* Posts by Graham Marsden

6899 publicly visible posts • joined 19 Jan 2007

Nasty Toryboy bloggers ate my politics, claims Blears

Graham Marsden
Stop

Dear Hazel Blears...

"mostly, political blogs are written by people with disdain for the political system and politicians, who see their function as unearthing scandals, conspiracies and perceived hypocrisy"

... have you ever asked yourself *why* that should be?

Possibly it's because people *do* have "disdain" for the political system and politicians like you who engage in scandalous behaviour, sneak through laws by conspiring with others and then make hypocritical comments about what "legitimate protest" should be whilst denying the people their right to legitimate protest without Police permission...!

Try taking the log out of your own eye first.

Lords demand DNA database deletions

Graham Marsden
Thumb Up

Excellent news!

It's pleasing to see that there are still some people with the power to stand up to our Big Brother Government's creeping removal of our liberties!

Oki okays release of 'jumping robot leg' chair

Graham Marsden
Happy

Will the BOFH...

... be getting one of these installed in the Boss' office in case there is the need for an unfortunate incident of defenestration...?

Gordo entertains a couple of lapdancers

Graham Marsden
Thumb Down

Big Brother is watching...

Obviously this is an attempt by The Party to encourage goodsex whilst oulawing sexcrime because the idea of pleasure and enjoyment is a threat to society and a corruption of morals.

It is already clear that The Party doesn't like the idea of people engaging in non-approved activities, or even looking at "dangerous pictures", this is just another step on their path of Moral Purity, banning anything that doesn't fit in with their views.

I, for one, do not welcome our Puritan Overlords.

Is the internet going down down under?

Graham Marsden
Stop

@Paul Clarke

> To be honest, I think this is a great idea. I work in E-Safety

Hmm, so no conflict of interest there, then?

> with the help of government organisations such as CEOPs sites that deliver child pornography can be targeted more effectively.

"WON'T SOMEONE THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!!!"

> What people need to appreciate here is that there is a minority of people who express an interest in the type of material being targeted for filtering. So why not filter it out.

Of course! Perish the thought that the Majority shouldn't decide what the Minority are allowed to view.

> The more that the ISPs can do to restrict the delivery of child pornography and other illicit material the better.

Ah, and so we see the classic attempt to link child pornography with anything else that you don't like. This is exactly the same thing that the UK Government did when they published their "consultation" on so-called Extreme Pornography which made repeated and irrelevant references to CP.

But who decides, Mr Clarke? What material would you define as "illicit"? What do you think is so unacceptable that people should not be allowed to view it just in case it might make them think about doing something nasty? Fifty years ago it was gay porn. Now it's "extreme porn". Why do you think your personal tastes should decide what others can or cannot view?

Why should ALL adults be treated as children because some parents are incapable of monitoring what their children do on the net?

Graham Marsden
Stop

This sort of material

... "is currently being filtered by a number of ISPs in countries such as the UK.

"This is not strictly true"

Well, not yet, anyway, but given the attitude of Mr Salter and friends...

Also Mr Salter says "No one is trying to stop consenting adults doing whatever they want in the bedroom" but this is BS because if they want to take photographs in their bedrooms, they might be committing a criminal offence!

There again, Mr Salter also believes that snuff movies actually exist, instead of being a well known urban myth...

The Independent gets the wrong end of Jacqui's gIMP

Graham Marsden
Thumb Down

We're at risk of labouring our point here...

... but the black boxes don't and won't "hold" data.

Oh, well that's alright then...

Well, no, of course it's not. But why shouldn't El Reg take the chance to sneer at the Indy instead of re-iterating the point that "That will allow GCHQ to target persons of interest for wiretapping via the black boxes." means that *everyone* will be treated as a suspect by our Database Overlords...?

Virgin cuts broadband to a fiver

Graham Marsden
Stop

Virgin generosity...

