Category Archives: Consumer

The propogation of the idea that borders are bad

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reddit rests its hat on the partisan binary use of trite wit and not balanced argument

F**k Borders ey – ? John Lennons “imagine” as he clearly suggests in his own lyrics, makes him a dreamer, No borders means – no sovereignty, means no cultural self determinism, means no natives, and eventually no identifiable meaningful cultural differentiation, except for a few dances for the tourists, ask how the native indian population would be without the mild respite of reservations and lands ? where giant international corporations get to move the cheapest most pliable labour forces and migrate them to where they wish to conduct they’re business, admittedly merica was founded on immigration in its modern sense, & can never shirk that statement, but imposing such ideologies on other nations is another matter, I for one quite clearly realise that a borderless world, could lead to the most depressing form of consumer based totalitarianism human history could have ever imagined, the world run by corporations for they’re benefit, and people just an abused permanently en-debted labour force within it for the sake of a roof and food to survive, democracy effectively a spineless mirage to distract the masses, some say were already there. Give the immigrant three generations and see what he thinks of the border then.

The Mastricht Treaty in 1992 combined with schengen in 1995 effectively dissolved european borders and effectively by implication sovereignty and national self determinism also, all of this done without resort to a referendum for all but three of the european nations populations involved, that was the turning point, ask europeans how they feel about it now and you will discover there average citizen who struggles has become worse off, Europe is run by the germans for the germans, there is almost complete economic dis-harmony between the nations, that isn’t what Churchill imagine when he created its predecessor the EEC for trade, had he realised it would eventually end up dissolving sovereignty, he would be appalled, as it would have undone his prior defence of britains sovereignty.

A real film / documentary … “The act of killing”

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best documentary I’ve seen this year … see this film … seriously, Though Indonesia is the canvas, this film portrays what happens when a society conducts purges of undesired groups the government make alliances with the worst kind of people and then are forever in bed with them complicit and also the government and power can be made of such people even , this documentary highlights the real incivility and poverty of being a human being still in 95% of the world, sadly it seems there are so few moral decent people in the world, the western world very much included in that statement, seriously how are human beings such bankrupt immoral things, but then the memory of year zero and pol pot balance this out in the sense, that atrocity and sadism are part of the human realm whichever side of the political fence, there is no god or retribution for immoral behaviour, except the judgement of our own conscience, and where the scale and scope of that consciousness is limited and weak, terrible things happen, hell is here on earth and its visible in those who commit evil and those who suffer its consequences are the canvas for its depiction, and every complicit silent person in between those two extremes. And how it goes on and on, even now and it seems it will in the future, bleak, but no truer film has yet been made.

App store more detailed post

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This is a formal complaint and desire for feedback from Apple support Admins (simple apple loving forum trolls beware my wrath) as to how to sort various issues, with the OS X app store application, I’d prefer to have a separate software update system for operating system updates, as at least the previous system seemed to work cleanly whereas the new app store version does not ? another 3 hours of my life dedicated to solving problems with an operating system which didnt exist in the previous versions of the OS ? rather than actually getting work done with my 27″ imac recently updated to mountain lion.

Some updates appear twice simultaneously in the app store updates section for example the imovie 9.0.9 update appears once as an individual update and once within the system updates ? in the image below, not noticing it was bundled within the system updates, as I had that folded up at the time, I clicked on the individual separate 9.0.9 imovie update. and the following badly written error dialog appears :

app store updating bugs

app store updating bugs

But I did discover doing the same update, but from the top system related software updates section instead of the singular lower app updates section, meant the update would install, but with some other bugs, including the singular update remaining in the lower list and the icon of the installed app being blurry/pixelated until I had restarted the machine.

this same error also happened for the singular iPhoto 9.4.3 update, which was only installed successfully when installing from the software update section link, and once it had installed, the icon for iPhoto was blurry and pixelated until I restarted the computer, but even then once the iphoto 9.4.3 update had installed it refused to then remove the update from the singular section of updates at the bottom of the screen, the app store seemingly still thinking it needed installing ? this really isn’t good enough as a system

some application update failed to install at all and then refused to appear as updates that needed doing afterwards, so I lost two system updates entirely, a safari being one of the updates which disappeared and now im stuck on 6.0.4 as the app store doesn’t think they’re are any updates for safari needed and doesn’t show them ? or maybe the 6.0.6 update was withdrawn as I can find no reference to it on the web at all ? and the log doesn’t mention it either ? this is where a user viewable history of app store activity with purchases and updates installed / apps installed etc would be very valuable.

