Steve Hooker's Radio: kids, war, blogs, gadgets: A Welsh man in the wrong country, going home
"Several thousand tribal elders held a jirga, or council, and agreed to raise a force of their own to find the wanted men. In the last two weeks, the tribes have handed over 42 of them. Tribal members, meanwhile, have bulldozed and dynamited the homes of eight men who refused to surrender."
I'm
glad we're hearing about this. Normally such inaccessible and 'minor'
efforts would only be reported in local press, never reaching something
like the NYT.
[During the anti-Soviet drive] the United States indirectly helped pay for hundreds of hard-line
religious schools that produced anti-Soviet fighters. Today, the same
schools appear to produce anti-American fighters.
Are we yet pouring more money into correct these mistakes? Or, going for the short term, painful, fix? My guess is the latter.
1622 Also posted to: warBlog
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Other title(s) for this story: Pakistan Adopting a Tough Old Tactic to Flush Out Qaeda
"if you've already hacked up your Tivo to the point where you can
telnet to it, it's not a whole lot of extra work to display RSS feed
data right there on the screen."
I don't suppose it's better than reading it in a proper
aggregator... But I like the convergence. I wonder if TiVo works in the
UK?
1621 Also posted to: cyberSaps
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Other title(s) for this story: Nutty RSS/Tivo hack
Another busy old day. Going back to do another iteration of the Manila
themes in CSS. Having troubles with my mouse overs. But after a good
night's sleep, and some re-reading of printouts of some basic CSS from
that I did way back in 1998, I'm looking forward to solving a few
positioning riddles.
I see Tantek's doing some fun stuff with CSS too:
[The Scobleizer -- Geek Aggregator]: He's doing a different design every day, based on Technorati's top
100 blogs. All in CSS. All without changing any of the content of his
blog.
Cool. And finally a reason to visit a blog in a browser rather than in an RSS news aggregator (News aggregators don't usually display design of blogs).
Doesn't look as though he's picked a good example today. Odd.
Current Weather. 2C Mostly Cloudy [Cosford Royal Air Force Base, United Kingdom Weather]
I
get the above updates every hour. Wouldn't it be cool, if I plugged it
intot the Government's Intranet. So that as the weather changed, so did
the theme. From suuny to partially cloudy. Rain to light rain...
Feature creep! I shut up, quickly!
John Robb: What is the scope of the offshoring problem?
What is $100 b of offshored services
worth in terms of jobs? First, an offshored service costs ~50% of the
service produced in the US (on average). Since this is basically a pure
salary play (infrastructure is minimal), these estimates mean that 2 m
($100k) information workers will be offshored by 2008. Also, given
these jobs usually produce upwards of ~4 additional jobs per position
(community impact), this is a net loss of 10 m jobs by 2008.
I guess, offshoring is a bigger opportunity than I thought. Problems are, after all , opportunities.
Too busy working over the last few days. NEED SLEEP. Been pouring man
hours into CSS for Manila. Not that Manila was the problem, but style
sheets, and what I could do within my knowledge, which obviously I
wanted to stretch (unfeasibly long).
Family's taking off to visit Nannie, so I'll have the house to myself.
Intend to break the back of this project—switchable CSS for Manila
themes. It'll be nice when it's finished.
ComputerWorld: Blogs bubble into business
Too busy to blog!
Oh well. But there is a great resource of Adobe presets, where people have uploaded styles and shapes.
The image is just a quick layout. Actually, a very, very slow one. It's getting there. Having to chop up the template, write some macros that produces CSS instead of HTML, it takes a devil of a long time.
It's a mish-mash of different buttons and textures, at the mo... I'll get some class, style and panache into it soon.
1613 Also posted to: cybersaps
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Other title(s) for this story: ImageReady to make CSS themes
Living with Britain's population timebomb. Society: 100 years ago, there were five workers for every retired person. Soon for every pensioner, there will be just one worker. Robin McKie asks what this means for the future.
1612 At: 10:55:00 AM . .
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Plenty of ideas to steal from :-) Giving clients the spin from these descriptions isn't recommended.
1611 Also posted to: cyberSaps
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Other title(s) for this story: 15 Trends Taking Shape In Logo Design
Current Weather. 1C Mist
1610 At: 10:50:58 AM . .
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Other title(s) for this story:
Slough beats New York's finest. BBC comedy The Office sees off Sex and the City and Will and Grace to pick up two Golden Globes.
1609 At: 10:50:41 AM . .
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Other title(s) for this story:
"David Kay, the former head of the coalition's hunt for Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, yesterday claimed that part of Saddam Hussein's secret weapons programme was hidden in Syria."
Debka.com has been saying the same for ages.
From my archives: Documents coming to light in Baghdad directly incriminate
Syria as a full partner in the financing, development and concealment
of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs
Mind, they were also saying: The Iraqi ruler has massed around Baghdad--not only his crack fighting divisions and most loyal suicide units, but also his missiles and weapons of mass destruction, including possibly radiological devices.
1608 Also posted to: warBlog
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Other title(s) for this story: Saddam's WMD hidden in Syria, says Iraq survey chief
But they need to negotiate them to the floor. For example, small firms should be aware of the fact that vendors often
try to base maintenance contract prices on the 'list price' of software
licenses (usually 20 per cent to 22 per cent) when dealing with SME
buyers.
It is important for SMB buyers to leverage the
interest in their market and negotiate maintenance agreements based on
'as sold' prices, or contract deliverables in return for their
business.
1607 Also posted to: cyberSaps
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Other title(s) for this story: Small firms to cash in on software bargain bonanza
Orphaned or
balck archive pages? Use this.
A few
days ago I posted some advice re deleting posts, saying that one may end up
with blank pages in your archives. Not that anything would point to them if you used my repair
script.
I've found an old
script that deletes those pesky files off your hard disk.