Virgin are currently also sending out advertising offering you the chance to "Experience the internet in Fibre Optic - The mother of all broadband from only £4.50 a month for the first 12 months and £9 a month thereafter".

Of course this is only for *NEW* customers, those of us who are already on that service are stuck with paying £18 a month.

Isn't that nice, we get to subsidise new customers...!

I'm off to see if I can tell them I'm cancelling the service and then re-instating it because then I'll be a "new customer"...

Daily Mail punts Georgina Baillie filth

Graham Marsden
Stop

Tabloid hypocrisy...

So, because two over-paid idiots staged a stupid prank which came back to bite them, the Daily Mail seems to think this woman is now "fair game".

What she and her clients get up to as consenting adults is nobody's business but theirs. She didn't consent to Brand and Ross' s "joke".

The Daily Mail should learn to tell the difference.

There again, in their story of the "gutsy pensioner" who "foiled a raid on a jewellery shop" I'm more interested in how he "causally" caught a bus...!

Academic avoids extradition over Holocaust denial

Graham Marsden

@ Anonymous Coward 17:26

> The problem with this strategy is that it's very "convenient" for a bunch of bigots and racists to buy into what these people are saying, invent their own little parallel universe with its own little revisionist history, and then use this new-found folklore to attack innocent people

[...]

> when such idiocy has an impact on the welfare of other human beings, it certainly isn't inappropriate to draw a line and to take sanctions against anyone who seeks to cross that line.

And the problem with your strategy is that there will *always* be some people/ bigots/ racists/ idiots will buy into this sort of thing or make up their own versions and believe what the hell they want.

But unless someone is *actually* calling for something that will "impact on the welfare of other human beings" it certainly *is* inappropriate to draw a line and take sanctions because then you get the Great Firewall of China or so-called Extreme Pornography Laws or some other form of repressive CrimeThink simply because *you* don't like what someone else says.

Police collar kid for Wi-Fi pinching

Graham Marsden
Black Helicopters

Cautions...

Kudos to the Dad for refusing the Caution because that would have been an admission of guilt, even though the Police seemingly try to convince people that it's not a big deal.

Of course what it really means is "we don't have to do any more investigation and chalk up another successfully resolved crime to make our figures look better..."

Schneier sticks it to surveillance

Graham Marsden
Black Helicopters

The real debate is between liberty and control.

... this just in from the Department of Stating the Bleeding Obvious...

Man threatens lawsuit after negative eBay feedback

Graham Marsden

Hmm...

Looking at the posted link, in the last 12 months he's had 9 Negative Feedbacks and 10 Neutral, so why threaten legal action now?

Perhaps leaving negative feedback instead of neutral was a bit harsh, given that the customer got a full refund, but threatening legal action because of this...?

EU to stock internet criminal database

Graham Marsden

"It will also run a web site where the public can report illegal content...."

Hmm, so will that include the UK Government's so-called "Extreme Pornography" which is legal in every other EU country...?

Speaking clock gets Disneyfied

Graham Marsden
Happy

Personally I preferred...

... Kenny Everett's version which had Cleo Rocos in Dominatrix gear doing the "At the third stroke" voice, then lashing KE three times to make him say "Bip, bip, bip!"

Public ID card support holds steady - says gov report

Graham Marsden
Coat

The Government did a poll...

... which said most people didn't want ID cards...

... but they "lost" the results...

NHS needs to catch up on technology

Graham Marsden
Boffin

Allowing patients to talk to doctors via email...

... That would, of course, be secure e-mail so private information wasn't broacast to any nosy parker out there...

... wouldn't it?

Home Office coughs to Dutch DNA screw-up

Graham Marsden
Stop

And still...

... they expect us to trust them will all of our DNA...???

Designer touts 'super sight' sunglasses

Graham Marsden
Thumb Down

SMIDSY...

How many times has a car/ van driver heard someone say to them, "Sorry mate, I didn't see you"?

How many times have cyclists/ bikers heard the same phrase?