I have also seen the app store mis-register whether apps are installed at all, ie perceiving them to be installed when they’re not etc ?

and refusing to allow the deinstall or re-installs of apps properly through app store interface ?

OK here is my point …

its one thing to foist on your users, your software cash till the “App Store” onto each and every machine and run your own DRM system through it which by default attempts to prevent the installation of software other than through your own cash till the App Store but >

Its another thing entirely … to replace a system that at least worked for system software updates, ie the old “software update” system, with a new app store system software updates system, which in relative fair comparison is shot through with bugs and annoyances, this is completely a backward step in my actual experience in comparison to the system it replaced ? here are a list of the bugs i’m experiencing as a user of this “app store”

1: conflicts seeming to occur between system software updates and singular app store app updates which the app store then come up with an error for that doesn’t explain the issue.

2: App store not properly registering which app’s are installed or whether they’ve been uninstalled manually ? this maybe indicates that app removal should be a part of the app store. and that perhaps it should be able.

3: no decent way of reinstalling app’s completely, that consistently works

4: system software updates failing to install and then not successfully being to recover from a filed update and offer the same update again, no in my scenario those updates just vanished from being visible to the app store system, what was it marking them a successful install beofre it had succeeded at updating them ?

5: no way, as within the previous software updates system to select multiple individual updates and have them queued to install sequentially whilst skipping a specific update I don’t want ? ie say itunes 11 for instance, this was easy and completely feasible with the previous software updates system tick based system far superior in my opinion ?

6: secondarily I could within the previous system software update system choose to store specific system software update downloads and use them to update other machines rather than having to spend time afresh red-downloading the same updates on other individual machines, which is much faster on poor bandwidth scenarios, for large combo updates etc than the current system ? especially for those people who support many many machines for a living like I do ?

7: some updated app icons being blurry after update until I did a restart of the machine

8: I have even had the scenario where the ‘app store’ mistakenly thought an app in this case which was free ie ‘blackmagic speed test’ was installed when it was not and then refused to allow me to download the app again, yet it was only available in the app store ? and this issue could not be got round by downloading the app from the makers site, as they were foolishly relying on your ‘app store’ as its only delivery method to their users ?

9: Without a deinstall option, I have as i’m sure many others might attempt a de-install by clicking on the x next to an installed app, only to realise that does some weird kind of hiding of the purchase, that then has to be reinstated in some complex way, which only accidentally discovered by chance, and manual uninstalls do not seems wise expecially when drm is involved but the app store does not seem to have any un-install system ?

10: there is no list of licences ore serials purchased when you purchase an app so that you can see what seats/family licences have been used and on what computers, and no way of making the purchases on the app store portable to any other setup, thereby making the licences that are purchased int he app store much less valuable than purchasing an actual serial numbered piece of software

11: certain applications, are no longer un-installable mail being one of them, which if you attempt to remove it from the OS will completely knacker your os install and mail setup such that it is no longer possible to cleanly reinstall it, any application even if produced by the OS provider should not be so deeply wound into the os such that it cant be removed cleanly and reinstalled, not allowing this is a this is a major failing.

12: No decent history system to see which updates and apps were successfully installed, apart from trawling through and decoding install logs, highly non user friendly.

13: It needs a way to establish which application and where installed its trying to update, like a reveal in finder button, as its is fully possible depending on the drives connected to have older apps and alternate version of apps installed in more than one place, and this confuses the apps tore as it doesn’t understand such intricacies and doesn’t know what to manage and what to ignore.

