The Virtual Gigolo

I would expect that if I purchased software it would work. Not least if this software was in version 7 and has something of a reputation for what it does. I’m sure that Matlab does what it is designed for very well, in its own quirky way, but is that any excuse to not save graphs properly? For reverting back to some odd old design just because you’ve decided to save as a pdf? I don’t even mean that it messes up the pdf output… the pdf output looks perfect, if you compare it to what the graph becomes in matlab! Unfortunately what the graph becomes is very different from what it started out as.

What a joke.

“I believe that God has everything in hands and that He permitted this disaster to happen in order to punish human beings for their sins and for not believing in His Son Jesus that will come back soon to judge us all according to our deeds. So I believe that we have to give these events the proper attention to avoid them happening again. ”

I must add in response to Matthew’s comment that I’m aware this isn’t a general Christian view, but to those whose views it is… if God is anything like the way you believe him to be, I dearly hope my atheistic views are correct.

Why why why oh why do people use this as a verb? This is an even more annoying usage of language than “could care less”. RSVP (répondez s’il vous plaît) means “please reply”. It is not possible to “please reply”. You can’t have “please reply”ed. You most definitely cannot be “please reply”ing. It makes no sense, so stop doing it!

Recently this phrase has been coming up increasingly, possibly not because it is in more common use, maybe I’ve just been increasingly frequently places where it is common. As yet it has not been too common in the UK, but after reading a post on the BBC website where a Brit used it, maybe that will not be the case for much longer.

Wherever it is used, it’s nonsense. Do people not think about what they are saying before they speak? Think about it, break it down. What does “could care less” mean? Clearly it means “I could care less about this than I do currently”, which means you care about it, obviously. In no context where I have seen the phrase used was the implication any different from “I do not care”, so saying “I care” when you mean the opposite is, frankly, idiotic.

“Couldn’t care less”, people! “I could not care less”. You don’t care! That’s what you mean! Use it right, damnit.

Digital Radio, a concept that should thrill the ears, provide quality, error free, radio listening to the masses, along with a wide range of channels and modern extra features. However, here in the UK, we find this to not be the case. Here we have adopted the DAB standard, which is based on MP2 compression. This in itself is fine, not necessarily the best, but there are always compromises with everything. More importantly, MP2 needs a MINIMUM of 128kbps to broadcast listenable stereo audio. How often do people encode MP3s at lower than 128? Very rarely because lower bit rates offer noticably poor audio quality. MP2′s compression is a level worse than MP3, it needs considerably higher bitrates to give sound that doesn’t annoy the ears of all but the least careful listener.

Around the world bitrates well over 128k are the norm. The average bitrate for UK music stations is 129k, the average in canada is 209k and the international average is 181k.

Of course, the reason for this, is that it was decided that here in the UK we want more channels, rather than higher quality ones. A concept I dispute completely, apart from anything else more channels just result in lower advertising revenue for each, making it much harder to support them with anything resembling quality at all. More importantly, why is digital radio takeup so low in this country? I would suggest that this is because the people who would be willing to pay the high prices for digital receivers would be the same people who buy expensive FM kit, generally. The problem here though is that to buy an expensive digital receiver would be a huge quality reduction over listening to FM on their previous equipment, so why would you bother? Until sales increase considerably, cost will not reduce, so those people who don’t see great advantages in digital (and as it stands, there aren’t any, afterall) also will not buy them. Destination failure.

What makes all this worse is that Ofcom wants to switch off analogue radio broadcasting soon after switching off analogue television. In principle that would be a good idea, but with tha appalling quality of digital radio, all you’re doing is giving the public a large number of pointless and low quality channels instead of a few dozen better, higher bitrate ones. They will have a fight on their hands from anyone who listens to FM on a good receiver… possibly enough that will mean the changeover will not happen. Such a shame, there is such potential there, if only they would see the reasons for giving people quality rather than quantity.

Why is technology rollout in this country managed by such fools??

I want it down on record that Odeon, the cinema chain, has one of the worst websites it has fallen upon me to visit. Due to apparent extreme incompetance, or laziness, take it as you will, their site still falls foul of accessibility guidelines, and simultaneously is unusable in web browsers other than Internet Explorer. Now, if IE provided something for their site that other browsers could not do, I could understand that, but as it does not, and an (I’ll qualify with almost) identical site could be produced with cross browser support, would it not be productive of them to do so? I realise they may be in production of a replacement, but as they have been doing so for so long, I have my doubts.

This subject has come up because of the recent closure of the “Accessible Odeon website”, a production by Matthew Somerville. While I agree that the site was illegal in the ways Odeon described, and in principle could be a problem, and that Odeon had no way to know for sure that the site was not storing user data, the useful service that the site provided has reminded me, and apparently many others, just how bad Odeon’s own in house web team is and how short sighted their management is.

