Slashdot Mirror

"Isn't a Labour government grand?"

This cartoon in the independent, sums up why we are heading into a total Big Brother police state.
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/the-daily-cartoon-760940.html?ino=9

This party isn't really labour. Labour was started to help the people. This lot are only interested in helping the rich. This Labour government has become a bunch of arragant, closeminded, greedy, self-righteous, control freaks, pulling the whole UK into their personal police state hell and no one can tell them anything, otherwise they get labelled opposition (or worse) and then simply ignored.

Jacqui Smith MP, is one of the worst of them.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacqui_Smith "As the UK Home Secretary, she has been noted for advocating strongly authoritarian policies."

I was thinking the exact same thing. I didn't realize that men and women have different genomes. According to this page

"Surprisingly, a male genome is not the same as a female genome â" and it even appears that genomes may be engaged in a genetic 'tug of war' within a developing embryo."

It continues saying

"An example is the insulin-like growth factor system, which has a strong influence on the size of a baby. The logic is that the paternal genome works to maximise the growth of the offspring, to give it the best chance of survival when it is born. The maternal genome, though, protects the mother, so she can go through further pregnancies. Male and female genomes may be constantly battling with one another, driven by evolutionary pressures to ensure that their genes survive and spread."

Additionally, I found this blog post and I quote

"Willard and Carrel's work has focused largely on x chromosome inactivation, and the way in which this expresses itself in between-and-within sex phenotypes. Hotz quotes Willard: "In essence, there is not one human genome, but two: male and female."
As discussed in a previous post, Steven Pinker (2005) theorizes that there is greater variation in ability in males; basically, that males are the guinea pigs for evolutionary change. This is part of Pinker's explanation of why men are overrepresented at the highest levels of achievement. Critics such as Chabris and Glickman (2006) have attempted to disprove this using examples such as chess achievement, but Hotz suggests that Willard and Carrel's research may have found genetic evidence to the contrary: "Females can differ from each other almost as much as they do from males in the way many genes at the heart of sexual identity behave."

One last article, I promise :) But I find this stuff pretty interesting as I never realized there was a difference:

"Analysis of the "X" chromosome - the female sex chromosome - has revealed that women are genetically more complicated than men. The findings reveal that men have taken a genetic battering that has dwindled the size of their own "Y" chromosome.
The battle of the sexes has its roots in a 300-million-year struggle between the X and the Y chromosomes which have vied with each other for influence over successive generations of males and females. Scientists showed yesterday that the X chromosome has retained its physical integrity while the Y of men has dwindled in size and power to become a shadow of its former self."

Now I am definitely oversimplifying this, but it seems the X and Y chromosome play a pretty big part in the difference. Odd how I never put 2 and 2 together. But if this has been known for so long, why hasn't anyone taken the time to map out a female genome before? Breast cancer is a pretty obvious female specific disease, so it strikes me odd that if the human genome has been mapped out since 2003 that no one has done this before.

don't do anything really annoying like have a mandatory "music and movie tax" on all broadband connections.

You may be joking, but there are proposals to change the TV licence fee to do exactly that.

More to the point, MY 'king government!

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/oft-to-investigate-macquaries-airwave-deal-449184.html

You'll never hear an Al Gore follower mention it but the Earth has actually been on a cooling cycle for the last two years. Maybe we should be starting to look at schemes to increase planetary warming. This could be especially worrisome if sunspot cycle 24 continues to be unusually weak.

Isn't that what was said about MySpace and Facebook before people started getting fired?

For blogging about what an asshole their boss is, typically. Or for posting pics of yourself involved in questionable activities. Yes, that will get you fired. One has a harder time claiming "privacy violation" when you willing post incriminating information about yourself to a public forum. Honestly, I'd call that a lack of judgment rather than a lack of privacy.

I'd call the current blog/MySpace craze a different fetish: A desire to share the most intimate details of your life with the entire world. Pretty much the opposite of a privacy fetish, if you ask me.

Is a DNA sequence/medical record in the same realm as this? Maybe, maybe not. I don't think I would have volunteered.

so, despite a consistent history of positions and votes antithetical to gun rights, now that he has issued a statement that the 2A is an individual right we should believe him? Was he on the road to Damascus lately? Going to change his name to Paul?

I'll tell you what... given that it looks very much like Obama is going to be elected, how about 4 years from now in the next presidential elections, you ask yourself how much gun laws have changed since now. If it is significantly different from the state it is in today, I would be VERY surprised.

