What is the big deal with all these QR codes (Quick Response codes) I keep seeing on posters? They are a kind of barcode, but why are they only machine-readable? Why can’t they be made human readable so we can see what they mean? Here’s one I made earlier, readable by a special app on your phone, tablet or whatever.

Lovely. But why isn’t it human-readable? My theory is that it activates the curiosity factor. Only by following the link and getting your gadget to read it can you find out what it is all about… If you knew already what the QR code said, you probably wouldn’t bother to scan it.

The huge file-sharing site www.megaupload.com has been shut down by the Feds. Even though it operates from Hong Kong and top staff work in New Zealand, the US authorities argue that they ran 525 servers in Virginia, they made money in US$ and knowingly hosted pirated US material, and furthermore paid out money to US citizens, so they are doing (illegal) business in the US and are subject to US jurisdiction. The owner and top management have been arrested and charged with racketeering and copyright infringement. A news article about the megaupload seizure on NDTV says that the Justice Department’s website was taken down in revenge by hackers (hacking group Anonymous has claimed credit).

It seems owner Kim Dotcom and his top staff had a rather lavish lifestyle, with umpteen Mercedes’, Lamborginis and so on, including one with the number plate “GUILTY". Hmm…

Well, of course it is right that lawbreakers are arrested, but on the other hand, the Internet model involves a very heavy reliance on the free distribution of information. Much of that information (movies, images, and so on) actually belongs to copyright holders… And outside the Internet it is hardly possible to acquire anything for free these days: we even pay for our daily brainwashing sessions in front of the TV, for the most part (those of us who still watch it occasionally, anyway). Will big business end up taking all of everybody’s money off them?

Have you ever wondered how to fake French? I mean, if you don’t know the language but are stuck with a load of French people, what do you do? After a few “Haw haw he haw, des oignons,” they are going to get a bit suspicious.

Well, this short tutorial explains it all.

I don’t know who webbilling.com are, but there are a remarkable number of stories online about how they seem to con or scam people into paying false bills, or even, as in the case of my wife, make a direct debit to her bank account (without permission). How can that happen? The bank has given no explanation. You can read the full story of this attempted theft by webbilling.com on her blog, along with how to deal with it.

I have posted a new web page detailing some of my experiences at Fellowship Films Ltd Organicc (with two c’s), the Southern Foundation for the Advancement of Art and Education, and elsewhere, involving a person called Mike Davies, of Southampton. I’m posting it on the basis that prospective investors ought to be able to find out who they are dealing with: it is an aid to due diligence. Click this link to go there:

Mike Davies

We went to the RAF Museum in Hendon, North London this weekend, on, as it turned out, the weekend closest to an anniversary of the September 15th turning point in the Battle of Britain all those years ago. (Its address is Grahame Park Way, Hendon, North London NW9 5LL by the way.)

From RAF-Museum-20110911

They were re-enacting some of the action with pushing blocks of wood about charting invading aircraft and running to intercept.

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Inside were all the old classics: a Fokker-DVII

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An Me-Bf109g in desert livery:

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The mighty Lancaster bomber:

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And a massive modern-day Vulcan B2 medium bomber:

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You can see a more complete selection of photos in my Picasaweb RAF Museum gallery.

Ah… one of the few sunny days this Summer (well, half a day, anyway). So: off to Crystal Palace park to look at the Victorian entertain-and-educate plan for the masses: dinosaurs! Yes! Well, I’m not going to regale you with all the monsters’ names: just enjoy some of the pics.

From Crystal-Palace-20110903

From Crystal-Palace-20110903

From Crystal-Palace-20110903

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They also have a few live animals there, as there is a mini-children’s zoo and education centre. Do you like dodgy pigs, perhaps?

From Crystal-Palace-20110903

Or maybe a lizard?

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Of course, the park is famous for the palace it was named after, which unfortunately burned down in 1936 and was almost completely destroyed. A few of the famous sphinx statues still survive.

