* Posts by MrCheese

179 publicly visible posts • joined 27 Oct 2010

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Survey: Apprenticeships will fix IT skills gap

MrCheese
Holmes

Timing

While I myself broke into the world of IT with an apprenticeship (which, as a result of the indepentdent firm running it, I never completed) I'm not sure of how successful that plan would be now.

While I was working as a second line techie and indeed gaining invaluable work experience the pay was worse than jobseekers allowance (£80 pw)! Now back them we were booming and I did both my apprenticeship and a second office cleaning job but I might not have been so lucky had I tried now.

More financial support will be needed to make this viable with such a high cost of living.

Global warming much less serious than thought - new science

MrCheese
Stop

The cost they didn't mention

How much was the carbon cost of all that business is what I want to know?

Ofcom: ISPs can cripple the web as much as they please

MrCheese
Thumb Down

Get ready to pay.......again

Yet more screwing-to-the-wall of yet more punters because these greedy oiks oversubscribed the network in the boom times before they had a clue how people would use it. Throw in the music industry's complete non-response to digital and the subsequent piracy problem, on-line gaming and the insatiable lust for the Cloud and all of a sudden they're crying and wailing about how much pressure we're putting on them without so much as even being honest about hte likely bandwidth.

Traffic management will always happen on any network to boost performance but to do it to make up for the ISP's short fall is insulting

/rant

MrCheese
Holmes

Accountability Diffusion

The art of diverting, deflecting and dodging all blame, responsibility and accountability from oneself and one's actions can be only be master through a lifetime spent in high public office

Spillover from 400lb man squeezed fellow flier into galley

MrCheese
Meh

Train Seats

I'd imagine plane seats will, if they haven't already, go the same way as train seats, i.e. as wide as your torso with your arms and shoulders removed, one of the regional news programmes actually demonstrated it to a train operator who mumbled useless hyperbole and left!

If I find the link I'll re-post!

Inside the BBC's R&D Labs

MrCheese
Thumb Up

TARRIF

Should've kept the first name, I rather like that!

MrCheese
Thumb Up

Almost Happy

Save for the following:

"With the UK’s creaking broadband infrastructure, broadcast will still be doing the ‘heavy lifting’ of delivering content to many consumers for a long time to come, with the internet enhancing it through hybrid services.

One of those is RadioTAG, which can use the internet to deliver additional data alongside a broadcast"

Non sequitur as far I can tell, any further use of the "internet" will add load to the "UK’s creaking broadband infrastructure". Is there an element of semantics here I'm missing?

"By capturing all the subtitle information from the DVB streams – the last four years’ of broadcasts are included so far – it’s possible to search a huge amount of material to find any mentions of a subject, then view the relevant clip and, eventually, producers will be able to use the system to include it in their own programme"

Surely this guarantees the exact same clip will be used by all shows more often not less, especially when the sample size covers a period during which they know this to be a problem?

"Another project aims to help classify archive material based on the moods evoked by the music"

Again, you wouldn't be classifying the clip just the music, the person who puts the music to a clip is dictating the mood it is trying to confer upon the viewer/listener long before other interpretations can be made.

I'm sure I can probably be enlightened and like all research, primary investigations generally promote discovery rather than making discoveries. Nice to know there's some British boffinry still doing what they do best though, license money well spent!

It's ALIVE! Broken Russian Mars probe finally answers calls

MrCheese
Holmes

2XB

The merkins did launch that unmanned shuttle not long ago, anyone got still got eyes on it?

NHS minister's bombshell: I get emails from dead people

MrCheese
Thumb Up

Right on the money

While some are braying on about the "wot 'e said" argument not being a valid one (they are wrong, see: petitions), mass production lobby sites should only form part of your voice, I completely agree with using their template material and following it up with a personal statement of your own.

MrCheese
FAIL

Same reply to you

So now if 80 - 90 percent of the population feel exactly the same about a policy (think climate change, war in Iraq/A'stan etc.) we all have to articulate it slightly different to avoid being written off as drones do we?

Logic Fail

MrCheese
Facepalm

You have 41,911 new emails

Would you prefer that a lobby (or any other group) mass-mailing you all use a common subject line and template or would you rather read 41,911 unique emails? If you chose the latter option, how far would get before giving up, how much of your valuable time would it consume?

