What else is new?

Unless you live in a country so remote that you think Michael Jackson is still black and known mainly for his music, mobile phones (also known as cell phones in the US just to confuse Europeans in movies) are probably part of your everyday life.

We all use mobile phones in the civilized world. We use them to warn loved ones when we are going to be late home from work, we use them to text message friends when we're unable to meet them as arranged, and we use them to contact the skank we're seeing on the side that is making us late for both the reasons above. Then we use them to dump said skank when something better comes along or we catch something nasty.

Mobile phones, in a word, are indispensable. We need mobile phones in the modern world just the same as we need oxygen, water and football. The phone companies have us by the balls and they know it. Except for the girls, who they have by the nipples.

So why, I ask you, are they always offering us better and better deals?

Seriously, we've all seen the ads…

• Free calls after 7pm
• Unlimited local calls
• 100 free talk minutes
• Free Asian girl with loose morals with every third brain tumour.

The list is endless. The mobile phone companies are always offering us a better deals and what I want to know is why? Why are they offering us all these extra minutes and cheaper call deals when they know we need the phones so badly we'd pay whatever the hell they ask, whenever the hell they ask?

Ladies and Gentlemen, there is only one logical explanation…

They want us to talk more on our mobile phones because they are playing subliminal messages in the background static to control our minds!

Think about it, it's obvious! How else can we explain the amount of shoes women buy in an average week?

We all know that women talk more on the phone than men do, and we all know women buy a whole lot more shoes. Coincidence? I think not! The phone companies are commanding people, specifically women, to buy shoes! Poor women. What chance do their fragile female psyches stand against the power of subliminal messages? They can't even piss standing up, much less fight off strong mental manipulation.

Mobile = Shoes?

You can imagine how it works…

Steve: "Hey, hon, its Steve calling. What's up?"

Steve's Girl: "Oh, hey, Steve. Well I…"

BUY SHOEEEESSS!

Steve's Girl: "I… um… What was I talking about?"

BUY SHOEEEESSS!

Steve: "You were telling me what's up."

Steve's ho: "Oh yes, well I think I'm going to town to buy shoes."

Steve: "Sounds good. So we're still meeting for the movie at eight, yeah?"

DON’T UNDERSTAND SPORT AND BITCH A LOT FOR NO REASOOON!

Steve's Girl: "God, you're so insensitive! If you don't understand what you've done wrong I'm not going to tell you… bitch… whine… etc. etc."

And so on.

It isn't hard to figure out the kind of messages these evil phone companies are subjecting us to.

Now this is the part of the article where I would usually investigate the motives behind these subliminal messages and then deduce a cunning and heroic plan to thwart their evil doing. You know, a bit like Columbo only less retarded.

But not today, dear reader, because I can actually see a value in these subliminal messages. If we can convince the phone companies to use their power for good rather than evil, perhaps by showing them videos of the cartoon series "Arthur" until they realise that people should all share, get along, and that loose teeth are a normal part of growing up, we might just be able to make this world a little better for all of us!

I mean, why can't subliminal messages be used for good? How about we use the technology to entice boy bands to either slash their wrists or quit, for example? Or perhaps play the alphabet repeatedly in George Bush's calls until he gains the ability to construct a legible sentence?

The possibilities are endless!

Saying the right thing at the right time.

Jack wakes up with a huge hangover after attending one of his companys office parties. Jack is not normally a drinker, but the drinks didn't taste like alcohol at all. He didn't even remember how he got home from the party. As bad as he was feeling, he wondered if he did something wrong.

Jack had to force himself to open his eyes, and the first thing he sees is a couple of aspirins next to a glass of water on the side table. And, next to them, a single red rose! Jack sits up and sees his clothing in front of him, all clean and pressed. He looks around the room and sees that it is in perfect order, spotlessly clean. So is the rest of the house.

He takes the aspirins, cringes when he sees a huge black eye staring back at him in the bathroom mirror. Then he notices a note hanging on the corner of the mirror written in red with little hearts on it and a kiss mark from his wife in lipstick! "Honey, breakfast is on the stove, I left early to go get groceries to make you your favorite dinner tonight. I love you, darling!"

He stumbles to the kitchen and sure enough, there is hot breakfast, steaming hot coffee and the morning newspaper. His son is also at the table eating. Jack asks, "Son. what happened last night?" "Well," his son said, "you came home after 3 A.M., drunk and out of your mind. You fell over the coffee table and broke it, and then you puked in the hallway, and you got that black eye when you ran into the door."

Confused Jack asked his son, "So, why is everything in such perfect order, so clean, I have a rose, and breakfast is on the table waiting for me?"His son replies, "Oh THAT!... Mom dragged you to the bedroom, and when she tried to take your pants off, you screamed, "Leave me alone, lady, I'm married!"

Broken Coffee Table $239.99
Hot Breakfast $4.20
Two Aspirins 38 cents
Saying the right thing at the right time . . . Priceless

The head of the GalacticConfederation (76 planets aroundlarger stars visible from here)(founded 95,000,000 yrs ago, very space opera)solved overpopulation (250 billionor so per planet) -- 178 billionaverage) by mass implanting.He caused people to be brought toTeegeeack (Earth) and put an H Bombon the principal volcanoes (Incident 2)and then the Pacific area oneswere taken in boxes to Hawaiiand the Atlantic Area ones toLas Palmas and there "packaged."His name was Xenu. He usedrenegades. Various misleadingdata by means of circuits etc.were placed in the implants.When through with his crime Loyal Officers(to the people) captured himafter 6 years of battleand put him in an electronicmountain trap where he stillis. "They" are gone. The place (Confed.)has since been a desert.

What is above is the first page of what is supposedly the most important document in the world. At least according to Scientologists. The going rate for reaching the level of idiocy in the church to be able to view this document (and the 20 other pages that follow it) is close to $300,000. It is said in their doctrine that simply by viewing this page, you might not be able to handle it and could possibly die. If anyone does happen to have their head explode because the knowledge contained within these chicken scratchings was just too much for their feeble mind, I take full responsibility.

Anyone with a half a braincell knows that Scientologists are a bunch f cooks.

Here is why I am starting this rant. I work in Woking. There is a mall near by. I went in to the mall to get something for my soon to be father-in-law. In the middle of the walkway to the mail shop area there were 2 tables with, what appeared to be, heart monitors. There were also cleanly shaved white people there in short sleeved shirts trying to peddle Scientology to morons who happened to stray into their paths. They were like hunters looking for the prey.

I made a point in staying on the side of one of the stores and watching their tactics for reeling in the morons. They approach women, older people and weak. They do not approach bisinessmen, young people or people who look reasonable. So approached them. I passed near their layer and, of course, they made no move towards me. The second time I made a move towards them. I asked them what it is all about.

And here began the funniest thing that I have ever experiences in a long time.

After listening to their rant about Tethens (or Hivens or any other spelling it is this week). Then I asked a simple question - how do you explain L. Ron Hubbard's conviction of conning the 'church' out of $200,000? I have never seen anyone try to get out of answering a question like that person did. Then he sent me on his way because I was 'too distraut to be helped'. I guess Scientology only cares for mildly helpless.

Here is the thing - as its core tenet, Scientology teaches that all the bad things in the world come from negative life experiences. For example, if you were bitten by a dog as a child, without realizing it you might develop an irrational fear of dogs (preventing negative life experiences is why they insist their babies be born in complete silence). Using special auditing techniques and e-meter technology, both of which Scientology claims L. Ron Hubbard created, they believe they are able to remove these bad thoughts from your body.

In actuality though, both auditing and the e-meter existed before L. Ron Hubbard created them. Auditing was an early type of psychoanalysis experimented with in the early part of the last century. It was soon discarded when the experts of the time came to the conclusion it had no real lasting therapeutic value. The e-meter is based on the same technology as a primitive lie detector.

