So Sudanese protesters are calling for British teacher Gillian Gibbons to be shot after children in her class named a teddy bear Muhammad.
A tad extreme?
Tell you what, as the ‘offence’ was one of insulting religion, I think they should protest for the execution of Muhammad Ali and for that matter, anyone else called Muhammad.
And whilst they’re at it, it’s probably best for equality to call for the execution of anyone – mainly of Latin American origins, probably – called Jesus…
One of the few interesting things things days about yuku - apart from how quickly their ideas have been overtaken by others who’ve actually released message boards, profile pages and image hosting that actually works and is reliable - is one of the threads in their support [sic] forum about problems with the chatrooms that they claim to be one of their “improved features” over ezboard.
Go and have a look at the thread, which presently includes over 100 replies.
Sheesh! That’s been running for almost three months and it’s clear that the chatrooms are up and down more often than a whore’s drawers and that when what appears to be their only tech guy “Ransom” says it’s up, that’s not what the actual users experience.
Why on earth do the poor people over there stay when there are so many better alternatives out there?
So Her Majesty’s Revenue & Customs have confirmed that our details were amongst those they managed to lose.
Their Acting Chairman, Dave Hartnett, wrote us “a personal apology”. Well, OK, he didn’t actually sign it. And he didn’t even bother stamping a signature on it. {sigh}
So what did it actually say?
“The copy of the data is likely to still be on Government property. The police are now conducting a search. There is no evidence that it is in the possession of anyone else.”
Well considering it was supposed to have gone from an office in Newcastle to an office somewhere else, they should have been able to find them by now, surely, if they are likely to still be on Governemet property? And of course there’s no evidence that it isn’t in the possession of anyone else, is there?
So what data is it they’ve managed to shove on a CD and lose? Nothing important, I expect.
“This data includes your and your children’s names and dates of birth, your address, your National Insurance number and, where relevant, the details of the bank or building society account…”
So … most of the necessary details for identity fraud.
Ah well, we can take comfort from his assuances that:
“all efforts are being made to ensure that such a loss can never happen again.”
What? Like maybe sending two CDs’ worth of data by e-mail rather than putting it onto CDs and shoving it in the post? And as I pointed out in my earlier post on this subject, it’s not the first time these idiots have messed up.
Am I confident in their abilities? Am I fuck! Same bunch of civil servants with cast-iron, index-linked pensions and no responsibility…
I co-admin. a few message boards and one of our pet hates is wankers joining up just to post lists of ‘phones they probably don’t have in the first place in order to make a buck or two off the unwary. There may be some otherwise legitimate companies in amongst the spammers, but I doubt it.
So we tend to delete all the ‘useful’ information and just leave the e-mail addresses they helpfully include so that other spammers can offer them viagra, tickets for rugby matches and those missing millions from Nigeria. Here’s hoping anyway.
I thought I’d start posting their e-mail addresses on here (and hence on the sites carrying the syndicated RSS feeds) so that other can avail themselves of their bargain wares … or something.
Here’s the latest: iphones@europemail.com iphone@ommail.com iphonss@yahoo.com
An earlier start than usual as I was heading off to the NEC at Birmingham for the bike show on Trade Day.
I picked up a friend just after 8.15am and was at the NEC at around 10.30am. Wandered around the other halls until 12.00pm when Hall 1 opened. This was where the big manufacturers were exhibiting as well as where TWO Magazine had their corner plot. TWO bought visordown.com earlier this year and they were running a competition involving their “Wonderwall”: a collage of photos of VD members as submitted by us. If you spotted your photo on the Wonderwall, you would be entered into a draw to win something, in this case a Shark Helmet.
As Hall 1 only opened at 12.00pm and the competition draw took place at 2.00pm (geddit?), there weren’t many entries today … two, as it turned out. And I won! Now all I need to do is ring Nevis Marketing and claim my prize.
Anyway, I took some photos:
Or, for the younger readers, ‘I Wish I Was French’.
Why? Is it the ability to not give a damn and shrug your shoulders? No, it’s because they are a bunch of bolshy buggers who, rather than sit and complain or – as in my case – blog about something, get up and demonstrate about things instead.
So when their Government introduce reforms that will affect their lives and livelihood, the French bring the country to its knees whilst we tut-tut and comment on the BBC News web site. Funny how student loans brought merely a murmur here but added to the strikes and marches there.
What a shower! They should be sacked en masse as clearly the incompetence runs through the lot of them (with their protected jobs and pensions).
In September, one of these window-lickers had a laptop stolen from the boot of a car which had been left overnight.
