sea nerd blog
autumn twenty fourteen

Appalling 8.1 bug

Just discovered a very nasty bug in Windows Phone 8.1: it deletes old email messages without asking permission first. Some of these emails it deleted had references for the next stage of our trip.

How dare it presume. How fucking dare it. Why do so many damn phone manufacturers design in this kind of presumptiveness? Are there none that dare pretend their users aren’t stupendous morons? Do no phone designers have elementary social skills?

It’s simple, Microsoft (and, for that matter, Apple). STOP FUCKING PRESUMING. Ok?

26.12.14

Windows Phone 8.1

My new Nokia 930 is a lovely piece of hardware, something it shares with iPhones. Unfortunately, like the iPhone, it’s let down by its operating system. The phone is noticeably less pleasant to use than it could be.

Don’t get me wrong, though, Windows 8.1 and iOS are both pretty good. Both make Android so clunky it’s nasty (well, earlier versions: I’ve not played with android 4 or 5, complements of HTC’s irresponsibility). Furthermore, I find 8.1 significantly nicer to use than iOS, although it is kilometres short of perfect when I’m expecting millimetres. Unlike iOS, unlike some android phone manufacturers, it’s shortcomings don’t make its phone unusable.

A great advantage of Windows Phone 8.1 is that you can remove drivel introduced by the supplier, the phone network, the phone manufacturer, or the operating system company. Yay bloatware delete.

Indeed, and most phone owners will be shocked at this: you can actually pretend you are in control of your own property.

However, Windows Phone 8.1 has some serious shortcomings that will annoy people, enough in some cases to rule out using an 8.1 phone.

I insist on a good podcast app. Listening to podcasts is what I do more than anything else on a phone. Unlike the iOS podcast app, which is so unusable that I gave up using iOS, the windows phone podcast app works fairly well. It has three shortcomings:

• It can’t play some files, although in my case that’s down to monopoly abuse by Apple;
• you can’t chose which podcast episodes you want to put on your phone;
• far worse, the app occasionally reboots the phone (an implementation bug rather than the too common design bug).

The walled garden is part of Windows Phone 8.1, as it is part of all smart phones. The problem is the walled garden doesn’t provide security, which is what it’s supposed to do, and it makes other tasks more difficult. It only provides a false sense of security, which is great if you don’t know any better (as most people don’t), but it relaxes you from being on your guard, so the things that does get through its restrictions are far more likely to work. There are already a few examples of nasty apps making their way past competitors’ walled gardens.

This problem can only get worse. The real issue is that the Windows Phone 8.1 walled garden prevents the user doing something about it. For example, the phone prevents me using a decent password. It doesn’t permit the installation of a phone unlocker that demands a good password. I am forced to use the standard useless four digit numeric pin to unlock the phone, which is about as secure as unlocking all the doors in a prison. This is a severe design bug. I am used to using real passwords, I like using real passwords, and the sodding phone won’t let me use a real password. As walled gardens rot, this decision to prevent users protecting their property will come back and bite hard.

The Windows Phone 8.1 has the worst contacts app I’ve ever encountered. It’s not just worse than its competitors, it’s worse than paper. Yes, I really have switched back to using (electronic) paper. If contact management was essential for me, I’d abandon Windows Phone 8.1. Fortunately for me, and Microsoft, I’m an antisocial git, and my key contact information is stored in wetware. The contacts app has the following faults:

• it presumes a contact can only have one phone number;
• it loads contacts from different email accounts with different purposes, so making it difficult to limit an account to a purpose—I don’t want my partner’s phone number associated my British business email address;
• it prevents you saving contact details to a SIM card, so if you switch SIM cards with another phone, the associated numbers don’t switch too (for example, I want to store my Irish phone numbers on my Irish SIM card);
• a minor one, but when I want to delete a contact, it offers to delete the email address instead.

Yes, it allows to group contacts together, but those groups are stuck on the phone: they don’t port when I swap cards, etc..

