Posts by Davey Bee

Student suspended for posting random satire on YouTube

Idiots

I like this guy's work. The school should be pleased they've got a talented student, and helping him develop, ffs - not throwing him out.

'Porn lock' heralds death of WikiLeaks, internet, democracy, universe

<sigh>

The Daily Mail's coverage of this was essentially as a news item (the article was uncritical, but then that is equally true of the Daily Mirror's reporting on the proposal). I can see no evidence that the Mail imagines there is huge public demand for an opt-in system.

In addition, the Mail's online replies were overwhelmingly hostile to Vaizey's plan. Very few supporting it.

But then actually reading the items in question before ranting on about the Mail would probably be too much to ask of you.

Counter-terror review to consider net jihadis

@ john lilburne

Are you advocating the blocking of all Tory / LibDem websites that abhor homosexuality (not aware of any, to tell the truth) or just all Tory / LibDem websites? What about websites that take the Muslim view (and that of many African Churches) that homosexuality is to be condemned?

Strange, confused post

UK border police seize £500k from Nigerians' hand luggage

Innocent until proven guilty

There is a misconception here that "innocent until proven guilty" has hitherto always been the case; or more accurately that the Police could not make an arrest until a crime had clearly been committed.

Well, no. People found in suspicious circumstances have always had to show that they were not criminals: people near rivers with poaching gear; people near warehouses equipped with jemmies etc; and (in Scotland at any rate) people with three convictions for theft carrying *unusual* goods with no explanation as to where they came from.

This does not mean that convicted thieves have to carry receipts for everything on their person; but it does mean that someone found at 3am with a bagful of silver has to explain themselves - and if they have no explanation they will be prosecuted. They are indeed innocent until proven guilty, but the circumstances in which they were found still have to be explained. This is sensible, and not at all unusual in law.

Seems to me that carrying half-million into a country is worthy of investigation, and it is not the end of liberty if the authorities take an interest in suspicious behaviour.

Emmerdale shoves jam rags in innocent kiddies' faces

daily fail <yawn>

Fair enough - we're all a bit laddish in here. But just suppose it had been something especially offensive to the left wing, and The Guardian had kicked up a noise. Just suppose it had been some racist slogan. Would we be hearing the "Daily Fail, Daily Fail" stuff here? I don't think so. Fine. Be consistent. Some things offend people, so don't be hypocritical.

Hoodies swipe bus for YouTube joyride

I might seem a bit harsh...

...but all three of them should be put away for a year at least. You simply cannot allow kids to think that the sentence for this is anything less than jail.

Middle-aged sex is crap: Official

@ for what it's worth: 22 June 21:25

"I am 62. But look to be in my 40's -early 50's".

You self-deluded, conceited pillock. No you don't. And anyway, how could you know that? Oh sorry, I forgot - you probably continually ask people how old they think you are. And maybe they're nice to you. God help us all (and especially our daughters) from creeps that think they look young.

Heathrow security man cops perv scanner eyeful

English

Let me suggest some examples where people will indeed have been traumatised (i.e. suffered continuing psychological damage as the result of one or a series of horrific experiences):

Being in a concentration camp; seeing your family murdered; being the victim of a very violent / perverted crime; being involved in some very bloody military action, etc etc

I wish people would stop using "traumatised" in reference to fairly mundane experiences. Try telling a real PTSD victim that you're "traumatised" by seeing porn on your mobile, or by a colleague flashing up a fuzzy image of your tits...

US couple jailed for TV shoplifting brag

IANAL

And certainly not an American lawyer, but the logic is crap anyway. When acting as a team to commit a crime, all parties are equally guilty. Otherwise, the people involved in bank robberies (planners, getaway drivers etc) who didn't actually stuff the money into bags would be held less culpable.

Crap.

Jobcentre ejects Jedi Knight

What about *my* religious rights?

My sacred beliefs include the one that none of my taxes should go to supporting tits like this

Sexy is as sexy does: UK.gov struggles with sexualisation

Excellent

Thx GB. One of the best posts in ages on El Reg

Pope pooh-poohs airport perv-scanners

Hypocrite

"The idea that we are going to get kicks out of seeing a blurry grey image... is frankly offensive"

But their idea - that I am going to get kicks out of murdering 100s of people - is NOT offensive?

Too much sitting can kill: Official

Breaks from the PC

Well I'll be OK, then. I get up every hour or so to raid the fridge

'God help our smartphones,' vicar prays

Good on him

I am not a christian - not religious at all, in fact - but within the community of his church he is surely justified in updating the prayers traditionally said for the work that needs to be done. Why should that bother anyone who is not a christian?

