Tell me this is a spoof. Please!

#50 / Magpye

As nobody has acknowledged it yet - Bravo! A very enjoyable read.

But I think you made one error - "...and he giggled UNTO himself", surely.

#3 Laffmaker

???????

Former South African Ambassador to US is a female person.

Nelson Mandela (male person) is NOT a former South African Ambassador to the US.

Perhaps I'm missing some other link here that justifies your humorous comment, but I can't see it.

...and there was me thinking that it was an ideology that led to the the nazi death camps. Glad you cleared that one up for me Ben (with your spiffy new ideology).

Hurrah for Joel. Make them write it out 100 times each! :-)

I don't understand all these comments - clearly it was a picture of a unicorn - was I the only one who saw it?

Sorry - I don't have time to read 100+ comments so if this has been said before I apologise.

But this is serious because many UK local authorities are effectively privatising public space by handing it over to commercial interests. I.E. Liverpool's new 60+ acre city centre development means that many of today's public streets will become private space under the control of the private firm in charge of the huge indoor/outdoor shopping mall there. Once it is privatised then they can say "we make the rules and the rules say no photography". You may THINK it is a public street but behind your back they will have enacted some regulations under some obscure law that lets them hand over control to private interests. Watch out for your local council doing anything like this and OBJECT!

I'm just going outside to remove my huge "up yours Bush" bumper sticker. Can't take any chances on the M25 now!

If we ever get to hear Humphreys or Paxman interview her on this, when she answers their question, ignore what she says (I always do) and pretend she is saying: "Well we figure it is easier to let some foreigners keep tabs on whoever they like rather than expecting them to ask us to do it, even if we have built the best 'keeping tabs' infrastructure in the world. Because, obviously we've built such a good 'public realm' spying capability that we can't cope with the volume of spying it enables us to do. So obviously outsourcing it is the way to go if we want to get a good return on all those CCTV and ANPR cameras".

"Despite all it's faults..."

Tut, tut, tut and thrice more tut.

Let us just parse that, shall we?

"Depite all it is faults..."

No, that cannot be what you meant, Joel. It makes no sense.

Methinks you meant "Despite all its faults ..."

Oops - Arkizzle beat me!
Let's form a society - the Anti legos Lego campaign - ALL Campaign!

Cory said "legos".
(see main BB pages)
Ugh!
He really should know better.
No such word.
People who say legos are such sheeps!

strangeinterlude - if you follow the link you will see just that, deflation in a very jerky time lapse (ok, that's a bit of an exaggeration - just some still pics as it deflated with the help of some kids)

Doesn't say how long it took to deflate, though, if my German is any good,

"I want to start with a question; do you trust the government? Got an answer? Okay now answer this one. Do you trust the next government? How about the one after that? Of course you can’t answer the last two because you don’t know who will be in power... (From MSN -Why ID cards are dangerous)"

I am opposed to UK ID cards. I don't trust this government. Recent history (I did not trust the last few governments either) suggests I won't trust the next few.

But I do acknowledge that the Danes and Portuguese appear to trust theirs. That they don't talk about any abuses of ID cards by their govts - is this because there are none? Can't speak for Portuguese but Denmark seems to come across as so much more civilised (as in civil society) than UK or US societies. Why is this? Is it because it is a smaller population with closer links to those individuals in power?

If we really want to understand how to oppose not just ID cards, but seek to prevent the EFFECTS of ID cards that we fear, we really must study places like Denmark to find out if they suffer the same effects, and if not why not. Then we might learn something we can use in the debate about UK ID cards. Just trading "we do this, they do that" "Oh no they don't, oh yes they do" "it didn't stop Madrid" "It found them quickly" exchanges serves nobody. We need to get beyond this.

If you "could live with paying $129 every couple of years to have Apple install a replacement" then what exactly are you complaining about, re the battery, and why?

(Or did you mean you COULDN'T live with it? I know I'm being very pedantic, but American English is sometimes just too far beyond merely being counter-intuitive. How would you express yourself about something you COULD live with? I assume you'd use the same words!)

I'll get my coat....

Takuan
Good question. And presumably Ford have actively protected their trademark in enough other situations that they don't need to hassle the BMC. (And frankly which judge is going to let someone else really get away with passing off FORD if they tried it)

Maybe the BMC just got a rookie lawyer on a bad day. Who knows - let's wait and see what ensues (deliberate bad pun)

One of the key issues is that this is NOT about the club or the calendar, and not about preventing the club from producing the calendar, but IS about being SEEN to be protecting the trademark.

