Privacy and letting go.

This one's a full on rant.

Anyone who hasn't already read Orwell's 1984 really should (before it gets edited from history by the Ministry of Truth). We're now at the stage of losing all sense of private and ultimately respect.

No one cares about anyone else's rights anymore, only themselves and their gimmie gimmie gimmie world view. How evident is that when you're out driving? No patience, no care, no give and take. Just take. Even in shops, people just cut in front of you without care or even thought.

Normally I don't care, because I've got other things to worry about and I try not to sweat the little things, but oh my god it's got so much worse over the last few years. I'm not assertive enough, or is it my old age kicking in.

See I have issues with so many big companies right now it's got to the point of totally not caring and just giving up. Unfortunately this attitude has flowed into too many aspects of my life too.

If you try to do the right thing, you get screwed over. If you do what is technically wrong but not enforced, no one cares and you get a bit ahead. If you do something that is actually wrong you may or may not get away with it, either way you might get ahead or not.

I mean what is the point of it all. There's not enough clearly defined lines in the system and it's built to favour those of means. Not to mention the number of rules on the books that aren't relevant anymore or based on a situation that is no longer the case.

Also, what's with the financial industry being given a license to print money (hello crazy fees and interest rate bumps). It's seriously temping me to opt out of this whole farce.

Telstra. Oh what a joke that one is. I'd switch to another carrier if there was one that was comparable in coverage - note I said coverage not service. At Telstra you don't get service, you just get put on hold and then have to deal with an Indian putting on a bad american accent who can't help you and then transfers you to his mate 2 desks over who also can't help you. HELLO TIO time.

Oh and the mother of all stupidity - the government. Why the hell did they sign onto the ACTA. This comes back to me using technically wrong and actually wrong. It's technically wrong to archive all of your dvd's/bluray's onto a file server for your media jukebox - however it shouldn't be - because that's a gap in the market being blocked by IP restrictions not for lack of innovation or payment for content. A while back it was (is still?) illegal to format shift music yet you couldn't legally buy mp3's but could buy mp3 players. Actually is it still illegal to record broadcast TV yet PVR's do it all the time. There is too much cruft on the books, and the overlaps and gaps created by this mish mash of rules gives those of means loopholes to get away with things but not everyone. If there was an easy way to correct this I'd tell the world - but obviously I haven't figured that one out yet. It would involve wiping the books and putting in place some set of ethics/morals and basic rules rather than specifying every solid case or is that how we got to where we are now. Clearly there is no solution, just a big mess getting bigger.

Bottom line is the world is not fair nor should you expect it to be. So cheat and make mayhem any chance you get!

The iPhone.

So the iPhone4S finally met my requirements to replace my trusty Nokia 6120c. Well nearly but close enough we'll give it a pass considering the Nokia shed a number button. Let's recap with my requirements that were lacking from the original (not released in Oz anyway) and roughly when they were introduced:

Push Email iOS 2.0 (11 July 2008) If you're doing email as a primary function, it needs push not polling.

Custom Ringtones 5 Sept 2007 or iOS 2.0 (11 July 2008) Ones you make yourself, I was not interested in paying an over the top price for them. Though even now you have to edit your files to do it, and it can't be an mp3. You should be able to select an mp3 really (though without editing for the region of the song most won't be appropriate anyway).

Copy/Paste iOS 3.0 (17 June 2009)

MMS iOS 3.0 (17 June 2009) or maybe iOS 3.1 (9 September 2009)

Video Calls iOS 4.0 (21 June 2010) Ok this is just a pass. It took until the iPhone 4 to get a front camera, yet it still can't make a 3G video call - however since no one uses them anyway I'll say Facetime or Skype will do. However if the phone supported it at launch, perhaps it would have been more used?

Custom Message Tones iOS 5.0 (12 October 2011)

Good Battery Life Ah ha. Ok still doesn't have this. Even by not using the phone I still estimate it will only last a few days at best, make a call or send a few sms's and it's only going to last a day. It is a smart phone, but I feel falling back on that as an excuse is still just a cop out. Another common cop out is saying turn off xyz, it ships with it on, so it ships with crap battery life (eg location services).

Standard mini-USB A connector for data and charging Ah ha. It still lacks this. And the problem is far more recently highlighted when I bought some iphone cables off ebay only for them to not fit with a bumper on (the Apple ones do). So is it my refusal to pay $25 AUD for a cable going too far - if they used standard cables I wouldn't need to spend any money at all.

Even though the so called Jesus phone is supposed to be so awesome, why am I finding so many things missing from it that were built in with my previous Nokia's.

Profiles Ok so the phone has a physical silent switch, great. What about having different profiles so you can have pre set different groups of settings for ring tones, message tones, email tones etc. Loud for outdoors, medium for indoors, silent except for emergencies for overnight and so on. I shouldn't have to buy an app to do this, it should be right there.

Even worse, the volume control. Right now I find I turn the volume down in games and then when I exit I have to turn the volume back up because there is only one volume setting (and I don't want my ring tone to be nearly muted). What's all that about. Don't suggest I have to use the volume slider in the games settings to adjust it, because not all have that and don't forget there is a button right on the case! That's a broken design to me.

