Get a Blu-ray player for £10!

No, it’s not spam: you really can get yourself a Blu-ray player for a tenner, but there are one or two conditions.

If you’re thinking of buying a games console, perhaps for yourself, perhaps for someone special come Crimbo, you’ll be pleased to hear that your timing could hardly be better. With current generation consoles entering middle-age, the multitude of technical ‘glitches’ which so plagued those over-eager early adopters have (mostly) been ironed out. And you can now pick one up at a pretty reasonable price.

OK – so you’re into games. That’s why you want a console. But seeing as you’ve held out a few years before jumping into the potentially hazardous waters of 7th Generation computer gaming (re: red ring of death), you’ll probably be wanting a bit more than just a games console for your money.

If we are to discount the Wii (which in my opinion amounts to little more than a Gamecube with a bluetooth chip plonked on) and the Xbox 360 Arcade (which won’t even play some 360 games which require a hard drive), you’re left with a choice between the 360 Elite (£199) and the Sony Playstation 3 (£149).

If your gut instinct is to go for the 360, a rethink is probably in order. In the very likely case that you do not have a wired network running into your living room, you’ll need to splash out on a £40 wireless adapter for your brand new ‘box of joy just to get online. Up for some online gaming? Forget about it unless you sign up for Xbox Live. And you have to pay quite a considerable fee for the privilege.

Ok – let’s just say you’re not into online gaming (yet). You still want web browsing and goodies such as BBC iPlayer, don’t you? So that £40 adapter is practically a must. That takes the cost of a 360 up to £139, though still £10 shy of the PS3.

But for that extra push, you could land yourself a top-notch game console, with a Blu-ray player (and a damned fine one at that), free online play, re-chargable wireless controllers as standard, and more exclusives coming out this year than you can shake a stick at. All that extra for just a tenner.

No brainer, eh?

How Derren Brown “Predicted” the lottery

It seems Derren Brown has beaten a game of pure probability. By predicting the numbers of Friday night’s game live and adding a dash of live-audience charm, his most recent stunt has certainly turned some heads. So many, in fact, that the 2.7 million people who tuned in to watch him on Channel 4 outnumbered the 2.4 million who watched the “live” draw on BBC One.

But how live do you think the BBC One draw was? Whilst I’m certainly not suggesting that there is a catalogue of pre-recorded lottery draws of which one is chosen to broadcast every week, it is possible that there is at least a 4 to 10 second delay between the actual events and actual broadcast. Surely enough time for Derren Brown to be somehow informed of the winning number before the rest of the country.

The question you should now be asking is who. In who’s interest is it to support Derren Brown in such a stunt? Who could, and would, feed Brown the numbers before anyone else?

The National Lottery, of course!

The stunt will not have only brought the contest some publicity, but made the system appear beatable. When you look at the figures for winning the lottery rationally, anyone can see that weekly tickets are hardly worth the paper on which they’re printed. But by having Derren Brown appear to “predict” the numbers, people at home will surely be inclined to think they can do the same, and thus the National Lottery will see the number of tickets being sold rise.

Further more, now that it seems possible to predict the numbers, contestants will begin using the same numbers, believing those to be the correct predicted ones, and reduce the probability of seeing a winner in what actually is a game of pure chance.

Obviously I have no evidence for this. I’m just giving one way in which this could have been achieved, and hoping to convert some people to scepticism at the same time.

My New Page

I urge you to look at my new page. It’s where I post all my little thoughts that I cannot (be bothered to) grow into an entire post. Have a look, comment, challenge, suggest your own.

An Obituary….

At the risk of being accused of being a lazy blogger, I’d like to dedicate the rest of this post to a little something that was written in The Times recently. You’ve probably already read this, but I haven’t posted in a while and it’s too late in the day to start thinking heavily.

Today we mourn the passing of a beloved old friend, Common Sense, who has been with us for many years. No one knows for sure how old he was, since his birth records were long ago lost in bureaucratic red tape.

He will be remembered as having cultivated such valuable lessons as: Knowing when to come in out of the rain; why the early bird gets the worm; Life isn’t always fair; and maybe it was my fault.

Common Sense lived by simple, sound financial policies (don’t spend more than you can earn) and reliable strategies (adults, not children, are in charge).

