Case in point, the one where the woman starts by saying “So you receive an email that looks like it’s from your bank, you click on it…” Woah, woah WOAH!! What the fuck!? So now you’re saying “it’s fine to be a complete fucking idiot, your browser will stop all the nasty Internet scammers from running a train on your bank account”?? Jee, thanks for the mixed messages there Microsoft. One minute your software is so paranoid you can’t even run a program without it freaking out like Rainman at the airport and the next you’re saying, “you know what, that message from ‘your bank’… go ahead and click on it, it’s all fine”.

There’s another one where the woman (sexist overtones?) starts by saying “So you click to get this free download and…” Now I admit that it’s less moronic to be duped by a dodgy site offering wallpapers and screen-savers than it is to get caught on a phisherman’s hook but still you have to be pretty dim-witted to fall victim to either.

The really worrying thing is that the adverts are probably pretty effective. People are probably now thinking “it’s okay I’m using that there Internet Explorer, I’m safe online because the man on the TV says so.” when there’s a very real chance that they aren’t even running the latest version and an even realer (more real?) chance that they have out-of-date or no antivirus solution installed. Let’s not forget that IE8 is still an unconscionably awful browser that EIGHT VRSIONS IN still can’t render a rounded corner or a fucking shadow!

Seriously, Microsoft. Pull your heads out of your arses and get real! It’s not like you make any money from IE so why put all that money into bullshit advertising. Do what other vendors do and put the money into developing great standards support and actually making websites look good. If you still feel the need to parade a bunch of over-happy fuck-wits on the TV why not spend 8 seconds with one saying “So you receive an email that looks like it’s from your bank. You should delete it immediately as 99 times out of 100 it’ll be a virus or a scam. If your bank really want to give something to you, they’ll use the post.”

/sigh. Rant over. Next: “Windows 7 was NOT your fucking idea, cocknose. And even if it was, that’s not something to be proud of! Now get back on your fucking treadmill!”

The story (Read here) involves a guy, Allan Wardle (no, not Alan Wardle) who, after experiencing trouble using his newly installed BT broadband called technical support. The call centre which the Mail says is “believed to be in India” – Wait, you mean you didn’t check that out? You don’t know for sure? Nice reporting. – for whatever reason was unable to help Mr. Wardle and an argument ensued. An argument that ended, claims Mr. Wardle, with the call centre operative threatening to “blow his house up”.

Yikes! Sounds harsh right? Well yeah but this article smells funny… kind of like bull shit. Mr. Wardle is quoted as saying “I did swear at him, I think, but he was refusing to fix the problem.” First of all, that is totally unacceptable. I work in technical support and I have a firm policy for people that swear at me; they get one warning before I hang up. Of course if the operative did indeed make the alleged threats it is a very serious matter and he should be punished accordingly but i just doubt… really doubt he even said it.

Here’s what I think probably happened, and this is purely speculation: Mr Wardle was too incompetent to correctly set up and use his new broadband and called technical support. Upon hearing the Indian accent, Mr. Wardle instantly engaged the “oh, for fuck’s sake!” attitude. When asked to carry out what were probably reasonable tasks to diagnose the issue, Mr. Wardle either didn’t understand or refused because he thought his time was being wasted. (Trust me, the amount of people who think I’m being difficult when I ask them to reboot their PC, despite that fixing the vast majority of problems, is shocking.) Upon being told that the problem could not be solved without him taking these steps Mr. Wardle flew into a rage and swore at the operative. The operative probably then terminated the call and, in the frustration said something that Mr. Wardle didn’t understand. Infuriated, Mr. Wardle then decided to play the terrorist card because, well because the guy was Indian and people from that part of the world are terrorists, right?

Despite the dubious nature of this story, and the fact that at the moment it’s purely allegations, The Mail (and the Express) have published similar articles about it. Not hard to see why. Their readers love this shit. Anything that might portray a minority in a bad light is the Mail’s bread and butter. This is the reason I should know better and not be so shocked when they publish it… but so help me, I can’t help it!

