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UK Government to Shut Down GSM Networks
An anonymous reader writes "Mobile Gazette is reporting that the British government wants to shut down the UK's GSM networks next year and re-use the frequencies for gambling terminals and a new citizen surveillance program extending the use of the new compulsory ID cards. Although we should perhaps welcome the move away from old-style 2G mobile phone networks, there are perhaps a few worrying things about the new "Big Brother" citizen monitoring that the government is proposing to put in."
Or someone needs to go V for Vendetta on those guys.
Inventions have long since reached their limit, and I see no hope for further development.-- Frontinus, 1st cent. AD
Funny, I don't remember anything too obvious or lame on 4th of January this year.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
This has to be another april fools joke.....
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I know this is Truthday, and Big Brother tells me the Prollies will love this doubleplusalot.
Edward@Tomato - /home/Edward/ man woman
man: no entry for woman in the manual.
"Qua!?"
The worrying thing is, I didn't bat an eyelid, and totally expected this from my government, until I got to the comments reminding me that it was April Fools Day... (Despite a full knowledege that it was April Fools Day, when I saw the words UK and Government in the same sentance I entered paranoia mode)
My 3D Texturing Skinning work (under construction)
>its gone 12 noon and as such april fools day jokes are *redundant* (owing to the custom of stopping at noon)
I do not think this word means what you think it means.
Me neither, grandparent poster? What are you on about?
Curiosity was framed; ignorance killed the cat. -- Author unknown
Ha Ha! This is an American based website. You may not have known that in America, people commonly say April 1st, or shorten that to 4/1. This is also the convention used in China, India, and throughout most of the world.
from dictionary.com
entries found for redundant: Chiefly British. Dismissed or laid off from work, as for being no longer needed.
*''I can't believe it's not a hyperlink.''
They'll never beat the ol' Spaghetti Tree Hoax of '57...
a pril/1/newsid_2819000/2819261.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/
Apparently the supermarkets sold out for fear of a shortage.
yep. I think I'll go back to bed until tomorrow.
Open Source Drum Kit, LPLC deve board - mjhdesigns.com
So it isn't true?
Damn, 8th time that happened to me today
It's you... because as far as I know, it's not the 4th of January in the UK.
return 0; }
subject.
Of course not! India has always been using the dd/mm/yyyy format, and 4/1 means 4th of January.
It is true that in China, 4/1 means 1th of April, but that's because they use the yyyy-mm-dd format, which is a logical order (most significant–least significant), unlike your American mm-dd-yyyy order which makes no sense.
The ISO standard (ISO 8601) is to use yyyy-mm-dd (as you see in dates on Slashdot and all websites that actually realise it's the World Wide Web).
To prevent ambiguity, it is best to spell out the name of the month in full, when you are not specifying the year, and there is no way of telling whether month/date or date/month is being used.
a "stupid" moderation option ? I would love to just for once, mod people stupid when they actually reply seriously on any story on slashdot today. Please Taco ? (Jupp, this reply could also be seen as a "serious" reply, but bear with me)
Doolittle :
Bomb no.20 : To explode of course.
the funny part isn't the stories they come up with. its in reading people with no sense of humor's comments
11 was a racehorse
12 was 12
1111 Race
12112
It wouldn't surprise me if I saw this story in a couple of years time, but not on april fool's day. We really are the lobsters slowly being boiled.
Stopping at noon? That sounds like and April fools joke. Here in the states, April fools lasts all day. Not everyone can get their fool on by Noon.
And to quote Alan Jackson, "It's five o'clock somewhere." So at a minimum, us GMT-5 folks could get another joke on until it's 5am in the UK. And at a max, we could follow our western most time zone at GMT-10 in Hawaii and get one more fool in when you're having your April 2nd morning tea.
The pirate says, "Aaaaarrgh!"
Peace and Hare Grease
+5 insightful
The title was believable. Well... I belived it :(
come on... British are miles behind... In America the Big Brother system work 25/8 and there aro no GSM phones... Only GTA (General Theft Audible)
http://polaralex.blogspot.com http://www.polaralex.tk *Define Reality*..*
The only reason not to believe it is because our government would never be able to roll it out so quickly, otherwise given the authoratarian and stupid nature of "New" Labour it hits quite close to the mark. Infact some official probably read that and thought "what a good idea".
If I have nothing to hide, you have no reason to search me
There was a second or two when I actually believed this story.
With the current state of our Government, would you really put it past them to do something like this?
" [+] aprilfools, uk, gay, bigbrother, lame (tagging beta)"
this kinda defeats the purpose of making a joke... at least hide the beta tags for today.
root@127.0.0.1
I would not be so sure. At least until the country is governed by a government lead by Antonio Bliar.
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
If you're going to make up an April Fools hoax at least make it remotely plausible. Only a total muppet could believe this story.
You obviously don't live in the UK. It's a bit of a stretch, but not that much less believable than doing away with parliament next and have ministers pass laws personally.
