Slashdot Mirror

http://www.metro.co.uk/film/851586-2012-named-most-absurd-science-fiction-film-by-nasa

Wrong.

Ed Vaizey is the minister responsible for this proposal: http://www.metro.co.uk/news/850896-new-porn-controls-for-children-on-internet-planned-by-government

Good summary and comment at http://www.longrider.co.uk/blog/2010/12/19/its-all-for-the-children/ - of course, once there is the precedent for blocking porn by default, it's then easy to block all sorts of 'undesirable' content, including Wikileaks etc.

For perhaps the only time in living memory, the Daily Mail has one of the more measured articles about this:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1339926/Internet-pornography-Parents-allowed-block-sexual-imagery.html

'The plan is to allow parents to 'opt out' of the sites and they will then be blocked at the source, rather than using conventional parental controls...Adults who wish to view the material would have to choose to 'opt in'.'

The Metro is even clearer:

http://www.metro.co.uk/news/850896-new-porn-controls-for-children-on-internet-planned-by-government

'He hopes to introduce a system that would enable parents to ask internet service providers (ISPs) to block adult sites at source, rather than relying on parental controls that they need to set themselves...Adults using the internet connection would then have to specifically 'opt in' if they want to view pornography.'

So Vaizey (and right now it's just him having a chat with the IPSs, not government policy) wants a scheme where parents can REQUEST a default filter for their connection, but Dad can opt back in when he's 'working late' at the PC.

Assange probably doesn't know yet:

http://www.metro.co.uk/news/850389-wikileaks-founder-julian-assange-slams-visa-mastercard-and-paypal

'The only letter to reach him during the week he has spent in the prison's segregation unit was a slip telling him that a copy of Time magazine sent to him had been destroyed as the cover bore his photo, Mr Stephens said...The American news publication pictured Assange on the front with an image of the US stars and stripes flag gagging him.'

Just to mess with him, the prison should let him have the new issue with everything from this story except the words 'Person of the year' redacted.

But for the MILLIONS of people whose job requires them to use antiquated legacy systems, it is often essential.... The sheer volume and costs of re-engineering these systems mean that they will be with us for years to come, no matter how ugly and inefficient when compared to modern systems.

But realistically, that's not a good reason to avoid re-purposing the caps lock key. If so many people need it, options will emerge for re-enabling caps lock behavior when/where needed. And that's exactly what Google is doing by providing an option to revert the search key to caps lock. Even if they didn't, somebody else would develop a system extension or USB dongle or whatnot to provide the option to the minority of users that need it.

Taking away choice from people is not good.

What a naieve view! Consider:

• Eliminating one choice may introduce new, more meaningful choices.
• Eliminating a choice may be a beneficial design trade-off that makes the system/product better in some other respect.
• Irrelevant and overabundant choices tend to be psychologically overwhelming. Eliminating or hiding such choices tends to have a liberating effect on the end user.

Perhaps the commentator is subconsciously equating choice with flexibility, freedom, or power. Sometimes that's the case and sometimes choices actually work to hinder such things. If you're designing for the good of your users, seek to understand their wants, needs, and capabilities and then optimize your product to serve and most easily enable the range of choices they are actually seeking make.

Apparently, Google is doing this as the caps lock key is now a search key that you can optionally revert to caps lock behavior if you need it.

The UK market. This was front-page this morning for everyone in London who goes to work by the Underground.

Or, is this like picking up a discarded paper on the ferry and the guy at the news stand demanding you pay him for it?

Don't you yank peoples have an equivalent of the metro? A paper that knows what it's worth?

Best story on NPR in a while. "FUCK YOU" by Cee Lo Green. Man I wanted them to have played it without censorship. I don't login to youtube so I had to find it someplace else, found it here. Would liked to have linked to Youtube directly, but they want you to login to view it.

Since there's freeze distillation (per here), is it still a beer?

Instances like this really paint a nice picture of how ridiculous the use of "non-lethal" weapons have gotten.

What about the power part? real books don't need them!

You have to ask yourself how much energy it takes to produce a book. Certainly they contain quite a bit of energy...

While the link you posted is interesting, the rest of your comment seems to be very misleading: you don't take out the energy that's been put in during manufacturing, you take out that nature has put in it during the growth of a tree. The energy during manufacturing is spent to move around material and align it an orderly fashion, not to increase the chemical energy contained in the ingredients.

What about the power part? real books don't need them!

You have to ask yourself how much energy it takes to produce a book. Certainly they contain quite a bit of energy...

Make sure you insulate your house properly, or you might get a knock at the door!!

http://www.metro.co.uk/news/242592-police-find-the-hot-spot-but-not-the-pot

Not sure how this relates to the technology under discussion.....admittedly this happened in the UK - should the police have had a warrant for their IR scanner?

Stepping on the pins will not kill you.

Not quite true. Stepping on the pins will not kill you, unless you go to a homeopath for treatment rather than a doctor. Yay natural healing!

