I smell a dodgy compo-seeker....

This 11cm piece of steel passed through the dvd drive's casing, and still had enough kinetic energy to pierce the guy's hand? I can't think of any component in a dvd drive has the capacity to fire a missile with that sort of force - 20lb ft minimum.

Sinister, much?

No sympathy with the rioting & looting yoofs, but surely RIM can't just hand over total access to everyone's messages without notice, consent or a warrant? Secure comms is a major part of the blackberry sell, they will shoot themselves in the foot (or radio) if they do this.

What did I do?

Perfect Ten, Collings & Herrin, now Sarah Bee.

Why do they all leave me?

Shame on the USA

They are mistreating this guy in a manner bordering upon torture, with the obvious intention of breaking any remaining free will or dignity he may have .

And then they'll produce a sleep-deprived, schizoid defendant, sedated to his eyeballs, and lead him through a rehearsed confession that Stalin would've been proud of.

Utterly despicable.

Good Riddance

The man was a blustering shroud-waving bully, more interested in building his empire than anything else.

This is just soooooo funny

Go scriptkiddies, blast your way to freedom with the LOIC!

The eBay app is borked

It's the only thing I wanted (apart from google maps, natch) and it won't recognise my username & password... :o(

We're a simple-minded, smutty lot....

Great, innit?

Also Happening With ContactPoint....

The policy & implementation teams aren't going to quietly disband, give back the money and go off to the dole queue. They're trying to reconfigure the projects as local initiatives, arguing that the benefits were recognised years ago and shouldn't be sacrificed.

I know that in at least 3 council areas local to me, there is a rearguard battle to continue Contactpoint. The killer problem is subject consent - eg how can they ignore it without without national legislation? We should watch out for 'creative' proposals being slipped under the radar to get around this.

www.no2id.net

offshore VPN

It's time has come - even if you're not infringing Hollywood's precious profits, nobody should have live under this sort of suspicion-based surveillance regime.

Perhaps the new govt will have the cojones to overturn this madness before it goes too far (eg Dangerous Dogs Act).

That's a classic!

Geoffrey Boycott in Star Wars... " You dinn't want to be mucking about with t' force stuff Luuke..."

What do they *do* to incoming Home Secretaries?

Alan Johnson seemed a reasonable, tolerant sort of chap. Within a week he's sounding like O'Brien in 1984, just like all his predecessors. There must be an induction briefing, but is it :

- Here is the incredible power you now have, as long as you play along with our peasant-scaring strategy. or...

- Here are the true threats facing UK, the real reason why we absolutely have to arrest photographers and kill black suspects - but the public cannot be told

That motto in full

Don't be merely evil, go further

I love this guy

Because Jimbo Wales obviously hates and resents him.... :o)

@ AC 16.31

"The beauty is that there is NOTHING you can do to stop the iPad coming to dominate mobile computing!"

mmm, yeah. Just like everyone's got an ipod, an iphone and a mac?? Be realistic, AC - Apple kit is aspirational and pricey, it's never going to dominate the market.

How The Law Works....

"History is not on his side. In November 2005, another Florida court, in Sarasota County, hearing a drunk-driving case, ordered that the code for the breathalyzer used in that collar to be handed over for examination by the defendant.

Despite the court order, all research suggests that the code was not handed over by the breathalyzer's manufacturer. The defendant, meanwhile, was convicted anyway and the case closed a year later in November 2006"

So corporations can simply flout a court order, and citizens get convicted anyway.

The War on Search Engines

The RIAA rep crows that they're not currently targeting Google but..... "websites have a duty of care to prevent the availability of illegal content on their websites".

So let's look forward to a China-friendly world where all net searches are automatically filtered to remove anything illegal, offensive or transgressive (by the standards of any individual, corporation or nation with the power to sue). Their version of Web2.0 will look like AOL circa 1993 - just links to nice, safe shopping & hobby sites.

I'm not a total fan of pirates, hackers, spammers etc, but if I have to take a side I'll stand with them against the smothering embrace of the RIAA pigopoly.

It makes me proud to be a taxpayer

The cold war is over, but we're spending billions on Trident, supersonic fighter planes & cruise missiles. Obviously our soldiers don't have proper boots or vehicles, but savings have to be made somewhere if BAE's cosy, corrupt monopoly is to be maintained.

The Sad Decline of Expert Judgement

These researchers are well-regarded in the criminal justice arena - experts in risk assessment & management, etc. It's very disappointing that they've put their names to such an uncritical, unthinking report. The government must be very pleased with their obedience.

Bollocks to the whole stinking thing

ID cards, biometric passports, national id registers, implanted chips - I don't want any of them, I prefer freedom and dignity and I accept the very slight risks associated with that.

The title is required, and must contain letters and/or digits.

PayPal hadn't offered an with an explanation at press time........

How about "it's my nature", like the old Aesop fable

Hull Daily Mail isn't fit to wrap chips in.

This is my local paper, and yes it's notorious for having multi-page adverts for sexlines, massage parlours and escorts, which make a veeeery tidy profit for them.

I have no connection with Mr Smith or his hu17.net site, but I can tell readers exactly what crime he has committed - he is providing free, fair and interesting news for the town, and that threatens the HDM monopoly.

They're just vermin who weren't good enough to get a job with a national tabloid.

Outrageous Delay

"The European Court of Human Rights ruled against the policy of indefinite retention in late 2008" and our supposedly pro-freedom & dignity govt is *still* trying to find excuses to continue the harvest.

