Posts by Secretgeek 388 publicly visible posts • joined 4 Mar 2008
Jessica Whyte, who said she "now struggled when wiping her youngest son's bottom...".
I really don't get that sentence. Has she suffered an unrelated hand injury? Or did she get a taste for it and is struggles to overcome the temptation to just try a bit?
Oh dear, I think I've disgusted myself.
Still, a new twist on 'chocolate log' I suppose.
Ok, now I feel ill.
Is it just me or does that sound kind of creepy?
'Zornetzer said the plane will be modified (with a near silent anti-gravity drive/ future tech noise nullfication field/massively bigger engines so that it instantly deafens anyone within a 20 mile radius when it fires up/with a pod that drops suitcases of cash on anyone that might complain about the racket) so that noise won't be an issue.'
No black plane symbol.
rant/
Now I'm usually not an opponent of encouraging creative and free-thinking in our 'yoof' but the whole problem is because teachers have been teaching by this method more and more for the past 25 years. Trouble is, the basics don't require critical thinking or analysis. Times-tables aren't open for negotiation, spelling doesn't need to be analysed (unless you go to university and study some language science type thing), it just needs to be done right. It needs to be taught by teachers that can do it and encouraged by parents who aren't too useless to get off their fat arses and interact positlively with their kids.
Get the basics, then at least you can do your analysis and creative thinking with some basis of validity and not just disguising terminal ignorance as free-thinking bollocks.
/rant
Free think all you want, just pass me my coat first please, attendant.
Fuck me that's a lot of resits.
Seriously, after the first 10,000 attempts they really ought to give it up as a bad job.
And how long was the exam?!
Maths - Piss Easy Level - 22 October 2008 12:00
Please show your working.
Q1. 2 + 2 =
End of Exam
FAIL
Maths - Piss Easy Level - 22 October 2008 12:30
Please show your working.
Q1. 2 + 2 =
End of Exam
FAIL
Maths - Piss Easy Level - 22 October 2008 13:00
Please show your working.
Q1. 2 + 2 =
End of Exam
FAIL
Etc, etc 19000 more times.
Mine's the one with the scientific calculator in the pocket.
Milk, eggs, bread, tootthpaste, high-energy lasers, weaponized microwave and millimeter wave beams, explosive-driven electromagnetic pulse devices, acoustic weapons, laser induced plasma channel systems, non-lethal directed energy devices, atomic-scale and subatomic particle beam weapons, butter, frozen pizza and washing up liquid.
One - 'nerd force' - a most excellent moniker which I will be attempting to use daily, if not hourly, from now on.
Two - amanfromMars' comment actually made some kind of sense to me - Is that a sign that I'm a truly committed El Reg reader?
As for the article itself - Meh. All squawk and no walk as far as I can see. What are the Navy going to do, DDOS enemy battleships? Slightly less effective than a cruise missile I think.
Yarr, prepare for spamming, me hearties.
That might be justification used by media companies but I'd argue that it's not copyright's raison de'etre. Fundamentally, you're not necessarily looking to receive a reward for your work, although that could be a side effect or even the reason for creating the work in the first place, it's to prevent others from taking your work and passing it off as their own.
From the little I've seen of Parliamentary Copyright it would also appear to function in this way.
I would guess that Crown Copyright is somewhat different again, in that it was probably originally formed to assert the Crown's authority over anything it created without question.
@Gerry
I appreciate your point but if that's the case then it's Crown Copyright that applies and not Parliamentary. Effectively the same thing as far as this case goes I believe.
@Everyone else who're saying 'It's our stuff!'
You can have you're stuff use FOI, EIR and DPA, what's the big deal about applying for a licence to re-use it? However I do think that my comment to Francis 16:03 still stands. If you want to change the system you're going to need more than just 'Well they do it!'
Fair enough. :-)
@Francis
I do appreciate that but I think your argument of precedent is a bit tepid - 'They do it so why can't we?'
If you're looking to take down the Crown and/or Parliament Copyright system you're going to need much bigger ammo.
I'm not saying anything you don't know, when I say that this system has been entrenched in our government system for probably longer than even the concept of legal professional privilege and I imagine would be just as hard to shift or even amend.
Not that that doesn't make it worth doing of course but I'm not qualified to make that decision.
My feeling is that if it can be evidenced that the Copyright system is being abused to withold information that would otherwise i.e. through FOIA or EIR, be available then you might have the beginnings of case. In this instance you're really just tilting at windmills as they've already said that they'd give you the info.
Maybe just apply for a licence? You only have to do it once and it's free for Parliament Copyright material.
You've definitely hit the nail on the head there.
The only advantage there is to continuing this little farce is that it makes UK Gov look bad. Like they need anyone's help for that.
@Frank
I'm afraid you've over simplified the issue. Parliamentary Copyright covers material produced by the House of Commons and the House of Lords of the Westminster Parliament which is subject to Parliamentary copyright protection. Which this information appears to be subject to.
