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How to contradict yourself in two easy steps
How to contradict yourself in two easy steps: Step 1. Dare Obasajno (a PM at Microsoft) argues that anyone comparing Adobe's Apollo and Microsoft's Silverlight by mentioning them in "the same sentence as if they are similar products" is proof that [ ...
2 in 3 government IT projects fail. Solution? Start a government IT project.
You might have noticed I have little confidence in the ability of governments to successfully execute IT projects. My skepticism is well founded I think, and the latest numbers provided by the UK government itself give me no reason the think otherwise...
Posted: May 20 2007, 02:38 PM by alexbarnett | with 1 comment(s)
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A frame nested in a frame nested in a frame nested in a web page
Nice... "A frame nested in a frame nested in a frame nested in a web page. SEVEN SCROLLBARS! Someone redesign this, for god’s sake." Sadly, this is referring to an MSDN page.
Posted: May 12 2007, 09:21 AM by alexbarnett | with no comments
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ID Cards - Get Less For More
When the UK ID Card scheme was first announced in 2002 the cost was estimated at between £1.3 billion and £3.1 billion over a period of 13 years . The Home Office's most recent estimate has revised it upwards, again, to be £5.31 billion over a period...
Posted: May 12 2007, 08:02 AM by alexbarnett | with 1 comment(s)
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DRM: If no one likes it, then give it a new name!
Brilliant ! "Since repeating the claim that DRM enables things for consumers isn't making it true , an HBO has a new idea: scrap the term DRM in favor of DCE . DCE, of course, standing for Digital Consumer Enablement. He says he doesn't want to use the...
Posted: May 11 2007, 09:04 AM by alexbarnett | with 2 comment(s)
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Step one: Blame the user. Step two: See step one.
Last week Chris shared his not-so-great customer experience with Gateway. My own two recent palavers with Cingular and Utah's DMV (you can have more than one palaver can't you?), have also reminded me of abysmal bureaucracy.
Posted: May 06 2007, 10:22 PM by alexbarnett | with no comments
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Is Anil crackers?
Is Anil crackers ? "More people know how to crack the encryption on HD-DVD disks than own HD-DVD players." Given last week's broohaha , I think this is probably true.
Posted: May 06 2007, 09:35 PM by alexbarnett | with no comments
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Are you doing OK in your pants?
Weird spam via email today: "Are you doing OK in your pants?"
Posted: Mar 16 2007, 02:22 PM by alexbarnett | with no comments
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How OpenDNS solved my really annoying DNS problem
About 3 weeks ago I started getting the "Page Cannot be Displayed" error message on my machine when using my home network. It would happen occasionally at first, maybe 1 in 20 sites. When the error occurred, I'd hit refresh - that would...
Posted: Mar 06 2007, 10:58 PM by alexbarnett | with 2 comment(s)
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The Top 10 Databases in the World (not including the ones we missed)
Via Josh Porter 's del.icio.us links , I saw this post on Business Intelligence Lowdown, claiming to 'cover the top 10 largest databases in the world'. Great idea, shame about the execution, as just reading from the comments shows they've...
Posted: Feb 21 2007, 09:13 AM by alexbarnett | with no comments
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Chase.com - is this your idea of transparent marketing?
This ad popped up on the Chase.com site this morning. Overlayed is what looks like internal codes from their customer segmention model. Either this is shown in error, or, Chase is taking the notion of transparent marketing a little too literally.
I'm confused.
I've not heard someone say "I'm confused" for a while now. I find it to be a confrontational phrase and I dislike it. I intepret it as someone trying to make a point along the lines of "I'm smarter than you, and what you just...
Posted: Feb 09 2007, 08:20 AM by alexbarnett | with 5 comment(s)
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The Joker gets an ID Card
Ever since I heard of the UK government's plans for an ID card system, I've felt for a number of reasons that it wouldn't work and that there would be 'unintended consequences', including making it easier for cybercriminals to commit...
Posted: Jan 25 2007, 07:05 PM by alexbarnett | with 2 comment(s)
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Starbucks everywhere
Frank has convinced me... Starbucks is everywhere . The other day I drove up to one of the drive-thu Starbucks, ordered my usual grande latte, paid for it, left a tip and drove off. About a mile later I turned around to actually get the coffee.
Posted: Jan 22 2007, 02:14 PM by alexbarnett | with 1 comment(s)
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DVD region encoding insanity
On my recent trip to London I got snagged by the 'intergrated' region encoding 'feature' on my laptop DVD drive. Let me explain: I bought 2 DVDs in the UK which the DVD drive barfed at. No error message, warning or anything, it just didn't...
Posted: Jan 17 2007, 06:28 PM by alexbarnett | with 14 comment(s)
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