Storing files on the Windows phone is awkward. You have to download a file manager, most of which are altars to their authors’ egos. “Ooh, aren’t I wonderful,” so many apps says, “please tell everyone how wonderful i am”. What is the app store, a home for people with personality disorders? If I were young looking for a career, all those bloated ego problems would put me off the profession.

Fortunately, Microsoft have provided an File Manager app which does the job without requiring you to sacrifice a goat to an advertiser’s ego (one of their many quality apps). The trouble is, it only shows parts of the stuff on the phone. You see things you don’t really want to see, like private certificates. You don’t see things you do want to access, like email attachments. All the same, unlike oneDrive, it doesn’t randomly delete files, so you can access files it can see reliably. It doesn’t help that Microsoft have indulged in some monopoly abuse: the OS X sync application can’t copy files to the phone, you have to run up the Windows version.

The settings section is badly disorganised. The various types of settings are arranged in an apparent random order. It seems Microsoft’s designers haven’t understood the concept of the alphabet. I can’t for the life see a reason for this: I wonder if the phone’s designers decided to put the entries in usage order, but didn’t bother to find out what users used. Or perhaps the managers couldn’t agree amongst themselves what order was best, so decided to stick with what order was worst.

I’ve read a lot of comment in the computer press about the lack of decent apps for Windows Phone 8.1, and I have to agree. Microsoft themselves provide some fascinating apps, such as a real time notice translator (take a photo of some writing, the phone recognises the characters, then the words, and provides a translation). A number of other corporates have usefully provided their product, and there’s the occasional interesting offering, but most of the rest are rot from the gutter.

It’s not a great loss, because I’ve found over the years that most apps on most phones aren’t worth the effort of seeking out. They’re often bad reimplementations of software that’s free and well–written on a PC, or of crapware to help waste time for people who have no purpose in life (though admittedly that kind of app can be a useful distraction for people who do have a purpose in life, but who are trapped by idiots with presumption and power). The exceptions are the basics: a torch, an SSH client (PuTTY), things like that.

Overall, I find Windows Phone 8.1, despite these failings, the best phone operating system that I’ve used, and the Microsoft range of phones are very good pieces of kit. I understand from other reviews that the app offerings on the Windows phone are pretty dismal compared to the competive operating systems, and I certainly can’t argue with that, but I’ve got what I need and I don’t really want to play a game about opening packets.

14.12.14

mass conspiracy theory

A mass conspiracy theory (MC) is a belief that a large quantity of people, often in the thousands, have collectively and secretly committed a major crime or some other dreadful deed.

The theorists believe the MC explains how something is supposed to have happened. As such, it is a form of narrative. A narrative is a literary device used to help people appreciate events. They’re not used because that’s how reality works; they’re used because that’s how the human mind works. It is a mistake to impose narratives on reality, it is imposing the mote in your eye on God.

The Alps weren’t raised because Italy wants to cuddle up to Europe, they were raised as a by–product of plate tectonic pinball. Plate tectonics themselves are a consequence of gravity and mantle dynamics, which are themselves consequences of … you get the drift. Narratives are a device of story–telling. They do not describe reality, they show how the human mind operates. In consequence, an MC, being a form of narrative, does not describe reality. It is a fiction.

The human race is a hugely social species. We need to communicate with each other: so much so that we have a mechanism unique in the animal world to do so, language. We need to communicate to maintain social coherence. We need to use language. We need to express what is important to us. We need others to know what is important to us.

It takes work to not commuicate, to keep a secret. You have to believe in the secret, it has to be important to you, for you to keep it. If you relax for a moment, you may find yourself blabbing the secret. It takes work to keep the brakes on your motor mouth.

An MC requires thousands of people to keep the same secret. It requires people to believe in the secret. It requires people to be willing to do the work not to give away the secret. It requires none of the thousands of people to let the secret slip by accident. It requires no non–conspirator to come across it by unseen accident.

