Posts by George Brown

Brexit: More cash for mobile operators or consumers? Pick one

No mention of the EU taking 17 years of obfuscation, time-wasting and report-writing before finally being pushed in to a decision by the OECD and WTO?

http://www.eureferendum.com/blogview.aspx?blogno=86008

The paperless office? Don’t talk sheet

This article is like it was written in 2001. Obviously paper still exists but our IT company of 65 people has one printer and it probably gets used once a week. All incoming paper is scanned and shredded. It's really very easy.

WWII HERO PIGEON crypto message STUMPS GCHQ boffins

Why would you insist on only using your first name when a simple google search gives the name of the gchq resident historian? Maybe it's another of those MI5 cryptology interview tests..

Poll: Porn-watching, net-savvy kids are a myth

Well my 16 year old stepbrother and all his mates have never been cyberbullied but all know what redtube is.

Money for nothing – and your (gambling) kicks for free

I'd say it's worth a go..

For every clearly-ludicrously-overpaid IT pro in here who sniffs at a paltry £1000, it is quite possible that there are those (like me) who wouldn't mind having a bit of free cash. I'd quite like to go to NZ next year for the RWC and that would cover most of my beer money.

Of course it's not absolutely free, in that it requires a bit of time, effort and skill, but then so does getting £1000 most other ways. If, for example, I wanted to work in a pub to make £1000, I'd need to work something like 250 hours in a second job at £6/hour to get it. So would I pick sitting at home in front of my PC with a beer to make £1k in six months, or 10 hours a week serving other people beers whilst stood on my feet all evening after a full day at work?

Airbus: We'll cancel crap A400M unless we get more £££

Economics of politics

Oh, the joys of being a member of the EU and, for political reasons, having to buy overpriced crap from our neighbours, rather that stuff that actually works...

Xbox girl-on-girl game upsets Singapore

WTF?

Is that it? Was hoping for some proper filth. Suppose I should have guessed from the lack of a NSFW notice.. Bit poor to ban it on that basis though.

Don't give booze to elephants, sobs Paris Hilton

Infested?

He added: "As part of her global elephant campaign, Hilton should, in fact, think of visiting this region literally infested with elephants."

Infested? Like vermin? Perhaps this is some kind of natural selection. Like an elephant Darwin Awards..

Cambridge computing profs 'desperate' for applicants

Cambridge grads

An IT company I used to work for had a penchant for employing only Cambridge computer science grads. Sadly however, although they have brains the size of planets, they're mostly completely incapable of human interaction, thinking for themselves or dealing with the real world. Graduates from 'lesser' universities with less high-level-IT-focused degrees are much more suited to life in the workplace and interacting with people. A good deal of Cambridge grads are great as long as you shut them in a room with lots to do and on no account let them talk to customers. Generalisation? Yes, but based on truth.

Alibaba.com soars on magic carpet

Somewhere, somehow...

...this is all going to end in tears.

Biologist 'discovers' scentless giant peccary

Mates?

'It turns out to be their most hunted animal.'

Who needs mates like that?

AT&T bestows international wireless plan on American iPhoners

Talking of people being stupid...

How about buying a phone that doesn't have a vaguely decent international roaming tariff?

Or as mentioned above, are they fanboys who don't feel complete without the latest bit of kit? Act in haste, repent at leisure..

Czech Olympic Committee annihilates English language

RE: Perhaps most embarassing is...

Funny you should mention that. What would be really embarassing is if the same situation occurred and the country actually DID win the Olympic bid. Oh wait, that's just happened in London..

Social networks to replace imagination and be woven into clothes

Just don't think it's that great..

"We believe there's a world five years down the road - three years down the road - where the most common thing you do on a social network is buy the things you want to dress up your profile with and the applications you need in order to do that.”

I don't know how many on here use facebook, but recently there's been a proliferation of literally hundreds of pointless applications to add to your account, and they're almost universally rubbish. People add them, use them once, and then don't touch them again. Surely the point of social networking is to talk to your friends? That's what most people I know seem to be doing on there.

Also read in the Telegraph that facebook is planning on having revenues of $6bn by 2016 and therefore must be worth about $6bn now. Living in dreamworld, if you ask me, but it's quite possible Yahoo! may take leave of their senses entirely.. Friendsreunited was the next big thing a relatively short time ago and now looks tired and sad. Facebook became popular in the first place because it offered people the ability to add any number of pictures for free, so they could now actually see the people they may not have seen for five or ten years. If someone else comes up with a similar vital difference in five years time, facebook will be in much the same position as friendsreunited is now. Though maybe that's why it's being saturated with 'features' so much now..

