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The UK is leading the charge once again in destroying freedom and democracy http://www.channel4.com/news/black-boxes-to-monitor-all-internet-and-phone-data , with their plan to install "black boxes" in all internet providers.. it's for your protection you see, so many nasty terrorists out there http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2134333/Why-allowed-spy-Facebook-Twitter-Whitehall-intelligence-chief.html If you don't allow your internet connection to be spied up, you'll be killed....do you want that? http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2159041/Snoopers-Charter-matter-life-death-says-Met-Police-chief-Home-Secretary-unveils-plans-monitor-website-use.html

The UK already said they will allow access to the information to the USA and to Brussles (EU). Think of all the other crooks, I mean corporations that could do with this information. See, now YOU have to PAY the corporations to prove you're innocent...... http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-18594105

AHahaha...yeah the script kiddies. Oh sure. Yep they're out doing good stuff again. So anyway, I mean the rebels are out doing things like trying to get reporters killed too. But hey, whatever. Pallywood everywhere!

Most of the articles are based off a single report, or other articles that accept this as fact.

Channel 4's Fact Check has looked into it, and largely considered it unverified guess.

Wikipedia mentions 60000 government cameras which may or may not be particularly high since there's nothing to compare it with.

Or just watch them online from the people who made it...

Like you say, accusing people of fraud is nasty... and I would add that if we think about it, it's also unnecessary. I don't know how things were over there in the USA, but in the UK during the boom years and until very recently people weren't committing fraud because they didn't even need to:

According to the Financial Services Authority, nearly half of new mortgages between 2007 and the first quarter of 2010 were provided without the customer having to verify his/her income.

Source

So, it's a lot like GP poster said: more credit => higher house prices => more money for those who joined the game earlier.

http://www.channel4.com/programmes/hestons-mission-impossible
http://www.terminalu.com/travel-news/heston-blumenthal-proves-that-british-airways-can-improve-inflight-food-standards/6728/

n/t

Try Charlie Brooker's new drama; Black Mirror.

Even tries to feature this face-swapping technique. And it involves the Prime Minister and an animal. I'll say no more.

Hopefully someone else has already seen it, think it'd be very appropriate for /.

I disagree; unless you're shooting a cartoon, everything should be as realistic and beleivable as possible. And everything in the movie should strive to be a work of art in itself.

I agree with this filmmaker, "The goal of special effects shouldn't necessarily be to look realistic, they should be works of art themselves and help create a mood or tell a story." Look at Aleksandr Petrov's Old Man and the Sea vs the B&W 1958 photograph version with Spencer Tracey vs some not yet made 3D surround sound version vs Hemingway's book. Which is the most "realistic" version? Which is the most "artistic?" CGI, green screen, 3D, multichannel sound is not the end-all in movie creativity. The art of film is in showing us a particular point of view, compressing time and space, focusing on aspects of visual space which lend themselves to moving the story forward. I'd highly recommend looking at The story of Film:An Odyssey which shows that early attempts at film didn't understand that the art of film is in what it doesn't show. If you don't believe me, set up a 3D HDR camera in an apartment and film daily life 24 x 7 x 365 and see if anyone wants to watch it.

Last month Channel 4 News did a story about the "hidden internet" (i.e. illegal drugs trading, arms, slavery, child sexual abuse etc.) and "its currency: Bitcoin."

Unusually for Channel 4 News, the direct link was made between Bitcoin and illegal activity i.e. the false premise that Bitcoin was designed specifically to facilitate crime on the Internet.

Maybe I'm naive and still believe that the Internet is for the common good and that Bitcoin was a legitimate tool, but maybe it was just designed for crooks all along, just like TOR, which they also talk about.

On Channel4 news (in the UK - report here) a spokesman said it was a problem with their core switch infrastructure at their primary European site in Slough. Their backup infrastructure was also not functioning correctly either - the problem with the backup infrastructure is unspecified. My first reaction to that is that it must be gathering dust somewhere untested - but it's been on and off for the last three days in the UK so either they have the same problem with the backup infrastructure, they are lying about having a backup infrastructure or their back up plan is to use the North American network for European traffic. If that's the case did the volume of traffic just take out the North American network?

What proportion of this '60% of their policies' falls into the category of 'stuff the Tories were going to do anyway'?:

http://www.channel4.com/news/articles/politics/aposcommon%2Bgroundapos%2Band%2Bconflict%2Bbetween%2Bparties/3641187.html

Allowing David Cameron to honour his own manifesto promises is hardly a 'spectacular' result, just a natural consequence of coalition. The Lib Dems are thrown the occasional bone to keep the rump of their core support happy, but in most of the important areas of disagreement the view of the senior partners has, quite predictably, prevailed.

