baldysblog.co.uk

Posts Tagged ‘The Web’

For me, 2011 has been an interesting year with most of the excitement crammed into June when as I was about to depart for a month long trip to the USA, my grandson Mika was born up in Scotland, the day before I left. So June 2011 was to be a very intense month indeed !

Inevitably when I sit and write anything on December 31^st, I think immediately of my Father who died in 2007, if he were still alive, he would have been 91 today, his birthday. But I will think no sad thoughts, nor sing sad songs for we all have our time on this Earth and all eventually will leave it, the measurement being what we did with our time here, not the length of our stay.

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I suppose with the passing of Steve Jobs plus the success of the iPhone and iPad, people will be looking forward to what is happening in the “IT & Gadget Space” going forwards and The Economist had a very amusing article which focused on employees using their personal gadgets whilst being connected to corporate networks likening it to “IT’s Arab spring” (http://www.economist.com/node/21531112 ). As with most things, it is not quite that simple I suspect.

As to the future of Apple without Jobs, it will go the way of all technology companies, prosper for a time because of current good products and the iTunes lock in plus it has always been a “cult brand ”. However without him and his instinctive feel for the right products, eventually it will start to fade away as the Circus leaves town and in the end, the brand and its history has more value than its actual inventory.

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It has become all too common regardless of which political party is “in power” to see the BBC as their “enemy” when it comes to reporting the ‘News’ But and to be fair, there may well be some justifications in such claims and a not too bad example is the following: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-15199000

The “Story” comes from a supposed row over ‘Pussy Cats’ and illegal immigrants given ‘leave to stay’ under the ECHR. Ms May stated that the illegal was allowed to stay because of a ‘pussy cat’. The reality was likely that in considering whether the person could appeal further up the legal food chain, said pussy cat figured but thereafter got not a further mention in subsequent proceedings.

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It really doesn’t matter how long you live, there are some mistakes that you will tend to repeat as I was reminded only the other day. The mistake is to assume that in some old fashioned way, a supplier that you use regularly, wants to maintain the relationship and keep you as a satisfied customer. Bollocks, they couldn’t give a flying fart.

The absolute farce that operates on car and house insurance is a prime case, move to a new provider each year and you get a good deal, stay with the same one for the second year and they will Roger you Royally by upping the premium considerably. Where the logic lies in that, defeats me entirely unless all sales are outsourced and the outsourcing company only gets commission for new customers. Whatever the reason, it is the business practices of total lunatics.

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I am often amused by the sort of careless headlines/stories one gets on computer technology in the National Press, often written by the clearly technically illiterate. I came across the following headline today: “The PC era is over. The tablet has won. Inside the Enterprise: Internet “enabled” devices will outsell PCs within two years. Businesses need to change tack accordingly.”

I almost fell about laughing because it is a ridiculous headline to anyone with even a limited amount of understanding of the computer market. However, I also check myself on condemning this sort of thing outright, perhaps I’ve been around too long and witnessed some of these changes at first hand, for some acne spotted youth, it probably does seem all “NEW”.

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With headlines such as “Hollywood vs BT” (British Telecoms), because of a court case brought against BT as an Internet Service Provider, the High Court in London has ordered BT to block access to Newzbin2 at the behest of Hollywood film studios, who say it is a “notorious pirate website”.

In fact and as I understand it, the particular site only acts as a “pointer” to other web sites from which material can be downloaded although whether it actually stores the data or acts as a conduit for it must be considered a technicality, that it is knowingly enabling the theft of intellectual property, is the reality. But all that said, is this the right approach ?

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“The longest way round, the shortest way home ?” I was reminded of this saying recently as I reflected on my recent stay in the US with my Uncle. That unbeknown to me, I really needed that break but mainly to “break my past trail” to free up future progress, became obvious to me by just having made the trip but there was/is more.

Since my return I have had various things to do that were set up before I went on my trip plus and due to the weather whilst I was away, a veritable jungle of garden weeds to tackle in a town where the use of napalm is frowned upon so…

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Recently as I am working on a major redesign of this particular we site, a task made rather more complicated by having to master the unfamiliar technology of database driven content management systems which is really what blogs are all about, I have been looking back at my past entries.

One of the things that you can do is that although this site is hosted “Out there on the Cloud”, I have a local WordPress site on my PC which I’m using for development purposes and I can use a copy of my existing bog entries as ‘data’ to populate my design experiments and doing so led me to some interesting ‘discoveries’ and realisations of the changes I’m personally going through.

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Here we go, the “Left Wing metropolitan classes” strike again ! Off the back of the government being advised to halt all further “ennoblements” to the House of Lords because it is “Full”, the Independent in yet another air headed Editorial, declares that it is urgent to reform the Lords… http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/leading-articles/leading-article-lords-reform-must-be-delayed-no-longer-2271056.html

I know I keep saying it but because the Editorials in the Independent are consistently so intellectually lightweight, I swear they are written by 6^th Formers on Work Experience placements. The proof will come if we get an article on saving Wales !

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This may seem strange or, merely prove that I am a very strange person all together but, the other day when considering graphics software updates from Adobe, I saw a stark relationship between the situation in Libya and especially from the perspective of of the Rebels based in Benghazi, the US company Adobe and a software update to their range of products.

I will tell you that this essay is essentially about graphics software rather than Libya but, there is a relationship between the latest Adobe ‘upgrade’ and calls for arming the rebels in Libya…

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