Consumerism [Amnesia]

There comes a point, as the good Dr recently pointed out, when corporations just fuck you off. Now I am, in all honesty, a complete past master of winning the phone-team-situation. This comes from having been a phone-jockey in previous student lives and from being a professor of human behaviour. Uncle Am's top tips for winning a consumer dispute via a call centre are;* Remember - nothing gives a phone jockey a sense of power in their miserable existence than being able to cut you off at the legs. Therefore if you are going to pull an attitude on them, you lose. Remember this a frickin lot because you're gonna need your patience.* Phone jockey's are mega apathetic and are completely uninterested in you. However....* They all really know just how shit their company is and they hate the bosses, more or less. Therefore....* If you can make *them* your friend and the bosses the enemy and give them a sense of "sorting the crap out" then you are into phone-jockey heaven my friend* Which is all predicated on the fact that you must must must get a personal relationship going with someone that you can come back to.If you achieve all of the above, then 9 times out of 10 you can achieve the impossible. i.e. get your frickin way.Now, to the point of the blog, there are sometimes that you know that you just can't win. A policy decision that is mindblowing but universal to the company. In these situations I have started writing emails for sheer entertainment only. The following is something I wrote to HSBC when they upped their normal internet security to extra loads of pointless checks. I think it would be great if other members of EED could contribute similar ones and we'll get it published like one of the most successful books of the 70's - The Henry Root Letters. Ours will be called Crosshatch Consumerism and we'll all be millionaires by this time next year, Rodney....Dear Kate & Team,Thanks for taking the time to feedback - sign of a decent organisation. I noted with interest that you said that your research was across "the industry" and imho this is why you've been conned into this change.Whenever you are talking data security or audit, those people do not have any "upside" to telling you that your current levels are acceptable. Instead they generally look around the industry and see - for instance - Natwest using 4 level security with interminable questions, rubbish functionality and a total unwillingness to let you do anything useful unless you have to input your name, the first family pet you ever had and your inside-leg measurement.The upshot of this is they say "ooh - you do realise your security is 'deficient' compared to Bank X". It's not deficient at all, it's just not as totally overdone. This recommendation, because it comes from data security or audit type functions, is then hard for middle management to turn down because they feel they are on a "no win" streak if one SINGLE person loses money because they wrote "My IB number is 123456666, my pin is 123456" on their wallet in crayon.Well it's wrong imho. It's always easy to go for the "max level" and certain people make a really good living out of making these recommendations. But in reality, if you have a telephone banking system that let's you log on using sort-code / a/c number and 6 digit pin, or the ability to take money out of the hole in the wall with card and 4 digit pin, then the choices you are making on this internet login are illogical.In summary, as an HSBC customer, I feel you've been conned by the culture of "maxism" on controls. It's not necessary. If a tiny percentage of the crayon-using public end up getting robbed of their money then I suggest, organisationally, you should recognise, this is probably a good thing. They will starve, become destitute and be unattractive to the opposite sex at which time they will not be able to reproduce, thereby stengthening the gene pool.So in summary, not only do I as your loyal customer ask you to reconsider, but I remind you, that the good of the species itself requires it....Yours sincerelyGareth Johnson.

Hacking the frames [Lurks]

Doom 3 is out right, and that means that they'll be a few clannies and a few general readers of ed.com out there in Internet land that may just be considering upgrading their graphics card so they can play Doom 3 and Half-Life 2 at higher than slide-show frame rates. I've been looking into it, as well you might expect, and I've come to the conclusion that what you need is a brand new Alienware PC. Ho ho. Bah. :)

Well... Okay then, what if you're just going to upgrade your graphics card? We're looking for a bit more value than just buying the top of the range ATI X800XT or GeForce FX 6800 Ultra and after a bit of digging around and some experimentation, I believe I've hit on a solution which will essentially get you the ninja graphics card you always wanted, cheaper than it's going for in the shops.

The solution is to buy a Radeon X800 Pro card with VIVO capability. A card from Sapphire, Connect3D or Club3D is what we're talking about. This one is the one that I used in my tests. An X800 Pro is basically the X800 core with 12 pipes disabled and the core/memory speed clocked down a ways. Turns out that the video-in/video-out (hence VIVO) cards, have non laser-cut X800XT parts on them and they just have a protected bit of the BIOS which tells them to disable the other four pipes.

There's a good guide here but I'm going to walk you through it with just a single download. First of all, you wanna download this which is a zip file with all the stuff you need in it.

When you extract the zip file you've got a FloppyA and FloppyB directory. You're going to need two floppy disks, all very cunning eh. First off, bang in the first floppy and go into FloppyA directory and run the Flasher+Floppy2.37.exe file which will cut a bootable floppy with the ATI flasher on it. Then copy the X800XT.bin file onto that floppy. Exchange the floppy for a fresh one and go into the FloppyB directory. Click on the drdflash.exe which will cut a bootable floppy disk with a bare DrDOS on it. There's a subdir called Bios, copy everying in that over onto your floppy. Job done!