Chief rabbi: Steve Jobs' Apple lust spreads misery, despair

MrCheese
Boffin

Not entirely accurate

Jobs' and Apple have neither started nor brought about consumerism but the company is the epitome thereof.

Many people would agree that beyond the "superior" hardware quality and their "it-just-works" UX, the vast majority of customer demand for Apple products is borne out of marketing and PR, touting their products as "magical" and "revolutionary" and instilling among some of those customers a sense of superiority over rival products.

Apple have managed to make people evangelise their brand, they've done very obviously and very successfully and that's why this chap has singled out Apple as the best example but consumerism has been around for years and attributing it to one company isn't all that fair.

Does tech suffer blurred vision on 3D future?

MrCheese
Meh

Eggs and baskets

3D isn't dead but I don't think it's going to see mainstream uptake in TV or cinema; watching those is something one does to relax and it's hard to relax when your wearing 3D glasses, more so when it's used as a substitute for good film-making.

Hollywood have bet the farm and may have lost because they tried to use 3D to supplant the gap in substance resulting from the writer's strike, they're paying them more but they're working less (8 episode seasons anyone?) and I've been pretty underwhelmed by the vast majority of films and TV lately, it's all just bland, lowest common denominator stuff.

Gaming is the future home of 3D, another step toward the total immersion games developers strive to achieve already with high-end casts and budgets. I've yet to upgrade my rig to utilise the 3D features already cropping up in big titles but I'd bet my farm on that.

Think your CV is crap? Your interview skills are worse

MrCheese
Thumb Up

Good article

Having very recently secured a new job, good interview technique is fresh in my mind, I especially agree with the comments about being honest about your limitations if you don't have all the answers.

In my interview I was given a few technical scenarios to troubleshoot and if possible, resolve. I though I'd performed poorly as I struggled with basic details on the first (see the pushing out trivia comment) and then struggled with a simple lack of knowledge on another (which I admitted to).

I used this apparent catastrophe to emphasise that I was seeking a role in which I could develop the skills I currently lacked, something I did must've worked as they made me an offer a few days later.

Drama as Thai frogmen struggle to save world PC market

MrCheese
Facepalm

Commentard Fail

OK I'll concede that comment is a) on the wrong site and vented in the wrong forum and b) restoration of the plant is one of the best ways to recover the situation and livelihoods of the flood victims.

As for a storage quandary, I can't see a lot to ponder, storage will cost more, simple supply and demand and the consensus of opinion that we can't reduce our current consumption boils the situation back down to a choice between continuing to buy mechanical disks or migrating to solid-state as the cost difference shrinks.

Then again I don't buy a huge amount of storage, it'd be interesting to hear from someone who does and what this means to them.

MrCheese
Thumb Down

WTF?!?!

Frogmen, recovering MACHINERY!! Is our insatiable capitalist, consumerist lust for disks so heroin-addict-strong that we're rescuing factories and not people, are our demands for unsustainable, exponential growth and progress so greed-ridden and amoral than we can't just buy less, are we going to ignore this massive fallacy of capitalism and out-sourcing? I remember when this happened with RAM prices and it seems we haven't taught the old money-grubbing dogs any new tricks, nor any respect, manners or decency.

I'd rather defer my disk purchase while there are people dying out there, but hey, that probably just makes me flame bait right?

Computers are so middle class – Mark E Smith

MrCheese
Thumb Up

Hear, hear!

A piece of meaningless twaddle written by self serving dolts so high on their own intellect they didn't seem to notice how much drivel they were spouting.

Both Mark Smith & MLF have assumed that if you're not on internet you're either too good for it or not good enough rather than engaging some grey matter and asking why a third of us couldn't care less about the internet,

Just a deliciously ironic aside, it's opinionated egotists like that passing off backwards stereotypes and prejudices as news which are my biggest gripe with using the web!

MrCheese
Mushroom

Stubborn Mules

You know the people she's calling dog-on-a-string types include your grand-parents right? Either of your parents tech-illiterate? Well they're stubborn mules of no value to society too, they live on "dirty council estates" and "prefer shouting across the street than tweeting" right?