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Obama's entire campaign is based on McCain voting with Bush for 8 years, and tells us to ignore McCain's protests that he is a reformer.

Is it deniable that the Bush administration has ravaged our country in so many different areas in the past 8 years?

• Our economy blows right now (I'll admit this was caused by both sides, but Republicans who are so economically minded should have been able to do something about it in the 6 years of congressional control + president, right?)
• Our 'inalienable rights' have been badly damaged as opposed to theoretically taking away our gun rights
• We have a widely unpopular war that many of our international allies are calling unwinnable, and there are many reports coming out that despite it looking like the surge worked, it actually has failed just as much as everything else in that country
• Our international relations have been totally destroyed, and we are losing ground as a superpower

Is it deniable that McCain has voted with Bush during the past 8 years? Even McCain himself proudly spoke about how much he went along with the Bush administration. FFS, look at what actually happened.

Again, in 4 years I want you to ask yourself how much things have changed for guns. This shouldn't be the major issue for anyone - the major issues in no particular order should be (IMO):

• education.
• economy
• foreign policy
• healthcare (both candidates are better than Bush on this, so this is a moot point)

On the first three that I listed, I see Obama as the clear winner.

You mean those 3% that actually benefit anyone?
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/the-big-question-are-cctv-cameras-a-waste-of-money-in-the-fight-against-crime-822079.html
or these 3%?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2008/may/06/ukcrime1

And god forbid someone comes up with the idea to use advanced CCTV evading technology.

It would all be funny and right in your post, if your country (or any for that matter) could continue to exist without a banking and finance group. If any other sector that wasn't needed made such a monumental cockup it would simply self implode and everyone would be "sorry about that mishap, but lets move on". Because however that banking (and insurance, and healthcare and other such operations) are so vital for a country, yes, you do have to cover for their mistakes with your taxes. If you don't it will be much worse.

Should the managers and bankers that allowed it to get to this level be punished? Certainly. In Australia when we had a major insurance company meltdown we put the blighter in jail for it. If I were American, I would be expecting the prison population to be filled up with bankers and lenders in the near future.

In deep water submersibles the occupied portion is a sphere to best resist pressure. The rest of the craft is filled with water at ambient pressure. The drawing in the article shows this one to follow that pattern. Your first comment is refuted.

The Trieste was a tethered bathyscape. It went down on a cable and back up again. No ability to survey an area. I'd like to survey deep trenches as possible nuclear waste sites. Put the stuff in wedge shapped containers and drop it into deep muck at the bottom of such trenches. If it's 20m down in muck under 7-11 km of water it's going to be easier to produce new nuclear material than to retrieve

An untethered deep submersible with ability to survey an area could find many useful things on the sea floor. Like how to harvest methane:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/exclusive-the-methane-time-bomb-938932.html

The land area of the Earth has been the subject of intense exploration for millenia yet we're still learning about it. Satellites, a 50 year old vehicle for exploration, have helped immensely. Why do you think a new undersea vehicle will not have a similar effect on ocean exploration?

On Cable they the Discover Channel had a show in HD where they build a CO2 scrubber almost identical to the ones describe in the papers from the University of Calgary's David Keith that the article was about.

Discover Channel
http://dsc.discovery.com/tv/project-earth/explores/carbon.html

David Keith Home page
http://www.ucalgary.ca/~keith/CO2%20Capture%20and%20Storage.html

I don't know about the whole caustic soda CO2 sequestration seems complex. David Keith papers have the whole chemistry capture and extracting the CO2 from the working fluid to reuse them.

The whole thing is like a glorified swamp cooler, and if they were smart, they could just retrofit existing cooling towers and swamp coolers to serve dual purpose of evaporation cooling and CO2 extraction.

I had an interesting though here, which is this is the first steps of terraforming.
We could store CO2 underground when it's too hot, and expel CO2 if we start to get an ice age.

Anyhow I think at this time, methane hydrates warming up on the sea floor and releasing methane in to the atmosphere is starting to occur. Or at least we are just beginning to notice anyhow.
This could end up becoming a much larger problem then CO2 soon.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/hundreds-of-methane-plumes-discovered-941456.html

A device to scrub methane, since it's almost 100x as efficient at holding heat (see entry for GWP) than CO2, and major non biological sources seem to be venting it in mass quantities.

