Archive for July, 2009
Prepared Not To Be Popular…
July 28th, 2009 | 
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With regard to our Service Personnel, I was just looking on the BBC web site and ‘reader’s comments’ which overwhelmingly, support bigger and better payouts to injured Service Personnel and so forth. This is set against the background of the MOD appealing two cases of injury payments made to Service Personnel which were subsequently increased by the Courts.
Let me make it clear, I am not on the side of the Government, nor I am on the side of the “breaking the Service Covenant” mob, both are seriously wrong in coming up with an appropriate ‘solution’, neither are on the side of the Angels let alone our lads, lassies and their families.
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A Commercial Future ?
Of late the Chancellor Mr Darling and Bumble Brown have been banging on about the Banks needing to lend money to get the economy moving again. Whilst I hold no torch for Bankers as such but feel that we need to be sensible here and not ask them to try and participate in political decisions or fund Government Policies it is not what they do.
Yes, we the taxpayer have put a lot of money into “rescuing the banks” but we didn’t do it for them, we did it for our own economic reasons. If there is one lesson that needs to be learned it is that they were allowed to get far too big, so big that we couldn’t allow them to fail, that has still not been addressed and it really needs to be.
Credit Card Fraud
Over the past more than a decade and via various methods of payment, I have purchased goods over the Internet both personally and on behalf of ‘corporate clients’. Over the years I have seen the landscape ‘move’ as it were until we have chip and pin + CV numbers.
In all honesty I suspect that because it becomes a normal activity, buying over the Internet, it becomes all too easy to get a bit blasé and today, I was confronted with such a situation and although I do not yet know how this will all turn out, I thought that I might share this as far as it goes thus far because we are all responsible for reducing credit card fraud.
Post Norwich North
It is possible to say that the Norwich North by-election didn’t really produce strong indicators of what would happen at the General Election. Yes the Tories won by over 7,000 votes in a safe Labour seat but the Labour vote clearly stayed away from the poll.
Even so, it must be clear that a Cameron victory at the next General Election is a likely certainty if only because the Labour Party has degenerated into a dispirited rabble, the Grand Army on its Retreat from Moscow and if not exactly eating their own horses, at least attacking each other openly or slyly, clearly their time is up…
Time for a Holiday – Of Sorts
This has been a difficult week with my Mother’s health but what does one expect when someone is an invalid and coming up for 89 years of age ! Against this background I continue work on my various projects which I apply the same kind of rules and drive that I did to any project I was in charge of for an employer in the past.
My nature is a pretty determined one and I am currently engaged in putting together a web project. This is a battle with web standard technologies which to be honest, is little better than digging the footings for a building, important, must be right but not totally what the project is about and certainly not highly motivational.
The Mote in Their Eye
I read a fascinating article in the Economist concerning the problems that the Internet is creating for the newspaper industry right across the West because nobody wants to pay for content, they all want it for free: http://www.economist.com/businessfinance/displayStory.cfm?story_id=14072274
I have every empathy with the plight of newspapers because their business model of selling a newspaper at below cost but making the income up on advertising is being considerably disrupted by the Internet and the industry has yet to formulate any workable alternative business model to the one that exists.
Journey Rather than Destination
The odd thing about most things in life is how when you set off to do something, inevitably other things present themselves that have to be done first and before you can get on with what you really wanted to do in the first place.
This is exactly what has happened to me recently but in a rather odd way over web site design and something called CSS which stands for Cascading Style Sheets the basic principles of which are very good but the “detailed explanations” from the experts very far from clear and one wonders why ? True if I wanted to do a simple web site, I could just create one using a template from within Adobe Dreamweaver and it would take care of the style sheet but sadly, I need more than just that…
Windows 7 Pre-Order, Price and Honesty
Windows 7 will launch around 22nd October this year and as predicted, Microsoft are doing a pre-launch/pre-order promotion which started last Wednesday both from their own sites and a number of other retail partners such as Amazon, PC World, Currys and so on, limited stock and on a first come first served basis.
Because of their on-going battle with Brussels, the EU versions come without internet Explorer web browser and are “Full Versions” as opposed to upgrades because they haven’t had the time to produce and test “Upgrade Versions” with IE8 removed if they want to keep to their world wide launch date.
The Land of Falstaff
After the Restoration. Charles II was fond of wandering around London on his own, naughty ladies no doubt being the bait. Prince Rupert pulled him up over this saying that he might get himself assassinated to which Charles replied something along the lines: “No chance Rupert, they know if they killed me they would end up with you as King !”
Disrespect for authority and individuals is endemic to the Anglo sphere, it is an essential part of our heritage and culture. I find it hard to stomach the pomposity of politicians in a world where they think it appropriate to demand that our Queen makes economies whilst they steal from the public purse and think it right that she and the Royal Family accept abuse from the Tabloids whilst they are immune.
Windows Seven
Although I normally avoid Beta Testing of new software – a real pain unless crucial to your business, I did download and install the Beta of Windows 7 and frankly was impressed so when the RC version came along, – RC stands for “Release Candidate”, the final product apart from minor tweaks if you like, I downloaded and installed that too, excellent.
I am not an over enthusiastic “fan” of anything from large “American Corporations”, they only think “our needs” not “my needs” and the only reason Microsoft is being “nice” is because they caught such a big cold over “Vista” the “Edsel” of the software world and gave their loyal customers nothing but “Vista Blisters” but perhaps, a Window of Hope beckons.