It's not a crime or an inferiority to not be interested in computers, it's just a generational gap, my folks and yours have lived most of lives without computers and very few of them actually NEED to learn how to use one, they're not essential to them, just a luxury, a perk.

It's people like you I worry about, narrow minded to the point you can't imagine a world without Facebook or Twitter, where you have to *gasp* actually go and *see* people you want to talk to, you sir are a cyborg, you'd die without your daily dose of tinterwebs, right? Personally I think I'd rather be a Luddite!

MrCheese
Mushroom

Mark Who? Mark What?

That's a bold tirade coming from someone with an opening comment like "I can never understand computers. It's a very middle-class thing". If you don't understand computers perhaps you should be more tolerant of those who do, of those who know their capacity and who have at least some idea of what technology has done and can do for us.

Alternatively, take all of that modern studio equipment you used for the last album, bin it and try recording the next one without it and let us mere plebs know you get on? No? You don't want to all of a sudden, thought not! Ultimately you've got to laugh at morons like this; so desperate to prove they're better than everyone else that their behaviour ends up falling far short of "people who prefer shouting across the street to tweeting"

As for Lane-Fox, how many failed initiatives does she have to champion before she realises the people she's calling the dog-on-a-string type think about as much of her opinions as they do of their dog's mess. She abjectly fails to see the advantages of real interaction versus virtual and if you don't know why one is better than the other and one results in the erosion of human interaction and social skills you probably don't have too much of either yourself

Facebook boss-lady is up the pole on the glass ceiling

MrCheese
Mushroom

Idiot

She may be a COO, but she is a COO of Facebook which is already eroding society's ability to communicate and interact without the aid of Like buttons and labeling people.

That work first attitude is utter garbage and anyone living by that mantra will almost certainly find themselves somewhat unfulfilled at some point in their lives even if you are a Bill Gates or a Michael Dell; the pride of accomplishment from building your own business and the rewarding expanse of your subsequent kingdom may be just reward but who do you go home to, will you have regrets, when did you last have fun?

For me, like most, work is a necessary evil required to raise money to enjoy life when I'm not working; I know that I won't get as high up the ladder as I could, but life's hard enough without piling on unnecessary stress and pressure and me, I'd rather enjoy life while I've got the youth to do so.

US anti-hacking law turns computer users into criminals

MrCheese
Unhappy

Ain't it funny?

Ain't it funny how the factory doors close

Round the time that the school doors close

Round the time that the doors of the jail cells

Open up to greet you like the reaper

iOS upgrade swells iPhone battery-suckage grief

MrCheese
Facepalm

Don't make me laugh

"...a conspiracy by a multibillion dollar corporation to steal you money with substandard products by hypnotizing it's fans into religious frenzies!"

Fanboi: Fan of a products, blinded to to any all faults and critiques thereof

Apple: Mulitbillion dollar company, marketing strategy based upon false claims of superiority and inclusion, ethereal and narcissistic dialogue and music used in advertising

I'd say that Apple's strategy is built upon making the customer evangelise them rather than convincing them of the quality of the product, to make the customer feel they are part of a superior clique to the rest of us...I'd also say it worked on you

MrCheese
Boffin

No difference

Having a Galaxy S2 (mine) AND an iPhone 4 (work) I can tell you there's bugger all difference in UX and from a techie's perspective the iPhone rapidly becomes impossibly frustrating to use since Apple decreed their tiny little screen is all you need for smartphone and about every five minutes thereafter when find a feature doesn't in the best way possible because the control freaks have thrown a roadblock in the way.

MrCheese
Thumb Down

Fanbois

Apple fanbois know Apple tactics best, right? ;-)

MrCheese
FAIL

Don't think it missed it? Depends what "it" is

If "it" is their "superior" battery life or "exemplary" hardware quality then Apple have indeed, missed it.

If you believe the marketing bilge then the massive price tag on Apple devices buys you a higher calibre of hardware, which shoddy battery components do not make.

MrCheese

Really?

You sure?