His health began to deteriorate rapidly when well-intentioned but overbearing regulations were set in place. Reports of a 6-year-old boy charged with sexual harassment for kissing a classmate; teens suspended from school for using mouthwash after lunch; and a teacher fired for reprimanding an unruly student, only worsened his condition. 

Common Sense lost ground when parents attacked teachers for doing the job that they themselves had failed to do in disciplining their unruly children. It declined even further when schools were required to get parental consent to administer sun lotion or an aspirin to a student; but could not inform parents when a student became pregnant and wanted to have an abortion.

Common Sense lost the will to live as the churches became businesses; and criminals received better treatment than their victims.

 Common Sense took a beating when you couldn’t defend yourself from a burglar in your own home and the burglar could sue you for assault.

 Common Sense finally gave up the will to live, after a woman failed to realize that a steaming cup of coffee was hot. She spilled a little in her lap, and was promptly awarded a huge settlement.

 Common Sense was preceded in death by his parents Truth and Trust, by his wife Discretion his daughter, Responsibility, and his son Reason.

 He is survived by his 4 stepbrothers; 

1.  I Know My Rights.
2.  I Want It Now.
3.  Someone Else Is To Blame.
4.  I’m A Victim

 Not many attended his funeral because so few realized he was gone.  A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort. 

Isn’t it nice when other people think the same way as you do?

My Predictions for the next 5 to 10 years…..

Everybody likes predictions. That’s why we had television programmes like “Tomorrow’s World”. We all like a sense of knowing what’s coming next before anyone else. On the other hand, no one likes predictions that turn out to be wrong. That’s why television programmes like “Tomorrow’s World” got cancelled once enough time had passed for their predictions to be tested (although Jeremy Clarkson claims that it was cancelled because the presenter got lost in BBC studios).

In the 1950s, we all thought that not only would there be robots in every home, but by the year 2000, there will have been a ‘robot revolution’, and mankind would be enslaved. Some say this has already happened.

But, in fact, the revolution that did take place (I am talking of course about the Internet revolution) no one had anticipated. Once the internet’s success became apparent, everyone went prediction crazy, putting their money where their mouth was. This we now fondly recall as the “dot com crash”.

For me, there is only pride riding on the backs of these predictions. They’re not exactly what you’d call “radical”, and some are even rather obvious. Nonetheless, I will share them with you.

1. Texting (SMS) will become entirely redundant within the next 5 to 10 years (perhaps even sooner). In its place, we will see the already widespread use of email on portable devices. Emails are far cheaper to send, and form a more flexible standard. Differentiation between MMS and SMS will be a thing of the past. Instead, only “Email with attachment” or “Email without”.
2. Phone calls will be all VOIPed out. For the technologically challenged of you (and I use the term affectionately), VOIP stands for Voice Over Internet Provider/Protocol. What I mean by this is that all telephone calls, landline or mobile, will be conducted over the internet. Video chatting will also be available, but not as much used (it has materialised in the last decade that video calling is something most people are rather uncomfortable about. Sci-fi fans wept).
3. Either 3G or WiFi will be replaced entirely by the other and my bet is with WiFi taking over. There are only so many bits you can shove down a long-distance wireless telecom connection, and 3G will soon fall short of our modern data requirements. I predict that within the next 5 to 10 years, all major cities will have a controlled grid of WiFi hotspots, perhaps free, perhaps on contracts from telephone providers. Short-distance wireless data transfer will be the future, unless someone can think of a better way of using 3G technologies.
4. Microsoft will slip into a quiet semi-retired state like IBM, focusing on XBOX. Remember IBM? What a huge company that was, and then all of a sudden, not a peep out of the sleeping giant. IBM products haven’t been making news for years (despite their numerous more subtle contributions to the technology world), and Microsoft, with the exception of their XBOX division, seem to be heading the same way.
5. Google Docs will take over the world. If you’re not sure what Google Docs are, I would advise you to visit the site (docs.google.com), where with a free Google account, you can use an online word processor, power-point equivalent or spreadsheet program to create and store documents, all courtesy of Google’s tireless web-servers. These can be accessed from your browser. Go on – try it.
6. No more money in Software: Hardware and Storage are worth their weight in gold. This has probably already happened. About a decade or two ago, Sir Alan Sugar turned down a lucrative deal from Microsoft on the grounds that you couldn’t sell something intangible (i.e: software). How wrong he was (and this he admits himself). But now it seems that the community has taken to producing software for free, and they’re a hell of a lot better at it than the Giants. Anyone who makes money in off-the-rack software should reconsider now. There are free and open-source equivalents for nearly every bit of computer software you can imagine, and they’re usually a good deal less buggy. 

