ShitChat

So the Jesus slate has landed with Steve Jobs declaring it a third type of device. Oft have I longed for a bigger, less easy to carry iPhone, which doesn’t have a phone or camera or indeed proper software.

Yet this turkey will sell like it’s Christmas. I’ve been a fanboy but increasingly Apple is behaving like Microsoft, new models every 12 to 24 months, OS upgrades where the ‘insides’ are improved but it’s really a way to cut G5’s from the support loop and force upgrades, and the headline that no-one seems to have noticed,

YOU can only run what APPLE says you can on the iPad

Yes it is variant iPhoneOS, so you can expect the same level of lockdown. That means Apple controls the platform. Yes you can set a wallpaper, but a ftheme? 5-row keyboard?

This is an inkling into Apple’s future plans, devices controlled by them (even down to the chips) with no adobe installing flash, no Microsoft word, but probably Apple versions at added cost.

It will still just work, with the just meaning ‘only just’. Prepare to adopt the Jobs doctrine as MacOS is heading out the back door, it will be knocked down the OS pecking order by it’s younger brother on iLocked devices.

In terms of control of your apple products, less is more.

It has been two years, give or take a day or two, since I was last employed by a company which mandated Microsoft products.

As a Mac owner this is not surprising, but increasingly Microsoft has been seen as an IT standard.

My question is why?

Office is a good product, but so is Apple Pages and the ubiquitous OpenOffice. Why spend $ on MS office when OpenOffice is far more than adequate? Does your office really use an MS office specific feature? the answer is no btw.

Exchange, this is a bloated behemoth of crud. I could forgive people who install it, if it was either a breeze to use or a breeze to administer. Neither apply and plenty of free and open alternatives exist AND (this is key) there are inter-operable alternatives. You CAN have outlook interface with mail and calendars and address books without exchange. You can share files without exchange, and in much simpler ways to implement and administer.

Windows, if your users are now using OpenOffice and exchange has been replaced with other elements, is there a need for windows? Probably not. Most Linux desktops are now mature enough for daily use, and easy enough to switch as a lot of bad ui decisions have crept in from windows and macos.

So, what do you get for ditching MS?

$ $ $ and lots of $ $ $

No cost for Os licenses on desk or server.
No cost for office software.
No cost for server software.

Support costs may be *slightly* higher as Linux admins aren’t as easy to find as MS (not worth the paper) certified people.

However, the running costs will be far lower, a New Zealand school recently defied government by going all open source, that’s 4 servers in a room with rackspace for 40, anecdotaly much cheaper to run.

There will be much less downtime thanks to viruses and spyware too.

Of course MS knows this and is tackling FOSS from the inside and offering huge discounts to bulk buyers, knowing full well that vendor lock-in is hard for business men to overcome.

That company I used to work for were pushing profit away on renewing licenses and updating to keep service contracts active, the reason they wouldn’t switch? They wanted to get their monies worth of existing software!

MS pr is also very good, but not very accurate in the information.

It’s not often consumers pay for similar or inferior products that are free, but they are with the most common MS products.

Computing with very little energy consumption.

I’m about to start using my tonido plug now that I’ve managed to get HFS drives working with it.

Thanks to @plugapps on twitter, I was told to do the following :

cd /lib/modules/2.6.30-rc6/kernel/fs/

mkdir – p hfsplus

cd hfsplus

wget http://localhostr.com/files/abb292/hfsplus.ko

insmod hfsplus.ko

So it was Izzys first Christmas.

I still hate Christmas and she was far too young to know what was going on.

Maybe next year, bah humbug!

Once again Gruber gets it so wrong my eyes bled.

There have, and always will be, 3 types of web developer :

1. The purist – only using strict standards code
2. The uncaring (with MSCE certs) – just getting something up, stop when it works in ie
3. The pro – someone who gets the job done well and without moaning, the site will work in 90% Market share

Gruber is 1, and you can’t be a pro if you are in 1. I’ve discussed the problem with standards before but Gruber’s rant on the video tag not only shows him up for the arse he is but proves why standards will never work.

Browser vendors will only follow a standard spec while there is little or no hinderence to them. Crying about autoloading being optional in the spec is stupid, they can’t mandate it because vendors will walk.

Gruber’s lack of willing to use workarounds simply do not fly, his eventual solution is quite appropriate and echos the sane way of web developing over the last 15 years.

Things are not going to change anytime soon.

I was going to write a big long post, but can’t be arsed to waste my time, yours and our collective bandwidth.

Some small spider has crawled up his japs eye now that Google is offering free public DNS.

It’s not Google he’s upset about but OpenDNS, a similar service that has been going for a while.

