Bikers

Believe me, I've nothing against bikers.  In fact if it were not for a back injury sustained at school I would probably be one.  But I wish they would do the 'do as you would be done by' school of driving.

Earlier this week we were on our way west, we ended up amongst a group of bikers.  To keep up with his mates, one overtook us, leaving about 1-2 feet between him & us, and a further 1-2 feet between him and the oncoming (60mph area) car.  He then pulled in in front of us, with only about 5-6 feet to spare in front; and then stayed there at 50mph when there was plenty of space ahead so he could have gone at 60 easily.  I hooted, he gave me the finger.  I later overtook him.

Now if I were to overtake a car with motor bike oncoming and give him 4-5 feet of road to work in (at 60mph), or overtake a bike and pull in nearly grazing their front wheel they would be justifiably angry with me.  So why the hell can't they drive to their own standards?  It's happening far too often these days, and one day there will be an accident, and some poor driver is going to feel guilty for being an innocent participant in the death or serious injury of a biker.

The modern shopping experience

Today it's generally acknowledged that shops have to offer service to survive, and whilst they are not at American service levels, the British high street has made some progress, or so I thought.

Earlier this week our digibox for Freeview decided to revert to factory condition, and I spent about 10 minutes setting it up again.  Then it did it again, and again and again....  So it was to be replaced.  I decided that given HD and Freeview HD and HDMI connections and so forth are imminent for the Bryant household, it's not yet right and so something better than a digibox, but not a full Windows MCE machine or a full recoding DVD/Hard Disk recorder was called for.  A bit of research later and I was interested in the Ivnerto Hard Disk record with 2 Freeview tuners from the Superfi web site was interesting, and they had a store in Coventry very close to where we were going a few days later.

When we got to the store and made our request to see the unit we were told that it was a web only thing.  Great.  So "why not put that on the web site?" Erm, possibly...  On the way out we say a very similar unit in the window.  We did not go back in...

So to the Sony Centre, they had a nice sleek, functional, slightly more expensive unit on display.  Knowing that Sony were a good brand, we decided a few extra quid would be worth it for reliability and quality.  Oh were we wrong...  The unit makes more noise than a rewinding video recorder, ALL THE TIME EVEN IN STANDBY MODE!  it is definitely not fit for purpose.

So it's going back.  But hey, despite the "if you have a problem you can go to any Sony Centre" answer - I cannot.  Sony Centre's are not 1 chain, they are franchises and I am supposed to drive 4 1/2 hours there and back to the town of purchase to get my money back.  Alternatively if I ship it back they'll pay for half the postage.  And what's more, when I rang Sony they were neither worried about the unit being noisy, nor about me being misled by the Sony Centre Shop; they say they have nothing to do with them, even though the Sony name is above the door, and they only sell Sony products.  Apparently I should have noticed the small sign on the wall behind the tills telling me all this.

Well I didn't, and I told Sony I didn't, and I no longer regard Sony as a reliable brand, and I told them.  And they don't care.  Enough said, it's going back.

Human Rights

With all the fuss over human rights legislation there seems to be a trick missing.

In his Robot books Isaac Asimov postulated 3 laws of robotics:
1. A robot may not harm a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey the orders given to it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.

3. A robot must protect its own existence, as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

Eventually in another novel (The Caves of Steel) he realised that there should be a zeroth law:
0. A robot may not injure humanity, or, through inaction, allow humanity to come to harm.
A condition stating that the Zeroth Law must not be broken was added to the original Laws.
(reference - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Laws_of_Robotics)

So, is it simply not the case that any human rights actions should take on board a simple zeroth Humanity Rights law as well?

David Gilmour

Well some rumours were (W)right!  Rick Wright was there for all three nights, although having seen him on the R2 broadcast a few weeks ago that was no surprise really.  However the first night was a real surprise with David Bowie on Arnold Layne.  Mica Paris appeared for the next 2 nights for a 'not my cup of tea'  version of The Great Gig in the Sky.

But, cue drum roll, the best bit was Nick Mason appearing for Wish You Were Here and Comfortably Numb on the final night.  Well worth getting home at 2am for!  Sadly Kate Bush did not appear, despite many expectations that she would.  Another time eh?

Overall - the new album finally grew on me by night 3 (I'd not been a big fan so far), and I was disappointed by the complete absence of any material from the earlier Gilmour solo efforts.  We deserved Mihalis at least!