Well, those are my predictions. I’m fairly confident in them, and look forward to spending the next 5 to 10 years finding out just how right I really am.

Changing Nursery Rhymes for political correctness. Street crime will be a thing of the past

I’m not an angry person.

Though you probably wouldn’t believe this yourself had you heard the various (and some rather creative) obsenities I’ve just been shouting very, very loudly.

What on earth could have possibly triggered such vehement outburst?

“Drunken sailors” have been removed from the lyrics of a nursery rhyme in a government-funded books project.

Excuse me?

Bookstart, a project that encourages parents to read with their young children, has produced a different version – with no references to alcohol-swigging sailors.

This is the same government that has been trying to have films depicting characters smoking immediately rated 18s (a lovely bit of legislation that would put 101 Dalmatians and Casa Blanca into the same league as Texas Chainsaw Massacre). 

Yup, it’s the British Government, once again pushing the limits in my ability to have faith of the human race. 

The motives for changing the lyrics are rather strange. Bookstart claim that this has nothing to do with political correctness. Now I’m really worried.

The new lyrics go as follows:

What shall we do with the grumpy pirate?
What shall we do with the grumpy pirate?
What shall we do with the grumpy pirate?
Early in the morning 

Hooray and up she rises
Hooray and up she rises
Hooray and up she rises
Early in the morning

Do a little jig and make him smile
Do a little jig and make him smile
Do a little jig and make him smile
Early in the morning

That’s depressing to the highest order. I’m not really sure what more I can say about that. Billy Connolly has a word for the people who did this: they’re beigeists, and they’re the same people responsible for renaming “man-holes” “person-holes” and “pets” “animal companions”. 

What’s perhaps even more worrying is that the have the power to do this: who on earth has the authority to doctor a much-loved piece of folklore to their liking? Correct me if I’m wrong, but that’s the sort of thing they’ve been doing in the Soviet Union.

 

This is the latest in a series of disputes over nursery rhymes.

There were complaints in 2006 about pre-school children attending two nurseries in Oxfordshire being taught “Baa Baa Rainbow Sheep”.

Last year, a story based on the Three Little Pigs fairy tale was turned down by a government agency’s awards panel as the subject matter could offend Muslims.

A digital book, re-telling the classic story, was rejected by judges who warned that “the use of pigs raises cultural issues”.

However, a study in 2004 showed that nursery rhymes exposed children to far more violent incidents than an average evening watching television – including Humpty Dumpty’s serious head injury.

 

Well, I’m thoroughly pissed off. Thoughts?

news sources BBC News

The Good Thing/Bad Thing Game

PLEASURE: GOOD THING/BAD THING?

Bad thing. Didn’t you know? Pleasure is seen by most modern faiths as distractions from whatever they think is important. 

PAIN: GOOD THING/BAD THING?

Good thing. You probably won’t find this written explicitly in the majority of religious texts, but many people find this subtle legislation reading between the lines. Clever them.

KNOWLEDGE: GOOD THING/BAD THING?

Bad thing. An open mind is a mind likely to deviate from devotion to any governing body. Read more (but just make sure it’s only the same book over and over again).

BLIND FAITH: GOOD THING/BAD THING?

Good thing. Blind faith means you’ll do anything if the right person/book says so. What could be bad about that?

CREATIVITY: GOOD THING/BAD THING?

Good thing. As long as you create the things they tell you to create. We wouldn’t want this creativity to create alternative ideologies now, would we?

FAMILY COMES FIRST: GOOD THING/BAD THING?

Bad thing. Was it not in the Old Testament that a certain Abraham was instructed to sacrifice his own son, Issac to prove his faith? He would have done it, as well. Good old Abraham. Family comes second.

MURDER: GOOD THING/BAD THING?