From Crystal-Palace-20110903

You can see more in my Picasaweb album

Link: http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/13313

The looting sprees this week have brought to the fore the general problem we have in this society of antisocial behaviour. As my wife puts it, we are suffering from a tsunami of chavs: ineducable louts for whom, in reality, society has nothing to offer, and who offer nothing to society either.

It is well-known that crime is related to many things: unwanted children (of which the chavs have many, and typically are examples of themselves) being a major factor. They grow up as feral children and society is left to pick up the pieces.

We can’t fix that right now (although a start could be made, no doubt, but it takes a generation for the numbers of feral children to decline and crime rates to decline along with them). Right now, what can we do? Well, a lot of people are calling for tougher sentencing, and it is hard to argue against it: if these people are off the streets at least crime would be reduced. However, the state has no policy here. The politicians talk tough and the courts ignore them. Looters are supposed to get 5-10 years, but in fact many are getting a £100 fine and a referral order or some such. The police and politicians claim anyone caught with a knife will get an automatic 5 years, but they often get much less in fact. Parliament hasn’t got any joined-up policy on these matters, clearly.

What sort of tougher sentencing is there that would actually keep the most persistent offenders off the streets? In some parts of the USA they have a “three strikes and you’re out” system, in which someone who has had three convictions gets an automatic life sentence, no matter how minor the crime. And life means life, usually. Well... OK, but it is a bit simplistic. Many kids do in fact grow up, and it has to be admitted that they are not entirely responsible for their poor upbringing and lack of education. It allows no room for reform - and some crooks do reform, after all.

I suggest a system that I call “Recycled Sentencing” instead. In this system, the courts can sentence as they do now, except that each successive offence gets its own sentence, plus all previous sentences as well.

Thus for a first offence a person may well get a £100 fine or whatever.

For a second offence they may get 1 month in prison plus the £100 fine again.

For their third offence maybe they get 6 months in prison, plus one more month, plus another £100 fine.

For their fourth offence they may be fined £500, but they also get 6 months in prison plus the other month, plus the other £100 fine...

For their fifth offence they may simply be bound over to keep the peace - but they still get £500 + 6 months + 1 month + £100 as well.

As you can see, persistent offenders will automatically end up with tougher and tougher sentences, and will, over time, be kept off the streets for longer and longer. And indeed, it should reduce the numbers of feral children in the long run too, as their breeding chances are reduced in prison, after all. Of course the proper way of fixing this is to fix society, but in the meantime, this method would seem humane and proportionate. Obviously the system will have to have substitutions for complex cases like care orders and so on, but these can be thought through and implemented fairly easily.

I've put a petition on the UK Government's e-petitions site - should it get 100,000 signatures, then Parliament has to... er... consider debating it. Hmm.

Billionaire investor Warren Buffett has hosted a private gathering at an Arizona resort for American billionaires who have pledged to give away at least half their wealth.

Well, how about giving some of that money to me? Oh, OK, I suppose I’m not as deserving as the starving millions. Sigh. It’s just that it seems to be very hard to get rich when you’re as lazy as me. :(

I think philanthropy is a good idea for rich people, although some cynics will point out that they took their money off poor people in the first place and in fact are only giving some of it back. Nevertheless, rebalancing the economy is a good idea - too much concentration of wealth is economically inefficient, and bad for those that don’t have any money too. It also can make a real difference, since governments and charitable organisations don’t seem to be changing much with their efforts (barring the eradication of smallpox). Perhaps a more personal approach, a direct approach, will actually achieve something tangible.

Or at least, Googling and general surfing: that’s what my boss wants to do at the office. He’s convinced people spend too much time cyberloafing, and then they moan that their computers are too slow. He has a point: the computers are *very* low spec, but they were OK when they were new: why are they so slow now?

Well, it is a well-known phenomenon that computers slow down over time, with Windows as an operating system anyway. I imagine the same thing happens with other OS’s too. Many IT people just wipe their machines every few months: a clean reinstall fixes a lot of nonsense. There’s no doubt that Windows becomes corrupt over time and there are various cleaning tools that can help fix it (and sometimes break it). Why does Windows get corrupt over time? Well, junk gets left from crashes, from installed software, from inefficiently uninstalled software, from orphaned temporary files, and more. No doubt Trojans and viruses lurking contribute on a lot of machines.

