Comments for The Digerati Peninsula

Comment on Punny Business by Charlie Came

Charlie Came — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 19:24:13 +0000

On Chip shops, others I’ve seen include:

The Codfather
A Fork ‘n’ Chips

Comment on Single-Use Credit Cards by Ben Blackmore

Ben Blackmore — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 14:49:34 +0000

Sorry, name of the service was ‘WebCard’, not ‘webcams’, damn predictive keyboard!

Comment on Single-Use Credit Cards by Ben Blackmore

Ben Blackmore — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 14:47:36 +0000

Cahoot bank in the UK used to offer this single use credit card number, that you could assign a specific amount of money to, called webcams, was a great service! But they discontinued it back in 2009 for some reason! Was such a shame!

Comment on Time to Replace Passwords by Charlie

Charlie — Sun, 20 Nov 2011 11:33:00 +0000

Totally agree Lee. I also think that until biometrics really come into play IT and HR departments need to clamp down on employees writing down passwords. Make it a disciplinary offence and follow through with a warning. Of course we’d (as IT) need to inform users as to tools that could help them remember all their passwords e.g keepass (or provide a corporate equivalent linked into AD) in order to make this workable given all the reasons you mentioned above but assuming we did so users would have to remember one, two passwords maximum.

Comment on Abolishing VAT on Ebooks by Dave Penney

Dave Penney — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 15:04:50 +0000

I agree it is unfair that books are subject to a 0% rate of VAT in this country while the self same words in digital form attract a 20% VAT rate. When you consider the environmental impact books, newspapers etc have on our world, I highly recommend that we should icrease the VAT rate on books and Newspapers to 20%. Who knows it may discourage people from buying the things or alternatively the additional tax it would generate may help to reduce the country’s deficit.

Comment on The Ariane rocket celebrates its 30th birthday by Reviving the UK’s Space Programme | The Digerati Peninsula

Reviving the UK’s Space Programme | The Digerati Peninsula — Sun, 25 Sep 2011 11:18:36 +0000

[...] Another use that was found for the Blue Streak first stage was in the fledgling Europa project, a venture between the UK, France and Germany to build a satellite launcher. Each country would provide a stage and the UK part of the project, based on Blue Streak, worked flawlessly, but the stages provided by France and Germany failed on each launch, so Britain walked away. Undeterred (and with the big incentive of a comms satellite the US refused to launch), France and Germany continued and developed what would become the Ariane rocket, which celebrated its 30th birthday not long ago. [...]

Comment on The Bad State of School Computer Lessons by Lee

Lee — Sat, 14 May 2011 17:02:06 +0000

Thanks, Sarah, good to get some input from someone with experience on the ground as it were. I think this is an area all kids, gifted or not, could do with some experience in (i.e. programming, it doesn’t need to be writing full-blown apps), most of them know how to use a computer long before they get to school these days so using office documents is, as you point out, teaching kids something they already know.

Maybe it’s because it’s easier to measure achievement in sport (you run a certain time, jump a certain distance, etc) whereas other subjects are far more subjective. It seems if you want to succeed in those it’s on your own time. (Mind you, allowing kids to cruise along without challenging them is not something new, most of my teachers only knew what I could do when I took my mocks and most had to reassess.)

Comment on The Bad State of School Computer Lessons by Sarah D

Sarah D — Sat, 14 May 2011 13:48:11 +0000

Ok at the risk of putting my head over the horizon, here’s the input from a mum with a teenage boy in a North London comp. (1400 pupils and counting). My son’s best mate came into the school from an Oustanding Primary and was immediately identified as Gifted and Talented in ICT. The Primary had built on his natural ability and I’m guessing there was some parental input. No such input was forthcoming from the secondary school. He works alongside my son who went into the school with office worker level ICT skills but whose programming experience is based on telling a floor hoover what to do. They talk in class out of sheer boredom with the lesson covering Powerpoing again, and as a “punishment” are sent to sit in a class two years above them for ICT for two weeks. Both are filled with delight as “at last” they are learning something they don’t already know. They are now calculating exactly what level of misbehaviour will have them exiled to that class permanently. Meanwhile the Design and Technology team are setting projects with CAD elements incorporated into them that the children have yet to be taught how to do.
The basic problem with the national curriculum is a “one size fits all” structure that does not allow pupils to move up and down the age range to find the level at which they are already working when they come into senior school. Widely referred to in education as the Year Seven Dip, what this effectively means is the disillusionment felt by all children when they find they are sitting in a classroom with pupils working at very different levels to theirs. Parallel examples may be found in all subjects, from pupils fluent in a foreign language being expected to sit through basic vocabulary lessons to children doing Tudors and Stuarts or Hitler for the third or fourth time in as many years. Ironically the only area in which natural ability and talent seems to be effectively recognised and supported by a wide range of organisations both in school and in the commercial sector is in sport. If the IT industry in this country put as much effort into spotting junior talent and bringing it on, as the football industry does, perhaps we might have the pool of talent the country needs. Meanwhile my son and his friends will be first in line for the £15 computer, believe me.

Comment on Edison’s Predictions for 2011 by Lee

Lee — Wed, 26 Jan 2011 17:55:27 +0000

I think Edison was saying we would be able to produce as much gold as we wanted by turning any metal into gold (the long-time quest of alchemists), thereby making it worthless. As it happens, we can’t. I don’t think he was commenting on the use of gold in economics, merely that science would solve the problem of rarity. Most countries hold large reserves as ‘store of value’ (so a sudden influx would cause problems), he could have picked any other rare metal though. Gold was probably just the best known example. As he implies in the article, once it is abundant it loses value, not least because it is less useful in industrial application than most other metals.

Comment on Edison’s Predictions for 2011 by SarahD

SarahD — Wed, 26 Jan 2011 12:00:26 +0000

So imagine a scenario where the world suddenly gets access to a massive amount of gold? Does it really underpin our economy to the extent that such a discovery would make a difference? When gold was found in Australia, the governor bullied the geologist who made the discovery into keeping silent for five years and publishing a falsified report into his findings, so that “the government could set in place structures to stabilise the impact on the economy”. What this effectively meant was that people in the know could buy up the land, including the governor himself who made a killing, and the geologist was heavily criticised for his professional “blindness”. I think Edison was making people think about what it really means to have a world economy so dependent on one substance.
Is anyone of equivalent intellectual calibre making predictions for 2111, do you know?