h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Well, this isn't exactly stupidity, but it is, at best, a major oversight and at worst, a sign of things to come in this brave new world of iron fisted copyright enforcement.

Last night the live stream of the Hugo Awards was erroneously brought down by automated DRM and Ustream, the host of the webcast, was apparently powerless to restore their own system.

http://io9.com/5940036/how-copyright-enforcement-robots-killed-the-hugo-awards

There are currently new treaty talks in Europe to strengthen the hand of rights holders (not necessarily the artists, mind you) that is very similar to what was nearly enacted with ACTA. Expect to see more of this in the future.

A failure of epic proportions, that was.

And another...

The Democratic National Convention's live stream including Michelle Obama's speech was blocked last night.

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/09/youtube-flags-democrats-convention-video-on-copyright-grounds/

http://www.news9.com/story/20010769/three-year-old-piemont-boy-gets-2500-ticket-for-peeing-in-his-front-yard

04FS!

I peed in my yard last night. (No, I really did... it was in the shadows and not visible from the streets, but I'm house training my new doggie and figured why not lead by example.)

But, seriously?! What an ass that cop must be.

In times gone by we'd have said something like 'Looks like there's going to be one extra cop directing traffic this time next week'. I wonder what the equivalent is these days? I would love to have seen the cop explain to a three-year-old how he'd just cost his parents two and a half grand.

Follow up: as expected, after the publicity, the public pee pee charges have been dropped and the police chief personally apologized.

http://m.newson6.com/story.aspx?story=20024368&catId=112042

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10611973

This guy... He's doing his part to reinforce the Australian stereotypes.

I saw that one a few days ago... right next to this other story

Ah, this story http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-20378949

Here's a follow up on the case of the cop citing a mother for a $2500 charge for her child's "public urination".

http://newsok.com/piedmont-officer-is-fired-over-public-urination-ticket/article/3730380?custom_click=rss&utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

TL;DR - He got fired.

Seems a little harsh. A reprimand, write up and looking out for any future similar behaviour ought to have done the trick, I'd have thought, even though he was being a pillock. Maybe this wasn't the first such incident.

From other sources it seems he's a bit of a bully. He's been sitting on that street for months just hassling people.

If this was a single incident, that would indeed be too harsh a punishment, but it may have been the final straw. But then again, internet news sources aren't the most reliable and this may indeed be merely an overreaction to the negative, worldwide publicity.

I predict a backlash against the backlash

I could easily have filed this under "The Owners". Bank of America insists on speaking with a college student's Dead Mother.

http://consumerist.com/2012/11/26/bank-of-america-is-really-good-at-losing-documents-really-bad-at-believing-my-mother-is-dead/



BofA consistently places at the top of the most hated corporations in the US.

I was at an event for women in IT recently and Bank of America were there. I didn't like them much.

This is why I bank with a credit union

I used to bank with a building society in the UK (kind of the same thing but less bank-like) until Thatcher (I think it was Thatcher, it must have been) deregulated things and most of them became banks.

I've been with the a credit union since I was a wee bairn. It's changed names at least twice since then, but I've kept the account. My account number, like my h2g2 user number only has 5 digits. I had to pad it with 3-5 zeros for a while.

Ok... maybe this isn't 'stupidity'. Maybe it's poor reporting. Maybe I'm just missing something.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-21579211

~*~
The living male birds were equally aggressive to Robosparrow whether its wing movements were activated or not, the researchers found.

"It confirmed our hypothesis that the wing-waving behaviour is functioning male aggressive communication," said Dr Anderson.
~*~

How does that confirm anything other than the fact that even birds know that zombies are bad?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=atq41uF89E0

I high school put on lock down because some woman misheard a lyric from a student's "Fresh Prince of Bel Air" ringtone.

"The police say that student has learned his lesson."

And what lesson is that? That our society has lost its ever loving mind?

We have a population that's frightened of everything and suspicious of everyone thanks to sensationalist news reports. And I've no idea at all what kind of lesson the kid could have learned other than the person who called the cops is a

But what me smile more than that is that it happened in Ambridge

Rum-te-tum-te-tum-te-tum, rum-te-tum-te-tuuum-tuuum