Pirate Bay Judge Exposed as Member of Pro-Copyright Groups

erm.... No conflicts of interest there then, no pre-judice there - oh siree no.

Pirate Bay Judge Exposed as Member of Pro-Copyright Groups | Threat Level from Wired.com

"Last Friday Norström and three lay judges found Sunde and three other men guilty of contributory copyright infringement, sentenced them to a year in prison, and ordered them to pay damages of 30 million kronor ($3.6 million) to entertainment companies."

Now the whole thing concerning the huge cost of damages get me - now if these guys were making pirated DVDs/CDs - or whatever and were selling them and making themselves millionaires then that I could understand. But these are well, wholly imaginary losses that the Entertainment Industry have guesstimated they've lost. I mean why can't we all do that? Say I imagine that a (any) company have earnt themselves X millions of pounds I've lost out on because they're doing something I could have done - but decided for whatever reason not to. Which is all this amounts to.

When you consider that the entertainment industry has only grown as big and as bloated as it has through it's gross exploitation of genuine talent and funnelling that money to lawyers - the situation is even more perverse.

*Sigh* - the human race is doomed.

The Planet of the Dead boring

The Doctor Who not so special.

Oh dear. Well that wasn't very good was it? And all that time and money and energy - and doing stupid things like shipping a whole red London bus off to Dubai (which alarmingly got trashed in transit - ooops!) to such poor effect. Furthermore can't say I'm a Michelle Ryan fan (wasn't that new Bionic Woman thing awful?) and I'm most definitely not a Lee Evans fan - what the hell was he doing in there? He was just irritating and annoying. There's nothing that can bring a combination of shivers up my spine and a sense of nausea than those two words: 'comedy relief'. Urgh-urgh-urgh. It was nice to see the return of UNIT Captain Erisa Magambo from 'Turn Left' - but then they completely ruined her character by having her behaving like a complete psychopath. Oh, and the naff bit shoe-horned in towards the end with the woman making predictions for the Doctor 'Your song is going to be over soon. Oooh, it's coming out of the darkness - coming to get youuuuu. He'll knock four times.' Etc. (Will that be a knock-knock-knock-knock - or four knock-knock-knock-knocks as in the beat that was in 'the sound of drums'. I'll guess the later - because we all kind of know the Master will be making a comeback to kill off the 10th Doctor at Christmas time. God knows they can't use the Daleks again) - but please, no more with the naff predictions - give it a rest. Or just be a lot more subtle about it. Especially since most of the time they're pointless and/or misleading (Rose isn't dead, and neither is Donna) (but I guess they're for our benefit - which breaks the fourth wall too much if you ask me).

[Just off the top of my head a quick list of predicting folk: The Face of Boe, Gwen the maid, The Sybilline Sisterhood and Lucius in Pompeii, The Ood, that maid (or whatever she was) in the Shadow Proclamation, mad, bad broken Dalek Caan....]

What else? Oh yes, TOO MUCH MUSIC. Oh my poor ears - all that Harry Potter style music - (which proves Doctor Who has leaned a bit too far over away from Science Fiction and into fantasy magic land - it's bad enough that sonic screwdriver = magic wand and Tardis = Narnia wardrobe... will the new Doctor have a zigzag scar on his forehead with his glasses perhaps?) all far too pompous and OTT. I'll quickly slip in here how annoying I found the Welsh voice choir bits in the finale of the last series Journey's End. Yes - we all know Doctor Who is made in Wales thank you - we don't need our noses rubbing in it every five minutes. Jeez. It doesn't help that I still associate Welsh male voice choirs with coal miners - so there I was subconsciously wondering 'what's coal mining got to do with dragging planet Earth back to it's proper place in space and time?'


So... to summarise we had a iconic red London bus - which ends up flying about all over the place, a bit of posh totty in Tom Cruise Mission Impossible drag, fly headed aliens from 'the Fly' Manta ray aliens from Stephen King's 'the Longoliers' an irritating stand up comedian, and a flimsy plot.

It's aggravating that I could have gone away for the weekend but decided to stay at home instead. Hurrrrumph. The last three episodes have a lot to make up for.

advertising ruins everything

» Terminator The Sarah Connor Chronicles CANCELLED 04-10-2009

This doesn't surprise me...

It's interesting though that the TV networks know just enough that they have to make shows that bring in an intelligent audience - because if TV was all just cheap and flashy game and reality schlock - then only *cough* subnormals would be at the screen - [and it so happens that usually they're not the ones who have the most disposable income]. But what the networks can't fathom is when to put their product out on the air. So they consistently make massively stupid choices after which they quickly start whinging about not getting the sort of viewing figures they've pre-decided they want in order to make it viable for them to go on making the programmes they're making. Yet, ironically, the very same - richer type of people they are so desperate to lure the eyeballs of - are the very ones that can afford PVRs, DVRs, TiVo, and the broadband internets to watch things on line etc. [without the adverts] D'oh. So, talk about self-defeating. Not that it's occured to anyone within he entertainment industry that their 50s/60s/70s era business model of advertiser-funded TV is severely broken. Oh no, nope - they're still wedded to it - come what may. Erm, what's that cliché about it's only someone who is insane that will keep repeating the same exact same actions over and over but nonetheless will endlessly expect a different result?

So, it's inherently baffling - the only people who care about adverts are the advertisers and their industry and the advert pushers. The rest of us normal (sane) folk just want good stories to watch and all that commercial stuff is stupid shit that gets in the way of that. Which, if you think about it for even a moment - is a totally ridiculous state of affairs to have got into. Especially since everyone involved ends up losing every time. D'oh.

Effin' Edward Bernays has so much to answer for.

funny - I remembered the scar being on the other side

So am I the only one who's noticed the 'inner child' going all 'through the looking glass' at one point? What's all that about then?

I was getting a screengrab for the moleskine reporter at the time...

planet of the dead

Bernard Cribbons in the Christmas special? - awesome. Because Donna will be back!

Terrified innocent musician targeted in armed anti-terror raid

This sounds like a scene straight out of Terry Gilliam's Brazil.

