* Posts by Spleen

826 publicly visible posts • joined 5 Nov 2007

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WPP chief sees headroom for Internet ad growth

Spleen

Re: Clogged already

"I pay for my net access I resent being forced to look at all the trash clogging up my browser real estate."

I pay for road tax and petrol, but I don't think that every shop I visit in my car should be free.

I actually count myself lucky that most of what I do on the Internet is free, and somehow those banners that I never look at, much less click, pay for it all. I don't even like to think about too much in case thinking about it causes the laws of physics to come into effect, Wile E Coyote style.

Olympic 'business dating agency' goes live

Spleen

Pff

This is Britain we're talking about. The way to win contracts is the same as it's always been: know which political party to give a "donation" to, which civil servants to wine and dine at which restaurants, and whose drug-addicted son-in-law to employ as a senior manager.

This isn't a dating site, it's the prostitution section of Craigslist.

O2 misses iPhone targets

Spleen

Target market

190,000 surprised me at first - given that we and the Europeans understand mobiles far too well to buy an outdated overpriced paperweight like the iPhone, I thought the number sold in the UK should be closer to 19. Then I remembered that there are Americans in Britain too. Some rigorous intertubes research later and I find that there are 220,000 Americans living in Britain. Mystery solved.

Join the army, get your ID pinched - MoD laptop goes AWOL

Spleen

@AC

Heh, you've got me there. In my defence I probably did take my stuff into the house in the right order at least most of the time, it just has more effect the way I told it originally. In any case, the risk of having a laptop stolen in the 30-second window while someone carries their shopping in is insignificant, since we're talking about the risk of leaving a laptop in the car all night, in the dark, while you're asleep and not about to return to the vehicle.

Spleen

Gerald is a stupid twat

When I was a humble placement student and had a work laptop, I always took it home. Even if I'd already made two trips from car to third-floor flat with heavy shopping in the pouring rain, I always went back for the laptop. Why? Because that was what I was supposed to do, because laptops are expensive and more to the point, it had confidential financial information on our clients on it.

And this isn't just a bit of nose-in-the-air "would never happen to me" oneupmanship, because sailors are supposed to be trained to obey orders without thought or question. "Don't leave your laptop in the car" should be a fairly easy order to comprehend, only slightly more difficult than "Don't jump off the boat into that big blue thing".

If I'd lost that laptop, my employer could easily have lost some of their business and I would hope that I would never be allowed to work in the industry again. I expect Gerald, being a government employee, will get off with a slap on the wrist. What he needs is a good keelhauling.

Bobby Fischer checkmated at 64

Spleen

@mark11727

Nope, that would be Irish chess, played with a full pint as the "king" in the centre and the winner being whoever captures it first with one of the other pieces on the table using whatever rules they feel like. (Read up on its propless equivalent, Mornington Crescent, for a better idea of how it works.)

Sadly, what with the smoking ban removing most of the Irish chess pieces (fag packets, lighters, ashtrays) from the average pub table, I imagine it would be more like a game of draughts now.

RIAA told to pay legal fees for harrassed defendant

Spleen

Morons

Well, I suppose there may be some disabled 44-year-old single mother fans of gangsta rap and kids' animé out there (though my loser knowledge shames me, "Goten" is a character in that Dragonball show and "kito" is probably meant to be the Japanese for "forever"). But if I was the RIAA and came across one, I might double-check *just* to make sure so that I didn't end up with a large lawyers' bill.

Then again, I doubt the amount, whatever it is, will so much as dent their budget.

Cops admit CCTV no use in deterring drunken violence

Spleen

@AC

The idea that 20-somethings in Europe spend their evenings sipping wine slowly and talking about art is bollocks. I'm not sure I've ever drunk more in one night than when I went out with friends in Europe. The European way is drinking strong lager in small glasses and being continually refreshed by waiters, and it's a recipe for getting very drunk very fast without knowing you're doing it. None of the waiters even hesitated to keep serving us. If we'd started causing trouble or vomiting on their property I expect we would have been ejected, but I doubt that even in the worst nightclub in Britain you could get away with that without being taken outside and taught a lesson in decency by the bouncers.

