Six months in prison for MOT scam garage boss

Six months in prison for MOT scam garage boss: "A Haverfordwest garage owner who ran an MOT scam has been jailed for six months."

Two years for cannabis factory

Two years for cannabis factory: "A Pembroke Dock man has been sentenced to two years in prison by a judge at Swansea Crown Court after setting up a cannabis factory in his home."

read this article by some fuck stick at the guardian lol

What bigots say behind closed doors: "

An equalities expert reveals what goes on in the privacy of the training room

You spot them pretty quickly, my friend Jerome Mack tells me. Put 15 people in a room and the chances are that there will be two of them. Thirteen will make the effort. The other two will be bigots and proud of it.

There are many derided jobs and Jerome does one of them. Try this for size. 'Hi, I'm an equalities trainer.' In a Con-Dem world, it won't cut the rug at parties. But, despite what you read about busybodies interfering with normal human relationships and curtailing freedom of speech, how everything would be all right if only the malcontents would stop creating the problems, Jerome says what he does is pretty necessary. 'We work for private companies, the NHS, the police. We have worked for the army. You would not believe the things we hear.'

We all think we're basically good, even those who palpably aren't. And we are all creatures of our conditioning. But sometimes, in a private room, and probably because an employer decrees it, someone gets to challenge our perceptions about what we do, what we say and why. That doesn't mean we have to like it. 'The bigots will sit there for a while like simmering volcanoes,' he says. ''I don't know why I am here,' they complain. 'Why are you making such a big deal about these people? We all have our crosses to bear. What about me?' Jerome and his team might conduct training for 10,000 people a year, but these are the ones who get angry. Depending on what newspapers are saying, all sorts of things make them angry. Right now travellers, gay people and eastern Europeans sit top of the list.

But there's an upside, and it is the other 13, because there was a time when in that room, the bigotry of the two would be infectious. No one would stop them, quite a few would join in. 'Things have changed,' Jerome tells me. 'They challenge the bigotry now, they shake their heads, obviously disapproving. The 13 have been empowered, the two disempowered.'

So doesn't that put you out of a job, I ask him. 'I'd love to be out of a job,' he says. But it's a work in progress. The 13, they're great. But the two are always a menace. And they never quite go away.

• Equality
• Work & careers

Hugh Muir

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

"

Full-scale, fetishistically detailed driveable replica 1966 Batmobiles

Full-scale, fetishistically detailed driveable replica 1966 Batmobiles: "

Mark Racop works out of a shop in small-town Indiana, turning out incredibly accurate, driveable 1966 Batmobile replicas. The bodies are modified castings from an old Futura and all the fittings and parts are functional and styled to match the prop Batmobile from the series (you can also buy these individual fittings -- 'Bat Parts' -- for your modern car). The sell for $150,000, and you can choose between a rebuilt Ford 460 motor, or a new GM 350 crate engine.

Fiberglass Freaks Officially Licensed 1966 BATMOBILE Replicas

(Thanks, Larry!)

• Man's replica Batmobile


• Badass custom Opel GT Batmobile sells for a measly $9k - Boing ...


• 1966 Batmobile as a papercraft replica

"

Working computer made out of Minecraft blocks

Working computer made out of Minecraft blocks: "

YouTube's TheInternetFTW shows off this arithmetic logic unit (ALU) that he's built out of blocks and chunks in the game Minecraft. It's part of a larger 'Hack' computer (as described in Elements of Computing Systems).

So basically, this is a computer subcomponent that you can run around on, physically moving around and watching as it does its thing. It's the 21st century equivalent of the wonderful Bell Labs Cardiac Computer that I played with as a child -- a cardboard computer that got me interested in computing when I was six or seven. It is the virtual made visceral, an unpacked microscopic mystery. It is sheer genius, better than any ten boring lectures on ALUs, computing theory, Boolean math, etc. It's the kind of thing that makes me wish I was a kid today, and glad that I have a kid of my own.

16-bit ALU in minecraft


(Thanks, Fipi Lele!)

• Interview with Minecraft's creator

"

Americans: sign petition to fight Great Firewall of the USA

Americans: sign petition to fight Great Firewall of the USA: "Aaron sez, 'Does Hollywood know how to be evil or what? Just as the President is denouncing Iran and China for censoring the Internet, the MPAA is rushing through a bill to create an Internet blacklist here at home. American ISPs would be required to block any domains that host too much copyright or trademark infringement. The bill is so careless and vague even YouTube could get banned, and that's even before other government agencies get their hands on this technique. (WikiLeaks, anyone?) Can you sign our urgent petition to stop the bill?'

