* Posts by John PM Chappell

200 publicly visible posts • joined 7 Mar 2007

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Franco robbed Sir Cliff of Eurovision win

John PM Chappell
Happy

@ Mark

Chip on (Irish) shoulder, much? ;¬)

As someone who considers himself Scots and much of whose family is Irish (I can hold dual nationality, in fact, should I wish), I have to say I got a laugh out of that bullshit you posted.

For the record, my experience is that many Scots and Irish are hugely bigotted individuals with massive chips on their shoulders and incredible ignorance of the rest of the world or even their own countries. Some English can be a bit much but they usually manage it in a basically goodnatured "We're all English really, aren't we?" kind of way.

Oh, just in case you're wondering, I'm SNP and my Irish family were/are SF and FF, so the "Self-hating" or "Unionist" slurs won't stick ;¬)

I Was A Teenage Bot Master

John PM Chappell
Flame

Another Skiddie bites the dust..

.. but the problem remains. As I see it, he's guilty of what he did but partial guilt belongs to those who do not take basic steps to secure their machines and/or exercize common sense. I also hold Microsoft (and to a much lesser extent other software companies) responsible for their atrocious attitude to and track record on security.

A basic flaw, for example, with Windows (until Vista at least) is that by default, on home user systems, a user account has full administrative rights with no challenge dialogs generated when they are used. Worse, an awful lot of software, written by Microsoft as well as others, will not even install or in some cases execute, without such privileges.

This guy was not really talented, not especially intelligent, but he learned that it was relatively easy and financially rewarding to use his skills, such as they were, to compromise poorly protected and/or ineptly used machines, for a bare minimum of effort on his part. It also clearly made him feel 'big' and 'clever', plastering over his poor self esteem. In short: The American Dream (tm).

This skiddie isn't the first and he will not be the last, in fact, until Joe Luser takes some responsibility for the security of his machine and exercizes some common sense and moral judgement (how about not downloading that 'free', i.e. stolen, version of your favourite software? The one loaded with trojans.) this problem will be with us, no matter how hard people work on education of users, removal of the payloads, prosecution of the perpetrators and so on.

HSBC in further data loss

John PM Chappell

Re: It's not difficult is it!

You're right, also, more to the point, those same minimum-wage security plods can be offered more money than they will make all year to 'see nothing' as the kit walks out the door. It's not their kit, after all and if they get fired, they still have the extra cash, if not.. win/win.

I seem to recall some seriously well-heeled and organized crime syndicates operating in HK. How useful do we think this server would be to them? Sadly they'd also be the very kind of people able to peel away those 'multiple layers' of security, which, let's face it, is basically trivial once you have physical access (though still time-consuming). If I were them, though, I'd already have appropriate access credentials, passwords and the like.

John PM Chappell
Dead Vulture

Well...

At least they [HSBC] followed sensible procedure by investigating it before shouting about the incident to the world at large. Such incidents are never good but I'm inclined to believe they do indeed use a lot of protection on the data. Of course, I still think it's basically inevitable that the data be recovered by the bad guys, eventually.

On another matter, Mr Leyden [et al.] : there is no 'a' and no 'double l' in "publicly".

:¬)

How to destroy 60 hard drives an hour

John PM Chappell
Black Helicopters

@ A J Stiles

I was going to ridicule your conspiracy theory but someone else has beaten me to it, so allow me to simply confirm that from first hand experience as well as anecdotal evidence, if you are up against people with the money and technical expertise of a government, software methods are not going to suffice (at least not without a _lot_ of repeated overwriting).

In fact, if you happen to encounter the wrong (or right, depending on perspective) police force, you're in a similar boat; many are hopeless at digital forensics but quite a few are not and several employ professionals to assist them who are anything but Uni students with a server or two and some open source tools.