This is a timely reminder that we should not forget there is garbage covering an area twice the size of the US floating just under the surface of the Pacific. http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/the-worlds-rubbish-dump-a-garbage-tip-that-stretches-from-hawaii-to-japan-778016.html

http://www.dnaindia.com/report.asp?newsid=1190142

http://www.independent.co.uk/multimedia/archive/00004/protest120206_4781t.jpg

http://atangledweb.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/muslim_protest_2.jpg

http://www.goofigure.com/images/library/muslim_protest_1.jpg

http://www.goofigure.com/images/library/muslim_protest_7.jpg

Depends where you are, and not "terrorist suspects", which can be held for many days in Britain - I seem to recall the three-month length was eventually shortened.

Then again, Britain is a police state anyway. Oh, and there are prisoners in Guantanamo who have not been in any kind of trial for YEARS.

The British newspaper The Independent started a campaign to save Betchley Park on 20 August 2008. I wonder if these are connected ?

Sounds like a great cause - it should definitely be preserved.

Her scandalous record on the environment alone should perpetually disqualify her from government.

That would be the Parisians. But the French fishermen would blockade the harbours, the French truckers would blockade the ferry ports and oil refineries, while the French farmers will blockade strategic locations such as the trains, the tunnels, and Disneyland.

The North West passage is already open. In fact for the first time in human history it is possible to sail all the way around the North Pole. As reported in the Independent at the weekend:

http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/for-the-first-time-in-human-history-the-north-pole-can-be-circumnavigated-913924.html

"He may even be going so far as to dare to suggest that solar output dominates the ~5% of CO2 emissions that humans contribute to the atmosphere!"

->Do you have a citation for your 5% number?

Actually, I only had my memory of what the IPCC's TAR had cited from several years back. That's why I used th ~5% instead of stating it was exact, but I'll dig up the exact citation if it will make you happy.

Here's one from the hippies over that the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration that says C02 increased by 5% in just the past 4 years. http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/ Now, I know it's not the same 5% you are talking about, but you tell me what 95% non-human factors are responsible for the increase.

I'm saying that 95% of the CLIMATE is controlled by non-human factors. And the link you give doesn't say a single thing about human contribution to CO2 concentrations, it only talks about the overall increase from human and non-human sources alike. Also it only talks about measurements from a particular site, which makes it more useful as a part of a larger sample set more than being definitive of it's own.

How about this from the nuts over at the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) in Cambridge: http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/ice-bubbles-reveal-biggest-rise-in-co2-for-800000-years-414711.html

The link you gave is down for me. If you go to look at the IPCC's fourth assessment though:
http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/wg1/ar4-wg1-chapter2.pdf

You'll find pages 137-140 talks about human contributions to CO2 levels. It states that since 1750 CO2 concentrations have increased by 36%, but "using 1750
may slightly overestimate the RF, as the changes in the mixing
ratios of CO2, CH4 and N 2O after the end of this naturally
cooler period may not be solely attributable to anthropogenic
emissions." Which basically is saying that human contributions to CO2 concentrations since 1750 must be lower than 36%.

I haven't the time to dig through the entire report to get were my ~5% came from, but let's even settle for less than 36% for all fossil fuel emissions from humans ever. From the IPCC report you'll find that CO2 contributes approx. half the RF(radiative forcing) of the LLGHG(long-lived GHGasses). From basic climatology we all know that long lived GHG's are dominated by short lived GHG's like water vapor. So we are contributing less than a 36% increase to CO2, which contributes just under half the influence LLGHG's have on climate. LLGHG's in turn contribute less than half the changes of overall GHG's as things like water vapor are dominant. So even if we ignore solar output(which seems... foolish) we have human influence through CO2 emissions as 36%of50%of50% meaning a highly exaggerated estimate of 9% through out human history. If you use more realistic numbers though by adding things like solar output and the fact that LLGHG's aren't even near 50% of GHG forcings you can drop that 9% by another digit.

We aren't as significant as the fear mongers want you to think. And for methane increases, methane is only 17% of LLGHG's effect on climate, which is why it's not given as much attention by anyone, it doesn't affect the climate that much.

"He may even be going so far as to dare to suggest that solar output dominates the ~5% of CO2 emissions that humans contribute to the atmosphere!" Do you have a citation for your 5% number?

Here's one from the hippies over that the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration that says C02 increased by 5% in just the past 4 years. http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/ Now, I know it's not the same 5% you are talking about, but you tell me what 95% non-human factors are responsible for the increase.

How about this from the nuts over at the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) in Cambridge: http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/ice-bubbles-reveal-biggest-rise-in-co2-for-800000-years-414711.html

"The core shows that carbon dioxide was always between 180 parts per million (ppm) and 300 ppm during the 800,000 years. However, now it is 380 ppm. Methane was never higher than 750 parts per billion (ppb) in this timescale, but now it stands at 1,780 ppb."

The editors note that is now attached to the Register article that you link to really does not help to support your position. Incidentally I remember having read earlier that year that the warming trend will be put on hold this year because of a severe La Nina effect - apparently the National Geographic guys didn't get the memo.

The Register article DID help my position, however not as dramatically as I would have hoped :)

The Ice extent graph showed 10% more ice than last year, whereas the map showed 30% more pixels than last year. The two sets of data appeared to be contradictory, but they were not. Still, the 10% increase of ice from last year instead of their being almost no ice is a big difference.

Especially since it wasn't just national geographic reporting this, it was almost everyone!

Exclusive: Scientists warn that there may be no ice at North Pole ...
North Pole could be ice-free this summer, scientists say - CNN.com
North Pole could be ice free in 2008 - climate-change - 25 April ...
ABC News: North Pole Could Be Ice Free in 2008
FOXNews.com - Report: North Pole May Be Ice-Free This Summer ...
North Pole Could be Ice-Free This Summer | LiveScience
Summer may see first ice-free North Pole - Climate Change- msnbc.com
North Pole May Be Ice-Free This Year - AOL News
No North Pole ice for 1st time in human history?_English_Xinhua
An Ice-Free North Pole? - TIME

Just a simple google search for "north pole ice free" will give you 1000's of articles. Notice how every one of these articles has very little variation. Not even fox news challenged the claim.

So much for a free and independent press.

To the vast majority of users, Netscape was the Internet.

Google has since taken that place. Google is the Internet to many people. So much so that Google has felt compelled to to prevent the genericizing of their mark.

Well I'd better do some googling to find out about that.

I imagine the first question on everyone's mind will be, "Why do we need a new web browser?" To which I imagine the truthful answer is: "We don't. At least not for technical reasons."

I believe what Google is looking to accomplish is to trade on their brand name in an attempt to further dislodge Internet Explorer.

Remember when AOL purchased Netscape? AOL didn't care about the browser in the slightest. They wanted Netscape for the brand name. To the vast majority of users, Netscape was the Internet.

Google has since taken that place. Google is the Internet to many people. So much so that Google has felt compelled to to prevent the genericizing of their mark.

In this particular case, however, the strength of their mark works to Google's advantage. They have already convinced millions of users to install their desktop software. If they can further convince millions of users to install and use their browser, they can cause enough of a disruption to finally remove IE's leadership in the browser market. Especially given the solid work already done by FireFox, Opera, and Safari. With only another 10% marketshare loss on the whole, even the most stubborn websites will be forced to support third party browsers. And once they support third party browser, it will be very little time before the technological superiority of the alternative browsers causes them to add special features not available for Internet Explorer users.

It will be Netscape vs. Internet Explorer all over again. Except that instead of two giants fighting it out, it will be Microsoft against everyone else. And when everyone else happens to be giants in their own right, Microsoft's prospects will start looking rather grim.

In effect, this move is a blow aimed squarly at Redmond. Not for the purposes of truth, justice, and the freedom of all mankind; as I'm sure many will imagine. Rather, for the purpose of hitting back at Microsoft for their attempts to leverage their monopoly in promoting MSN Search over Google. The only difference is that Google Search is a good product and it is entrenched. Internet Explorer hasn't been a good product since Microsoft stopped developing it nearly 8 years ago (piss-poor upgrades pretending to be standards-compliant not withstanding), and its entrenchments are slowly falling to competition.

Legendary comedy writer and producer Geoffrey Perkins has died in a road accident in London.

Hey, you neglected to say what road! It is, of course, quite relevant that it was Marylebone High Street, as that of course is rather high for him to have shifted over from Town Hall Approach Road.

The Independent is reporting that he might have fainted and stumbled onto the road before getting hit.

