I live and work in London, and I'm more likely to be caught on about 500+ cameras per day.
Let's see:
All numbers are rough estimates:
In the morning, I walk to the bus stop on my high road. There's 3+ street cameras on the corner, plus 5+ more cameras further down the road (in both directions), plus 3+ cameras in the 2 shops I walk past. (total maybe 15+ form my home to bus stop, 5 mins walk)
These shop cameras are mainly focussed on the shop floor, but also catch people walking past in the shop window.
On the bus, there's about 9+ cameras. (in the tiny black domes on the roof).
While walking and waiting, about 6+ buses passed, and I was filmed by their bus-lane cameras, and their door cameras. Let's say 12+ cameras.
I transfer to the tube, with another 10+ cameras around the tube entrance, plus several more buses passing (6+).
Walking down to the platform, there's 10+ on my route through the tunnels, and another 10+ on the platform, and several in my tube carriage.
Change tubes, walk down 2 platforms and an intersection. 30+
Out of the tube, another 20+ in the station tunnel and platform, and 10+ at the entrance. I cross the road past a congestion charge checkpoint, another 20+ in all directions. Yes these are traffic cameras, but they still pick me up.
At lunch, I walk down the high road for a roll, 20+ cameras.
Same again going home.
Go out shopping after work, walk past maybe 20 shops, (40+) and another stretch of high road,(30+), and same again coming back home.
Out in the evening to somewhere in Central London, repeat the travel camera count, plus West End camera count, and then same again back home. Maybe another 200+?
I've completely lost count by now, and this is just a slashdot post, but already I'm nudging 500 + and that's without going for a car drive into London or a taxi ride.
Damn, I'm scaring myself now.
And yes, I've seen so many times 'Oh we couldn't find the tapes' whenever the police beat someone up, including witnessing a couple of events where the police just steamed into some people peacefully drinking in a pub at 6pm.
Other major cities in UK are less heavily surveilled, but they still have cameras on buses etc. So I can see how the average is driven up for rural people. (I grew up in Cornwall, and there's a lot of cameras on the larger roads and in the larger towns there now. 'Larger town' in this context actually means a village of 1000+ people)
"We told ourselves we needed to "fix" things on Earth first, things like poverty, prejudice, war, pollution. I suppose it escaped our attention that these things are as much fixtures of life as bad luck, death and taxes"
Those things are very fixable with 450 billion of funding. That's the size of the US military budget, which is larger than the next n countries put together (n slowly increasing in size).
Fixing them in the USA alone would be a good start.
I looked at my userpage, but the year is left off all the datestamps and I'm not leet enough to work out how to get Slashdot to tell me which year the comments were made.
Here in Brit-land, 'Nice one' is still commonly used in the context of 'oh look what a silly thing you;ve done now. You've made a right fool of yourself now.'
If i recall correctly, it might even be used in this context in a couple of Laurel and Hardy films or Bob Hope films.
I'm deaf. It's never caused me any problems walking across a busy street. I have a working pair of eyes.
In fact, being hearing wont help you on busy streets, cos there's constant traffic = useless ears.
Ah! you say, what about QUIET streets?
So? I still check both ways for traffic before crossing. And I still have the advantage over hearing people, as they get near-misses by silent transportation like bicycles etc, while I with my ingrained habit of looking both ways before crossing, see them before crossing.
I feel sorry for you hearing-sensitive people who are shamefully overreliant on your ears and fail to use your eyes.
As a Deaf boy growing up isolated in the countryside in the 70s/80s, TV subtitles provided by the Ceefax service was my only gateway to learning about the wider world.
>Ceefax was developed by BBC broadcast >engineers who were working on ways of >providing subtitles for the deaf.
Many thanks.
Curiously, in 1999, I worked for the BBC as a web interface programmer, and I was based at Kingswood Warren, which is their R&D dept. Looking back, I guess that's where they developed Ceefax.
Wierd place, with its own vegetable gardens and croquet pitches.
