Mark's Musings
A miscellany of opinions, thoughts, rants and comments
Current Events, Digital Lunacy, Internet, Politics and News
Pirates in an adventure with pornographers
Aside from the election results in London and elsewhere, there have been a couple of other interesting news stories this week. The first is the injunction granted by the High Court ordering a group of ISPs to block access to The Pirate Bay. The second is speculation that the government may yet be considering forcing [...]
Current Events, Rants and Ramblings, Sport and Recreation
The London Olympic Games And Paralympic Games Security, Control And Marketing Regulations
Someone asked a question on Usenet: Supposing the Army wanted to station missiles on my roof to shoot down Olympic miscreants, what powers and legislation would they be relying on to enable them to do this? How might I stop them? The London Olympic Games And Paralympic Games Security, Control And Marketing Regulations 2009 gives [...]
Digital Lunacy, Internet
How to avoid being a Twitter tw*t
David Cameron, when asked why he isn’t on Twitter, once memorably replied that “too many tweets might make a twat“. It’s a lesson well worth learning, although as a regular Twitter user myself I have to admit that it isn’t advice I’ve chosen to follow. It’s advice that Linda Hobson might be wishing she’d taken, [...]
Analog Lunacy
If the world’s richest 10 people renounced their wealth, it wouldn’t amount to a hill of beans
There’s a meme going round Twitter at the moment, which reads: If the world’s richest 10 people renounced their wealth, the world’s 1 billion hungry human beings can be fed for 250 years with the money. I can’t find any cite for this claim, but it appears to originate with an account called @InjusticeFacts. The [...]
Current Events, Politics and News
Save a prayer
There’s much wailing and gnashing of teeth this morning in the media regarding the ruling by a court that Bideford Town Council doesn’t have the right to hold prayers as part of the meeting. This article by the BBC is a fair summary. Sample headlines include Christianity on the rack as judge bans public prayer [...]
Current Events, Digital Lunacy, Internet, Politics and News
Pirates in an adventure with pornographers
Posted on 05 May 2012
Aside from the election results in London and elsewhere, there have been a couple of other interesting news stories this week. The first is the injunction granted by the High Court ordering a group of ISPs to block access to The Pirate Bay. The second is speculation that the government may yet be considering forcing [...] Continue Reading
Current Events, Rants and Ramblings, Sport and Recreation
The London Olympic Games And Paralympic Games Security, Control And Marketing Regulations
Posted on 03 May 2012
Someone asked a question on Usenet: Supposing the Army wanted to station missiles on my roof to shoot down Olympic miscreants, what powers and legislation would they be relying on to enable them to do this? How might I stop them? The London Olympic Games And Paralympic Games Security, Control And Marketing Regulations 2009 gives [...] Continue Reading
Digital Lunacy, Internet
How to avoid being a Twitter tw*t
Posted on 25 March 2012
David Cameron, when asked why he isn’t on Twitter, once memorably replied that “too many tweets might make a twat“. It’s a lesson well worth learning, although as a regular Twitter user myself I have to admit that it isn’t advice I’ve chosen to follow. It’s advice that Linda Hobson might be wishing she’d taken, [...] Continue Reading
Analog Lunacy
If the world’s richest 10 people renounced their wealth, it wouldn’t amount to a hill of beans
Posted on 14 February 2012
There’s a meme going round Twitter at the moment, which reads: If the world’s richest 10 people renounced their wealth, the world’s 1 billion hungry human beings can be fed for 250 years with the money. I can’t find any cite for this claim, but it appears to originate with an account called @InjusticeFacts. The [...] Continue Reading
Current Events, Politics and News
Save a prayer
Posted on 11 February 2012
There’s much wailing and gnashing of teeth this morning in the media regarding the ruling by a court that Bideford Town Council doesn’t have the right to hold prayers as part of the meeting. This article by the BBC is a fair summary. Sample headlines include Christianity on the rack as judge bans public prayer [...] Continue Reading
Digital Lunacy, Internet, Web Authoring
A bit of a curious case
Posted on 29 January 2012
A minor ripple of news yesterday concerned the fact that Curebit, a “social referral platform”, had been caught ripping off the design and layout of Highrise, a 37 Signals product. 37 Signals, of course, are probably more famous for their “Signal vs Noise” blog and book “Getting Real” than they are for their own products, [...] Continue Reading
Current Events, Politics and News
The Good Samaritan
Posted on 24 January 2012
Several bishops voted in the Lords last night to oppose the government’s welfare reform proposals. Here’s a story Jesus might have told, if he were sitting on the steps of St Paul’s Cathedral this morning. A man was walking through the East End one evening when he was attacked by robbers who stole his wallet, [...] Continue Reading
Current Events, Digital Lunacy, Internet, Politics and News
Why David Aaronovitch is wrong about Wikipedia and SOPA
Posted on 19 January 2012
Journalist David Aaronovitch has a full page opinion article in The Times today, which I can’t link to as it isn’t openly available online, in which he complains that “There’s nothing noble in this Wiki blackout”. Although the article is ostensibly about the decision by Wikipedia to join the anti-SOPA blackout, which he calls “self [...] Continue Reading
Current Events, Politics and News
HS2 – it’s for real people, not metropolitan journalists
Posted on 11 January 2012
Simon Jenkins, writing in the Guardian, isn’t in favour of HS2. Before getting into the detail of why not, he starts with this comment: HS2 will cost taxpayers £1bn a year in interest alone, all so a few rich business people can get to Birmingham earlier And in that one sentence he demonstrates exactly why [...] Continue Reading
Digital Lunacy, Internet, Politics
Study finds that filesharing is about convenience, not unwillingness to pay
Posted on 07 January 2012
Courtesy of an article in El Reg, I discovered an interesting report prepared by US think-tank American Assembly and Columbia University. Rather drily titled “Copyright Infringement and Enforcement in the US“, it’s a summarised set of results from an extensive survey of the America public. Obviously, the US isn’t the UK and some of the [...] Continue Reading
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