It's copyright just like anyone else's copyright and as such they can and do issue licences for it's re-use. The funny thing is, this licence:
http://www.opsi.gov.uk/click-use/system/licenceterms/ParliamentaryLicence_01-00.pdf
specifically states that it covers publishing on a website. So if they really want to put it on whatdotheyknow.com they need to apply for a licence, simple as.
Obviously, an automatic system can't do that.
Your point that 'All of those considerations become moot...' is ridiculous. You're effectively saying that any content put on a public page then belongs to the public and no copyright should be asserted over that material. Only the most committed freetard can seriously subscribe to that view.
I've been following this story for a while now and I'm pretty sure that the problem isn't that the Commons don't want to release the information.
The issue is that if they send their response to an address which automatically republishes it then it will be then sender e.g. the person at the Commons that sent the response, that will be responsible for any copyright breach.
What they're saying is 'If you want to republish then that's your choice and you face the consequences. We're not going to do that for you.'
A reasonable analogy would be if you were a delivery firm and a customer asked you to deliver a package within a deadline that meant you had to break the speed limit to do it. I wouldn't be willing to do that - would you?
Also, under the 'Reuse of Public Sector Information Regulations 2005' public authorities can invoke their rights, as the owners of the copyright, over material. This covers situations such as where a public authority spends money putting together a report for their own purposes that would be useful to businesses then it is perfectly reasonable for them to charge others to use that information or even restrict them frm commercial reuse entirely.
Where I think the House of Commons has fallen down on this is by not explaining their decisions to the whatdotheyknow.com site. That'll have probably arisen because they've had a lawyer tell them what I've just said above and they think that opinion will be subject to legal professional privilege. This last part is my hypothesis but it seems reasonable enough given the evidence.
I thinking that the best way to recover this data (and as a happy by-product find out really how much info has been lost by UK Gov Ltd) is to get trawling the seedier sides of the net for sellers of this kind of data. Surely, right now there is a forum where someone is advertising premium identify info for 3 million UK citizens at a reasonable rate per 10,000?
..is this really going to work out well seeing as it will cover all 3 Services (I don't think the USMC have any nukes)?
Then again seeing as it's pretty bloody unlikely that they'll ever get used in anger again I suppose it's kind of like just sticking them all in a room to gather dust so that no-one else has to bother with the whole tedious business.
Lead lined one please.
I realy can't believe all the negative comments here. This database is an excellent idea. Of course it will catch terrorists. All you have to do is define your terrorist. Say, just for example, UK Gov feel that anyone saying something in a phone call or email along the lines of 'All fucking governments are a bunch of devious, manipulative bastards, simply out to propagate their own personal power and wealth at the expense of everyone they can and stamp on the face of everyone else.' Well quite blatantly that person wishes to promote disorder and chaos and should therefore be classed as a terrorist, with appropriate action taken.
As for the minute percentage of terrorists that the system doesn't pick up, well obviously no system is 100% efficient and it is unfortunate that there would be civilian casualties from that. However, this will simply spur UK Gov to go to more vigourous lengths to promote any method that may improve their level of *control* sorry, watchfulness.
I would add to your comments that it isn't likely that we'd even recognise an 'extreme' regime when it came. Remember these things don't happen over night, we'll not wake up tomorrow having our doors kicked in by grey suited 'thought police' (well most of us won't anyway). It will be a feeling, a sensation that makes you look up one day and think to yourself 'Where is this place? How did I agree to this?'
The extreme regime of which you talk will wear a nice suit, have a slick advertising campaign, will appeal to most of people's own beliefs and will come into power in a way no different to that of any other political animal either here or in Disneyland.
It is only those that continue to question that will remain awake enough to see it coming.
I'm talking about a lot of you, Reg Readers, and of course our pal El Reg.
I posted this elsewhere but it seems particularly appropriate for this story.
How do you think Britain has ended up being the most surveilled society on the planet?
Inch by inch, step by step, all the time saying 'This will make us better at catching the bad guys.'
What time is it Mr Wolf?
'It's time for me to introduce one more database to make sure you and the kiddies are safe from the bad people.'
What time is it Mr Wolf?
'It's time that we shared all that info with all those approved authorities that might want to see it.'
What time is it Mr Wolf?
'It's time to make sure that we know who everyone is so we can tell if you're a bad person.'
What time is it Mr Wolf?
'It's time for you to STOP ASKING QUESTIONS!'
..........
Look around, just exactly how much better is this country than anywhere else? How much worse? I'm trying to avoid descending into some kind of paranoid rant here but if the problem is crime and we're told that the solution is surveillance (cameras, dna databases, id cards etc), seeing that we have more of that now than ever in history shouldn't we expect a significantly lower rate of crime?
And I'm not talking about the single digit percentage figures that every government likes to suck it's own dick over, I'm talking 10%, 20%, 50%. Obviously surveillance isn't doing that.
(As an aside, I do know that there are probably thousands of examples where CCTV has been a positive influence.)
