Archive for the ‘Annoyances’ Category

Focus

Thursday, June 5th, 2008

The focus I'm talking about now is in terms of your current window manager. I remember light-hearted but heated discussions about window managers - did people prefer 'focus-follows-mouse' or 'focus-follows-click'. Focus follows mouse (FFM) means that the keyboard input and live widgets on screen are a result of the placement of ...

Few things more irritating…

Friday, May 30th, 2008

...than talking to someone (for instance, a recruitment consultant) and being promised a call the very next day. And the very next day you're told that yesterday was his last day. No wonder recruitment people get such a bad rap in technology circles. I'm thoroughly fed up now.

What can you do about content thieves from a .cn domain?

Wednesday, May 28th, 2008

These guys are dirty thieves. I, and others, are getting pingbacks daily from c/p'ed content.

Right people for the right job

Tuesday, May 27th, 2008

Today I'm alone. Back in March I suggested to some senior managers that if they were desperate to get developers for the new projects which were coming in, they could do no better than the three guys working for me. It would debilitate my team in the short term but we'd ...

Police arrest 15 year old for saying “cult”

Wednesday, May 21st, 2008

A teenager is facing prosecution for using the word "cult" to describe the Church of Scientology. The unnamed 15-year-old was served the summons by City of London police when he took part in a peaceful demonstration opposite the London headquarters of the controversial religion. ... The teenager refused to back down, quoting a ...

itv.com full of FAIL

Monday, May 19th, 2008

I don't like the terminology but I feel forced to use it. ITV recently emailed me to let me know that, as a Mac user, I can now watch itv episodes on my Mac. This was a nice catchup to BBC's iPlayer which, although very limited on the Mac, allows me ...

MySpace Internet Predator indicted

Friday, May 16th, 2008

ENN.ie with the news: "A federal grand jury in Los Angeles indicted Lori Drew, from Missouri, for her alleged role in the hoax on the social network against her 13 year-old neighbour Megan Meier who committed suicide. Drew allegedly helped create a MySpace account with a false identity to contact Meier, ...

DRM bad

Thursday, May 15th, 2008

Img credited to JustinJas Ars Technica writes in NBC-Vista copy-protection snafu reminds us why DRM stinks Handfuls of Windows Vista Media Center users found themselves blocked from making recordings of their favorite TV shows this week when a broadcast flag triggered the software's built-in copy protection measures. The flag affected users trying ...

MSN Music no longer “PlaysForSure”

Tuesday, May 13th, 2008

Microsoft is turning the store off. Your files will be locked to the machines you have registered. That's what you get for trusting Redmond. From The Times Imagine if you had a bedroom full of CDs and decided to buy a new player one day, only to discover that none of your albums ...

Keeping ‘Pro’ tools off the Mac

Friday, May 9th, 2008

Microsoft has always treated the Mac as a second class citizen and the bugs in Office 2008 are just added icing on the cake. Back when I started using the Mac, there was Word. It wasn't known as Microsoft Word to me, it was just Word, it was the word processor ...