I.D. Rather Not
01 07 2009So, I’m driving to football and I hear half a news bulletin saying that the Home Secretary stated the compulsory ID Cards scheme has been dropped and will now be voluntary.
I was in he car alone but, at hearing this, I actually said “Awesome” out load and did a little cock-rock air punch. From this reaction you can assume my opinion on the whole idea of having a compulsory ID Card in Britain is to the contrary.
After running round like a madman for 80 minutes and driving home, I hear the whole news item (yes, it’s either the iPod or Radio 4 in my car ladies). I half thought I’d misunderstood the story the first time around, it being such a massive U-turn and what-all, but no it was all true and sense was finally winning out.
The entire scheme has been a farce from start to finish. I mean, does anyone actually think that someone bent on coming here to commit acts of terrorism or people trafficking will diligently sign-up for an ID Card on their way in? Furthermore, if said individuals were circulating without ID Cards, are they really going to go do something that requires them to present one? The only people carrying these insultingly oppressive things would be John Smith normals, who frankly have better (or worse but more essential) things to spend their money on or time thinking about.
This is without even mentioning that I’m sure we have far better uses to which we can put the apparent £9 billion the scheme will/would cost to set up in the first place.
On my return home I look to the internet for confirmation of the news, surely if I type ID Cards into google this massive story will immediately spring forth and I will be bombarded with a plethora of news copy and quotes. Well apparently not, I have to manually go to the BBC website, then to the news section, then click on politics and it’s buried as the third story. Honestly, am I the only one that cares about freedom and liberty these days? Apart from the Yanks of course, but I find them a little… misdirected in their approach to the whole thing.
Anyway, enough of my blather and rhetoric. The simple fact it’s looking very much like we wont have to have one now. The Home Secretary has said he wants the whole thing to be voluntary, which effectively ends it as an even tenuously justifiable expenditure.
So go home reader and sleep safe in the knowledge that the only country wide government run database that abuses your civil liberties will remain the one the police keep your DNA on, even if you’re proven innocent of any crime…
What’s that buzzing?? Must be time for my tablets again…
Ahoy hoy!!
BBC story is here but watch the video too for better info:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8127081.stm
And a big well done and good work to the air-side airport staff, pilots and the unions that have supported them. As the first group who would have had ID Cards foisted upon them, they are the ones that have been fighting this, finally braking the back of this issue. We all have you to thank.
Mobile Telecommunication for a Flat Earth
14 06 2009
The first things that I need to get across are 1) I am a technophile, more to the point I love gadgets, I have a very real need for new things to play with on a regular basis. 2) My mobile phone network of choice is Orange, not for any special reason, it’s just that that’s the one I landed on. 3) My contract is due for renewal in July and I’m in the market for an upgrade.
While trying not to deviate from the righteous path of rant into the dark fields of viral marketing Nokia’s new N97 has me Greasy excited.
It would need to really, considering the last Nokia product I owned was a Gen 1 N95 which was so flaky I nearly ate it. While in the bath. I eventually had a hissy fit with it in Blockbuster car park, took the battery out and refused to put it back in. It was at this point I vowed I would never own another Nokia product.
But seriously God-damn that’s one awesome looking gadget!
So any way, I’m thinking woot! awesome new toy just around the corner, let’s have a look at it on the Orange website. Hmm, not on the phones coming soon page, strange you’d think they’d have made more of a fuss about such an important product. So I checked The Feed (Faux corporate blog), one entry, answered with possibly the most insulting, patronising answer a marketing drone could muster. Not the type of coverage you’d expect for a device being hailed as the next big step in mobile technology.
Finally, feeling defeated I turned to google for my answers. The answer I found has left me disappointed, and will probably lead to my changing my service provider. Among its many features the N97 has integrated 3G Skype support, meaning it would allow owners to talk for an unlimited amount of time for free, anywhere in the world. This is no doubt making many mobile service operators tremble as should it catch on it would ultimately negate international call charges.