WalesOnline Terrified musician targeted in armed anti-terror raid

Olympus AF-1

Olympus AF-1 Times Two
Originally uploaded by Arthur Lee Smokes

(Got myself one of these - a charity shop find - a few weeks back - haven't found a battery for it yet. So I've yet to use it.)

How British cops are criminalising peaceful protest - Boing Boing

It has ever been thus.
(But the video only showed a relatively mild attack by the riot police. They've done a lot worse in the past.)
How British cops are criminalising peaceful protest - Boing Boing

The rise of the sleaze-ocrats in Britain's ruling class

I've been googling Oborne after seeing on Charlie Brooker's Newswipe.

Rich men, dodgy money and the banana skin.

PETER OBORNE: The rise of the sleaze-ocrats in Britain's ruling class | Mail Online

(omigod - I'm book marking an old 2007 article in the Mail. Hell, bookmarking anything in the Mail worries me.)

link dump

A couple of books:
‘CREATIVE DESTRUCTION’ – THE MADNESS OF THE GLOBAL ECONOMY

A Brief History of Neoliberalism By David Harvey

(Just an aside - last year I vividly remember as I was watching the news programmes as the first waves of the global financial crisis started to hit and was struck how positively gleeful the reporters came across - it was as if they were happy that they had some real news to report for once. Out came the big screen graphics and there where lots of animated charts, they could take to the streets for their 'vox pops'. It was complete 'the Day Today'.)

Talking of the news: "Charlie Brooker looks at the news's obsession with the credit crunch"

OJ on education

1/4


2/4

Mmmmmphf - I'm old school

I still happen to think the whole students fees/student loans thing has been a massive mistake. IMO all education should be Government funded, dammit. It should be seen as an investment in our people and in the country's future. It makes no sense to me that if they can afford to give out dole money, child benefit, tax credits etc. [I won't mention the billions in bank bail outs] for people to do nothing (except for look for jobs that currently don't exist). Why not pay people to study? And not make it compulsory for people to start their working lives with a massive debt around their necks. Not when around the world we've seen where a over-reliance on credit and debt has got us - and the insane notion that you can rely on predictive future learnings - as any one of the million and more of the newly unemployed will tell you as they face foreclosure on their mortgages.


Recession to mean fees resistance.
Student hardship pleas 'increase'.

Dollhouse: Echoes

Where'd I seen elements of this episode before? Mmmmm? Oh yeah - Star Trek 'The Naked Time' and the Next Generation sequel 'The Naked Now' and that episode of Buffy 'Band Candy'.

But overall I'm happier with the show heading in this direction - as it seemed to turn a corner with the last episode 'the man on the street' - I was starting to find the whole 'new personality and a new mission a week' thing ala 'Joe 90' cum 'Mission Impossible' a bit wearing. Unfortunately I'm guessing there's a lot more of that to come though.

['Man on the Street' is the 'Dollhouse' episode to watch and the series creator explains why ]

Does ‘welfare reform’ work? No...

It didn't work under the Tories back in the 80s and 90s either - (and I've had first hand experience).

But what it does do is give the directors of these Private Companies (who are always cosy-cosy with those in power) - work - oh, and LOTS of tax payers money to play with. It's really another instance of corporate welfare. And the British voter seems to fall for it every time. But then as this sort of thing never gets so well covered in the press and TV news - whereas any story about 'dole scroungers' are always good for a headline or two. Not to mention the Govt. funded adverts for 'If, But' benefit cheats...

McNulty, hypocrisy and the Westminster bubble

One of those 'couldn't-have-put-it-better-myself' rants...

Liberal Conspiracy » McNulty, hypocrisy and the Westminster bubble

poor fred

Sir Fred Goodwin's home attacked.
Um? Why am I not surprised? and why isn't Fred forking out for his own security? It's not as if he's short of a bob or two.

but they all love a good database...

Link dumping for our Surveillance society and database mining...

ContactPoint’s failure is a symptom of a wider disease.
"Technology moves fast. Governments do not. Those in the know are not in the least surprised that ContactPoint has been halted. The Government’s databases are in a mess."

10 government databases ‘will break the law’

Information Commissioner Richard Thomas warns of surveillance culture

God knows where the Govt. gets it's almost religious faith in technology from - it's either that or a breathtaking gullibility. 'Oooooh magic boxes - oooooh."

Tony, Tony, Tony...

It's a grim time to be an employment minister with unemployment figures at two million. When Tony McNulty went on Newsnight, he appeared moved almost to tears by the plight of Tina Owen, who described how her life had been ruined by losing her job at Woolworth's. The Employment Minister admitted that he could never live on £60.50 a week. At the time he seemed honest and endearing. This man understood these people's pain.

Here's Tina and Tony...

and then there's the Dawn Butler fiasco.

[But then I remember all the sleaze that was around at the time of the John Major Govt.]

Hot head

Samsung NC10 netbook

Mmmmm. Want one.Samsung NC10 netbook

Long hours link to dementia risk

Mmmmm. Now who do I remember who famously worked really long hours and slept only four hours a night. And made out that anyone who didn't follow her example was a wimp, oh, and on retirement is nowadays suffering from dementia? Oh yeah... that would be Margaret Thatcher.

And who constantly fought against the European Parliament's attempts to limit working hours to a maximum of 48 hours a week because it might hurt Britain's competitiveness in world markets? Why - that would be Thatcher's number one fan Tony Blair.

And who also wants to keep the opt-out? Why... Shadow business secretary Alan Duncan.

Mmmmmm. SlaveLabour UK - it's on it's way.

BBC NEWS | Health | Long hours link to dementia risk

won't someone please think of the children...

Children who spend hours in front of the TV are more likely to get asthma.

"The growing numbers of children with obesity-related diabetes need more radical help from the NHS if they are to have any chance of a normal, healthy life, according to experts. A study of 73 adolescents with type 2 diabetes - unknown in children before 2002 - has found that they put on more weight over a year, rather than losing it."

Britain’s children are unhappiest in the Western world.