The tuition fee debacle is something of a special case. This was not just a manifesto promise that might reasonably be taken with a pinch of salt, but a flagship issue that was, uniquely, the subject of a personal pledge made by every candidate to vote in a specific way. Nobody expected the Lib Dems to actually form a government by themselves and implement this policy unilaterally, but quite a lot of people really believed their own MPs would stick to their guns on this issue (which an honourable minority did). In university towns it would have been a significant vote winner. Of course we now know the party leadership had absolutely no intention of keeping this promise if it proved a barrier to power:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/nov/12/lib-dems-tuition-fees-clegg

Even by the standards of UK party politics, this is remarkably cynical.

A News Corp subsidiary that happens to be a tabloid (which as we all know don't count as real journalism) hired a private investigator to complete his own investigation on the murder of a girl. The private investigator, acting as a lone agent, "hacked in" (Is it hacking when you guess the passcode? 1-2-3-4?) to her voicemail and used a message on it to add to his investigation.

Firstly- they used information gathered from the phone hacking (and which can only have been gathered from phone hacking) as the basis for a front page story. The editors and journalists involved have exactly as much responsibility for the methods used as the PI.

Secondly, this is just one more leaf in a very mucky story. Among stories of hacking celebrities, senior politicians, the royal family, 7/7 terrorism victims, and a raft of other murder victims, other highlights include bribing the police and monitoring and intimidating a police officer investigating a PI with News International connections. And yes, hacking is still hacking even if brute forcing the password only takes 2 attempts...

(Incidentally, watch the interview with the NI executive in the second link. I don't know what the poor man did to deserve being given that job, but it's one of the funniest things I've seen in weeks. The poor chap doesn't stand a chance when the party line is so intrinsically stupid and illogical.)

Never mind the six billion quid HMRC let Vodafone off for free. You can now measure cuts to services in percentages of a Vodafone.

Or George Osborne's personal tax evasion.

No, it's all the eBay traders. Yes, they must be the problem.

It is not illegal to go to Switzerland to kill yourself, there is no question over that. The issue is that it is illegal to assist suicide in the UK, and sometimes if a family member travels with them they are prosecuted on their return to the UK. It also makes it impossible for doctors in the UK to assist.

However, there was a case a year or two back where a mother helped her daughter to die at home in the UK, was prosecuted and then found not guilty of murder: http://www.channel4.com/news/articles/uk/assisted%2Bsuicide%2Bmother%2Bcleared%2Bof%2Bmurder/3515647.html

So the law is somewhat unclear. A woman tried to force the government to say if it would prosecute her husband if he travelled with her to be there at the time of her death, but she died before it was fully resolved.

Furthermore, there has not been a single documented case of anyone being killed because they were "outted" by wikileaks.

There has not been a single documented case of you making poopie, anywhere, any time. Therefore I can conclude that you MUST be full of shit. Isn't logic wonderful?

Also: http://www.anorak.co.uk/267106/politicians/wikileaks-killed-1300-people-and-counting.html
And: http://www.channel4.com/news/articles/uk/taliban+hunt+wikileaks+outed+afghan+informers/3727667.html

DO NOT look at the Star newspaper it's like looking at the national inquirer....

the people who broke the news where UK channel 4

see this link for the story

http://www.channel4.com/news/britains-nuclear-subs-potentially-vulnerable-to-accidents

the document seems flattened but is here
http://robedwards.typepad.com/files/declassified-report-to-mod-defence-board.pdf/a

anyone actually able to copy and paste from it ?

why does the MOD use microsoft word for these type of things is beyond me...

regards

John Jones

p.s. do you think china et. al. have the same problems...

You should provide a citation about the cameras because it's not true. The UK has 1 camera for every 14 citizens and we don't have anywhere near that many here.

You should follow your own advice and provide a citation yourself. And I'll proved a counter-citation just in case you dredge up one of the various tabloids who have reported the figure. The number was, essentially, made up. The average number of CCTV cameras in 211 business premises that are open to the public in two particularly high crime London streets was counted. This was multiplied by the number of businesses in London (note: not just those that are open to the public), and an arbitrary number added as a guess of the number of cameras not operated by such businesses (e.g. public transport cameras). The result was divided by the population of London and multiplied by the population of the country (note: the rest of the country has lower crime than London, so probably less CCTV). This is not a valid methodology.

