Chinese Apathy... Maw Fong

Well, having spotted this article on the BBC news I had to come to blog about it... its like why are reporters only suddenly bothered about this... take a look:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-15331773

A two year old toddler is hit by a van, the driver makes off, she's hit again, people walk by and pretty much no-one gives a shit.  This is pretty normal for South East and Eastern Asia in general, if you've ever spent any time watching any of the sickening postings and video's on "Toxic Junction" you'll soon see how people of such countries simply do not give a flying fuck about anyone in the road.

American McGee was on GFW Radio, back in the day, and he was talking about working in Honk Kong, he explained a Chinese (I think) concept of "Maw Fong".  You'll have to excuse me if that's not the right spelling.  But the phrase pretty much relates to the standard bullshit that goes on in China.  The words actually mean "trouble you", so you could say "Maw Fong Mei", to mean "May I trouble you", but Maw Fong is just all the crazy fucked up shit that goes on in China.

A good example, apparently, is that in the Chinese driving test (or at least of Hong Kong) one of the questions is "Should you find yourself going down a street with cars parked, should you a) honk occasionally to let people know you are coming, b) honk often to let people know you are coming, or c) hold down your horn to let out a continual tone?"... And one of these is the right answer!  That is Maw Fong.

The people walking past that poor little girl, that's Maw Fong.  Its all fucked up, and shows just a little of the "don't give a shit attitude".

Why am I so bothered?  Well, a couple of posts back I had a dig at Nottingham Police, and this was because I stood up to sort out a small local problem.  The problem is quiet, but the situation carries on, the nasty bitch I had to deal with still goes out and talks to other people about me like I'm shit, that's Maw Fong.  You try to be nice, you accidentally walk in the street and the planet will kick you in the knackers, run you over and watch you squirm.

I'm just amazed this story got reported, just go look at Toxic Junction, of how much of this crap goes on.

Strain your Resources, Ruin your Software.

One of my daily frustrations around here is the amount of work which relies on such tenuous back history.  A good example, which has I've been reminded of today, is the smart card (chip & pin) system used in one of the main products of my employer.

I wrote the current incarnation of this system, and to be frank, my employer needs to kiss my boots for doing so, because writing it was pretty much done in the worst circumstances, with no design, no idea what was even expected, from an in complete software development kit (SDK) purchased years before; for a member of staff no longer in their employ.

The fact that they have working chip & pin functionality is a miracle.

I mooted this scenario to a friend of mine, he expressed similar concerns at his employ, it seems the common story is that someone higher up decides a piece of kit or tech is needed, and they turn to a randomly picked, or the first available, technie type person and they set them a challenge to get things done.

The trouble with all this of course is that it leads to stress, the person doing is stressed, especially when there is no formal back, no training and no resource in which to carry out the task at hand.  The person asking for results is stressed, as without that back ground the task takes longer than it is perceived to take.  And then at the end of the day, one is stressed, the product is stressed, as testing it might reveal unknown results.
   
The moral of the story is, if you want to get good software, kit or tech, out the door let it mature.  Get the resources, get trained, get research carried out, and get to know the end product required.

It seems the current economic slump has taken a bad situation and made it far worse, as before managers and higher expected tech results from the veneer thin surface of training or resource they'd give.  But now it seems that tiny resource has been done away with.

Leaving people to produce substandard, strained, flaky software, and worse still they then point blame not at their own miss-management but at the developer working on the product.
   

Weird Google Search...

I've just spotted something Google related, you know you can type a search query straight into the address bar in Chrome?  And it'll start to prompt you for the page you might be looking for?

Well, I was just looking around, and don't ask me why this came up (I neither have a sister, nor caught her doing anything) but I typed in the phrase "Caught My Sister" and two of the prompted items surprised me, the latter on the list was Wikipedia's entry for Tony Blair, the direct link to his honours no less.

The other was the Wikipedia entry for Steven Fry... How strange that should be a suggested short cut from google for the phrase "Caught my Sister"....

Review My Review

So, I have a thought... I've not tried this out yet, neither am I tempted to pander to the idiots I believe are doing this... but I'm going to express my opinion here... I am an Amazon Vine reviewer; in case you don't know us Vine Reviewers get a montly list of products offered to us to try to Amazon to drum up some reviews and interest in the items, we get the items free and are asked to read/listen to/use and post a review back about them.  You become a Vine programmer member by invitation only.  I'm not aware what Amazon's criteria are, one day I had an invitation e-mail arrive and I accepted, since then I have tried books, CD's, some head phones and a water jet dental flossing system.

Now, most of my reviews are really about my impression of the item, I like some items and I don't like others.  A couple of the books I've had have been excellent and my reviews reflect that.  But I've noted that some items are pretty rubbish whilst others are middle of the road.  My Scores reflect that.

