Disqus - Latest Comments for emsquared

Re: Don’t make the poor pay for political cowardice

emsquared — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 05:30:31 -0000

The poor have always been an easy target. Gordo just retracted a bill to cut housing benefit due to a possible backbencher revolt though no doubt disco Dave would have less backbench dissent once his hand is on the steering wheel of the ship of state. There are some good proposals in the IDS think tank study(though much of it is tainted by its rabidly right wing viewpoint of course) such as phasing out benefits once in work rather than a brutal cut off the moment a claimant get s a job off (thus having to live on fresh air until the 1st months derisory pay cheque is received). In America they found they had to pay people to keep them in work rather than having the poor endlessly falling on and off benefits.No doubt eventually the benefit costs will just move to just having to top up a vast range of very poorly paid and poorly treated 'jobs' (the real cause of any possible benefits trap that some may too easily fall into and which increased as the deregulated 'flexible' jobs market culture increased) which may or may not placate that certain bitter middle England viewpoint of the poor.

Re: Many Tories still hate the NHS

emsquared — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 05:02:05 -0000

Hannan's clearly a bit of a loose canon but he does appeal to a large legacy Tory rank and file and there was talk of breaking up the NHS during the last Conservative government (and in the early years of New Labour's reign re a two tier health system and they've helped damage it with the promotion of an internal market within the NHS) as it's easy to criticise when compared to the state run health systems in parts of Europe (and who the US detractors would perhaps prefer to overlook as they are perhaps better models for socialized health care than our own). I've been quite encouraged over this outpouring of support for the NHS even if it is riding on people's knee jerk reaction to criticism that comes from outside of the UK. At least there's finally a line being drawn in the sand with regard to an insipid kind of creeping social Darwinism favoured by successive UK governments and fires a warning shot across the boughs of any political party who talks of dismantling the NHS . Does this social event harm the Tories? Well marginally maybe but I'm no longer sure that enough people really vote on core issues and will probably primarily be motivated by a dislike for the sitting government and desperate for change whilst dismissing other viable alternatives. Mind you political parties often say what needs to be said in opposition and then do what they like when in power.

Re: Excessive banality on Twitter

emsquared — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 04:15:52 -0000

Personally I'm more annoyed by excessive commercialism, 'tweet to win' posts,endless teenage ceo's (growing exponentially at a faster rate than Elvis impersonators?), so called social media experts (aka bullshit merchants) and the unbelievable obsession with making money.
Compared to that deluge of sewerage banality is almost a whimsical jewel of innocence and honesty in a box of braggish cheap tat (for me anyway-but hey we're all different).I count myself in amongst the anonymous brick-a-brack by the way. Don't you think life is pretty banal for an awful lot of people?
Admittedly Twitter clients desperately need the ability to filter out posts by keyword filters but that'll come (Tweetdeck has only one filter per column,come on how useless is that?). Or at least it better bloody eventuate or I'm off matey.

Maybe Twitter archives will paint a more accurate picture of the society at this time in history (compared to the film camera era that just shows the happy bits) or maybe over time it'll just accurately show swathes of disconnected people seemingly having or pretending to be having wonderful interesting (or equally banal) lives talking endlessly about themselves whilst pimping goods and services to each other. The generations to come will look wistfully back at a golden era of glorious irresponsible narcissism.A kind of self aware Truman Show writ large.

Re: Apple and O2: another year, another iPhone, another set of rip-off tariffs

emsquared — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 05:55:23 -0000

I presume the low upgrade price is a a marketing ploy to steal a bit of thunder from the Windows 7 release(s) the following month. Just waiting to see the special UK pricing on that. My bet is circa £36-£42 but that's with my realism tinted glasses on.

Re: Apple and O2: another year, another iPhone, another set of rip-off tariffs

emsquared — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 05:43:24 -0000

On the announcement yesterday I went first to Apple US to see the original iPhone now offered for $99 (vague as to what the package tie in is admittedly) then to the UK store & lo £342.50 (payg). Bit of a disparity or wot!. I did try to find out how much Orange in France do the unlocked version for (French law dictates it must be unlocked. Gotta love the French for this). It does feel like Britain gets singled out for an especially good kicking but then that applies to so many consumer items. It's like we've be reared to expect premium prices for everything & sadly we're so pants at complaining or standing up to this treatment we almost seem to secretly say to manufacturers 'hit me some more I actually enjoy it'.
Still $29 upgrade for Snow Leopard eh. Bet it's not that cheap in the UK.
I for one welcome our new cash-cow overlords (er...not)

