It would be understandable if Mark was annoyed or upset, or wanted to ridicule the law firm of Baker & McKenzie LLP, or Infront Sports & Media, but Mark goes the extra mile with:
Oh brother. I don't even know what the FIFA World Cup is. I'm guessing it's soccer, which I hate just as much as any other pro sport. Every editor at Boing Boing detests professional sports, and we would sooner stream a video of a crumpled up paper napkin in the corner of a room than show some jackasses running after a ball. The only time we would ever post anything about pro-sports would be to make fun of them.
Mark thus demonstrates that he's the jackass, and a bigoted one at that. First he demonstrates the kind of ignorance that actually puts him in the same group as the sports fans he seems to detest by claiming not to know what sport the world's biggest sporting competition is, because it's pretty certain you'd get the same reaction to the world cup from most sports fans in America. Only the USA could be so arrogant as to not only invent all it's own sports, but then deride or ignore the single most popular sport in the world as a game for kids or women (or in particularly obnoxious circles call it "fagball"). Yes, Mark Frauenfelder might hate football (sorry, soccer) simply because it's a professional sport, but in the way he dismisses it with such ignorance he sounds just like every braindead jock he most likely got beat up by at school.
Yes, the FIFA World Cup is the world's biggest sporting competition, bigger than the Olympics even though only 32 countries make it to the finals and far bigger than the Superbowl that I'm sure he also detests. While "pro-sports" in the USA may be dominated by "jackasses" (and no doubt Mark is jealous of the phenominal amount of money they are paid for simply being good at playing a game), soccer is a powful force for good in the world's poorer countries, particularly in north Africa where a lot of the players in Europe's top leagues come from. It's fine for "intellectuals" in America to be dismissive of sports and sit on their butts while they argue about bullshit subjects like copyright and whether it's more ethical to do this or that, but for kids in poor countries who have nothing much to look forward to in life, the game of soccer is not only the cheapest form of entertainment they have, but becoming a player in Europe is the best possible outcome for them. Many of those that made it have been able to build schools and clinics with the money they made.
As for the whole thing of "detesting professional sports", I wonder why Mark doesn't expand on that. I've come across people who variously hate competitive sports (as if it would be sport if it wasn't competitive), hate team sports (presumably because they got picked last at school) or hate international sports competions (because it's supposedly encourages xenophobia and racism). They're all wooley-minded people who think of themselves as intellectual and think that sports are below them, that competition is wrong or that because they don't like the way some sports fans behave, that sport itself is somehow bad. All pathetic attitudes in my opinion. I could write at length about all the good aspects of sport, professional or otherwise, but people with such attitudes uniformly have their heads shoved so far up their own arses that there's no reasoning with them.
I can completely understand someone not being interested in sport, I wasn't really interested in anything but motorsport until five or six years ago and I wasn't even into motorsport until I left school, but to "detest" sport, wow, that takes some effort. I tried but struggled to think of anything I actually detest that isn't something anyone in their right mind would hate like terrorists (or animal-rights activists as they like to be called). There are a lot of things I don't like and an even larger number of things I'm not the slightest bit interested in, but it must take some real vindictiveness to actually detest something that a large percentage of the population derive a lot of enjoyment from.
Boing Boing is a web-zine that bills itself as "A Directory of Wonderful Things". Sure, there are occasionally wonderful things on there if you don't get bored to tears by Cory Doctorow's inceasant whinging about copyright or all the political posts which might satisfy the 'editors' of Boing Boing, but it's hard to argue any of them are "wonderful things". In fact there's a great post where Mark Frauenfelder further demonstrates his extreme arrogance by openly insulting anyone who would dare to complain about the more than occasional political post they publish. Of their 'editors', only Xeni Jardin seems to stick to the web-zine's breif, although there is an amusing post where she laughs at CNN's use of the term "rim-shot" in a headline because, according to her, it referrs to a sexual act. Then she gets all uppity at the legions of people that email her to say that it just refers to that thing the drummer does when the stand-up comic finishes the punchline, thus completely missing the point: it's not at all funny or controversial that CNN would use "rim-shot" in a headline unless you're in the same tiny group of people as Xeni herself, thinking that "rim-shot" means a sexual act. Oh well, there must be something about writing for a web-zine that has hundreds of thousands of readers that makes you unwilling to accept criticism.
