* Posts by adrianww

179 publicly visible posts • joined 17 Jun 2009

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WordPress saga escalates as WP Engine plugin forcibly forked and legal letters fly

adrianww

Re: Four Fox Ache

…aaand just spotted “attack service” in that comment. Which should have read “attack surface” of course. D’oh!

(Of course, detractors might say that “a very large attack service” is a pretty good way to describe any Wordpress installation. And they’d be right too in lots of cases…)

adrianww

Re: Four Fox Ache

There isn’t a barrier as such but it’s one of those “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” scenarios.

Right now, I have more faith in WP Engine and its management than I do in Matt Mullenweg and Automattic. This fork looks purely like Mullenweg trying to make life slightly more awkward for anyone using WP Engine or its products. And seemingly all because he’s having a meltdown because WP Engine are making a bigger success of running a Wordpress hosting business than his own for-profit baby. So he appears to be using the open-source/Foundation side of Wordpress to further his personal or business vendetta against WP Engine.

If he’s going to do this kind of thing, what kind of small-minded dickery is he going to indulge in next? All he’s ultimately going to achieve is a splintering of the Wordpress environment to the detriment of all.

Of course, as others have said, anything that effectively buggers up Wordpress (even if only in slightly irritating or fairly minor ways so far) and makes it less attractive as a platform is possibly no bad thing.

adrianww

Re: Four Fox Ache

If it was the beginning of the end 10 years ago, it’s been progressing very slowly. Most recent figures I can find show around 62 per cent of web sites that use some form of content management system use Wordpress. That equates to 40-odd per cent of all websites worldwide.

As for security/maintenance issues, I can’t say that Wordpress is any more of a nightmare than any other solution in my experience. But it does have a very large attack service with all the themes and plugins and is obviously a big and tempting target owing to its prevalence. You can’t just use it and add plugins and other cruft willy-nilly with zero risk. You need to keep your wits about you, same as with anything else.

I think that has been one of the sources of Wordpress’ bad rep when it comes to security really. It is perceived (by some management and bean-counting types) as being an easy way to do content management and get stuff online without having to get the serious techies involved. Next thing you know, Dave from marketing has built the new customer info portal and all hell breaks loose because no one has ensured that his lashed-up Wordpress monstrosity has had a proper audit and a decent set of security and maintenance tools deployed with it.

adrianww

Re: Four Fox Ache

Exactly. We’re way too small and insignificant ever to appear on his radar, but which hosting company is he going to take exception to next and will it be one of the ones that we use?

Even if we weren’t already planning on getting out of the web/content game, this ludicrous stramash would have made us start thinking about it. Or, at the very least, migrating away from Wordpress.

adrianww
Facepalm

Four Fox Ache

Mullenweg seems to be in need of a thorough and dedicated slap.

Although we do a fair bit of Wordpress stuff, we don’t host with WP Engine and I was hoping this whole ridiculous carry on would more or less pass us by. Or, at least, pass us by long enough for us to be out of the game anyway (working on that).

However, we do use ACF. We’ve been very happy with ACF (in those places where we’ve needed it and used it) and with the support for it - in our experience, it’s rare for there to be bugs or issues that aren’t fixed promptly. But now Mr Deranged Hissy-Fit Bloody Idiot Mullenweg has decided to remove ACF from the standard repository and replace it with his own forked version because of a supposed security issue. Yeah…riiight…nothing to do with you chucking your toys out of the pram and being a dick Matt, no, of course not.

OK, it’s not a massive issue. Just need to make sure the WP Engine versions of ACF remain on our sites and we pick up updates from WP Engine (or wherever). But it’s an unnecessary and annoying bit of hassle.

I’ll admit to having a bit of a love-hate relationship with Wordpress over the years - same as anyone who has spent any time using it or working with it I suspect. This ridiculous conduct by Mullenweg could well be the beginning of the end for Wordpress dominance in the blog/web content management space. No doubt many will be doing a little happy dance if that proves to be the case and I might well end up joining them for a bit of a boogie myself at this rate.

BBC weather glitch shows 13k mph winds in London, 404℃ in Nottingham

adrianww
WTF?

Only 13k?

That’s just a light breeze!

According to the BBC weather app and website, wind speeds were hitting 19035 mph in my neck of the woods this morning. (SW Scotland)

Ya big bunch of soft sassenach jessies…

WordPress.org denies service to WP Engine, potentially putting sites at risk

adrianww
WTF?

