I am constantly gobsmacked at how hard some “professional” applications make things.

Take for example something as obvious as a shape with a dotted line.

I want to make some buttons for a website. Ordinarily I’d just create a shape in something like Keynote or Powerpoint with the appropriate line, cut and paste into something like Seashore and cut the bits I need. No it’s not the “ideal” way to do this, but it consistently works and takes me ten minutes, tops.

But I’ve recently become a Photoshop person. I like the layers, which PS will do. But try getting a dotted line on a shape. Really.

Finally after hours and hours of searching, I found how to do it here.

Surely they can make something like this simpler? Or is this the now standard “exclusive” approach rather than “inclusive”? After all, we can’t have just *anyone* doing graphic design can we? There’s lines of demarcation to worry about.

What goes around, comes around.

Proposed intellectual property agreement

It occurs to me that this is the modern equivalent of the restriction of information and free-thought that existed during the Dark Ages.

Remember that fun time, where the church was all powerful, they could do what they liked and anyone they didn’t like was harassed and if you spoke up, you were tied to a tree and burned to death.

Perhaps they won’t do the burning this time around. But they can — if this monstrosity gets up — do these:

- ex-officio authority to take action against infringers  (i.e. authority to act without complaint by right holders)(my note: anywhere, any time, they can grab you and start searching. Nice one)

- authority to order ex parte searches and other preliminary measures (my note: right to be notified of a search, presumption of innocence, etc, etc?)

- remedies against circumvention of technological protection measures used by copyright owners and the trafficing of circumvention devices (my note: well, there goes the ENTIRE computer industry, and the Medical industries in one fell swoop)

And perhaps the scariest of all:

- Special measures for developing countries in the initial stages (my note: what exactly does this mean? Whitey cracks the whip and says you can’t do this anymore?)

What’s scary about all this? Well, suspension of the presumption of innocence for starters. And, of course, the ultimate issue that if a whole country — say an african country which is breaking copyright by producing its own anti-retroviral drugs in an attempt to stem the spread of AIDS — is breaking this “law”, then what happens then? Do the armed forces of another country fly in and bomb them all to smithereens because they’re breaking copyright.

And how exactly are they going to stop China?

In my opinion, and this is my blog, so I can say stuff like this, the proposal is a massive can of worms which could be used to justify anything from the suspension of the presumption of innocence to all out war.

And again, it’s another attempt to stifle the creativity and information exchange afforded by the net and other technological advances.

Long live freedom of thought.

Well, it’s official: iiNet Sucks.

I’m sick of being on hold to these guys. It’s like being with bloody Hellstra or Opt-Arse for frig’s sake! What IS it with companies.

No amount of “Your call is important to us” and “Our staff are experiencing higher than average call volume.” cuts it anymore in this world.

Neither do constantly being told “it’s time to go naked with iiNet…” and “…are you experiencing slow download rates with your dial-up connection..?”

I don’t care. I don’t want to be advertised at. I don’t want to be constantly told how hard it is for you to receive calls because the three people that are left in your call-center after your last hatchet-job on staff that actually do the freaking work can’t handle the volume of calls!

It reminds me of an ex-employer who, during one of the regular 6-monthly retrenchment cycles, fired the guy responsible for building the one application that the CEO of the company had declared was the best thing since sliced bread and would make the company bigger than Ben whatsisname.

Stupid!

So is being on hold for 15 minutes!

iiNet used to be a good company, easy to deal with, quick turnaround on service calls, connections and anything you needed really. Now they’re just like every other damn company out there: happy to take your money, happy to provide a bit of contractually obligated service (ie. phone/net connection) and CRAP at everything else that’s actually necessary for running a business.

Bottom line: if your staff can’t handle the number of calls coming in, then HIRE SOME MORE!!

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZ-lJpL2oVg]

Pure freaking gold…

Zero Punctuation Reviews – Uncharted

And you get to meet the author. How snazz!

And I’d embed the code if it actually worked in WordPress. Damn.

w00t for the power of the citizenry.

But that’s not the reason I’m posting this entry.

I’m posting the entry because of the apparently slack standards of news services. This — and many other reports I’ve seen lately — appears to have been either:

(a) written by several different people and not copy-edited

(b) cobbled-together from several reports around the world and not copy-edited

(c) not copy-edited

Notice the common-denominator in the above points.

Seeing the same piece of information repeated several times in the same report smacks to me of apparent laziness.

