Posts by JM

French court fines eBay for sale of counterfeit handbags

Ah, France

The country where business is a four letter word, especially foreign businesses, and of those especially "anglo-saxon" companies. And they wonder why the economy sucks?

Boo-hoo why doesn't anyone want to come here and invest? Because of protectionism like this (see if they go nuts over foreign goods being counterfeited), treating business owners like cash cows and an outdated economic model that worked great for 50 years following WWII, but can't survive in a global (another dirty word) economy.

I don't care one way or another about ebay, but this stinks of anti-foreign parctice and\or protectionism.

......because ebay joins the long and distinguished club of those screwed by Paris.

Grand Theft Auto 4 queue man stabbed in head

Could've been worse........

The stabee might've had a knife on him as well.

Seriously though, I live in France and films that were rated over 18 in Ireland (where I grew up) and Britain are rated at 12 here. Movie violence is rarely rated over 12 here. There's no 15 rating,soft porn gets a 16 rating and hard porn gets an 18 rating. And they don't even have a 21 rating! And you don't see French kids killing and raping each other in the streets every day.

I think the Irish and British censors are living on another planet. And I won't even get into American "values" when it comes to TV censorship. You can burn, bomb, shoot, strangle, torture, maim, rape and kill, only during the destructive act of choice you can't show more flesh than you'd see in church on Sunday (except for HBO of course!).

Mine's the one with "don't tell me what I can and can't watch" written on it.

Welsh Darth Vader dodges jail

What can I say......

Darth pisshead's a muppet; given that he had previous convictions and could've brained someone with that first swing, he deserved to be reported.

Having said that, the "Jedi" were fairly whiny about the whole affair......I've seen worse violence in the schoolyard when I was 10. If that'd happened round where I grew up, Darth muppet would've gotten that crutch wrapped around his scrawny neck.

...AND he was pissed up to the eyballs, FFS!! How easy does it need to be?!

Paris, 'cos she knows how to handle a stick, unlike these so-called Jedi.

Shuttle astronauts: Aliens are definitely out there

@Jesse

How far they have traveled or how "brilliant" they are is irrelevant to the question of whether there's ETI. What is relevant is that astronauts are scientifically literate. This is a scientific question, but as I mentioned previously is generally viewed in quasi-religious terms with a simple binary "do you believe" being enough to put you in one box or the other.

Many astronauts are qualified to comment on this topic

Many of them hold advanced degrees in various scientific and engineering disciplines. The rest are military pilots on detachment to NASA. You can't be an astronaut without being one or the other (unless you count the short-lived "teacher in space" program in the '80s or billionaire "space tourists"). I think soliciting the opinion of an astronaut on this topic is not as unusual as some of you might think. The way in which these comments are reported, though, sometimes leaves a lot to be desired. It's unfortunate that SETI is sometimes associated with ghosties and ghoulies and things that go bump in the night, thanks to the paranoid crazies that scream conspiracy at every weather balloon and unidentified aerial light ( the "U" in UFO seems to have gotten mislaid somewhere along the way). Can't explain it, it must be aliens. It demands rigorous, skeptical analysis of the evidence, and to quote Carl Sagan again "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence". That's not to say that we can't speculate, but we must define carefully the line between speculation and belief (in the religious sense). Somewhat like creationists saying that if science can't explain something, it must be god.....fuzzy thinking and false logic to support pre-determined conclusions.

Reminds me of a joke:Have you heard the one about the dyslexic insomniac agnostic? He was awake all night wondering if there was a dog......

El Reg celebrates 10th birthday

10 Years later......

Can it be possibly 10 years since I regularly sat quivering in my cubicle with my phone on mute, giggling like a muppet at the BOFH ?

Wow......tempus fugit.

thanks El Reg, keep it up!!