Apathy Sketchpad

Not so very long ago, it was said that 90% of the internet was pornography. Fortunately for those who don’t particularly approve of pornography, this is no longer true. This is because at least 40% of the internet is now taken up with a myriad versions of that stupid penguin-clubbing Flash app, and a further 30% is used up informing the remaining 30% about the first 40%. (I expect a smaller percentage of the internet is made up of pornographic versions of the penguin game.) The original game was rather entertaining. Then came the turbo version, which was exactly the same, but the numbers were bigger, and that made it better. Then came the turbo-turbo version, with even bigger numbers in it. As I type this, my Placebo MP3 is being interrupted with the rhythmic bouncing of a new version of the game, which I have very little reason to assume ever ends. The penguin has been bouncing along for about fifteen minutes now, and while it isn’t getting as far as it was, it doesn’t seem to be bouncing any lower, and I think the bounces are only getting shorter because my computer’s lagging. Eventually I had to close the window. It was too much. someone took the game and removed the ‘game’ element. Now it’s just a bouncing penguin and not even any good as a screen saver.

At least, I suppose, it doesn’t involve dragging a little hand across something to slap it as fast as you can. I was really beginning to tire of those games.

I am not even going to link to this game. Even if the server could take the massive bandwidth people are subjecting it to, and even if the original hadn’t been pulled, anyone who can’t find it themselves is not using the same internet as everyone else.

Computer viruses are supposedly a big problem. And back in the day, they were. Way back when there was no internet or hard drives to speak of and they had to fit into the boot sector of a floppy disk. That’s when virus writers had to work hard. It was an art form. Now, like so many are forms it has given way to quick, rush-job, ten-a-penny viruses* that any idiot can write in an afternoon.

I get a lot of email, less so since I changed my email address, that have a very short message and an executable attachment. For example, today, I got an email saying (and this is not a direct quote, because I deleted it) “the body of this message cannot be expressed in 7-bit ASCII and has been encoded as a binary attachment.” Well no, it can’t. Because it’s a virus. And so is document.doc.pif, and so is calendar.xls.scr. And so, I’m afraid is NUDE_SIMS_PATCH.ZIP.EXE.

Time was that people would be clever and exploit some security hole in Outlook or Windows. Let’s face it, there are plenty to choose from. Now people have discovered an even bigger security hole: the user. Users are people and people are idiots. Therefore, users are idiots. This make the virus creator’s life much simpler. All he has to do — and you can place a good bet it will be a he — is email the victim and ask them to install the virus manually. And they do. Even people who consider themselves rather computer-savvy install special software to keep an eye on them and stop them running viruses.

But please don’t think I am intending to let Microsoft off the hook that easily. Yes, people are idiots, but Microsoft employs people. Therefore, Microsoft employs idiots. And these particular idiots have decided that file extensions are too complicated for the average Windows user and elected to hide them. I expect this is why people don’t spot that body.exe is unlikely to be a text file. Which brings us to the main problem here: If you buy a computer, learn how to use it. If I left a bucket of water in your garage marked ‘petrol’ would you tip it into your car without noticing it didn’t smell (and indeed, hadn’t evaporated before you found it)? If I left a brick in your kitchen marked ‘food’ would you eat it or throw it out of the window? (Tip: open the window first.) They why would you run a programme left in your email marked ‘document’? I’m not saying you should become a geek, or that you should learn how to overclock your processor safely. I’m just saying you should learn the rudiments; which files are which, what you can and can’t send by email, etc..

I am also aware that some people just don’t get computers. Personally, I cannot understand that. Computers, if you just want to use them casually, are no more complicated than the correct usage of, say, a washing machine, but there seems to be something about the combination of a computer and a human brain that causes the latter to turn off. People just guess how to do something and then call tech support when it doesn’t work. I can’t work out why this only seems to happen with modern technology. You may have heard about the American woman who microwaved her dog to dry it then complained to the microwave company when the dog died, or the people who call computer tech support to be told that you have to actually put the disk in the drive, not merely own the disk. I can all but guarantee, though, that you have never heard of someone phone Renault and say “I held down the accelerator and turned the steering wheel to ‘on’ but my car still crashed”. Granted this is perhaps because you have to take a test to use a car whereas computers and microwaves are unlegislated, but you get the idea.

