The story is that the City University of Newcastle on Tyne got as far as printing the letterhead before they decided that they needed a name change.
I think that this is an urban myth as there is a similar story about the Southampton Higher Institute of Technology who allegedly had to change names after seeing the stationary... and I'm sure I've heard it elsewhere about other institutions as well. Who knows where it really happened now, if at all.
Pornnet and Internet could be separated or as simple as.porn domain to make filtering easier.
As I said above, a ".child" or ".kids" domain is a better idea that.porn or ".xxx". There are many reasons for this - no need to make anyone move domains, no need to try and work out what's porn and what isn't, and it means the rest of us can carry on using the internet as it's meant to be (.com,.org,.co.uk etc. domains won't have to worry about material that's a little risque but not porn).
Sure there would be a migration period of a few years, but once its done, its done. Sure new websites would pop up using the incorrect.com, but they could be taken down, or just deregistered, but realy, what benefit would there be to a porn content provider to use a.com ?
A ".child" or ".kid" is a far better idea - restrict young children to that domain and let the rest of us use the internet as it's meant to be.
The difference is that you can actually SEE that the goods are damaged at the time you pick them up, before you'd actually buy them. You can avoid taking an item that has been damaged or removed from its wrapping and instead get one that hasn't.
With delivery services, you already paid and bought the item, essentially the deal's been closed. You can now try to return it and exchange it for an undamaged good, i.e. send it back, wait for the new item to arrive and hope it ain't damaged.
We have two VATs in existance. One "common" one for all goods and a "reduced" one (pretty much half VAT) for some others. The idea of the reduced VAT is that there are certain goods of everyday need that you should not be taxed heavily on, to make living affordable. Hence that reduced VAT applies generally to food and rent.
And to books.
Don't ask me why, but books are apparently seen as essential for your living.
Here in the UK, for reasons similar to those you describe, we have three rates: standard, reduced and zero; books are zero rated here.
THHGTTG isn't consistent between mediums (or even between books). That was by design by the author. I think some fans missed that point when watching the movie. (unless I am misunderstanding their complaint.)
The "original" version was actually the radio series, and it was self consistent(ish), only once the books started being written did us fans embrace the inconsistencies as part of it's charm, enough to make many think that the books came first; so they made DNA write book 5 and retconned it into radio (after having made a TV series). That's why it's inconsistent. (Mostly) Not by design. The 'problem' with the movie is that it felt more like a story in the H2G2 world rather than H2G2 itself. Here the inconsistencies were deliberate because IIRC DNA always felt he had under developed Trillian as a character, so used it as an opportunity to make her more relevant (and thus had to re-write much of the story - some fans didn't like that; personally I like the movie, but think of it as set in an alternate universe. Mostly I really wish I was old enough to have bought the H2G2 towel though;p Seriously M&S did an H2G2 Towel for a short time when the original series was aired & was at the peak of it's popularity here in the UK. They must be worth a fortune to the right people now.
What's the point of making a video game into a movie? You already have the story, the actors, the dialog, the setpieces, etc.
Apart from the actors, so does a book. The Lord of the Rings trilogy and the Harry potter movies show that you can make half decent movies when you already have story, dialogue etc. in place; it's just another medium for telling the same story*, some people like video games, others like movies, others prefer books. Many like a mix - I don't like FPS games, but if they released a good movie of one, I'd watch it happily.
*The Hitchhikers guide to the galaxy was released for radio, TV, as books, as a computer game, as a film, and last but not least, it was also released as a towel. None of these versions are consistent with each other so this does not always entirely hold...
it would always result in a dead end, because those genes wouldnt be passed on.
Not necessarily true; it might have recessive benefits - I carry the gene for Thalassemia, a nasty blood disorder, but it means I'm less likely to get malaria, thus having a genetic advantage. If I have a child with another carrier they have a 25% chance of developing full-blown Thalassemia, but 50% chance of being carries and getting malaria resistance. Something similar could be (and probably is) true of a hypothetical "gay gene".
