I'm typing this on my shiny new Samsung Galaxy S II... and I'm just not sure.
I have to type in the plain text box, because the keyboard doesn't come up in the rich text box. Typing a conma folkowed by a space doesn't put the keyboard back on the letters screen.
There are so many apps on this thing by default, and most of them are optus shovelware.
There's no single screen of important apps. The Google apps aren't well integrated, in fact despite setting up other email accounts, and linking a Gmail account, I can't even find my Gmail account on here. I can't hook up my work email, which uses exchange, because it says that the Exchange admin wants admin access for my phone including the ability to take all data and wipe it remotely, to which I can't agree. IPhones don't have the same requirement.
Scrolling is weird. There's no elasticity when scrolling to the edge of screens and flinging my finger around in Google Earth sometimes sends the map panning, but usually stops as soon as the finger leaves the screen.
While typing this, I can't see most of the text box (on a Google website), because the text box is wider than the screen and nothing is resized properly. There's no easy way to navigate around inside this text box in which I am typing. This is my worst-written post and I can't even tell if there's anything past this sentence, so I might edit this later from a PC.
The hardware's great, but the software's far less pokished than on an iPhone, which I hate to admit.
Tuesday, May 31, 2011
Saturday, May 7, 2011
Borders
I discovered today why Borders had to go into administration.
Forget about the fact that it is a massive bricks-and-mortar book chain in the age of Amazon.
Forget about the fact that Borders in Australia doesn't own the right to the Borders-branded online store.
Forget about the fact that they sell the ridiculously terrible Kobo eBook reader when there are so many ways of reading eBooks without having to smash things.
Borders is broke because they treat their customers like idiots.
I have always thought of RRP as being the price that suckers pay. It's what you pay if you go to Harvey Norman or Myer and don't try to haggle. It's 10% above what you'll pay at JB Hifi, before you haggle. It's 20% above what you'll pay at MSY if you're buying computer equipment. I don't know that these values are correct, but what I do know is that if I peel the $54.99 sticker off the back of a Clive Cussler book at Borders, I don't expect to see "RRP A$44.95" printed on the book. Just as I don't expect to see £7.99 on a Dune book beneath a $22 sticker.
I asked a staff member if it was normal for them to sell books well above RRP, to which the staff member replied "yes", with a smile.
Borders, good riddance.
Forget about the fact that it is a massive bricks-and-mortar book chain in the age of Amazon.
Forget about the fact that Borders in Australia doesn't own the right to the Borders-branded online store.
Forget about the fact that they sell the ridiculously terrible Kobo eBook reader when there are so many ways of reading eBooks without having to smash things.
Borders is broke because they treat their customers like idiots.
I have always thought of RRP as being the price that suckers pay. It's what you pay if you go to Harvey Norman or Myer and don't try to haggle. It's 10% above what you'll pay at JB Hifi, before you haggle. It's 20% above what you'll pay at MSY if you're buying computer equipment. I don't know that these values are correct, but what I do know is that if I peel the $54.99 sticker off the back of a Clive Cussler book at Borders, I don't expect to see "RRP A$44.95" printed on the book. Just as I don't expect to see £7.99 on a Dune book beneath a $22 sticker.
I asked a staff member if it was normal for them to sell books well above RRP, to which the staff member replied "yes", with a smile.
Borders, good riddance.
Thursday, April 21, 2011
Bob Dylan in Concert
I don't know what it is about Bob Dylan, but I love his recorded music.
Back in about 1998, a guy I went to school with told me that he had been to a Bob Dylan concert, and that he had sounded like a drunk, scratchy, old man. He's 13 years older, so he could only improve with age, right?
I went to his Melbourne concert tonight and bought a t-shirt (because that's what Pirates do), and I was expecting to be disappointed, and I wasn't disappointed.
His vocals sounded like he was clearing his throat. There's a line in Things Have Changed that goes "I've used a camera" which came out more like "hyoo KA!" He'd pause for a couple of seconds, and then spit out a whole line or two quickly, frustrating any attempt to sing along, and one of the first things that struck me, was about half way through Don't Think Twice, It's Alright, people started applauding, because they'd just realised what song was being sung. This was a theme throughout the night, with people realising at different times what the current song was, as not only were the vocals generally unintelligible, the arrangements made the songs effectively unidentifiable.
I am pretty sure that Bob Dylan can actually sing though. There were times when a relatively clear, melodic voice would come through, and I'd find myself wondering why he couldn't sing more like that, but knowing that the answer was why I was there: It's Bob Dylan. It's kind of like Prince with Kiss. The little snatches of clear vocals are the reward for listening to the rest of it.
There were quite a few songs that I didn't recognise at all though. I'm not sure if I really didn't know the songs, or I just couldn't recognise the croaky vocals and new arrangements.
