Re: Hmm
+1 for able and apt usage of 'bollocks' and 'wankers' :)
Posts by Roq D. Kasba
642 publicly visible posts • joined 3 Jun 2015
UK TV is getting worse as younglings shun the BBC et al, says Ofcom
Friday 3rd July 2015 22:15 GMT
Re: Jeremy Kyle...
'Live' TV is by far the cheapest way to fill a regular slot - cover it with 4 cameras, competent presenters, and there's no post production to worry about - it's already gone to air so nothing to fix, you just get on with filling the next hour.
Kyle is shot 'as live', multi camera but edited for length and drama. He may be the Daily Mail in human form, but Kyle is actually very good at what he does (hint- that show isn't journalism)
Friday 3rd July 2015 11:27 GMT
Re: Hmm
And yet in the US the networks that *do* produce the premium, watchable content are subscription-based (HBO is the current reigning example).
Subscription-basis means they have already got your money, so can take a chance as opposed to claw onto weekly viewing figures and lowest common denominator stuff. They don't have to be ready to cancel series mid-run, so stories get to unfold (GoT is a popular example) and grow an audience.
Did you see The Honourable Woman? BBC co-pro. Fabulous, intelligent drama, really wakes you up to what utter shit CSI <domain> made by the yard TV really is. We cannot lose stuff like that. Sherlock also, for instance, came from nowhere - no hoo-hah, it could have crashed and burned terribly, but someone was able to take a real punt and look how it has paid off. You can't do that kind of punt-taking if you're chasing weekly ad-rev fluctuations.
Assange™'s emotional plea for asylum in France rejected
Oil & gas? Pah. We’ve got a MASSIVE 3D printer, beams Dubai
Trump carded: Wannabe prez's hotels 'ground zero' in banking breach
World+dog will soon watch 'at least 200 pr0n vids a year'
Wednesday 1st July 2015 06:55 GMT
Democratisation of the medium = less profit
In the growth days of the internet, every bloke with a camcorder became a low-rent porn producer, producing thousands of hours of poorly lit, shot, audio video and starting up sites. Monetisation failed for whatever reason, and this dumped a huge amount of 'free porn' on the market as these sites shuddered their death rattles. A few aggregators were in the right place, most became sub-brands of the big few.
They have the challenge of getting people to pay for something that is now free, they can't rely on dodgy dialers any more, all the streams that made Sullivan and Gold rich enough to buy West Ham are gone, Fawn (Raymond's granddaughter) has a property portfolio covering most of Soho, but I very much doubt she'll be doing much publishing.
The ubiquity of instant, free films means there may still be money right at the boundaries - where there are still questions of taste or legality - as the rich middle easy ground has gone. A fondness for 'particular presenters' will help to a degree, but if I can see the wobbly bits of Hollywood starlets whilst on a train, it's not a massive deal. And males seem to be hard programmed to collect diverse sets as opposed to remaining faithful to one selection of pixels, so I'm unsure that'll work except for boundary cases anyway, and then be incredibly time-sensitive as their pertness sags.
US police to throw big balls in criminals' faces
Why OH WHY did Blighty privatise EVERYTHING?
That man told me to stuff a ROLE up my USER ENTRY!
Sunday 28th June 2015 07:14 GMT
Re: Login names
>>>.Anyone who's last name is fewer than six letters might have problems, too - unless it was up to six letters of the last name, rather than a strict six.<<<
Yes, it's a format riddled with limitations, similarly not having a middle name also means an imperfect fill. Namespace collisions are also more common than you'd imagine, leading to abominations like 'kasbar03' which help nobody.
Saturday 27th June 2015 09:51 GMT
Login names
Back in the days of steam, before anyone standardised user names etc., I remember a guy who decided to try to bring some order to the company using LLLLLLFS as a template (lastname * 6 chars, then first and second initials). In most cases this was perfectly acceptable and brought things under control.