Oh, if you're wondering why I keep referring to Boing Boing's 'editors' in quotes like that, it's because I wonder how much actual editing they do before they publish items. If you read it via an RSS reader you'll notice that stories are corrected over and over as they seem to rely on their readers to research everything for them. They must get a hell of a lot of dross in their submissions bin in order for what they publish to be considered "edited". Oh, and I refer to Boing Boing as a web-zine rather than a blog because I think one of the things that makes something a blog rather than just a webpage that gets regularly updated, is the provision for people to add comments. If you've got something to say about a post on Boing Boing, you can try emailing the 'editor' who posted the story and they might add your correction to the original post, or they might just completely ignore it. You're only real option for commenting on their stories is to bitch about them on your own blog, if you have one. I suspect they'll claim that with so many readers, they couldn't support a workable comments system, but for gods sake, even BBC News Online allows commenting on many stories now and they have enough readers they make Boing Boing look like, well, my blog.
]]>I mentioned the Ask Nigel collumn on Autosport.com before where he answers questions submitted by readers. In one question he's asked if it is "fair" that Valentino Rossi should be able to jump straight into Formula 1 with a top team when other drivers have built their whole careers on getting that same seat. It's not the answer to that question that got my attention though, it's the quote from Frank Williams..
Frank Williams said, years ago, after the death (from cancer) of 28-year-old Gunnar Nilsson, "Don't make the mistake of thinking life should be fair - life is not fair, and the sooner you accept that that's the case, the easier it will be for you."
What I like about that quote is that he doesn't just say "life isn't fair, deal with it" like a lot of people do, he says "don't make the mistake of thinking life should be fair". He's telling you accept the unfairness for your own benefit. Lets not forget that aside from his experience with Gunnar Nilsson, Williams himself was left paralysed from a car accident in 1986 and has gone on running his Formula 1 team with great success from a wheelchair. He is truely an inspiration, not only in what he's achieved, but in the outlook on life that's let his achieve it.
The other quote is from Nigel Roebuck's 'Fifth Column' in Autosport magazine. I don't know whether he's quoting someone else or whether he came up with this himself, but it's a good one. Talking about Ron Dennis signing Fernando Alonso to drive for his McLaren team in 2007 - a whole year ahead of his becoming available, he said "Long ago Ron Dennis realised that the things that come to those who wait are the things left by those who got there first."
I don't take that to mean you should go out and grab whatever you can, hoarde it and stuff everyone else. What I think it means is when you have an opportunity to do something great, don't spent too much time worrying about whether it's the right thing or whether it's a classy thing to do. Just do it!
]]>I left there in 1990 and not long after the schools inspectors, Ofsted, named it as a "failing school". A new headmaster was brought in and it improved just enough to avoid being closed. Later in the '90s it joined the trendy government program to become a 'specialist' school and gain some extra funding for it's chosen area of speciality. They chose arts (presumably because it's easier to bump the grades a little than it is for maths or english) and the school was renamed Upbury Arts College to make it sound more impressive. Another Gillingham school (Woodlands road) was closed with pupils transferring to Upbury. Then the government came up with another scheme to try and improve failing schools by attracting more funding through gimmicks and the Academy schools program was born. Upbury joined up and the school was renamed again to New Brompton College (Brompton is an area of Gillingham near the school).
Today New Brompton College was in the news because it was the lowest ranked Academy school in the country. A table from the BBC website shows that of the schools in the local area it is ranked last with an astoundingly low figure of only 9% of pupils achieveing the basic standard of 5 GCSE passes at grade C or above - a standard that is really, really easy to gain. The most amazing part of the story is this quote from the Reuters story on Academy schools:-
Headteacher Judy Rider said she recognised that the results were "extremely poor", but Medway Council said it had every confidence in her and her management team.
Well, the council would say that as they appointed the management.
]]>In the race to suceed Kennedy, the first to declare an interest in the leadership was Sir Menzies Campbell, the party's elder statesman. Another was the young-gun, home affairs spokesman Mark Oaten. He was looking quite competent on camera and with the Conservative's recently electing a younger leader, many thought he might be in with a chance against Campbell.
That was until a newspaper revealed that Oaten, married with two children, was having an affair with a 23 year old man with allegations that the man was a 'rentboy'. Now leaving aside all arguments over morality etc., you have to wonder what was going through Mark Oaten's mind when he decided to run for the party leadership. Didn't he think for even one second that this would come out in the press? It never ceases to amaze me how that when people get on a roll in public life and are popular, they can't resist reaching for the next level regardless of whether it's actually a good idea or not.
