Many bloggers/readers have been scathing about how Google seems to have lost the plot of late. I’ve read and heard what these bloggers/readers have been saying but haven’t had any personal issues since 2008 when a nutter decided to flag my Blogger site for inappropriate content and Blogger’s reaction was to shut it down immediately.

The logic therefore was that anyone could go to any site he didn’t like, flag it and Blogger would summarily shut it down, with some sort of investigation following some weeks later. This was precisely why I began the new site you’re now on – to stop this sort of insanity.

Now there’s another real doozy from Google.  Get this – they are disabling ad-sense at my new site because of a supposed offence at my old site.  The offence?  Inappropriate content for advertisers in that the youtube breaches some sort of sex/violence code.  Clearly youtube still see it as all right, plus it’s in Indonesian – are Google experts in the Indonesian language?  It was the American Google home which wrote to me.

You might like to put up with as much of the song as you can:

… and compare it to the offerings, say, on good sites such as this.  Offensive?  Gross sexual content?  Moi?

And the way they put it. This quoted post was “an example” of the type of offence I was committing. It wasn’t the offence, just an example of it.  If they want offensive, I can do far better than that, chums.

Some might say it was because of the inclusion of key words, e.g.

Then Inul swaggers on stage, packed in tight red jeans and a glittering crimson tank top. She turns her back to the audience. The guitars crunch, Inul’s hips swing low and hard.

There’s far raunchier stuff than that in my book, quite graphic in point of fact, in a serial way.  Let’s test it out here – titty, bum, erotic, sex, penis, vagina.  Let’s see what that drags down on me in the next day or two.

Curious why people are targetting my old site and leaving the new alone, despite Google’s obvious misdirection.  It’s the third incident now re the original site and in both previous cases, in 2011, concerning posts from 2007 and 2006, I complied.  Also, who’d be remotely interested?

Tell you one thing which has been happening though and I wonder if it has anything to do with it.  Some weeks back, I changed the theme/template at the old site, which had been a private template, with one of Google’s own, called Awesome.

The site had been relatively dormant for spam but suddenly now it was attracting 20 or 30 Anonymous would-be comments a day, increasing daily.  These were being anti-spammed by Google/Blogger itself – i.e. they were not appearing onsite but notifications were coming to my email thick and fast.

My mate couldn’t see what the spammers were getting out of it if they were never posted.  I thought it might have been something in the process of the anti-spamming which made it worthwhile for them – maybe it became a click for them.

Now I’m beginning to think that Google itself has been trawling, as they’ve said they have, but putting out Anonymous comments to test it out.  Hell, I don’t know.

What I don’t like is this “we’re punishing you summarily for an imagined offence”, they investigate and find me not-guilty but instead of an abject apology for maligning my blogs, they issue a “don’t do it again” and I’m on the record for a “prior offence”.  There’s a nannying, bullying, infantilizing element to this I don’t appreciate.

I’ve given Google the use of part of my sites for their advertising, which pays virtually zero.  I haven’t gone on the offensive about them since 2008 and comply as best I can.  I’ve been a good little Googlette.  And they give me this c*** in response?

My answer to Google is Arkell v Pressdram but naturally, it is a non-reply email – no redress.

Oh beat me, whip me, put your tongue there, sex, sex, sex

Just as there are free software and open source factions that work together for a common cause, but eternally snipe at each other over details, so the Wikipedia community harbors two groups that agree to disagree on what is the proper scope for the project: the deletionists and the inclusionists.

Basically, the article says it should consider the example of Monmouthpedia, about the town of Monmouth:

Monmouthpedia will be the first Wikipedia project to cover a whole town, creating articles on interesting and notable places, people, artifacts, flora, fauna and other things in Monmouth in as many languages as possible including Welsh … Monmouthpedia will use QRpedia codes, a type of bar code a smartphone can read through its camera that takes you to a Wikipedia article in your language.

