Posts by Simon Painter 312 publicly visible posts • joined 20 Mar 2007
Labour has always done this... they screw up the economy by taking out large debt and blowing all the cash on public services and lowering taxes, then they get kicked out and spend the next decade bitching about the Tories who have got to tighten the belt and pay off the debts. Gordon's main woes is that the cheques he wrote as chancellor are starting to be returned to him and while Tony has skipped the country with a phat pension and a lifetime on the lecture circuit, Gordo is left holding the baby.
Stop indexing and caching sites that complain about being indexed or cached.
With such a large chunk of the search market secured I doubt *Google* will be the ones to lose out. I use Google news and if a couple of sites dropped from their roster because they were being arsey about getting extra traffic from Google then I doubt I would mind... plenty more news sources out there who are glad of the extra traffic and resulting ad revenue.
It's comforting to know that there are no real issues to deal with and the politicians have time to fix problems like 'toon porn now that they have fixed the public transport system, sorted immigration, reduced the burden of the welfare state, eradicated all crime, modernized the NHS and returned the armed forces to their former glory.
Well done them
oh, wait...
If done right this makes a lot of sense in the same way that remote office sites sometimes have wired network connections and a wireless solution in place as a backup in case a cable gets cut.
As planes now use fly by wire technology the opportunity exists to migrate the analogue controls to digital data packets which can be correctly checksummed and routed around redundant paths in the same way that routed networks can. In this scenario you can have a correctly authenticated encrypted channel from the cockpit to the control surfaces which can travel over the wireless links or through several redundant fiber runs in the fuselage. In this case a terrorist with a laptop and the correct hardware for the airplane's wireless communications (let's face it, nobody would be stupid enough to use 802.11n here) would be able to do little more than jam (or DoS) the signal which would have to be combined with a physical cut of the redundant cable paths to do any real damage.
With their economy tumbling into the abyss and either in recession or on the brink of recession they need to keep their markets open. Can't have the UK selling things to the Saudis when they can sell their crap to them instead.
I love the US/UK "special relationship". Makes me feel all fuzzy inside as we get buttf*cked by our 'friends' over the pond.
What you are describing are good business practices for a company that wants to screw over the tax payer really well.
They do lease schemes because that way they get more revenue as schools do not replace the kit after 3 years so carry on paying for it even though they have bought it twice over already. If you cancel the lease you don't get to keep the kit even though it is worthless as RM will send a bean counter to make sure the kit is disposed of.
They apply a number of policies to the users and computers (especially the server) in order to stop teachers messing with it and screwing things up and thus they decrease their support costs compared with a system where schools can customise their IT.
They charge through the nose for extra services (revenue streams) because they can and they make it hard to provide the services yourself purely because it cuts down on support costs (where your freeware mail server software has brought down the CC server and you are blaming them).
As for applying policies with only one setting in them, it makes it a lot easier to move policies around and only apply the ones you want rather than applying them in blocks and it saves the numpty teachers from having to go into gpedit.
All of these are sound business practices to screw over the end user who, in the case of schools, you have to assume is a total fuckwit and in general RM will see these things as "saving the user from themself" or "cutting support calls". In the unlikely event that a school employs someone in IT who has some sort of clue (unlikely as schools pay roughly half what a good corporate will pay and if they had a clue they would go get a job in a corporate) then they can ditch RM and do it themselves but as most ICT staff are as computer litterate (or less so) than the children they teach it is best to keep them from breaking the kit that the taxpayers have paid through the nose for.
I am not sure why anyone would need to use the iPlayer on their console. I have a 360 and can't think why I would use iPlayer on it as I have TV, media center tv recording and a selection of laptops for watching streaming tv or downloaded content.
If you don't have a TV or a computer with a browser then tough luck on the BBC content because you probably also don't have a TV license and I don't see why tax^h^h^h licence payers should have to subsidise development of a delivery method for a very small niche of non payers.
So, you are a senior civil servant and get this job. A vendor comes up to you and offers you a consultancy job if you ensure they are awarded a large chunk of this pork barrel. You go with a nice golden handshake to a job where you don't have to do anything and nobody gets to pin you with the blame for the fact that you were shockingly incompetent and wasted tonnes of tax pounds.
Of course that's probably not how it happened but you can't help wondering.
Here's how it works... this kid is bullied on a regular basis and is probably having a hell of a time at high school and has idle fantasies about beating up people who have caused him hassle. He probably added Chuck because he's like Superman and anyone who beats up on Chuck would get some "respect".
