Category Archives: Tech

Where I give you the real skinny on the tech debate and recommend tech one the basis of my own experiences

two web giants destined to fall

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AOL and yahoo bye bye, Yahoo the idea that you didnt accept microsofts offer of $31 a share hahahahaha, you thought you had something better on the table ? there is currently no core value in your searchpage, the shareholders of yahoo must hate that $31 a share was offered, and now theyre looking at $13.48 a share to be honest next year it will be $7.49 and the year after half again the year after until it dribbles out, clutching on to a dwindling base of search users gets you nothing in the long run. and aol’s portal webpage offering is likewise doomed. Microsoft dodged a bad buy there in my opinion, plenty of tech giants have bought over-valued companys, luckily some purchasers like google can seemingly get away with wasting money ? on smaller companys that are over-valued, but then perhaps they themselves are over-valued ? though that seems less likely ?

And for the record bye bye myspace except as a band fan site portal, because myspace finally realised that the only way to add proper core value to sustain their site was to focus on the music element, but how long will that sustain them, the social element is of limited value, and if you have critical mass like facebook you still cant presume you wont lose it, as I beleive that any social network offering could be trumped by a better website offering, and the interest in facebook can eventually fade.

very few silicon ceo’s have vision enough to sustain bigtime growth. and unless you physically make things or can transact value from your website, or are able to continuosly write great software your worth is always destined for decline.

Perhaps the moral in the tech industry is “Keep running or you will be run over eventually” ?

New 1st day tuneup “Lifetime User” review and feedback suggestions

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ok im not writing this to be overtly negative, I think this program is good and has great potential with a few small fixes and does a large amount of what it says at a speed that is fast enough for me, but needs a few things tidying up.

immediate improvements :

1 the cover art tab should not start searching for artwork by just selecting the tab itself, it should require a button click such as dedupers “find duplicates” button but instead saying “find missing artworks” as currently anytime i click on the cover art i have to wait four minutes as theyre is no way to stop it searching once its started. and this means i cant return to say the clean tab and carry on, whilst it is in this unstoppable searching for cover art state.

2 all processes once started within the interface, should have any ability to skip or cancel said process once initiated

3 Lockups > there is a wierd lockup that occurs on the mac i have experienced many a time, in which attempting to drag some tracks to the clean panel says that it is still processing things, yet in fact it is doing nothing as the clean queue is empty. the only solution to this is to close and reopen tuneup. this lockup often seems to occur after some processing is finished and i have switched application and come back to itunes. OK update so far in the first day of use I have had to force quit the tuneup program about 10 times, its asked me to relogin a second time even though I had already done it after first install. im keeping a tab on this.

Further to this i have paused a clean search and then “clear all” ‘ed it, and attempted to drag some new tracks on only to discover that when if refuses to process the new tracks it eventually comes with the results for the tracks I asked it to stop processing. as though it sort of ignored my pause and clear all commands. I also note that if one just waits say 3-4 minutes then the cleanup panel can be usable again, but with no real explanation as to what caused it to be unusable for that period ?

Ok the lockups are insane I can drag 5 tracks on then i have to wait like 5 minutes before the cleanup interface will alow me to drag another 5 tracks on, so far my first days use impression of this software is bad, these random slow downs and lockups of the interface need to be resolved.

4 you need to be clear whether tuneup is compatible with the keep my itunes folder organised preference option as maybe some of these conflicts lockups maybe due to itunes and tuneup fighting over naming tracks once tuneup has placed more ID3 data onto the track for the moment i have disabled the itunes keep folder organised option in case this is causing issues/conflict with tuneup, i will report back if this makes things more stable.

5 Tuneup has to get better at finding albums as a whole very often it has no problem labelling individual tracks, but is in fact attempting to split up tracks from one album into tracks from multiple albums as a solution to tagging them, in a way that is unrealistic. even when the tracks are known to be an album and are dragged in as a group.

6 you need a preference to set which tabs will operate and be visible, if a user wishes to hide a tab then they should be able todo so , features of software should not be forcefully run, if i dont want my processor cycles used on the tuniverse then id like to be able disable that part of the software. (priority)

