BatFlattery

My girlfriend thinks that girls are better at games than boys. I’d like to disagree with this but she currently holds the top score on Frenzic on my iPhone, and I can’t seem to dislodge her. I also struggle to maintain my early lead on the Wii: I seem to do well right off the bat, but can’t seem to improve much, whereas she seems to improve dramatically in a relatively short period of time.

So, based on this very objective and scientific study with a very valid sample size, I’m forced to conclude that girls are better at games than boys.

So the Government PR machine is working overtime to lay the groundwork for action on the terrible state that alcohol has left Scotland in. The problem is, it seems, cheap alcohol, abused by a small minority of drinkers. The solution is to make all users pay more. Will it work?

Comparison with the drug industry suggests not. Prohibition has increased the cost of drugs far beyond that of alcohol, yet they remain popular, suggesting that demand is unlikely to be affected. Also, many of the most problematic users of drugs resort to crime to fund their habit. So we can look forward to, in addition to the usual public disorder and assault offences that attend on alcohol abuse, an increase in muggings, burglary and robbery. Nice thinking there.

You may know that Spotify comes in a free, ad-supported guise, as well as a premium, ad-free one that costs £10 a month. I’ve been listening to the free version, and I’ve discovered a fairly annoying (and pretty slimey) tactic on the part of the software.

One of the ads that keeps coming on is the awful DEC appeal for the “crisis” in Gaza. Since I don’t like hearing people bleat on about giving money that will likely go to the terrorists rather than the innocent collateral damage of the terrorists, I hit the Mute button on the Mac. After awhile, thinking the ad must be over, I hit unmute. Nope, still playing. After a couple of minutes of this, it dawns: Spotify is monitoring the state of the mute button and pausing the ad!

And lest you think this is a feature for the music, that just happens to have the effect of forcing you to listen to the ads: hitting mute during music play does NOT pause the playback.

Absolute bastards.

I’ve been using Spotify for a few weeks now, and I’m starting to get that “car-crash in slow motion” feeling: the record labels still don’t seem to get it, and the service is degrading before my eyes. And it’s still in beta!

First there was a massive withdrawal of tracks days after I signed on. But OK, there was still a decent amount of music. On the home page, there were a number of cool tracks in the top ten, including Infinity 2008, Poker Face by Lady Gaga, and Viva la Vida by Coldplay. Today I went back to the home page for the first time in awhile, and the top 5 tracks are all in red, including the tracks just mentioned. An attempt to play them gives a “This track is currently not available in United Kingdom” message. WTF??

Even more bizarre: many of these artists have albums in the top ten, which are listed just to the right. Clicking on the album allows you to play the track! Is this a Spotify screw-up, or intentional? Who knows?

Just unbelievable.

BTW if you want to get in on Spotify before it completely collapses, I have ten invites to give away.

UPDATE:

According to a commenter on the Spotify blog, the problem is caused by restriction of the particular versions of the songs that went into the top list, but that other versions are still available in the UK, and thus the ability to play from the album is not an oversight. So the problem should disappear as the top list is updated. Still seems a bit of a silly error, and a chilling reminder of the way the record labels want to keep the world divided up.

As a longtime user of Amazon’s DVD rental by post service, I was a little annoyed when they sold it to LoveFilm. But after some initial teething problems relating to the transfer of my account, I have to admit that LoveFilm is pretty good. The website has some great features, like categorisation of your list into high, medium and low priority movies, and multiple lists if you and your partner each want their own list. And if you search for movies by eg genre they are sorted by release date.

This is in strong contrast to the BlockBuster rental by post service which I did a free trial on. It was awful. Searches produce lists sorted alphabetically, so you have to wade through dreck released fifty years ago to get to the movie you want. You cannot return the movies to a BlockBuster store. The whole thing just reeks of poor execution. Which makes sense, I suppose: LoveFilm do this as a core business, while BlockBuster were forced into rental by post to deal with the decline of their core business model. Their heart isn’t in it.

I have to admit that I have pretty much lost total interest in Facebook, and although I still need to find my stride in terms of posting on Twitter, I do read Twitter every day. At least. (Mostly, I admit, to find out what Stephen Fry and Jonathan Ross are up to.) FB just seems too demanding, too annoying, too commercial, too slow. Twitter is quick and easy and cuts to the essentials. God knows how they will make money with it but I am enjoying it while it lasts.

You may not have heard of Mohammed Al-Dura, but to millions of Arabs he is a martyr akin to Hector Peterson, an innocent victim of Israeli action. But there has always been strong doubt about whether the IDF fired the fatal shot, or even if the boy died at the scene at all.

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Why are all the UK-based domain companies such crap? All my dot-com domains are registered on EasyDNS, who make it really easy to manage and pay for domains, but I can’t really use them for .co.uk domains. I first tried 1&1, who were a complete nightmare. Then I did a few on Fasthosts/UKReg, but they’re not much better. First there was the infamous password hack, which meant a forced change to all our passwords. And today I got this lovely email in response to a support request:

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Just finished watching The Kingdom. Immediate thoughts:

1. I’m very glad I didn’t see it before my trip to Saudi Arabia in January. The compound that gets blown up looks very similar to the compound I visited, even though the scene was shot in Arizona.
2. Then again, there really is a compound called Arizona in Riyadh!
3. The security that you see at the entrance to the compound is absolutely for real. When you drive into a compound, they really do check under the car with a mirror. Every time. You really do have to drive the meander between huge concrete blocks, and there really are national guardsmen in tanks parked outside. All the time.
4. In many of the city shots it was very obviously not Riyadh. I haven’t been to Abu Dhabi but in photographs I’ve seen, it contains far more huge glass buildings than there are in Riyadh, which really has only two tall buildings, the Kingdom Centre and the Faisaliyah, and neither is a glass box.
5. Although none of the film was actually shot in Riyadh, in some shots you can see, on the horizon, the distinctive shape of the Kingdom Centre (which contains the Four Seasons hotel that I stayed at). I presume it was digitally added in post-production.

I was quite impressed by the movie: it felt authentic for the most part, and the writing avoided stereotypes and cliches. The plot was surprising and reached a satisfying climax, and all of the performances were solid; only Ashraf Barhoum really stood out. Recommended.

The state broadcaster in the UK demands that its unfortunate subjects pay a tribute in excess of the cost of 67 chickens every year to fund its dreary propaganda. Seen in the past as a mere tax on TVs, the TV Licensing thugs have now expanded their remit to cover video or DVD recorders, computers and mobile phones. If you live in what’s ludicrously termed “an unlicensed property” (ie an address that is not in their database) you are subject to surveillance and attempted home invasion by Gestapo-like “Enforcement Officers”. But look on the bright side! No need to travel to third-world banana republics to experience state repression: you can now enjoy it without leaving home!