Monday, December 16, 2024

If I were 'Jaydax Almighty' I would...

[Revisited December 2024. Originally posted 2009]

...re-educate laptop manufacturers who continue to design laptops that can't easily be used on your lap! Your personal laptop would redesign itself so that everything, keyboard, sockets and screen was all on the front edge of the laptop.
Let me give you a hint guys - buttons, optical drives and headphone sockets should NEVER be placed on the front edge of a laptop because they cause problems when it is used on your lap or - heaven forbid - in bed.
My Dell Inspiron 1720 is an example. If it's used on raised knees (in bed) then the front edge presses into you and several buttons are pressed which plays havoc with the sound system and for some reason stops some of the keyboard from working. The buttons Dell tells me are positioned there so I can play sound files with the laptop lid closed. Hey guys, if I want to listen to music I use an mp3 player or my mobile phone. I don't lug a laptop around!
HP Pavillion laptops have headphone sockets on the front edge which mean a jack plug sticks into you and which can give you a mild stinging shock if they touch bare skin.
Front opening optical drives? You have to move the laptop before you can change a disk. While I'm on the subject of computer design i WOULD CONSIGN TO AN ASSYLUM THE IDIOT WHO FIRST PUT 'cAPS lOCK' NEXT TO 'sHIFT'
[Update - For some reason laptop manufacturers seem to think smaller, thinner and lighter equals most desirable. I want a power laptop with bigger screen/s. Make me a 17" one with multiple folding screens and a detachable tablet which acts as a control surface/numeric keypad/extra screen. Those who produce tiny screens would be condemned to a laptop with a five inch screen for eternity.]

...Spray paint silver those who design paint on laptop palmrests. Don't worry about the paint on you guys - it will wear off just as it does when you use a laptop enough. It wears away even faster if you use a mouse on the palmrest. On my Dell the plastic under the paint is grey so it just looks scruffy when the silver paint covering it wears away but my HP has black plastic under it's silver paint scheme and looks awful after just a year's heavy use.


...give a permanent thirst and only £1.00 to soft drink manufacturers who think its OK to charge £1.65 ($2.67) for a bottle of Coca-Cola! You must be kidding. I stop buying the stuff at my local supermarket when its price goes above £1.00 per 2 litre bottle and that price I consider too high considering I can buy 'Cola' for less than 40p. How about a 1 litre bottle of water for 90p ($1.46)? I have a tap at home and water from it which has stood in the fridge overnight tastes just as good.
[Update - Those 2 litre bottles of Coke are long gone. Now we pay £2.49 for a 1.75 litre bottle! I would consign those soft drink manufacturers who think shrinkflation and exorbitant prices to Hell with a perpetual thirst and 50ml bottle of salt flavoured liquid.]

...fill the cars of people who litter roads with 100 times the amount of rubbish they dump. I live in the country on a main road which passes through a beautiful area of Northumberland. Each day I clean up rubbish thrown out of cars. Plastic bottles, fast food wrappers, beer cans, newspapers, plastic bags, used nappies (diapers) and cigarette packets all get dumped outside my house. Oh how 'Jaydax Almighty' would enjoy watching them try to dump their rubbish a second time.

...consign those who shrink wrap their products to an environment where everything was shrink wrapped and there wasn't a sharp object or fingernail in sight. I'm sick of plastic wrapping around DVDs. The stuff you spend ten minutes trying to get into. There already is a better alternative to preventing people removing the disks, those red tabs which are removed at the checkout.
[Update - Yes I know - who buys DVD/Blue ray now? It's all in the cloud now which really sucks if you have a slow Internet connection so I'll consign those convinced everyone has a lightning fast connection to 28 Kb/s dialup. (Microsoft please note)]

... at night I would enter the houses of supermarket managers and move everything in the house to a different location while they slept in revenge for them moving everything in the stores to a new location. I know why they do it - it's so that you have to look for it and hopefully you will see something else to buy as you do so ...but it's SO annoying! Lets see how they would like hunting for their car keys relocated to the bottom of the freezer, a shoe in the oven, the alarm clock in the garage and all their clothes in/on the front porch.

… consign all those politicians who talk about democracy to an eternity of watching party political broadcasts by their opposition. We in the UK and US do NOT live in a democracy where the majority rule. Our government is a minority government elected by a minority of the electorate. Currently in 2024 the UK's Labour government was chosen by 9,704,655 out of the 48,214,128 electorate. That's 20.13%. In the US in 2025 Trump and the Republicans got 74,983,555 votes but since the US electorate appears to be 209,240,895 that means he represents 36.92% of the electorate.