I like the new design, but then again, I also thought it was funny to fill water balloons with urine.
This is just like that famous book, Fahrenheit 1987 by Joel Chandler Harris.
/.
I love it when governments get ideas from my favorite Sci Fi! But I think a lot of other people on slashdot really like that book, so I'm sure I'm not the only one who can't wait for this to become a reality!
Ok, gotta run, my gf is calling me back to bed...
--
Happy AF
>lobsters slowly being boiled.
you're thinking of frogs, dude. lobsters don't get slowly boiled, they get thrown right in the pan of boiling water.
frogs, however, apparently don't notice they're being boiled if you turn the heat up on them very slowly. hence the expression 'like a frog in a pot'.
my password really is 'stinkypants'
April fool's day is a good day to bury bad news.
-- Cheer, Cheer, The Red and the White.
One example of this is the Texas State lottery, which exist under the guise of increasing funding to education. Of course funding for education, as a percentage of the Texas budget, has fallen considerable over the past 15 years even as lottery revenue has grown. So what is the new proposal? Well a official named Strayhorn want gambling machines. Now this is the lady that attempted to start the process of a state religion for Texas by attempting to rescind the tax exempt status of a church, the denomination of which has existed from the birth of the United States and in many ways reflects the values of our founding fathers, as many of these men had input in it's creation. Combine this with the fact that the demonination has no profit motive, unlike the megachurches that infest Texas, and one wonders if Strayhorn is primarily concerned with well being of the average Texan or the a personal campaign of religious zelotry in which those that disagree with her liberal view of gambling are ignored.
To be clear I am not concerned if people gamble or not. I do not see how we can justify lottery machines in an time when we no longer have cig machines. How can one say that we can enforce the 18+ limit on tickets any more that cigs? I am not sure that having gambling machines in every corner is a net benifit. Like illegal drugs it take money to feed the habit. But, at the end of the day, in a capatilist conservative country like ours, built on a the standards of minimal government and private enterprise, I suppose the government is in the best position to effecintly run a gambling bussiness.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Margaret Thatcher, former UK PM, is believed to be behind the plot to shut down GSM netwroks in the UK. We've received word that Miss Thatcher is apparently doing this after years of planning -- since her impeachment -- to get back at the british public, and further her goal to start her own fashionable cellular phone company... Ass. Press 2006
I know everything, I just don't remember it all..
Well, here in the USA, the government is taking away spectrum from a well established industry:
http://www.atsc.org/faq/faq_general.html
Oh, and they are requring everyone in the US to buy a new TV or STB (At least we get better pictures). All because the FCC wanted to allow secondary use on the unused channels for first responder dispatch radios.
Granted, most of the problem could have been avoided with some reasonable thinking from all parties involved, but hey, we're Americans! We want an unresonable response to a reasonable situation!
"Well, good luck finding a judge that doesn't run a bestiality site."
Blair lied, cellphones died!
God: When you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all.
That it didn't even occur to me that it culd possibly be a joke at first because it is so in line with the escalating kind of behavior we're seeing from western fascist leaning governments these days.
/. got me.
What can I say...
I had an American Maths teacher in high school, and he got caught out by this. The class was after lunchtime, and a member of staff had come in and told him something rather implausible that was actually true. He didn't believe it, and thought it was an April Fool. Trying to persuade him that it finished at noon was rather difficult.
This story is a somewhat less worrying than the Government's compulsory weighing and enforced fitness regime that is under discussion. Seems that many kids of an age to be called up are too fat and wouldn't be able to handle the assault course at boot camp. Each school / college is to provide a list of overweight students on request.
The UK thing is that if you are unprepared enough not to have played your joke before 12 noon, then you are yourself the fool.
Its all part of the tradition here in the UK, and why breakfast jokes are some of the most common, ie switching the salt and sugar and watching some poor b*stard spit their salty coffee. Mwahahahah!
Look it up on WikiPedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/April_fool
OrionRobots.co.uk - Robots From sol
Yeah, they might as well have joked that the UK Government want to pass their very own Enabling Act, allowing them to change laws without going through Parliament. Only a total muppet could believe that.
I love the 'lame' tag! Sums the whole story up really.
spoonerize "magic trackpad"
Nonsense. Middle-endian dates are pretty much unique to the USA (which despite what some of the inhabitants seem to think is not "most of the world").
Apart from the USA, the rest of the world uses either DD-MM-YYYY or YYYY-MM-DD, both of which are much more sensible than the USA format.
APRIL FOOLS!
sic
Stopping at noon? That sounds like and April fools joke. Here in the states, April fools lasts all day. Not everyone can get their fool on by Noon.
Actually April Fool's Day is now held on April 3rd, in line with new EU standards. Didn't you see that on the news yesterday?
i dont mind screwing with poular entertainment for the sake of emergancy communication.
at least it's not goin the other way shafting first responders to line some fatcat's pockets
Snowden and Manning are heroes.