Oh the joys of drm, and copyright lawyers. Moral: dont buy a kindle or from amazon
October 29, 2009
October 2, 2009
Charlie Brookers Gameswipe
Was on bbc four and took a large dump on the mainstream media’s reporting of computer games.
I like Mr Brookers acerbic wit and i can be found to be recommending his bbc shows in this blog
5/5 bananas
September 22, 2009
Stanisław Lem in english – not possible.
The monkey house is not good at the polish language. But i had a feeling i wanted to read Stanisław Lem’s book Solaris. It’s been made into a film twice, once by the soviets* (imdb:tt0069293) and again by the americans (imdb:tt0307479)
The soviet film does the thing better, while the american film feels more at home and does not go on odd soviet joyrides with long meaning less bits of film bits of cars traveling on a road.
So i find that my library has the book, but its in polish, if thats supposed to be snobby then i admit it here.
It seems that reading Mr Lem is out of the question, unless i learn polish or make films. Strange.
* which the announcer thought was the american version – thought that was funny.
September 7, 2009
‘professor’ Karol Sikora and the perils of compassion.
Karol Sikora was the doctor who said Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi (an alleged terrorist), was dying, at least that was the first of many excuses used by Gordon Brown and others. The Libyans actions are not here up for discussion as it makes my head hurt.
Framed or not the deal to let the Libyan even stand trial meant everybody is rather complict in this tale.
Karol Sikora is supposed to be a cancer expert, it now seems that while lectures about cancer are given the ‘professor’ it appears that the professor is a fake.
Gordon Brown and Scotland’s ‘problem’ is that if a fake professor was used to produce humanitarian advice for the Libyans release then it calls into question everything. Was his release for oil contracts?/etc
The answer it seems that when in doubt use a fake doctor to muddy the water. I hope that Megrahi lives for a long time and humiliates the politicians for not being straight. As for the ‘faker’ well who cares.
June 11, 2009
Catholics suck at science.
Bananas in the Falklands likes most of the work of an author called John Scalzi, (search the blog), and so it was decided to take a look at a non fiction book called ‘The rough guide to the universe’ or isbn: 1858289394.
The book published in 2003 suffers from a few faults like i don’t live in iowa for location, and the time tables are either way in the future, or in the past, but it explains to an humble chicken sexer like me the dynamics of star gazing. Science books have a duty to be heavy going an this book fails to do this and keeps it understandable.
Its sad though that the ancients (pre christianity) saw most of this stuff and documented it only for the flat earth catholics to assume the earth is the centre of everything and kill those with what we now know to be true.
June 9, 2009
The eu 2009 mep results in brief
A witty blog (not mine) on why england never has had an immigration debate and the monoculture of those who don’t ever want that debate.
I am glad the greens got in (my blog), and the pirate party in Sweden is a force to be reckoned with. I note that in england some, 10% of the vote went to non big parties, and with ukip coming in second so there’s hope for real debate about europe rather than it being a place where national political parties exile people to as a place to do nothing.
The collapse of the labour vote* and the election of the bnp is a good thing it is tells those ‘we will have no debate ever’ that ignoring the issue has consequences for major political parties who ignore the voters at there peril.
Any movement that shakes the three main national political parties and introduces smaller parties into europe is a sign that regional politics has failed in europe, and bigger ideas are needed here and they exist.
* except in Jack Straws ‘fraud’ area (see Craig Murray in blogs i read)
June 5, 2009
British Telecom comic shareholder humour
A colleague who also sexes chickens is also a bt plc shareholder, and they passed me the basic shareholder report, it is comic and fluffy in content with an interview with a phb type and emphasizes the ‘future’ rather than the fuck ups that British Telecom seem to be famous for (see this post, and phorm issues)
It fails to mention those i wonder why ? My colleague grumbled to me that the shareholder dividend was crap this year, at least the future is bright for spyware and spying at British Telecom.
I could rant further but dont see the point of boring you with stuff i have written about BI (not a typo).
May 25, 2009
cbs and the riaa trying to kill last.fm
Last.fm is web radio, who cbs an american corp bought. What you may or may not know is that an application on windows tracks all your media (see a problem yet?) so this means lots of data which is uploaded to last.fm [privacy?]
Last.fm is a london,england based outfit and so should really be under the control the evil ifpi, not the american bit which is the riaa and famous for suing music fans with bad data.
The story is here, the moral is don’t run microsoft windows, or trust americans (even if you are an non american citizen) for your privacy.
So Cbs the American broadcaster wishes to destroy there investment in web radio in last.fm, thats ok with me, but the shareholders of cbs might be a bit angry since thats rather a waste of money.
It is interesting to note that popular music once a benchmark for american freedom means just the opposite of it today, that goodness those commies in Russia lost the cold war, but lets not mention china.
As to the privacy abuse make up your own mind.
Plenty of issues here i think for all.
May 18, 2009
Patriotic spying is not profitable for British Telecom [the police states phone provider]
Readers might not know that British Telecom (refered here to as British India) has posted a huge trading loss of 1.3 billion sterling. ‘Global service’s a department which provides services to government is responsible for most of this loss,
So why do i mention this – spying and interception it appears is not a profitable business, even with Indian staff in India. Naturally Pform (my blog) does not help either but that is a choice BT plc decided to go with and not a customer demand.
April 15, 2009
amazon.com’s ‘easter hating gays’ moment a one off, or future feature?
Amazon.com is a big shop on the internet, which for whatever faults it now has pushed bookseller from a rather stuffy / lazy profession hence the quote from them before amazon that
“PEOPLE DON’T READ BOOKS”
into a dynamic business worldwide where it appears people do.However with big comes responsibility, the word monopoly might come into a discussion, and the one click patent trolling that amazon still engage in to today mean this beast needs monitoring.
Cave dwellers will not know that amazon decided that any book with a hint of a gay theme – including Captain Jack from Torchwood (my blog) lost its rating on the the amazon .com site, however if your book was soemthing like how to train fighting dogs your safe. So amazon went redneck for a bit.
so what’s the problem ? i hear some of you think.
Well – if you start delisting ‘alternative’ books how long before Harry Potter goes, or Stephanie Meyers book?s. The world does not need extra censorship, in fact censorship is bad for amazon – for this book (my blog) i could not enrich the shareholders of amazon.com.
Granted that the books i read might not be best sellers, and im not likely to read the books that amazon it appears would prefer not to sell but if the only two books allowed to be printed where the bible and how to train fighting dogs then amazon.com would not have a business.
If you read the blame game now that this was a cock up by one tolerant french amazon employee caused the issue that does not ring true to me, and why it that english titles like Jack Barrowmans book got censored rather than say asterisk (seen right) then explain that one away.
In short it does not add up. However if you read about the tale of the book amazon would not sell me then you will know that ‘no’ isnt the final word yet.
Exploring the world of bookselling outside of amazon means there are much nicer websites thena amazon, be different explore. Why you should explore is that say a book deals with vampires or witchcraft and some loon complains and amazon repeat this with vampires then both as a shareholder it will help you investing and as a consumer supply you with the things you might need.
If those examples are bad try this if ‘god fearing folk’ have issues with most things, women leaders, eating pigs, sex etc then pick a book up suppose a charles dickens book has strong female character, or emily brontes books might cause womens liberation then the danger is that these retards can both damage a business and have the ability to censor everyone.
The e-book – there kindle is also a means of future censorship, suppose Jane Eyre is banned as a e-book on the kindle, then the drm does not allow any non amazom.com content loaded. You have censorship.
I’m off to purchase a copy how best to train pit bull fighting dog after all im sure they can be trained to bite and kill religous people.