Yes, there are *some* two wheel users who give the rest of us a bad name, but how many of them are responsible for the majority of the three and a half thousand or so deaths on the UK's roads every year...?

NASA kids' compo: Name the inflatable moon habitat

Graham Marsden
Coat

How about

iBlow...?

Government tied in knots by bondage protest

Graham Marsden

@Scott, @RW

@Scott:

> Boxing and martial arts doesn't involve sex (mostly).

Apart from women's topless boxing, female on female "submission" wrestling and a few NSFW others...!

> if someone makes a video of himself and his wife dressed in bondage gear, and engage in some mutual slap n tickle - but *don't* have sex on tape, then it's OK?

No, because the offence is having *possession* of that video and, in someone else's entirely *subjective* opinion, it fits the criteria for "risking harm" and you had it for "sexual arousal".

There is a "defence" in the CJIA that says you *are* allowed to own it if you can prove you were a "direct participant" in the acts shown, but that means that if you were videoing two other people you wouldn't have been a "direct" participant and even if it was you in it, were you to be dressed in head to toe leather/ rubber etc, how would you "prove" it was you? (Oh, and, of course, Paragraph 2 of Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights says you have the right to be presumed innocent, ie you do not have to *prove* your innocence, but when did this Government ever let trivialities like that get in the way of a Moral Crusade?

@RW

> has this kind of nonsense been going on since before Precious Jacqui got her grubby little mitts on the levers of power?

Oh yes, it started under the reign of David "I'm blind, but I'll ban things I can't see" Blunkett, then was followed by Charles "ID Cards are good for you" Clark, followed by John "Jackboots" Reid. Wacky Jacqui is only the latest in a line of Home Secretaries to decide that we can't be trusted to look at pictures they don't like.

Graham Marsden

@Sir Runcible Spoon

> Now you can't take a photo of a politician in a kinky sex act (can you say oranges) and publish it in the news of the screws

Actually you can, because they can argue that it's "not for sexual arousal".

Unfortunately publishing anything on how to engage in asphyxiphilia (asphyxiation for sexual arousal, which is what Stephen Milligan MP was doing) with photographs about how to perform such acts more safely *will* be illegal, so the Government will actually be creating a greater risk to people's lives by denying them important and relevant information!

Graham Marsden
Stop

Twenty Questions for the Ministry of Justice

(Yes, I know I've posted comments on this before, but *still* there has been no response or "guidance" from the MoJ with only two months to go before they introduce this law...!)

Here are some questions which the MoJ need to supply answers to in order to give us *any* clue as to what this law will *actually* affect...

http://www.seenoevil.org.uk/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=803

Google Maps gets gov M-way congestion overlay

Graham Marsden

Perhaps...

... the Highways Agency would like to use this service so variable speed limit signs are *switched off* once the congestion they were intended to eliminate has actually *been* eliminated!

When you're cruising down a virtually empty motorway at 1am and see a "Congestion Ahead, 40 MPH" limit sign, it does rather make them look a bit silly.

German privacy watchdogs agree social networking ground rules

Graham Marsden
Go

Wow!

A sensible piece of legislation from a Government that seems to have actually comprehended something about the net!

Wish it could happen here...

Bank of England prescribes 'boredom'

Graham Marsden
Thumb Down

Why didn't Mervyn King...

... take a lesson from the way Sterling crashed when Darling Alastair opened his big mouth and *not* trigger another plunge for our currency?

Top prosecutor warns against growing state power

Graham Marsden
Stop

<Title deleted by Government Censors>

"Jacqui Smith said last week that she wants an open, reasoned debate to build consensus around the Bill. "

A "consensus" that will then be ignored if it doesn't agree with what Wacky Jacqui and friends want, because they've already decided that this is "good for us(tm)" and so will be implemented anyway.

