Technical Woe

 

Here’s a little story of what happened, starting 1 November 2022.

Just after signing in that morning, my computer decided a blue screen of death was appropriate. The restart indicated it could take an hour to mend itself. With utmost calm I went to play videogames for an hour or two and then return to see how things were going.

The desktop had then chosen to become a brick. It wasn’t doing anything, it wasn’t reloading, it didn’t appear active at all. However, I’d been idly musing buying a new computer, so I thought I’d do that and when it was sorted see about fixing old computer to retrieve a handful of useful files, and then either sell, give away, or recycle it.

The normal computer people I use for my desktops didn’t reply. Maybe the e-mail has changed. No worries. I bought my laptop, which has been essential to keep working, from Dell directly. So I browse around for a new desktop there and select/order one. In addition to a regular discount I also had a code for more than £100 extra off. Not bad.

It came just before 5pm on the indicated day. Bit late, but not so bad. I then discovered I’d made a mistake. There was no VGA port just HDMI. Well, not to worry. I unhooked my old (but perfectly functional) monitor and dragged in my almost-as-old bedroom TV, just to ensure the machine worked ahead of a freshly ordered monitor arriving.

Going through the setup process, all seems well... and then it doesn’t progress. The next item won’t load. I can go back one space but cannot advance any further.

I try the recommended steps from the Dell virtual assistant. Nothing works. So live chat starts, and a perfectly nice fellow called Allan has suggestions. I can’t try the one time boot menu because for some reason the old TV (while fine for most of the process) initially has the Dell logo squashed and this means the one time boot menu is the same way and the text is unreadable.

Ok, bad luck but the monitor’s coming in a day or two. I’ve got the file I need loaded to a USB I know works, so I’ll wait.

Monitor comes. I check it works, and it does, and then hook it up to the new desktop. I get into the one time boot menu without difficulty, and there’s no USB option. I try again with different ports, and nothing shows.

I’m pretty frustrated at this point. It’s been two working weeks since the initial computer failure, and around four days since the non-functional computer came. So I ask for a replacement.

And then the thing occurs which annoys me quite a lot. I think if I were a younger man I may have been enraged.

There’s a 48 hour period for approval. After which a replacement may take 4-6 weeks to arrive.

Everything else was misfortune. A month to a month and a half wait for a replacement computer when the paid-for desktop took a couple of days to arrived is a choice. And a pretty shitty choice given what I paid for does not work.

Part of me is wondering about just asking for a refund and ordering afresh, but I did get a fairly hefty discount overall.

I am not delighted with the situation.

Extra bit, added 15 November: 

My request for a replacement for the newly delivered and unuseable machine was rejected. I have arranged, at least, for a pickup return and a refund. We shall see what new torment awaits with this.

I should stress that, contrary to my own expectations, I have managed to get the old computer working again but have no idea if it'll be alright or break once more, and I did lose every file on here (although much was backed up).

Thaddeus

Why moving to digital only is a Bad Thing: part 2 – Money

In part 1, I outlined my fears about a potential drive to abandon physical videogames and looked at the ways in which this will be bad for gamers (essentially, loss of control, higher prices, and the destruction of the second hand market).

But the intoxication with New Things and technological possibilities also means that some people want to abolish physical money altogether. And that’s far more concerning.

Why does that matter? Why does it worry me? Is it just because I’m so old-fashioned I have a mechanical calculator that computes using cogs?

Well, I am an old-fashioned man. And that helps provide context for why money came about in the form it did, and why shifting entirely (I don’t oppose electronic money, I oppose it being the only form) into so-called digital is drunken madness.

First off, why did physical money evolve? In the earliest days, wealth was essentially cattle. But imagine going to the shops with fifty oxen because you wanted some dresses. It’s not exactly convenient. Gold, however, is pretty, lasts effectively forever, and scarce enough small quantities are very valuable. Gold, silver, and electrum (a silver-gold alloy) coins soon came into being in Lydia, home of the fabled Croesus. They were easy to move, and if you’re selling wedding dresses it’s a lot easier to slip some coins into a pouch than to store fifty oxen in your pants.

The Chinese first brought about paper money, and a few centuries ago cheques (akin to paper money) came into being.

It was about the convenience of carrying, storing and transferring wealth, and shifted the concept of wealth from sheer physical property (oxen etc) to a more nebulous concept. However, the move to online only is a step away from control as far as wealth goes.

There was a report in the UK a year or two ago from some chap who had an interesting idea of a third employment category between employed and self-employed to cover the gig economy, and an idiotic idea about abandoning real money altogether and shifting purely to electronic.

If you get hacked or your bank goes down, it’s a pain in the arse. If you get that problem when physical money doesn’t exist, how are you going to pay for little luxuries, like catching a bus/train to work, paying for petrol or food? You can’t spend twenty pound notes when paper money isn’t legal tender any more.

