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Actually, the only ads the BBC is allowed to show consist of trailers for their other shows (both radio and tv based). Commercial advertising of products is strictly verboten, although there is a certain amount of wiggle-room when it comes to sponsorship deals...

I was wondering if the service personnel browsing dude's computer was routine? Seems like service people are being a lot more thorough than is required to get the computer working again.

Read some old news about it: sky news

the jetpack was such a moneysink, this hovercraft is cooler.
http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/Strange-News/Flying-Hovercraft-Inventor-New-Zealand-Mechanic-Rudy-Heeman-Auctions-WIG-Vehicle/Article/201003115563210?lpos=Strange_News_First_Home_Page_Feature_Teaser_Region_0&lid=ARTICLE_15563210_Flying_Hovercraft%3A_Inventor%2C_New_Zealand_Mechanic_Rudy_Heeman%2C_Auctions_WIG_Vehicle

It cracks me up how you rail so vigorously about socialism when it comes to useful, important things like healthcare. Heaven forbid you get decent healthcare for half the cost of your current wasteful system, the USA is not socialist, fuck off with your socialism, land of the free, rugged individualism, etc. And yet this sort of thing goes on? Which is the worst kind of meddling in private matters and private property. Compare and contrast. Congrats on refusing socialism in areas where the benefits far outweigh the philosophical objections, whilst being way more socialist than any of the demonised european socialisms in the areas where they don't.

Quite stylish watch/gadget combo

We've already had cops waterboarding suspects.

I thought you were kidding, but that has happened in London

how about linking to the original article instead of a blog entry attempting to get page views by copying chunks of the article?

Um, you mean like /. does? ;)

how about linking to the original article instead of a blog entry attempting to get page views by copying chunks of the article?

"Like the UK with it's rising violent crime rate now that the entire population has been relegated to "Sheep" status?"

Nah, try Australia, here the home invaders have been relegated to lunatic ninja kangaroo status.

Depends how they do it. Sky let you rent or 'buy' episodes of House at £1.50 and £2 per pop respectively. That doesn't sound bad, and given that pretty much the only things me and the wife watch on Sky that we can't get on Freesat (free to air satellite) are House and Bones then it might work out cheaper than our Sky bill, even if we buy them.

The down side is that "buy" doesn't seem to be buy. It seems to be a still DRMed perpetual rental, so I'm getting the worst of buying (higher price and not replaced if I lose/delete/damage it) with the worst of renting (I could at any point get screwed over by the DRM crapping out or Sky's service disappearing, and I can't use it as I want).

Oh, and it seems to run on Silverlight as well and require Media Player 10, or something.

Less than 50 years ago a guy named Mao was able to pull together a country of 1.3 billion people and almost wipe out that culture. He brought massive change to the country. It wasn't novel for the world but it was for China. Post-Mao brought an almost complete reversal with what I would say is just as big of a change.

Most people will do anything to make a buck, such as even leaving their children behind, and become part of the largest mass migrations in the world. http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE50C10J20090113

This article pegs it at almost 200million people (2/3 of the US population). If thats not a completely different way of living then I dont know what is. http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/World-News/Chinese-New-Year-Mass-Migration-As-Chinas-Population-Visit-Their-Families/Article/200901415210152

I sure met a lot of people who were stuck in the old ways and they were mostly over 60. The young are out exploring the world, something their parents would have never had a chance to do. The town I stayed in (pop. > 80000) had very little young as it was a prosperous town and most are foreign students. The young who were in town were mostly the uneducated looking for work.

this e-fit that helped the Bolivian Police track down a murder suspect

This is why kitchen laboratories should not be taken so lightly.

I was just thinking about Australia's issue. If CA has a large number as well, I wonder Aussies are getting munch so much more? Greater number of sharks, shortage of food supply, or are the sharks down under simply more aggressive?

Well we do have a larger coastline than CA :) And down here, we have sharks eating other sharks.

Shark C-Section

10-ft shark eaten by even bigger shark

Here is another article that goes into a little more detail.

The crux of the matter seems to be the fact "readers who randomly reach a page via an internet search hold little value to advertisers." Apparently advertisers want to know some demographic details about the people who read the articles, details that are available with paying subscribers. "Who knows who they are or where they are. They don't suddenly become loyal readers of our content." states Mr. Murdoch of Google news click-throughs.

Mr. Murdoch also claims that there is simply not enough advertising money in the world to make all news websites profitable. He realises that the number of visitors will decrease, but states that he would prefer to have fewer readers who pay to many readers who don't.