Needless to say, none of us did cause trouble either there or on the way home because none of us were of that temperament, even sans inhibitions.

I'd like to see alcopops disappear, probably just like everyone else apart from those who drink them. Oh, and rapists. Nonetheless, it's their right to drink what they want. They don't go around trying to ban ale because they find it warm and sludgy, so I don't go around trying to ban what they like. If it causes them to assault somebody, prosecute them for assault. I fear authoritarians and their useful idiots trying to ban everything far more than I fear some gently swaying yob shouting incomprehensible obscenties at me on the way home.

Spleen

@AC

"So, dress 'em in a frilly ballet tu-tu, parade 'em around the town they caused grief in, then give 'em a public caning."

If you think that would deter them, you've never seen a 20-something fancy dress party, or a hazing ritual. Youths, certainly British youths, have a very strong sadomasochistic streak.

Outrage over Nokia factory closure

Spleen

Ausgezeichnet

Did it not occur to anyone in Germany that subsidising a company like Nokia, who operate in a very profitable and expanding industry, and are perfectly capable of making money without help, is moronic? It amounts to a bribe to keep down the unemployment figures long enough to get relected. That's taxpayers' money being used for political purposes.

To make it clear, the German and EU governments are to blame, not Nokia. If Nokia did take the money and run, it serves the bureaucrats for running a subsidies program in the first place. If Germany took away the subsidies and put the money and effort into growing a spine and deregulating their labour market, then not only would companies move into Germany, they'd actually stay.

First step, outsource all the union parasites into the middle of the Baltic Sea.

DVLA's 5m driver details giveaway

Spleen
Black Helicopters

Is anyone that surprised?

It's not just a nice little earner for the government (which they can pass on to us in the form of lower taxes... hahaha, not really, public sector pay rises for all!) It also fits in neatly with rocketing fuel and car taxes, road pricing, excessive road signs, environmental scaremongering, etc, in getting rid of the car and the incredibly annoying personal freedom it provides, forcing people to either go where the government says they can go (on public transport routes) or stay where they've jolly well been put.

It's joined-up government thinking at its finest.

Black helicopter for the obvious reason... another decade of Labour and the only cars on the road will be black Ministerial ones as well.

Showdown over encryption password in child porn case

Spleen
Black Helicopters

Tough tits

If I'd committed some horrible crime and the police were knocking at my door, I think it's fair enough that I don't open it. You want to get in so badly, get out the battering rams. Same applies to encrypted files you want to look at. Can't crack the encryption? Boo hoo hoo, go off and find some comatose diabetics to Taser(TM) until you feel better.

There is a valid argument that if the police are able to gain entry to your house they should be able to gain entry to your encrypted files, US-specific constitutional arguments aside, but I find the dilemma is made much easier by the fact that the police have far too much power already. I'm not inclined to be reasonable until they give some of the more flagrantly authoritarian powers up.

Hasbro fires off legal letters over Scrabulous

Spleen

@AC 22:48

How many hours it took to make Scrabble I dunno, but it is one of the best, finely balanced games in the world. If there had been too many of one letter with too many points or if the triple word scores had been too accessible, it wouldn't have lasted as long as it has, let alone got to the point of being in The Times daily above the chess puzzle. It took both a flash of genius and, presumably, many hours of balancing to create.

Hasbro is perfectly entitled to protect their intellectual property. Whether they would make more money or sell more sets by licencing it is irrelevant - that's their decision.

And more than one freetard has suggested that Hasbro should *buy* Scrabulous. Which is like going to the guy that burgled your house and buying all your heirlooms back off him. Not how the real world works. It's out there - turn off Facebook, stop reading open source and Ron Paul campaign blogs and open your front door.

Tom Cruise Scientology vid leaks onto net

Spleen
Happy

Scientology vs other religions vs people

There is a big difference between Scientology and other religions in that its founder started it as a money-making exercise, which meant that Scientology was from the beginning an extremely efficient business operation in which revenue generation is indivisible from participation.

