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The X-Factor
We all know the X-Factor is a bit shit, but what’s got me annoyed is that the cameras never focus on the despairingly awful singers who have had a tough life.
Whenever we get the soppy music and the introduction similar to ‘and now for ________, this was a moment that he/she has been waiting for all his/her life, and he/she could only wish his/her father/mother/auntie/brother/sister/uncle/pet turtle was still alive to witness this occasion’
As soon as you get that, you know fine rightly that this person is going to be a decent singer. Where’s the people who are god awful singers but have got an interesting backstory? There’s bound to be plenty of them but they won’t show them because they then can’t have Simon Cowell laughing at a terrible singer whose Llama failed to return a bail of wool from Peru.
One more thing, for the love of all things holy, can we please have a contenstant on the X-Factor who makes it so far without bawling their god damn eyes out. Please?
London’s Finest
Whilst I have absolutely no opinion regarding the Metropolitian Police in London’s attempt at ‘neutralizing a terrorist threat’ (aka, shooting an innocent man), it was this image on Sky News that made me wonder about the overall competence of the police force.
This ‘Crude sketch’ was shown on the Sky News website and supposedly represents a ‘map’ of the incident regards Charles de Menzes.
It looks like a quick doodle that I’d do whilst on the phone to somebody completely and entirely unimportant. It looks like a doodle that’d have absolutely nothing to do with anything significantly important and yet this appears on a national news website regarding something of some signifigance. What exactly did this doodle add to the entire investigation into the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes?
Were the Police not able to reconstruct the events in the good old timely fashion often seen on Crimewatch? Were they not able to get a computer diagram? Is this the best they have? I know it obviously isn’t but I mean, doesn’t this kind of just take the biscuit? I can only assume the stick figure lying spread out on the floor is the deceased Jean Charles de Menezes? Is that the appropriate way to represent a murder victim, because whether anyone wants to admit it, this was a case of murder, or at the very least manslaughter.
Oh well, like I said, I don’t really have an opinion on the entire affair, it was an unfortunate accident I guess but I mean, this picture (if it was ever put forward as a ‘recollection of events’ or a tool to aid memory or help describe the scenario) is an entire joke.
Peace out. Homies. Word. Or something.
I am speechless. I am without speech.
Rather shockingly, I have nothing to rant about. Nothing to claim. Nothing to get annoyed about. Despite the Earth being in somewhat of a shit state what with the global economy dangling on a knife edge, tensions in the world and all that jazz, I have no real comments.
It’s not that I don’t want to comment, because believe me I do, it’s just that I have absolutely no interest in finances or global stocks to make any kind of comment without sounding stupid. People could have told me that Lehman Brothers crashed and burned because they invested heavily in Horseradish and I’d have believed them.
However, British banks saw some turmoil this week. HBOS suffered stock loses and had to sort themselves out by merging with Lloyds TSB. So…Lloyds HBOS, HBOS Lloyds TSB, that’s one hell of a company name.
On top of that, it looks like the British government can’t really decide who they want to be in charge. I am waiting for the day where Bono, Bob Geldof and all the other self-serving idiots who like they to think they’re changing the world one C Chord at a time, form a group to take over power in the UK - GovernAid. It’d make political party broadcasts all that more easier to stomach mind you, seeing Bob Geldof standing in Liverpool pointing out a car with no hub caps. (Sorry for the stereotype. But it is true.)
Also, the Parliament Channel would get record viewing figures, it’d be a kind of quasi-Big Brother. Though it’d still be just as bad as.
If I could choose though, I’d stick Richard Branson in charge of the country. The man can do no wrong. He’d sort the economy and get us back on the right track. I imagine though, he’d want to re-brand Britain - Virgin Britain. Unfortunately, it won’t really work, seeing how the previous government fucked as all.
WikiWatching
I am really curious as to who sees a news article or something that crops up in the news and instantly thinks to themselves “Oh, I gotta make that addition on Wikipedia, it’s my duty”?
This stems from my reading about the death of Isaac Hayes, at the age of 65.
I read about it on the BBC News Website and this was reported onbly ‘36 minutes ago’. Lo and behold, the WikiPedia article about Isaac Hayes is full of information regarding his death. Not only that but there’s a plethora of editing to ensure the article’s integtrity.