You don't know why looking at child pornography is illegal? Wow. See, if my niece got raped or otherwise sexually exploited, and I knew that it had been photographed and men were downloading that picture to wank to, I'd have them strangled with their own guts.

Cool story, bro. But still boils down to "I don't like it", which is an invalid reason to forbid anything.

Or was this supposed to be some kind of attempt at argument from intimidation?

Out of curiosity: How would you react if someone took a picture of your niece in swimwear, and wanked to that? What if they simply saw her at the beach, and retreated to a WC, inspired by the memory? What her parents gave him a (non-pornographic) picture of her and he wanked over that?

CP is governed by supply and demand like everything else. If there were no buyers, then there would be no sellers. Sure, those who sexually exploit children would still do that, but the majority of people involved in CP aren't sexually interested in children - it's just a source of money for them.

Every case of CP I've ever heard of involved some moron recording/photographing his activities and posting them online for bragging rights. This usually leads to said person getting caught, since they almost invariable leave enough clues to be identified - the infamous Swirl Face being a good example.

This, then, leads to an argument that allowing CP would actually lessen child molesting, since it would give molesters more opportunities to get themselves caught.

You can request CCTV video you appear in under the Freedom of Information Act.

Famously, a band recorded a music video using this law. (Playing infront of a CCTV camera, then requesting the video )

Article: http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/Sky-News-Archive/Article/20080641315116

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2iuZMEEs_A

Israel commits crimes that make Iranian transgression look like shoplifting by comparison.

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_vjJ5fOtvksM/SWYvR4IFthI/AAAAAAAAAAU/AcXQzvRoxsw/S1600-R/headline9637e7.jpg

They are a house of horrors, paid for by the endless U.S. debt.

Who they are:
http://www.itisapartheid.org/
http://politicaltheatrics.org/2009/10/01/binyamin-council-head-jews-arabs-should-have-separate-roads/
http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/World-News/Israeli-Army-T-Shirts-Mock-Killing-Palestinian-Women-And-Children-During-Gaza-Offensive/Article/200903315245946

What they do:
http://www.kawther.info/wpr/2009/09/30/israeli-army-terrorizes-teenagers-inside-a-school
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1253198149221&pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull

It actually needs MORE immigrants as it is loosing population due to low birth rates and an aging population.

Are you sure about that?

Also, stating that the UK is quite racist is generalising more than a little bit. There are a few idiots in every country, but claiming that the entire nation is racist is more than a bit hypocritical.

Just build petting zoos on top of nuclear waste dumps. Problem solved!

Second, is BBC the only supplier of TV programming in the British market (aside from satellite)? If there are other minor networks, that want to specify their own DRM or just don't want to participate, I'd think the TV manufacturers would be apoplectic.

The TV content providers on "terrestrial" (the analogue, "free" broadcast) are:
BBC (public service)
ITV (commercial)
Channel Four (public service, but funded by adverts)
Five (commercial)

There are, by my count, up to* 48 additional "free" channels on digital broadcast via the Freeview service, a fair chunk of which are provided by the above 4 providers (I guess around 15-20 content providers, though corporate connections aren't always clear). Pretty much everyone has Freeview now since it's £30 for a box that gives you all these channels for free.

I'll point out that Freeview is ran by... The BBC. Well, "Freeview is managed by DTV Services Ltd, a company owned and run by its five shareholders - BBC, BSkyB, Channel 4, ITV and Arqiva", but it was only thanks to the BBC that it got going.

After free-to-air, there are 3 further alternatives for broadcasting, with a lot of channel overlap even above them all also showing Freeview:
Sky (sattelite) - channels
Virgin (cable) - channels
BT (relatively trivial, a mix of freeview and broadband delivery, dont think they have their own channels)

The situation for downloading programming is a bit of a mess right now, providers have their own software and it's a nuisance. BBC did try to get a combined thing going but it got shot down, I have some hopes for Hulu which is on the way. Oh yes and BBC got the whole online delivery going too, the other channels basically followed their lead. For DRM, TV's/boxes sold everywhere are probably going to need a flexible system that can cope with many forms, and oft-updated of DRM anyway, so one more in the mix won't really matter.

* Obligitory "up to" small print: Whether you'll get all those channels is another matter, though most people get most of the best channels and about everyone should get the rest when the analogue signal is switched off (digital will take over the whole spectrum).

Yet you're perfectly ok with people being able to allow knives, which are infinitely more dangerous? Glad I don't like in the U.K.

As a matter of fact, Britain is in fact enacting 'knife control'.

