Category: News

Music downloads mean no free wireless

A confusing title perhaps, but let me explain. BT are currently trying to convince people to open up their wireless routers so that the UK becomes a huge wi-fi zone. Very commendable, especially when a lot of their accounts are bandwidth-limited, so if some guy sat in a car outside your 2-up/2-down decided to leach Lost Season 3 on BitTorrent, your downloads are crippled or chargeable for the month thereafter…

The illegal download thing comes in again with this case in the US where a woman has been charged £108,000 for downloading 20 songs. Bizarrely, the case hinged around the fact that she made them availabl for download, so it wasn’t so much how she got the songs – it was what she did with them afterwards. The prosecuting lawyer said she broke the law by making them available, she maintains it was an accident and she knew nothing about it.

So, folks, lock up your CDs. If you leave them lying on a table then someone could copy them and you’re looking at a twenty grand fine for each track that someone else steals. Well, that’s te loiv they’re following.

OK, so how does this relate to the BT story? Simple – if someone else uses your router (no matter how “secure” a portion of it is and regardless of a logon being needed), any illegal activity goes back to your IP address. Child porn downloads, Torrents, hosting of pirated films… by the ruling in that court case, it’s your responsibility. The two clash completely. OK, you have the defense that it wasn’t your computer so you had no control, but it’s your responsibility and the music lawyers seem to have started a nice precedent for “guilty until proved guilty”.

Visiting the Houses of Parliament

All in all, it’s a bit of a ballache. In Australia, you just arrive sometime before 4pm and you get a nice, free guided tour for about 45 minutes. In the UK, there are different rules depending on where you come from, when you visit, what you want to see and whether you’re buddies with a Lord or not.

Non-UK citizens can only visit (for a fee) during the summer period. UK people, however, can visit all year round at no cost… but have to have their visit arranged by their MP or a Lord. Because we all know the local Lord, don’t we? And our MPs really do have nothing better to do than sort out day trips. No, really. They don’t.

My problem is that I want to go in about a week and a half, which could be short notice. Also, I want to go with a foreigner. So can they get in now it’s not summer even though I’m accompanying them? And do they have to pay if they can? And who is my MP seeing as I don’t have a residential address in the UK?

UK government do something sensible… but don’t ******* tell anyone

It seems that from Monday, the legal age to buy tobacco in the UK rises from 16 to 18. This is a good thing. But as someone in the story points out, “only one in five 16 to 18-year-olds knew about the change”.

Likewise. I read the news every day when I’m able and at the very least scan the headlines. This is the first I’ve heard of it, which bears this out. I probably look at what’s going on in the world and at home more often and more closely than most 16-18 year olds so how did I miss it? You can blame the government for lack of advertising, but surely the news agencies should have picked up on it?

Apple = ****

Not the fruit, the hardware manufacturer. So many time I hear the cries about how wonderful Apple are, but let’s face it – their stuff is design over function. All their stuff is the height of cool. It looks fantastic. The user interface on the iPod is genuinely a dream to use. But they’re fragile and unreliable. The first thing any sensible person buys for an iPod is a protective sleeve and a screen-scratch protector. Surely for an item designed to be portable, this kind of protection should be built-in, not an optional extra?

And now Apple have joined Sony’s policy of preventing people making full use of a product they’ve paid for as the recent iPhone updates can shaft an unlocked product. Sont have been doing this with the PSP for a couple of years now, but at least it only stops you using the homebrew and cracked software you’ve downloaded. The Apple update actually renders unlocked phones permanently useless and has also been causing problems with unaltered handsets. Well done, Apple.

I hear so many pro-Apple arguments. Their stuff looks nice. Well, whoopee. I want something that works, is upgradeable and for which I can get all the software I want. My PC is to be used, not to be looked at. PC’s are targets for viruses, whereas Apples aren’t. Horseshit. There are antivirus scanners for Apples as well – if they don’t get virii, then why do they have scanners? PCs are a more common target as there are more PCs. If the world ditched MS and moved to MacOS or whatever it’s called this year, in three years time they would be the major target.

As I said, I admire the design of Apples. If I wanted something to put on a desk and look shiny to show off how much money I have, I’d get a Mac. But for useability, upgradeability and sheer “tinker” factor, the PC rules hands down.

Flip… flop

Easy come, easy go. I can’t remember which party it was that took the piss out of the other for their “flip flip” (constantly changing back and forth) policies an election or two ago. This is mainly due to the fact that both major parties in the UK are exactly the ******* same. Two big bunches of kids who just want to shout at each other and do the exact opposite.

To prove a point, along comes out new PM who’s barely had a chance to shape the seat in Number 10 to the curves of his huge, sweaty arse and already he’s announcing that he might reverse the 24-hour drinking laws that England were finally granted only a few months ago. By the same government he is a part of.

You’d not believe the number of people I’ve met who are astounded at how early our bars and clubs used to close. The Germans, Belgians, French, Israelis, Aussies… any who’ve visited the UK or been told are simply unbelieving that less than a year ago we had to drink up at 11pm.

Gordon, stop making threats about binge drinking causing problems. Kids are kids. If they binge drink and die, then that’s their own fault. Early closing promoted binge drinking by forcing people to cram alcohol down their throats by an hourly deadline you fat Scottish ******. Just because you know you can piss off back to your home constituency and neck a few whiskies till 4am doesn’t mean that the rest of us wouldn’t like that privilege as well. Or are you planning on making it Britain-wide? No, of course not.