Posts by Chris Hunt

Joy Division designer tackles England footie strip

Again?

I thought the England shirt had already be redesigned to fit in with their new sponsors. See http://tinyurl.com/39fduh5

Japanese press step into execution chamber

Reoffending

For those who point out how the death penalty stops murderers reoffending, that only applies to *convicted* murderers.

Imagine yourself on the jury at a murder trial. You have to determine if the accused is guilty beyond reasonable doubt. If you know that your decision will send them to the gallows, how unreasonable do your doubts need to be before you dismiss them? The death penalty increases the risk that murderers walk free.

It seems to me that the level of crime in different parts of the world doesn't bear much relation to the nature of the penal system. There are places with draconian systems and high crime, and places with liberal systems and low crime, and vice versa. Harsher sentences to drive down crime is one of those solutions that is "simple, obvious and wrong".

Whatever the answer is, I don't think it involves killing people.

UK ICT classes killing kids' interest in tech

Lack of Focus

I took a look at the GCSE syllabus for one course at

http://www.ashcombe.surrey.sch.uk/curriculum/ict/GCSE/Y11_ShortCourseSyllabus.pdf

If it's representative of all such qualifications it shows a lack of focus on what the qualification is intended to achieve. It looks like a fairly random collection of "things that have something to do with computers", some of them pretty irrelevant in the 21st century.

If the intention is to teach general IT skills that will be of use to anybody working in an office, and a lot of people working in a whole lot of other places, build a course that teaches that. That would be a really valuable course to a lot of people, arguably it should be in the core curriculum that every pupil learns.

If the intention is to teach kids to become programmers and to develop other skills that would be useful in an IT career, that needs to be taught as a completely separate subject. Such a course would (and should) have less mass appeal, but would be a lot more relevant than learning how to use Word.

London hospital hosted grumble flick shoot

Why Not?

" it was a big-budget affair and generated substantial income for the hospital [...] it cannot be said to be contributing to the objectives of the primary care trust."

If it generated substantial income for the hospital, that was money they could re-invest in meeting their clinical objectives. Sounds pretty good to me - if the NHS has assets lying idle that can be put to work supplementing the taxpayer, why not?

Of course, what they *actually* spent the money on was probably a full-time film liason manager on £50k a year + car, but you can dream can't you?

Seoul police crack down on Holy Water filter prof

What's the problem?

"Kim claimed that he had digitally captured the healing powers of genuine Holy Water from the Catholic Shrine at Lourdes"

And he's right. His water has exactly the same healing power as the "genuine" stuff, with a fraction of the carbon footprint. Plus he's taking money from gullible people that otherwise would go to the Catholic Church.

They should be giving him a medal.

RAC prof: Road charges can end the ripoff of motorists

Road charging and peak hours

I've never understood this whole "discourage people from driving at peak times by introducing road charges" thing.

I'm already discouraged from driving at peak times by the fact that the roads are busy. It's much nicer to drive at times when they are emptier. However, I'm not on the road at rush hour for my own amusement - I'm there because I have to be at work on time. Road charging wouldn't make a blind bit of difference to peak hour congestion, except to make it more expenive to Joe Public. The citizens of Manchester and other places had the sense to realise this - it's just the politicians who are stuck in a jam.

Robobeachcop demands licence from Poole snapper

You're missing an important clue

"a council official said he was not allowed to take pictures on Sandbanks"

Sandbanks is home to some of the richest people in the country - it has the fourth highest land value in the world (admittedly that's just according to ickypedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandbanks ). I'm sure those folks don't want anyone pointing a camera at them, and have more than enough wonga to persuade a few councillors that "public safety issues" demand a photo ban.

German bank robbers in Italian Job moment

One for the phrasebook

via O-level German and babel fish:

Sie sollen nur die blutigen Türen zu sprengen

QinetiQ lends PARIS a helping hand

While you're in there...

...any chance of seeing if a siphon will work?

Waterstone's whips out its pendulous dugs

What I think

That new logo is the dog's bollocks.

Literally.

Vote Lib Dem, doom humanity to extinction

I agree with Nick

Ok, I realise Lewis is an ex navy man, and no doubt has lots of mates whose future jobs depend on Trident being renewed, but this tosh really isn't worthy of him.

We have a limited amount of money to spend, and can choose between spending it on the defence commitments we have right here, right now and for the forseeable future; or we can spend it on a weapon system we'd never use, to deter an enemy who doesn't exist.

