power in the hands of an electorate that wasn’t even democratically elected? Are they thinking at all? Gnah.

— This is in the RANTS category, and as such may not be correct in any way —

Election Earring

Monday 0950hrs

Yesterday I was purchasing a month’s supply of tuna from the wonderful Aldi supermarket. Just prior to that I’d purchased some concentrated glyphosphate (Roundup, basically) from a B&Q warehouse. My my those places make me chuckle.

Anyway, why I’m mentioning this is because on the way home I saw a giant billboard advertising for the Tory party. It said, and I quote almost verbatim (As my memory is hopeless…)

It’s not racist to impose sensible immigration limits. Are you thinking what we’re thinking?

To which my response was a very loud and resounding:

No. You wankers.

See, I disagree with what the government, indeed, what governments all over the world are doing with respect to immigration. They are trying to stigmatise immigrants of all kinds, and seemingly associate the term with things like “Burden”, “Cost” and “Risk”. Oh, in case you weren’t aware, preventing people from migrating to the UK somehow makes the place safer, reduces crime and make the UK a better place.

Err, hello?

Oh boy this stuff makes me mad. You see, for a start, a lot of immigrants are totally legal. They come here to live and work, they pay their taxes and their N.I. and as far as I am concerned good luck to them. Then there are some illegal immigrants who come here and work and don’t pay taxes as they’re off the radar. Now these guys are on marshy ground but, usually, they’re doing crap jobs that native English people refuse to do and to be honest I wonder if the UK’s production and crap-job sector could survive without them. Finally you have the illegal immigrants who come to the UK and somehow manage to sneak on to the end of the dole queue. Ok, now these guys *are* bein cheeky and do represent a drain on the UK economy but hey, you know what, so are the rest of the doley wasters.
See, these jobs that the migrants are “Stealing” are not being stolen at all. They’re available because the chavs native unemployed are too idle or too arrogant to do them. Things such as 12hr night shifts in plastics factories, or night shifts in freezer warehosues for starters. So what are the native unemployed doing? Claiming dole. And you can bet your arse they lead the numbers of dole-claiming migrants by a little more than a nose.

Where am I going with this? Anyone who knows me knows that I hate the benefits system. There should be a temporary safety net for people who find themselves sick or out of work, but temporary it should be. The flagrant abuse of the system by Briton’s is responsible for so much it’s absurd. The gorgeous Coley has had first hand experience with the very people I mention and verifies the incredibly negative impact it has on society.

I don’t think the new government should impose immigration limits. I think for every honest hard working foreign chap that comes in, one lazy layabout pot-smoking, Special-Brew-drinking chav should be punted to shores afar. That’s right. Punted. And no, not on a boat.

“Imposing immigration limits is not racist” ? More like xenophobic I reckon. People who think Britain should be for the British are probably some of the most boring you’ll ever meet, not to mention some of the silliest. Bring on the hot sauce and let everyone get along.