Its existence? Comedic, yes, but no, not what I was referring to.
I just fired up IE on the laptop for the first time... well... not quite ever, but almost, to see if Windows Update would do anything more than the automatic bit. And while loading Windowsupdate.microsoft.com, there was a little warning icon that said "Phishing filter is checking this website".
What really disappoints me is that it didn't find anything to complain about.
Sunday, 6 April 2008
Not bad, just broken.
My current thoughts about Samsung can be read here, as well as other posts. But I'm afraid that, yes, I've got another gripe.
For a while now I've been intending to get my girlfriend and I a pair of BlueAnt Interphone bluetooth motorcycle intercom headsets - they're really small and neat and they can do bike-to-bike communication at 150m. Yay BlueAnt.
However, I haven't. Yet. However, a friend who has been spending hand over fist on motorbike kit because he's making a documentary and will get it back in tax has bought two, and leant us one while he heads off to Kakadu via Alice Springs with more cameras than colleagues.
And I attached it to my helmet, and paired it with my phone, and found that I could make or receive calls through the phone, and the answer button on the unit worked, and then tried playing MP3s through the headset off the phone. Which didn't work.
I tried several things, and then found the phone's manual. Which told me that there would be menu items in the media player for "Send sound to bluetooth" and "Play via bluetooth."
Actually, no, there aren't. I mean it. I could not get those menu items, and so today when I saw the expedition off in Toowoomba and rode back alone (somebody was recovering from the prevoius night's hangover and didn't come) I was not listening to music. Because Samsung fucked up.
This is not a missing feature, it's a break. When the manual documents and details functionality that does not actually exist, there is something wrong, not something that they weren't bright, considerate or far-sighted enough to not do in the first place. This is a bug. Samsung, I used to like you. Now you suck.
For a while now I've been intending to get my girlfriend and I a pair of BlueAnt Interphone bluetooth motorcycle intercom headsets - they're really small and neat and they can do bike-to-bike communication at 150m. Yay BlueAnt.
However, I haven't. Yet. However, a friend who has been spending hand over fist on motorbike kit because he's making a documentary and will get it back in tax has bought two, and leant us one while he heads off to Kakadu via Alice Springs with more cameras than colleagues.
And I attached it to my helmet, and paired it with my phone, and found that I could make or receive calls through the phone, and the answer button on the unit worked, and then tried playing MP3s through the headset off the phone. Which didn't work.
I tried several things, and then found the phone's manual. Which told me that there would be menu items in the media player for "Send sound to bluetooth" and "Play via bluetooth."
Actually, no, there aren't. I mean it. I could not get those menu items, and so today when I saw the expedition off in Toowoomba and rode back alone (somebody was recovering from the prevoius night's hangover and didn't come) I was not listening to music. Because Samsung fucked up.
This is not a missing feature, it's a break. When the manual documents and details functionality that does not actually exist, there is something wrong, not something that they weren't bright, considerate or far-sighted enough to not do in the first place. This is a bug. Samsung, I used to like you. Now you suck.
Monday, 31 March 2008
A full Apple worth of Duh....
I was just downloading Safari for Windows onto the laptop and I happened to glance at the boastful posturing "Why you'll want to be our bitch after trying this" box on the side of the link, and I happened to see...
Fuck me it's got resizeable text fields!
How great is that? My biggest gripe with GMail is how measly the bloody compose box is, and Blogger isn't that much better. Resizeable text entry fields! Hot damn that's good! Firefox, catch up already!
The other thing I noticed, which rather impressed me, is that Apple make non-Apple downloads, like Firefox, available through their website. That's rather nice, that is.
Fuck me it's got resizeable text fields!
How great is that? My biggest gripe with GMail is how measly the bloody compose box is, and Blogger isn't that much better. Resizeable text entry fields! Hot damn that's good! Firefox, catch up already!
The other thing I noticed, which rather impressed me, is that Apple make non-Apple downloads, like Firefox, available through their website. That's rather nice, that is.
Warning. Conspiracy theories ahead
I was thinking last night about drugs. Don't ask me why. I really, really couldn't tell you.
But I was, nonetheless, thinking. And this is where my thoughts ran:
Place all drugs, legal and illegal, prescription and recreational, on a continuum from downers to uppers - sedatives to stimulants.
With my limited knowledge of the subject, let's just divide them into major or minor, and we have this, from downers on the left, with only a sample selected because I can't be bothered being thorough:
Opiates - Marijuana/Valium - (Alcohol) - Caffeine/Nicotine - Speed/Cocaine.
Alcohol is in the middle for the simple reason that it has a contradictory effect - although a sedative, which gradually diminishes neural activity throughout the body until you die from not working any more, the effect is to make you stimulated and hyper. (Incidentally, never give caffeine to a drunk: The coffee accelerates the effect of the alcohol. Yes, all those ads about "You've had too much, how about a cup of coffee?" are really irresponsible).