At first they introduce you to courseware and studies using bland subjects such as tapes on how to have a happy marriage, and how to control your eating habits. Where things get really weird is when they teach you to hate psychology and require you to pay money, lots of it, for the courses and auditing sessions. These materials and sessions are required to progress up the Scientology ladder.

As you progress up the ladder, the church begins to reveal more information about itself to you. They contend it can’t be revealed to you all up front, because the information is so powerful, that if you were to hear about it with an unprepared mind it would kill you (it's that powerful). What they begin to reveal is that all the negative energy trapped inside you are actually those pesky aliens.

If at some point you cannot continue to pay for the courseware and the auditing sessions, you will be offered a Billion year contract to serve the church for free in lieu of the fees. You see, the church begins to teach their followers that by following the courseware they will eventually become immortal, and a billion years is pittance in comparison to forever.

Eventually the courses teach you that once you reach the state of "clear" all thetans will have been purged from your body. After "clear" you progress to an OT (operating thetan). As an OT you will begin to develop supernatural powers (John Travolta is a high level OT).

To protect all of this information, the church uses its vast sums of money to litigate into oblivion those that speak out against the church. They have an entire dictionary of terms and plays to use against people. For example, if you were in the church and knew someone critical of it they would label you a PTS, or potential trouble source. The outside person would be called a suppressive person. As a PTS you are required to get rid of the suppressive person. This leads to the Scientology policy of disconnection.

Another trick Scientology uses is spying, threatening, and record keeping. See, the contents of your auditing sessions are kept by the church. They have all your deep dark secrets, and if you ever leave and are perceived as a danger in any way, they won't hesitate to threaten you with this information. Watch the scary video of scientology doing its spying.

Scientology is dangerous cult. They have ruined lives and killed people. If your are interested in learning more the many true life stories of people hurt by the cult, search the Internet. Just don't join their cult.

Oh and By the way -

http://theunfunnytruth.ytmnd.com/

The European commission has just announced an agreement whereby English will be the official language of the European Union rather than German, which was the other possibility.
As part of the negotiations, the British Government conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a 5- year phase-in plan that would become known as "Euro-English" (or preferably, "SI English").

In the first year, "s" will replace the soft "c". Sertainly, this will make the sivil servants jump with joy. The hard "c" will be dropped in favour of "k". This should klear up konfusion, and keyboards kan have one less letter. There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year when the troublesome "ph" will be replaced with "f". This will make words like fotograf 20% shorter.

In the 3rd year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible.

Governments will enkourage the removal of double letters which have always ben a deterent to akurate speling.

Also, al wil agre that the horibl mes of the silent "e" in the languag is disgrasful and it should go away.

By the 4th yer people wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing "th" with "z" and "w" with "v".

During ze fifz yer, ze unesesary "o" kan be dropd from vords containing "ou" and after ziz fifz yer, ve vil hav a reil sensibl riten styl.

Zer vil be no mor trubl or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi tu understand ech oza. Ze drem of a united urop vil finali kum tru.

Und efter ze fifz yer, ve vil al be speking German like zey vunted in ze forst plas.

Tuesday, August 22, 2006

Taxiing down the runway on a London-bound BA flight from Dublin, the steward made the following announcement:
"The Transportation Security Administration has asked us to advise passengers that congregating in groups during the flight is prohibited. Please note that this includes standing in line to use the airplane lavatories."
Airline security is rapidly becoming a theater of the absurd. It's hard to imagine how the bureaucrats at home can top this effort, but at this point I have every confidence in their abilities. Nevertheless, I can't resist the temptation to try and apply rational thought.
What threat, specifically, is this measure addressing? Are hijackers supposed to be deterred from getting up and storming the cabin because of an in-flight announcement? ("Alas, Mahmoud - foiled again! We must remain seated"). How is this measure in any way enforceable? Is the pilot expected to divert the flight? Perform a barrel roll at the first sign of a pee queue? And how, exactly, is the sight of multiple passengers simultaneously lunging from their seats towards a suddenly available lavatory an attractive alternative to having a little group milling about by one of the galleys?
I was filled with curiousity to see if the pilot would perform an emergency landing at Leeds after the meal service, but of course (inevitably) everyone just ignored the directive, and let the passengers empty their bladders in peace. On an 1 1/2 -hour flight with free alcohol and predominantly Scottish passengers, there was just no other solution. Even the few people who understand the announcement were in no condition to comply with it after a few glasses of cognac and orange juice.
On arrival at London, I got to see many of the same passengers who had failed to commit violent acts in the pee queue waiting in line to be photographed and fingerprinted in the non-EU citizen line. The immigration agents, who had already had their fill of fingerprinting confused, tired foreign people, were perhaps understandably gruff. But the impression they created was awful - grabbing hands, barking instructions at people who did not speak English, physically pushing little old ladies into camera range. The line was long and moved slowly, another hurdle for people who had already endured a non-refundable hundred dollar visa application fee, long questionnaires at the embassy, two immigration and customs forms to be filled out in flight, a stern video about customs procedures before landing.
The only hint of sense in this depressing carnival came at the baggage carousel, where a friendly customs inspector was walking the Sausage Dog around, looking for contraband. The Sausage Dog is a very cute beagle who is designed to detect meat products, fruit, and other contraband that one is not supposed to bring into the country, for fears of spreading pestilence and little six-footed fauna.
The procedure with the Sausage Dog is simple - if he takes a liking to your suitcase, you get a green A written on your entry card, and the customs inspectors at the exit gate take a closer look at what you've brought. If he gives you a free pass, you're less likely to be checked before leaving. And the handler walks the dog around while people are collecting their baggage, so there's no extra hassle for the passenger. While I was waiting for my bags, I saw the animal detect a bag of oranges, a suspicious bundle in a carry-on bag, and a live cat (legal, in a carrier, but one got the sense that the dog had strong opinions about the cat's immigration status).
It would be nice if more of our security measures could be this smart, rather just ostentatiously useless. Unfortunately, our Homeland Security Bureau has become obsessed with collecting as much information as it can, with little thought to how to use it. It is ossifying into a bureaucracy that would make the Austro-Hungarian Empire proud. And it's making many visitors' first impression of America one of fear, incompetence, and a general disrespect for human dignity. If irony hadn't been declared dead after September 11, this might be one promising place to look for it.

Monday, August 14, 2006

What seems remarkable about this situation is how much harm even a foiled plot can cause. Between delays, rescheduled flights, lost productivity among businesspeople flying, lost duty free revenues, and the rest it seems likely to be tens of millions of dollars or more. This as the product of the unsuccessful efforts of a couple dozen people. It highlights the asymmetry between those who can attack anywhere and those who must defend everywhere. I do quite a lot of flying each year (business & leisure withing US, EU, & Pacific rim) and while I agree with temporary security restrictions, it has reached the point where I just don't want to fly any more because of all the hassles.
One could argue that the real terrorists in terms of making people fear flying is the airport security regime. When it comes to flying, I fear inconvenience, lost time, and challenges to my pride more than I fear for my safety from attacks or hijacking. Try explaining to a six-year old why Mommy and Daddy have to take their shoes off but kids don't have to. (Yet.) For me, flying has turned from a luxury into a sometimes necessary evil. Making is a big hassle won't make it more secure. Most of the security is invisible. The best security can't be observed. It's there, you can't anticipate it or plan for it. Having the National Guard seaching bags is theatrics. It makes for good television though.
It's more probable that a jet will crash from mechanical failure than terrorism. Most people don't think about it or worry about it. The world is strange. The airlines layoff thousands of mechanics to save money and are forced to spend more money on security due to terrorism. The wing is falling off, the landing gear is shakey due to fewer mechanics, less repair work done by less people and the airlines are pushing "cheap" flights. Marketing trumps security. The layed off mechanics are applying to work security jobs because that's where the jobs are. In the end everybody is working security as the jets lose millions of dollars (higher fuel prices, etc.) and fall into disrepair. Job security is what most people care about. Our energy security is also threatened due to poor policy. We can blame that on terrorism too. Toss your bottle of hairspray and do your duty. I get the feeling the terrorists have won a few battles because we do as we are told, no matter how little sense it makes.
Your chance of dying in a car wreck is vastly greater than your chance of dying in a terrorist incident. Yet most of us ordinary people leading middle class lives overcome the terror of dying in a car wreck. In fact, most of us don't give it a second thought. I buckle my seatbelt and keep my car in good shape and pay attention to what I'm doing and relax in the knowledge that I've hedged my bets enough to survive another commute. I have no problem being "un-terrorized" while flying. I'm much, much safer once I've actually made it to the airport than I was getting there.
If you look at statistics, your chances of being involved in a terrorists attack are very low. Your chances of hitting a lottery for millions of dollars is greater, much greater. The chances of being killed by terrorists is so low you might as well forget about it. Your chances of something good happening are always much greater than something bad happening, even if you don't waste cash on lottery tickets. That's your business though.
Aren't we lucky that the shoe bomber wasn't an underwear bomber?

Thursday, August 10, 2006

So the airports are in chaos right now. Whoopty doo. You know whats frightening? How non shalant everyone is at the airports these days. 3 hours before departure for a 1 hour flight? No problems. Cavity search for a flight? No bother. When I am flying from Luton or Gatwick or Stanstead, there is a row of booths that everyone is stopped at to get their passport inspected by a Customs officer. This is the last flight I took last week from London to Edinburgh. Before the scare:The flight was departing at 18:00 from Loton to Edinburgh. I arrived 3 hours in advance. I already had a boarding pass so there was no need for me to stand in the check in line that seemed like the line at a free ice cream sampling. I went to the security point thinking that I would sit down in the departure area and eat my sandwich. I was greeted by a hoard of people waiting to pass through the security check where only 2 xray machines were working. Out of available 7. So before you get to the area where you receive some healthy dose of radiation, you have to show your boarding pass and your ID (1 if you are counting the check in counter thats 2). Then I stood inline for about 1 hour 45 minutes while the people snaked around the makeshift slalom velvet ropes making it look like there is a free Picasso napkin doodle at the end of it free for everyone attending. But no. What was at the end, was the more unwilling to listen faces telling people who are late for the flights that everyone is late for the flight. Huh? If you had enough staff you wouldnt have the line because all of the screening machines could be working. But I soon saw what the hold up was and why only 2 places were working. You see, they did have enough staff. The reason that there were only 2 machines woking, is because there were 2 people viewing the xray images, 2 men and 2 womes standing to do a pat down if the person beeps throught the metal detector, and the rest of about 14 people were hand searching every peice of hand luggage going through this section. Every one little peice.So after waiting for 15 minutes for my turn to be evaluated for the neatness of my packed luggage, I was let loose in the collection point between the security barrier and the passport control point, where it looked like the slaughter house and were the sheep. The screener did empty the contents of my bag onto the table and looked at everything, by the way. Police were checking the boarding cards and passports (thats 3) of everyone who was funneling through to board their flight after standing in line to get screened for almost 2 hours. They asked me the questions like am I a legal resident here. Am I working. Where is my residence, and of course the obligatory questions like has anyone without your knowledge had access to my bags. Well, if anyone had, would I know about it?? Fine. It was already 17.30 and I desided to make my way to the gate. Obligatory POlice in full riot gear with semi-automatic weapons dont fase me anymore. Do I feel safer with them around? No. Would you feel safer on the plane if somewhere in the hugeness of the terminal you knew that there were police with guns? No.After walking for about half the way to the gate, I came to what appeared to be another security point where I had to present my ID and a boarding pass (thats 4). So let me guet this straight - all the people flying from the gate past the security point get their little 'you are safe to fly star' and all the people whos gate is before the security point are just good enough? fine. The plane boarding was uneventful, although I was asked to show my boarding card and ID once again at the gate (thats 5) and prior to enetering the plane, although this time, it was only for a boarding card (soI am going to awad it a 1.2). Apparantly the boarding card before coming on the plane is in case someone sneaks in between the gate and the plane door.Thats 5.5 times that my identity has been checked, scanned, probed and, im my opinion, stored somewhere for later use. I lef london 4 hours before departing on a 1 hour flight bringing the total number of hours of travel to 7 (I am counting the bus from Edinburgh airport to Heymarket station).This weekend I am taking a train. From london to Edinburgh. 4.5 hours. Non stop. With scenery. £45 cheaper than flying. Who knew. Plus my cast wrapped broken leg would like some comfort as well.Look. All I am sayin is that the security has to be beefed up. The intelligence has to be beefed up. The research has to be beefed up. But who is paying the price? The consumer. In every way.

Thursday, July 20, 2006

President Bush appears poised for the first veto of his presidency. The cause that has finally pushed him to reject Congressional legislation? An attempt to expand funding for stem cell research that Bush hobbled back in 2001.
For millions of Americans, the potential fruits of stem cell research -- in the form of cures to dangerous diseases -- are a serious matter with grave personal import. For President Bush, the issue has always served as a political football.
On the one hand, Bush argues that the destruction of human embryos (microscopic organisms made up of a few cells) is a kind of killing. His press spokesman, Tony Snow, adopting the supercharged cant of anti-abortion activists, referred to it recently as "murder." In order to stop such "murder," Bush agreed in 2001 to limit all federal funding of stem cell research to a handful of pre-existing "lines" of cells -- cells that had been created specifically for research. His argument was, let's not use tax dollars to pay for the destruction of more embryos for the sake of research.
Here is why Bush's position is a joke: Thousands and thousands of embryos are destroyed every year in fertility clinics. They are created in petri dishes as part of fertility treatments like IVF; then they are discarded.
If Bush and his administration truly believe that destroying an embryo is a kind of murder, they shouldn't be wasting their time arguing about research funding: They should immediately shut down every fertility clinic in the country, arrest the doctors and staff who operate them, and charge all the wannabe parents who have been wantonly slaughtering legions of the unborn.
But of course they'll never do such a thing. (Nor, to be absolutely clear, do I think they should.) Bush could not care less about this issue except as far as it helps burnish his pro-life credentials among his "base." This has been true since the first airing of Bush's position in 2001, as I said back then. So he finds a purely symbolic way of taking a stand, but won't follow the logic of his position to the place where it might cause him any political harm -- as opposing the family-building dreams of millions of middle-class Americans would doubtless do.
(And please don't test our credulity with the laughable "Go ahead and do the research, but let's not spend taxpayers' money on things they don't believe in" argument: If that had any bearing, my tax dollars would not be funding a war that 2/3 of the country opposes now that the specious arguments used to launch it have collapsed.)
If Bush believes destroying embryos is murder, let him take a real stand against it. If he doesn't, he shouldn't make it harder for the thousands of embryos that are being discarded anyway to be used for a valuable purpose that could improve real lives.
That's why Bush's stem cell position isn't Solomonic -- it's craven. His upcoming veto is an act not of moral leadership but of hypocrisy. And the cost of this hypocrisy, assuming Congress can't muster the votes for an override, will be borne by everyone who dreams of new cures for awful illnesses.
An administration that is not in touch with theoutside world. What else is new....

Monday, July 10, 2006

Brave new world

http://www.youtube.com/v/uw8MrgQrM1I

So this a new beginning, as the new century dawns

The world's a better place for you and me

Shouldn't smoke or drink or watch that evil filthy porn.

Be Christian and God will set you free.

But being poor is worse than having AIDS,

The homeless live in boxes at our feet

Living in a constant state of dull frustrated rage,

The innocent shot daily in the street

The government has always been you pal as you well know

Absolute corrupted power play,

If we all wipe each other out, it only goes to show

While the bureaucrats get richer by the day,

Smoking dope will get you more than murder one,

And even worse than statutory rape,

Don't understand your children, so you send them all to jail,

Beleive me, you will never make a worse mistake.