The party-poopers are out in force in comments:

# This is a beautiful and interesting idea, but unfortunately, the fact is that the manpower necessary to build and maintain a deeply recursive structure like that would increase exponentially with its depth — making it highly unlikely to succeed, except, possibly, on generational time scales.

# Wikipedia will need some way to send links outbound, or to incorporate other wiki info into itself, for the more focused wiki(s?). This could end up with wiki being almost a search engine if it becomes more of a portal than a source itself

# It’s not a mini-Wikipedia for Monmouth, it’s a project to write articles on Wikipedia about everything that Monmouth has. Interesting buildings, football clubs, rivers, local bands – everything that fulfils Wikipedia notability criteria. Think of it as hundreds of Wikipedians descending on Monmouth and completely documenting everything about the town and its environs.

I’ve always found Wikipedia good on most things non-controversial, such as how hydrofoils work and the more technical, the better it often is, with those in the field doing the article.  Then along comes some editor full of himself or herself and virtually scrawls over it in red ink – citation needed here, this needed there, effectively ruining the article for the reader.

On controversial issues, it’s obviously going to be written by someone biased, i.e. interested and with a point of view.  In these cases, just take some key ideas and google them to further explore the topic.  There are ways around it.  What might happen with Monmouthpediae is the unwieldiness of it, relying on editors and updaters who don’t have axes to grind and will keep at it.

[H/T Rowan]

2.  Harry Hook is dead – at least his blog is and goes into the honour roll.  Vale, dear sir.

3.   AK Haart writes on the Chaldon Wall Painting.

4.  Macheath writes on the Buggrit.

5.  Everyone but me probably knows Angry Exile has moved.

No posts or comments today.  See you on the other side.

It’s an unfortunate combination, and one we’ve seen at work with the RNLI; an emergency response organisation with no alternative but to take each call seriously is forever at the beck and call of the thoughtless (not to mention intoxicated), who can summon assistance at the touch of a button on phones that may well, in some cases, be smarter than their owners (as described by the indefatigable JuliaM).

Mark Wadsworth on dealing with Scottish independence and RBS:

I assume that the bulk of this is with the Bank of England, so all we have to do prevent RBS from drawing down its balance to below £45.2 billion. Then the day after Scottish independence, the Bank of England merely swipes this cash, i.e. deletes it from the record and we send the new Scottish government a share certificate showing them as the new owner of the 90 billion shares.

Julia M on the appropriateness of commensurate justice:

A mother has told of her anger after the teenager who sexually abused her young daughter was handed an eight-day community work order for his crimes.

Her daughter was eight. Eight…  And just how had the two met?

Last night the mother of the eight-year-old victim – a foster carer who had taken the boy into her home – was joined by campaigners in condemning the sentence … The Ministry of Justice said the supervision order could include therapy work with a specialist.

Oh, and if anyone wonders where this bizarre concept of ‘restorative justice’ came from in the first place, well, wonder no more. It came from the EU.

Longrider on the smartphone disease:

Today it is scary smart phones that cause us harm.

But people become so obsessive about checking their email accounts and social networking sites that they actually become more stressed as a result, researchers said.

Some are so hooked to their devices that they even begin to experience “phantom” vibrations where they mistakenly believe their phone is buzzing in their pocket, it was claimed.

I’m beginning to think that maybe we should all just commit suicide at birth and save ourselves a great deal of trouble.

Luikkerland on a Britain ripe for the conquering:

Backward Britain trussed up to be conquered – as history would warn, if it were taught

Even a superficial coverage of a large arc of history would show that those of us who grovel to the Queen of England do so only because her ancestors stole and murdered, and justified the acts with self-anointment. Until recently, the people who were our politicians and leaders were exactly so because their ancestors had at some point been licensed by the Crown to join in the exploitation. These days, that license is bestowed by voters in elections who are under the impression that they are exerting their democratic right – such is the craftiness and low cunning of our ruling class.