7 your data collection and use policy should be readable from the software, perhaps a help menu would be good ? so that I know what rights you are giving yourselves ? over processing my data for your own marketing purposes etc, ie is the data you using on peoples librarys being sold on is it anonymous, tuniverse seems dubious in this respect, you need to clearly explain what your business model is in this respect ? if I have paid for software then … I don’t want a scenario in which you are shoehorning me in too being marketed at, using my own data i have provided and using cpu cycles from my computer to do it with, without my permission, especially on software i have supposedly paid for ? ie the tuniverse style marketing, if not turn offable you would expect the product to be the price you pay for a free product ! not a software which you have purchased ie ie the user should have control over tuniverse being run or not as a tab. and if you would have to charge more because there is some kind of kickback for you guys from the whole tuniverse aspect then in reality this should clearly stated up front that the price we are paying for tuneup does not afford us a choice about being marketed at ? especially since in reality tuneup is not disabled / non running as a whole without an uninstall so it will in fact be doing tuniverse stuff even when im just attempting to play stuff in itunes normally without wanting any interference from tuneup, im using tuneup for fixing my tracks not as as social media tool, feature set creep of software is something to be wary of,better to be focused on core features and do them well(answer please) at leaste some ability to choose which parts of tuniverse run, ie a full tuniverse preference panel.

8 tooltip overlay helptext paragraphs for every tuneup preference option, going to the website to read what each specifically meant was a bit of a bore

9 in marketing terms you need to be explicit and clear about the term “lifetime” user, as you seem to be sailing to close to the wind in a marketing sense, with one computers life and one transfer of machine, as that to me that indicates “two machine use lifetimes”, which is reasonable but i wouldn’t call it “lifetime” as that does mean for the duration of someones entire life use, licensed on one machine at any time through that period. the transferability of this licence needs to be clear in this respect as although the lifetime of two computers is quite a while in computing terms as so much changes, it is not a lifetime licence ?

10 since the software is server dependant … you should have a webpage that shows whether the tuneup server is up running or not ie a status page for the tuneup server, as sometimes it appears to say “connecting to TuneUp’s Server” and doesnt get any further. now either this is in fact a software glitch and i need to restart tuneup/itunes or the server is now and again down ? something that I comprehend is always a possibility, but none the less a status webpage will stop me wondering whats going on, when the problem isnt at my end.

11 explanation as to why tuneup wants to catalog my entire track information each time it first starts up with words like importing track information 500 tracks per seond … every time itunes / tuneup launches ? why is it doing this without asking when in reality i will be dropping tracks i want repaired onto its panel anyway at which point it can get track information from the tracks ? without delaying me initially ?

12 A master ON/OFF switch to choose when tuneup is and isnt running ? so that I as a user can choose if it is fetching tuniverse stuff on the basis of what tracks i happen to be playing, ie if i want to isolate my itunes operation from tuneup I should be able to ? as i dont want my itunes stability to be affected by tuneup.

13 tuneup Process prioirty , I notice … that when the cleanup interface is locked up, that bloody tuniverse seems to do all sorts of stuff in the meantime, not that i want it to ! CLEANUP is the priority and always should be of this application if i find in anyway that whatever tuniverse is doing it causes a the clenaup part of the app to lockup or even a minor slowdown, i will be less than amused, i did not buy this app for its tuniverse feature the cleanup part is the priority part for me ! and anything that stands in the way of that is not what i paid for ?

does tuneup do somekind of actual spectral sound analysis to find tracks with very little id3 data similar to shazam ? it seems better than could be attained from cddb based track length analysis.

if you also would like to see the points above come into reality within tuneup then please comment to add weight to this request.

macos x keychain access self blanking secure notes

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I use keychain secure notes to store large numbers of passwords and info securely , and also now and again suffer from keychain access blanking secure notes so that all information they contained is lost, this is a big problem with keychains, and also reduces my faith in keychains completely. My conclusion is that this is occuring when a keychain is left open in the background and times out and the keychain locks itself and then goes into some form of deep sleep, and when awoken the secure not appears to be blank or somehow is then blank.

To minimalise the chance of this occurring my theory of using keychains involves saving and closing them and not leaving them open unsaved or open or timing out and locking with unsaved edits in them, whilst the machine goes to sleep as im convinced it is in that situation the blanking is somehow occurring. this flaw is at least 5 years old in my experience and it surprises me no-one at apple has recognised or fixed this problem, I guess the real issue is to identify in what exact circumstances it is occuring.

I was personally going to switch to one password, but since that has no import ability, Im stuck in a tough place as 400 secure notes each containing many logins and information is not really feasable to translate into one password without huge time and energy and expenditure, so I also struggle along with keychain and its frailty

ebay rip of sellers no doubt about it.

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ebay fees in total are so far running at 18/19% of my sales total, and this for serving some web pages up for 20 days ? Ebay is a FUCKING RIP OFF !!!.
so let me clarify ive taken 1102.00 in sales, ebay have in fees so far charged me 196.00 in relation to this
my postage costs are around £200.00
so in total ive made around £700.00

and this isnt even taking into account the 3% theyre taking for me to receive money, or the the 3% they also make on me paying those fees with paypal ?