I'd suggest a "Big Brother" icon for stories like this, but that would just allow Jacqui and co to zero in on those of us proles who fail to engage in "blackwhite" thinking (The ability to accept whatever "truth" the party puts out) and, instead are engaging in illegal crimethink (even considering any thought not in line with the principles of the party)...

Microsoft raises anti-piracy posse

Graham Marsden
Gates Horns

"killing American jobs and suffocating competition"

Fish... barrel...

BANG!

New York sends AOL 'how-to-wiretap' slides

Graham Marsden
Stop

Just remember...

... You are being watched Citizen!

UK.gov says: Regulate the internet

Graham Marsden
Alert

Hmm, let's see...

Do we allow children to drive cars? No.

Do we allow children to go into pubs and drink alcohol? No.

Do we allow children to go into cinemas and watch 18 certificate films? No.

So the answer is simple, we simply ban children from the internet entirely!

I'm sure we could get the Daily Mail onside, any parent found allowing their child to access the internet should be arrested and charged for neglect and failing to protect their kiddies from all that nasty stuff, *that* should teach them a lesson!

Or (ok, I know this is a stupid idea, but...) how about we expect parents to be *responsible* for the upbringing of their children and monitoring what they do online?

Nah, that's daft and wouldn't allow our Big Brother Government to introduce even more ridiculous and unworkable Thought Crime legislation...

Times: US about to deploy Space Marines

Graham Marsden
Boffin

Wrong music...

... They should have used the classic 80's hit "99 Red Balloons" by Nena:

"This is what we've waited for,

This is it, Boys, this is war!

The President is on the line as

99 red balloons go by.

"99 Knights of the Air

Ride super high-tech jet fighters

Everyone's a super hero,

Everyone's a Captain Kirk.

"With orders to identify,

To clarify and classify,

Scramble in the summer sky as

99 red balloons go by."

Still, it's only a song about a massive military over-reaction, isn't it...?!

Holy f**k, Microsoft covers up ‘undesired’ words

Graham Marsden
Coat

@Soruk

On one internet forum I used, in a discussion of the works of the author of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, his name was rendered by their software as "Philip K Masculine Area"!

Mine's the one with a copy of Monty Python's "I bet you they won't play this song on the radio" in the pocket...

Google ends gambling ad self-denial

Graham Marsden

Cashmore??

Says it all really!

NASA spots 'gamma ray-only' pulsar

Graham Marsden

@Probably the result of....

... not a Thermo-stellar Triggering Device?

"Bomb number 20, you are out of the bomb bay again..."

NASA's nuclear Mars tank is go

Graham Marsden
Go

I hope the Martian are ready...

... to welcome their Nuclear-Powered, Laser Wielding, Robotic Tank Overlords...!

Feds hamstring world's largest spam gang

Graham Marsden
Boffin

Hmm...

"responcible [sic]"

"they bought [sic] me up"

Explains a lot...!

McCain begs for YouTube DMCA takedown immunity

Graham Marsden
Thumb Up

Rearrange these words...

... to get a well known phrase or saying.

Petard, Hoist, One's, Own, By.

Obviously McCain is one of those politicos who think they have special privileges (the word derives from "private law"!) and that the sort of legislation they pass is only for the "little people" to obey.

Airport baggage screener charged with stealing passengers' stuff

Graham Marsden

So how about...

... all the baggage handling staff have to leave work via the main concourse wearing a sign saying "Baggage Handler" and any of the airline travelling public can, at their whim, call them aside and search them, just in case they might have nicked something...

Sounds fair?

Koreans create dancing droid

Graham Marsden
Coat

So the Korea Institute of Science and Technology...

... will be the first against the wall when the revolution comes...?

Brussels bemoans low take-up of electronic cash

Graham Marsden

"It's as if people don't trust the financial system."

More importantly, it's as if people don't trust this system and the people operating it and the governments who'll be spying on it (and us) and will probably then find ways of levying taxes on it, not to mention the risk of money disappearing from your account when someone hacks it, followed by the operators saying "we think you were careless with your card, so we're not going to pay you back even though we didn't ensure we had a secure system", to name just a few things...

