Posts by Graham Marsden

Mandy accused of screwing small biz

Mandy accused of screwing small biz

Bear, woods,.Pope, Catholic... you know the rest.

Apple prepping 'Explicit' App Store?

pointless and derivative type of apps

Sorry, have you actually looked at some of the rubbish that's already available?

And you approve of Apple tying themselves up in knots (oops!) trying to decide what sort of content they should or shouldn't allow to presumably "protect the integrity of their brand"?

Go away, troll.

Council backs down on CRB checking grown-up lecturers

Stupid!!

Yes, stupid.

This doesn't just "check for convictions" (which is sensible) it relies on gossip, innuendo and unfounded and unproven (and possibly malicious) accusations.

Consider for a moment what would happen if you worked with kids and someone (as a sick and ill-advised "joke") sent you a copy of one of those cartoons of Lisa Simpson engaged in sexual activity (which, of course, are soon to be illegal) and your supervisor or a parent saw it on your laptop or phone and reported it. That would be "significant information" as far as this law is concerned and could result in you losing your job and being banned from ever working with "vulnerable groups" again, even though you have never and would never harm a child.

Meanwhile someone like Vanessa George who was taking photos of children in the Devon Nursery where she worked would have been considered "safe" until such time as she was actually caught and convicted.

*That* is what is so stupid about another pointless, knee-jerk, "something must be done" piece of legislation from a clueless Government.

The Home Office also responded...

... saying "Stop making our regulations look stupid! (Even though they are)"

Let us legally rip discs, campaigner tells govt

"this law is, to a great degree, unenforceable"

What? A nonsensical and unenforceable law? Never...!

What ever will they do next?

Google profits from UK.gov's climate change quango rivalry

Circle jerk?

I think you mean "Cluster Fuck"!

Plan for top-level pornography domain gets reprieve

And what about the grey areas?

I run a business making leather bondage gear. Whilst my site www.affordable-leather.co.uk has adult content (and appropriate warnings, is signed up to Net Nanny, Cyber Sitter et al) and is clearly not suitable for children, it's not "pornography", so should I be forced to dump my old domain (and have to re-do all my advertising and get all the links changed) to make it www.affordable-leather.xxx?

If not, what possible use is a .xxx TLD going to achieve except big commissions for the bidding war that will no doubt ensue for domains like sex.xxx and xxx.xxx which will probably sell for millions?

Citizens rail against government data sharing

Re: The Freedom Bill

Vince Cable for the Lib Dems is offering to answer questions from the public and there's one that says "How will you roll back the unnecessary attacks on personal liberties that Labour have introduced or planned under the guise of "protecting us" eg ID Cards, DNA databases, criminalisation of images of consenting adults, CCTV and ANPR etc?"

You can vote for this question here:

http://www.google.com/moderator/#15/e=4333&t=4333.40&q=4333.1d0e7

MPs bash broadband tax

You miss the point.

Are you really so naiive as to think that once this subsidised roll-out of rural broadband is complete the Government would then go "Oh, ok, that's done, let's scrapt the tax"?

They'll find another excuse to keep it (probably to run an online "child protection" service or some such) and then, to cover the extra "administration costs" bump it up to 75p, then a quid and once more the frog gets boiled.

UK government won't be keeping mobile database

"has no such plans" != "won't"

Big Brother icon: enough said.

Car thieves making clean getaway with GPS jammers

But... but...

... they *can't* do that, we've made jammers illegal! We know that banning something means that people won't do it, don't we, boys and girls?

- Government Spokesdrone.

Twitter bomb threat joke man faces possible jail sentence

How would I handle it...?

... Well, first tell me, did the 7/7 bombers or anyone else publically announce exactly what they were going to do before they did it?

And please, spare us the guilt trip "would you want to call the relatives?" nonsense. Would you want to tell the relatives of someone who'd been knocked down by a drunk driver? Would you want to tell someone they had cancer? Those are much more likely than a) such an attack happening again or b) those intending to carry it out telling everyone about it.

Jury!

He has admitted posting the message, but that is *not* the same as pleading guilty to "sending, by means of a public electronic communications network, a message that was grossly offensive or of an indecent, obscene or menacing character".

It is up to the prosecution to *prove* that his message was "of a menacing character", which is unlikely given that the prosecutor admits he "never intended the message to be received by the airport or for them to take it seriously".