Also, Anyone else wonder how someone managed to hit him, drive away and not realize it? I understand he was hit by a lorry and not a smart car, but I remeber a few years ago I hit a cat and I sure felt it.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/police-seek-new-evidence-on-death-of-comedy-guru-geoffrey-perkins-913928.html

But if you are laughing, you have completely missed a very important point.

They reported some inaccurate information. Fine. WHERE did they get that inaccurate information? That is the issue here. If you think that the fact that they reported that WTC 7 had come down (again... described by name, number, and location) BEFORE it actually happened is a "coincidence", then you must be a very big believer in coincidences. Sorry, but that rather stretches believability past the breaking point.

Coincidences happen. The woman from BBC just fucked up and lied. Check out for her testimony that she just plain old fucked up. Stupidity and lying to cover your ass does not stretch believability.

And I did, by the way, find the source of that "radio announcement" of the building coming down. Two separate on-site witnesses reported a red-cross worker, outside the building, holding a radio that was blaring a countdown just before the building collapsed. Their separeate accounts are remarkably consistent.

Of course, that is not a "radio station" (interesting how stories get distorted)... but at least I was able to find the source. You can also find it on youtube with a quick search.

I'd rather not. Why don't you give it to me, since you're so sure that it's solid proof. Or at least give me the search terms.

So, sorry for your disbelief, but some facts are pretty solid:

(1) The BBC reported the building coming down before it did. (What was the source of their information?) This is incontrovertible, since in the video you can SEE the building still standing behind the reporter as she reports that it had collapsed. Some minutes later, it did collapse. The probability of that being coincidence is probably much less than that of you getting struck by lightning in a given year, or killing yourself by slipping in the shower.

And yet people get struck by lightning, as well as slipping in the shower. She's an idiot and should've been fired for reporting a blatant lie, but she fucked up and made shit up, not let loose the information of some grand conspidracy.

(2) Firefighters and red cross workers are on video telling people that the building "is going to come down", and that it is about to "blow up". This, hours after they were removed from the building, and when there was NO external evidence that the building was going to fall. (Remember... before that day skyscrapers had NEVER fallen in this manner, in the history of the world, except for earthquake or demolition. Never. And WTC 7 was not hit by a plane, nor was it even close to the others... closer buildings had little or no damage.)

Firefighters and red cross workers probably wanted people to get the fuck out of there to make their job easier, and lied to get them out of the area.

(3) Outside the building, a countdown was heard on an emergency worker's radio (by MORE THAN ONE eyewitness who reported their stories on video), coinciding with the building's collapse.

Citation please.

If you really think that is all coincidence, then you have a funny view of reality. The laws of probability are practically screaming "no" at you!

The laws of probability state that certain things are improbably (unlikely), not impossible. Next you'll be telling me that a bowling ball and a golf ball dropped from an airplane will hit the ground at the same time.

Again, we were not talking about total energy consumption or fossil fuel consumption, your original statement ("US demand has been flat") was in reference to oil, not generic energy. I posted a graph of US oil consumption to refute that statement. Stats showing total energy use do not contradict my assertion that the US petroleum demand has not been flat.

From the first link :
US Oil Consumption.
2004 40.294
2005 40.393
2006 39.958

I also understand that we are using less oil this year than last year and last year was less than '06. Although, I can't find a link for that so you'll have to take my word... or not. Not that it would matter as you didn't look at the links I provided the first time.

I am aware of peak oil theories, but nowhere have I seen a theory that predicted "that we would be out of oil by now" (your words). Where are these predictions? Simply typing "peak oil" onto Google does not yield any predictions that the oil will be gone by 2008. You are just beating up your own strawman [wikipedia.org]. Where are these predictions?

OK, how's this quote:

We cannot long continue our present rate of progress. The first check for our growing prosperity, however, must render our population excessive.

Sound familiar. I hear the same argument made every day. This one is different in that it was made about coal, not oil. Oh, and it was made in 1865. Such statements have been made ever since. Take this one for example:

Scientists have criticised a major review of the world's remaining oil reserves, warning that the end of oil is coming sooner than governments and oil companies are prepared to admit.

That was from an article written in 2007. It says the same thing.

Here is someone how agrees with me:

Oil is a nonrenewable resource. Every gallon of petroleum burned today is unavailable for use by future generations. Over the past 150 years, geologists and other scientists often have predicted that our oil reserves would run dry within a few years. When oil prices rise for an extended period, the news media fill with dire warnings that a crisis is upon us. Environmentalists argue that governments must develop new energy technologies that do not rely on fossil fuels. The facts contradict these harbingers of doom.