I nearly lost my job there due to reading Slashdot too much... (I was rubbish anyway) - Guess Ceefax was where I got the habit of staring at pages, waiting for them to update...
Just as well I changed careers to becoming a playwriter now... see my sig
+tomato+ -- See the new play by Deafinitely Theatre! 'Children of a Greater God' by Tomato Lichy Jacksons Lane Theatre, London, Nov 3-13, 2004
David Brent, the nightmare boss played by Ricky Gervais in 'The Office' was expected to disappear after the two-part special which aired over Christmas. However, Brent has been brought out of retirement already... by Microsoft.
Microsoft have paid Gervais an undisclosed sum to write and star in a series of training films, to be recorded at the company's head office in Reading. The Microsoft headquarters are reported to already be full of posters freaturing David Brent with the slogan: "I'm Back, and this time it's Personal Development".
However the general public are unlikely to get to see any of the training videos. A Microsoft spokeswoman has said "It is an internal thing and not something we like to publicise."
Spammers do indeed have a weak point. They are dependent on procesing their payments via credit card companies.
I once tried to set up an online business that would accept payment via credit card. To set up a trading account, you have to jump through all sorts of hoops and rules. It's not cheap or easy. The credit card comapnies cheak who you are quite rigourously before they will give you a business trading account.
Part of their rules is that the trader must clearly identify theirself/the business when making a sale.
There are only a very few credit card companies - amex, visa, mastercard, mbna, that covers about 80% of the market.
I'm not quite sure how to go about informing the credit card comanies that you have received an illegal credit card payment request. Perhaps you could send the spam to them, or the url of the actual webpage where it asks to fill in your credit card numbers.
For the desperate, you could actually pay something, maybe using a spare card that you never use, then at once inform the credit card company of the situation, requesting a refund, and giving them relevant details, e.g. the website with the unlawful request on it, so that they will place a black mark against the trading account of the spammer.
Too many of them and they will close his trading account. With the resources that credit card companies have for checking on background, its gonna be bloody hard for the spammer to reopen new acocunt, especially as lying for the purposes of getting a trading account is something that the police take REALLY seriously...
(close your card or keep an eye out for any further withdrawals from your account and instantly notify the credit card company - they will then know the spammer's been passing around your details and have his address on file - more charges for the police to use)
> Many people have issues with the US, but last > time I heard, the military didn't run businesses > with civillians in special work camps.
Hello?
US prison service (like the military, just another branch of the government) makes prisoners work for $1/hour or less at tedidious, repetive work sewing mailbags, or preparing shit for various companies (including i think HP - nice to know that your computer might have been made with slave labour).
It is described as 'optional' work, but the alternative is to spend all day locked up in your cell, and unable to buy neccessites such as soap, pens and paper, razors, phone cards for phoning loved ones, shower tokens, socks, underpants, laundry tokens, etc, all of which have to be purchased at hugely inflated prices from the offical prison shop.
[You're not allowed to take more than pocket change into the prison, thus it's work or go mad]
Many of these people have not even been sentenced yet and are still on remand awaiting their trial, and thus are fully innocent according to the law.
The prison governors are quoted on the news (search on the bbc website) as saying "The inmates love their work, it's fufilling and gives them a sense of purpose."
China couldn't do any better..
Read some of the many Ammnesty International and UN reports on human rights abuses within the US prison system, which in some ways is far more oppressive than what exists in China.
>the universe can be represented in 4 lines of mathematica code
hmmm
given that mathematica has a limited set of symbols and operators, s
and given that a line of code in mathematica has a limited number n of symbols and operators,
we get
universe = 4 * s * n
It should be trival though computationally intense to generate every single legal 4 line-combination of symbols and operators
after pruning of these which lead to 'impossible' universes, we are left with a pool of several squillion[technical term] 4 line possiblities.
checking these may take a little longer.
