Posts by Psyx 2549 publicly visible posts • joined 4 Jun 2010
"As long as I don't have to hang out with them, I am glad someone with weirdnesses can actually create something for the greater good. "
I too was good with that, until he used his money, status, connections and perceived 'enemy of the state' status to sh!t all over the legal systems of two nations and avoid trail for being a creepy sexual predator.
Now I believe he's a shit.
Hope he's still Googling himself...
"After going through all he's been through (yes, much of it his own doing), though, most folks would pro'ly be a little twitchy."
He likes it. Nothing is better for the ego than a good persecution complex and paranoia. Paranoia can be a highly narcissistic personality trait: It infers that the individual is important enough to be singled out as an enemy to the conspiracy: that they are 'special' and deserve special consideration. Ploys such as heightened security awareness and the type of frankly pointless security procedures he insisted on even before the cable release heightened the perceived and self-importance of an individual. Half the people who need bodyguards don't need them: They just want to have the feeling that they are important enough to be targeted, want to be seen to be important enough to merit such security, and like the idea of someone being ready and willing to take a bullet for them.
"Whilst it is always amusing to see how the sheeple simply fail to read any background info before bleating their baaah-liefs, it's not surprising the poor little woollies are confused"
Loving the way you de-personalise everyone who doesn't agree with you, there.
I've not read so many sheeple comparisons since the last time I read a conspiracy theory website. Lots of people on those are convinced that anyone who doesn't agree with them are ill-informed idiots, too.
"You are failing to understand that an eventual charge need have nothing to do with the original reason for a stop"
No I'm not, you patronising berk; I'm fully aware of how the law works. However, it is a failing of the current system that we just use whatever detain/stop and search legislation which sticks easiest and allows the most invasive and generous powers of search and detention.
"Other than it was encrypted, I do not think so"
I do, as it was Classified and greater level information owned by GCHQ and he was not authorised to carry it. He was not the legitimate owner, not cleared for it and the data was essentially stolen. Surely there cannot be much debate as to if the data was legal to possess or not.
BUT:
Detention under the official secrets act would have been the way to go, rather than the anti-terrorism laws. However, I suspect that the officials in question aren't au fait with OFA legislation and just used the tool they knew worked.
Anti-terror legislation has become an unfortunate catch-all for the authorities. Don't like the look of that bloke with a camera? Stop him under A-T legislation. Dodgy youth? Search him under A-T legislation. It's a carte blanche and a too-easily-reached-for tool.
Granted, our police officers are not trained lawyers and are not supposed to be: It is there job to try to enforce the law and the lawyers are supposed to cover the details. The police don't have the time to know how to properly detain everyone for everything and every law, and have to work with what they have been told. Sadly, they have been seemingly told that the anti-terror legislation is a great legitimate catch-all for rounding people up that will hold firm under judicial oversight.
"The thought of a bureaucrat explaining technical details to MEP's who most likely barely understand how to use a search engine let alone the details of this agreement is crazy."
No it's not.
The point of a briefing to MEPs is to explain the choices made in clear terms, rather than obscure the details in pages of obscure documentation. Parliamentary hearings and briefs HELP our ministers (who might no be au fait with technical aspects as you say) understand issues. Without them they're just left stranded with several hundred pages of micro-font technobabble.
Personally, I'd rather have our clueless MEPs informed, rather than being both clueless and uninformed.
"I wonder if they tried leaning on PayPal to freeze his account I also wonder if they accessed the PayPal database to find out who had been making donations"
That's rather paranoid. And additionally judges the organisation as some kind of vast entity, rather than separate departments. ie: Do you think that if you got into a trademark spat with Walmart that they'd stop you shopping there?
Legal departments are entities in their own right and generally reviled by every other part of the organisation, rather than work hand-in-glove with them.
Frankly, I'd like to think that even the NSA's fingernail pulling department* look down on the lawyers.
It's also kind of laughable that you'd make a watch-list for buying a T-shirt.
*Yes, I know they don't have one.
"This was apparently part of the reason for his grievances with the police. In Japan once you've been arrested then you are assumed guilty and expected to confess, almost everyone does."
Unlike our country, where the police just arrest anyone willy-nilly.
Yeah: Our policing system is vastly superior.
"Err, no, I wouldn't, but rather than spit my dummy out id have a wee"
I don't think he spat his dummy out. He made the kind of sarcastic comment on Twitter that I would without threat of lawyers. I imagine that he also spoke to them, because I doubt the production company would shut their plans down just because of a Twitter post, do you?