MrCheese
Facepalm

Well of course not

"my brand new (I got it on release day, from Sprint, took 45 minutes)"

"checked weather (there's a chance that the temperature may fall below 18°C here in sunny South Florida tonight)"

With comments like those your obviously too busy showing off to notice practical shortcomings like that

Why your tech CV sucks

MrCheese
Boffin

As an earlier poster has already said...

I'm not sure which one as this is along thread (so make yourself knowing as I'm quoting you!) but a CV shouldn't be a one page summary, that's a résumé. a CV is a long-form document details the whole "course of one's life".

Recruitment FAIL for not knowing what to ask for and then complaining about it

MrCheese
FAIL

CV FAIL

Didn't even clear the first paragraph: "Your CV is not a "This is Your Life" red book"

Google Curriculum Vitae and post the definition as a reply to your article for all to see please

MrCheese
FAIL

More fool them

The whole system you're defending is broken and apparently full of self-important idiots too stubborn to change; it's such a poor method of extracting diamonds from the rough, so much so you'll only ever find fool's gold.

In fact it's almost the epitome of IT industry management; too many managers who lack the real skill they're recruiting for ignoring the advice of the experts in favour of fluff, marketing snake-oil and too much form over too little function.

And those of us who want to be judged on merit are just f**ked.

As the late Mr Jobs, and I suspect most recruiters would say, Not that big of a deal!

MrCheese
FAIL

Advice to Employers

Don't use recruiters; their broad brush, sloppy and spam-like approach to recruiting means you'll only get average talent, but they'll be ace at writing CVs and emails and that's all a developer or sysadmin really needs right?

MrCheese
Boffin

Something for Nothing eh?

This "you do all the work because I have nothing invested in you" seems a bit self-defeatist; surely you can't be getting the best talent nor justifying the pay check you command if you're leaving it down to everyone to essentially guess what you're looking for and market it to you?

MrCheese
Mushroom

Just goes to show

This article and others before harking on about what the middlemen want from your "CV" are only of limited use at best as some halfwit recruiter with a one-size-fits-all approach will invariably do something out of your control that may impede if not entirely jeapordise your chances because "we've got too many CVs to read".

I truly wish the recruiters and headhunters of this world would just grow up; would you accept tech support not fixing your PC because he's got too many calls to do and your wasn't interesting enough?

No, thought not.

MrCheese
Boffin

CV Length

I don't support the short CV idea, I have conform to it but it's recruitment laziness being foisted upon us because we're the one's after the job where in actual fact the team on the paper sift just can't be bothered, my CV maxes two pages and it still doesn't have everything of relevance on it which I'd imagine will cost me a job or two.

But it appears that no matter how relevant the information on the CV a hirer doesn't want to (or can't be bothered to) look for anything meaningful just some "hire me" marketing fluff and then they wonder why they don't get the best talent.

The result of any job, including hiring are directly proportional to the effort you put in, even if you think you shouldn't have to.

MrCheese
FAIL

For That Matter

A recruiter asking for a CV when they mean résumé is a breach of one of the golden rule of writing either: Don't include terms or acronyms you don't understand yourself, one of the first tips I was given about my CV was to look up the meaning of Curriculum Vitae.

Recruitment FAIL

Murdoch blames other NI execs for phone-hacking scandal

MrCheese
Unhappy

Narcissist

Only the truly narcissistic can lie like that

Is Apple nobbling iPhones to avoid more patent misery?

MrCheese
Facepalm

Sounds more like Linux every day

We're not allow to bundle this but do visit our forum for instructions ;)

Common brain parasite 'can affect host's actions'

MrCheese
FAIL

Just how do you police that??

You know cats have their own lives right? About the only way to control where they go to the toilet is to lock them in the house, and besides, cats don't tend to dump all over the pavements do they?

If you think you can control where a cat goes to the loo, give it a try and get someone to film you, the footage should get you the £250 from You've Been Framed

Compact Disc death foretold for 2012

MrCheese
FAIL

HMV?!?!

"HMV, for one, has said its future lies in selling hardware and music merchadise as packaged media - CDs, books, DVDs and games - is slowly replaced by downloads."

HMV perfectly demonstrates WHY we're all going download only (and why piracy exists for that matter); their astronomical mark-ups on everything are a frankly insulting extortion of their de-facto market dominance.