I don't think anybody has performed a similar analysis in the US, but it's worth noting that Chicago's network of over 8,000 centrally-monitored CCTV cameras is of a similar size to London's (7,500 AIUI), despite London being about 3 times the size of Chicago. Yes, Chicago has the highest number of such cameras in any US city, but the point is that the comparison can be made in some places.

http://www.channel4.com/programmes/the-it-crowd :)

I tried watching that. But I turned it off....

... then on again.

http://www.channel4.com/programmes/the-it-crowd :)

A boy (8-15-ish) who dances erotically for a group of men, and is then used as a prostitute.

There was a good documentary on Channel 4 (UK) about it, and there's a decent article here.

From the article, there's just under 60,000 cameras now.

That's not a reliable figure, though. There is no official figures for the number of CCTVs in use in the UK, and some very dodgy statistics have a very long life. The figure of 60000 comes from a campaign group opposed to CCTV so it is likely to err on the high side.

Here's some background.

Amnesty International and Reporters Without Borders have joined the Pentagon in criticizing the organization for risking people's lives by publishing war logs identifying Afghans working for the Americans or acting as informers.

Some more

But Ahmad Nader Nadery, the Commissioner of the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC) told Channel 4 News the damage is already done, because thousands of Afghans have already downloaded the files.

'Thousands of Afghans have downloaded the entire package'

He said: "Release of names of the tribal elders and community members who met US, ISAF or NATO forces is an absolute irresponsibility.

"There is no protection mechanisms for these people, be it informant or other community members who as part of the role as an elder meets with the officials or international forces, while wikileaks served greatly in brining to public some of the unspoken files, it certainly also acted against the principle of "Do No Harm" that all civil society and watchdogs have to adhere to.

I don't have the link handy, but AIHRC and other local organizations also stated that the assassination rate went dramatically up after the release.

*shrug* keep telling yourself it's not the case if you want, but it is the case, and it is the problem with your military and your country's military attitude. It's why you see defeat over and over despite having overwhelming numbers and technology.

You see it doesn't matter how strongly you stick to your mindset, a trait typical of Americans- an ideology bred from the 2nd World War and Cold War that they're unbeatable, that due to the sheer numbers, the amount of spending, the technology, the US is unbeatable, and yet time and time again the US has failed miserably to achieve a reasonable degree of success. You believe you won the second World War, but the reality is the Russians had done more damage and by the time the US even entered the war, the British and it's allies had already largely castrated the German Navy as well as having destroyed large swaithes of the Luftwaffe as a result of and in the aftermath of the Battle of Britain - something America was uninvolved in bar 1 pilot. Post war you entered Korea, which resulted in a stalemate, the deaths of tens of thousands of US troops and a situation that to this day is unresolved. Vietnam was of course next, and well, we all know how that worked out for you. Around this era there was of course multiple attempts on Cuba which again resulted in abject failure, such that to this day the US has a nation hostile to it right outside it's front door which it failed to deal with. Your attempt to rescue American hostages from the US embassy in 1980 in Iran went horribly wrong. In the 90s there was of course the first Gulf War which involved a rather effective invasion, but where there was once again failure to aprehend and deal with Saddam. Next up was Somalia, again, we know how that ended- the US left with their tail between their legs. It's then really on to Iraq and Afghanistan, again both of which have been failures.

Of course in many cases you did have allies with you, and these didn't prevent failure, but the fundamental problem was always that these allies have been constrained by US leadership- many of these allies have demonstrated competence in acting unilaterally where the US has not, but also any actions of winning hearts and minds by allies is often undone by US screwups.

So answer this, if your military is really so competent as your US patriotic mindset leads you to believe, then why has every major US led deployment in the last 60 years failed to achieve it's objectives? Despite overwhelming numbers, overwhelming technology and financing, why do you think it goes so wrong?

Again, look at successes over that same period, for example Sierra Leone and The Falklands for the British, or Algeria and Chad for the French- in both cases they have been resounding successes because the people were on side, look at failures, not just the US ones, but for example, Russia in Chechnya- they have been utter failures in policy because the people were not on side.

Say I have little understanding all you want, dispute the facts all you want, but it wont change the fundamental point that the US simply cannot achieve it's military goals and has not been able to for many many decades now- it doesn't matter if I understand what US military training involves or does not involve, because the reality is it does not work in practice. You only have to look at the proportionally much higher incidents of friendly fire on allies by US forces compared to other nations to see there is a severe competence issue regardless of the amount of training given.