A bonus is of course, in that pool, there are also the 4-line codes for every single possible alternative universe and alternative realities.
another thought is that since these 4-lines of code set up a logical construct that contains the universe (presumably 'complete') that also contains these 4 lines of code, this may well violate Godel's incompleteness theorems.
Of course this might be the same as the possible exemption to the laws of thermodynamics apprently found by Wolfram.
I'm no mathematical genius, I even have problems adding, so I will leave it there.
put one pot inside another, fill the gap with wet sand, the evaporation of the water makes it act as a crude fridge. The idea is now sweeping across africa & co. In both cases, the execution is so simple it was the original idea that eluded everybody
I think that was actually invented over 4 thousand years ago. Yup. They made clay pots and urns and left them unglazed. A small part of the contents would seep throu the porous pot, and evaporate, thus cooling the pot / urn.
When they wanted to store the contents for longer, then they used glazed pots, - the glaze acts as a surface sealant, just as u see on modern pottery work.
The technology of making self-cooling pots was well understood thousands of years ago. Sorry, nothing new under the sun, at least in clay pot technology.
If a website considers itelf as suitable for kids, then it should be able to apply for a 'Teen certfied status'. Then I'd let my kids only access these teen certfied sites. Probably with different certificates for different age ranges.
Different opinions on what is kid appropiate? No problem. There will be surely a group somewhere with the same views as you, and you can use their list of 'appropiate' websites. E.G if you're an X-ian, you can use the 'Catholic Church Approved list' (or something maintained by whichever sect you adhere to) and thus your kids at home can only access sites on that list. Sure if they want to access something independent, they'll have to go down the library or a friends computer, but at least it wont be in your own home:)
Got quirky views? Create your own approved list. My list would probably be something like encyclopaediabrittanca.com (sodding spelling), slashdot.com, indymedia, and a few others.
In some european countries, there is no formal age of consent as such, e.g. (i think) in France and the Netherlands. This doesnt mean that you can go pick up a teen however, because there are laws against assault and molestion, and abuse of power, its just that they apply to all ages equally. Therefore, if a 25 year old bloke starts shagging a 12 year old, the police will be breaking down his door soon, because it is clear that he is abusing his power and behaving inapropiately. I'm not an expert on these laws but they appear to work.
BTW when there is a formal age of consent, it tends to be 16, as in the UK and Ireland, with some countries putting the formal age as 14 or 12.
Many of my friends in the UK, both male and female, first had sex between 12 and 14, typically with someone the same age or slightly older. (mine was 17, but then i'm a geek:) Parents and police tend to be watchful but turn a blind eye as long as both partners are roughly the same age.
France has no minimum age for alcohol, and in the UK, if a parent is present, it is about 12. I should say most european kids start off having a glass of quality wine or a sip of beer with their parents at the weekly sunday dinner, at about 12 onwards, when they start becoming curious about what their parents are drinking, and this is allowed for by law. It's independent drinking or purchase of alcohol by teens that is illegal.
Likewise, for porn, in france there is no minimum age for softcore purchase I think, and for hardcore, 18.
this is a shorter version of a much longer post that got munged *ACK*
My brother studies fine art at Goldsmiths College, one of the top UK art universities (Daimen Hirst, most of the young BritArt people, most of the artists in the Sensations show etc, went there)
It is very theoretically orientated, heavy workload over the 3 years, daily lectures and seminars, daily sign-ins to check attendance etc - ya really gotta work:)
But they take computer art seriously, and there are always several computer orientated artists at each year's Fine Arts degree show.
However, these people are always artists first and foremost, who just work with a computer, not a paint/brush. Last year, there was one woman who did lots of personally relevant graphics with a mouse in something like MSPaint, blew them up to giant size, printed them out in glossy banner format 1 meter x 20 meters, and wallpapered a room with them. She made a virtue out of the jaggies, pixelliation, erronous joggings of the mouse and so on.
As noticed in another post, these things, the ideosnycrasies of the medium are what makes it a valuable medium, artisically speaking, as with exploitation of the grain in modern art photography.
