Posts by h4rm0ny

And those who paid for his crimes?

I hope that after all this, those people who paid money to NI to read the details of other people's private lives, all those who regard tragedies like 9/11 or Milly Dowler's death as a soap opera for their personal entertainment, learn to feel suitably ashamed.

Freedom of the Press is an important thing. We need it for unearthing corrupt politicians, preventing suppression of views and information that powerful factions would like to be kept from the public. And when someone abuses that freedom, it weakens the case for the freedom of the press. We get things like the super-injunctions passed (temporarily, anyway) to protect the details of someone's marriage - and what business of ours is it really, anyway? - which can then be misused for to conceal actual wrong-doing that the public has a proper interest in. Just like criminals undermine the case for privacy and not having CCTV everywhere, like movie pirates undermine the case for not having DRM on everything, like a kid using their parents credit card to buy something undermines the case for their being trusted unsupervised... Protections of journalists are there so that we can preserve human rights, not so we can read about someone having an argument with their spouse. Shame on NI, and shame on the people who paid them to listen in on Milly Dowler's voicemail, 9/11 victims or any other victim whose private lives were made into a circus for the shallow people of the planet.

I don't know if it's Art.

But I don't like it.

So sorry to see you go.

Will you censor this last cunting-tit-cock post of mine, just for old time's sake. :)

Beer to take with you, in case your new place is more sober.

It all depends...

Good article. The cost difference isn't really going to be a big issue for most of us. This is for professional users and we're quite happy to pay a small premium for something that does what we want. I know I am.

Honestly, given that I'm already using Office (and like it), the MS offering looks overwhelmingly preferable. I get offline-capability which I stiil consider vital, I get better integration, more powerful products (if Open Office isn't good enough to prise me away from Excel and Word, the Google offerings don't have a chance) and I don't have to start committing my data to a company whose primary business model is adverstising and which I do not trust. I don't get why some complain about the complexity of MS's pricing model. It's not *that* hard to work out and it allows you to buy what you need rather than a one-size fits all.

All in all, MS comes out way ahead for me. They need to sort that SSL connection out though. That shouldn't be optional on even the cheap end of their offerings. It should be standard.

Cretins from Hell

That was the term for CfH round our neck of the NHS. There are more fingers in that pie than there is pie. At least there were at the time that I escaped the NHS in disgust at a body that could spend literally millions on a piss-poor web-application that was supposed to show our practice's target results to us for payments, but couldn't even add up the numbers correctly.

The problem isn't Microsoft. Sure, they're more expensive than if you put Open Office in place, but you could use pen and paper and it would still cost a fortune by the time it had been through the upper levels of the NHS. I had the misfortune of sitting in a procurement meeting for an IT support company for our PCT. They spent literally four times what it would cost to hire an entirely new and extra IT support person working in house, on an outside company that did nothing but take calls and then pass them back to our own IT support staff. During the roll out of "The Spine", we had a bod turn up at our practice who was a freelancer, hired by an agency, who was leased to a "freelancing company" who then leased him to ATOS to go round the practices and check if computers were up to spec for the new software. Four levels of profit skimming for a guy whose IT skills were barely capable of checking the processor and ram on a PC which was the extent of his job.

It's frustrating because there are so many people working so hard at the bottom of the NHS, and there are so many bastards at the highest levels skimming money out of it. I still have friends at the PCT level working like crazy to try and save the NHS from the likes of Blair and Cameron.

I could save the NHS literally hundreds of millions if I were just allowed to shoot selected people at the top. The NHS is worth saving, but the DOH needs a good purging.

PR?

It's about time the field of IT got a bit more media coverage. We are raising a society that thinks the pinnacle of recognition is to be a popstar or a footballer. Perhaps if there were more stories about people doing things with computers in the mainstream press, people will think: "there are better ways to achieve respect and to contribute than shagging a celebrity. I could get involved in the ongoing battle between government and activists!"

Beer for the cyberwarriors who fight for something other the right to be on X-Factor. ;)

Interwebs? INTERWEBS?

Please tell me I didn't just see that word used in a NON-ironic manner. I weep for IT journalism.

:_(

So this Blinkbox...

It's actually legit? I've been linked to it from time to time, saw a site offering me downloadable movies in return for my credit card details and thought: "how daft do they think I am?" Time to update my expectations, apparently!

For the people saying it will fail because of poor bandwidth, that doesn't matter much if the movie or show actually downloads in some DRM'd format rather than has to stream with minimal buffering.

A service like this will definitely increase my impulse buying - want to watch a movie this evening but not one I've already got? Click "buy" and I'm done. So long as I can still buy a movie and actually own it, as I do with purchased discs, and that doesn't become some super-high priced luxury option, I think this sounds great.

Here's a simple trick to reduce rubbish...

Go back to selling food loose, rather than pre-packaged. Obviously not baked beans etc. but if you go to France for example, you just scoop the tomatoes or whathaveyou into a paper bag, they weigh it and charge you accordingly. In the UK, you far too often end up buying a packet of the veg you want in a little tray and clear plastic wrapper. Not only is that instant waste, but because you almost always want slightly more or slightly less than the amount in the packet, you end up throwing food out.

I'm not normally one for saying the old ways were better, but in this case...

Chilcott

I bet Alaister Campbell and Tony Blair wish they'd had something like this instead of having to make up evidence about WMD in Iraq.

Why are we invading this country?

Because they launched a cyber-attack on us.

How do we know that's true?

Here is an IT man who says it is.

That's not sexual?

Maybe if you're a snowman. Now if Ofcom want to say they don't find anything wrong with a bit of sexual provocation thankyouverymuch, well so be it. But that's definitely deliberately sexual. The argument of whether X is good or bad, is a separate argument to whether Y is X or not.

Not sexual, my arse.

Unexpected and sad loss.

She was great, both back then and in the modern era. I had no idea she was ill. She looked remarkably good in her recent works. Best wishes to her family. She gave us all something, even those of us who'd never met her.

Raised in her honour.