Then there’s all those security updates to beat the viruses and hackers. They all add bloat, and not just to Windows: applications have updates too.

And then… programmers, I suspect, write their updates with the assumption that people are using the latest whizz-bank hardware, when in reality people are trying to hang on to some cobweb-ridden old crank-box to save a few pennies for their retirement. Some people may have shares in hardware companies, but most of us don’t.

So what can one do? Use a crap cleaner like ccleaner and also defragment your hard drive. But even that won’t help all machines: new software and new websites are just not written with antiques in mind. Furthermore as we add more and more programs to them, even if they are uninstalled later, the junk piles up.

I’ve found one other factor that may apply more in a working environment: when a PC has multiple users and each user has their own profile on the PC, the registry expands massively for each user as it records that user’s preferences, their programs, their programs’ options, and more. Windows has to read the entire registry to do anything much on a PC, so it knows what to do when you click on things. A PC that has had 10 or 15 different users over the years has a huge registry, and it takes time for Windows to scan it every time you want to do something. If the PC only has a small amount of RAM, then Windows will be caching the registry on the hard drive and reading it back from there all the time, rather than storing it in working memory. This will slow the machine down enormously over time. What can you do about it? I don’t know. Wipe the machine and start again, I suppose. Adding more RAM will certainly help in some cases, however.

Is it OK to go around assassinating unarmed “terrorists” and enemy leaders? I mean, not for you and me, we’d be done in an instant if we tried to take the law into our own hands, but is it OK for governments? Certain ones at the moment seem to think its a jolly idea. They shot Osama, and also claim not to be targeting Gadaffy Duck directly, whilst dropping three massive bombs into a bunker they, presumably, knew was occupied by the Colonel (NATO/US claim to be targeting command and control systems, which will include various individuals of course, rendering the concept of not targeting specific people meaningless). I’m not saying these folk don’t deserve it, but is it morally sound?

Well, we all know killing people is supposed to be bad, but in the real world, bad people usually have to be stopped by force one way or another. Despite what the churches and whatnot say, most people accept that self defence is right. Most people in the West are not unduly upset by the death of Osama (assuming its real and recent as claimed).

We must bear in mind that the targets of these assassination attempts (in the case of Mr Duck) need not be one-sided: he can send his own assassins across the water, and probably will, if he lives long enough. Our own great leaders may be writing their own death warrants: a reason, I suggest, that such behaviour is generally avoided by them: it makes them more vulnerable to assassination themselves. A war and the killing of tens of thousands of nobodies is one thing, but our glorious leaders can’t be put in the line of fire…

Personally I think they should all be locked in a room with one loaded gun and let them sort it out between themselves. So, yes, I think assassination is more moral than the killing of large numbers of people in a wider conflict. Why kill thousands when one will do?

Hmm… and while I’m on the subject… I just note that Iraq has loads of oil; Afghanistan has the route for a long-planned oil pipeline from Iraq to the sea (and a load of heroin production); Libya has oil. Yemen doesn’t have much: it is expected to run out by 2017; Syrian oil production peaked in 1996 and it may become a net importer within a decade. Libya on the other hand has an estimated 60 years of reserves. So which countries would you be most interested in taking the opportunity of intervening in, if you were the West, and stupidly dependent on oil?

So science is finally beginning to catch up with what I found years ago in my Diet & Exercise page: avoiding fat is a waste of time. Exercise doesn’t help much (I found it helped, but I had to do a lot). Avoiding sugar and fructose (and high-fructose corn syrup) is the key.

Coulda told ‘em that… well, technically, I suppose I did, but no-one was listening, of course. Got 26 minutes to listen?

He says it again here, with one or two extra interesting tidbits thrown in.