The government is coming and it wants to be your friend,

It wants to show you how to be a snitch

Inform upon your children, the inevitable end,

Is everyone's a victim but the filthy fucking rich,

And religion, like the monster that it is

Keeps telling you to turn the other cheek

God is on your side, but I don't think that you're on his,

If Jesus showed up now he'd be in jail by next week

Tuesday, June 20, 2006

Reprinted. I totally agree though.

One of the finest pieces of contemporary London-centric satire is, or was, Charlie Brooker's 'Cunt' (http://thegestalt.org/simon/cunt/): the fictional adventures of Nathan Barley, a "worthless, moneyed little shit who deserves to die". Barley, a typical preening Hoxditch fool, as now undergone the almost-inevitable transformation to the small screen - though with heavy input from both Brooker himself and the massivly-influential Chris Morris.
Its not like Decline and Fall to pass up such a golden critical opportunity, so I positioned myself in front of the television, cracked open a can of Turkish pilsener, and got watching. Telelvision adaptations are often extremely disappointing, but would this one live up to its remarkable pedigree?

Well, from whats been seen so far, the signs are not good; the need for Nathan Barley to conform to the mechanics of television comedy seems to have caused some unfortunate changes to be made. Perhaps the most damaging is that Barley is obviously signposted as a twat - a buffoon who unknowingly humiliates himself with every word he speaks, a man whose mulleted dandyism is so obviously at odds with the surrounding world that the casual viewer can easily pick him out. The true horror of the original Cunt, however, is Barleys absolute comfort within the London milieu. Hes not an obvious caricature; hes an Everycunt - the kind of man youd meet anywhere in the gastropubs of West London, the bars of East London, and a million places in between. He is vile but plausible, and indeed represents that little seed of pretension that lurks in all of us: London welcomes such people, rather than throwing them into sharp relief. His very existence obviates the need for any further comment, or for him to condemn himself via his own stupidity: yet this is obviously too subtle for the new medium. In a further change, a new character, a depressive thirtysomething Dan Ashcroft, is introduced as a voice of reason - since the TV format usually demands a character with whom the audience can identify. In this case, having written an article on the rise of the idiots (we must assume at this point that idiot is the rather limp replacement chosen for cunt) our hero is distressed to find that his articles are read, for the most part, by idiots. While this may have been an effective way for Brooker to salve his conscience over the usual readership of his articles - which, lets face it, are popular with the very elements he constantly attacks - as a satiric device it falls a little flat. In addition, the creation of a new central figure has relegated Barley himself to the status of occasional comic relief, which seems clearly wrong.

So, in part its the execution which is the problem here. But a more fundamental issue is that satires implicit dialogue between outside and in, between engagement and detachment, has become corrupted. The centrality of the London-centric broadcast or print media to our culture means that any attempt to satirise that culture - at least in a manner as simultaneously vicious and specifically targeted as Nathan Barley - from within those same media circles will be doomed to failure. Once the script falls into the hands of the gilded fools behind the cameras, all of its vitality is lost: its translated into a language already simplified by the very things it attacks. For complex economic, educational and social reasons (many of which boil down to the fact that the media is a fundamentally middle-class profession, itself boiling down to the fact that to get ahead you need to be able to afford to work for free), contemporary television comedy is already heavily inflected by Barleyism, however distasteful a judgement this might seem to genuine talents working in the field.

This may seem a terribly sweeping judgement, but to a certain degree its borne out by other humour currently on our screens: increasingly, theres a sense that British television comedy seems to be existing within its own, claustrophobically self-referential world. Id cite the pretentious, self-indulgent Green Wing, the sub-Morris dark comedy of Nighty Night, and even the increasingly cosy, twentysomething tweeness of Spaced - a series that at its best had considerable charm. A lot of this, admittedly, is related to the huge influence of Morris - a talent so utterly unique that any attempt to re-use his techniques comes out as hamfisted parody. It cant help, either, that the creation of BBC digital channels has oriented the programming towards an increasingly specific audience; one that in demographic terms coincides very closely with the materials creators. It should be added at this point that Im not harking back to any golden age of television comedy - it was always crap. Yet failure in these times is possibly less excusable; theres more being commissioned with more airtime to fill, and with most major televisual boundaries and taboos having been broken down, writers are at last free to pursue whatever takes their fancy, which makes it even more depressing when what they seem to fancy is Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps. The series of the past few years most likely to bring a wan flicker of mirth to Decline and Falls face have been those which have broken out of the sitcom format by whatever means - the internal monologues of Peep Show, the focused parody of Look Around Yous first series or of People Like Us - rather than attempting to update it with limply surreal touches or flashy camerawork (Nathan Barley was blighted by both of the these, leading to an irritating confusion over whether these innately Barleyesque techniques were part of the satire or were used without irony).

At this point, someone might try and cite the runaway success of current audience favourite Little Britain as an example of Britcomedys rude health and of the success of the BBC3 concept. Well, Id argue that Little Britain is actually deeply old-fashioned; a blend of stale catchphrase comedy (a genre already fucked raw by The Fast Show) with some more traditional elements of British humour. You may remember the episode of Family Guy where the local bar is turned into a English theme pub. I say, says a stereotypical English customer, you know whats really funny? A man dressed in womens clothing. Depressingly, this really gets to the bottom of much of Little Britains appeal - its a traditional-style point-and-laugh freakshow (unless, of course, thats the entire point, and Lucas and Walliams are actually satirising their audiences desperately MOR tastes; but could they really be that clever?)

What this all leads to, ultimately, is the sense that Nathan Barley is part of the same airless, self-contained world. How else would it be possible to explain its startling sense of irrelevance? Webcasts and MP3 decks are all very well as a target for satire, but to some extent its the ludicrously optimistic, pre-tech-crash culture of the late 1990s thats being satirised, and one suspects that most people in the non-media world wouldnt really be bothered. It seems remarkable that a television company would waste valuable time on this or on lampooning of a set of stereotypes only recognisable to those who live in London, until one remembers that for the media, London is everything.

How can all this this be stated more simply? The television version of Cunt is made, most probably, by cunts. For cunts. If it turns out rather cuntish, we shouldnt be surprised.

Wednesday, June 14, 2006

Now, I love my Irish peeps. You're all really close to my cold Jewish heart. But I gotta ask you about this...

WHY IS EVERYTHING JUST GOOD ENOUGH?

I am in Dublin right now and going to be here for the 3 weeks on assignment from my company based in london. The first thing I noticed when I landed in Dublin 'international' airport was the debris on the field next to the runway and the gates. Isnt that like a hazard of some kind?

The airport is a shack. THERE ARE NO COMPUTERS ON THE CHECK IN DESK! They do everything on paper. Whats up with that? Plus you pay 7 euro's to check in your bags on RyanAir and Aerlingus? why? should that come with the price of the ticket?

The main artery into the city from the airport is always jammed because its a local road! I guess they are not expecting anyone to come to dublin.

thank god I am staying near Trinity college, which is a progressive area of dublin.

I asked for a wake up call at 4.15am, received it at 4.30.

The city bus does not give you change if you dont have exact change. It gives you a receipt to redeem it at the bus depot office. You have to spend another 1.35 to get there to get your change.

The soft drink machine in the hotel lobby I am staying at has not been filled or fixed or something in the whole 2 weeks that I have been here. It couldnt be because there is a shortage of vending machine repairmen, because ireland has one of the highest unemployment rates in europe. but thats good enough.

I left my suits at the hotel for the weekend. When I came in on sunday night at about 6pm, I asked the reception for my suits. They said that they will bring them to my room as soon as they located them in housekeeping. They didnt. I asked them at 10pm again and was told that the person at the front desk left home. Nice. I only got them on monday night. Why? Because the housekeeping department opens at 9 which is later than I need to be at the office.

Vat is 21%.

I firmly beleive that Irish had a great civilization going once. With flying cars and doors that open with the whoosh sound like on star trek and food dispensers that would eliminate hunger and poverty. Then they discovered whiskey......

PS: Guinness tastes much better. I guess that because they are going through so many barrels a week. What else is new....