More than likely there'll be
nothing there, but you
may want to run it in check mode, to see if there are. If there are and
there are lots uncomment the delete line and it'll really delete them.
Here's a screen shot to help you understand the
script. You can just look in particular archives.
As my posts to the Radio discussion board is syndicated into my
Radio aggregator it's much easier to snip it out of my aggregator than
to copy, open new editing window, paste... (I think :-)
"Not an easy peak to locate while zipping over the mountains at 7 kilometers per second" [Via kuro5hin]
Once upon a time: India 'floated' up to Asia, and bashed the Himalayas up, and up, and up.
1605 Also posted to: Space
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Other title(s) for this story: The Many Faces of Mount Everest
Auto-focus (AF) mechanisms and electronic flashes are likely to become
more common in mobile phone cameras once the 2-megapixel mark is
reached.
I guess this will make me move from my current still digiCam ==>
puter ==> thumbnailed to blog. Would prefer direct to blog, but will
also require editing on the phone (crop, colour correcting). Though imageMagick does this... {Via Roland Tanglao]
1604 Also posted to: cyberSaps
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Other title(s) for this story: Mobile Phones Enter 2-Mpixel Era
ESA has new evidence of water on
Mars like we have oil on
Earth.Site is in German (well, it is the European Space
Agency's Mars
Express) but you can download 17Mb tifs which give fairly
good detal...
From metaFiler:
At this point it seems fairly
certain that a lot of the water is now underground (ESA
artist's impression),
and occasionally makes its way to the surface, sometimes carrying salt
along the way (forming some of the more interesting surface structures
on Mars, evaporites). But this can only be verified by the
radar onboard of MEX, which will start operating in a couple of
months.
1603 Also posted to: Space
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Other title(s) for this story: Good Mars photos in German
"More AtomEnabled tools and services are being added every day. Check back soon for even more sites and software using Atom."
I don't hear of anything happening in the Radio or Manila world. I just had a quick look at Mark Pilgrim's feed made by MovableType. Doesn't look that tricky to do, knowing the system.verbs.builtins.radio.weblog.writeRssFile script (though I'm probably missing something, as I've ignored the developement process). If I had some time I'd make that system.verbs.builtins.radio.weblog.writeAtomFile and make one for my Manila hosting server too.
It would be good for business to be listed as the only Manila
hosting service and quite probably the only service that both writes
and reads Atom.
1602 Also posted to: cyberSaps
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Other title(s) for this story: The AtomEnabled Directory
I'm creating some new themes for the Government's intranet. 20 of them. Valentines. St David's day. Christmas. Eid Al-Addha. You know, all the most important holidays.
I'm starting from scratch. Trying to have very little HTML and do most of it with XHTML and style sheets.
Once I have a layout that I'm happy with, I can very quickly alter the
stylesheet, or the arrangement of the columns and produce 20 different
designs with basically the same structure. Kinda like the CSS Zen Garden,
only without the switcher. The intranet has 30 odd micros sites (Manila
sites) and the IT geezer wants to 'one click' swap themes for the
entire installation. People will still be able to use the Editors'
only: Prefs: Appearance, to change background and link colours — I'm
still using the body macro.
Each site will be fully loaded, with all the usual macros plus:
- searchThisSite
- alteredUserland.siteMenu: a Windows Explorer view of the hierarchy
- lastUpdate
- alteredUserland.newsDeptLinks: links with XML buttons to news departments
- recentNewsItems
- displayLastUpdatedHomePagesCSS
- printFriendlyLink
- mailStory
- xmlCoffeeMug
- rssLink
- viewRssBoxCSS
- alteredUserland.mailToLink: a mail to: member's name with envelope icon
Currently, I'm ripping out the discussion group theme. Still has to be an HTML table but much simpler, whilst giving more power to the CSS.
I'll remove the non UserLand macros and add in modules instead of the includeMessage and release them to the community when they're finished.
1601 Also posted to: cyberSaps
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Other title(s) for this story: Manila themes and CSS
About a year ago, I gave Esme some slid out of a tin... Little three inch long whole fish
in a tomato sauce. She'll eat just about anything, and normally likes
tinned fish. I say it's good for her brains. "What's brains?"
She looked down at them, and said she didn't like them. "Well, try them first!"
Still months later, nearly a year, Bradley won't eat fish. Any fish. He says. "I don't like fish with faces on."
1600 Also posted to: personal
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Other title(s) for this story: Fish with faces on
All search engines, to varying degrees, analyze links in calculating
the relevancy of a page for a particular query. Seed the Web with
enough links pointing to the same site using the same anchor text, and
you alter the search results. The effect is magnified with less popular
search phrases, since there are far fewer competing links.
Some Google bombs may have been accomplished with as few as 20 links. What is important is not the number of links, but rather the popularity of the sites doing the linking and the relative obscurity of the search term.
I wonder if us UK bloggers should do that for Blair, something on the lines of 'big liar.'
1599 Also posted to: warBlog
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Other title(s) for this story: Engineering Google Results to Make a Point
For the first time in Internet history there are more DNS rootservers outside the United States than within, following this week's launch in Frankfurt of an anycast "instance" of RIPE NCC-managed K root server.
The US still has the master A root server in Dullas, under the control of the US Dept. of Commerce.
1598 Also posted to: cyberSaps
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Other title(s) for this story: The World and the US internet balance of power
I think all of his arguments have been rebutted now.
Easy subscription is one I'd like to add to. I can subscribe to feed by
hitting the coffee cup icon on a lot of sites, or, more usually pulling
down a bookmark which looks in their headers for a feed. Sure lots haven't got this yet, but it's there and has been for two years.
I think there's still a ways to go, but for sure it's ready for prime
time. This is why many large orgs like the BBC are publishing through
it.
