Provisional Licences

Anyone paying attention to the Irish media will be aware that provisional drivers are the sole cause of all the worlds problems. While I support current demands for L drivers to have to announce there presence with a bell and for them to be forced to wear a sack cloth I do not think they go far enough. Accepting the premise that people who are unproven ability or even who have proven defective should undergo some sort of constraint or punishment many more areas for societal improvement open up.

It is not only proper but also beneficial if you hang up on anyone who cannot correctly use a phone. People who answer with a “oh your there” or some such are idiots there is nothing you can learn from such a person. Continuing to talk to them is like taking a dog to the opera.

Why must we endure endless lines behind people who cannot use an ATM machine? A tester would not even be needed in this situation. ATM’s could time transactions and people who spend too much time having there card restricted so that it cannot be used at certain times when these witless oafs can delay useful citizens.

Similar systems on toll bridges and shopping lines could result in more efficient services for useful people. The L plated would suffer greater delays but it is not like this time would be fruitfully spent by the feckless rogues.

Now L plates would seem an unwieldy mark to carry. Instead some sort of patch worn on the clothes could indicate what shared resources a person is entitled to use. Maybe separate segregated facilities could be made available.

Baby excrete everywhere

Have you noticed those “pisses like a real baby” ads have started up for Christmas? Is it ironic that children in the third world make toy children for children over here to play with? Would it not be more efficient to just send the third world children over?

“New super realistic poor child, it cries, pisses and does all the other stuff the fake one does” at the end of the advertisement the terms and conditions voice comes on saying “If real life poor child arrives dead simply post its ear to this address and you will be sent a new one”.

How about a new toy? We get the real life baby a fake sweat shop to work in. There they can make fake baby piss themselves. It would be like those fake kitchen toys we get for kids over here. Invest now in the real life child labour camp this years must have Christmas toy.

Video Game Causes Shooting

Part of the yearly hype cycle is the computer games cause murder story[1]. Similar to the satanic messages in music that started off backwards and then were subliminal. This reminds me of the Bill Hicks piece about how Satan must go to radio shack each week to keep up on technology.

Say computer games did cause mass shootings why do we only hear one side of the equation? Surely if shootemup games do lead to copy cat violence then good games should lead to copy cat kindness.

You never hear the animal cruelty charities saying about how nintendogs has reduced maltreatment of puppies. Links between random acts of pet kindness and computer games probably do not make good reading. When a soldier dies in Iraq you never hear of searches of his bedroom revealing a copy of “medal of honor” may have lead to his patriotism and bravery.

[1]http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/09/15/canadian_shooting/

Do you want virus with that?

Two far eastern media players have been shipping with malicious code installed in the last two days[1,2]. Calls for the memory media player makers to test all their products with Anti Virus software miss the point slightly.

Anti Virus software will never be 100% effective. A small amount of prevention is worth more then a large amount of detection/removal. Take a real world example. Would you rather take a blood donation from a nun or from a drug addict prisoner whose donation is tested. In the prison case there is always diseases out there that no test exists for yet. By taking tested blood from a dubious source you are risking not hepatitis A,B or C (they can be tested for) but the rest of the undiscovered alphabet out there.

Adding virus detection to production of hardware is a good idea only if it does not lead to sloppy hygiene in the manufacturing process. An attitude of “well it is being tested anyway so we can do whatever we want”[3] is easy to create.

[1]http://www.f-secure.com/weblog/archives/archive-102006.html#00000999

[2]http://www.pcauthority.com.au/news.aspx?CIaNID=40873

[3]http://www.damninteresting.com/?p=494

The most disappointing album of the year

I got “At War with the Mystics” that day it came out. After listening to it solidly for a week I found it intensely irritating and decided to give it up and come back to it after a few months. Same thing happened again then.

It is not disappointing because thy tried experimental stuff and it did not work, tightrope walkers need to occasionally fall off otherwise it is not impressive. I can forgive and even expect a few dodgy songs on a flaming lips album, It tells me I am not just listening to elevator music if I do have negative reactions occasionally.

I finally figured out the reason this album makes me nauseous [1] There is no difference between the loud bits and the quiet bits they are all incredibly loud. So the call and response of the “yeah yeah yeah song” becomes a constant sonic assault. When the foot is taken off the gas slightly like on “Goin On” you can hear how good the songs are. The wall of sound on The W.A.N.D sounds great because the contrast between loud and quiet has not been destroyed as it never existed.

When the whirrs and squeks are as loud as the tune they take away from it. Like Stalinistic architecture where no one item can be the main theme in case that style is labelled bourgsouise[2] and gets you sent off to the gulag. Everything becomes over decorated, everything becomes important so nothing is.

This album is disappointing because the songs are so good. Underneath the Pollock like random blasts of sound is a subtle gem drowned out.

[1]http://www.austin360.com/music/content/music/stories/xl/2006/09/28cover.html.

[2]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Msu-main-seabhcan.JPG