Grey area. Last time I checked all three Abrahamic religions had some sort of manifestation of the Ten Commandments. But some wonderfully clever people discovered that isn’t actually what it meant, and I’m not just talking about the suicide bombers. If only more people were so attentive….

SEXUAL EQUALITY: GOOD THING/BAD THING?

Bad thing. Women, you heard the book. You know your place (on a raised gallery as far away from the religious stuff as possible).

—-

Well, it’s been quite a learning curve. I hope you’ve taken all this on board. Now off you go, make the world a better place.

The joys, pleasures and subtle merits of Laziness

Laziness has never enjoyed particularly good press. In an employer’s handbook of employee attributes to avoid, laziness usually comes close to the top. But the very nature of the idle is often overlooked and misunderstood.

A good engineer of any sort will know exactly what I’m talking about. I’m sure at one time or another, you, or a colleague of yours, has had to think of a solution to a problem, only to jump at the first thought and get busy making things. A lazier equivalent might sit and ponder for a minute, search deep for a simpler and more elegant solution, and find one which is altogether more achievable, more maintainable, works better, and most importantly for this example, constitutes for less work.

Those who remain sceptical would do well to have a quick flick through a book called ‘Programming Pearls’, which states that all good programmers should be a bit lazy for the reasons stated above. We’re instinctively lazy for a reason. Don’t forget that.

Something else which is often attributed to laziness is delegating work to others. But this is actually a very effective way of getting things done, and is a key leadership skill. Spreading the load will not only make things go quicker, but actually potentially minimise mistakes, as no one is overworking. If work is delegated intelligently, then you can assign different people tasks for which their abilities are better catered. 

And now I will return to another engineering principle: don’t re-invent the wheel! If it’s been done, it’s almost always been done better than you could ever hope, so use someone else’s work! Stubbornly insisting on only using your own work is childish and counter-productive. The task in hand will take longer to complete, and will likely not be completed as well.

Doing the minimum amount of work possible will achieve better results, and keep you enthusiastic about other projects.

On an entirely selfish note, you can’t possibly be expected to work your hardest all your life. The human capacity for work is astounding, but taking such a notion to heart will most certainly shorten your own life-span by a good few years, or at least make you a bit of a miserable git in old age.

Sure, there are times when it is important to roll up your sleeves and put a bit of elbow grease into it. But just make sure you’ve always got the goal of your endeavour in sight. You may find you’re working far more than you need be.

So let’s raise a glass to the lazy. Let us praise the idle. Because they are the thinkers, they are the achievers, and let’s face it, they’ll always be a lot happier than you.

The Gaza Crisis: the conflict, the suffering, and the delusions

I mourn for the lives of those who have been killed in Gaza. I would like nothing more than for this war to be over and for the Israelis and Palestinians to live peacefully on the same bit of land. I do not condone Israel’s actions, but I condemn the severe anti-Israeli reactions.

Someone once told me that at a political demonstration, barely half will actually believe in their slogans and causes, let alone understand the situation altogether. And I fear this is another one of those all-too-common examples of ignorance prevailing over a moment of rational thought.

Comparisons between Gaza and the Holocaust are simply unacceptable. Making such a statement demonstrates utter ignorance of both the Gaza conflict and the Holocaust. Israel is acting too aggressively, but this is not to say that they have the intention of wiping out all Arabs. There is undoubtedly something wrong when Ken Livingstone and the Pope are sharing quotes with Hamas (a terrorist organisation) propaganda.

I was further shocked to hear Ed Husain’s (co-founder of think-tank the Quilliam Foundation to stop young Muslims turning to extremism) comments that the war in Gaza is undermining their efforts. Excuse me? Did a man who’s raison d’etre is stamping out terrorism just justify terrorism? Calling for something to be done for fear of terrorist backlash is simply playing into the mechanisms of how terrorism works (hence TERRORism). Whilst I probably wouldn’t mind such a statement from most people, the guy responsible for curbing such extremists should most certainly not be flagging up terrorism as a reasonable political voice that should be listened to.

I’m not saying that we should condone the actions of Israel simply because the terrorists want otherwise. I’m more frustrated by how the louder they are, the less they know.