Black widows: Coming soon to a kitchen sink near you

Graham Marsden
Coat

Did anyone else...

... read this as "Black WiNdows" and got really puzzled...?

DarkMarket carder forum revealed as FBI sting

Graham Marsden
Go

@Stings are evil

> Maybe I'm just old fashioned.

Maybe you're just misinformed.

Entrapment is where a law enforcement officer or agency actively *encourages* people to commit crimes.

A sting is where they allow criminals to commit crimes so they can be arrested.

For example them saying "Go on, steal that car with the window open" is illegal, but leaving a car unattended with the window open that turns out to lock itself when someone tries to nick it is entirely legal.

Unless someone from the Law Enforcement community on DarkMarket actually instigated any criminal behaviour, then I have no problem with them simply making it easy for crooks to incriminate themselves.

Jacqui Smith resurrects 42-days after Lords rejection

Graham Marsden
Unhappy

@Dan

> The government can rush the one-page bill through if they've declared a national emergency. I can't remember off-hand exactly under what conditions they have can declare national emergency

For more information (at the risk of a Godwin!) see the "Enabling Legislation" which allowed Hitler to seize power from the Reichstag in 1933...

Euro judges strengthen protections for database creators

Graham Marsden

Ok, but...

... what effect is this going to have on Screen Scraping services?

We've already seen in El Reg how Ryan Air have cancelled or refused to honour tickets that were booked through companies that do this (in order to allow customers to find the cheapest deals), now, it seems, this will give legitimacy to their actions and make life more difficult for the public to save money due to the "confusion marketing" techniques Ryan Air et al use.

US teen cuffed for sending nude phone pics

Graham Marsden
Thumb Down

@Ted Treen

> Believe me, there ain't nobody more fascist & draconian than a "liberal" given power.

ORLY?

Speaking as a liberal (with a small 'l') I can't say I recognise many liberal principles (Civil Liberties, Basic Human Rights, Presumption of Innocence etc) in the control-freak, nanny state legislation that has been brought in by this country and by the USA.

So, are Blair, Brown and Bush really "closet liberals"...?

US satellite returns first hi-res snap

Graham Marsden
Joke

I'm off to...

... paint "FUCK YOU!" in large, friendly letters in my back yard...!

Home Office defends retaining comms data

Graham Marsden
Thumb Down

Communications data...

... does not include the contents of a call, email or webpage

I think someone missed out the word "Yet" :-(

May I welcome our Stasi-emulating overlords...

Porn, abuse, depravity - and how they plan to stop it

Graham Marsden
Thumb Down

Welcome...

... to Thought Crime Britain!

If we think that the porn you look at might make you do nasty things, we'll ban it.

If we think that looking at Hentai and Manga cartoon images of "underage" girls might make you want to groom or molest children, we'll ban them.

If we think that satirical sites about mob rule might be taken seriously, we'll ban them.

If we think that banning sites or making it illegal to look at material we don't like is actually going to have the slightest effect, then we'll do it.

If we think that you are all a bunch of mindless sheeple who are incapable of acting in a mature and responsible adult manner and can't be trusted to look at anything that might make you do bad things then we've succeeded in our mission.

Hooray for the freedom loving and democratic UK Government!!

New USAF Cyber-war formation downgraded

Graham Marsden

@Destroy All Monsters

> purty japanese schoolgirls in sailor uniforms wielding oversized weaponry.

They'd better hurry, the Chinese are already way ahead of them...

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/09/18/china_space_station/

'Podestrian' risk rising for drivers, warns insurer

Graham Marsden
Thumb Down

And what about...

... the number of pedestrians, cyclists and other road users who are *STILL* being put at risk by idiots using hand-held mobile phones whilst in "control" of a tonne and half of metal despite it being illegal?

(PS "breaking"? "Swindon"?? Methinks some proof-reading is required!)