There goes the 19th Century…

Posted on by May 23, 2008
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January: PC Pro talks about Microsoft being the 'partner' digitising the entire 19th Century stock of the British Library – "Microsoft and Google have both been digitising books from US libraries and adding them to their rival online services for some time, and the British Library opted to partner with the former. Choosing Microsoft as a partner for any archiving project brings not only a wealth of experience and financial clout, but also a degree of controversy…"

May: Microsoft abandons the entire 'Live Search Books' project (and 'Live Search Academic'). But hey, they will start to "offer users cash back on their purchases from our advertisers", i.e. split ad revenue. If you're in the US.

Bill Gates gives $100m to fight HIV, $421m to fight Linux

Posted on by May 12, 2008
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Found during a search for something else…

"We do hate to rain on a high-profile corporate love-fest, but we have to point out that in addition to the much trumpeted $100 million Billg has donated to India's fight against HIV, he's funding the Microsoft jihad against Linux to the far more impressive tune of $421 million. That means that Linux is more than four times worse than AIDS to Billg…"

More here.

He's smarter than you, he's got a science degree

Posted on by May 2, 2008
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I don't think I've spotted this on the UK bits of my friends list: the producers of Expelled, the bilge of a film about how 'intelligent design' is being cruelly treated by people with a brain, paid someone to do a video, Beware the Believers, dissing Richard Dawkins.

It looks like they went to the wrong person. The video is here, and so much of it is funny because it's true.

Jarndyce vs M&S moves on

Posted on by April 10, 2008
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I mentioned the long-standing dispute between the UK tax authorities and a retailer of teacakes back in 2005. At that point, it had been going on for over a decade and was heading off to the European Court of Justice.

They've just sided with M&S. Mind you, they've passed the final decision back to the UK courts.

All this is over about £100,000 from memory. Lawyers fees will be in the millions.

Amazon DVD rentals

Posted on by March 3, 2008
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I've been trying this out and, thanks to them giving me two weeks free rather than one month, crept over into the paying for it time.

Now, I started off on an 'unlimited' plan, in this case giving me one DVD 'out' at any one time, but with no limits on how many I have in a month. I switched to a cheaper 'four per month' plan on the 29th Feb because, in practice, that's how many I got: they'd send one, it arrived two days later, I watched it and sent it back same day (the joys of not having a day job), they'd acknowledge receipt a day or two later, say the next one would be sent "immediately" and then send it out the next day, typically after the usual last post time. Repeat. Throw in weekends, and you can work it out for yourself: one a week, basically.

But now I'm on a limited plan, for the first time ever the next one has been dispatched the same day as they got the previous one, and in the afternoon, not evening too. It may well arrive tomorrow.

I know I'm cynical, but doesn't that strike anyone else as a bit of a coincidence?

Penalty Fare update 2

Posted on by February 5, 2012
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Well, the appeal was posted, via what the Royal Mail now call 'Recorded Signed For™' in the first week of February. It still has not, according to their website's Track and Trace page, been delivered.

This is odd, because they're supposed to return such mail after a week of attempting delivery.

So a complaint has been made to London Travelwatch, following the discovery via a set of their minutes that the particular appeals service is actually based in Portsmouth!

An FOI request to the Department for Transport confirmed that Southeastern never bothered to apply to change their scheme when altering (i.e. reducing in the vast majority of cases) the opening hours of ticket offices and also taking away all Permit to Travel machines from numerous stations.

I reckon they should refund the money to everyone given a penalty fare from affected stations throughout most of 2007…

A look at the FOI requests published on the DfT site also shows someone thinks First Capital Connect have been naughty with their scheme.