All of this was no real problem though, as this is what I had expected to see. The most annoying thing about the concert was the ticket seller: Ticketek. When I booked, their servers were busy crapping themselves, so I resubmitted before checking my email account, and of course ended up double-booking. In order to get a refund, I searched their website trying to find contact details, and of course couldn't, as Ticketek implement every Dark Pattern they can think of. I'd booked silver tickets, because the gold tickets were listed as "allocation exhausted". A couple of weeks later, I noticed that there were gold tickets available, so I got around to using Google, and searched for Ticketek contact details there and managed to find an enquiry form, so I submitted my request to refund one set of tickets and hopefully upgrade the other set.
I got an auto-reply, which included a phone number, so I followed the dark-pattern-filled path that they had set for me. I called the number (132849, in case you're wondering), and about 6 times over 3 hours, it was engaged. I finally got through and was on hold for around an hour. When I spoke to someone there, he tried to tell me that they had a strict no refunds, no exchanges policy. I wouldn't accept that, so he spoke to a manager, which was just his way of putting me on hold for another 5 or so minutes. I got the refund for the duplicate tickets, but he said that they couldn't let me upgrade the other tickets. I tried to pull out the old "misleading and deceptive" advertising thing (as I was lead into buying tickets that I didn't particularly want, because the ones I wanted were falsely listed as sold out), so he said he'd speak to a manager again and get back to me within a day, which never happened. Eventually, someone got to my email response and told me there was a strict no exchange or refund policy, however they had already given me a refund on the extra tickets by that point. Anyway, the point of all this is that my seat was shit.
Overall, I'm glad I went. It was what I expected, and as such, it was quite humorous. Bob Dylan is a legend and it was good to see him before 2024, by which time, I think his voice may be a little rusty.
Back in about 1998, a guy I went to school with told me that he had been to a Bob Dylan concert, and that he had sounded like a drunk, scratchy, old man. He's 13 years older, so he could only improve with age, right?
I went to his Melbourne concert tonight and bought a t-shirt (because that's what Pirates do), and I was expecting to be disappointed, and I wasn't disappointed.
His vocals sounded like he was clearing his throat. There's a line in Things Have Changed that goes "I've used a camera" which came out more like "hyoo KA!" He'd pause for a couple of seconds, and then spit out a whole line or two quickly, frustrating any attempt to sing along, and one of the first things that struck me, was about half way through Don't Think Twice, It's Alright, people started applauding, because they'd just realised what song was being sung. This was a theme throughout the night, with people realising at different times what the current song was, as not only were the vocals generally unintelligible, the arrangements made the songs effectively unidentifiable.
I am pretty sure that Bob Dylan can actually sing though. There were times when a relatively clear, melodic voice would come through, and I'd find myself wondering why he couldn't sing more like that, but knowing that the answer was why I was there: It's Bob Dylan. It's kind of like Prince with Kiss. The little snatches of clear vocals are the reward for listening to the rest of it.
There were quite a few songs that I didn't recognise at all though. I'm not sure if I really didn't know the songs, or I just couldn't recognise the croaky vocals and new arrangements.
All of this was no real problem though, as this is what I had expected to see. The most annoying thing about the concert was the ticket seller: Ticketek. When I booked, their servers were busy crapping themselves, so I resubmitted before checking my email account, and of course ended up double-booking. In order to get a refund, I searched their website trying to find contact details, and of course couldn't, as Ticketek implement every Dark Pattern they can think of. I'd booked silver tickets, because the gold tickets were listed as "allocation exhausted". A couple of weeks later, I noticed that there were gold tickets available, so I got around to using Google, and searched for Ticketek contact details there and managed to find an enquiry form, so I submitted my request to refund one set of tickets and hopefully upgrade the other set.
I got an auto-reply, which included a phone number, so I followed the dark-pattern-filled path that they had set for me. I called the number (132849, in case you're wondering), and about 6 times over 3 hours, it was engaged. I finally got through and was on hold for around an hour. When I spoke to someone there, he tried to tell me that they had a strict no refunds, no exchanges policy. I wouldn't accept that, so he spoke to a manager, which was just his way of putting me on hold for another 5 or so minutes. I got the refund for the duplicate tickets, but he said that they couldn't let me upgrade the other tickets. I tried to pull out the old "misleading and deceptive" advertising thing (as I was lead into buying tickets that I didn't particularly want, because the ones I wanted were falsely listed as sold out), so he said he'd speak to a manager again and get back to me within a day, which never happened. Eventually, someone got to my email response and told me there was a strict no exchange or refund policy, however they had already given me a refund on the extra tickets by that point. Anyway, the point of all this is that my seat was shit.
Overall, I'm glad I went. It was what I expected, and as such, it was quite humorous. Bob Dylan is a legend and it was good to see him before 2024, by which time, I think his voice may be a little rusty.
Tuesday, March 1, 2011
NBN Oversight
I'm all for faster internet access, but I have to say, I'm not convinced that the National Broadband Network is the best solution out there. $40B+ for faster internet is about $2000 per human in Australia, which could be spent in so many other ways, such as:
But this rant isn't about those aspects of the NBN, so that said, I'm happy to assume that the NBN is a good enough plan with which to improve our nation's infrastructure, competition issues aside, because sometimes any plan is better than no plan.
