Scarf wearers

There’s a small group of people I have problems with.

They all seem to follow a fairly set pattern – pretty, blonde – and typically wearing a shawl or scarf made from the wool of some strange African tribe. They believe they are environmentally minded “people persons” and they typically have qualifications in things like English Literature or other arty subjects.

Oh – and they work in HR.

If you’re looking for someone to take offense at something, look no further. Political correctness is important to them – because they’re so no nice and perfect, everyone else must be as well.

What’s got my goat up about them this time?

Well, it’s my emails. I’ve had for some time an email signature. It’s my name, how to contact me and a short message – “Kill a tree. Print this email”.

I may not be much of an environmentalist when it comes to electricity – but I do like trees. So I’d rather they weren’t cut down wholesale to print out my emails on. And I do send lots.

Still – back to the point. The only person to complain about my little signature is a scarf wearer.

On the grounds that some people wouldn’t find it funny.

Sodding hard drives

And now, for the second time, a Maxtor hard drive has died on me.

Without any real abuse, cause or even wear and tear - it's dead. Toast. Corpse like.

100Gb of assorted stuff, in the process of being sorted - GONE.

Including a 2/3 put together present for a friend.

Grrrrr

Email madness

So here I am, sitting at work - alone.

To cover for an ill member of staff, so I'm feeling warm and full of virtue. My one good dead of the year.

Anyway, here I am, trying to decipher a work related email I've received. I can't understand it.

In full, it reads...

--
pretty raspberries will get to it Z
--

It means nothing to me.

Any ideas people?

My telepathy isn't what it used to be

This post has been delayed for some time since I saw the article it's based on. What can I say, Christmas got in the way.

I'm doing it now because I'm sitting in an office, far from my own, waiting for some software to install. This is going to take some time...

The topic today is quite simple - a news article that some of you - ok, lets be honest - all of you probably missed.

There is in fact a type of film that will damage your love life.

We're not talking "Sorry dear, I'm watching xxxxxxx" type damage - anything can cause neglect and distraction. No, I'm talking far, far worse then that.

We're talking romantic comedy.

I know, I can hear it from here - girls love those things. Yes, they almost all do.

That's the problem.

Yes, I know, I know - I can feel you glaring from here. I know I'm not an unbiased observer here - I'm not a fan of the genre by any definition. So feel free not to take my word on it - I'll post a link at the end of the file.

But the problem is simple - look at any "rom com" and you see a few common traits. The characters don't talk - they fall in love. Almost spontaneously, sometimes without even speaking a word.

They then seem to break up their budding relationship, over some lack of communication issue. One of them (typically the man, but that's another rant entirely) will make some huge overblown romantic gesture that's almost completely insane - and all is well.

They never sit down and talk. More to the point, the men are always supposed to know exactly what to do, say or how she's feeling.

Now, I know some of you are thinking or saying "But isn't that what love is?"

No, that's telepathy.

A truly great expectation.

Another muppet in charge

Recently the culture secretary, a muppet by the name of Andy Burnham has been talking to the papers about inappropriate content on the internet. I'm just going to copy and paste a few things he's said (via the BBC, the Telegraph and The Register).

Because I believe the man should be stripped of any power - and for that matter, clothing - locked into a public stock in London and publicly humiliated for failing to understand a problem that's intrinsically related to his job.

Quote 1: "There is content that should just not be available to be viewed. That is my view. Absolutely categorical. This is not a campaign against free speech, far from it; it is simply there is a wider public interest at stake when it involves harm to other people."

Translation: There are somethings the public shouldn't be allowed to view, read or say. Because it may harm or upset people.

Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but that IS a freedom of speech issue. But a freedom of speech issue that's already addressed. There are laws against the related harm - child abuse, incitement and liable laws.

So what he wants to do is...ban things that aren't illegal. He later gives an example of "...which I would say is unacceptable. You can view a beheading."

Right, now correct me if I'm wrong, but what's the alternative? The beheading he's almost certainly talking about is something that happened in Iraq - a hostage was beheaded.

Such a thing is a gruesome act that will offend - in fact, this event was a message intended to upset. But in banning it what do we achieve? We can't hope to remove it from the internet and the only person it harms is the viewer.

Oh, wait, I forgot. Think of the children...

