Search blog.co.uk

No news is good news - or, would you employ this man?
by loiswakeman @ 24/01/2008 - 14:54:07

BBC lunchtime news is appealing to the great unwashed for "their stories" in a rather weedy attempt to be relevant and cutting edge. Yeah, whatever.

As a result, we get non-stories like today's, in which we learn that "Student Kris Athi has spent two months trying to delete his MySpace profile while he applies for jobs."

As if that wasn't newsworthy enough, we are told that, actually, he could just have made his profile private to hide it (RTFM, Kris), and [allegedly: Ed] the only reason he didn't get the "are you sure you want to delete your profile" confirmation email was because it was spam-trapped.

Call me stupid (or even too clever by half) - but if said Kris is really an IT graduate - shouldn't he have known that this was a very likely explanation? I for one won't be rushing to recruit him. [Ed: see below for why, in the light of feedback on what really happened] What a clueless wally.

Read the 'news' story here

9 comments | Trackback (0) | Permalink | Recommend this post
Tags: bbc, myspace, news, tv,

Trackback address for this post:

authimage

Comments, Trackbacks: Hide subcomments

menhirmenhir [Member]
24/01/08 @ 21:38

I vaguely remember something about this but switched off ears until a more newsworthy element arose about said Myspace, rather than indifferent individual.

Myspace is being investigated for a variety of data handling issues and there is a real issue with the deletion of blogs. I must say I was much more interested in those aspects and agree with your frustration about the intro to the subject.

A young friend of mine surprised me by finding the site itself, too cluttered with junk and so-called fun things and with insufficient worthwhile interactive communication. The one or two forays I have made into myspace, lead me to concur wholeheartedly with her view. It's a shallow site.

Were you watching the news or listening on the radio?

| Show subcomments
loiswakemanloiswakeman [Member]
http://lois.co.uk
25/01/08 @ 10:34

This was the TV news - but I am sure the Beeb recycled it on the radio too!

| Show subcomments |
menhirmenhir [Member]
25/01/08 @ 20:50

The radio news tonight, has highlighted another major breach with Myspace, to do with the security and personal settings being hacked and/or overridden, even those that are automatically set for children's sites, by Myspace itself. Huge numbers of private photos have been accessed by who knows who.

We really do have to be vigilant and protective about our personal data and the attempts to misuse it.

|
Kris Athi [Visitor]
http://www.klog.co.uk
25/01/08 @ 20:36

Alright, this is "said Kris" from the news report.
Please check out www.klog.co.uk for some of my views on the final report :)

I run my own mail server from home, so I can confirm that such emails were most certainly not blocked by anybody. If they were sent, they would have got through!

Also, I’m aware I could have read the manual and set my profile to private, but that's not the point, if you want your details removed from sites such as these, you should the right to

Thanks for your opinions
Kris

| Show subcomments
loiswakemanloiswakeman [Member]
http://lois.co.uk
25/01/08 @ 23:12

Gosh Chris - you are the first meeja celebrity ever to visit my blog, AFAIK ;)

Thanks for your correction about the emails - which all goes to show that we can't believe everything we read in the media.

(Personally, I don't expect very much at all in the way of customer service from frivolous sites like Myspace - but I'm an old fart, so what do I know?)

PS: vanity googling rools, OK?

|
louidoglouidog [Member]
25/01/08 @ 23:59

I totally dislike MySpace, Facebook etc with a passion.....

Kris Athi [Visitor]
http://www.klog.co.uk
26/01/08 @ 01:42

You still wouldn’t rush to recruit me? Oh well, don’t blame you really, I wouldn’t either!

In the full interview, I gave Mr Cellan-Jones the full technical break down on everything MySpace would throw back at them, and then the reasons why they would be wrong, but none of that was included :(

I will add this blog to my blogroll :)

Kris

| Show subcomments
loiswakemanloiswakeman [Member]
http://lois.co.uk
28/01/08 @ 17:38

Kris - don't take it personally - I won't employ anyone as the overheads and regulations are just ridiculous for a small business! I wouldn't have time to actually work for the red tape.

Your explanation doesn't surprise me at all - anything that requires attention for more than ten seconds is routinely judged as too difficult for us listeners/viewers - sigh.

Given the nature of the original post, I'm surprised you haven't added me to your bogroll ;)

| Show subcomments |
Kris Athi [Visitor]
http://www.klog.co.uk
29/01/08 @ 01:15

Done!

|

Leave a comment :

Your email address will not be displayed on this site.
Your URL will be displayed.
Allowed XHTML tags: <!, p, ul, ol, li, dl, dt, dd, address, blockquote, ins, del, a, span, bdo, br, em, strong, dfn, code, samp, kdb, var, cite, abbr, acronym, q, sub, sup, tt, i, b, big, small, img>
URLs, email, AIM and ICQs will be converted automatically.
Options:
 
(Line breaks become <br />)
(Set cookies for name, email & url)
Validation code:
Please enter the above code here:
For protection from spambots (case-sensitive).