British Medical Experts Campaign for Long, Pointy Knife Control

Britain Cracks Down on Knives After 11th Teen Is Slain in London

War on Knives

Statistics on Knife Crime in Britain

Just try googling for "knife control in britain" and you'll find lots of stories on the subject.

The BBC is essentially an arm of the government.

...

It is much like the Obama healthcare "public" option. Publicly funded services will swamp privately funded ones and eventually the private ones will disappear. Yes, Fox News in the UK is threatened in this way by the BBC as insurance companies will be under Obamacare's public option.

There are two fallacies here, one is the public funding leads to government control and the other is the public and private funding can not coexist. The UK experience plainly shows the contrary.

Both the BBC and the NHS are publicly funded but they both have their own constitutions, charters and governing bodies which control them independently of the government of the day. The British might chose to elect a government that decides to override these protections. Similarly the US might chose to elect a government that on the one hand overrides the constitutional protections of the press, or on the other hand one that decides to create some form of public health care.

The idea that the NHS would drive out private practice in health care was the fear of many doctors when the service was set up, but over the sixty years of its existence this simply has not happened. Health care in the UK remains a mixture of private and public provision. There is co-operation between the two sectors.

The position in broadcasting is even stronger. While the BBC started as a state monopoly broadcaster this is no longer the case. Independent commercial radio and television stations have had a long existence in the terrestrial broadcasting and have expanded further with the onset of digital. Ironically Sky a Murdoch company was until the recent onset of Freesat the sole supplier of digital satellite broadcaster for the UK. Companies have set up profitable healthy businesses in this space despite the presence of the BBC.

http://www.newscorp.com/news/bunews_39.html
http://www.newscorp.com/news/bunews_40.html

http://www.newsoftheworld.co.uk/news/402737/The-News-of-the-World-was-the-subject-of-some-ferocious-attacks.html
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124713962333917725.html
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124710587096916143.html
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124725579809924597.html
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/2528020/Met-Police-No-investigation-into-hacking.html
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/2530062/No-truth-in-News-of-the-World-phone-tap-claim.html
http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/UK-News/Article/200907215334404
http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/UK-News/Article/200907215335802
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,27574,25762968-401,00.html
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,27574,25763994-23109,00.html
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/business/story/0,28124,25759684-7582,00.html
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25757545-2703,00.html
http://www.skynews.com.au/showbiz/article.aspx?id=351326
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article6670747.ece

just a few links about it from News Corp. owned sources.

/deafening right?
//oh and in the end, it seems like the guardian (a rival newspaper to News Corp. in the uk) got a bit carried away with reporting this because they didnt seem to have any of the evidence of the claims that they were making.

http://www.newscorp.com/news/bunews_39.html
http://www.newscorp.com/news/bunews_40.html

http://www.newsoftheworld.co.uk/news/402737/The-News-of-the-World-was-the-subject-of-some-ferocious-attacks.html
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124713962333917725.html
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124710587096916143.html
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124725579809924597.html
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/2528020/Met-Police-No-investigation-into-hacking.html
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/2530062/No-truth-in-News-of-the-World-phone-tap-claim.html
http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/UK-News/Article/200907215334404
http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/UK-News/Article/200907215335802
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,27574,25762968-401,00.html
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,27574,25763994-23109,00.html
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/business/story/0,28124,25759684-7582,00.html
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25757545-2703,00.html
http://www.skynews.com.au/showbiz/article.aspx?id=351326
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article6670747.ece

just a few links about it from News Corp. owned sources.

/deafening right?
//oh and in the end, it seems like the guardian (a rival newspaper to News Corp. in the uk) got a bit carried away with reporting this because they didnt seem to have any of the evidence of the claims that they were making.

Apparently it looks a bit like ancient Earth at the moment.

No, but if you blaspheme Mohammed expect to have your country's embassies car-bombed and your country's products boycotted

Good thing America doesn't actually make anything anymore, nothing to have boycotted by other countries other than beef jerky, F-22's, and the NFL, and I'd rather we keep those three things to ourselves anyways.

For example, if someone blasphemes my diety, the Flying Spaghetti Monster, will they be treated the same as somebody who blasphemes against Jesus of Nazareth, (who is clearly an undead minion of Satan?)

No, but if you blaspheme Mohammed expect to have your country's embassies car-bombed and your country's products boycotted

No photos of any wound, but fast enough to bury in the ground or leave a foot long mark on the ground? Loud noise? Many small meteors are traveling quite slowly by time they reach the surface. Small meteorites are quite easy to obtain. Apparently this is a photo of the rock. Is that the 3-inch scar? Just dunno...

