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anonymous1208

Listed below are comments made by anonymous1208 between Saturday, 1st November 2008 and Saturday, 27th December 2008.

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Suggest a story 5:10pm on 27 Dec 2008 How about control of the internet, including censorship and (heck, they can stop this from being posted) "moderation".

The news today about a certification scheme is an example of the "nanny state" gone mad. If resources are available to control internet content, make the order of attack as follows:

1) stop child porn
2) stop spammers (who waste thousands of hours of staff time, and cost firms millions in anti-spam handling) and
3) stop / track / detain "phishers" (trying to get bank and other 'identity' information to allow them to defraud people)

I see those as far more important than certification of content, which is unworkable
1) because there are millions of sites, and thousands of new ones daily (I registered 10 new domains yesterday)
2) because content can change in seconds from "PG" to "12" to "18" to "18R"
3) because the US has a right to freedom of expression, so won't "play ball"
4) because not all sites will be in UK/US/EU control, so cannot legislate of those
5) because it looks like a tinkering, and taxing plan (certificates won't be free, and not having a certificate could be against the law) which will hold back the UK in internet development if sites have to get a certificate to be allowed to be online

Sorry, words now fail me as it is such a silly idea that certificates will be needed for 10s of Millions of websites!
Show Us A Better Way winner. 11:34am on 30 Nov 2008
Elsewhere ( http://tinyurl.com/699k7w ) I came across another reason for the results to be of mixed fortune, and fully expected to hear about it during iPM.

Of course, while there are resources like Microsoft's Virtual Earth (see http://maps.live.com/ ) and Google Maps being used to show "mashed" data, and various mobile networks show postcode areas, they can demonstrate uses of the tools, but the lack of open (or affordable) access to data will hold UK development back (some companies may have other ways to get the data - for example look on various property search sites and one can assume they have used the geographic data collected from GPS devices - the estate agencies had a large number of mobile employees - an ideal source of the data independent of any central/costly suppliers).

I checked some prices for the US 5-digit ZIP code data, and there's a range from $20 to $40. The more detailed data (in the form 12345-1234 called ZIP+4) can cost from $250 to $800, so not impossible for small businesses. How do those prices compare with the UK, I wonder (I've never been tempted to look in detail about the PAF database, but believe that rather than get full access, there are per-lookup charges - probably 'required' by Royal Mail as a money making exploit!)
Keeping an eye on the competition... 11:24am on 30 Nov 2008 On the one hand it shows how search tools are far from ideal. I've certainly come across 'search tips' from Librarians on some academic sites, but when one spots 500,000 'results' in response to a search one cannot be sure of spotting an 'appropriate' match, and of course, changing the words (or just the order of the words) for the query can have a significant effect on the results that get reported.

On the other hand, it shows how difficult it is to track a multitude of projects within an organisation such that each project group is aware of the 'call for papers' or 'reports' from the other 1001 groups in that same organisation. It doesn't help that some sites are .gov.uk some .uk.com and others .org or .com - however it is slightly less 'odd' that so many sifferent TLDs are used than the recent WAG tour of Wales to meet businesses... their tour was promoted on their E-Crime site (sorry, don't recall the full URL, but we know politicians 'cannot be trusted' already :) )

I use a number of search engines rather than Britain's 'favourite' to have a chance of seeing the odd gem rather than a mish-mash of sites which manage to get listed (as they seem to accept any random strings and give a 'result' - or do they quietly pay for 'inclusion').
Broadcasting live 2:15pm on 27 Nov 2008 I've been less and less happy about BBC radio news over the past few years, perhaps some will say that's because I'm just a grumpy old man, but the reason I am unhappy is because I'm hearing more and more of "the same".

That same sound clips come up time after time from 1300 to midnight. I'd love to know more about what went on across the UK, on radio, the way that the BBC Nationwide programme on TV used to do.

In response to comment #4 - I wonder why so many R4 and R5 shows seem to be run on a stopwatch without any flexibility (even at 0259 when "Up All Night" has someone from the USA or Canada (or elsewhere) on the phone, they have to wind up (no matter how interesting the material) because the jingle for the news starts up and the presenter has to bow down to the BBC schedule. On R4, the format for Today means they have so many trailers, weather, sport and news headline sections, that when there is a good discussion going, that gets 'cut short' for some (daft) 'package' and then the presents try not to crash the 0900 pips. It's like the final 2 metres in a sprint some mornings to end before the first pip!

The same happens on phone-ins which is really annoying - a US station I listen to (WGN in Chicago) has the time pips in the background but the presenters have the flexibility to break for the news or delay the news if something interesting is being discussed.

Seems far more 'friendly' handling (and while I'm on a roll, why do BBC presenters cut any interviewee off after saying their goodbye - so many N Americans must feel 'snubbed' that the 2 seconds it takes for them to say "bye" or "thanks" gets snipped - it may be "the way we do it" but it's plain rude, BBC!)
Good morning. What on EARTH are you doing up at this time? 1:46pm on 01 Nov 2008 I'm regularly up, having been working on websites or just browsing all night. I only signed up recently (as I wanted to comment on Sachsgate, elsewhere) and had previously vowed not to sign up on the BBC's service as it is/was run in such an alien way to the rest.

Having "opening hours" (OK, might no longer be the case) is alien to the 24x7 internet world where you are available worldwide.

On many other discussion systems, there is a core set of moderators (initially just the owner of the forum) and each is trusted to manage a section.

There is little need for paid-for moderators, in other schemes, and you surely have sufficient 'regulars' who could be trusted to act to uphold the rules.

It would have meant that on the recent Ross/Brand discussion there would have been 40000 comments posted, in real time, and those few hundred that were unacceptable could have been quickly weeded out...

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