Of course, I said we'd be out of oil by now. Well, that may have been an exaggeration. We will never run out of oil. Eventually, it will be too expensive to bring out of the ground. So while we will have oil under ground, WE, meaning those with empty gas tanks, will not.

I was speaking of M. King Hubbert. He said US oil production would peak in 1970 and then fall. That was over 38 years ago. We should be out by now. While Hubbert was correct in his claim, his dates and reasoning were way off. It's not because we have run out of oil as he predicted, but because environmentalists have done whatever they can to curtail US energy production (not just oil!).

links:
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=47276
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/world-oil-supplies-are-set-to-run-out-faster-than-expected-warn-scientists-453068.html
http://www.ncpa.org/pub/bg/bg159/

Mortality rates for married vs. single are based on people born in the 1930s or even 1920s. For those age cohorts, only the very sickly or very ugly did not get married, it was standard issue social behavior for their time. Correlation != causation, as always. Being married did not make people healthy, it was the other way around. Now, look at people today and it's obvious to a casual observer that a whole different dynamic is at work. The data backs it up: not only are the people who stay single happier ( http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-britain/women-are-happiest-with-first-love-and-men-with-serial-monogamy-study-finds-577451.html ) but they don't get as fat as married people (http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2007-10-22-marriage-weight_N.htm ). Again, this is stating the obvious for any single guy or gal who's watched misery and widening waistlines begin to make their mark on newly married couples after about 2 years. Marriage not only makes people miserable, it will probably shorten your life if you're born after 1970.

unless of course you were arrested as a suspected terrorist for a reason or another and get shipped to Guantanamo, in which case you could be stuck for a few years.

Well, the Independent wrote about it at length, too.

Wanna go and claim that they got a buddy doing them a favour by writing an article in a highly-respected national newspaper as well?

Go ahead.

Thank you parent, and I must disagree with the grandparent, anonymously, since I'm about to reveal something of myself that my family don't know. The police here made claims that the protestors had knives which could attack [cute] police horses and dogs which gained widespread media coverage. In fact the protestors were vegans who were going to use knives to chop vegetables: they were camping, for god's sake!

Recently I was arrested for protesting against ID cards. It was the most peaceful, law-abiding, fun, fancy-dress, familty-friendly protest you ever saw, but politicians got upset. The police racked their brains to find a crime and eventually, the best they could do was claim that wearing fancy dress in the "current climate" could distress the public. Pathetic. The charges were subsequently dropped, but not before I'd suffered fingerprinting, DNA extraction, and eight hours in a prison cell.

The fact is that we're all doing something, all the time, which the police can contrive as illegal if they want to harass you. And whether or not they want to harass you depends on your politics.

I didn't think it could happen to me, but it did, in the UK.

Here's an article with pic of the police displaying the confiscated "War on Terror" boardgame. Here's the BBC version.

After digging some more, I'd like to redact at least part of my argument in my post, "context context", above. The Independent's version of the story explains in more detail, and in particular how the authors of the game came to realise it had been taken in the raid.

Following a series of raids on the climate change camp near Kingsnorth power station, officers displayed an array of supposed weapons snatched from demonstrators: knives, chisels, bolt cutters, a throwing star â" and a copy of the satirical game, which lampoons Washington's "war on terror".

Okay, making off with the balacalva, I get it. Maybe taking the board game as well, because it's a whole set, sure. Making off with them, then displaying the board game as part of the success story?! Are you kidding me? At what point does "satirical board game" become a serious part of the investigation?

True, but sadly the law doesn't agree, and it's not just the stupid anti-terror laws. However justifiable the raid is, there's a pretty obvious reason for them to leave with the balaclava as evidence.

The Independent's version of the story actually says the board game wound up photographed for the media as part of the collection of things the police had taken in the raid, alongside the aforementioned bolt cutters etc., though, and suddenly it gets a whole lot weirder. I'm starting to wonder what the heck they were thinking.

This is a fucking advert. The creators, from Cambridge, heard about it, and got their mate at the local paper, in Cambridge to write about it as a favour. This is a local paper, and the event the article is supposed to be talking about happened in Kent, 100 miles away.