What the school board should have done is offer this kid some help with managing his anger (to be honest writing a list and keeping it in your locker is a pretty healthy way to deal with this sort of anger and a lot better than turning up to school with an AK just because everyone teases you for being an emo as has happened in a number of US institutions). Instead they have branded this guy a psycho which will mean the victimisation will only get worse for the poor kid until he either kills himself or kills a few other people and then himself.
The land of the free, the same place that brought you the Salem Witch Trials.
IT in banking is extremely complex and has been made more so by the different platforms which so may different banks use. Any payment system is going to be inherrently unstable because it is going to have to interact with a number of other disparate systems and that's where VB hacks come in to glue the whole thing together.
Add to that the fact that if a complex and interdependant system goes down it is often very difficult to restart it again quickly as some parts will have to be taken down in order that other ones may start and the dependancies can be the death of you.
All in all they have not done badly at all.
It's not the fault of Rockstar that games like this fall into the hands of 14 year old kids, it's the fault of poor parents for not knowing what their kids are up to and not taking an active part in raising them.
If parents were more accountable for their offspring then they would not be able to blame antisocial behaviour on third parties. In the US they have classes in school which are mandatory and teach kids about the level of responsibility it takes to be a parent while we just teach them about sex and let them know that there is a council flat and income available for anyone who gets pregnant.
"I guarantee that every single one of my sons 14 yr old school friends will have this game within 24hrs of release, they've been going on about it for weeks."
I am the guardian of my 13 year old brother and he is aware of GTA and will obviously petition me for a copy (or a go on my copy) but it's been classified as 18 and so that means that if I find that he has obtained it from *anywhere* other than from me then I will take the necessary actions against the person who supplied it to him illegally. I know what sites he visits and I know what games he plays because he gets adequate non invasive supervision (and he knows it so has realised that it's better to come clean than to try to hide things from me). If, after playing it, I deem it to be suitable for him then I may allow him to play it but he's not going to be allowed to lend it or even play in the presence of friends unless their parents have agreed that it is OK.
It's that simple.
Nice to see there are still misguided fools who think this is a democracy.
If it was a democracy we would have elected our leader and our head of state.
PM - Elected by his party
Head of State - Not elected at all
Iran is more democratic than us.
Paris Hilton because the same amount of people voted for her to be PM as voted for Gordon Brown.
A standard is not something that a bunch of people have written down somewhere, it's the system used by the most people. Microsoft have something like 90% of browsers and so whatever they impliment becomes the standard. Users don't want to change browser just to use a site so if the site is not IE capable then the site will lose visitors.
Silly little W3C buttons and suchlike mean nothing to the average user so it would be in firefox et al's best interest to render things in the same way that IE does. I was very enthusiastic with FF 1 but 2 and 3 are rubbish and offer no advantages over IE7 while IE7 works with all the .NET apps I use and things like Windows Update. I flirted with IE tab for a while but ditched it in favour of IE7 because tabs were the only thing that I actually liked about FF.
Real web developers write sites for IE whereas Comp Sci students who are doing some free work for their uncle 'designing' a web site tend to go overboard on the standards compliance, it's that simple.
From the size of the ports this does not look as tiny as it could have been. I have an eeepc and if you take away the screen and the keyboard and keep it with the same external power supply you have the possibility to have a PC which fits in a form factor similar to a box of chef's matches.
Paris Hilton because conversely she's smaller than she could be.
The Swiss operate a true democracy with referendums on every issue which enables everyone to vote and decisions to be made by the people. The difference between this true democracy and ours is that even though over 50% of the country is opposed to something like the hunting ban, a political party can force it through. Even though the majority of people were against the invasion and subsequent occupations of afghanistand and iraq, the government can do what they please for the full duration of their term in office (and even change leaders so we have an unelected prime minister).
The side effect of this is that the people naturally want to keep their country for themselves and are not all that keen on letting the whole of poland in to claim from their benefits system. As a nation they have a pretty solid work ethic as well so only want people of a similar disposition to be allowed in. The democratic process allows for people within a canton to vote to allow or disallow a new resident to gain citizenship and if my home town had been given the vote I doubt we would have voted to be over run with immigrants.
I have some lovely italian leather jackets for sale... no, I am italian and have been over for a trade show but don't want to pay for these samples to go back on the plane so that's why I am selling them out of the back of a rental car in a motorway service station.
Paris Hilton because she's nearly as fake.