Thanks for that. I'm glad that Lord Lucas has agreed, but I don't think that it's legally binding. He was expressing an opinion too. The legalities of it weren't determined (He states himself that it is legal blackmail).
Not to mention that Lord Lucas had parliamentary privilege, you can libel and slander whoever you like on the floor of the Lords.
If the employer tells you these are the rules, you follow the rules.
That's a shitty employer you work for, personally, if an employer gives me inane rules, I ask "why?" to see if they can justify them. Even then if I think that the justification was dumb, I'll only follow them in my workplace, not at home or elsewhere. Indeed, if I'm at my place of work, but at lunch or on another break I won't follow them then, either. Their rules only apply when they're paying.
The funniest about all this is that most people with security clearance would have been able to access those cables anyway through the gov systems.
I suspect that this is wrong. I have only held security clearance in the UK, so there may be some differences with the USA, but I believe that these points hold on both sides of the pond
Like you, I'm in the UK but from press reports, all this stuff was classified up to "secret" and was on a single database accessible by around three million people: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/nov/28/us-embassy-cable-leak-diplomacy-crisis Hence the ability of a single disgruntled employee to download and leak it all. The reason for this ease of access was because before 9/11 the US government's various agencies were having problems sharing info.
Pratchett satirised this wooly theological thinking with the line: "It's turtles all the way down".
As much as I love Terry Pratchett, he didn't invent or popularise the concept of "Turtles all the way down" I don't think that line is even in any of the Discworld novels as the great A' tuin is swimming through space (destination unknown) right from the colour of magic; in one of the books we see baby world turtles, but none of them stand on each other...
Furthermore, ask any honest cosmologist and he'll tell you that at our current level of understanding the universe is turtles all the way down, or more accurately turtles all the way out and turtles all the way back; they're just standing on the big bang. Underneath that there are just more turtles. Eventually we'll hopefully be able to eliminate the turtles, but for now we still have a turtle problem.
Why is parent modded troll? He's entirely correct; there's almost no way that a British newspaper will ignore a D-Notice. Of course once the info reaches UK bloggers they might report that that fact. They'll also talk a lot about how this info is all over the internet. The only publication that may ignore it is Private Eye because AFAIK as they don't attend government press conferences etc. anyway - they also tend to be far more informed about the behind the scenes goings on at Wetminster... If it's really juicy and implicates senior British politicians they may well publish and be damned.
Your explanation is actually very compelling. Thank you.
Woah, Woah, this is slashdot. You can't come here and admit the other person might have a point!
You're meant to argue semantics about how this law is loosely worded and could be abused, or perhaps go really libertarian claim that this is government intervention is artificially driving down the cost of treasure by increasing supply. I was saving replies for both of those.;p
Anyway, shock over, thank you for having a civil and courteous debate rather than degenerating into the name-calling and general douchery that slashdot debates usually end up in. It's been a pleasure.
It seems that way. But I have to wonder if, pre- that act, the law tilted a certain way. For example, if it was always the property of the owner of the land it was found on, then this law steals half their profit away in the name of compromise. If it was always the property of the person who found it, then this law steals half their profit away. Minus lawyer fees, of course.:) Compromise is cool and all, but I don't want to compromise on my half of the booty. Nobody does.
Totally understandable, however if all of it was the property of the land-owner, there would be no reason for people to hunt for treasure and you would have got zero because the guy with the metal detector didn't search your land. He needs an incentive too.
You could make the argument that the metal detector people should all draw up contracts with all the individual land owners but what land owner would want to pay for a lawyer to draw up or check a contract every time some nutter with a metal detector wanted to search his land? Again, you get zero profit as no treasure is found because you decide it's not worth the hassle of letting him on your land for the remote chance he finds something.
This law incentivises both detectors and land owners so that a profit can actually be made, there would be far less treasure found without it. It actually makes it easy for ordinary people to get a fair and just solution without having to involve lawyers and courts, with the bonus that the rest of the country also benefits because our heritage is preserved. IMO it's a rare example of a good law.
That doesn't seem to be what the statute pasted a few messages above said, which is what I was responding to.
