Sim-O

Why is this news? A woman pretending to be a man gets pregnant.

BBC:

Trials of an online ad system carried out by BT involving more than 30,000 of its customers were potentially illegal, says a leading digital rights lawyer.

BT has said it trialled a prototype of Phorm, which matches adverts to users’ web habits, in 2006 and 2007.

The company did not inform customers that they were part of the trial.

Nicholas Bohm, of the Foundation for Information Policy Research, said tests without the knowledge of users were “an illegal intercept of users’ data”.

A spokesman for BT said the firm had no comment about the legality or illegality of the 2006 test.

It then goes on to say more testing will happen soon, but BT is asking people this time.

A thought has just occurred, and it’s just a small one. In these reports, it goes on about ‘users’ can opt out. I don’t imagine there are many single user computers about. So it will be computers that are opted out or not. I can’t really imagine the opt out with be easily found or the opt out status changed, for someone borrowing a computer for example.
We need to be very wary.

The Guardian:

YouTube, the video-sharing website owned by Google, yesterday came under attack from MPs after admitting that an error in its review procedure meant it had failed to remove footage apparently showing a gang rape.

Pressed by the culture, media and sport select committee to explain how it dealt with offensive and illegal material posted to the website, Google’s vice-president and general counsel, Kent Walker, said human error had been to blame for footage of an apparent gang rape being viewed more than 600 times before it was removed.

“Our reviewers review a lot of material and in some cases simply just make a mistake,” he said. “The initial flag was reviewed and the individual reviewer had reviewed a huge number of materials and did not take it down promptly.”

I’m not very technical, but I can imagine there is no way possible that every video uploaded to Youtube can be vetted for unsuitable material.

…but John Whittingdale, the Tory MP who chairs the select committee, which is conducting an inquiry into harmful content on the internet and in video games, said: “Your corporate slogan should not only be ‘do no evil’, but take an active role in preventing others from doing evil.”

WTF? What can Google do apart from take down offensive stuff that it finds? Ican’t stop people making the videos, or dictate what people look for on it’s search engine. Does this John Whittingdale want Google to monitor who buys video cameras and phones and then keep an eye on what people do with them?
What it can do is have a procedure for removing/filtering out unsuitable content.

Mark Steel:

Because someone who routinely lies like she [Hillary Clinton] does, then dismisses it as a consequence of the number of words she says has severe psychological problems. Perhaps her disorder is a result of the sort of politician she is. Like Blair, neither she nor Bill stand for anything – priding themselves in being tied to no “ideology”. So a normal politician might set out with a set of principles, then lie as they compromise and betray them. But a Blair or Clinton is a politician with no purpose but their own standing, like celebrities who are nothing but celebrities. So they say whatever they feel will make them look best to the audience they’re with, regardless of whether it’s true, until they probably don’t know themselves what’s real and what’s not.

A lot of politicians seem just like that, except they don’t tell such whoppers in one go. They tell lots and lots of little one.

Here we go again.
From Spyblog.

Part 6
FINAL PROVISION
43 Power to make consequential provision
(1) A Minister o the Crown, or two or more Ministers of the Crown acting jointly, may by order make such provision as the Minister or Ministers consider appropriate in consequence of this Act.

(2) An order under subsection (1) may —

(a) amend, repeal or revoke any provision made by or an Act;
(b) include transitional or saving provision.

(3) An order under subsection (1) is to be made by statutory instrument.

(4) A statutory instrument containing an order under subsection (1) which amends or repeals a provision of an Act may not be made unless a draft of the instrument has been laid before and approved by a resolution of each House of Parliament.

(5) A statutory instrument containing an order under subsection (1) which does not amend or repeal a provision of an Act is subject to annulment in pursuance of a resolution of either House of Parliament.

Repealing any Sections of any Acts of Parliament i.e. Primary Legislation, will only require the “affirmative resolution procedure”.

Revoking any Sections of any Acts of Parliament i.e. Primary Legislation, will only require the “negative resolution procedure”.

Amending any Sections of any Acts of Parliament i.e. Primary Legislation, seems to require both the “affirmative resolution procedure” and the “negative resolution procedure”.

What happened to the supposed “super-affirmative procedure” and the whole of the debate in Parliament and in the UK political blogosphere over the wretched and controversial Legislative and Regulatory Reform Act 2006 then ?

The abuse of the catch all, excessively broad wording “amend, repeal or revoke any provision made by or an Act” means that even the Constitutional Acts like Magna Carta, the Bill of Rights 1689, Habeas Corpus, the European Communities Act, the Human Rights Act, the Civil Contingencies Act etc. can all be repealed or amended without the need for a full debate, or for new Primary Legislation, simply by Order of a Minister.

Go visit Save Parliament.