Not a difficult choice, I'd say, but if the case for Trident is so unassailable, why is it being explicitly kept out of the (long overdue) defence review? Maybe truly expert opinion on the subject wouldn't agree with our beloved politicians' views - they don't want to create another Professor Nutt affair.

There are lots of countries - most of them in fact - who don't have nuclear weapons. I don't see any of them nuked out of existence or threatened with same. They seem to be getting along just fine. Why would Britain be any different?

If some mad mullah developed a nuclear bomb and decided to hit us with it, they wouldn't send it in a fancy ICBM with a smoke trail leading back to their homeland. They'd put it in the back of a Transit and drive it to the target. The first we'd know about it is when we woke up and found a smoking wasteland where London used to be (some would say that would be an improvement, I couldn't possibly comment). Where are you going to fire your missiles? What price deterrence then?

It's really hard to deter suicide bombers set on mass murder with the threat of death and mass murder.

Incredible Hulk snared on Street View

Look again

First picture, left foreground, big green man in jeans and white top.

Blighty surrenders to Street View

Amazing achievement

I hope they're gonna store all this data somewhere safe. Imagine how interesting it'll be to historians in the future to have a snapshot of the whole country - like a visual Domesday Book.

MPs, Lords ask if Mandybill is human rights friendly

Missing the Point

Considering whether withdrawal of the internet invades one's privacy, or curtails free expression, or might (in some circumstances) be a form of collective punishment misses the point.

The big ECHR barrier to this bill is Article 6 - the right to a fair trial. Lord Vaderson is proposing a system in which people are punished on the basis of an accusation alone, without any need to make and prove a case in a court of law. That's the worst problem with this bill (though certainly not the only one).

If it gets passed, I'm going to accuse his Lordship of downloading my copyrighted content three times. It won't be provable (or even true), but it doesn't need to be!

Schools minister strikes elegiac tone at Bett

Erm...

What's "Bett"?

Please shut up about the Mull of Kintyre Chinook crash

Stains

> It's no dishonour to a pilot, no stain on his reputation, to say he could have made a mistake under such conditions

Surely being labelled "grossly negligent" is a very considerable stain on anybody's reputation, but maybe it's considered OK in the Navy?

I doubt if we'll ever get to the bottom of what actually happened that night. If we could leave it at "open verdict", I'd be happy to move on.

Angels can't fly: Official

That further research

Are you sure it wasn't "the transport and fate of ursine faecal matter"?

Gov targets boozers as Manc ID card scheme launches

@John Smith 19

No need to be Home Secretary to get "no queue national ID card issuing", just go to Manchester!

Green politician says oral sex is part of being Swedish

"I said it in the heat of the moment and it just slipped out"

fnarr fnarr...

Libel reform campaigners seek £10k damages cap

@Peter2

"the sun et al don't publish untrue stories by the dozen"

I take it you're not familiar with our tabloid press?

Mandy declares 'three strikes' war on illegal file sharers

Why?

If, as the Sith Lord tells us, 95% of tracks are dowloaded unlawfully, why do we need a new law? We have a law, people are breaking it, go out and get 'em. How hard can it be if 95% of us are villains?

On the other hand, if the marketplace is so totally dominated by pirates, the creative sector seems to be surviving rather well regardless. This "threat" to their existence doesn't seem to be having much effect, unless I've missed a lot of entertainment companies going belly-up in the last year or two. The financial ballsup foisted upon us by the banks looks like a much bigger threat - maybe we should be going after them instead?

I'm not a file-sharer, legal or illegal, so I don't have a dog in this fight, but I don't like the look of this proposal. What I particularly dislike if this:

"Only persistent rule breakers would be affected - and there would be an independent, clear and easy appeals process"

This is "sentence first, trial afterwards", in true Alice in Wonderland style. First they cut off your access, then you try to prove yourself innocent in an appeal.

By all means paint illegal downloading as a terrible crime akin to mugging old ladies, if that's what floats your boat, but it doesn't mean you can ignore natural justice. Allegations should have to be *proved* before sanctions can be taken.

Dallas cops fine drivers for 'not speaking English'

W

Fined for not speaking English properly?

Doesn't George Bush live in Texas? .........

UK.gov convinces just 2,000 Mancunians to join ID card trial

An offer

So they "haven't really marketed the scheme yet", but they've spent nearly half a million quid not marketing it.

In the spirit of cost cutting in the public sector, I'm offering to not market the scheme for £200,000.

The Twitter storm that saved freedom of speech

@Grease Monkey

> Journalists used to be hard nosed bastards who would stand up for what they believed.

