blog.world3.net

BBC Have Your Say as a mouthpiece for the BNP

17/10/2009 – 18:08

If anyone were in any doubt that the BBC Have Your Say forum is being used by right-wing extremists like the BNP to push their views, today’s question about Binyam Mohamed should soon clear them up:

Send him home!!!!

[RulaBritannia], Bradford, United Kingdom

and

Yet again the system making me think its time to give the BNP a closer look.

Oh dear, York

and

DEPORT HIM!!!!

[cosmicKoalaK], London

Mr Binyam Mohamed should be sent back to Ethiopia ASAP.

Captain Mubbers, Britain out of EU!!

The list goes on. The problem is that the highest rated comments only need about 180 odd votes to rise to the top. Finding 180 people to log in and vote is not hard for any determined organisation. In fact, part of me wants to start a Facebook group for that very purpose.

The BBC must do something about this. It cannot be platform for the BNP and other extremists. I would recommend a Slashdot style comments system, with the key ability to reply directly to other people’s posts and rate them based on more than just “I agree”.

By mojo | Posted in idiots, politics | Comments (14)

Thunderbird modifications

15/10/2009 – 11:59

I finally decided to switch to Thunderbird. Having the gecko HTML engine is handy, and I have found ways to work around most of the annoyances.

Add-ons:

Attachment Reminder
British English dictionary
keyconfig
Opening Words
Quote Colours
SmoothWheel (AMO)

Note that Quote Colours does not work with 3b4 at the moment.

Change the delete key in keyconfig to “MsgMarkMsgAsRead(true); goDoCommand('cmd_delete');” so that deleted messages are automatically marked as read.

Set mailnews.threadpane_select_delay to 0.

By mojo | Posted in software | Comments (0)

Living the lie

03/10/2009 – 23:54

The biggest lie of the modern age is the American Dream(TM), also known as Thatcherism in the UK.

The pitch is that anyone can make it if they work hard. Wealth comes to those who earn it, who do it for themselves.

Actually, most people will never be rich. Most of us spend our entire lives working for other people, earning a salary that tends to fit to a scale set out early on by our choice of career and qualifications.

The sooner you accept this and start trying to make the most of where you are now without chasing dreams of wealth, the sooner you can be happy. Your life is not validated by the amount of money you have, it’s validated by the way you live it.

At least, that’s what I tell myself.

By mojo | Posted in politics | Comments (2)

Tabs Open Relative (Modified) reaches V1.0 and goes public

03/10/2009 – 19:00

A minor update to add about:config prefs if they do not already exist and the add-on is now public (so people can find it on the add-ons site):

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/13626

http://soft.world3.net

By mojo | Posted in software | Comments (0)

Comparison of PDF viewers

16/09/2009 – 23:14

I have been using Sumatra PDF for a while now, and while I’m mostly happy with it, I would like something with a few more features. Everyone seems to suggest Foxit, to the point where it is now the first result on Google for “pdf viewer”. Unfortunately, the rendering quality of Foxit is well below par:


Foxit Reader 3.1		Sumatra 0.9.4		PDF-XChange 2.0

All screenshots are with the document at 100%. Small font rendering quality is important, even on a large monitor. I often have one window with code I am editing and next to it another window with a datasheet PDF. Foxit looks pretty bad at any zoom level.


Foxit Reader 3.1		Sumatra 0.9.4		PDF-XChange 2.0

You can click the above images for the an expanded view of the whole program window. Again, Foxit is by far the worst, with Sumatra and PDF-XChange about equal.

Overall, I’d have to say that Sumatra is the best. Zooming can be a bit strange in it, but the quality and very small program size make up for all that. I’d like a few more features, such as bookmarks and web browser style back/forward navigation, all things which PDF-XChange does. I’ll probably keep both of them around for now until I can pick between them.

One thing is for sure though, after the bloatfest that is Adobe Reader, Foxit Reader is actually the worst option. Sumatra PDF, which is fully open source, is quite simply much, much better at displaying documents – the primary purpose of any PDF viewer.

By mojo | Posted in software, windows | Comments (4)

List of things installed by iTunes 9

15/09/2009 – 21:41

iTunes for Windows is by far the most bloated bit of software I have ever seen. The shear amount of crap it installs in unbeliveable:

iTunes itself
Quicktime
Apple Mobile Device service
Bonjour Service
iPod Service
iTunesHelper startup task
QTTask startup task
Firefox plugin
iPod Classic drivers
iPhone drivers
Apple Software Update

Grand Total: 276MB

Actually, they removed the DNS Resolver service from iTunes 8 (wtf – Windows can already resolve DNS).

On top of all that, iTunes itself contains half of MacOS. OSX font rendering and associated fonts, graphic rendering elements etc.

You also have every supported language installed, and support for every Apple device (iPod Classic, iPod Touch, iPhone, AppleTV), network sharing and streaming… The list goes on.

I could just about forgive all this if there was an alternative, but if you own an iPhone or an iPod Touch there isn’t. Apple decided to encrypt the iTunes database and make it impossible for 3rd party software to work with their hardware.

By mojo | Posted in idiots, software, windows | Comments (1)

eBay is broken

15/09/2009 – 18:57

The idiots at eBay have done it again. They managed to break the auction pages:

Nice one. You broke the most important page on your site.

By mojo | Posted in idiots, Internet | Comments (0)

Life on Mars Bluray review

08/09/2009 – 23:51

I was looking forward to the high-defintion release of Life on Mars, but have been let down.

The Bluray has only slightly better picture quality than the DVD. It’s not even as good as downloaded 720p, but I suppose it’s the best you can expect given that it was shot on 16mm and edited digitally with effects added.

The biggest problem is that the frame rate has been changed from 25Hz to 24Hz. I have a 100Hz TV and it judders like mad. It’s really off-putting, so much so I returned the Bluray and got the DVD. The slightly better picture is just not enough to compensate. The only reason I can think of for doing this is to make the disc playable in NTSC countries, but since it’s a UK program that hardly justifies ruining it. Even the pace of the show seems off in parts.

I’m not sure the sound is better either – the original BBC mix was certainly compressed and very loud in parts, but the Dolby mix here suffers from the typical film problem of speech being too quiet in parts. Maybe it’s better if you have a 5.1 system and can turn up the centre, but I am listening to normal TV sound in 2.1. The BBC mix is more “artistic” too, with the use of music and ambient sound being a lot more dynamic and integrated into the overall presentation. The Bluray mix feels a bit amateurish and occasionally the odd line will seem really out of place and not mixed properly.

Overall I’m really disappointed, as I love the series. I am hoping that Ashes to Ashes will be better, but it seems unlikely… I think you just have to accept that these series will never be in high-definition.

By mojo | Posted in Uncategorized | Comments (0)

Retro Adapters now on sale!

07/09/2009 – 22:00

I finally got there – Retro Adapters are on sale!

Everything is at http://retro.world3.net, including an online shop where you can buy ready made adapters and kits via Google Checkout.

I’ll add more stuff to the shop side in the next few days. In particular I hope to have some extension cables for sale for making connectors. They are hard to come by, but if there is demand I’ll get them.

By mojo | Posted in hardware, Retro Adapter | Comments (2)

Get rid of the flashing cursor in Firefox

07/09/2009 – 21:11

Another handy tweak:

Tools -> Options -> Advanced -> General -> Accessibility -> Always use the cursor keys to navigate within pages = unticked

The annoying blinking cursor you get when you click inside text on a web page will now be gone.

By mojo | Posted in Internet, software | Comments (0)

たとえ溺れても梦はゆめでしかない