Then there’s the control aspect again. Every time you spend, it’ll be logged. The time and location will be known. Perhaps more importantly, tax can be automatically deducted at source (this would be VAT [sales tax] in the UK). But the individual and the state aren’t the only players. Spending money this way requires a third party, perhaps a bank or an online cash-handling firm. They’ll take a slice. Maybe 0.5%. Maybe 2%. After all, they need to make enough to keep in business. If all their prices go up, what’s your option? You can’t go to cash because it doesn’t exist any more.

As mentioned to me on Chrons by Vladd67, this article is well worth a look. It’s about what’s happening in Sweden right now: https://www.techspot.com/news/77555-cash-has-almost-gone-extinct-sweden.html

“Digital currency is far more profitable for banks, as they get to profit from the fees attached to debit cards, credit cards and Sweden’s bank-developed payment app, Swish.”

“Sweden is also at the forefront of exciting new digital payment technologies, including microchips that have been implanted into 4000 peoples’ hands, enabling them to pay via high-five.”

Maybe you consider that ‘exciting’. I think it’s a dystopian nightmare.

Abolishing cash is a demented idea. People are sometimes so focused on what’s technologically possible they fail to consider the negative implications. Just because you could do something doesn’t mean you should do something, to paraphrase Jeff Goldblum.

Digital ‘goods’ and money are sold on convenience, but the cost is higher prices and loss of control. Don’t fall for the glib promises of a brave new world. It’s all about sucking the money out of your wallet, then burning your wallet so in the future you don’t even know how much they’ve gouged.

Thaddeus

Why moving to digital only is a Bad Thing: part 1 - Games

I’ve heard rumours on the interweb that Microsoft are thinking of having the next Xbox Random Number return to something that was slammed on the XBone: digital only media. As asserted by LoadingReadyRun’s Checkpoint, which reports such matters with a delightful mixture of competence, fairness, and humour and is well worth checking out, the world has moved on quite a bit. It’s entirely possible this approach will get little censure next time.

Got to say, I’m 100% against a shift to all-digital media. It’s part of changing games from being products to services, and in line with the madness of some who want to abolish physical money and only have it electronically.

Why Abandoning Physical Games is Bad for Gamers

I hang onto my old consoles. Planning on dusting off the PS2 and returning to some old favourites fairly soon, actually. With a physical copy, you can install or remove the increasingly large game download as much as you like, without worrying about it becoming defunct. You can give it to a friend, swap it with someone, or sell it second hand [NB I may be doing this with some books/games in the New Year so keep an eye out]. You cannot do this with a digital only copy.

But maybe that’s a small price to pay for the convenience of digital gaming. Assuming you don’t use your credit card only to have the details stolen, of course. Then it’s a large price to pay.

Browsing the Playstation store (I’ve got a PS4), it’s clear that the price of games there is higher than buying actual physical copies, possibly excepting pre-order periods and the first few weeks of a game’s release. There’s no gradual, natural decline as initial hype fades and shops want to get rid of their stock and reduce prices accordingly. The digital shop has zero physical space requirements and infinite stock. So the price stays high forever. Why would it decline?

And if everything goes digital, that will become industry-wide. Sure, you’ll be able to pirate games, as now, but those of us who don’t want to become criminals will be faced with the prospect of selling our kidneys to fund our increasingly expensive habit or going without Battle Royale: Money Gouger 3.

A related but different note is the move to microtransactions. I thought Fallout 4 was ok. It did make missteps. One of them was making settlement building so frequent. I liked the system itself but I didn’t need dozens of places. I also didn’t need basic items like a weapon rack hidden behind a paywall. If I’ve spent £40 on a videogame I don’t expect something basic like that to be ‘extra’ DLC.

Dead or Alive, the frisky fighting franchise, makes rather a lot from DLC of fruity outfits for characters, perhaps even more than from actual game sales. Similarly, there’s a push for microtransactions with lots of other videogames, whether that’s cosmetic silliness or pay-to-win Satanism. Sometimes this comes from games that seem to have no business having them at all (yes, Shadow of War, I’m looking at you, you greedy little grease princess).

There are great aspects to electronic cash and products. Delivery is faster than waiting for post. You don’t need shelf-space for countless games. But there are major downsides too. The price of games won’t ever fall. Spending physical money and electronic money feels different. It’s easier to get someone to spend numbers on a screen than it is to hand over pound coins (even the dreadful new pound coins that look atrocious). I’m not opposing digital versions of games, but I’m absolutely opposing the wholesale abandonment of physical games. Digital means you get convenience at a cost in money and control. If you’re happy to make that choice, cool. 

But if that’s your only option, it’s not a choice at all, just a mandatory move to line the pockets of companies at the expense of consumers.

In part 2, up in a few days, I’ll take a wider look at money and the desire of some to abolish physical currency in favour of a purely electronic system.

