All entries for March 2007

Who isn't proud of 'our boys'

Writing about web page http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1agtAW3m54

I'm glad to see that our taxes are going into something useful.

*warning - video contains offensive language and an offensive situation NSFW*

It's thrilling to know that the troops are clever enough to film their escapades. Idiots. 

: 29 Mar 2007 12:48 |  Tags: Abuse America British Disgusting Exploitation Iraq Poitics Policy Rant Soldiers Video |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Ruth Badger – Still Thick

I used to be an avid follower of the US Apprentice back in its first and second seasons. It used to be reasonably high-brow for its market (ie reality TV show) and it was often genuinely interesting... it has since descended into an epic crapfest. While the show still pays homage to the idea of a business competition, the producers and apparently Trump himself, seem to believe that, in order to boost the ratings, the show should cynically be a weekly, extended advert, with ten minutes spent on the task, ten minutes on backbiting, and then the next half an hour on the "exciting" boardroom.

Yes, I do still watch it. I don't really know why and after each episode this season I feel like punching myself for sitting through it. But what has annoyed me and still annoys me most about the American Apprentice? The ridiculously overused catchprases.

I haven't conducted any scientific surveys but I hear this, without fail, every single episode:

1) I (will/have/am) step(ping/ped) up to the plate.

2) I (will/have/am) give(/ing/gave) 110%

There are others... but I'm sure any of you who've watched  the US Apprentice will agree that these two are the most annoying.

So it annoys me when I flick on the UK Apprentice which, either through virtue or inability, has somehow managed to keep away from being a complete advert for Trump/Whoever's paid the most this week, and I see them saying exactly the same things...

ARGH ARGH ARGH ARGH ARGH ARGH

Anyhow, what does this have to do with Ruth Badger (last season's runner-up)? Well in tonight's after-show discussion, Ruth decided to make an appearance and bring her winning (wait... she lost?) advice to the "loser" of tonight's show...

Anyone remember the best bit of last season? Mani vs Ruth in the boardroom?

Mani: ( Ruth's Authoritarian )

Ruth:  "What's that supposed to mean?"

Mani: “Look it up in a dictionary! I don’t have time to explain it to you!”

Beautiful. For those of you who had given Ruth the benefit of the doubt last season, she responded to the first cliche ("I stepped up to the plate")... with "You may have stepped up to the plate, but you didn't eat your dinner"...

What the hell? Now either she thought she was being clever, but in reality being retarded, or she is actually genuinely clever and she is playing around with etymology for too sophisticated for the audience to properly understand.

I'm going with what the t-shirt says. 

: 28 Mar 2007 23:57 |  Tags: Apprentice Apprentice Uk Britain Random Thoughts Rant Ruth Badger Season 3 Sir Alan Television Uk |  Comments (2) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Special Superdrug Slim–plan

You know it's gotta be the staff having a laugh (Superdrug, Oxford St.):

: 26 Mar 2007 00:20 |  Tags: Britain Choc Fat Idiot Oxford Street Random Retarded Slimming Superdrug Thin |  Comments (2) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

E–bay and Comic Relief

Writing about web page http://www.ebay.co.uk

I'm all for Comic Relief working with companies for charity money and when it comes to late night TV I don't mind the late-night humour. But when it comes to E-bay I think this is a little bit over the top:

<---- Now forgive me if I'm wrong, but isn't that a hell of an insinuation? And it's on e-bay frontpage.... imagine you're 8 years old and you load up the argos.co.uk webpage to be greeted "SANTA'S A CRACK WHORE" and a picture of Santa doing naughty things for money... Terrible. Terrible

Naughty e-bay! Naughty Comic Relief! I wander if Hasbro or whoever the hell produces the near-dead barbie range feels about the negative insinuations concerning their product on a family page? Perhaps this is the introduction to their new line: Cheap-Holiday-Whore Barbie?  

: 09 Mar 2007 13:07 |  Tags: Auction Charity Computer E-Bay Electronic Naughty Online Poor Taste Sick |  Comments (1) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Poor Taste?

How many Russian journalists does it take to change a light bulb?

Nobody knows... Lightbulbs last longer than Journalists in Russia.  

: 07 Mar 2007 23:33 |  Tags: Joke Journalist Lightbulb Russia |  Comments (11) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

How much data did we produce last year?

Writing about web page http://www.cbc.ca/cp/Oddities/070305/K030517AU.html

161 Exobytes apparently.  

Time to learn your exabytes: Tech researchers calculate wide world of data

A new study that estimates how much digital information the world is generating (hint: a lot) finds that for the first time, there's not enough storage space to hold it all.

... 

The researchers also assumed that on average, each digital file gets replicated three times.

Add it all up and IDC determined that the world generated 161 billion gigabytes - 161 exabytes - of digital information last year.

Oh, the equivalents! That's like 12 stacks of books that each reach from the Earth to the sun. Or you might think of it as three million times the information in all the books ever written, according to IDC. You'd need more than two billion of the most capacious iPods on the market to get 161 exabytes.

The previous best estimate came from researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, who totalled the globe's information production at five exabytes in 2003.

But that report followed a different trail. It included non-electronic information, such as analog radio broadcasts or printed office memos, and tallied how much space that would consume if digitized. And it counted original data only, not all the times things got copied.

In comparison, the IDC numbers were made much higher by including content as it was created and as it was reproduced - for example, as a digital TV file was made and every time it landed on a screen. If IDC tracked original data only, its result would have been 40 exabytes.

Still, even the 2003 figure of five exabytes is enormous - it was said at the time to be 37,000 Libraries of Congress - so why does it matter how much more enormous the number is now?

For one thing, said IDC analyst John Gantz, it's important to understand the effects of the factors behind the information explosion - such as the profusion of surveillance cameras and regulatory rules for corporate data retention.

In fact, the supply of data technically outstrips the supply of places to put it.

IDC estimates that the world had 185 exabytes of storage available last year and will have 601 exabytes in 2010.B ut the amount of stuff generated is expected to jump from 161 exabytes last year to 988 exabytes (closing in on one zettabyte) in 2010.

"If you had a run on the bank, you'd be in trouble," Gantz said. "If everybody stored every digital bit, there wouldn't be enough room."

...

Chuck Hollis, vice-president of technology alliances at EMC Corp., the data-management company that sponsored the IDC research and the earlier Berkeley studies, said the new report made him wonder whether enough is being done to save the digital data for posterity.

"Someone has to make a decision about what to store and what not," Hollis said. "How do we preserve our heritage? Who's responsible for keeping all of this stuff around so our kids can look at it, so historians can look at it? It's not clear."

I've highlighted what I believe are the interesting points in bold and excised some of the article.

Exciting eh? Anyone remember the days when it'd take an hour to download a song and you'd have a tough time playing Ultima Online unless you had one of those near-mythical ISDN lines? Ah the wonders of progress!

: 06 Mar 2007 20:07 |  Tags: Computer Data Electronic Estimate Technology |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem