Posts by Wommit

A number of people

still are posting the "I drive ten miles a year and pay more than my wife/girlfriend/SO who drives a million miles a year and has an accident every day!" And "But this man / woman / sloth is paying the same as..." And Insurers should look at the individuals risk.

Go back to reading the DM. You're lack of understanding of the insurance system is beginning to bore me.

Do you buy you shirts / shirts from a bespoke tailor?

No, you by them from a shop which sells to a large number of people. So you get a "STANDARD" item of clothing.

And just WHAT makes you think that insurance is any different? If you want a cheap insurance deal, you'll go to a company who sells to tens of thousands of people. You'll put up with not having "your" risk calculated for the sake of saving a few quid.

There are quite a lot of insurers who would just love to insure you PERSONALLY. But it will cost you.

Just like a made to measure suit will cost a lot more than the off the peg counterpart.

So, you have your choice go cheap and get an 'off the peg' deal. Go tailored just for you and pay through the nose for it. Your choice.

So now you can stop whinging that the insurers are cheating you, because THEY aren't assessing YOUR risk. Go to a respectable broker and They'll arrange insurance just for you.

Also men and women are different. I don't know why, but they are. If you feel that you must make the genders equal then start at the beginning. In the UK 1011 girls are born for every 1000 boys. Start with that. Get the birth rates equal. How are you going to sort that one out?

WOW!!!

That was interesting.

Especially for an IT tech site where most of us are driving servers daily.

Are you sure that this article wasn't meant for the Plumbers Weekly?

Insurance

is the transference of risk. that's it pure and simple.

If a person is within a group which the insurance companies have found to be a higher risk, then they will be charged more. This is irrespective of age gender colour or religion. If you are in a group which has shown itself to be a low risk then you will pay a reduced premium. The questions that you're asked on your application are all about identifying _precisely_ which group you belong in.

Insurance companies have huge data sets to mine for this type of information and, in a hugely competitive market, they cut their margins as much as possible.

If you wish to complain about sexual discrimination in insurance then have a go at companies like Sheila's Wheels, companies who only sell to a single gender.

But complaining that you fit into a group which has a higher than average number of claims every year is pointless. Do something to get out of that group, take the advance drivers tests. That will lower your premium.

But no, it's far easier to just whinge at the insurance companies and blame them.

Yes, I am a DBA for an insurance / reinsurance company in the city.

So...

Gambling is OK _only_ when you pay tax to the local government. Got it.

Just

completed the survey.

Perhaps the only way to stop ridiculous laws being enacted and enforced is to have a body of research like this.

Asking pressure groups what their opinion is will only get you their narrow, and biased, viewpoint. This is dangerous as it warps the viewpoint of our lawmakers (as if those viewpoints weren't warped enough already.) And this leads to very bad laws being enacted, i.e. the extreme cartoon laws.

A lot of the pressure groups, who are trying to force these limitations upon us, are just trying to make us conform to a set of rules which are basically unnatural and unworkable. These laws are criminalising people just for the sake of criminalising them.

This ruling doesn't go far enough

All pasties should be made in Cornwall. It should be forbidden on pain of death to make them anywhere else.

And then we should ban the export of pasties out of Cornwall.

That alone will increase the standard of British food by a measurable amount.

Sad day.

I always liked the Brigadier.

But

at least he got a cat for his lunch.

The people in charge of the budgets

are used to having subordinates jump at their whim. Now these officers (its always the officers - Sorry Lewis) find that they have to deal with civilians and company bosses too. People who have been trained to screw the fuck out of them.

Its like leading lambs to the slaughter. The officers in charge (Sorry, had to put that in - delicious irony and all that,) have no idea how badly they are going to be screwed. And the "civil servants" just sit back and watch the military make fools of themselves. After all, it's not _their_ fault if the brass can't find their arses with both hands is it?

The Who

Tommy

So they want to list the security holes in social websites

Pointless. Nobody is going to read past the first 16 or 17 pages.

I want

a green one. A green one!!!!!!!

They're wrong.

The way to get more people volunteering and working in, and for, 'the community' (tm) is to reduce the red tape and bureaucracy involved in doing so.

I read in the ES last night about a woman who wanted to 'do something'. While she is obviously insane, this is a laudable ambition.

She decided that visiting the elderly was within her means and started to find out how to 'do it.

However it took her three months to gather the required 'permission'. That included the charity involved picking up references from the electoral register and her work, and her having a CRB check. Then the spending cuts meant that the charity involved lost part of its funding and this particular program was being terminated.

How sad she was, she couldn't visit the elderly any more.

Bugger.

Now all of this raises a few questions.

1) Why did it take so long to get her in touch with someone who could use a visitor? If this process had been quicker perhaps she would, even now & without the assistance of the charity, still be visiting someone.

2) Why didn't she look up and down her own street. I bet she'd find a couple of elderly people within two minutes walk. They might dribble a bit and smell of wee, but that's a hazard with any of us over 30. She could start to speak to them in the street. Perhaps help them carry shopping back from the local shop etc. You know, stuff that we used to do in the olden days. Perhaps she could have made a couple of FRIENDS!!!

No need for CRB checks. If she's bad then hammer her hard. If she's not then why bother with her in the first place. After all we don't start checking the youth of today to see if they're going to be thieves and burglars do we? Oh wait, some ones already proposed that we should do that.

This is still very DM

So, I get caught with a cartoon of Lisa & Bart Simpson engaging in oral intercourse (or the 2012 Olympics logo if you prefer) on my PC, get a long prison sentence (because I'm obviously a complete and total perv and waste of O2). Get released after spending my sentence in effective solitary (because the ordinary decent criminals don't like pervs and I'm a convicted perv.) And then I have to wait _15_ years before I can appeal.