1597 Also posted to: cyberSaps
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Other title(s) for this story: 10 reasons why RSS is not ready for prime time
.Last year
was yet another record-breaking year for text messaging, and this year
is set to be bigger. A massive 20.5 billion SMS messages were sent over
the
four main mobile networks, said the Mobile Data Association, with 1.9
billion sent in December alone.
I wonder how much mobile firms make out of picture messaging?
1596 At: 12:16:09 PM . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Text messaging reaches new high
From Metafilter I also found, some that are more appealing to me as a
designer. Fuller of meaning and poignantcy. Here's a cheesy cheese example:
Found Typography (right) and if you liked that, please also try Hundreds of Thousands.
1594 Also posted to: cyberSaps
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Other title(s) for this story: Found Typography
Gated communities should be adopted by councils to improve
community safety, the home secretary, David Blunkett, said today.
WTF? This doesn't sound very egalitarian! What the hell is happening to this so called socialist government?
This on top of the higher money for good or best higher education? I'm
beginning to pray that Labour lose their vote next week, a day before
the Hutton report, and this will be the exit for Blair.
1593 Also posted to: warBlog
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Other title(s) for this story: Blunkett calls for spread of gated communities
The government faces renewed calls for a full judicial inquiry into its decision to go to war with Iraq.
I don't see why this programme is more of a call to action than
anything else that has been said by anybody else. Nothing too exciting
in it.
However, I certainly want Blair's head on a block for the passion he added to his calls for an attack on Iraq in Parliament 18th March 2003. I certainly was for it then. To stop any chance of WMD being used or passed to mad Muslims — for no other reason. For sure, he was a ruthless dictator — but that was for Iraqis to solve.
"We are now seriously asked to accept that in the last few years,
contrary to all history, contrary to all intelligence, he decided
unilaterally to destroy the weapons. Such a claim is palpably absurd."
That's what he did Tony. Your intel was wrong. You went to war for the wrong reasons.
I used to respect and trust you. Now, I don't.
I want you out. Otherwise Labour will lose. And I don't want that, not at all.
Why did we go to war? I now believe it was for other reasons. Perhaps as a distraction for the bin Laden brigade, perhaps for the US dollar hegemony, perhaps for more power in an oil rich region. I still don't know. But, I do believe that WMD was a camouflage — a way of getting around the anti-war public.
1592 Also posted to: warBlog
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Other title(s) for this story: Panorama prompts probe calls
Do you know what is a tooltip? This is a tooltip an aiding text that appears just when you roll on with the mouse. The basic idea comes from Eric Meyer's pure css popupsa very clever way to get dynamic effects on an html page without using javascript.
Nice... I use javascript for the tool tips on the navigation, this is much cleaner, and I'd much, much prefer to use CSS to do this. And I don't have to have 'stuff' in my hrefs. I could write an addition to my standard hrefs, just to add the class declaration, won't matter if there's no span element inside... And I could style the tool tips differently for different parts of the site... Yip, I'll change over as soon as I get some time.
As an aside, I wonder if it'll come through my RSS feed into my aggregator.
[Update:] No, the CSS curly braces have been neutered in the RSS feed somewhere. I'll have to dig in and see if I can control this with a callback. It may be that Radio thinks they're macros and is neutering them. [update 2:] Actually, it's not the production of the RSS feed that's the problem, it's the aggregator, when it sucks up the feed. Again there are callbacks for this, but I wonder how many other aggregators actually allow complete stylesheets?
1591 Also posted to: cyberSaps
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Other title(s) for this story: Pure css tooltips
Limited trial for pros, first.
Interesting, I'm just starting with Python, which is a lot like Usertalk,
1590 At: 12:32:41 PM . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Nokia prefers Python to Perl for smartphone scripting
This script runs on four Frontier servers automatically, without error or incidence and has done for three or four years. I run it because it makes Frontier serve pages much quicker. It's based on a legitimate Userland script, and I've just made it report better and run faster.
I like to squish out bloated aggregator, radio and weblogData most. Saving up to 50% off disk space. But that's not the important aspect, it's the speed!!!!! I'm sure upstreaming is faster, because the bloat in user.radio.settings.files can be considerable. I have over 13,000 items in that table, believe me, I NEED to squish that regularly!
After swapping the Radiox.root (freshly squished) for the Radio.root (old and bloated) in your Radio Userland application folder, by deleting the old one and renaming the new one as Radio.root, you'll also need to add this line to your radioStartupCommands.txt which is also in the same folder:
user.scheduler.prefs.runThreads = true;
Then, restart your Radio application. You'll find things are back to normal, your roots a freshly squished, things will be quicker and likely you'll have no root corruption.
Click for bigger
If you get this report and then there's an error in the last part of the script which is trying to send you mail regarding this report, read this message for how to edit the script either to switch off the emailing, which isn't necessary, or how to edit your email server, email address etc. Or, you can just carry on ignoring the error. The squish worked perfectly (if you get this report window up).
1589 Also posted to: cyberSaps
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Other title(s) for this story: Fat, bloated files! Squish them with this
RSS removes SPAM completely and make it truly "My Internet"
RSS Aggregators and formats are good enough to start replacing email newsletters
RSS information routers are disruptive because of their ability to create your 'own newspaper', will lead to explosion
RSS is a great way to collaborate and manage attention
2rss.com is a directory of RSS feeds.
RSS flowing in and and out enables a superior colloborative process
RSS may be the perfect vehicle for delivering news to small devices
Showing people business applications of News Aggregator is key. Show them how to subscribe to a Google or Feedster search.
Roland Tanglao was on IRC for the first day and blogged quite a few snippets. I just had to rob, what I considered the best bits, and stick them here.
