Everybody in the western world has heard of Microsoft. Chances are you're reading this on a Windows operating system using Microsoft's Internet Explorer. They've been reliable and popular even if there were better specialist systems out there. But I think Mr. Gates and co are starting to lose thier touch, and nowhere is this more apparant than in any game store you may happen to visit.
You see, those white things lining the shelves at increasingly reduced prices are Microsoft's pride and joy: The Xbox 360 home games console. It reads 9GB DVDs, boasts an impressive games line-up, and Xbox Live is one of the most heavily used online services on the globe. But behind all the glitz and glamour of the press kit lies a problem that strikes at the very core of every unit sold: the machine.
The problem with microsoft is that they were so busy making sure their machine had the best software any gamer could ask for, they forgot to build the machine itself and ended up thowing it together as an afterthought a week before launch. The build quality deteriorates faster than a china plate being shot seeing as the whole thing is constructed out of paper maché. 16% of all warranties claimed are from the infamous red ring of death - and the vast majority of owners will need to use that warranty for one problem or another.
It says it all when a high profile demo machine at the Games Developers Conference conks out just as the keynote reaches the part about "No expense spared" with the hardware, and if you have the gall to buy one preowned your staring disaster in the face. I mean, maybe I'm old fasioned but games machines are supposed to load games for a while before they crash, right? I spoke to the guy at gamestation about exchanging my faulty unit, and the reply I got was so crisply rehearsed from repetitive usuage I had half a mind to give him a round of applause.
Whatreally boggles the mind is how people keep buying this console, and why people keep making games for it. I see any develoepr signing these days with microsoft as an act of desperation after all the companies who make things with plastic and wires like normal people turned them down.
So a final word of advice: Always look up for falling 360s, cause lord knows mine's going out the window.
Microsoft Construction Crew: 2/10
Friday 29 February 2008
Wireless Internet
I'll be honest, I know very little about computers. I can type in word, download music, and check wikipedia. Thats as far as my skill goes. So thus, when it came to setting up a wireless network in my house, I was rather stumped. Thus I phoned my good friend Phil.
Our attack of the wireless internet started badly, equipped with entirely the wrong router, and thus we set off for PC World, where we were assured that the router we had could work. This was a lie.
A quick phonecall to the makers of this router revealed that with my current ISP, wireless internet didn't work with the router. Fuck. (My ISP, by the way is the hellbeast that is known as AOL. We really should have expected problems from the off.)
So, armed with my mothers credit card, and the model number of a router that we were assured would work, we went back to PC World. And conversed with a rather smug, annoying tech guy about modems, and he directed us to a new toy, refusing to take the old router from us.
Needless to say, the new router failed abysmally to work. It was then that we discovered that my internet comes via a coaxial cable in the wall, and into my current modem. The router had no coaxial socket. (Coaxial, by the way, is circular. Like the old sockets in ancient style TVs.) Thus, with this rather useless router, BACK TO PC WORLD! Listening to the soundtrack to Neon Genesis Evangelion on the way. This did not help subsidise our current rage, having been deceived by two tech dudes.
And again, we were served by smug, annoying tech dude. Who couldn't comprehend what we were trying to tell him.
Us: We have a coaxial coming from the wall, which won't go into the modem.
Him: You can't though, youve got a box on the wall yes?
Us: Yes.
Him: and thats plugged into the modem through an ethernet cable?
Us: No it's coaxial. It's circular.
Him: And then youve got an ethernet connection going from the modem to the computer.
This repeated a few times.
Then we began to get irritated.
Rage flowing, we explained patiently to the useless tech dude of the year, that we had both seen with our own eyes, the cirular coaxial, and this was unable to fit into a rectangle ethernet or USB slot. The ability to judge things using our senses is a rather important one, and in fact is one of the foundations of scientific investigation. Quite frankly the man was a fucking idiot, and violent slaughter against individuals like this is to be encouraged.
-Az
Our attack of the wireless internet started badly, equipped with entirely the wrong router, and thus we set off for PC World, where we were assured that the router we had could work. This was a lie.
