Playground superbug can kill children within days
Eeeeek!
Playground superbug can kill children within days.
Superbug fears hit playgrounds.
But does this mean even more over-anxious middle class parents are going to be keeping their already over-cosseted little brats indoors and eventually becoming even more dysfunctional?
Playground superbug can kill children within days.
Superbug fears hit playgrounds.
But does this mean even more over-anxious middle class parents are going to be keeping their already over-cosseted little brats indoors and eventually becoming even more dysfunctional?
Professor Greenfield, promoter extraordinaire of science, has written a book that makes routine auguries – global warming, economic downturns – look like mere gloomy hand-wringing. A specialist in brain degeneration, Greenfield is predicting that our teen generation is headed for a sort of mass loss of personal identity. She calls it the Nobody Scenario. By spending inordinate quantities of time in the interactive, virtual, two-dimensional, cyberspace realms of the screen, she believes
that the brains of the youth of today are headed for a drastic alteration. It’s as if all that young grey cortical matter is being scalded and defoliated by a kind of cognitive Agent Orange, depriving them of moral agency, imagination and awareness of consequences.
“They are destined to lose an awareness of who and what they are: not someones, or anyones, but nobodies, eh!” That expressive mouth widens again, the lower lip ripens. “The time is well nigh,” she says, “to explore the impact of these technologies.”
BBC Three gives 'Being Human' a series
YES! Oh yes. I am very pleased about this!
Television - News - BBC Three gives 'Being Human' a series - Digital Spy
Television - News - BBC Three gives 'Being Human' a series - Digital Spy
‘Bold’ Bank of England? Don’t credit it
Faced with a crisis, the best idea that the Treasury and the Bank can come up with is to try to keep the economy afloat by effectively pumping billions of pounds into it. Not to restructure anything or make any fundamental changes, but to extend the credit to grease the palms to keep the racket going.
I've been saying this sort of thing for years... the UK has been zooming up the wrong road for decades now. Like how we barely make anything to sell to the rest of the world anymore [except for weapons - which invariably get used against us - d'oh - but that's a rant for another time] - Thatcher destroyed a lot of the old industries (which was more to break up the working class power base than anything else) to replace them with the stock market (yay! let's make money by moving money around the globe) and the phenomenon of 'hostile take over bids' - leaving ordinary people to do what? Buy and sell each other's houses? - cut each other's hair? sell each other insurance and debt consolidation loans from call centres? Blah blah blah - rant rant rant.
Four sound effects that made TV history
Boooooing - whooooosh - whhiiiirrrrrr - bloooop bloooop bloooop -Ex-ter-min-ate! Ex-ter-min-ate!
and so on...
BBC NEWS | Magazine | Four sound effects that made TV history
and so on...
BBC NEWS | Magazine | Four sound effects that made TV history
So...
I was re-watching Doctor Who confidential - and ~I had this revelation:
Russell T. has admitted in interviews that he always rather liked the idea of being a companion of the Doctor's. Not the Doctor himself but one of his assistants...
So having learnt his 'Buffy' lessons well - when he had the chance to bring back Doctor Who he centered it all on Rose... but now in the fourth series we finally get to see a companion who's probably the closest to how Russell would be if he were the companion. Someone who's smart, very clever and willing to take the Doctor to task for his various decisions.... and about his same age range.
mmmmm?
Russell T. has admitted in interviews that he always rather liked the idea of being a companion of the Doctor's. Not the Doctor himself but one of his assistants...
So having learnt his 'Buffy' lessons well - when he had the chance to bring back Doctor Who he centered it all on Rose... but now in the fourth series we finally get to see a companion who's probably the closest to how Russell would be if he were the companion. Someone who's smart, very clever and willing to take the Doctor to task for his various decisions.... and about his same age range.
mmmmm?
Pahf!
Oh look a PC magazine I forgot ever buying - oooh and how terribly handy - it has a copy of CyberLink PowerDirector 5VE on the cover disc. I was on the look out for something to edit my tiny short movies in for flickr and this blog and youtube and that...