All too often, the biggest signs have the stupidest slogans in demonstrations. People declaring ‘Free Gaza’ haven’t a clue what they’re talking about. Should Gaza not be free, it’s certainly not the Israelis who are making it that way. 

Once again, I do not condone the killing of innocent people, but I think there may be a little more to this than Israeli malice. Isolated incidents are unacceptable, but sadly an inevitability in warfare. What you would find if you were to look at the bigger picture is that in many cases, Palestinian civilians are being used as ‘human shields’ for the Hamas terrorists. I’m not saying that this makes their deaths justified, I’m saying that the Israelis are not acting out of cold, irrational hatred.

There is lots more I could say here, but it’s just such blindingly obvious stuff. For so many back here in Britain, this crisis, which is causing loss of human life (an Israeli life or a Palestinian life, I don’t care. A life is a life) is a game. You get ill-informed brain-deads sending threatening letters to prominent Jews, shouting obscenities on the streets of Golders Green, and taking so much away from what is a just cause for protest.

I’m not saying that none of the pro-Israeli body are acting without console to that pinkish-gooey thing between their ears. Pro-Israelis have made equally stupid statements. There just simply aren’t as many pro-Israelis, mainly because the pro-Israelis are almost exclusively Jewish (which makes up about 0.02% of the world’s population), and are outnumbered ten-fold. Therefore, the anti-Israelis will always be louder.

Note my careful choice of words there. I said “anti-Israeli” and not “pro-Palestinian”. This is because “pro-Israeli” and “pro-Palestinian” are not contradictory. I support the formation of a Jewish state (for a huge number of reasons too obvious to go in to) and for the Jewish state to co-exist with the rest of the Arab world.

I will now refer you to an outstandingly well-balanced opinion of the Gaza crisis from the Times Online. Like me, he does not condone the Israeli actions, but explains the reasons for them, and how this could have been avoided by both sides. Please do read it properly. Too often, I see comments written by people who haven’t read thing properly, and it makes them look stupid beyond belief. The article is here:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/daniel_finkelstein/article5461544.ece

I am open for comments, but racism will not be tolerated. 

P.S: My oxymoron for the day: anti-war violence. Anyone who commits acts of violence in the name of anti-war is as stupid as those who consent to perpetrate war in the first place.

P.P.S: Just half an hour into the publication of this post, an appallingly racist comment has already been made, which in the interests of stemming further conflict, I will not allow to be published. He clearly hasn’t read/understood my post properly. I am as horrified by the atrocities in Gaza as anyone else, but this person’s statement was unacceptable. Besides it being hideously racist, it was self-contradictory and ignorant. I hope the writer of the comment will someday learn to use the aforementioned pinkish veiny entity between his ears. I fear there will be more similar comments to come.

Could sex become unfashionable?

I wouldn’t be asking this question in such a rhetoric fashion if I didn’t already have some ideas as to how to answer it already. I just felt like sharing them with you. Furthermore, this blog entry will feature a 90% increase in the use of the word ’sex’, so it’s win-win, really.

So, now that you have been utterly baffled by this peculiar title and bizarre opening paragraph, I will attempt to arrange my scattered thoughts into some sort of a coherent form.

Well, could it? (sex, I mean).

Lets take one or two examples. Start with one, see how it goes from there, perhaps mull it over with some French Chardonnay and light dancing. Cheese and biscuits? No, never cared for cheese. Will explain why in a later post. Perhaps next time I’m feeling as unconventional as now.

Example 1: Eating. Hugely unfashionable, these days. Also a deep-embedded human instinct, vital for the continuation of the human race. Pleasurable.

So if food can go out of fashion, why not sex?

My next point is perhaps even more obvious than the last. And to all those who haven’t yet clicked away from this blog having heard my cheese and biscuits remark, I will state it here:

Sex has been unfashionable in the past.

In fact, it’s only in the sixties that it has regained popularity, what with advances in balloon making technology, and so-forth.

So, now that I’ve thoroughly enjoyed myself spewing what is essentially utter bollocks dressed up in some fancy archaisms (you see – I did it again!), a bit like a monkey dressed up in a sailor suit, I will bid you good-day, and hope to god (should such an entity exist – see other posts) that I’m not so pissed when I write my next entry.

Until next time