Furthermore, because the MC is secret (otherwise an MC is not a conspiracy), it requires people not to know the secret before they commit themselves to it. It requires those who recruit to be incapable of selection error. It requires those recruited to be incapable of judgement against the secret, or of disagreement with it.

In other words, an MC requires the conspirators to be not human. As such, an MC is an expression of racism.

The human race is also … well, human. We are imperfect. We make mistakes. An MC require conspirators not make mistakes, not to accidentally give away a secret, not to accidentally leave evidence, not to accidentally be found out by others. It requires an infallible clean–up squad that perfectly counteracts the entropy and chaos of existance, it requires an infallible clean–up squad that contravenes the second law of thermodynamics. An MC requires reality to be unreal and the conspirators to be not human.

By requiring conspirators to be not human, MC believers are racist.

There is no need to look at the details of a belief that involves an MC to try and work out whether it might be true, because, by involving an MC, a belief is therefore false.

In conclusion, an MC is a device of fiction that contravenes human nature, & requires believers to consider conspirators not fully human. If a belief requires an MC, the belief is wrong, and the believer is at best naïf, at worst racist.

11.12.14

Soekris 4826

Hah: after something of an argument with flashboot, I’ve got my Soekris 4826s working with OpenBSD 5.6. Thanks to the guys who produce flashboot.

11.12.14

mass conspiracy theories

we are a sociable species
we need to form communities
we need to work together

we are a communicative species
we need to talk
we need to tell each other
our key and silly things

it’s easier to talk
than to keep a secret

but we can keep a secret
if it’s important to us
or to someone close to us
who’s had to say it

keeping a secret
is keeping the brakes
on the mouth
pressed hard

but people are fallible
we make mistakes
in a moment of distraction
we’ll let the brakes off

when we are seen unseen
when we share with love
when the beer is strong

professionals can be trained
of course
those whose job
is spy and wreck
are trained

but those of us whose jobs are normal things
who remain untrained
in the malign arts of secrecy
in the master arts of crime
to leave no evidence
we can’t

you have to believe
to use the energy
to keep the brakes
applied

the secret
has to be important to us
it’s work to keep a secret
it’s natural to talk

if the secret
is not about our own lives
then it has to have a reason
to be kept
a reason that is so important
that we will do the work
to keep it

a common cause that’s strong
in which we strongly believe
is defence of the realm
is honouring the king
is protecting a principle
but none of those are secret

a common cause
that’s secret
how do you know
you’ve a common cause

and to expect
a mass of normal people
to do the work
to keep a secret
for a common cause
when they do not know
the common cause
is silly

a conspiracy
is a secret plan
by a group
to do something unlawful
or harmful

a mass conspiracy
is a secret plan
kept by a mass
of people

who have to keep the secret plan
who have to make no error
all of them
every single one
must be infallible
must keep the brakes
on their tongue

so
a mass conspiracy theory
requires the conspirators
not to make human mistakes
not to be people

yes
one or two
yes
a cell of committed believers

and cells get caught
their secrets
escape

but a mass of hundreds
of the untrained
all keeping the same secret
perfectly

do the believers
in the conspiracy
really think
the conspirators
can all keep the secret
perfectly
that none can make
a human mistake

a cell is small enough
that the changes of mistake
is low enough

thousands of people
no

a mass conspiracy theory
is a confession
by its believers
that they believe
the conspirators
are not human
that they themselves
are bigots

if they’ve thought it through
if not
they’s at best naïf

and then there’s
the recruitment

for a conspiracy
to become a mass conspiracy
the initial conspirators
have to recruit
many more

if the recruits
know the cause
for which they’re being recruited
then it’s not a secret

how can mass conspirators
recruit people
to a cause
if they keep the cause
a secret

how can they guarantee
that people will always accept the cause
once they know the cause
is a ‘unlawful or harmful’ cause

how can they make
their thousands of recruits
all keep the brakes on talk
all never make mistakes
when moral cause
demands otherwise

no
it’s clear
if a belief
depends on mass conspiracy
to hold
then that belief
for that reason alone
is false

for a long time
i’ve help the opinion
that mass conspiracy theories
contradict human nature
but i’ve never
got to the nub of it
until now

there is an innate contradiction
in the concept of a mass conspiracy
which makes them impossible
so much so that a belief
which depends on mass conspiracy
is false

you do not need
to investigate the evidence
put forward
the claims
stated and implied
to find an error

the very fact
that the belief
involves mass conspiracy
is the very proof
that the belief
is wrong