Excellent Result!

Nobody could've complained if the BPI had sought an injunction or other civil means to protect their IP rights. But to send in a dawn raid by Police and prosecute an overblown criminal charge was clearly taking the piss. Well done to the jury for refusing to accept it.

So, what does it *do* that XP can't. do?

Not being funny or anything, but I've read a lot of the coverage of W7 (including fawning magazine articles surely ghosted by MS PR) and I've yet to find a unique, important function which W7 offers over a properly configured XP Pro.

Okay, with XP you have to add a few external apps for critical tasks but that's arguably an advantage. I specifically prefer to trust TrueImage backup for example, compared to a built-in function which might be corrupted along with the rest of the OS. Ditto AV, etc.

So really, all you happy adopters - apart from "new & shiny" what other key benefits are offered in W7?

Lies, just more more lies

They'll cook up some rubbish using biased questions or tame samples, and then they'll release it as a positive change story - "Young people told us what needed to be tackled to make this work - we listened and we reviewed our proposals. Now young people say that the relaunched New-Entitlement-Citizen-Card is great!"

A major clean-up is needed.

It will take decades, or a very substantial civil insurrection, to move the police back into a public service ethos.

This "we are the masters, you will obey!" attitude has to be eradicated - a good start would be to formally discipline all officers who are discourteous to a law-abiding citizen (just as we would if they were bus drivers or nurses). It will probably be necessary to get rid of 90% of the senior officers though, as they plainly don't care about incidents like this one.

May God Have Mercy On My Soul...

I'm gonna vote for them, unless Lib or Lab make similar commitments.

@ Francis

I've signed the pledge, made a monthly contribution *and* fellated the Chair on a quarterly basis.

Excellent

It was public information held by a public body, should've been released years ago

Fighting like rats in a sack

They're all as bad as each other...

Kudos to Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer

"Given that the majority of ACPO’s funding is provided by the public in one way or another and that its leading representatives are generally serving senior police officers, it is effectively a public sector entity operating as a private company. It is responsible for leading the development and direction of police authorities in England and Wales; so its public functions are obvious. It co-ordinates strategic decisions among police forces and much of that decision-making process is opaque and unminuted."

She has some pretty sound ideas - http://suemiller.org.uk/

At the next election....

I shall hold my nose and vote for the Tories. I am absolutely ashamed of that, but it's the least bad option available for a civil libertarian.

"The problem with socialists" rant

And there, ladies and gentlemen, is our problem. As AC (13.08 14.30) so eloquently demonstrates, whole generations of Septics have been brainwashed with the Catechisms of Power & Profit :

- Socialism, communism or communitarian behaviour is always bad. “The rich man in his castle, the poor man at his gate, God gave each his station and ordered his estate.” It is God's will. Anyone who tampers is a freedom-hating commie, and will be crushed like the Wobblies (or those pesky native americans).

- America's military-industrial complex is always good. Saving the world does require carpet bombing of various brown-skinned foreigners, but they'll feel good knowing they died for freedom. Anyone who questions this is a freedom-hating commie, and will be detained indefinitely in an offshore torture facility.

- Any historical or scientific fact which doesn't suit the prejudices of Joe Six-Pack and Faux News is invalid. History will be rewritten to suit Septic sentiments (Rambo, U-751, Braveheart), and science only counts if we like it (climate change, stem-cells, birth control).

I do agree with that AC that there's no point in being abusive towards Septics who hold these flat-earth views. They sincerely believe it, as we would if we had grown up in their milieu, and at an individual level Septics are as kind and generous as any other people. Unfortunately, as a nation they more closely resemble the dystopic fantasy of Starship Troopers (movie) every day.

The final contempt for the public

They would rather continue to waste our money on this pathetic face-saving 'voluntary' card than admit it's a failed idea and redirect the money to useful stuff like army helicopters, hospital beds etc. This rather brutally reveals the contempt our masters have for us.....

ACPO - Yeah, Right...

I guarantee that two weeks before ACPO finally becomes subject to public scrutiny, all it's shady and antidemocratic activity will simply be exported to another still-exempt body, leaving a 'shell' ACPO to issue press releases about transparency.

Try asking them what accountability or governance applied to the adoption of Kratos "shoot-on-sight" rules, and you might as well ask a cat to explain algebra. It's a national scandal.

18 - 25's unable to enter pubs & clubs....?

Sounds like heaven to me.....

The Estariel Haters....

I'm glad that this chap's right to create sleazy, misogynist, brutal pornography has been upheld, because that's unavoidably relevant to a whole load of other civil rights which I treasure.

But let's not kid ourselves - this isn't Lady Chatterley's Lover, American Psycho or Texas Chainsaw Massacre - there's no shred of literary or creative merit to redeem Darryn Walker's vile, jealous filth.

His employer is wholly entitled to conclude that this behaviour has brought them into gross disrepute, and to act accordingly within the law. That's an important freedom too, and I'm sure we all support them in exercising it as they see fit.

Leela....

mmmmmmmmm

Good point by PPPie

Menwith Hill is hoovering up *vast* amounts of transmitted data from UK wires and ether, processing and matching it, searching out interesting people and patterns for the national advantage of the USA. Can anyone imagine any other circumstance in which a modern country would allow another country to deploy an Eye-Of-Sauron-Matic surveillance device against it's citizens?

Menwith Hill has been doing this for several decades, so It seems clear that our leaders (of all parties) have no qualms about compromising our privacy, and our economy, if this will please the Septics.