Gumtree comes over all queer in blocking 'offensive language'

Lame

'...neologism "ghey", to mean "lame" without homosexual connotation'

Er.... isnt the word "lame" offensive to disabled people?

Boffins: Stress of family Xmas can cause fatal diseases

I have always been shyish and unattractive..

But.... no, no, no, no, no. to the guys that hate Xmas and other things. There are all sorts of social get-togethers that it's easier to miss. For example, I used to dread parties when I was a teenager (ever had the feeling that at these things you won't quite be dressed right, and that everyone except yourself is going to score? ) - and in one sense I suppose we'd all have less stress if Xmas Day was spent sitting with ElReg and reading the other news.

Fine. Maybe pipe and slippers every night is the least stressful life - until one day you wake up and realise you've got no-one.

Family and friends (ex friends if you keep turning down invitations) are important. Get along to the Xmas thing; relax; ignore the uncle you don't like; don't think you've got to be faux-jolly; and be quite sure in yourself that *everyone* else is feeling awkward too. Stop worrying. Take a drink,. and enjoy the drink and avoid the crap buffet. And if you really feel that you've got to leave early, then do it. So what? What's the problem?

Life's never so scary as it seems. It's only a party, ffs, you don't need to be Ant-and-Dec cheery, and *someone* at that party is going to make a bigger tit of themselves than you could ever do. It's only a few hours out of your life (ffs again). Really, things aren't that important. Honestly.

Green politician says oral sex is part of being Swedish

Disappointment

I read this article three times - but I still couldn't find anything about Swedish 30-year-olds fancying middle-aged men with beer guts and grey hair.

Ah well, looks like a Saga tour again.

Catholic priests, scientists head to Rome to ponder alien life

Common sense

I'm no authority on religion (though I was brought up in the Church of Scotland) but I do wonder how so many churches can get themselves in a mess about things like this.

Do you remember about 10 years ago when they thought they'd found things on Mars that might be fossils of bacteria? The Catholic Church came out with some theological waffle; the C of England came out with even worse babble; but the Chief Rabbi's spokesman simply said "It doesn't matter where they come from - they're all God's creatures".

I'm not now religious at all - but I'm sure other religions would do well to abandon doctrinal tangles, and just follow the Chief Rabbi's obvious common sense.

STRONG REAL SEX? That's not porn, rules ASA

@kissingthecarpet

You criticise the Sun and the Mail for not printing swear words, and you talk about the Sun's "pathetic version". But the Mirror's policy on this is just the same - so why do don't you have a go at them too? Or is it just newspapers you see as right-wing that you can bring yourself to criticise?

And why do Guardian readers seem to be such experts on the Mail? Do they read it in secret?

Scots slam Germans for 'tight-arsed' slur

Well, I'm a Scot

And this doesn't bother me at all. I'm sure the Germans don't really think this about individual Scotsmen, so I just find it funny. What did niggle me for a time was that any Scotsmen in 90s soaps seemed to be violent drunks; but this sort of jokey stuff about being mean? Nah, no sweat.

PS And no, I don't wear a skirt either. Well, except on Saturday nights I suppose, when I usually call myself Linzee

PS2 Doh!!!!!!!

Aussie birds 'desperate to copulate with brainy males'

I'll change my lies

So instead of claiming to be a 25-year-old professional surfer in chatrooms, I'll have to invent a degree in accountancy. Ah well...

Pair charged with BNP list breach

@john186

"If you've done nothing wrong... the traditional opinion of so many on the extreme right wing". Bullshit. Why do so many people now assume that anything authoritarian or otherwise unpleasant is a "right wing" thing? It is the creed of the LEFT that the state must run everything, and that individual rights are subservient to the demands of the state. Ask a marxist - it's part of their philosophy.

Or does John think the Stasi etc were right-wing?

Kingdom of Sweden dragged into Reg smut-basket

Knobs

Well, if we didn't know *before* today what a Swedish knob was like (and that's a joke in itself) we certainly do now.

Women's lust for shopping linked to periods

@ Colin Millar

"4) Sell research to the Daily Fail". Er... this story was reported by BBC, Times of India, ElReg, FemaleFirst etc., (and the DM too)

So what's your point, muppet?

UK kids presenter gets online support

Daily Hate???

What's this crap about the "Daily Hate"? I've now looked up the relevant articles in the Daily Mail, and it seems to me that the newspaper is totally against those parents who have complained. As indeed it should be.