Police confiscated his iPhone, laptop and home computer.

... and we can probably shortly expect "smear" charges of him being suspected of having kiddie porn/ extreme porn/ dangerous drawings as well which will serve no other purpose than an attempt to taint his name in the public consciousness in the hope that it will make people think that the authorities were right to grossly over-react...

Apple squashes wobbly jub app

Puritanical censorship...?

... There's an app for that!

Swiss prostitutes armed with defibrillators

Let's hear it for common sense.

Meanwhile, of course, sex workers in this country would probably be being prosecuted for manslaughter in a ridiculous belief that this would "send a message" to other women to "discourage them" from entering the sex trade...

ISS gets bay window onto Earth

But...

... when do they install the quad laser cannons...?

Watchdog takes hard line on 'adult film xtras' ad

Re: model agency scam

The modelling scams have been going on for many years. Mostly they involve up-front "joining" or "registration" fees, followed by "You need a portfolio, pay our in-house photographer a couple of hundred quid" etc.

Anything like this that wants a fee up front should be ignored with prejudice.

"paid several thousand pounds up front"

So just another version of a 419 scam.

Perhaps it could be called a 69 scam...?

77% of domain registrations stuffed with rubbish

Another example of ursine arboreal defecation...

... So the spammers, pill pushers, purveyors of illegal porn and so on are putting fake details in their domain registrations.

Wow, who would have thought it...

Minister deploys 'dodgy' DNA case study

Even if the four cases of rape are valid...

... it does not provide a justification for retaining the DNA of *every* person arrested unless the Government is accusing us *all* of being potential rapists...

Royal hack police worker avoids jail

"motivated by idle curiosity."

As opposed to, say, motivated by his interest in UFOs?

One law for them...

MPs, Lords ask if Mandybill is human rights friendly

"As we have explained in the past..."

"...flexibility is not an appropriate reason for defining a power which engages individual rights without adequate precision to allow for proper parliamentary scrutiny of its proportionality."

And the Government have replied "f**k you, we're going to do this anyway because we can!"

And so we get another piece of ill-thought out, ill-defined and completely vague legislation which lets the Government retroactively decide what they actually meant *after* the law has gone through Parliament, always presuming our elected representatives actually get to discuss all of it, which is unlikely because the Government is probably going to guillotine the debate to force it through before they are voted out of office...

Sorry, but we're not going to vote fascist for a third glorious decade of total law enforcement.

MoJ and police discipline Twitter sinners

Of course...

... what they really want to make sure is that Police Officers can't blog anonymously and criticise the management of resources and senior officers etc because that sort of thing makes them look bad...

Holy Father turns on to Dad Rock

So...

... the Vatican have forgiven John Lennon for saying that the Beatles were more popular than Jesus...?

Google backpedals (again) on Buzz privacy

The sound you hear...

... is of Google thinking they'd better offer to bolt everyone else's stable doors after Google let all the horses out...

Doctor Who attempted to overthrow Thatcher

The Happiness Patrol...

... I always thought it was a take-off of the Paranoia RPG.

"Are you happy, Citizen...?"

"Yes, friend Computer, I'm wonderfully happy!!!"

UK universities being broken by border control measures

"astonishingly short sighted and ill-conceived piece of unnecessary bureaucracy..."

... What *another* one...?

Chip and PIN security busted

Chip and Pin always was broken...

... since it was really all about shifting liability away from the Card Companies rather than actually making transactions secure.

Foreign objects in orifices a bigger killer than laptops

Foreign body entering...

... you know where you can stick that...!

US judges leave definition of obscenity to Amish, Kansas

@Cazzo Enorme

it was MPs who first put forward the Dangerous Pictures and Dangerous Cartoons legislation. Of course since the Government then Guillotined debate on the Criminal Justice Bill and the Coroners and Justice Bill, MPs never got to debate these proposals and it was left to the Lords to do something about it.

Of course since the only people with the balls to do that are the Lib Dems and since (as a Tory Lord admitted to me) Tory Peers don't vote on Lib Dem amendments, both pieces of nonsense legislation went through virtually unchanged.

So, what this really means...

... is that if anyone, anywhere in the world, publishes material on the Internet, they could liable to prosecution if they visit the USA if it violates some arbitrary "community standard" (read: prejudice of narrow minded bigots)

Of course meanwhile in the UK we only have to worry if some MP decides they don't like it...

