* Posts by Arthur McGiven

11 publicly visible posts • joined 15 Aug 2008

Use of Weapons declared best sci-fi film never made

Arthur McGiven

blame the gov

If our lords and masters would only exempt e-books from VAT as they have done for paper ones ,,, but it is odd how variable the effect is on final prices for Kindle editions

Is US prudishness ruining the internet?

Arthur McGiven
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Puritans = Christian Taliban

We got rid of the our puritans to America centuries ago and now they are coming back via cyberspace. Tis a truism that nobody is as pathologically interested in other people's sex lives than a puritan.

Assange denies 'sexual assault' allegations

Arthur McGiven
FAIL

Dept of smears

All "intelligence" organisations have special departments for this kind of thing. It's just surprising that the press should fall for this so gleefully, or is it?

Google fashions Android dev kit for dummies (from Scratch)

Arthur McGiven

iFart Apps?

Not likely - it'sgoing to be iVuvuzela apps if the students I deal with are anything to go by.

eBooks: What to read on which reader

Arthur McGiven

I'll wait thanks

I wouldn't mind a usable e-reader, but I'm going to wait for a couple of years and leave it to the Gotta Have the Latest Fashion brigade to go through the Betamaxing process first. Once there's a standard then get back to me.

Ubuntu's Karmic Koala bares fangs at Windows 7

Arthur McGiven

It's today now - so where is it?

It has been today for more than 12 hours now and still the website says "Coming soon"

101 uses for a former merchant banker

Arthur McGiven

Prediction?

The fact of the matter is that economics is not a science. Economies are mathematically chaotic systems like the weather. Politicians and economists are either delusional or con-artists when they claim to predict or influence the economic future.

Wait for the announcement "This morning a woman rang in to say she had heard that there was a recession coming. Don't worry, there isn't."

Gov aims to extend dead artists' royalty denial

Arthur McGiven

Unsurprising

The government has "sided with the art sales industry over artists." Is anyone surprised at this?

Art dealers are generally rich, artists are generally poor. Politicians generally side with rich people in the hope that some of the richness will rub off on them in some way or other.

Jacqui Smith trails überdatabase plans

Arthur McGiven

It's the SPAM stupid

When all the spam is on their system it would take the lifetime of the universe to extract any meaningful data

Furse should not resign, she should be sacked

Arthur McGiven

Clubable

The real problem with British management on all levels is that it runs on the basis of knowing the right people. That is how they get the jobs and also how they do the jobs.

The nearer one gets to the ranks of the great and the good, the more this rule applies, and, most disastrously for our future, the more one tends to regard technology/engineering as something that belongs round at the tradesman's entrance.

Judge refuses to lift order squelching students' subway card hack

Arthur McGiven
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Typical management response

Instead of handing the problem over to their technical people they give it to technically illiterate lawyers.