Other religions had at least an initial phase of genuine belief. When they gained enough followers, they became a money-making opportunity, and then the businessmen moved in. They had to bolt on the revenue generating part to the existing structure, hence the rather clumsy donation/tithing model compared to Scientology's requirement that you pay for courses to move up. Christianity would be much more efficient if they charged for entrance to the church service and premium amounts for baptisms etc, but if they tried they'd be condemned as ungodly.

Turning a cult of a few hundred members into a religion of millions also creates inevitable conflict with the original holy doctrine. It's so difficult to reconcile the existence of a multinational political and financial powerhouse like the Catholic Church with the more personal philosophy of Jesus that Jack Chick's case for the Vatican being Satanic, based on Biblical verses, is actually quite convincing (or no less convincing than any other interpretation of the Bible). Scientology has no such problem because the organisation was built alongside the doctrine, rather than after it. El Reg's IT audience should have no trouble understanding how superior this approach is.

So the religions are very different - by which I mean Scientology is better, for its purpose anyway. (The sole purpose of a religion larger than a few hundred members who all know each other is to make money and wield political influence. Salvation, if it exists, can be done in small groups just as well as large ones.) But the religions are exactly the same in terms of followers. Scientologists aren't any more extreme or more gullible than other religious folk. Tom Cruise's weird-sounding comment on stopping at accidents is reminiscent of the large number of Christians who believe that atheists are inherently immoral or amoral.

Parliament ponders the weight of e-petitions

Spleen

Who cares

It's one of those lovely issues on which pretty much everyone with an opinion is wrong, on both sides. The Government is cynically trying to give the impression that it cares, which it doesn't. The public on the other hand seem to genuinely believe that they have the right to an actual voice in government, rather than merely a vote. If we did give power to the people, we would have a national identity database, National Service, mandatory hanging for sex offenders (including public urinators) with burden of proof lowered to 'on the balance of probabilities' all within a week. Overlaying it all are hundreds of joke petitions that are very amusing if you're 14 years old and bored during break.

It's not the government's most expensive, most humiliating or most disgusting failure, but it may be the most representative.

Japanese whalers lash protesters to mast

Spleen

Good

Even if they were assaulted and lashed to the mast, they invaded private property. This is no different from knocking out a burglar and tying him up until the police arrive. Wankers.

ISPs nominate UK record industry as top internet villain

Spleen

Caption

"This is Geoff Taylor, three seconds before realising his mineral water had been replaced with two-day-old human urine."

Wait, hang on, I made a typo.

"This is Geoff Taylor, three seconds after realising his mineral water had been replaced with two-day-old human urine."

eBay in sensational Back to the Future coupon deal

Spleen

@AC 15:32

Bravo. I was going to try and write something witty and time-travel related myself but my mind exploded.

Can it be a coincidence that the second series of Torchwood starts tomorrow?

Beeb confirms iPlayer streaming dominance

Spleen

@Ian

"For the 0.1% of the population that have attached a networked computer running XP to a living-room sized television."

Or the much larger percentage of the population that has an MP3 player capable of video playback and a lead to attach it to the TV, as I do. Still small, but with far more growth potential than those actually willing to permanently connect their computer to their TV. I'm assuming that stuff downloaded from iPlayer can be transferred, which it may not be.

Completely off-topic, did anyone watch City of Vice on Channel 4 last night? That is what television people outside the BBC believe quality programming is, judging by the hype and the conceit. The worst pile of badly written, badly acted and badly directed shite I have had the misfortune to see since... well, actually I can't remember turning on the TV at 9pm and ever seeing such a shocking waste of everyone's time in my entire life. And it's a series. Thank God for the BBC.

Microsoft develops 'intelligent' shopping trolley

Spleen

If it's useful, it'll happen

"what isle it’s in"

Hey, I shop at Archipelago's too. Kind of a chore getting the trolley between isles without ruining your ready meals in the ocean, though.

Unless you meant "aisle", of course. Narf.

