How much does the Internet weight?

According to Cnet, they reckon there are 22,837,511,120kg ofcomputers, 1,754,809,310kg of servers, 87,000,000kg+ of cables, 6,075,000kg of iPhones, 6,800,000kg of Blackberries, and about 0.01kg of websites which gives us the following for the total weight of the Internet *roughly* :-)

For further explanation of the figure see here.

Sad but true....

Balls and his Education team fail GCSE maths?

Ed Balls MP, the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families, is a man very proud of children's achievements in schools. He also, as the man who would be Chancellor likes to think of himself as a bit of an economics/maths whizz kid.

This makes the following from Parliament from Balls quite funny, because, whilst discussing GCSE questions he said the following,

The third question comes from the mathematics exam, GCSE, June 2008: "Work out 33/4 minus 12/5 " Does the hon. Gentleman (addressing Michael Gove MP) want to try?

I asked the Minister for Schools and Learners (Vernon Coaker MP) a moment ago. He worked it out as two and seven twentieths.. I do hope that he is right.

The Minister for Further Education, Skills, Apprenticeships and Consumer Affairs (Kevin Brennan MP) checked it as well, and he says that that is the right answer.

Two and seven twentieths you say Mr Balls? You say you got this answer from your learned colleague in charge of Schools, and had it double-checked by another learned colleague in charge of further education, and they told you it was right? Why did you not get a bit of paper out yourself?

Let's see, 33/4 as a decimal would be 8.25; and 12/5 as a decimal? That would be 2.4. So... 8.25 minus 2.4 is 5.85. Or as fraction, five and seventeen twentieths. So, where did the two and seven twentieths come from?

Isn't it good to know that the team in charge of schools, from junior minister up to the Secretary of State are so reliable with their figures?

Update: Sadly it seems this is a fomatting error in Hansard's online version and there are missing spaces in the fractions. It should be '3 and 3/4' minus '1 and 2/5' which apparently is '2 and 7/20'. Oh well. I forgot to say in the original, the point being made by Balls is rather weak anyway because you're allowed a calculator in most GCSE maths anyway.

That work thing is drawing to an end....

Over the past month, as regular readers will know, I have had a lot going on, both work and personal, that has meant my blog has taken a back seat for a while. The professional side of that is now coming to end as tonight some colleague and I go for a big bang and move a 20+ server web and database infrastructure that provides 24/7 service across national boundaries.

So basically, blogging takes a back seat again today as I prepare to get some sleep around lunchtime and sort out some home office stuff this morning.

Your office/desktop meme.....

The office in the cellar is finally up and running and I at last have a proper desktop to work with. Decided to go dual display vertically for the first time. Quite like it.

Click for uber-large imageAnyhow, this is a crossover post betwen the geeky and the political because I want to see screenshots of what other political bloggers look at on a daily basis. So it's time for Guido (far to cool to respond natch!), Croydonian, ToryBear and Iain Dale to show the world what their desktop looks like. If they feel like it they can ask others to do the same.

Last Facebook Updates from History

Via the ever hilarious College Humour.




Some more here.

BCK FR MR 2 BE IGNRD!

Back in July last year I posted about an Early Day Motion which said,

That this House notes that there is no facility to allow people to use text messages to contact blue light emergency services and believes that such a service could assist people needing to contact the emergency services while unable to speak; and calls on the Government to encourage the mobile telephone industry to come up with a text message 999 number through which blue light emergency services can be contacted.

Well guess what. Having received 44 signatures and after being completely ignored, it's back. No doubt it will be ignored again and is yet further proof of the complete waste of money such motions are.

Dissecting the Labour PPB

Last night, Labour apparently had their Party Political Bullshit Broadcast. Guy News has dissected its accuracy.

The comment experiment...

Just wanted to do a quick housekeeping update. Back in June I posted about the change in the comment system to the one provided by IntenseDebate. I know that people have been annoyed with it, things like cookies etc meaning it did not remember names. Apologies for that but the experiment is over and the system is staying.

Since installing it I have had a pretty steady traffic of comments on many of threads, and most importantly I no longer receive any comments from certain users who I suspected were alter-egos. Intense Debate has provided me with a snapshot of commentators IPs and I think this has deterred some of those people.

Basically it's here to stay. I may look into doing some video posts soon but I stress "may". What that probably means in reality is that I will think about it then not bother.

Labour Lords turn on Brown over elderly care

Lord Lipsey, former member of the Royal Commission on Long-Term Care and labour peer telsl the Times in relation to Brown's "National Care Service".

"I’m not looking forward to the night of the next general election but, if the result goes as I expect, one of the consolations will be that one of the most irresponsible acts to be put forward by a prime minister in the recent history of this country will be swept away with his government"

Brown's "big idea" was also compared to "an admiral firing an Exocet into his own flagship". Meanwhile, Lord Warner, a former health minister called it misjudged.

I fully expect an Early Day Motion similar to the '10p tax' one too appear very soon. We'll then get a measure of how many of the Labour backbenchers intend to openly rebel.

Get your popcorn ready.