BBC Blog Network

User Profile

Codingmonkey

Listed below are comments made by Codingmonkey between Monday, 24th November 2008 and Wednesday, 18th November 2009.

«Newer
Older»

Facebook v Ceop 12:25pm on 18 Nov 2009 Having a standard button on reputable websites is a good idea, it's just the unreputable ones that are the problem. Having, and promoting, a standard Ceop button would be a good idea if there was a guarenteed way of getting to that website irrespective of the source then this would be a good thing.
Unfortunatly it is all too easy to set up fake sites, and we all see them everyday in our Spam folders. Having a standard button is certainly going to give online predators a bigger target to aim at and any successful "capture" is going to be a valuable vulnerable child. There are a number of different ways of faking this and delivering a fake button that could deliver vulnerable children direct into the hands of online predators.
Rather than having a recognisable button to click on it is probably better to just educate the children about Ceop and the problems of online predators.
Stephen Fry's In the Beginning was the Nerd 4:13pm on 29 Sep 2009 nhawthorn with your drip example you just don't know how the control software has been written. Just to say that all it does is count 60 seconds ignores the fact that in Software there is more than one way to skin a cat. The control software for the drips could have come from a more sophisticated system which had internal monitoring and data logging that was just turned off for this product. I can come up with about 10 different ways of triggering after 60 seconds and a few of them do require an external clock which would have been potentially vulnerable. Just because you can't set the time and date doesn't mean that the system hasn't got a factory set internal clock for timing purposes.

Until we looked prior to Y2K nobody knew if a device would work or not at midnight on Jan 1st 2000. I know some organisations just bit the bullet and bought new equipment that had been tested but most of this was really just advance and held over equipment budgets from previous years.

I and many others at the time found and fixed many bugs relating to Y2K and it was only due to hard work that prevented these errors from occurring.
When panic shapes policy 10:44am on 14 Sep 2009 @105

If they "catch" 20,000 about 10% of those "caught" will be wrong. (The CRB checks currently have an error rate of about 0.05% though some months have been significantly higher.) This will result in about 2000 additional people branded as a Paedophile.

Now the result of one of these checks failing incorrectly for a volunteer for a community project where everyone knows each other and lives near each other is pretty much devastating.
When panic shapes policy 9:43pm on 13 Sep 2009 There is another side to the Vetting and it's the reason why I am simply refusing to go along with this on a voluntary project I donate my time and energy to. I will simply not drive or have any contact with the children/teenagers on the project. ( There is no opt-out as well.)

The reason for getting one is that the error rate for CRB checks is about 1 in 2000/3000 [1]. Since they use the Criminal Records Bureau that is not a chance I want to take. Every time I would be checked I would have a 0.05% (0.23% [2] last March) chance of my complete life ruined by a bad check branding me as a Paedophile. This is an unacceptable chance that I would my life would be completely ruined by a Civil Servant.

[1] In 2008/9 there were 1,570 errors out a total of 3 900 000 CRB checks giving the error rate of 0.05%
[2] [Unsuitable/Broken URL removed by Moderator]
Open post: Thursday, 10 September 2009 4:02pm on 13 Sep 2009 #1

"(I'm forever missing stuff on Radio 4 simply because a new series has started and I didn't realise). Or is there already a way to do this I'm not clever enough to realise?"

There isn't, as far as I can see, an RSS feed for /programmes but you can subscribe to the RSS feed for the iPlayer. Now the downside is that only programmes which are on the iPlayer are listed. Anything that is marked as "Not Available" is not shown.

Now if you are so inclined you could feed the channel feed through Yahoo Pipes and filter out all programmes except those you are interested in.

The feeds can be found here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/feeds/
Interesting Stuff 2009-04-23 6:23pm on 23 Apr 2009 If you go to the iplayer and then activate the Labs features then you will get a 128kbps AAC Stream for Radio 3.
Drink now, pay later 11:02pm on 16 Mar 2009 There is a massive flaw in the logic which nobody has addressed, perhaps because it is easier to recycle a politician's press release than it is to do some work.

Alcohol consumption in Britain has not changed much since the 70s according to WHO figures http://www.heartstats.org/datapage.asp?id=4597.

It rose a little in the late seventies and has been pretty stable ever since. So if this is such an epidemic then it's been an epidemic since about 1980 then. We have a very slightly higher than average consumption.
Mac malware - were we wrong? 11:15am on 03 Dec 2008 Actually this makes this story more interesting and intriuging. It certainly doesn't deserve an apology, except for not spotting this a year ago.

So it appears that at the same time they were promoting Macs as be immune to Viruses,via their Mac V PC ads, they were simulataneously recommending that Macs need anti-virus software.
How Can We Improve Commenting Across BBC Online? 08:36am on 01 Dec 2008 I'd personally like the ability to hide, or just collapse, all the posts from particular commenters.

On the flip side I'd like the ability to have favourite commenters; people whose comments I'd like to monitor for whatever reason.

Preferably this would be anonymous so the hidden and monitored commenters wouldn't know they were in these states.
BBC Local Decision: Reaction 1:33pm on 24 Nov 2008 I'm pretty sick to death of the BBC Trust and it's stifling of innovation, especially the iPlayer. The Trust seem to roll over and die at any comment from commercial alternatives, whether or not those alternatives do, or will, exist.

Since the iPlayer's introduction the end result has been to spur the Commercial competition into actually offering something substantional whereas previously all you would get would be simple clips. Though despite the Trust's best efforts the iPlayer is far and away better constructed than any of the competition. The alternatives often look like technical previews than fully functional websites.

I am very sceptical as to whether or not the local newspapers actually have anything planned or now they have killed off the BBC's alternative they can go on with the current insubstational rubbish that they peddle today.

If the BBC had been allowed to move into Local news then the current malaise that seems to pervade on local news paper websites wouldn't be tolerated any longer. My local newspaper's website is awful and could be replaced by a wordpress blog and be suddenly quicker and a lot more functional.

With these decisions I'm not sure who the BBC Trust represents. It's certainly not the public at large, who would have gained a fantastic local news resource, and the BBC is definitely poorer as a public service broadcaster after this decision.

«Newer
Older»

^ Back to top

BBC MMVI

The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites

BBC.co.uk

BBC Blog Network

Find and talk to the BBC's bloggers.

User Profile

Codingmonkey