We (and the courts) can debate if this is the best case/place to do it but if a company is not SEEN to be protecting its trademarks, eventually someone comes along and does something with it that we would all agree is wrong, but they might get away with it if the trademark owner had shown no propensity to protect its trademark, as evidenced by lots of prior cases (such as calendars like this) over the years, where it had blithely looked on (implies approval) and taken no action.

This club could surely get their calendar produced by asking the trade mark owner for permission (which satisfies the criteria for protection).And in this case why wouldn't a club like this have (or want to have) an ongoing relationship (which would facilitate easy permission) with Ford in any case? There are plenty of "INSERT BRAND" Owners' Clubs in the world who all have excellent relationships with the manufacturer in question, after all.

The mistake JC made was not the one he admitted to. Once the £500 was gone he should have said "I'm still right - look I can get the £500 back in seconds, it is not my problem, it is the bank's, and as I originally said, anyone with one of my cheques could have done the same thing. The DPA is a smokescreen - a crime (fraud) has been committed and the DPA allows data to be revealed for preventing or detecting crime. I am going to report this to the police and ask them to find the culprit, which the DPA will not prevent them doing (though other things might). So my original point that the fuss about the exposure due to loss of data was a lot of palaver still stands"

That's what he should have said. His mistake was not saying it.

(Sets cat among pigeons and stands back awaiting fur and feathers to fly)

When I first saw this several months ago I wrote to the designer congratulating him on his inventiveness but pointing out that practicality was also important. That I, like many people, like my toast hot, so the butter will melt. I pointed out that it looked like the time it took to get the toast through the toaster probably meant that the leading edge might be a lot cooler than the trailing edge when it was done, etc.

Never got a reply. No surprise of course, he was surely stuck up his own fundament, as you say, Joel, and unable to deal with email as a result.

Kyle says "Amazon sells MP3s with no DRM."

Ummm, GRM anybody? (geographical rights management)

(Yes, I know, I sound like a scratched record - see my previous post)

Wait until they put GPS in this e-kindling device and it stops you reading your "book" as you cross a border! I simply can't imagine why the "anti-pirate, we're so dumb we can't imagine a new business model beyond suing our customers" brigade haven't tried to have GPS put in hardware yet. Oh - yes I can - if they hired someone to come up with this idea they've already admitted they are so dumb they wouldn't know if he/she was telling them the truth!

Anyone fancy a combined GPS/DVD player with MPAA DVD region control?

:-)

(Ok - sorry - too far off-topic)

Christoper J Olsen said
"...Amazon just opened a DRM-free MP3 store that is by and large a lot cheaper than iTunes...how exactly is that 'dumb'?"

Well it isn't dumb IF you can explain why possessing a US address/credit card somehow magically enables some DRM-free binary digits to be deliverable, but not having a US address/credit card renders those same DRM-free binary digits somehow undeliverable.

Sounds a bit like these particular bits are not "free" of something (whatever it is) that is a bit like DRM in character. Heading straight back to dumbness, surely?

Xeni
For a very long time I have been wondering how one goes about orking a cow. It happens every time I see the word 'coworker' - but never when I see 'co-worker'. So I loved your ironic wink at the idiocy of 'coworker' by giving us 'cow-orker'. Utterly brilliant! Well done!

"...that hate-filled, anti-religious tract. It's garbage like that..."

Anti-religious? Sure, if you like.

Garbage? Fair comment, as your subjective opinion.

But hate-filled? Not in the slightest - the only hate I detect here is yours. Precisely the kind of hate that alienates academia, the Left and many, many other individuals and groups (including many on the Right and more temperate religious people) from your hate-filled "Community of Faith".

I bet you hated Life of Brian, too, and thought that was motivated by hate. Look up the word "parody" sometime. The worst you will find is "ridicule" - but I doubt there is any accepted definition that employs the word hate.

But well done! Do keep up the good work. No, seriously...

Re "It's a diminutive of Alexander ..." It is also a diminutive of Sandra (which may in turn be a diminutive or variant on AlexandrA)hence the gender ambiguity (not quite the same as androgyny)

Apparently South Africa has 10 'official' languages (or so I was told recently by a resident). So this ATM is probably non-compliant with some assortment of government regulations!

(I looked at that link to what the Lego lawyer said. What is a "lecutre"?) :-)

Is Meccano much seen in the USA? Or is it a curiously European thing?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meccano

Because nobody EVER said "made from Meccanos" - it is "made from Meccano". Same deal.

I am very disappointed that I was not the first one to say it is not legos it is Lego!

Xeni and Mark (and probably David - my memory is faulty) have been corrected on this in the past - this is Cory's first offence as far as I know.

Just stop it! Always Lego (with a capital L) and NEVER legos or Legos. Can't BB be fitted with a "seek and destroy" filter for any uses of 'legos'?

:-)

"The Lego pedant"