I think there's a bit too much pessimism here. Whether it screws up supermarkets' placement tactics or not is rather irrelevant - if it's useful, one store will implement it, people will start going there, then the others will have to install it too. They installed self-service checkouts even though they usually lack an impulse-buy counter and can't pester you to get a Nectar card. Online shopping already allows you to see your total as you shop. And they can still put bread at one end and veg at the other - in fact, if the trolleys told you exactly where to go you'll probably have more time to look at the shelves instead of staring at the aisle signs.

If they could get away with it, I'm sure all supermarkets would chain shoppers to a conveyor belt that took them round the whole store twice and then to the checkout. But if people can get a more convenient shopping experience, they'll go to a different supermarket. In fact, that's part of why people went to supermarkets in the first place instead of trudging round the high street.

UK faces big jump in renewable targets

Spleen

Malta is killing the planet!

What if tomorrow someone invented a way of powering an entire village for a week on one lump of coal? I can guarantee you one thing - the EU would still insist we generated 20% of our energy with ugly/expensive renewables because that was the target. I'm exaggerating, but the fact is that using renewables is a means towards clean energy, not an end in itself. Treating it as inherently virtuous is self-evidently stupid.

Government targets are always arbitrary in any case and now they're being applied to something also completely arbitrary. It makes about as much sense as trying to stamp out MRSA by saying that x litres of water must be used in cleaning the hospital every day. Or that we can teach our children to read, write and do sums if they turn over a prescribed number of pages in their textbook per lesson.

Brighton professor bans Google

Spleen

Complicated issue? Not really

I've seen this discussed elsewhere, and while Wikipedia is obviously useless as a source (though may be a good starting point), the question of Google is a bit more difficult.

1. Searching the top 5 results on Google will obviously result in bland, similar essays.

2. Using reading lists can also result in bland essays, and ones that are specifically tailored to the lecturer's viewpoint.

3. Google allows students to search far more knowledge far quicker than an antiquated library system.

4. Searching antiquated library systems rather than having everything handed to you on a green plate in 0.0001 seconds is arguably a rewarding skill in itself.

Tricky issue, isn't it? Well, no. Not at all. She's a meeja studies lecturer. Whether her students spend five minutes on Google or five hours in the library, they'll still find nothing of intellectual value, nor will they write anything that adds to the sum of human knowledge. So it's all completely irrelevant.

I think someone's having a "where did my life go so wrong" moment.

Steve Jobs' Macworld Expo spiel spied on web?

Spleen

Who the hell is taking this seriously?

The content is irrelevant. Here is the post to Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Macworld_Conference_%26_Expo&diff=183215796&oldid=64332664. It's an anonymous post to a talk page with no attempt to claim authenticity. It's total rubbish, obviously completely made up. If it hadn't attracted a bunch of comments it would probably have been immediately removed, instead it took a couple of days (though it's still in the history - if it had been real, it would probably have been deleted).

Void Inside's reprinting it is a great example of the journalistic standards of the blogosphere. Shame that El Reg seems to think it has to follow suit.

Look out for next week's story: "Apparently, someone's friend Johnny is dumb and smells of pee. Source: Shiteforbrains.blogspot.com who cleverly spotted an edit to Talk:Sonic The Hedgehog on Wikipedia."

MP accuses BBC chief of illegally championing Microsoft

Spleen

Hyperbole

"What might be a pragmatic choice for a privately funded company becomes deeply problematic for a public corporation."

I fail to see why. The argument about it breaching state aid laws may be valid, but absent any professional legal opinion, it seems just as valid as the argument that licence-payers' money should be used to fund programmes. Not to make Linux geeks feel more included.

If the BBC stump out more money to make it compatible with Linux, I assume it'll give the same treatment to the Amiga and Workbench? Either the BBC is allowed to find its own balance between cost and accessibility, or it's forced to open it up to everybody. The BBC is one of the few public bodies that makes anything remotely resembling a contribution to humanity, so I say let it make its own choice on this one.

Village shaken by GPS-driven tank invasion

Spleen

If you can't read a map, then maybe you shouldn't choose lorry driving as a career

I only hope that these private contractors are never employed by the US military. Specifically, I hope they never have to deliver a shipment of arms to an army base in one of the several towns in America named 'Palestine'.

