Sonic devices.

"A high-pitched device used to disperse teenagers is
being challenged by campaigners, who say it is not a fair way to treat
young people." So says the BBC here

My own thoughts on these devices conjures up visions of herding cattle.

Isn't that what these devices really do? They call it dispersing. The difference between herding and dispersing is so small as to negligible. Stretching the English language somewhat we can say that dispersing means to scatter and herding means to collect but the underlaying thing of using sonic to 'hurt' young peoples ears so they scatter is exactly the same as using sonic sound to herd cattle.

However you view it these sonic sound devices are wrong. Do we know for sure what damage we are causing to our young peoples hearing many 10 of years down the line? Do these devices damage the hearing to such an extent that when these young people are in their 50's, 60, 70's etc they will all be deaf as posts? Do they really know for sure? I think not.

This is just another short sighted attempt to forget that whatever problems our young people have most all of them stem from the family home or lack thereof. There exists many problems regarding our young people and not all of them lay at the feet of the young people. Some of these problems lay squarely at the feet of the elders. The elders see young people as a threat. That theme can be found in the animal world and humans are animals so perhaps this should not come as a surprise that the human elders act as they do towards their youngsters.

Are we really at the stage of human evolution that we should treat our young people with such disdain?

Walking the dog.

Far be it from me to claim our nations youth was any better back in the 1970 when indeed I was a "yoof" myself, but I do know we did not intimidate disabled people or cripples as we termed them in those days. Everyone and everything else, yes, but disabled people no.

I am 47 years old. Throughout my body but more advanced around my spine I am inflicted with advanced osteoarthritis. Those of you who know me know that although I suffer terribly with pain, 24 hours a day and 7 days a week, as the arthritis grows inside and outside of every bone in my body I do not moan or complain, preferring instead, as much as is possible, to just get on with life as best as I can on any given day. As I awake each morning I know from that moment on what I can and cannot do during that day. That does not stop me from attempting to do something I know I should not attempt however. Obviously as the day progresses my body starts saying to me enough is enough and starts to slow down. I manage to walk only with the aid of walking stick. Soon to be two I suspect as the arthritis grows and twists my bones. I do not walk well nor very far nor often, especially on my own, so it is with some delight my dog and I take this once a week long waddle together. At the behest of my wife, and to my chagrin, I take my mobile telephone "in case you get into difficulties". This is my only touch with the rest of the world. I must admit the walks with my dog are getting harder and harder but for as long as I can do it, I will do it and bugger the pain. Who enjoys it most, myself or the dog? Who knows. But I do know that my dog knows when the time to get ready for this excursion is approaching as he displays excitement and a sudden perchant to do everything his master tells him. Typical of a dog.

Buster, as we named our dog, is a 2 year 1 month (why that 1 month is mentioned rather than say just over 2 years old will be explained later) short haired Golden Labrador Retriever. A very powerful Drakeshead. He is, as anyone who trains, properly trains, these wonderful animals, knows is very good on command. But, and this is why his age was given as 2 years 1 month, he is at that age when Labradors seemingly forget almost everything they have been taught. He still does his extensive command set but he is relaxed about exactly when or what he will do when given a command. Thankfully this state of affairs only lasts for 3 months or so after which everything is back to normal. No-one knows why Labradors do this nor if it is forgetfulness or a backlash to being controlled but whatever the cause is they go through this 2 to 3 month period at around 2 years old.

So there we was. One man and his dog enjoying the slightly cold wind brushing against his face and making the hand on the stick turn white then blue. Listening to the wide variety of bird song around him. Where was I? I was out walking our lovely Golden Labrador dog down a little grassy area next to a children's playground where we live. This strip of grassy land is approx 20ft wide and 3/4 mile long. Fenced off from the playground and children's play area down one side and lined with heavy thicket the other side. It opens up, as it does, into a large open, long since abandoned by the farmer who in years past had probably lovingly tendered it, at least he would have until our government sold our farmers down the river. Now the E.U. pays them to leave land unattended. Via farm subsidies that pay farmers to leave good arable land to go to waste. Their loss is us dog owners gain.

It is an ideal area to let ones dog off its lead to do its thing without worrying if some member of the public, who is possibly a dog hater as well, will jump up and down with indignation due to the fact a dog is roaming loose. Not that it matters to that type of person but I, and I am teaching our children to be likewise, am a responsible dog owner who not only picks up his dogs poo but also ensured his dog fully understands and more importantly does recall. Well, does recall as good as one can reasonably expect, damn near flawless in fact in so much as 99.9 (recurring) times out of 100 he will come back to base on first call. The remaining 0.1 times on 2nd or 3rd. Recall is one command I have drilled into our dogs and while one can never be certain the dog will always come back on command I m reasonably certain that Buster will every time.

