Archive for August, 2008

Fraud halts US refugee scheme

August 21, 2008 6:50 am

BBC NEWS | ‘Fraud’ halts US refugee scheme

The United States has suspended a programme aimed at reuniting refugees in Africa with relatives in the US because of widespread fraud.

The US state department said DNA tests showed the majority of those applying had no family relationships in the US.

Thousands of Africans have been allowed to settle in the US under its P3 family reunification programme.

The scheme offers close family members the chance to join loved ones who have already made America their home.

But DNA tests on applicants in seven African countries showed that only around 20% of those trying to enter the US actually had a family relationship.

Well duh! African fraud?! Whoever heard of such a thing. Imagine that.

Best spam ever!

6:40 am

This just arrived (4 times)

Hello!!! My name - Margarita. To me 28. I saw your structure, you liked I, And I have decided to write to you! My girlfriend Has found to itself the person in the Internet, now it is happy it. They always nearby with each other. It so is remarkable in my opinion. I believe, that I can construct relations, and I have written to you. I wish to write to you a little about me directly! I very sincere, beautiful, and fair! I very much wish to Find love, and to construct a happy family in the future. I very much love children, and to me dreams Happy family with my favourite person! I work as the croupier in a casino. I very much wish to correspond to you as you have very much involved me. If you Interested in me, please write to me on my e-mail: Maslenica@gmail.com I will be very glad, if you write to me! I will wait with a deposit Hope of your letter. I very much want it, I saw your letter. It There will be a small happiness for me! If you write to me, I can send I to you the photo! I very much hope to see your answer wash the friend! Your friend Margarita!

But you know, the best part is, she has another email address - mrgrtlksv777@gmail.com, and has lots of friends called Alano and Conway and Spencer and Logan all of who like to send her details out.

She must be really keen on me - and her English is better than most chavs. And with her small happiness and my answer washing the friend, I can’t wait. Right after I reply to “Princess Abdul” from Lagos whose last letter said:

“I kept this information secrete within myself and to enable the whole plans and idea be profitable and successful during the time of execution”

.

Can you better this?

Why do I dislike Julie Burchill and Angela Eagle so much?!

August 20, 2008 5:17 pm

They’re just - horrible! That is all…

BBC iPlayer - how to download realplayer streams

August 15, 2008 9:06 pm

How to listen again without iPlayer - thanks to the a post on the iPlayer forums

You can listen again without using iPlayer by constructing the RealAudio link manually, and passing the link to the RealAudio player.

The RealAudio link is in the form: rtsp://rmv8.bbc.net.uk/radio4/xxxx_ddd.ra
where ‘xxxx’ is the time the program started
and ‘ddd’ is the day of the week (mon, tue, wed, thu, fri, sat, sun).

Here are a few examples:

Just a Minute - rtsp://rmv8.bbc.net.uk/radio4/1830_mon.ra
Armando Iannucci’s Charm Offensive: rtsp://rmv8.bbc.net.uk/radio4/1830_fri.ra
Afternoon play from 14:15 Friday rtsp://rmv8.bbc.net.uk/radio4/1415_fri.ra

To grab a stream and turn it into an mp3 podcast:
You need to download Net Transport from http://www.xi-soft.com/default.htm

Then paste as a new job in Net Transport, and, if you have broadband, you’ll have a 9Mb realaudio file on your desktop in about a minute.

You can, of course, play it standalone, but if you want to play it in the car, the mobile, the mp3 player, you need to get

http://www.free-codecs.com/download/Real_Alternative.htm
http://winamp.com/
http://out-lame.sourceforge.net/ - a winamp plugin.

Install Real Alternative, then Winamp, then configure Winamp input plugin > Nullsuft Directshow decoder and add ;RA to the end of the list of handlers.

Then test that Winamp plays back the .ra file, and if it does, just go to the output plugins and configure the lame output plugin, then play the file (it will play back silently when encoding of course - don’t forget to re-select the normal audio plugin afterwards!) and Beeb’s yer Aunty.

I’ve checked the terms and there’s nothing against doing this. The terms say:

“3.You may not copy, reproduce, republish, download, post, broadcast, transmit, make available to the public, or otherwise use bbc.co.uk content in any way EXCEPT for your own personal, non-commercial use.”

Which makes this all perfectly legit, for any knee-jerk reactionists out there!

