This is a collection of thoughts and statements about things that annoy me. I am a big, angry man. Hear me roar, or piss off and give me peace.

Sunday, October 29, 2006

MSPs are upstanding citizens... NOT!

Well, that's another Socialist wanker jailed for not paying fines for their part in the denial that this country has a right to defend its self. I am, of course, referring to the recently incarcerated Rosie Kane MSP

The law should be changed so that criminals can't sap any more of taxpayers money by "representing" us in a wee pretendy parliament, and then slacking off to cause a nuisance by blocking roads, taking up police and court time, not paying fines and generally being a waste of space.

Get a real job.

The illusion of security

Having just logged in to check the balance of one of my credit cards, I was confronted with this abomination as I was forced to change my username and password for the site:

Password Rules
• Your password is case sensitive.
• Your password must be between 8 and 20 characters.
• You can use letters, numbers, dots [.] or dashes [-].
• Your password must contain at least one letter and one number.
• If there is only one number, it must not be at the beginning or the end of your password.
• You must not have more than two of the same characters in a row.
• Your password must be different from your user name.


So, in other words, a couple of passwords I have used elsewhere, and *are secure* cannot be used here, since they only allow dots and dashes, rather than a sensible ASCII character set...

Who the fuck are the idiots who set this up? There are going to be people all over the nation writing down their internet banking passwords because of utterly stupid policies like this. Make the passwords have one of a letter, a number and a symbol, be >= 6 characters (8 ideally) and run it against a dictionary when set, to avoid dictionary words from stupid people. That's a fairly basic UNIX like password policy, and one which isn't totally fucking stupid.

Suffice to say, I am about to pay off the card, and cancel it. Bastards.

Friday, October 27, 2006

Labouring under a false hope?

Why do people in Scotland vote Labour?

Most of the places that are Labour through and through have had Labour Councillors, Labour Members of Parliament, and no doubt Labour Members of the Scottish Parliament (God help us).

These folk, who claim we've been suffering under an iron rule of Toryism probably have never seen a tory in their lives, apart from on the televsion. Their wee part of the world will have been governed (sorry, represented) by the iron fist of Labour since the year dot.

Has anything improved for them? It doesn't look like it, does it? Tehy still have jakies unconcious in the gutter. They still step over people in their close stairs - and yet still they trudge down to the polls, and vote for the same crap they have always voted for, and their parents before them.

The populous seem hell bent on returning a government that engages our troops in conflicts (it's not a war, since that would mean we would have to pay our troops more money) that the people do no like. The government erodes our civil liberties, and threatens to introduce expensive, unwarranted, useless ID cards - with the ridiculous notion it will be a great panacea for the immigration problems, health care problems and crime problems this country is seeing.

What utter crap. Labour need to be kicked into touch. (That said, all the other parties are just as bad).

Thursday, October 26, 2006

It's free because it's crap

Today I had to suffer free software. Because it's free, it must be good, innit?

WRONG!

I had made the mistake of being caught installing phpBB, and someone wanted a new feature - not supported with the base phpBB install, so I had to apply a "mod".

I downloaded the mod, and looked for the install script.

*** What install script.

So I looked for the howto / readme

*** No howto or readme

So I looked in the mod file

*** Nothing obvious in the mod file

So I searched the interweb for a howto.

- Apparently I have to manually search for bits of php code, and insert or modify them as appropriate by myself... How the hell is this a scaleable solution? I then spent 30 minutes editing a number of files by hand, with no easy roll back, no guarantee the mod would work.

Well, it's true what they say - you get what you pay for. Fuck all for fuck all.

It's only free if your time is worthless.

Friday, October 20, 2006

Give 'em the hose

It's the October holiday here in Edinburgh, and the natives are restless...

In the Edinburgh Evening News, it has been reported that oiks are setting things on fire, then playing that age old game of "throw shit at the firemen."

The only way to get through to these pests is to turn the hose on them. A slightly harsh approach would be to stop sending appliances out to the schemes. Let them burn - when they have no houses and no possessions, maybe they will think twice about throwing stones at the firemen.

Tuesday, October 17, 2006

UK 'must act' on plane emissions

And that's all it must do - since if they do anything other than a pantomime, the economy will go down the pan.

According to this BBC article, Air traffic makes up 5.5% of British carbon emissions. Yet again with the carbon, like it is the be all and end all of greenhouse gases.

"And although restricting flights might be bad for airports and airlines, other sectors of the economy such as domestic tourism would benefit, the report concludes."


Which will mean more cars on the road, I suspect - moving the problem, if it is a problem, to somewhere else.

When will these politicos and hippies realise you can't stop climate change. It far more complex than cutting down the growth in CO2, SOx and H20 (vapour) output, and all these current pantomimes are doing is costing us money that could be better spent elsewhere.

Thursday, October 12, 2006

Ghost ships exorcised by local councillors

According to this BBC report, the US ghost ships which were to be decommissioned in the UK by Able UK will no longer happen as plans have been blocked by the local councillors.

"After a four-hour meeting, councillors rejected the proposals despite planning officials recommending they be approved."


So what councillors are saying is - even though their own experts told them this could be done safely and even though this means jobs for local people... they would rather the work went to somewhere that isn't here.

Would they rather have more people out of work? Would they rather the work was carried out somewhere else, that doesn't necessarily have the stringent safeguards in place for the people doing the work and the environment?

The answer, it would seem, is yes.

The £1m question

If I said that for a payment of £1m, I could offer the hope that you would live longer - say, chances are give you another couple of years on your life. I am not guaranteeing this, by any means - simply taking your cash, telling you to change your life a bit, and saying that should mean you live longer... Would you pay me?

This is essentially what the environMENTALISTS are claiming. We need to pay hundreds of millions of pounds to fund committees on climate change, provide more recycling points, pay someone to stick their finger in the leaky dyke for an unknown length of time for an unquantifiable gain - if it is a gain at all!

When will we wake up to the greenwash? Climate change has happened for longer than man has walked the earth! We should be evolving to combat the change, not throwing limitless amounts of money at a problem that money and manpower cannot solve.