Tuesday, May 30, 2006

When I used to go on long trips, I would rent a car rather than drive the car I already have. I don't have a really good reason for this, except that rental cars are shiny and smell new, and my car is dingy and smells like the nightmares of a thousand cheeseburgers. Now that I am in the new country, that feeling was reinforced by my experience on driving from Scotland to London.Rental cars also have better tech. For instance, my car has one bar to move the seat back and forth, and one to move the seat up and down. But they don't really move the seat, they just loosen it so that I can jerk around like three go-go dancers roped together, trying to get it into place. By comparison, my rental has an ingenious little knob that gently tucks my body into perfect ergonomic balance. It's like a womb with new-car smell. Actually, for all I know, wombs do have new-car smell. Maybe that's why we like new-car smell so much. But I digress.My car has a radio that picks up normal free stations, which is fine for the city but if you travel for an hour or so you're going to be stuck with three flavors of station: country, mariachi and preacher.My car also has a CD player that works with any CD that has not been marred by scratches, fingerprints, dust, sunlight or sexy thoughts -- in other words, none that I own. The rental, on the other hand, has satellite radio, which has infinity channels. NASA has a probe sitting in a rental car even as we speak, exploring the far, uncharted reaches of satellite radio stations. All they've been able to determine so far is that every station eventually plays at least one cover of "Time After Time."Satellite radio is very dangerous, because I'm really not qualified to make aesthetic decisions at 70 mph. It generally takes me three near misses to give up and go with the station that most resembles my own record collection. It's nice to know that at least one other person, or perhaps algorithm, out there likes "One Night in Bangkok."Rental cars these days also have buttons all over the steering wheel, which makes me very happy. This is because like all rational, mature adults, I want to be Speed Racer. All I need is a child and his chimp in the trunk and I'm ready to rock. It's not precisely totally 100 percent the same, though, because Speed's buttons transformed the car into a boat and launched a robot homing pigeon, while my buttons engage cruise control. In all honesty, I'm about 400 times more likely to use cruise control as I am to need a robot pigeon, but it would be nice to have both.I think the point of having the buttons on the steering wheel is that it's supposed to be safer, but it's actually more dangerous for the first 15 minutes, because that's when I'm experimenting. I'm pressing all the buttons to see what they do. I'd make a terrible James Bond. Two minutes after I pulled into traffic the streets would be covered in oil slicks and smoke screens, and I'd be trailing a grappling hook.My most recent rental had "parking assistance," which is not as nice as it sounds. I was hoping for that thing where you press a button and the car slides into a parking space for you, but instead parking assistance just mimics the presence of a high-strung passenger. When you start to get too close to another car, or the curb or an invisible elf, it beeps at you. A startled, accusatory beep. If you ignore it, it beeps again. The first time I tried to use parking assistance, I may as well have taken the handicapped space because anyone seeing the angle I ended up at would have assumed I was half-blind, suffered from vertigo and had an intense fear of curbs. So I just ignored it for the rest of the trip and I'm proud to say I didn't run over anything that has a lawyer.I guess I am getting too old for even stuff as basic as a car. What else is new...

Saturday, May 20, 2006

From the 'Can't Wait To See This Kid Get His Ass Kicked In High School Department' - According to press release by Brad's PR firm, Angelina had a 6lb. baby boy they named Benin Obadele. What a retarded name.Is it real? Lets examine the evidence...1) retardo, "hollywood" name- check2) born in 3rd world country for the sake of press attention- check3) small for a full term child, suggesting that mom "watched her figure" during pregnancy- checkYep, seems real to me. Benin Obadele? WHAT THE FUCK!?!? Angelina, YOU ARE WHITE. Quit with this african shit already. Repeat after me: I am NOT from africa. I am white. I am not a member of the watusi tribe. My name is Angelina, not Ngungo Bunifa Kitenge. All these phony hollywood types are trying too damn hard! What else is new....

Tuesday, April 25, 2006

Soft drink proprietors have seized the media spotlight with a recent announcement that they will phase out the sale of sugary soft drinks in public school cafeterias and vending machines over the next three years. Health and education officials were quick to praise the move, but others are asking the pertinent question why the sudden change of heart? Call me a jaded consumer, but I have a difficult time swallowing the fact that the purveyors of sugary, health destroying cocktails are more concerned with the recent obesity epidemic and the health of our youth than they are with their own market shares and profitability. There must be some measure of benefit, aside from the recent P.R. gains, for these gigantic corporations to even consider pulling their flagship products from such a lucrative market. What could possibly replace all of those cans of Coke and Pepsi?
H-20. Wet gold. Profit in a bottle. Water. The bottled water industry is ridiculously lucrative. Each of the three companies that agreed to drop the sugary beverages has their own version of bottled water that will undoubtedly fill the gaps in the school vending machines. The world consumes roughly 155 billion liters of bottled water per year in a market that last year surpassed 9 billion dollars, and it would seem that they still have markets to (excuse the pun) tap. The corporations literally pay fractions of cents for each liter of spring water that they bottle, which they then sell marked up at roughly 2000f that cost. In some cases the water isnt even from a fresh water spring. Instead it is common tap water that has gone through one or more stages of purification. Without a doubt, selling the water in its base form for the same price as water mixed with sugar, flavor, and carbonation is vastly more profitable.
That being said, the end result is a school environment in which children are not able to over indulge on soft drinks. This is good. Bear in mind, however, that Cadbury Schweppes, Coca-Cola. and PepsiCo were likely not putting the health and well being of the children first when making this decision, because when we think about healthy food and drink, PepsiCO and Coca-Cola are the first things that pop into everyones head. Big corporations making even more money at the expense of eveyone else.... What else is new.....

Friday, April 21, 2006

Girls of Myspace? Who knew that it was filled with hot young women just ithching to submit their photos to playboy? What else is new.... (NSFW of course)
http://www.robont.net/archives/2006/04/girls_of_myspac.html

Friday, April 14, 2006

Remember when South Park was funny? I am kinda pissed at Matt and Trey for their attack on Family Guy. They think that they really stuck it to people from Family Guy. And they think that they made a point about censorship. It not like that they get their ideas from the front page of morning newspaper (that would imply that they read newspaper and not get their idea from FOX News channel). It seems that they just have a list of people to pick on. It would be anybody - US leaders, foregn leaders, anyone. Then you could make him have a homosexual sex with Satan so nobody has to wonder what your opinion of him is.
Alternatively, you could spend 30 seconds pasting his head on a cartoon body and put him in his underwear to beat America over the head with your opinion. At which point you have 23 minutes of air time to fill. Just to shake things up a bit, we could have Cartman call Kyle a dirty jew. 15 times ought to do it. Between that and Kyle's response that's another 10 minutes gone. After that, we will have to come up with some joke about Iran's president and repeat it again and again. Then, just in case someone in the universe didnt get your point, you can spend the last 5 minutes of the episode having a stock character like Stan's father explain everything in plain english without coming up with a single joke! Matt and Trey - have you guys forgotten that you used to have episodes where aliens implanted a satellite in Cartmen's ass? Sure, you wrote a couple of funny contemporary criticisms like Janet Reno in a bunny suit, but you got lost somewhere along the way. You know that episode where people smelled their own farts over 50 times because they were so arrogant? The city of San Francisco was destroyed by its own smug sense of self satisfaction - it was like a metaphor for your own lives. You are on Comedy Central for crying out loud! The Daily Show has more jokes and less politics than South Park these days. As far as Family Guy goes, humor doesn't have to be topical. Show me one show on TV that doesn't use a formula to some extent, including yours. Get off your fucking high horse and go back to writing funny episodes before your viewers get fed up and desert you.People forget, South Park was just as "pointless and random" as Family Guy when they started out. Then, Matt & Trey decided to get a stick up their ass when the events of the nation made it seem like politics were very important, right around the 2000 election. You remember the old South Park, and then do you remember "Orgasmo" or "BASEketball"? Yeah, that was them in the 1990s. Then it went to "That's My Bush" (or whatever that stupid sitcom was called), the new preachy South Park, Team America, and beyond. I guess what I'm saying is, give Family Guy some time, at least as much as South Park has had now, to evolve, before you go dumping on them. I'm sick of South Park having a point. It's starting to feel like Tom Cruise yelling at Matt Lauer about psychology... I like the show, but they're no more qualified to tell us how we should feel about every issue than the very people (i.e. George Clooney) that they make fun of for the same things. Matt and Trey selling out to the money machine. I know they always said that they are in it for the money and ready to sell out at any time, but at this rate, they are going to be out of a job. What else is new.....