I’m not saying it’s impossible that this happened… I just really really doubt it. Funny how it’s the Mail and the Express who jump all over it before the transcripts are even released. Not even The Sun has touched this crap. Still, I bet Mr. Wardle is getting plenty of support from like minded dullards down the local boozer and maybe a nice cheque from the newspapers… Hell, I might call up the Mail and claim my pizza delivery man threatened to plant an IED in my driveway for not tipping enough. I doubt they’d take me seriously though as I don’t look like I’ve just walked off the set of the Jeremy Kyle show.

5. The game itself.

It amazes me that such a game is the most popular sport in the world. I just don’t get it.

Although marginally more entertaining to play, football is, for the most part, a sinfully boring game to watch. I mean, really. Here is a game where there is a high probability that not a single point will be scored in an hour and a god damn half! Wow, carefull you don’t piss yourself with excitement!

You might be thinking “Oh you’re just not into sports.” Not true. There are some sports I love to watch. Just not this one.

I can only think of one more sport that I find as boring and that’s cricket but that is cricket’s only fault really… that and an unfathomable scoring system. Football has the next four points (and then some) against it.

4. The players.

What a bunch of girly-boy douchebags, really! I cannot think of a single other sport where the players are such drama queens. “Oh, what’s that? The nasty man pulled on your shirt? Oh, my apologies. It’s quite understandable that you’d throw yourself down on the ground and hold your face, in apparent agony. Please, continue. You don’t look like a twat at all.”

I’m not saying bad injuries that require such a reaction don’t happen in the game. Some of the tackles are pretty harsh but seriously what are these guys, six? Strap on a pair, I know it’s a non-contact sport but do you see basketball players crying like spoiled babies in an effort to get an opposing player in trouble?

3. We, us, you.

I don’t think this one will take much explanation. I’ll let David Mitchell and Robert Webb explain.

I think that says it all.

2. Footbal manager games.

I remember when I was at college and the latest iteration of Championship Manager was released on the PlayStation. A few of the lads on my course wouldn’t shut up about it so I had a look at what it was all about. /facepalm.

You know how I said before that the game of football was sinfully boring? Well these manager games are that kind of boring on steroids! I believe my reaction was something like “I can’t see how playing on Microsoft Excel, recreationally, would be any less enjoyable than playing Championship Manager. It’s a game based on spreadsheets!”

1. (By a long, long way) Hooligans.

I don’t like using the C word. But I’ll happily use it to describe these people. The odd thing about this is that it seems almost totally unique to football. Of course there are a few bad apples in the fan-bases of other sports that will start fights at a game but it’s nothing compared to the legion of arse holes that comprise football “Firms”. These people actually organise violence with rival groups using mobile phones and the Internet. How fucked up is that!? “Excuse me, good sir. Would you and your associates like to meet us outside The Rose and Crown at 3:30 so we may punch/kick/chair/glass/knife/ashtray the living shit out of one another? Spot on! See you then.”

Sometimes it can get so bad that games have to be called off. The other week, a man watching a match with his son (Not a part of any hooligan firm) was stabbed in the chest. That was not an isolated incident.

I think my main beef with this lot, though comes from many experiences of being stuck on a train full of them. I remember going up to Leeds one weekend and I don’t think I’d have seen more Stone Island clothing at the brand’s flagship store. It was wall-to-wall bell-ends and like 5 transport police to herd them all. They aren’t young yobbos either. They’re men in their 30s and 40s with good jobs… And a dangerous testosterone imbalance apparently. Maybe roid rage. =/

There you have it. Quick and not-so-serious one for today. What do you think?

I work in IT support. I see it every day. Other people I know in IT support see it too, some to a worse degree than me. I know people who have more than adequate IT skills who are either out of work or stuck in a job far below their station. But who is to blame? Well it’s not the computer illiterate, oh no. I accept that some people will never be able to use a computer. I suck at sports. I always have and I always will. It’s the companies that are to blame here. So many companies only consider computer literacy as an afterthought when hiring new staff which begs the question; if they had run some kind of computer literacy test prior to hiring people how much more productive would the staff and, in turn, the company be? I would wager a noticeable amount.