The way it works in practice is that anything found and declared "treasure" (i.e. old enough or otherwise culturally significant) is automatically the property of the crown, in return the crown usually gives a reward split between the finder and the land owner, the value of the reward is usually the price they get at sale from a museum or similar institution. As I said, if not for this law there would either be countless civil cases about who gets the treasure and\or reward or the crown would take it without giving one. Neither of these are desired outcomes, the law is a compromise.
but not being able to own something I found myself is b.s.
He found it on someone else's land. Why should it belong to him & not the land owner? This law solves that problem by saying that it belongs to the state and he & the land owner have to split the proceeds of the reward (it's sale). It's far better than protracted civil action between the two parties whilst preserving the cultural heritage of the nation. It seems like a win-win situation to me, no pointless court cases & all parties are rewarded. What's the problem?
b) He'll show up his first day of highschool in a Porsche, I'm sure he'll do fine.
"Highschool" equivalent here in the UK is from ages 11-16 and you can't get a provisional license until age 17, most people (I know, anyway) don't bother actually learning to drive until at least Uni (age 19\20 onwards), so he might show up at college(17-18) in a Porche, but certainly not High school (or secondary school as we call it).
Yeah. This is the kind of thing that should have been settled with a chat, or even ignored.
That's exactly what the Police did, it's the bureaucrats in the CPS (Crown Prosecution Service) who are to blame for this one, not the cops. Both the cops and the airport did minimal investigation.
The IRA usually warned the police that they are going to blow up something to avoid collateral damage casualties.
If those bombs were happening today I would not be suprised if they were tweeted instead of phoned-in.
IRA however is a strange exemption to the overall "rules" of terrorism. Most of today's terrorists would go for the opposite - to kill as many bystanders as possible.
They didn't phone to warn, they phoned to make sure that everyone knew it was them - if they waited until after the bombs went off all of the myriad of republican paramilitary groups would have tried to claim responsibility. By phoning a warning 5mins before the bomb went off, the police knew it was them & they gained some positive PR whilst maximising damage and casualties.
I can't believe I'm about to say this, but Timothy makes an excellent point about who we . Here's what Mr. Chambers originally said:
"Robin Hood Airport is closed. You've got a week... otherwise I'm blowing the airport sky high!"
Here's what Mr. Compton said:
"Can someone please stone Yasmin Alibhai-Brown to death? I shan't tell Amnesty if you don't. It would be a blessing, really."
Neither one has the ring of a joke, neither one is in good taste, but the former is defended while the latter is fodder for criticism. Now, back to your comment:
You have no sense of context - Chambers' tweet was @hisgirlfriend whom he was going to fly to Belfast to see when he discovered that the airport was closed, Compton's tweet had the hashtag #R5L because he was replying to something he had heard on Radio 5 Live. Viewed in that context it becomes very obvious, very quickly that neither were actually malicious.
Also, is it just me or is there a difference between a man who fought against slavery and a man who made a bomb treath for no reason?
Who made a bomb threat? There's no indication that the tweeter intended his words be treated as a bomb threat, but was just mouthing off to his readers. As for a reason,
Paul Chambers, 26, said he acted in frustration after Robin Hood Airport in South Yorkshire was closed by snow.
Not even all his readers, the original tweet was directed @hisfriend (now his girl friend) who lives in Belfast and was going to fly to visit.
The Home Office has a specialist unit set up to deal specifically with forced (aka "arranged") marriages,
There's a big difference between forced and arranged marriages, hell even the British aristocracy still arrange marriages because of the need to find a 'suitable' boy\girl - The difference is that the boys\girls in question get to say 'no'. There is no option to say 'no' in forced marriages and questions of (so called) "dishonour" start to come into it. Please don't mix the two.
Slashdot Mirror
The story is that the City University of Newcastle on Tyne got as far as printing the letterhead before they decided that they needed a name change.
I think that this is an urban myth as there is a similar story about the Southampton Higher Institute of Technology who allegedly had to change names after seeing the stationary... and I'm sure I've heard it elsewhere about other institutions as well. Who knows where it really happened now, if at all.
