Posts by Graham Marsden
4077 posts • joined Friday 19th January 2007 17:59 GMT
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Posted in Fark attempts to trademark NSFW
@Tom
> Barclays Have trademarked "Hole in the wall".
Next time I go into the Hole in the Wall pub in Great Southsea Street, Portsmouth, I'll have to remember to point this out to the Landlord!
Double standards...?
So they're not willing to hand over documents that might reveal alleged corruption on the part BAE to the US authorities, yet they were falling over themselves to hand over everything they had on the Nat West three including the guys themselves...?
Hypocrites
So MPs the majority of whom will, of course, be from the Labour Party, the one which keeps ignoring the comments from the Information Commissioner about how their ID card and National Identity Register and NHS Spine will breach Data Protection, will "grill" him on *why* people do stupid things with sensitive data and *ignore* sensible advice on how to ensure that data is protected...?!
Where's the "Bashing your head against a brick wall" icon??
Posted in Poor take-up of e-tax system
Try logging in with this...
I've registered for online VAT payments.
My login ID (which won't auto store in Firefox) is LUZPKSQTF93N (BTW I've changed a couple of the characters :-P )
Now which part of "User Friendly" don't they understand?
@Chris W
> You both seem to be seriously suggesting that paedophiles should not be prosecuted because their actions are not as bad as something else. As far as I know there are no good crimes are bad crimes, simply crimes. Break the law and in an ideal world you should pay the price. I, for one am glad for every abuser that gets locked away.
No, I don't think Keith T and Andy Bright are suggesting any such thing.
What they are suggesting is that "wallies" who propose the sort of "Zero Tolerance" approach which *you* seem to be advocating are actually applying a "Zero Common Sense" system whereby "breaking the law" is the *only* thing that is taken into consideration.
This is the sort of "crowd pleasing" political nonsense we frequently from our leaders who are more interested in getting good headlines than actually dealing with the problems that exist in society (which often result from their *previous* "get tough" policies!).
Edit history...
The company a friend works for sent round a memo telling everyone to ensure that the "history" function was switched off.
Office gossip revealed that this was after a customer was sent a document and back-tracked the changes to find that "Dear Sir" had replaced "Dear Miserable Bastards"....!
Posted in EU TV laws are coming
@Enjoy the mute button while you still can
Alternatively, get Sky+ or some other sort of PVR technology, record the programme and then just fast forward through the ads
(At least until they bring in coding to disable the fast forward button...)
Posted in NASA reveals manned Mars mission plans
The chances of anything going to Mars...
Are $450bn to one he said...!
Clean ID and NIR Databases...?
Th... th... th... that's all folks!
PS Wow! Name checked in El Reg :-)))
@He can't prove he's innocent
"If you were accused of something serious, wouldn't you want to prove your innocence?"
No, because I have the right to be *PRESUMED* innocent until and unless I am *PROVEN* guilty, so do you and so does he and everyone else.
This Government seems to think that, like many totalitarian regimes, an accusation is sufficient evidence to take action.
Proof is an unnecessary extra.
@Sarah
> If, in the unlikely event that it happens, my bank account gets emptied, I'll get the money back anyway
You hope! The expression "Mineralogical Haemoglobin Extraction" comes to mind because the banks will argue that it wasn't their fault and they were not liable for the loss and obviously it's the Government who should foot the bill.
In the mean time if someone uses your information to take out loans or credit cards and then defaults on those it's *your* credit record which will end up screwed up. Sure, eventually you might get that fixed, but you're going to waste a lot of time doing so.
And the same goes for everyone else who may be affected.
PS
> I did originally post my bank account number and sort code previously, but the El Reg moderators bounced the posting. And there's me thinking that what with all the effing, jeffing and personal attacks on here there was no moderation
Yet they allow a duplicate post one minute after the original...!
Who do you trust...?
The Government has just admitted that two disks of Benefits Claimants' details have gone missing, something that could affect half the country's population.
And they expect us to *trust* them with systems like the ones in this article?
