One day, and it will be a good day, it will be possible for me to install a computer game and, you know, have it work first time. This day is not yet here. Both Doom3 and Half-Life 2 took me at least 2 days to get working, and now Trackmania’s being a pain, too. I played the demo last week and it ran pretty much fine (one graphical glitch that went away), but the full game had major graphical corruption, and the demo has now developed a similar problem. It’s not like I’m a l33t hacker who spends all his time messing about with drivers, either. I’m going to go buy an xbox.

So, you want to make a film about robots. That’s great, robots are cool. You want to make a film about killer robots. Also fine, this has the makings of a great action flick. You want to make it kinda nonsensical. Not a problem, plenty of films are nonsensical but entirely enjoyable. You want the underlying themes to be anti-technology, anti-logic and anti-intellect, as well as having various thinly-veiled religious notions. Not so keen myself, but hey, plenty of people will still enjoy it. But given all of these things, why oh why would you decide to base it upon the complete antithesis of these ideas, and incorporate Asimov’s three laws of robotics? Why? Asimov wrote hundreds of stories in which he pushed, pulled and manipulated those rules as far as they could go, and in none of them did he ditch them when he felt like it. I find those stories completely fascinating and consider them some of the best sci-fi I’ve read. Why use them in a film, then just fudge about with them for the plot? Why? It would have been perfectly fine if you hadn’t done that. Really it would.

What’s black and white and gushes? The catholic church.

Sorry. But really, he’s 78. How much longer is he going to last? And don’t fall off your chair, people, but apparently he’s rather conservative. The Pope. A conservative. Who’d. Have. Thought. Did I mention that he used to be a member of the Hitler youth? Boingboing also points out that he was “prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, formerly known as the Holy Office of the Inquisition”. Galileo may be back in the dog house.

Little irony here, when the crowds didn’t know what colour the conclave smoke was. Hmmm - the church’s message is meant to be black and white, but in the real world it’s just shades of grey. Imagine that.

Crappy morning. Totally crappy morning. The Pope arguably had a better morning. Well, probably not, but what’s a little hyperbole between friends. I’m coming to the conclusion that moving to Albania to become a woodchopper is in my best interests. It would also help improve my axe skills, which I could then apply to certain computers which can’t go 24 hours without developing new problems and as a result get me yelled at.

Don’t mind me, I’m just grumpy. While waiting for something to update I checked out Aaron Swartz‘ latest blog entry, which tipped me off to Excellent Word of the Day: Limerence. Great word, I must attempt to use it in general conversation at some point.

Parcelforce are annoying me. The last three times I’ve ordered anything from Amazon, it’s been too heavy for standard post so has shipped Parcelforce.

Parcel no. 1: Didn’t turn up for three days. Parcelforce website said that it had been delivered and signed for. And said signature was a squiggle. Bit weird. It finally turned up when a neighbour brought it round, it having been left in her porch. Not signed for in the slightest, then.

Parcel no. 2: This was a present for somebody in London, so I had it posted straight there. He lives in a flat, and despite being ill at home all week, managed to ‘miss’ the three attempted deliveries the Parcelforce website claimed to have attempted. There’s no way he missed all three! He looked and looked for a missed parcel note, but nothing was there. Finally he arranged to have it shipped to his local post office, which never happened as it disappeared en route (the parcel, not the PO). Eventually, three weeks after ordering, they found it and managed to deliver it.

Parcel no. 3: Ordered and shipped on Monday. Arrived at Parcelforce depot on Tuesday, and was sent out for delivery on Wednesday. Then it arrived back at the depot for no apparent reason. Nothing happened on Thursday, but happily today it was again sent out for delivery. Nothing’s arrived, though. It’s annoying, as there are four copies of Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom meant to be arriving.

Entertainingly, the Parcelforce website currently says this:

The Parcelforce Worldwide website will be unavailable this weekend (Friday, March 18 to Sunday, March 20) while service improvements are carried out.

Well, yeah. I’m sure that Parcelforce aren’t entirely useless, but this is the third time in a row, to different addresses! It’s just aggravating. I emailed Amazon just to say that the delivery problems were making me less likely to order from them, although I could appreciate it’s not really their fault. I got a decent reply from them, actually:

Thank you for contacting Amazon.co.uk with your comments about Parcelforce.

I am sorry to hear that you are not satisfied with the service that you have received from us.

In order to improve our service, we have implemented a revised dispatch method that allows for some of our packages to be traceable and to have guaranteed delivery. Currently, packages weighing a certain amount or over a certain value are automatically upgraded to Parcelforce. Some of our customers prefer to have this service as their packages are traceable and have no risk of being left outside.

We are committed to delivering your order from the moment it is placed. This is the reason why we have provisions in place should problems occur at any stage. We take full responsibility should any item become lost or damaged while being delivered and we are more than happy to replace these items at a cost to ourselves.

We find the service offered by Parcelforce to be excellent and this is primarily the reason why we are using their services. The vast majority of our orders are usually delivered well within the expected delivery time, however, occasionally a package may be damaged or delayed, perhaps even lost during the delivery process. This is not a common occurrence but when it does happen, we take full responsibility and will endeavour to find a solution.