A quick phonecall to the makers of this router revealed that with my current ISP, wireless internet didn't work with the router. Fuck. (My ISP, by the way is the hellbeast that is known as AOL. We really should have expected problems from the off.)
So, armed with my mothers credit card, and the model number of a router that we were assured would work, we went back to PC World. And conversed with a rather smug, annoying tech guy about modems, and he directed us to a new toy, refusing to take the old router from us.
Needless to say, the new router failed abysmally to work. It was then that we discovered that my internet comes via a coaxial cable in the wall, and into my current modem. The router had no coaxial socket. (Coaxial, by the way, is circular. Like the old sockets in ancient style TVs.) Thus, with this rather useless router, BACK TO PC WORLD! Listening to the soundtrack to Neon Genesis Evangelion on the way. This did not help subsidise our current rage, having been deceived by two tech dudes.
And again, we were served by smug, annoying tech dude. Who couldn't comprehend what we were trying to tell him.
Us: We have a coaxial coming from the wall, which won't go into the modem.
Him: You can't though, youve got a box on the wall yes?
Us: Yes.
Him: and thats plugged into the modem through an ethernet cable?
Us: No it's coaxial. It's circular.
Him: And then youve got an ethernet connection going from the modem to the computer.
This repeated a few times.
Then we began to get irritated.
Rage flowing, we explained patiently to the useless tech dude of the year, that we had both seen with our own eyes, the cirular coaxial, and this was unable to fit into a rectangle ethernet or USB slot. The ability to judge things using our senses is a rather important one, and in fact is one of the foundations of scientific investigation. Quite frankly the man was a fucking idiot, and violent slaughter against individuals like this is to be encouraged.
-Az
Sunday 24 February 2008
Interesting Customer of the Week Part 2
This week, we have....Pocoyo!
Those of you with taste will know of a childrens televisual feast kown as Pocoyo, featuring a small child, a duck, and elephant, and narration by Stephen Fry.
Today at work, I was given assistance by a small child, who poked my in the leg and gave me a coat hanger he'd found on the floor. I took the hanger, said thankyou, and watched as he smiled, ran off across the shop to his parents, found another hanger on the way, and dutifully bought it back. What a nice kiddie.
And he looked EXACTLY like Pocoyo. No joking.
Most aspects of my work lead me to total misanthropy, in fact it's often tempting to come into work and put broken glass in the underwear. But this id made me smile, and thus earns his title as Interesting Customer of the Week!
- Az
Those of you with taste will know of a childrens televisual feast kown as Pocoyo, featuring a small child, a duck, and elephant, and narration by Stephen Fry.
Today at work, I was given assistance by a small child, who poked my in the leg and gave me a coat hanger he'd found on the floor. I took the hanger, said thankyou, and watched as he smiled, ran off across the shop to his parents, found another hanger on the way, and dutifully bought it back. What a nice kiddie.
And he looked EXACTLY like Pocoyo. No joking.
Most aspects of my work lead me to total misanthropy, in fact it's often tempting to come into work and put broken glass in the underwear. But this id made me smile, and thus earns his title as Interesting Customer of the Week!
- Az
Sunday 17 February 2008
Interesting Customer of the Week
Introducing a new feature! The interesting customer of the week! To my parents utter shock at confusion, I do have a job, a nice basic boring retail existance. But some of the people who turn up are quite odd indeed.
This week: Das Kommandant.
Super skinny, short blonde hair, and about 6ft4, this fellow was utterly terrifying. The lights dimmed as he entered the store, eyes squinting looking at the workers who cowered behind clothing and tills. The silence was broken only by the sounds of a single crying child, who was swiftly hushed.
Ok, so I made the last of that up completely, but the fellow looked very much like the evil commander of a German POW camp. He even had a scar over one eye for christsakes! And wore a black suit with a grey shirt. I fully expected "Ah...die Englander...Mine olt nemesis..." followed swiftly by a slap from a black leather glove (yes he was wearing them) and then dragged off to face a horribly premature death.
So, for sheer mind beinding terror, I give you Das Kommandant!
-Az
By the way, don't you dare correct any of my German.
This week: Das Kommandant.