Pornnet and Internet could be separated or as simple as .porn domain to make filtering easier.
As I said above, a ".child" or ".kids" domain is a better idea that .porn or ".xxx". There are many reasons for this - no need to make anyone move domains, no need to try and work out what's porn and what isn't, and it means the rest of us can carry on using the internet as it's meant to be (.com, .org, .co.uk etc. domains won't have to worry about material that's a little risque but not porn).
.xxx or sex or both TLD's need to be implemented.
Sure there would be a migration period of a few years, but once its done, its done. Sure new websites would pop up using the incorrect .com, but they could be taken down, or just deregistered, but realy, what benefit would there be to a porn content provider to use a .com ?
A ".child" or ".kid" is a far better idea - restrict young children to that domain and let the rest of us use the internet as it's meant to be.
The difference is that you can actually SEE that the goods are damaged at the time you pick them up, before you'd actually buy them. You can avoid taking an item that has been damaged or removed from its wrapping and instead get one that hasn't.
With delivery services, you already paid and bought the item, essentially the deal's been closed. You can now try to return it and exchange it for an undamaged good, i.e. send it back, wait for the new item to arrive and hope it ain't damaged.
Buying off the 'net counts as distance selling, which in turn means I have a seven days from when I receive the item to send it back just because I feel like it: http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/Governmentcitizensandrights/Consumerrights/DG_183048
Interesting. It's quite the opposite here.
We have two VATs in existance. One "common" one for all goods and a "reduced" one (pretty much half VAT) for some others. The idea of the reduced VAT is that there are certain goods of everyday need that you should not be taxed heavily on, to make living affordable. Hence that reduced VAT applies generally to food and rent.
And to books.
Don't ask me why, but books are apparently seen as essential for your living.
Here in the UK, for reasons similar to those you describe, we have three rates: standard, reduced and zero; books are zero rated here.
THHGTTG isn't consistent between mediums (or even between books). That was by design by the author. I think some fans missed that point when watching the movie. (unless I am misunderstanding their complaint.)
The "original" version was actually the radio series, and it was self consistent(ish), only once the books started being written did us fans embrace the inconsistencies as part of it's charm, enough to make many think that the books came first; so they made DNA write book 5 and retconned it into radio (after having made a TV series). That's why it's inconsistent. (Mostly) Not by design. The 'problem' with the movie is that it felt more like a story in the H2G2 world rather than H2G2 itself. Here the inconsistencies were deliberate because IIRC DNA always felt he had under developed Trillian as a character, so used it as an opportunity to make her more relevant (and thus had to re-write much of the story - some fans didn't like that; personally I like the movie, but think of it as set in an alternate universe. Mostly I really wish I was old enough to have bought the H2G2 towel though ;p Seriously M&S did an H2G2 Towel for a short time when the original series was aired & was at the peak of it's popularity here in the UK. They must be worth a fortune to the right people now.
What's the point of making a video game into a movie? You already have the story, the actors, the dialog, the setpieces, etc.
Apart from the actors, so does a book. The Lord of the Rings trilogy and the Harry potter movies show that you can make half decent movies when you already have story, dialogue etc. in place; it's just another medium for telling the same story*, some people like video games, others like movies, others prefer books. Many like a mix - I don't like FPS games, but if they released a good movie of one, I'd watch it happily.
*The Hitchhikers guide to the galaxy was released for radio, TV, as books, as a computer game, as a film, and last but not least, it was also released as a towel. None of these versions are consistent with each other so this does not always entirely hold...
it would always result in a dead end, because those genes wouldnt be passed on.
Not necessarily true; it might have recessive benefits - I carry the gene for Thalassemia, a nasty blood disorder, but it means I'm less likely to get malaria, thus having a genetic advantage. If I have a child with another carrier they have a 25% chance of developing full-blown Thalassemia, but 50% chance of being carries and getting malaria resistance. Something similar could be (and probably is) true of a hypothetical "gay gene".
Thanks for that. I'm glad that Lord Lucas has agreed, but I don't think that it's legally binding. He was expressing an opinion too. The legalities of it weren't determined (He states himself that it is legal blackmail).