"proposed new UK Border Agency, which may deploy operatives with enhanced, police-like powers in addition to actual coppers"
Would these be the same "enhanced, police-like powers" that the highways wombles and the police community support wombles have? So far those powers seem to be limited to wearing a high visibility vest and impersonating a police officer without prosecution. Their powers to rescue kids from drowning in canals was missed in the training.
Dressing these people as coppers does not mean we are fooled... they are just more high vis wombles.
"somebody purporting to be an agent of Her Majesty's forces"
If someone purporting to be from her majesty's forces asked me to hand over some ID I would simply point out that they have no juristiction over me and they can frankly get stuffed.
Unless they had an SA80 pointed in my direction in which case I don't think the ID would make one bit of difference as I hand over my ID _very slowly with no sudden movements and with my hands visible at all times_.
The creepy thing is that Facebook was supposed to be the Friends Reunited of our generation and we all know what happened to that... people found their old school mates, realised it would cost a fiver subscription to get in touch with them and then didn't bother.
FR had a massive advantage over FB because it was designed to solve a problem, to get people in touch with each other. FB was designed for picture sharing at college but has now lost its way. The 'friend finder' only allows you to locate people who you already have in your email address directory (so people you are already in touch with) and was basically designed to increase the userbase.
If I want to find a person whose name I can't quite remember but who I met on Sark while I was living there 8 years ago then Facebook is not the tool for the job... if I want to find the friend of a friend that I met a few weeks back and who was photographed and correctly tagged then Facebook is (or at least used to be). Now, however, I have the contact details of everyone I want to contact so FB is useless to me other than for the photo sharing features (which was the attraction in the first place).
If they lose the apps or scale down the apps (maybe by removing all invite features) then I may stick with it but considering a mildly skilled PHP hacker (in the correct sense of the word) managed to hack together an app in about 2 hours (including 15 mins reading the documentation) it's just too easy for any old git to pollute the experience with silly vampire/ninja/pirate/werewolf junk.
You can absolve yourself of responsibility as much as you like... I am guardian of my brother and he is 12 years old. I want him to have access to the internet and learn to use it responsibly so we frequently talk about 'net risks as well as real life risk (without making him scared that there is a pedo around every corner). He knows that I can monitor his internet usage (logged at the network level and I can also monitor his screen live from anywhere) and so although he may in the future do the typical teenage thing and fire up the smut (a new euphamism?) he knows that I know and the pure embarassment factor is a pretty good deterrent.
Myth #1: Linux is all standards and Microsoft doesn't comply.
Sorry, princess, get back to your mom's basement. If 90% of machines do something a certain way then *that* is the standard. The french really do believe that the prime meridian passes through Paris and may have written it down as an international standard on a whole heap of occasions but the rest of the world population are happy to agree on it passing through Greenwich. You can write as many RFCs as you like (and they are *Requests* *for* *Comment* and not *standards* *to* *be* *adhered* *to*) but if 90% of the world's PCs adopt a different standard then you can either join up or lose out.
Myth #2: Linux is more secure than Windows.
Maybe, but it's not been proven either way.
Myth #3: Making software open source means that you immediately get thousands of highly trained security conscious programmers crawling over the code improving it.
Dude, it just does not happen. Because people *can* see the code does not mean they bother. It also doesn't mean they have the skills to do anything with it. There are the odd exceptions but most Linux fanbois who use that arguement couldn't fix a bug even if they had the inclination to because they rely on their imaginary army of Microsoft busting superheroes to do it.
Saying that making something open to the public makes it more secure is like saying that Wikipedia is more accurate because anyone *can* change it (and I think that's been proved wrong enough times - who wrote that S Club track again?).
Myth #4: Getting indignant about how Microsoft are in the wrong makes some sort of difference.
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha. Tosser.
All said, Yahoo as a brand and that's all. They own no innovative products and although they have a lot of tin in a lot of warehouses it's of negligible value. The only value this company has is the three people who still have yahoo.com set as their homepage and the 18 people who still have yahoo.com email addresses and have not switched over to gmail or the like.
I'd put up a fiver for the domain name... maybe £30 as it's a dotcom.
The scots are fiercely nationalistic and refuse to be involved with things that benefit the Union yet cost the rest of the Union a fortune in healthcare etc.
Let's cut them loose. When they have to pay their own health bills they might start considering some of their potenial revenue streams a little more carefully.
And, let's face it, at least there is considerably less chance of gratuitous homosexuality in an episode which is not written by Russel Tea Lady. Torchwood jumped the shark after the first episode but has now sunk to new lows in the second series with everything being centered around just how gay Captain Jack is each week, they could rename it "Queer as Alien Folk".