Using orange as an example, to call Australia using an Orange mobile phone costs a whopping 49 pence per minute! Any where in the rest of the world other than the US, Australia or Europe costs almost a pound a minute. At the moment therefore calling abroad from a mobile would only ever be a final option. Using a Voice over Internet Protocol such as Skype however places all locations under one price-band. zero pence per minute. That’s only short term as well. Should this trend continue, as VoIP phones become more main stream we will eventually see all call charges for become a thing of the past.
This doesn’t really relate to me at the moment. There is no-one I really need to call livng overseas who I really need to talk to, VoIP isn’t yet so popular that I can abandon regular calling. That isn’t and should never be the point though. My point is that a company who I Choose to patronise is refusing to provide me with a product I want, and am willing to pay for because it cannot dictate to me the way the product will be used.
Facebook Usernames and the Online Identity
13 06 2009
The Facebook Username landrush started last night, basically meaning that instead of your facebook link looking like this:
http://www.facebook.com/friends/#/profile.php?id=561529368
it now looks like this:
http://www.facebook.com/yournamehere
Big deal, right?
Well, potentially it was for some, popular journalists and brands were spared the landrush and allowed to pre-register their desired facebook username in advance of the launch. Presumably this was a play for positive write-ups for their vanity project.
So what does it mean for us? Well it will be a little easier to do this sort of thing:
It has got me thinking about the distinction between the two worlds we operate in. The only place I use my real name on the internet is Facebook, and to a degree here. Everywhere else I am VenomandSerum, a handle that has developed from gaming, through forums and now to creative outlets. I’m fairly sure this is a common story.
In the Venn diagram of my internet connections there are very few people in the intersecting area. This made my decision to use my actual name as my Facebook Username an easy one. Facebook, whilst a powerful tool for connecting people, seems to me like internet-lite, a tranquil zone for the less geeky in a sea of nerd. It has pretty much all the other aspects of the tinterwebs, games, chat, commercials, and the friends in the Facebook circle that I also see in real life, you know, the real number once you strip away the people that you drifted apart from after school FOR A REASON, tend to head straight to Facebook when they get on the net, and rarely visit anywhere else.
For these people the Facebook Username might be a huge deal. Nobody wants to be DaveSmith637, and for these people an alternate Facebook Username is largely useless; their online persona is the same as their real life one. I guess they’re stuck with a string of numbers still in their link, pretty much negating any potential benefit of the Facebook Username.
Oh well, never mind, I got /GazzHayes so what do I care…?
Facebook vs Twitter
09 06 2009So Big Brother 10 started recently, allowing fuckwits to vote for other fuckwits, which does seem like a theme recently, but thankfully there is a reality entertainment experiment that stars normal people and is actually entertaining.
When I was younger I remember a show, I forget what it was called, but it was basically a national scavenger hunt where the contestants would be hunted the length and breadth of the country whilst having to perform simple tasks. One team of bounty hunters would recieve help from the public to track down the other team, who in turn recieved help completing their tasks and staying one step ahead of the hunters.
Finally someone has picked up the mantle for the internet generation, in the form of Facebook vs Twitter. Each team is set a daily task in a different city in the UK, and require the help of their friends and followers to complete them.
Yesterday the two teams had to perform a stand-up comedy routine using only jokes provided by their friends or followers. Today a set of photos need to be found. Choose a side and get involved…
On Voting
08 06 2009
BE FOREWARNED I will sound like a parochial fool with Tourette’s, but I am an angry internet mans right now. People refusing to exercise their democratic right are linked to a switch in my brain labelled ‘Angry and Indignant’.
I am sick, absolutely sick of people not voting ‘because there’s no point’. True, most politicians will do things you don’t like, but not voting at all is like rolling over and asking to be taken by every sweaty inmate in the political community. I hope you enjoy it.
Recent example: the fabulous 42.81% turnout for the European elections has allowed two members of the fascist, almost neo-Nazi BNP to represent us in Europe, their vote totals are lower than the last election, but they gained two seats due to the terrible turnout. They got in simply because people couldn’t be bothered to put a cross in a box.
