Oli's blog

rant

Product placement gone wild

Tuesday, 17 June 2008filmrantsony

Films and TV need money to cover their extravagant budgets but is product placement the right way to cover those funds?

So you’re thinking of writing a comment…

Thursday, 17 April 2008rant

Then please read this before you do. English is a seriously complex language, something too many of us take for granted. While modern browsers can help us with our spelling, they do little for grammar. Read this post to boost your grammatical karma and avoid my wrath.

digg’s friend feature is a complete debacle

Saturday, 1 March 2008diggrant

Many aeons ago, digg added a social aspect to their news site: friends. Hailing it as a new way to find news at a more personal level, it was seen as a good way to follow your favourite diggers. Now there’s a new game for would-be spammers: add whoever you can and shout your crappy submissions at them.

The cruel joke: Seagate RMAs

Wednesday, 30 January 2008hdrantrma

Last year while moving to Linux, one of my 300gig disks from the just-broken-up RAID5 array decided it was time to call it a day and died. It’s within warranty but that doesn’t mean that much when the support is run by Seagate.

Zookoda’s mother was a hamster!

Friday, 25 January 2008emailrant

Zookoda, the RSS to email republishers have been spamming me since a newsletter I was subscribed to closed down. I’ve complained several times yet the junk keeps coming. Not on my watch.

Is all charity good?

Thursday, 15 November 2007charityrant

In light of some of the feedback surrounding my last post, I address the core problem I see with good causes like FreeRice, namely that they don’t do nearly as much good as they could and probably harm other charitable causes.

Is FreeRice.com making $150k each day in profits?

Monday, 12 November 2007charityrant

FreeRice.com is a site that tries to educate and feed the world at the same time, but just taking a quick look at their figures shows there is a massive potential of earning money from this "philanthropic" gesture. Just how much is the owner keeping?

Murphy’s Law

Saturday, 10 November 2007raidrant

If something adverse can happen, chances are it will, just to spite you. I’ve just had my first hard drive crash in years and it waited until just after I dismantled my RAID5 array. Just perfect. Strong and colourful language in this post.

Apple needs to respect its users

Friday, 28 September 2007appleiphonerant

They warned you but Apple decided to follow through and give those iPhone enthusiasts exactly what they wanted: shiny, bricked iPhones. Well done Apple. Way to meet the needs of your customers.

Spinning the figures

Saturday, 22 September 2007rantstatistics

Stats are a tricky thing. When you’re trying to push an argument and you have raw statistics by your side, it’s usually very easy to feed them to your audience in a fashion that misrepresents them. Using that as a base you can form conclusions varying from just misguided to outright lies…

O2: Unlimited means less than 35megs

Wednesday, 19 September 2007o2rant

Another day, another "unlimited" claim. This time from the mouth of O2’s CEO regarding their new "unlimited" data plans. What he didn’t tell people at the iPhone unveiling is that unlimited actually means just 35megs. Spot the difference.

MPEGs cause Vista’s Explorer to crash

Sunday, 2 September 2007crashrantwindows

Video: watch a simple download crash explorer over and over again. This really reminds me how feeble the underlying systems are in Windows.

ADSL is holding back the online economy

Thursday, 16 August 2007internetiptvrant

While the internet continues to grow in both size and complexity, the speed that rural ADSL users are almost completely stagnant. Something needs to be done before the gap between urban and rural ADSL harms the online economy.

An executive at Microsoft has an unusual idea

Saturday, 4 August 2007kittenauthrant

I really wish that reporters would get their facts straight before they publish articles… Especially when the core idea behind the subject is my own little brainchild.

The Dvorak Bubble is about to burst

Thursday, 2 August 2007rant

Dvorak is a complete nonce. I mean that in the kindest possible way because sometimes he’s hilarious to listen ranting on and occasionally I happen to agree with him but now he’s predicting the second downfall of the Internet…

Apple fans why can’t you just be happy?

Friday, 1 June 2007appledrmrant

After Apple introduces DRM-free tracks into iTunes people are getting in a hissy after they found out their personal information is injected into bought tracks

PCLinuxOS’s militant leadership

Wednesday, 23 May 2007linuxrant

As a reviewer, I expect people to disagree with points I make. Everybody has their own opinion. But is it okay when the project leader of a maturing Linux distribution calls on his users to "hammer" a site because of its outcome?

Stop hacking my server!

Saturday, 28 April 2007rant

Oli gets mad as hackers converge on his server… But the problem is none of them have a brain cell between them. Sigh…

Is 9rules the new Ebaum’s World?

Wednesday, 18 April 20079rulesrant

Stop the server abuse!

Thursday, 12 April 2007javascriptrantwebdev

Have a look at the silly things IconBuffet are doing.

I’m a Windows enthusiast

Wednesday, 28 February 2007rantwindows

Dear Browser Makers

Wednesday, 21 February 2007rant

Movie producers don’t understand piracy

Saturday, 17 February 2007piracyrant

One reason all XP users should upgrade to Vista

Friday, 16 February 2007rant

Gripe 802: Background Images

Monday, 12 February 2007accessibilityrantwebdev