tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-67418932008-06-12T19:11:55.573+01:00Blue Stonehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08037609507827126573noreply@blogger.comBlogger473125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6741893.post-1153314403531523742006-07-19T14:06:00.000+01:002006-07-19T14:12:55.576+01:00

A nice little piece the Beeb have included in their 'news' reporting - about how people in the UK face, on average, 11 demands for proof of identity per year. How cynical of you to wonder if is this has been fed to the Beeb, by the government, as part of the softening-up process for the authoritarian ID Card/Registry scheme! Shame on you for thinking that the only thing missing from the piece is

Blue Stonehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08037609507827126573noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6741893.post-1152824935566324502006-07-13T22:08:00.000+01:002006-07-13T22:08:56.210+01:00

A Vicar resigns after being investigated for giving a child a kiss on the cheek to congratulate her because she had done well in maths."As the complaint and subsequent police investigation demonstrates, the simple act of a kiss on the cheek - a common greeting throughout the world - has potentially damaging consequences."

Blue Stonehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08037609507827126573noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6741893.post-1152368253447926002006-07-08T15:17:00.000+01:002006-07-08T15:17:33.606+01:00

... in Businessweek, about meditation and the creative process (with some business thrown in).

Blue Stonehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08037609507827126573noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6741893.post-1151361775203015242006-06-26T23:42:00.000+01:002006-06-26T23:42:55.473+01:00

Yet more proof that the BBC's messageboard 'Have Your Say' is the almost sole preserve of short-sighted right-wingers.

Blue Stonehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08037609507827126573noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6741893.post-1150551083600094212006-06-17T14:31:00.000+01:002006-06-17T14:31:23.746+01:00

If you ever needed any proof that the people who frequented the BBC News Forum 'Have Your Say' messageboards, were generally brain-dead, right-wing, morons, this should surely be it. The 'debate' is concerning Bill Gate's departure from Microsoft. The high-rated comments are the preserve of the uninformed:Bill Gates has been a tour de force behind the generation of the modern world. His vision

Blue Stonehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08037609507827126573noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6741893.post-1150476300450634742006-06-16T17:45:00.000+01:002006-06-16T17:45:00.723+01:00

A small Welsh computer company has won the right to include the word "spam" in a trademark, despite objections from a multi-national food corporation. NetBop Technologies developed a filter it called "bopspam" aimed at combating unwanted e-mails, known as spam [,]but US-based Hormel Foods, which makes the meat product of the same name, initially objected to its registration. Experts believe the

Blue Stonehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08037609507827126573noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6741893.post-1150418643303262122006-06-16T01:44:00.000+01:002006-06-16T01:44:05.820+01:00

An antidote to all the hang 'em, flog 'em screeching often found in the Daily Mail and The BBC News' 'Have Your Say' message boards, perhaps?People who work and claim benefits do so often because they are in dire financial trouble, a Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) study has said. The JRF study was based on six years of work by the East London Community Links project. It found that people

Blue Stonehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08037609507827126573noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6741893.post-1148396408566465072006-05-23T16:00:00.000+01:002006-05-23T16:01:11.516+01:00

Some 2,700 people have been wrongly labelled as criminals by the Criminal Records Bureau (CRB), it has emerged. The mistakes have led to some people being turned down for jobs. Emma Budd, from Maesteg, South Wales, lost out on a job she was offered by a children's charity when she was incorrectly identified by the CRB as a convicted shoplifter.What's the betting that New Labour will propose ID

Blue Stonehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08037609507827126573noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6741893.post-1148169522234491662006-05-21T00:58:00.000+01:002006-05-21T01:00:30.853+01:00

From Forbidden Planet. Plastic, four quid. The way this country's going, you know we'll all need one.

Blue Stonehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08037609507827126573noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6741893.post-1148053999396414482006-05-19T16:53:00.000+01:002006-05-19T16:57:31.700+01:00

The RIAA (Ridiculously Inflated Accounting Abberations) get US$150,000 as statutory damages for copyright infringement. Donny, of Donny's Blog, has taken some data available from copyright apocalypse that is The Pirate Bay, and calculated just how much the RIAA is claiming entitlement to, for such shennanegans. It turns out to be more than the GDP of France. France has the sixth highest GDP of

Blue Stonehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08037609507827126573noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6741893.post-1147956294383559942006-05-18T13:44:00.000+01:002006-05-18T13:48:05.030+01:00

Does anyone else feel nauseated when they read the BBC's 'Have Your Say' message boards? I mean, it's bad enough that they're still censored. Despite the (relatively) recent changes to the sytem, it's rare to find a topic which is retroactively moderated, and the moderation which does take place is hard to understand - stupid, barely comprehensible posts full of speeling eerors, or the worst

Blue Stonehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08037609507827126573noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6741893.post-1146909661384284322006-05-06T11:01:00.000+01:002006-05-06T11:16:34.950+01:00

The Woodring Monitor. Woo!