Re: Matt Mullenweg recently called WP Engine a "cancer"

Please let this be irony/tongue in cheek. Please.

In any case, I don’t think I will stop using it.

Sometimes the word “black” is just a reference to a colour, not a value judgement about something that is entirely unrelated.

If an actual cooking pot or kettle get in touch, I might reconsider my position.

adrianww
Thumb Up

Re: Matt Mullenweg recently called WP Engine a "cancer"

While I've used Wordpress and worked with it a fair bit over the years and don't find it quite as dreadful as you seem to do, I do agree that Wordpress' head honcho (or one of them) referring to WPEngine as a cancer is a bit of a pot-kettle-black situation.

Wordpress definitely has its issues and, if you ask me, has contributed significantly to website and Internet/network bloat. As have other CMS and WYSIWYG web builders, etc. However, Wordpress sites don't have to be unmitigated, insecure disasters. The fact that so many often are is more due to something we have all seen across multiple technical industries for years. Complex tools are made sufficiently easy that less experienced, or even inexperienced, people can use them and build stuff without understanding enough about what is actually going on under the hood. The end result is people developing things that are, at best, sub-optimal and, at worst, downright dangerous in some way or other.

Not that I'm claiming to be perfect of course - we've all made our cock-ups in our time and I'm sure there are loads of things I could do better - but I've been involved in building and managing a fair old assortment of Wordpress sites over the years with zero security incidents and hardly any significant downtime (other than hosting/server failures that were outside my control). So far! And, as I mentioned in another comment here, this whole carry on has left me thinking it's time to retire from the game anyway, so I'm hoping that that record will remain unblemished!

adrianww
Coffee/keyboard

Re: This just seems wrong

Oh, it's all about the trademarks, that's all. Really. Really, really! No, don't look behind the curtain!

Let's face it, in most cases, that's pretty much the shortcode for "I don't have a proper technical case or decent legal argument for what I want to do, so I'm going to whine a little and wave my hands around to pretend there's a good reason for my crap!"

Good grief...

adrianww

True, but...

You are Matt Mullenweg and I claim my five pounds! :-)

Seriously though, you're right. However, there are lots (and lots and lots and lots) of people making a profit on the back of Wordpress. The latest figures I can find suggest that over 60% of websites that use a CMS use Wordpress. That works out to over 40% of all websites worldwide. Even allowing for a significant percentage being non-profit, that's still a lot of people making money from their Wordpress websites. Some of those will have built it themselves, but some will have employed an agency or web developer to do it for them, so there's another layer of people profiting from Wordpress. Some may self-host on their own server, however a much larger number will also be paying a hosting company, which may itself be providing a managed Wordpress service. So there are even more people and companies making a profit from Wordpress. Very few of those people will be contributing back to the Wordpress ecosystem in terms of source code, bug fixes, etc. although they may be contributing financially by using paid/premium plugins, themes, etc. In any case, the whole money-go-round has arisen due to the way that Wordpress has been licenced and supported (in terms of the plugin repository, updates, etc.) If Matt/Automattic want to change that, then they are within their rights to do so. However, if they're going to change it, they need to do so fairly.

By all means, they can go after WPEngine if they want, but if they don't then also go after everyone else - GoDaddy, Hostinger, Dreamhost, Siteground, whoever (and, ultimately, the agencies and developers too, even me) - they're not playing a straight bat. If that's the way they do want to go, they need to think about changing the licence and terms of their service across the board and take whatever flak that entails - including the probable loss of a lot of developers and users. If they cherry pick, they're going to get flak for it and lose some of those people anyway.

adrianww
WTF?

Re: I don't get it

Hmmm...I'm not so sure it's as simple as that.

At the end of the day, WPEngine is a hosting company that offers a managed Wordpress hosting service. Just like dozens, if not hundreds, of others. For reasons that aren't really clear to me, Matt Mullenweg appears to have got a bee in his bonnet about WPEngine. Why them and no-one else? How many of the other companies offering managed Wordpress hosting contribute significant time and resources back to the Wordpress core, etc? I'm prepared to bet that many of them put even less back into the project than WPEngine does.