Moving on from that, the strange thing is that some idiots are so sensitive about disability now. I was a little kid in the 50's and I was well acquainted with these things: it was quite common to see people who had suffered disability or disfigurement, and my parents explained to me from a very young age that these people had been "hurt in the war" (and that included some people who, looking back, clearly had mental problems) and I wasn't to think that they were odd or frightening. OK I only had a hazy idea of what a war was, but I knew about disability even before I went to school.

Parents shouldn't hide their children away from things that aren't cutesy. They will have to handle life, and part of that is understanding that people do have differences.

P.S. If you're going to label any paper the Daily Hate, can I nominate the Scottish Daily Record (sister paper of the Daily Mirror)? Even in their article about the death of David Cameron's son, they still got in the sneer "Wealthy, Eton-educated Cameron..."

Absolutely Fabulous ups sticks to LA

@ The Fuzzy Wotnot

"I just get the feeling... it's all been done before".

Wait till you're kicking 60, young man. The rock music all sounds the same (so you take refuge in classical); TV comedies don't make you laugh (heard all the jokes before); the politicians seem to get more and more useless year on year. Hell, you're not even as interested in fuzzy wotnots as you used to be.

And this is me having a *good* day.....sigh

Changed my mind

Cancel my last tell - I've just seen that new girl on Countdown.

Oh yes!!

DB is back to life.

Most Americans without broadband don't want it

Low usage people

I actually visit people's homes / workplaces as part of my business (doing repairs, giving advice, etc etc) and I see all sorts of people. In fact I suspect that I see a wider range of PC users than most people here.

I have about a dozen - mainly elderly - customers who are quite happy with PAYG, and with some justification: they only use their PCs for reading and sending emails every few days, and this is far cheaper for them than paying a monthly fee. In fact I've had a couple of customers who have gone back to dialup as a money-saving measure.

It's all very tempting for pros like us to think that everyone *should* be interested in the internet - but some people aren't, and they shouldn't be ridiculed because of it.

P.S. But Martin Edwards' point is a good one, and in fact these dialup customers of mine never have things up to date (but then again, for a few emails here and there....)

Teen discussed suicide plan online 12 hours before webcam death

Suicide

I am 59 now, happy and successful - but I was there (ie sucidal) 38 years ago. I had a lousy 4th year at university (after doing well for three years) when I suffered from depression, drink problems, debt and the constant anxiety of falling further and further behind with my studies. The one problem fed all the others, and i just drank all the more and got deeper into it...

My own hints to my friends that i would do it went unnoticed... OK, I failed and ended up in hospital - but that was only because of my lack of understanding of pharmacology, and not in any way because the attempt was half-hearted

One lesson I learned that year was that you must never, ever take any threat of suicide lightly. Never. OK, if it's someone on a server and you don't know them then you might think you have no way of influencing things - but maybe you should step in, even if if the guy in question turns out to just to be a bit drunk.

If any of my friends over the years have ever even mentioned death I have listened to them very seriously and talked to them equally seriously (but of course sympathetically).

Again, not so easy when someone is 5000 miles away and might just be an idiot - but I do ask people to treat these threats seriously.

Taurid meteors promise Guy Fawkes fireball show

@it wasn't me

What's all this kneejerk crap about the Daily Mail? I don't have a clue what the DM says about light pollution, as I don't read it (although you obviously do - otherwise you couldn't possibly comment on its policy could you????!!!) but personally I'd imagine campaigns against light pollution to be more a Guardian thing anyway.

Daily Mail also gets the blame of supporting ID cards - maybe it does , I don't know , but what I do know is that the Daily Mirror supports them as nice, convenient, cheap cuddly things.

So just stop talking muppet-shit, OK?

UK.gov says: Regulate the internet

Legislators

"Ask most legislators about it..."

But it shouldn't be "legislators" that you ask. You should ask the people, and then have the legislators draft laws accordingly.

The implied notion that they are the masters illustrates perfectly how we are moving towards a left-wing statist dictatorship.

Also, the idea that lack of government intervention is in some way "forbearance" just shows the arrogance of these people. So if the government isn't controlling it, that shows restraint on their part?

Bastards

Newcastle men dodge post-bog handwash

Town and gender

You only mention that overall the incidences of dirty hands were equal between the sexes. But this is misleading, as there were clear differences when broken down by town. Here are the details:

Newcastle: Men 53%....... Women: 30%

Liverpool: Men 36%....... Women 31%

Birmingham: Men 21%.......Women 26%

Cardiff: Men 15%.......Women 29%

Euston (London): Men 6%....... Women 21%

Well done the London men.