Install. (Minor grumble from the installation about me having a later version of Quicktime than it wanted to install.) Get a free serial number from website. Reboot. Load. Feh. Annoyed by it insisting on loading it's own sample files crap. Try to import an avi I want to edit. PowerDirector vanishes. Huh? Maybe it's upset because Picasa is running at the same time? Load PD same annoying sample. files load - try to drag and drop the avi - ooooh progress bar promisi... - oh no. Vanishes again. No warnings - no wanting to send a crash report home. Just... nothing!
PowerDirector Sux then. Sux baaaaaaad.
Install. (Minor grumble from the installation about me having a later version of Quicktime than it wanted to install.) Get a free serial number from website. Reboot. Load. Feh. Annoyed by it insisting on loading it's own sample files crap. Try to import an avi I want to edit. PowerDirector vanishes. Huh? Maybe it's upset because Picasa is running at the same time? Load PD same annoying sample. files load - try to drag and drop the avi - ooooh progress bar promisi... - oh no. Vanishes again. No warnings - no wanting to send a crash report home. Just... nothing!
PowerDirector Sux then. Sux baaaaaaad.
season 1 Heroes in 6 minutes
(Now I need someone to do a similiar treatment for Lost - because even now, I'm sick of it being dragged out forever.)
Russell T Davies: Return of the (tea) Time Lord
Episode 6 - The Doctor's Daughter sound like it's going to be a doozy
The Child Support Agency is involved, says Davies. Donna is "literally like Jiminy Cricket on his shoulder, telling the Doctor what to do as a father. She says, 'I've seen men like that round our estate, with pushchairs and prams. You've gone into dadshock.'"
The Child Support Agency is involved, says Davies. Donna is "literally like Jiminy Cricket on his shoulder, telling the Doctor what to do as a father. She says, 'I've seen men like that round our estate, with pushchairs and prams. You've gone into dadshock.'"
Space Ood-ity
The poor Ood.
Good solid story. A few seconds of Tate's comedy character style of acting briefly slipped out (as it has before) but was tightly held in check - to be soon replaced by what's becoming her trade mark compassion and sympathy and awe. If this carries on Donna is fast becoming one of my all time favourite companions*. Although Rose is a really tough act to follow but then Martha is a easy one - I never took to Martha.
Didn't spot anything that was immediately 'story arc-y' on the first viewing. Is the phrase 'all songs must end' (do the 'sound of drums' end too?) going to allude to anything? But then the Ood themselves are telepathic rather than prophetic.
[*I had to laugh when I read in someone's blog how Tate can't act. Because - you know the RSC just take in anybody off the street don't they.]
Victor Keegan: Corporate dinosaurs kill sites - in a Flickr
Oh look, yet another person who's got the wrong end of the stick...
I've noticed this again and again - those who object most to videos on flickr are those that seem to think flickr is gearing up to challenge youtube. Dur. No it isn't. I've never seen it but apparently there's a whole yahoo videos section - now that's
trying to compete with youtube. (except for to be the 'yellow pages' directory of the web - way back at it's start up I don't think Yahoo has ever had an original idea of it's own - ever since it's just either just copied whatever everyone else was doing (ie. webmail - trying to be a 'portal') or else bought a original innovative company up (and historically manage to trash whatever they touched - Geocities, egroups - etc. and does anyone even use widgets? Aren't they just well, naff?)
Consquently it wouldn't bother me in the least if Microsoft were to buy up Yahoo! - they're both so clueless and deeply uncool and such bad copyists - they pretty much deserve each other.
Victor Keegan: Corporate dinosaurs kill sites - in a Flickr | Technology | The Guardian
I've noticed this again and again - those who object most to videos on flickr are those that seem to think flickr is gearing up to challenge youtube. Dur. No it isn't. I've never seen it but apparently there's a whole yahoo videos section - now that's
trying to compete with youtube. (except for to be the 'yellow pages' directory of the web - way back at it's start up I don't think Yahoo has ever had an original idea of it's own - ever since it's just either just copied whatever everyone else was doing (ie. webmail - trying to be a 'portal') or else bought a original innovative company up (and historically manage to trash whatever they touched - Geocities, egroups - etc. and does anyone even use widgets? Aren't they just well, naff?)
