Slashdot Mirror

France beat you to it: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10129324

It's a shame that someone saw fit to mod my post down instead of either reading the link or providing a rebuttal. Since I suspect the former I'll clarify the point:

Here is the original article.

Here is a different account of the story.

For quite a while after virtually every MS story had a bunch of +5 comments to the tune of "RTFA". The summaries got the stories wrong and people were finding if they read the article they could chime in on it and get modded up. That's where all these 'apologists' and 'fanboys' came from.

There were plenty of things to despise Microsoft for, but if you got all your M$ news from Slashdot, you may want to do a little research on your own.

The moral panic that broken out in the news lately would be funny if it wasn't so fucking frightening. But mainly though it pisses me off that all of this 'think of the children' bullshit or vague allusions to stopping terrorists passes unchallenged most of the time.

Behold this master plan by the Andrea Leadsom and the Mothers Union to stop teenagers looking at porn http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-17826515 Good luck with that! But while it's not going to work, it's a great excuse to get some extra control of the internet.

And yesterday, no less a person than the Deputy Childrens Commissioner for England was making the case for mobile interet censorship on the grounds that... and I'm not making this up... children in London routinely expect to be gang raped for hours in public parks by teenagers who've been watching porn on their phones. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-18422204

The moral panic that broken out in the news lately would be funny if it wasn't so fucking frightening. But mainly though it pisses me off that all of this 'think of the children' bullshit or vague allusions to stopping terrorists passes unchallenged most of the time.

Behold this master plan by the Andrea Leadsom and the Mothers Union to stop teenagers looking at porn http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-17826515 Good luck with that! But while it's not going to work, it's a great excuse to get some extra control of the internet.

And yesterday, no less a person than the Deputy Childrens Commissioner for England was making the case for mobile interet censorship on the grounds that... and I'm not making this up... children in London routinely expect to be gang raped for hours in public parks by teenagers who've been watching porn on their phones. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-18422204

Close. Long knives. And they consulted chefs.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/4581871.stm

And even if AnonCoward045's statement is 100% factually true, that is NO DEFENSE under UK law. How fucked up is that?

Yes there is.

Biology is by far my weakest science and I'm not qualified at all to comment, but I just read two articles today which suggests that older fathers have longer lived children...

Here and here.

And for those of use who believe in evolution and genetics influencing ability, robbing the world of future geniuses by refusing to breed.

Robbing the world of future children who might, or might not, have been geniuses. (Those who believe in evolution and genetics influencing ability are presumably familiar with, for example, the notion of recessive genes.... They're presumably also familiar with the notion that merely having a set of genes for some trait does not always magically ensure that the trait will manifest itself in the way you want; had, for example, Alan not been a particularly good father in this hypothetical world where he was a father, the kids might, or might not, have ended up as geniuses or, even if they did, they might not have ended up as productive geniuses.)

And, if he contributed more to the success of his brother John's children as a result of not having children of his own than he would have contributed to the success of his own children had he had any, perhaps it was a net win for the cause of geniuses. (Google is your friend.)

Allergies are usually caused by dust mites, which thrive on the cozy environment of made beds: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/4181629.stm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/4181629.stm

My point is that this is on par with what breeding projects have already produced (see http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/7569064.stm where dogs have been bred to look cute, and as they grow older, their skull can't contain their brain).

Your examples are not what people are afraid of. I haven't heard "because its patentable" as a GMO fear before. If this was the only fear, then a simple change to the law would fix it.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/1759791.stm

Having fines which are the same for everyone just penalises the poor...

In Switzerland they now fine people proportionally to their wealth. A couple years ago they hit a guy with a ~$290,000 ticket for driving his Ferrari 85 mph through a village, and then 6 months after that, hit another guy for ~$1,000,000 for driving his Mercedes 170 km/h over the speed limit.

It'll never happen here because Lord knows all the millionaires would come screaming out of the woodwork about how it's punishing their success to make them feel the same sized pinch in their wallets as the hoi polloi, but at the same time, even if the state tried, the courts are so screwed up and skewed towards the wealthy that I'm sure they'd just be able to throw enough money at someone, be it a politician, lawyer, whatever, to make it go away so they wouldn't feel that pinch anyway.

Having fines which are the same for everyone just penalises the poor...

In Switzerland they now fine people proportionally to their wealth. A couple years ago they hit a guy with a ~$290,000 ticket for driving his Ferrari 85 mph through a village, and then 6 months after that, hit another guy for ~$1,000,000 for driving his Mercedes 170 km/h over the speed limit.

