Bob Browning's blog

Apparently a group took photos of Swiss undercover police (who were taking photos of demonstrators) and posted them on their web site. The Swiss talked to the US who issued a soepena to the hosting company (Rackspace) in Texas. The next thing the servers have been physically removed from the server farm in Rackspace London.

Home Office spokeswoman Caroline Flint said, “I can confirm that no UK law enforcement agendas were involved in the matter referred to.”

The servers are back now but some files are missing.

How in the name of our constitution (which in our case we do not have) can this happen. There is no mention of any UK court order in this story that i can find. Did Rackspace London really take down some servers on the basis of a US subpoena?

You just couldn’t make it up could you. Some guys funded by the dept of trade and industry (ie us) have come up with the recommendation that computer games should be studied in schools. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/3956241.stm

Well I guess now the playing fields have all been sold off… sigh…

How about teaching them to write english and do simple maths.

Despite the fact that half the population can apparently get multiple A levels at grade A . And despite the fact that the exams have not been dumbed down and the pupils have just go better, I am still confronted by a series of ill-educated illiterates who couldn’t figure their way out of a paper bag whenever I have to interview graduates.

I know one person who’s interviewing approach is to first ask the graduate which part of the course they excelled in. Then he would ask a few questions about that area. You guessed it, most couldn’t answer them.

When I last interviewed marketing grads (who had all done statistics as a course) and asked them to explain the concept of standard deviation, very few could.

Our education system is a cruel joke played on the innocents who have to go through it.

I dispair.

When I saw the news item announcing sipgate I deconstructed the title (in true postmodern style) before I read it

• SIP – the protocol behind VOIP (Internet Phones)
• Gate – a political scandal

So this must be a political scandal involving VOIP. Sounds unlikely and it was. It seems a German telephone company hasn’t quite got to grips with cultural references in the anglo-saxon world.

In any event it is a new VOIP firm from Germany. The rates (once you mentally substitute civilised full stops for the strange commas in the numbers) are not bad. A bit more than PipeMedia who I am using at present but still reasonable at 1.2p per min to landlines and 14.9p to mobiles. US 1.5p. 17.7p to a german mobile seems steep however.

DAB digital radio – going to replace FM by 2008 in most homesin the UK. Didn’t I read than somewhere?



If it was going anywhere the early adopters would be piling into it by now, which means that Hi Fi shops and web sites would be flogging units for people to add to their component setup. But check out any Hi Fi web site – component offerings still have FM radios in them. DAB is there, but not featured in the way that a new technology should be.

The big radio audience has got to be in cars. Is your local car showroom putting digital radios in the top of the range models? You can add a DAB radio to your Ford for £400 (you couldn’t make it up!) but I don’t see it as standard on any of the upmarket models.

At some point someone is going to claim digital radio is a success, but only because it comes with digital TV – and when did you last listen to radio on your TV?



Frankly I don’t think anyone is interested. Did anyone do any market research before they blew millions on this.

I don’t know enough about radio to make this potty idea number 18 but it is beginning to look like a disaster waiting to happen, not the greatest thing since sliced bread.



Incidentally who came up with this sliced bread thing? Sliced bread is tasteless pap, it should be the greatest disaster since sliced bread.