To be taken seriously in the academic art envirnoment, you need to read up on the body of art theory out there, read about previous academically respected (dead) artists who used new material, such as Klimt, Duchamps, Beuys (especially Beuys) talk about them and the theories they represented.
Your work needs to have personal relevance to you, and to be visbly hand-made, not something slickly photoshopped, to be linked with/ explore respected (!) art theories about colour or emotion or personal analysis or shape/form.
Use this and modify according to your desires. Hope this helps.
>Just as you don't want drunk-drivers, mentally >ustable, extremley elderly, or blind/deaf people on you highways,
Off topic but I feel I should come and give you a methaphorical smack in the face as a deaf person who drives a variety of cars (and motorbikes:) without any problems. The Dept of Transport (licensing authoritiy here in the UK) who seem to be somewhat more enlightened than you, has no problems whatsoever about my deafness. I dont even have to pay any extra on my driving insurance.
(We also have deaf lorry drivers, and deaf couriers, who communicate using Nokia 9110s or mobile in-cab fax machines.)
You may ask how do I know what's going on behind me? There's them things called mirrors, and I use them. Frequently.
Ungoed-Thomas has been trying out his nefarious tricks elsewhere:
(extracted from Schnews - Brit eco-activist newsletter)
If you receive any unsolicited emails from wide-eyed activist females, don't count yourself so popular; it could be our mates at the Sunday Times with another lesson in the value of media liaison. While journalist Mark Macaskill came across reasonably enough, emailing activists with an approach to interview them, his colleague took a different tack.
So, it must now be our turn to take the piss out of super-sleuth journo John Ungoed-Thomas, who sent out a few emails under false names, in the hope of getting back some juicy info for an article.
'Jo' is just one 'committed environmental and anti-corporation activist' apparently now flocking to the ranks of our burgeoning movement, if an email recently received by Friends of the Earth is anything to go by. She wants to know how to get more involved indirect action, having ' really enjoyed' June 18 [anti- capitalist riots in London earlier this year]. Likewise, 'Laura' who eco-columnist George Monbiot of the Guardian was privileged to hear from, describes herself as a 'committed anti-corporationist' and is eagerto help in any way she can. Any ideas? Perhaps Laura and Jo might benefit from a few words of advice from someone more canny in covering their tracks, for both sent emails from addresses leading back to Clouseau-esque Ungoed-Thomas, the master of disguise himself. Hardly for us to take the piss now; he's practically giving it away.
I saw this bra last week - it's part of a post-graduate design show at the Royal College of Art in London - the show finished last sunday unfortunately, but there has been some lurid coverage in the brit tabloids. It seems the orginal concept was something that would help older women who have fallen over or passed out or whatever, but being the RCA (which has a bit of a poncy reputation) the designer gave it a make-over and turned it all glam, high tech and expensive.
While I was there, she was modelling it for a TV channel, and yes she was cute and pretty, (but not as cute or pretty as me, with my long purple dreadlocks:P)
Someone asked about how to wash it - the electronics are in a small button capsule in the middle of the front, and it's easily removeable for washing.
What else? It came in various nice colours - orange, deep purple, blue, in a kind of satin-y fabric (no-doubt deeply modern and space age gee-whizzy.)
I won't be buying one for myself, cos I'm a bloke and my tits aren't big enough, but my Japanese friendette adored it, mainly for the cool gear factor I suspect.
Slashdot Mirror
I live and work in London, and I'm more likely to be caught on about 500+ cameras per day.
Let's see:
All numbers are rough estimates:
In the morning, I walk to the bus stop on my high road. There's 3+ street cameras on the corner, plus 5+ more cameras further down the road (in both directions), plus 3+ cameras in the 2 shops I walk past. (total maybe 15+ form my home to bus stop, 5 mins walk)
These shop cameras are mainly focussed on the shop floor, but also catch people walking past in the shop window.