Notice something? Discounting the stimulating fuckery of alcohol, all the legal recreational drugs are on the right. They're all stimulants. There is no single legal, recreational depressant/downer available in this society. Even Valium, the housewife's friend, is not immune: What's the cliche for taking Valium? "A cup of tea, a Bex, and a good lie down." You can't even take a sedative without taking a stimulant to counteract it.
Aren't we allowed to feel relaxed, happy, mellow and friendly? We're allowed to get beat-people-up wasted, we're allowed to get hyper, we're allowed to get jittery, but we're not actually allowed to mellow up. Maybe it will hurt productivity if people could relax on demand. So we get over-prescribed antidepressants (in the UK, physician's guidelines state that antidepressants should not be used for cases of mild depression), or run to potentially problematic herbal solutions like St John's Wort, which will interact with just about everything you get on prescription.
Picture this comparison: On the one hand, a pub full of ear-damaging noise, staggering idiots, vomit in the toilets, and spontaneous outbreaks of violence. On the other, a 19th century opium den full of barely animated corpses who lie there for a couple of hours, too spaced out to move let alone commit minor or major felonies, and then stumble home and sleep it off.
I know which one I'd prefer to live next door to.
When exactly do our drug policies start making sense?
But I was, nonetheless, thinking. And this is where my thoughts ran:
Place all drugs, legal and illegal, prescription and recreational, on a continuum from downers to uppers - sedatives to stimulants.
With my limited knowledge of the subject, let's just divide them into major or minor, and we have this, from downers on the left, with only a sample selected because I can't be bothered being thorough:
Opiates - Marijuana/Valium - (Alcohol) - Caffeine/Nicotine - Speed/Cocaine.
Alcohol is in the middle for the simple reason that it has a contradictory effect - although a sedative, which gradually diminishes neural activity throughout the body until you die from not working any more, the effect is to make you stimulated and hyper. (Incidentally, never give caffeine to a drunk: The coffee accelerates the effect of the alcohol. Yes, all those ads about "You've had too much, how about a cup of coffee?" are really irresponsible).
Notice something? Discounting the stimulating fuckery of alcohol, all the legal recreational drugs are on the right. They're all stimulants. There is no single legal, recreational depressant/downer available in this society. Even Valium, the housewife's friend, is not immune: What's the cliche for taking Valium? "A cup of tea, a Bex, and a good lie down." You can't even take a sedative without taking a stimulant to counteract it.
Aren't we allowed to feel relaxed, happy, mellow and friendly? We're allowed to get beat-people-up wasted, we're allowed to get hyper, we're allowed to get jittery, but we're not actually allowed to mellow up. Maybe it will hurt productivity if people could relax on demand. So we get over-prescribed antidepressants (in the UK, physician's guidelines state that antidepressants should not be used for cases of mild depression), or run to potentially problematic herbal solutions like St John's Wort, which will interact with just about everything you get on prescription.
Picture this comparison: On the one hand, a pub full of ear-damaging noise, staggering idiots, vomit in the toilets, and spontaneous outbreaks of violence. On the other, a 19th century opium den full of barely animated corpses who lie there for a couple of hours, too spaced out to move let alone commit minor or major felonies, and then stumble home and sleep it off.
I know which one I'd prefer to live next door to.
When exactly do our drug policies start making sense?
Saturday, 29 March 2008
Dammit, I knew there was a catch!
I am, for reasons of ergonomics, protecting the screen and providing the maximum available real estate to both screen and keypad, a fan of the flip design of phone. See most famously the impressive engineering but flat and unfinished styling of the Motorola Razer/RAZR and the Samsung A701 which has been pleasing and infuriating me in such successful turns that I'm beginning to think that it's a tool of psychological warfare.
But there's a problem with this position, which we shall place under the "right took for the job" file. The problem is this: GPS.
If you build something like GPS into a device, it works a little better if you make it so that the screen is visible all the time. Which is okay for a sliding form-factor, but tends to bugger up a flip. Which gives me somewhat of a situation flavoured faintly like a dilemma. The obvious solution is to do what flip-phone stalwarts Samsung and Motorola (or what remains of Motorola, anyway) have already done, which is to put a high-quality screen on the outside of the phone as well. But that sort of redundancy, of duplication of services, offends what's left of my sense of elegance of aesthetics and is no solution at all.
Neither is relying on voice commands, through a speaker or headset, when the phone is closed. So we move to a slightly less inelegant solution, the flip-twist. This design is hardly new, having been used at least since Sony was building a Palm-powered line of PDAs glorifying under the ludicrous name of Clie (pronounced Clee-ay, and with an accent I think), and having since defined the tablet PC, as well as appearing on several awesome models of Sharp's Zaurus Linux-powered PDAs and the odd (and sometimes extremely odd) mobile phone. The essence is that the device hinges open to reveal the screen and then, if desired, rotates through 180 degrees and folds back down over the keypad to leave you with a compact device with, crucially, an exposed screen.