Of what about the 15yo teenager who sends a silly photo of him/her self to their SO? Same situation.

All of this presupposes that the original laws which put people onto this register are fair and just. And that the judicial process is unbiased, and that the police officers attending the case actually 'do their jobs' and don't stitch me up, because they are _sure_ that I'm hiding the _real_stuff somewhere and anyway, I'm single and I have a whole bunch of computers in my home, so, let's face it. I'm as guilty as sin right now, so why do we have to bother with the expense of a trial, just fall down these stairs sonny boyo.

</rant>

I need a lie down now.

So...

Obey The Man, for The Man is a vengeful man and will smight thee mightily.

If thou obeyeth the Man, then the Man will be a just and wise Man. Unless you pisseth him off in other ways.

Not gonna happen

Not in this country anyway.

1) You have to change the attitude of the senior / head teachers in the junior / senior schools away from the 'fluffy' ideas about the kids finding their own way through 'the learning journey' (tm). You have to convince these people that their job is to actually _TEACH_ the kids in their care.

2) You have to remove disruptive influences, including (or especially) disruptive students, from the classroom. How can a class of 30 to 60 learn anything when one or two of their number is running round being a total arsehole?

3) You have to get rid of the useless teachers. Now this is never ever going to happen. Once someone figures out how to properly evaluate a teachers performance, the whole teaching profession will shit themselves.

4) You have to convince the kids with the ability to attain these qualifications that they should actually _WORK_ to get the quals. Now that is going to be difficult when the kids see football or big tits, and the willingness to expose them, as their best gateway to fame and fortune.

5) You have to convince the hordes of middle class parents (who believe that their kids degree in media studies has equal worth as a degree in maths, science or engineering) that they are twats.

6) You have to convince the universities and HEIs (doesn't that give you a warm and cuddly feeling if 'insidership'?) that this country only needs about 1% of the media studies graduates that they currently churn out. And that most of these 'universities' are little but jumped up red brick colleges and they should go back to what they used to do so well. Teach technical subjects for those without the real ability for the 'pure' subjects.

7) And you have to convince the government, and those hordes of middle class parents whose kids were given^W^W obtained a media studies degree, that it is worthwhile for this country to pay for the harder, more salable courses.

There are countries who realise that the only way that you can give everybody an equal educational qualification, is to give everyone the lowest grade possible. Some people are brighter, more academically able than others. These people, the brightest of our children, need to be nurtured and helped to fulfill their potential. It means streaming kids into ability groups, it means harder work for the teachers of the higher groups. It means getting the very brightest kids into special schools so that they can be taught by the best teachers. It also means that the less able kids are grouped too. They should be helped to develop their potential just as hard as the brighter kids, but their needs will be different. And so on down the ability range until the very least able are helped in the ways that they need.

None of these thoughts are actually radical, nor are they 'consigning the less able to the rubbish heap'. If these brighter kids are from middle class or, heaven forbid, upper class families, perhaps we should be looking at what they are doing right and what the others aren't doing.

One point

that seems to have been forgotten in this <terrorists are everywhere> piece.

"The purpose of terrorism, is to terrorise," Attributed to Lenin.

And you 'terrorise' people, not fish. Blowing up a farmhouse is much safer than a tube station or train. But that won't 'terrorise' people, so you would have failed.

9/11 worked because the American people, and their government, panicked. The whole country changed because of a single terrorist attack. The terrorists won and the world lost.

7/7 didn't work so well, people were getting on buses and tubes the next day. But the UK had already been bloodied by the IRA attacks, and knew what was most likely to happen next, nothing.

Blowing up a gas tanker in a harbour will only work if it is somewhere like the London docks. It is the population density that terrorists have to look for.

Blowing up an oil rig, won't affect most people and so won't 'terrorise', but it will seriously piss off some seriously rich people. People who have the means, and, possibly, the will to make things tough for the sponsors of terrorism.

So there is a real reason why even such a soft target as an oil rig hasn't been targeted by terrorists, it isn't worth it.

Oh no...

I'm not gonna dick around with this one.

The problem with this

is that the people whose data was lost, are going to be among those who actually have to pay the fine.

This is a title

Is _ANYONE_ surprised that a federal LEO of the USA believes in their right to remove a person's, or organisations, property without giving them a change to defend themselves?

In the free world this sort of behaviour is usually called theft.

It's not even going to matter if the (former) holders of this property are operating legally in the jurisdiction that they're based in. Now who can these victims appeal to for redress?

No one.

Even if there was a world court, and the USA had signed up to be bound by that courts judgments, they would ignore such irrelevancies. See the WTO for precedents.

Perhaps now really is the time to end this _special_ relationship between the US & UK. Maybe then the UK would regain some of its former standing in the international communities.

Does this mean...

that the ambulance chasers, and their 'outraged' and 'insulted' clients will crawl back under their PC stone?

/Joke

PS. This is intended as humour. Sue me and I'll throw my overdraft at you.

PPS. See the JOKE icon.

Err...

"Consumers can usually activate Wi-Fi security protections in a few simple steps, but much like the seatbelts [sic] in your car, it won't protect you unless you use it."

No, seat belts used to be quite easy _for some people_ to fit to cars. Quite difficult to very hard for others to accomplish the same task. And it's the same for router security. Some people just _don't_ understand the concepts that they're expected to deal with. This isn't their _fault_, I don't understand much about sewing and I'm assured that that skill is easy to learn.

So, if you want more people to set the security on this kind of kit, then make it easier for them. Nice usable front ends, cheap easy to access helplines. etc.

Just moaning that 'they' don't do it isn't going to change things.