However dot dot dot

From now until the 18th [Jan] I am really locked into learning for this assessment [can't get down to doing it and am running out of time] and then straight after it, there is a work-related commitment and a battle royal I’ll be having [quite grim stuff] – I must go to that meeting fully prepared. Now fellow bloggers know the moment they go near the blog, there are emails to sift, comments to approve, general maintenance to do and that’s before the blogging and visiting. It sucks up the time like a hoover.

Not complaining in the least – it’s interesting and it’s a pleasure but I simply … can’t … at least during these two weeks. It would be a failure of epic proportions in RL, given that I set these things up in the first place and my livelihood and even my home might depend on it. That is no overdramatization. They’re pushing me into a corner I don’t intend to be in and that’s where my energies must be – countering them.

Nourobscur, therefore, must be reduced to a skeleton posting regime, only for these two weeks and that means perhaps one serious, one more lighthearted and a graphic post of some kind a day. I’ll keep checking OoL but not quite as much for that time. It will start after Friday evening as there’s much to write on until then. It’s going to affect emails responded to [delays] and Skypes, everything I’m afraid.

Very pleased to have completed the Guestposter page, which now includes the co-authors at NO.  There might be errors but no one intentionally left out.  Some links might be old and not work anymore and so on but we’ll sort that out along the way.

Anyway, read and enjoy some of those posts over there.

Festive cheer is a bonus on top of that.

Also sorted out the other blogs today and am right chuffed about the guestposts blog – would love to have that up and running properly asap.  Just a bit of hack work needed on the code and a bit of link testing.  Gee, it takes me back – quite nostalgic – and to think how many of those names have disappeared from around here, while others are still persevering.

Christmas is a great time to get these sorts of things done.  Tell us about some of your “must do”s.

Police have targeted at least four climate bloggers in three countries, with constabulary taking computers and networking equipment from a science blogger in the UK.  Roger Tattersall, aka “Tallbloke”, a Digital Content Manager at the University of Leeds, posted that six police officers identifying themselves as being from Norfolk Police and the Metropolitan force entered his home at midnight and took away two laptops and a router.

Much of the blogging community views with alarm the way an American agency were able to get an English constabulary to forcibly enter a blogger’s home and shut him down over his continued exposure of the climategate scam – not on account of any wrongdoing but for the sheer politicization of the issue and the scammers’ fear of the globalwarming agenda being derailed should the emails reach the eyes and ears of the public at large.

Watts Up has this from Roger Tattersall’s attorney:

That data is clearly in the public interest by virtue of having relevance to the wisdom of certain global policy decisions relating to energy use, energy supply and possibly global rationing of energy sources and the direct or indirect taxation of every individual on the planet for the foreseeable future.

Roger has been publicly libelled and abused across the world to the detriment of his reputation and has suffered distress, inconvenience and damage to property. The worst such offender appears to have been a contributor at ‘Scienceblogs’.  His privacy has been invaded and he and his family have been intimidated.

It is possible that treatment of that nature could be meted out to any persons expressing sceptical views about the so called climate consensus.  A clear signal needs to be sent out that such treatment is an abuse of process and a negation of free speech and democratic freedoms.

If you would like to and are able, even in some small way, to assist with the funding of the fight against the State’s cavalier manner with views they clearly don’t like, then here is Roger’s site and:

Here is the Paypal account as displayed on Roger’s site .

How dithering leads to misery: Agonising over problems means you’re never happy with your decision

Men are just beasts:

Former lovers of undercover officers sue police over deceit

Crimewave of foreign thugs the Tories promised to kick out

The school where pupils have etiquette lessons: Comprehensive hires expert to teach students how to get a job

EU demands £25bn lifeline from the UK

Fête de Noël : la crise vous incite-t-elle à réduire vos achats ?

David Hasselhoff: ‘I want to conquer the world’

‘I’d do it all over again, even though it hit my family hard’ – Fraser

It’s up to parents to resist the tyranny of the pink princesses

British household incomes hit by austerity measures

And no review would be complete without MacHeath:

“Is it ‘cos I is a lay-dee?”