Consquently it wouldn't bother me in the least if Microsoft were to buy up Yahoo! - they're both so clueless and deeply uncool and such bad copyists - they pretty much deserve each other.
Victor Keegan: Corporate dinosaurs kill sites - in a Flickr | Technology | The Guardian
Lore Sjöberg's Alt Text: Flickr Fans Flustered Over Video Posting
Lore Sjöberg's Alt Text: Flickr Fans Flustered Over Video Posting: "Flickr now allows users to post short videos. This is the worst thing that could happen in this world or any possible alternate timeline, at least if you ask the members of the 'We Say NO to Videos on Flickr' group."
The Honeywell H316 Kitchen Computer
via swapatorium. The kitchen computer.
The Honeywell H316 Kitchen Computer
This so reminds me of the 'Look around you' sketch on the Lady computer - the Petticoat 5 -made by women for women.
The Honeywell H316 Kitchen Computer
This so reminds me of the 'Look around you' sketch on the Lady computer - the Petticoat 5 -made by women for women.
Opinion: An XP Lite would be a smart mobile strategy for Microsoft
Opinion: An XP Lite would be a smart mobile strategy for Microsoft: "An XP Lite would be a smart mobile strategy for Microsoft"
Yes, it would be if Microsoft and Apple weren't all about the bloat. Adding ever more 'features' - more 'options' - more and more and eye candy.
Yes, it would be if Microsoft and Apple weren't all about the bloat. Adding ever more 'features' - more 'options' - more and more and eye candy.
ooooh Up Pompeii
There's no point in me adding to the masses of reviews already out there. Not when some of them are better written than anything I could write. Like this one...
Save to say... yup. Donna completely won me over this episode. I enjoyed the cute silly little language jokes (T. J. Maxximus) - they got the balance between comedy and tragedy/drama just right. I hope they can keep it up throughout the rest of the series. In the commentary for 'Voyage of the Damned' in upcoming episode 11 RTD says "Catherine Tate gave the finest bit of acting I've ever been associated with" executive producer Julie Gardner says 'devastating'. I can believe it - I've re-watched Pompeii a couple of times now and I've been in near tears every time.
Now that prophecy pis*ing contest between Lucius and Evelina.
So - we already know Rose is returning. (But 'she' could as easily be Martha, Sarah Jane -etc. But we all know - it's Rose.)
"There's something on your back" - this is a big part of the arc. I'm surprised the Doctor didn't pick up on it and gave Donna a once-over with his sonic screwdriver [fnoar-fnoar] once they'd finished all their good deeds for the day and got back to the Tardis... but then it took the 9th Doctor - how many times before he and Rose noticed 'Bad Wolf'?
The Medusa Cascade has been mentioned before - in "Last of the Time Lords" -I think.
I give this ep 10 out of 10.
Doctor Who 4.2: The Fires of Pompeii
It’s a moral dilemma that has haunted Doctor Who since its earliest days. While the Doctor has always meddled in the affairs of other planets and present day Earth, our planet’s history has always been treated differently. Ever since strong-headed schoolteacher Barbara Wright failed to stop the Aztecs from performing human sacrifices, the message has been clear: you cannot change the past.
Trust Donna — brash, loud, intelligent Donna — to ask the question, “Why not?” and refuse to give up until she got a satisfactory answer. It was that process that formed the emotional backbone of this episode, producing some truly heartbreaking performances from both David Tennant and Catherine Tate.