The computers may be multiple redundant with graceful degrading of performance in case of failures and may try to guard the plane from the pilots (like preventing the pilot from decreasing speed to below stall-level or performing manoeuvres that would jeopardize the plane or its passengers), but the system is dependent on input from sensors and, if I remember correctly, Airbus has had a number of problems with sensors and I just read that Air France are going to replace all airspeed sensors and that pilots should refuse to fly unless two of the three airspeed sensors have been replaced.

Multiple redundant systems do not change the GIGO (Garbage In, Garbage Out) principle.

Price guide for SkyPlayer, which the service will be based upon:

http://corporate.sky.com/documents/pdf/press_releases/SkyPlayerTV

If you want sport (particularly football) you'd need the £26 package I guess

From what I can tell from the screenshots, it looks like it utilizes SkyPlayer, which is available in the UK for £10 per month, and you get Sky One, Sky Sports and a few other flagshiip sky channels (32 in total) If you already have a Sky subscription, it is free to use.

At least we haven't had any offspring with chimps, yet.

Chimps, no, but Gorillas?

Hey, Hasbara astro-turfer, who boast of killing babies? The IDF! They even print T-Shirts, that laugh about killing pregnant women.
Israeli Army T-Shirts Mock Gaza Killings of Women and Children

Of course, they don't usually use bullets. Internationally banned chemical warfare agents, like White Phosphorus will kill a neighborhood full of children, so much easier.

Per your deception on the origin of the Incubator smear of Iraq? Kuwait is a client of the USA. The USA is a client of Israel.

"[The Palestinians] are beasts walking on two legs."
-- Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, speech to the Knesset, quoted in Amnon Kapeliouk, "Begin and the 'Beasts,"' New Statesman, June 25,1982:

"The blood of the Jewish people is loved by the Lord; it is therefore redder and their life is preferable."
-- Rabbi Yitzhak Ginsburg, head of the Kever Yossev Yeshiva (school of Talmud) in Nablus

"The killing by a Jew of a non-Jew, i.e. a Palestinian, is considered essentially a good deed, and Jews should therefore have no compunction about it."
-- Yitzhak Ginsburg, "Five General Religious Duties Which Lie Behind the Act of the Saintly, Late Rabbi Baruch Goldstein, May his Blood be Avenged"

Not just that, it was allegedly found by an amateur and hung in a collector's living room for 20 years!

Ida was unearthed by an amateur fossil-hunter some 25 years ago in Messel pit, an ancient crater lake near Frankfurt, Germany, famous for its fossils.

She was cleaned and set in polyester resin - and incredibly, was hung on a mystery German collector's wall for 20 years.

Sky News sources say the owner had no idea of the unique fossil's significance and simply admired it like a cherished Van Gogh or Picasso painting.

But in 2006, Ida came into the hands of private dealer Thomas Perner, who presented her to Prof Hurum at the annual Hamburg Fossil and Mineral Fair in Germany - a centre for the murky world of fossil-trading.

So the word, "fake" has crossed my mind too!

http://www.ontrackdatarecovery.co.uk/columbia-drive-recovery/

that one allways gets me..

http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/Sky-News-Archive/Article/20080641316604

love to qoute this

"
He said it was the most challenging project every undertaken by Kroll, especially when you considered "it had been through re-entry, hit the earth and then sat in the outdoors".
He added that even though a modern disk could not have been recovered in the same way, he said: "Disks that may have been unrecoverable five years ago may be recoverable today - never assume that your data may not be recoverable."
"

And of course NASA's first use for the product will be........ Toolbox handles

Imagine you're a resident of a third world country (e.g. Germany or UK) and even capable and willing to pay for your favorite TV series. Would you wait months or years for it to acess it legaly or just download it immediately from the asinus electronicus?

Tuesdays (I think), 9pm, Sky One

If you're willing to pay, Sky One has it already. You don't have to wait months or years (if you live in the UK).

More links and pics about this guy:

http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/Sky-News-Archive/Article/200806413251033

http://www.china.org.cn/english/NM-e/96084.htm

http://rashmanly.wordpress.com/2008/11/27/wu-yulu-of-china-builds-his-own-wu-clang-clan-of-robot-sons/

Some semi-random quotes:

"[Wife] When we got married, everyone warned me he would care more about his robots than about me," she said, "but on the other hand, at least he doesn't drink or chase other women."

"So far, though, the farmer has encountered little success.

Five years ago, one of his inventions short-circuited, burning the family house to the ground.

Then in 2000 a salvaged battery exploded, leaving Mr Wu with serious burns on his hands and torso, requiring several weeks of hospital treatment.