@Chris
Here's the coat you forgot to pick up...! ;-)
Posted in Oz Santas suffer no 'ho ho ho' blow
@AndyB
And what about this place...?
http://www.streetmap.co.uk/newmap.srf?x=432771&y=1153659&z=3&sv=twatt&st=3&tl=Twatt,+Shetland+[Town]&searchp=newsearch.srf&mapp=newmap.srf
It's so good to see that...
... So many people on here are happy to assume that because the woman involved is an "animal rights activist" and has had demands for her passwords she is clearly an "animal rights terrorist" who digs up grannies or whatever and thus are quite ok with the idea of *her* rights being violated.
Of course if it was *their* rights being breached and their passwords being demanded, they, knowing they were completely innocent and having had done nothing, would no doubt be shouting to high heaven about this.
Hypocrites.
I can see...
... Gordon Brown looking at the cover of Private Eye and thinking...
PS Where's the...
... Send for Chuck Norris icon?
Re: Best delay message i have heard was...
Even better was when a friend travelling on the London Underground realised that they'd left the Platform speaker microphone box unlocked.
The commuters were amused (or, perhaps, amazed) to hear the announcement that "We apologise for the delay in the arrival of the next service, this is because we're completely incompetent and couldn't organise a piss up in a brewery!"
He faded into the crowd as a number of LRT staff converged on the speaker system... ;-)
Posted in Government rejects retreat on e-voting
If it ain't broke...
We have a very effective system of manual vote counting that has worked in this country for generations, why does the Government want to pi$$ away public money on systems that other countries have shown needs a *lot* more work?
Having said that, I could understand wanting to bring in a system like STV proportional representation which works well in countries like Ireland and Denmark, but so far they seem to be entirely unwilling to get rid of the nonsense of First Past The Post which effectively disenfranchises people in "stronghold" constituencies.
PS I understood a complete posting from amanfromMars. I think someone must have stolen his ID...!
Oh dear gods....
Having no idea who Lilly Allen is, I went to her website and my ears were assaulted by some incredibly awful "singing".
If that's any measure of her acting talent then it seems the producers of Dr Who are definitely trying to kill off the show :-(
Posted in Bacteria to blame for global warming?
Bunk or not...
I'm fed up with "it's bunk"/ "no it's not" arguments.
The *fact* is that, as a society, we are using too much energy in an inefficient manner and that *cannot* carry on.
We need to find more energy efficient methods of powering our civilisation before it's too late.
Everyone must be thin, athletic, fit; wardrobe will be form-fitting.
Ah, so *that's* why Shanter didn't get the part...!
"Everyone's unique. Let us keep it that way"
They missed out "...Or Else!" to make it properly sinister.
Posted in ID Cards cost cut to £5.6bn
New passports...
I got myself a passport a year ago, not because I'm planning on travelling abroad any time soon, but because I *might* want to in the future and I didn't want a "biomentric" one
I now have ten years to wait for the Passport/ ID card system to collapse under its own inadequacies and incompetence!
Re: This is getting dull
Jared:
You asked me to "prove that fighting pedophilia and and UNICEF compete for the same funding". I did.
Rephrasing your Appeal to Pity fallacy doesn't make it any less a fallacy.
I demonstrated that your claim about what Ulm said was wrong.
You now seem to be intent on moving the goalposts because you don't like losing however I do not have inclination to waste any more time on this.
Please feel free to have the last word.
They missed out...
Share and Enjoy!
@Anonymous Coward
> Just because you're not important enough to be told every little bit of the case file, not trustworthy enough to be allowed to see what evidence or methods of collection were used to bring these folks in, doesn't mean that there isn't a damn good reason to lock these people away.
No, it doesn't. And whilst the basic principle of UK justice is that it must be *seen* to be done, I can appreciate that there may be information or methods that, for security reasons, cannot be divulged in open court and I have no problem with that.
However what I *DO* have a problem with is the seeming lack of oversight or accountability which will be applied to the Police and Security Services when they start using the powers they want to be given.
It isn't enough that when someone's arrest is questioned the response they get is "well we think he's a terrorist" as if that is sufficient to justify their actions.
> is it easier to follow the herd and follow the well paid and trendy naysayers who pave the way for their boss's visions at the expense of yours?