Charlie Brooker: To politicians, we're little more than meaningless blobs on a monitor

Dear Charlie, please don't think that this has ever been a new thing. All politicians have only ever held the general public in contempt.

AWESOME!

BBEING HUMAN RECOMMISSIONED FOR SERIES TWO

Fringe Notes

David Robert Jones...

A name, as a fan - I recognised immediately...

Section 76 of the Counter Terrorism Act

Mmmmm. I missed the news on this during the day it was happening. But it's all part of a very worrying trend. We've reached the point where the Government's own paranoia and fantasy-land view of reality is tipping over to a point where we're all going to be seen by it as being terrorists...

With the TV currently having a Thatcher retrospective - I'm reminded that hers was a government where a MP was murdered in a car bomb and herself and her cabinet where all nearly killed in a hotel bombing, and there where many incidents where people were killed - and as authoritarian as the Thatcher Government was - they never saw the need for all these extra new laws that are only going to prove a great threat to civil liberties of many a innocent person.


BBC NEWS | UK | Photographers angry at terror law

Photographers protest against Section 76

Charlie Brooker: Television has the perfect answer to credit crunch despair - full-frontal nudity

I've actually sat through a couple of these programmes now and haven't been able to believe what I was watching. It's truly baffling to me how BBC three ever came to commission this in the first place. The only sane and sensible people on the show are those that walk out - refusing to take any further part in it. There's absolutely no real reason why anyone should appear naked in public if they don't want to and having a camera crew following you around recording your distress - and these utterly bizarre 'self-help' people coaching you through it...
It's all just pervy and sick - and not in a good way.

"Television has the perfect confidence-boosting answer to credit crunch despair - full-frontal nudity" Charlie Brooker.

Just rewards?

Darling bids to stop Goodwin's £693,000-a-year pension.
(Considering the lengths the DSS and local councils go to to claw back overpayments to the unemployed for relatively minor sums of tax payers' money [as part of their state-sanctioned long-running 'let's punish the poor' campaigns] - they should pull their fingers out and get this stopped right now.)

Fred Goodwin's pension: It won't make him happier. (Although I doubt he's crying himself to sleep every night.)

The Spirit Level
Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better
(according to the website this book is not yet published.)

Wow. You don't say. Golly, but we can't stop now -not just when the 'trickle-down effect' of the past 30 years have served us so well. *cough*

US Bankers scamming the newly unemployed

Let me get this right - after a colossal screw up of the economy - the bankers still get obscenely huge bonuses even though they've brought about a global economic crisis and their banks necessitating being flooded with quite obscene amounts of taxpayers cash to keep them afloat, they've already led to the ruin of hundreds of companies and to many people losing their jobs yet after all that now they're scamming the unemployed out of a chunk of their payments.

Roll on the revolution... it's what we need right about now.

Jobless hit with bank fees on benefits.

well, well, well...

Straw vetoes Iraq minutes release.

Mmmm. Like us, the general public, don't already know that the invasion of Iraq - effectively merely supporting a whim of Prez Bush's - was all uber-dodgy. I mean, hello - it would have been as if England had invaded and bombed the shit out of Scotland because of a IRA terrorist attacks on London. The whole enterprise was clearly insane.

[I still hold to my belief that the only reason Bush invaded Iraq in the first place was because he wanted to do one better than his daddy - thinking it's all be terribly easy and he'd get a lot of kudos for winning a 'war'. Of course it all went terribly wrong. But shame upon Blair and his spinelessness that he went along with it all.]

spam monsters

Surveillance society

CCTV cameras on every street video-logging your every move. The Government planning to keep Records of all phone calls, emails, web pages visited, and now...
Government compiles travel records database.

I get the impression that our country is being run by a cabal of OCD afflicted bean-counters and database operators - mindlessly collecting and compiling data - but with absolutely no idea what they're going to do with it. Well, apart from putting it onto laptops or burning to CD-ROMs and leaving them on public transport etc. Oh well. At least criminals have a better idea of what they can do with all this information than the Govt. does.


[Aaaargh!]

The Smart Growth Manifesto

The Smart Growth Manifesto - Umair Haque (although I prefer reading it with the Bruce Serling notes/commentary on Wired.)

More ideas, less stuff - Russell Davis.

'We must protect privacy from over-zealous state'

'We must protect privacy from over-zealous state'

OK - so they've brought out a report... now what?

Mmmmm

Truthdig - Reports - Who Knew Bankers Were This Stupid?

I don't know about America - but for the life of me I don't understand why the streets haven't been filled with mobs of middle class people baying for banker's blood here. Maybe it's yet to come - as the recession bites and things get harder for everybody. After all the UK there's been a long standing disgruntlement about top executives of various companies awarding themselves massive bonuses and golden handshakes etc. when the companies they've resided over have actually fowled up and made masses of losses. Of course nothing was ever done about it. Maybe we're all just too soft and apathetic here.

Later:
Bailed-out Royal Bank of Scotland bankers set for millions in bonuses.

So we can see here - even in extremis - there is STILL absolutely nothing being done about the situation. Mind you , even if the Govt. made the slightest noise about doing something -I bet if these people had a quick whip round among themselves and came up with a suitably-sized party donation out of those same bonus payments - then suddenly there still wouldn't be anything done about it... if this hasn't already happened, which could explain a lot.

[I mean - it's ever so curious that the former chief executive of RSB Frederick (Dick) Anderson Goodwin was presented with a knighthood before RSB nearly went belly up... I can't help but wonder if he made any contributions at any time? Is there any way of finding out?]

Meanwhile (as a taste of things to come - because the general population here are so pathetic and dim witted that it's pretty certain they're going to vote a Tory Govt. in next time):

The Times has learnt that the Conservative Party accepted £200,000 from a slot machine tycoon’s businesses shortly after calling for softer rules on arcade gambling.

Wow, that sounds familiar...

So let me get this straight...