On the bus, there's about 9+ cameras. (in the tiny black domes on the roof).
While walking and waiting, about 6+ buses passed, and I was filmed by their bus-lane cameras, and their door cameras. Let's say 12+ cameras.
I transfer to the tube, with another 10+ cameras around the tube entrance, plus several more buses passing (6+).
Walking down to the platform, there's 10+ on my route through the tunnels, and another 10+ on the platform, and several in my tube carriage.
Change tubes, walk down 2 platforms and an intersection. 30+
Out of the tube, another 20+ in the station tunnel and platform, and 10+ at the entrance. I cross the road past a congestion charge checkpoint, another 20+ in all directions. Yes these are traffic cameras, but they still pick me up.
At lunch, I walk down the high road for a roll, 20+ cameras.
Same again going home.
Go out shopping after work, walk past maybe 20 shops, (40+) and another stretch of high road,(30+), and same again coming back home.
Out in the evening to somewhere in Central London, repeat the travel camera count, plus West End camera count, and then same again back home. Maybe another 200+?
I've completely lost count by now, and this is just a slashdot post, but already I'm nudging 500 + and that's without going for a car drive into London or a taxi ride.
Damn, I'm scaring myself now.
And yes, I've seen so many times 'Oh we couldn't find the tapes' whenever the police beat someone up, including witnessing a couple of events where the police just steamed into some people peacefully drinking in a pub at 6pm.
Other major cities in UK are less heavily surveilled, but they still have cameras on buses etc. So I can see how the average is driven up for rural people. (I grew up in Cornwall, and there's a lot of cameras on the larger roads and in the larger towns there now. 'Larger town' in this context actually means a village of 1000+ people)
"We told ourselves we needed to "fix" things on Earth first, things like poverty, prejudice, war, pollution. I suppose it escaped our attention that these things are as much fixtures of life as bad luck, death and taxes"
Those things are very fixable with 450 billion of funding. That's the size of the US military budget, which is larger than the next n countries put together (n slowly increasing in size).
Fixing them in the USA alone would be a good start.
It feels like 5 years :)
I looked at my userpage, but the year is left off all the datestamps and I'm not leet enough to work out how to get Slashdot to tell me which year the comments were made.
This is the first time I've posted to Slashdot in nearly 5 years.
That robot in the videos is truly amazing - graceful, simple, and harmonious.
This is what we need - systems that co-operate with humans, can be pushed around, and stick to their own personal space.
We need more beauty and grace in the world, not less.
I work in technology, but I also study feng shui, and that robot has it in abundance.
What is a chess aperture? I've been playing for years and read a few books on chess (tho I;m still rubbish) but I've never heard of them.
Here in Brit-land, 'Nice one' is still commonly used in the context of 'oh look what a silly thing you;ve done now. You've made a right fool of yourself now.'
If i recall correctly, it might even be used in this context in a couple of Laurel and Hardy films or Bob Hope films.
WTF?
I'm deaf. It's never caused me any problems walking across a busy street. I have a working pair of eyes.
In fact, being hearing wont help you on busy streets, cos there's constant traffic = useless ears.
Ah! you say, what about QUIET streets?
So? I still check both ways for traffic before crossing. And I still have the advantage over hearing people, as they get near-misses by silent transportation like bicycles etc, while I with my ingrained habit of looking both ways before crossing, see them before crossing.
I feel sorry for you hearing-sensitive people who are shamefully overreliant on your ears and fail to use your eyes.
All the best.
-RedTomato-
failed first post
Damn.
Yes really. I'm Deaf, why should I have to pay extra for my computer gear to finance other people's music habits?
As a Deaf boy growing up isolated in the countryside in the 70s/80s, TV subtitles provided by the Ceefax service was my only gateway to learning about the wider world.
e atre.co.uk
>Ceefax was developed by BBC broadcast
>engineers who were working on ways of
>providing subtitles for the deaf.
Many thanks.