Then last month, two CDs full of sensitive data were lost in transit between Newcastle and Edinburgh.
And now, these complete and utter incompetents have managed to lose the details of 25,000,000 child benefit recipients.
“Revenue and Customs says it does not think the records - names, addresses, date of birth, national insurance numbers and bank accounts - have fallen into the wrong hands.”
Thank goodness for that: I can rest now. Erm. Er. How do they know this? And given their evident monumental stupidity, why should any of us treat anything they say with anything other than complete contempt?
The Chairman of HMR&C has resigned, saying:
“But I am extremely proud of what all of you in the organisation have achieved during my time as deputy chairman and chairman.”
Good for him! He can indeed be proud of their fantastic achievements in being unable to do anything as simple as transport a CD or two around or keep a laptop safe…
Well, nearly!
On 7 March 2006. ezboard, Inc. CEO, “Silent Rob” Labatt used his WordPress blog to announce Yuku (having launched it in September 2005…), stating amongst other promises that he and his little band never kept that:
“Later you can click a button and your board will automatically move to Yuku - archives, threads, members, banned users and all!”
Well it appears that “later” is almost upon us: there’s a global ezboard announcement going around that mentions “Next generation of ezboard: Yuku” with hyperlinked text saying “Upgrade your community now!” The hyperlink is to this page: http://www.yuku.com/ezboard/import/
Now the problems start to appear: you have to be logged-in to Yuku to view that page which means that for anyone who’s only been on ezboard, they can’t exactly have a one-click button to have their board and indeed their ezboard account migrated as they need to set up a Yuku account first … doh!
The second problem is that ezboard were saying that they were reserving ezboard account names on Yuku so if you are JosephTBloggs on ezboard, you shouldn’t be able to regsiter an account under that name on Yuku.
So, you go ahead and register, say JosephTBloggsTest on Yuku and then you go back to that page. It says:
Welcome to Yuku!
Importing your Ezboard Community is one click away. The process generaly takes up to 24 hours depending on the size of your message board. We will contact you by email when your board is imported into Yuku.
By clicking “I Accept” you have agreed to the terms.
Having problems? Get help now!
And then there’s a button labelled “I ACCEPT”. So still not quite a one-click install as you have to manually enter the user-unfriendly URL of your ezboard and then click a button and wait.
So there’s the next problem: someone at ezboard is going to have to check that the person who’s filled in this form is the same person who is the “ezOp” or board owner on ezboard and hence has the authority to do so: a tad tricky given that the Yuku username and the ezboard username probably won’t match and neither might the e-mail address.
The next problem is that they don’t actually make it plain that Yuku is still in beta and hence it isn’t working properly still.
And then there’s the big problem for all their Gold Communities: how much will Yuku cost? It’s a hell of a leap of faith to say that you’re going to go through the pain of migration from ezboard to Yuku - apparently with your members’ contributions to the community chest intact - without knowing what the cost will be for a gold Yuku community when they start rolling out the banner ads. on the free Yuku boards.
And finally, the Yuku developers acknowledge that your new Yuku board won’t necessarily look like your old ezboard one, so hard luck about losing all that work!
Still, once this is all done - and I doubt that the 24 hour target will be met, somehow, ezboard will have yet more claimed members - including those extra Yuku accounts that people will need to start the migration off, remember and whilst they’re looking at the benefits to ezboard, Inc. of the migrations, I’m sure they’ll be thinking that the ezboard to Yuku migrants won’t want to go through all the pain of moving again despite finding that life at Yuku may not be what it’s cracked up to be.
A win-win situation for ezboard, Inc. though. Well … apart, that is from the lack of new income from Gold ezboard Communities and ezSupporter subscriptions. Best hurry up and roll out the ads, Bob.
I used to use Snap Shots on this and my other blogs and on one of my main websites as a way of enhancing “the user interface” for visitors (lol).
Understandably, they need to support the service and they’ve chosen to introduce advertising within the pop-up preview windows. Despite softening the introduction of the ads. by sharing revenue with the sites with what they call Snap Shares, I’ve removed the system from my sites.
Why? Well on my blogs, I already display adverts using Google AdSense (click on the button in the sidebar to find out more and join up) and the revenue they generate is shared between Google and me. Why would I want to display more Google AdSense adverts and yet get a smaller share of the revenue?
The way Snap have approached this is by claiming that the ads. will effectively be macro-targetted and hence more appropriate to the link being displayed and that may well be true, but for the end user, they’ll simply be seeing far more adverts than they did previously.
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