Posts by Richard

A vision of the future

This reminds me of the old joke email (http://cloudybay.netfirms.com/humour/newspeak.shtml).

Worryingly, entering "Ze drems of the Guvernmnt vud finali hav kum tru" into google, it asked Did you mean: Ze drems of the Government vud finali hav kum tru?

It's clearly spreading...

I was delighted to learn (admittedly on wikipedia, so pinch of salt mode is ON) that "Buckinghamshire New University owes its existence, at least in part, to a tax imposed on beer and spirits towards the end of the nineteenth century". This explains a lot.

The *real reason they're holding back

"The British rightly object that such a database would be as secure as the weakest access point to it – an argument that oddly doesn’t seem to hold much weight with the Home Office when it comes to its own plans for a centralised UK database containing details of all citizens."

Of course it does! The Home Office is doing its very best to ensure that _it_ is the weakest access point. Unfortunately they think that some crafty foreign power is planning on printing their database on toilet paper to be used in all govt buildings. And another is going to give DVD's away with whatever their version of the Daily Mail is. Until Jacqui's crack squad of data loss specialists have come up with something better than "losing it in the mail", then the scheme is a no-goer.

BTW, why is meal preference forwarded on? Is it so that the guards can waft the smell of said meal into the cells?

I can see the response now...

The money's yours when you tell us where you hid the Grail.

Mine was used as a prop in Foucault's Pendulum ;)

People getting richer isn't the problem

It's the variant in off-the-balance-sheet reporting that means exporting the manufacturing and carbon emissions but only importing the manufactured goods.

The chutzpah of some countries' "Why bother, China and India are just going to keep on emitting..." stance is truly spectacular.

And I still can't see why we can't send nuclear waste into space to blow it up at New Years.

Does this mean?

That Apple are striving to outdo Adobe in the currency conversion stakes?

$1 = £121

No buying from Apple's online store for a bit methinks...

I can think of a use for it

Taking the "Nothing to hide, nothing to fear" and "People in glass houses" maxims to the limit, if the lying, self-serving weasels ^H^H^H members of HM.Gov want unhindered access to telephone and internet logs, then I want said data to be cross-checked with their expense claims.

Going north through Doncaster and York while claiming you drove? Moonlighting for National Express East Coast were we sir?

The problem with the Parliamentary debates on the matter hasn't so much been a lack of debate as a lack of members of the Commons actually listening to the debate, choosing rather to spend the evening clubbing or suchlike before tipping up to vote, or simply giving carte blanche as soon as the magic phrase "prevents terrorism" is used a la the Manchurian Candidate.

Formatting

Good grief, that code sample looks awful! And that's even before you realise it's PHP...

Can I suggest that "computing" is a pedund - a special class apt to cause pedantic grammarian arguments over what kind of word it is?

The housekeeper

...didn't look like Sigourney Weaver by any chance?

Destruction list

When are you going to let Andrew Orlowski have his Optimus Prime back?

Now that he's destroyed Terminal 5 and Croydon, where will the Moderatrix be sending him before a final showdown with Megatron? Based on his current trajectory, I'd be worried if I lived in Sevenoaks...

Online cards - like those in your wallet?

I don't have any online cards in my wallet. Unless you count other people's business cards with a web address on them; in which case it sounds rather worrying that I'd be able to pretend to be someone else.

I know it's just a slightly fluffed up press release, but that particular description, directly pasted from their site, is so vague as to be fatuous.

Clearly a typo on Gordon's notes

Brown claimed, “It could be said that for too long we have used nineteenth century means to solve twenty first century problems. Instead we must have twenty first century methods to deal with twenty first century challenges.”

I bet his notes said “It could be said that for too long we have used 19th century means to solve 21st century problems. Instead we must have 12th century methods to deal with 21st century challenges.”

Certainly rolling back habeas corpus gets back to the start of the 13th...

I'd be intrigued to see where he's getting his definition of liberty from - it's definitely not Montesquieu, who argued against thought-crimes and for making it as easy as possible for the innocent to prove their innocence.

public class GlassHouse

"Our first duty is the protection of national security. We fail in our duty if we do not take preventive measures. I say in sorrow rather than anger that it is no use having opposition for opposition's sake. We must take no risks with security."