Bless her, just when you thought all was done and dusted and the fat lady was taking a deep breath, Baroness Uddin surfaces again – it’s like Fatal Attraction but with ermine.

Despite the best efforts of the Lords to shake her off, at least until she paid back the £125,000 she pocketed in dodgy expense claims, legal advice had it that a permanent exclusion would ‘infringe her right as a peer to be called to the house by the Queen at the start of a new parliament’.

Worming her way back in thanks to this technicality would enable her to claim the full attendance allowance and – oh, the irony! – use it to pay back the money she owes. As an illustration of the difference between the law and justice, that would take some beating.

… then that’s why I haven’t commented for weeks – it won’t allow me to.   The moment I select Google Account, it snuffs out my comment. I’ll make a list of these sites as soon as I can but that’s the issue.

Meanwhile, around the blogs:

Watch those dirty digits:

It’s this long experience that makes me wary of numbers. Even if you trace the numbers back to an original published paper, there are still many things you don’t know. On the whole, if you want to understand something, then if at all possible it’s best done without numbers. Not always possible of course, but it pays to be very wary indeed when numbers are the basis of an argument. It also pays to be wary if computers have been used for anything but storing the raw data.

Singing to the choir:

Regular readers will know that, for me, Christmas music has roughly the same effect. I don’t mean the classical stuff; I’m very happy with the odd oratorio or a traditional carol, but the nauseating drivel that fills your ears in virtually any enclosed public space at this time of year makes my blood boil.

Muffins are not just to eat:

As Christmas and the New Year get nearer, nerves get frayed, tempers flare, patience wanes, and stress is unleashed. This is the dark side of an otherwise joyous time and many people get stuck in that darkness.

While the spirit of the holidays are awe-inspiring, the toll it takes on us physically, mentally, and emotionally is exhausting. So if you are getting a little stressed about now, take a break to remember the reasons we are celebrating.

Do you think he’s referring to iDave and the Beast?

This week we have slain the dragon that has of late threatened the realm with destruction. We have become the very first of all the kings of Albion to do so when we slew the recently-feared and invisible dragon in mortal combat and have now returned to you to rule you all amid the peace and security that our personal valour has won.

Though we can never know the name of that awful creature; nor display its hide and broken bones to our relieved and grateful subjects; we stand before you in the warmth of your praise and love. Let the doubters be silent, let the soldiers of our Guard sheathe their rattling sabres once more in faith that their liege lord has done his duty and that all is now well.

Nuff for now.  By the way, my execution has been postponed till Monday.  Hence me being here doing this.

There are issues – the required reading for the course and I’m behind, with an assessment tomorrow, the other work things which are piling up, BT redefining my contract today and making something happen which logs me out every ten minutes [need it for the course], gas and water issues again when I thought it had all been sorted, the computer making a noise and about to give up the ghost so transferring files for a few hours now and more tomorrow [via usb stick], BT outage for three hours today, health about 50%.

Simply can’t blog these few days, either here or at OoL. I’ll get some posts up but don’t know when. Tomorrow is shaping up difficult. Probably no worse than your situation but it’s cutting into blogging time something awful. Sorry.

Approximately 90% of Russia’s inmates serving time in the country’s penitentiaries have cast their ballots in the parliamentary elections, NTV news channel said on Sunday.

With only five hours remaining until polls close in Russia’s westernmost time zone in the exclave of Kaliningrad, 25.4% of eligible voters have cast their ballots. The Siberian region of Krasnoyarsk has just closed its polls.

NTV also reported that prisoners are casting their votes according to a strict time schedule and that none of the prisoners so far have declined to vote.

[Think the implications are in there - JH]

AK Haart on the climate change for kids website:

Maybe it has been left as some kind of digital snare for the unwary, but the last press release was July 7th 2010 and the last update I can find related to the site is a Facebook entry for September 17th 2010.

I have no idea why the site seems to have been abandoned like a digital Mary Celeste, but it started me thinking about the demise of climate change generally.