As I said originally, it all depends on what you are trying to hide and from whom; if it's your pictures of the ex-girlfriend from a determined or tech-savvy (and presumably quite creepy!) new squeeze, DBAN will do nicely (although if you want to keep them, TruCrypt volume is the way to go ;¬) ). If you are handling the kind of stuff that ought to attract the attention of well funded police operations, intelligence services or well-heeled crime syndicates, and you want the data gone, physical destruction of the drive is called for and to be effective and certain, that means total destruction of the platters (and on modern drives you want to toast the silicon too, to get the cache, just in case, as has previously been pointed out). Of course if you simply want to keep it and prevent access, correct use of TruCrypt, again, is the way to go.

So, your suggestion is perfectly reasonable for most people, I mean, who really has to worry about digital forensics being used on their drives? However, it is not the foolproof method you seem to believe. If I were recycling drives I'd use DBAN, if I were expected to _destroy the data beyond all recovery_ then those platters are going to become liquid and the drive electronics are going to become ash.

[Black Helicopter because of conspiracy theories and repeated reference to 'the powers that be' ;¬)]

John PM Chappell
Happy

@ JC

Sorry, but no. :¬)

There's a reason 'first world' militaries only accept physical destruction of media, mate.

John PM Chappell
Stop

Well...

DBAN, Eraser and similar tools are perfectly adequate software methods for anyone short of professional criminals, paedophiles, espionage agents or military.

For complete confidence or if you are one of the above (and thus likely to want to hide the data from people with long arms and big budgets) the only satisfactory method is complete destruction of the platters, ideally melting or turning into fine particulate.

Particularly of note is that putting high calibre rounds through the drive, bending the platters, using solvent on the platters or even belt sanding do not actually guarantee that data is completely destroyed (trust me on this).

For those of you with the "I have a cheaper method than 11.5k!..." if it one of the above covered suggestions, consider it already discounted as suitable and if it does cover the criteria but involves hazardous procedures, bear in mind that whilst you might not care about H&S your company does and you will eventually when you injure yourself or worse someone else. Also, in most cases it is necessary to have a safe and effective method which can be certified as such and where you can retain evidence that destruction took place; most of the suggestions above do not qualify without some serious added burdens, whereas this 11.5k kit plus a minimum of written procedures and paperwork will.

Gawker - Texas's supercomputing Ranger

John PM Chappell
Happy

Pfft.

No real argument, I suspect. Aside from 'fanboi' types I can't imagine anyone really claims to like Vista and my experience is pretty negative even ignoring the interface. I don't see that there is any real argument. In fact, even XP is bloated and underpowered really but we have had years to learn to exploit it and write apps that get the most from it.

John PM Chappell
Flame

Re: re: Pierre

Mike - in other words an over-powered system to run an underpowered resource hog that looks 'pretty' (actually, I don't like the interface but that is a side issue), has compatibility issues and basically adds nothing of genuine interest to the consumer but a lot of crap for MS friends in Hollywood, etc.

Vista is rubbish and to a man, everyone I know who has it experiences serious issues with it, especially with hardware and software compatibility. Those applications which can be made to run on it but were not written for it seem to experience serious performance degradation compared to XP. Is this honestly an OS you want to blow the trumpet for?

Of those I know using it, half wish they had XP instead and several have asked to *ahem* downgrade them to a copy of XP and move their data back on for them. I may yet help them out too, if I find the time.

Turkey probes The God Delusion for 'insulting religion'

John PM Chappell
Flame

"z" question

@ "This" : Guess again sunshine! :¬) It does indeed have a 'z' in it in the correct English spelling, the 's' spelling is from a fad for Francophilia which swept the south of England about two centuries ago now; they wanted to make words look more French, hence the retention of 'u' in words where it was disappearing and the addition in other words where it did not belong but 'looked right', alongside using 's' instead of 'z' in places where the same or similar French word would have it.

There are a few words which are not spelt correctly with a 'z', "analyze" being the best example, since it comes from "analysis" but any place where a noun has been made into a verb by adding -ize to end, that is the correct, coming from the (Ancient) Greek method for doing the same with 'eizo'. Of course, if spelling were more phonetic, they would all be z, as tends to be favoured by the Americans.

