Issues

Now, after being a ‘web professional’, if you will, for nigh on 16 years now, I can safely say I have had my own fair share of spam. Most of it’s inane, ghoulish, guttural and annoying, but tonight – tonight I was rewarded with the most awesome kind of spam there is. “Second Language English” spam.

Please enjoy ‘Second-Language-English-spam-orama’.

-= Courtesy Nirav Patel =-

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Hello,

Compliments of the Season!!

Our web research department has found your company through online research, while reviewing your web page, we found that you deals in almost the same services, where we deals in. We would be happy to let you know that we are having a good hands on experience and expertise working on various applications.

We’ve been in this business since last 5 years and served many industries like Banking, Entertainment, Health care, Insurance, Pharmaceutical etc. We have an excellent blend of technology and industry expertise which allows them to realize your vision. Some of the expertises that we offer are:

• Web and Software Application Development and Maintenance
• Mobile Applications Development
• Graphic and Web Designing
• Client Server Development
• Database Design, Development and Administration
• ERP Applications
• IT Consulting
• Network Consulting
• Re-engineering and testing

If you need any technical clarification, do not hesitate to revert back to me. I would be glad to answer you.

Look forward to join hands with you and your venerated organization. Thanks.

Best Regards,

Nirav Patel

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I know right? So great.

Don’t you love, “We would be happy to let you know that we are having a good hands on experience and expertise working on various applications.”…? I mean, that’s so great. I am glad they would be happy.

Life is funny.

This is just so hilarious.

Microsoft always follow the same recipe when it come to hiring executives, and the scripts they have to read out when speaking in public.

Basically, MS feel that tablet computing is not worth betting the farm on. Mundie, MS’s global chief strategy officer, ‘doesn’t know’ if this sector will persist in the long run.

I find this strange as MS have been dumping resources into tablet development for nigh on 10 years now. And what? Suddenly now that Apple has actually developed one that doesn’t suck and has made billions in the space of a year since it’s release, MS isn’t sure whether to pursue this sector of the market anymore. Makes MS sound like bad sports.

On the other hand, Mundie, the non-visionary that he is, feels that people in the future will have a room in their house that will be a computer. Said Mundie:

“I believe the successor to the desktop is the room, that instead of thinking that the computer is just something on the desk that you go and sit in front of, [in the] future basically the whole room is the computer and you go in it.”

Oh for crying the fuck out loud. This is a classic MS public speaking strategy where they shoehorn some technology they have developed into a lame, half-arsed vision of a non-existant future. In this case the tech being the Kinnect infrared controller (which admittedly is a pretty good set of ideas).

This is typical of an executive from MS. They are so far removed from normal people that they think that everyone will be able to afford a special room in their house for typing emails. I can imagine Mundie looking stupefied because he has realised that there are people out there that don’t own a helicopter and live in giant mansions on massive plots of land.

The reality of the situation is that people will buy the most compelling product for their needs – not what some billionaire doofus dreams up after overdosing on his meds. If you think about it, the population is expanding, resources, energy and space is becoming more expensive. People need something rugged, compact and able to do the staples of personal computing (communication, productivity and entertainment) without sucking.

I have an iPad and I use it primarily for emails and surfing the net whilst on the couch. It has supplanted the laptop we have in the same room because it’s more convenient to use than the lappy. A keyboard is better for typing long documents, but -most of the time we aren’t typing long documents.

The short comings of the tablet form factor will be dealt with over time and there will be some heavy competition between the small lappy and the tablet – but eventually most consumers will be making this decision when purchasing a portable computing device:

Shall I fork out an extra hunj or so for a device with a keyboard attached to it?

This is hilarious: Microsoft and Google: The Good Guys

“Anyone who likes competition and choice should root for Microsoft and Google, not Apple, in phones.”

Yeah – this guy clearly has nothing to do with Microsoft. Apart from he writes for PC Mag – owned by MS since forever. But otherwise, judging by the tone of this article he has never actually heard of Microsoft before at the CTIA Wireless trade show this week.  Not surprising – he doesn’t sound like he has enough of a clue to have thought up the topic of this article all by himself.  Not by a long shot – he must have either been:

1. Born yesterday
2. Come down in the last shower
3. An alien that immigrated to Earth in the last few weeks
4. Another one of MS’s stooges

The premise of the article is that Apple, Palm Pre and Blackberry are ‘bad’ (but mainly Apple) because they are so bad-ass, so evil that they have the gall to design not only the hardware, but the software as well for their smart phone offerings. Can you imagine that? What bastards!

The doofus explains:

“Before you mock, understand that putting together a mobile OS is a huge investment. If every mobile manufacturer had to create its own mobile OS, you’d have either a huge barrier to entry, hideous fragmentation with dozens of incompatible platforms, or both. Think about how many platforms and how few manufacturers are already out there. It would be worse.”

Let’s just have a quick look:

• ‘A huge barrier to entry’ – Right, and owning a mobile phone fabrication plant isn’t a huge barrier to entry in the mobile phone market? For crying out loud!
• ‘Hideous market fragmentation’ – so market fragmentation is hideous eh? Now we *know* the guy works for Microsoft.
• ‘Incompatible platforms’ – GAF. As long as the data can be shared, differences in platforms is a non-issue.