Number 10 spinner fingered in NTL investor 'bullsh*t' suit

Spleen

Just the man

Lying to voters is pretty much inevitable. I mean, they're a captive audience, literally. You take about 60% of their money at effective gunpoint, they're not expecting to be treated with respect after that.

Lying to investors, however, is, I would argue, much worse, because unlike taxpayers they've made a conscious, voluntary decision to hand you thousands of pounds on the promise of a return.

Even among the Brown Politburo, Stephen "nine-tenths" Carter is going to stand out as a complete douchebag.

California to snatch control of citizens' air-con

Spleen

So much for a free market society

The laws of supply and demand should be perfectly adequate to ensure that people use as much energy (in general and in relation to AC) as they can afford to. If they aren't, then the cause is virtually always incompetent government meddling, whether preventing adequate power supply being developed or refusing to allow consumers to be charged a sensible price.

A limit on how much energy you're allowed to expend on air conditioning amounts to rationing, and should be referred to as such at all times to counter government spin. Rationing in a supposedly free country - in Soviet California, air conditioning controls you.

BOFH: Memory short circuit

Spleen

@AC 09:54

BOFH stands for "Bastard Operator From Hell", PFY is "Pimply-Faced Youth".

Mobe snap murderers face justice

Spleen

Unbelievable

Whenever the government loses 25m personal records or says it's going to build a database on everyone in the UK, El Reg readers are usually pretty sensible. But give them the prospect of a good hanging and the old animalism comes out - an instinct barely distinguishable from the one that drove these guys to commit murder. Roll up, roll up, come see a man die. Don't worry, the government's said it's OK, so bring your mobiles and make sure you get a picture of the guy's tongue turning blue and the bit where he shits himself right at the end.

The government should not have the power of life and death over individual citizens, period. Nor should it have the power to say who can reproduce and who can't (which is why no civilised country uses chemical castration as a punishment either). The only thing worse than an unregulated gene pool is one regulated by the government. An ideal government-regulated gene pool would consist entirely of a cross between Ed Balls and Gordon Brown.

YouTube biker clocked at 189mph

Spleen

Pleasant surprise

Nice to see that most people take a sensible view of this.

My belief is that only actions that cause real harm or loss should be crimes. Crashing your car causes both. Dangerous driving *may* cause a crash. And driving at a fast speed *may* be dangerous driving. So what you have with speeding is a "crime" that is not one but two steps removed from anyone actually suffering.

Of course if the police effort put into speeding was put into actual crimes - for example, catching the uninsured who know they can hit and run with impunity - they'd get a lot less revenue (since when was the police force a business?) and cops wouldn't be able to spend their New Year's evening living out their Stasi fantasies by setting up roadblocks and interrogating every driver. In return for triple overtime pay, of course, as if anyone would ever invite them to go somewhere else.

Citizen's panels to put DNA database under microscope

Spleen

Quick survey

Politiicans and other worthies call for a national debate on something every few weeks. Hands up anyone who has ever taken part in a "national debate", that is, participated in something other than the usual amount of Internet threads and pub arguments because a politician said they should. I'm guessing no-one.

And hands up who's ever been on a "citizen's panel" or similar. I'm guessing no-one again, given that El Reg's demographic a) probably has a job b) probably has a life and c) is not the kind of mental that writes letters to the Sun.

Is it or isn't it? Brown keeps bottling the ID card question

Spleen

Ditherer

How we've managed to endure Brown for so long is beyond me. He's a total ditherer with no leadership ability whatsoever. To quote Matthew Parris (I think), he's prudent, but the sort of prudent person that hesitates as they approach a traffic light as it goes from green to amber, go over the line, then change their minds and screech to a halt - in the middle of the junction. I'm surprised he hasn't already been pushed - probably his rivals expect Labour to lose the next election no matter what (hooray) and don't want to snatch the poisoned chalice.

Nato secrets USB stick lost in Swedish library

Spleen

Anyone else reminded...