As much as the phone is good and has many uses, it has many short comings.

After all it is supposed to be a phone, it's just not brilliant at that.

I've been following some philosophical minimalists for a while and a month or so back one of them wrote about how technology changes the way people behave as a group. Regarding blogging specifically, how Google+ makes it so easy and how that eliminates a barrier to gaining an audience for that blog. Removing that step makes anything on that platform easier than everything else, purely because that one step is gone. It means the old way of doing things are now harder in comparison, even if they were the preferred (or only) way before. This one additional step is one too many.

This mirrors my own experience in many ways. My own stubbornness and unwillingness to adjust fully to changes. It's held me back. Way back. Few examples;

Blogging software or sites: I wrote my own software to blog with, because when I started blogging there wasn't anything out there. When Blogger came along it made it easy for people but was restrictive and I didn't want anyone else to own my content. Then Live Journal came along, same thing right? Not really, it's value was providing easy commenting where everyone's account is known - you only need one account and you can comment wherever as you. The community provided value and life. Comments on my blog needed you to type in your email address - this was one step too many.

RSS: I didn't like the idea of people free-loading on content purely because it was easier for them. By reading my content in an RSS reader they're not seeing it as I the author intended and I felt that affected how it was perceived (and also my stats). What really happened was the few readers I had vanished. Going to a site to check for an update was too hard, it was one step too many.

Twitter: When this came along I was playing around with mixing up my big and hand crafted posts with smaller more topical things. I even looked at implementing my own micro blogging thing on my site. The bit I missed was again the community and the removal of a step. Now to comment to someone you just need to put their name in a post on your feed, not specifically post on theirs. This meant it was easy, very easy. It also addressed another area I'd experimented with early on - post early post often (early-mid 2001). The weekly post was read far less than a short burst of something emitted more often. Again I'd missed the boat.

Facebook: Ah ha, the elephant in the room. This one I was sure wouldn't last. With the amount of legit information they collected in such a short space of time I was sure it would be misused, cracked and leaked, I was sure it would fall apart in a matter of a few years at most. How wrong was I. Yet still I haven't joined (read the privacy policy to find out why). The first thing I noticed once all my friends were on it was I hardly heard from them. All of a sudden I didn't exist - I was still contactable through the usual means; phone, email, face to face. But no, that was now too hard, it was one step too many. I should have kept a tally of how many times I was asked why I didn't go to a party only to respond what party, no one invited me. Contacting someone outside of their chosen platform was too hard, again one step too many.

Me being unwilling to change and adapt, has changed me for the worse but it's shown to me a glimpse of raw human nature. I still think I'm lazy by nature, but the whole world is one step lazier so clearly I'm working too hard.

Your homework is to consider that perhaps my age old motto it's all too hard isn't so far from the truth.

I guess the previous bitcoin post was a bit of a wake up call again. About 14 days after that post one card's fan stopped spinning and died. Fortunately I was alerted and shut things down before any damage was done. The card was returned for RMA. I'd hope for a new one back - considering the fan stopping could have damaged the GPU, however I was at the mercy of the supplier. And I'm still at their mercy as this friday will be 4 weeks since it was returned and still no word whether it will be repaired, replaced or refunded. A lot changes in 4 weeks. BTC2USD for example, is down from 12 to 4.5. Hmmm. I did get the PCI-E extenders and they do work a treat.

Thursday this week is RUOKDay 2011. So I've been listening to TripleJ's hack program a bit lately and it reminded me of about this time last year when an episode dealt with RUOKDay which was very interesting to me at the time. It raised a very important point which wasn't immediately obvious. Don't jump in and ask someone if they're ok unless you truly and honestly are ready for any answer.

Speaking of listening to things, at work we've taken a liking to listening to the CFox. They seem to play lots of music from when I was in high school, which is cool, mixed in with some new stuff and more metallica/nirvana than most stations would play. The ad's are funny too, being from Vancouver it's all Canada-ay. After noticing they seem to play the same tracks multiple times in a day (like all commercial stations) we started tracking it. Pumped up kicks had it's day, and is dwindling now, it's still funny when it's heard around the place though. It makes me laugh.

Minecraft. What can I say. There's a reason I didn't play WoW and this could be it. So far I've only lost one whole evening to it (and built a Nyan cat). It's fun to do stuff in, but is a massive time sink. I also built a weighted companion cube, 35x35x35 too, only another 5 or so hours. Oops.

Storage. I've got the sata port multipliers I wanted, out of China which went as smoothly as could have hoped. I did take precautions on paying by credit card by obtaining a prepaid mastercard to pay with, which was fine. The Woolworths ones have the best fees of the ones I looked at, and was easy to buy and use. Highly recommended. So far I've only done basic testing with them on the doomed (bitcoin) AMD board. I need to get a wriggle on with this project, because the new tv shows all start this week.

"Not all those who wander are lost." - J.R.R Tolkien