What we call PC's...

Nah, too many syllables, Le-No-Vo, three, P C, two. Two wins over Three.

Putting all aside and just counting the human cost...

Gaza War 2009, wiki (US based, using anything else would be biased, and Arabs can't count are too stupid to collect statics etc.)..

Israelis killed: 13 (4 by themselves)

Palestinians killed: 1,417

As a proportion of population, 1m Palestinians, 300m Americans, that's the equivalent of a 9/11 event that kills 450,000. A similar scaling was used by Fox news in it's 'Victims of terror' show that focused exclusively on Israeli victims and made a parallel that Israel is hit by the equivalent of a 9/11 event every so often, using the proportion of population killed as a measure.

One can add the previous four years of Palestinian home made rocket attacks, which killed less than 10 people, and add an indeterminate number of Palestinians, killed in targeted killings etc. which form a constant backdrop, and Israelis needing to avenge having these rockets fired at them.

Then argue about the number of children killed, the Palestinians lying about how many of the dead were armed, how many civilians, etc. ad nauseam. But, anyway anyone looks at it, that was 1417 human beings, very similar to most of us, two parents, maybe a sibling, maybe a partner, maybe some children too.

The only way to justify this is to reclassify them as sub-human, inhuman, violent, illiterate, etc. So we end up with a group of people who think that it's fine to murder that many people, because they are so evil (a certain R, Dawkins repeatedly declares their belief to be evil) , that they deserve to die in that sort of quantity, and so do their children. Clearly Professor Hawkins hasn't quite seen it this way.

But four years on, no one cares much, and most probably don't even remember, given a few more year, people will care even less, and fewer still will even remember. But those who suffered loss, will they forget so easily?

.. and if you're a minotriy...

I saw part of a news report where some French Policemen were going through a Paris Metro, they were asking people to show their ID cards, everyone they chose just happened to African or Asian. I don't think I'd like that, but others may like or even want it, especially people who see me as an inherent, and 'visible' threat. In fact I find it quite scary. The racial profile of those being stopped and searched most often by the Police here not withstanding.

UK employment law requires employers to check a persons immigration/work status, and almost by default I am asked to provide my passport, and many are surprised when a produce a P60 and my birth certificate instead, one even had to check if that was allowed.

Anyway in this day and age, Amazon, google, Microsoft, eBay and Apple all know where I live, what I buy, how often I buy it, even try to guess what I want to buy next etc. facebook is an exception, as I've never spent a penny there, I put a remote double landlocked country in as my place of birth and residence, as a joke obviously. My bank evens knows where I eat and where I buy my food, with the supermarket even knowing exactly what I bought to eat in the first place. My mobile phone provides instant tracking of where I am, so what's left? We still need ID cards?

... to claw back some of the market share it’s been hemorraghing...

.. they could try making laptops that at least survive the warranty period. I've had two of their £1k flagships, one had a dead network port, which they fixed, after it was returned twice, the second time they packaged it badly and damaged it physically (cracked edge of laptop). Out of warranty its screen hinges broke, which their spare parts department then spent a year trying, and failing to replace.

Next the Aspire 8920G, sound died within a year, and they didn't honour their worthless international travellers warranty. Within the following year, it's screen died too.

Never again.

Love the 'free app a day', while it lasts...

Well I rarely say something is great, but I quite like Amazon's app store, works fine on my Sony Xperia T (as it does on the Motorola Atrix and Xperia S in the household). Some of the free apps can be naff, but the exquisite World of Goo was given free for example. The app store linked seamlessly to my current but old (1999!) Amazon account.

One gripe, no idea how it runs on a Kindle Fire etc. but it is painfully slow. It appears to 'multitask', but you can't be sure if it just buffered taps or is just very very slow. Happens on all out phones. Obviously one has to turn on the option to allow from installation from unknown sources, as you obviously can't get it on Play store (you can't buy a Lexus from a Mercedes garage either), but considering the mass of mall-ware already present on Play store, you have to have your wits about when buying anyway.

Last but not least, it's the only 'big' alternative to Google's Play store, and yes they locked me out, so I can only get paid for apps on Amazon, though purchases have been rare, as there will be at-least one good free paid for app a week. Obviously I can still get free apps on Play.