Towards the bottom end of this patch of land the thick thicket that lines one side tails off as the open field beckons beyond its end. It was there that an incident with some of todays youths happened. They were stood on the apex of where th thicket ends. My dog must of been obscured from view as they shouted obscenity after obscenity in my direction. "Crippled up old bastard" one shouted. "Waste of human space" shouted another. And so on. Unperturbed I carried on walking towards where these youths had positioned themselves. Actually, unless one turns around and goes back from whence he came, thereby showing these youths they had won, whatever it is they win, one has nowhere else to go but to go towards where had positioned themselves. Being once youthful myself I know they knew this. As I was approaching ever closer the youths changed tack. "Coming to sort us are ya!" One shouted. "That stick a secret sword?" inquired another. They where becoming increasingly more violent in tone and content the closer I got. As I got to within 2 or so yards of them I gave Buster his whistle. From approx 70 yards away he came bounding towards where I was stood waiting. If you have ever seen a fit 72lbs Drakeshead Labrador in full flight you will know what an imposing sight it is.

The looks on those youths faces as Buster came running at full tilt, barking that gruff excited bark as he does, was a delight to behold. Suddenly they had gone from a stance that can only be described as intimidatory to one of resignation that not only was this 'crippled old man' not scared of them but he had with him what one of the youths described as "a big fuck off dog." I was not about to tell them that this big dog was as soft as a soft thing from softland.

I smiled to myself all during the rest of our walk together.

Now when Buster and I go for this weekly romp these same youths, when there, play with Buster and treat me as one should treat their elders. With respect. In return they get respect from me and Buster who even though he is gong through the temperamental stage he is going through right now does some of the commands they give him.

Oh FFS this goes too far!

Read this then tell me it isn't stupid. How can supposedly trained police officers not tell the difference between a real firearm and a child's toy gun? I have children of my own and I can tell you they are different from a distance. Yes, they 'look' real but the reality of it is they are bloody toys.

This is just another case of utter stupidity by our police force. A force that is supposed to protect and serve, or whatever their motto is, the general public and yet here we have them telling children not to play in the streets with toy guns.

It boggles the mind. It really does.

Back during my own childhood in the middle to late 1960's we often played Cowboys and Indians which would involve one party having guns and the other party having bows and arrows. Another game we played was Batman and Robin which also involved guns and some home made 'weapons'. Going by what was said in that article these types of simple boyhood games are gone forever.

For crying out load. Let our bloody children play what they want to play with whatever they want to play with wherever they want to play and for fuck sake leave them alone!

E.U. 1 : U.S.A. 0

Ignoring the wrong about file sharing (in the P2P sense) for a moment. It was good to see that the E.U. came down fair and square on the side of common man in a recent filing at the E.U.'s top court.

This link shows what I am talking about. It is only a matter of time before that sort of thing is enshrined in E.U. Law proper that all member states must abide by.

More here about a related thing.

There are many more things written about around the Internet that all boil down to the same thing.

The people living under E.U. rule are being afforded what should be a God given right and that is the right to expect to have their privacy private.

Oh and it is a poke in the eye with a red hot metal pole for the RIAA, MPAA etc and all their various tentacles around the world as it means they cannot submit John Doe court requests like they can and are doing in the U.S.A.

There is not much to celebrate about the E.U. and there has not been since its inception but every now and again they do something right and when they do it is worth celebrating.

This, is one of those times.

Comparisons?

I make no bones about the fact that I still consider the Amiga the best operating system ever devised. Even though I run a Linux based operating system on my main workstation I am forced by market economies to run that Linux based operating system. Even as Amiga OS 4, and the Ami-One, are available, sadly, they simply do not cut it for the day to day work I do now. So, I take, what in my opinion, is second best and use a Linux based platform, which does do everything and more I, and everyone else if they tried it, need to get done. Plus, I have my Amiga emulator to remind me of those glory days when technology truly was innovative.

Back in 1985-1995 the Amiga family of computers was at that time deemed by many to be the platform to have, use, play on and generally a must have machine.