14: And of course as per usual because if it all operates of just one apple ID only at a time, it doesn’t take account, households with more than one apple ID and being logged in with more than one apple ID on one computer at a time, which is one of the reasons to run the system off serials and licences etc.

15: And if apps are installed system wide how do separate users even with separate apple ID’s handle being logged in on the same machine or not ? do they all gte access to the apps or just the user etc etc etc, the potential and possible problems go on

16: how do you specify that a machine should be removed from the licensing for for an an app ? you only appear to be able to do this by removing the entire apple ID at a time.

17: how do you transfer a licence from one apple Id to another ? basically currently an impossible no no.

18 what happens when a couple share an ID separate how can you separate who gets what apps ? you cant, the system is to some extent limited and flawed and will remain so, cheapening the value of software purchased from the app store, from a value perspective over time, or if eventually the App store eco system or Apple itself has its demise, how does one transfer the value out of the apple app store apple ID ecosystem in general ? you don’t – your setup currently to lose that value as its more a kind of rental license, but lets say you to reinstall the software on another system other than apple you couldn’t ?

all these bugs are much worse than the old software update system ? which it now seems was much more finessed and without such stressful issues ? recently i feel like im getting a worse operating system with the newer releases, lion and mountain lion etc, and as a tech support have cause me massive amount of unecessary work to sort out the problems your new OS have caused. Snow Leopard was the last decent improvement in my opinion, what on earth were you thinking with removing “save as” or locking files after 2 weeks without being opened ? it seems your making more booboo’s than getting things right, and I think its best you hear it rather than living in a dillusion ? why are you finding it so hard to make the right user interface decisions creatively ? if your intending on dumming down os x to make it operate like ios and converge, you will not find me as a customer willing to put up with it, computer operating systems have to be functional for doing real work ?

solutions please ASAP to this currently buggy system ? and don’t suggest a “clean install” otherwise i may as well use a Microsoft operating system ?

Having attempted to put this post to apple on the support communities it appears to have been summarily deleted, as per usual indicating to me that apple support forums really just offer them the greatest form of censorship possible for their own software products. And proof if any were needed that all company forums should be independently run separate from the company by law.

Use of pointless and ill thought out headline statistics, designed to engineer opinion in the simple minded.

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heres was the marketing slogan

“FACT: More coal is consumed within 600 kilometres of beijing than in the entire united states”

As a paid supporter of Greenpeace, No doubt there is too much coal use and pollution from it near beijing and I agree with your belief in caps on coal, this is understood, but I disagree with your use of statistics here as marketing, as it seems a little weak when described this way, your talking the diameter of a 1200 kilometre wide circle around beijing, thats a very large area of 1,130,973 km squared ? maybe there is better and more meaningful statistic to use than this, as I think people with half a brain for mathematics wouldn’t be too shocked by that area use unless they understand the amount of coal consumed in that area ? the ratio of coal v nuclear energy production between the two countrys etc, as im sure the majority of americas coal consumption occurs in an even smaller area ?

the word “FACT:” in caps as though its being shouted, though it may be a fact, the question is what is the real relevance of the fact … surely ? some facts are positive and are some are negative, its the weight of a negative statement and fact that is important, as the severity in meaning of such a statement will bring attention to an important cause, and it is vitally important for organisations who should work at the moral end of the spectrum and fight to preserve the truth at all times, otherwise they undermine their own position and argument ?

Connect the dots between all things

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goldman prize for environmentalism co-created by airess of jean production empire :

pollution from jean production

connect the dots, all things are inter-related, linearity is unfounded ideological belief, old wealth tries to assuage its guilt ? the wealth fosters solutions to problems they may well have been largely responsible for originating ?

the world is riddled with close and not widely observed real connections between things, that are heavily inter-related but ill perceived.

poverty and immorality

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afghanistan’s poppy growing culture is evidence of how poverty drives immorality, if its a choice between feeding your children and growing poppys or failing to feed your children and growing cotton then the most human beings will grow poppys, regardless of the consequences to human life elsewhere in the world due to heroin addiction and the drug trade.

poppy production afghanistan

60 million gameboys in landfill by now ?

