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Jonathan

Listed below are comments made by Jonathan between Wednesday, 17th September 2008 and Wednesday, 11th November 2009.

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Computing for older users: Patronising or practical? 11:33am on 11 Nov 2009 Perhaps the reason for the high price is to ensure that all the hardware is compatible with Linux. Some users have said that setting up webcams is a nightmare, but it's simple if the system is supplied with one that works, just as installing Linux on a laptop can be a nightmare, but using a laptop designed for Linux is a breeze.
I'm a photographer... 11:35pm on 11 Aug 2009 What I find most ridiculous is the way that anyone using an SLR camera is more likely to have questions asked of them. If I were a terrorist, I would carry out my reconnaissance using a mobile phone camera to take shots as quickly and discretely as possible, not stand in a prominent position and take some time to frame the shot perfectly. Not only are they unfairly harassing people going about their lawful business, by not paying attention to mobile phone cameras they are not actually achieving their stated aim of protecting people from terrorism. But of course, this has nothing to do with terrorism, but more of the feeling or power and importance it gives a security guard (in, let's face it, a job with fairly low status) to stop someone taking a photo, thinking they are saving people's lives - and the bigger the camera, but more significant a threat they have eliminated, and so the more important they feel.
New BBC weather site launched 11:57am on 04 Mar 2009 I've been sticking with the old site as long as possible, but now it's finally gone. I don't find the new page so easy to look at. With the old 5-day forecast page, I could see at a glance the whole week's forecast for where I am. The symbols were bold, the temperatures large and colour-coded, max and min temperatures were there, all in one table. Now the new symbols may be artistic, but they are not as clear. The rest of the information is just displayed as small text. And I have to scroll through several different sections to see all the information I could see at a glance.

I used to use the BBC's weather site in preference to others because I liked the way all the information was there at a glance. I'll now re-evaluate the alternatives, and may even consider writing some sort of script to re-format the page to look like the old one!
BBC News and disabled audiences 3:50pm on 19 Feb 2009 @atrisse: Spot on! With digital TV so much could have been done to enhance viewers' experiences. Start with the permanently-visible station ident that digital stations have. Why can't this be hidden once the viewer knows what the channel is? Then there's also the way continuity announcers talk over the end credits of programmes, ruining the music that a composer has written especially, and damaging the artistic integrity of the programme (one great thing about the iPlayer is that this doesn't happen). Unfortunately the only purposes of digital TV were (1) to allow most of the airwaves to be sold off to mobile phone companies; and (2) to squeeze in loads more more low-quality channels (I'm mainly referring to commercial ones here). There's no room for innovative features.
'I've never joined Facebook because...' 5:09pm on 04 Feb 2009 I don't like Facebook as I don't like everyone being able to see who's on my friends list. The same goes for sites that let people see my web bookmarks. I use my web browser to bookmark sites I'm interested in, including acquaintances' personal pages, and if I want to tell people about myself, I put the information on my website, where I have complete control over what information is displayed. With Facebook, even if you think you have the privacy settings set appropriately, who knows when they'll change the way they work, and suddenly make a whole load of new information about you publicly accessible?
But is it art? 1:55pm on 14 Jan 2009 I think it's brilliant, it's really cheered me up today. Not only are the depictions witty, I also like the fact it's made a fool of the pompous politicians, and also pokes fun at pretentious artists (if you read the accompanying brochure).
The BBC licence free? 4:53pm on 25 Nov 2008 Two thirds of the licence fee go towards TV, a tenth on transmission costs, so radio and the websites account for less than 25% of the fee. If there was no longer to be BBC TV, I'd happily pay £40 per year for the radio and internet services.

Sadly, there are no figures for how much of the TV funding is spent on quality programmes, and how much is used to duplicate commercial stations and pay celebrities inflated salaries. I'd like to see a slimmed-down TV service with fewer channels showing public service programmes that can't be found elsewhere. Perhaps £80 for the whole lot would be reasonable?
Google - do you speak the Queen's English? 4:32pm on 21 Nov 2008 Perhaps Google can use accent detection to return search results releated to the user's location.
Map of the week - How will you die? 3:59pm on 20 Oct 2008 A fascinating map. Unless I've missed something, the map only shows the proportion of each cause of death, not the total number of deaths. While traffic deaths in early teens, suicide in the 20s and cancer in the 30s and 40s look alarming, covering much of the map, the number of deaths would be small compared to the 60+ maps. An interesting variant on this map would be to allocate a colour for people who survive, to show how much sparser the distribution of deaths is at younger ages.
The creation of Lloyds HBOS 5:43pm on 17 Sep 2008 Presumably HBOS (as Bank of Scotland) will retain its own banking licence - they have to remain as a bank registered in Scotland to retain the right to print banknotes. That was the reason last year's reorganisation saw Halifax become a division of BoS and not the reverse.

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