1588 Also posted to: cyberSaps
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Other title(s) for this story: Snippets from RSS WinterFest IRC day one
What if we combine Webcam, Windows Media Technology, GPRS and a SmartPhone together? Here is the result:
Interesting stuff. But using IIS is a bit overboard, surely? Aren't there web cam apps that would do this? Or, at least create MPEGs that could be streamed with QuickTime Streaming Server? What about QuickTime Broadcaster? I'll dig into this a little more in a few days. I have a client that will definitely be interested in it.
1587 Also posted to: cyberSaps
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Other title(s) for this story: Webcam Windows Media GPRS SmartPhone=?
"Filmmakers can afford to work now. No more excuses, or filmmakers'
block, or procrastination. Either they start shooting, or they are
waiting for the vanity crew, or they aren't filmmakers."
Whooo-Hooo! There's my call to action. I've got hours and hours of the kids... Hundreds of stills. No time though. Damn.
1586 Also posted to: personal
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Other title(s) for this story: Wired News: Here's the Price of Fame: $218.32
I can't keep it up. Over the next few days I'm gonna work at getting rid of about half of the feeds I'm reading. I learned I can handle 700 feeds, but not 1200.
Feeds.scripting.com still says that I am only reading 703, though.
I have enough problems with 61. Most don't update, luckily, some
have hundreds of news items a day, some repeat. But most of all, I know
I'm being extremely efficient in my news junky mode. Takes me an hour a
day to skim. Plus an hour to read/post. Pretty soon, I'll have to skip
some of this this out, as I'm getting
too busy.
1585 At: 11:42:35 AM . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Scoble reading 1200 RSS feeds
The 5,000-strong crowd was believed to be the first public
demonstration in Iraq demanding death for Saddam since he was captured
by U.S. forces Dec. 13.
Iraq is turning into a blood thirsty country. I guess it always has been.
1584 Also posted to: warBlog
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Other title(s) for this story: Thousands of Iraqis Demand Death for Hussein
How could such a long string of galaxies form so early in the universe?
Several
new measurements of galaxies and clusters in the
early universe are reporting structures involving
galaxies and
clusters
that are larger than expected with the
new standard "dark-energy" cosmology.
The controversy centers on the inability of a
dark-energy dominated universe to create such large structures.
Fans of the old standard cosmology -- without weird but pervasive
dark energy --
are hoping that these new measurements rule out the newly popular strange universe.
Previously, however, data taken from several
independent sources
over the past few years has only appeared to
bolster the bold new universe paradigm.
A compromise is still possible if the
new data is
not typical or if the
comparison computer simulations are not properly
biased.
Pictured above is a computer-generated illustration of a universe
that shows a string of galaxies of the size measured.
The size of the superimposed box is about 300 million
light years on a side.
I
can't begin to wrap my mind around the argument between the dark energy
universe and the old way of looking at it. I guess I'm still in awe of
the great distances still. 300,000,000 light years. One light year is
6,000,000,000,000 miles. If in doubt download this 8Mb video.
Strings are made of clusters of galaxies. This string, then, is too early for some theorists.
1583 Also posted to: Space
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Other title(s) for this story: Unexpected galaxy string in the early universe
Current Weather. 9C Rain
Ah! Good. I need to post some invoices. I can wear my new hat. This
makes me even happier — it's a big invoice I'm posting :-) And the
Government, who're gonna get it, always pay quickly.
"With a camera phone that is also a bar-code scanner, you can go into a
store like Barnes & Noble, take a photo of the ISBN number on a
book and instantly receive a coupon offering the book for 30 percent
less at Amazon.com."
Although it'll be difficult, for sure, camera phones will be banned
from use in most shops. The above example is just perfect: the bricks
and mortar carry the expense of stocking the 'look-at-product' while
the online company makes the profit by selling it.
Look in the shops, check out competitive prices on the 'net. Barcode phones increase the efficiency, dramatically.
I know I did this when I need to buy my digi cam. However, Tescos
actually carried it as cheaply as anywhere on the net, especially when
delivery came into the equation. I ended going back to Tescos :-)
1581 Also posted to: cyberSaps
Permalink Top Search Google Technorati
Other title(s) for this story: Camera Phones Help Buyers Beware
For his phonetic sound-a-like domain name of MikeRoweSoft.com.
"It may confuse customers."
1580 Also posted to: cyberSaps
Permalink Top Search Google Technorati
Other title(s) for this story: Microsoft threaten and bully student
Maybe I'm getting quicker. Last week it was an hour and ¾. Today, it was down to an hour.
To be fair, the two classes I had today were far brighter, and much quicker off the mark. One woman was always two steps ahead of me. I was particularly impressed by one instance if this, as she had to log into her site under a made up email adress then add herself using the Editor's only: Admin, then log out, and log back in as her real self.
While others were figuring what fields to fill in, and what level of editorial roles to select, she had done the lot. Smart.
So I'd have finished an hour early. But, I wanted to teach them the world according to my version of Manila's RSS aggregator and this, news items, and express blogging via bookmarklets and/or the aggregator took up the other hour.
1579 Also posted to: cybersaps
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Other title(s) for this story: Basic Manila training in an hour
Anytime I go, I have to present it, they stamp it, and after x many stamps Bradley gets a present. They'll even send him a birthday card, at least that's what I'm lead to believe why they wanted me to add his birthday to the forms I had to fill in just to push this around Telford Shopping Centre. I guess the company's country wide.
Wasn't like this in Esme's day. New flanged consumerism!
1578 Also posted to: personal
Permalink Top Search Google Technorati
Other title(s) for this story: Cars in shopping centres these days
On the way we pass the Co-Op. Otherwise known as the centre of Dawley village life.
They've had posters up for a couple of years now, and everytime we pass we each take a giant apple, and pretend to scoff it making pretend scoffing noises.
Of course giant apples give us giant bellies, but at least they keep the giant doctor away.