7.12.14

oneDrive

Unfortunately, Microsoft’s cloud offering, oneDrive, is dangerous on Windows Phone. It loses files. I put some documentation I needed in oneDrive, make sure a copy was on the phone (by reading it; I was concerned I’d copied the wrong file), travelled to where I needed it, and sodding oneDrive has deleted it from the phone. What on earth is the point of that? Why make an essential document inaccessible?

Fortunately for me, this was reference documentation, and I was able to google the information from the client’s computer. But what would have happened if it had been ticket information? I do that, I back up ticket information on my devices so if something goes wrong, I can get a copy. No ticket information means no train, means I don’t get to blightly for Christmas. There is no WiFi at Gare du Nord.

Bluntly, Microsoft, no software should presume it can delete stuff, whether it’s oneDrive, or Apple’s iTunes (which deletes podcasts and podcast subscriptions randomly), or anything. No software should presume it knows the value of data better than the data’s owner.

Yes, I can understand unused files which are backed up in the cloud being removed from the phone when memory is full, but I had more than 16G (of 32G) free.

I don’t have a clue what Microsoft’s idea is with oneDrive, but it’s very obvious they’ve not understood the real world, with its intermittent WiFi, expensive mobile networking, and all those other things. Microsoft seem to have made the frankly naïve presumption that a permanent connection is always available to their servers, which never fail.

It’s very simple, Microsoft: no software should be presumptuous, especially in a destructive way, unless it really has no choice, and has the user’s permission. OneDrive had neither.

6.12.14

there is no demand

A phrase that winds me up is “there is no demand for that”, when I ask a shop why they don’t stock something.

It’s not just the contradiction of me just having just provided said demand, it’s the implication that I’m such a non–person that my demand hasn’t raised the total from zero. I have no problem with “there’s insufficient demand”, that’s fair enough: I’m only one person. No, what annoys me is the deep insult hidden in “there is no demand”.

Still, something good comes out of it. A shop that uses that phrase (not just a member of staff; some people have clumsy tongues) cannot have properly thought through their customer relations. If they’ve the mistake of implying a prospective customer is a non–person, they’re likely to have made others elsewhere. That’s not a good sign of their future good fortune. It’s an invitation for competition. That’s why a shop that says “there is no demand” when asked for something is a shop that’s more likely to fail.

6.12.14

AI

The physicist Stephen Hawking’s been on the BBC claiming that Artificial Intelligence (AI) will end the human race. It’s an opinion, and a completely unscientific opinion at that: how can he measure AI behaviour when there is no AI to measure? His opinion seems to be the common fear of AI, the fear of the unknown.

I research AI when I was younger, and I thought about these fears. I had them, yet I was researching AI. That’s why I thought about them. The result was my poem Hymnen, which I wrote 25 years ago. It’s at the heart of my latest book, anticipating the metaverse, from The Knives, Forks and Spoons Press. Read the essay at the back.

And it seems, according to the BBC, Hawking’s not the only one who’s scared of what doesn’t exist. All those famous names, and all that scaremongering about AI. There is no AI to pontifcate on, it’s all fear and Hollywood. Only Charlie Stross speaks sense in this piece; I’m with him.

Hawking risks becoming another Linus Pauling, a Nobel prize winner who pronounces on subjects he doesn’t know, and ends up producing tripe for the benefit of scammers, such as the vitamin C prevents colds nonsense (like many people, I believed that, until I heard the history).

6.12.14

quackery & the media

I’ve been trying to work out why a lot of media promotes quackery and lies, and I think I might have got it.