It'll never happen here because Lord knows all the millionaires would come screaming out of the woodwork about how it's punishing their success to make them feel the same sized pinch in their wallets as the hoi polloi, but at the same time, even if the state tried, the courts are so screwed up and skewed towards the wealthy that I'm sure they'd just be able to throw enough money at someone, be it a politician, lawyer, whatever, to make it go away so they wouldn't feel that pinch anyway.

"Much of the funding to create their drugs actually comes from the taxpayer, because the fundamental research is carried out at public universities."

heard this on BBC Radio 4 a few weeks ago, you may find it interesting and somewhat relevant.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01hxh76/The_End_of_Drug_Discovery/

benefit by being situated in a country where (I presume is like the average European country) where good education and healthcare is quite accessible.

I don't know about healthcare in particular (although this being a Nordic Economic Model country, it's most likely good) but Finland's education is the best, even beating Fellow Nordics.[1]

It's level[2] is frequently top three, if not the first. And that's a country with NO private schools, and with system that does *not* urge absolute competition between students.

Got to admit, despite their other possible faults, Finns got this education shit covered.

Links:
[1]: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8601207.stm
[2]: http://stats.oecd.org/PISA2009Profiles/

With hindsight, this probably shouldn't be a big surprise. There were some reports earlier this year about Loch Ness having a small but measurable tidal activity; something like 1.5mm across its 35km length. Given that the instruments at the LHC are apparently so finely tuned that they can track continental drift[1], it shouldn't really come as a major revelation that they can detect lunar tidal activity across the diameter of the LHC.

[1] Coincidentally, I found out about this as part of the whole issue over neutrinos supposedly travelling faster than light, which was finally given the official "no they don't" by CERN today.

I am usually quick to criticize the irrational thinking and the complete lack of scientific literacy found in many people, but in this case I feel journalists should be blamed more than anyone.

What the scientists said: We have a strange result from one of our experiments, it indicates that neutrinos went faster than light. We know that's not supposed to be possible and we don't think we discovered FTL, but we haven't been able to find the error in our experiment so far. Can anyone help?
What half-decent journalists wrote: Experiment surprisingly observes neutrinos possibly exceeding the speed of light
What typical journalists wrote: Speed of light exceeded by neutrinos in an experiment
What bad journalists wrote: Scientists break the speed of light - neutrinos are faster
What horrid journalists wrote: Modern physics invalidated, speed of light not a limit after all

It's generally known that scientific journalism isn't, at least mainstream in media, but in this case the journalists really outdid themselves.

I remember when the news was first announced, slashdot commenters congratulated the press (especially the BBC) for the good reporting of what the scientists said.

On the other hand....
Forever is a long time. There is no reasonable expectation of forever in any legal contract for goods or services in any
industry I'm aware of. Even contracts for burial plots do not last much more than 200 years.

Soo...what happens in year 201? Do they figure you're finished with it?

braainnnss...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cemetery#Re-use_of_graves
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-13357909
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,527134,00.html

O_O

I was being facetious, but...suddenly my commitment to cremation is a whole lot firmer...

On the other hand....
Forever is a long time. There is no reasonable expectation of forever in any legal contract for goods or services in any
industry I'm aware of. Even contracts for burial plots do not last much more than 200 years.

Soo...what happens in year 201? Do they figure you're finished with it?

braainnnss...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cemetery#Re-use_of_graves
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-13357909
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,527134,00.html

The only people worse then programmers at design are designers who have become totally disconnected from their audience. Like say, the ones doing this. The audience is programmers. They probably know what they want, and the areas Visual Studio needs improvement in were not caps locked menus and monochrome grey icons.

Also, all caps is harder to read: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-15990443 . We've known this for decades. It was determined before Microsoft existed. They were with the program for a while, then this "Metro" disease showed up in Redmond and now everybody is screwing everything up and calling it Metro (though when they call VS Metro I really don't know what they're talking about, unless Metro is code for ugly).

And while we're on it, what does Apple have to do with this? You're saying they should bash Apple for something that Microsoft just changed their UI to do. Since Microsoft wasn't doing it and now is, why wouldn't we go after them for screwing it up when they had it right before?

UK road signs were changed to their current style after testing in 1958, there's a nice summary on the BBC. This new mixed upper and lower case style became legally required on 01 January 1965.

