Posts by Paul Murray

Clarkson's 'steal my ID' stunt backfires

get a lawyer

"My bank allowed a large amount of money to be taken from my account .. a week after I'd given them (in person) a written request to cancel... the bank said they hadn't had my request ... and that they wouldn't do anything about it ... the company, they refused to refund me ... the bank then charged me lots of money for being overdrawn and kept me in the red for several months afterwards by continuing to charge me for being overdrawn."

Etc etc etc. Sounds like this advice is too late for you, but here it is: GET A LAWYER. Don't get given the runaround - threaten to drag the bastards into court. It's the only thing they understand.

Schools minister touts 'one interweb per child' pork barrel

Different Worlds

"As said, yes, computers are affordable, you can pickup a base unit for maybe 200 quid? a laptop for 400? as for a monitor, i'm sure you can get a CRT free easily-"

Spoken by someone who has never been poor, or attempted to live on a fixed income. 600 quid, in one lump, is an absolute *fortune* to some.

Spam King Ralsky indicted over stock spam scam

Re:How do people fall for this??

It takes a couple of years for boffins like us to really understand this simple fact: most people, *most* people, are bloody stupid. Those people on Big brother and game shows, people that buy lottery tickes, are average. It is normal for people to be that dumb.

Once you appreciate this, really grasp it, the world makes a lot more sense.

British teens score a C in international science poll

Crooked Cartels

"Remove the crooked cartels masquerading as political parties "

And introduce a single person who by right of birth has authority to govern the country as they see fit. They will have a vested interest in seeing that the country does well, and be effectively incorruptible - who could bribe them?

Funny how ideas turn out in practice.

Boffins slashed in big-science budget blunder bloodbath

Outsourcing

I wonder how much money is going to fatten the bottom lines of outsourcing companies?

Catholic schism over mobile icons

The Iconoclastic Controversy

"I thought one of the major differences between the Eastern and Western churches was the acceptance of the use of icons by the one and not the other"

I belive the issue was concerning icons "in the round" - statuettes, rather than paintings or bas-reliefs.

Having said that - what difference between an image done in pixels and one done in oils? Why is it wrong to get an image via download, but ok to get a mass-produced medal at some dodgy healing shrine? Why the hoo-hah about this, when people are selling eggplant with pictures of Jesus on them on eBay?

Bah. It's because there's no money in it for the church, that's why. Someone ought to have applied for a software patent on getting divine blessings by means of arrangements of coloured pixels, or something.

Remember children: if you kiss God's arse long enough and sincerely enough, he will do tricks and give you free stuff.

California gov site invaded by smut and malware again

Outsourcing

Time to stop outsourcing key government functionality - and these days, having a public website is key. Plunk down some cash for a couple of machines, cluster them and run them in-house. Kick those damn web hosting companies - bloody extortion what they are after to simply host a domain name.

New Zealander's Nokia explodes

Surely not

Is Nokia, or the company that makes the chargers, aware that NZ power is 240v, not 110?

Britain's waterways turning 'healthy' brown

Black and two

Robert Timms Mocha-Kenya coffe bags. Black, two "equal" tablets (phenylalanine). The water here in Canberra is quite nice, thankyou.

New emails address you by name, then try to hose your PC

Certificates

If I had my way, the govt of Australia would manage certificates for all departments - the top level public cert issued by PM&C or dept comms - and all outgoing mail would be *signed* and have a *certificate chain*..

All employees would have two email accounts - an official one and a personal one. Official mail is signed and archived. Personal mail gets a warning added to the effect that it is not officiial communication.

Wii grasses up cheating wife

Cheating

"Cheating" is a standard and predictable part of human sexuality. It is inherently dumb to have all your offspring to just the one partner. Men like to spread their seed around and women, well, like to collect it. In general - if your wife has three kids, one of 'em ain't yours.

Telstra sex romp woman back on the job

God Bless Australia

God bless Australia! I Love this country!

Mars: more evidence of a watery past

Forget ecology

I know this will iritate people who want to keep Mars as-is so we can study it, but I say: breed some lichen or extremophile bacteria that can survive there, and seed Mars with life. Once it's covered with lichen, we can send up some reindeer to eat it.

Google pulls essay adverts

The academic system

Maybe the academic system would work better if it ceased being a moneymaking diploma-mill doing bogus vocational training (you don't really need a degree to be able to do most jobs that require one), and went back to producing educated citizens and doing independent research.

Of course, for that to happen society as a whole would have to stump up the money. You know - taxes and government spending.

Boffins to UK.gov: Don't muck around with science teaching

Why do we trust science?

Kids need to know not just the content of science, but how science as a human activity works - why we trust it. Peer review and all that. Something to answer those bought-and-paid-for scientists that say global warming isn't hapenning, or nicotine is not addictive.

Vista upgrades not so 'express' after all

I got an apple

I got an apple. Bwahahahaha!

GSK runs out of juice over Ribena claims

Busted by schoolgirls

Anyone remember that incident where another schoolgirl demonstrated that Theraputic Touch ("TT") is nonsense?

Booze worse than Speed or Acid shocker

It'l never happen

The right wing will never permit the legalisation of cannabis. Dope makes you unagressive and unafraid, and the right relies on fear and hate to win their elections.

Mother Superior: MySpace or school, your choice

Why bother?

"A predator who wants to violate children will find a way, electronically or otherwise"

Yup. And a thief will pinch your XBox anyway, so why not just go on holidays, leave the doors open, and hang out a flashing sign reading "Attention thieves: XBox here!" ?