As for Turkey... well, they are large enough to *not* join the EU, it's the rest of the EU that would like them to do so and many Turks who do not wish to.

Religion is, of course, stupid and criticizing it should be a protected right in any civilized and especially any secular state.

US man sets himself on fire and cuts off his own arm

John PM Chappell
Flame

Aye...

... Americans = Stupid, Darwin Awards, yadda yadda yadda.. but;

seriously, he (apparently relatively calmly) cut his own arm off, while the skin on it was "coming off like melted plastic" with a 'pocket knife'. He was fucking stupid, in the way that has cost many a tradesman a finger, hand or even an arm, before but he had the presence of mind and sheer balls to use a knife to amputate his own arm whilst in conflagration that was apparently hot enough to strip skin and muscle.

I'd buy him a beer or few whiskies, that's for sure.

Panto star sacked for foul-mouthed outburst

John PM Chappell
Flame

In line with the outburst..

.. what the fuck is "ChristX"? It's either Christmas (or any of the more accurate names, such as Winterfest, Yuletide, etc) or Xmas, as the 'X' stands for Christ, from the Greek letter 'chi'.

As for censuring him, well, he was an idiot. If you are 'in the public eye' and attempting to trade on your supposed 'family appeal' then you have to modify your behaviour in line with the so-called 'family friendly' bullshit.

However, 'swearing' is just not a big deal, in fact it's not even a deal at all, just a weird hangover from puritan attitudes which were only ever adopted by a small minority of people in the UK and sadly re-invented by people who imagined them as "Victorian Values" and thus the middle-class ideal.

How HMRC gave away the UK's national identity

John PM Chappell
Flame

Me too...

... I have often impersonated my father, as, contrary to their contract as it happens, banks and others often refuse to deal with my mother unless they first speak to him, even though all accounts are 'shared' (i.e. joint and several liability and authority) and this has been established and re-iterated multiple times.

I do this by knowing little more than my father's date of birth and his mother's maiden name, in addition to the family address.

Oh, to the HMRC guy, in common with other posters - thank fuck you don't typically have external email access. Perhaps this kind of fiasco will highlight why decent IT staff and decent Admin staff are needed and that you cannot get them for £5.50 to £6.00 an hour.

Hushmail warns users over law enforcement backdoor

John PM Chappell
Gates Horns

*sigh* Silly paranoia begins...

Anyone imagining absolute security whilst using a middleman was naive to say the least.

As for the above nonsense about MS - they are not a service provider (when you are simply using one of their horrible OSes) so your paranoia can be notched down a bit, sunshine.

No2ID calls in pledge cash to 'probe' ID Act's enabling laws

John PM Chappell
Thumb Up

Well...

... the wording on the pledge amounts to "If 10K others give a tenner, I will also" - since more than that 10K have indeed so pledged, the call is valid.

This ignores the fact that any attempt to claim "But it is not defence!" woefully and possibly wilfully misunderstands the nature of British (or more accurately, English & Welsh) law. It's sensible and perhaps even necessary to first establish any obvious flaws and contradictions in the law as presently in force, not least because it may prove impossible or extremely difficult to oppose on any other grounds.

For the record, I pledged, openly and will be sending along the tenner. The message was definitely sent out and I received it before seeing this story, too.

Six-month hangover for 60-pint Scotsman

John PM Chappell
Flame

It's been said before but...

... sixty pints over four days is only an average of fifteen a day, which, whilst clearly a binge, is hardly a staggering amount, not in the UK and certainly not for a typical weegie or even a Scot elsewhere.

For the record (and again not in the vein of boasting, per se) I used to consume considerably more than that rate, in spirits mostly, when I was at Public School and between thirteen and fifteen. Can't drink anything like that these days, at least partly thanks to such stupid levels of consumption, but mostly thanks to an inherited liver condition. Don't miss it as much as I thought I would though, in fact it's quite nice to have total recall and not cringe the next day.