Now if memory serves - isn't the Labour Govt. recently all for bringing in new welfare plans to get the long term unemployed, lone parents and the sick back into work - and if the DSS decides they aren't trying hard enough - they'll get their benefits cut and/or be forced to do menial work for their benefits (which are considerably lower than minimum wage levels). Um. Well, OK. So how does that square with Gordon Brown now saying that Union Workers shouldn't be striking over the issue of Oil Refinery jobs going to foreign workers. Seems to me - if you're properly serious about creating jobs for the unemployed - you should well, be doing something to actually create real jobs for the unemployed and that should be for the people who need work in this country - not for those in Italy and Portugal.

[This of course should highlight another thing what's been going wrong for a long while in the UK - and that's just how much of the country's industry is now owned by foreign companies and interests. It should concern us mere mortals because these being foreign companies - the bulk of the money they're making is going abroad - and a lot of them don't pay taxes! And why do the politicians (it doesn't matter what 'side' any more - they've long become indistinguishable from each other now) let this happen? Oh, you just have to take a look at who's giving them contributions for their campaign funds etc. There's a clue or two right there.]

I was just thinking...

Now that we know that with Matt Smith we're going to have the youngest ever Doctor Who (something which does worry me somewhat...*) it's now fallen to the Sarah Jane Adventures to carry on with what was the original spirit of Doctor Who where a older, wiser person takes young companions along on a series wild and exciting adventures...


(*because one of the things I liked about Doctor Who was that a older grandfather - or older uncle figure was the hero - even as a kiddie-wink I thought that it was a great role model for older folk. In fact I pretty much stopped watching the series when Davison took over the role - because I felt he was much too young - that and he was wearing beige... *shudder*. Now we're going to be given yet another youff running about - like as if, well, haven't we got enough of those in fiction already? Isn't that why the Doctor had companions to do all that sort of malarkey? Oh well... I'm just going to trust that they don't ruin it and all my vague misgivings will be proved utterly foundationless.)

David Hoyle

George

Being Human Blog

Ooooh oooh ooooh!


BBC - Being Human - Being Human Blog

Another miserable quarter for Dixons • Channel Register

Apparently:

"Dixons Store Group International saw sales fall ten per cent in the 12 weeks ended 10 January because customers delayed buying TVs and computers until after Christmas, once the sales had begun."

Oh boo-hoo, boo-hoo.

You mean the punters have finally (and God knows it took long enough) twigged on that retailers put their prices UP in the run up to Christmas and then sell off whatever they can't sell at those inflated prices at a discount during the January sales to clear space for the next batch of stock. So now maybe that business model doesn't work so well for them any more. Oh boo-hoo, boo-hoo. Meh. Dixons are such a rippoff at the best of times.

gadget lust - Cowon iAudio S9 PMP

Cowon iAudio S9 PMP • Register Hardware

or I've my eye the older A3 with it's older connectors - all ready for hooking straight up to a tv.

UK e-mail law 'attack on rights'

Mmmmm. So how come the Govt. can do this - and throw out millions of pounds to pay ISPs to store all this info. but doesn't spend a penny to do something useful like oh. I don't know - make sure ISPs aren't ripping us off on broadband charges - or do something to tackle spam - ANYTHING that would be of genuine tangible benefit to the general public - rather than just self-perpetuating their own paranoia.

Bearing in mind over in America there was plenty of intelligence and warning signs over September 11th 2001 - but it all got lost among the noise of all the other shit they were diligently collecting.

Think I might start looking into old PGP systems for my mail - if they're going to be paranoid anyway...

BBC NEWS | UK | UK e-mail law 'attack on rights'

gadget lust

mmmmm - a home server mmmmm

Iomega aims at TVs with home server • The Register

Technophile: Flip Mino and Kodak Zi6

Technophile: Flip Mino and Kodak Zi6 mini video cameras

Dammit - whys the Kodak had to go for quicktime movs as their format? sigh.

But still wants.

The Journal of Impossible Things

The Journal of Impossible Things & Mini Sonic Screwdriver.

Want!

Will Hutton

I've just been reading Will Hutton's 'The State to Come'

Which written back in 1997 (before NuLabour won the election later that year)- shows that the big mess the Global economy is currently in has roots stretching way, way back. (But since Blair and Brown have only ever been Thatcherites in disguise - it's only to be expected.)

So I've been reading the other things he's written in the Guardian.

I've also come across this:

Edward J. Dodson / Review of: Boom Bust, by Fred Harrison.


Just a thought since most economists have been proven to be completely wrong by real life events over the decades - isn't it time we stopped paying them any credence? Shouldn't we now be lumping them together with the tarot card readers and astrologers and rune-readers and only taking anything they say with massive handfuls of salt?

Proving Moleskine Is Just A Style: The Piccadilly Notebook

As far as I know - Not yet available in the UK.

It's about time someone either took away Moleskine's crown - and/or Modo and Modo brought their prices down - and brought them down a lot.

Proving Moleskine Is Just A Style: The Piccadilly Notebook

Doctor Who monster maestro wants Nesbitt as next Time Lord - Coventry Telegraph - The Geek Files

"Mmmmm Ruari Mears" tasty.

sony ericsson pc suite

Yup - I get the annoying Capi_Worker module crashing nonsense...
here's a supposed solution - that I haven't got working yet. *sigh* Is my next phone going to have to be Nokia - simply because Sony-Ericsson are so far up their own arse they refuse to acknowledge and actually fix their dodgy software?

oh no - plot recycling

The latest episode of Sanctuary - warriors was set around an illegal fight club...

like erm... Torchwood : Combat.
Angel : The Ring.
Star Trek Voyager : Tsunkatse
Star Trek OS : The Gamesters of Triskelion

...I'm sure there are many others (if you know of any others - let me know in the comments). It's my least favourite plot ever - because it's so wretchedly limited.

out of this world - a set on Flickr

A nice little collection of vintage sci-fi things
out of this world - a set on Flickr

gadget lust - nokia n97

Nokia N97 hands-on part II: the reckoning - Engadget

Random bookmarking

I agree with this blog post from Mr Eugenides: Levelling the playing field

Missed this one back in November:
Bill for ID cards rises by £50m as Home Office unveils pilot scheme. Now - a couple of years or so back didn't the London School of Economics predict that the Government's costing for the scheme was wildly out of whack. Of course the Govt. pooh-poohed their warnings...