In addition to our large selection of goods, one of the benefits we’d like to offer our customers is convenience, and I realise that we have not met that standard in this case. I hope that you will give us another opportunity to prove the quality of our service to you in the future.

At the moment, we are not able to promise you that your future orders will not be dispatched by this method. However, the issues that you have mentioned will be forwarded to the appropriate department for
consideration. We truly value this kind of feedback, as it helps us continue to improve our website and provide a better service to our customers.

That’s the kind of customer service that I like I’m glad my comments have been passed on; I’d imagine that Amazon have rather a lot of pull with Parcelforce, so if enough people complain something should get done. I hope my books turn up on Monday.

Since when did kids get incredibly stupid? I’m talking about two advertising adjudications released by the Advertising Standards Authority yesterday.

Firstly, they state that a marmite advert should have an ‘ex-kids’ advertising restriction, because they received complaints that children between two and three had been ‘terrified by the advertisement’. You know the one: a large blob of marmite moves down a street, attracting and repulsing people in equal number. Because you either love it or hate it. The ‘ex-kids’ restriction means that it can’t be shown during any children’s programming, and broadcasters can choose whether to show them during shows like Pop Idol which attract a large number of younger viewers. I think this is pretty crazy. So what if kids are scared? Reasonably and logically, it’s a un-scary thing. If they’re scared it’s their own fault, surely? I don’t think this is a nanny state issue, I think it’s a taking-responsibility-for-your-kid’s-upbringing-issue. Every kid gets frightened, but getting older doesn’t magically stop it happening, does it? Surely experience and knowledge that scary things in fact aren’t is what helps us mature?

What do you think?

The other adjudication makes me laugh. Have you seen the Wanadoo advert with the teenagers running around the junkyard? You’ll likely remember it from the final scene, which shows a couple french-kissing in the back of a car. It’s been banned. Because…wait for it…of the ‘explicit kiss’, which was ‘much too graphic for the timing restriction…’, and that ‘it was irresponsible to show a car scrap-yard as an adventurous place to hang out with friends’. Well.

An ‘explicit kiss’? On the lips? What? What? How…what? How can a kiss be explicit? People are going to be corrupted how, exactly? I remember it being pretty gross, but what’s it going to cause? Will children vomit? Will they have nightmares? Will they go out and try it for themselves? Just how dumb are these supposed children? Does anybody know any? Were you one? As for advertising scrap-yards as adventurous places to be…well, clearly they’re not.

Saying that ‘everybody else does it’ isn’t a valid argument, but how about suggesting that kids get treated like they have a modicum of sense? Which, I think, they do. I’m not so bothered about the fact that these bans have been handed out. The ASA are doing exactly what they were set up to do. It’s the people who complained that interest me. Are they starved of attention? Stupid? Bored? How about we take their TVs away, as it’s for their own good that they don’t get offended any more.

My, that was a good rant, wasn’t it. Feels good now it’s out of my system. Phew.

UPDATE: Gotta love the BBC’s reaction to this.

Connoisseurs of Businesswank may appreciate this.

We’re running Symantec Client Security on the network here. It’s pretty good. The server checks for new virus information every couple of hours and pushes out any new information to the rest of the computers. All virus warnings are dealt with in the background, which is very convenient. I can also configure firewall rules on the server and push them out to the network, which comes in handy. In short, I quite like it. I bought it via mail-order from a standard internet store a year ago, and yesterday the maintainence agreement expired. Fair enough, I thought, I’ll just pay the fee and continue.

Yet, no.

For Symantec, in its terribly advanced businesswank wisdom, has decreed that maintainence agreements for ‘enterprise products’ such as Client Security may not be purchased directly from them, but must be done through a reseller. The problem is that all reseller websites couldn’t care less about continuing existing agreements - they want to sell you new products. Even more bizarrely, it’s possible to download a 30-day trial of Client Security from the Symantec website, but you can’t actually buy it when the 30 days are up!

Then, though, I got a phone call from a reseller in Kent somewhere (I think). They said that my agreement was about to expire, and would I mind if they emailed me a quote through. No problem at all, I said. It came to £150 for another year, which seemed perfectly reasonable to me. So I bought it.

This morning, this turned up:

When I saw this letter, obviously from Symantec themselves, I thought to myself ‘This is going to be cheaper, isn’t it’. I thought I may have made a large mistake. My fears were, however, groundless. For this is businesswank of the highest order.

The above letter on the left says, in the second paragraph:

To ensure uninterrupted protection from your investment, please contact your preferred reseller to renew your Symantec Maintainance Agreement immediately…

Yep, this entire letter has been posted to me to say ‘talk to someone else’. There’s an order form on the back to fax to this other reseller, and to be fair it does say ‘if you do not have a reseller [fax it to us]‘. Presumably they’ll then put a reseller in touch with me. This from a computer firm who are aware of the concept of email. That’s not all, though. I also received the leaflet on the right - a handy guide to the advantages of upgrading to Symantec Client Security.

Trees died for this.