Wednesday, March 29, 2006

As are governments try and controls us even more, by telling us all how useful ID cards would be to the nation, I decided it was about time I aired my ideas to make the world a better place! We can all see ID cards may have some use, for easy identification or authorisation but in truth, it will probably just lead to more fraud as crime rings master how to copy them! Unlike the revolutionary IQ cards, with the risk of on the spot IQ tests, it will cut down any real way of scamming the system. Unlike the ID card which would secretly be used to track us, watch us, and generally spy on us, the IQ card will simply be there to stop stupid people being stupid outside the privacy of there own home!

Places where the IQ cards would be useful

Bars and Clubs. Now of course each bar or club could set its own IQ standards and possibly be made to have it displayed clearly near the entrance next to the dress code and other policies. Knowing that there is a minimum IQ level on the door, will give you a good idea of what to expect inside. This can be helpful in two ways, not only in choosing if you want to enter the establishment, but aslo give you a clear guide as to what stories / jokes to tell saving everyone the embaresment of having to explain them. The IQ level will then be used to set the level for the alcohol allowance, without actually having any facts to prove this, I think most would agree, the dumber somebody is the more likely they are to cause a fight over who can piss the highest, or drink so much that they fall down the stairs! Using the simple IQ to Alcohol level guidelines, we could cut down a huge amount of fights, accidents, and unwanted pregnancys.

Restaurants. At first you might be fooled into thinking that this is an area where the IQ card would be redundant. But thats probably because its you Im mocking! By issuing an IQ standard for each establishment, not only do we once again not have to deal with screaming swearing football fans and dribbling idiots. But they dont have to put up with us, sighing and looking down at you. Nobody wants to hear you struggling to pronounce creme Brule, when all you want is a bowl of custard! (Oh wait... forget it) So lets save us all some uncomfortable moments and let them show off the knowledge of the McDonalds menu, to people that will appreciate it. At least then you wont have to worry about arguing who had the salad and who had the steak! The dollar saver menu does the work for you!

Electronics. Each new product will not only have to be tested for safety, they will also have to pass an IQ test. So before purchasing anything from a fancy high def TV to a not so fancy toaster, the end user will have a good idea if they will be capable of using it. This will not only save a lot of embarrassment and possibly accidents, but will save the manufacture millions in technical support and user error breakages. Therefore bringing the prices of there products down, and cutting down the amount of things people point at in there houses with a blank look saying "err yeah, we got it last year, dont no how to stop the clock flashing though".

Insurance. Rather then insurance companys simply relying on there clients telling them how much things are worth, where they are going to be stored, and how is going to use them. To work out how much the premium should be, they can now bring IQ levels into the equation. Lets face it my dumb neighbour is much more likely to leave the keys in the car, spill coffee over the keyboard, or have a problem with taking things apart to see how they work and lick live cables to see if they are live or not! Then I am, so why not let him pay a premium for it!
Am I the only one who sees this? What else is new...

What’s the speed of dark?

There's no industry standard for Web application performance, so we must depend on our own best judgment to determine just how fast is fast enough. Learn how to gather performance expectations and convert them into explicit, testable requirements.

There are no industry standards.

You must analyze your site in terms of who the customers are, what their needs are, where they are located, what their equipment and connection speed might be, etc., etc. I suspect 1.5 seconds would be a rather short interval for many situations. Do you really require that quick of a response?

The bottom line is that what seems fast is different in different situations. So how do you determine how fast is fast enough for your application, and how do you convert that information into explicit, testable requirements? Those are the topics this article addresses.

Let's start by discussing the leading factors that contribute to what we think fast is. I believe these considerations can be divided into three broad categories:

• user psychology
• system considerations
• usage considerations

None of these categories is any more or less important than the others. What's critical is to balance these considerations, which we'll explore individually here, when determining performance requirements.

User psychology

Of the three categories, user psychology is the one most often overlooked -- or maybe a better way to say this is that user psychology is often overridden by system and usage considerations. I submit that this is a mistake. User psychology plays an important role in perceived performance, which, as we discussed in detail throughout the "User experience, not metrics" series, is the most critical part of evaluating performance.

Consider this example. I recently filled out my tax return online. It's a pretty simple process: you navigate through a Web application that asks you questions to determine which pages are presented for you to enter data into. As I made a preliminary pass through my return, I was happy with the performance (response time) of the application. When I later went back to complete my return, I timed the page loads (because I almost always think about performance when I use the Internet). Most of the pages returned in less than 5 seconds, but some of the section summary pages took almost a minute!

Why didn't I notice the first time through that some pages were this slow? Why didn't I get frustrated with this seemingly poor performance? I usually notice performance as being poor at between5 and 8 seconds, and at about 15 seconds I'll abandon a site or at least get frustrated. There's no science behind those numbers; they're just my personal tolerance levels. So what made me wait a minute for some pages without even noticing that it was slow? The answer is that when I requested a section summary page, an intermediate page came up that said:

"The information you have requested is being processed. This may take several minutes depending on the information you have provided. Please be patient."

When I received that message, I went on to do something else for a minute. I went to get a drink, or checked one of my e-mail accounts, or any of a million other things, and when I came back the page was there waiting for me. I was satisfied. If that message hadn't been presented and I had found myself just sitting and waiting for the page to display, I would have become annoyed and eventually assumed that my request wasn't submitted properly, that the server had gone down, or maybe that my Internet connection had been dropped.

So, getting back to the initial question of how fast is fast enough, from a user psychology perspective the answer is still "it depends." It depends on several key factors that determine what is and isn't acceptable performance.

The first factor is the response time that users have become accustomed to based on previous experience. This is most directly tied to the speed of their Internet connection. My mother, for example, has never experienced the Internet over anything other than a fuzzy phone line with a 56.6-kbps modem. I'm used to surfing via high-speed connections, so when I sign on at my mother's house I'm frustrated. My mother thinks I'm silly and spoiled. She's right. I'm not very patient, so I have a low tolerance for poor Web site performance, whereas she has a high tolerance.

Another factor is activity type. All users understand that it takes time to download an MP3 or MPEG video, and therefore have more tolerance if they're aware that that's the activity they're performing. However, if users don't know that they're performing an activity like downloading a file and are just waiting for the next page to load, they're likely to become frustrated before they realize that the performance is actually acceptable for the activity they're performing.

This leads us to the factor of how user expectations have been set. If users know what to expect, as they do with the tax preparation system I use, they're likely to be more tolerant of response times they might otherwise think of as slow. If you tell users that the system will be fast and then it isn't, they won't be happy. If you show users how fast it will be and then follow through with that level of performance, they'll generally be pretty happy.

The last factor we should discuss here is what I call surfing intent. When users want to accomplish a specific task, they have less tolerance for poor performance than when they're casually looking for information or doing research. For example, when I log on to the site I use to pay bills, I expect good performance. When I'm taking a break from work and searching for the newest technology gadgets, I have a lot of tolerance for poor performance.

But if there are no industry standards, how do we know where to start or what to compare against?

System considerations

System considerations are more commonly thought about than user psychology when we're determining how fast is fast enough. Stakeholders need to decide what kind of performance the system can handle within the given parameters. "Fast-enough" decisions are often based purely on the cost to achieve performance. While cost and feasibility are important, if they're considered in a vacuum, you'll be doomed to fielding a system with poor performance.