Is it just because WPEngine have been successful and make lots of money? Well, sorry, but if that's the problem, the answer is to provide a better or more competitive service yourself and get your own share of the pie. Kicking off and saying they can't use your platform or have to pay huge fees to use it or that you're just going to stop providing certain facilities (that are still provided to all the other companies doing the exact same thing as WPEngine) just smacks of sour grapes and extortion. Especially when the platform in question is open source and widely used (regardless of what any of us might think of it from a technical point of view). As others have said, this is one of the potential problems with open source as an idea - give stuff away essentially for free and you're going to have to find other ways to earn your crust and fund the work. If you're going to start changing the rules about who has to pay what, then you either need to see about changing the licence itself or you need to apply your new rules fairly across the board. That certainly doesn't look like what is happening here.

I don't really have a dog in this fight. I do a bit of Wordpress stuff, but don't use WPEngine - their offerings have some nice features, but are over-priced compared with what you can get elsewhere. The whole thing has, however, got me wondering which hosting company might be in the crosshairs next and whether it might then impact me in some way. If that's the case, I'm not going to go host-shopping to find someone who hasn't yet incurred Matt's ire, but I will look at dropping Wordpress altogether. In fact, I've been thinking about getting out of the game anyway - it's too much of a race to the bottom in terms of price nowadays. By the look of things, this might be the perfect time to call it a day.

Black horse down: Lloyds online banking services go dark

adrianww
Thumb Up

Re: Not just Lloyds

I was just going to say something similar. If you look at downdetector.co.uk you can see a number of organisations (including a few banks) showing a spike in problems this morning that closely matches the spike in Microsoft Azure problems.

Kia Niro electric vehicle defies physics with record-breaking 114 million miles on the clock

adrianww
Headmaster

Re: Nothing spectacular.

Sadly, the Kia app is still wrong even in this scenario, but in the other direction...

The Earth doesn't travel 93 million miles a year. It is 93 million miles from the Sun. Its orbit is around 580 million miles (2.pi.r plus a bit 'cos it's slightly elliptical), so in 15 months it'll clock up something over 720 million miles.

Honda cooks up an electric motorbike menu, with sides of connectivity

adrianww

Re: Hmmmmmm

I could imagine scenarios where it is having the rider assist gubbins that actually makes things more dangerous. If you start getting riders who ride more carelessly on the basis that the assorted rider assist technologies will save them from their own stupidity, bikes with rider assist could end up with a worse safety record than those without. I don't know whether there have been any studies into this kind of thing (perhaps on bikes, but maybe in cars or other vehicles), but it's an interesting question.

My own time as a motorcyclist was fairly short-lived and is now nearly thirty years ago, but even back in the day, I wouldn't have thanked you for any additional techno-wizardry (with the possible exception of ABS which was about the only such thing that was available at the time and then only on a couple of bikes such as the Honda ST1100). And certainly not bloody stupid things like entertainment systems, etc. Riding a motorbike is a dangerous activity - you're physically vulnerable, you can be hard to see and you have to be much more aware of your surroundings, road conditions, etc. Knowing that the only thing between you and a nasty end is your own ability, alertness and good sense is a good way to make you stay safe. If you do make a stupid mistake and live to tell, you learn very quickly not to do it again.

Rackspace rocked by ‘security incident’ that has taken out hosted Exchange services

adrianww
Trollface

One might even say…

Microsoft Exchange. What could possibly go right?

Zuckerberg wants to create a make-believe world in which you can hide from all the damage Facebook has done

adrianww

Re: Sadville 2.0

No, he’s not inventive enough to come up with that kind of thing. It’s actually much simpler - “Mark’s Electronic Targeted Advertising”

Nobody cares about DAB radio – so let's force it onto smart speakers, suggests UK govt review

adrianww
FAIL

Did anyone ever get DAB to work?

Over the last 15-20 years, I have tried various DAB radio receivers at various times while living in a bunch of different places. Admittedly, no major cities but various towns and villages and rural places in different bits of England and Scotland.

At no point has DAB worked. I think the most stations I ever managed to pick up was about 7 or 8 and, of those, half of them were stations that I wasn't interested in hearing and all of them arrived with a sound quality that could be generously described as "variable" but was probably more accurately described as "a garbled, bubbly stream of unpleasant digital artifacts".

Why the hell are they still flogging this dead and decomposing horse? Is it just utter technological stupidity or did someone get paid a lot of money to promote and support this utter monstrosity? Is there a worldwide champions league for governments based on how technologically incompetent they are and, if so, does anyone anywhere stand a chance of knocking the UK government off the top spot?