Sex with dead deer is illegal, US man finds

drawing the line

What about picking up some liver from the butcher and gratifying yourself with that? Revolting - yes, orta to be illegal - debatable, animal cruely - ridiculous.

I think it's pretty obvious - you can't be cruel to something that is dead.

A little inconsistent, there

"Killing animals to have sex with their corpses SHOULD be a crime"

What about killing animals in order to eat their corpses? Why should one be a crime and not the other?

Microsoft joins OpenAjax party

Felons

MS has been found guilty - guilty - of breaking the US antitrust laws. It is a corporate felon, and any standards body would do well to refuse it admittance on that basis.

UK boffins uncover more secrets of the gamma ray burst

Why go to so much trouble

Why go to all this bother, when you can just read the book of Genesis, or if that's too hard, just go to www.answersingenesis.org and memorise some of the talking points.

Remember: science is just too hard. All you need is your bible.

German Gmail blocker wouldn't sell up for millions

An old trick

The offer of money is a trick, of course. If he accepts it, then google will accuse him of cybersquatting and seize the domain.

BA upgrades corpse

Culture clash

"Or that the the comfort of a wealthy white buisiness man takes priority over that of (relatively) poor Indians ?"

+

"So basically he's complaining that the daughter dared to be upset at her mother dying suddenly, and that - to give the grieving relatives as much privacy as they could - they moved the body and the relatives to first class."

=

Ah ha! I get it - the basic complaint is the way that, in some cultures, it's correct to wail and carry on and generally make a huge racket over things like this. Meanwhile, nice white people who in the same situation would simply sniffle a a bit, pat each others hands and say "there, there", and who have bloody paid for first class tickets are forced to endure it.

He orta fly united. First hint of that sort of carry-on on a US arcraft, and the sky marshalls would start shooting people for being terrorists.

Supreme Court refuses to review 200-year sentence for child porn

25%

The US incarcerates more of it's citizens than russia, china, etc. 1 in 4 of the worlds incarcerated persons are in a US prison of some sort - mainly for nonviolent drug offences, or DWB (driving while black).

It's a stage that merry ole england went through centuries ago - criminalising the lower orders of the population and locking them up.

England eventually started sending these people here to Australia. What will the US do? Global warming gives a clue - soon, Antarctica will be ripe for colonisation.

There's another possibility - after AIDS completes its mission of depopulating the third world, in an ironic twist the US may send its negroes back to africa.

I wish them well, and hope that free from their hereditary aristocracy (oh yes, the US definitely has them) they will have a free society for at lest a few generations, like we used to.

Carmakers tout green motors in Geneva

Whatever happened to ethanol from hemp?

Where is the "grow more hemp" crowd?

Having said that - the only hope for our current way of life (WOL) is nuclear fusion.

Godless coins released in US mint cock-up

AHem???

mark [sic], which part of ".co.uk" do you not understand?

Hold your breath, save the planet

Planting Plants

"Simply find the highest consuming species and plant them like it's going out of style."

Yet another excuse for the "hemp is wonderfulr" crowd.

Israelis vote for Eurovision nuclear apocalypse

Deomcracy

"The difference of course being that Israel is a secular democracy, and holds regular, free and fair democratic elections."

A country is not a democracy unless all who live there - in particular, all who have to obey laws laid down by that government - have the right to vote. Israel is no more a democracy than the american confederacy was.

James Cameron finds grave of Jesus & Son

Othe POVs

Well! All these posts seem to take the view tht there was such a person as Jesus. The other POV, of course, is that the man and his earthly life are entirely mythical, invented by the writer of the gospel of Mark years after the early epistles.

Go see http://www.jesuspuzzle.com/ , and google "ahistoricist".

Why do we like to scratch a wound when it's healing?

Licking, not scratching

Well, most animals do not scratch wounds - they lick them. The itching reminds them to keep the wound clean and moist.

How old is my body if the cells keep renewing themselves?

Body Reductionism

To be alive is to change. A self is not a thing, it is a process. Every moment, I become a slightly different person to the person I was a moment before.

'Your future is in your hand,' says talking urinal

Big Brother

How long before there are monitors in the urinal to detect alcohol and illegal drugs?

The drug detector would, of course, have to take a photo of the offender, leading to hilarious possibilities ("I swear, it's a case of mistaken identity, guv!").

If whales can communicate by telepathy, why can't humans?

1$m

For the past several years, the James Randi Education foundation has offered a prize of $1M to anyone who can demonstrate any sort of psychic or supernatural ability whatever.

The money is, as yet, untaken.

Remembering Anna Nicole Smith and her impact on the American Dream

The Central Bank of China

Does this author have any *idea* how far in debt the US is to China?

A PC to call your own...

Dos 3?

DOS 3? Luxury! We had DOS 2.11, and we were THANKFUL!

Anyone remember windows 2 on a CGA card? 640 * 480 in glorious black and white.

Please don't burn or stone women, pleads Canadian town

Sikhs? What about Rastafarians?

So you can bring a dagger into school, but not smoke the holy herb in the privacy of your own home. Sigh.

(or can you, in Canada?).

Great moments in human research

Porcelain

Porcelain toilet accidents are occasionally the result of people who are accustomed to squatting attempting to use one. Finding it impossible to defacate in the sitting postion, they climb and put their feet on the rim (sorry) of the pedestal.

This places tensile stress on the porcelain, which shatters it. The injuries, as you can imagine, are horiffic.