Along with other posters here, I feel it'd be nice if the rather silly Americanisms were dropped, at least on the .UK site, as they are not culturally relevant and tend to just annoy us. Glesga is well east of Mississippi, within the standard temporal and geographical frames of reference, the supposed hangover was at least seven, not six, months and I'm amazed they actually got round to seeing him before he expired.

@Christopher Rogers: Clearly most of us do, personally, I find your whingeing a lot more irritating than the repeated posts :¬)

China hijacks Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo! traffic?

John PM Chappell
Black Helicopters

This is what...

...proxies are for.

Bubbly billygoat-bursting boffinry brouhaha at MoD

John PM Chappell
Paris Hilton

Spot the yank...

"bleeding heart hippy liberals" ? I mean, really, LOL.

The Pirate Bay absconds with domain name of its nemesis

John PM Chappell
Paris Hilton

Caveat Emptor

Pirate Bay does not host the downloads, that's the point of BitTorrent, rather.

As for virus/trojan infected downloads, see my title. In any case, aside from porn, illegally copied films and cracked software, torrents tend not to have any such stuff in them and by no means a majority even in those categories does.

ISP bosses told to get real on broadband speeds

John PM Chappell
Flame

*sigh* With regard to units...

... it is not a conspiracy from drive makers to diddle anyone, nor is it ISPs misleading consumers (about the maximums anyway).

Kilo is an SI prefix and it means x10^3 (i.e. x1000). It has never and never will mean x2^10 (i.e. x1024). However, for the purposes of Computer Science, it is convenient to abbreviate x1024 as 'k' even though in fact it is not. This is not about misleading but simply jargon, since programmers, hardware designers and so on understand that working with binary means that you reach 1024 when you fill a ten digit memory location with ones, but this is still close enough to 1000 for k to be a useful and obvious shorthand.

The problem came with Microsoft, who erroneously report drive size as if it should be calculated based on a kilobyte being 1024 bytes, a megabyte being 1024 x 1024 bytes and so on. The drive manufacturer did not cheat you at all, Microsoft just can't count and/or is ignorant of the units it is quoting.

Communications specialists work in terms of bits per second (b/s or bs^-1) as this is the SI unit of data throughput (bandwidth). 8 Mb/s is 8,000,000 bits per second and not 8,388,608 bits per second (8 x 1,048,576 [1024 x 1024]). Note, this is still bits and not bytes per second (B/s), hopefully I don't need to explain a byte.

As a result of this confusion and the compounding stupidity, the IEC recently introduced the kibi (binary kilo, ki), Mebi (binary mega, Mi), etc unit system. These operate on a base of 2^10 as the unit progression rather than 10^3 and actually are convenient for Computer Scientists but still often incorrectly used or poorly understood, as yet.

Unfortunately, even allowing for this, the gimp that your ISP employs on helpdesk, customer service or sales probably doesn't even understand that bit and byte are not interchangeable, and that one is b and the other B, let alone that k/M/G is not the same as ki/Mi/Gi.

In short, the ISP is offering you "upto, subject to our fair use, distance from exchange, yadda yadda" 8,000,000 bits per second when they offer you an "8 Meg" package, not 8 MiB/s which would in fact be a "67.1 Meg" connection.

BT home router wide open to hijackers

John PM Chappell
Thumb Down

Aye, I know it is not an article on WiFi...

.. however WiFi has been discussed extensively, so:

Hiding SSID is not pointless, but it is of course no obstacle to the determined. WEP is relatively insecure, to the determined. WPA is potentially breakable, by the determined. MAC authentication is not secure against a sufficiently determined attacker.

