Brief explanation of the advantages to be gained by replacing country and province flags with barcodes

The first of the myriad of advantages to take up this idea is the fact that barcodes are machine readable. This would result in near instantaneous recognition of the origin of a person holing a flag, in addition to the fact that a log can be kept of all the flags that have been scanned. Think of all the embarrassment that could be saved at international sporting events, such as the Olympics of people not knowing which flag came from which country. All they would have need to do would be to whip out their barcode scanner on their key ring (or any other easily accessible location), and scan the flag that they were holding.

Secondly, we would immediately be able to discern countries with terrible mathematics skills, because of their ability or lack of in to calculate the check digit. The check digit for those that don’t know is the digit at the end of a barcode that is related to the remaining numbers in the code.  It is used to reduce reading errors.  The check digit is calculated by manipulating the preceding numbers in the sequence, for instance adding every second number and then dividing by 100. If the check digit for a flag was wrong due to the countries inability to perform basic calculations, not only would it be immediately apparent to the rest of the world that they lack numerate ability greater than that required to count fingers, but it would also render their flag unreadable.  This would ensure that they didn’t meddle in world affairs, because any time that they presented themselves, – for example; the twin flags flying at the front of a diplomat’s car- they would be rejected as unintelligible data. As you can see it’s a win-win situation

A third advantage is that these flags would replace unwieldy national anthems such as those that mention “crushing rebellious Scots” (British anthem). Imagine if you would, the entire ‘British’ football team resting on their knuckles in the centre of Wembley stadium at the beginning of the world cup final; a proud smile on each of their disfigured, faces as the modern beats of a rejuvenated anthem come spilling out of the archaic PA system.

“Thin line, thick line, double white. Two strips, one strip, all equal height”

I think that you will agree with me that that would be a glorious sight.

Why I hate Vista

Yes I know, this seems to be turning into a let’s-get-get-vista blog (which I promised myself it wouldn’t)…
but reading another recent blog post has prompted me to do this. Shouldn’t be too hard to find out who, considering I only read two blog posts and they are both WARP radio members. More info on WARP radio coming soon. I actually wanted to write a small section like this at the end of the last post but I just couldn’t be bothered.

So lets get to it, MY few real reasons for hating Windows Vista

1. The search feature does NOT work.
This is one of my main problems with this OS, and is also the one that i get caught up with the most, while arguing on this topic. What is the problem with the search feature? Well, in order to ’speed up’ searching, it only searches for indexed items. The main problem with the Vista index is that extensions that are not recognized by the OS are not present. Meaning that if the file you want to search for is not written into the registry, is can’t be found. This situation doesn’t seem like it may happen much, but it is surprisingly common. Imagine you install a program and them later remove it. Some of those program files may still remain on your system and they are impossible to remove if they cant be found. The only fix for this problem that I have come across is to go to the index configuration file and add the extensions as you need them. This is by no means a reasonable solution, rather a workaround.
Having said that, there is a way to turn off indexing, but as is the continual theme of Vista, it just doesn’t work. Surely for a multi-billion dollar company, it wouldn’t be too hard to develop a feature to actually search the contents of my drive for a particular item.
What would i do if it were my job to fix this? I would allow index searching to be optional, and either index the entire drive, or none of it. this would result in a search feature that actually found files when you were looking for.

2. Audio is rubbish
The audio module of windows Vista has been moved out of the kernel (the main part of the OS). This means that the audio will not be rendered properly if the processor has anything else to do. Think listening to a high quality audio broadcast on a dial-up connection. This oversight is compounded by the fact that most of the processor power is wasted since every window writes its contents to the aero glass feature so that it can look all nice and shiny.

3. Start menu is difficult to use
The start menu has changed substantially, and the tree structure that everyone has become used to has now disappeared, as has the ability to see all of your programs at once. This has resulted in a mess rather than a selection menu, and most times the only solution is to use the search feature. Yes you heard that correctly. The search feature. the one that doesn’t work. Microsoft, I beg you to integrate a start menu that displays the tree structure that we use to save our files in the first place

4. The file structure is terrible
I will clarify the point slightly before i talk on it in more detail. In windows Vista, it is generally impossible to navigate from one place to another. For example I challenge you to get from Documents to My Computer without opening a new window, or manually typing it in. On XP this would have taken a MAXIMUM of 5 clicks, wheres on Visa it is an impossible task.

5. UAC
UAC (User Account Control) is the bane of all windows Vista users. It was designed to protect stupid users from deleting windows files, but its main use seems to be annoying the average user by not allowing them to perform simple diagnostic tasks. If you dare to turn off this constant barrage of communist prohibition, you will be badgered by an onslaught of notices and pop ups demanding that you turn it back on.

6. Features are hidden
This further cements my suspicions that Vista was not designed to be changed. All features that a slightly advanced user may ne interested in are cloaked under a cornucopia of menus and sub menus.

7. You HAVE to use it
Yes Microsoft has invested even more money in ensuring that everybody uses Vista. In addition to the fact that they are using their monopoly to foist the OEM versions upon equipment manufacturers, there are also electro-mechanical devices that have been employed to prevent the re-installation of an operating system. I think Microsoft should allow users to make the choice on which software they would like to use.
And there they are. The few things that make me loath this piece of software. However I don’t regard it a complete write off. There are a few features that I like.

1. The sound mixer is based on applications rather than sound sources.(ie wave, line in, etc). What would be nice however was if there was a way of switching between the two modes. Or an app that could be downloaded that would integrate the two seamlessly. Panning between left and right speakers is also strangely absent, requiring users go to their sund card driver application screens to do this.

2. Search is integrated into the explorer windows. What would be great was if the search actually worked.

3. The new resource monitor that allows me to see EVERYTHING that my PC is up to in real time.

4. Ad-hoc wireless network support.

In conclusion windows vista isn’t a complete write off, but more an experiment. Lets hope windows 7 is more stable and devoid any of the annoying features that have become part and parcel of windows Vista

Microsoft Launches Vista PR Campaign (again)

Straight in the deep end with my first blog entry

Microsoft has seemingly started their ‘love Vista’ campaign, with the release of this website.

For those of you that haven’t clicked on the link (and I don’t blame you), the experiment involves targeting users that have never used Vista and telling them that the what there are seeing is an upcoming operating system, Windows Mojave. After some heavily edited footage of the guinea pigs marveling at how brilliant the operating system is; it is then revealed to them that this Windows Mojave is actually  Vista.  Cut to stunned look on guinea pig’s face. “Really!?”. So what is wrong with this you may ask. Maybe vista isn’t so bad after all. Well I’ll tell you…

First of all this is an indication of how Microsoft as a company is spending less money developing their products, and more money on ‘important’ things like hiring PR staff. (It used to be lawyers.) These spin doctors are adept at hiding the negative things, and exaggerating the few good points.

Secondly, this is obviously just an attempt to make the best of a bad situation. Windows Vista was IS terrible. I can say that as someone that has the misfortune of using it as my primary OS. The bottom line of the Mojave experiment was ‘try it for yourself’. A very sneaky move. The whole campaign is obviously aimed directly the less technically minded, and it is these kind of people that are susceptible fall prey to the ‘try it and see’ mentality that Microsoft are attempting to poison peoples minds with.

Thirdly, I personally doubt the fair handedness of the adverts. While it is obvious that any company would try to show themselves in their best light, I remain suspicious that the reviews that were shown weren’t at all exagerated (or even fabricated).