Thaddeus

Guest post: Authors Navigating Instagram - Hashtags, Sister Apps, and Best Practices, by Jo Michaels

Happy Friday! Jo Michaels here. Before I get going with my guest post, I’d like to take a moment to give Thaddeus a huge shout of thanks for having me on his blog. It’s such an honor to be here and be allowed to share all the things with you. Okay, that done, let’s get into why I’m here in the first place. Today, I’m talking Instagram. We’ll go over some sister apps and why you need them, where to get your hashtags and why they matter, and best practices. Ready? Grab those pens and notebooks, and let’s get going!

If you’re not familiar with Instagram, I urge you to check it out. Unlike Facebook or Twitter, where posts with text are the most important forms of updates, Instagram allows people to communicate via pictures—and images are a universal language. To get the app, go here for Android devices and here for Apple.

Let’s start with the hashtags. There is no other social media site where hashtags are more important (not even Twitter). Instagrammers click photos they like and then through to the hashtag to fill their feed with similar photos or specific user types. Here’s an interesting post on how many hashtags you should use and why. To find the ones that are trending highest, you’ll see a link there that’ll guide you to this site. There, you can actually perform a search on a specific topic to gain insight on which hashtags are the best for your image/user account type (author, artist, photographer, etc…) and gain followers that way.

Sister apps you’ll want to have(I’ll explain why in a moment): Layout Android devices can grab it here Apple devices here and Hyperlapse (not yet available on Android) Apple devices can get this here. 

Why you need those apps: Instagram allows you to post a single photo from your phone or device’s camera roll, with Layout, you can collage more than one image to make a single post photo you can then put in your feed. Pretty cool, huh? Instagram also lets you post fifteen second videos to your timeline, and this is where Hyperlapse comes in. It can do slow motion films and other cool things to feed your page with content.

Speaking of content, let’s get to best practices, shall we? Instagram is all about the visuals, and people are hungry for them.

• You should typically post at least once a day (I totally fail at this). Every time you log on, take a look at your feed on the home screen. You’ll notice how massively and quickly it updates. Your pictures will get buried rather quickly if you don’t post them often.
• Don’t repeat a lot of the same content. People like fresh and new; keep your account’s feed fresh and new.
• Follow others! Everyone likes to network with the folks in their circles. Grow yours.
• Take part in monthly challenges. In February, there was the #AuthorLifeMonth challenge. I gained a number of new followers, and I got to know more writers (expanded my circle).
• Comment. Leave messages for others! It’s just good manners.
• Click the little heart icon when you really like something. This pushes the image to the trending (when you click on a hashtag, the first ten images or so that pop up) section of the hashtag’s feed, and it’s not difficult to do.

If you’re wanting to sell on Instagram, here’s a post that’ll help you with that.

Now, as a last word, let me throw this out there: Facebook bought Instagram a while back, and you can now set your ad to be placed over there, too. Double the marketing! Food for thought. *grin*

I hope you all learned something useful from me today. I had fun putting this together.

If you’d like to give me a follow on my blog, where I often post tips like the ones above, you can find me at http://jomichaels.blogspot.com

Thanks for reading, and thanks again to Thaddeus for having me over to entertain you!

Any questions? If so, pop them in the comments, and I’ll be around to answer.

Well, that’s all for today, folks! Until next time, WRITE ON!

Jo

Console Wars: and the loser is…

A new console generation is more or less upon us. Ho hum.

Here’s a quick rundown of the state of play, which is mostly a list of console-makers getting things wrong:

Nintendo

The Wii-U has been out for a while, but has several issues. Firstly, the marketing was rubbish and almost nobody realises it’s actually a new console, not just a Wii with an extra letter at the end.

Perhaps because nobody noticed it (and it has correspondingly poor sales) fewer developers are making games for it, which has the obvious knock-on effect of making people less likely to buy it. EA did say, a year or two ago, that they would have an unprecedented approach to making games for the Wii-U, although at present ‘unprecedented’ appears to mean they’re not making any.

Sony

The PS4 is out later this year, probably, and Sony has probably cocked up the least of the consoles. Yes, there’s a stupid ‘share’ button because firms seem to think that everybody both has Facebook/Twitter and wants to share their experiences of gaming on such social media, but that’s mostly it.

There’s no backwards compatibility, which is rubbish, and also perplexing. If consoles were consistently backwards compatible it would really help Sony or Microsoft to keep people hooked into their systems, because you’d have a massive back catalogue of games and you’d be able to play them on a new console, preventing the ridiculous situation of either throwing out your old consoles/games or having an ever-increasing number of consoles.

This isn’t a Sony-only problem, but it is the biggest mistake they’ve made. (So far. They haven’t revealed the console itself, but it’d be surprising if it were wildly different in size than recent consoles).