And that’s the point isn’t it. People claim to object to politicians and refuse to vote as any asshole is as bad as the next, but it’s really because it takes a lot of effort reading about the parties and candidates when all that mental bandwidth could be used thinking about how Susan Boyle is the second bloody coming instead. Not to mention actually hauling ass all the way to your polling station, losing 30 minutes of valuable TV time. I admit it, whoever you vote for you will still be fucked, but isn’t it better to be fucked by the nice smelling guy who still talks to you after, rather than the grinning monster covered in his own faeces with razorblades taped to his cock?
Voting is a right and not exercising it is unconscionable. We’re just over twenty years past the events at Tiananmen Square (excellent reminder here), these turnout figures so close to the anniversary of this event feel like a slap in the face. You are lucky enough to have the right to chose your political leaders; sure you don’t have the final choice and it seems like your vote doesn’t count, but that doesn’t matter. You have been given a voice, please use it.
UPDATE: See Warren Ellis’ site for more. For those wanting to maintain the political momentum I suggest reading his Transmetropolitan books, drawn by Darick Robertson (who is also bloody brilliant).
European Election Results
08 06 2009
The fascist BNP have a seat in Europe. What the fuck were Yorkshire and Humberside voters doing at home that was more important than voting? They got 9.8% of the vote, that’s 1.3% more than the Green party ffs.
I am not impressed.
Almost Live: My House Gets Hit By A Car Edition
29 05 2009
It’s 3am.
Gah.
Not one hour ago a car ran into my garden wall, demolishing a small part of it. Nobody was damaged, but the car is written off. I’ve been sat outside streaming with cold offering blankets and cups of tea to all and sundry and I came over all misty eyed at how calm and pleasant everyone involved was.
Well done.
…All’s right with the world.
24 05 2009You know how it is when you spend so long waiting for something that eventually you stop checking?
A couple of years ago Hideaki Anno, Gainax and Studio Khara announced the Rebuild of Evangelion project. It’s aim to retell Neon Genesis Evangelion across four theatrical movies. The first three focusing on updating the original series with the addition of several new elements including new characters and at least two new EVA’s. The fourth film is intended to give the franchise an alternative ending(at least its fourth variation across all Media).
Grand plans indeed. The first of the four movies was released in September of 2007 and was pretty much a straight remake of the first six episodes of the series, none of Anno’s plans became apparent in the actual movie, its not until the teaser trailer for part two at thee end of the movie that there is anything for the fan to get greasey-excited about. Here we are treated to glimpses of a new Eva model. our first look at the redesign of Eva 02 and our first glimpse of a young girl with brown hair and spectacles who may or may not be a new pilot. Pretty exciting stuff.
Then things went quiet though. The originally planned release date of January 2008 came and went, anime magazine Newtype anounced that the film would now be released in December 2008, almost a whole year after the original date. October 2008 the official website published enigmaticly that the second film wouldn’t be released until “Early summer 2009″, it was starting to look like the rebuild project was going the same way as the ill-fated western Movie.
That’s what I thought any way, an as time went on I stopped checking, until today I tapped it into Google looking for a UK release date for Book 12 of the manga, what I found instead was a new trailer for the second movie, and a confirmed release date of June 27 2009.
While I realise that this isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, since I first saw the series I’ve loved it, it features a complexity to it’s characters that I find fascinating and while many of it’s themes are cod philosophy, psychology and theology at best it’s still probably more thought provoking than your average Dan Brown adaptation. And it has giant robots (sort of), take that Hanks!
I’ve been taking lessons from Messrs Spielberg and Lucas…
20 05 2009…on how to ruin a franchise. I did it in the first attempt. A good friend of mine put me onto XtraNormal, a site where you can create your own movies over the internets. His version is hilarious and it made me want to try it too.
I think I may be spending some time with this…
Buy This Stuff: JoCo DVD!
20 05 2009Since I’ve resubscribed to WoW I can only spend my time levelling, not posting. Instead here is a video of a man 75% of the SC staff would perform acts of coitus on singing my very favourite song..
If you love Jonathan Coulton as much as we do then buys his new live album and/or DVD.
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