Sounds plausible, but no. The Cambridge News article is actually a word-for-word re-print of a story in The Independent, a national newspaper. The Indie published 2 days earlier, if you check the dates. And the Cambridge News didn't attribute the story. Naughty.

Unless these publishers of War on Terror have got some really cool pals in the UK national press, it looks like a sense of whimsy, local colour, and what looks a lot like a penchant for plagiarism are the real reasons behind the publication of this article.

Does it matter what Genesis says? The Pope's own astronomer says life is out there: Pope's Astronomer Insists Alien Life Would be Part of God's Creation (The Independent)

Well, Dasani is tap water. So I don't see how that's a problem.

Apart from the bromate they add to it, anyway.

Not true. I heard that a stand up comedian in London died on stage, and nobody noticed until the corpse went cold.

True - it was Tommy Cooper

In 1984, once again in a packed London theatre, the big man clutched his chest and slumped to the floor, his trademark red fez clinging precariously to his outsize head. The audience, millions watching live on television at home and more than 1,000 packed into Her Majesty'sTheatre, roared their approval - thinking it was part of the act.

But the sound of the comedian gasping for breath, hauntingly amplified by his radio microphone, slowly stifled the laughter, as the crumpled clown fell grotesquely against the curtain.

You're quite right, this story had passed me by. Although it is Europe-wide, not just UK.

I saw some coverage on the BBC some months back when a group of bloggers were making a point of exposing misleading promos, but at the time there were only faint rumblings of a possible law being introduced.

Woah Mr Digression, nobody's trying to take your gun away, a van drove onto a guy's property and saw his crop. Afraid of StreetView? Don't post 'no trespassing' signs, get a polytunnel:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/reefer-madness-do-the-drug-laws-work-822160.html

The point that's nearest to being on-topic in your post is

held responsible for what they DO

. I have tried cannabis a few times, and I drink alcohol. I've got no intention of having some cannabis again, it just didn't float my boat. I don't care if my neighbours are growing it or using it - it's unlikely to become my business. What bothers me is that if it does become my business the law in my country can take (to me) the bizarre view that it's a mitigating circumstance:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/beds/bucks/herts/6033077.stm

If a criminal taking behaviour modifying substances is a mitigating factor, then I'm surprised anybody commits a crime sober. I don't get it - that's like blaming the inanimate substance for the crime. I would feel much happier if they legalised the activities of growers and consumers and made "wilfully lowering your ability to predict the consequence of your actions" an aggravating circumstance in sentencing. Spend the "fight against drugs" money on telling everybody how to have a laugh, safely.

I don't want to talk about guns - why did you bring that up? That's not a question of approval: if my neighbour spills his drink, my leg might get wet. If he drops his gun, he might pop a cap in my beast of burden. You lot should think of the poor animals.

Yeah, I guess the old days were better - when there was no consortium, when file and data formats were not at all intercompatible and mostly untranslatable, and when everyone just used Microsoft's file and data formats because "everyone else uses it."

There were no file formats before Microsoft cam along with Office? Then what was ASCII, .txt, .rdf, and Word Perfect's format.

Meanwhile open standards work fine such as for electricity, electricity produced by wind farms in Scandinavia is compatible with the electricity produced via wind farms in Spain or the electricity produced in France's nuclear reactors.

:lol: Um.... :snicker: really? You want to talk about the intercompatibility of electricity? :lol:

Yes, several governments are talking about "Wind-fuelled 'supergrid' offers clean power to Europe" using High Voltage DC to transmit energy from Iceland the northern Africa. You recall those blackouts in the Northeast a few years ago, you know the one that effected the US and Canada? The lines were interconnected, if they hadn't been power would only have been lost in local places not all over.

Seriously, even electricity has had its share of battles and compatibility problems:

I know about the electrical battle between Edison and Tesla, Edison used DC whereas Tesla advocated AC. I even posted a link on /. a little while ago about how Edison tried to electrocute an elephant to show how dangerous AC power was. While AC power is delivered to most places in the US there were places in New York that used DC until last year, 2007. The US uses high voltage DC transmissions today. HVDC is used because there is less of a loss of power when transmitting it long distance than there is transmitting the same amount of power over AC lines the same distance.

Falcon

Why is this person being modded down?

Something like you suggest has also been proposed today - £30 a year for immunity to prosecution. Not sure if these announcements are related or not, but that does does seem about the right price to me, perhaps even a little low - around $1.25 a month.