Curiously, in 1999, I worked for the BBC as a web interface programmer, and I was based at Kingswood Warren, which is their R&D dept. Looking back, I guess that's where they developed Ceefax.
Wierd place, with its own vegetable gardens and croquet pitches.
I nearly lost my job there due to reading Slashdot too much... (I was rubbish anyway) - Guess Ceefax was where I got the habit of staring at pages, waiting for them to update...
Just as well I changed careers to becoming a playwriter now... see my sig
+tomato+
--
See the new play by Deafinitely Theatre!
'Children of a Greater God' by Tomato Lichy
Jacksons Lane Theatre, London, Nov 3-13, 2004
£10 / £7
Box Office 020 8341 4421
mail@jacksonslane.org.uk
www.deafinitelyth
***
hmm David Brent, the nightmare boss played by Ricky
Gervais in 'The Office' was expected to disappear after the two-part special which aired over Christmas. However, Brent has been brought out of retirement already... by Microsoft.
Microsoft have paid Gervais an undisclosed sum to write and star in a series of training films, to be recorded at the company's head office in Reading. The Microsoft headquarters are reported to already be full of posters freaturing David Brent with the slogan: "I'm Back, and this time it's Personal Development".
However the general public are unlikely to get to see any of the training videos. A Microsoft spokeswoman has said "It is an internal thing and not something we like to publicise."
From 'Funny.co.uk' - comedy sector news website
http://www.funny.co.uk/news/art_77-1692-Microso
Spammers do indeed have a weak point. They are dependent on procesing their payments via credit card companies.
I once tried to set up an online business that would accept payment via credit card. To set up a trading account, you have to jump through all sorts of hoops and rules. It's not cheap or easy. The credit card comapnies cheak who you are quite rigourously before they will give you a business trading account.
Part of their rules is that the trader must clearly identify theirself/the business when making a sale.
There are only a very few credit card companies - amex, visa, mastercard, mbna, that covers about 80% of the market.
I'm not quite sure how to go about informing the credit card comanies that you have received an illegal credit card payment request. Perhaps you could send the spam to them, or the url of the actual webpage where it asks to fill in your credit card numbers.
For the desperate, you could actually pay something, maybe using a spare card that you never use, then at once inform the credit card company of the situation, requesting a refund, and giving them relevant details, e.g. the website with the unlawful request on it, so that they will place a black mark against the trading account of the spammer.
Too many of them and they will close his trading account. With the resources that credit card companies have for checking on background, its gonna be bloody hard for the spammer to reopen new acocunt, especially as lying for the purposes of getting a trading account is something that the police take REALLY seriously...
(close your card or keep an eye out for any further withdrawals from your account and instantly notify the credit card company - they will then know the spammer's been passing around your details and have his address on file - more charges for the police to use)
What do you think of this method?
-tomato
> Many people have issues with the US, but last
> time I heard, the military didn't run businesses
> with civillians in special work camps.
Hello?
US prison service (like the military, just another branch of the government) makes prisoners work for $1/hour or less at tedidious, repetive work sewing mailbags, or preparing shit for various companies (including i think HP - nice to know that your computer might have been made with slave labour).
It is described as 'optional' work, but the alternative is to spend all day locked up in your cell, and unable to buy neccessites such as soap, pens and paper, razors, phone cards for phoning loved ones, shower tokens, socks, underpants, laundry tokens, etc, all of which have to be purchased at hugely inflated prices from the offical prison shop.
[You're not allowed to take more than pocket change into the prison, thus it's work or go mad]
Many of these people have not even been sentenced yet and are still on remand awaiting their trial, and thus are fully innocent according to the law.
The prison governors are quoted on the news (search on the bbc website) as saying "The inmates love their work, it's fufilling and gives them a sense of purpose."
China couldn't do any better..
Read some of the many Ammnesty International and UN reports on human rights abuses within the US prison system, which in some ways is far more oppressive than what exists in China.