"Sorry mate, but you need to sort your self out or you will go down as not only creating one of the biggest hit games in a generation but of also being an equally big cock."
So if someone decided to make a movie about you or something that you made, without asking first, then you'd be cool with that?
"I've never understood the hatred toward parking-rule enforcement. Without enforcement, drivers take the piss and we end up with chaos and selfishness like in Rome or Bombay."
Instead we're charged over a pound to rent thirty square feet of space with zero attached maintenance fees for an hour while traffic wardens circle like fat buzzards, waiting eagerly to charge us another 70 notes for going 5 minutes over.
"I see, in my minds eye, Chris Barrie in the TV show "Brittas Empire".
Anyone else?"
Yes, but not in the same manner: I think Chris Barrie would probably make a great public face for the NMOC, as he strikes me as just the kind of person who would be fascinated by it and see the importance.
" they are in fact handled by completely different laws, namely patent law and trademark law, they can't be equated."
I have no idea why some people down-voted a statement of simple fact.
I believe that's half the problem with the issue: Some people just don't understand it and believe all IP to be 'bad'. Short odds that they've never created anything in their life.
"Even though I think patents are a particularly stupid waste of everyone's time and resources"
Without them no little man with a big idea would ever earn what he deserves for his work.
Without them, medical research would slow to a crawl, as would many other fields: Why spend millions in research when you can wait for someone else to and steal their ideas?
Patents are a crucial part of our development as a species. Don't confuse the litigatious nature of large companies and trolls or the poor approval process taint your view of them.
I agree that there is a place for us as a service-providing nation, but I don't believe that we can unilaterally raise the standard of living over the next 50 years worldwide without sucking a hit down ourselves (Not that I mind not having a new TV every year so that someone the other side of the planet can have a job that pays for plumbing, I should add). More to the point, I don't see how we can do it ethically. If we can only be a service provider unethically, then frankly we deserve to take that hit to our standard of living.
As a species that we have created certain corners of the market that we'd be better off without, created the desire for certain products and attempted to educate via media in developing nations that 'our' services and culture is better than local services and culture. Looking at your list:
Pharmaceuticals - The questionable morality of massive corporation making money out of people in backwards countries suffering from disease. This could be a 'clean' service industry, but a quick look at the habits of GSK shows that it is far from being such. Why cure things when you can make more from treatment?
Architecture, higher education - ultimately things which can be done in-country once we've built up a decent education system there.
Aerospace - The idea that 'you're not a country unless you have an airline' has dropped aside to a degree, which predominantly leaves the big money in military aviation. Like the Al Yamamah deal with the KSA.
Pop-culture - The question of if it is ethical to bombard developing nations with our own culture, performers, morality and values in an attempt to make money and imprint those values is very dubious. Ours is a culture based heavily on sex and drinking. Who are we to brainwash a generation in a developing nation with the values of rap-stars?
Building services - I've already said my peace on the ethics of (re-)building a nation's infrastructure and living off the interest for thirty years.
Finance - Growth areas for the UK: Moving numbers around and making them larger without adding any real value.
Access to legal services - Developing nations have lawyers and mostly get on fine. Are we talking about exporting a bunch of lawyers to litigate on such matters of auto accidents and patents?
In short, a lot of the things and services we are making a buck off are morally dubious. Actually, it's morally dubious to sell them to fellow Westerners - it's downright appalling to turn a profit out of some of them from people in the Third World.
In real terms perhaps you are right: Perhaps we can continue to inflate ourselves as 'service providers' and sustain our standard of living at current levels. I seriously doubt that we as a society will be willing to lose that second car just to do it ethically.
'Winning at capitalism' to my mind would be obtaining sufficient long-term security (which traditionally came down to owning land and property, but bags of money does these days) that neither yourself nor any of you descendent ever have to work again, can afford to live a life of luxury and obtain crucial advantages for your descendants via the wonders of interest.
That's what our Upper Classes did in feudal times with land, and that's what our new elite are doing these days. The rest of us are content with our toys and gadgets, but in real terms they are transient and fairly empty baubles that we are often pointlessly competitive about possessing. 'Winning' is not strictly about happiness or having the most toys, but securing advantage for your dynasty.