No, you're confusing truth with the movies. In fiction, the romantic idea of a principled, hard-nosed journo (or member of any other profession for that matter) prepared to go to the wall for his/her beliefs in commonplace. In reality most people will buckle down and think of their careers and their pensions.

There are, of course, shining exceptions to this rule - but I'm not one of them, and I bet you aren't either.

Hypnotist expands breasts, cures irritable bowels

Hmmm...

> his CDs can put martial artists "in the perfect zone to complete your task and beat any competitor

What about a competitor who also listens to his CDs?

Cops cuff Mafia Don's crocodile enforcer

The answer

> The powers that be are unsure how it got to Italy

Maybe it swam with the fishes?

Oz bottle shop falls for 'double your money' scam

Wouldn't happen over here

> The victims, meanwhile, will escape a legal knuckle-rap since they "had not committed an offence"

Ah, the old "not done anything illegal" defence eh? That wouldn't do them any good in Brown's Britain - they'd get at least ten years on the DNA database up here.

Home Office foot-dragging exposes ACPO to criticism

Relevant!

"Whether guidance was issued to police forces by central Government or by ACPO is irrelevant"

Whether the police force are guided by our elected representatives, or by their own leaders, is extremely relevant - if we are to avoid a police state.

UK.gov revives net cut-off threat for illegal downloaders

@muttley

The point is, under the Dark Lord's new scheme, they won't NEED a court summons or a prosecution. The system goes straight from accusation to sentence, without any of that bothersome evidence stuff in the middle.

Why?

All this hassle to solve the "problem of unlawful peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing".

If this behaviour is already "unlawful", why do we need new legislation to deal with it? Just take the file-sharers to the courts, show them your evidence and bingo!

If the record companies don't have evidence that would stand up in court, that's no reason to decide to skip the "proven guilty" bit and go straight on to sentencing, quite the opposite in fact.

That's the truely chilling element to this proposal, and a real challenge to our human rights - not the human right to be on the internet (a bit shaky, that one), but the right to justice. According to this proposal ISPs have to "send notifications to subscribers *alleged* by rights holders to be infringing copyright", and to take further action against anybody receiving too many such notifications. There's no mention of any of these allegations having to be proved true, nor of their recipient having the right to defend him/herself from them.

This one's got Mandelson's grubby little paw prints all over it, but I wouldn't get to hopeful for a change next year - the tories aren't exactly the sworn enemies of big business are they?

Government unbans dirty vids but bans 'legal highs'

@AC 10:57

That club needs to have a dialogue with its steakholders.

Collar the lot of us! The biometric delusion

The bigger picture

I think even new labour realise that ID cards won't work, but they won't have the job of making them work.

When the tories win the next election*, it'll be their job to implement the cards, and their fault when it all goes tits up. Think "millenium dome" with knobs on.

Of course the tories are committed to dropping the scheme altogether. That's even better for NuLab - they can accuse the tories of being soft on crime/security/terrorism; and next time there's a terrorist attack they can claim that ID cards might have prevented it.

All good ammunition in the ongoing political bunfight, for only £5M and counting - but who cares, it's only our money!

Of course the plan runs into trouble if, somehow, Labour win next year (let's call this the "John Major" scenario). Then they just keep it in a perpetual series of consultations and trials and whatnot to keep it on the "coming soon but not yet ready" list so as not to pay the price of cancelling it. Sadly, with daily-mail-appeasing uppermost in their minds, I think the tories might do this too.

Card-shaped icon with "fail" written on it...

Crystal ball torches woman's flat

Unforseeable

The sun? Actually shining? THIS summer? Who could possibly have expected that?

Chinese more willing to trust hookers than pols

The difference is...

Politicians claim they're NOT out to screw you.

Powered robot suits make debut on Tokyo streets

The wrong trousers?

Techno-trousers hit the Tokyo streets! Don't these people watch Wallace & Grommit?

Too-tall terror snapper stopped by cops again

Hmmm....

It seems to me that in a confrontation between plod and photographer there's a very real chance that one of them could behave like a pompous arse.

If I were the snapper in question, I'd want to be sure that it wasn't me.

So if they ask nicely, and it isn't too inconvenient, I don't mind telling them who I am and showing whatever ID I might have on me (if any). I know I don't have to, but if it gets him out of my hair so be it. If he wants a look at my pics, that's probably OK too if I don't have anything better to do.

If he starts talking carp about me not being allowed to photograph this or that, or wants me to delete something, that's the time to get shirty.