Aussie anti-censor attacks strafe gov websites

Conroy's pitch that Google censors search results in China so why not in Australia

If it's ok for the Chinese, it's ok for Australia...???

Strewth!

Prisoners chucked off Facebook

"Facebook [...] if they get a notice... "

"all they have to do is not make a judgement about it, just press the delete button."

Yep, don't worry about checking the details, just do what you're told! (I bet the RIAA, MPAA, PRS and all the others would love that too...)

PS "he'd like a remote control which could mute, or delete, people", well I can think of a few people I'd like to mute or even delete too. Does that make me a suspect...?

UK inserts battery take-back scheme

A good start (at last) but what about the rest of the stuff?

To get to my local recycling centre (and it *is*, as has been mentioned by others, a centre for recycling) requires a 10 mile round trip.

Consequently recycling of batteries, low-energy lightbulbs, old computer kit and much more is actually environmentally *unfriendly* unless it's possible to take an entire car-load to offset the fuel involved in getting there in the first place...

Battlefield skyhook robocopter 'passes US Marines' test'

Or how about...

Immediate Cargo Unmanned Supply System

or iCUSS for short when they're going "Where's the *%#& supply chopper?"

Global gov's shrugging lets cybercrims frolic

"Baked-in security"

As opposed to half-baked security...?

IPS's double IT has risks, says commissioner

"forcing passport applicants to enrol..."

... So much for "voluntary", then...

Tories will force BT to open up ducts to rivals

None of the other passengers looked impressed.

Well, they'd have been even less impressed if you'd forced it to run through the buffers and onto the concourse...!

Jedi chapter seeks leader after master resigns

"an undisclosed location"

<Waves hand>

This is not the location you're...

... oh bugger, what a give away!

Online Kiwis maybe feeling Oz censor trickledown

New Zealand fix...

Amongst other things I'm a Moderator on the Gamehouse Discussion forums for their version of Scrabble etc and a couple of our users have found a work-around to allow access to Gamehouse games on Facebook for users in New Zealand.

See http://forums.fb.gamehouse.com/showthread.php?t=836

NB this is not an official Gamehouse fix, caveat user! :-)

China stomps cybercrook training outfit

Chinese authorities have closed down a firm....

... and taken it under State control...

Extreme pr0n suspect has his internet access suspended

It's called "Strict Liability"

Strict liability means that mens rea ("guilty mind") does not have to be proven in relation to the actus reus ("guilty act") in order for a conviction to be obtained.

In other words the defendant has to prove that the image is *not* "grossly offensive" or "liable to cause serious injury" etc, which is virtually impossible.

Let's hear it for Tick-Box Justice...

Does this mean that BDSM clubs are now illegal in this country?

No, thanks to Regina vs Church 1996 after the Club Whiplash raid where the CPS tried to get a conviction for "running a disorderly house". The Judge asked the Jury "Do you think this sort of behaviour is acceptable in this day and age" and the Jury said "Yes".

The only problem is that the Operation Spanner case R vs Laskey, Jaggard, Brown et al, says that if you leave marks which are "more than trifling or transient" then you are committing an offence...

Confused? You will be...

Iran launches rat, two turtles, some worms into space

And in related news...

The Government are now warning that Iran may be able to launch rockets containing plague carrying rats and have raised the National Security Level to "frantic".

MoD turns to bloggers for advice on UK defence policy

Pour encourager les autres...

... or, at least, it would get rid of some of the redundant Admirals, Generals and so on...

Aussie ISP beats Hollywood on 'copyright' rap

Bravo Judge Cowdroy!

At last someone who gets the point that just because Hollywood squinnies does NOT mean they get their own way simply because they can afford lots of expensive lawyers.

DNA pioneer lambasts government database policy

Good for you Sir Alec!

Of course we now have to hope that the Government will actually *listen* to the advice they're given instead of ignoring it and blithely continuing to trample all over every liberty we have...

Carbon trade phish scam disrupts exchanges

"This happens to banks about once or twice a month. And this is the same sort of thing...."

So why the F**K didn't you consider that before introducing this silly scheme with great big security holes in it??

Google behavioral ad targeter is a Smart Ass

"a browser plug-in that kept your opt-out"

Where can we get this...!