I'd recommend uninstalling all your vid drivers first. Download the latest Catalysts, right now there's some 4.9 betas with some bigger numbers in Doom 3 but I'm not linking those as they'll be outdated soon enough. Just hack those ready for an install. You could also, just to be sure, run the ATI catalyst uninstaller util from this page. You can't do the old uninstall drivers, install drivers and reboot trick, you'll b0rk ATI shit if you do that.

Now we're set to go ahead, make sure you've got your new X800 Pro VIVO card in your box. Boot up floppy A. Then;

flashrom -s 0 backup.bin

That's written out a backup of your card's BIOS in case it all goes horribly wrong. Now reboot and boot floppy B instead. Now we wanna do this;

gvf11 -p -f r80x256v.f1

This is Gigabyte's flash util and their X800XT BIOS and, strangely, they've released a tool which writes over a protected part of the BIOS which writes over a protected part of the BIOS which unlocks the extra four pixel pipelines that we would quite like, thank you very much. The thing is, we don't really want Gigabyte's BIOS though, we want ATI's default X800XT one. So reboot and boot FloppyA again and this time;

flashrom -p -f 0 x800xt.bin

Reboot. Windows will reckon you've got an X800XT. Install your new drivers if you haven't prior, otherwise you'll just need to walk Windows through finding the new graphics card. If you do that, you'll need a reboot before benchmarks because there's a start-up service which checks AGP speed and ups it to the maximum, otherwise it'll crawl.

How about some benchmarks on what this achieves? You got it! Doom 3 benchmarks are all in 1280 x 1024 because that's native for the TFTs most of us are using. Doom 3 timedemo is 'timedemo demo1' and scores are from second run in each instance.

ATI Radeon 9800Pro
• Doom 3 'Medium': 24.8 fps
• Doom 3 'High': 22.9 fps
• 3D Mark03: 5956 3d marks

ATI Radeon X800Pro
• Doom 3 'Medium': 37.1 fps
• Doom 3 'High': 35.7 fps
• 3D Mark03: 10164 3d marks

ATI Radeon X800XT modded
• Doom 3 'Medium': 47.0 fps
• Doom 3 'High': 45.4 fps
• 3D Mark03: 12274 3d marks

You might get some graphics corruption if your memory isn't good for XT default speeds in which case just flash back your original BIOS and the four extra pipes should remain open. Or run an overclocking utility and back the card off until it's happy. Enjoy!

The Incompetence of Lastminute.com [DrDave]

There are good internet companies... companies that are honourable, efficient, fast, who deal with problems in a mature and reliable fashion, willing to admit mistakes and deal with situations in a grown up manner. Companies like Amazon, Play or Dabs. Give these companies your money, they deserve it and you'll get a good deal into the bargain.Then there are bad internet companies. Companies who are shifty, evasive, sly, incompetent, dishonest. Companies who will lie and wriggle their way out of responsibility. Companies who will stop at nothing to make complaint resolution the single most complicated process in the world. Companies who will shift the blame at the drop of a hat. Companies like, for example, lastminute.com.To cut a long story short: Nina and I booked a short break in Madrid for five days last June. We wanted to see a Euro 2004 game in Portugal, but didn't fancy paying the extortionate costs of a flight and hotel. So we decided to drive across from Madrid to Aveiro on the day of the game. Very nice it was too. But the process of actually getting there was a goddamned nightmare. We turned up at Gatwick on the morning of our flight to find that the original flight had been rescheduled back in March... to 90 minute earlier. Of course, since we hadn't been told about this, we missed the flight.A lengthy discussion with a lastminute customer service scouser revealed that their policy was to email customers about schedule changes and that failure to respond constituted acceptance. Of course, we never recieved any such email, but this guy was having none of it. He stopped short of calling us liars, but made it very clear that this was our fault and that he would do nothing to help us. He even claimed that the Ts and Cs required us to check flight times 72 hours prior to departure, and if we hadn't checked, then we'd violated the terms of the contract. He was almost laughing when he told us this... smug bastard.It didn't end there. Since we'd missed the outward flight, the return flight would automatically be cancelled. And not only that, but the tickets we had been issued were for the original flight, and wouldn't have been valid even if we had turned up for the rescheduled flight. In the end, we were forced to buy a £375 Easyjet flight and spent most of saturday running around Madrid airport trying to secure transport home.Of course, with fire in our bellies, we were not going to take this lying down. So when we got back, we began our counterstrike. We started with the Ts and Cs. There is a 72 hour requirement in there, but it only requires travellers to check for "onward and return flights". Since this was an outbound flight, the requirement does not apply. Strike one. Our other piece of evidence was the photocopy of a delivery note for the tickets. It turns out that they were only delivered to the airport the previous evening, so lastminute had willfully issued entirely wrong tickets. Strike two. The final blow is that under the Package Travel Regulations 1992, a package seller is responsible for compensation, not the third party providers that the operator resells. Strike three.We put this into a legalesque letter and added a deadline (three weeks) and a threat that if we were not reimbursed the £375 within this time, we would begin legal procedings, raise the issue with ABTA and go screaming to Watchdog (who, incidentally, have numerous examples of exactly the same problem with lastminute).After three weeks, we had heard nothing, so wrote again, informing them that we were beginning legal procedings. Imagine our surprise when three days later, a letter from lastminute arrived. Some choice quotes:"... I can find no record of an email being sent to you to advise you [of the schedule change]. I can only assume that you were not advised of the change to your flights and for this I offer my sincere apologies.""We of course will be happy to reimburse you for the extra costs."There was much rejoicing. Job done... case closed. Right?Well, that was three weeks ago. After speaking to the customer service rep, and giving her my bank details, I was told that it would be paid straight away. Still no money. The rep no longer answers her phone. Attempts to get through to someone else put you in an endless loop of answer machines, scousers and evasion.I'm awaiting a callback from the rep, but I anticipate they'll come up with some new and interesting way of evading responsibility. Eventually, we'll probably have to take them to court... but with the letter admitting liability, I assume it would be an open and shut case. Fuckers.So there you go. Lastminute make the list. I wholeheartedly advise you to avoid these idiots like the plague... unless you like having holidays ruined, or being lied to by a smug scouse monkey?