China successfully launches Mars probe that packs an orbiter, lander, rover

adrianww
Alien

Re: China has successfully launched a Mars probe.

s/need/deserve/

China's silicon-self-sufficiency plan likely to miss targets due to Factories Not Present error

adrianww

Re: sales dip of negative 5 per cent.

Yes. I raised a pedantic eyebrow at that too.

Mortal wombat: 4 generations of women fight for their lives against murderous marsupial

adrianww
Happy

Re: What kind of name is "wombat"?

Obviously, it’s a bat with which you play the traditional Australian game of wom.

Not sure about the rules or size of the playing field etc. but I’m sure you can find out somewhere.

Mind you, in situations such as the one described in the article, you’d probably need a wombat-bat. Or should that be wom(bat)^2?

Morrisons puts non-essential tech changes on ice as panic-stricken shoppers strip stores

adrianww

Re: "throughput of goods is in excess of the usual Christmas peak"

I panicked when I happened to be picking up a couple of bottles of screen wash at a well-known German discount supermarket. Ended up coming home with a pillar drill and a bench grinder as well.

Oh, hang on, that’s not panic is it? It’s fairly normal for Aldi-Lidl-di-Aldi-Lidl-di-dee.

Anyway, what’s this COVID-19 thing that everyone is banging on about?

(“COVID-19 too-loo-rye-ay. COVID-19 too-loo-rye-ay. Now you’re full grown. Now you have shown. COOO 19...”)

Aww, a cute mini-moon is orbiting Earth right now. But like all good things, it too will abandon us at some point

adrianww
Alien

...continuum transfunctioner?

In the red corner, Big Red, and in the blue corner... the rest of the tech industry

adrianww

Hmmmm...

Not sure I'd have said that TCP/IP was barely three years old in 1987. Its widespread, standardised use might have only been 3-4 years old, but it was invented in the mid 70s (74? 75?), several prototype implementations were developed in numerous places during the late 70s and early 80s, the US DOD declared it the standard for all military networking in 1982 and the migration of ARPANET to TCP/IP was completed by January 1983.

Anyway, that's a minor quibble. In all other respects, the article is bang on the money. Hopefully, Oracle will get shown the door in no uncertain terms on this one. Although, this is the USA we're talking about where corporate money appears to be king. Who knows how it will actually play out.

Remember that Sonos speaker you bought a few years back that works perfectly? It's about to be screwed for... reasons

adrianww

Re: Why indeed...

Oops! I appear to have tweaked the nose of some who have sipped of the Sonos Kool-Aid.

Being fair, I suppose I was a tad harsh.

But...

I'm certainly no high-end audiophile (far from it) and most of my audio stuff is unashamedly low priced and low end. I've spent far more on instruments than any hi-fi stuff (even though my instruments are, themselves, largely from the low end of the price spectrum). I do, however, stand by the general drift of my earlier hyperbole.

A few years ago, I actually looked into buying some Sonos stuff. Someone elsewhere in these comments has already mentioned the convenience factor, which is a fair point and was the angle I was coming from. So - knowing three or four people who had various different Sonos products (including one guy who had spent a fairly significant amount putting Sonos speakers, etc. in several rooms of his house) - I asked if I could go along and have a listen to some of my favourite bits and pieces of music on them.

Now, I suppose if I'm being scrupulously fair about it, it's possible that all of these folks had things configured incorrectly or set up the wrong way or some such, but the overall impression that I was left with was that the Sonos stuff just didn't sound very good. Even compared to the relatively cheap and basic gear that I had at home, never mind some of the stuff I've heard over the years in the homes of more serious musicians and audiophile types.

As background music while you were doing something else, or to provide music for a bit of a party, yeah, the Sonos kit was fine. Similarly, if you're using it to provide the audio for your TV or home cinema set up (maybe). But if you actually want to sit down and listen to the music, as music, with no distractions, I really didn't rate any of it at all. And certainly not at the kind of inflated prices that Sonos were charging.

So I decided not to pursue that particular avenue after all, before I even thought about the issue of product longevity and the possibility of the manufacturer simply pulling support for things after only a few years.

Under the circumstances, I guess I dodged a bullet. Even if they had sounded much better (as they should have done, given the price) I'd have been royally pi...er...peeved had I bought into them only for Sonos to pull some of the stunts that they have in the last couple of years.

adrianww
WTF?