As opposed to the Well Paid Chief Police Officers who want to pave the way for *our* liberties to be removed and make their vision the applicable one at the expense of our freedoms?
FYI I make up my own mind. I don't need anyone else to tell me what my opinion should be. Do you?
@Jared
> You have to prove that fighting pedophilia and and UNICEF compete for the same funding
UNICEF is financed through donations from Governments which come from money raised by taxation. Police forces are financed from Government, money which comes from taxation. There is only a limited amount of money available from the Government's coffers. To spend more in one area means spending less in another. QED.
> Making that argument is hypocritical unless each penny you spend is spent on something more important than starving/diseased children. How much have you donated to UNICEF this year, and how much has gone into upgrading your computer and eating out?
As I've already said, UNICEF is funded by National Governments. I have contributed to them via my taxes just as everyone else who pays taxes has.
Your subsequent statement is an Appeal to Pity fallacy.
> Ulm argued that we should not spend resources on pedophiles because preventable deaths of children is a more important problem.
He did *not* say we "should not spend resources on paedophiles" he simply questioned the priorities under which the amounts of funding are allocated. You are using a Straw Man argument to misrepresent what he said.
Oh and...
> Speaking of straw man arguments...
No, that was *irony*.
@John A Blackley
> Please tell me one interest group, industry, public service or just plain motivated loony that doesn't try to publicly influence the political process.
In case you hadn't noticed, the Police are *not* a political organisation.
The UK has, for very good reasons, long had an *independant* judiciary (despite the attempts of various Home Secretaries etc to stick *their* noses into the judicial process, mainly to get themselves some positive headlines)
The job of the Police is to maintain the Queen's Peace and uphold the law. They do not decide what the law is, they do not decide if someone is guilty, they do not sentence prisoners.
The UK legal system is designed to *protect* the innocent. Other countries have tried the "presumed guilty unless you can prove yourself innocent" system where the Secret Police/ Stasi/ KGB etc can pull some poor sod off the street and question them at their leisure until eventually a confession is forced out of them.
Do you think we should copy those examples?
Chill?
So it's alright for the government to introduce pointless Big Brother laws because they're unenforceable?
What about the people who are doing no wrong, but find themselves criminalised because the text files they read or pictures they look at are the current "big threat" even though they're freely available?
Meanwhile the real criminals just move elsewhere but another basic freedom is whilttled away some more.
@J and Jared
> Since you (think you) are so smart, Graham Marsden, how exactly do you interpret what Ulm Schulbaum wrote, and why? "Excellent priorities" is supposed to mean what, eh?
How many politicians do you hear campaigning on a platform of "there are millions of starving children in this world, we should spend more money to help them" and how many go for the much more media-headline and voter friendly "let's put lots of money into chasing and locking up suspected kiddie fiddlers"?
Is your argument "starving children in other countries aren't our problem"?
> I find it hard to accept that anybody educated enough to know what a 'straw man' argument is would accept Ulm's logic as sound...But life's full of surprises.
Yes, like the "surprise" that people on here are willing to skip the concept of "innocent until proven guilty" and jump straight to demanding "castrate them with no anaesthetic" and similar sentiments...
> Ulm's argument only makes sense if the two priorities compete for the same resources.
They do. It's called *money*.
> Can you imagine a world where everybody waited for the most important problem to be solved before anybody could work on the second most important problem? Hardly a model of efficiency.
Who said anything about "waiting for the most important problem to be solved"? Those are your words, not mine or Ulm's.
Should we *ignore* the most important problem of millions of children dying because it's happening somewhere else?
Oh look...
Once again our Chief Police Officers are sticking their noses into the political arena and arguing that they need more powers to make their jobs easier.
Of course what they actually mean is they want to reduce *our* rights to such basic liberties as the Presumption of Innocence and Freedom of Speech because those things are so *damned* inconvenient when people use them to protect themselves against Big Brother...
@A.Lewis
> I've had first-hand experience of how small, seemingly irrelevant details recorded on police systems have added up to worthy intelligence resulting in arrests and the recovery of stolen goods.
And what about Raymond Easton, the guy with Parkinson's Disease who was arrested for burglary because of a False Positive?