Hmm, spot a theme? That's right! A *determined* attacker can break security. This is news, why? It's hardly a specific WiFi issue and it doesn't mean you ought not to use security precautions. Script kiddies often don't even get past the "scanning for SSIDs with no encryption" stage when looking to break WiFi nets and MAC screening is pretty effective, as it takes a reasonably techincally capable attacker to figure out what MAC he needs to spoof and how to spoof it. Bottom line? It's always worth securing your network but you have to operate on the assumption that is insecure, just as with any other line of communication.

Tasmanian tumours blamed on inbreeding

John PM Chappell
IT Angle

Presumably...

... you meant 'cervical' and 'papilloma' *sigh*

Tip; if attempting to correct someone, be sure you know what you are on about.

Anyway, you're correct, cervical cancer in women has indeed been linked to the HPV group.

P.S. <now obligatory> "What's the IT angle?"

UK police can now force you to reveal decryption keys

John PM Chappell

Mr Blackley

I propose restricting food to those who can prove they have not committed crimes, as it is has been frequently "used in the furtherance of a crime" by keeping these worthless criminals alive.

Or you could get your head out of your excretive orifice and wise up a little to reality and clear thinking.

John PM Chappell
IT Angle

Aye, but what's the IT angle?

;¬)

More seriously, been waiting for this. I now intend to work hard on showing it up to be ridiculous and probably illegal (in that it conflicts with other legislation with a higher priority).

Needless to say I shall not be handing over any keys, my laptop is multiply password protected and there are encrypted files on my drives.

Luther - TrueCrypt will work just fine, if you don't don't understand the subject don't try and venture 'expert' opinions on it. There are detailed technical explanations of how and why on their website and in their manual.

British teens offered boozing qualification

John PM Chappell

@Alex

It shows, mate, it shows. No apostrophe in learnt ;¬)

Adopt this dog or we'll kill it

John PM Chappell

Genius, Karl!

I bet there is serious money in that, so long you don't base it in Antigua...

John PM Chappell

LOL @ Heartless

No really, were you spaced out when you typed that? ;¬)

I won't burn in 'hell' because:

The word simply means 'cellar' or 'cave'. The concept it was adopted to cover is found in Jewish scriptures which the Xtians also adopted as theirs and has nothing whatsoever to do with flames or suffering. A much later and different suggestion is found in single text, usually called "Revelation" which was written by a man who was either hallucinating through drug use or else through poisoning as a result of illness. In any case, it contradicts many other texts of the Xtian faith and is the only place you find the fiery pit... but guess what? It's for 'Satan' and his 'Demons' not people you don't like.

As for Anubis, quite what you think Egyptian deities have to do with a modern Xtian concept is beyond me, not to mention that there is only one Anubis and he did not chew people to punish their lives. Oh, he was Jackal-headed, too, not a dog.

So, tenuous grasp on reality, no grasp on mythology and anthropomorphize animals... have you sought professional help, at all? :¬)

P.S. I think I'll go find a nice dog Char Sui....

John PM Chappell

Meh. Kill them all.

It's only a dog, at the end of the day, turn them into cheap food, maybe?

Fundy dunderheads make monkey of monkey man

John PM Chappell

Not quite...

Richard Dawkins, whatever else he may be, is not a fundamentalist and certainly not a holder of any faith.

@Blissett: there is no such thing as Darwinism and exactly which fossils are you whittering about? You're aware, of course, that there is no guarantee of any specific organism being fossilized (many cannot possibly be) much less a guarantee we will or could find such fossils? Piss poor reasoning skills, methinks.

@Danny: so-called "Intelligent Design Theory" and "Creationism" are absolutely linked and essentially the same thing. Also, ID is not in fact a theory, either but an easily refuted postulate.

John PM Chappell

Tut tut, Richard

As an atheist, Bright (http://the-brights.net), naturalist, and so on, I'm typically on the same page as Dawkins.

This time however, it looks like he's throwing the dummy out of the pram because he was slightly fleeced by an interviewer who knew that if he gave the full take of the potential film to Dawkins and his mates, they would refuse to talk.