]]>There is no web front-end to Napster so you have to install their software on your PC. Downloading is a breeze if you use Internet Explorer - FireFox users might have to put up with some errors before getting their download. Once downloaded, you install the software and then create an account. This involves entering your credit card details so that they can bill you the instant your trial period expires. I presume it also stops people repeatedly trailing the software for free.
Once you're up an running you'll discover an interface that's pretty similar to Apple iTunes. That's not at all surprising given the success of iTunes. You can spend the time ripping your CDs with the built in ripper or import any audio files you already have on your PC into the library. That didn't apply to me due to the HD disaster, so I went ahead and searched for music to listen to.
Slightly confusing at first is the fact that as a subscriber you can listen to also all the music in Napster's library without additional fees on your PC (and up to 2 others) and yet there are still links and buttons everywhere in the interface to 'buy' tracks and albums. This is because the subscription only allows you to listen to the music on your PC and compatible portable player if you paid the extra £5 a moth for that feature. If you want to burn CDs or retail access to a certain track once after you cancel your subscription, you need to 'buy' that track the same way you do with a non-subscription site like iTunes. I put the word 'buy' in quotes because the files are heavily DRM encumbered and you're really only buying a licence to use the music under certain restrictive circumstances. Still, if you want to make a compilation CD to put on at a party or something, you'll need to pay the 79p a track that Napster currently charge.
So lets assume that like me, you only really listen to music at your PC and you have broadband internet access. In this case you can stream the music off the Napster servers. This saves a lot of harddrive space, but it does mean that if your net connection drops, things go silent pretty quick as there is very little buffering. You can download the music to your harddrive if you don't have access to the net continuously. You'll still need to connect to Napster every so often though so the software can renew the "rental" of the files after confirming that your subscription is ongoing.
As well as being able to search for artists, albums and tracks, there are other ways to discover music. There are downloadable playlists, some just on a theme, others compiled by celebrities. Another advertised feature is "40+ advert free, interactive radio stations". This is one feature that doesn't work very well at the time I write this review. You see the "radio station" is really just a dynamic playlist - the music streams from their servers anyway so the only thing of interest is the choice of songs. Unfortunately the algorithms they use to pick the order of songs don't work very well. Most of the tracks on a given 'station' are picked by Napster staff - the order is randomised and a portion loaded into your playlist window. It's likely in any given try that you'll only get through the first twenty songs before you get a song you've already heard, even though there might be new songs further down the playlist. It has a facility to make a custom radio station based on a selection of tracks from your library. I didn't try this because my library is empty since there's no need for me to download tracks. This doesn't seem to be taken into account.
OK, I've got through all that without mentioning what is by far the biggest problem with Napster - the sound quality. They use WMA encoding which in itself is not a problem for me. The problem is that they encode their files at 128kbps. Even though WMA is more efficient than standard mp3, 128kbps is still vastly inadequate for most music. Subjective quality on the music I listen to varies from OK-ish (Scissor Sisters) to completely unlistenable (Green Day) due to the phasing in and out of high frequencies. This is such a shame because for me, the all-you-can-eat subscription model works, the price is right, but the audio quality, to be frank, sucks.
I'd rate Napster 6/10 at the current time due to the audio quality. It's the only major flaw but boy, is it a big one. If they increased the bitrate to 192kbps that would make most music listenable and then I've give the service 9/10. If they fixed the niggling bugs (many of which I've left out of this post for brevity but if you use Napster you'll be aware well aware of them) and increased filled in some of the obvious omissions in their library I could happily give the service 10/10.
I'd like to include some sound files to demonstrate how bad the audio quality is, but that would obviously be against the law (and their terms of service). If you want to try Napster yourself go to www.napster.com for USA residents and www.napster.co.uk for Brits. I don't think there's a referrer scheme unfortunately. A word of warning though - I'm still a subscriber (despite the flaws), but I've read on the built-in chat room boards that unsubscribing is a bit of a hassle.
I'd like to try Yahoo's service, but it's only available to US residents. I read Microsoft is setting up a Napster-alike that will presumably be available in Europe so I'll look forward to reviewing that at some point.
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