The other day I was thinking about the beginnings of mainstream computing ... brought on no doubt by my 'rediscovery' of such classic games as SWIV - 3D, Carmageddon, DOOM and Quake. My work on the Website necessitated the dusting off of these games. It's a tough job, but someone's got to do it :-)

We have now had computers in the mainstream for what, 20 years? Still, in all of that time, one word sticks out a mile: "incompatibility". Take for example a recent one: RSS feeds. Six or seven different standards. One group goes working on it, part of the group reckons it has the goods on the technology, so what do they do? - yes, fragment.

Often times greed is behind lack of compatibility / standards everywhere. How many true standards are there in computing? - not many. Perhaps the web itself, at the core level, but before long you realise that that too is riddled with glitches as soon as you pass the basics.

My work this past 6 months or so on my various websites has always been like taking a sledgehammer to square pegs, trying to fit them into round holes. Many things have been promised with the advent of Web 2.0. I will need some convincing for all of the above reasons.

Bloatware - will it ever end?!

I'm sitting here trying to install Nero Express disc - burning software, which came with my LG CD / DVD Multiwriter. First off, I have to install 'SecureDisc viewer' before I can do anything. I hate installing stuff just to do with one program, but hey, it's German and they do these things. I'm trying to avoid installing a huge suite, all I want to do is record CD's / DVD's. What it installed last time was huge! Is anything simple any more?

I just finished installing Pinnacle Studio 8, which comes on 2 CD's. It's 2004 vintage, and takes up all of about 386 mb. on the hard drive. It does everything well. A couple of years later I invested in Pinnacle Studio 9, then 10 ... I haven't bothered with 11 or the recently released 12. The reasons are simple. They are approximately 10 times bigger than Studio 8. Somehow Pinnacle managed to go from 400 meg to 4 gigabytes in a few years, with about 30% greater functionality, give or take.

In other words, it's got 10 times bigger but not 10 times better, or 10 times more functional. As I am reistalling everything ( my computer needed a clean 'sweep' of the drive ) every disc I pick up sends a shiver down my spine. Office 2003? Massive. What do I want to do? - write letters. I use it for nothing else. Why does it take 100's of megabytes to do what ran on a mid 1980's 8088 machine?

The more I look at all this bloated stuff, the more I am liking shareware. I plan to investigate it further, because I don't want my Hard drive crammed with programs designed so that I only ever use 5% of what they offer.

The continuing scandal that 'Ebay' has become

Back in October last year I purchased two items from an Ebay 'Power Seller' in the U.K. I duly sent off payment a few days later. In Ireland PayPal - an Ebay 'service' - falsely advertise that a debit card can be used on their accounts. Not so. If you don't have a credit card, no PayPal. Kind of makes you wonder "why bother with PayPal at all?"! For this reason I had to pay the old fashioned way - by post.

After a couple of weeks the seller opened an 'unpaid item' dispute. Following my assurance that the payment was sent, about a week further on I got suspicious. I decided to check with the post office ( I sent it registered ) and sure enough, I discover that it was delivered but no one was home to sign for it! The seller then goes "oh well, I was on holidays. It's not my problem".

Sensing that I was not happy, she then left two unpaid strikes on my account. I eventually got these removed. In the meantime this odd seller went and collected my payment and sent it back to me, unopened. I left her negative feedback, but ebay promptly removed it. Doesn't say much for Ebay does it?

Ebay was a great resource, but they've gone 'Hollywood' and will, I have no doubt, trip over their success. Remember a time when everything was 'go on Amazon'? Then Ebay got really big. People are just as likely to try Ebay as Amazon for books etc. now. I would not be the first one to say this, but Ebay are doing a shake - down of smaller buyers and sellers.

Along with the banning of 99p 'Buy it now' listings on the U.K. site, the change to feedback rules for sellers ( who can no longer leave negative feedback ) and the obvious contempt for smaller buyers will backfire.

Ebay should see themselves as having a duty to warn other buyers of someone who messed me about like this woman did by allowing negative feedback to stand. Clearly the only thing that's in their hearts is money.

In the future Ebay will become less and less relevant: Power - seller junkstores and high priced 'Buy it now' sellers will become the norm. And guess what? - that's the death of everything which made Ebay special. My exprience has been stomach - churning.

In fact it is a small step away from Ebay being complicit in fraudulent activity. They can wave goodbye to my custom. I have about 87 transactions completed in 2 years on it ( 100% positive feedback ). What Ebay are too dumb to notice is the value of the items I purchased: in almost every case, high.

Hurry up Google, and set up a better service!

Not so Cuil at all ...

I remembered listening to the radio one morning many months ago ... semi - conscious. I heard something that woke me up in hurry though: Cuil had apparently got more hits than Google! As they say, 'wtf?'!

I can only assume that this referenced the novelty factor, and I can also only assume that this lasted for about 90 seconds. Feeling adventurous as I have lately ( what with trying Google chrome and all that ) I decided to give Cuil, as we say in Ireland, " a lash " ( em, try it out ).

Such rubbish! My own website showed up as "account suspended"! Okay, there was a billing error and my site - www.deadpc.net - was offline for all of 6 days. That was about two months ago. Google returned the same result - up until about 7 weeks ago. Cuil has still not twigged that it is back!

My knowledge of Cuil is patchy, but it seems that they are ramping up the 'massive database' aspect of the thing. Well, the bottom line is that it doesn't work. According to Cuil, or at least during the short while I spent on it - I don't exist. That's funny, because Google returns about 20 results, the first one being a lesbo feminist giving out about me.

I like the excitement of something new and quirky, but I don't like the excitement of stuff that is new and quirky and doesn't work. What a flop!

Dell: Job losses in 2009

It happens every year, around this time ( or at least it has for the past few years ). Yes, Dell have announced - oh sorry, they haven't - that they are pulling out of Ireland. Actually the 'Wall Street Journal' set the ball rolling late last year, when they stated that Dell would wind up it's Irish operation in 2009.

Since then the Irish media / politicians / workers have been asking loads of questions but getting no answers. As for the politicians, some of our finest ( ie: not very fine ) even went to the trouble of going to Texas recently to talk to Dell. Whether they managed to fit in some pre - Christmas shopping or not can not be confirmed at this time.

Dell just keep saying the same thing publicly: "We constantly review our operations ( blah blah blah )". The latest interesting take on this non - episode episode is that 'senoir business figures' have come together in Limerick - the territory in which the main ( threatened / not threatened? ) plant is situated, and devised a plan for 'local outsourcing' to save the 2,000 jobs at stake ( or not at stake? ).

Now I am no whizz on outsourcing, but I fail to see how the nice peeps of Limerick in Ireland can compete with Warsaw - or Bangalore. In fact Dell have been telling us how much they love us for the past 2 years while they build a gi - normous plant in Poland. All that construction was just a coincidence! After all, Limerick is the "Jewel of our European Operations", according to Dell.

Who knows what's going on, or how this will pan out in the long run. One can only look to the past few years, and what has happened then. A lot of innuendo comes from Dell, the IDA ( Industrial Development Authority ) get involved, and the whole threat goes away. And it usually happens around Christmas. Let's hope that if the IDA strike another sweet deal that they will not tell us all "the terms are none of your business" like they did the last time.

No one screws quite like Dell!