Part of its magic and charm was the custom chips it had which came in 3 distinct combinations known as OCS (Original Chip Set), ECS (Enhanced Chip Set) and AGA (Advanced Chip Set). The chip sets where known affectionally as Agnus, Denise and Paula. Agnus was central to the whole thing. It controlled chip RAM (also known as graphics RAM) and two further graphic related components called the blitter and copper. Denise was the main graphics chip and also handled joystick and input devices. Paula was the audio chip but also controlled the floppy disk drive, the serial ports and analog joysticks. In a nutshell, those 3 surface mounted chips including the CPU itself, which was also surface mounted, those 3 chips combined to make what gave the Amiga its 'feel'.

In comparison, the IBM specification, universally known as IBM compatible PC (this term was later dropped and became known simply as the PC) for PC's used by many at that time was a mixture of largely incompatible cards that fitted together to form a computer. These cards covered graphics, audio, serial and parallel I/O, each a separate cards glued together with the CPU where at the time a pale comparison to the Amiga. Even the operating systems that ran on such hardware were utterly dire and outputted not much more than white text on a black background and even when colour graphics came to that platform it paled in comparison to what the Amiga could offer.

Back then of course IBM was a big player in computers. Much bigger than Commodore, which produced the Amiga. That, combined with lackluster management at Commodore saw the IBM compatible PC come to dominate the computer hardware market. Even when MS Windows 3.1 came to the market the Amiga operating system simply ran rings around it for sheer elegance. Some say even though the Amiga operating system is approximately 20 years old now it is still the best. The Amiga was derided because of its integrated surface mounted technology.

It is with great amusement that those of us privileged to have grownup, in computer terms, with such technology that today we are seeing a return to that combined surface mounted technology from the likes of AMD/ATI. While AMD/ATI are not yet in the process of combining graphics, audio and CPU on the same silicon slice, they are producing a graphics and CPU hybrid late 2008 or early 2009. It is surely only a matter of time before they add audio to the mix.

Then, once that happens, almost 20 years after the Amiga 1200 was released the computer hardware world will have come full circle.

And they call that progress?

Something to play with.

Apologies to any and all regular and not so regular readers of this blog but my time of late to be on the Internet has been limited.

This isn't something that annoyed me, the complete opposite in fact. One of my lads, aged 10 currently, found my old Amiga A1200 which sits plugging away quietly hanging off my network. He, for whatever reason, was found routing under my desk. On asking him why he was there and what he was looking for he replied with "what is that?" whilst at the same time pointing at the Amiga. I explained it was a computer that at one time was the best of the best and some like myself say it still is. "Does it play games?" He asked. I replied not only does it play games it was the computer at one time on which people played games. "Can I have it in my bedroom?" Was the next question from him. I replied no but I can get something similar for your MS infected PC or the same for the Linux half of it.

He was excited at the prospect so I set about getting WinUae for him. I got the required kickrom from my A1200 and created the Workbench .adf files off the same.

After routing around the Internet I found several places where many games and application came in adf format. I will not link to any of them here as they are of dubious legality. On pushing my ethics to one side for a wee bit I downloaded several of the, in my opinion, games and applications.

More searching of the Internet found AIAB (Amiga In A Box) and AmiSys. While AIAB is an excellent add-on for the emulated Amiga I personally think AmiSys is overall better. So, I installed that for him along with some AmiSys add-on packages and a boot-load of adf format games and utilities and he is now very happy playing those older games. He has said that "some of these games are excellent". I think back then games where all about game play whereas todays games are lacking in game play but are big on content.

Still, it is nice to have introduced him to the fantastic operating system of yesteryear called Amiga OS and with the links I have thrown in above you too could enjoy this wonderous experience and enjoy a time in computer history when innovation really was innovation.

Enjoy!

For crying out loud.

When is America going to realise it is not the centre of the world in anything?

That is right. Americans continually assume that whatever it is they do the rest of the world will automatically follow.

Take the contents of this article as a prime example of what I am talking about. In it they are reporting on a forum that was discussing copyright reform. The overwhelming theme is about the American copyright situation. No mention anywhere was anything about other countries and how thier copy write system works. They automatically assume that whatever changes are made to the American copyright system will carry over to the rest of the world. That is but one example. There has been many with the same underlaying theme.

It is bloody annoying! When are they going to get over themselves are realise that what is allowed in Law in America is illegal in many other countries.

That country, not the people, the commonman, is becoming more and more isolated. Which is probably why they keep discussing things that could have an effect, but not in the way they automatically assume, on the rest of the world as if they are living in a goldfish bowl.