It was only the fact that he *had* Parkinson's Disease and thus it was obvious that there was no way in hell he could have traveled 200 miles and climbed through someone's window to steal goods that allowed him to be acquitted.
If he was an ordinary bloke he'd probably have been banged up because "we've got your DNA sunshine, that *proves* you were there!"
Now consider how many false positives are likely to result if *everyone's* DNA is on file.
FUD? I don't think so.
@Fozzy
Ulm Schulbaum is neither a troll, nor an idiot. Neither does he make Straw Man arguments like you do.
If I were to use your tactics I might suggest that you appear to think that it's ok for millions of children to die from lack of basic resources such as food, water and medicine provided a few people who may be innocent (you know "presumed innocent until proven guilty"?) are arrested for alleged child porn offences.
Your arguments for this should make for entertaining reading...
Posted in China goes lunar
@supermeerkat
Ah, but remember that the Sunday Sport story "WWII Bomber found on Moon - Picture" was followed by "WWII Bomber disappears from Moon - Picture" showing, indeed, the absence of said bomber!
@alistair milligan
I hope you've remembered to renew your Daily Mail subscription...
@John A Blackley
"please tell me how a government is going to manage immigration, my money (in the form of government handouts) and the criminal justice system in an age when anyone with a computer and the wit of a vole can forge documents?"
No, because that is just a classic attempt at reversing the Burden of Proof.
If you and the Government think ID cards are such a good idea, please provide clear evidence that they will help manage immigration, your money (in the form of government handouts) and the criminal justice system without making our private information available to anyone who has the wit of a vole to get themselves a job in any Council Office or minor Government Department and then crib a password off someone who has full access to it all.
If you cannot do this, then why should we accept such a system?
@John Lettice
"I suppose there IS a way, in a future black helicopter world, where the e-petitions could provide a clear list of dissenters."
The problem is not *whether* they can do it or not, the problem is whether people *believe* they can.
My petition against the plans to criminalise the possession of "extreme pornography" (see http://www.backlash-uk.org.uk for more about this campaign) garnered over 1,800 signatures, but there were also a lot of people who said that they didn't dare sign up in case they ended up on some Home Office "hit list" and have to worry about getting a knock on their door "Excuse me Sir or Madam, we have reason to believe that you may be in possession of illegal material and we have a warrant to search your home and confiscate your computers..."
The fact is that people simply do not *trust* our Government any more.
@Ken Livingstone
"If an armed police officer believes they are in pursuit of a terrorist who might be a suicide bomber and they start making these sort of calculations based on this, how is this going to be seen? Am I going to be hauled off to court?"
Personally I'd hope they're thinking "Am I sure that my *belief* that this person *might be* a suicide bomber is secure enough *before* I unload my magazine into his head..."
@ Tanuki - Cash in on the Poor!
"Personally I don't see what the fuss is about: truth is, calls to 0870 numbers are charged at a-pittance-per-minute"
I can make a local or national rate call for 1p a minute. If I call an 0870 number it costs *seven times* the price. This might not be much to you, but if you're not well off that can start adding up quickly and remember that the company gets a cut of the revenue the call generates. This means it's to their *benefit* to keep you hanging on the line!
As for OFCOM's spineless capitulation to the industry, they don't seem to care that 0870 is an obsolete pricing model that is now used by greedy companies to milk money out of their customers.
Why don't they just let companies put a recorded message on saying "please hold, we're making money out of you!"
More Thought Crime...
So the contents of your hard drive, be they "terrorist materials" or "extreme porn" are heading towards being evidence of crime and now we have "virtual child abuse" too.
It seems that our ever protective Nanny State is so unwilling to trust us that even just *thinking* or *fantasising* about something is prima facie evidence of criminal intent and thus we should be locked up by Big Brother just to be on the safe side.
But, tell me, isn't murder be worse than (or at least as bad as) child abuse? So thinking about it or writing elaborate plans for it should clearly be an offence as well.
So everyone who writes crime fiction where someone is murdered is obviously a danger and a threat to society and should be locked up because whilst they're only fantasising about it now, it might "incite" them or someone else to actually *do* something in the future...
