Engineering updates to make Starcraft 2 (patch 2.1) better

As of writing, Starcraft 2 patch number 2.1 has been available for a while. I must say that my ADSL connection is not extremely fast, but it is not horribly slow either, some people with fiber optic would consider it slow as 2MB (about 96kbs download speed).

Based on my connection speed and user experience, I recommend that the following changes should be made to Starcraft 2:

1. Download progress indicator for the map list. Just a spinning animation does not tell me anything since the connection could have stalled and I do not know how long I still have to wait.

2. Have some internal checksum system for the map list, especially for Blizzard maps, to avoid repeat map list download if nothing has changed.

3. If the game crashed due to stalled connection and like in my case I was in a multiplayer game with a friend then I would like to be able to reconnect to the game or at least spectate it if there was a record that I was involved in the game. This actually happened in a custom game when some other application decided to start downloading massive patches in the background.

4. A mute or volume control for that annoying voice about base being attacked. The noise spam gets worse as there are more players and especially with Zerg this gets rather annoying and is a really good reason not to play 3vs3. There are several forum entries on the Blizzard forums and it seems like Blizzard has not bothered sorting this out after two years and then they put out ads to ask for people who are passionate about gameplay and quality. Apparently annoyances are not a quality issue.

Windows 8 updates forcing a reboot, not cool at all

This morning my PC at work with Windows 8 decided to forcefully tell me that my PC will be rebooting in 15 minutes due to updates and a timer running full screen. At least I had a close option to save my work, but I suspect that the timer would keep on going.

This is most intrusive and I am highly annoyed with this tactic. I should be allowed to choose when I am going to reboot for updates and not get forced into it. What if this happened during a presentation in front of an audience? This makes me glad that I never bothered getting Windows 8 for my home PC since I bought Windows 7. I am not happy with some things of Windows 7 either, but that is another matter.

Windows 8 has so many other annoyances that I would like to avoid as well which Windows 7 did not have, but this reboot forcing is yet another intrusive tactic. I understand that this is for security reasons most likely, but if the system was designed properly and not just a face, then this tactic would not have been needed.

XAMPP Apache HTTP server port 80 blocked on Windows 7

For testing websites on my local PC I use XAMPP and with it Apache HTTP server which is configured for the standard ports of 80 and 443. Recently I had a rather persistent case of the webserver just not starting because of something already using port 80. This is on Windows 7 64-bit.

This hunt to get Apache started on port 80 was a long story including a weird error in the log of port 443 being used over port 80.

At one point in time the log files did not get populated either. It helped to start Apache using the XAMP provided batch files to start Apache. This actually showed the error including that logs could not be written.

All of the usual suspects were checked and mostly were either not installed or the suspect services had been previously disabled. This included IIS, SQL Server. web publishing and routing services, etc. The list went on. Eventually I killed most services and processes that could have been remotely related to this and still no luck.

The cause of my problem in the end was this which was still ticked:
Allow Remote Assistance connections to this computer

The next day I checked for the same setting on my PC at work where Apache is running successfully with XAMPP on Windows 8 and found that the checkbox was ticked. The funny thing was that I do not remember that the actual service was actively running. Now I wonder why that remote assistance was actually using port 80 to begin with when Microsoft already has two or three other software pieces that use this port and it is standard HTTP. Going to my localhost address with a webserver (default port 80) was useless. I really wonder why someone implemented this.

Beggars are becoming more on the streets of Cape Town

This is an ugly topic, but someone has to say something. This will also affect tourism, investors and other industries, but something has to be done.

The last couple of weeks and even months I have noticed how more and more beggars are asking me for money. This is not just me, multiple other people have told me the same thing:
The beggars on the streets of Cape Town are becoming more!

Since I do not have deep pockets and am paying a lot of taxes, I am asking what is the local and national government doing about this? All that I do see is that taxpayers and commuters now get taxed at least 30% on petrol and this is most likely going up. This in turn affects food prices and eventually jobs which will add to the unemployment problem and even more beggars. The rich are getting richer and the rest just struggles and gets poorer. Top make matters worse, I have heard that electricity prices are now also going up again.

Usually this kind of thing gets followed by yet another squandering for useless things of government funds for which the struggling taxpayer yet again foots the bill.

Obviously it will be a 100% guarantee that nobody in government is going to put some minimal support system in place for these beggars because that is political suicide, a black hole for finance and a huge project which nobody wants to touch with a very long stick. In the end this just stays unmentioned but everyone knows about it. Nothing get acknowledged would be the standard procedure here about something being done.

Add to this mess the issue seen a few weeks ago about the toilet system for at least 80000 houses that was promised and never implemented or implemented in a totally impractical way using a temporary system meant for camping on a weekend and not multiple years of daily use. Obviously people just had enough of this mess and promises but totally under delivered.

Add to this the usual top level fat cats that get paid bonuses and extra bonuses for more or less doing nothing but supposedly performing well, while the people doing the work are slaving away and getting minimal pay and horrible working conditions. Do not forget understaffed and not properly equipped.

Something needs to be done soon before even more people end up on the street.

Different employment criteria

Recently I was multiple times shocked to hear how some people that I know decide on who to hire. It is about what language the person speaks, he/she has to have had many more years work experiences and diplomas so that the diplomas would have to have been studied for during early high school. Then I heard criteria about absolutely minor non-trivial things about why the person should or should not be hired. This is even because the person might be from a small town or has been to a certain school that the person is not being considered for a position. The whole thing was rather shocking. This is for an organisation of between 20 and 30 people.

From someone who employs over 300 people, I have heard the following advice:
Hire people with the right attitude and do not really worry about skills. He mentioned that if he just hired according to skills, that they left pretty soon after and then additional time was needed to hire and train yet again more people which turned out far more costly than training someone with hardly any skills. This was according to the motto: Skills can be acquired, attitude cannot and bad habits cannot really be removed once ingrained.