A company wants to sell a product. One thing it can do is buy advertising. It is naturally going to want the most effective advertising it can get, the highest bang for its buck. There’ll be many factors to consider, but one will be placement: where does the advert go to get the maximum return. Where can the advert persuade the most people to buy the product. So advertisers will want to find places that maximise returns for their clients.

Now imagine you run a commercial media company. Your income comes from adverts. You want to put out shows that draws the crowds in. But to really please the advertisers, you’re going to want to put out shows that draws in people who are most likely to respond to adverts: both quantity and quality. You need to draw in people who are most likely to believe them.

The people who are more likely to respond to an advert are those more likely to be persuaded by it. Presuming the media company doesn’t know what adverts will be shown, they will prefer to find an audience of generally easily persuadable people. Given most adverts do not stand up to questioning, they need people who do not question, who just accept.

And there we have the attraction of quackery, and mass conspiracy theories, and the like. By hosting such things, the media are delivering an audience of gullable believers to advertisers. It obviously works; if the media didn’t make money, the support would be replaced by something that did. The more gullible you are, the more likely you are to believe any old nonsense, such as adverts, thus the more likely you are to buy the product advertised.

To put it simply, the media promotes quackery because it pays well. They are paid to deliver the prey to the predator, they are paid to deliver the gullible to the conmen.

6.12.14

potty

I’m visiting a family with five young boys, soon. It is going to be glorious havoc.

But I want to talk with the kids, not to them. Trouble is, it’s a while since I was that age. So I’m watching the Harry Potter films, for the first time, to remind myself of what it’s like to be that age. Yeah, I know, fat chance, but I have to try. This may sound daft, but I’m reminded of my old school (& it wasn’t me that burnt it down!). In the first film of the Harry Potter world, I would have been, unfortunately, Neville.

6.12.14

rant

In my profession, a job lasts a couple of years, and then you move on. Often, there’s a gap between one job ending and the next starting, especially if times are hard or you’re in the wrong place, You need social insurance. Cameron’s four years without payout will simply tell people like me not to bother to come to the UK in the first place. I know, that’s what he wants. Trouble is, he’s saying, if something goes wrong, stuff you. People fall ill. People have accidents. Life can be nasty. And Cameron’s saying, stuff you, bugger off, to people who suffer misfortune.

His problem is my skills are in severe demand, and Cameron’s now telling people like me, experienced developers, not to bother to come to the UK. If the companies can’t get the people, and they can’t (currently a thousand a day to work in the city, not exactly a sign of too many people for the jobs), how does telling people with the skills to bugger off help? The socialist principle of the welfare state should apply to all in need, rich or poor, whatever their passport, whatever their nation. Nationalism and socialist doesn’t mix, Cameron. Don't you know your history, Cameron? It’s a bit of an obvious lesson, that one.

I have no problem paying the taxes so long as I get the insurance. I’ve no problem paying higher taxes and having some of that redistributed to people who’ve not had my luck. But, fuck it, I’m not paying the taxes if the insurance won’t pay out should things go wrong. It’s just not a European market, it’s a world market, Cameron, & putting your fingers in your ears and saying na–na–na doesn’t change that market. You can’t buck the market, Cameron! If the company can’t get the people to come to them, they’ll have to go to where the people are. You’ll just hand the riches of the city to the competition, Cameron, to where I live now. Think Frankfurt, Cameron.

6.12.14

womanhood

Until recently, I thought of my niece as a girl. Then she became a mother, and I thought of her somewhere between a girl and a woman. But she’s spent the last week nursing her poor baby daughter through a nasty illness, and now, to me, she’s a woman. It’s not the motherhood, but the mothering, that’s made the difference.

28.11.14

three point plan

The rise in hatred across the world, as shown by the success of the parties of hate in this year’s European elections, demands something quite extraordinary to prevent the usual consquence of war and genocide.

The defeat of hatred will need a powerful ideology with courageous belief that is clearly grounded in reality, that can call on all the resources of the millenia of humanity, that can defeat the easy call of hatred.

