If there's one thing that bothers me about the now pervasive trend of allowing people to comment on almost anything on a website, it's that it is somehow seen as the Holy Grail of reader participation, which must be adopted by all for fear of being left behind on the trail of media evolution. In particular, no industry seems to have embraced it so blindly as the 'traditional' media of news reporting.

In the UK at least, BBC News were probably the first large media organisation to adopt wide-scale commenting on their articles, as the seemingly logical extension of their "Have Your Say" section; or, as I refer to it, the "Have Your Ignorant Rant" section.

For me, it ruined BBC News forever.

( Read more... )

There is a phenomenon amongst IT workers.
Its existence a mystery,
Never normally discussed with outsiders.

This thing is a gift that some of us possess.
It sets those of us who are trained in our profession
apart from those who were are naturally drawn to it.

It is called The Ear.

The Ear cannot be learned or acquired.
No-one can tell you if you have The Ear or how you can recognise it in yourself.
One day you will simply know.

One day you will sense a fault while passing a Machine.
Through the ether it will beckon for attention
for you to resolve some unseen fault.

I have long known I have The Ear.
For years now my colleagues have witnessed my speciality in action
that has earned me the name of "The Hard-Drive Whisperer".

Earlier this week it took on a new form.
I was in the car park when the Machine spoke to me.
It called out, a dark red charger in the wilderness.
At first its calls were faint, like a half-heard conversation on the wind.
I listened.
I trained my senses, eyes closed to deaden any distraction,
and suddenly I heard the call loud and clear,
and it spoke to me an urgent warning:

"My drivers-side brakelight is out."

During the coverage of the snowfall in the UK earlier this month I noticed something curious: both BBC and The Times were running the same pictures on their website, but BBC's looked... different.

( Let's examine, shall we? )

How much market share does Firefox have to take before companies realise this is no longer acceptable?



Firefox's market share stood at 21.3% at the end of last year. That's a fifth of the market that you are shutting out if you don't support Firefox. Also, let's be serious here; if you don't support Firefox, you also probably don't support any of the smaller browsers either, just Internet Explorer with its 2/3 slice of market share, so you're really shutting out almost a third of your potential customers.

That just does not make business sense to me.

In other news, Napster's competing service works just fine with Firefox.

Look at it! It's huge! Also, where do I get a roll of sticky tape that big, and in which alternate version of London is today Tuesday?

So, yes, il neige as they say in France. I had a fun time this morning after the school was initially going to be opened, only for the decision (followed by my driving route) to be reversed after I was 2 miles down the icy road on my way. Took some grainy photos of the snow in Reading. Note to self: stop using manual mode on the camera so much, you clearly don't know how to use it properly.

This sort of outdoor decorations are popular in America these days. While driving through MD earlier today, we saw a very... special... one of these.

It was a crucified Jesus. 6 feet tall, on the side of a house.

A 6-foot tall crucified Jesus that lights up at night.

What. The. Fuck.

The next recommendation, based on the same reasoning, was for a Mamma Mia! gift set

There are many of them; Microsoft's Virtual PC software has a plethora of uses in software testing, and for working around those irritating bits of software that I need to use very occasionally that don't play well with Vista x64.

However, one of my favourite features is the 'Undo Disk' functionality. I can boot the virtual machine up, and any changes I make are only temporary. When I shut the virtual machine down, I can either choose to keep those changes, or wipe the slate clean as if the virtual PC had never been booted up.

This evening, I found this most useful in installing a neighbour's broadband connection. A lot of ISPs (especially in the UK) are adamant that you must install the software from their CD in order to setup your ADSL. Normally this is bullshit, and you can simply log on to the modem directly and fill everything in.

( Not so with the BT Home Hub. )

The person in front of me at the petrol station today put £107.15 of petrol into a Range Rover that was literally twice the size of my car. They had no passengers, and this 4x4 behemoth had clearly never been off-road, nor ever would.

I really do despair sometimes.