Posts by Alec Harkness

So either it's rubbish, or it's rubbish

Let me get this right... They're saying "Use an ID card to buy booze, and avoid risking losing your passport"

So either

a) An ID card is more difficult to lose than a passport

or

b) An ID card matters less when you lose it

and (a) is clearly rubbish, unless they plan to physically attach them somehow...

"developing a country level net filter to block unwanted web sites"

"Other countries to have warned their citizens about the evils of Western IT recently include China and Iran."

.. and Australia of course...

Of cowboys and incompetence

I'm kinda baffled as to *how* a website can be made incompatible with Vista and W7. It'd take truly epic incompetence.

It's either that or some cowboys built it in on purpose so Parcelforce would have to stump another wad of cash to get it 'upgraded'.

So much fail! So much fail!

Something rotten

Certainly something does seem fundamentally wrong with the patents system when a genuine inventor has to raise tens of thousands of pounds to patent a radically new type of flying machine, whereas enterprises seem to fart out patents for the bleedin' obvious on a daily basis.

@Chris C

Your points are valid but, like all the record industry's protestations, are based on the assumption that the current status quo must be preserved.

No industry has the unalienable right to exist. q.v. Polaroid and the old photographic industry. Digital technology overtook it, and it's now more or less extinct.

Similarly, the music *industry* will sooner or later die, and that's just too bad. Times change.

Music as *art* however is a different matter, and an altogether more noble one. What this report says (at least how I read it) is that file-sharing may be killing music as an industry, but music as art is thriving.

Which I don't think is a bad thing.

Laughable hypocrisy

Claiming the videos are examples of "fair use" because they are non-commercial and factual is pretty laughable. Politicians are as commercial as anyone, and less factual than anyone.

Also, every week we get some other band coming forward to say the McCain bunch have nicked their tunes.

All in all, McCain should just stop weeping and suck it up like his constituents have had to.

Re: €230

€230? For this much entertainment? I've been offered worse deals...

I say we have a whip-round and raise some cash so they can mount an appeal.

(huh, uhu, huh, I said "mount" ... )

American tyranny

I have to laugh at the people who claim that gun ownership in the US prevents tyranny. They have tyranny right now! Bush Jnr has eroded more freedoms than even Tony Blair managed, yet the gun-toting fanatics are the first to cry "treason" when anyone seeks to question the government.

Face it, the gun-owners will only ever rise up against their government (be it tyrannical or otherwise) if it's run by a black man.

Oh, wait...

Human dignity?!?!?

[quote]the piratebay is about distributing stolen intellectual property.

ever been burgled? would you feel good knowing your ex-property was on offer in the local pub?

the law protects human dignity.[/quote]

If Pirate Bay is akin to being burgled, then this law is akin to allowing government goons to rifle through your bins, read your mail and listen to your phone calls.

How does that constitute human dignity?

2nd ammendment

So, let's see if I understand this? Carrying a broken snappy-snaps camera is an imprisonable offence, but the right to carry around fully-automatic machine guns is protected by the constitution?

Stooopid Americans.

Naivety

£10k does seem hopelessly naive. Possibly if done by actual human people who actually know what they're doing, but this is the *government* we're talking about.

More likely they'd outsource it to IBM or similar, who would stick a couple of zeroes onto the budget, then do exactly the same thing but with an army of salesmen and middle-managers cluttering up the place.

The fact that it's already published in XML is, of course, irrelevant. After all, solving a problem that's already been solved is (marginally) less likely to go tits-up.

Mine's the one reeking of cynicism...

I think I recognise that text

Ah, yes. It's output from the GNU Random Bullshit Generator, version 0.9beta. It looks like they entered something like "makes small people effective in large companies"

The beta version had a few kinks though, which is why it is still almost coherent in places.

They don't like it up 'em do they?

Are MPs even capable of comprehending the word "hypocrisy"

Pisses me off the way MPs will constantly hide behind this idea of the supremacy of parliament to conceal the fact that they're all incompetent, snivelling toadies and/or wannabe tyrants.

While the threat of MI5 bringing down a government because they didn't like a politician's policies was perhaps a good reason to introduce this doctrine, nowadays there's a far greater risk of a politician bringing the country to ruin to feed their own vanity.

I'm inclined to trust MI5 spooks a lot more than MPs. At least the spooks are professionals, and can be fired if they screw up.

Still a happy camper

I have a lot of time for DreamHost. Similarly to Rich, I got a strange "you have been billed" email, but by the time I got round to looking into it, I'd got the following apology email :

<quote>

Hi Alec!

Ack. Through a COMPLETE bumbling on our part, we've accidentally attempted

to charge you for the ENTIRE year of 2008 (and probably 2009!) ALREADY

(it was all due to a fat finger)!

We're really really realllly embarassed about this, but you have nothing

to worry about. Please ignore any confusing billing messages you may have

received recently; we've already removed all those bum future charges on

your account and already refunded the $119.4 charge on your

credit card.

You should get the money back on almost immediately, within a day or

two max, and there's no need to contact your credit card company or bank

for the refund.

Thank you very very much for your patience with this.. we PROMISE

this won't happen again. There's no need to reply to this message unless

of course you have any other questions at all!

Sincerely,

The Foolish DreamHost Billing Team!

</quote>

Obviously there will be people screwed over by this, but it will be the fault of the afore-mentioned evil banks. Dreamhost made an honest mistake, corrected it quickly, and issued the only genuine apology I've ever heard from a corporate entity.

(happy icon 'cos I'm still a happy camper)

New Threat

In the face of this new, serious and imminent threat, the only solution is to embed every citizen with RFID chips, block all but government sanctioned websites, and enforce compulsory anal probing in the workplace!

I've got plenty to hide

Like the fact that I don't intend to vote Labour, or the fact that I've been thinking of attending more protests, or the fact that I know ID cards are a bad thing.

Youthful vigour

Well, many of us could hold our booze better when we were younger than we can now. The guy was obviously just taking this idea a bit further.

Ahem. Son! Get my coat.

"discurse vivdly"?

Receiving unsolicited intergalactic email certainly makes me want to dis and curse vividly, on the phone or otherwise