Gordon Brown, PMQ's 11 June 2008

They obviously don't know much about feature calls on the web

Hmm, let me see: Selective support for CSS 2, which has been around for 10 years with 2.1 still only a candidate recommendation.

Heaven help us, wikis took a good few years to be properly noticed.

So, what on earth made them think that a project announced to the world ON APRIL FOOLS DAY FFS!!! would generate anything even vaguely useful in a couple of months?

We seriously need a Way of the Badger icon. If this isn't a classic example of Sett Theory I don't know what is.

Low CO2 footprint

They're probably right on that score, but rocket fuel isn't exactly eco-friendly once you get away from the liquid oxygen/hydrogen blends.

The Kazakhs have been whinging about it for years.

And how's this going to stop bullfighting?

PETA: We'll keep doing pictures of improbable naked women until you stop killing bulls.

Everyone else: OK, OK, we'll stop! Anything but that! Wait a second - did they say improbable naked women or John Prescott?

Mine's the one artfully moved at the last possible second.

One has to wonder

Whether this principle will be extended to other items on the prohibited items list:

Thermometers (but only if they're mercury based)

More than how ever many ml of liquid it is these days.

Fake Passports

Common Sense

Mine's the one with SECURITY? on the back. Clearly, the ? is offensive.

Better name

Surely the bad kind of flashing should be called Dirty Mac-ing. A botnet of such would be a Dirty Mac Brigade.

Advantages:

1) no ph abuse

2) It'll wind the cult of Jobs up

Trademarks != Patents

Trademarks are issued with relation to specific zones of interest. Hence Apple Computer's spat with Apple Corp. over who got to be Apple with regards music distribution.

CBS probably (and this is just a guess based on where cartoons get used) only have the trademark over clothing, food products and broadcasting. And possibly cat repellent.

In the realm of computer peripherals, M&M may well have more right to the Mighty Mouse mark. Unless some judge decides that their mark only applies for specialist computer peripherals. It all comes down to whether the mark is diluted by the presence of the other. M&M /have/ to fight it - trademarks are defend it or lose it.

<aside>For some reason, there's a bucketload of case law over dolphin based marques. </aside>

Ferrero Rocher

Now that Hello Kitty is a Japanese tourism Ambassador, would one be able to claim diplomatic immunity on the contents of a Hello Kitty branded laptop? Admittedly you'd therefore be ceding it to Japan but it's a small price to pay ;)

And Disney is much worse. Copyright in the US keeps getting extended lest a certain eunuch-voiced rodent enters the public domain.

Phthalates, schmalates

Greenpeace would be a lot better off ensuring that said toxins, nasty chemicals etc are disposed of and produced responsibly rather than moaning that they are used in something.

On the same logic, Greenpeace should be campaigning against Church Roofs. I'm sure that would get a hell of a lot more publicity.

But that's not the point, is it? There's always been a certain amount of insinuation that technology is inherently bad in and of itself and if people would just stop hankering for it then everything would be alright. It's this lazy kind of activism that really winds me up - let's get something that's totally not important all over the media in the vainglorious hope that we'll get some crossover coverage on the other stuff, like large scale pollution of groundwater due to the cynanide leaching method of mining. Does it happen? Of course not! All the media consultants and PR flunkies are busy working on the next non-issue press release and pretty soon that's all you become known for. The sad thing is that Greenpeace used to put out the odd nugget that actually made sense and set one thinking. I haven't seen one for nearly a decade though.

On a side note, chemicals stopping people having kids is surely good for the environment as population pressure is one of the biggest threats to it.

Some Questions

1) When will the Playmobil dioramas be available on Cash & Carrion?

2) Can the moderatrix questions/answers be done in the form of a Playmobil diorama?

3) Why don't we ever hear of 418 fraudsters? Is that the section covering selling an animal at the fair that's trained to return to you?

Have to say though, the moderatrix sounds like someone who'd jury rig a taser out of a harpoon gun and a scalextric controller

*Bad pun follows*

Will the tension monitors be governed by Taut law then?

And now for the Daily Express version...

A swift adding up of the estimated units over the 10 years yields nearly 80 million.

GIven that said cards are valid for 10 years, this surely implies some/all of: a lot of lost/replaced cards, a lot of Johnny Foreigners coming over for 6 months and more at a time, or a hell of a lot of breeding by the British population.