Performance costs. The cost difference between building a system with "typical" performance and building a system with "fast" performance is sometimes prohibitive. Only by balancing the need for performance against the cost can stakeholders decide how much time and/or money they're willing to invest to improve performance.

System considerations include the following:

• system hardware
• network and/or Internet bandwidth of the system
• geographical replication
• software architecture

Entire books are dedicated to each of these considerations and many more. This is a well-documented and well-understood aspect of performance engineering, so I won't spend more time on it here.

Usage considerations

Usage considerations are related to but separate from user psychology. The usage considerations I'm referring to have to do with the way the Web site or Web application will be used. For example, is the application a shopping application? An interactive financial planning application? A site containing current news? An internal human resources data entry application? "Fast" means something different for each of these different applications. An application that's used primarily by employees to enter large volumes of data needs to be faster for users to be satisfied than a Web shopping site. A news site can be fairly slow, as long as the text appears before the graphics. Interactive sites need to be faster than mostly static sites. Sites that people use for work-related activities need to be faster than sites that are used primarily for recreational purposes.

These considerations are very specific to the site and the organization. There really isn't a lot of documentation available about these types of considerations because they're so individual, depending on the specific application and associated user base. What's important is to think about how your site will be used and to determine the performance tolerance of expected users as compared to overall user psychology and system considerations. I'll say more about this in the next section.

Collecting information about performance requirements

So how do you translate the considerations described above into performance requirements? My approach is to first come up with descriptions of explicit and implied performance requirements in these three areas:

• user expectations
• resource limitations
• stakeholder expectations

In general, user and stakeholder expectations are complementary and don't require balancing between the two. For this reason, I start by determining these requirements. Once I've done this, I try to balance those with the system/financial resources that are available. Truth be told, I generally don't get to do the balancing. I usually collect the data and identify the conflicts so that stakeholders can make decisions about how to balance expectations and resources to determine actual requirements.

Determining the actual requirements in the areas of speed, scalability, and stability and consolidating these into composite requirements is the final step. I'll describe that process in detail later on, but first let's look at each of the three areas where you'll be collecting information about requirements.

User expectations

A user's expectations when it comes to performance are all about end-to-end response time, as we touched on earlier in our look at user psychology. Individual users don't know or care how many users can be on the system at a time, how the system is designed to recover in case of disaster, or what the cost of building and maintaining the system has been.

When a new system is replacing an old one, it's critical from the user's perspective for the requirements of the new system to be at least as stringent as the actual performance of the existing system. Users won't be pleased with a new system if their perception is that its performance is worse than the system it's replacing -- regardless of whether the previous system was a Web-based application, client/server, or some other configuration.

Aside from this situation, there's no way to predict user expectations. Only users can tell you what they expect, so be sure you take the time to poll users and find out what their expectations are before the requirements are set. Talk to users and observe them using a similar type of system, maybe even a prototype of the system to be built. Remember that most users don't think in terms of seconds, so to quantify their expectations you'll have to find a way to observe what they think is fast, typical, or slow.

During my tenure as a performance engineer, I've done a lot of research in the area of user expectations. I believed at first in the "8-second rule" that became popular in the mid-1990s, simply stating that most Web surfers consider 8 seconds to be a reasonable download time for a page. But since then I've found no reliable research backing this rule of thumb, nor have I found any correlation between this rule of thumb and actual user psychology. I'm going to share with you what I have found, not to suggest these findings as standards but to give you a reasonable place to start as you poll your own users.

I've found that most users have the following expectations for normal page loads when surfing on high-speed connections:

• no delay or fast -- under 3 seconds
• typical -- 3 to 5 seconds
• slow -- 5 to 8 seconds
• frustrating -- 8 to 15 seconds
• unacceptable -- more than 15 seconds

In my experience, if your site is highly interactive or primarily used for data entry you should probably strive for page load speeds about 20% faster than those listed. For mostly static or recreational sites, performance that's about 25% slower than the response times listed may still be acceptable.

For any kind of file download (MP3s, MPEGs, and such):

• If the link for the file includes a file size and the download has a progress bar, users expect performance commensurate with their connection speed.
• If users are unaware they're downloading a file, the guidelines for normal pages apply.

For other activity:

• Unless user expectations are set otherwise, the guidelines for normal pages apply.
• If users are presented with a notice that this may take a while, they'll wait significantly longer than without a notice, but the actual amount of time they'll wait varies drastically by individual.

When users are made aware of their connection speed, their expectations about performance shift accordingly. Part of my experiments with users was to create pages with the response times in each of the categories above over a high-speed connection, then to throttle back the connection speed and ask the users the same questions about performance. As long as I told them the connection rate I was simulating, users rated the pages in the same categories, even though the actual response times were very different.

One final note: There's a common industry perception that pages that users find "typical" or "slow" on high-speed connections will be "frustrating" or "unacceptable" to users on slower connections. My research doesn't support this theory. It does show that people who are used to high-speed connections at work but have slower dial-up connections at home are often frustrated at home and try to do Internet tasks at work instead. But people who are used to slower connections rate the same pages as fast, typical, slow, and unacceptable over their typical connection as people who are used to high-speed connections and try to load these pages over their typical connection.

Resource limitations

Limitations on resources such as time, money, people, hardware, networks, and software affect our performance requirements, even though we really wish they didn't. For example, "You can't have any more hardware" is a resource limitation, and whether we like it or not, it will likely contribute to determining our requirements.

Anecdotally, there's a lot to say about the effects of resource limitations on performance requirements, but practically all it really comes down to is this: Determine before you set your performance requirements what your available resources are, so that when you're setting the requirements, you can do so realistically.

Stakeholder expectations

Unlike user expectations, stakeholder expectations are easy to obtain. Just ask any stakeholder what he or she expects.

"This system needs to be fast, it needs to support ten times the current user base, it needs to be up 100% of the time and recover 100% of the data in case of down time, and it must be easy to use, make us lots of money, have hot coffee on my desk when I arrive in the morning, and provide a cure for cancer."

OK, that's not something an actual stakeholder would say, but that's what it feels like they often say when asked the question. It's our job to translate these lofty goals into something quantifiable and achievable, and that's not always an easy task. Usually stakeholders want "industry standards as written by market experts" to base their expectations on. As we've already discussed, there are no standards. In the absence of standards, stakeholders generally want systems so fast and scalable that performance becomes a nonissue . . . until they find out how much that costs.

In short, stakeholders want the best possible system for the least possible money. This is as it should be. When it comes to stakeholders, it's our job to help them determine, quantify, and manage system performance expectations. Of the three determinants of performance requirements that we've been discussing, the stakeholders have both the most information and the most flexibility. User expectations very rarely change, and resource limitations are generally fairly static throughout a performance testing/engineering effort. Stakeholder expectations, however, are likely to change when decisions have to be made about tradeoffs.

Consider this. Recently I've been involved with several projects replacing client/server applications with Web-based applications. In each case, the systems were primarily data entry systems. Initially, stakeholders wanted the performance of the new application to match the performance of the previous client/server application. While this is in line with what I just said about user expectations, it's not a reasonable expectation given system limitations. Web-based systems simply don't perform that fast in general. And I've found that even users who are accustomed to a subsecond response time on a client/server system are happy with a 3-second response time from a Web-based application. So I've had stakeholders sit next to users on the prototypes (that were responding in 3 seconds or less) and had those users tell the stakeholders how they felt about performance. When stakeholders realize that users are satisfied with a "3-second application," they're willing to change the requirement to "under 3 seconds."

Speed, of course, isn't the only performance requirement. Stakeholders need to either inform you of what the other requirements are or be the final authority for making decisions about those requirements. It's our job to ensure that all of the potential performance requirements are considered -- even if we determine that they're outside the scope of the particular project.

Determining and documenting performance requirements

Once you've collected as much information as possible about user and stakeholder expectations as well as resource limitations, you need to consolidate all of that information into meaningful, quantifiable, and testable requirements. This isn't always easy and should be an iterative process. Sending your interpretation of the requirements for comment back to the people you gathered information from will allow you to finalize the requirements with buy-in from everyone.

