I like to manually position my icons on my desktop; recently for no reason I can discern my work laptop has started to randomly reposition the icons. After trying numerous settings in XP I finally installed Enterra’s Icon Keeper whilst my icons still wonder particularly at start-up, two clicks now allow me to restore my icons positions. Enterra provide standard and deluxe versions I’ve not forked out the cash for the deluxe version so I couldn’t comment on its worth, however the standard version has solve my problem brilliantly.
Monthly Archives: September 2008
They Will Make Us Pay
Another day another link to that excellent website that is becoming Lenin’s Tomb.
The simple fact is that we have a struggle to make sure they don’t make us pay for their crisis. After all, the capitalist class has a procedure for situations like this: cut your losses, shred papers, fire staff, take the profits, retreat behind some gated communities with armed guards, let everyone else fight over the scraps, and wait patiently for a decent investment opportunity. Didn’t these motherfuckers just come for your social security recently? Wasn’t it only months ago that the UK government was talking about cutting disability benefits and the entitlements of single mothers? Aren’t they pushing for a roll-back of your state pension entitlements? And how many people no longer have a pension to speak of because it has disappeared into a financial black hole? If these people have the monopoly of political initiative, they’ll be able to use this crisis to roll back your rights even further. They’ll say that trade unions are distorting the market by artificially raising wages and discouraging hiring, and they’ll want new laws restricting membership. They’ll say that social security distorts the market by disincentivising labour and encouraging widespread abstention from work. They’ll say that pension entitlements are unsustainable with an ageing population, that the retirement age needs lifting since people are living so long, and that the taxes paid by corporations and the rich to help fund such bleeding-heart programmes are discouraging investment. If people resist, they’ll say that violence is being promoted by political extremists and that for the time being certain rights need to be suspended until such time as people prove themselves mature enough to have them restored. Oh, but, don’t worry: they’re your friends, and they’re there to help you. Just be patient and the wealth will trickle down. Read the whole post at Lenin’s Tomb.
Vote Your Favourite Motown Songs onto a CD
To celebrate their 50th Anniversary Motown are releasing a 50 track album this December and we can vote for the tracks we’d like included. Vote now at Poll the People.
Hat Tip: Kerry McCarthy.
Bankruptcy of American Presidential Campaign
Johann Hari writes about the opportunity to elect a US president who for the first time in nearly a 100 years that won’t be in thrall to either big oil companies or Wall Street.
Is it possible to empty a presidential election of all political content? The economy is crashing, the climate is unravelling, Iraq and Afghanistan are haemorrhaging – and the debate in the mainstream US media about who should be the most powerful man in the world was fixated for weeks on burbling trivia. Barack Obama called Sarah Palin a pig! (No, he didn’t.) Obama wanted to tell toddlers about sex! (No, he wanted to warn them about paedophiles). The critics of Palin are sexist! (McCain voted against the Equal Pay Act. That’s sexism.) Read the full article on Hari’s blog.
Large Hadron Collider’s First Collisions
After last weeks apocalyptical headlines predicting the Large Hadron Collider would create a black hole and swallow the earth up things seem strangely quiet in the news considering the machine is expected too carry out its first proton collisions next week.
Source: The Times.
Lloyds TSB to Take Over HBOS
I can’t help wondering how much of the billions the taxpayer has pumped into the banking system are being used by Lloyds TSB to swallow up HBOS and make tens of thousands of workers redundant. I’d expect the Competition Commission to be involved especially as they state.
We investigate and address issues of concern in three areas:
In mergers – when larger companies will gain more than 25% market share and where a merger appears likely to lead to a substantial lessening of competition in one or more markets in the UK.
In markets – when it appears that competition may be being prevented, distorted or restricted in a particular market.
In regulated sectors where aspects of the regulatory system may not be operating effectively or to address certain categories of dispute between regulators and regulated companies.
This take over will give Lloyds TSB a third of the Mortgage Market according to the BBC. But no The Chancellor Alistair Darling said the government would allow the HBOS-Lloyds TSB deal as financial stability “must trump” competition fears. What on earth has happened to the Labour Party?
Still it allows all those fat cats with share bonus’ to get something out of the busted flush that is HBOS – shares in HBOS had been trading at just 88p considerably less than the 232p of Lloyds TSB’s offer. Despite protestations to the contrary from Lloyds TSB the deals got too paid for somehow and it won’t be done by shareholders so as normal it will be done by sacking employees. Don’t you just love capitalism?
Source: The BBC.