Penis. That's what I get for skimming the summaries. I figured they'd found another one of these:

http://www.metro.co.uk/weird/article.html?Giant_ice_penis_-_is_climate_change_to_blame?&in_article_id=304450&in_page_id=2

I'm gonna have to call bullshit. I've used OSX and Linux, and both have warts. Anyone who says a computer "just works" is a person who's learned to work around the warts of their system without having to actually think about the workarounds as workarounds. A site called "MacFixIt" would not exist if OSX "just worked" as you say it does.

There's a difference between having warts and being the tree man.

While of course I was being humorous, come on, the best you can do to back up your case is an article by a comedian? Other sources say different.

"A quarter of the workforce - around 7million people - put in more than 48 hours a week.

That puts us way ahead of the rest of Europe and even the hard-grafting Americans, says the International Labour Organisation, a UN agency. "

De Gaulle, and gaullists in general, was very much against the UK joining the EU. His major objection was its overseas empire and is connection to it. A connection that would preclude any stronger connection with the continent.

These days, I think it must be said that De Gaulle was certainly correct, except that he mistook the connection. The UK is not so much linked to its former empire, as it is inextricably linked to its former colony, and now arguably its master, the United States. There is also the concept of the Anglosphere in general.

The Anglosphere is a very real cultural and economic force, if not a political one. This is what De Gaulle saw, and is why he did not want the UK forcing that worldview onto the EU. With English now being used as the dominant language in the EU, and with the UK promoting measures such as this, and all but standing in for the US in the commission, I think his objections were valid.

The UK should not have been let in.

I don't think so.

http://www.metro.co.uk/news/article.html?in_article_id=84014&in_page_id=34

That's a facile and discredited argument. Back in the 60's, Virginia argued that whites and blacks each had the same right to only marry people of their own race, and that therefore their prohibition on interracial marriage wasn't discriminatory.

Your analogy is imperfect. Race of the partners is not an essential element of the definition of marriage. Until recently (say the last 10 years), almost no one would deny that an essential element of the Western definition of marriage would require that partners be of differing sexes.

Those who argue for a right for "gay marriage" are really advocating a radical redefinition of Western marriage. Once one starts this redefinition, how does one argue that marriage must be confined to just two partners? Why can't 10 people all marry each other if they consent? And if the essential issue is consent, how can one deny marriage between infertile consenting siblings? And who are we to restrict the definition of marriage to consenting humans? Why can't we redefine marriage to include "marriage" to a cartoon character (here)?

If we as a society want to redefine marriage, we should do so through legislation and/or the ballot box with careful consideration of the consequences and implications. We should not do so through false claims that this is a civil rights issue.

doh.. should've used preview. here: http://img.metro.co.uk/i/pix/2008/02/eduardoinjuredAI_450x300.jpg

The link in the article leads to a Slashdot 404. Wtf

The link is this

What a noodle-spined move on the part of Google! If only UN language were so effective on the rogue nations of the world!

"I would like to see other internet service providers follow suit to reinforce our message that violence will not be tolerated either on the internet or in the real world," said Home Secretary Jacqui Smith, who has also stated that police should restrict photography by citizens. Indeed, why not suppress free speech in in all ways in Britain and in the rest of the world, you dunce? It would certainly decrease violence!

The hysterical myths about computer game violence have in many cases been debunked, as recently discussed, and why are YouTube videos any different? Movies, games and books which incite dissent are next on the worldwide chopping block, folks! To see Google assume the position on this debate, which includes no specific legislation, is a grim forecast on government intervening in our daily lives with their friendly companies on Politically Correct leashes opening our bedroom doors for them.

The cheeky bastards.

YouTube bans knife and gun videos

So Intel pull a Ferrari and take a leaf out of spygate?

http://www.metro.co.uk/sport/formulaone/article.html?in_article_id=65980&in_page_id=58

Yep, scripted beds/poseballs with custom animations, sometimes with scripted genitalia/attachments as well.

It's the flying *unattached* genitalia that caused Second Life problems in the past...

At some stage the data will almost certainly be Ethernet frames, which doesn't bear that much relation to the orginal data.

But then it is recombined to form the copyrighted work, to create the infringement.

I cannot see how this is different to that process and thus escape legal sanction.

To adapt a good quote, as in :: £20,000 bill for speeding row scientist. Quote 'In speeding [copyright] matters, it is the law of the land not the law of physics [way you split the data] that matters.'

Mum fined £75 for being clumsy with roll

Prosecuted for overfilling wheelie bin by four inches

Mum fined £75 for being clumsy with roll

Prosecuted for overfilling wheelie bin by four inches

Then you'd be incorrect, this report suggest as many as 54% more laws passed per annum by Blair's government than by Thatcher.

In fact at his peak - Blair's law passing average was one every three hours.

I'm not pro any party - but anyone who has even been remotely acquainted with the UK knows how much bullshit bureaucracy there is in every facet of the public sector, one of the reasons that nothing ever gets done, that huge sums of money are wasted on reports and think tanks and because the civil service remains despite government change, nothing ever really changes.

You want to blame Thatcher then fine, but consider this - how much has Blair done to repair it?