Review By Scott Matthewman
Save to say... yup. Donna completely won me over this episode. I enjoyed the cute silly little language jokes (T. J. Maxximus) - they got the balance between comedy and tragedy/drama just right. I hope they can keep it up throughout the rest of the series. In the commentary for 'Voyage of the Damned' in upcoming episode 11 RTD says "Catherine Tate gave the finest bit of acting I've ever been associated with" executive producer Julie Gardner says 'devastating'. I can believe it - I've re-watched Pompeii a couple of times now and I've been in near tears every time.
Now that prophecy pis*ing contest between Lucius and Evelina.
So - we already know Rose is returning. (But 'she' could as easily be Martha, Sarah Jane -etc. But we all know - it's Rose.)
"There's something on your back" - this is a big part of the arc. I'm surprised the Doctor didn't pick up on it and gave Donna a once-over with his sonic screwdriver [fnoar-fnoar] once they'd finished all their good deeds for the day and got back to the Tardis... but then it took the 9th Doctor - how many times before he and Rose noticed 'Bad Wolf'?
The Medusa Cascade has been mentioned before - in "Last of the Time Lords" -I think.
I give this ep 10 out of 10.
who ARE these people?
BBC NEWS | Politics | Cabinet faces: Old and new
Jack Straw in charge of Justice? That's got to be a joke.
Jack Straw in charge of Justice? That's got to be a joke.
Compare and contrast
Fears of food shortage as rice prices keep climbing.
Haiti food protests.
meanwhile in the UK:
Fruit and vegetable waste clogs landfills.
(Although getting supermarkets not to sell fruit and veg at the ridiculously high mark-up prices they do - and then allowing them to just throw it away when they can't get those prices... That's a scandal.)
Haiti food protests.
meanwhile in the UK:
Fruit and vegetable waste clogs landfills.
Every year millions of tonnes of supermarket food ends up in landfill sites. At the same time there are still millions of people, including one in three children, living in poverty in the U.K.
(Although getting supermarkets not to sell fruit and veg at the ridiculously high mark-up prices they do - and then allowing them to just throw it away when they can't get those prices... That's a scandal.)
So many TV programme on Houses - so very many.
BBC 1.
'Homes under the Hammer'
People buy below par properties at auction - renovate them - by painting them beige.
Channel 4.
Property Ladder.
Bossy posh woman visits people renovating their homes (people who've always got more money than sense) berates them a bit. One last visit - they've painted everything beige. Posh woman then congratulates them on their supreme good taste in beige.
Five.
Put your money where your house is.
A team of people go into someone's home, and paint everything beige.
House Doctor.
Bossy Californian woman Ann Maurice comes into people's homes - dresses everything to look like it's a hotel room. Paints everything beige.
Seriously - you can easily spend a whole day's TV viewing looking at beige room after beige room after beige room after beige room.
WTF is going on? Have paint manufacturers suddenly stopped making any other colours of paint? What's with the severe chromophobia? Why do so many people want to live in glass of Bailey's - or baby sick? When is it going to end?
'Homes under the Hammer'
People buy below par properties at auction - renovate them - by painting them beige.
Channel 4.
Property Ladder.
Bossy posh woman visits people renovating their homes (people who've always got more money than sense) berates them a bit. One last visit - they've painted everything beige. Posh woman then congratulates them on their supreme good taste in beige.
Five.
Put your money where your house is.
A team of people go into someone's home, and paint everything beige.
House Doctor.
Bossy Californian woman Ann Maurice comes into people's homes - dresses everything to look like it's a hotel room. Paints everything beige.
Seriously - you can easily spend a whole day's TV viewing looking at beige room after beige room after beige room after beige room.
WTF is going on? Have paint manufacturers suddenly stopped making any other colours of paint? What's with the severe chromophobia? Why do so many people want to live in glass of Bailey's - or baby sick? When is it going to end?
Flickr Adds Video Sharing for 'Pro' Members | massive storrm in a teacup breaks out
Well, I for one am in favour of this. Mainly because I understand where flickr are coming from. I often use my digital cameras to take the odd little movie - just to capture things that you can't get from stills. Now these movies are so short that it never seemed worth the effort involved in uploading them up to youtube. But now I can upload them to flickr with the minimum of fuss - where they can nestle along with the stills that often come out of the very same cameras.