Beau Bo D'Or tag: benefits.

The brilliance of creative chaos.

now macs need virus protection too

Mmmmmmm - does this mean that Apple are going to go back and re-edit all their 'I'm a pc - and I'm a mac' adverts where they're boasting how macs never ever get viruses and trojans and what-not?

Welcome to Cloud cuckoo land UK

Er... hello. Apparently - there's this global financial crisis going on - the whole world - thanks in main part to the mass idiocy of the people who work at the top levels of the financial sector - is in recession. In the UK there are already various companies shedding large numbers of their workforce - if not going out of business altogether... economic experts are predicting that unemployment figures are set to grow to at least 2 million - very possibly more very soon... (and that never takes into account the real numbers of people who are really unwaged, such as those people subsisting on low wages and/or tax credits or inadequate pensions etc.) - and we're being warned this recession could last for quite some time. So against this background - the Government thinks it's the best time ever to introduce stringent Welfare reforms. Most of which only amount to punishing the unemployed and the sick if they don't get a job. With the end goal of eventually treating them as criminals by forcing them to do community work if they don't toe the line... this Government needs to think about changing it's name to the Slave-Labour party if it carries on in this vein.

It's always interesting to consider the various things the Government hasn't even considered to help people back into work (-or even that the whole work-life concept needs to be radically rethought - because it plainly is very broken). Oh, things like providing proper training schemes (currently only those people already in full employment can afford to pay for the education to gain decent qualifications) - or bringing back the student grant system (rather than the current loan system which only forces people into high levels of debt at the beginning of their careers. We might have cottoned on by now that high levels of personal debt is NOT a good thing) - reducing working hours by law ('work to live - not live to work') and -oh yes and doing various things that mean there are the businesses and companies etc. that people can have jobs in... (Because our Govt. still fails to grasp the simple concept that before we can ever have full employment - that there needs to be more than enough actual real jobs to go around than there are people) But all those things are expensive* and difficult - and it's all so much easier and simplier to blame the unemployed for being unemployed... (and that always goes down well with the sort of angry, mean-spirited, small-minded person who reads the sort of popular newspapers in this country. The sort that live in their own little vindictive fantasy worlds. Just read any comments feed on the websites of such papers and prepare to be horrified at the vitriol and bile these people can spew out.)

Related stuff:

...TUC general secretary Brendan Barber said: "This approach to welfare assumes a utopian world of unrestricted childcare and widely available jobs where only the lazy opt for life on the dole.

"The reality is very different. Thousands of people are joining the dole queue every day through no fault of their own."

___

"Urge lone parents into jobs. Just put away the big stick
Getting people employed is vital, but in a recession current welfare-to-work targets are impossible - and compulsion is crazy"**

[*Although it's always amazing what Governments CAN find the money for when they put their minds to it. The illegal invasion of a country on the whim of a US president? Well, that's open cheque-book time. Bailing out a load of banks and building societies - (and making sure the managers can keep their huge multi-million pound bonuses) the sky's the limit there... But Hospitals? Care homes? Nursing staff? Welfare payments for the poor... oh no - the cupboards bare then.]

[**For the life of me I can't see what's the idea behind forcing lone parent mothers into employment when most of their wages are only going to go paying for childcare! In fact - they might as well just pay them their benefits as normal and let them claim to be self-employed child carers.]

Pictured: The robot that can pull faces just like a human being

Working towards making ourselves redundant one step at a time...

Pictured: The robot that can pull faces just like a human being | Mail Online

(pity the video doesn't work any more.)

Gmail hints

40 brilliant Gmail hints, hacks and secrets

Spoofing Shepard Fairey's Obama poster

Mwha-ha-ha-ha

Spoofing Shepard Fairey's Obama poster | Art and design | guardian.co.uk

Coupland Blankie

Corporate Safety Blanket No. 1
Corporate Safety Blanket No. 2

The essential Firefox extentions I can't live without...

(and this is all a right pain - having to find and put them all back - especially as nearly all of them call for a re-start of flickr - everytime.)


Greasemonkey.

Better flickr.

Better youtube.

Adblock plus

Video Download helper.

and the Googlebar

More to come...

firefox 3

sighs.

Yay! I got a new 'puter for my birthday. Yay!

So there I was with my spanking new computer - and am slowly adding all the programs I need and what not - and here's the really annoying thing... After loading on my preferred browser Firefox 3 - got a few of my favourite extensions loaded on etc. All was happy and going along swimmingly - then I thought I'd load on google's chrome... chrome wanted to add all the bookmarks and stuff from firefox... despite there being hardly anything there I let it. Boom.

Firefox 3 refuses to load - at all.
Tried launching with it's profile manager. Tried running it as an administer...
Nothing.
I've un-installed it - I re-installed it. Rolled back to a previous restore point in Vista. I've un-installed chrome. I've ccleaned everything. Hoping to remove all traces of it all from the registry. Re-installed and always the same - nothing. Absolutely nothing.

Anybody out there any ideas?

It's really aggravating me not being able to use Firefox - I live for it's extension and plug-ins - there's nothing else like it for those things...

[update - now fixed - thanks Leff.]

Tomorrow Peeps

I got a disc set of the last series as a birthday present. Oh my. Cheap and tacky doesn't begin to cover it.



Here's a big link dump:

Wiki entry.

international hero.

Tomorrow People dot com.

Clive Banks.

Meanwhile - let's admire Mike Holoway's packet shall we?



Nice.

Alan Ball on Making True Blood

Alan Ball on Making True Blood

Cowon A3 gadget lust

Cowon A3

Book Designer Chip Kidd - new manga Batman book

Book Designer Chip Kidd - TIME:

"What's the story behind this crazy Batman/Japanese comic book you're putting out?
I've published several books on the lore and the toys and the this and the that of Batman. When the Batman TV show came out in 1966, it was a global hit. But Japan was the only country in the world that contacted DC Comics and said, "We want to license the right to write and draw our own Batman and Robin stories." These stories appeared for exactly a year, from April '66 to May '67. And they kind of came and went. They were never collected, never translated. They just appeared and then vanished.