Incidentally, it would be more newsworthy if there are any actors who are *not* in series 4 of Doctor Who.
Windows 95 - New and interesting but rushed to market, buggy as hell and lacking some important features
Three (ahem, two) years later they issued an almighty service pack called Windows 98 and it got popular.
Windows 2000 (NT5) - New and interesting but rushed to market, buggy as hell and lacking some important features
Two years later they issued an almighty service pack called Windows XP (NT5.1) and it got popular.
Windows Vista - New and interesting but rushed to market, buggy as hell and lacking some important features
I wonder what happens next?
The Master of a seagoing vessel has almost absolute soverignty on a vessel in international waters. That is why they are allowed to perform weddings and funerals and also act as judge in cases of piracy and mutiny. A person or persons boarding a ship without authority can be considered pirates and hung from the yardarm.
Alternatively you could look at this as proof that music piracy is not doing any harm whatsoever. When it was released online many people downloaded the album for free and many people who would not have bought the album got a taste of the music.
I often download music from peer to peer services and if it's something I enjoy then I will happily buy the album or single later. I do the same with movies, I will watch them at the cinema or on a download and then buy the DVD later if it is something I enjoy, even if it is shown on TV and I could just record it from there. It seems from this evidence that I am not alone in the 'try it before you buy it' mentality.
We all know that the quickest way to lose public sympathy is to strike. The miners were the only ones who managed to get away with it and even they slowly lost the sympathy of the nation. The fire service made the mistake of showing the nation how a twelve grand a year squaddie with rubbish equipment could do their job just as well and the posties were never going to have the public behind them in their demands for more pay for their frankly laughably easy jobs.
The revenue are the most hated government department and I can't see anyone leaping to support them if they go on strike so soon after proving themselves to be totally incompetent and unfit.
I can't wait until the teachers strike, that would be a laugh... people would just assume it's a Baker day/inset day/in service training day or whatever they are calling a half day with a pub lunch these days.
Much as Windows for Warships is a worry for you, it is even more of a worry for me that the US army is no longer fighting battles and has now resorted to drawing pictures of battles and doing swanky flash animations of battles.
Or playing Myst.
At least the US has the sort of defence budget that can justify the purchase of Macs instead of a far cheaper real computer.
Guy takes out contract without reading it and then runs up bill. Is too stupid to understand what he has done wrong and tries to make out he is the victim.
A few years ago I had the free Orange email alert service where they send you a free text message with the headers and subject of every email you get so you can go check your email when the important stuff arrives. At the time there was no push email and data services on the mob were a lot more pricey.
I went to stay with my father in Holland for a couple of weeks and during that time was charged 20p per text for every single email I received... that ended up being around £250 which was a real pain in the ass. I checked the smallprint and had a think about it and really any d!ck with half a brain should have realised that the alerts were not going to be free abroad so I paid up and took the hit. I find it hard to believe that anyone is dumb enough to think that there is going to be a mobile solution out there that is economical for downloading TV shows as even the DSL packages are trying to discourage you from doing it now.
I say make this guy pay up as a lesson to stop other people thinking they can use things without reading the smallprint, it worked for me.
Their website was down and there was some annecdotal evidence of problems with the payment system. These two systems are going to be a long way apart in their network topology so it's unlikely that the two are caused by the same problems. Payment systems drop out over the christmas periods for a lot of reasons and there is nothing to suggest that the outages were caused by anything at the card processor end as that would more likely bring about a total outage. The issues with some retailers are more likely to be because the card machine cannot get a connection to the processor due to the busy nature of the season.
In the words of Slashdotters everywhere... nothing to see here.
"Blah Blah Blah linux blah blah Microsoft is evil blah blah blah blah my computer is too rubbish to run Vista blah blah blah I have not even tried vista but like to bitch about it because it makes me feel clever blah blah blah linux is ace."
Nice one, Dell, I hope you gamble pays off. I have an eeepc and that is most likely going to be the machine which brings linux to the masses but there is always a chance that the clone buying techie wannabes that make up the linux comunity will put down their cheap taiwanese motherboards and pick up a Dell computer and make all that investment in R&D and staff training worthwhile.
Or they may just bitch about having to pay over the odds for their machine because despite the fact that you are not paying £60 to Microsoft for each PC you still have to stump up a lot of extra 'linux tax' to get hold of the people to either make it work or support it when it doesn't.
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