Blue Stonehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08037609507827126573noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6741893.post-1146906931550687222006-05-06T10:15:00.000+01:002006-05-06T10:15:31.576+01:00

... and another for the big fellas, I guess: A spyware maker was fined $4 million for putting crap on people's computers, in breach of US laws that state that software may not be installed without user's knowledge or consent. I seem to recall one of Sony's DRM protection schemes had them installing software on people's computers, without their knowledge or consent, when it installed the DRM

Blue Stonehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08037609507827126573noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6741893.post-1146906121182964982006-05-06T10:01:00.000+01:002006-05-06T10:02:01.203+01:00

"The Zen teachers are all unknowing knowers or knowing unknowers. Therefore their 'I do not know' does not really mean our 'I do not know.' We must not take their answers in the way we generally do at the level of relative knowledge. Therefore, their comments which are quoted below do not follow the line we ordinarily do. They have this unique way. Yengo, (1063-1135) gives his evaluation of the

Blue Stonehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08037609507827126573noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6741893.post-1146904644919011022006-05-06T09:37:00.000+01:002006-05-06T09:37:25.116+01:00

"You gain an illuminating insight into the very nature of things, which now appear to you as so many fairy-like flowers having no graspable reality. Here is manifested the unsophisticated self which is the Original Face of your being; here is shown all bare the most beautiful landscape of your birthplace. There is but one straight passage open and unobstructed through and through. This is where

Blue Stonehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08037609507827126573noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6741893.post-1146732052820456902006-05-04T09:40:00.000+01:002006-05-04T09:40:52.820+01:00

It seems the hideous Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill that allowed ministers to wipe their arses with the Magna Carter has been killed. The powers that will be contained in the bill will now be limited by way of the bill itself, explicitly stated, rather than as the result of a vague promise (a politician's promise!) that the ministers would be on their very best behaviour and would never

Blue Stonehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08037609507827126573noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6741893.post-1146731595507444782006-05-04T09:33:00.000+01:002006-05-04T09:33:15.853+01:00

"It is presented right to your face, and at this moment the whole thing is handed over to you. Look into your whole being. Let your body and mind be turned into an inanimate object of nature like stone or a piece a wood; when in a state of perfect motionlessness, an awareness is attained. All the signs of life will depart, and also every trace of limitation will vanish. Not a single idea will

Blue Stonehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08037609507827126573noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6741893.post-1146426561003503762006-04-30T20:43:00.000+01:002006-04-30T20:50:25.183+01:00

In my garden, six feet from where I sit when the sun is out and I'm enjoying a cup of tea, or a peaceful moment, there is a robin's nest in the sculpted hedge, a mere four feet from the ground. When the red-breasted parent robins arrive with their offerings of tiny worms, the chicks go off like miniature high-speed fire-crackers, with a crackling burst of chirps, which swiftly declines as the

Blue Stonehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08037609507827126573noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6741893.post-1146421514253649432006-04-30T19:22:00.000+01:002006-04-30T19:26:33.696+01:00

Blue Stonehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08037609507827126573noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6741893.post-1145874435386723152006-04-24T11:27:00.000+01:002006-04-24T11:27:15.493+01:00

Do you have a problem in Firefox where the flashing cursor appears in a webpage? Where the 'Home' and 'End' functions seem not to work? Where the up and down arrows seem to work inefficiently or not at all? And where you don't know what you can do about it? It happened to me after I'd banged my keyboard against my head to generate some random text in an e-mail, to make it look like I was

Blue Stonehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08037609507827126573noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6741893.post-1145524044092901092006-04-20T10:07:00.000+01:002006-04-24T11:51:03.236+01:00

What is it with the Guardian Unlimited blog site 'Comment is Free'? On any given day, any number of articles featured on the front page will be listed as having comments, but upon clicking the article, not only are there no comments listed, there's also no 'add your comment' button. As of right now, for example, the George Galloway comment "Every country needs a labour party. We no longer have

Blue Stonehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08037609507827126573noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6741893.post-1145460498329984612006-04-19T16:28:00.000+01:002006-04-19T16:28:18.410+01:00

All those adverts with beautiful women draping themselves over expensive sports cars, suddenly make perfect sense.

Blue Stonehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08037609507827126573noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6741893.post-1145263350064231442006-04-17T09:42:00.000+01:002006-04-17T09:42:30.396+01:00

The Chinese government are erecting a giant statue of Chairman Mao in Tibet, to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the tyrant's death. "Many Tibetan people suggested we should have a statue of Chairman Mao to show our gratitude," a local Communist Party official lied to the Chinese press. It's an appaling act of arrogance and contempt for the Tibetan people.

Blue Stonehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08037609507827126573noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6741893.post-1145186674912051032006-04-16T12:03:00.000+01:002006-04-16T12:28:31.756+01:00

A very poor start to the new series, teaming with plot inconsistencies, and awful writing. Returning characters which are in the situation (a hospital on New Earth) without any explaination; a terrible solution to the problem of a horde of disease-infected 'zombies', who are cured by getting sprayed with a bunch of intravenous drugs. They're then able to pass on the cure by touching their fellow

Blue Stonehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08037609507827126573noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6741893.post-1145178395742247822006-04-16T10:06:00.000+01:002006-04-16T12:34:03.266+01:00

People taking their family to Alton Towers, a fairly large English theme park, will have the option of wearing wrist bands containing radio frequency identification chips. Wearing them, will allow the operators of the park to monitor their movements, watching and recording people's behaviour on CCTV. Those choosing to take part will be offered a DVD of 'their day out' at the end of their visit.

Blue Stonehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08037609507827126573noreply@blogger.com