Second Life will dwarf the web in ten years

Rubbish...

Aside from the fact that second life is pretty rubbish and not as good as real life (IMHO), I'd be surprised if in three years they'll be capable of being at an equivalent graphics level to Transformers, while in 10 years, they'll require hundreds of millions of machine to do it - are we presuming that Moore's law won't be valid then?

US man flies 193 miles in deckchair

Winpenny...

Given the regularity of Winpenny's contributions to the site, I suspect that working too hard is some distance from the truth...

Hacking WoW and the pursuit of knowledge

Personally I don't really care

I can't really stand MMORPGs, least of all WoW or Guild Wars. It's not just the fact that they're only RPGs in the sense that you can choose to be a certain race or class, and don't really give a sense of playing any kind of role. It's partly the fact that you do basically spend the whole time running around in a Diablo-esque hack n' slash trying to level up the whole time and trying to find better gear. I'm sure some people find it fascinating, but I would only ever pay a one-off game fee for it, certainly not a monthly subscription. I also can't stand the people - in Guild Wars, if you go to a town, it's mostly full of people running around saying 'Join my guild! Join my guild! It pwns!' and other such inanities. How you can even vaguely immerse yourself in it (and I'm no D&D obsessive) when there's annoying Americans/teenagers running around making stupid comments and doing vaguely-funny-the-first-time dance moves, I've no idea. Give me single player any day.

YouTube, CNN invite cats falling out of trees to US Prez debates

Taiwanese and Japanese?

Sorry for the ignorance, but it does sound interesting - what exactly about Taiwanese and Japanese legislatures?

Jet-powered go-kart roars onto eBay

I seem to recall..

..that I saw a programme in which Jeremy Clarkson was riding around on a jet-powered bicycle. That seemed ludicrously dangerous, but extremely fun. It also didn't look a lot safer than this, and he absolutely loved it. I want one too!

Hot babes cruise planet Google

How often do they update?

Any idea how often they update the pictures from the UK? The building I'm sitting in is in the centre of Cambridge (not *that* much of a backwater) and is showing as still under construction, when it has in fact been finished for well over two years...

Google wants to really get to know you

Can't you just not use all the personalised stuff?

I just use google as purely a search engine, because I find the personalised stuff a bit pointless. Surely all they can get from me is a list of regular or irregular searches connected to one of millions of IP addresses? And since I use a couple of computers at work as well as my home PC, the data's not really complete anyway?

University moves to hush Facebook criticism

RE: Google is an employer's friend

That's why I'm glad my name's George Brown - best of luck googling that!

There are students in the Institution I work in who have quite openly been slagging professors here on facebook - I guess they're just not aware of how easy it is to find..

With regard to the above, a number of the major political and social changes of the last 100 years worldwide have, in the most part, been instigated by students - Romania under Ceaucescu, Tiananmen Square in China, etc. etc. If they'd all be 'doing their homework' none of that would have happened. Of course they're not directly comparable, but it is in student's nature to question and inquire, and I feel they should be encouraged to do so, though in a positive and constructive manner.

Highly amusing though.

BBC culls Jam staff

Sounds like rubbish to me..

Surely ITV could come back with the same argument that the BBC's production of television programmes means fewer people are watching their channels, ergo less advertising revenue?

About that TV service, Mr Branson...

Broadband fine, TV rubbish

I've had broadband through NTL/Virgin/whoever for a year or two now, and I've barely had a problem with the service itself (the year it took them to sort out a refund for them opening two accounts and charging for both is a different story altogether). The up and download speed have been fine, and I do a pretty hefty amount of downloading torrents and the suchlike.

The TV, on the other hand, is pretty appalling. The guide is incredibly slow, and there seem to be several buttons I can press which seize the whole thing up for a minute or so at a time. The 'On Demand' service simply doesn't work, and every time I phone the call centre in India I have to go through the rigmarole of them sending something to the box, which apparently takes two hours. Of course each time I phone the person I speak to has no record of previous calls. The new much-vaunted Central service doesn't work either - scant recompense for the lost Sky channels. Nor (often) do the pay per view movies. I am generally met with indifference by any customer servants I eventually get through to. The service offered by Sky (including interactive) is considerably better - I would have it if my landlady would let me put a satellite on the roof.

And mine costs me about £70 a month for the pair. I was paying a price similar to another poster, but that went up very quickly after the offer period ended. When I pay this much for something, I really do expect it to be pretty perfect, and frankly it isn't.