[Funding ran out?  Kids found out about Santa Claus? - JH]

Alexys Smith on the coffee a professor offered his guests:

When all the students had a cup of coffee in hand, the professor said, “If you noticed, all the nice looking expensive cups have been taken up, leaving behind the plain and cheap ones.

While it is normal for you to want only the best for yourselves, that is the source of your problems and stress. Be assured that the cup itself adds no quality to the coffee.

[Fine line between appreciating the best and greed - JH]

Angry Exile on the baby rape and justice:

And there are two reasons – first is that we all know the police screw up from time to time and arrest the wrong people, and right this second we can’t honesty say that those arrested are guilty of anything. Suspected, yes, sure, but right now they haven’t even been charged and in law they are innocent ’til proven guilty, just the same as everyone else. This is not a triviality.

[It seems to me that lynch mobs are being encouraged by the media, probably at the behest of their masters - JH]

Autonomous Mind on the lazy press and the Beanology of reportage:

Congratulations!  You have now successfully given a low key rumour of unknown origin a huge shot of steroids and prepared the ground for world’s biggest ‘news’ organisation to fill a news cycle with more speculation; promoting fear that the banking sector of an entire economic area, is on the verge of collapse.

There is one question that no-one has asked of the rioters so far to my knowledge; “did you grow up with your biological father?” You see, I think I know the answer to this already – that an overwhelming majority of them will be growing up or have grown up with an absent father – but it would be nice to see the figures.

Vox:

If we are to take the polls seriously, this leaves Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney as the two leading candidates for the Republican nomination, which is arguably the least attractive leadership pair on offer since the Polish people were divided between Hitler and Stalin.

Prodicus:

Have to say, it makes one feel really rather proud:

“Ayatollah Ali Khamenei reminded his naval commanders and the world that of all perfidious nations, Britain was the worst.” The Times - via @ChristianJMay

Mark:

Do you think the public sector strike on 30th November was justified?

No – 83%
Yes – 17%

[I've really no opinion - JH]

Macheath:

The annual bazaar was the province of Sister Patrick, who ran a bottle stall from which nearly all the winning tickets had been extracted in advance. Pupils also had to run the gauntlet of Sr Mary’s dartboard (blunted darts), Sr Seamas’ coconut-shy (glued down) and Sr Clare’s tombola (you’ve guessed it).

The nuns had it nicely calculated – just enough pupils won prizes to keep everyone’s hopes up while extracting the maximum amount of profit. I may not have derived much spiritual benefit from that education, but being thus parted on an annual basis from my hard-earned pocket-money gave me a lifelong aversion to risking cash ever again.

This brings up the thought that I need to be careful what I schedule because if posts are happily coming up [this one is in real time now], then you might come in and comment, won’t be able to and might think I’m blocking you or whatever.

I think the only way is that if something seems untoward in future at this site, check the failsafe and that will give the state of play. Failing that, check the original site. Failing that, email me.

OK, so back to business.

I replied: “The most discriminated against at this time are the aging white British male and to a lesser extent, the aging white British female.”

There was a sharp intake of breath from her and she said “That is not as the law states and we must comply with the law. What you’re saying is a matter for policy change and we don’t directly deal with that.”

“When I come to work, I leave politics at the door though I’m heavily involved in them in the outside world.”

She accepted that and added: “I understand what you’re saying but we really must comply with the law.”

When I read through the training manual, sure enough, there were the groups we all know listed and sure enough, the white British male was excluded. Now we have an interesting situation. I’m not allowed to comment on the law at work and must rely on someone above in the policy department to push for changes in the law.

This they clearly will not do.

Therefore, to have a job is to comply with an unjust set of laws [or statutes, to be precise]. Not to have a job is also to comply because one is taking the taxpayer’s shilling. What does the taxpayer think? The taxpayers are divided.

There must be some mechanism whereby, if a law is unjust, it can be challenged, debated and overthrown. If that provision is not there, then it must be put in place by the taxpayers themselves. The principle of open debate is a sacred one.