What concerns me, is that I was just listening to parliament on the radio, and they were debating a motion to disallow some delegated legislation. The legislation in question is currently in place to stop the parliamentary Public Works Committee from being able to oversee the project, and maintain transparency throughout the process. The motion failed, so the biggest, most expensive project in the history of Australia will have no parliamentary oversight to ensure that the project is running according to plan, or according to budget. As it is, from the 40% of the NBN plan that has been released, it is apparently going to optimistically lose 3%,^ due to the cost of capital being higher than the gross profit, which doesn't sound like the best of projections, considering the size of the project.
Despite this, Labor was talking about having awesome transparency. This is what annoys me the most. There is so much about this project that is hidden, so by calling this a transparently-managed project is complete doublespeak. And most people just swallow it.
/rant
* 500k people = 200k apartments = 400 high-rises = $100M per building or $200k per apartment.
^ Look up the parliamentary proceedings from today to find references to any figures I am quoting.
- Providing solar power for every household in Australia;
- Building affordable, luxury apartments to sell at cost to about half a million people,* solving our housing shortage and allowing more immigration;
- Giving it to the states to improve hospitals, public transport, education etc.
- Relying on existing market development (after all, Optus has been upgrading their cable network to support up to 100mbit per second);
- Wireless for the last (most expensive) mile;
- Using a fraction of the money as incentives for companies to invest further money building out their own networks.
But this rant isn't about those aspects of the NBN, so that said, I'm happy to assume that the NBN is a good enough plan with which to improve our nation's infrastructure, competition issues aside, because sometimes any plan is better than no plan.
What concerns me, is that I was just listening to parliament on the radio, and they were debating a motion to disallow some delegated legislation. The legislation in question is currently in place to stop the parliamentary Public Works Committee from being able to oversee the project, and maintain transparency throughout the process. The motion failed, so the biggest, most expensive project in the history of Australia will have no parliamentary oversight to ensure that the project is running according to plan, or according to budget. As it is, from the 40% of the NBN plan that has been released, it is apparently going to optimistically lose 3%,^ due to the cost of capital being higher than the gross profit, which doesn't sound like the best of projections, considering the size of the project.
Despite this, Labor was talking about having awesome transparency. This is what annoys me the most. There is so much about this project that is hidden, so by calling this a transparently-managed project is complete doublespeak. And most people just swallow it.
/rant
* 500k people = 200k apartments = 400 high-rises = $100M per building or $200k per apartment.
^ Look up the parliamentary proceedings from today to find references to any figures I am quoting.
Saturday, February 26, 2011
Do Not Knock List
After yet another religious type coming to the door today trying to sell us their non-evidence-based beliefs, and some semi-frequent hassling by utility companies, I started thinking: If we can have a Do Not Call list, then why not a Do Not Knock list?
If people could put their addresses on a list to indicate a lack of interest for certain types of door-knockers, then the householders could avoid being annoyed and the door-knockers could avoid wasting their own time and being abused for disturbing people.
I'm not so concerned about restricting the freedom of people who really want to communicate with others by door-knocking for non-sales purposes, as a legislated Do Not Knock list would have the same kind of exceptions for non-commercial communication as the Do Not Call list, but all this could lead to helping marketers to identify a household's demographic, which would be undesirable.
So, as an intermediate step, I've knocked up the following:
I tried to put one together that would refer to utilities, but I'm not very good with graphic design, and I was having trouble showing power plugs, gas flames, mobile phones and similar. If you like the idea and put together some better imagery, write a comment to let me know.
In the mean time, print out the image and stick it to the outside of your front door if you'd like to avoid having people annoy you with religious crap while you're sleeping, eating or otherwise uninterested. If they still annoy you, I'd guess you have licence to go nuts at them.
Edit: I decided to do a search and noticed that there is already a Do Not Knock campaign. Support it if you are interested.
Another edit: Completely unrelated to this post, but I just want to ensure that Pratik the Ninja's site gets indexed in Google.
If people could put their addresses on a list to indicate a lack of interest for certain types of door-knockers, then the householders could avoid being annoyed and the door-knockers could avoid wasting their own time and being abused for disturbing people.
I'm not so concerned about restricting the freedom of people who really want to communicate with others by door-knocking for non-sales purposes, as a legislated Do Not Knock list would have the same kind of exceptions for non-commercial communication as the Do Not Call list, but all this could lead to helping marketers to identify a household's demographic, which would be undesirable.
So, as an intermediate step, I've knocked up the following:
I tried to put one together that would refer to utilities, but I'm not very good with graphic design, and I was having trouble showing power plugs, gas flames, mobile phones and similar. If you like the idea and put together some better imagery, write a comment to let me know.
In the mean time, print out the image and stick it to the outside of your front door if you'd like to avoid having people annoy you with religious crap while you're sleeping, eating or otherwise uninterested. If they still annoy you, I'd guess you have licence to go nuts at them.
Edit: I decided to do a search and noticed that there is already a Do Not Knock campaign. Support it if you are interested.
Another edit: Completely unrelated to this post, but I just want to ensure that Pratik the Ninja's site gets indexed in Google.
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