Posts by MonkeyBot

Re: "putting the responsibility on teenage girls"

The alternative is to expect teenage boys to be responsible. Good luck with that.

I'm 35 and I'm barely responsible now.

It would also have set a dangerous precedent.

Imagine the terrible things that would befall us if governments spent money on building infrastructure.

Bit of an unfair comparison

The article seems to be comparing the output of the BBC to the output of the entire US TV industry.

It shouldn't be surprising that the total number of "good" programs coming out of the US is more than the UK when they've got far more shows to begin with. They also have a hell of a lot crap as well, but we don't normally import that.

I saw the G-cloud stand at a civil service exhibition recently. It consisted of one screen showing a rolling presentation and a couple of civil servants standing around looking bored. The presentation was just words popping up on screen telling you how great the G-cloud is, but the timing meant you didn't have time to read half of them and on some slides, the words didn't even fit on the screen.

It's no surprise that take-up is slow when the sales pitch looks so amateurish.

"...asked not to be named."

Please tell me the guy who didn't want to be named isn't the one standing on the right of the photo.

Close the schools

"We don’t need a lot of people who know a bit about coding, but a few people who are extremely good at actually doing coding well."

You can say the same about every subject taught in school. We don't teach maths & science because we need a lot of people who know a bit about math & science (although that would be nice). The important thing that we need kids to take from those lessons is how to think rationally and in that sense, coding could be a very valuable subject.

"So the day at the ad agency no more qualifies Rory to speak about computer programming than painting a fence qualifies you to be an architect or a civil engineer."

And you have spent how long working in education? What's that you say, you've never taught a class in your life? Then I guess you're not qualified to speak about what we should be teaching in schools.

It could be worse...

Trying to just cut&paste from Twitter may be a bit naive, but at least he isn't trying to put hashtags in Disquss comments and sms messages.

And yes, I've seen people do both of those.

Sue the Dept. for Transport

I was driving on a 60mph road the other day and I could only go 50mph because they let too many other cars on the road.

We should just make them tell us the average speed for an area alongside the "up to" speed.

Top Gun 2: Wings of Fury

'Nuff said.

Not entirely equivalent...

The problem with privacy vs. copyright is that your privacy rights only really last as long as you do whereas copyrights keep being extended.

The fact that they both rely on property rights, doesn't make it irrational to want to strengthen one and weaken the other. Or more importantly, strengthen and weaken the respective penalties for breaching those rights.

Where does Orlowski live?

I hope it's not anywhere in the jurisdiction of this Arizona law or he could be in trouble.

Password

If the word "password" doesn't appear in the bible no-one will be using it.

So I can just change my password to "password" and no-one will guess it, right?

"...money is the best revenge."

Yes, but there's still the choice between gaining more money for yourself and depriving them of money.

Take your revenge well and you could cost them far more than you could ever gain for yourself.

How about a mixed model...

We charge foreigners and use the money to fund it being free for us.

Their respective fortunes...

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that the differing incomes of Google and Apple may be a result of a little more than just their respective attitudes to IP.

Left leaning

I doubt their "left leaning" bias allows them to alter the Lexis Nexis database. Besides, I thought the mainstream media was already supposed to have a "liberal bias" anyway.

Strange as it may sound, not everything people do is motivated by some left/right political battle.

"anti-child sex abuse organisation"

Depending on where you put the emphasis in that phrase, the IWF could become a very different beast.

Search Engine De-Optimisation

This could open up a whole new industry.

Instead of paying someone to push your site to the top of Google's search results, you could pay them to push your competitiors down by duplicating their websites.

Productivity

"What happened in practice, however, was that the ribbon caused confusion and damaged productivity as people were forced to re-learn their way around Office."

Anyone who was seriously confused by the ribbon is unlikely to be doing anything productive anyway.