How was it different than the American version? I noticed one comic where Batman was fighting a man who could change into a praying mantis, a drill bit, a pterodactyl...
They took it back to the '40s, where there wasn't any deep psychological exploration, just a slam-bang fun thing. There's this one villain called Lord Death Man, and his ability is basically to die. But much more importantly, he comes back to life and starts to haunt Batman's dreams. All kinds of wonderful weird things happen that don't get explained."

Tube Talk - Russell Tovey talks 'Doctor Who' - Digital Spy

Oooooh - can't wait for the new series of 'Being Human'. But I'm in the camp that thinks -as much as I like him - he's a bit too young to play the Doctor.

Doctor Who - Tube Talk - Russell Tovey talks 'Doctor Who' - Digital Spy: "Russell Tovey talks 'Doctorjavascript:void(0) Who'"

I might be looking forward to Win 7

There are quite a few things I've always wanted Windows XP to do..

1. Drastically cut down all the bloat....

Stop the constant race to use up all the resources of new faster chipsets and RAM it can... (IE games machines, Linux, Mac OS were perfectly capable of fancy-schamanzy effects without having to use masses of RAM and graphics cards.) The OS should be using as little as of a 'puters hardware as it can - and get out of the way of the programmes the user needs to use.

This should be true of all programmes - not just windows - but everyone seems intent on cramming in as many bells and whistles and bloat as they can with every new version - without ever addressing old bugs and stability and reliability. This has been bugging me for years... Adding endless patches and updates just add to the bloat... but add to the bloat is what they all love to do. *sigh*

3. Be able to move around the open programs tabs on the task bar - like you can the tabs on firefox.

4. I've always wanted to be able add my own bits and progs and rearrange stuff to the explorer window thingy. (I'm sure there are official names for these things but I have no idea what they are.)

5. Control exactly what gets added to my start up. God - I want to kill Quicktime - Adobe Reader - RealPlayer - even Open Office - for adding their shit there without ever asking if I want them there. The arrogant resource hogs.

I want my 'puter to boot up as fast as possible so I can do my things - not have other people pre-decide what they think I'll be doing for me.

6. I hope Windows 7 is as easy to network as they claim - I've never be able to get anything working with XP or Win 98 - it was all nightmareishly stupid and complicated to set up. I've failed to get a win 95 to connect to a win 98 box or a XP box using a parallel cable - I've failed trying to get a laptop to connect to a XP box using a cross ethernet cable... All the 'easy to set up' built-in Windows help screens were worse than useless. You want it to work like you plug in a USB thumb drive works. Bing-bing - you're connected. It should only be difficult if you're at work and security is a concern. But at home... jeez give me a break. You shouldn't need an advanced computer degree to link up a couple of computers and external hard drives and printers etc.


PDC 2008 - Webmonkey

Noooooooo! Don't gooooo!

Grumble grumble grumble.

They'd better bring back Doctor-Donna for a spell too just to make up for this bad news...

BBC NEWS | Entertainment | David Tennant quits as Doctor Who

Brainy Robots To Lead To Longer Unemployment Lines?

I read this short piece in Wired - and all I can think is - 'what the hell is wrong with Americans'. When I was growing up as a kid - this is the sort of thing we were promised would be happening in the future. That machines and automation would be doing a lot of the more tedious work - that we'd be only working a few days a week - yadda yadda yadda. So feel my horror that when I grow up I found myself in a world were - despite computers now being everywhere - people are actually working longer hours than before - for relatively a lot less pay. That's those who do work - because no one has managed to figure out yet that if those in jobs did have a shorter working week - then we would have less unemployed people.

Anyhow - the bit that really got me in the article was 'sounds a lot like socialism doesn't it?' God, the majority of Americans are so totally brainwashed by their masters (their media, their politicians, their bosses, their lecturers, their school teacher, their parents -etc.) that they can barely think of any other way of organising their lives. There's this knee-jerk reflex remark. It's really deeply pathetic.

(I heard the 'we've afraid of socialism' remark uttered quite a few more times by republicans in the run up to the US presidential election on the news.)

And anyway - we don't seem anywhere that close to robots and AI yet. Or are we?


Brainy Robots To Lead To Longer Unemployment Lines? | Gadget Lab from Wired.com

who rumours

A short series of Dr Who rumours.

Oily

"How Big Oil's Lobbyists Contributed to Big Finance's Crash"

So I'm watching the news this morning... apparently - after going up and up and up- and Mr Bush asking the OPEC countries to increase production to bring prices down... Now because prices have been coming down because of the economic slow down, they're cutting production by 1.5 million barrels to - er... keep prices high. Well, they'd say at a level that's profitable for them. Those diamond-encrusted ipods oil sheiks buy for their daughters don't pay for themselves.

It's funny how monopolies work isn't it? No sign of any greed there then.

Meanwhile in this part of the country bus fares are set to go up - because of the high fuel costs... why? when fuel prices have gone down... oh because they buy stocks ahead of time and they bought it when it was more expensive... *sigh*. Isn't anyone looking into bringing horse-drawn carriages back yet?

teh suck

If it wasn't for all my bad luck - I'd have no luck at all...


A camera died.


Another of my cameras -an Olympus UZ550 is very ill.

A gadget I bought didn't work and I haven't got around to returning it yet...

the laptop died:



and an attempt to install the drivers for a printer/scanner ended up killing my main already ailing old 'puter for good...

the dome - a photo set on Flickr

the dome - a set on Flickr

Special report: How our economy is killing the Earth

After the Berlin wall came down and Soviet Russia shortly afterward... I remember thinking at the time - "well, Capitalism is next." Of course everyone else in the world - went along thinking "Whoooo - capitalism has won - whooooo. Greed is good. Therefore the best form of capitalism is unfettered free market laissez faire Capitalism. Full steam ahead!". Ending with the utterly
bizarre belief that a country's best interests are served by allowing a very small handful of individuals to become super-rich (-and get away with paying less and less in any taxes) while the number of poor grow and grow...