I believe that something is the reunification of two of humanity’s the most powerful forces, reason and religion. Reason, as represented by atheism, and religion, need not be opposites, but should be partners guiding each others’ development on the hard path of truth. Each can stop the other from drifting off into fantasy and inhumanity.

Here in Europe, there are Christian athiest churches, such as the KPN in the Netherlands. Other great world religions have strong atheist elements: for example, Judaism & Buddhism.

I propose a three point concorde between atheists and believers:

• Religion accepts reality, accepts evidence, & jettisons the pixies;
• Atheism accepts religion is the gestalt of human culture;
• Both accept religious holy books are literary truth.

I hope, from this three points, these, the two powerful halves of human thought, can discuss and dispute to form a growing common bond, to eventually unite against hatred.

24.11.14

life span

Ignoring accidents and other misfortune, what kind of lifespan should I expect? I suspect most people, at some point in their lives, will ask themselves this question. This, though, is pure egofest: I’m talking to myself about my own situation. Worse, I’m not going to be deeply scientific, these are more general observations.

I can see a number of factors affecting my life expectancy:

• The general life expectancy of people living here and now;
• The lifespan of parents and grandparents;
• My lifestyle.

I live in Luxembourg, where the life expectancy for men is current 79.5. Actually, I spent most of my life in the UK, but the life expectancy there for men is the same.

I spent most of my younger life believing the primary thing that affected lifespan, in normal circumstances, is the lifespan of your parents. That was based on informal medical advice, which I now wonder if I misunderstood. My father died in his forties, my mother in her sixties. I made decisions when I was young accordingly.

However, we now know that the lifespan of your parents only affect your lifespan minimally. My parents’ unfortunate early deaths makes no real difference to me. I made the decisions I made when I was young on the information available at the time, which was all I could do, but turns out to have been wrong.

In fact, a lot of the information I’ve picked up in checking the facts out was discovered in the last twenty years, long after I made those decisions.

Right—I’ve covered average lifespan here and now, and immediate ancestery. I also have to consider lifestyle.

There’s an interesting contradiction between one of the lifestyle things that affect life expectancy, and my grandparents’ lives. I am fat. My kind of obesity reduces expected lifespan by three years. But here’s the contradiction. Two of my grandparents died fairly young (50s/60s), and two made it into their 80s. Two were thin, two were fat. It was the two fatties who survived!

Both my parents were skinny. Both died fairly young, certainly younger than their fatter parent. Does this mean that I might survive like my grandparents? I have no idea, but I like the contradiction, and I seem to be running with it.

Other lifestyle factors that will affect me:

• I don’t take enough exercise, although I’m not a couch potato. I walk about a half a kilometre a day, on average, and this involves hills. I don’t dawdle. In other words, I take moderate exercise. That gives me an extra two years over fellow fatties who don’t exercise at all, knocking off most of the impact of being a fatty.
  
• a genuine positive one: I’ve been vegetarian all my adult life (British definition: no meat, no fish, no seafood). American research suggests an increase of five years;
  
• a small negative: I enjoy booze: I drink a couple of pints and a couple of shots a week, it’s not heavy—well, but … blow me down with a feather duster, I’m in the best place, it’s a small increase.

There are some other factors which effect life but not life expectancy, or are, frankly, confusing. These include:

• I enjoy coffee: some research says that’s positive, some says negative—so I’ve no clue;
  
• another positive reduces the chances of Alzheimer’s: I speak more than one language;
  
• similarly, I have purpose, although whether my purpose is the type that was sudied is another question, so I’ll ignore than one;
• there’s a 25-year difference between life expectancy for rich and poor in the UK, although Luxembourg, being more civilised, has much less of an inquality problem. Anyway, I’m middle class, on a middle class income, so those factors (beyond those I’ve mentioned above) probably leave me without a negative or positive impact.