As a result of my views on this and on so many views dotted throughout my own blog and to a lesser extent, at OoL, an Anonymous commenter wrote:

@James Higham Can’t tell if sexist or just very ignorant.

So, one of the Twitterati. The reason I’m personally so aggressive against feminazism, PCism, the hijacking of words [see AK Haart's post below], the gay mafia forcing itself on children:

… and so on is that it is a set of false ideological constructs forced into statutes which are then forced upon the non-compliant who realize these statutes are unjust and unfair.  And they are amazingly damaging to society as a whole in their pig-ignorance [softer word used here].

Therefore so many of us are belligerent and society is divided. We didn’t divide society, this process did.

Therefore I am also committed, personally, to taking this to the edge, whilst remaining just inside the law. Hence comments the leftist will call sexist, racist, anything he doesn’t like -ist are not that at all. To point out an injustice is no -ism, it’s simply pointing out an injustice.

There are too many people quite happy to slur whilst maintaining that they are the soft, kindly ones and such people are the worst of the lot. When asked questions directly, they substitute more slurs and emotion for argument. They don’t see themselves being the subject of action at all, though they have slandered and libelled. Such people get up my nose and thus I shall continue to show their hypocrisy and prejudice, name them and shame them.

One such leftist wrote: “You’re not going to get far with an attitude like that.” What she misunderstands is that many of us are fed up to the back teeth with the whole shoddy structure that’s been imposed on us and wish to see it dismantled. I think we’ll get a long way by showing we won’t be walked over.

So no – I am not misogynist or racist in the least, just because I detest feminazis, parachutees and unrestricted immigration at a time of austerity, just because I do not appreciate importees getting up and vilifying this nation and because I am calling for their BS to be blocked and the infrastructure they’ve imposed to be dismantled.

Have a pleasant Sunday everyone, whether white, black, Christian, Muslim, atheist, disabled, gay, normal, tall, short, thin, obese or whatever.

Copyright has changed through amendments to the law but as relating to blogs and images, the law allows an author and/or owner to assert copyright and give the blogger reasonable time to either take down or pay royalties. In such situations, if copyright is asserted, the image comes down immediately the webmaster here becomes aware of it. This in fact has happened twice so far through legal emails, one from America and in both cases, the image was taken down and an apology issued. In both cases, emails of thanks were then sent to the webmaster.

The vast majority act in this reasonable manner and this remains the policy at this site.

There are certain companies who are known for buying up images and this can render an image previously clear for reasonable use by the blogger into not only a copyright situation but an aggressively asserted right, with the desire for litigation and moneymaking behind it. Again, the law allows reasonable time for the image to be taken down and at this site, it is done immediately the webmaster becomes aware of it. Any continuation after this is covered by Arkell v Pressdram.

All reasonable care is taken, particularly after the mooted amendments to the law, to be assiduous in attributing. This is the letter of the law:

s29.—(1) Fair dealing with a literary, dramatic, musical, etc, work, for the purpose of research for a non-commercial purpose, does not infringe any copyright in the work, provided it is accompanied by a sufficient acknowledgement of the source.

s30.—(1) Fair dealing with a work for the purpose of criticism or review, of that or another work, or of a performance of a work, does not infringe copyright in the work, provided it is accompanied by a sufficient acknowledgement, and provided the work has actually been made available to the public.

… and the spirit is incorporated in this blog’s policy:

1. Images in possession of the webmaster before 2006 fall into three categories:

[i] belonging to him
[ii] not belonging to him and able to be attributed
[iii] not belonging to him and unable to be attributed

The last one is the trickiest because it comes back to the opening paragraph above – that ofttimes ownership is not known until someone steps up and asserts it and then, if that person can verify ownership, either the image is allowed to remain, with attribution or else it is taken down immediately.

