Somewhere to write, discuss, reflect, ponder, muse and mull over life, stuff, things and anything that takes my fancy.
Here’s an interesting site, click on the guy with the pipe and you get taken to a random site of ‘his’ choosing! I clicked half a dozen times and was amazed at the variety of sites thrown up.
Similar to StumbleUpon.com, just different.
Yet more taxpayers money to spend as English MP’s have voted to award themselves a £10,000 a year pay rise for new web sites as part of their communications allowance. This is on top of £7,000 MP’s already get for printed communications!
The increase was recommended (of course it was) by a parliamentary committee to improve the MP’s communication between MP’s and taxpayers. See here for the full story.
I’ll be amazed if the whole £10,000 actually gets spent on the web sites, but if it is, then it should produce some really good web sites, let’s see what some random web sites look like now.
We’ll come back and visit these web sites and some others to see how the web site have been developed.
One of the worlds earliest astronauts has died of a heart attack. He was the only astronauts to fly on all three Mercury, Gemini and Apollo programs.
Why is this in my blog? As a young boy I followed every single aspect of the early space missions. Sitting and listening to my fathers old valve based Philips radio, we used to listen in to the overseas broadcasts from American radio stations broadcasting various information about each and every space flight – Walter Schirra’s flight in MA-8 was on Oct. 3, 1962 and lasted 9 Hours and 13 Minutes and he landed just 8 km from his return target!
He eventually went on to fly on the Gemini VI mission and finally captained the first Apollo mission Apollo 7 along side Donn F. Eisele and Walter Cunningham in November of 1968 laying down the foundations for mans first trip to the moon.
In today’s world full of some much technology that’s taken for granted like PC’s, Ipods, Computer games and the Space Shuttle, it’s important not to forget people like Schirra, who paved the way so that many others should follow and benefit from various technologies used in the space program.
If you’ve even listened to Internet Radio, particularity Internet radio services like Pandora or LastFM, then they may be on their last days of broadcasting. A recent ruling by the Copyright Royalty Board could put an end to the popular web radio services. This stupid ruling increases webcasters’ royalty rates (what they must pay) between 300 and 1200 percent over the next 5 years, seriously jeopardising the industry and threatening your listening.
However, you can help. Join SaveNetRadio, a coalition made up of artists, labels, listeners, and webcasters are trying to force the U.S. Congress to “create a structural solution for this problem and create an environment where Internet radio, and the millions of artists it features, can continue to grow for generations to come.”
It’s unknown at this time if the ruling will in any way influence UK based Internet Radio stations, who are already covered by UK legislation, but as they say, what happens over ‘there’, eventually influences us over ‘here’.
I lost this link a while ago and then suddenly tripped across it tonight. Be the first to see tomorrows Newspaper Front Pages!
Here’s the starting place from Newseum.org. Enjoy.
It look like this scam has not died a death yet! I received this letter today from The Domain Registry of America, a very official sounding company saying that I had to renew two of my Domain Names and they could do this for me!
The domain names in question were not registered with/through this company so why they think I would want to renew with them I have no idea, but of course on closer reading of the letter you can see that what they are offering is that if I send in the letter (with money) it would effectively transfer my domain names to them from my current registrar, not something that is a good idea.
It seems that this company has come in for quite a bit of stick of the years for sending out these sorts of letters and it has already been barred from carrying out this practice in the USA by the Federal Trade Commission. Click Here to read the FTC press release. They then has to transfer their address base to the UK, the current one being 56 Gloucester Road in London.
You can find about much more about this scam by running their name through Google, there are over a million hits! Be warned!
Much has been/is being written about the position and danger our soldiers are being constantly put in through inadequate equipment and weapons.
In this very interesting article Lewis Page investigates the very shabby state of affairs that we expect our troops to work under. It’s a must read piece.
It seems to me the longer a politician stays around, the worse (and less sincere) there speech presentations become! Maybe I’ve remember too much about Spitting Image.
I had a conversation with my 93 year old Aunt at the weekend, she told me that ‘someone’ had said to her that she needed a new television by the end of the summer as her current one would not work after the Analogue/Digital TV change over!
I do wonder whether the government really cares about its citizens anymore, clearly there is not enough information flowing out of government channels to make sure that people (particularly the elderly) fully understand what the change over is about, what it means to them and how they will be affected. I think I’ve seen some of the TV adverts on the BBC about it, but even for my quick eyes it all seems to pass me by with out conveying any real information.
Of course there is a lot to find out on the BBC web site, but unfortunately my Aunt, like many 90+ year olds are not using the web, she also does not take the Radio or any other TV times, relying instead on her daily newspaper for TV channel information.
So how do you find out the required information, maybe the government hope that anyone over a certain age will not be here to need to help! Perhaps they have created, published, printed and distributed already the piles of information about this and my Aunt missed it!
My look around the web found…
I am sure that there are many other sites that offer information, but again my 94 year old Aunt has no Internet access so how does she and I am sure many thousands of other similar people find about what they need and prevent themselves from being the target of unscrupulous TV related experts.
Great story in last weeks copy of Computer Weekly about a complete IT idiot dictating his companies log-ons and passwords to someone in his office over a mobile phone on a crowed train! See full article here.
It reminded me of an incident during a flight I was on a few years ago on a business trip to Italy. A fellow passenger sat down next to me and after the meal service opened his laptop and preceded to finish off a Power Point presentation he was obviously going to be giving to a sales prospect sometime during his own business trip.
Imagine my surprise when the title page of his presentation came up with the name of the company that I was going to visit! Over the next hour I had a grandstand seat viewing the strategy that his company was going to use to push out the competition and win that order!
It has always amazed me how cavalier people can be with sensitive company information, over the years I seen financial information dissected on zoomed spread sheets, forecasted sales-revenue figures boldly styled and software development plans revised and reviewed in full view at 30,000ft. Surely all these people can’t be laying false trails just for me!
The same could be said for paper information reviewed in such a crowded environment, though this is always easier to keep to yourself whilst your reading it. But I wonder how many laptop users really think before they make that last minute change to that important presentation!
The guy sat next to me! Well, I could have introduced myself, but declined to do so and went on to my meetings, never to see him again and yes the deal went our way, but without any need to use his free laptop info!
Beasley's Place 