Given that several of 'our community', i.e. atheist/antireligionist, have persuaded, possibly with a little glossing over, religious figures to appear on televised debates or small programmes with a decidedly (and in my opinion legitimately) aggressive stance against them, he can hardly complain too loudly.

Not surprised they changed the title either, first one was crap and this one is not a lot better, though I can see the Bible Belt (their market) thinking it 'terribly clever'.

If you can't take the heat...

Note to despots: You can't kill the internet

John PM Chappell

This could be the final straw

Given the difficulty of preventing realtime reports and despite enormous pressure from China and Russia leading to a weak UN response, I think they may finally manage to chuck the current bunch of corrupt militaristic parasite out, once and for all.

If it goes on long enough, China's only realistic response might very well be to back "regime change" while ensuring such a regime will still be friendly to China.

Consumers confused by HD

John PM Chappell

Umm, nice try but...

Whilst I agree with Stiles' comment about the number of connectors being a backwards step, in a sense, albeit to *potentially* deliver better sound and vision... he's clueless about primary school English. It's -an- HD-DVD without doubt and the letter is "aitch", just the one aitch.

As for Stinky Pete, perhaps you meant "Aitch Dee Em Aye"

Colombian armed robber targets karate school

John PM Chappell

*sigh*

All martial arts teach you to deal with opponents, armed or not. Sports masquerading as martial arts don't really teach you anything aside from the rules and how to 'fight' within them.

Karate, in its various forms (ignoring above reference to 'sport' nonsense) is *all about* dealing with dangerous, armed opponents. If you had to make sure an opponent was unarmed first they would not have been a lot of use, would they now?

Firearms are somewhat different in that they are a ranged weapon and modern firearms can fire repeatedly at a high rate. That said, many of those who resort to threatening others with them have little or no skill with the weapon and no tactical ability, which means they probably will screw up anyway and someone with some training will indeed be able to capably handle them.

For the record, with a pistol, you need your opponent to be around 6 metres (20 or so feet) away, or you are going to have a hard time shooting them if they want to take you down, as that distance can be covered in a surprisingly short time and it's very difficult to shoot someone at grappling range. With a larger gun the distance tends to be even larger thanks to the increased time needed to take aim and they are useless, near enough, at hand-to-hand range.

Guns do one thing very well; hit targets at range, over and over. They're not a magical talisman and bullets are much less lethal than films suggest (Miami shoot out, anyone?).

Blind Judo master floors tobacco stealing skinhead

John PM Chappell

YMMV...

... with regards to Police attitudes to self defence. Here in Staffs, my experience is very negative. Not content with simply being incompetent gung-ho wankers who think having a warrant card makes them somehow superior to 'civilians' (they honestly seem to think that Police officers are not civilians), they have frequently, in my personal experience and that of my friends, attempted to press charges against those who defended themselves, apparently on the simple expedient of "Well, the other guys have run off now, so we can't charge them and the stats will look bad if we don't charge someone..."

I wish I was exaggerating. Perhaps I ought to return to Scotland (which, to be fair, I have long intended), like Bristol, Grampian force seemed to have common sense officers and a genuine street presence.

Secretive FBI 'National Security Letters' to ISPs, Telcos halted

John PM Chappell

HM C&E

The situation has changed considerably with regard to Customs, not least because of embarassing court cases where they abused their excessive powers and then found themself having to actually defend them for once (subsequently losing the cases and so setting precedents) but also as they have been merged with the former Inland Revenue (which makes sense when you remember their primary task).

A US CERT reminder: The net is an insecure place

John PM Chappell

Raheim?

Did you also know that 99% of statistics are made up on the spot? ;¬)

Or, to put it another way, got any evidence, even a source you can quote, for that nonsense about 'Urban Myths' and English speakers? If it's Wikipaedia, don't bother.

Church hall bans 'unchristian' yoga for nippers

John PM Chappell

Two churches, one CoE, one Baptist.

