stoopid Americans

Siri Arse Lee

| Richard

So when I first got my iPhone 4S I wrote:

“I see it really being of use to me when I’m in the car and a text message comes through: Siri can read it out and send a dictated reply. It’ll be interesting to see if that’s done through my Mazda RX-8′s Bluetooth sound system or the iPhone’s loudspeaker.”

Well there’s some good news and there’s some bad news.

The good news is that yes, it works through the car’s Bluetooth sound system, so it mutes any music and reads out the text messages.

The bad news includes:

  • “Uh-kay” being said before most things it does.
  • If you haven’t got a web connection it’ll say it can’t do anything right now, like reading something stored locally.
  • The voice recognition at anything other than walking pace is pretty poor, actually, and I’ve now started simply sending bizarre text messages in reply to people rather than spending hours arguing with Siri when it comes up with gobbledegook instead of what I actually said, thinks that I said “danger” rather than “change it” and claims not to understand danger (big, brave Siri!)  and sometimes even picks a track from my music library to play in an attempt at being ‘helpful’.
  • Won’t perform a web search because I’m in the UK and using proper English.
Close, but no cigar.
Oh and another thing: to be fair to Apple, they claim different sets of services from Siri on their US site to those on their UK site.

YouTube – Contact Us

| Richard

Well I would … if I could find a contact form that doesn’t threaten me with being banned if I use it!

I’ve now received two ’strikes’ in 6 months from YouTube on an account of mine for videos I’d posted a couple of years ago. They’re not explicit or anything and yet – according to YouTube:

The following video(s) from your account have been disabled for violating the YouTube Community Guidelines:

  • {Video Name}

Everyone hates spam. Misleading descriptions, tags, titles or thumbnails designed to increase views are not allowed. It’s also not OK to post large amounts of untargeted, unwanted or repetitive content, including comments and private messages.

This is the second Community Guidelines warning sanction your account has received within six months. Accordingly, the ability to post new content to YouTube from this account has been disabled and will not return until two weeks after you acknowledge this message. Please review the YouTube Community Guidelines and refrain from further violations, which may result in the termination of your account(s).

Helpful eh? Of course they’ve also helpfully removed my ability to actually access the ‘offending’ video but having looked at the one in question offline, I really, really don’t know what the hell they’re talking about.

So I thought I’d ask them to clarify what was wrong, but no. There’s no actual way on the YouTube site for me to be able to query this with anyone. How stupid are these people?