Well, I suppose I just have to say something about the wave of revolutions sweeping the Middle-East and North Africa over the last couple of weeks... and it all started, remember, because one jobsworth bullying bureaucrat confiscated (stole) a market stall-holder's scales from him. The man had had enough, and set fire to himself... I wonder what that bureaucrat thinks now? And what do all the police and army people who have been killing civilians think of themselves? Are they ashamed? Proud but sad because they lost? It would be interesting to hear.

And of course, I am pleased so see so many psychopaths being booted out of ‘office’ at once. May it happen to many more. Hopefully, the psychopaths who are even now moving in to take advantage of the power vacuums will have to be more democratic with their manipulations.

I suppose some form of what we laughingly call “democracy” will take the place of outright dictatorship in most of these countries, but it is perhaps a time to remember that there is no perfect system. As Winston Churchill once said, “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.” And of course, people are tying democracy in with this elusive word, “freedom”, by which of course they mean, the freedom to exploit the public for the benefit of the giant corporations and the super rich. Still, it is better than the other systems that have been tried. I suppose some rustic Native American style tribal system might actually be better for small groups of humans, if it is not coupled with ignorance and war, but in the modern world it is just impractical. As is even the current system, indeed, with its sucking up of the planet's dwindling resources irreparably and rapidly.

But what to do? Darned if I know. I have to sell stuff and/or work if I want to eat, just like everybody else (except the super rich who are living off our productivity for free...). I'll be reviewing Peter Joseph's latest Zeitgeist: Moving Forward movie soon, but I'll say here that I don't think he has the answer either.

I have placed some links to some of the better videos at the side of this page, but in doing so, I have noticed that many of them are not actually mentioned in this blog yet!

I must have watched them, but not written about them! Well, I shall fix that over the next few days. I may put one up per day over the next week or so… er… or maybe over a bit longer, as I’ll review each of them too…

It’s nice to see at least some anti-capitalists are still alive and kicking… One of Boris’s bikes (a transport initiative in London) is here shown suitably defaced.

Well, let’s hope it works… then I’ll add all my old Blogger entries. One by one. Because Blogger didn’t export it properly and the import function seems flaky as well. Good thing I’ve got a backup. :)

It wouldn’t be necessary but Blogger have changed their system, no longer allowing FTP access, which means the blog would have to be hosted on their site rather than mine. Shrug. Well, OK, they’ve lost a customer. Several in fact, since I do websites for people and often integrate their blog - they’ll all have to become independently hosted now instead.

I’ve tried Nucleus blogging software, but find it cumbersome to use and the documentation is written by programmers for programmers. In other words, the entire system is user unfriendly. B2evolution seems far superior.

Anyway, for now, my old blog entries will appear below, one by one… hopefully.

People keep asking me to fix or create their web sites for them. Well, OK. Maybe that will be my new mode of income, apart from the film work at the Studio. So I shall be a web designer. The www.shortletbudapest.co.uk site has since gone, so um... here's a picture of it.

I've done others recently too, now I think about it. I guess I can be a web designer. And, since people keep asking me, I don't think I'll have to search too hard for business. And as people typically ask extortionate prices, I can be more reasonable, I think. After all, I have a day job to go to too.

I’ve hardly had time to do anything much lately - too much work! Plus watching the Great Depression unfold, if that is what it is doing (see previous post). But here are a few interesting web pages I’ve managed to dig up even so. You might want to calculate your global “footprint” at the Earthday Footprint Page. They try to calculate how many planet Earths would be needed if everybody lived like you do. My lifestyle adds up to 1.5 Earths; below average for a Westerner. But really I don’t buy all this scaremongering. Yes people could take more care of the planet and I wish we would, but in the end, I believe we will sort the problems out and maintain or improve our lifestyles. Technology rules!

Here is a nice 90-second overview of the progress of “democracy” (of sorts) down through the ages, assuming that no tribal systems were democratic, I suppose. And assuming that the modern system of “representative democracy” actually counts given that most such governments seem to claim to listen then do what they like anyway (and then claim to wonder why voter turnout is so low).