Of course there's a very loud contingent on flickr - whose feathers get ruffled at any hint of a change - now hollaring loudly that they don't want video on flickr, they're all scared it's going to turn into youtube. *sigh* Way to totally miss the point guys.
By the by - whatever happened to last year's big issue about Germany and other countries having 'safety filters'/aka censorship forced onto them. I guess people have forgotten all about that now. Just like they'll eventually settle down and forget about this.
Flickr Adds Video Sharing for 'Pro' Members | Compiler from Wired.com
Of course there's a very loud contingent on flickr - whose feathers get ruffled at any hint of a change - now hollaring loudly that they don't want video on flickr, they're all scared it's going to turn into youtube. *sigh* Way to totally miss the point guys.
By the by - whatever happened to last year's big issue about Germany and other countries having 'safety filters'/aka censorship forced onto them. I guess people have forgotten all about that now. Just like they'll eventually settle down and forget about this.
Flickr Adds Video Sharing for 'Pro' Members | Compiler from Wired.com
I don't wanna go to the Phorm
Phorm: Your questions answered -sort of.
Phorm
Bad Phorm.
BT and Phorm secretly tracked 18,000 customers in 2006.
Me - I've always said advertising is the toxic pollution of the post-industrial age.
If advertisers have such a desperate need to put their ads in front of people's eyes - they should pay the people to look at them - not big stupid companies to secretly hoodwink people into seeing them.
Hey, then the unemployed can sit at home earning money looking at these ads and then they'd soon not end up not being unemployed any more and be able to buy some of those things they see advertised everyday. Wealthier people who simply haven't the time to sit through ads of various kinds could pay people to sit through the ads for them, like they already pay for housekeepers and personal trainers and what not. That'd save the government some money.
Can you tell I hate advertising - it's all such a waste of people's talents, creativity, time, effort, energy just to make people want things they don't really need. Just think what the human race could have accomplished if all of those things had been put into other things. We could be living in a world that had cures for cancer, no wars, clean energy, we'd be exploring the solar system, have personal robot servants, we could even have had jet packs!
OK I got carried away there. Meanwhile it's firefox & adblock for me.
It's always a shock for me to use someone else's browser - I forget how much people get bombarded by ads. They just mentally filter them out - I don't see how having personally targeted ads is going to work any better.
Phorm
Bad Phorm.
BT and Phorm secretly tracked 18,000 customers in 2006.
Me - I've always said advertising is the toxic pollution of the post-industrial age.
If advertisers have such a desperate need to put their ads in front of people's eyes - they should pay the people to look at them - not big stupid companies to secretly hoodwink people into seeing them.
Hey, then the unemployed can sit at home earning money looking at these ads and then they'd soon not end up not being unemployed any more and be able to buy some of those things they see advertised everyday. Wealthier people who simply haven't the time to sit through ads of various kinds could pay people to sit through the ads for them, like they already pay for housekeepers and personal trainers and what not. That'd save the government some money.
Can you tell I hate advertising - it's all such a waste of people's talents, creativity, time, effort, energy just to make people want things they don't really need. Just think what the human race could have accomplished if all of those things had been put into other things. We could be living in a world that had cures for cancer, no wars, clean energy, we'd be exploring the solar system, have personal robot servants, we could even have had jet packs!
OK I got carried away there. Meanwhile it's firefox & adblock for me.
It's always a shock for me to use someone else's browser - I forget how much people get bombarded by ads. They just mentally filter them out - I don't see how having personally targeted ads is going to work any better.
Top 10 *most annoying* Lost moments
When a show's new season HAS to be heavily promoted with the slogan 'the answers are coming' - then the flags already gone up that there's something going seriously wrong somewhere - don't you think?