Not to mention that Lord Lucas had parliamentary privilege, you can libel and slander whoever you like on the floor of the Lords.
If the employer tells you these are the rules, you follow the rules.
That's a shitty employer you work for, personally, if an employer gives me inane rules, I ask "why?" to see if they can justify them. Even then if I think that the justification was dumb, I'll only follow them in my workplace, not at home or elsewhere. Indeed, if I'm at my place of work, but at lunch or on another break I won't follow them then, either. Their rules only apply when they're paying.
The funniest about all this is that most people with security clearance would have been able to access those cables anyway through the gov systems.
I suspect that this is wrong. I have only held security clearance in the UK, so there may be some differences with the USA, but I believe that these points hold on both sides of the pond
Like you, I'm in the UK but from press reports, all this stuff was classified up to "secret" and was on a single database accessible by around three million people: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/nov/28/us-embassy-cable-leak-diplomacy-crisis Hence the ability of a single disgruntled employee to download and leak it all. The reason for this ease of access was because before 9/11 the US government's various agencies were having problems sharing info.
Pratchett satirised this wooly theological thinking with the line: "It's turtles all the way down".
As much as I love Terry Pratchett, he didn't invent or popularise the concept of "Turtles all the way down" I don't think that line is even in any of the Discworld novels as the great A' tuin is swimming through space (destination unknown) right from the colour of magic; in one of the books we see baby world turtles, but none of them stand on each other...
Furthermore, ask any honest cosmologist and he'll tell you that at our current level of understanding the universe is turtles all the way down, or more accurately turtles all the way out and turtles all the way back; they're just standing on the big bang. Underneath that there are just more turtles. Eventually we'll hopefully be able to eliminate the turtles, but for now we still have a turtle problem.
Why is parent modded troll? He's entirely correct; there's almost no way that a British newspaper will ignore a D-Notice. Of course once the info reaches UK bloggers they might report that that fact. They'll also talk a lot about how this info is all over the internet. The only publication that may ignore it is Private Eye because AFAIK as they don't attend government press conferences etc. anyway - they also tend to be far more informed about the behind the scenes goings on at Wetminster... If it's really juicy and implicates senior British politicians they may well publish and be damned.
I can't understand TFA. Does this give the registrar power to steal only .co.uk domains, or any TLD that's registered with them?
Nominet administers all *.uk domains, but only *.uk domains, so .com, .org etc. will be unaffected.
Okay. You're not necessarily a pirate. You're just semantically misguided.
UK case law rests on his side, not yours. It's not just semantics - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxford_v_Moss
Your explanation is actually very compelling. Thank you.
Woah, Woah, this is slashdot. You can't come here and admit the other person might have a point!
;p
You're meant to argue semantics about how this law is loosely worded and could be abused, or perhaps go really libertarian claim that this is government intervention is artificially driving down the cost of treasure by increasing supply. I was saving replies for both of those.
Anyway, shock over, thank you for having a civil and courteous debate rather than degenerating into the name-calling and general douchery that slashdot debates usually end up in. It's been a pleasure.
It seems that way. But I have to wonder if, pre- that act, the law tilted a certain way. For example, if it was always the property of the owner of the land it was found on, then this law steals half their profit away in the name of compromise. If it was always the property of the person who found it, then this law steals half their profit away. Minus lawyer fees, of course. :) Compromise is cool and all, but I don't want to compromise on my half of the booty. Nobody does.
Totally understandable, however if all of it was the property of the land-owner, there would be no reason for people to hunt for treasure and you would have got zero because the guy with the metal detector didn't search your land. He needs an incentive too.
You could make the argument that the metal detector people should all draw up contracts with all the individual land owners but what land owner would want to pay for a lawyer to draw up or check a contract every time some nutter with a metal detector wanted to search his land? Again, you get zero profit as no treasure is found because you decide it's not worth the hassle of letting him on your land for the remote chance he finds something.