Google lock out? Long, boring story:-

http://furbian.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/my-google-walletplaycheckoutwhatever.html

Wot no bigger screen...

.. sorry Apple, I'd love to come back to your 'world' but at those prices and still stuck at that small 4" screen, I'll stick with Android (Sony Xperia T) for quite some time to come.

Oh one of the many reasons why I want to return? Wife, son and I all have Xpeira T's, they've got jelly bean update some two weeks ago, and I haven't! Asked Sony and they said 'we do not release it to every handset all at once' so not quite the 'same day for all' as for iOS releases, maybe Samsung manage updates on a single phone model on the same day like Apple?

Dumb region coding deson't help...

I was gifted a 3DS, proudly marketed as an official UAE product. Only problem being that getting it back home to the UK it turns out that despite the UAE being a PAL region, Nintendo have concocted their own idea of regions, and decided that the one I have will only work with games from the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Singapore (?!). Looking through the list of countries that you can set as your 'home' country, I found the US and many South American countries, so it's essentially an 'NTSC U/C' console. However some games are region coded, some are not, but there appears to be no way to tell. Googled plenty of forums, asked Nintendo etc. but no solutions other than sell and buy another.

Net effect? We only have the one game that came with it, Resort Wings. We loved the 3D, but the Russian Roulette of whether a game will work or not, and that they are expensive second hand (PS3 and Xbox 360 games are so much cheaper) meant that we bought no more.

.. and this company thinks I'll buy a Wii U, or anything else they'll produce?

Oh did I mention we have a Nintendo Wii, gather dust somewhere?

Not The Beatles and ruddy Monty Python again...

Apparently these feature in the current test. Well here's what REALLY gets to me, these are all ancient history for anyone who wasn't born in the early 60's. Now my dad tells me that Monty Python was quite good in it's time, well I don't find it that funny, I get it, but it's just so puerile, I mean the Spanish Inquisition with the Comfy Chair, that made people laugh? Why not questions on more contemporary comedy, Red Dwarf and Black Adder are perfectly acceptable. I do confess though to finding Faulty Towers funny though, some things to age well.

As for the Beatles, two of them left the UK for good, seems hypocritical to put them in a 'citizenship' test. Better candidates? How about New Order, (every one still in the UK), The Charlatans etc?

Or is the whole idea of the test to ensure that only those over 50, or who read history books should be eligible?

Intel reliable?

I find all these postings praising Intel boards for reliability a bit odd, many (many) moons ago, around the time of the 440BX chipset, Intel managed to mess up a chipset up so badly that it offered to buy and refund boards made by others, in my case it a Super-micro board that had the defective intel chipset.

I sent them the board, somewhere in Scotland, and never received a refund. Apparently they sub-contracted their repairs, and then fell out with and changed the repair company. After a year and a half of trying, I gave up, Intel having done me out of money in effect.

At some point, Intel also replaced my P90 processor. Yes, I had a buggy one, though it was such an obscure bug, I was living with the chip just fine, but took the opportunity to have it replaced for free.

As for who's reliable, my PC building goes back to the days of 80386 (I had a 286 machine before that, but it was not self built), and I've had virtually every brand (many more than once), Gigabyte, Asus, Jetway, Intel, Supermicro, MSI and others. I've had boards fail from each one of them, some after years, some after a few weeks (e.g. an Asus board's North Bridge heat-sink cooling fan packed in). Oh and yes, both AMD and Intel based boards too. Can't remember the last time I bought an Intel board, had forgotten that they even made them.

Currently we've got an MSI Ivybridge board, a Gigabyte Intel board, and an Asus AMD board. All running fine.

Scary..

I find this whole idea of guessing what I want to eat quite intrusive. The 'tracking where I am thing', photographing our houses roads and streets, swiping wi-fi accounts etc. we've largely given away, this looks downright Orwellian. "What are you thinking? Let's try to work it out..."

The 'best routes' thing, I've spent most of my working life commuting between English cities where there were usually only two alternative routes and one could easily tell before setiing out which to use. Maybe this will work in the US and possibly London. Oh I now bike a few miles to my workplace, on a route impervious to congestion (for a bike).