P.S. I'm a Scot, so I'm basically neutral in this

Spy chiefs plot £12bn IT spree for comms überdatabase

State monitoring

This is desperately serious - though many people may not appreciate it. Years ago we despised regimes which spied routinely on their citizens; which employed secret informers in every town; and which would not allow their citizens the means of communication or publication (typewriters were banned in Communist Romania, I believe).

It really does not matter what these regimes might have called themselves – right-wing, left-wing, whatever – the point was that totalitarian control over citizens’ lives was viewed in this country with outright horror.

But left wingers in particular have always yearned for greater state control; this is their natural and probably well-meaning aspiration. And now we see the logical results: no private communication is to be allowed. The state is now all, and the left have to see that this is a monster they have encouraged… and despite their gut feelings, they must come out against it.

What is to happen to me if all my outgoing emails are now sent with an encrypted attachment containing my message? Will the state consider that to be suspicious in itself? What about meetings in publlc parks with a few friends? Will the police want to know what that’s all about? If I criticise a politician, will I be reminded by some civil servant that I was recorded the other week as having searched for “Milfs in leather” and that it might embarrass me if that little secret were to get out?

Things are getting bad, and if we’re not careful we will be right into a situation which Brezhnev, Hoenecker, Ceausescu etc. would have envied. Let’s not allow it.

US bank loses unencrypted data on 4.5m people

Couriers

I'm probably going over old ground here (various British cock-ups) - but why, when you're moving such sensitive data, isn't it held in the safekeeping of the same human being(s) from the beginning of its journey to the end of it? No sorting offices, no handovers: the courier takes it from the sending office to the receiving office, and does not allow himself to be distracted from that task.

OK, maybe in USA these can be quite long journeys. Even so, I would still give it to one trusted guy (or pair of guys) to take from A to B, with strict instructions about never letting it out of their sights.

In-flight calling given lukewarm reception

You must be joking

"People are constantly coming up and down the aisles selling scratch cards or food and we believe there is a market for this".

Thank you, Ryanair, for this glimpse of Hell-in-the-air. Your utterly insincere statement has made me determined never even to bother checking the times of Ryanair flights.

Kid's 'new' MP3 player was preloaded with smut

Porn on used goods

It might be tempting to have a laugh about this, but a year or so ago I was called to a house where their PC had started displaying porno popups - pretty rough ones, too - and the family's 10-year-old daughter had been shocked and really quite frightened by the images. She too had been in tears about it.

[ She had a 14-year-old brother, so I didn't need to be Hercule Poirot to find out who'd introduced all the crap into the machine ].

It's just not on for returned goods not to be cleared out before they are resold. It should be absolute basic procedure, and in this case I think the family should be getting Walmart all the bad publicity they can. And huge public apologies.

Cambs cops podcast 999 timewasters

Contacting the Police

Yes, and these are very stupid calls indeed (can't the people be prosecuted?) BUT....

In this town of 15,000 people, we can no longer phone the local police station. Let's face it, most calls to the police are not emergencies are such, but things like "There's some lads fighting in my pub". So there was a time that you'd phone up the local nick, and they'd send a couple of PCs to sort it out. But now you can't do that. You end up speaking to people 50 miles away, who don't understand where The Dog and Duck is or anything else about your town, and seem more interested in asking statistical questions than getting someone to come round.

I had this experience a year ago, when I phoned the police about a very drunk / drugged girl who was on the street one afternoon (I was concerned about the girl's own safety and nothing else). Half an hour later - by which time the girl had disappeared - a WPC turned up, wandered about for a minute or two, and then left the scene.

Perhaps if the local cops' number was publicised - and if your calls actually got through to someone local - then people would be more likely to keep 999 for real emergencies.

And removing the police to out-of-town barracks (TheRegister a week or so ago) will only make things worse.

Bike bonk bloke cops three years' probation

Offenders' Register

This is a stark warning about the creeping authority that modern government now imposes upon us all.

When the Sex Offenders Register was introduced, we were reassured that it would only be used for people who were a clear danger to the community: paedophiles and rapists, mainly. But it has been used several times in the cases of young men who have had sex with 15-year-old girls.

[And in one notorious case, against a 14-year-old boy who had regular and consensual sex with his 12-year-old girlfriend - presumably a girl of maturity similar to his own. No, I certainly wouldn't encourage sex between kids of this age - but the boy was not a "sex offender" as we normally think of them.]

Now it has been used against someone masturbating.

And terrorism laws ("they will only be employed in exceptional circumstances..." we were told) can be invoked if you heckle the Prime Minister too loudly.

We should resist every single new law they seek to impose on us; these same laws will be used against all sorts of people, at the whim of the police.