Top 10 *most annoying* Lost moments « Dube’s World
Top 10 *most annoying* Lost moments « Dube’s World
Carphone Warehouse stares down BPI and UK.gov
Good for them. I wish the other ISPs would grow some balls as well. Although virgin's toadying surprises me not - because they have their whole lame-ass Virgin media thing to protect. (Does the Virgin record label still exist?) After all - what's the point of broadband if it's not p2p? If you can't use it for that, well I'll be going back to dial-up. It's not as if video streaming works reliably enough to be pleasant to use. BBC iPlayer is the pooh, even Youtube has it's off days...
grumble grumble grumble...
Carphone Warehouse stares down BPI and UK.gov on three strikes | The Register
grumble grumble grumble...
Carphone Warehouse stares down BPI and UK.gov on three strikes | The Register
one law for the MP - another for the rest of us
Mmmmmm. And to think what an outcry the right-wingers are constantly making about 'dole scroungers', the sickness benefit claimants, the Pensioners - and yet - just look who's really got their fingers deep in the public purse...
MPs get paid a wage well in excess of the national average - yet they feel compelled to claim for petty things like a TV license, their council taxes, their mortgages, cleaners, - yet they so begrudge people on benefits the barest minimum they need to survive...
er... so it turns out that it's our politicians who are the real evil grasping twunts - the whole lot of them. [Like that was ever a surprise.]
I stand by my assertion that all MPs should get nothing more than minimum wage to live on. If they really think that's enough for a person to live on... then they can too. No extras. If they need a suit to go to work in - or for a state function they should be given a voucher - like they used to give to poor families so their children could get a school uniform. If they did that made being a politician into a vocation rather than a career - we'd get a lot less shady characters in there messing things up.
MPs get paid a wage well in excess of the national average - yet they feel compelled to claim for petty things like a TV license, their council taxes, their mortgages, cleaners, - yet they so begrudge people on benefits the barest minimum they need to survive...
er... so it turns out that it's our politicians who are the real evil grasping twunts - the whole lot of them. [Like that was ever a surprise.]
I stand by my assertion that all MPs should get nothing more than minimum wage to live on. If they really think that's enough for a person to live on... then they can too. No extras. If they need a suit to go to work in - or for a state function they should be given a voucher - like they used to give to poor families so their children could get a school uniform. If they did that made being a politician into a vocation rather than a career - we'd get a lot less shady characters in there messing things up.
oh Gordon...
My, how things have changed...
The old Labour party used to heavily tax the very wealthy to have the money to spend on public services... etc.
But these days the current Labour Party has had the totally fantastic idea of taxing the poor more to help pay for taxing the better off less...
In the link above - it doesn't mention that those who'll be affected are: Students who work evenings and weekends (way to go to make going to university even harder), pensioners, young people under 25 in their first jobs, part time workers, and basically anyone who doesn't qualify for Tax Credits.
I think we're looking at a party that's developing a death wish...
The old Labour party used to heavily tax the very wealthy to have the money to spend on public services... etc.
But these days the current Labour Party has had the totally fantastic idea of taxing the poor more to help pay for taxing the better off less...
In the link above - it doesn't mention that those who'll be affected are: Students who work evenings and weekends (way to go to make going to university even harder), pensioners, young people under 25 in their first jobs, part time workers, and basically anyone who doesn't qualify for Tax Credits.
I think we're looking at a party that's developing a death wish...
New Doctor Who is an event for all
Here's a quick bit of Dr Who link dumping...
New Doctor Who is an event for all - icWales: "WRITER Russell T Davies has revealed that one of his main aims when reviving Doctor Who was to create a weekly “event” for the whole family."
Who actors launch fourth series.
New Doctor Who is an event for all - icWales: "WRITER Russell T Davies has revealed that one of his main aims when reviving Doctor Who was to create a weekly “event” for the whole family."
Catherine on her Doctor Who doll: “Having not been really into the idea – frankly resisting it, but it was in the contract so I couldn’t get out of it. When they showed me the prototype of my doll, I loved it. I was literally running around. I don’t think I’m supposed to like it as much as I do.”
Who actors launch fourth series.
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