His problem : OpenDNS redirects you if you make a mistake.

Why he’s an arse :

1. Make a simple error and OpenDNS corrects it for you and you get what you expected.

2. If it can’t correct it, it performs a search and returns a lot of results, usually adverts – This isn’t a problem arse gruber – I made an error and instead of a bollocks error screen ive been given some help – OBVIOUS help – you can’t mistake the openDNS search for anything else.

3. Google’s DNS hasn’t even been fully tested yet, it might just die under pressure or evil script kiddies – openDNS has been around for ages – tried and tested

4. OpenDNS have a privacy policy, using Google as a DNS means pretty much all your Internet usage will be to Google’s knowledge.

Nice job, feels like he’s been rimming a dog and needed to take it out on someone.

This is one of the solutions I thought about, but dismissed as the logistics are fairly difficult. Extra group games, means extra staff and ticket sales, not likely to happen.

One commenter on the BBC said

The score was only 1-1 anyway, why should they [the Irish] go to the World Cup on the basis of a draw

He was a chelsea fan. I’m only saying that because he’s clearly missed the point that if you take the ‘Hand of Frog’ away from the match, France got through for a draw.

I doubt FIFA care anymore, they will get their World Cup with or without cheats, and Henry may still get a ban, but I wish they would do something about it. Have the replay at the World Cup, that would be one extra game, then the winning team stays on for France’s place (the draw being made on Friday).

In any case, the Cheese Eating Surrender Monkeys are going to get roundly booed anyway!

FIFA have a very real problem whether they act on the France v Ireland result or not.

Quite simply put, they are choosing which rules and regulations to apply, and which to ignore. The World Cup, including qualifiers is governed by the regulations of the tournament, in this case the South Africa World Cup Regulations (here).

The points to note, Article 5.4.g

On entering the competition, the participating member associations and their players and officials automatically undertake to:

[..]

g) observe the principles of fair play.

Article 10.3 in full

3. In addition, the players agree notably to:

a) respect the spirit of fair play and non-violence;

b) behave accordingly;

c) refrain from doping as defined by the FIFA Doping Control Regulations.

And, Article 13.6

No protests may be made about the referee’s decisions regarding facts connected with play. Such decisions are final, unless otherwise stipulated in the FIFA Disciplinary Code.

Here FIFA hide behind Article 13.6. They want football to decide winners and losers, and the referee has sole authority on that matter. (We’ll ignore the one time they ruled against this because a referee had given a free kick instead of a penalty, and invalidated a whole 2-leg World Cup qualifying tie) They don’t want to set a precedent.

However, by, in their opinion, not setting a precedent, they in fact have set a very serious one. Thierry Henry has admitted he handled the ball, using his “I am not the referee” defence. It is an admission of guilt, of unfair play. This breaches Articles 5.4.g and 10.3.a . His national association by taking no action against him have also breached 5.4.g.

FIFA have chosen, for no apparent reason, to ignore 5.4.g and 10.3.a (arguably 10.3.b too), and favour another Article 13.6. Who, then, decides which of FIFA’s articles are to be implemented in a given situation? What is the point of publishing a list of rules, to only selectively apply them?

Look closely though, 10.3.c tells footballers to refrain from doping. FIFA have, actually set such a dangerous precedent by ignoring Article 10.3, that they have effectively allowed doping. Presumably as long as you do it on the field of play and the no-one catches you.

Of course, the common sense resolution is simple, but probably doesn’t help the commercial interests of FIFA and the World Cup OC. The result stands as the referee officiated it. Thierry Henry is found guilty of a breach of 5.4.g and 10.3 and banned from a number of games, possibly the World Cup as a whole. France, for taking no independent action against Henry are also found guilty of 5.4.g and excluded from the World Cup. Ireland, as their losing playoff opponents are invited to compete under Article 6.5.

That would apply all of FIFA’s own regulations with the equal merit, and set no precedent of ignoring rules which don’t suit the commercial benefits of FIFA.

Update

Well done donal, what you have done there is, not read the article and then made yourself look like a fucknut by posting a point which is made and dealt with in the article. You have a job at the Guardian anytime you want it.

Update 2

Not often I have to write a second update. Anyway, Donal spectacularly misses the point AGAIN. He also, wrongly assumes that the laws are above the tournament regulations, but that’s so obvious it shouldn’t need calling BS.
In any case it seems the whole point of the blog post needs pointing out for some poor unfortunate readers, or tards as they sometimes get called.

FIFA have already set a prescedent (sp?) over the issue of the referee being sole arbiter of a match – as pointed out. Aside from that we have 2 regulations (and whilst I could go check the laws of the game, I won’t, but do know there are remarks about fair play there too) about fair play.