Financial Crisis A View From The Left
I’ve not the time to devote to the financial crisis that I’d like – I’ve got a job to do. So for a view from the left read Lenin’s “The sound of raining bullshit” at Lenin’s Tomb.
Hank Paulson tells us that the system is sound. The Daily Telegraph is sure that the chimera known as the “free market” is still “our best hope”. Anatole Kaletsky of The Times believes that the fundamentals are sound and that the worst of the crisis is to be spent outside the ‘real economy’ in the surreal financial sector. And, as a special treat for British workers, the governor of the Bank of England says that his Monetary Policy Committee is now “firmer in its belief that a period of muted economic growth is necessary to dampen pressures on wages and prices and return inflation to target.” Yes, you read that correctly! They’re keeping interest rates high to beat the shit out of wages and depress the economy, right in the middle of a global downturn, right when deflation is the vogue threat. Ten’ll get you five, this is driving a further wedge right into the heart of a government that is already collapsing before our eyes. A few days ago, the good governor directly intervened in policymaking by warning the government not to raise spending on public services for fear that this would reduce the credibility of the government’s fiscal rules on borrowing in the eyes of investors. Well, isn’t he sweet? Read the rest at Lenin’s Tomb.
Browser Wars
Harold James has an interesting piece on at Project Syndicate on Google’s threat to re-open the “Browser Wars” of the 1990s with its new browser, Chrome.
PRINCETON – Ten years after its birth, Google is threatening to re-open the “Browser Wars” of the 1990′s, when Microsoft’s Internet Explorer eliminated its rival, Netscape’s Navigator. This time, however, it is Google’s Chrome that promises to transform the economics underlying the entire software industry, and not only because of its technical innovation in linking very different kinds of software to an Internet browser. In doing so it eliminates the need for a program such as Windows, which previously controlled access to every kind of software. read the rest at Project Syndicate.
UK Libel Law is a Gross Miscarriage of Justice
I’ve been aware of how grossly unfair UK libel laws for some time, take for instance the Sheffield Wednesday fans threatened with legal action by the club for such comments as
“What an embarrassing, pathetic, laughing stock of a football club we’ve become.” “Another day, another blunder. I doubt even Leeds were in such a mess this time last summer, and look what happened to them.” “I am waiting with bated breath to hear who the Chuckle Brothers have signed after their trip to watch players abroad. With the amount of money they have to spend and the wages they can offer the best we can hope for is that little known Transvestitavian International I Sukblodov, who last scored in a brothel.” Source: The Guardian.
Then there’s the case of Matthias Rath who denounces the pharmaceutical industry and claiming his vitamin pills could reverse the course of AIDS.
In South Africa, Rath published adverts claiming that Aids drugs are toxic and multivitamins halve the risk of developing Aids. Source: iol.
Ben Goldacre had been documenting the horrors in South Africa in the Guardian. Rath decided to sue. The result has been that the Guardian has been unable to discuss the calamities in South Africa for about a year now. Rath had managed to effectively silence one of his chief critics. One can speculate that Rath thought that the Guardian would not defend one of their non-staff minor columnists, but to their credit, they did. Rath has failed and he now faces a mammoth legal bill. The Guardian’s bill was £500,000. His own must have been similar. Source: The Quackometer.
The There’s Simon Singh who’s being sued by the British Chiropractic Association for an article in The Guardian titled “Beware the spinal trap” published in April, it appears to have been removed so here’s an extract.
This is Chiropractic Awareness Week. So let’s be aware. How about some awareness that may prevent harm and help you make truly informed choices? Some practitioners claim it is a cure-all but research suggests chiropractic therapy can be lethal.
First, you might be surprised to know that the founder of chiropractic therapy, Daniel David Palmer, wrote that, “99% of all diseases are caused by displaced vertebrae”. In the 1860s, Palmer began to develop his theory that the spine was involved in almost every illness because the spinal cord connects the brain to the rest of the body. Therefore any misalignment could cause a problem in distant parts of the body.
You might think that modern chiropractors restrict themselves to treating back problems, but in fact they still possess some quite wacky ideas. The fundamentalists argue that they can cure anything. And even the more moderate chiropractors have ideas above their station. The British Chiropractic Association claims that their members can help treat children with colic, sleeping and feeding problems, frequent ear infections, asthma and prolonged crying, even though there is not a jot of evidence. This organisation is the respectable face of the chiropractic profession and yet it happily promotes bogus treatments.