...of the Armstrong and Miller sketches where the Prime Minister (or someone) walks out of an official meeting, leaves a horrifically important document/treaty/wife behind him, and after dithering, refuses to go back for it because of the embarrassment of re-entering the room?

Can see it happening.

CES moots move from expensive Las Vegas

Spleen

Self-serving nosense

Ooh, there's a dilemma here and no mistake. Las Vegas obviously doesn't want to lose CES - but CES certainly doesn't want to lose Las Vegas.

Just look at this article itself. They're looking for "exhibition halls capable of hosting a show as big as CES". Tall order, is it? No it's damn well not. Pretty much every city on earth has at least one large empty buliding for the purpose of hosting large events. Perhaps CES does need a particularly large empty bulding, but no matter how large it is there will still be many, many venues across America that could accomodate it.

The people who make these kind of decisions want CES to be in Las Vegas so they can get a nice suite and play poker all day while the nerds in their employ are doing the whole technology fair thing before going home to the $100-a-day flea-holes mentioned above.

Toshiba remains upbeat about HD DVD

Spleen

Apologia Apocalypse

"We‘ve been declared dead before... "

Any statement along these lines translates as "We're dead again".

I hope whoever wrote that part of the statement has a second job.

Ofcom investigates X-Factor debacle

Spleen

Electoral reform

Maybe people should be allowed to either vote in reality shows, or in general elections, but not both. Do we really want people who ring premium rate phone lines to vote on karaoke competitions to decide the future of the nation?

Don't see Labour introducing this reform of course, they'd never get into power again.

NHS frets over Brits' genitalia

Spleen

Why stop there?

If we're going to censor the naughty bits we may as well put the woman in a burqa. Either you pander to all sensitivities about the human body, including the minority who believe that the entire female form is sinful, or you don't pander to them at all.

Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo! settle un-American activity claims

Spleen

Missing children

What on earth does gambling have to do with the International Center for Missing and Exploited Children?

Sounds like an arbitrary tax to me, extracted with threats that it'll be even more if they dare to contest it, and carefully calculated so that the companies won't see it as a large enough amount to be worth making a fuss over. Basically a large-scale version of the parking/speeding fine scam the government operates over here.

Tiger Team brings haxploitation to TV

Spleen

re: Computers + TV = fail

@Ross: Make sure you don't ever play Introversion's hacking game Uplink. The numbers in the IP addresses go up to 999, so it would probably give you a heart attack. (The rest of us get our heart attacks in the usual way, changing people's criminal records and hitting the 'Disconnect' button with one second left on the clock before we get traced.)

Anyway, I can't imagine that anything on Court TV could possibly be worth watching. Vérité sounds to me like they're not even going to pretend to hire actors.

Concerned comrades floor China's anti-graft website

Spleen

Corruption is inexcusable

There's no need to steal money from taxpayers. Just do what councillors here do, and allocate council tax money to useless projects then give the building contracts to companies that happen to be run by your friends and family. All perfectly legal. You might be investigated but all you usually have to do is say 'Oh, I had no idea that company was run by my brother-in-law, besides the other councillors approved it' (in return for you approving their own schemes - don't say this bit). At worst, you may have to resign, on a full pension, at which point the investigation will close on the basis that you've retired. Then you can go back in again. Don't worry, my Chinese friends, I'm not making a single word of it up. Who needs corruption?

Government is corrupt by definition. If they weren't corrupt they'd have real jobs, if we wanted the crap they build with taxpayers' money we'd pay for it ourselves. If you don't like corruption, the best you can do is vote for lower taxes, and even that's little more than a pathetic plea along the lines of 'please most exalted sirs, next time you take away our money at gunpoint, can you perhaps not take quite so much, Tiny Tim needs a new wooden leg'.

Smurf gives Paris Hilton a mouthful

Spleen
Paris Hilton

The Paris Hilton angle

...was probably best had by the dwarfs, given that their eye level was almost certainly below the hem of what Ms Hilton was wearing that day when she "bent down to talk to them".