Why indeed...

Godawful, overpriced, under-performing speakers with sound quality that is barely acceptable if your target audience is a bunch of very, very drunk people at a party, but that's about it.

I've got a cheap pair of Bluetooth bookshelf speakers that don't sound great, but they still sound better than just about any bit of Sonos kit I've ever heard.

My old Wharfedale Diamond actives are pretty comprehensively low-end and poor sounding (as near-field monitors for recording purposes go) but leave anything Sonos produces lying dead in the dust when it comes to sound quality. Meanwhile, for general listening, the nearly 20-year-old Missions connected to my nearly 40 year-old hi-fi easily show up anything Sonos produces as sonic garbage.

Even allowing or inflation, none of these speakers cost as much as one of Sonos' lower-priced offerings, much less their more pricey warble-boxes. And I'm not even a major hi-fi geek. I know guys who have amps and speakers that are as far beyond mine as mine is beyond the Sonos stuff.

Also, none of these items are suddenly going to stop working because some corporate money-grubber decides that he doesn't want to support them any more. Even if you weren't a bit daft to buy in to Sonos' tat in the first place (*) you'd certainly be out of your mind to stick with it now.

(* Actually, you probably were a bit daft, but we all do daft things now and again. It's only if you don't learn from them that you're crossing the line into really stupid.)

What was Boeing through their heads? Emails show staff wouldn't put their families on a 737 Max over safety fears

adrianww

MCAS

Monkey-Clown Aircraft Systems?

Greetings from the future where it's all pole-dancing robots and Pokemon passports

adrianww

Re: Hmmmm...

Well, you...er...plug it in and then you wave your hands around it in the appropriate fashion.

It then makes unearthly “Ooooo-eeeeeeee-oooooooo” noises in a fashion that is almost, but not quite, entirely unlike music.

adrianww
Coat

Hmmmm...

Haptic Schlong. There’s a good punk band name if ever I heard one.

Or possibly the title of some weird electronica/space rock fusion album.

Happy New Year folks!

(Mine’s the one with the theremin in the pocket. No really, officer, it’s a theremin, honest!)

Post Office coughs £57.75m to settle wonky Horizon IT system case

adrianww
Mushroom

Rude words go here.

When I first heard that the PO was finally having to fess up to this ludicrous shambles and make some kind of recompense, I was rather pleased.

Now that I know more details, I think the whole thing is a travesty and the management and other people behind this shameful episode should be strung up and quartered.

Disgraceful from start to finish.

US Air Force inks deal with Raytheon on Windows 10 (and other) support for ARSE

adrianww
Black Helicopters

Re: They

That’ll be the Frontline Emergency Combat Kit that they’re working on.

Combined with the Dynamic Response Inflight Night Kit, they should have most of the bases covered...

Apple's looking at you, kid: Fanbois froth over AR patent docs for gaze tracking headset

adrianww
Coat

Forveal???

Given the description in the article, shouldn't that be foveal? Last time I looked, there's no such thing as a "forvea", just a "fovea" (or "fovea centralis" if you prefer its Sunday name) which is, indeed, the most sensitive part of the retina where light can fall directly onto cone cells.

Or has the computer industry taken its usual approach of inventing a similar-sounding new word to hide the fact that a bunch of software/hardware engineers and IT salesdroids can't use a medical dictionary?

(Mine's the one with the copy of "The Human Eye: Its Structure and Function" in the pocket...)

Yes, people see straight through male displays of bling (they're only after a fling)

adrianww
Trollface

Re: Really?

I suspect you do indeed do a lot of beating off.

Doing it with a stick rather than the more traditional way? Well, that's your prerogative...

Avengers: Infinity War: More Marvel-ous moolah for comic film-erverse, probably

adrianww

Thor?

At the risk of seeming like just another nit-picking nerd, are you sure that's Thor standing with Black Widow in that picture? And, if so, does Captain America know that the Norse geezer has nicked his outfit?

Li-quid hot mag-ma: There's a Martian meteorite in your backyard. How'd it get there?

adrianww
Alien

Re: Bah!

Yeah, but it were Ogilvy what told him as well.

adrianww
Alien

Re: Bah!

Nope, I'm pretty sure that Stevie said exactly what he intended to say. Although it was probably Ogilvy who told him...