I feel that the removal of the pressure as to whether I bought the item, and the embarressment that I bought something and its crap, being removed has lead me to give more constructive and insightful reviews.  Some of the items I've had I've not liked, they have negative reviews, and some of the items I've had have has positive reviews...

Yet the number of people who find my reviews helpful is destressingly bizarre.  It seems when I get a product people like they roughtly 50/50 agree with me, pharoh nuff, but when I, and a gaggle of others detest an item; and say so clearly with defined parameters, examples and use cases; our feedback is given negative responses.

The dental flosser seems to be such an article, when I wrote my review for it, it had no other feedback, I was one of the first fice commentators, I posted my one star negative review and went to bed, I got up next morning and there were four more one star negative reviews and a couple of two stars... all seemed right and everyone of those reviews tallied somewhat with my own experience.

Then I noted the rating of my review was marked as a negative review, not useful, and there was a five star review in its place.  This item had no reviews, hence no sales, just vine reviewers... a bunch of vine reviewers found the item bad, one found it good, but their review gets a positive feedback, whilst ours all get negative... "0 out of 1 people found this helpful" on mine... "1 out of 1 people found this helpful" on their strange "This is awesome" style review... I'm not disagreeing that that person found the item useful, and that their review has any less merit than mine or all the others...

But a detailed, insightful, presented review with use cases and my specific points of failure, along with the few redeeming features, is marked as not helpful?  Why?

That's what I want to know, I want feedback on my feedback.

But I also want some transparency on who is giving ths "useful" ratings, should vine reviewers be able to (as it appears in this case) mark other vine reviews as not helpful?  Should only people who have bought an item on Amazon be able to review that item... or if they're not a vine reviewer; or a reviewer whom has not had that item; be able to rate the feedback of others?

These are all questions I have, as a vine reviewer I now have page after page of reviews I've posted, of the feedback on those (24 points worth) only a measily 16 people have said my reviews were helpful.  When I didn't bother with Vine and just reviewed things I got a hold of I had a much more positive number of helpful feedback points... (the points mean nothing by the way).

Might some reviewers be beign biased?

Might some be in collusion with the makers of items for review?

Might some manufacturers be getting staff to find down rating reviews not helpful to promote those with positive reviews...

In the field of PR the Amazon rating system must be a nightmare for some brands.

PHP - Exec, PassThru & System calls

When you're working with PHP, hosted by Apache, if you are using the calls "exec", "passthru" or "system" to call into other applications you can miss changes in those apps, unless you change the PHP script before accessing the page again.

So, I have my browser pointed to my PHP page as "http://127.0.0.1/example.php" and in that PHP page script I have a call to "exec /usr/bin/myapplication" which is a program I've written in C++.

Now, if I change the application in C++ and recompile it, then refresh the browser I can fail to see any change, the Apache Server/PHP engine keeps the last version run cached.  Great for speeding up your server, but a pain in the bum when you're trying to debug that C++ application through the web-browser interface.

The best solution to making sure your changes to the C++ show up appears to be to simple put an edit into the PHP file and save it again.

Note; Not even copying the PHP file into /var/www again makes a difference, the file itself has to change, if only by adding a space and then removing it again.

This edit then makes the Apache/PHP engine drop the cached version of the C++ Application and run it from scratch.  This same problem must happen if you do anything to change any application you are calling with the above PHP commands.

Call Centres....

No wonder I can't understand them when they're in India, if this is the kind of voice coaching they're getting:

"B-U-T is pronounced as 'but', however P-U-T is pronounced 'poot', [like foot] not 'putt'," explains teacher Stephen Rosario, as he coaches the class in how to enunciate English words.

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-15060641

But and Put... are the same changing the constonant from B to P does not change the inflection of the ut.... But, Put, Hut all sound the same, even Foot sounds like Fut to me (a very native British English Speaker)...

Poot, a pooter is a womans privates for heaven sake!

Ignore this "Stephen Rosario" he clearly can't speak English himself, his name sounds Italian. Gah.

Scrolling Technology

So, taking a patient look back at all the graphics technology I have documented and on my reading list, I figured I needed to pick something worth reading that was going to further my actual work too.  So, I picked up looking at scrolling and 2D effect games.

You know what? I am amazed at how much knowledge seems to have been lost, I was looking at old games from ID (the makers of Doom & Quake), I also looked at a bunch of 2D scrolling games on my old Atari ST, and started to put together some simple testing code to do the same soft of effects in Java & C#.

But, I'm after hard information about how to do certain tasks, how to achieve certain effects, but the knowledge is lost.

So, I cry out to all those old programmers out there, all you 2D scrolling nuts, blog about the technology!  I'm going to be, but I have to reinvent your wheels first.