As for the food thing, actually, I want to be surprised, and like to try different things. Sometimes I'm grateful that what I want is not available, it allows me to try an alternative.

Oh and underpinning this wonder that may change our lives this year, is a pathetic third rate payment system that I'm banned from using, unless I give them a copy of my passport as well (http://furbian.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/my-google-walletplaycheckoutwhatever.html ). I've since switched to the other great information leach Amazon's App Store, the lesser of the only two evils available for buying Android Apps.

iPhone owners are all rich? Spare a thought for this poor lad..

"I was only 15 when I bought the phone and £440 represents many hours of paper round, birthday and Christmas money."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2011/may/28/faulty-iphone

My son received my old iPhone as a combined present for four events, his birthday, a religious holidays, completing the reading a large religious text, and a good school report (I let him off for the only score he had below the 80% target, 70% for French).

.. and if I tried pulled a stunt like that at my old employer when interviewing, I would been shown the door, and quite rightly so.

Well I'm not contributing to that revenue ...

Largely because I can't, unless I hand over a copy of my passport, to a company that's probably already leached my wi-fi details via their street view cars...

http://furbian.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/my-google-walletplaycheckoutwhatever.html

However I found an alternative, Amazon's app store for Android, that works quite well, I can buy things from it, and best of all, a free app every day, some bad, but many very good ones. For Music I'll stick to iTunes, it just works well for me.

Confidence in Windows 8?

With a vote of confidence for Windows 8 like that, one has to wonder...

Was his leaving line something like...

"Thanks for all the fish, and good luck Windows 8...."

Boring...

But this just reminded me to delete that partition I set up to test it with, and get that 200GB back. I'm done with it for good, I hope!

So I don't care, what it looks like, I'm not buying it, nor is anyone I know. I quite easily avoided Vista, so I'll stay clear of this too. Well the latter is not quite true, they shipped it with my wife's laptop, and we poured curry all over it and it was all fine again, sorry, I meant installed Windows 7 and all was fine.

Humax box?

Good luck with that, I bought their 'flagship' Foxsat-HDR 500GB, hoping not to pay Sky+ £10 a month for scheduling.

It's slow as hell, the remote is awful (badly layout and often unresponsive), and worst of all, it messes up most scheduled recordings by cutting their ends off! Add padding and it often records 15 minutes of the previous programme and then doesn't quite get enough of the one you wanted recorded. Common problem apparently, that my Sky+ barely suffered from, i.e. maybe once in a number of years.

Firmware updates are few and far between, and haven't fixed any of the problems inherent with this device.

Oh and their tech support doesn't answer e-mails either.

Gory details...

http://furbian.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/stuck-with-bad-humax-foxsat-hdr.html

Until there are more HD channels and there's some decent (any?) Sci-Fi on, I'm not interested in these offerings,

In contrast, oddly enough TalkTalk's diminutive Huawei Echo Life Router/Modem is not bad, good wi-fi range, and just works well, apart from the almost mandatory reset once a wee when it 'jams'.

Better the devil you know?

I've been with them for a few years, and have almost switched every time my contract renewal comes up.

Last time Orange were cheaper, I told them, they gave me discount to match Orange, I stayed.

About 2 years ago we had some connection problems, a few day a week for a few weeks. Then only a two hour break we noticed about half a year ago.

The Huawei HG532 router they gave us needs a weekly reset, so bearable. As I have a family, we tend to hit 120GB a month, so Plusnet didn't want us. BT offered the same deal, but wanted more money.

My biggest bugbear, one that has lead to rather argumentative exchanges with them is that I get a lot of nuisance (PPI etc.) calls, not only for me, but also for some other chap. I want to change my number, but they won't do it unless I file a Police report, or pay them monthly for extra call baring. I bought a £40 box for line blocking, which has helped, but I'd still rather change my phone number. So coming January, I'm probably switching to Orange just to be able to change my number.

... and then there was Populous: The Beginning...

This was an already great game perfected. Both were just amazing ground breakers, but the second one was spectacular with the followers suffering all sorts of torments, being swept up in the air by hurricanes, being set on fire, drowning etc. The best was the preacher type character, who would cause the opposing sides followers to sit down listen, and then swap sides.