But what about chiropractic in the context of treating back problems? Manipulating the spine can cure some problems, but results are mixed. To be fair, conventional approaches, such as physiotherapy, also struggle to treat back problems with any consistency. Nevertheless, conventional therapy is still preferable because of the serious dangers associated with chiropractic
I will leave you with one message for Chiropractic Awareness Week – if spinal manipulation were a drug with such serious adverse effects and so little demonstrable benefit, then it would almost certainly have been taken off the market. Source: The Quackometer.
I can see why the British Chiropractic Association’s upset, but protection under the law? Oh but the law’s an ass.
Still, it’s not just us Brits that should be worried editorials such as this one from The New York Times is typical of American worries.
When Rachel Ehrenfeld wrote “Funding Evil: How Terrorism Is Financed and How to Stop It,” she assumed she would be protected by the First Amendment. She was, in the United States. But a wealthy Saudi businessman she accused in the book of being a funder of terrorism, Khalid bin Mahfouz, sued in Britain, where the libel laws are heavily weighted against journalists, and won a sizable amount of money.
The lawsuit is a case of what legal experts are calling “libel tourism.” Ms. Ehrenfeld is an American, and “Funding Evil” was never published in Britain. But at least 23 copies of the book were sold online, opening the door for the lawsuit. When Ms. Ehrenfeld decided not to defend the suit in Britain, Mr. bin Mahfouz won a default judgment and is now free to sue to collect in the United States.
The upshot is a First Amendment loophole. In the Internet age, almost every American book can be bought in Britain. That means American authors are subject to being sued under British libel law, which in some cases puts the initial burden on the defendant to prove the truth of what she has written. British libel law is so tilted against writers that the United Nations Human Rights Committee criticized it last month for discouraging discussion of important matters of public interest. Source: The New York Times.
The upshot of this in America is the Free Speech Protection Act of 2008.
Free Speech Protection Act of 2008 – Declares that any U.S. person against whom a lawsuit for defamation is brought in a foreign country on the basis of the content of any writing, utterance, or other speech by that person that has been published, uttered, or otherwise disseminated in the United States may bring an action in a U.S. district court against any person who, or entity which, brought the foreign suit, if the writing, utterance, or other speech at issue in the foreign lawsuit does not constitute defamation under U.S. law. Source: GovTrack.
It’s pretty depressing that our law’s so bad that the USA is passing laws to stop its gross stupidity. Why do I think it’s stupid you ask? Simple – the current system is archaic to say the least, George Monbiot sums up the law
As Geoffrey Robertson and Andrew Nicol explain in their excellent book, Media Law, England’s defamation laws date back to a statute created in 1275. The criminal offence of scandalum magnatum was devised to protect “the great men of the realm” from stories which could stir the people against them. Three centuries later, the Star Chamber allowed noblemen to launch civil actions for libel, to provide them with an alternative to duelling.
They made prolific use of this privilege until Fox’s Libel Act of 1792 determined that the claimant (the person bringing the case) had to prove that the words used against him were false, malicious and damaging. This means that libel law 216 years ago was more liberal and more in tune with the principle of free speech than it is today.
During the 19th and 20th centuries, Robertson and Nicol show, “the common law was re-fashioned to serve the British class system from the perspective of … the Victorian club”. To protect wealthy people from criticism, the courts reversed Fox’s burden of proof. They created a presumption that any derogatory remark made about a gentleman must be false. This remains the case today. Defamation differs from all other civil or criminal laws in Britain: the burden of proof is on the defendant.
The law remains the privilege of gentlemen, by which I mean people who are able to afford costs that often exceed £1m on each side. Cases tend to be resolved by sheer financial might, as the plaintiffs bankrupt the defendants, or force them to give in before their money runs out. This ensures that the law retains its 13th-century function. It guarantees that most attempts to hold the wealthy to account founder before they are launched, as people bite their tongues for fear of losing their homes.
Since 1879, corporations have also been able to sue for libel. The inequality of arms this causes is compounded by the fact that there is no legal aid for defamation cases. Lawyers are now allowed to fight these suits on a no-win, no-fee basis, but this freedom is double-edged: if a defendant loses, he could end up paying double the claimant’s legal costs. Source: The Guardian.
Which makes our libel laws a mockery of justice – what happened to innocent until proven guilty? Don’t get me started.
Hat Tip: The Quackometer.
Rick Wright Dies Aged 65
Pink Floyd keyboard player and founder member Richard Wright has died, aged 65, from cancer. Source: The BBC.
I spent a great part of my formative years listening to Pink Floyd, particularly, Dark Side of the Moon, Wish You Were Here and Animals, I even went, for me at that time a rare visit to London to see a rare performance of the Wall. I still play these albums 30 plus years later and there are not many albums I can say that about..