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The gameboy with its illegible piss yellow screen no back-light was rubbish, but once you’ve sold 65 million of them on the back of marketing hype and tetris, you kind of have the market sewn up, parents would not invest twice. The lynx was far superior and so was the game gear or nomad, but you can’t unseat an active user base of 64million users who invested in something rubbish, also Atari dumped allot of their own old game ip’s onto the Lynx there were some good games, but many were bad.

the skinny re the Atari VCS 2600

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This machine was the first to really crack home console gaming globally, and set the precedent which is still true with consoles today, that the machine maybe reasonably priced, but to afford to buy the number of games to really show the machine off, would cost you just as much money as the console again, I used to regularly visit a friend of mine who had the original atari heavy sixer VCS, and we had great fun playing the games, though I think he just invited me round to show off his prowess with the games he had mastered ;), I was amazed as to how many games his family seemed to buy for this machine as carts were not cheap. this machine most definitely had the feel of the arcade at home, and its the sounds of this machines games, that to me are most redolent of early gaming. The VCS hit peoples home well before the home micro computer revolution and had full colour gaming with juicy sounds going on, well before the much later 1k ZX81’s home computers B&W efforts. and all this with 128 bytes of memory and maybe a 1 or 2k game rom, incredible.

The truth about the ZX81

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Not the first computer I had access to or used that honour would fall to an apple II, but the ZX81 was the first computer I got to own and share with my brother in 1981, we could never afford the RAM pack, as it was a one off gift and the parents would not stretch the monetary input to the ram pack, to be honest I should have written a game or two in basic for the 1k and sold them, as 15-20 lines of basic didnt take long to right, and If I had sold 10 cassettes I could have bought the ram pack, 2nd tape deck to copy with would have been an issue. the ZX81 was an absolutely minimal computer, in fact i would say Clive Sinclair manufactured the ZX81 down to its retail price, full well knowing that most people would have to buy a ram expansion and a better keyboard (which was awful) to make any decent use of this machine long term, as the Z80 was a capable processor, perhaps, more so, than the paired down 6502, but with 1k of memory the machine was really a stopgap or placeholder for machines that would rapidly succeed it. my next computer was the incomparably powerful disc based CPC6128. but the ZX81 built the computer market in the UK on the basis of making machines cheap enough for everyone to afford, such that demand for upgrades and newer machines became part of the general desire of the public. before the ZX81 your average person had no concept of affording a computer. The BBC model B was mainly an education machine and far too expensive except for middle class to upper class rich people almost all computers at this point would have been £300 and up, the ZX81 brought that down to £79.00 and you could get deals such as a ZX81, tape deck and a couple of games all in for £99.00, this was unheard of at the time hence its success, in getting its computing foot through the door of the ordinary folks homes. but it was never going to replace or compete with the atari 2600 console on the gaming front. but it was certainly unlike an atari, was just capable of being described as a fully fledged computer, when you first got this computer out the box, unless your parents were relaxed enough to get you an additionally expensive £5.00 cassette game or two to go with it, the only thing you could do with it was start programming in basic as that was the only software built in to the computer, or type in a listing, both such activities would of course enhance your understanding of writing code, kids today could do with such limited machines in order to draw them into basic code writing. But the lure of the console today is too easy with its vast galaxy of distraction, from the rigour required to code your first inevitably small achievements when learning to code for the first time.

share prices and house price falls

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Why does a homeowner or a shareholder conclude than when the price of such commodities they own decline from they’re highs that they have somehow made a loss ? regardless of a what price they bought a commodity at ?

on the 30th of december 1997 apples share price was $12.75 no-one who owns apples shares from such a time, has a right to imagine that the losses that occurred post their gains after initial purchase is somehow they’re loss, the shareholder class are parasitic on the energy of those who innovate and push humanity forward, they have a value to foster innovation with investment, but theyre part in the affair overall, should not be over-estimated.