This is the kind of heavy-handed censorship you'd expect from a dictatorship, where one man can decide what web sites you're not allowed to visit. But the Senate Judiciary Committee is expected to pass the bill this week -- and Senators say they haven't heard much in the way of objections! That's why we need you to sign our urgent petition to Congress demanding they oppose the Internet blacklist.

PETITION TO THE SENATE: Censoring the Internet is something we'd expect from China or Iran, not the U.S. Senate. You need to stop this Internet blacklist in its tracks and oppose S. 3804.

Stop the Internet blacklist!

"

Intel + DRM: a crippled processor that you have to pay extra to unlock

Intel + DRM: a crippled processor that you have to pay extra to unlock: "

Intel's latest business-model takes a page out of Hollywood's playbook: they're selling processors that have had some of their capabilities crippled (some of the cache and the hyperthreading support are switched off). For $50, they'll sell you a code that will unlock these capabilities. Conceptually, this is similar to the DRM notion that I can sell you a movie that you can watch on one screen for $5 today, and if you want to unlock your receiver's wireless output so you can watch it upstairs, it'll be another $5.

I remember the first time someone from the studios put this position to me. It was a rep from the MPAA at a DRM standards meeting, and that was just the example he used. He said: 'When you buy a movie to watch in your living room, we're only selling you the right to see it in your living room. Sending the same show upstairs to watch in your bedroom has value, and if it has value, we should be able to charge money for it.'

This idea, which Siva Vaidhyanathan calls 'If value, then right,' sounds reasonable on its face. But it's a principle that flies in the face of the entire human history of innovation. By this reasoning, the company that makes big tins of juice should be able to charge you extra for the right to use the empty cans to store lugnuts; the company that makes your living room TV should be able to charge more when you retire it to the cottage; the company that makes your coat-hanger should be able to charge more when you unbend it to fish something out from under the dryer.

Moreover, it's an idea that is fundamentally anti-private-property. Under the 'If value, then right' theory, you don't own anything you buy. You are a mere licensor, entitled to extract only the value that your vendor has deigned to provide you with. The matchbook is to light birthday candles, not to fix a wobbly table. The toilet roll is to hold the paper, not to use in a craft project. 'If value, then right,' is a business model that relies on all the innovation taking place in large corporate labs, with none of it happening at the lab in your kitchen, or in your skull. It's a business model that says only companies can have the absolute right of property, and the rest of us are mere tenants.

If there's one industry where 'If value, then right,' is a dead letter, it's computing. The first processors Intel ever sold went into PCs did practically nothing. It was only the addition of unlicensed, unauthorized, independent third-party innovation -- software, peripherals, networks -- that made them valuable enough to send more business Intel's way.

Intel is a direct beneficiary of our property rights in our computers: the company's best customers are hobbyists who buy Intel processors directly in order to upgrade their PCs. What if Dell asserted 'If value, then right,' and told its customers that they had only purchased the right to run their PCs as-is, an if they wanted a faster processor, they'd have to pay Dell to unlock this latent value?

One thing remains to be seen: will Intel try to sue people who figure out how to unlock their processors without paying Intel? Under the more exotic interpretations of the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act, showing your neighbor how to unlock her Intel processor is a copyright violation (though a recent court decision went the other way).

Just this week, Intel's spokesman sang the praises of the DMCA's anti-circumvention rules and promised to use them to club down its competitors. Let's hope that this anti-property mania doesn't extend to attempts at shutting down websites that distribute software that let us unlock our own processors.

Intel wants to charge $50 to unlock stuff your CPU can already do

(via /.)

(Image: Engadget/Brian)

• Report: Intel says no to Vista Gadgets


• Intel threatens lawsuits against HDCP jailbreakers


• HOWTO Install Mac OS X on a commodity Intel PC in 8 steps


• Nvidia accuses Intel of anticompetitive hornswoggling


• Intel: Nehalem is now Core i7


• Add Intel DRM to your product, pay $8m fine


• Protect your copyrights, boycott DRM-locked platforms

"