There's a 'queuing' paradox here.

I for one cannot understand why anyone would want to queue for anything, because I hate queuing, unless I have company. On occasions I have even left queues after running out of patience or buying something else with a shorter queue, when it comes to food that is, not phones. I buy on-line, so the only queues I face in my life are for food, or passport control, 'security' etc. at airports.

So these Apple fans are actually showing a great deal of patience, which I do consider admirable in an odd sort of way.

.. and people think I'm paranoid for not giving Google my passport...

Apparently some people think that I'm being unreasonable for not sending Google a photocopy of my passport, document which in the long term is far far worse than your credit card in the wrong hands.

http://furbian.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/my-google-walletplaycheckoutwhatever.html

Oddly enough, Amazon, Apple, Sony (PSN), Xbox Live are just some people I do have paid accounts with, and do not want a copy of my passport.

Two empty slices of bread...

... with possibly a spread applied, if you're an observant Jew or Muslim.

Almost sad to see it go.

As an ex-employee who saw it going from someone competing to becoming a major powerful British IT company, to one that ended up shifting most of its business to India, it's still sad to see it being de-listed from the LSE. End of road. Alas poor Bogica as it was affectionately known at times. On reflection my career their had its ups and downs, but I have fond memories, and I always found the atmosphere to be 'proper' and above board, with only the occasional hiccup.

It's probably the refunds...

eBay probably got sick of bearing the transaction costs of refunds, I'd love to read the reasons for the requests if they exist and look like what I think they might look like, I demand a refund because:-

.. the hex on the barking dog next door didn't work, it still barks, louder if anything.

.. I used the spell to get an attractive man, and now I'm being stalked by a lesbian.

.. I did NOT win the lottery, this elixir of perfect number choosing did not work.

.. despite drinking the wisdom potion my IQ is still 90, I can provide transcripts of my before and after tests.

.. I immersed my dead hard drive in the water of Asmodeus as instructed, it made lots of pops and bangs, and even smoke came out when I plugged it it, so it appeared that it had worked like most magic does, but it still didn't show up when I plugged it into the USB port.

.. the potion of ethereal transport didn't work properly, I'm now stuck in the Argentinian Embassy instead.

Alas poor Royal Mail...

... we knew and loved you well.

However they are busy shooting themselves in the foot. Our local sorting office, one of the larger ones in the country, is about a mile down the road. They cut their hours from about 9 to 4 to 9 to 12. Every now again I have seen (we have a camera) a postie with a parcel (not out regular one who has letters and small items, he's excellent) throw a card in and not ring the bell, or ring it and dart off before someone reaches the door. Oh did I mention queuing at the sorting office, takes up to half an hour to get through the dozen or so people there?

Collect+, not bad, round the corner, next door to the Post Office, but longer, much longer, hours, however one big caveat, they have a wireless scanner, and it doesn't always work. So it's always hit or miss, scans and connect, hooray, if it doesn't, then get in the car and drive a mile and a half to the next closets one (in that radius there are five others), Failure rate to date is 50%.

No fan of Windows 8 etc. but...

A loss leader might be the only way to get a foothold in the market. Look at the Xbox 360, a grossly unreliable poorly made console rushed out to get a lead on the Sony PS3, they then spent billions fixing those that died (own experience, over 5 years still on first PS3, Xbox 360 is number 5 (6?)).

But it worked, you can get away with selling an unreliable consumer product, if you time and price it right, etc. Xbox live provides a steady income, that Sony have failed to match, though being first on the block is not necessarily the reason for why Sony's PSN doesn't make it as much (if any) money as Xbox live does.

If the hardware is reliable, I doubt one could mess up designing a tablet (hostility to Windows 8 UI not withstanding) in this day and age, then why not make a loss on the first iteration, and then price the second revision to make money, having got a foot (toe?) hold in the market?

Besides M$ have a huge amount of money to burn, selling these at a loss might still be cheaper than what they overpaid for Skype, and make more economic sense for example.

PC manufacturers, they won't be happy, and will be thoroughly shafted in the process, not sure that will help M$ in the long term.