Posted in Speed-cam fines topped out in 2005
A little bit of basic maths...
Consider this about the level of GCSE Maths:
If you undertake a 100 mile journey and average 80mph instead of 70mph, approximately how much time will you save (to the nearest minute)?
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The answer is *ELEVEN MINUTES*!
Eleven minutes over 100 miles. Wow, what a saving!
You get a similar saving (ten minute) if you undertook a 20 mile journey around town at 40mph instead of 30mph.
Obviously people's time is *so* precious that they're willing to risk the lives of others because the reduced reaction time and extended braking distances mean they have less chance to do something about a problem before it becomes an accident.
Posted in Biofuels make poor people even poorer
There's no substitute for rational argument...
... and that post at the top from an Anonymous Coward was certainly no substitute for rational argument!
What good is "solving" a problem if the "solution" is worse than the original problem? (See Australia and Cane Toads for a basic example!)
There are those who think that Biofuels or Nuclear or so-called "clean coal" or tidal or whatever are some sort of magic wand that, once waved, will allow us to go merrily on our inefficient and polluting way.
Well, sorry Anonymous Coward, it's not that simple. Whether you believe it to be a "crock of shite" or not, we are overspending our "energy budget" and running up a deficit which is very soon going to come back and bite us in the arse.
So why don't *you* STFU whinging and instead do something about the amount of energy *you* use?
Dangerous Pictures Act...?
Oddly enough, it would still be entirely legal to possess a copy of this video clip because it's not "extreme pornography" as defined in the Government's Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill 2007.
And was he put on the Sexual Offenders Register? Oh, no, he wasn't engaged in a sexual act in private, so of course not...
Chilling effect
Forgive a slight divergence from the subject, but whilst this is only, of course, legally relevant to the US, the "Chilling effect" it mentions and "that enforcers can seek out and silence particularly disliked people or speech" certainly seems relevant to the UK given the "extreme pornongraphy" provisions of the Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill 2007 which would make decisions based on entirely subjective critieria of how an image "appears" to a viewer.
This would mean that you couldn't be certain that a picture you had was or was not "extreme" since your subjective view of it may well differ from someone else's and "it means that enforcers can seek out and silence particularly disliked people or speech".
Amazingly, though, a *Labour* MP, Harry Cohen has proposed a series of amendments to the Bill that would remove all references to "appears to" and include an exclusion for images where the participants consented.
For those who have been following the progress of the "Dangerous Pictures Act", can I strongly recommend you write to your MP via http://www.theyworkforyou.com and urge them to support these amendments to bring some much needed sanity to a ludicrous "Thought Crime" law.
For more details see http://www.backlash-uk.org.uk/
Water load of...
... Rubbish.
It's like the recommendation that you "Drink eight glasses of water a day".
Apparently Health Which? magazine once commissioned a researcher to look for data to back up this claim and after about 9 months came back and reported that he could find *NO* research in published medical journals where anyone had actually done experiments to support this figure.
Still, it's nice to know someone cares enough to tell us these lies, isn't it?
Debate?
Why do I get the feeling this "Debate" isn't going to be *whether* we'll have a national DNA database but only *how* they're going to impose it on us!
Write to your MP via http://www.theyworkforyou.com/ and remind them that we have the Right to be Presumed Innocent Unless Proven Guilty, not Presumed Guilty if we have your DNA on file...
Posted in No-humping 20mph limit for London
@Neil
> All the little kids that I'll now run down whilst keeping my eyes glued to the speedo will be delighted!
Oh dear. What's the betting you subscribe to the so-called "Safe Speed" site?! This sounds exactly like the BS that Paul Smith comes out with.
A speed limit is exactly that, a *LIMIT* it is not a *TARGET*!
If you are incapable of driving your car at a constant speed whilst maintaining Due Care and Attention to what is around you, then you should not be on the road at all.
Posted in Yahoo! Does! Adsense! In! Reverse!
Sigh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Yawn!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Hmm...
Perhaps someone should point this story out to the UK Government who seem to think that thousands of NHS staff can be trusted with access to all *our* medical information...