Xbox

They’ve made some very brave decisions. First off, no backwards compatibility. This is rubbish, but as the PS4 is the same that’s not going to shift or shed sales either way.

The name Xbox One is stupid. How do you go from Xbox to Xbox 360 to Xbox One? Not serious, just innumerate.

Then there’s the always-online rumour. That turned out to be false, but only just. Xbox One as a console won’t need to be constantly online to function, but games-makers can make their individual games work that way. Depressingly, Microsoft has stated it will ‘encourage’ them to do so. Apparently the firm thinks many users actually want this. It would be fascinating to know if this is plain old bullshit or whether the upper echelons of the organisation are so far removed from reality they actually think that’s the case.

So, some games will need a constant internet connection, and some won’t. It’s hard to see how the percentages will stack up either way, but it’s immensely stupid and counter-productive. If you live somewhere with an imperfect internet connection this can and will bugger up your games, if you’re a big Xbox fan. If you live somewhere with no internet connection (*gasp!*) you might as well not bother. You can either play on Xbox with a limited range of games, or play on the PS4.

Bad news, poor people. Lots of people, realising that certain games are destined for massive sales and a fairly rapid price drop, deliberately avoid buying them at release. They then wait a few months, maybe a year, and buy the same game for half the price. It’s a clever and simple strategy if you’re a gamer but not a very wealthy one. This hasn’t been completely confirmed, but the rumour mill is now suggesting that there could be a fee for pre-owned games.

The story is this: games can be run without a disc by installing the whole game to the hard drive. Except, this means individuals could band together, have one member buy a given game, and then share it around so everyone can install it. (Of course, you could stick to the old system whereby you need a disc to play the game… but never mind). So, they’ll tie each individual game to each individual console/hard drive.

If the disc is attempted to be used on a different account (NB in the same console as the first or a different one) then a fee may be charged. Obviously, clarity on this issue is needed, but the very fact fees for pre-owned games are being discussed is not good publicity for Microsoft. “Too poor to spend £40 at release? Then we’ll charge you a fee for buying a cheap pre-owned game! Mwahahaha!”

Oh, and apparently the Kinect camera will always be on.

Now, the Xbox One will apparently have some new options regarding TV-streaming or the like. But guess what? I don’t need that. I already have a television. The ability to watch TV on my TV is not something I need a console for.

Maybe that would appeal to people who are very casual gamers and like integrated systems, but given the intensely stupid game-related decisions I think the people happiest with this reveal will be Sony. By dint of only making one idiotic choice (no backwards compatibility) the PS4 is already well ahead of the Xbox One.

And here’s a telling piece of info. Since the Xbox reveal Microsoft’s share price was down half a percent. Sony’s was up 9%.

Thaddeus

Communications technology

I’m not an old man. I don’t wear slippers, I don’t need a walking stick, and I don’t get a free bus pass. But when I was a lad, mobile phones were essentially still the preserve of Star Trek: The Original Series. You’d go into town to meet someone, and if they or you were unable to get there, you’d wait around for a bit and eventually leave.

That’s in the very recent past, but technology really has revolutionised the way we communicate. I still don’t have a mobile (I’m not a fan of phones), but recognise that mobiles, e-mail, blogs, social networks and twitter have fundamentally altered the way people communicate.

This does allow for a lot of inaccurate rumour-mongering and idle gossip. However, it also has been a great leap forward for freedom of expression and has changed forever human behaviour and the possibilities available to organisations and individuals.

We can now, if so minded, read what celebrities or even politicians are thinking on twitter. Not my cup of tea, but twitter was one of the means of communication used during the unsuccessful protests in Iran some time ago and the very recent successful Egyptian ousting of Mubarak.

Information, including music and books, can now be sent from almost anywhere to almost anywhere. The net and similar technologies are used by terrorists, friends, journalists and revolutionaries.

There are problems. As well as gossiping, there’s the rather more serious problem of slanderous and vile smearing of individuals or groups (I had an excellent example in mind, but don’t want to repeat it and spread the filth).

Easy sharing of data files was a problem for the music industry for a long time, and still is to an extent. It remains to be seen whether e-books will prove liberating for authors or simply allow their creations to be stolen and shared without appropriate remuneration.

Interestingly, despite the furious pace of communications technology development, it is not an entirely one way street. Vinyl is the prime example of this. It’s outdated, inefficient and still sought after. In the same way, I think e-books will flourish but real books will survive. I hope so, anyway.

I do intend to get a Kindle at some point. Unfortunately, procrastinating is one of my few real talents. I’m intrigued at the prospect of a screen that’s easy to read, the free (though limited, I think) access to the net and getting books almost instantly.

Twitter and other websites and technologies have played a role in the recent uprisings that have affected, and continue to affect, north Africa and the Middle East. Proof, were it needed, that the pen is still mightier than the sword.

Thaddeus