And I also know that modern technology can be confusing to people who grew up before it was widespread, but it’s not as if one day ten years ago the world announced “Attention: This is what we have now. Live with it,” and unveiled digital cameras, microwaves, the twenty-four hour clock, DVDs, digital TV, mobile phones, CD-ROM, the Oxford comma, and the Pentium 4 all at once. It was a trickle. And you don’t have to understand them all. Just the ones you use. Besides, DVDs are easy. Easier than video cassettes, anyway.

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*For the sake of simplicity I choose to use ‘viruses’ as the plural of virus. I don’t like the sound of ‘viri’ and ‘virii’ is just so stupid I don’t know where to begin.

I’d like to say something controversial now: The moon landings were real.

I know it’s crazy. The very idea that Americans would waste millions of dollars sending someone to the moon for no reason other than to annoy the Russians is clearly insane, but bear with me, I have a well-argued case for it.

The fact is that the human brain is preprogrammed to want to believe the conspiracy theory. Unfortunately, the conspiracy theory is usually fantastically stupid, and so people need to contrive ‘evidence’ to back up their beliefs. In the case of the moon landings, this evidence usually involves pointing at the photos of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the surface and saying “Look at the shadows” or “Where are all the stars then, smart guy?”. None of these people have thought these things through properly. I’m not going to go through every single point they make and debunk it, because it’s been done millions of times before, and to be honest anyone with half a brain can do most of them themselves, but I will explain this one, because it’s so uniquely stupid:

“Here is a portion of the previous picture, blown up. Take a look atthe [sic] cross hairs that appear on the picture. These hairs appear on EVERY lunar picture. These cross hairs are placed between the shutter of the camera, and the film, supposedly. If you take a look at the cross hair on the left, this cross hair was placed behind the lunar rover, you can see the Lunar Rover is in front of the cross hairs.” — This text is from http://batesmotel.8m.com

The crosshairs appear behind the lander because the glare from the lander is saturating the camera and the thin crosshair doesn’t block enough of the glare to prevent this. This is what happens when you use a camera with crosshairs. This is an astonishingly common example of “proof” used by conspiracists, especially considering that what they are suggesting is that NASA’s fake moon set contained several freestanding crosses placed on the ground in precise locations. Not only is this a fantastically stupid thing to suggest, but these crosses don’t have shadows (because we all know shadows mean hard evidence). If NASA were going to fake crosshairs, they would have done it by adding them after the photo had been taken. Then they would appear in front of the lander, not behind it. Ironically, this fact that they tout as evidence for the hoax in fact (if anything) suggests the photos are real.

Besides, what exactly is so difficult about getting to the moon? For an organisation with as much money and resources as NASA, it shouldn’t pose a problem. Compared to the difficulty of making a video of someone dropping a hammer and a feather and both falling at the same speed in 1969, it’s a doddle. Admit it. You’ve seen a film from 1969. A big-budget one. They couldn’t do that. They couldn’t even make a teleport that didn’t get a laugh.

I know this is a very controversial subject; that’s why I raised it. I think the forum could use a good argument.

I got a book voucher for Christmas this year. I usually do. As always, it was not easy to choose a book, mostly because I am the least decisive person who has ever lived — which is why the site design changes every six months or so. But enough about my book token for the time being. Let it step aside, to the back of your mind for a moment. Don’t forget it completely, though, just let it reside in that little place where it is just far enough out of mind that it seems inordinately funny when I mention it later almost out of the blue.

The BBC’s website is a huge, sprawling affair. It has a sizeable section for every single one of its programmes, and somewhere in the region of a hundred million terabytes of downloads. (Specifically, the astonishingly large region that includes both zero and two hundred million terabytes.) One of its many pages is the Red Dwarf microsite. At the top of this site, at least at the moment, is a link to the BBC Radio Wiltshire section, because they recently interviewed Rob Grant.