Sure, I know, it's wimping out, it's a slippery slope and all that; but as a photographer I'm more interested in light than heat.

Russian's Bulgarian airbags burst mid-flight

Re: Ouch

"Needless to say you have never heard such a synchronised intake of breath in your life!"

Followed by synchronised squeky voices, no doubt?

Stop ID cards, says Scottish minister

So...

"We remain on progress to bring in what we believe has widespread support"

Here's something else with widespread support: GENERAL ELECTION NOW!

Hitler kicked off iPhone

My favorite

is this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8fbrUjjivw

The original film, incidentally, is fantastic.

Fox terminates The Sarah Connor Chronicles

Swapsies

Any chance we could get Fox to do Last of the Summer Wine? Not for long, obviously...

Wolfram Alpha - a new kind of Fail

Pretty Poor, El Reg.

Look, just because Wolfram Alpha looks a bit like a search engine doesn't mean it actually IS one. Just read the FAQs: "Is Wolfram|Alpha a search engine? No." So comparing it to Google and finding it wanting is a pretty pointless exercise.

I heard Wolfram interviewed on the radio yesterday and he was pretty clear that it wasn't intended to be a "Google killer", but a different kind of app for a different audience. It didn't seem to register much with the interviewer though. El Reg is supposed to be a specialist publication - you should be able to understand this concept.

Still, in the spirit of this article, I've done a few test of my own on the usability of Wolfram|Alpha...

How does it compare with my washing machine? EPIC FAIL! I've had my dirty clothes piled on a screenshot of WA for ages and they aren't even wet yet. C'mon Wolfram, get your finger out!

Is that the kind of review you're looking for in El Reg these days?

Top British boffin: Time to ditch the climate consensus

I don't know much about climate change but...

can it really be true that what this issue needs is more sociologists working on it? What next? Homeopaths? Media studies graduates?

Heck, why don't we ask Paris what she thinks?

Star Trek Klingon lingo hits cutting room floor

Huh?

> Star Wars/Michael Jackson (which is basically the same thing).

If you've never seen Star Wars, how would you know?

And, more important, what the blithering heck do you mean? How can a series of six feature films of variable quality be "the same thing" as a mostly-plastic pop star accused of kiddy fiddling?

The force has been with them, I suppose.

Phorm boss blogs from a dark, dark place

Arr mateys

'Tis a battle royal betwen us Privacy Pirates and Phorm's Nosey Ninjas. I wonder who will win...

Hair-stripping fungus threatens future of judo and sumo

@ AC 1138

Competitive Ninjitsu would be a brilliant idea. Once Japan got an international team together they could pit them against the Somali pirates to see who would win.

Screeching rails close London Tube station

Oh the Horror...

Londoners forced to undertake 10 minute walk to the next station along the line.

Brits and Yanks struck with embarasment embarrassment

Ahem...

So the (admittedly extremely difficult) nature of English spelling is "holding Britain and the US back" is it?

One of those nations ruled over the biggest empire the world has ever known. The other is the world's only remaining superpower and biggest economy (until they get overtaken by China, and their written language is pretty tricky too!)

Not much evidence of being "held back" there, I think. Indeed, maybe the opposite is the case - having overcome the vagiaries of english spelling at an early age, we're ready to take on the world! I'd certainly like to see more of a cost/benefit analysis before we go changing anything.

Oh, and the reason that non-native speakers tend to out-perform us natives is simple selection bias. If you're able to live in a foreign country and master its language, you're probably (a) pretty intelligent, (b) motivated to get it right, (c) in possession of a knack for learning languages. You're thus likely to do better than a randomly selected local in a language test.

Lucky Mancs could get ID cards first, Jacqui declares

Sting in the tail

@Frank: "It's backed by the biggest database of any size made anywhere detailing every breath you take and move you make"

Ah, now I see, it's not going to be run by the police but by The Police.

Street View vehicle kills Bambi

D'oh! A Deer! A female deer...

Google's response posted here:

http://google-latlong.blogspot.com/2009/01/oh-deer-street-view-and-road-safety.html

Apparently "60,000-70,000 deer collisions happen per year in New York alone", and according to http://money.cnn.com/2005/11/04/news/newsmakers/deer/ , NY's not even in the top ten bambicide states (at least it wasn't in 2005).

Amazing there's any of the blighters left.

Benjamin Button eyes 13 Oscars

Stop It

Ok El Reg, DON'T send a new Ferrari, a troop of topless models and £1 million cash round to my house for me to do with as I please. I'm ordering this as brusquely as I can, m'kay?