We stoped in to the sweet shop on the way back home.
The old lady behind the counter asked Esme how her baby doll was, if she slept well, if she looked after it. Old ladies do this a lot, and Esme loves old ladies for it.
1577 Also posted to: personal
Permalink Top Search Google Technorati
Other title(s) for this story: A walk to the local park
The large impact basin pictured is Crater 308. It spans about 30 kilometers (19 miles) and was photographed by the crew of Apollo 11 as they circled the Moon in 1969."
Apollo 17 astronaut Harrison Schmitt standing next to boulder at Taurus-Littrow during third EVA.
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I began to wonder why. If there was little green men, or a god, on the other side, and they caused it to be so.
Well, I was just wondering. I'll go see if anybody else has been troubled about this in Google. [Update:] Not much there... Just one little snip thast makes things seem a litle worse... "The far side of the Moon was first seen on September 15, 1959 when the unmanned Soviet probe Luna 2 was launched into an orbit over it." So, we haven't done much looking there, have we?
I know, it's daft, but these daft things keep me awake some nights. Just don't like coincidences — especially when they're in twos, more so when they're this magnitude. (Back to work, kids and the real world.)
1576 Also posted to: Space
Permalink Top Search Google Technorati
Other title(s) for this story: Dark side of the moon
"This demo illustrates how to achieve a layout with 3 columns of equal height using only one column. The trick is to use a central column (this one) and add borders to it. Then position your other 2 columns so they overlay the borders."
Clever! I've been puzzeling problem for a while now.
I was attracted to this site with the weird and wonderful pencils in CSS.
The geezer, has taken an image, rendered the whole thing in stylesheets
with absolute positioned pixels, thus he can change colours by
switching stylesheets.
Looking around for his links and others:
Some nice drop down menus in CSS, but unsuitable for IE.
Then there's the graphs in CSS - which work in IE. Different site, mind. I certainly love those borders.
Another site: a scroll bar CSS generator for IE5.5
And mouse over menus? Tons at Wireframe (works in IE)
More tricks: It's quite often, when navigating through a long document, confusing or disorienting for users to click a link which immediately jumps them to somewhere else in that document. Are they on the same page, on a different page, should they scroll more from here, what's going on?
Smooth link scrolling alleviates this a little, by scrolling the page to the
new link rather than jumping there directly.
Getting off the point, some javascripts: automatic search word
highlighting after web searches. Like my Google bar... I've seen this
on a few sites. Quite useful (if I didn't have my Google bar in
Firebird). And from the same trickster (Stuart Langridge) sortable tables, just like Excel.
Madness with borders that look like triangles, which can them be further messed with.
And it looks as though this chap solved my stylesheet swapping problem. Using a drop down list. Thus, he could have as many sheets as he wants.
That's enough. Time for bed Sooty.
1575 Also posted to: cyberSaps
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Other title(s) for this story: 3 Columns From 1
This new style of business, birthed by the Internet, is ignored at any company's peril.
I love these sayings. "Do it or die!"
Customers today have more options and less loyalty. They will migrate to businesses that see them as participants in a process rather than as just consumers.
Somebody once said, they, "don't want to be a customer anymore!" But this was nearly four years ago.
Can people finally be catching on to this simple clue train
stuff? If they are, both companies and consumers, I wonder if (our)
world will be filled with the products we want at the prices we want
them. Followed by a feeling that we have helped, that we have been a
part of the process, then we'll have swallowed the hyperaffilate bait, hook line and sinker. Is this to be the post modernist consumer society? Bottom up?
No. This is simply market forces. Companies who solicit feedback on
the internet are merely marketing, but in real time, rather than
pouring over dry stats and hoping their focus groups are speaking for
the masses.
Still, it's a great way of holding consumer attention. But wouldn't
you get pissed off if the big company didn't add your 'die for'
feature? Well, that's politics for you, and this is where companies are
heading.
1574 Also posted to: cyberSaps
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Other title(s) for this story: Why 'Bottom Up' is on its way up
"Following are all the blog search engines, directories, and web-based RSS aggregators I could find, along with brief instructions on getting your site listed."
I counted 31 such services. As I've got several hundred blogs on my manila servers, I'm going to have to do this programmatically. And, very, very carefully :-)
1573 Also posted to: cyberSaps
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Other title(s) for this story: Big List of Blog Search Engines
Mipellssed Wdors. Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a...
1572 At: 9:07:22 PM . .
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From an article in The New Yorker. A fascinating insight into Saudi culture. Here's just a few quotes about this dangerous and unstable country.
I had begun to look at Saudi society as a collection of opposing forces: the liberals against the religious conservatives, the royal family versus democratic reformers, the unemployed against the expats, the old against the young, men against women. The question is whether the anger that results from all this conflict will be directed outward, at the West, or inward, at the Saudi regime.
A number of Saudis told me that many of the muttawa’a (government-subsidized religious vigilantes usually trailed by official policemen, who are at their command) are ex-convicts who would be unemployable except for the fact that in prison they memorized the Koran. They receive a bounty from the government for every arrest they make: reportedly, three hundred dollars for every Saudi, and half that for a foreigner. One Jeddah resident described them as “an occupying force.”
There is no feeling, in this article, nor, in anything else I have read, that there is a light, a way out. All I read is blackness, hopelessness.
Perhaps the stars will be such a commonality it may get through.
1571 Also posted to: warBlog
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Other title(s) for this story: The fucked up schizophrenic society that is Saudi Arabia
"So the trick will be to make enough noise to dampen-off file-swapping
while avoiding suing anything that's going to look like a victim of
heartless pigopolist greedheads."
If anybody has been to a car boot sale, and seen the huge, huge crowds
around the bootleggers' stalls, or heard of a friend of a friend who
makes thousands of pounds a week copying DVDs, CDs computer games...