It's taken a few years for the cracks to show - Capitalism is nothing but adaptable - but we're all now reaping the folly of the last 20 years.

I wouldn't care so much if the writing wasn't on the wall for all the world to see for decades. One of the glaring examples being the Energy Oil crisis of the 70s. There was a brief blip when America had to endure sudden sky high oil prices - and they endured a few power cuts. It should have been then when masses of research and development should have been poured into alternative cleaner energy production. But the OPEC countries brought the price of oil down again and the world breathed a sigh of relief and went on it's wasteful gas-guzzling ways... Ending with such things as the popularity of the 4x4 SUV as fashion accessory and now shortly after China and India wanting to copy everything it's seen happening in America and Europe for the past 40 years. (IE. Everyone there having their own motor car.) Just at the time when we in the West should maybe copying what China used to do and replacing a lot of it's cars with bicycles!

Anyway - my point is we're about 20 years behind were we should be with greener technologies. Too busy partying I guess.

Special report: How our economy is killing the Earth - opinion - 16 October 2008 - New Scientist

Make-Believe Maverick : Rolling Stone

What the hell is wrong with Republicans - and why do people keep voting for them?

Make-Believe Maverick : Rolling Stone

pointless outside broadcasts

It's 6.35 in the morning. I'm watching the GMTV news - having a change from the BBC news. They - the pair of newscasters sat on the sofa in the studio are, over a link, talking about the Global financial crisis with a female newscaster stood outside Number 10 Downing street. But why? It's early in the morning all the politicians will either be at home still in bed or just getting up. Other to provide a backdrop for her there is no reason for that woman to be out there whatsoever.

This little quirk that ALL news shows have fallen into the habit of has been annoying me for years now. It's just so pointless and stupid.

Jamie Jamie Jamie

TV scoop Review.

Felicity Lawrence in the Guardian review.

Just the premise of 'The ministry of Food' in the trailer adverts for the show had my mind firing off woeful connections:

Jamie the mockney chef being all swearingly patronising and condescending diving in and blaming the victims for their ignorance and unwillingness to do something about bettering themselves.

The whole notion of the chattering middle-classes who already have a niche career for themselves running around telling the classes under them how they should running their lives. Which has been a big drive behind all of the Blair years. Without ever doing anything concrete that helps makes a lasting difference for the better.

The idea that if only people would learn to cook from fresh ingredients that alone would change a local community... oh, how naive.

Anyone with half a brain knows that it's very expensive to eat properly - ask any university student - (but obviously not a catering University student).

There's an anecdote I remember from a TV chat show I saw years ago (Wogan I think)...

A woman asked a TV chef person (I can't remember who) why health food cost twice as much as supermarket fare - the chef said well, you live twice as long - so it's worth it. But the chat show host (Wogan?) said - 'but that means you're paying four times as much for your food as the rest of us.'

9/11 Was Big. This Is Bigger.

"The current economic debacle is far more likely to be seen by historians as a true global watershed: the end of one period and the beginning of another. The financial chaos has brought down the curtain on a wide range of basic and enduring tenets also closely linked with the Reagan era, those associated with neoliberal economics, the system that the Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz has called "that grab-bag of ideas based on the fundamentalist notion that markets are self-correcting, allocate resources efficiently and serve the public interest well." Already this crisis has seen not just our enemies but even some of our closest allies wondering whether we are at the beginning of the end of both American-style capitalism and of American supremacy."

9/11 Was Big. This Is Bigger. - washingtonpost.com

Wal*Mart shutting down DRM server,

"Hey suckers! Did you buy DRM music from Wal*Mart instead of downloading MP3s for free from the P2P networks? Well, they're repaying your honesty by taking away your music."

Wal*Mart shutting down DRM server, nuking your music collection -- only people who pay for music risk losing it to DRM shenanigans - Boing Boing

undoing Thatcherism - years later

Why'd I say this? Well, guess who was behind the idea of abolishing school meals in the first place? Forcing schools to bring in outside cheap catering firms...

A mean-spirited cost-cutting exercise that's led to a bad diet for kids and part of the reasons behind the rise in childhood obesity.

BBC NEWS | Scotland | Free meal plan for Scots pupils

[While I'm at it should I mention that the current credit crunch/banking crisis/house price meltdown also have their roots way back in the 80s free market economy that Thatcherism kick-started? Looks like everyone's being forced into having a big re-think on all that too. Albeit all way, way too late...]

Bradford and Bingley

I just found this entry in one of my notebooks written a month or two ago...

God – I can't stand that new Bradford and Bingley TV ad. How to make something as utterly dull and boring as mortgages and banking and savings – interesting? Oh, let's have a very pretty girl dressed in green (the colour of money? Except most UK currency isn't green any more – it's brown, or purple, blue or whatever – not much green) and have her wearing a bowler hat (the logo of B&B was two bowled hatted men) and have her whittering inanely on - while lots of magical fairy lights swoosh around all over the place. Yup. We're deep in gah-gah fantasy land now. That's exactly what you want from a financial institution. Magic dancing lights – pretty girls and utter gibberish.

---

Then a few days later. The bubble bursts. Bradford and Bradley prove to be in such deep trouble that the Govt. has stepped in and nationalised it – sold off it's assets to a Spanish Bank – and blah blah blah.

“Dreams and hopes are so fragile..” yes, there are B&B – yes, they are – pity you didn't know that a few years ago.

Foreign national ID card unveiled

And so it begins....

BBC NEWS | Politics | Foreign national ID card unveiled

uh-oh

Heart Disease, Diabetes Linked to Chemical in Plastics - US News and World Report


Thrift Shops Thriving, but Running Low on Stock.
and if the thrift shops in 'Merica are finding things are tough (more customers - but far less donations) then what else is it going to take before the economists start to use the 'R' word?

Conservatives Scare More Easily Than Liberals,

Mmmm - interesting. Wonder if that's anything to do with the fact they're got more primordial, smaller reptilian brains. Because that would explain a lot...