Doctor Who: Oh, look! There's a restaurant at the end of the universe in Hell Bent

adrianww

Re: For me this summed up everything that Moffat is getting wrong

I think the problem that Moffat has suffered is the same one that plagued Babylon Five and Star Trek: DS9 back in the day. It seems like the majority of science fiction series (and franchises) at some point attempt to do the whole "encompassing story arc" thing. Unfortunately, the producers and writers get so obsessed with trying to shoehorn in oblique little references to past and future events, plot sidelines and other self-referential details that they forget to make the individual plot elements, characters and episodes within the overall story compelling in their own right.

It's like someone having the vision of some wonderful, elegant building in mind and then spending so much time, money and effort on the pretty drawings and architect's models that, by the time they come to build the thing for real, they can only afford the shoddiest of materials and the end result is a slipshod, rickety assemblage of poor quality bits and pieces.

Whereas, if they concentrated on the key individual elements first (immediate plot, character, etc.) and then built the story arc around those afterwards, they might stand a chance of coming up with something bigger, better and more compelling. Foundations first and then start building your soaring spires - not the other way around.

(And yes, of course, I realise that they have to have at least some vague idea of where they want the whole thing to go but it still feels as though too many series put the end-to-end story arc first and then forget to build it up out of good stories along the way.)

adrianww

Sack him? No. But...

To be fair here, I wouldn't say that Moffat should be sacked. Possibly returned to the role of dedicated screenwriter (at which he has already demonstrated his ability) while someone else takes on the responsibility of running the show as a whole, but certainly not sacked.

This series has, however, largely been shite and I really don't understand how anything other than severely rose-tinted glasses (or hopeless addiction to all things Whovian) could make anyone believe otherwise. I really did have high hopes for Peter Capaldi in the role and I think he has tried very hard to make something of the rather shoddy mess that he has been given in terms of plotlines and script but this has been the first season of the "new" Dr Who where I, for one, have found the sow's ear simply too ugly, trite and frivolous to be turned into any kind of purse, much less a silk one.

Still, takes all sorts I suppose. If it rocks your boat, more power to you, but I still think I'd prefer to see it shelved again (or canned altogether) rather than watch another season like this one.

adrianww

Re: 4.5 billion years?

Oh yes it is!

adrianww

This is obviously using some new definition of the word "best" that I was previously unaware of.

Although I suppose - to be fair - there have been worse episodes during this shark-jumping train-wreck of a series. Like the first two or three which ensured that I didn't so much watch this rest of them as sit in the room doing something else of a Saturday evening while others watched it.

Still saw enough of what was happening to vote for putting it back on the shelf for another couple of decades though...

Devious Davros, tricksy Missy and Dalek Clara delight in The Witch's Familiar

adrianww

Re: Hang on...

Fortunately, nobody. I watched it because - in general - I have always had a soft spot for Dr Who, harmless and fun hokum that it is. I enjoyed it as a kid and I have enjoyed it a fair bit during the last few years. However, as I said, I think that during Matt Smith's tenure as the Doctor the general standard of the writing and development of the series deteriorated. And, if anything, it seems to be getting worse. Or, at least, getting no better.

Once upon a time, I would make an effort to see each episode in a series. During the last couple of series, I missed the odd episode here and there and found that it had reached the point where I wasn't that bothered about catching up with the ones I'd missed (even though that's easy enough to do nowadays what with iPlayer, etc.) I watched the first episode of this series in the hope that they had given it a bit of a refresh and were going to give Peter Capaldi better scripts to work with. I then watched the second episode to see how they wrapped up the story (and whether the first episode was just an unfortunate aberration). Sadly, while the second episode was somewhat better than the first, it certainly doesn't give me hope for the future.

So...as I said, fortunately no-one is holding a gun to my head and forcing me to watch and, short of having absolutely nothing else to occupy my time of a Saturday evening (which is unlikely to be the case most of the time) I don't expect to be watching any more. And I'm still baffled by all the fairly glowing reviews I've seen around the place. I can only assume that they have been written by inveterate Dr Who fans who would give a sound thumbs-up to any old drivel so long as it had two hearts and a Tardis.

adrianww
WTF?

Hang on...

...reading the reviews here and most of the other reviews that I've seen in the press or online, did the reviewers actually watch the same episodes as I did?