What amazes me though is why people think it’s their duty to do this. Whilst I believe it is a good thing that information is now getting out there to the public domain in one centralised location, isn’t it dangerous to state so-called “facts” on a supposed encyclopedia website when all the facts have not yet been reported or are completely unknown?
What an unbalanced world we live in
Despite the major global event of the Olympics kicking off in Beijing, we have another global event going on that couldn’t be any more different from the values and statements of the Olympic Games.
in Georgia, specifically in the South Ossetia and now the Abkhazia regions, a conflict (or even war now, according to the Georgian parliament) is kicking off between Russian Forces (both forces stationed in the aforementioned regions and Russia-based troops) and Georgian troops.
To avoid a huge blog post detailing the history of such a conflict, I’d encourage readers to take read up on the situation before continuing. Despite me linking you to wikipedia, I feel the article is actually pretty well written and accurate.
Whilst the war, I believe, is a matter that should be resolved by all parties involved and not outside influences like the US or Great Britain, I feel that it is important that the International Community takes heed of what is going on.
The major western parties have swiftly moved to show their support for Georgia and condemned the Russian activities as ‘criminal’. They have called on Russia to halt it’s ‘unfair, criminal and disproportionate’ assault on Georgia’s sovereignty. I think it’s important to remember some of the facts here.
- South Ossetians do not want to be part of Georgia and have been pushing for independence form Georgia since 1991.
- There are over 70,000 South Ossetians who have accepted Russian passports, therefore making them de facto Russian citizens.
- Georgia, despite a ceasefire agreement on the 6th August, launched a major assault on the capital city of South Ossetia on the 7th August with unconfirmed reports of casualties.
- Georgia have been accused of targeting civilian amenities in the region, including hospitals in South Ossetia.
Georgia are not smelling of roses right now but since they have close ties with the West, specifically the United States, it’s no wonder that the Bush Administration haven’t condemned their actions as ‘illegal’ or disproportionate towards the South Ossetians.
Enter the Russians. It’s in almost every countries mandate to protect their sovereignty and their citizens. To know that Russian peacekeepers were killed (and allegedy deliberately targeted by Georgians), surely that’s a cause for the Russians to get involved. Moreso, the majority of South Ossetians and Abkhazian’s hold Russian passports, therefore are citizens of Russia, it is within Russia’s mandate to protect them and fight for their liberties.
Whilst it is obvious that the Georgian military is nothing compared to the Russian forces, let’s cast our mind back to when Israel conducted their war with Lebanon about 3 years ago. Not only did Israel completely outnumber the Lebanese, they constantly bombarded them with munitions that the International Community has long since considered illegal. Did the West then come out and label Israel’s actions as ‘disproportionate’ or ‘illegal’? No. They supported them.
People who believe claims for World Peace will lead to something and misguided. Sorry to sound so doom and gloom but how can world peace be achieved when double standards exist throughout the world. Russia and the US have bad enough relations as it is (especially with regards to the Iranian situation) but by the threats that the US have made towards Russia regarding future relations over this conflict, it can only serve to decrease the likelihood that we are going to see a stable and thriving Europe.
Especially when we consider factors such as the US’ proposed ‘Missile Shield’ in the baltic states.
The iPhone-y
Oh, look at my post title, I’m ever so witty.
So, I’m probably the only nerd with a habit of disliking anything popular and craze-esque who hasn’t yet ranted about the iPhone. Seeing how last Friday, the iPhone 3G was released, I figured it was entirely appropriate to finally vent my feelings concerning this technological wonder.
Trash. Pure trash. Whilst the potential for Apple fan boys and girls is huge (in terms of monetizing them), Apple still seem to have a rather pretentious following. Admittedly, this is a slight deviation but I’d be curious to know how many male Apple users (with respect to personal computers) also have curly hair and drink Magners whilst watching a foreign film (So as not to alienate anyone reading this, you must tick all 3 of the aforementioned criteria for me to greatly dislike you).
Given Apple’s cult success (and glaringly blatant shortcomings), it was only natural that they’re release another cash cow device for the masses to drool over.
Shock. I was actually reasonably impressed by the iPhone after a colleague in one of my many previous jobs showed it to me. It does look sleek, it does look nifty and it has a nice screen. Then again, my Samsung mobile phone looks sleek nifty and has a really nice screen and has a retail value of considerably less than the iPhone.