And this has had me scared, worrying that me replacing some hard to
find hip hop tracks from knackered tapes given to me years ago, is
going to get me sued. I guess I shouldn't be so paranoid.
1570 Also posted to: cyberSaps
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Other title(s) for this story: Suing grannies for MP3 swapping - will it start in the UK?
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Interesting, obviously. There was also this story a month ago, about a doctor with two electrodes.
Not quite the some thing, but still, worthy of a back link.
1569 Also posted to: sexblogs
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Other title(s) for this story: Orgasms 'at the touch of a button'
"The prank took five days to complete and foil was used to cover
everything in the apartment -- down to the quarters in the coin jar,
the casings of each CD -- and suddenly, an innocuous joke is magnified
into speed freak Warhol Factory-like proportions."
1568 At: 10:56:51 AM . .
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Other title(s) for this story: How to wrap your friend's apartment in tin foil
Royal Mail unveils the digital stamp.
Online: Royal Mail today enters the digital era by introducing
Britain's first digital postage stamp. Called SmartStamp, customers
will create
their own stamps on their computer - with or without an image of the
Queen - pay for them via the internet and print them on envelopes or
labels.
You can add your own logo too! But it cost £4.99 a month to subscribe.
1567 At: 10:43:41 AM . .
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Current Weather. 2C Partly Cloudy.
Brrr! Better put the heating on.
1566 At: 10:39:55 AM . .
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Adrift 1,500 light-years away in one of the night sky's most recognizable constellations, the glowing Orion Nebula and the dark Horsehead Nebula are contrasting cosmic vistas. They both appear in this stunning composite digital image assembled from over 20 hours of data that includes exposures filtered to record emission from hydrogen atoms. The view reveals extensive nebulosities associated with the giant Orion Molecular Cloud complex, itself hundreds of light-years across. The magnificent emission region, the Orion Nebula (aka M42), lies at the upper right of the picture. Immediately to its left are a cluster of of prominent bluish reflection nebulae sometimes called the Running Man. The Horsehead nebula appears as a dark cloud, a small silhouette notched against the long red glow at the lower left. Alnitak is the easternmost star in Orion's belt and is seen as the brightest star to the left of the Horsehead. Below Alnitak is the Flame Nebula, with clouds of bright emission and dramatic dark dust lanes. Fainter tendrils of glowing hydrogen gas are easily traced throughout the region in this Orion deep field.
I love Astronomy Picture Of the Day. If only I could get this in my RSS aggregator, I could have a few minutes each day pondering the meaning of it all.
The Orion Nebula is hundreds of light years across. Our nearest star is 5 light years away. To get to Mars under rocket power would take 6 months. Current (possible) technology would allow us to sail under the power of our own sun's light at (eventually) 10% of light speed. Thus, it would take us 50 years to get to our nearest neighbour, and 1000 years to sail across the Orion.
1565 Also posted to: Space
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Other title(s) for this story: An Orion Deep Field
Reminds me of articles I read when the internet first came out. Only, they were of the type "if you're not on the internet by 1999 your company will die." 1994 was when I first heard of the word disintermediation. It was all going to change at 'internet speed.' Looking back, I believed all the hype, and indeed, some companies died and new ones came into being. It seemed that the whole corporate world was to be changed upside down. It hasn't. Things are much the same.
Reading this article, I thought, "this sounds right" but I know things won't change that much. Maybe if the time scales are more like 30-40 years rather than eleven. I'll probably be dead by then.
"Future state vision at the front lines of a typical corporation, and look over the shoulder of a typical knowledge worker in 2015."
Nevertheless, this excellent and stimulating article will be worth reading again. I'd better print it out >:->
The company this employee works for no longer has a knowledge centre, in-house researchers or a corporate library. In fact, it has outsourced and shrunk its IT and other infrastructure to zero. It has no in-house overhead, no 'back office'. Everyone on the payroll either sells product or delivers services to customers.
1564 Also posted to: cyberSaps
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Other title(s) for this story: David Pollard's vision of a global corporation in 2015
The Apollo 15 mission to Earth's
Moon
was dedicated to better understanding the surface of the
moon by exploring mountains, valleys,
maria, and highlands.
Astronauts David Scott and James Irwin spent nearly three days on the Moon while
Alfred Worden orbited above in the
Command Module.
The mission, which blasted off from Earth on 1971 July 26,
was the first to deploy a
Lunar Roving Vehicle.
Pictured above in this digitally stitched
mosaic panorama, David Scott examines a boulder in front of the summit
of Mt. Hadley Delta.
The shadow of James Irwin is visible to the right, while
scrolling to the right will reveal a well-lit and diverse
lunar terrain.
The
Apollo 15 mission returned about 76 kilograms of moon rocks for detailed study.
Want to pan across the surface of Mars, too? Check out the
color panoramic view
from the Spirit landing site.
APOD: 2004 January 13: Another wonder! What could it be like to walk on another world?
1563 Also posted to: Space
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Other title(s) for this story: An Apollo 15 Panorama
Tories ask for help in waste war. Tory leader Michael Howard asks staff in schools and hospitals to help expose waste in public services. [BBC]
I wonder if he'd be interested in my Government Office whistle blowing?
1562 At: 1:48:53 PM . .
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UK song-swappers 'could be sued'. The British record industry may sue internet song-swappers as part of a new campaign against piracy. [BBC]
Uh-oh! Better get all I can now!
1561 At: 1:47:36 PM . .
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This pilot blog is being developed by Traction Software as an "enterprise blog" according to the company. It will serve as a medium for distribution of general information to staffers from the seven team members. It also will enable users to post proprietary data, for example, test results and reports, that are accessible only to designated readers or groups of readers. The homepage will resemble a newspaper consisting of stories posted by users.
Blogs are beginning to seep into everywhere.