US fails to reverse online gambling ban

Spleen

@Curtis, Greg

All casino gambling is rigged with or without mechanical/software jiggery-pokery. If you bet on black in roulette you get double your money back if you win but your odds of winning are slightly less than half (because of the green square(s)). The same applies to all the squares - the payouts are based on the green squares not existing - so over a long period of time you inevitably lose. Same applies to all games in which the 'house' is involved, especially betting on races and the like.

Everyone knows this, of course, even the stupidest gamblers know it deep down. Gambling is a game and the difference between your stake and your expected payout is just the price of playing. Only a stupid casino owner would actually rig his games and expose himself to legal liability when there are perfectly legal ways of making a profit on casino games over time.

US warrantless wiretapping predates 9/11

Spleen

The only news...

...is that people think this is news. It's well known that the "emergency measures" drafted in supposèd response by the British and American governments had been on the wish lists of their respective secret policemen for years. Al-Qaeda merely played the part of Father Christmas. Ho ho ho, you've been very good little boys and... other little boys this year, have house arrest, extended detention, restrictions on air travel.

Of course, whereas children generally get bored with their Christmas toys after about ten seconds, the security perverts have been having a grand old time torturing hapless wrong-place-wrong-time darkies - some of them British citizens - for the past six years.

Truth, anonymity and the Wikipedia Way

Spleen

A closed Wikipedia wouldn't be Wikipedia

Casual editing makes Wikipedia what it is, for better or for worse. If it forbade anonymous edits - let alone required real names to edit - then the millions of casual edits wouldn't happen. Like it or not, being able to click, type, and click again to correct a typo or nonsensical paragraph is a virtue (albeit an abusable one). Many editors say that they wouldn't have started editing if they hadn't been able to make that first, easy, casual edit.

Expecting people to give you personal information and jump through a bunch of sign-up hoops for the privilege of doing writing for free is a losing game. Despite all the media hype, Veropedia or Citizendium are to all intents and purposes deserted. If you want to read an encyclopaedia for free then it has to be completely open, with the minimum possible barriers to entry, or people simply won't bother writing it. If you want something written by dedicated, accountable human beings, guess what - they'll want to be paid, which is why if you want that you need to shell out for the Britannica.

Virgin Media network collapses nationwide

Spleen

"Routine maintenance"

For NTL/Virgin Media this kind of "maintenance" is pretty "routine".

Thank God they were too incompetent to even give us a line in our flat, so after several weeks we told them to f off and got BT instead. Better a few weeks of no broadband than a year of this sort of service.

Bikini-clad pin-ups cover old school jailbreak

Spleen

Why bolt the stable door when you can brick it up

"barred inmates from pinning up pictures from magazines on their cell walls"

Would it be so hard to look behind the posters during cell inspections? Instead let's put a niggling ban on the prisoners personalising their cell, that'll deter them from planning to escape from it all right.

What the hell am I doing, I'm expressing astonishment that prison officers - American prison officers at that - could be petty and small-minded.

MoD trumpets 'Innovation Strategy' for buying kit

Spleen

Beyond belief

It sounds like the plot for a bad role-playing game.

"Journey to the Six Towers of Excellence and place the magic crystals on each of the Five Pillars. Then you will fight the Research Directors twelve (make sure to put on your fire resistance kit) with a save point after the sixth and eleventh."

US woman launches 'Taserware' parties

Spleen

re: the point is

I certainly do have the right to defend myself. Moreover, I can be reasonably confident that if I do have to defend myself, usually a black eye is the worst that will happen, because the other guy won't be carrying a gun. And if I misjudge a woman then I'll get a slapped cheek, not 40,000 volts or some toxic chemical to the face.

Americans don't have the right to defend themselves, they have the right to carry guns, which is completely different. Their penises may feel bigger but they're much less safe.

Cambs cops podcast 999 timewasters

Spleen

@lglethal

To add to what AC said, a silent call could very easily be someone suicidally depressed rather than an unlocked phone.

Sysadmin admits trying to axe California power grid

Spleen

EPO button

I assumed it was there so James Bond could press it at the last second.

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