So what the guy is saying is that someone has to stand up for the poor guys with the shitty mobile phone fabrication plant that can’t possibly afford to get the talent together to make an SmartPhone OS specifically for the phones they manufacture. Android and MS are good – it’ll give the rubbish handset manufacturers a shot at the smart phone market, which is unfairly dominated by those horrid companies that design and manufacture both the OS and Handsets.

Unfortunately, Windows 6.5 is a bag of shit and everyone knows it. So what if a shitty phone manufacturer can use it – it will only add competition to the ‘rubbish smart phone’ sector of the smart phone market – it won’t actually be competing with the top 3 smart phone providers.

Android, on the other hand, I like. In Google’s typical fashion they’ll dump a whole lot of resources into developing a Smart Phone OS that makes using and accessing their services easy, conforming to open standards, and then releasing it under the GPL. However, much like the Windows Phone OS, they will be competing in the ‘rubbish smartphone’ sector of the smartphone market, and not with Blackberry, Palm and Apple.  They will be competing with Windows Mobile, Symbian and Linux.

Can’t wait how this competition pans out for Microsoft.

What I hate about this carbon trading thing is that there is this big resistance to it centred around spending money. Certain people are all about the fact that the climate science isn’t bedded down properly and therefore the whole carbon trading thing is a total scam. They feel it’s corrupt because climate change is either natural, or it’s not actually happening. And quite frankly they don’t see why they should have to pay for bigger energy bills based on information prone to having lots of holes poked in it.

There is enough science out there to throw doubt on the entire premise of carbon trading, and worse, it’s all valid. It’s because it’s about carbon emissions. Geologists, or any scientist with an affinity with the last billion years of climate on Earth, will tell you that the climate has gone through patches where the earth was so warm there were forests that went all the way to the poles. Is that bad? In the grand scale of things, no it’s not. In the grand scale of things our civilisation is so negligible is mathematically isn’t even there – so really, why even give a shit?

Personally, my thing with carbon trading has bugger all to do with climate change. Climate changes, it’s natural. Even if humans do, or *could* affect the climate does it really matter in the long run? We will all die out eventually – apparently we only have another billion years or so before our sun turns into a giant red star and engulfs Venus and Mercury. Life won’t continue on Earth after that, so therefore it’s pointless forcing the current sentient inhabitants to take responsibility for what they consume.  Carbon trading won’t affect the continuance of life on earth – nothing in Earth’s history has.

Maybe the fact that we are burning all fossil fuels and releasing all this carbon into the atmosphere will allow earth to go through another dinosaurean-like renaissance – another biological peak of evolution. Perhaps all the extra carbon on the atmosphere will allow forests to flourish in a big way again, seeding the next era of mega-fauna, especially if it gets rid of those pesky humans. After all, what are we actually here for? Is it so that we can live forever? Is it so that we can seed the universe with life and technology? Are we supposed to all become gods? Does anyone have any science on this?

Short answer is no, no, no and no.

What I like about carbon trading is that it makes us more efficient. There are a bunch of things that being efficient makes better for humans. Less degradation for a start. More resources for things for another start. Initially, sure it’s gonna cost humans a bit more to move to a more efficient way of life. There will certainly be an outlay to get there, and there is no two ways about it, we will absolutely have to do it. If it isn’t climate change, then it’s over population. If it isn’t either of those then it’s a lack of cheap, non-renewable energy sources – or some other catastrophic event that makes life for humans on Earth a lot tougher. Regardless of how you view it, people are never going to volunteer to die so that there are more resources for everyone else – and if you look at the Easter Island scenario, it becomes a life that’s hardly worth living. Life like that doesn’t progress – it simply disintegrates.

If there is a way to make human life on Earth happier it’s about having an abundance of resources to go around. Being efficient is only going to help that cause. Paying a bit of extra cash now is going to make life way better for the our progeny, so it comes down to an ethical decision. Do you like beautiful landscapes? Do you like to see an abundance of biodiversity? Do you like nature and the environment? Do you like being happy? Do you want your future generations not to stuggle? If you do then carbon trading is at least doing *something* about maintaining those parts of our lives. Doing nothing because you don’t want to part with a few greenbacks, is simply preventing progress for humans on Earth – unless, of course, you have a better idea.

You got a better idea? I really fucken doubt it.

Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

Emissions from burping cows ‘higher than family car’.

How is it that it’s so incredible that a ‘herd of cows’, which is 75 to 125 times the weight of a car, emits more CO2e than a vehicle over an entire year?

Is this stupid web site article suggesting that we drive herds of cows around instead of cars? Is it suggesting that we should convert our cows to ethanol? Is it suggesting that ‘Big Cow’ should stop lobbying the government against climate change and start producing the ‘E.B.’ (electric bovine)?

Who the fuck knows?

Just so that people can actually get some perspective here, the problem with the man made portion of climate change is the fossils we dig up and release into the atmosphere via the burning thereof. All we really have to do to halt the vast majority of our contribution to climate change is to stop doing that.

Just for a bit more cow perspective, apparently there are just under a billion cows on the planet, which means there are roughly 5 million herds of cattle (going on the ’200 cows per herd’ number published in the stupid article) compared to 625 million cars. This means that cars out-pollute cows by 125 times alone. Cow methane is a friggin piss in the goddam ocean! For fucks sake, stop pointing the finger at developing countries and get rid of your stupid SUV you fucken dick head!