Conservatives Scare More Easily Than Liberals, Say Scientists | Wired Science from Wired.com

just a quick mutter...

I was watching Newsnight last -erm night, and as part of the show they had one of their focus groups pieces. There they were showing speeches from Gordon Brown, David Cameron and Nick Clegg - then gauging the punter's opinions. So guess who everyone liked best? Oh, the Lib-Dems. You might think that'd give me a bit of hope for the future (since I so vehemently hate both Labour and the Tories) - but I've seen this time and time again over ... well, decades. The average punters always like what the Lib-Dems have to say - yet they never vote for them - why not? Because people say - 'oh, they haven't had the experience of being in power'. Why's that then? Oh, probably people won't come out of their comfort zones and even try something different. I'm guessing it's out of some sort of warped brand loyalty or something. The Labour party hadn't been in power for something like 18 long years before they got back in... the Tories will have been out of power for 10 years and more - but people will still vote either of those two in, rather than the third alternative. All this despite the fact the both have proved themselves pretty useless at running the country, and do so time and time again.

Sorry rant over. I might as well resign myself to the fact the Tories will almost inevitably get back in next election and set about fouling everything up in a most spectacular manner.

Ponzi scheme

...and when was this essay written? Oh, way back in 1998. So the writing on the wall for this current economic crisis has been up there all this time. I guess too many people where having too a great time to bother themselves to read that writing...

Ponzi scheme

*sigh* lunatics have been running the asylum for so long now -obscenely GREEDY lunatics that is...

Working Harder for Less

Mmmmm. Once upon a time one working man's wages could support a whole family with the 'wifey' being able to stay at home... Now it takes both partners to be out working. Now even that isn't enough?

Somethings been going wrong here - and has been going wrong for a very long time...

What's even more distressing is the fact that a quite large chunk of the working class will still vote for the Republicans. The same happened and still happens here - in the 80s so many working class people voted for Thatcher even as she was closing down mines and declaring war on the Unions. The right wing are just so good at their propaganda - they can get turkeys to vote for Christmas - every time.

Working Harder for Less Mocks the American Dream

Seabird chicks 'killed over food'

Oh dear - this is depressing.

BBC NEWS | Scotland | Edinburgh, East and Fife | Seabird chicks 'killed over food'

plastics, BPA and health...

*sighs*

Despite there being a report on the BBC News tonight - this was the only thing a search for BPA (bisphenol A) turned up: "Chemical linked to mouse genetic damage". Mmmmm, that article comes from 2003. It's odd how the reaction to health related things varies wildly. A wild bird sneezes somewhere and the papers are full of 'Avian Flu is going to wipe us all out' headlines. Any Blue-tongue, foot and mouth, BSE and there's mass slaughter and corpse burning.

But letting food manufacturers package all our food in plastics without having done any long term tests whatsoever... mmmmm...

---

In defence of plastic

Actually I'm a great fan of plastic but I think we over-use it and need to to treat it with a lot more respect. And in the above lined article it's disingenuous to equate plastics used by high end designers when the big problem is all the plastic used to wrap food, plastic bottles, disposable nappies etc. All the stuff that gets used once and sent off to landfill - or what ends up out as part of that scary garbage island...

Doctor Who's secrets revealed, by Russell T. Davies - Times Online

Extracts from Doctor Who: The Writer's Tale, to be published by BBC Books on September 25, RRP £30. (Blimey. £30 that's a bit expensive. Oh wait - it's published by the BBC heh - they're notorious for over pricing everything they publish.)

Doctor Who's secrets revealed, by Russell T. Davies - Times Online

i want this shirt

nous sommes les mannequins (acht)
Originally uploaded by japanese forms

nous sommes les mannequins (acht)

Paul McGann back as Dr Who

The thing with Sun rumours is that - they're often not fair off the mark. It'd be nice to see McGann more tightly woven into the TV canon.

Paul McGann back as Dr Who

SATS? what?

We never used to have SATS in the UK. Decades aggo we had the 11+ - which no doubt some old biddies ware quietly fighting to bring back along with grammar schools etc. But SATS? Oh god - is this yet another one of those stupid ideas that our Government has decided to blindly copy from America - regardless of whether it's appropriate for us or not. I don't know why they do tat because they almost always get it completely wrong and mess the whole thing up. Like they have. The whole notion getting rid of individual exams in favour of a high school diploma is another Americanism. (In that article I'm not happy about people taking too much attention to what businesses say what they want. Education should be regarded as a valuable thing in it's own right - not just as means to getting a job. I think that's where the whole system has been going wrong these past few decades.)

Why don't we just ask if we can become part of the US and have done with it? Oh wait. The fact that they don't really want us might have something to do with that?

*Sigh*

an Englishman in New York

Oooh, I can't wait for this...

Crisperanto.org: AN ENGLISHMAN IN NEW YORK - The Movie - John Hurt reprising Quentin Crisp role!

mmm trying to see if i can blog from my Nokia web browsing gadget. It doesn''t look as if I can. the cut down pocket opera browser just can't handle the complated pages. *sighs*

we don't neid no edukashion

Oh dear. Can you see what's wrong with this picture. The whole of the country's economy has been badly messed up now because of a small number of people (bankers mainly) being let out-of-control - chasing short term profits (selling sub-prime loans) and not giving a hoot about real long term planning for the future.

Hard times hitting American students and schools in double blow - International Herald Tribune

And now the UK has adopted the same model for our Universities - student loans, expensive fees, top-up fees etc. I guess we'll soon be seeing the same thing here.

tee-hee tee-hee

Google's comic capers: what they really meant to say | The Register

Of course I'll be giving Chrome a try - it sounds awesome.

Moleskine Friendly Fountain Pens - 43FoldersWiki

(I want them all.)

Moleskine Friendly Fountain Pens - 43FoldersWiki

Geoffrey Perkins - Telegraph Obituary

Well this is sad. He was a big name behind a great many really good comedy shows that I've enjoyed over the years.

Geoffrey Perkins - Telegraph