1560 Also posted to: cyberSaps
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Other title(s) for this story: Blog, Blog, Blog: The US Navy Tests Web Logging For Team Communications

"Unprecendented 1 terabyte capacity"
How big is your disk? Or, are you pleased to see me?
Don't know the price, but I guess I'm not many months off having a hard look.
1559 Also posted to: cyberSaps
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Other title(s) for this story: largest hard drive capacity available
Current Weather. 6C Partly Cloudy
Still no sign of that storm.
1558 At: 1:54:36 PM . .
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"The admission of doubt is
particularly significant for Mr Blair because, unlike President George
Bush, he put WMD, rather than regime change, at the centre of his
justification for war."
What worries me, is that, though WMD may never be found, will we ever
know if they were there, and have been hidden, or given/sold to
terrorist orgs?
Witness another Guardian report, "French police are
convinced that their country has escaped a planned chemical or
biological attack by an Islamist cell linked to al-Qaida." Though this cell was making it's own botulism or ricin.
1557 Also posted to: warBlog
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Other title(s) for this story: Blair admits weapons of mass destruction may never be found
Current Weather. 5C Light Rain
I thought there was to be a big storm today, at least that's what the BBC weather said yesterday.
1556 At: 9:42:53 AM . .
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M. is an unusually Zen teenage boy -- dreamy and ruminative about his
personal relationships. But his obsessive online habits are hardly
exceptional; he is one of a generation of compulsive self-chroniclers,
a fleet of juvenile Marcel Prousts gone wild. When he meets new friends
in real life, M. offers them access to his online world. ''That's how
you introduce yourself,'' he said. ''It's like, here's my cellphone
number, my e-mail, my screen name, oh, and -- here's my blog.
Personally, I'd go to that person's blog before I'd call them or e-mail
them or contact them on AOL because I
would know them better that way.''
And this is how reputation will be (is) amongst businesses and individuals in businesses. The grown up world isn't so far away.
1555 Also posted to: cyberSaps
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Other title(s) for this story: My So-Called Blog (or reputation amongst teenagers)
She looks a picture. Though the singing is pretty awful. I guess she'll get better when she knows the words.
1554 Also posted to: personal
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Other title(s) for this story: In her new disco dress
On top of the bridge I say, stand together for me to take a picture. Which Esme takes as a cue to for her and Bradley to pull funny postures.
And so it goes on. Remember, the bridge is quite full, and people stop while you're lining up the picture, then carry on past.
We look a sight.
She's pulled her coat down like that purposely, I don't think she's trying to look vixen like, but she does.
Wild west?
Just bought it. Been wanting one for a while, and this fitted, and was the right price. Happy in my hat.
1553 Also posted to: personal
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Other title(s) for this story: On top of Ironbridge we pull funny poses
A little diversion. I needed to entertain the kids for a few hours. So, after picking up my Lottery winnings of £10 we head for Ironbridge.
Back in May, it was much more green.

All this was totally under water today.
As usual we buy an ice cream, argue as we walk up the town to the museum behind which is our favourite throwing stones into the river bank.
She washes it and puts it into her pocket. I wonder if she's still got it. Did she bring it home? I remember her showing me as we walked up towards the bridge.
Esme finds a pretty stone. It's a slag stone, from the foundries here abouts. I used to find them when I was a kid on old railway lines, thrown out from the steam trains.
Takes me back in time for a second.
But, boy is it in full flow! Must be nine feet above the level back in the summer. In the photo below, taken in October, you can see the trees at the top left, that we're standing by today.

The muddier the better. And Esme wants to go for a paddle, even though I explain 40 thousand times that the water is very, very cold. "You'd get frost bite and your toes would turn black and drop off." This shuts her up for a while, till she starts on about the frostbite...
Not many stones to chose from. We stay only a few minutes, as it's fast flowing, cold and steep. I don't want to dive in after anybody.
1552 Also posted to: personal
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Other title(s) for this story: Throwing stones in full flow River Severn

We're off to feed the ducks! On the bus too, which is always a great adventure, by itself. Bradley has to sit at the seat with the stop button. And I'm asked to remind him re: the procedure for pressing the bell. "Not till we're ready to get off!"

Bit of a shaky shot, but you can see how tall the two of us are with him on my shoulders. Great fun for him, I'm sure.

We pop into the Discovery (Gadget) Shop, where Bradley has fun with the battery powered crocodile, sticking his finger in, and having it bitten off.

The point of this trip was to get him away from the TV. I have to baby sit, if we stay in, he watches TV and I work...
1549 Also posted to: personal
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Other title(s) for this story: Feeding ducks trip with Bradley
We bought him this luminous yellow coat and a hat, complete with handcuffs, whistle, etc. for Xmas. But he didn't wear it, it was Esme who was in it most of the time.
This is a fleeting moment, perhaps the only time he has worn it.
1548 Also posted to: personal
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Other title(s) for this story: Bradley dresses as a policeman
Interesting training day yesterday at the Government Offices for the West Midlands. (I was giving Manila training.)
I learned two important things:
- Someone's daughter wanted to be a horse at the age of three. Thus, I shouldn't worry that my 3 year old Bradley wants to be a girl because he's "not brave of having his toenails cut."
- On the topic of spending tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of pounds plus increased labour on web projects when Manila could do it out of the box.
- That money needed to be spent quickly less it disappeared, if it wasn't spent it may not come back and this was "the way Government works."
- And, people would make purchasing decisions between, very low cost and very large cost without the slightest technical knowledge nor seeking advice, because "it gets their dick hard to spend loads."
1547 Also posted to: cyberSaps
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Other title(s) for this story: Governments waste money
"No longer married to TV, the elusive young male demographics"
I'm too old! But anyway, I do more internet than TV too.