For what it's worth I didn't ignore the relative troop numbers in my analysis, which is precisely why I used the word "proportionally". For information on checkpoints see articles like these:

http://www.channel4.com/news/iraq-war-files-death-at-checkpoint

http://english.aljazeera.net/secretiraqfiles/2010/10/2010102216241633174.h

Somehow this implies McDonalds has a kitchen and i don't like it. Its more like a plastic mold factory. I'm actually upset they call this meat.

http://www.channel4.com/food/images/mb/Channel4/4Food/features/2009/september/37/kids_food_toys/playdoh_kitchen_gallery--gt_full_width_landscape.jpg

Is it the same Texan court that doesn't know which side of the Atlantic Liverpool is on?

The Taliban has vowed to hunt down and kill anyone who is a "spy", and they are using the Wikileaks information to do it, so there will be more.

So, if wikileaks were to release the names of all the known members of the taliban and suggest they were spies, the problem would be solved?

Wikileaks and Julian Assange own this now. The good, and the ill, from publishing that information are on them. And it looks pretty ill to me.

According to Newsweek, a man named Khalifa Abdullah was killed after the release of these documents. So that's one man dead already. The Taliban has vowed to hunt down and kill anyone who is a "spy", and they are using the Wikileaks information to do it, so there will be more. Some of the people listed in Wikileaks have disappeared, hopefully into hiding rather than dead.

Julian Assange's stance on this is callous. He "insisted that any risk to informants' lives was outweighed by the overall importance of publishing the information." Okay, at least one man is dead now. What is that "overall importance"? I sure don't see it.

I'm also not buying his idea that this is really the US military's fault, together with Amnesty International, for not helping him redact the critical info. Much of the info is years old. What was the big rush? If Wikileaks didn't have enough volunteers to vet the info carefully, why rush ahead and publish it anyway?

If I were Julian Assange, I wouldn't be sleeping well at night.

steveha

I see no evidence to support your claim and believe it to be completely untrue. It is not a tribal thing, it is a Christian thing. These are Christian church elders denouncing the children as witches and not tribe leaders. They are doing EXACTLY what it says in the Bible to do, nothing more. You can try and palm the blame elsewhere but that would be a lie and giving the native American argument seems very random and irrelevant considering it's nothing to do with the Bible and they are not Christians.

I must add that I am not in any way condoning acts of extremist Muslims, personally I think superstition should be banned from all schools; But it gets my blood burning to see hypocrisy from Christians claiming the moral highground when their own flock are murdering children in the name of Jesus.

http://www.channel4.com/programmes/dispatches/episode-guide/series-43/episode-1

http://www.channel4.com/4homes/on-tv/kevin-mccloud-slumming-it/ Quite an interesting documentary series on the benefits and shortcomings of living in slums in Mumbai. He goes and lives in Dharavi for a few weeks and describes his experiences from a micro and macro point of view.

Philip Campbell was one of the "scientists" selected to join the "independent" review panel for the UEA leaks. He later had to step down when it was revealed that he had already made up his mind before any review:

http://www.channel4.com/news/articles/science_technology/aposclimategateapos+review+member+resigns/3536642

I'm sure he was replaced by somebody equally independent and impartial and that we can expect the same level of impartiality from the UN's review of the IPCC. This is nothing but a waste of taxpayer's money.

Ooohhh... "scary" "quotes"!

Plus you even name checked the almighty taxpayer. A relevant argument to any discussion ever. Mod parent up!

Philip Campbell was one of the "scientists" selected to join the "independent" review panel for the UEA leaks. He later had to step down when it was revealed that he had already made up his mind before any review:

http://www.channel4.com/news/articles/science_technology/aposclimategateapos+review+member+resigns/3536642

I'm sure he was replaced by somebody equally independent and impartial and that we can expect the same level of impartiality from the UN's review of the IPCC. This is nothing but a waste of taxpayer's money.

you were also likely to die by 35 during the time of Bill.

This seemed not quite right to me, so I did a little research.

According to not only the Wikipedia page on life expectancy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_expectancy), but also its sources ( http://www.channel4.com/history/microsites/H/history/guide12/part06.html http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/241864.stm ), the closest relevant figures presented are for 13th-14th century England. It is true that in this case the average life expectancy was roughly 30. However, don't get the wrong idea; this isn't some Logan's Run-style situation where the "average" person dies at 30. Infant and youth mortality rates were quite high, skewing the average down, but in the words of the BBC,

However, by the time the 13th-Century boy had reached 20 he could hope to live to 45, and if he made it to 30 he had a good chance of making it into his fifties.