There needs to be some sort of  international standard computer literacy test that companies can use to test potential employees. I’m not talking about difficult stuff here. I mean the basics. It wouldn’t be a hard thing to impliment either. At the time of the second interview your applicant would sit down at a computer and carry out a series of pre-determined tasks under the watchful eye of a manager and perhaps, if the company can spare them, a member of the IT department. Of course the manager of the potential employee’s department would be able to make the final call but the information provided by the test and the official opinion of the IT department would give a vital insight into the person’s potential productivity.

Test tasks could be as simple as the following:

• Correctly start up, log on to and shut down the computer.
• Copy and paste a file into a pre-determined folder. Repeat with multiple files.
• Re-name a file in a pre-determined folder.
• Minimise, maximise and re-size a window.
• Save a document from a Microsoft Office application into a pre-determined folder and Save another copy with a different name somewhere else. (Demonstrating an understanding of “Save” and “Save as…” )
• Print a Microsoft Office document to a pre-determined printer (may or may not be the default printer).
• Send an e-mail with an attachment.
• Open a web browser and navigate to a pre-determined website.
• Copy and paste text into a document or e-mail.
• Switch between open applications.
• Connect to a wireless network (if this will be a common task in the applicant’s role, i.e if they are going to be a mobile/laptop user)
• Identify a USB port.

It should take no longer than 10 minutes to run through that test but the insight it will provide will be invaluable. All the tasks in that list are things the average 12 year old would be able to do without much of a problem and they can be applied to either PC or Mac. It’s very much a win/win scenario. People with good IT skills will be able to get the jobs they deserve and companies will get efficient, productive staff. Changes or advances in the IT infrastructure would be a lot less painful and would take less time. IT departments would be free to concentrate on their core responsibilities rather than endure hours of hand-holding.

Discuss.

Okay. I remain unsure on the authenticity of this video. It could be a joke. There’s actually a really good chance it is but it still made me more angry than pretty much anything else I’d seen online this week. It’s not the geographic ignorance (“African country in Asia…”) although there is no excuse for that kind of stupidity. It wasn’t even the borderline racism (“why are you so dark?”). It’s the fact that they flat out tell the poor girl that being Hindu is wrong and tell her she “has to convert”. It has to be (again, if it’s real) the most vile and ignorant behaviour I’ve seen on a YouTube video. For the entire 9 minute duration I sat with my jaw agape in disbelief.

I’m an Atheist. Religion isn’t for me but as far as I’m concerned you can believe whatever you want. If you believe that space aliens created the earth and all life on it or that Star Wars is real and that makes your life better, then good for you! But the second you start telling others that they’re wrong and they should believe what you do, you’ve crossed a line. It works both ways too. I recently watched Religulous, a film by Bill Maher. What that basically is, is a guy going across America telling Christians they’re wrong and shouldn’t believe what they do. He’s rude, and insulting and just as bad as a Christian fundamentalist getting in an Atheist’s face telling them that what they believe is rubbish and they’re going to hell.

I have friends who are Christians. They’re some of my best friends. But let it be known; If I ever saw any of them pull any shit like in that video words would be had. Of course, I would never expect them to. They’re nice people with an IQ above 25 and a good amount of common sense, unlike Molly. No one has the right to forcefully impose their beliefs and doctrines on another. Ever. By all means, talk to me about religion I could talk for hours about beliefs and faiths. Just have the decency and respect to accept that people can believe different to you and that’s okay.

As I keep saying, my hatred of this video only applies if it is genuine. I’m still unsure if it is. If it’s a joke then Molly has one of the greatest senses of humour I think I’ve ever seen and is destined for a wonderful career in comedy. I hope, for all our sakes, that this is the case.

Edit:

Having done some more digging around it would appear that this video is definately fake. The tags on the YouTube video include “Poe’s Law” and “Henry Fielding” – Molly is more than a little bit intelligent. She clearly knows how to wind people up.

“Without a winking smiley or other blatant display of humor, it is impossible to create a parody of Fundamentalism that SOMEONE won’t mistake for the real thing.” – Poe’s Law

Molly, as I said above you have wonderful career ahead of you.