This law incentivises both detectors and land owners so that a profit can actually be made, there would be far less treasure found without it. It actually makes it easy for ordinary people to get a fair and just solution without having to involve lawyers and courts, with the bonus that the rest of the country also benefits because our heritage is preserved. IMO it's a rare example of a good law.
That doesn't seem to be what the statute pasted a few messages above said, which is what I was responding to.
The way it works in practice is that anything found and declared "treasure" (i.e. old enough or otherwise culturally significant) is automatically the property of the crown, in return the crown usually gives a reward split between the finder and the land owner, the value of the reward is usually the price they get at sale from a museum or similar institution. As I said, if not for this law there would either be countless civil cases about who gets the treasure and\or reward or the crown would take it without giving one. Neither of these are desired outcomes, the law is a compromise.
but not being able to own something I found myself is b.s.
He found it on someone else's land. Why should it belong to him & not the land owner? This law solves that problem by saying that it belongs to the state and he & the land owner have to split the proceeds of the reward (it's sale). It's far better than protracted civil action between the two parties whilst preserving the cultural heritage of the nation. It seems like a win-win situation to me, no pointless court cases & all parties are rewarded. What's the problem?
b) He'll show up his first day of highschool in a Porsche, I'm sure he'll do fine.
"Highschool" equivalent here in the UK is from ages 11-16 and you can't get a provisional license until age 17, most people (I know, anyway) don't bother actually learning to drive until at least Uni (age 19\20 onwards), so he might show up at college(17-18) in a Porche, but certainly not High school (or secondary school as we call it).
Yeah. This is the kind of thing that should have been settled with a chat, or even ignored.
That's exactly what the Police did, it's the bureaucrats in the CPS (Crown Prosecution Service) who are to blame for this one, not the cops. Both the cops and the airport did minimal investigation.
In the UK? Not twitter, but phone - yes.
The IRA usually warned the police that they are going to blow up something to avoid collateral damage casualties.
If those bombs were happening today I would not be suprised if they were tweeted instead of phoned-in.
IRA however is a strange exemption to the overall "rules" of terrorism. Most of today's terrorists would go for the opposite - to kill as many bystanders as possible.
They didn't phone to warn, they phoned to make sure that everyone knew it was them - if they waited until after the bombs went off all of the myriad of republican paramilitary groups would have tried to claim responsibility. By phoning a warning 5mins before the bomb went off, the police knew it was them & they gained some positive PR whilst maximising damage and casualties.
I can't believe I'm about to say this, but Timothy makes an excellent point about who we . Here's what Mr. Chambers originally said:
"Robin Hood Airport is closed. You've got a week... otherwise I'm blowing the airport sky high!"
Here's what Mr. Compton said:
"Can someone please stone Yasmin Alibhai-Brown to death? I shan't tell Amnesty if you don't. It would be a blessing, really."
Neither one has the ring of a joke, neither one is in good taste, but the former is defended while the latter is fodder for criticism. Now, back to your comment:
You have no sense of context - Chambers' tweet was @hisgirlfriend whom he was going to fly to Belfast to see when he discovered that the airport was closed, Compton's tweet had the hashtag #R5L because he was replying to something he had heard on Radio 5 Live. Viewed in that context it becomes very obvious, very quickly that neither were actually malicious.
Also, is it just me or is there a difference between a man who fought against slavery and a man who made a bomb treath for no reason?
Who made a bomb threat? There's no indication that the tweeter intended his words be treated as a bomb threat, but was just mouthing off to his readers. As for a reason,
Paul Chambers, 26, said he acted in frustration after Robin Hood Airport in South Yorkshire was closed by snow.
Not even all his readers, the original tweet was directed @hisfriend (now his girl friend) who lives in Belfast and was going to fly to visit.
The Home Office has a specialist unit set up to deal specifically with forced (aka "arranged") marriages,
There's a big difference between forced and arranged marriages, hell even the British aristocracy still arrange marriages because of the need to find a 'suitable' boy\girl - The difference is that the boys\girls in question get to say 'no'. There is no option to say 'no' in forced marriages and questions of (so called) "dishonour" start to come into it. Please don't mix the two.