People may have been likely to die by 35 during the time of Bill, as you say, but dying at that age was hardly considered a long or full life.

Happens from time to time. It was part of a cartoon sketch show which was intended to drum up publicity.

Another one (though I doubt you'd find it on Youtube) which definitely did cause hysterics was the Brass Eye paedophile special:

http://www.channel4.com/programmes/brass-eye/4od#2929844

Well, that's not how it works in e.g. the United Kingdom (where income tax is deducted at source for employees). Those items you mention are very rarely claimable expenses (you certainly can't claim your daily commute against tax), except for certain specialised trades. The truth is that the majority of people do not need to even submit a tax return each year, chiefly those that do are people who a) are self employed, b) are directors of a company, or c) earn significantly over the median wage so as to be liable for the highest rate of tax.

Some statistics: In the tax year 2008/2009 there were 30.9 million tax payers in the UK. By the deadline for submission, 7.84 million people submitted a tax return on time, and typically 10% of people missed the deadline (I CBA to find the actual data). That extrapolates to 8.8 million people, or 28% of the tax-paying population.

http://www.channel4.com/food/features/what-s-in-your-banger-09-01-23_p_1.html

A typical economy sausage recipe might look like: 30% pork fat, 20% recovered meat, 30% rusk and soya, 15% water and 5% assorted e-numbers, flavourings, sugar, flavour enhancer, preservatives and colourings.

Premium sausages look hand made. Good sausages use joints of meat, minced; you'll be able to see the granules of fat and meat through the skin.

At the top end, the ingredients list is much shorter; something like 40% belly pork, 40% boned shoulder of pork, 10% breadcrumbs, 5% water and 5% herbs and spices.

Of course, some people like the taste of cheap sausages. You can train yourself to like any old crap. Hence the success of McDonalds.

I wish these folks would just sit on the sidelines and let people come up with real solutions

Perhaps you should ignore the media hype about the Fat duck and its so-called 'molecular cooking' (which is just a term used to describe thinking what happens when you cook - like protein chains tightening under heat, etc).

For real solutions, take a look at what he did with the restaurant chain Little Chef. This was an iconic British brand from years back that was in decline, so he came in to make menus for it that would fit its price range and quick cook requirements. He did very well at it too. There were 2 programmes on Channel 4 about it, take a look.

The other programmes he did were to reinvent ancient recipes, and to show the 'ultimate' way of cooking favourite dishes. His steak one was impressive if impractical for your average home cook.

what on earth are they thinking?!

That's an easy one.

From the Channel 4 remit as laid out in the statement of programme policy, attached to the Channel 4 licence:

“[channel 4 shall] foster the new and experimental in television. It will encourage pluralism, provide a favoured place for the untried and encourage innovation in style content perspective and talent on and off screen”.

Nick.

And as if on cue.... Kill Him!!

For those looking at doing this it's worth knowing that as well as iPlayer there is now 4OD, Demand Five and ITVPlayer for all your C4, 5 and ITV watching needs.
They've all ditched their paid for P2P based systems for advertising supported Flash players.

Have you seen ITV news recently? It's like a cross between the Daily Mail, Daily Express and Heat Magazine.

The BBC1 news is going the same way. The only TV news I watch now is Channel 4 News. Channel 4, although partly commercial is a public service broadcaster so its news tends to be reasonably independent.

The best news is on Radio 4 twice a day.

here in the UK Channel 4's "Time Team" covered some of the recent excavations in the Stonehenge area in a couple of episodes earlier this year - this includes the initial discovery of this 'Bluehenge' site, although when the programmes were made they had not got as far as finding the evidence for a complete henge at this site.

check out the two 'specials' here and here. fwiw, the second programme is the more detailed of the two and covers more of the later discoveries.

these recent digs are particularly interesting because they're the most up-to-date excavations to have taken place in the Stonehenge area so far, and they also include the re-excavations of older digs which took place before we had some of our modern techniques, technologies and understanding.

truly fascinating stuff! :)

here in the UK Channel 4's "Time Team" covered some of the recent excavations in the Stonehenge area in a couple of episodes earlier this year - this includes the initial discovery of this 'Bluehenge' site, although when the programmes were made they had not got as far as finding the evidence for a complete henge at this site.

check out the two 'specials' here and here. fwiw, the second programme is the more detailed of the two and covers more of the later discoveries.

these recent digs are particularly interesting because they're the most up-to-date excavations to have taken place in the Stonehenge area so far, and they also include the re-excavations of older digs which took place before we had some of our modern techniques, technologies and understanding.

truly fascinating stuff! :)

Channel 4 is not a "public service" broadcaster in the same way the BBC is, you seem to imply that it's a Govt. controlled channel with commercial advertising.