Also, to do the interviews, they'll need to average 20000 a day. That's a rate that only Japanese council workers can achieve; and even then only when breasts are involved. I await the updated ID card photo guidelines with (heavily) bated breath.

Re: Lethal? I though that was alcohol... :P

"Funnily enough we didn't get any cannabis-smoking patients. None that were there for that reason anyway."

Surely it's obvious why you didn't get any. It's just like after an armed robbery - the countless victims didn't seek medical attention for fear of going to jail.

Sorry, I seem to have pierced my cheek with my tongue.

Of course, back in my day it was easy to make fake skunk by painting a white line down the back of a cat...

The bit I don't quite get

From RIPA:

28 Authorisation of directed surveillance

(2) A person shall not grant an authorisation for the carrying out of directed surveillance unless he believes—

(a) that the authorisation is necessary on grounds falling within subsection (3); and

(b) that the authorised surveillance is proportionate to what is sought to be achieved by carrying it out.

How the hell does surveillance for littering prevention get authorised as a proportionate response? I'll bet the paperwork alone is more than the miscreants would have littered.

This is clearly from the same school of thought as the justification of Will's borrowing a chopper to get to a stag party as "valuable training".

140Kg is STILL pretty fat

He's only whinging because cannibalism will mean extra years on the sentence.

Mine's several sizes too big now...

Goon show ringtones?

Here's a song that I recall,

My mother sang to me.

She sang it when she tucked me in,

When I was nine-teee-threee...

Ringtone Ringtone Ringtone Ringtone Ringtone iddle eye po

Ringtone Ringtone Ringtone Ringtone Ringtone iddle eye po

Ringtone Ringtone Ringtone Ringtone Ringtone iddle eye po

Repeat adwords infinitum...

Feet-Acre

Surely that's the Reg Unit for consultants?

As in a 1000 Feet-Acre project, which requires 1 BOFH to fix (1 BOFH = 1 kilo feet-acre)

Re: Bloody city analysts....

But the analysts think 20,000 is a really important number at the minute. Seeing as there's probably going to be 20,000 less of them in the coming months. They didn't forecast that one either :o

Mine's just like the Emperor's new one.

I'm just waiting for the advertising campaign...

Got Wood?

Re: Bootnote

Sounds like a huge error by the planners to me. The wedding isn't going to be in a quaint little village called Crocctella by any chance?

Mine's the one that doesn't rustle when it moves...

It's going to keep happening

Until someone gets some jailtime, a whopping great fine or (better yet) a ban from doing business here. Especially with regards banks - surely data safety should be a condition of a banking licence.

I vaguely recall that solicitors & the like have a dedicated post service for legal documents. It's about time that the banks were forced into the same sort of thing.

Black helicopters - not just for heists!

"Experts"

On PM last night they had one of the more Quisling-esque MPs commenting on the subject. When asked why HM.Gov looked like it was going to ignore independent expert advice he said that they were following expert advice - from ACPO.

Now I don't give a rats arse about the classification - what worries me is that the police are cited as experts on any given subject. Surely the only thing they are supposed to be experts on is upholding and enforcing the law of the land. Last time I looked, Class C drugs hadn't stopped being illegal; so why is it that the police should have any opinion on the matter?

Is it that nabbing a few consumers of Class B substances improves their statistics more markedly than Class C?

As the politikos are banging on about being really concerned about the high-THC varieties, would it not be possible to classify high-THC cannabis as Class B and leave the rest as Class C? A differentiation is made with regards alcohol taxation so I don't see why it wouldn't be albeit that that /could/ cause an implementation issue that the police would struggle with.

Cruel and unusual

Heh - typical Yank idiocy, but then what do you expect with a president who can't spell 'Guantemanomo' without the aid of My First World Dictionary, eh?

They're even giving this technique a name: Billboarding

There's 3 more horsemen to deal with!

I find it strange that our Glorious Leader cites the usual war, pestilence, famine and nature as the huge dangers yet only tells us how prepared we are for war albeit with a quick local-councils-will-have-to-deal-with-floods-and-the-like. Oh wait: Is that a military-industrial complex or are you just pleased to see me?