EEDford Wives [DrDave]

Hello pervs. In honour of the recent release of the classic Stepford Wives, I think its about time we started a mini-version of Stepford for ourselves.So in the unlikely event that you're offered a chance to cash in your existing spouse for a Sex-Crazy, Housework-Obsessed, Well Turned-Out Love-Robot... And assuming that this Carnal Automaton was easily skinable... Which Nokia Xpress-on (tm) cover would you chose for your Cyber Shag?Personally, I would garb my Robo-Hump in the likeness of the eternal jailbate, Natalie Portman. Whereas Slim would weld a titanium visage of Charlie Dimmock onto his Love Machine. Speak on chums...

Quantum Assmastery Upgrade [Beej]

Testing 1,2... testing 1,2...

Vote for me, I'll scare the crap out of you [brit]

For fucks sake vote for Kerry you Yankees.
I can't vote, none of EED can as far as I'm aware, but if you're American, eligible to vote, and reading this: VOTE KERRY.
Bush is a grade A cuntlord and I'm heartily sick of him using 'terrorism' as a card to trump any and all criticisms, fuck it - even genuine questions, with.
'Mr Bush, why is it that over 10,000,000 Americans are illiterate?' 'Uhm, well its.. LOOK OVER THERE! TERRORISM! AIEEEEEE! GO TO LEVEL ORANGE!'
'Mr Bush, why is my grandmother denied medical care despite having paid taxes for the last 60 years?' 'Uhm, thats because we operate.. TERRORISM IN OUR MIDST! AIIIEEEEEE!'
It's bullshit, it's utter utter bullshit.
Amazingly (or not) the latest batch of scaremongering horseshit to come out of the White House is that a man in Pakistan, an AGENT OF TERROR, had emails on his lappy identifying targets in the US of A.
Fine. OK, cool, ramp up the alert, inform the people, secure teh targets.
But what's this? the intel is NEARLY FOUR YEARS OLD? Are the phonelines from Pakistan really that fucked? Do they use the Royal Mail to communicate this shit? Or, has Bush's myriad moronic cronies decided that by chucking this out, Kerry will lose some of that super fabby 7 point lead?
And where's the evidence eh? Oh, THERE it is.
Ladies & Gentlemen of the United States of America, BEHOLD YOUR EVIDENCE:
Look everyone, evidence of terrorist plotting
VOTE KERRY.

Doom 3 sucks [slim]

It doesn't really, but it's not Teh Best Game Evah..
Biggest gripe is the lack of anything other than standard fps gameplay. Take away the grahpics, and you're left with find yellow key, open yellow door shooting bad guys on the way. It's very well executed, very slick, very atmospheric, but I've not yet had to do anything outside that model. It's also (as that letter suggested) fucking dark, fucking cramped and filled with very pointless rooms. These rooms are usually decorated with very fancy and clever animated machinery......that does absolutely fuck all other than look good. Very little is interactive, including the people. It's not even got the questy/dialogie stuff that riddick has.
I'm not surprised like, ID are engine makers, and have always made average single player games. It does look fucking amazing, but if these fucking amazing rooms have to be so small, dark, and filled with pointless non-interactive animations, who's going to use it?
Half Life 2, we need you!