PushingJelly

Ok, yes I am pro Apple and Anti Microsoft, but there are times when even I am aghast at the Redmond giant’s anti competitive behaviour.

Exhibit A. Microsoft’s new “flash killer”, which they are currently giving away in beta, a laudable endeavour however no-one has seemed to notice that although there are player plug-ins for Mac OS X, content creation tools are squarely a Windows only affair. This is obviously an attempt to kill flash but with the hidden agenda to muscle in to the creative space at Apple’s expense.

…..(75 million years ago to be more precise) there was an alien galactic ruler named Xenu. Xenu was in charge of all the planets in this part of the galaxy including our own planet Earth, except in those days it was called Teegeeack.

oh give me a break: http://www.xenu.net/archive/leaflet/xenuleaf.htm

If it didn’t affect people’s lives so badly, I would find it laughable, but it isn’t funny at all.

Well, I have just watched the BBC Panorama programme on the scientology organisation. The bit when Sweeny does his pieces, well it ‘aint pretty. You have to sympathise with the guy however. The “spokes person”, Tommy Davis is in his face continually for what looks like days, the crew are being followed all the time and blatantly (funny bit when he gets out and taps on the window of the guy in the Sedona, the wally in the car didn’t know where to look).
At the end of the day (whether they like it or not) they are a “brainwashing cult” who use NLP techniques to persuade their followers and bullying tactics to persicute anyone who disagrees with their opinions and methods.
They are a fantastically rich corporation funded by donations not only of money but intellectual property who keep tight control of their copyrighted doctorines, so much so that they were instrumental to the ratification of the DCMA .
The organisation was founded by a known confidence trickster who wrote science fiction stories and who is quoted as saying “the best way to make a million dollars is to start your own religion”, although they now refute this by frightening off the two living members of the audience of the meeting where he said it.
I guess they have as much right to call their organisation a religion as anyone else, arn’t all religions based on the words of men serving their own best interests and not divine deities as most profess.
The rest is just history and timing, unlike most organised religions, scientology was set-up last century instead of thousands of years ago.
As to it not being a cult, well aren’t all religions cults? Christianity was 1900 years ago, just as Judaism was further back.

Perhaps it is a sign of getting old, but I seem to be growing increasingly intolerant of the way we as consumers are treated.

We took my two kids and one of his friends to Thorpe Park recently for my son’s birthday, the tickets (even with discounts) are not inexpensive and with the concessions during the day, petrol etc., we must of spent over £200. It isn’t something that we do often and he didn’t really have any other present so it’s a little excessive but OK.
We haven’t been to Thorpe park for years and it has changed a lot since we last went so after looking around for a map and not finding one, we decided to buy one.
For 50p I expected a programme of some kind with at least several pages and a cover. Instead I was handed a single sheet of A5, printed with the map on one side and an advert on the other. What a rip off, this is the sort of thing that we should be given with our tickets not sold.

Today we went to the pictures to see SpiderMan 3. Again, the tickets were quite expensive, the popcorn doubly so (£6 for 4 medium popcorns), we had to queue to get in to the cinema and there was the melee to get a seat because the American owned cinema that bullied in to our local shopping centre has abolished ticketed seating so it is first come first served.
When we took our seats we waited 25 minutes sitting through a projected slideshow of still adverts, then another 40 minutes of moving adverts and 20 minutes of trailers before the film started.
It is pure greed that they subject a captive paying audience to pre-roll advertising, they know that cancelling the ticketed seating makes people take and keep their seats and watch the ads. It is manipulative and conniving. If there was one reason to pirate movies and watch at home it is pre-roll advertising.
And they wonder why cinema attendance is down.

Hmmm, ,Mac is down doe maintenance at the moment.

Changes afoot perhaps?