That aside, I had no real issues with the iPhone. Yes, it was locked to networks, yes it had software glitches; neither of these two points came as a real surprise to me given Apple’s track record for ‘keeping things in the family’ยน especially when their iPod was considered. However, the realisation that the iPhone only worked on a 2G network was somewhat of a shocker. Here I am waltzing around with my Samsung something-or-other (I genuinely cannot remember the model) with not only 3G network capabilities but HSDPA (as close as we’ll get to mobile download speeds) and a 3.0 megapixel camera. The original iPhone did not even come close to this.
I think it’s a disgrace that the iPhone didn’t launch originally with all the bells and whistles. They’ve brought out the 3G version now and if I had bought the original iPhone I’d feel somewhat betrayed that I’d have to fork out another hundred quid or so to get a phone that works with a better speed, a speed that almost all modern devices currently work at for a lot less.
So, despite my normal disliking of Apple, I was willing to give the iPhone a chance (not to extent of buying one though) and not actually hate it. But I had no idea it wasn’t 3G and had no idea it only had a 2.0 Megapixel camera nor did it work at HSDPA download speeds.
So yeah, I feel better now that I’ve ranted about the iPhone but really, it just seems like a big iPhony (I’m sorry, I did love that pun too much) and a usual i-insertWordHere device to appeal to the more upper-class market that Apple seems to target.
What’s wrong with using a good old Nokia or Ericsson?
Important News
Well, today has been a seemingly slow news day, if you were to go by what the People want to see. Before I sound all preachy and pretentious here, let me first of all say I haven’t really watched the news either today so consider this a non-critical comment, just something I’ve noticed. Let’s, for the sake of argument, assume that what I’m going to talk about is a middle-aged woman getting changed in front of her window and I’m a prepubescent boy with a new telescope for my birthday.
As we can see, more of the ‘lighter’ or ‘whimsical’ news stories are the ones most distributed. The most read category and identical set of stories (at time of writing, not this post but this sentence, which is 10:44pm GMT). So essentially, the hottest news today is that a fat lamb likes to lie on a sofa, a gay bishop was heckled, twat ‘Banksy’ may be revealed but we’ll never know as he’s never going to come out, much to the disappointment of the gay bishop, a referee was drunk and you’re not allowed to pop your clogs in the freezing cold.
In reality, some of today’s proper news stories:
There’s quite a lot of news going on there, enough to keep BBC News 24 presenters actually doing something other than showing live pictures of something only somewhat slightly relevant to whatever news story they were covering. So, let’s see, we’ve got a prisoner exchange between Israel and Hezbollah, that must be a good milestone, Pakistani soldiers being killed by militants, that’s important news, stabbings in festivals and a victim of knife crime being named.
All in all, quite a filled sandwich of news. Again, not that I’m suggested we all ought to be tuned into the news 24 hours a day and keep abreast of what’s happening. I’ll be honest, I don’t give a hoot about 99% of the stories above anyway.
But is it possible that people tune into the news just for those ‘And finally…’ moments where a cat got stuck up a tree and the fire engine sent to rescue it got stuck down a well on it’s way there? Why not make two versions of the news, The Serious News and The Silly News? I wonder what will get more ratings. Hmmmm.
So Much For Privacy
Crazy law suits are nothing new in the USA but for me one the craziest court cases was finished today. In some weird and unfathomably twisted logic, a fat person suing McDonald’s for making them fat has some grounding at least.
Announced today, however, a US court has ruled that Google must divulge the viewing habits of each and every YouTube user to Viacom. They will no doubt peruse all the millions and millions of user IDs, take note of each and every IP address whilst monitoring what they’ve viewed or uploaded onto YouTube. Moreso, despite this being a US court that has ruled this, it is believed that Viacom will have rights to globally inspect what users have visited.
I personally don’t have an account with YouTube but I anonymously view videos, many of which are probably illegally uploaded and many of which I may have some shame about watching - easy people, YouTube doesn’t allow pornography, I am talking about sad cheesy 1980s hit songs.
This is a clear violation of user rights. I do hope Viacom take up Google’s offer to provide an entirely anonymous list of user activity.
However, not to dwell on the negative - there may be some positives that come out of this. We all know about the Rickrolling craze so I’m guessing Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up” will feature quite highly in Viacom’s analysis. Maybe they’ll strike a deal with him regarding some form of come back.
We can only hope.