As I've mentioned before, I like to think of performance in three categories:

• speed
• scalability
• stability

Each of these categories has its own kind of requirements. We've been discussing speed and scalability extensively in both the "User experience, not metrics" series and the "Beyond performance testing" series. Stability is a slightly different type of performance that we won't be discussing much in either series. However, I think the topic of collecting stability requirements is important enough to include here. In the sections that follow, we'll discuss how to extract requirements from expectations and limitations, then consolidate those requirements into composite requirements -- or what some people would refer to as performance test cases.

Speed requirements

If you've gone through the exercise of collecting expectations and limitations, I'm sure that you have lots of information about speed. Remember that we want to focus on end user response time. There may be individual exceptions in this category for things like scheduled batch processes that must complete in a certain window, but generally, don't get trapped into breaking speed requirements down into subcomponents or tiers.

I like to start by summarizing the speed-related information I've collected verbally -- for example:

• normal pages -- typical to fast
• reports -- under a minute
• exception activities (list) -- fast to very fast
• query execution -- under 30 seconds
• nightly backup batch process -- under an hour

You'll see that some of that information is fairly specific, while some isn't. For this step, what's important is to ensure that all activities fall into one of the categories you specified. You don't want every page or activity to have a different speed requirement, but you do want the ability to have some exceptions to "typical" performance.

Now we must assign values to the verbal descriptions we have and extrapolate the difference between goals and requirements. You may recall from the Performance Engineering Strategy document that performance requirements are those criteria that must be met for the application to "go live" and become a production system, while performance goals are desired but not essential criteria for the application. Table 1 shows the speed requirements and goals derived from the descriptions above.

Activity type	Requirement	Goal
Normal pages	5 sec	3 sec
Reports	60 sec	30 sec
Exception activities (listed elsewhere)	3 sec	2 sec
Query execution	30 sec	15 sec
Nightly backup	1 hour	45 min

Of course, speed alone doesn't tell the whole story. Even getting agreement on a table like this doesn't provide any context for these numbers. To get that context, you also need scalability and stability requirements.

Scalability requirements

Scalability requirements are the "how much" and "how many" questions that go with the "how fast" of the speed requirements. These might also be thought of as capacity requirements. Scalability and capacity are used interchangeably by some people.

Here's an example of scalability requirements that go with the speed requirements above:

• peak expected hourly usage -- 500 users
• peak expected sustained usage -- 300 users
• maximum percentage of users expected to execute reports in any one hour -- 75%
• maximum percentage of users expected to execute queries in any one hour -- 75%
• maximum number of rows to be replicated during nightly backup -- 150,000

As you can see, we now have some context. We can now interpret that the system should be able to support 300 users with about a 3-second typical response time, and 500 with an under-5-second typical response time. I'm sure you'll agree this is much different t from single users achieving those results.

Another topic related to scalability is user abandonment. We'll discuss user abandonment in detail in Part 4 of this series; for now, suffice it to say that a general requirement should be to minimize user abandonment due to performance.

Stability requirements

Stability covers a broad range of topics that are usually expressed in terms of "What will the system do if . . . ?" These are really exception cases; for instance, "What is the system required to do if it experiences a peak load of double the expected peak?" Another, broader term for these types of requirements is robustness requirements. Some people define robustness as "the degree of tolerance of a component or a system to invalid inputs, improper use, stress and hostile environments; . . . its ability to recover from problems; its resilience, dependability or survivability." While robustness includes the kind of usage stability we're focusing on, it also includes overall system stability. For our purposes we'll focus on usage stability and not on topics such as data recovery, fail-over, or disaster recovery from the system stability side.

Some examples of stability requirements are as follows:

• System returns to expected performance within five minutes after the occurrence of an extreme usage condition, with no human interaction.
• System displays a message to users informing them of unexpected high traffic volume and requests they return at a later time.
• System automatically recovers with no human interaction after a reboot/power down.
• System limits the total number of users to a number less than that expected to cause significant performance degradation.

Now, let's put these together into some real requirements.

Composite requirements

The types of requirements discussed above are very important, but most of them aren't really testable independently, and even if they are, the combinations and permutations of tests that would need to be performed to validate them individually are unreasonable. What we need to do now is to consolidate those individual requirements into what I term composite requirements. You may know them as performance test cases. The reason I shy away from calling these performance test cases is that my experience has shown that most people believe that once all the test cases pass, the testing effort is complete. I don't believe that's always the case in performance engineering, though it may be for performance testing.

Meeting the composite requirements simply means the application is minimally production-ready from a performance standpoint. Meeting the composite goals means that the application is fully production-ready from a performance standpoint according to today's assumptions. Once these composites are met, a new phase begins that's beyond the scope of this series -- capacity planning, which also makes use of these composite requirements but has no direct use for test cases.

Let's look at how the individual requirements we came up with map into composite requirements and goals.

Composite requirements

1. The system exhibits not more than a 5-second response time for normal pages and meets all exception requirements, via intranet, 95% of the time under an extended 300-hourly-user load (in accordance with the user community model) with less than 5% user abandonment.
2. The system exhibits not more than a 5-second response time for normal pages and meets all exception requirements, via intranet, 90% of the time under a 500-hourly-user load (in accordance with the user community model) with less than 10% user abandonment.
3. All exception pages exhibit not more than a 3-second response time 95% of the time, with no user abandonment, under the conditions in items 1 and 2 above.
4. All reports exhibit not more than a 60-second response time 95% of the time, with no user abandonment, under the conditions in items 1 and 2 above.
5. All reports exhibit not more than a 60-second response time 90% of the time, with less than 5% user abandonment, under the 75% report load condition identified in our scalability requirements.
6. All queries exhibit not more than a 30-second response time 95% of the time, with no user abandonment, under the conditions in items 1 and 2 above.
7. All queries exhibit not more than a 30-second response time 90% of the time, with less than 5% user abandonment, under the 75% report load condition identified in our scalability requirements.
8. Nightly batch backup completes in under 1 hour for up to 150,000 rows of data.
9. The system fully recovers within 5 minutes of the conclusion of a spike load.
10. The system displays a message to users starting with the 501st hourly user informing them that traffic volume is unexpectedly high and requesting that they return at a later time.
11. The system limits the total number of users to a number less than that expected to cause significant performance degradation (TBD -- estimated 650 hourly users).
12. The system automatically recovers to meet all performance requirements within 5 minutes of a reboot/power down with no human interaction.

Composite goals

1. The system exhibits not more than a 3-second response time for normal pages and meets all exception requirements, via intranet, 95% of the time under a 500-hourly-user load (in accordance with the user community model) with less than 5% user abandonment.
2. All exception pages exhibit not more than a 2-second response time 95% of the time, with no user abandonment, under the conditions in item 1 above.
3. All reports exhibit not more than a 60-second response time 95% of the time, with no user abandonment, under the conditions in items 1 and 2 above.
4. All reports exhibit not more than a 30-second response time 95% of the time, with no user abandonment, under the conditions in item 1 above.
5. All reports exhibit not more than a 30-second response time 90% of the time, with less than 5% user abandonment, under the 75% report load condition identified in our scalability requirements.
6. All queries exhibit not more than a 15-second response time 95% of the time, with no user abandonment, under the conditions in item 1 above.
7. All queries exhibit not more than a 15-second response time 90% of the time, with less than 5% user abandonment, under the 75% report load condition identified in our scalability requirements.

These requirements may be more detailed than you're used to, but I hope you can see the value of insisting upon explicit composite requirements such as these.

What does it all mean?

No matter how many people ask for one, there's no industry standard for Web application performance. In the absence of such a standard we must depend on our own best judgment to determine just how fast is fast enough for our application. This article has discussed how to determine how fast is fast enough and how to convert that information into explicit, testable requirements. While explicit requirements based on reasonable performance expectations don't ensure project success, they do ensure the ability to evaluate the performance status of a system throughout the development lifecycle, and that alone can be invaluable.