The second was "Saint James Church of England, Taunton" and their vicar is Tim Jones. The Baptists do not have vicars, it is a CoE term. Farrar above is a Minister at "Silver Street Baptist, Taunton".

John PM Chappell

Look to your own house first...

Andy: starting with ad hominem attacks makes you out to be the idiot, not me. Now, one by one I shall address and for the most part refute your nonsense. Thereafter, you shall be ignored as the fool you have now shown yourself to be.

Either someone is talking about it [God] being a 'proper noun' or they are not, you cannot have it both ways; either you're talking bollocks (you are) or you are lying (we'll be charitable). In any case, it's not a name, in reality, nor is it anything but a simple noun. Using "God" with a capital is simply the Xtian equivalent of Judaism and Islam's use of the Hebrew and Arabic phrases for "the [one and only] god" which originates with the Jewish unwillingness to verbalize the personal name of their version of a god.

You're also wrong about "christian"; although it later came to be treated as a name, indeed many ignorant of such matters believe it is "Jesus' surname", 'Christ' is an anglicization of the a Greek title (annointed [man]) which alluded to a Jewish scriptural reference. The Jewish equivalent is anglicized as 'messiah', incidentally.

Yoga is simply a body of exercize, meditation and breathing techniques. It came out of a spiritual movement but that is not quite the same thing. Also, I defy you to even define 'spiritual' in any meaningful way.

Publicly funded buildings cannot operate discriminatory policies, so you would be quite wrong. However, I researched the nature of the monies distributed to parishes and established to my satisfaction that in fact I was wrong. It mostly appears to be money generated by the CoE's massive stocks portfolio and property assets.

What paper I choose to read is utterly irrelevant and I obviously think more clearly than yourself and without needing to bluster verbally, either. For the record the Telegraph aka Torygraph is notorious as the home of the bigotted pseudo-intellectual, but I had not corresponded with one 'in the wild' since leaving Public School, until now ;¬)

John PM Chappell

Oops!

I apologize, I misunderstood the provenance of the money which the Church Commisioners pass down to the parishes.

Incidentally, the vicar mentioned above and quoted is indeed a Baptist but I am prety sure the second church the woman approached was a local CoE one, however I cannot now find a link to the article I read.

John PM Chappell

Actually...

So much bollocks on this thread.

First, "god" is not a name or 'proper noun', sorry. It came to be used as if it were as a result of arrogance and ignorance. For the record, there is a proper name for that mythical being and it is variously rendered as "Yahweh" (in Roman letters) or "Jehovah" (thanks to some truly awful mistransliteration by an ancient scribe).

Yoga is not a 'spiritual' pursuit in and of itself, arguably, but it was most definitely first practiced by people who saw it as a tool to assist them in their 'spiritual' goals, which happen to include being physically and mentally fit and flexible. As such, it can often contain pseudo-religious clap-trap which followers of a different set of silly superstitions (such as Xtians) would probably find 'offensive' (i.e. it doesn't unquestioningly back them and therefore must be suppressed).

The Xtians can reject whatever they like, when it affects only themselves and their lives, but CoE buildings and village halls (which are often actually attached to a church) are funded by the state from taxes. As such, they are not in a position to refuse their use unless it would be for illegal activites. The obvious solution is, of course, to finally do away with the ridiculous notion of state sponsored and funded religion.

Personally, I consider any and all superstition to be equally worthy of contempt, though it should be noted that this is not the same as treating *people* with contempt. If some idiot vicar gets in a huff about Yoga, where's the story? However, the point, for me, was more that he used his dubious power of veto to prevent a reasonable public use of what amounts to a *public* building. With any luck, this story and others like it will be the final nail in the unwholesome marriage between "establishment" and the mess of incoherence known as the CoE.