On that subject may I take this moment to commend Odeon’s Marketing Director, Luke Vetere, for his public relations work and drawing of the online public’s attention to the issue of how many people hate Odeon’s site. Three cheers.

Yay, a pointless geeky entry. Does it really have to explicitly NOT support half the useful options in the C standards? Vararg macros anyone?

Ok, enough of the geekiness.

Argh, argh argh. So I made a mistake! Her birthday isn’t wednesday at all!

Blast.

In my defence I blame US/UK date format differences…

Ok, I know that’s just an excuse.

So damn again! I’ll probably permanently remember the wrong date now too, have to unremember that it’s also my grandmother’s birthday.

Damn again.

I must put it on record that it interests me that a company’s attitude is archaic when it says a woman cannot wear short skirts and tops that “bear the midrift”, when one would have assumed that archaic (and relatedly sexist) would have been wanting women to wear these things and to not wear trousers? I have to wonder if in these situations the women in question are happy that men in the same workplace are asked to wear ties, or is that archaic too? Surely it is within a company’s rights to set a dress code for its staff anyway. We’re on slightly less tidy ground when they change the dress code for employee after they’ve signed contracts, admittedly, but the principle of setting a dress code, asking people to behave in a way that the company feels will improve its relationship with its customers is quite valid.

This ground becomes even shakier when religious requirements for dress conflict with a company’s wishes (though actually then I still feel the companies wishes should take priority within reason, it would be extreme discrimination to only allow members of a single religious group to break the dress code, afterall (but is that ok, because it’s discrimination in favour of a small group? dubious at best).

Right, to business, the reason that pushed me over the rishi-generated edge into the publication of my most shallow and conceited opinions onto the grand web-like creation that goes by the common name “the web”.

So, the Mail, what is it about the Mail that makes the categoryof this post a “moan” you wonder? Is it that it’s a generally extremely right wing and poorly written newspaper? Is it that Lynda Lee-Potter writes a column (although This may be of interest there? No, it’s neither directly, although possibly indirectly the first.

Poor Lord Birt, is all I can say. Ok, not all I can say, but it’s a start. My tired eyes (a late drive home after a party followed by getting up early for bowling is great for leaving tired eyes) were greeted this damp, dreary morning by the headline “Lord Birt”. So what? The slightly smaller text above the headline reads “Lord Birt, former BBC boss and key Blair adviser, made director of firm that processes payments for hardcore internet porn”.

Unfortunately this article is no more than a continuation of the Mail’s recent reader grabbing attempts to draw attention to the issue of internet pornography. Maybe that’s a noble cause, maybe it isn’t (though honestly I can’t see consensualhardcore porn as an issue worthy of such attention), but direct character assassination with no good reason is not worthy of respectable journalism, though clearly this is why the Mail sees fit to publish such nonsense.

The company in question I will mention, though if any of my (countless, I’ll have you note!) dear readers feel I should remove the name, then I shall do so. It is Pay Pal, Lord Birt is a director of Pay Pal, yes, that (open sarcasm) dreadfully evil supporter of all things evil (close sarcasm). Quite how Pay Pal is more evil than, say, Amex (who also help you pay for Internet pornography, oh no, Amex must be closed down!) the article doesn’t really make clear. Maybe if Lord Birt were a director of Amex the tentacles of targeted writing would extend to that particular company.

It must be noted as well that the article states, and I quote, “But an investigation by this newspaper has established that hardcore porn firms – offering a range of nauseating and depraved sexual material – are using PayPal to help peddle their wares”. Oh dear. Noone would ever dream of SELLING access to something through a payment company would they? Worse than implying that much investigative effort went into this (5 minutes on google would probably have sufficed) but they have the cheek to call it a “revelation”.

This brings numerous questions (why anyone buys the Mail is a good one to start with) around the theme of how much care must a company like PayPal take in deciding who can use their services? If they close it up too much and something slips through they risk being sued, what incentive is there in it for them?

Now, I’ll allow that PayPal may have allowed sites that were not strictly legal, or that went against their usage agreements, it’s bound to happen, with the number of porn sites that we have to assume set themselves up each month the chances are high that a few will slip through. Pornographic sites are against their rules and that is their perfectly respectable (though in the general case unnecessary it could be argued) decision, I have no reason to doubt they make every effort to keep that in line.

Manipulative “journalism” is not the solution to the problem of internet pornography, and neither is direct character assassination. Whatever Lord Birt or PayPal’s faults, in this situation they have my sympathy, I hope the biased writings of a widely sold comic do not harm their reputations greatly.