Techies, being techies, would use that login as a monicker, much as a public schoolboy is referred to by his surname. 'kasbardee', etc
His own name was something akin to Alistair Patrick Cochran, making his username monicker a variant of 'cockcrap'. Bet he wishes he'd thought that template through harder before imposing it ;-)
Bloke called Rod struck by lightning for second time
Apple apes Microsoft with iPhone BLUE SCREEN OF DEATH
We forget NOTHING, the Beeb thunders at Europe
Buh bye fakers? Amazon tweaks customer product reviews system
US students prevail in rocket-powered egg challenge
Kamikaze Rosetta probe to ram comet it's chased for billions of miles
The wonderful madness of metrics: Different things to different folk
Another CEO goes overboard from Jay Z's Tidal music website
This whopping 16-bit computer processor is being built by hand, transistor by transistor
Taylor Swift boycotts Apple Music over no-pay-for-plays shocker
Sun like it hot: Philae comet probe wakes up, phones home again
FLICK my FLINT and SNIFF my TREE on the streets of Naples
Saturday 20th June 2015 13:09 GMT
Why lighters and air fresheners?
100-odd years ago in London it would have been matches and bootlaces, another unlikely combination.
You see varaitions all over - the purpose of the goods is to be legit to approach strangers when you can either 1) sell them an overpriced cheap item 2) beg for money in order to get rid of you 3) hold them still and distract them whilst your mate picks their pocket. Streetside shoe polishing is the same deal.
The Big Issue is better as it has a decent margin but also prohibits vendors from selling tat or begging, and has an backup infrastructure to help move people on (hopefully)
Post-pub nosh neckfiller: Nasi goreng pattaya
UK.gov loses crucial battle in home-taping war with musicians
Friday 19th June 2015 19:03 GMT
Re: "The government has already vowed not to introduce a levy on copying music."
Is it really impoverished musos behind this, or the industry that has already bullied copyright maximalism extensions every time the mouse is about to go public, and who already get the public purse to pay for enforcing their business model (arguably copyright violation is civil, not criminal, like any other contract breach)?
Thought so.
Airbnb beats actual posh hotel chain with stupidly large valuation
Friday 19th June 2015 10:14 GMT
Re: Meh
Alas it probably does affect you indirectly. Do you have a pension? Does your less-savvy sister? Your mother-in-law? With IPO's for tech bubbles being high profits for brokers, they will all be in sharpish, gambling pension funds. Don't imagine they wont - dotcom IPO's are crack to addicts.
Dorcomboomandbust1.0 crippled BT, wiped out Marconi (remember Marconi?), and hundreds of other investors. Now they are marching, rushing to do the EXACT SAME THING!
It's OK – this was an entirely NEW type of cockup, says RBS
Super Cali goes ballistic – Uber says it's bogus (even though its contract is something quite atrocious)
Thursday 18th June 2015 10:49 GMT
Re: Lessons for techies: the law is like duck typing, not static typing
UK Ltd company...
Yes, except if HMRC decide you actually are acting as an employee, IR35 will info all the ducking and diving anyway. Your company should be able to substitute labour, take other contracts and clients, and certainly not be engaged for more than 2 years. The goalposts will shuffle a little, but if you're not the lowest hanging fruit you're probably fine for now.
YOU ARE THE DRONE in Amazon's rumoured new parcel delivery plan
Wednesday 17th June 2015 05:53 GMT
The last few miles are the worst paid in the independent delivery networks, 40p per package is not untypical, so the only way to make anything approaching break even is to have a lot of packages in the same street, and for that to be close to base. Having watched local delivery affects for MyHermes (as I recall) standing in a freezing, unclean, uneven bit of waste ground in front of a local depot, stuffing rusty cars with packages as they scanned them from the cage, on the floor, it was clear this is a Iow-cost operation.
Belgium trolls France with bonkers new commemorative coin
Chips can kill: Official
Science teacher jammed his school kids' phones, gets week suspension
Thursday 4th June 2015 08:14 GMT
May need a bit of work - the 'urgent call' caveat will cause problems - at 14 the important stuff is exactly the shit that's irrelevancy as an adult, and arguments on the respective merits of the urgency of social life (Mikey just dumped me omg I am going to die) will just move the problem a few inches. Also, it means people will be checking phones to see which texts and calls are coming in, in case they're 'urgent'. You know they will. There's no space for leeway because it will be applied inconsistently, and so abused. That's what testing boundaries is about!
So, I'm sympathetic in theory, but it needs more work ;-)
Biting the hand that feeds IT