  So yes indeed, typographical designers understood this in the UK quite a while before it was a widely discussed computer interface debate..

Microsoft currently doesn't make money on anything but Windows and Office -- everything else is either runs at loss, or has so much money sunk in it while it was being developed or ran at loss, it will take significant amount of time to turn profit.

Citation? Exchange - for example - would appear to be a very profitable product, XBox has been hugely profitable for the last 5 years

MSFT operating profit by division. Xbox comes under "Entertainment and Devices", a division that has historically been a loss leader. The vast bulk of the profit is from Windows + Office + Windows Server. Basically Microsoft's profits as a whole are largely dependent on sales of Windows and Office: profits jump 31% on strong Office sales, profits stagnate as Windows sales fall.

Perhaps it's the cigarettes that go so good with coffee :)-~

There is much wrong with everything else you say. First, black holes can't be only at the edge of the universe. There is no edge - the universe is isotropic, as far as we know. Unless you suggest that the black holes were in the early universe but have somehow vanished over time. But in any case, that is totally irrelevant. We see dark matter effects IN galaxies NEAR us that we can see ALL of. If all the black holes are at the edge of the universe, they aren't affecting the dynamics of the galaxies we can see, and thus can't be cause of the dark matter effect.

Much wrong? Let's start with yours:

Black holes at the edge of the universe - you've been there? You purport to know what happened in the first ms, seconds, minutes, and hours of the universe? Please do enlighten the rest of us. We have absolutely no idea what's further out from the prototype galaxies. We've seen very little if any evidence of the monster stars that gave us all our higher order elements. Each one of those was truly massive, existed for a very short time, and went super nova for lack of a better description, leaving behind... we think, a black hole. Provided of course that the universe started out as a hydrogen plasma as the popular theory has it today and everything was built up through nuclear fusion. I personally am not willing to put a stake in the ground and state that black holes cannot exist beyond the furthest observable galaxies. You may, and you might or might not join a long line of other stake holders (flat earth, earth center of the universe, sun center of the universe, solid earth, etc)

The universe is nearly isotropic. There are variations. This is not the only reference stating so.

No edge (well, surface actually)? Do you define the universe by the limits of the radiation of the big bang? Or is the universe everything, including things 100 quadrillion light years away, should they exist? I'm curious, because the common definition is everything inside the "edge" (or surface) describing the extent of the big bang, although there are theories that describe things outside our "known" universe. I know the answer to that one is more philosophical at this point, since there is absolutely nothing we can say today about what's even at the limits light has traveled since the big bang. It would all be mere speculation with no way to prove it.

Sitting is only awful because most idiot furniture makers and ergonomics "experts" haven't made decent office chairs even though chairs were invented thousands of years ago.

They've been telling people that sitting straight is better and making chairs like that when they've been wrong:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/6187080.stm

Sure if you lie down and don't move for long you get bed sores, but there's no real problem if you recline for a while then get up and walk (or even run) about every now and then. I bet that's better for you than standing or walking the whole day.

Maybe the very expensive office chairs are OK, but it's ridiculous how uncompetitive and crap the furniture/chair industry is.

"...so I'm not that convinced that the presence or absence of God is going to make a big enough difference unless God directly wields the biggest weapon (without the aid of humans) to enforce his opinion...."

Someone who denies the possibility of the existence of God, will also deny the possibility that God did indeed perform judgments in history. Someone like that will also deny that human existence extends beyond physical death. Such a person will also deny that God could possibly use human beings to leave a written record of his activity and commands.

So which of human beings who claim that they know God's commands are we to trust? As I said, history shows pretty clearly that people making such claims don't always agree with one another.

Any historical record, no matter where it is or who created it, in the end always has to be believed by those reading and studying that record. The Bible is that record of God and his activity.

The Bible is claimed by some to be that record. Why should somebody believe those who claim that rather than believing those who don't?

Sodom and Gomorrah did exist in history. Archaeological digs around the Dead Sea have confirmed this.

Possibly, although that article doesn't seem to indicate that there's a consensus amongst archaeologist that they did.

God wiped Sodom and Gomorrah out.

That is your opinion, and of course you are entitled to it, but what makes you think your opinion is better than anybody else's or should be binding on any other person?

The natural conclusion is that IQ is not some magic static hereditary number that you are born with and can never change. It changes a lot, check out this research on IQ change in teenagers.

