Posts by Cthonus 115 publicly visible posts • joined 9 Jul 2008
Not bothered for myself but left cold wondering what my 80+ mother is supposed to do.
Partially sighted, partially deaf. Can't use phone or internet banking (no computer and gets confused enough with the telly controls). Can't walk far - the next major town is 9 miles away on a regular bus route but she's a mile away from that bus stop.
Guess the only winners are the last bank in town?
You know there are valid reasons pages get junked from websites.
Given the number of photographs I've had copyright abused over the years I wouldn't be happy if some of the dead links ressurected images I've had ISP remove from the archives.
What about articles that went to be considered libellous and were taken down? Given how lazy people are there must still be hundereds of broken links/bookmarks cached and never updated, even on legitimate sites...
"but non-commercial filming is a free-for-all, more or less. Or is every one of the selfies in front of the Eiffel Tower on Facebook a copyright infringement?"
Wikipedia doesn't use 'non-commerical' copyright though - all (or most) images there are "Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike". They won't accept 'not for commerical use' restrictions on their images as they sometimes do charge for their content (ie DVDs etc).
So by extention any company could use images from their site for commerical purposes as long as they give attribution - Virgin Mobile Australia used Flickr CC images on bus adverts a few years ago - which is why so far I've resisted requests to use my photos in articles.
In the old days the scripts took the place of the special effects. These days it almosts seems like the special effects are included to take your mind off just how flimsy some of the plots actually are.
It's a shame Moffat et al seem enamoured more of making it into a spectacle than a serious series. Plot howlers are ignored; continuity is just a knowing wink to the original series to make the die-hard fan squee for a few seconds.
I remember Ray Cusick's response to the rebooted Daleks asking why this advanced race, time-travel capable and almost impossible to destroy, should still be using bolts and rivets on their casing.
(Yeah, ok - don't remind me of Troughton's Cybermen having lace-up boots...)
Roger Delgado was a fantastic villain - charming, erudite and thoroughly untrustworthy.
The latest reincarnations have been less menancing and more 'care-in-the-communty' psychotic. I like to think some people are just very very bad without having to give them a mental illness to justify their lack of compassion. Delgado glowered. Simm girned.
Interesting poll if you take into consideration the mellowing of Colin Baker's Doctor in the Big Finish audio plays. I agree that his television performance bordered on the horrendous but he's a decent enough actor not to blame the performer but the direction and the scripts.
He's very good in the BF stories if anyone cares to listen.
To coin a phrase, "nice little retort, spoiled only by the fact I never said the website was either designed or run by EC themselves."
They do however have a duty of care in ensuring any such services are robust enough, and if they were the incumbents during its commission to ensure the correct questions were asked regarding security.
My point was around general incompetence. You only need to look at the recent Statutory Repairs scandal in the city to know that either someone was deliberately adopting the ostrich position, or the right questions were failing to be asked time and again.
- now THAT is closer to my idea of a rant ;)
They refused to empty our bin two months ago as it contained glass which "should have been placed in the blue bin provided."
I pointed out they hadn't provided any of us in the area with blue bins so they promised to send some out within ten days.
Failed to do so, and also failed to reply to any of our follow up messages.
So - back on topic - not surprised that their data security is on a par with the rest of the council services.
Yeah. I prefer my Master to be as suave and sophisticated as Roger Delgado's. Proper devils like Fu Manchu never needed to girn to camera to look menacing, or ham it up like the infamous Zaroff or Soldeed death scenes...
I always though John Sim played the character as if he was brain damaged rather than truely, awesomely bad-ass.
"full of Oxbridge luvvies, ghostwritten sleb biogs, and middlebrow nonentities specialising in novels about wine, shoes, husbands, and bitchy middle class nastiness."
Whereas the burgeoning ebook market is full of metrosexual novelettes on werewolves, vampires, pixies, same-sex historical romances and pulp scifi*. Take a look at Amazon's Kindle range.
In the old days you had to impress a commissioning editor. Now you just grease the big A-cloud's wheels. If you want to go back to having a better range of printed books then you'd need to reintroduce the NBA - publisher's cannot support the same breadth of publications when people like supermarkets et al can undercut the usual cash-cow best sellers.
(* not denigrating the quality of the writing, just the genres)
Funny,. That actually happened to me a couple of years ago. Every week I'd get an Age UK letter addresses to some senior citizen.
I kept emailling them to update their mailing list correctly and after a few months of this (where they constantly insisted my address HAD been suppressed) I got this bizzare apology letter, with the envelope addressed to me, but the letter headed "Dear Mrs". I couldn't quite understand what it was trying to say as the sentence structure was very odd.
So I finally scanned the letter and emailed it back to them pointing out if the old dear who'd written it was the same person in charge of the mailing department then perhaps their carer could step in for a few minutes and finally get my address off their bleedin' lists.
It worked.
PS Before anyone says I'm being unfair to pensioners I'd like to point out I'm equally as unfair to every other group out there. :)
Spent last weekend with aged parents and new mobile.
Me: Are you sure you know how to use that?
Mum: Of course we do. We've had two before.
Dad: Where does the battery go?
Mum: And how do we answer calls?
Me: You said you'd had two earlier phones.
Mum: We couldn't get those to work.
[next day my own phone rings]
Mum: What are you doing answering?
Me: You phoned me!
Mum: Don't be stupid. We're dialling our own number to test. Why would we call you?
Me: You did call me!
Dad: How come you can answer our number?
Me: AARGH!!!
I'm assuming Version 1.0 is some kind of common troll.