Why? What would you rather see

Yo.

http://www.metro.co.uk/news/article.html?in_article_id=73011&in_page_id=34

"Gordon Brown announced a review of the present 30-year rule on the release of confidential documents. It could be cut to just 20 years.

The Prime Minister said: 'I want to explore how together we can write a new chapter in our country's story of liberty.'

Slashing the 30-year rule would lay bare the most explosive events of the Thatcher years, including the 1982 Falklands War and the 1984 miners' strike."

"In a major shake-up of Britain's secrecy laws, other proposals included a Bill of Rights and the extension of the custody time limit for terror suspects from 28 days to a possible 56.

The Freedom of Information Act could be extended to private firms working in the public sector. "

That articles dated Thursday, October 25, 2007

So what parent said was pretty much wrong, however it's all sugar round a rather nasty tasting pill namely to increase the length of time someone can be held without charge to 8 weeks. Long enough to seriously mess up most peoples lives, should you be innocent.

This Prat just got 8 years http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/10/23/europe/EU-GEN-Britain-Terrorism.php
Ok he said he intended to become a suicide bomber and he posted stuff on the web about how to make bombs and guns (probably the anarchists cookbook). At what point did it become more than words?

I found the 'Who shot Mr. Burns' episodes much more entertaining than the movie. Although when I watched it, there was absolutely no one laughing at any point during the movie.. So either us Londoners are humourless, or in fact, the movie really did suck :p

They came up with some crazy advertising which resulted in a massive box office hit, but how many people actually came away satisfied?

That's all I'm saying really. Maintain a healthy dose of scepticism and bear in mind that a journalist is likely to have distorted a story to include connections with current hot topics like video games and mass killings. I've no idea what actually happened here. But don't think that because you've ready a story about it you know either.

(Slightly different but this story was pretty popular recently. It's apparently a complete fabrication. How much work would a journalist have to have carried out to determine that before publishing it? Note the story was edited after the fact - it was originally published as fact.)

What are you talking about? http://www.metro.co.uk/news/article.html?in_articl e_id=46710&in_page_id=34MTAS is an excellent web server.

I assume you mean the 2 A-10s firing on Canadians, not British?

I think the GP is referring to the following:

http://www.metro.co.uk/news/article.html?in_articl e_id=41408&in_page_id=34

Well, I can tell you one thing - if the governments here tried to raise the drinking age to 21 there would be far bigger protests than if they tried to impose this...

Already talking about it - in a Lancet report.
Strangely, Drinks companies are against that.

Nothing's stopping you from trying:
http://www.metro.co.uk/weird/article.html?in_artic le_id=44177&in_page_id=2

Just don't let your underwear out by the elves:

"Accused knicker nicker says he was in bad elf"

http://www.metro.co.uk/weird/article.html?in_artic le_id=40208&in_page_id=2

Has the validity of an EULA ever been tested?

That can be applied to sightings of many other things.

The problem is, how does one determine which patterns indicate something and which patterns are just convincing illusions?

You could get your hair done while you're there too!

~owen

Row over angry, penis-removing doctor

Though he might have been listening to Bryan Adams' "Cuts Like A Knife," I don't really know.


*sounds of head banging against inside of MRI machine*

There was saturation advertising (every spot except for the small-ads) of the 360 in the Metro free newspaper this morning. I wondered why, and the PS3 and Wii releases explain it quite thoroughly...

Or crying Lallas.

Apparently, time lady Lalla Ward (Romana #2), ex-wife to the curly haired scarf wielder, when asked who was her favourite monster, replied: "Tom Baker."

(I always think it's satisfying that now Lalla is married to someone who is probably smart enough to actually build a time machine, scientist Richard Dawkins.)

As the article said, in part, "Although the word google is in the Oxford English Dictionary, the company is worried its brand will be diminished if it becomes jargon."

[snipped]

"Statistics show about 60 per cent of all Internet searches are done through Google. Struan Robertson, editor of legal website OUT-LAW.COM said the company was right to protect its name. "It's a problem for a lot of brands that don't want their brand to become a verb," he added. "What can happen is they loose the value of their name. For example, Escalator, Aspirin and Linoleum are all brand names that have passed into common useage. I think Google is doing the right thing."

Jo Steele, who wrote the article, says "Google is not the only company getting litigious, however. Xerox and Jacuzzi are both quick to police their name in dictionaries and the media."

And as for 'Portakabin' - don't spell it 'Portacabin' and don't describe any old shed as a Portakabin if they've not made it.

I wonder if PC is really going mad? :)

Crucified gamer, Tuesday, April 4, 2006

http://www.metro.co.uk/weird/article.html?in_artic le_id=11519&in_page_id=2

This guy isn't seeing the opportunity battering ram that's beating down his door. He could be SET FOR LIFE if he played his cards right

The guy DOES see the opportunity you idiot. That's why he's holding out for the best offer! If he just turned up and said "take my blood" then he's not going to get the best price for it. What the BBC article neglected to say is that he has publicly announced he DOES want to help, he just hasn't agreed yet. This from the Metro (a free newspaper, unfortunately the article is not on their web page.