Here's a start

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-17769529

There is a solution to that too: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/4581871.stm

Let's be serious. Google/Motorola is not innocent: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-17825580 The atmosphere in mobile patents is terrible. Apple, Google/Motorola, and Microsoft are going to fight over this for years to come. Until there is some sanity and these companies start cross-licensing for reasonable costs this is going to continue, and it's pretty silly to claim that one of these companies is just the victim. They all have large enough legal departments to know how this game works.

By the way, for people in the US, the _average_ house price in Chelsea is about £1.5 million, so well over 2 million dollars. The average semi-detached house price is £12 million. It's not a normal part of the the UK, by any means.

Irrespective of the currency's strength or weakness, Chinese wages have gone up by about 500% in that same time period..

An interesting programme for you to watch would be "The Town Taking on China" http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01hn6l8 which is about a company in the UK which does an experiment to see whether continuing to have a factory in China (after all of the hassles and expenditures involved in doing that) is still as economically beneficial as it was several years ago.

For those who don't feel like watching said programme, the outcome of the experiment is "not really" (there is some minute cost saving in favour of the Chinese factory, but it's not significant) and they end up shifting all the jobs back to the UK.

Most electronic payment systems have very short lives.

• Exxon Speedpass (1997-2004 for uses other than gas stations) Tried, then dumped by McDonalds.
• RFID chip embedded in arm (2004)Used in some nightclubs in Barcelona.
• i-Button (1994) A ring or fob mounted contact-type ID device. Used for bus ticketing in Turkey, and for login security elsewhere.
• EMV Contact-type smart cards. (1995-date) Popular outside the US, especially for stored-value applications.
• American Express ExpressPay (2005). Tried, then dumped by McDonalds. Still used by OfficeMax.
• T-Cash (2011) Send money from your cell phone. Tried in India.

Most electronic payment systems have very short lives.

• Exxon Speedpass (1997-2004 for uses other than gas stations) Tried, then dumped by McDonalds.
• RFID chip embedded in arm (2004)Used in some nightclubs in Barcelona.
• i-Button (1994) A ring or fob mounted contact-type ID device. Used for bus ticketing in Turkey, and for login security elsewhere.
• EMV Contact-type smart cards. (1995-date) Popular outside the US, especially for stored-value applications.
• American Express ExpressPay (2005). Tried, then dumped by McDonalds. Still used by OfficeMax.
• T-Cash (2011) Send money from your cell phone. Tried in India.

According to the BBC article on the matter:

Their views will now be considered by the larger International Trade Committee (Inta) which will in turn make a formal recommendation to the European Parliament.

Inta's appointed rapporteur on Acta, David Martin, has strongly condemned the treaty.

In April, he said: "The intended benefits of this international agreement are far outweighed by the potential threats to civil liberties."

Inta will vote on the matter on 21 June.

So it seems reasonably likely that the official recommendation to the European Parliament will be a "no".

The big question is if the MEPs will listen to Inta...

Do you want to know what the Patent Trolls really think of themselves?

BBC happens to interview Paul Ryan, top dog of Acacia Research Corp, a very well known patent troll

Podcast available at http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/worldservice/bizdaily/bizdaily_20120530-1006a.mp3

You tube carries another interview on the same guy

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hwpGWT_LdDw

This isn't about banning cookies, it's about banning user tracking without consent - which includes far more than cookies; browser fingerprints being the main candidate, so the correct intent is there. For a start, it's perfectly OK within the law to set a cookie that tells the site to not track that user, which I suspect will form the bulk of the (incorrect) complaints received by the ICO, but you can't use that cookie to track the user across your site, or any affiliate sites.

So would a temporary session cookie, often set without the programmers knowledge, be ok?

How about a cookie which is used to remember you've done an action, but not track you. E.G. "color=red" and "color=blue".

The problem with this legislation isn't the intent, it's the complete lack of clarity coming from the ICO who are responsible for its adminstration and enforcement. The law essentially boils down to "do not track your users without their consent", which the ICO has then muddied the waters over by making some vague remarks about implied consent being OK without explaining exactly what they mean. There is a great deal of confusion over whether the request to opt-in/out needs to be overt (i.e. a click-through or banner), whether or not you can set a "do not track" cookie (you can), and so on.

It's not being helped by some totally lame implementations of the consent request, most probably due to lack of clarity from the ICO about what can and can't be done, in the cases of users with cookies and/or JavaScript disabled for a site. A frequent occurance in this case seems to be that such users either have to go through the consent request every visit or have a consent banner permanantly displayed on the screen. Both these problems could (and I'll emphasis that "could") go away quite simply if the ICO were to state that:

1. If using a script to prompt for consent and if that script is blocked then default to "do not track"
2. It's OK to try and set a cookie, read it back and if that fails assume cookies are blocked by the user and implied consent = "do not track", otherwise prompt the user for consent and act accordingly.