Re: Great Britain no more – but the fight is far from over

emsquared — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 02:13:14 -0000

Yes a sad day. The media has long played a part in whipping up public prejudices so I have to assume that some of that media is happy with what has transpired. All my voting life there's been talk of hung parliaments but it's never transpired and I'm not holding out much hope of one at the upcoming general election either. Now in a recession and without the money and property owning love fest of the past decade and with employment worries plaguing many we find the shallow and narrow minded aspects of our society are seemingly coming to the fore once again. Blame is the new new game in town and as a society we seem very good at playing it

Re: Is there a BBC gnome that exiles old songs to Radio 2?

emsquared — Wed, 20 May 2009 04:46:19 -0000

Radio 2 has changed a helluva lot from the Radio 2 Jimmy Young Mantovani fodder of old (except bizarrely for Friday nights into Saturday morning where it reverts to a decided easy listening few hours though it could be argued that Sunday goes a bit middle of the road too). It was after all Radio 2 that the whole Wossy/Russell Brand thing kicked off. There is a lot of niche content on 2 that I would have expected to find on R1 back in the day (eg: Mark Lamarr covering Reggae and in depth documentaries about music which now have no place on Radio 1 whereas they would have done 20-30 years ago) which is probably more an indicator of how music listening has fractured across the generations. Look at the average age of many Radio 1 DJ's not to mention Tim (51 going on 15) Westwood. There's just a lot of crossover now. The 'middle aged' no longer listen to modern equivalents (if any) of Renee and Renato though of course they do listen to the music artists of their supposed youth with many of those artists continuing to release new material. I admit it can be hard to accept the mantle 'Radio 2 listener' due to its image and defined demographic of old. Maybe it's slightly more the home now of the generation that Danny Baker once described as "possibly hipper than their children".

Re: Poem: Sir Clement Freud

emsquared — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 04:35:27 -0000

Sad news.Lovely poem. I thought the Minced Morsels dog was a bloodhound but not sure.
Hovered over your wizard of Oz survey btw.Not sure I'd actually be Dorothy. More likely a friend of Dorothy (il est évident!)

Re: Big business extortionists and the curse of Direct Debit

emsquared — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 11:57:17 -0000

I'm keener on the notion that people make bad choices in bad systems. Big business is forced to chase profits for themselves and shareholders.That's the bottom line sadly.Th-th-th-that's capitalism folks.The answer in the short-term is to have better regulation (with actual teeth) and governments less beholden to the power of big business. Achieving that is going to be difficult. Clearly we're going to be trying a slightly more left of centre economic policy for a while (whilst a right wing social policy eventuates) and reigning in the excesses of the free market up until the point we probably (cynic central here) decide that controlling the free market also damages us as well. If you can find a not for profit company to buy your services off then great but sadly they have to compete on a playing field that rewards exploitation.

Re: What’s wrong with Tom?

emsquared — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 03:41:29 -0000

Fingers crossed for Tom.Best wishes to you all.

Re: The ITV Zombie - Adam Wilcox's WilcosWorld.co.uk

emsquared — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 13:27:10 -0000

It's hard to know if ITV would have been in better shape if the regional franchises had been left as was. Clearly somebody's got to lose out in a multi channel environment when there's shrinking advertising revenue and a change in the status of television in general. ITV1 needs to partner with the right people if it doesn't want to lose whatever is left of its legacy identity. Before Woolworths went under the question was being endlessly asked as to what exactly Woolworths was for. The same question is being asked of ITV1 by many people including yourself. I agree about the mooted merger. Channel Four would be better pushing for a merge into BBC worldwide. I expect Five would be happier with a merger without the Channel 4 public remit element. Interesting times.

Re: Channel 4 still providing bullshit-on-demand to Mac users

emsquared — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 07:21:44 -0000

I think the trend is towards more cross platform solutions. Even Five have started moving to a streaming flash solution (shame there's nothing I want to watch).The beeb iPlayer has shown that streaming flash solutions are used more than download solutions anyway and that applies to windows users too. "Oooh the tide is turning".

