Posts by Simon Dax

WIN a RockBLOCK Iridium satellite comms module

YANKS

Yet Another Nerdish Kill Switch

The Open Rights Group gets rights wrong again

Oh dear...

This is precisely why real politicians have assistants who write speeches and perform other trivial, unimportant tasks such as checking facts and making sure their boss *DOESN'T* stick his or her foot in their mouth.

Google orders spontaneous support for Parliamentary motion

Re: VP

If Google wants to see rights-holders and artists get paid for their work then why are they spending so much time, effort and money to avoid it?

The Google review is about making it legal for them to simply help themselves to whatever they fancy without getting permission or paying for it.

And you still believe that rights-holders and creators should compromise with these people?

Google earns billions of dollars a year in advertising revenue from other people's work, almost none of which reaches the rights-holders or the artists.

The Safe-Harbour provisions of the DMCA were designed to protect service providers from the likes of the Church of Scientology, instead it's being used by Google to hide behind while they fill their boots. All the while claiming immunity because they didn't personally make the work available.

It's hardly surprising that some within the industry favor a 'scorched earth' policy. The Megaupload case is one of their disasters which is already beginning to bite us on the arse.

However even the most moderate members agree that the Google and service providers have to be made responsible for the content they carry subject to lawful fair use exceptions.

Sysadmins: Your best tale of woe wins a PRIZE

Where do you begin :)

The Dutchman sent over from the European headquarters in Rijswijk to supervise a machine room refit because HIS boss felt we "lacked sufficient experience". Who - for reasons known only to himself - decided that a wall mounted coax termination unit was the perfect place to park his fat arse while he ran patch cables from it to the back of the new VS300.

Or the two salesmen from the second floor who - after reading a fairy-story about computer viruses in a home computing magazine - took the coax connections off the back of their terminals, carefully wrapped a condom round each of the bnc connectors and forced them back on. They left the tnc connectors off because "the threads were cutting through the condom".

Or the secretary from one of the regional offices who got a paper jam in a old style, floor standing laser printer and decided to just leave it when I refused to make the six hour round trip from London to clear it for her. The resulting fire caused nearly £20,000 worth of damage.

Lambeth email sting councillor rejoins local Labour group

... the local right-wing NuLabour party....

Nah.

Kingsley Abrams is the leftie which is why the nu-labour twonks hate him so much.

Brit inventor wants prison for patent crims

Patently Ridiculous

Interesting piece here from one of our local Labour Party bods. I think he's got a very good point about the German preview.

http://doverwatch.blogspot.com/2009/09/patently-ridiculous.html

Spanish bar invites customer abuse

Abuse - The Universal Language

I've always preferred the more subtle approach - "Get me a beer or I'll wire your testicles to the mains!"

(This sounds much better with a South African accent)

Firefox passive-aggressives adjudicate Nerd Law

A title is required.

Wow man! That's a really, really big chip you have on your shoulder there!

Two children squabbling over a toy does not constitute a problem with software engineers.

Logitech Digital Video Security System

Or alternatively...

You could contact a *professional* CCTV supplier, get some *professional* advice and a full system for around half the price. Much less than half price for a system with four or more cameras.

Ofcom's pilot starts seeing signs

Cue the Black Helicopter Brigade...

Or perhaps it's simply someone's iBook leaking RF due to a botched repair :)

US lost Cold War bomb under Greenland ice

@Anonymous COWARD

Alexander's claim of 22 unrecovered weapons is probably a little on the low side as that is simply the number estimated from currently available sources.