Quite: "Leaving your child for two hours completely unregulated on the internet is not something you can do. This isn't about turning the clock back. The internet has been empowering and democratising in many ways but we haven't yet got the stakes in the ground to help people navigate their way safely around."

Why in the name of green tomatoes are you leaving your impressionable children to browse the internet on their own?? Would you leave your child in the hands of strange people for 2 hours?

Nope - it's called supervising your children. Making sure they don't run into dangerous things is a part of responsible parenting.

More to the point, how are your precious little angels supposed to find this material? *Accidentally* search for "beheading infidel"? It's not something I'd imagine most children would look for.

The odds of children accidentally stumbling on something unsuitable is slim to none. Further more, the odds are that anything they stumble on will be passed by as boring.

We view things as unsuitable for children. But children...filter out things they don't find interesting. Actually, to be honest, most of us do. Which is why unless they're looking for something they're perfectly safe just web browsing.

The other side - how do we stop them looking at things. If a child wanted to get online and look at unsuitable things....do we think we could stop them?

Even if we had a "perfectly secure system" - we locked down the DNS system, prevented proxies, limited direct IP address lookups - it still wouldn't work.

Lets be clear - there is no practical technological fix to prevent access. Why do I say that? Because even outside the huge techie issues, there's a massive classification issue. What is a child allowed to see?

Quote: According to the Telegraph, Burnham's main goal is to compel ISPs to offer "child-safe" services.

Now, what's the problem with this? There are two main ways of filtering. You allow everything except things that have been complained about...or you allow only things that have been checked.

Now, the problem is simple. He wants the ISPs to pay for all this. Now, how many people do you expect this would take? People to check every blog, picture, site and video file. Oh, and remember that the content keeps changing.

Daily.

The answer is - lots. Paid for by ISPs. Now, since they are all private companies that means that the people who pay for it are us, the customers. So that isn't going to happen, because it can't. The one body that already does part of this job - the Internet Watch Foundation - yep, that should familiar - does what it can, but as recently shown is fundamentally incompetent.

A big enough staff to filter the internet is simply impossible.

So what we have here is a complete moron wringing his hands and saying "Oh, something must be done! Won't someone think of the children!!"

What he really should be doing is promoting the idea that parents should be careful in how they allow their children to be exposed to the collected thoughts, desires and idle mumblings of the human race. Because the internet isn't a pretty place.

Because humans aren't a very pretty people.

Once again, the bombs fall

Once again in the land with the city holy to the three largest religions, bombs fall. Missiles whine and people die.

But here in the UK there seems to be a small, tiny - nay, microscopic bias in the reporting.

Yes, Israel are again bombing the life out of Gaza.

But Hamas launched rockets from the gaza strip first.

Now, it's not as clear cut as all that - it never is. They attacked us, we attcked them back. Remember that the attrocity we commit now is excused by what they did to us last time.

But what is clear is that this could all be ended very, very quickly. It's depressingly simple - if they would stop for 5 minutes to think about it.

Hamas can't win with military might. They launch rockets, Israel has nuclear weapons. (Probably.)

But if the rockets and the attacks stopped, so would the retaliation. Follow this up with non-violent protest. Ghandi had the right idea in India and its hugely difficult to fight - because there is nothing to fight.

But no.

You homo sapiens and your guns...

--
Yes, I know, I want a rifle. So shoot me.

Why politics can make me angry

Broadly speaking I would hope that all politicians put their country first, then their party and only finaly themselves.

Ok, I admit if the last two were reversed I wouldn't mind to much.

Even so I accept that different political ideologies will do things I don't agree with - however, they are all doing what they think "is for the greater good".

This is why I'm rather angry with the current crop of labour politicians.

Right now we're going through a bit of a recession - as is much of the world. During this difficult time the labour parlimentry party hasn't been exactly...well...helpful.

But what really takes the biscuit is this sort of thing.

Rather then bail out a british company like woolworths, or spend a few billion reducing the employers contribution to national insurance - a tax on employing someone - they spend it on a car company.

A car company that was bought out by an indian firm a year or two back.

Not because it would be especialy bad for the economy - woolworths employs more people. Both have huge supply chains.

Nope - it's because the car company happens to have several thousand workers in a couple of margional labour seats.

Spending our tax money to buy votes.

But why is it needed? Surely the've already saved the world?