In case you are unfamiliar with Rob Grant, he used to co-write Red Dwarf with Doug Naylor, back when it was good. I’m not saying it was a mistake to link to this interview, of course, but the fact remains that during the interview Rob was asked what he thought of series eight of Red Dwarf. He replied that he hadn’t watched it because series seven had been so bad. That was the clincher, for me. They had been discussing his new book, Incompetence, and it sounded rather good — it is about a future where firing employees for incompetence is considered discrimination and therefore illegal — but my decision to buy it was as much based on the exemplary judgement demonstrated by his decision to ignore Red Dwarf VIII entirely as it was any actual faith that the book would be good.

Nonetheless, I strongly recommend this book to anyone — I haven’t actually read it yet, but I don’t want to risk it being a bad book and not being able to recommend it. Besides, his last book was good, and besides, look at Red Dwarf VIII and subtract it from, say, Red Dwarf III. That’s how funny this man is, mathematically. I think we owe him some book sales.

So, President Bush wants to invade Mars. Liberate Mars. Explore Mars. Whatever exactly he wants to do up there, the fact is he wants to go to Mars, or more accurately, he wants someone else to go to Mars. Personally, I think that he should go himself; Mars being probably the best place for him, but his decision is made. I can’t say I’m all that surprised that he doesn’t want to go: the proposed trip involves two six month flights and a 50% chance of death, and the in-flight movie is I Still Know What You Did Last Summer. The 50% chance of death is, I think, an underestimate. Anybody willing to climb inside a rocket aimed at Mars by a country who can’t reliably aim rockets at targets on this planet has at least an 80% chance of death. Precisely why anyone would want to go to Mars in the first place is still something of a mystery. Its primary mineral resource is common or garden rust, and the most valuable thing there is the remains of a hundred or so space probes that didn’t work. In fact, there is so much rust on the Martian surface that it appears red in photographs in which the RGB channels were incorrectly combined by NASA’s staff several years ago. It could be any colour for all we know. Possibly this is what the Beagle II was supposed to determine. Now we may never know until the astronauts get there. Possibly Mars has been chosen as it will afford a fantastic view of Bush’s promised moon base.

The moon base is a much better idea than a trip to Mars. This has a clear purpose. The moon base is where the whole of America will relocate to after they have refused so sign environmental treaties and messed up the planet (and after a lengthy legal battle with Dennis Hope which I really hope he loses). The proposed base is a large glass dome situated in an otherwise harsh climate to offer some protection. If the similar structures on Earth are anything to go by, this dome will contain a swimming pool complex and a restaurant. Since it is American, it will also contain a small herd of Starbucks.

Today I was bored enough to sit through about 45 minutes of soap operas (so called because they feature neither soap nor opera — one of many reasons to watch Frasier instead). These were random episodes, you understand. I didn’t choose ones I thought would demonstrate any particular point. However, it strikes me that a lot of people died.

In Emmerdale, it seems that at least one person died in the gale thats been in all the TV listings magazines for the last month or so, and on EastEnders (which I’m almost certain used to be set somewhere in London) one person was killed on some rocks*, and another got hypothermia and almost died. I don’t know if she’ll recover, but I expect you can find out by reading it in a magazine. I reccomend you do so, as it will reduce the chances of your watching the programme. Personally I fail to see the point in watching them if you already know what is going to happen, especially considering the viewers get so angry when the big event they read about doesn’t happen, which I would have said ought to come as a welcome relief. Also in EastEnders it emerged that one character’s ex-boyfriend was also her half-brother. By an astonishing coincidence, in the same episode she announced she still had feelings for him. The whole thing was almost cringe-inducingly contrived.

And I didn’t see Dirty Den once, after all the trouble they went to reanimating him.

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* I haven’t been following the plot, but I think it was a murder, on the grounds that his young wife was wearing various red outfits and acting funny all episode. When women on TV wear red and act funny, that means they’re evil.

I’m looking to get a domain name, and your service appears at first glance to be a very cheap way to do this. The trouble is your free hosting scheme doesn’t appear to be free.

I’m not certain of this — your website makes a deliberate selling point that there are no hidden charges attached to your domain name registration — but it seems to me that dialling your 0845 number every time I want to update my website is going to cost me money. I already have a connection to the internet, and I update my website every few days, so even if it only takes a minute or two, this is a considerable sum of money over a couple of years, especially compared to the registration cost.

What I want to know is: is there any way to get a domain name and hosting service from you without paying for a Freeola connection? If there is, I may consider purchasing one.