My work :

now lets get this straight im providing my goods, writing clear descriptions and edvertising material for the sale, taking good photographs of each item, cleaning the items and carefully packaging and taking them down the post office.

The delivery persons work :

he is taking the parcels physically to my customer.

ebays work :

serving a few web pages for a couple of weeks and taking some digital payments, all of which is automated and involves no persons actual labour.

Why the fuck are they skimming 20% of all peoples second hand good sales ? for practically no work

FUCK ME do ebay need some competition the reason this shower of shit can get away with this behaviour is because they have a monopoly, and they justify it to feed their greedy fucking shareholders. whilst everyone else is actually doing the work.

and how the fuck do these chinese sellers make any money at all ? in this scenario ?

if ebay were doing google mail theyd be charging 50p per email, how these theives get away with it i’ll never know

ebay fee increases and how and why they will get away with it.

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15% for a real auction house that has massive overheads in comparison to ebays small bit of digital data flying around in a computer network that shows how efficient and competetive real auction houses are that they are only 5% more expensive than a virtual auction house like ebay, bear in mind by the time you total up all ebays other scalling listing fees and paypal fees and tax and payment charge they are making on your postage costs they are actually taking more than a physical auction house would take percentage wise as a proportion on low cost items ? the point is sadly “if computers cant do what the real physical world does at around at a tenth the cost” then there is profiteering going on, ebay have shareholders to feed who seem obsessed with the rapid growth of their investments as though ebay were google or something, and this is the issue. these price increases are there to satisfy their appetites, and can and will be gotten away with while there is no decent competition to ebay. also ebays action portray, that though they grew on people selling second hand posessions from their homes, they now seem desperate to move away from the low cost item crowd into more amazon retail type circles, not realising what ebays niche is, ebay having very little competition is a bad situation, but its not there fault, google has the skill and ability to do an open source ebay type thing at a tenth the cost if not free, the reason why amazon charge more and get away with it, is because the site is mainly used by shop retail channels and there used to much higher overheads in running physical shops therefore amazon looks reasonable to them. from a costs perspective ebay have the easy part of the arrangement, you the seller do all the physical donkey work to make the sales happen, ebay distribute a small amount of digital data thats it. Truth is digital retail should ultimately cost pence per item to sell ? shipping is always going to have a high cost due to its physical nature, sending and receiving money digitally should also cost pence per transaction not a percentage ? the fact that this is not the case is because ebay has blown up into a non nimble large shareholder corporate with all its associated costs, and this makes it bad value for money. strangely their attitude toward their customer is not yet affecting their profits ? proving they can get away with it ? look at the number of paypal accounts listed (ok its not an active total which is more important) but when you have 260 million estimated payal users lets say how much money do you think paypal has sitting at its disposal ? they have the GDP of a smallish country im sure, they probably dont care what anyone thinks as theyre richer than nero, the individual can be discarded at a whim with no loss to that total. This is why your complaint is never heard. Juggernauts like this take years to turn aroud or hear anything. If you can live without ebays exposure to sell your item then ebid will suffice ? but is it going to sell on ebid ? probably not, because sady critical mass and audience are the things that will make your item sell, that is ebays strength.

uk stupidity when it comes to protecting ecosystem

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uk stupidity when it comes to protecting ecosystem :

oh look its the green parrot, the grey squirrel, the signal crayfish, and now the fucking racoon, when are we going to ban all these people from importing foreign pets because all this crap is inevitable.

alternative solution tag every foreign animal and bred version electronically, and dna profile these animals, so we can fine the owner for environmental pollution, when they drop the fuckers by the roadside.

HDCP a standard built not for the users benefit.

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The HDCP standard is there to protect copyright holders, its on your kit not for your benefit, but for their benefit, the aspect of its thats irritating, is that for the user its just another headache to have to take into account when hooking technology together, such as my dell 2405fpw which is a great monitor in many respects does 1080p, works great.

Which im now expected by industry to replace regardless, because most hdcp kit wont talk to it, PS3 included etc on any digital connection, basically HDCP increases the potential to cause conflicts, incompatibilities, and things to go wrong, and generally waste more of the computer users life, which is what most manufacturers and software developers seem to be doing nowadays, wasting more of the users life than necessary to increase their own financial benefit.

bad filename design

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com.apple.xxxxxx.xxxxxxxxx

having a file methodology like this make it impossible to peruse a list in alphabetical order, it bundles different developer sourced items in groups admittedly, but finding individual items by name becomes much harder, whoever designed it this way is slightly mad ?

put them in folders rather than this naming system ?