Posts by andy

@just asking

"...But is it really beyond the skills of internet experts to actually just close down the offending sites on these lists?"

As I understand it, it is not this easy as laws are different from country to country. you could not have, say, China, pulling the plug on offending sites that are perfectly legal in the host country (or probably most other countries)

I'm not talking necessarily about kiddy p*rn but it still applies -- what is the age of consent in one country could be underage in another.

We'll all have cameras soon

They can try but they wont be able to turn back the coming tide.

In just a few years we will ALL have cameras beaming everything we see straight t' web in order to play back some part of our lives at a later date, or share our lives with the world - twitter style -- completely live.

Are they prepared to ban all cameras in public?

@Mike Crawshaw

@Mike Crawshaw -- You just screwed yourself...

@AC

AC -- "Just tick the box to say you have a college degree (and if you don't lie), then all of a sudden you're a 'climate scientist' !!!!"

You mean like every supposed 'climate scientist' I see on TV chatting AGW-is-true-i-tells-ya bollocks to earn themselves a few quid...

No Dancing licence

I used to DJ at a bar that didnt have a dancing licence -- the council would NOT permit dancing on the premises.

It was both funny and frustrating when we used to build up the music, people would be getting more and more merry and then slowly but surely (hopefully) feet would start tapping and people would start swaying until a few bodies would start moving kind of rhythmically.....

....then the bouncer would come down and tell each one of them they'd better stoppit or they're out...

Ridiculous.

Crap system

I stumbled across VbyV when trying to buy a camera. I didnt have time or inclination to read the T&Cs so phoned the number provided and said 'I dont really want to sign up for this service until I've read more about it, will it affect my account if I just cancel?'

I was told it was fine to cancel and bought the camera elsewhere -- next thing I'm in the supermarket buying something for a few quid and my card's blocked -- I eventually found out it was because I declined VbyV.

I complained to the financial ombudsman about it all as I thought it was wrong that there was no way of knowing if a website used VbyV and then declining the T&Cs blocked your card.

I then had a call from my bank but it was obvious they weren't going to change their system so I took the 50 quid they offered me for my trouble! Still a crap system though...

I since found out that as long as you put your birth date and card number in you can cancel the password and the transaction still goes through -- no need to remember another pass....

Hang on a second!

Dont forget, kids, that Climate change isnt real -- well, not the man-made kind anyway.

It's all a big scam that the public are expected to pay for with higher taxes, in return for....nothing... no more holidays abroad, no more fancy techno-gadgets, no nice cars, nada, because we will all feel too guilty to have anything above and beyond BASIC.

Well, I'm not buying it...

maybe it's the Internet 2.0 conspiracy

What could be underlying all of this is that governments and big business are desperately trying to sell us 'Internet 2' -- and I can only guess which side John Thompson is on.

What this could fundamentally mean is an end to net neutrality where big businesses take priority and not all sites may be available on your ISP, blogs and websites may have to be authorised by the government or FCC etc on the pretext that it will be for our own security and everything you do will be logged and stored for use by the authorities -- moreso than now.

I reckon John and others like him will eventually be heard to say 'hey, if you dont wanna have your ID stolen by terrorists no more, come on over to the new, safe Internet 2.0'...

Google it.

Urea?

That's taking the piss...

@Howard - Science not at all "complicated".

"Billions of tons of 'stuff' buried under the ground for millions of years,

Take just 100 years to dig most of it up and burn it into the air...etc..."

Take a volcano -- Billions of tons of stuff buried in the ground for billions of years (since the earth began?), explodes and in a matter of hours, maybe days, and releases more CO2 into the air than man ever could.

If there is global warming do you really think it's man-made? or that we can control it?

@AC

By Anonymous Coward Posted Friday 19th September 2008 06:08 GMT

"Whilst I don't agree with the "If you've nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear" mantra, your suggestions about posting your address, bank details etc. are just a straw man and equally specious as an argument."

You talk rubbish AC. And you're anonymous -- the irony!