Super skinny, short blonde hair, and about 6ft4, this fellow was utterly terrifying. The lights dimmed as he entered the store, eyes squinting looking at the workers who cowered behind clothing and tills. The silence was broken only by the sounds of a single crying child, who was swiftly hushed.
Ok, so I made the last of that up completely, but the fellow looked very much like the evil commander of a German POW camp. He even had a scar over one eye for christsakes! And wore a black suit with a grey shirt. I fully expected "Ah...die Englander...Mine olt nemesis..." followed swiftly by a slap from a black leather glove (yes he was wearing them) and then dragged off to face a horribly premature death.
So, for sheer mind beinding terror, I give you Das Kommandant!
-Az
By the way, don't you dare correct any of my German.
Wednesday 6 February 2008
Free Tibet (with every purchase)
My loyal readers (now 8, we gained another reader since I last broke the fourth wall), no doubt you are bemused by the title of this particular piece. You may be aware that I am a student of Journalism at university. As such, I often come into contact with various magazines for the purpose of study. Karma obviously caught up with me in a recent lesson, for I was unfortunate enough to be engaged in a study of magazines aimed at girls in their early teens, an activity akin to buying a happy meal, filling the box with deadly scorpians, and then placing your face in the mixture.
As the only male to turn up to this god-forsaken lesson, I assume that I am braver than my absent comrades, who clearly have an abject fear of catching the dreaded gay from the girly magazines. Hardly suprising, considering the lurid pink of the magazines, a colour only witnessed before by connoisseurs or highly unorthodox herbs and mushrooms.
Freakish, seizure inducing colour schemes aside, the magazines have a wide variety of contents and opinionated pieces, offering scathing political satire and hard boiled journalistic brilliance on every page...
Sorry, I can't get away with a lie of that extremity. The magazines I witnessed are completely vacant of anything remotely resembling intelligent thought, much like its intended audience.
I did, very briefly, wonder what leads writes down this horrible path, to work for trash like this. Then I realised, nice and quickly, that this is true capitalism at work. Sell shite for vast amounts of money. It's like stealing candy from a baby, but at least the baby will grow up traumatised and may craft thought provoking art inspired by the horror it has faced. Teen girl magazines, on the other hand, have no inherant journalistic value or quality, and simply propogate the views that teen girls are empty headed and follow what their told like obedient sheep. And if they buy trash like this, they probably are.
Somewhere out there, deep within a bleak fortress overlooking the fires of Mount Doom, a figure in a hooded cloak is laughing in a manner most psychotic, preparing to unleash the next issue of "Bliss" at us, printed on paper crafted from brain matter of young teen girls. Because there appeared to be no other use for them.
-Az
As the only male to turn up to this god-forsaken lesson, I assume that I am braver than my absent comrades, who clearly have an abject fear of catching the dreaded gay from the girly magazines. Hardly suprising, considering the lurid pink of the magazines, a colour only witnessed before by connoisseurs or highly unorthodox herbs and mushrooms.
Freakish, seizure inducing colour schemes aside, the magazines have a wide variety of contents and opinionated pieces, offering scathing political satire and hard boiled journalistic brilliance on every page...
Sorry, I can't get away with a lie of that extremity. The magazines I witnessed are completely vacant of anything remotely resembling intelligent thought, much like its intended audience.
I did, very briefly, wonder what leads writes down this horrible path, to work for trash like this. Then I realised, nice and quickly, that this is true capitalism at work. Sell shite for vast amounts of money. It's like stealing candy from a baby, but at least the baby will grow up traumatised and may craft thought provoking art inspired by the horror it has faced. Teen girl magazines, on the other hand, have no inherant journalistic value or quality, and simply propogate the views that teen girls are empty headed and follow what their told like obedient sheep. And if they buy trash like this, they probably are.
Somewhere out there, deep within a bleak fortress overlooking the fires of Mount Doom, a figure in a hooded cloak is laughing in a manner most psychotic, preparing to unleash the next issue of "Bliss" at us, printed on paper crafted from brain matter of young teen girls. Because there appeared to be no other use for them.
-Az
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