1546 Also posted to: cyberSaps
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Other title(s) for this story: Found: All the Young Dudes
Personal security passes, a digital warrant contained in the writings and other stored ephemera in one's blog.
Dave Pollard's cooking up some more excellent thoughts. His first of a
series of important ideas for 2003 concentrates on blogs. This item,
I'd like to revisit.
"Blogs could be the platform for a proxy for each of us as individuals, our electronic filing cabinet and electronic identity - A blog consists of information about you, and knowledge you've accumulated. What if you expanded it to be a repository for all the information about you and all the knowledge you've accumulated, your 'locked' filing cabinet. You control it, you decide what does and doesn't go into it, and who can have a temporary key to what parts of it. Then at work, it could be your proxy, the repository of knowledge that shows your value to your employer and the value you've added to the company. And it could be your resume. At home it could be your medical patient record. Your bookshelf catalogue and refrigerator/pantry inventory and recipe book. Your bio for the dating service. Imagine the applications that could be built on this knowledge. Your intellectual property, under your control. Amazing. Scary."
One of the applications would be the policeman stopping you to see if you're a terrorist or not. Easily he'd be able to access you blog with bills or other background knowledge you have about yourself on his mobile device. Looking at your posts he'd see if you're an extremist. If you didn't write, he could question you on your utility bills, your movements, interests.I do see the day when it is a legal requirement to have a blog. For this very purpose. All your school, employment and bank records, bills, passports and other legal documents will be sent there by government agencies, utility companies and so on. Your library books, music choices, phone calls, browsing statistics, every conceivable record would be there, including GPS information from mobile devices. Transport records, car ownerships, bus or train trips. FOAF is only the start.
Big brother? Sure.
As a way of finding criminals, of checking out truths, researching backgrounds, probabilities, understanding motivations. It couldn't be beat. Where as finger printing, or retinal checks could if there's no previous history of wrong doing.
Thought police? Sure.
In a civilisation where 99.999% of people are good, honest. Where 0.001% are bad, dishonest and out of them the tiniest minority are evil. Where that evil, in years to come could wipe out thousands, millions even billions of people, I don't mind. I welcome big brother, as I do with the zero tolerance of New York's drive to eliminate crime. As I do with the CCTV cameras now everywhere.
Thirty or forty years, after the second, or third WMD attack on the West the public will say yes to anything.
Security will be our new morality.
1544 Also posted to: cyberSaps
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Other title(s) for this story: Most important ideas for 2033 - security blogs
"What a hack. Woooo! :D"
Looking at the javascript, it looks very neat indeed. This would be
quite a thrill, I think, for I.E. users to see in their browser. $50
licence though! And I love his site, 22 year old Kiwi, wants to change
the way the web works. Excellent. Can't argue with that.
1543 Also posted to: cyberSaps
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Other title(s) for this story: CSS3 Emulation in IE with javascript
I think he'll be adding a lot more to this list. There's the private
site, control over membership — lots just in there. Bulletins,
pictures, shortcuts, power blogging, trackbacks, comments, plug-ins,
dynamic updates, check outs...
So much, and then there's different ways of configuring a site to make
highly customised front ends, not to mention linking sites up to make
very different types of sites.
1542 Also posted to: cyberSaps
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Other title(s) for this story: Manila Features
"Advertisers report return on investment (ROI) and customer service have deteriorated."
I thought
this would have top end sometime. Although some were thrown off for
lifting their own click throughs or even asking their readers to click
through, I thought (and in my own experience) that when I was surfing
at other sites, I wasn't hunting for products. Where as when at Google
and presented with ads that were helpful to my search, I was in buying
mode.
Although AdSense brings them more traffic, many find it also
lowers their ROI. The drop in ROI, sometimes exceeding 50 percent...
Ouch!
1541 Also posted to: cyberSaps
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Other title(s) for this story: Google's House of Cards
As usual, Apple have kept the lid firmly shut. Only rumours abound.
Personally, I'd like to see a massive increase in power in the G5.
Massive, massive, massive.
Though I fear it may be too late for me, I'm much happier on my fast PC these days.
1540 Also posted to: cyberSaps
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Other title(s) for this story: Wired News: Mac Maniacs Wait to Be Wowed
Scoble explains :
"1) RSS is faster to display...
2) With RSS I only need to read one out of 10 sites...
3) RSS is faster to read...
4) RSS is more efficient to read...
5) RSS lets you escape the browser..."
(see site for more details and good discussion.)
I was once a multi tab browser type guy. With one link I could hit 20
blogs. I thought I was a power reader. But I was always taking time to
re-read stuff, figuring out what was new. Now, in my Radio aggregator,
I only get new stuff and I read far, far quicker.
I hate excerpts too. I want the full article, with pictures.
1539 Also posted to: cyberSaps
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Other title(s) for this story: Several things that RSS does better than HTML
"RSS in Government News about how RSS is being used by international, federal, state, and local governments"
As
usual the UK Gov't haven't a clue. Why, oh why are we so behind?
Answer: most of the UK Gov't leaders are technophobes. At least in my
experience. And in others too.
It's no good to say I can use email therefore I am a technophile.
When it is derogatory to call some one a techie it's vital we do
something to get more techies into positions of authority and power.
The culture and approach to IT in UK Government is risk adverse,
and prefers to delay decisions thinking that the tortoise rather than
the hare will win.
RSS is a tiny, tiny expense much like many of the IT solutions out
there, yet it is the big, big plans and applications that are usually a
waste of money which receive all the glory.
The e-envoy, Andrew Pindar: "Three-quarters of the population have never visited a government website at all." Because they're dull and lack personality? Where are the guides?
1538 Also posted to: GOWM
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Other title(s) for this story: RSS in (US) Government
1537 Also posted to: personal
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Other title(s) for this story: First snows in Dawley
1536 Also posted to: sexblogs
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