Journal Entries
Bought a telescope at long last.
Posted Mar 4, 2008
It's a cheap one, a Tasco, but it's a reflector. They guy who was selling it wanted £40 but he didn't have a clue about telescopes because he didn't notice that the eyepieces were missing. I pointed out that they were and that I wanted a tenner off the price. Which he accepted.
Thing is, Tasco eyepieces are crap. So I ended up geting money knocked off for something that wasn't a great loss anyway.
Hopefully I should have a nice clear night tonight.
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Latest reply: Mar 4, 2008
The banality of evil
Posted Mar 1, 2008
I think it was Gitta Sereny who coined this phrase when writing about Adolf Eichman. Lately, I thought of it when I read about this crime:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/wear/7270808.stm
They killed a naive and helpless man simply because they thought they were better than he was. The ringleader said 'I'm not going down for a muppet'. But I suppose when one is stupid, violent and sadistic, it's especially necessary to have someone to look down on.
After having read seemingly every day about murders like this, it constantly challenges my opposition to the death penalty. There has to be *some* deterrent that morons can relate to.
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Latest reply: Mar 1, 2008
A bloody good idea
Posted Mar 1, 2008
eBay is banning negative seller comments:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7228460.stm
I had a bad experience with eBay. A computer games dealer advertised a game as the DVD edition when in fact it was the inferior CD edition. I got pissed off at receiving this, especially since I had contacted him to determine whether it was the DVD edition beforehand and he ignored my message. So I left negative feedback, and got a whole load of retaliatory negative feedback myself calling me an 'idiot' and a 'timewaster'. This tended to put me off the experience of buying on there.
Trawling through his feedback I noticed that this was a common tactic of his: ignore emails and wrongly advertise goods and then when the negatives came back to get into a slanging match with his customers in the hope that the customer would withdraw the feedback: there were a lot of mutually withdrawn comments. I decided not to play this game. I'm glad I stuck to my guns because with any luck eBay's new policy will be restrospectively applied as well. And that shyster's ratings will start to plummet.
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Latest reply: Mar 1, 2008
Feb 29th
Posted Feb 29, 2008
Mrs Monk proposed to me tonight after 15 years of cohabitation. I accepted!
Discuss this Journal entry [8]
Latest reply: Feb 29, 2008
Why are DVD's regionalised?
Posted Feb 12, 2008
I bought a new DVD player/recorder the other day. I've had my existing DVD player for about 5 years I reckon: it was a multi-region player but I have bought ONE non-UK DVD during that period, so I thought that multi-region capability was superfluous to all intents and purposes.
I'm not sure if I understand why DVDs are regionalised. I think the argument goes something like this. If they weren't regionalised, then as soon as a film got released in the US then not long afterwards DVDs could be imported to Europe. This would mean that in order for them to make any money from the box office takings in Europe, they'd have to release at the same time as in the US. But at present they release films at different times in different countries to minimise risk: if the film is a flop in the US, it's just a flop there and nowhere else and no extra oney has been spent on distributing in other countries.
So, the whole purpose behind regionalisation is to minimise the exposure that the studio suffers. We end up with a crippled digital format so they can make as much money as possible. Tut.
Discuss this Journal entry [8]
Latest reply: Feb 12, 2008
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