So you dont want 'every fucking weirdo' to know your personal details but you trust the government enough to give them access to all your info?!! You must be crazy.

What about if you were a rival politician? would you still think it ok? Or you were some kind of activist/campaigner, would you really want the government knowing your every move?

I bet the authorities are eagerly tapping all of EFF's comms as I write.

Even if you supposedly 'have nothing to hide' there must be thousands who do, genuinely and leglally, have something to hide from the government/authorities. After all, George Bush and co can seemingly get away with murder -- why should they be trusted?

TBL backed by corps and big pharma

If you look at the member list over at the w3 website (who TBL is speaking for) you will find a whole host of Big Pharma and other corporates who I'm sure would love to silence various bits of bad publicity that emanates from the net.

To sum it up, Mr Berners Lee is almost definitely bias and does not have the best interests of joe public, or the web in general, in mind.

Censor that Mr Lee....

But there IS a grey area...

People's car speedometers are less accurate than speed cameras, the older the car, the less accurate the speedo.

Some speed cameras are set to go off at exactly the speed limit and are thus unfair to people who think they are within the law.

Please get off your high horses and stop talking this 'if your breaking the law you should have known better' bullsh*t.

@paul gray

So you think it's fine that Hushmail can send you a 'poisoned java applet'?

Sounds like a step too far to me...

Theres nowt wrong with patio heaters

Patio heaters use a minimal amount of fuel and should not be painted in a bad light.

"We're already heading for trouble finding enough tax payers to support increasing numbers of OAPs."

There are and never will be trouble finding enough taxpayers to supprt the OAPs -- it's all rubbish. There are more than enough immigrants coming to the country each year to fund the elderly and then some.

The gov. should stop participating in illegall wars if they want to save a few billion quid

@Adam Foxton

Actually, I can identify with the Smoking Ban analogy.

It's NuLabours usual way of using a sledgehammer to crack a nut.

Smoking ban - They could have allowed some smoking bars if all employees/employers were happy to work in a smoking establishment, but no, thay had a total ban.

Then Gordon B wants to ban happy hours and cheap drinks in supermarkets - same sledgehammer cracking everyones nuts.

More recently he wants to stop 2 for 1 deals on supermarket food because according to GB most people dont eat the stuff or freeze it to eat another day -- they just waste it!!

This latest hairbrained scheme is just another sledgehammer...

Dont they do that already?

"It is clear that you are not going be pulled aside by rubber-gloved customs staff so they can probe the portions of your laptop where the sun don't shine."

I believe the TSA guys (american customs officials) have started to do this already. They are confiscating laptops and other gadgtes for indefinite periods and doing who-know-what with them.

They seem to be beyond the law already...

What about if I absolutely refuse a swab?

What about if I absolutely refuse a swab? Can they pin me down and force my mouth open?

I'll bite them...

@RotaCyclic - Not quite accurate

- "Haven't people noticed that under Livingston there's been a drive to push as many people into taking up Oyster, by making it much cheaper than tickets."

I think it's more accurate to say that they have made cash prices ludicrous, just to make Oyster viable.

Oyster card prices have risen with inflation -- cash ticket prices (for buses) rose 120% in the space of a couple of years (and even more for Tube I think.

@I can see both sides of this...

Sounds like a very one-sided view to me.

You now have wardens going round giving people on the spot fines in the street -- why the hell do you need the powers to check phone records, car number plates and god knows what else?

It's using a sledgehammer to crack a nut.

If we're going to have this legislation they should fully open it up to the public -- it's only fair. After all, if you're going to have 800 companies able to use RIPA you may as well make it available to the other 12 people in britain who cant currently use it...

@Chris Richards

-- "So if I turned my phone off on the way into the airport so I could avoid any work contact while I sat reading my book I'd just be bombarded with these texts on the other side of the world where I get charged for the pleasure of receiving them."

Chris, if you turned your phone off on the way to the airport your phone wouldnt be detected IN the airport and registered as a phone to deploy Ads to, thus you wouldnt be bombarded with texts on the other side of the world.

