Author: James Lark

A note to people who produce DVD packaging:

“Interactive menus” is not a special feature. It is simply a feature, not one that is special. If a DVD is to have any other features to choose from, a menu is pretty much essential; furthermore one needs to be able to interact with it, or it is not a menu at all, it is a list. A list of things that one can’t choose from.

Perhaps I missed a whole era of early DVD manufacturing where there were such DVDs, with films hidden on them that could not be accessed because people had not yet realised the importance of making their menus interactive. I can only imagine that if there was such a period it didn’t last very long. Certainly such hypothetical times have, if they ever existed at all, long since passed.

Therefore, an “interactive menu”, or to put it plainly, a “menu”, is something we generally expect on a DVD, except perhaps on an illegal bootlegged one. If you consider a menu a special feature you might by the same logic list “not an illegal bootleg” as a special feature, and that would be silly. A DVD not being an illegal bootleg is a feature, but like interactive menus it is not one that is special.

“Scene access” is not a special feature either. For all the reasons stated above, it is a feature. But if you bother listing it on the packaging you might just as well start listing features like “plays on a DVD player”, or “circular and flat”, or “contains sound and moving pictures!!!”.

And finally, if you happen to have listed the film itself as a special feature, that is most certainly not right. The film is a feature, but only a very basic feature for a DVD of that film. If you consider the film to be special then that is lovely for you, but very much your subjective opinion and not one I want shoved down my throat thank you very much.

Eight minutes. I wasn’t far off.

You could be forgiven for not having realised that, as of today, a European Union directive requires all internet service providers to retain information on email traffic, visits to web sites and telephone calls for 12 months, since the government have been so sneaky about it (clearly their information is a lot less public that ours).

I have already discussed the worrying implications for people who visit odd websites, and naturally privacy is an issue (you don’t want the Home Office knowing about all that Harry Potter porn you’ve been looking at), but another issue for concern is that the extra storage needed for all this data will be paid for by the Home Office. Which means bigger tax bills all round (one mobile phone company alone is charging the Home Office £875,000 to retain the information).

Obviously in a time of financial crisis we’d all like to avoid this unnecessary cost, so here are a few tips to keep our taxes down and also maintain a modicum of privacy:

1. If you visit a website which lots of other people read, print out the best pages so they can all look at it without building up additional data for internet service providers to store. Or if it’s a particularly embarrassing website, get somebody else to print it out for you.

2. Stop using the internet to send messages. Now may well be the time to return to simpler, older methods of communication – in offices, slipping notes across desks, or those whooshy vacuum delivery systems that go through whole buildings, make for methods of communication which simply can’t be tracked by the Home Office, and cost the taxpayer nothing. As Young Letter Writer of the Year 1987 I thoroughly advocate the return of the good old-fashioned letter for more personal correspondence.

3. If you absolutely MUST send an email, try to include in it as much information as you can about any terrorist attacks or groups you are aware of. That way it’s not a complete waste of money when that email is stored for the next 12 months.

4. If you’re going to look at porn, use good old-fashioned pay-per-view channels rather than the internet. That way the Home Office will never find out. Unless you do something stupid like sticking the cost into the Home Secretary’s expenses claim…

A story here about the Home Office’s plan to monitor web-browsing habits to build up a database of our very private details. Civil liberties, blah blah, more data to be lost on trains, blah blah, etc etc.

Beyond the whole worrying idea that this level of surveillance is building up detailed private information about all of us, there is an issue here which nobody seems to have mentioned yet – viz. the plain and utter wrongness of the idea that a person’s web browsing habits can build up a clear picture of who they are (or to quote Shami Chakrabarti of Liberty, “who I’m associated with, perhaps what my politics is, what my religious preference is and shopping habits are”).

Okay, in many cases that’ll work, because many web users are simple people with simple needs and their browsing habits will be restricted to social networking, news stories, fundamentalist religious websites and ebay. But let’s look at those of us who aren’t so simple.

Case study #1: let’s imagine the Home Office pieced together the character of John Finnemore from his reading habits at the British Library; a cursory sweep through his blog suggests they’d be left with the baffling image of a man whose professional song lyric writing, primarily in the style of by P. G. Wodehouse though possibly influenced by Idi Amin and P. L. Travers, is shared with his enthusiasm for barbed wire (specialising in the area of early US barbed wire patents) and cowology.

Case study #2: as previously discussed, one of the searches that brings readers to this particular blog is the desire to see Harry Potter porn. This was due initially to an unwise post by Mr Aylett, but latterly is something I have become oddly proud of and try to perpetuate with semi-regular mentions of Harry Potter porn. However, I feel it gives a not entirely accurate indication of the content of this blog. Or, to turn that on its head to create a picture of our readers, whilst it might be assumed that they are all literate, intelligent, politically aware writers and Doctor Who fans, a lot of them are in fact just Harry Potter perverts.

Clearly if the Home Office were to start creating databases of the above examples it would be John Finnemore who’d be locked up and our readers who would get off scot free, which is entirely the wrong way round.

I’m told that Bedford’s main parish church are going to install a memorial to the BBC.

Bit premature, I wonder?

On the drive from Cambridge to Bedford there is currently a road sign which says “Sign not in use”.

Is it any wonder we’re in recession?

“I’ll let others off first… because I’m balding and insecure.”

“And I won’t push to get on… because as the hearts in my hair indicate, I can’t cope with being a grown-up. Also I can’t really see properly because of the fringe.”

…I’m just filing away some old receipts for tax purposes and I notice I’ve scribbled a possible exchange for two of our characters on the back of one of them. It goes like this:

Barry: Do unto others what you would have done to yourself.
Horny_teen: (sadly) I can’t give everyone a blow job.

This is going to be embarrassing if I get investigated by Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs.

A couple of days ago I drove past a handmade sign by the side of the road that said ‘Pallets wanted’. In my state of near exhaustion, however, I initially thought it said ‘Wallets painted’.

Neither of them makes a lot of sense, but what my brain saw comes from a much nicer world than the truth; even now I’m a little sad that we don’t live in a reality where I might visit a roadside craftsman on a whim to have my wallet painted a different colour.