Chiefs admit Brum skyline mix-up

August 14, 2008 11:42 am

Chiefs admit Brum skyline mix-up

“Birmingham City Council has admitted sending out leaflets which showed its US namesake’s skyline instead. About 720,000 pamphlets praising Brummies for their recycling were sent around the city at a cost of £15,000. ”

Epic fail. Lol for teh win etc.

UPDATE: Just heard the mayor of Birmingham, AL talking to Eddie Mair on Radio 4.
He sounded like such a good sport, unlike the dullards at Birmingham, UK, who wouldn’t even put someone on.

Twitter stops updates via UK number

8:47 am

Twitter is to stop sending updates via SMS to its UK users. Which pretty much negates the whole point of twitter - why pay 25p to tell the web something? I’ll paste the email I just got, below.

Update: Since started to blog earlier, and having to do some real work in between, a whole load of other blogs have popped up too. Here are some places it’s being discussed:

Official Twitter Blog
Getsatisfaction: here’s the official place to comment

A collection of dis-satisfied twitterers on Twitturly

Blogs A World without Twitter SMS, Death knell for twitter , Feureau

I’m sending you this note because you registered a mobile device
to work with Twitter over our UK number. I wanted to let you
know that we are making some changes to the way SMS works on
Twitter. There is some good news and some bad news.

I’ll start with the bad news. Beginning today, Twitter is no
longer delivering outbound SMS over our UK number. If you enjoy
receiving updates from Twitter via +44 762 480 1423, we are
recommending that you explore some suggested alternatives.

Note: You will still be able to UPDATE over our UK number.

Before I go into more detail, here’s a bit of good news: Twitter
will be introducing several new, local SMS numbers in countries
throughout Europe in the coming weeks and months. These new
numbers will make Twittering more accessible for you if you’ve
been using SMS to send long-distance updates from outside the UK.

Why are we making these changes?

Mobile operators in most of the world charge users to send
updates. When you send one message to Twitter and we send it to
ten followers, you aren’t charged ten times–that’s because we’ve
been footing the bill. When we launched our free SMS service to
the world, we set the clock ticking. As the service grew in
popularity, so too would the price.

Our challenge during this window of time was to establish
relationships with mobile operators around the world such that
our SMS services could become sustainable from a cost perspective.
We achieved this goal in Canada, India, and the United States.
We can provide full incoming and outgoing SMS service without
passing along operator fees in these countries.

We took a risk hoping to bring more nations onboard and more
mobile operators around to our way of thinking but we’ve arrived
at a point where the responsible thing to do is slow our costs
and take a different approach. Since you probably don’t live in
Canada, India, or the US, we recommend receiving your Twitter
updates via one of the following methods.

m.twitter.com works on browser-enabled phones
m.slandr.net works on browser-enabled phones
TwitterMail.com works on email-enabled phones
Cellity [http://bit.ly/12bw4R] works on java-enabled phones
TwitterBerry [http://bit.ly/MFAfJ] works on BlackBerry phones
Twitterific [http://bit.ly/1WxjwQ] works on iPhones

Twitter SMS by The Numbers

It pains us to take this measure. However, we need to avoid
placing undue burden on our company and our service. Even with a
limit of 250 messages received per week, it could cost Twitter
about $1,000 per user, per year to send SMS outside of Canada,
India, or the US. It makes more sense for us to establish fair
billing arrangements with mobile operators than it does to pass
these high fees on to our users.

Twitter will continue to negotiate with mobile operators in
Europe, Asia, China, and The Americas to forge relationships
that benefit all our users. Our goal is to provide full, two-way
service with Twitter via SMS to every nation in a way that is
sustainable from a cost perspective. Talks with mobile companies
around the world continue. In the meantime, more local numbers
for updating via SMS are on the way. We’ll keep you posted.

Thank you for your attention,
Biz Stone, Co-founder
Twitter, Inc.
http://twitter.com/biz

Britain from Above

August 11, 2008 8:58 am

I saw a really good bit of TV last night; the BBC’s Britain from Above. (blog)

Well worth watching the full show in iPlayer if you can (and are in the UK). However, if you can’t, the BBC is experimenting with embeddable video. Hmmm, let’s try the taxi segment..

Mr T speed walking Snickers ad banned

August 9, 2008 11:34 am

Take a chuckle at this advert:

YouTube Preview Image

Now have a listen to this

And a read of this

The world has gone mad

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