Rebuilding the family home, paying his medical bills, and taking out extra loans to finance his new creations have left him staggering under almost £5,000 of debt. "

"Nor was that fire the first time his obsession hurt his loved ones. Wu grew up in a family where sometimes there was "no oil for cooking," Dong said. Once, the family scraped all its money together and bought him a remote-control car. He broke their hearts, she said, when he immediately took it apart to see how it worked."

""I got a rechargeable battery-like tube for a very low price from a recycling shop, thinking I could save money," Wu said. But he did not understand the English warning on the tube, and "when I tested the tube, it exploded in my hands. I remember a big fireball suddenly burst out, and I lost my memory." Luckily, neighbours rushed him to hospital. His memory returned, but the scars on his hands and arms and the pain he frequently feels in his wrists will last forever."

"Wu's perseverance finally began to pay off. Feature stories on the "farmer inventor" began appearing in various media. After one report on China Central Television (CCTV), its science channel hired Wu as a prop-maker, paying more than 3,000 yuan (US$375) a month. Each week he goes to CCTV for orders and makes them at home. Selling robot Wu Laowu helped speed the repayment of his loan."

Thus, it may not end so badly after all. Obsessed Geeks *can* break even. Maybe my SQL replacement language has a chance after all ;-)

I don't think either of my recent ISPs have done (Orange and Sky). Not that they've ever contacted me, even on a 2GB (yes, two gig) cap when I run a downloads website (so I'm uploading and downloading to the server) and a Fedora box (so I can be downloading reasonable size updates at times). Sky are nice enough to say that they'll do the monitoring for me between 5pm and 12am. I've even looked for something in their control panel before but found nothing, which means it'll be my first point I raise if they ever contact me about it.

There are some ISPs that let you see how much you've used in a month, but in the UK they're generally few and far between in my experience.

Hey, I'm on 2GB per month you insensitive clod!

(No, really, I'm on the Sky "Base" package and it's fine).

ISRO is sending the satellite to the moon for very pragmatic reasons - They're looking for Helium-3 and Uranium on the moon and investigating what it would take to bring them back to earth to power India's nuclear reactors. http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/World-News/India-Moon-Mission-Chandrayaan-1-To-Investigate-Helium-3-Future-Fuel/Article/200810315125699?f=rss

Pictures 1 and 2 in this series of photos clearly show burnt wood around the crash site. So either a forest fire burnt the area recently, or more likely, the plane's fuel burnt after the crash. However, his money and ID cards were clearly not burnt, and no mention was made of his sweatshirt being burnt, so either he was ejected clear of the crash and escaped the fire (whether or not he lived), or he got away from the fire under his own power.

Santa's a bit busy fighting warcrimes charges, at the moment.

In Dubai, you will get a minimum of 4 years of prison for drug posession. Having a poppy seed on your clothing (because you ate a sandwich at a UK airport) constitutes drug posession. If you don't want to be prosecuted then here's an idea, don't break the law? Easier said than done. Notice that you now can get fined for having your dog poop on the pavement. But if you try to have them go after your stolen laptop, they're too busy. With dog poop, no doubt.

Ubuntu laptop last standing in hacking contest

-1 TROLL || -5 LUSER.

Ubuntu was the only OS *UNHACKED* at the end of the conference http://news.sky.com/skynews/xml/article/tech/0,,91221-13702,00.html

I'm afraid Murdock got there first.... http://www.sky.com/

I'm wondering how complicated this thing really is. Can't I just get a bicycle helmet and wire 1000 ultra bright ir LEDs and 3 cooling fans too? I would love to see more plans on this device so I can make my own. I've been fighting anxiety for years and am willing to try alternative remedies as all of the medical ones are failing. I know it is intended for Alz but it also mentioned anxiety. Screw the FDA and the trials. If the FDA existed when penicillin was invented it would never have been approved.

I would also love to see how this sleep helmet works.
I hate waiting for trials too. At this point I'm willing to try anything too.

Taking non-satellite, non-cable first, the basic list's here:
http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/terrestrial/epg/

The first five of those are available analogue (which is currently being phased out); everything is available on a series of digital multiplexes which may or may not be available depending on where you live. If you follow the website links from the Digitalspy page you should be able to get to "who owns what", but in brief the BBC is publicly owned and licence-fee supported, ITV is a standalone company, ad-supported, Channel 4 is publicly owned, ad-supported and Five is owned by RTL.

The largest satellite operator is Sky TV:
http://www.sky.com/portal/site/skycom/tvguide
(mostly owned by News Corp)

The largest cable operator is Virgin Media
http://allyours.virginmedia.com/websales/service.do?id=1
(standalone company)