I Have left ebay

The last couple of things I bought I managed to get for a bargain. Then the items didnt turn up, the seller said they'd posted them. I have deep suspicions they didnt want to sell them cheap.

Especially as one of the sellers suddenly found the item after 2-3 weeks, when I asked for proof of postage. He 'thought his mate had posted it'...

Anyway, my own issues aside, ebay should 'grow some cojones', do away with 'buy it now', abolish any automatic progs that put last second bids in and just have a straightforward, honest-to-goodness auction.

Toxic?

Never mind the non-issue of CO2. Doesnt burning plastic bags cause all sorts of toxic fumes?

I think getting bacteria to eat them is a great idea.

They already persuade bacteria to eat our poo in big vats at sewage plants, and the world has not yet been devoured by a giant poo monster so I doubt if the plastic eating bacteria is too much of a danger. Besides, eating plastic will be like a gourmet meal for them compared to all that poo...

I've heard it all now...

"It can be simultaneously true that the world is warming, and that the world is in a 20 year cooling trend."

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!! Perfect!!

@AC

"....back in 1970 a few government officials from NATO countries gathering in the US to discuss this network thing, just suppose we can get technology cheap enough to get everyone in the world on it, we'll get it tested make sure the plebs are having fun, then we'll slowly tighten the screws and lock down the information and start tracking people, oh yes a few of the more savvy plebs will cry out but most people are pretty stupid, they'll just be too blinded by the technology to see what we're up to"

'yeh, and we'll do it all with a whopping 640k RAM!!' - Bill Gates, 1981

Scary t-shirts

I think the question is: What does a gun look like?

Considering Mr transformer person has something that looks nothing like a real-life gun I wonder how abstract a picture could get whilst still being against airport rules?

ridiculous.

revealing.

How did they reveal Mr Mauler's online anonymity? A subpoena?

Time we all started to be more careful about covering our tracks...

Get Retro

Can't G W Bush just create one of those retro-active laws he likes so much and make this offence punishable by death?

I have to say I feel sorry for you guys in the USA. One day you'll wake up to a retro-active law to punish you all, YOU'LL SEE !

2,000 terrorists?

More like a couple of morons with a provisional licence and 'Snap-Its' stuck to their shoes...

No fun

So we cant even have fun now IN CASE something bad happens!!

We're doomed...

Hold up!

If Google were serious about doing no evil couldnt they promise not to keep logs of IP addresses for longer than necessary? Or is that angle covered in data retention laws?

I don't understand...

So these systems don't show MORE ads, just targeted ads.

Excuse my arrogance but does this mean that ads embedded in a web page, that a company has paid to display, will be removed and replaced by these Phorm style Ads?

Surely that's going to p*** off the original advertisers as well as any self respecting user that likes to retain an ounce of privacy...

What are you worried about?

@Tanya Cumpston

So, "Averaged over Australia, maximum temperatures for the month were 0.79°C above the 1961−90 average (16th highest on record)"??

16th highest on record? Doesnt sound particularly worrying to me.

also you say "Most of this area experienced its warmest March of the post−1950 period"

so it was hotter before 1950? I presume CO2 levels have been increasing steadily since then, like most of the developed world, so you really think the heat is all man-made? pur-lease!

er, how do you say that?

QUAERO...Doesnt exactly slip off the tongue...

...and in the lull periods between jobs we should do what??

I can only imagine what these sysadmins are like to live with.

"I have restricted access to the cupboard as of this morning due to one of you kids using up more than their months allowance of cornflakes"....

Global Warming is a scam!!!

...and you've all been duped into paying for it!!!

Dead?

"I thought firewire was dead now anyway?"

If you use a Mac, chances are its waaay quicker than the USB ports...

FACT!

@john B

"I heard a similar story about 2 polish guys on a work site nipping off for up to an hour at a time...security tailed them ...."

Dont tell me these foreigners have actually started wanting lunch breaks or something?!