But one has to wonder whether the major labels deserve this, the way they've been behaving? If the money went directly to artists, though, and copyrights lifted from non-profit digital copying, now that would be a perfect solution.

Its a pity that Cherie Blair didn't know this one.

Food? Don't kid yourself - although the US has many farms, a huge proportion of our food comes from overseas.

Don't kid yourself - the US is the world's largest food producer, and exports $30B more in agriculture than it imports, making it the world's largest food exporter.

Margins on such products are super-low; in the end, a huge proportion of the money you spend on your iPod, car, or even tooth brush is basically money that is leaving the country permanently.

Far more than "margins" stays in the country of sale; have you not heard of "overhead"? All those well-paid design, marketing, and managerial types are likely to be in the US.

Not to mention that for some of those products, like cars, the US is one of the world's manufacturing heavyweights.

Why invest in a US company that gets 5% return when you can invest in a Chinese company that is more likely get a 25% return?

Because the Chinese company is also more likely to get a minus 25% return. Or, in reality, -50% so far this year. Volatility in developing markets is hardly new.

You have some strange ideas about the state of the world that don't agree with the available data. You might want to reconsider some of them.

http://www.independent.co.uk/
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/

Lies, damned lies and TV viewing statistics: The most watched televised sports events of 2006

Sport/Event/Claim/Verifiable

Football, Italy v France World Cup final, 715.1m/260m

American football, Super Bowl Steelers v Seahawks, 750m-1bn/98m

Winter Olympics, Torino 2006 opening ceremony, 2bn/87m

Football, Champs League Arsenal v Barça, 120m/86m

Formula One, Brazilian Grand Prix, 354m/83m

NASCAR, Daytona 500, n/a/20m

Baseball, World Series game five, n/a/19m

Golf, US Masters (final day), n/a/17m

Tennis, Wimbledon men's singles final, n/a/17m

Basketball, NBA finals game six, up to 1bn/17m

Cycling, Tour de France (final stage), n/a/15m

Golf, US Open (final day), n/a/10m

Golf, Ryder Cup (final day), up to 1bn/6m

Commonwealth Games, Melbourne opening ceremony, 1.5bn/5m

Cricket, ICC Champions Trophy final, n/a/3m

Disclaimer:

1. I've got no ties with Iran whatsoever
2. I'm not saying that I agree with the Iranian leaders either

That being said: what about the everyday Iranians?!?

Inside the real Iran

Despite the welcome for their President's nuclear bragging and anti-Israel rhetoric, many Iranians have private worries about the economy - and the threat of war. By Angus McDowall in Tehran and Raymond Whitaker

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/inside-the-real-iran-474365.html

The REAL Iran:
http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread368018/pg1

And look at those desert dwelling people!

TEHERAN - Mega Capital of IRAN
http://www.worldisround.com/articles/98910/
(huge page! broadband only)

But, yes.. the 'everything in Iran is horrible and they need to be freed' machine is running and running. I admit that it isn't a perfect country, but what about North-Korea (oh wait: they've already got a deterrent)? Zimbabwe? Darfur/Sudan?
(who cares about poor people that are suppressed in areas without natural resources? they don't need democracy!)

I give a war against Iran an 80% chance, before the elections.

http://youtube.com/results?q=war+iran&search_type=

We need more oil and more beachheads to contain upcoming super powers like India and China... ... and the whole world will be dragged down into darkness when that happens..

We're not bombing them so the news doesn't show the country on a colorful map.

Apparently even that doesn't help too much.

Why do these terrorists (people who employ "the systematic use of terror especially as a means of coercion" - see wikipedia article on Terrorism) still abuse the term piracy? Neither the United Nations, nor the International Maritime Bureau define piracy as the downloading of files (see wikipedia article on Piracy).

The legality/illegality aside, the way they are handling physical piracy sure makes me confident they'll succeed in removing internet "piracy" in no time (here, here, here and here - I bet you didn't even hear that is a problem in other businesses, maybe with the exception of fashion and software).

Here's something to think about, dear G8. All of these products being copied have artificially high prices. Could it be that those prices should be adjusted down to make it non-profitable to copy them instead of using lots of taxpayers' money (who do you think will fund these new action programs against "piracy"? You thought it was the businesses involved? Wrong!) to fight an uphill battle (War On Drugs anyone?).