To my mind, we'd all be able to achieve happiness with our lot a little easier if it was not so tied to rampant consumerism. We have reached the stage in the West where our aspirations are too often 'shiny toys', which are tied to both an expenditure of money and a constant 'upgrade cycle'. I firmly believe it to be a trap that keeps many of us firmly in debt. Most of us would be a lot better off if we lacked such a mind-set. Not to come over all Buddhist here, but desire for toys and jealousy at other's toys leads to a lot of unhappiness. Teaching us and embedding in us this jealousy and desire for new 'stuff' is a cornerstone of our society, and nothing is seen at fault with it.
Ok... maybe that was pessimistic!
I don't feel I'm it's pessimistic about it, just realistic. For every one of us with plumbing, a vote, a car and access to decent healthcare there are over a dozen people who don't have it. With only so much wealth to spread around, what we lucky few get is going to be a smaller slice of cake.
As those poorer countries get some money, what they'll actually be trying to do is pay the US and China and other 'civilised' countries back for all those infrastructure projects, power stations and roads that we nicely built on credit out of the kindness of our hearts (funny how power stations seem to get bombed early on in any US intervention... one would think it was some kind of business plan...). That will hold them back for a while longer.
Profitable imports from us will come even later down the line, when they perhaps embrace the wonders of consumerism and come to believe that they are not a complete human being worthy of their peers without a new phone every year and start collecting more than a shed-full of worldly belongings and then deciding that some of them can be replaced before they break. At present only the criminally rich in those nations are importing luxury goods from us.
In nations that are ramping up the imports, we have really missed the boat: People drive Toyotas, have LG electronics, et al. I'm struggling to think of any mass-consumer 'bulletproof' product for the developing world that we make in the UK. We do create luxury brands, but you can't support a nation based on selling Rolls Royces. If we want to sell to the developing world, we need to sell them rugged stuff that works for 20 years.
Post script: Then if we bombard them with enough TV, we can convince them to replace their Toyota after a year or two and get them into the consumerism cycle, because the world will be a better place because of it... or something...
"Conclusion: when everyone is wealthy enough to choose to not do manual labour, only oppressive regimes will do it, and North Korea will be the world's labour source"
I'm not convinced of the assumed over-lap there between awful living standards and being an oppressive regime that leads to the conclusion.
There will always be dirt poor people, and I don't feel that they will only live in places like North Korea. For example, I suspect that there will be people poor enough to get their hands dirty amongst the third of the world's population in China and the quarter of it in India for just as long as North Korea is still going.
That said, it's adequate sanctions that could change those places if what you say is correct: By the time everyone else has had the 'uplift' and oppressive regimes were prevented from having it, perhaps NK will want it badly enough to change, and perhaps we will have obtained enough empathy in order to be willing to all pay an extra 10c on a $400 phone to have it built by people getting a reasonable daily calorie intake.
"People buying things keep the capitalist ball rolling; might upset a few environmentalists, but that's not what this discussion is about."
People buying things is also a money-trap for the poor. If you're not buying/investing to accumulate more wealth or buying property then you're out of that real race of success.
Shiny new electronic toys are essentially pointless diversions and baubles thrown to us to divert us from gaining ground on the 'winners', much as a bugler might throw pretty chocolate coins over their shoulder in order to gain some ground with the bag of gold they have.
Let's not pretend we're 'winning' capitalism by obtaining things that will be outmoded, obsolete or non-functional and need replacing in less than a decade.
I'll second the 'excellent article' bit.
"the "reserve army" is extended all over the planet, as long as a free labour market exists."
Depending on where you stand that's either a bad thing or a good thing. It means essentially that workers in fields where this is true will all slowly move towards a worldwide mean wage. For those in poor countries: Great! Although they will never reap the full benefits of being born white and rich, it will move us slowly towards a more equal standard of living. Obviously this is 'bad' for rich white people, whose standard of living will move downwards towards the mean global standard. Great for equality and all that, but most people who are 'robbed' of the money for a second overseas holiday in the year due to price competition from people who don't have plumbing won't see it like that.
Ultimately though, it's the business owners who are raking it in for this new-found global equality for workers. I don't know if Marx would cheer or cry.
"At least for those of us on the right side of the pond, these "exploitations" are long-gone."
Some of them are, sure. We don't have to work 16 hours in coal mines and get paid in Company Script. However, it would be wrong to say that the exploitations are 'gone': Zero-hour contracts, 'voluntary' overtime which isn't, recovery time for 12 hours call-out which you can't take because you have the crash meeting and project work, employers hiring on the grey market and then using the threat of the law to enforce illegally low pay... et cetera, et cetera.