Now, I’m very sure there are going to be other factors I’ve not considered, because I don’t know to consider them. All the same, these results are better than I expected when I started writing this article. Judging by all of these, and with a fair wind, I have the chance of reaching my grandad’s resounding 89. He was a man who was huge for most of his life (to quote my mum).

But, really, all these figures represent are the odds. I could be wellied by a bus tomorrow. Hopefully, being fat, I’d dent the bloody thing, but that’d be no compensation for fate deciding my grave would be a nice place to dance.

22.11.14

half nine

So I resolved the pocket computer thing (I’ve got fed up saying smart phone when they’re computers), and got myself a Lumia 930. It’s got good glass, although I’ve not got the best out of it yet. It runs Windows 8.1, which, IMHO, is currently the least worst operating system.

Windows 8.1 has not got so many apps, true, but it has the necessary things for me. Those are SSH, in the form of a port of PuTTY (which is in beta and not yet as good as the iPhone offerings), and a podcast app that is usable.

It’s a very nice phone to hold and use. Then again, it should be, there’s been a couple of years of technological advance since I last bought one of these things.

I have a new test, though, that’ll help decide if I buy more pocket computers in the future, presuming no major shake up of the form. All current pocket computers are pretty well built. The Apple models are very well built, and that appears to be true of the Lumia too. The hardware lasts for quite some time.

The problem is the software. It becomes risky to use after a couple of years, because the manufacturers of the phone (mainly in the case of Android) refuse to patch it, or the manufacturers of the software (mainly in the case of Apple) stop making patches for their older phones (though they’d not as bad as many Android manufacturers).

Microsoft have something of a history of supporting operating systems for a long time. Microsoft have only recently stopped patching Windows XP: it was introduced in 2000. That’s a good record. But the desktop computer market is not the same as the pocket computer market. I want to see this new Lumia patched with security patches for a decent period of time.

I don’t worry about having the latest features: they’re nice, but they’re not necessary to keep criminals from abusing my property. Features and gizmos are valid as enticements to buy new products. Patches are necessary to maintain existing ones.

So here is my new test: if this new phone is security patched for at least five years, then I will keep buying pocket computers. Clearly, over five years, other things can happen that’ll affect any decision I make then, but this test is going to be an important factor in my future decision—presuming I’ve not become dinner for daisies.

22.11.14

htc sensation

Quite some time ago, I spent around 600 euro on an HTC android phone. I stopped using it after a while; bluntly, Android was pretty awful (I hear it’s much improved). Worse, the phone had more bloatware than lorry load of lentils. For a while, I used Windows 7 phone (which was pretty good, way better than Android) until I bought an iPhone. Anyway, my girlfriend needed a second phone, so I gave it her.

Sometime later, HTC made an update that completely broke the contacts app. You go to it, look up a number, and it crashes. A phone without a phonebook is pretty useless. She had to give up using the phone.

It’s been two years since there was an update to the phone. HTC left the final version with a broken version of an operating system that badly needs updating. I bought the thing in 2011; that’s not long ago. Bluntly, HTC, that’s crap customer service. I will never buy an HTC phone again.

Apple are way better with the updates. My old iPhone 4S is still being updated; I bought it about a year after the HTC. Furthermore, they’ve never left their old phones in a near–unusable state. I’m still using my iPod 1 with iOS 1 (I never updated it, and iTunes on iOS 1 is a better podcast app than that on iOS 8). Also, of course, Apple make good hardware.

I will probably be getting a new phone when my pocket camera needs replacing. Unlike HTC, Apple are still on the menu. But Microsoft remain the most likely. That company does have a history of maintaining old products for rather a long time—witness XP. Some Nokia smartphones have smashing cameras.

9.10.14

more podcast app idiocy

Let’s see: displays podcasts in random order—there’s this thing called the alphabet, Apple. Displays podcasts without episodes on the phone—trying to look big, are we, Apple? It’s update after update after update, and the podcast app is still full of stupid mistakes. It’s getting better, admittedly: at this rate, it will soon be as good as Vista was, when launched.