Which leaves us with another question. If surveillance is the solution but crime isn't the problem it's solving - then why is it there?
Answers on a miltary-grade encrypted postcard thanks.
@'Trials...' I think you're missing the longer view here.
How do you think Britain has ended up being the most surveilled society on the planet?
Inch by inch, step by step, all the time saying 'This will make us better at catching the bad guys.'
What time is it Mr Wolf?
'It's time for me to introduce one more database to make sure you and the kiddies are safe from the bad people.'
What time is it Mr Wolf?
'It's time that we shared all that info with all those approved authorities that might want to see it.'
What time is it Mr Wolf?
'It's time to make sure that those people we feel might be harmful can be stopped.'
What time is it Mr Wolf?
'It's time for you to STOP ASKING QUESTIONS!'
..........
Look around, just exactly how much better is this country than anywhere else? How much worse? I'm trying to avoid descending into some kind of paranoid rant here but if the problem is crime and we're told that the solution is surveillance (cameras, dna, datasbases etc), seeing that we have more of that now than ever in history shouldn't we expect a significantly lower rate of crime?
And I'm not talking about the single digit percentage figures that every government likes to suck it's own dick over, I'm talking 10%, 20%, 50%. Obviously surveillance isn't doing that.
(As an aside, I do know that there are probably thousands of examples where CCTV has been a positive influence.)
Which leaves us with another question. If surveillance is the solution but crime isn't the problem it's solving - then why is it there?
Answers on a miltary-grade encrypted postcard thanks.
I believe (I can fly?) that it's fairly well established that children with regular access to computers do better than kids that don't. If that's true then really all we need to do (and I'm saying this like it's easy) is work out how much less the 'brighter' kids cost to society than the others on average and put that against the cost of the programme.
You have a negative value, the programme is a goer, a positive and it's 'sorry kiddies, you're just going to have to rely on your mum's boyfriend to hand over the proceeeds of his latest burglary before he sells it for smack.'
It's a tough old world and someone's got to take the long view.
Mine's the one that stone's bounce off.
Firstly the serious one - $30 million? Isn't that pocket change to these establishments? Given that, as intimated in the article, the issues to be overcome will require significant research and advances in multiple areas including materials technology and chemistry, $30 mill really seems like a let's throw a few coppers out there and see what comes back kind of plan. Good luck with that.
Second - 'slap the pendulous jowls of established wisdom with the gauntlet of disregard' - I love, I'm going to use it.
I actually have it on good authority that the Illuminati in question, Director Womack, is none other than Cecil D. Womack of 'Womack and Womack' fame. I understand that his wife Linda Womack heads UK's Swindon office - Illuminati 'r' us.
In fact, their hit single 'Teardrops' contains a subliminal message to instill in all junior Illuminati a complete and total fear of helicopters - hence 'repelled from a huey'
Wibble.
Oh come on! LOL
Also, you'd have to pay hard cash to have that sort of pr0n downloaded to your phone, apparently. She should be pleased she's got a bargain. Some people are never happy.
Just as an aside, was the lady 'in action' also the store employee? That's a very funny way of handing your notice in.
Paris - what else?
..I agree with everyones comments here. My suggestion would be to get to the WhatDoTheyKnow.com website and start submitting your FOI requests to central Gov through them. That way we can all see just how evasive they get!
I'm not affiliated with the site but I do work in FOIA and DPA.
Oh and 'word' to the Reg for keeping on top of this story.
Just how similar these election ads are getting to GTA IV's version. How long will it be before Obama calls McCain a kiddie-fiddling paedo and McCain responds by claiming that Obama secretly worships Allah and is planning on turning the good 'ol USA into the Islamic Republic of America?
:-)
It's a joke, surely?
..I reckon you could mount an awful lot of ordnance on that bad boy. 380 tons worth? Yes please. Forget your poxy 80 tonne tank imagine the shock value when this behemoth comes rolling out of the desert tooled up with a battalions worth of 200mm howitzers.
And machine guns.
And rocket launchers!
And Flamethrowers And Frikkin LAZERS! WITH SHARKS ON!!!!
I'm sorry, I appear to have reverted to age 13 for a moment.
Big flames from the super-quad-turbos!
But this minor blip upwards won't halt the downward slide of this stock.
I wait with baited breath to see just exactly what UK Gov has to say. It could be a significant nail in this particular coffin. That's if we ever get to see it of course, though I wouldn't be at all surprised to see the document 'land' in the hands of some like El Reg in the near future.
Mine's the one with the UK Gov in the pocket.
But have to say that I really don't think this will steal away any sales from the Wii.
It's not daft to own a Wii and a 360 or PS3, whereas it is a little daft IMHO to own a PS3 AND a 360. So you've got to guess that they are trying to entice those who previously haven't considered buying (i.e. the great unwashed) and those who are waivering over which console to get.
My feeling is that the boost in sales in the short term will be minimal and whether it makes enough of a impact before PS3 do get around to their next price drop is also questionable.
As always, time will tell.
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