As for the poster who went on about respecting what amounted to zealotry and irrationality whilst hating those who bother to critically examine their beliefs and reinterpret them as necessary ('pick and mix'); I'd much rather have the, relatively, tolerant and well-meaning if misguided and silly liberal-CoE types, lapsed RC types and so on than the fire-and-brimstone, "Spiritual Warfare" and "Evangelism" crowd, thankyou very much. Respect at your leisure but get a fucking grip.

National Guardsman suspended over personal website

John PM Chappell

Yanks...

... misunderstand what 'irony' is, what 'satire' is and tend to consider puerile slapstick to be the entirety of humour. This combined with a huge chip-on-the-shoulder about their country or themselves being laughed at is what causes those of us outside the USA to laugh all the harder and repeat the old "Yanks have no sense of humour" line ;¬)

P.S. Germans used to do a nice line in much the same vein but seem to have lightened up in recent decades.

Reader succumbs to apostrophe apoplexy

John PM Chappell

And don't get me started on...

..people who think "who's" is the correct possesive of who/whom. Grrrr. ;¬)

John PM Chappell

Collective noun? My arse! But..

If it were, it would have to read "Google seem.." no, 's' since it would take the plural form of the verb. However, it is an object (either a tool or a company) and thus assuredly singular.

Engineers write defence against aliens manual

John PM Chappell

It's been said already...

..but I say it again. The staggering amount energy of energy required to travel from, say, one planet elsewhere in our galaxy to within our solar system is such that it rules out coming to Earth with either aggression or resoruce theft as a motive. The only realistic reason would be communication of some sort and that seems unlikely right now, since we cannot even get into space on any reasonable scale.

This sidesteps the even more staggering odds against any life with that kind of ability oc-existing with us in the universe. The odds favour there being no other intelligent life extant, right now although they suggest that long after we ought to be extinct there ought be intelligent life coming into existence elsewhere in the cosmos. This is all pretty well documented maths but I guess the 'boffins' concerned like stats even less than I do ;¬)

Booze worse than Speed or Acid shocker

John PM Chappell

Not really....

Ecstasy (and that *is* the spelling) won't kill anyone at all, for example. Heroin is relatively harmless, as a drug but injecting it carries all kinds of risks, and so on.

Only sensible system is total liberalization with taxation and control of distribution.

Racing games increase real world crashes

John PM Chappell

Better driver? Not likely..

While the report looks like a pile of steaming faecal matter to me, as an ADI I can assure you that your driving game does not make you a better driver at all; it's so far from the reality of driving and utterly divorced from the concepts that actually *do* make for better driving as to have probably no impact either way. Indeed, I am often hopeless at so-called driving games precisely because they so poorly model real world experience and response (compare that to my previous experience being trained in the Police Roadcraft techniques).

Terrorist site surfer blows up Moroccan net cafe

John PM Chappell

"Palestine Facts" ?

Not quite sure of the relevance of that Zionist propaganda site... care to enlighten?

Godless coins released in US mint cock-up

John PM Chappell

Perhaps you meant 'article'? ;¬)

Mike - whilst you are quite correct that there was no suggestion that "e pluribus unum" means "in God we trust" you might want to make sure you spell "article" correctly before gloating.

More to the point, are they really likely to be *that* collectible? In one or two centuries, maybe so, but in the near future, I doubt it very much. Also, the "In God We Trust" inscription is a recent addition to US currency anyway.

Trio suspended for putting 'vagina' into Monologues

John PM Chappell

Typical yank stupidity

I wish I could say I was even surprised but the USA is a nation obsessed with sex and a hypocritical morality based almost exclusively around the issue.

Media blasts Cambridge undergrads' drinking habits

John PM Chappell

American students can't hold anyone's, as a rule...

As if, Dillon! The poisoning has more to do with them having a desperately low tolerance for the alcohol due to a sever lack of prior training, an even more stupidly late legal age for sale and consumption (compared to the UK) and typically having only had access to pish-poor yank beer until they reach their university.

In my experience they can barely hold their glass after a couple, never mind anything else. Still, makes them easy to take in games of chance or a scrap. ;¬)

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