Posts by Gina

Web 2.0 baffles businesses, says survey

Web 2.0?

No such thing. It was a trick to see if we could con you into giving us millions for making fancy websites all over again.

Here's a secret. People have been talking on the internet for quite some time now, and funnily enough, user driven content has been around for a year or 2 as well.

What should happen IMHO is we should consider getting our priorities straight and concentrate on getting Internet 2 moving instead.

Given a choice which would you prefer, MySpace clones or a 1Gbit connection?

Perhaps you prefer the social thing, but personally I'll go with a faster connection and being able to download HD movies in a respectable time.

YouTube is cool though, I have to give them that.

Pentacles to honour US's fallen

Yes - no Jedi

and for some reason they also appear to have forgotten the Steve Jobs symbol or at least a half-eaten Apple.

Dark mutterings on killer Wi-Fi in schools help no one

I Love ADHD

It's brilliant and so is the cure.

There's nothing better for society than feeding it's children narcotics from the earliest possible age.

I found that if you give kids speed and cocaine they will do anything you tell them, they just can't get enough of having stuff to do.

But to make a drug that gives the euphoria (when combined with good old fashioned opioid pain killers) of heroine is a totally genius way of taking care of kids that get bored in physics classes.

I didn't realise it, but I have been a long term victim of ADHD.

You wouldn't believe the number of things I couldn't and still can't concentrate on. In fact I'm thinking of suing my old County Council for not supplying me with the necessary narcotics to get straight As in school and a 'First' at University.

So I reckon that besides good drugs, the only cures are completely impractical - like occasionally saying 'no - you can't have that' to kids.

Teachers? Well they deserve a bit of blame, but we're the ones that decided that they would spend more time with our kids than parents do. And then we stopped them from being allowed to smack our kids about - what's up with that? Guess what, your darling little Johnny is a darling little shit. You know how he screams and shouts every time you don't want to give him something or let him do what he wants? That's actually not good behaviour, that's him telling you to beat the shit out of him, and not letting his teachers in on some child whacking action is incredibly bad form.

Daily Telegraph rattles legal sabre at Google

I agree with Kevin

Whether you like the paper or not, they have a good point.

Why should they spend the time and money investigating stories only for Google and Yahoo to take full advantage for free - and get paid handsomely in the process?

Its one thing to link to a site that sells media, offering the first 30 secs of a movie, the first few pages of a book, helping to generate sales. Its quite another to hoover up stories from every news website and use their free service to make yourself money.

It may be useful to the consumer, but your still making money off the back of other people's work. The Telegraph and the New York Times can't use other newspaper's stories to sell advertising.

If your neighbour stuck a billboard in your backyard and made millions selling advertising you'd be pretty narked off too - this is no different.

Seems the simple solution here is profit sharing. If you're bound and determined to run this kind of service, you pick the news outlets you want to do business with and give them a share of the advertising revenue.

And yes I know all the reasons they don't want to do that, but perhaps we shouldn't give multi-billionaires everything they want for free.

If Google kills penguins, is it doing evil?

Huh?

Penguins are bastards, I say kill the lot of them - and while you're at it, those polar bears aren't much better.

Google -> Power -> Global Warming -> Death to all the Penguins.

Actually that's not a reach, it's bang on the money. It just misses out all the other consequences, and gives you one you get your head around.

Should you pick on Google, and not, say Ford or California? (but it's soo not cool to sweat, after all what's the point of all that cosmetic surgery if I look ugly because I'm sweating.. crank up the AC and fuck the penguins)..

I believe the point here is the "Look at us - we're so cool and groovy, and like don't be evil man.. oh and fuck the penguins we need another 50 data centers for the sake of the whole world."

Could he point the finger at a dozen other corporates? Obviously, but again the point seems to be that if you say "Don't Be Evil", that would include not killing Koala Bears, and at least make an effort not to consume more energy than California - rather than hide the fact you do.

Blu-Ray disks hacked by sweet talking teenagers

huh?

I think I just woke up.. what was that?.. who said what?.. we invaded another defenseless 3rd world country?

Are the political comments you make IT related?

Actually most seem to be. ID Cards - related, dodgy activities over telecommunications - related, automated immigration controls that don't work - related, RFID passports with poor security - related, this list goes on.