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I’m looking to get a domain name, and your service appears at first glance to be a very cheap way to do this. The trouble is your free hosting scheme doesn’t appear to be free.

I’m not certain of this — your website makes a deliberate selling point that there are no hidden charges attached to your domain name registration — but it seems to me that dialling your 0845 number every time I want to update my website is going to cost me money. I already have a connection to the internet, and I update my website every few days, so even if it only takes a minute or two, this is a considerable sum of money over a couple of years, especially compared to the registration cost.

What I want to know is: is there any way to get a domain name and hosting service from you without paying for a Freeola connection? If there is, I may consider purchasing one.

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YOUR ENQUIRY:

I’m looking to get a domain name, and your service appears at first glance to be a very cheap way to do this. The trouble is your free hosting scheme doesn’t appear to be free.

I’m not certain of this — your website makes a deliberate selling point that there are no hidden charges attached to your domain name registration — but it seems to me that dialling your 0845 number every time I want to update my website is going to cost me money. I already have a connection to the internet, and I update my website every few days, so even if it only takes a minute or two, this is a considerable sum of money over a couple of years, especially compared to the registration cost.

What I want to know is: is there any way to get a domain name and hosting service from you without paying for a Freeola connection? If there is, I may consider purchasing one.

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Your Enquiry (received on 2/1/04):

I’m looking to get a domain name…

I am of the ilk that would make it illegal to kill random strangers in the street. This seems pretty logical to me. I dont much care how you do it, if you want to shoot them, smash large metal objects into them, poison them, it should be illegal. Now, shooting people in the street is illegal. In America, though, it isn’t discouraged very well. Their constitution protects their right to carry a gun. Their National Rifle Association fights to keep this right protected.

Why? “Guns Don’t Kill People; People Kill People”, yes, I know, but I think people would have a rather harder job of it without the guns. Americans buy guns, keep them in unlocked boxes on a low shelf, then act all suprised when their two-year-old son shoots them. What did you think was going to happen? The argument for keeping a gun in the house it that it protects you from intruders, but guess what? The intruders have guns too. In fact, they are already holding a gun, whereas you have to go and get yours from Daddy’s Secret Cupboard. The simple fact is that more of the shots fired by these guns are accidents that hit family members than well-aimed shots that hit intruders.

Smashing large metal objects into people is also illegal, but again is not exactly discouraged. If you assume the metal object in question is a car, then it is perfectly legal to drive it around city centres at 30 miles per hour. This is, of course, understandable; they are tremendously useful and it would be insanity to ban them. It might help, though, to make them a bit safer. It is illegal, for example, to attach bull bars to the front of a car. The logic behind this is that if you hit someone, they make it far more likely that they will die, and the only benefit they bring is to make your car look cool. All very laudable, but a better idea would be to try to prevent the crashes in the first place. I’m talking about huge picnic tables bolted onto the backs of cars. Brakes and steering on the front wheels don’t work if the car has a spoiler pushing all the weight onto the back wheels. And the justification for these things? It looks cool. Blacked out windows that stop you seeing the outside world. Looks cool. Ban them. some people will think their cars look worse, other people won’t die.

Poisoning people in the street is not illegal. It is perfectly acceptable to blow clouds of carcinogenic toxins into peoples faces at random. I cannot understand why this should be. Smoking in public should be banned. There is not one single reason for it to be legal. This is not a grey area. If you want to surround yourself in toxic gas, stay away from me. If I want to go into the town centre, then kindly stay at home. I shouldn’t have to avoid you. There shouldnt be “non-smoking” areas. It should be assumed that it isnt allowed unless a sign says otherwise. To me, it’s just common sense. Somkers, of course, don’t see it this way. They say things like “it’s my right to smoke” or “second hand smoke isn’t harmful”. Yes it is harmful. Smokers die younger than non-smokers. Therefore, smoke is harmful. I very much doubt that the filter adds the toxins, so logically second hand smoke must be dangerous. And it is not your right to smoke around me, for that very reason. If it wasn’t already legal, it would never even occur to anyone to allow it. If you disagree, please feel free to debate the issue in the forum, but not in person, because I don’t want to be near you.