But all that assumes that the websites are going to act in the best interests of their users over the best interests of their bottom line; in many cases sites will be dependant on the revenue they can raise from their users, and a tracked user is going to be better targetted with ads, and thus more likely to click through, than one that is not. The more inconvenient it is for users to opt out of tracking, the more likely we are going to see those sites taking that track. Kudos on that front to the BBC who have a well thought out and graded set of cookie policies you can opt into ranging from "necessary", through "functionality" and "performance", to "behavioural advertising".

WTF is up with British tourists and their "tweeter" accounts.

this guy was sent home from LAX because he said he was going to "destroy" America (the same way a hungry person would destroy a burger)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-16810312

and Stephen Fry offered to pay Paul Chambers' fees. /stephenfryisawesome

Germany had its economy crushed by the massive reparation payments imposed on it after WWI, primarily at the instigation of the French, as a part of the treaty of Versailles. Inflation and poverty in 20s/30s Germany was horrendous (people wore suits made from re-purposed paper because cloth was too expensive) and the resulting national depression predisposed the German people to radical alternatives. It didn't help that Hitler was a masterful orator with a Reality Distortion Field that would have made Steve Jobs look like Gerald Ford.

Understanding that part of history is why some people worry about increasing wealth separation/concentration within the US and other Western democracies. Some of the 1% appear to think that controlling information media allows them to control the message and direct the building resentment. Others see an increasingly dry plain and fear the spark and the lightning strike will eventually bypass the media firebreak.

Funny you should say that: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-18159752

1. If using a script to prompt for consent and if that script is blocked then default to "do not track"
2. It's OK to try and set a cookie, read it back and if that fails assume cookies are blocked by the user and implied consent = "do not track", otherwise prompt the user for consent and act accordingly.

But all that assumes that the websites are going to act in the best interests of their users over the best interests of their bottom line; in many cases sites will be dependant on the revenue they can raise from their users, and a tracked user is going to be better targetted with ads, and thus more likely to click through, than one that is not. The more inconvenient it is for users to opt out of tracking, the more likely we are going to see those sites taking that track. Kudos on that front to the BBC who have a well thought out and graded set of cookie policies you can opt into ranging from "necessary", through "functionality" and "performance", to "behavioural advertising".

That's probably a false positive because it is likely a stock logo. But this picture found on this website of hers is from BBC News.

Har. What a paranoid rant.

Also, not only did she use that picture of Houston without permission and fail to find one with a free license (is it THAT hard to find a nice picture of Houston?), but she's used this image from the BBC without credit too. I wonder how many of her other website images are used without attribution?

For a lawyer she seems to understand the concept of copyright rather poorly. Fair use might cover some things, but it isn't at all clear in this circumstance. Obviously it's all a conspiracy if somebody points out that she's probably violating copyright. You would think a lawyer would know better than to explode when they are caught in a violation by the copyright holder themselves. But no, it's everybody else's fault for bringing it up, not hers.

After all the lies during the events I have serious doubts about anything coming from official sources there. Its like listing to Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf and thinking "oh yes he has to be telling the truth this time".


"There is little health risks from the Fukashima reactor anamoly"


This is really disgusting because it damages the viability of nuclear power, and that is a resource we should be expanding and modernizing and not getting rid of.

A quick look at unemployment levels might point out that the GGGP is making the situation in Glasgow sound a lot better than it is... http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8000029.stm

Of course this only works if you trust those who control it.

Of course this only works if you trust those who control it.

I've looked at the numbers and I haven't seen any country in Europe (besides Greece by a little bit) reduce their spending year-over-year. That doesn't sound like austerity.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-10810962 - it was futile and unable to reduce deficits, of course. But spending cuts were very real.

He did raise taxes to reduce the deficit. And that will suck money out of the private sector and slow the economy. But I'm not sure if that warrants the label austerity.

Not 'will' but 'has'. The UK is in the midst of the SECOND recession and falling down still. Cameron achieved quite a dubious feat - UK has now been depressed more than in the Great Depression of 30-s. With no way out in sight.

Too late.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8779388.stm

Perhaps though if you were laying down people wouldn't complain as much and then they could stack people in.