Let's not pretend the Workers ever won, because we haven't.
"If you can't beat it stop crying to your Mum that you can't. Man (or girl) up and actually get better at the game."
Your ability to die in video games without crying is certainly worth belittling others over. Well done: You're more of a man than any of us: A true bastion of machismo.
We applaud your bleeding edge lifestyle dedicated to sitting in your bedroom, performing a variety of dexterous tasks repeatedly. It has belittled all of our own achievements. You sir, are truly what all males aspire to being.
Oh no, wait: You're a dick.
Gallows humour is very much part of both El Reg and cynical IT bods.
We've made a shit ton of jokes about dead stupid people, accidental-but-funny deaths and celebrity deaths, and we've danced on several gravestones here. The fact that Reg publishes such stories is the first clue that death IS funny, and has been since Ug put his hand into a dead deer's skull and played hand-puppet.
However, jumping in with 'FIRST POST' tastelessness is a little sour. There is a difference between biting gallows humour and simply being an unfunny and an unpleasant human being.
Let's not confuse it.
"Maybe you missed..."
I think the only thing any of us have missed is that other companies have got away with things just as bad, without getting caught.
I steadfastly refuse to believe that any of the large corporations are morally better or worse than Sony. It's just that Sony got caught out. It would be stupid of me to think that Panasonic aren't boning me somehow behind the scenes to a worse degree than Sony.
"However the Walmart generation buy any old shit and are more than happy to be told that what they bought is better,"
I don't pretend my £19 Asda DVD player is the best. But it does plays DVDs just as well as anything else, from any Region, still works after 8 years and *cost 19 quid!*
The difference in the quality of consumer electronics is not sufficient to warrant the difference in price. High prices are due to perception and marketing, and not very much else... especially when half the 'choices' all come from the same factory.
"Sony is run by an arrogant bunch of assholes who feel that they can do as they damn well please!"
Well it's a good job that you're electing to give you money to other corporations instead, who all aren't run by arseholes!
Oh, wait... it's just that Sony fucked up publicly, whereas the ones you give money to haven't, and haven't restructured in any way and tightened security as a result of it. Good show.
Also: Down-voted for use of four exclamation marks.
"we don't see equivalent posters for potential rapists"
To be fair, there are shit-loads of them in gent's nightclub toilets. You wouldn't see them, but they are there.
"the conviction rates for rapes so pathetically low"
It's also a much mis-reported crime, with plenty of false accusations. I can't imagine being accused of much worse. I'm in no way defending rape or complaining about prosecuting rapists, but part of the low conviction rates is due to the lots of cases getting dropped, which is a gross shame both that they came about in the first place and because it makes the CPS more cynical towards accusers.
"The main argument seems to be that 'you shouldn't _have to_ defend yourself'."
You shouldn't.
It's a perfectly valid statement.
Yes: It's less safe to walk down the road in knickers and a bra than it is a voluminous body-suit, but that's NOT the victim's fault. EVER. It's a problem with our society, how we view under-dressed women as 'up for it', some men's willingness to commit terrible crimes on other human beings not for money but out of sexual sadism, and insufficient policing to make every dark street safe.
We lock our doors at night as a fair precaution against burglary. It's a sad state of affairs when we believe that someone should dress conservatively as a fair protection against being violently raped.
"Note: this is all about discrediting the report by attacking its methods than about proving that it is flawed for any other reason... it's almost an ad-hominem."
No it's not.
No hard science degree for you.
(Also: The contention that less internet searches for it = dying is clearly erroneous. The quite opposite "It's so popular that people know how to find it with out googling!" is just as valid a reason for the decrease in search.)
"Your personal experience of the ASA clashes with mine. They come across as a wasteful useless organisation"
I don't think it's wasteful to curb advertising fictions. The problem is that they are essentially toothless. They need more power to punish, rather than curbing.
"more interested in pushing a progressive liberal campaign "
Woah... tinfoil hat much?
Serious... WTF?
Not everyone you don't like is a commie
"I can't understand why this is an ASA issue"
Because you didn't reply to them!
It states really clearly in ASA guidelines that not bothering to reply is a black mark. Five minutes effort could have saved them this embarrassment. If it was an empty complaint, then it could have been sorted. This is basic common sense, surely?
"He said he was unaware of the case"
Does he not read his email and post? From personal experience, the ASA are pretty reasonable and if you reply to them and say "sorry, it was a screw up in proofing the advert" then they don't put you on the naughty step.
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