They were very, very poor indeed. OK, so Dr Who isn't (and has never been and is unlikely ever to be) high art, but it has on occasion been interesting and entertaining. For all their occasional failings, the Eccleston/Tennant seasons did have some nice moments, the odd interesting story or plotline and the introduction of some rather fine new "baddies". As a reboot of the tired old original series, it was quite welcome and showed a fair bit of promise. Almost as though the Beeb were taking it slightly more seriously this time around.

But then Matt Smith happened. Not that he was particularly bad, but as his time in the Tardis continued, the whole thing started to come apart as far as story lines, characters and general quality of the overall narrative were concerned. By the time he regenerated, a new Doctor was already long overdue and I had some high(ish) hopes for Peter Capaldi, so long as he got decent scripts.

Oh well, so much for that then. Decent scripts? Chance would be a fine thing. If anything, they've gone even further down the pan than they already were. I wouldn't even mind if they had come up with something where I could actively dislike it (perhaps taking it in a determinedly different direction altogether) but no, it's just a whole heap of "meh". The bits that weren't eminently predictable were simply boring - characters that were even more cardboard cut-out than usual (if possible), plot devices that were either glaringly transparent or supremely ad hoc and an overall feel of mediocrity. I watched the second episode just to see if it picked up any after a pretty abysmal first one. Being fair, the second episode was probably better than the first, but not enough to warrant making any special effort to watch a third.

Perhaps it's time for this McTedium Sandwich with Extra Cheese to be put back on the shelf for another couple of decades until someone can come up with another interesting reboot...

Oi, Google! Remove links to that removed story, yells forceful ICO

adrianww
Mushroom

Re: Please remove the link...

As the years have gone by and I've watched the web grow into the seething morass of stupidity and insanity that we see today, I begin to wonder whether "delete the entire Internet" actually isn't such a bad idea.

I'd even go as far as to recommend nuking the entire site from orbit. After all, it's the only way to be sure...

Wikipedia jumps aboard the bogus 'freedom of panorama' bandwagon

adrianww
Stop

Actually...

...the thing that makes me most worried that something like this idiocy may ultimately make it into EU legislation in some shape or form is, in large part, the absolute certainty with which El Reg's redoubtable Mr Orlowski says it can't happen. Not that I necessarily disbelieve everything he says, but I've never been convinced that he knows as much about things as he thinks he does.

Anyway, as far as this particular issue is concerned, while I'm no fan of self-aggrandizing Wiki-anything types, I've seen enough ill-thought-out and utterly cocked-up legislation coming from the EU or from individual European governments (not least our own in the UK) that I can easily imagine some bunch of assorted political dimwits picking up this dog's breakfast of an idea and actually trying to run with it. On that basis, I'm prepared to stick my name on the petition and possibly even badger my MP/MEP just on principle. Conversely, if Mr O turns out to be right in this case, then that is a fine and good thing and I shall sleep sounder in my bed.

I block, you block, we all block Twitter shock schlock

adrianww

I wonder...

Most of the folks on my block list tend to be people or companies whose Promoted Tweets have appeared in my timeline. In fact, my first (and pretty much only) action on seeing a Promoted Tweet is to block the sender.

I'd guess that some other folks do the same.

So...if we all exchanged our lists of blocked users, could we come up with the beginning of a global Twitter spam block list? Pretty sure that wasn't Twitter's intention with this feature, but it sounds like a very useful application for it.

Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV: The new common-as-muck hybrid

adrianww

Re: How much?

Absolutely, I know you have to have some new ones out there otherwise there won't eventually be old ones. However, the point that slightly bothers me is that as emissions regs are tightened further and further and car taxation is tied more and more closely to them, it becomes more punitive to keep running the older cars and people are pushed in the direction of new ones. Which is all well and good from the day-to-day emissions point of view but takes little (or no) account of the overall environmental impact of the manufacturing/disposal process. Or, at least, it pushes those costs/taxes back up into the manufacturing chain (whence they are probably ultimately passed on to the consumer anyway, but with additional profit margin applied) or it pushes them into the waste disposal chain (where, again, they are probably passed on to the consumer in some shape or form). So, ultimately, we all end up paying even more (directly or indirectly) and the only people really to benefit from it are the manufacturers, their bankers and their political pals. Funny how it often seems to end up working like that...

adrianww
Stop

How much?