5. Not introducing yourself.

If you call someone, especially if you’re calling them for the first time or you haven’t called them in a long time, you must introduce yourself. It doesn’t have to be long and drawn out (in fact, it’s best kept short); “Hi, my name’s ****** and I’m calling from *****” will do 90% of the time.

In my work I take a lot of cold calls and the worst ones are the ones that completely skip the introduction. They’ll ask “Who is it who deals with ******?” or “Can you put me through to *******?” but they give you no idea of who they are or what their business is. Sometimes the caller won’t even say “hello”!! It’s rude and can potentially waste a lot of time. So take a couple of seconds and say who you are.

4. Being too lazy to listen to the rings.

Okay that was hard to put across in a title so I’ll give you the scenario: Someone calls me up and after 3 rings or so (usually less) I pick up. “Hello…” I say… *silence* for a good few seconds then the reply comes “Hiya…”

That pause is symptomatic of people using phones where you can dial and start the call before picking up the handset. Listen, just because it’s possible, doesn’t mean you should do it. For a kick off, because you’ve done that you haven’t heard me say “hello” and if I were to give a longer greeting such as “how can I help you?” you’d have picked up half way through.

Using phones in this way means the caller has to look at a light or screen on the base unit of the phone to tell when the  other person has picked up. So if they look away for even a short time they can leave the other person saying “hello” over and over again and potentially hanging up. So please! Have the common decency to listen to the rings and the persons greeting and reply right away.

3. Leaving silent voice mails.

This one’s a real pain in my ass! When I hear that I have 5 new voice mails and 3 of them turn out to be *click* I start to question the callers IQ. I mean it can’t be that they start to hear the “The person you called is unavailable….” speech then hang up because then, there would be no message at all. In order to leave a *click* voicemail you’d have to listen to that whole speech, then the beep, then hang up!

Seriously people, there is plenty of time before that beep for you to decide if you’re going to leave a voicemail or not. It’s not rocket science. Even if your message is just something like “Hey, it’s Dan. You’re obviously busy, it’s not important I’ll try again later.” it’s better than just a click or, heaven forbid, a sigh and then a click.

2. Being too busy to answer, but answering anyway.

Pretty simple, this one. If you’re too busy to answer you have two acceptable choices; You either answer and say “I’m really sorry I’m just in the middle of something. Can I call you back?” or you let the call go to voicemail and get back to the person when you can. What you shouldn’t do is answer then immediately put the person on hold. It’s a total waste of the caller’s time and it’s really rude.

I know some people that will hang up right away when this happens. Personally I leave it 60 seconds, plenty long enough to put down what they are doing or say to someone “Excuse me, I just have to take this.”

1. Not giving the call your full attention.

This particularly applies if you are the caller. Imagine the scenario; someone calls you for help or to ask you questions but while you’re trying to help them they are constantly talking to others at their end or even putting you on hold!

Sounds crazy but it happens a lot. It gets particularly infuriating when you’re in the middle of trying to explain something and you hear the person say something like “Pam, can you make me a cup of tea please? … two sugars… no thanks…” It’s obvious they aren’t listening and you just know you’re going to have to tell them again.

Sometimes I even get calls where, after we exchange greetings and I say “how can I help you…” they put me on hold! WTF!?

Although I said that this is more important if you are the caller, it can never hurt to apply the same rule regardless of which party you happen to be. It’s just polite. It’s good manners and everyone leaves the call feeling a lot better.

5. Chocolate and Cheese

Maybe I’m spoiled. Maybe I’ve lived in the UK so long I’ve gotten used to really really good food. Our proximity to Europe means we get produce of the highest quality and our standards are just higher. Either way, though, American Chocolate and American cheese just plain suck! Case in point; Hershey’s chocolate. The stuff tastes like drywall flavoured with a poorly manufactured synthetic chocolate substitute. (Mockolate?)

4. American English

What my beef is here is not how America spells some words differently. I’m not a language purist. I fully support the development of language and some of the changes to English that the United States have made do, indeed streamline the language. Classic example is the removal of the letter U from “colour” “flavour” et al. My problem however is that many applications and websites seem to ignore the fact that forms of English outside the US still exist and only offer English (United States) as a language option (Adobe, I’m looking at you!).