Nokia did half of this design on a line of camera-focused phones that they appear to be letting quietly die (the final one being the N93i), and Samsung have recently introduced the same hinge into a phone focused on mobile TV and glorying in the defensive moniker of "Widescreen". Sad, I know. In fact, almost as sad as Samsung's website. Those devices used an offset rotating hinge so that the screen could either be used like a video camera's flip-out screen, with a fat camera mounted inside the usual hinge and pointing sideways, or like a portrait-mode screen for peering intently at tiny little videos where you can't see any of the detail or read subtitles.
So it can be done. Should it? good question. Will it? highly unlikely, I'm afraid. There are candybar phones with GPS, and sliders, so why would anyone bother? Mind you, if anyone does, it will almost certainly be Nokia who does it.
But there's a problem with this position, which we shall place under the "right took for the job" file. The problem is this: GPS.
If you build something like GPS into a device, it works a little better if you make it so that the screen is visible all the time. Which is okay for a sliding form-factor, but tends to bugger up a flip. Which gives me somewhat of a situation flavoured faintly like a dilemma. The obvious solution is to do what flip-phone stalwarts Samsung and Motorola (or what remains of Motorola, anyway) have already done, which is to put a high-quality screen on the outside of the phone as well. But that sort of redundancy, of duplication of services, offends what's left of my sense of elegance of aesthetics and is no solution at all.
Neither is relying on voice commands, through a speaker or headset, when the phone is closed. So we move to a slightly less inelegant solution, the flip-twist. This design is hardly new, having been used at least since Sony was building a Palm-powered line of PDAs glorifying under the ludicrous name of Clie (pronounced Clee-ay, and with an accent I think), and having since defined the tablet PC, as well as appearing on several awesome models of Sharp's Zaurus Linux-powered PDAs and the odd (and sometimes extremely odd) mobile phone. The essence is that the device hinges open to reveal the screen and then, if desired, rotates through 180 degrees and folds back down over the keypad to leave you with a compact device with, crucially, an exposed screen.
Nokia did half of this design on a line of camera-focused phones that they appear to be letting quietly die (the final one being the N93i), and Samsung have recently introduced the same hinge into a phone focused on mobile TV and glorying in the defensive moniker of "Widescreen". Sad, I know. In fact, almost as sad as Samsung's website. Those devices used an offset rotating hinge so that the screen could either be used like a video camera's flip-out screen, with a fat camera mounted inside the usual hinge and pointing sideways, or like a portrait-mode screen for peering intently at tiny little videos where you can't see any of the detail or read subtitles.
So it can be done. Should it? good question. Will it? highly unlikely, I'm afraid. There are candybar phones with GPS, and sliders, so why would anyone bother? Mind you, if anyone does, it will almost certainly be Nokia who does it.
One sentence review of "The Other Boleyn Girl"
Do not meddle in the affairs of kings, for they are childish, petulant and capricious.
Thursday, 27 March 2008
Is this supposed to be that fucked?
If there is one piece of technology design that needs to be obliterated on pain of considerable amounts of pain, it is this: Power plugs that are too wide to fit next to other plugs. Has anyone worked this out? Some companies have avoided this by putting the big chunky transformer halfway along the cord, with perhaps another cord plugged into it to help with adapters for different countries. But this gets messy and most just give up, and give you something that takes up so much space that you need a four-socket power board just for two devices.
And then there's Samsung. My growing annoyance with this manufacturer was given a good boost this morning when I attempted to move the charger from where it was plugged into a mega-powerboard behind my computer to somewhere it could be both plugged in and get reception at the same time. The adapter is very neat and svelte and quite sexy. And goes off to the left. When sitting in the powerpoint, it takes a sharp left turn. I couldn't put it there because it would run into the wall. I couldn't put it in the right-hand side of that double powerpoint because it would block off the left-hand side. I tried putting it in a powerboard, but between the power pack for the cordless telephone and the plug for the digital clock, there wasn't enough room. I now have three devices plugged into two powerboards.
I have to wonder: What do the designers of these products do at home?
And then there's Samsung. My growing annoyance with this manufacturer was given a good boost this morning when I attempted to move the charger from where it was plugged into a mega-powerboard behind my computer to somewhere it could be both plugged in and get reception at the same time. The adapter is very neat and svelte and quite sexy. And goes off to the left. When sitting in the powerpoint, it takes a sharp left turn. I couldn't put it there because it would run into the wall. I couldn't put it in the right-hand side of that double powerpoint because it would block off the left-hand side. I tried putting it in a powerboard, but between the power pack for the cordless telephone and the plug for the digital clock, there wasn't enough room. I now have three devices plugged into two powerboards.
I have to wonder: What do the designers of these products do at home?
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