The problem I have with this thing is the price. For twenty-eight grand I could have something with a conventional engine/drivetrain but much better and more usable out in the sticks where I live. A diesel Subaru Forester (for example) if I wanted something with a bit of ground clearance and the ability to cope with the local farm tracks, minor roads and bits of off-roading that are sometimes required. Or even just the standard diesel Outlander if push came to shove.

Actually, having said that, I don't think I'm likely to spend that much on a car again anyway. I prefer to buy something a couple of years old after some other poor sap has eaten all the depreciation. Which begs another question for me - which is more environmentally friendly? Buying a new "eco-car" every two or three years (with the associated costs/environmental impact of its manufacture) or buying something older that is less tree-friendly (so to speak) and then running that for several years (assuming it's properly maintained, etc.) Because the current road-tax system seems to be increasingly geared towards hitting the owners of older cars (that were manufactured for looser emissions regs) in their pockets but making no allowances for the environmental impact of manufacturing the shiny new ones (or, indeed, disposing of the old ones that no-one then wants).

Of course, the manufacturers do have to pay their environmental charges and taxes so that obviously will come into it, but it just seems like we're increasingly moving towards a world where everyone is being persuaded, poked, prodded and cajoled into buying the newest this, that and the other even when we're talking about things like cars (which, for many folks, will probably be the second most expensive thing they will buy in their life, or even the most expensive if you leave houses/property out of the picture). Which is all very nice for the revenues and profitability of the companies that make all the doo-dads (and their political chums) but is it really all that good for the people? I'm not certain...

Drone penetrates Virgin's shapely space arse

adrianww

Re: Slightly worrying

Heh, heh, heh, "bottoms", "number 2", heh, heh, heh...

(Damn - where's a minion icon when you need one?)

Why Joe Hockey's Oz tax proposals only get five out of 10

adrianww

Re: GST/VAT Rates for International Sales

Not only is he "almost right" about the sale of goods, he's specifically and actually right - so long as (as you mentioned) your annual sales into other EU countries fall below the distance-selling threshold in each one. I suspect that there are a lot of UK small businesses/SMEs who fall into that category and who are grateful that the system is actually fairly rational in that respect. These are also the businesses who are going to suffer the most from the ill-thought-out and poorly-publicised way in which the digital products/services rules were introduced. We all suspect that we know who the EU were trying to target when it came to that almighty shambles, but it's the little guys who are going to feel most of the pain. As you say, it would have been better and far more workable if they had applied the same rules/thresholds as for physical products, but the idiots didn't do that.

Jupiter Ascending – a literally laughable train wreck of a film

adrianww

Re: Sceptical Mila is sceptical

I'm not certain that Matrix 2 and 3 suffered from "trying to do too much". What they suffered from was the Wachowski siblings suddenly finding that the quite interesting idea that powered the first film didn't actually have the legs to be extended to anything further. The end result was a second film that became increasingly awful, shallow, poorly plotted and laughably scripted as the minutes ticked by. Then, just when you thought it couldn't get any worse, along comes the third film, mewling and puking in the bottom of the barrel where the second left off and - to everyone's astonishment - actually managing to be even worse.

I've tried quite hard over the years to find redeeming features in the second film and - while I haven't really managed to do so yet - I still live in hope and can occasionally watch it again to see if there is anything there to save it. The third film is unadulterated dross and is almost bad enough to make you wish that none of them had been made at all. I have tried to watch the third film again. I've even seen bits of it here and there when it's had an airing on the TV. I've still never managed to find anything in there worth the effort and could probably only manage to sit through all of it if I were sedated or spectacularly inebriated. It's about as much fun as cleaning a badly blocked plughole in a house populated by yetis who use their own dung and phlegm as shampoo.

I suspect that, if there had been a fourth Matrix film, Plan 9 from Outer Space would finally have had something to look down upon.

'YOUTUBE is EVIL': Somebody had a tape running, Google...

adrianww

Re: elreg misquote

Yes, except the transcript doesn't cover all of the ground around this. It's not as simple as you make out. The new terms include a few interesting provisions that are, at best, unacceptable restraints of trade and, at worst, just completely screwing the artist over for Google's profit. All in all, it amounts to something little different from the worst excesses of the old-style recording industry. That's the very industry that some of the Internet/web cheerleaders used to say would be brought to heel by the wonderful, open access that our new technology provided. Unfortunately, they didn't go on to mention that the new corporate behemoths that would be controlling this amazing electronic utopia would turn out to be even worse, more acquisitive and more duplicitous than the old ones.

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