Okay, this isn’t an Americanism as such but it does stem from one. The creation of the American dialect has spawned a blinkered approach to languages by a number of american companies.

And don’t even get me started on “zed” and “zee” or the replacement of S with said letter in words like “organise”… Bleugh!!

3. Screw you! We’re calling it that anyway!

I’m guessing that this Americanism is deeply rooted in the nation’s history and the pride they take in declaring independence from Europe. America has this habit of taking something and giving it a name that is already used for something else. The classic example is football. What Americans call soccer is known as football over most of the world and has been for longer than the American game of Football has existed. Oddly, American football has more in common with rugby than football. Even more oddly, they chose the name even though the ball has very little contact with the players’ feet. Hey ho!

Another one of these that’s kind of irritating is the fact that, in the states, any sparkling wine is called Champagne. Only sparkling wine that is made in the Champagne region of France should be called Champagne. This isn’t nearly as annoying for me as it must be for the hardworking vinyard owners in that region who have their hard work and centuries old craft devalued like that.

2. Wait? Do you mean January 7th or July 1st?

Why!!? Why put the month first!? Well, the reason is simple. We used to do it that way in England.. y’know, before the Americans gave us the finger. But what they missed out on, in their emancipation, was when we changed the standard to the more logical day/month/year format around 1900. That’s right, stuffy old England realised the error in one of it’s traditions and changed it!

Come on America, you must see how this can cause problems. Trans-Atlantic communications are at an all time high and, because of this, so must be date miscommunication. That said; “eleven nine” doesn’t have the same ring to it…

1. Anything you can do, we can do better…

One thing that the online community seems to agree on, regardless of their nationality, is that American remakes of foreign media suck… hard! I can’t think of one American remake of a foreign movie or TV show that has been as good as the original. Ringu is better than The Ring, The Office is better than The Office and if the American version of The IT Crowd is better than the UK original I’ll eat my own face with a side of peas.

Why, why, WHY!? Well, money. It’s all about the Benjamins. But as much as I understand that these people make these things to earn money, I really wish they wouldn’t. I hear an American remake of Oldboy, one of my favourite foreign films, is in the pipeline and the web is awash with fury about a forthcoming remake to Let the Right One In.

America makes some great movies. Some REALLY great movies. Play to your strengths, America. Leave the remakes alone and concentrate on making really breathtaking original material.

So there you go. Do you have any Americanisms that really annoy you?

So what’s so bad about it? Well Apple have failed in two areas in which they usually excel: function and fashion. Functionally they’ve committed a Dragon’s Den sin and solved a problem that never existed in the first place, not once, not twice but thrice! Firstly they’ve removed all the controls from the device itself, instead placing them in a “convenient” place on the cable of the right ear-bud. Not such a big deal, you might think, but it is. As of now there is only one manufacturer of ear-buds compatible with the new Shuffle… you guessed it, Apple. This is an issue because not only is the sound quality rather lack-lustre, they fall out of a lot of peoples’ ears, including mine, and seeing as this is intended as an active MP3 player (one you’d use at the gym) you want your ear-buds to stay firmly in place. Let’s not forget, there was nothing inconvenient about where the controls were on the old Shuffle… you could clip the thing anywhere on your person and as such have the controls anywhere you wanted.

The second non-problem Apple have solved is the lack of a screen to display the song title and artist. They haven’t done this by introducing a screen either, that would be too simple. What they’ve done instead is introduce VoiceOver. That’s right, when you change tracks you can have your iPod actually tell you what the title and artist is. Wait a minute! Did anyone actually request this? I get the feeling that some thumb-twiddlers in R&D needed to come up with something to keep their jobs safe during the recession. I mean, come on! It’s not even like the voice sounds good. It sounds like they gave some studio time to Stephen Hawking and HAL 9000‘s retarded robotic children and got them to read out the iTunes catalogue! And that’s not even the punchline. The PC voice sounds better than the Mac one! Epic self ownage!