I rather think the photographer who's livelihood depends on selling his images is less of a DRMtard than you think. Or clearly, don't think. Or perhaps you feel he ought to make up for lost revenue by flogging torrented BluRays and CDs from the back of his van?
Quite right. The stairs issue was cleared well before this reboot.
And as for "the show’s design team got the look right" I'm with Ray Cusick - WTF are there bolts and rivets showing? This is supposed to be a high-tech mechanised society capable of building almost anything. It's not supposed to be a steam punk revival.
I have to say I'm not taken with the new cybermen either - they're just chunky lumps of metal. All the older versions had something interesting about them whether it was the semi-humanoid faces of the Tenth Planet, or the later chest-units. Okay maybe the lace-up boots weren't the best design feature but a spray-painted wetsuit better suggests futuristic metallurgy than something that looks like it fell out of a Victorian foundry.
"Ah yes, the nukes. Strapped onto missiles that can barely reach Japan."
I really don't see that "they can't hit us back" is a good enough justification for taking arms against NK.
Do you really not care if they turn those weapons on countries they can hit in mindless retaliation?
"The recent spate of high-profile data breaches, such as this alleged attack on Foxtons, are evidence that organisations are either not taking cyber security seriously or are bewildered by the problem"
Anycompany: "How much will this extra security cost?"
IT Dept: "£xxxx"
Anycompany: "And if the worst happens what can we be sued for?"
Lawyer: "Only £xxx"
Anycompany: "Right. Operation 'Heads in the Sand postion'. All for? All against?"
"this handsome ex-soldier sits up, and looks at a photo of his wife Rachel. Beautiful. Deceased.”
Another tired old cliche. Why does he have to be handsome and why does she need to be beautiful?
Has no one quite realised why most American SF shows just fade away after a season or two? All lip gloss and no substance. Perfect teeth isn't a substitute for a decent plot and good actors.
Remember "Murder One" with the mesmerising Daniel Benzali? Not pin up material, so after the success of S1 they replaced him with a "more" camera-friendly version. Show cancelled...
American remake of Red Dwarf: remember what they did to the character of Lister? Show cancelled...
Much as I religiously sit down every Saturday to watch it I do find myself enjoying the old Pertwee/TBaker ones much more than the current reboot.
Maybe it's part nostalgia but in the absence of budget for special effects plot and characterisation played a big part in each episode. Now I feel the "plot" mainly involves the current incumbent girning to camera whilst flapping his magic wand in all directions at once. Characterisation should not be replaced by caricature.
Gatis scripts aside, Moffat's seem to be all spectical and little substance. Good for the occasional extravaganza but it's like overdosing on chocolate meringue. One bite and it substantively collapses.
On the plus side, the eye-candy has certainly improved :)
We have a PM who refuses to follow what the majority of the public want and implement the Leveson report as it sets a bad precident over "Press Freedom".
Now he feels he can impose a web filter on everyone (opt out be damned: if it's filtering content not specifically designated as illegal it's censorship by the back door) wanting to access the internet at home whilst still condoning the right of newspapers and other sundry rags to sexualise children and stuff photos of semi-naked women between the newssheets where any kid can see.
I know it will never work: the attempts to block PirateBay just illustrates how the web routes around such blockages, but knowing it'll never work doesn't lessen the anger I feel.
Fix the economy. Fix the gutter press. Fix our army's kit shortages. Fix youth unemployment. Fix your own lobbyists.
Don't just pander to the Daily Mail readership as if it makes up the entire electorate.
Porn does not equate with Abuse/Rape any more than Muslim equates with Terrorism (though his beloved Daily Mail may argue the latter).
</rant>
As an ex-bookseller I have soft spot for the Penguin brand and as much as I dislike being ripped off buying ebooks I'd dislike it even more if such well-known publishers went under.
They may have a retail turnover of £440m (2012 figures) but at least for last year the Grauniad was reporting their operating profit as just £22m.
I really can't blame any of the remaining UK publishers for jumping on any chance to increase their profitibility given their steady decline since the abolition of the Net Book Agreement. Better value for the consumer? Possibly. More choice for the consumer? Certainly not.
I'm not sure I'd want to be in a world where the only reading material was either self-published ebooks or mass market tra... novels like Dan Brown's latest. Sure, they have their niche in the marketplace but give me a Penguin Classic any day.
Yes - please have a level playing field when it comes to [e]book buying, but also, please don't take the golden feathers off the golden goose. Money like that just goes straight into whichever Treasury has jurisdiction and does nothing to help either the reader or the publisher.
Virgin & Amazon [et al] couldn't compete with the online retailers.
Play.com etc had the Channel Islands VAT loophole closed on it so it couldn't discount by 17.5%.
So we're left with the only "highstreet" presence being a supermarket bulk discounting the latest stock and with little or no back catalogue.
And Amazon/Google, doing their utmost within the legal framework to avoid UK taxes.
Depressing.
Given the media coverage of data loss (from NHS to Schools to Local Govt) over the last few years you'd have to be pretty dense for that not to have filtered through now.
These things happen, not down to lack of training (though it's easy to blame that) but because after hours of lecturing on best practises tired and busy people take the easy way out.
(I need to take this data home but if i speak to IT I'll just get bogged down in paperwork and questions)
Experience? Working with a small finance company - where everyone was lectured regularly on the importance of FSA and Data Protection regs. Didn't stop people on Friday evening from dumping stuff onto their laptops before heading out the door.
Is there any point to the ASA? Time and again VM (and world+dog) run ads that are found to be misleading to what result? They're told not to run the same advert again. So they run a new misleading one in its place.
If you genuinely wanted to discourage the practise you'd bite them until it hurt.
Paris 'cos she knows when to use teeth and when not to.
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