Hello, I blog!
I share all my sporadic and toilet thoughts in here, because I am random like that.
Mice with balls (It’s not what you think)
Indeed, it seems that technology advancements have pampered us all too much.
Take the optical mouse, for instance. Now, you can move that little cursor on your screen so freely, without the need to yank out the balls (har har har) of your mouse ever so often to get rid of the dust within.
I salute the optical mouse. It’s made my life so much easier ever since I got my first one in … 2005. Suddenly, Photoshop seemed three times easier to use, especially since I don’t have to CTRL-Z as many times when I do my illustrations and whatnot because that stupid ball within the mouse refuses to move again.
Perhaps this perfectly explains why I was practically tearing my hair out at Sakae Sushi this evening.
Some background knowledge. Sakae Sushi is a chain of restaurants located predominantly in Asia, serving sushi of all sorts at cheap prices. (At least, they claim to make sushi affordable – but with the recent price hike, I am starting to have my qualms.) The outlets provide computer screens with an attached mouse at every table from which you place your orders.
Apart from having to deal with the occasional soy sauce soaked mouse, and perhaps the mouse which has had its inner mechanisms completely whacked out by the previous occupant (most probably a kid!) spilling water all over it which I encounter ever so often – I also have to deal with the old, traditional wheel mouse.
Yes, the wheel mouse.
With the ball within.
I am guessing that they chose to stick with the wheel mouse because the mouse was in the shape of an adorable green frog which matched the restaurant chain’s logo really closely, and perhaps there was no optical mouse in a similar design.
But what’s the point of having an aesthetically pleasing wheel mouse, especially when the ball within simply REFUSES. TO. MOVE?!?
That wheel mouse was practically as useful as … a male mouse without any balls. (Err, okay. Corny, I know. I couldn’t think of anything better, considering all that is in my head now is nothing but mice, mice, mice.)
Oh, and the frog-shaped wheel mouse had two big eyes – which were actually the control buttons. And I found it extremely disconcerting to punch my fingers directly into the eyeball of a frog, real frog or not.
In a nutshell – placing one order of salmon sushi involved twenty slams of the mouse on the table (to dislodge the ball from it’s stuck position), another twenty attempts to move the mouse at least one centimetre (that’s the maximum the mouse will move before it gets jammed again) and countless frantic punching of the eyes … err, buttons.
–Facepalm.
Someone should declare the wheel mouse a lethal weapon. It drives people mad.
Patent trolls
A SINGAPORE firm has threatened to sue websites that use pictures or graphics to link to another page, claiming it owns the patent for a technology used by millions around the world. In a move that has come under fire from the online community, VueStar Technologies has sent ‘invoices’ to local website operators asking for thousands of dollars in licensing fees …
Credit to a Straits Times excerpt (Paid subscription required).
(Read another full article here.)
Quite a few people have already been smacked with an invoice, charging them for use of their so-called technology.
Doesn’t this violate the fundamental rule about patents being that “the technology cannot be something obvious“?
Using images to link to other websites has been around for ages, goddamnit!
And furthermore – when I was a little kid learning HTML, I figured out how to link to other websites using images all by my tiny self without help from any web tutorials/books/what have yous – that is HOW FUCKING OBVIOUS the concept is!
And that was in 1997, waaaay before this so-called patent even existed.
There is talk that because the duration of the patent is coming to an end, the company is seeking to reap as much benefit they can from the patent by smacking charges on people before the patent officially expires.
Patent troll – that was the term people used. I absolutely agree. Typical, money-minded companies using the umbrella of their patent (and its associated rights and laws) to bully the rest of the online community into feeding their (money) faces.
If THAT is called a patent, then I can also go and patent simple, day by day tasks of walking, breathing and eating. (An annual license of $1000 payable for each action, perhaps?)
And plus, the nutcases who approved that sorry excuse of a patent better go get their heads checked. That patent was approved in 2003. Two FUCKING thousand and THREE. My circle of internet friends back then (plus my fellow bloggers) have been using images to link to other websites long before that. Perhaps even when God was still wearing diapers.
This is what I call the height of ridiculousness. Thank you for putting Singapore on the map for laughing stocks.
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