>the universe can be represented in 4 lines of mathematica code
hmmm
given that mathematica has a limited set of symbols and operators, s
and given that a line of code in mathematica has a limited number n of symbols and operators,
we get
universe = 4 * s * n
It should be trival though computationally intense to generate every single legal 4 line-combination of symbols and operators
after pruning of these which lead to 'impossible' universes, we are left with a pool of several squillion[technical term] 4 line possiblities.
checking these may take a little longer.
A bonus is of course, in that pool, there are also the 4-line codes for every single possible alternative universe and alternative realities.
another thought is that since these 4-lines of code set up a logical construct that contains the universe (presumably 'complete') that also contains these 4 lines of code, this may well violate Godel's incompleteness theorems.
Of course this might be the same as the possible exemption to the laws of thermodynamics apprently found by Wolfram.
I'm no mathematical genius, I even have problems adding, so I will leave it there.
put one pot inside another, fill the gap with wet sand, the evaporation of the water makes it act as a crude fridge. The idea is now sweeping across africa & co. In both cases, the execution is so simple it was the original idea that eluded everybody
I think that was actually invented over 4 thousand years ago. Yup. They made clay pots and urns and left them unglazed. A small part of the contents would seep throu the porous pot, and evaporate, thus cooling the pot / urn.
When they wanted to store the contents for longer, then they used glazed pots, - the glaze acts as a surface sealant, just as u see on modern pottery work.
The technology of making self-cooling pots was well understood thousands of years ago. Sorry, nothing new under the sun, at least in clay pot technology.
-tomato
If a website considers itelf as suitable for kids, then it should be able to apply for a 'Teen certfied status'. Then I'd let my kids only access these teen certfied sites. Probably with different certificates for different age ranges.
:)
Different opinions on what is kid appropiate? No problem. There will be surely a group somewhere with the same views as you, and you can use their list of 'appropiate' websites. E.G if you're an X-ian, you can use the 'Catholic Church Approved list' (or something maintained by whichever sect you adhere to) and thus your kids at home can only access sites on that list. Sure if they want to access something independent, they'll have to go down the library or a friends computer, but at least it wont be in your own home
Got quirky views? Create your own approved list. My list would probably be something like encyclopaediabrittanca.com (sodding spelling), slashdot.com, indymedia, and a few others.
What do you think?
In some european countries, there is no formal age of consent as such, e.g. (i think) in France and the Netherlands. This doesnt mean that you can go pick up a teen however, because there are laws against assault and molestion, and abuse of power, its just that they apply to all ages equally. Therefore, if a 25 year old bloke starts shagging a 12 year old, the police will be breaking down his door soon, because it is clear that he is abusing his power and behaving inapropiately. I'm not an expert on these laws but they appear to work.
:) Parents and police tend to be watchful but turn a blind eye as long as both partners are roughly the same age.
BTW when there is a formal age of consent, it tends to be 16, as in the UK and Ireland, with some countries putting the formal age as 14 or 12.
Many of my friends in the UK, both male and female, first had sex between 12 and 14, typically with someone the same age or slightly older. (mine was 17, but then i'm a geek
France has no minimum age for alcohol, and in the UK, if a parent is present, it is about 12. I should say most european kids start off having a glass of quality wine or a sip of beer with their parents at the weekly sunday dinner, at about 12 onwards, when they start becoming curious about what their parents are drinking, and this is allowed for by law. It's independent drinking or purchase of alcohol by teens that is illegal.
Likewise, for porn, in france there is no minimum age for softcore purchase I think, and for hardcore, 18.
this is a shorter version of a much longer post that got munged *ACK*
:)
My brother studies fine art at Goldsmiths College, one of the top UK art universities (Daimen Hirst, most of the young BritArt people, most of the artists in the Sensations show etc, went there)
It is very theoretically orientated, heavy workload over the 3 years, daily lectures and seminars, daily sign-ins to check attendance etc - ya really gotta work
But they take computer art seriously, and there are always several computer orientated artists at each year's Fine Arts degree show.