9.10.14

the culture of incompetence

One of the main reasons I left the UK, and why I’ll never return to live in Ireland for that matter, is the culture of incompetence, the general acceptance of incompetence, the attitude of “it’s not my fault that I fucked up”. It gets really bad because it’s not unusual for the incompetent to blame their victim for the problem, whatever it is, and they’ll be backed up by the people who are supposedly supervising them. It’s become a culture of institutionalised malevolent incompetence.

You see it in the politics, blaming foreigners, particularly the EU. It’s never the incompetents faults for the fuck–ups, it’s always someone else’s, hence anti–EU, hence the racism. The average Brit might be getting quite old, but so many of them need to sodding grow up. When I hear someone complain that foreigners have come and taken their jobs, I hear someone admitting out loud they’re fucking useless at their job, I hear someone admitting they’re too fucking lazy to learn up, so much so that their boss would prefer to employ someone else who’s so crap at English they can’t talk proper. I wouldn’t be working now if I wasn’t constantly improving my skill set, it’s a lot of effort and time, and I have no sympathy whatsoever with lazy bigots would couldn’t be arsed to do the same and are blaming people who have no power instead.

3.10.14

green energy

The country that produces the most renewable energy, in absolute terms, is China (source: Nature Magazine).

Yes, polluting China leads the world for green energy production. It can do so, apparently, because it has the manufacturing capacity. Western countries have manufacturing capacity too. Why are so many so far behind?

20.9.14

the scottish vote

I'm pro– union (more European Union than UK, but I still would prefer the UK to stick). All the same, I wouldn’t have had a particular problem had Yes won the recent Scottish independence referendum: Europe’s borders are always changing. After the 1989 revolutions, when I went to look around the new post–communist countries, I met someone whose grandmother had lived in the same house all her life, yet had lived in four countries (Austria, Italy, Yugoslavia and Slovenia). Europe’s borders are always changing.

It’s pretty obvious that unless there’s a fundamental change in the way the UK works, then, when this question goes to referendum again, as it surely will, the vote may well go the other way. The decisions made by Westminster now will determine whether the UK will stick together then.

It’s going to be interesting to watch, the next few months, because England has to change too. There was clearly strong support from northern England for Scottish independence, for many of the same reasons (Westminster remoteness high among them). That vote has not been harvested by any political group, so far as I know, but now it’s clearly visible, it will surely be targetted. I would expect the old pre–England countries^* to regain some political traction. If there is no change, what happened in Scotland yesterday might happen there in 25 years time. There has to be fundamental change in England too.

I didn’t expect any of this when the referendum was announced. I’d presumed the SNP won the Scottish election as a part of getting rid of the old Labour government, that they were simply the obvious alternative to the Labour death–rattle. I was quite obviously wrong.

But if England is to be divided into regions, it’ll only work if those regions have some form of identity to hold them together. The division cannot solely be on the basis of size. For example, Cornwall has its own identity—it even has its own language—yet it’s far too small to be a unit if England is divided into, say, ten equal sized chunks. Yet not respecting Cornish identity when Yorkshire would be respected is plain bonkers.

Some prospective regions have obvious identities: London and Yorkshire, for example. Others have their own identity of which outsiders may be unaware, such as East Anglia. London is a region, perhaps other English cities should be regions too. City states themselves are globally successfully; if London were a city state it’d be the world’s cultural capital. Real city states, such as Singapore & Luxembourg (smaller than Cornwall, richer than everywhere), show the way. On the other hand, Birmingham is the heart of Mercia, Manchester of Lancashire, both of which have strong identities. These are questions of identity and geography that have nothing to do with maps of convenience on bureaucratic walls, which must be acknowledged and addressed if the regionalisation of England is to have a chance of working.

^* England was created in the 8th century by a union of Mercia, Northumbria, Wessex, and some smaller ones, to fight off the Vikings. It initially worked, but eventually failed when some Vikings who had adopted the French language came a–visiting.

20.9.14

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