These regulations and laws are being given less authority than regulations and laws allowing the referee to make incorrect decisions without access to the full information. This is bad a) who picks which rules are given priority over others and b) where is the accountability? Without it referees are open to corruption and have no task to answer under your precious quote.

After all, if this were a game of football and I was the referee, I could send you off (ban you from posting, which I haven’t done) for the sole reason of being an asshat – under your rules you have no right to reply or appeal, the record shows you are an asshat.

There are two camps in the Ireland v France “Le Hand” incident.

The first camp are fuelled by injustice, they see Henry’s actions as cheating, against the game (And FIFA’s Fair Play charter and article 5.4.g of the World Cup regulations)

The other camp says, that’s life, that’s sport, Ireland could have done more to win the game.

I’m dismayed with the latter, and disillusionment has set in with regards to organised sport. From the vocal camp two, it would appear that ‘everyone’ would have done the same thing. Anyone would cheat to benefit their cause. This makes me fear for society as a whole, anything is ok, as long as you get away with it.

What we have is a situation in which a player has cheated, lied about cheating until it was too late and then admitted he cheated after the fact. Sadly there is a large public backing for the actions. If I went out and murdered someone and admitted it with my only excuse being “I am not the police”, I think I would go to jail.

Sport is supposed to be about fun, the rules exist to create a fair playing field. We are only one hundred years on from sport being played by ‘Gentlemen’. Corrinthians wouldn’t have gone to the World Cup in such circumstances.

FIFA and UEFA still indicate they need the “human” element in football. Who do they think will make the decisions based on video replays? the TV cameras themselves? No, it will be a human. It isn’t about slowing the game or changing the game, it is about ensuring football is decided by footballing actions and not the decisions of three or four men.

Let’s look at the common argument against technology :

1. It will slow the game – Sky have shown the FA they can replay incidents within 5 seconds.

2. It will de-humanise the game – A human still has to make the decision, but able to base that decision on much better evidence. There will be cases where video evidence also cannot definitively give an answer, this is not a reason to deny the officials the chance to eradicate incidents like the Henry one.

3. Where will it stop? Do we go with offsides and penalties? – It is only used to judge scoring. As illustrated by this incident, incidents where goals are wrongly awarded cost teams, decisions where you don’t get a penalty are not goals, they will not by definition, affect the result directly. As a result, you only look at goals, can use the video to detect fouls and offsides in the build up and check the ball crossed the line. As the meerkat says, simples!

4. It will change football, lower league football won’t have access to TV replays. – Every game in the English league is covered by at least one camera, a feed to the 4th official is not “out of this world” unobtainable. As for it leading to a ‘different’ game, there already exists a huge disparity between Premier football and non-league football. Referees are of very different standards, and although applying the same rules, they have very different interpretations of dangerous tackles, obstruction, etc.

[While we are here, yes it should be introduced for retrospective punishment, Eduardo and Darren Fletcher are prime examples of where there would be a huge benefit in righting injustice post-match also.]

Now, what will we gain? Football. Football will decide matches, great build-ups, great goals, not injustices. Isn’t that what all football fans want? As a Man Utd fan I would have rather been beaten recently by a Lampard screamer than a dodgy John Terry freekick, Drogba wrestled mess of a goal. If players know they are being watched and goals start to be ruled out for the nonsense that goes on in penalty areas, and that they can be punished post-match for anything caught on camera, including diving, these over-paid prima donnas might get back to playing football, and playing it well.

Otherwise it’s a race to the bottom, who can cheat the best and get away with it. If that happens, bye bye SkySport, bye bye ESPN, for me at least.

Dell have released the Zino HD today.

The base model comes with an atom processor, 1GB of RAM, 160GB HD, and just about no other options (including only two USB ports).

The next model up starts with an AMD 64-bit processor, can have plenty of RAM, 1TB of storage and has 4 front facing USB ports.

I’m not sure what to make of it. The base Atom version is basically the spec of the Mac Mini with a crappy processor. Not likely to be replacing any minis with a base Zino, then the next version up, with 4GB, and 1TB makes sense because it comes in at £500, the starting price for the mini. Yet, if they had gone Intel, hackintoshing it would have been easy, since it is 64-bit AMD you will run into far more problems.

Are they going after the EEEBox and Asus Revo market with the base and challenging Apple with the mid-range editions? Seems like a failed strategy to me, fighting on too many fronts.

Afterthought : There is no Ubuntu edition I could find on the UK editions, but the colonies are getting it. Boo Dell!