And in the award for Shameless repetition, we have:

“…Qian Xun was nicknamed Pumpkin, after the Pumpkin Patch-brand clothing she was wearing when she was found in Melbourne…”

“…She was nicknamed Pumpkin, after the Pumpkin Patch-brand clothing she was wearing when she was found in Melbourne…”

The award for the most gratuitous use of the same fundamental points goes to:

“…Murder suspect Nai Yin Xue was found by police with his pants around his ankles and his hands tied with his own belt after being captured by a group of angry Chinese Americans…”

“…”They had basically taken his pants and tied his legs up and taken his belt off and tied his hands up, so he was very much in custody by the time our officers got to the scene,” he said…”

“…”Local authorities got wind of the incident and arrived on the scene only to find the suspected murderer hogtied and detained by a number of men.”…”

The award for emotive geography goes to:

“…The abandonment of Xue’s daughter caused outrage in Australia and New Zealand, and led to the establishment of the Little Pumpkin Trust in both countries…”

“..Qian’s half sister helped establish the Little Pumpkin Trust in Australia and New Zealand…”

The award for television over-exposure is for:

“…Authorities in America had recently said they were closing in on the fugitive, and his image had appeared on America’s Most Wanted…”

“…The website for the America’s Most Wanted television program says Xue was caught after Chinese-American locals recognised him…”

“…”The arrest was based on the news reports and the internet and America’s Most Wanted,” Hession said…”

The Where’s Wally award goes to:

“…Xue had now been transferred to the Dekalb County Jail where he will be held until US Marshalls take him into custody…”

“…Xue is now in custody while it is determined what legal jurisdiction he faces….”

The Stating-the-bleedingly-obvious award goes to:

“…Murder suspect Nai Yin Xue was found by police..”

“…He is accused of Liu’s murder…”

“..Xue, who is suspected of killing his wife, has been charged with being a fugitive and for being wanted in New Zealand…”

I’m sure there’s more, but the point is well and truly made: it’s an abominable news report and the “with Staff Reporters, stuff.co.nz and Agencies” is little more than a disclaimer rather than giving proper credit to the sources of the report.

This is really sloppy journalism, but I’m up for alternative interpretations (other than a 5-minute deadline, which is just tommyrot on an online newspaper).

Okay, bored now.

I found a link for a Fake Steve Jobs round-up of the Macworld conference, and thought it might be worth a look. Cool, I thought; I quite like the blog — even though some of the readers are obviously sexist pigs (take a look at some of the Photocrank pictures if you doubt my appraisal) — and thought this might be an amusing diversion to what I was doing: translating incomprehensible tech-speak into something that people other than the author could read without a fairly high inhalation of peyote and camel-dung.

First I got a crappy and incomprehensible IBM advert, but hey, you expect that sorta thing on some online news reports; I lived with it.

Then there was a lady news reporter — no, not FSJ — saying how there’d be a report on Macworld. Cool, I thought.

Then there was a second ad.

And that was the point I killed the page. Arse-factor Zero; you lost me within the first 30 seconds. And that’s what happens these days guys. Don’t inundate people with crapervising, we’re Not Interested Anymore! And it wasn’t like I could just click the progress indicator because each of these babies was a self-contained presentation.

Morons.

Froot-loops.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tUrCF7fpViw&rel=1]

Choice quotes:

“…If we can just save one person’s soul…”

“…I don’t know if you’ve seen Kirk Cameron’s ‘Left Behind’…”

“…Noah’s Ark is real, and the Millenium Falcon is fake…”

“…When they die, and they’re judged, then they’ll go to hell… according to my beliefs they’re going to go to hell…”

So today I looked at the blogs I usually look at.

Fake Steve Jobs hadn’t added anything since yesterday.

Vista Sucks isn’t adding much regularly (maybe once a week; come on! I’m a bloggict, I need my fix once a day at the very least!)

Rory Neopoleon had some new content and some additional links.

This one looked interesting — Laura Foy — except, What The Hell is “Microsoft Silverlight“? Surely they’re not creating a “competitor” to flash? Or even to Youtube. Please don’t tell me they’re doing this because I hate the pain caused by broken ribs, and that’s exactly what will happen when I LMAO and fall onto the floor.

Well, you can see from the link, that I’ve found some information. Talk about missing the bloody boat.

Oh my aching sides.

Okay, thanks to this article, the treo might just be syncing properly…

I deleted all the windows sync settings from the treo, and have paired the computer and the treo once again.

If this works, I might just call it a night. It’s only been 4 hours. All right, 3 and a half at this point (I arrived here at about 6.30pm).

Well, it kind-of works. There’s still more contacts on the Palm than on the PC.

The addressbook seems to have synced properly though, so that’s nice.

Screw it. It’s after 10pm. I’m going home.

Okay. Success: it installed.

Now for the hard bit: getting the thing to (a) recognise there’s a treo connected, and (b) getting it to perform a full sync without crapping-out halfway through with some incomprehensible error message that not even the programmers in Redmond understand.

Restart time: here we go again…

I just had a heart-stopping moment there: straight after the PC manufacturer rubbish (Press F8 to do unspeakable acts to the BIOS), there was a black screen and a blinking cursor.

Phew, Windows hasn’t suddenly turned into a turgid pile of horse droppings infested with the worms of a thousand parasites. Well, no more than usual.

(By the way, before anyone complains how much I’m bagging windows tonight, consider, I’m well into my fourth hour on this sodding thing. I’m entitled to feel a little annoyed).

Okay, sync-time!Well, we’re back to what we had before the uninstall/reinstall loop.

Activesync refuses to accept there’s a Treo connected, while Windows syas there is.

Found New hardware it keeps saying, like a small dog with a sudden unabiding love for your leg.

Okay, I’ve waited a bit, and restarted the treo. Activesync seems to think it can deal with it now. And we’re Synchronising……with another sodding status bar that does NOTHING!

Let’s see what happens next…