Re: The land of lost things

emsquared — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 06:33:10 -0000

I'm a great believer that inanimate objects have a secret life we know nothing about (only half joking here) and can will themselves into a parallel dimension as a way of 'throwing a sickie to get a day off'. They return as and when they want to.Best thing to do is pretend you're now looking for something else entirely and the previous object will quickly swap places with it and return.Fingers crossed.

Re: The sometimes problem with Web 2.0 whizz-bangery

emsquared — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 07:04:56 -0000

The odd things is that Automattic (owners of the Wordpress platform) now own Intense Debate.Everyone has frustrations with the balancing act of externally hosted sites, plugins, safe code etc. I guess it's finding a workable balance.As is always said 'the fewer the moving parts, the less there is to go wrong'.

Re: Lumpit - the way it is, randomly

emsquared — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 03:13:42 -0000

I think you could be right.There's something of the Ivory tower vantage point about NE's more recent pronouncements (the delusion that only he can 'fix broken Britain' and only , of course, via a well paid TV series on Sky). I don't mind the positive thinking 'there's orbs on me shoulder mate' stuff the some other stuff has really made me shout at his bearded bonce (I'm not beardist, honest).

Re: Lumpit - the way it is, randomly

emsquared — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 03:12:49 -0000

error

Re: Lumpit - the way it is, randomly

emsquared — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 16:22:37 -0000

Edmonds does seem in danger of becoming the new David Ike.It worries me that he may see himself as a pseudo guru in a floral pattern shirt. I expect we'll all humour him for a while.

Re: You’re in the wrong lane, pal!

emsquared — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 11:28:20 -0000

Glad you found the trip tolerable. London can probably be called a super city in that much like New York, Beijing etc is almost not representative of the host country and almost exists as a small country on its own. My Australian partner hated London on first viewing and dismissed it as dirty, expensive and overcrowded , and felt that Bath was more the sort of city that London should have been though that view has now softened. London seems to have cranes permanently working on something along with other building works so London seems to be permanently a 'work in progress'.

Re: A change in plans

emsquared — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 13:57:29 -0000

I'm sure this is a worthwhile change of plan that, as you say, will help bolster any plans to work in the UK. You never know, this was probably meant to happen. In the future you may look back on this opportunity as key to more longer term plans.

Re: Cloud computing brings us rain

emsquared — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 06:28:03 -0000

Lol-yes those fiendish and wily squirrels have a lot to teach us. I think the desperation to replace the desktop OS and to have an 'always on' data source for increasingly mobile workers is, you're right, slightly hyping cloud computing as an answer before it's ready and tested.

Re: Cloud computing brings us rain

emsquared — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 05:18:06 -0000

I think S3 just have to learn from last week's downtime and build in more redundancy & distributed servers (mirrored data). Many web apps do now use Google gears for offline backup purposes.The same worries happen on business networks where data is stored centrally anyway and the server needs upgrading, or suffers an error or some kind.And the number of laptops containing sensitive unencrypted data being left on trains tends to prove the fat client model has its own problems.At least with cloud computing very large numbers of load balanced & distributed servers is possible. No doubt these are the first tentative baby steps in this area and mistakes will and are being made.We're only human after all.

Re: The world in your living room

emsquared — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 05:00:15 -0000

The Internet is a great resource.It depends whether a lot of it remains a virtual world and whether your 'real world' and online world actually connect sometimes.In theory the net should be a force for democracy and enhance our understanding of one another though at times it just seems to underline our differences & intolerances as the natural tendency of forming cliques continues. It's still early days yet for the Internet and maybe the 'real world' has yet to feel its unifying (or fragmenting) impact. No doubt in time new social structures that supersede geographic borders may eventuate.

Re: Changes

emsquared — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 18:15:36 -0000

Yes,I like it too.It's that mixture of 2D, 3D and simple segmented cut out figure animation is an eclectic combination.

Re: Public Information Films

emsquared — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 12:48:21 -0000

Thanks RB- There is more than one way of viewing some of the timelines (timeline, list view, flipbook on the top left of the timeline window) though admit that one was made quickly from a keyword rather than inputting in one at a time so it'd only show when it was submitted to You Tube.Yes iIm pleased with the look though it took longer to sort the comments system out than usual.

Re: Blogger:Disqus shows on individual posts only

emsquared — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 05:50:27 -0000

OK I've solved it.Just a bit of xml tidying up and it now seems to work. thanks for all yur help