The third non-problem they addressed is the least severe and that is the lack of play list functionality. The new shuffle now comes with 4GB of storage which means there is now room for enough music to maybe require sorting by play list. But let’s think about that for a minute. We’ve already established that this player is mainly intended for active use such as running or gym training. During those times you don’t want to mess around with flicking through your play lists and songs. You’d just put the music on there that you want and play it. I admit it’s a nice extra and makes use of the otherwise useless and laughable VoiceOver but there was truly no real need for it.

Now let’s talk fashion. One thing Apple has always been good at is designing beautiful objects. That is until now. This version of the Shuffle lacks two of the things that made the previous version such a design hit; The controls and the colour options. The simple and elegant controls on the old version were beautiful and added some really nice design detail to the device as a whole. This coupled with the fairly wide choice of colours made the previous model a fashion accessory in it’s own right. The new Shuffle comes in silver and black. Wow, careful guys, you don’t wanna break your imagination bone.

It’s not all bad, though. Apple have actually priced this thing pretty well with a not-too-shabby 4GB of storage coming in at £59 including dock and proprietary ear-buds. The build quality looks to be impressive too, as you’d expect. But these pros don’t outweigh the cons, not by a long shot. If you want an iPod shuffle buy the previous generation, while you still can. If you want 4GB of storage, spring the extra £50 and get a new iPod nano. Those things are actually good.

Why, Apple, can’t you have a photos option in the list along with Music, Podcasts and Videos and allow me to drag, drop and delete photos as I see fit? It seems totally bonkers that there isn’t one! Even better, why can’t I choose to delete photos from the ipod itself? I can do it with images I’ve saved from Safari, but not my own images… wtf? What makes this feature all the more valuable to me is the fact that I regularly connect my iPod to more than one PC. I mainly do this for charging purposes but occasionally I have a few photos on one computer that I don’t have on another and, most definitely, directory structures are not the same on both computers. This causes yet more issues when I attempt to sync because purchased items are licensed to a computer and as such causes errors to be thrown up, as you’d expect… but for some reason it also causes iTunes to have a fit and attempt a backup.. of your whole iPod. That takes aaaaages! I only want to delete a hand full of photos for Christs sake!

For such a clever interface between hardware and software, photos on iPod and iTunes seems to be a massive flaw. Up until recently you could use your iPod as a mass storage device and as such drag photos to it in explorer and that was fine so it seems like the least Apple could have done, when they took this feature away, is integrate a decent alternative into iTunes. Alas… maybe we’ll get it in the future…. maybe not.

Not got loads and loads to write about this time really, other than to say I had a very lazy relaxing weekend. Quiet morning tidying the house with some music on. I also got a call from work to sort a printer out but that could be done remotely so that was easy enough. Nat came round about 1 and we went into Notts for a bit where I bought a nice new adio t-shirt. It’s black with a white adio “A” emblem on the front with skulls in it and things. It reminds me of the Deftones’ self titled album cover cos it has skulls and what appear to be roses on it.

Anyway, we got back from Notts about 4 and went to Asda to get some nibbles and a bottle of wine. When we got back to my place we watched Anchorman which never fails to make me laugh. Nat thought it was pretty funny too. After that we were pretty hungry so I drove up to Co-co sun and got some foodz. I had Singapore chow mein and it was right nice. I also had some mini spring rolls! We then watched Shaun of the dead and had the wine. (Told you it was a lazy weekend)

Sunday we did bugger all! oh, except make the obligatory trip to mcarthur glen for some unhealthy food and some coffee from GJ’s Laaaavly!

I’m proper looking forward to seeing Transformers on Saturday. Looks like I’ll be going with Nat, Brahn and Laura. Should be good. Initial reports from the US seem to indicate that the film is really good and I have been battling my will power to not watch it in low quality online. Just this minute while writing this I’ve got word that good old Double D (edd) will be back from Norwich this weekend which will mean he may come with us to see this as well. Also…. Edd has Wii!!!!

On the topic of the Transformers, one thing I am mucho-unhappy with is the new theme. It is by MuteMath and it sucks…. hard! Check it out on their MySpace. Seriously, it’s fucking dire! “Autobots wage their battle to destroy the evil forces of the Decepticons” should not be uttered to that beat or that tune… ever!

Anyway, enough about that, the film looks too friggin good to be ruined by a dodgy theme song.

Tata for now!