* Posts by Bob

6 publicly visible posts • joined 28 Mar 2008

Pudsey Bear refused UK passport

Bob

Welcome to New Labour

"Protecting identity? Since when has that been the role of a passport?"

Since the government decided people needing passports would be a great way to force the national identity register onto the public. The only way out of this mess now is unfortunately to vote Conservative, assuming they'd keep their election promises...

Animal rights group protests seal clubbing in World of Warcraft

Bob

Hmm

No mention that PETA already make an appearance in the game, satirised (or not...) as extremely violent defenders of the local wildlife?

http://www.wowhead.com/?achievement=561

Prime Minister's health records breached in database attack

Bob

*sigh*

I despair of this country when this kind of thing happens so regularly and the general public care so little that we're still on track for a national ID database. Soon enough disinterested British people will get the invasive and overbearing regime they deserve...

OcUK puts £10K bounty on the heads of DDoS varmints

Bob

No sympathy here

When they can't be bothered to sort a promised £10 refund, it seems unlikely you'd see £10k out of them. Couldn't happen to a nicer company...

Get your German interior minister's fingerprint here

Bob

Doing nothing is better than expensively doing nothing

"Or we could just pretend that there's no such thing as organised crime, smuggling, large scale identity fraud, unrestricted criminal movement, drug trafficing, child abduction, sex slavery, money laundering and of course terrorism"

That's not the real position though. The alternatives are spend a massive amount of public money on making the situation *worse* with governments' phony silver bullets like poorly implemented biometrics, or keep on looking for a solution that inevitably won't be capable of being packaged in a simple way to sell to the public. But unfortunately governments need to look like they're doing something more than they need to actually achieve their goals.

MPAA copyright punch up knocks out TorrentSpy

Bob

"Which country?"

"Which country? Not all countries have the same legislation"

The EU by way of the Distance Selling Directive. You can return goods for whatever reason up to seven working days after receiving them but things like software are exempt for obvious reasons.

The people posting merely to gloat seem to be revelling in their obvious moral superiority, well done you. Never mind that the various trade bodies have successfully lobbied to completely erode any chance of fair use of legitimately acquired material, torrents are evil and that is that.