I am pretty happy with the BBC on the whole. I think it does a good job, usually, is, for the price of it, good value for money when compared to the likes of sky where you pay , £15 a month and get American shit thrown at you.
But why do they keep getting on the breakfast news fucking idiots like the twat that got fired from the apprentice?

OK, maybe doing a bit of an article on whatever subject Panorama is doing that night is OK, as it’s a current affairs programme, but The Apprentice? (I am aware that it also does it to the dancing programmes too, but they don’t promote the trampling of everything and everybody that gets in the way of making money.)

The news is not for plugging any old programme. Who got ‘voted’ off by the public who have nothing better to do or fired by Mr Big is not fucking news.

The presenter (well, they ain’t newsreaders anymore, are they?) introduced it like this, to paraphrase: “Sir Alan Sugar fired his first apprentice, last night, and we’ll be speaking the unlucky person in a few minutes. And don’t worry, I won’t say who it is.”
You can say his name all you want, love. No fuckers heard of him. He had less than an hour of TV last night. He fucked up by not being able to price up fish, ffs. He reckons failure is a GCSE grade B. His closing quote at the end of the programme was ‘If it was down to me, I wouldn’t have failed’ (or got fired, i can’t remember properly, but you get the drift). Oh, fuck off.

I think the reason this has got my goat this morning is that what the apprentice does bring more real wankers (as apposed to fictional ones) onto the screen, when there’s enough of them on the screen anyway, running countries and stuff. We don’t need Joe ‘Wanker’ Public on the telly too.

One of the fuckers said that he would loss everything for this job, family, friends, he didn’t care. Well I’d say you’ve done that bit quite well already then. Another said she was probably the best salesperson in Britain (or was it Europe)! If you’re that good, why are you on this fucking programme about to make a cunt of yourself? Why aren’t you already making a fuck load of cash with no need to embarrass yourself and you family chasing the capitalists’ dream?

Get a proper fucking life.

Free our Bills!

The Nice Polite Campaign to Gently Encourage Parliament to Publish Bills in a 21st Century Way, Please. Now.
What the…?

Writing, discussing and voting on bills is what we employ our MPs to do. If enough MPs vote on bills they become the law, meaning you or I can get locked up if they pass a bad one.

Bills are, like, so much more important than what MPs spend on furniture.

The problem is that the way in which Bills are put out is completely incompatible with the Internet era, so nobody out there ever knows what the heck people are actually voting for or against. We need to free our Bills in order for most people to be able to understand what matters about them.

If we can’t get the MPs to write them in plain English, we can at least get the buggers to put them somewhere where we can struggle through them whilst sat on a nice comfy sofa with a nice cup of tea.

Via Tim

I’ve just done a big long post and it was just waffle, so here is the abridged version:

What has been the result of this war so far?

Iraq has a different leader, this one sits in the White House, and fuck more people are dying and being killed everyday than happened whilst Saddam was in power.

And the people responsible? They lied, they profiteered, they covered their own arses they looked the other way, they broke, and continue to break, international and their own domestic laws and they have the blood of countless people on their hands.

The worst part is not that they haven’t been put on trial, there is still time and I do not expect them to be charged so soon after the fact, but they both got voted back in for another term after all the lies and such came out.

Shame on them and shame on us.

Hot on the heels of Ben Griffins silencing comes an attempt by the govt. to make sure coroners record the right verdict.

The Guardian:

The defence secretary, Des Browne, has gone to the high court in an attempt to prevent coroners criticising the Ministry of Defence during military inquests.

Government lawyers yesterday presented papers to the Royal Courts of Justice asking for a court order banning coroners from accusing the MoD of “serious failings” when recording verdicts on service personnel deaths

Where the fuck do we live? The USSR?
Mr Fucking Browne, YOU CANNOT DECIDE WHAT THE FAULT OF SOMEONES DEATH IS! That’s the job of the coroner. If he finds that a flak jacket the proper vehicle to go on patrol in would’ve save a soldiers life but he didn’t have one because you never gave hime one when you should’ve, then it’s YOUR fault.

The defence secretary claimed the phrase was tantamount to blaming the government for the deaths of servicemen and could be seen as deciding civil liability, potentially being used by families seeking to sue for compensation.

The phrase isn’t tantamount to blaming the government, it IS blaming the government.

Stop wriggling, you shit and take responsibility.

Via Jherad

Sunny:

LOLcat, if you don’t know, has become a popular internet phenomena where pictures of cats are given speech bubbles with funny messages in pidgin English. Sometimes, pictures of cats are super-imposed on random pictures too. See: Icanhascheezburger

I have a new suggestion. LOL-blair. In this game we find pictures of Tony Blair from his latest new and exciting plan to change the world, write funny captions, and then speculate on what he’s going on move on to next.

This is my effort:

via Justin

Update: Back on my computer so more lol-blairs: