Friday 30 January 2009

Retarded = backwards

It seems that our literally retarded government is mulling over the idea of a "broadband tax" of 20 quid per year for everyone with broadband (which is actually everyone in the country, since they also want universal broadband access) which will be given to the "music industry" and the "film industry".

With this in mind, perhaps now is the time we can finally recover our failing Ice House economy with Ice House taxes on all fridges? Our TV channels and film studios can receive tax on VHS tapes and DVDs? Our dwindling equine propulsion industry could benefit from a tax on all internal combustion engines, electric motors, petrol and diesel. Our whale oil industry could benefit from a tax on light bulbs, flourescent tubes and LEDs. The typewriter industry could have a tax on all computer sales, as can gramophone makers. Whilst we're at it, why not charge for Wikipedia and give all of the proceeds to the desperate Encyclopedia Britannica?

In fact, to encourage these ideas I propose that everyone who uses a fridge, a video or DVD player, any form of engine-powered travel, electric lighting or computer should be labeled as a criminal, since it is completely within my rights to make such accusations when there is no legal basis at all for it. Actually, criminal is too light a word, afterall some crimes are legitimate in certain circumstances when they're the lesser of two evils. The label I propose therefore must be something that's never legitimate, so that juries can have their minds made up for them beforehand rather than having to go through that tedious business of deciding guilt (which, after all that effort, might not even get me the result I want!). They should be called some kind of word which implies rape, murder and that sort of thing... how about serial killer? Yeah, that works. OK, now on with the spreading of my message with twisted logic, brainwashing and of course my all time favourite, the outright lie.

Here's one to get started with:

"You wouldn't strangle a toddler

You wouldn't stab a pregnant woman in the womb

Refridgeration is murder

Murder is a crime

Don't let the serial killers get away with it

Copyright the Respected Icehouse Association of America"

Or how about a more subtle brainwashing?

"He's the, kind of man that makes edits in-place,

He kills post men and shits on their face,

He wanks in the sandwiches you leave in the icebox,

He makes documents using a word processor, what a fucking cock,

He's a, Nerdy Nigel, a Nerdy Nigel

Nerdy Nigel word processes his documents

(Copyright the British Typewritographic Institute)"

Or, perhaps, we should actually EMBRACE technological innovation? ESPECIALLY innovation which looks set to destroy the crumbling monopolies of the 20th century's "music industry" (ie. the few rich sods who decide that you don't want to listen to the vast majority of bands and thus give millions to Britney Spears whilst decent acts end up working in McDonalds) and "film industry" (ie. the few rich sods who decide that potentially good, inventive ideas are too risky to back compared to more sequels of the same old shit). Giving them such a "tax" is not only COMPLETELY disruptive to the economy, but offers NEGATIVE incentive for them to do stuff, since their income could come straight from the tax without wasting any money doing any of that 'making stuff' kerfuffle.

Labour need a firm kick to the teeth for all of the bullshit they're shovelling over us. They're as conservative as the Conservatives, leaving the Liberal Democrats as the only viable way out (and that's still rather tenuous). The problem with the Lib Dems is that they don't seem to have any morals either, not in a 'Fuck you, I'm in charge' Labour way, but in an 'OK as long as you vote for us' way. I think forming policies specifically to cater to a minority so that they'll vote for you, regardless of how it affects the majority, isn't a particularly good thing (here I'm not using minority in an ethnic sense, but for instance their stance for legalising cannabis. Whilst this is obviously backed wholeheartedly by that minority who abuse cannabis, it's impact on the majority of the population is far from clear cut).

On a side note, I really really really wish that Java dies a quick death. It's a fucking terrible language, restrictive, verbose, full of boilerplate bollocks, full of glaring errors which, for some ungodly reason, are standard, making every Java environment broken (either in the sense that they're nonstandard but work properly, or they follow the standard but are full of fucking retarded shit like 2147483647 + 1 = -2147483648 (which *IS* an error, as anyone over the age of about 5 can tell you)). Object oriented my arse. What the hell are these "base types" then? What about methods? What about classes? Fuck off Java.

The End

Sunday 25 January 2009

PubSubClient back in development

I've been messing around with my pubsubclient library again, and the issue with publishing now appears to be fixed (either thanks to me or thanks to the ejabberd team if it was a bug in the server).

Anyway, it's working again, and it's now an opportunity to get more reply handlers and documentation written. Since I'm currently in the middle of my exam period this obviously should not be a full-steam-ahead effort, but I'm going to keep chipping away at the TODO list (which is now formalised into a not-yet-up-to-date SPEC-COMPLIANCE file). It's now just a case of putting in the work, since it's not hard thought involved, it's just extracting data from XML and putting it into sensible, pure Python representations.

The website is still around at http://pubsubclient.sourceforge.net/ and the code is still on GitHub at http://github.com/Warbo/pubsubclient/tree/master

Enjoy :)