However, these people are always artists first and foremost, who just work with a computer, not a paint/brush. Last year, there was one woman who did lots of personally relevant graphics with a mouse in something like MSPaint, blew them up to giant size, printed them out in glossy banner format 1 meter x 20 meters, and wallpapered a room with them. She made a virtue out of the jaggies, pixelliation, erronous joggings of the mouse and so on.
As noticed in another post, these things, the ideosnycrasies of the medium are what makes it a valuable medium, artisically speaking, as with exploitation of the grain in modern art photography.
To be taken seriously in the academic art envirnoment, you need to read up on the body of art theory out there, read about previous academically respected (dead) artists who used new material, such as Klimt, Duchamps, Beuys (especially Beuys) talk about them and the theories they represented.
Your work needs to have personal relevance to you, and to be visbly hand-made, not something slickly photoshopped, to be linked with/ explore respected (!) art theories about colour or emotion or personal analysis or shape/form.
Use this and modify according to your desires. Hope this helps.
-Tomato
>Just as you don't want drunk-drivers, mentally
:) without any problems. The Dept of Transport (licensing authoritiy here in the UK) who seem to be somewhat more enlightened than you, has no problems whatsoever about my deafness. I dont even have to pay any extra on my driving insurance.
>ustable, extremley elderly, or blind/deaf people on you highways,
Off topic but I feel I should come and give you a methaphorical smack in the face as a deaf person who drives a variety of cars (and motorbikes
(We also have deaf lorry drivers, and deaf couriers, who communicate using Nokia 9110s or mobile in-cab fax machines.)
You may ask how do I know what's going on behind me? There's them things called mirrors, and I use them. Frequently.
-tomato
Ungoed-Thomas has been trying out his nefarious tricks elsewhere:
(extracted from Schnews - Brit eco-activist newsletter)
If you receive any unsolicited emails from wide-eyed activist females, don't count yourself so popular; it could be our mates at the Sunday Times with another lesson in the value of media liaison. While journalist Mark Macaskill came across reasonably enough, emailing activists with an approach to interview them, his colleague took a different tack.
So, it must now be our turn to take the piss out of super-sleuth journo John Ungoed-Thomas, who sent out a few emails under false names, in the hope of getting back some juicy info for an article.
'Jo' is just one 'committed environmental and anti-corporation activist' apparently now flocking to the ranks of our burgeoning movement, if an email recently received by Friends of the Earth is anything to go by. She wants to know how to get more involved indirect action, having ' really enjoyed' June 18 [anti- capitalist riots in London earlier this year]. Likewise, 'Laura' who eco-columnist George Monbiot of the Guardian was privileged to hear from, describes herself as a 'committed anti-corporationist' and is eagerto help in any way she can. Any ideas? Perhaps Laura and Jo might benefit from a few words of advice from someone more canny in covering their tracks, for both sent emails from addresses leading back to Clouseau-esque Ungoed-Thomas, the master of disguise himself. Hardly for us to take the piss now; he's practically giving it away.
I saw this bra last week - it's part of a post-graduate design show at the Royal College of Art in London - the show finished last sunday unfortunately, but there has been some lurid coverage in the brit tabloids. It seems the orginal concept was something that would help older women who have fallen over or passed out or whatever, but being the RCA (which has a bit of a poncy reputation) the designer gave it a make-over and turned it all glam, high tech and expensive.
:P)
While I was there, she was modelling it for a TV channel, and yes she was cute and pretty, (but not as cute or pretty as me, with my long purple dreadlocks
Someone asked about how to wash it - the electronics are in a small button capsule in the middle of the front, and it's easily removeable for washing.
What else? It came in various nice colours - orange, deep purple, blue, in a kind of satin-y fabric (no-doubt deeply modern and space age gee-whizzy.)
I won't be buying one for myself, cos I'm a bloke and my tits aren't big enough, but my Japanese friendette adored it, mainly for the cool gear factor I suspect.