HMV are one of the few high street music chains who deserve to go down, if they set fairer prices they might just see a bit more business but try telling that to a capitalist these days...

As iPhone 4S battery suckage spreads, fixes appear

MrCheese
Mushroom

I can't believe...

...How much faster the S2 is compared to a 2+ WEEK old phone

MrCheese
FAIL

Yeah right

Worst case scenario my Galaxy S2 gives me a day and a half, usually more like 2 and a half, far better than any iPhone I've seen to date

Last mystery of first recorded supernova laid to rest

MrCheese
FAIL

@Loyal Commenter

Ask the most prominent scientists about the origins of the big bang and then tell me believing in a God is any different.

While science explains the world around us it does not, nor ever has managed to disprove the origins of that which science explains, believers of science are themselves religious, with no methods to test big bang theories and prove or disprove the source of the universe your beliefs are no more valid than a Christian, or any other religious believer for that matter.

Yours and many others mockery of religion is unscientific at best and plain pathetic and hypocritical at worst, evolution is still only a theory, creationism less so, but until the indisputable evidence is in one way or the other the pro-science mob have to accept their belief in science is no different from the belief that bearded super-being made all this.

/rant

IANAC

Virgin Media broadband in two-day wobble

MrCheese
Black Helicopters

Longer than a couple of days

I've had this kind of performance for the last week or so and I'm in Bracknell on the M4 corridor and as such, pretty well connected.

I simply assumed it was because we'd told them we're cancelling in a month!

Yes, there's a Tech Bubble. But that's OK

MrCheese

Facehate

You make less sense still with that attitude; bad mouthing something solely based upon your prejudice thereof. Whether you or anyone else on this site bashing Facebook think it's of any use is irrelevant, it's making a metric fuck-ton of money off the people who do use it which in turn. makes it successful, a lot more successful one suspects, than most people on here assuming it will fail simply because they don't like it.

If you've "have absobloodylutely no idea what it's for....." then perhaps you're not qualified to sound off about it

How gizmo maker's hack outflanked copyright trolls

MrCheese

Just because you can...

...Doesn't mean you should

Microsoft bans all plugins from touchable IE10

MrCheese
Boffin

The important bit in that quote you're using is "....applications that require LEGACY ActiveX controls will continue to run in the desktop browser" (my emphasis)

From that remark alone MS seem to have decreed all ActiveX controls to be legacy, old, obsolete, not long for this world etc etc.

If the Metro-style browser is at all popular you can guarantee that'll be the new format for future IE's both mobile and full-fat

Patent wars: Apple attacks Samsung in Japan

MrCheese
FAIL

Running scared

To anyone who has seen Android and iOS homescreens and the different dimensions, aspect ratio and shaped home button will know Crapple don't have a leg to stand on, they're running scared now the iPhone beaters are coming.

The GS2 is entirely superior to the iPhone 4 in every way, it make the iPhone feel like a decades old housebrick and one think they know this

Facebook deletes hacked Pages, destroying years of work

MrCheese
FAIL

Muppets

Free or not Facebook is NOT a business tool and anyone using it as such should know what to expect form these monkeys, Facebook handle everything in the same way; make a change, don't tell anyone, disrupt many users services, release PR waffle, panic and make mitigating changes.

The PR and marketing wonks who've decided to jump on the Facebook bandwagon without so much as considering things like this will only encounter them more and more frequently

BBC explains 'All your Twitter pics are belong to us' gaffe

MrCheese
FAIL

@ Tom 15

I'd be minded to agree with your somewhat specious logic but you've completely failed to realise that our license fee hasn't gone anywhere but up in recent years so the lowering cost agrument is complete tosh.

The quality of the Beeb's output has plummeted in recent years, their website is a grammatical nightmare, their coverage reduced to pilfering material from social networking sites rather than any salient attempt at decent journalism and now they're flouting the very copyright law they'd hang YOU by if you started infringing upon them.

Examples like theirs go some way to explain some of the reasons for the recent rioting i.e. if the BBC, NoTW etc can wrecklessly break the law, then why can't the rest of us?

MrCheese
Joke

BBC vs RIAA MPAA et al

By their own logic home taping is no longer killing the music industry but liberating arts from the greedy claws of evil corporations!

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