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Craig Cockburn

Listed below are comments made by Craig Cockburn between Wednesday, 11th June 2008 and Sunday, 11th October 2009.

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What is a web browser? 11:52pm on 11 Oct 2009 I was getting asked to explain Web2.0 to someone and that's a lot harder to pin down than "what is a browser". So if you want to know what Web2.0 is hopefully you will be able to point people at http://www.siliconglen.com/news/2009/10/web20-defintion.html and we might get a bit of consensus.
'Vigilante retribution' 10:25pm on 25 Mar 2009 This is perhaps a good time to question why directors home addresses and personal details are still so freely available. Not only does it raise issues of ID theft but as we see here, putting such information in the public domain adds to the risk that directors face when their details are so accessible. It only takes one lunatic to make an innocent family feel frightened. Do we have to make it easy for these lunatics by giving away the information?
Lifestyle choice 12:08pm on 07 Mar 2009 I live in Scotland and work in Ireland. It's about £4.50 absolute minimum for a pint of Guinness in Dublin, translated from Euros. It's £3 a pint in Belfast.

High prices don't seem to have curtailed drinking in Ireland, why should they work in Scotland.

Above all, why should the sensible drinking majority have to pay the price for the minority who abuse drink?

It's about as effective as raising the price of cars because a majority speed in them.

Craig
Who's watching you? (1) 1:46pm on 09 Feb 2009 As someone from the UK currently working in Ireland it astonishes me how none of the UK proposals as seen as being required in Ireland or are even being discussed.

The UK wants to record every phone call, every email, track citizens movements in an out of England, Scotland and Wales (NI exempt) from a UK travel database, is pressing ahead with ID cards and "leads the world" in the use of CCTV with over 4 million of them. Then there's also the DNA database which stores DNA of persons without charge.

Ireland on the other hand has none of these things at anything like this level of scrutiny, indeed even speed cameras are rare.

Why does the UK feel so alone in needing to gather every possible piece of information about citizens in the event that some of it might be useful?

Craig
Dear Andy, can we talk? 7:48pm on 04 Jan 2009 Here's a government minister who clearly doesn't understand the Internet, and then demonstrates this lack of understanding by proposing something unsuitable, unworkable, unwanted and is little better than soundbite politics.

As an IT consultant, (I wrote the UK's first guide to getting online) and one who has just finished working on an Internet project for the Dept for Business, I'd be more than happy for the government to give me a call so that I can educate the ministers on what might actually be a suitable IT policy.

If the government thinks age ratings are the way forward, maybe they could try it with an easier target such as soap operas so that I can decide in advance if each episode is suitable for my children to watch.

Since my time working in government departments brings me into contact with government IT systems, I know that these systems employ web filtering technology. Why does the minister not recommending that parents use similar technology or is he admitting that either the government systems are so hopelessly overpriced that parents can't afford them or so hopelessly ineffective that the wrong solutions have been deployed in government? There are several good, cheap solutions out there that any government minister who stands up to talk about IT should be pointing parents towards as part of an overall solution rather than the absurd route of rating each page.
Calling time 1:05pm on 02 Oct 2008 It is a fair comment by the opposition that this unfairly discriminates against 18-21 year olds, many of who could be responsible drinkers (as well as responsible soldiers and parents at that age). However in light of this, perhaps the opposition will also suggest dropping the ban on Sunday morning off sales because that similarly discriminates against people whether they are responsible drinkers or otherwise.
Craig
What's said and what's not 6:58pm on 26 Jul 2008 My vote goes on Gordon Brown hanging on to 2010, an SNP vote on Independence scrapin in just before the UK general election with Gordon Brown loses and being replaced by "fresh face" James Parnell.
Duly elected 10:39am on 25 Jul 2008 The result emphases the comments I made 2 months ago on this blog http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/briantaylor/2008/05/making_new_friends.html#comment11 that Labour and Gordon Brown will hang on until 2010 and then be ousted by the SNP in Scotland and the Conservatives in England. We will look back to today and the May elections to see the writing on the wall. Seats previously thought to be safe Labour will fall to the SNP and the 2010 election for Labour will see heads roll in same way that 1997 did for the Tories. It's time for change.
Labour lagging in by-election race 9:05pm on 05 Jul 2008 Like the Tories before them, Labour has pressed the political self-destruct button in Scotland.
Not ticking boxes 11:28pm on 11 Jun 2008 Letter to Points of View, The BBC. Dated 26th August 1996 (the English bank holiday weekend). Published to the scot.general newsgroup 26th August 1996.

11+ years for the penny to drop?
Incidentally the conspiracy I hinted at in the post was revealed as fact in John Birt's biography in 2002.

Letter begins:

Today, the "UK" programmes are all different because England is on holiday. The children across the road from me, however, were in school (a state primary)

Tomorrow the schools in England go back after the summer break and Children's BBC restarts throughout the "UK" The Scottish schools have been back for two weeks - what had they to watch when they return home from school?

Tonight on the "UK" BBC news there was an article about the Notting Hill carnival. Nothing about the Edinburgh Festival, the world's largest arts festival. There was also an article about the English cricket team.

Tonight on the "UK" BBC news there was an article about the "national" curriculum and standards. "National" in this context means England and Wales (since when were England and Wales a nation?), but the story is shown in Scotland.

Last week English and Welsh exam results were announced and this news was broadcast to Scotland. Were the Scottish exam results broadcast to England so that people in England could compare the two systems and learn from the differences? Of course not!

I resent stories applicable to the whole of England and none of Scotland being broadcast to me in Scotland. I'm just not interested and I don't think most other Scots are either. Has the BBC ever undertaken a survey to find out what people in Scotland think of getting stories that have no relevance or interest to them?

This treatment of Scotland as an unimportant region and broadcasting
inappropriate programmes and news is unacceptable. I call on the BBC to
devolve its news service. This would mean giving the Scottish news 25 mins of time instead of 5, binning the current "UK" news and allowing Scottish TV and English regions to fill the extra 20 mins by buying in national and international stories from the BBC in London. Thus most English regions would probably carry today's international stories and the "National" Curriculum stories, whereas the Scottish news would carry the international stories and fill the English-specific slot about the national curriculum with something actually relevant to the viewers.

There is widespread talk on the Internet of the London bias in the BBC and it is attracting a lot of negative publicity for the BBC, indeed there is one site I believe which is gathering evidence of anti-Scottish collaboration within the BBC in London - particularly with regard to recent high level changes which resulted in the Gaelic learners' programme "Speaking our Language" being withdrawn from the Learning Zone.

Your motto is "And nation shall speak unto nation". It would be great if the Scottish and English nations could speak to one another on more equal terms.

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Craig Cockburn