Sure there's the occasional bit that isn't - but as it's funny who cares?

Gay squirrels, cows and flamingos are hardly IT related, but again who cares?

Sure we hate GW, but doesn't everyone, deep down, hate GW?

Even conservatives do because as outrageous as we think he's been, amazingly they don't think he's been outrageous enough.

The most blatant profiteering, politically polarizing and abuse of power ever seen in a US Presidential administration, and they think he hasn't gone far enough.

But the reality is most of us don't just read the Register for IT related stories, we admire the satirical twists, the occasional relevant-to-our-lives political commentary and of course the coverage of critical issues such as RoTM and Captain Cyborg - not to mention the activities and scientific study of gay squirrels, cows and flamingos.

Ace or Epic as they used to say - Right On and Groovy as others once uttered.

While I can see that those of a more conservative political viewpoint might be upset by some of the stories, I think the fact that the Labour Party and Tony Blair receive much of the same treatment does show a certain amount of objectivity here.

I'm not sure, but I don't think some of the critics realise these represent Britain's equivalents of a left wing leader and the Democrat party.

Thunderbird 2 is go

It may be unremarkable

most email clients are, unless of course you're talking about any of the hideous products from Microsoft.

Outlook Express is obviously the most malware friendly email client ever conceived, and Outlook itself is the most user unfriendly email, calendar, contact combo ever supposedly designed.

In fact there are large portions of Outlook that have only been fixed in its latest version. Even so it remains slow, easy to corrupt, and as so unintuitive it leads me to believe someone at Microsoft deliberately made it as nasty a product as they possibly conceive.

You see I like email clients that let me send email, allow me to lookup LDAP directories as I'm typing a name in the To field, and don't open attachments or dodgy HTML code imbedded in email unless I decide that's what I want.

What I don't like is having to work through so many options to get a piece of software to function as the average person would expect, so many in fact you often can't remember where something you need to change is.

Consequently setting standards for business users is extremely painful.

No, I'll take an unremarkable email client over flashy features that don't work any day. In fact I have no desire to have anything remarkable about my email client. Sending someone a message shouldn't have to be any more complicated than typing.

Oracle produce a fine calendar program that integrates well with Mozilla products, and of course that the cost of implementing an IMAP email system is a fraction of the cost of using Exchange.

So good job Mozilla, and continue to keep my email client unremarkable.

'Please read this important email: you are being shot'

It just seems to me

I agree that blaming the police for not being prescient seems irrational, but of course people are bound to let their emotions run after something like this.

It also seems to me that relying on any technology alone is foolish - even in this day and age not everyone has a cell phone, and may only be able to access email from a desktop in their dorms.

But it seems to me is even if they were 100% certain the original shootings were not the actions of a crazy who broke into the dorm, not considering that perhaps this person was still loose on the campus, that perhaps he was carrying a loaded weapon and was not particularly in the best state of mind, is dropping the ball more than just a little.

Of course the use of email was absurd. Maybe they did warn people in other ways too, but no one, absolutely no one, is going to believe an email that says there's a gunman loose on campus.

The cell phone idea seems pretty good, and yes, it may involve some complicated equipment to setup, but almost everything does.

It costs time and money to install any sort of emergency system, but once it's set up, it is probably very easy to use.

Sure they wouldn't have had time to do it that particular day, but it should definitely be considered as an additional method of warning people about dangerous situations in the future. The author is 100% correct in saying that today's students may have email, but they almost exclusively use instant messaging and texting to communicate.

The author is also 100% correct to highlight shameless use of such tragedies to make a quick buck, and the almost useless information and analysis done by what passes for media these days. CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, and the rest are no better than your average tabloid newspaper. They certainly don't bother to hire real reporters any more. Not a single one of them has someone that can actually see past flashy headlines and catchy labels.

Curious don't you think that not having friends is suddenly major news. Anyone else notice that as soon as the media found he didn't have any, every headline got altered to "HE WAS A LONER". Just think what they'd be saying if he played video games or was known to use a computer.

So if you don't have many friends, be careful. Simpleton presenters posing as reporters are probably looking for you, to ask why you people always shoot up schools and universities.

Spanish flag flies over Gibraltar

Just for laughs

let's give it back without telling anyone who lives there..