I merely said "public service, but funded by adverts". But anyway, no it is not quite the same situation as the BBC, but it is indeed a government controlled channel funded by advertising.

From the Channel 4 website (which appears to have an .exe file in the url but does not download anything):

Channel 4 is a publicly owned corporation whose board is appointed by OFCOM, in agreement with the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport.

The BBC on the other hand is an organisation established by Royal Charter (very loosely a special form of "company", "owned" by the Queen and by extension the public). It is overseen by the trustees who are formally appointed by the Queen (who is told who to appoint by government ministers).

Channel 4 is thus arguably more closely controlled by the government than the BBC is, in that technically the Queen is in the way of appointing who runs the BBC - however unlikely her intervention may be. In practice however C4 has more freedom and anyway the Gov't set the BBC licence fee which obviously confers influence.

I get most of my videos legally from http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer or http://www.channel4.com/programmes/4od these days

http://www.channel4.com/news/articles/world/chinese+people+are+not+pets/3097807

or are chinese people human beings, who desire freedom

if there is some magic genetic component in a chinese person that makes them needed to be controlled like a slave, then you win the argument

but if on the other hand, as i believe, that chinese people are just as yearning and desiring of freedom as people in the west, then surely you recognize that the west, regardless of all the problems the west has, better realizes the concept of personal freedom than the current chinese system does

so that in the end, your view of "ideological imperialism" is absurd, since all i am asking for is more freedom for you. the only ideological imperialism that actually exists is coming from beijing, not the west. beijing is trying to control you, i'm asking for you to LESS control over you. how is that imperialism? how in a million years do you view that as some sort malicious foreign influence? maybe its just a better way for chinese people to live? wheter or not i say it, as a westerner, or a chinese person says it?

in other words, when a chinese person compes up to you expressing a desire for more freedom, are they some sort of zombie under the influence of western imperialism? or perhaps they are expressing something human inside them that unites us, all humans, western or chinese, something stronger than any authoritarian system that beijing can devise, and stronger than any blind xenophobia you are suffering so strongly from, you actually view your own emancipation as a despicable foreign influence

as for more my desire to make the world one place: yes i wish upon the entire human race greater personal freedom. truly, i am an imperialistic monster LOL

To say that these religious systems don't make useful predictions is false. These systems must be useful, or they would have driven their adherents to extinction many generations ago.

Religion preys on the fear of life and death. Its success has nothing to do with it making "useful predictions".

You want an example of destructive religious predictions? How about the apocalyptic prophecies that George W. Bush cited in his decisions regarding the war in Iraq and up to 16 million American "end timers" believe to be about to come true.

Patrick Moore is somehow still on the go, presenting The Sky At Night along with Chris Lintott. There are usually a good few astronomers and astrophysicists on as guests.

Richard Dawkins made an appearance, albeit brief, on Inside Nature's Giants.

Brian Cox has already been mentioned... I can't think of any more.

It really annoys me that the vast majority of documentaries these days are people-oriented, at the expense of science documentaries. I'm not saying that women are ruining the BBC, but I'm certainly thinking it loudly...

You should try watching Inside Nature's Giants on Channel 4 at 9PM on Mondays. Its a very good nature programme where they cut up a large animal (last night was a whale) and show you all of its parts. I learnt last night that whales actually have hind legs inside them as they're most closely related to Hippos.

"Maybe not requested directly from you, but all of that license information, including home address and the photo, is stored in the DVLA database. You have no idea who has access to it, or what they have done with it."
Yes I do! It's frigging anyone who wants it. As an example, private car clamping firms can get it from them to send you a bill - see http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/02/17/dvla_review/.
Major supermarket chains have automatic numberplate recognition cameras that will automatically post you out a fine if you sit for too long in their carparks. McDonalds in the UK will famously send you a fine in the post for the temerity of sitting in their car parks for an hour whilst you eat your burger, and the first you'll hear about it is when the fine arrives in the post: http://www.channel4.com/news/articles/uk/mcfines%20for%20slow%20eaters/1169247.

What site brings real news? (except Slashdot, of course)

news.bbc.co.uk

www.channel4.com/news

www.economist.com - A good place to go if you want to see the news before it happens