2. Youtubes are held to be their own attribution on a blog because they contain a direct link back to the youtube page.

3. Creative commons is all about reasonable and fair use, using one copy only and:

The proper method for giving credit will depend on the medium and means you are using, and may be implemented in any reasonable manner, although in the case of an adaptation or collection the credit needs to be as prominent as credits for other contributors.

The standard method of attribution on a blog is either a hyperlink or a hat tip. Providing the link takes you to where the image came from, that is attribution. It is not necessary for the author himself to be sought out, if he chooses not to reveal this on a site page. The area is grey and comes back to someone asserting copyright and this blog’s reaction to that assertion, as mentioned above.

Occasionally the owner is mentioned by name in the post, in lieu of the hyperlink.

4. Wikipedia. Until some weeks ago, the policy of this site was that if there is not a hyperlink, it’s either found in Wiki under the topic discussed in the post or else it’s the webmaster’s own image. Thus, if it was, say, a picture of a lion and the topic was wildlife, if you went to the Wiki entry on wildlife, you’d find the image there.

5. This site’s policy since October has been that irrespective of whether it is Wiki, Creative Commons, Copyright free for use or in any other form, if copyright is asserted on the source page, the image is simply not used. If it is not asserted, then the fair use policy under law is in effect and a hyperlink, hat tip or the name of the author is fair attribution.

This hyperlink can either be embedded in the image or in some text within that post such that, if that link were to be clicked on, it would take you to the source. An example is this post. The images themselves are not embedded as they need to be enlarged and embedding prevents that so the hyperlink is in the text. This takes you to the page where you’ll find the image[s]. Ditto with this post.

6. Where an owner is unknown and reasonable searching did not find the source, then the image is used, subject to two conditions:

[i] if the right is subsequently asserted, then the image is taken down

[ii] ongoing review of posts is in any case done by the webmaster here to ascertain ownership or the original site. When the original can be established, then the image is immediately embedded with that link.

7. The intent and spirit in which images are used counts in law. This site asserts that it takes all reasonable steps to avoid copyrighted works where an issue might arise and as for any other images, excluding the author’s own, all attempts are made to attribute by the methods above. This site rejects absolutely any assertion that it just uses images willy-nilly. Care is taken on every image appearing onsite, particularly since the mooted amendments to copyright law.

8. This site further asserts that there must be fair play. It has never attempted to “rip anyone off” nor to avoid responsibility and cannot speak for any other blogsites. Almost all the time, it’s not been an issue with anyone. Occasionally, someone comes in to stir up trouble and in that situation, unless he [or she] is the actual author/owner of a particular image in question, this stirring is filed under Arkell v Pressdram.

James Higham

November 26th, 2011

David Icke is currently studying the creature as the descended rump of some mutated and all but extinct species but current orthodoxy sees the Higham as just another fruitcake … and they may well be right.

Klout are flagrantly in violation of UK data protection law. Their terms and conditions, and their privacy policy, are riddled with loopholes that permit them to resell personal data. They violate Principle 1 of the Act (“the individual who the personal data is about has consented to the processing”).

Arguably, they violate Principle 2 of the Act (“be clear from the outset about why you are collecting personal data and what you intend to do with it” — no prior notification to people they hold data on is made). The amount of personal data Klout collects is excessive (see Principle 3), they show no sign of complying with Principle 4 of the Act (“take reasonable steps to ensure the accuracy of any personal data”), and they may well be in breach of Principle 5 (that personal data must be deleted after it is no longer required for the purpose for which it was collected).

They violate Principle 6 of the Act (“right to prevent processing for direct marketing; right to object to decisions being taken by automated means”). They violate Principle 8 of the Act (personal data is exported from the EU without due compliance with EU privacy regulations). Shockingly, Klout might actually be in compliance with Principle 7 of the Act governing information security (“you must have appropriate security to prevent the personal data you hold being accidentally or deliberately compromised”) but it’s hard to tell.

It kind of puts my objections to Google+ into perspective, doesn’t it?

Anyway: if you sign up for Klout you are coming down with the internet equivalent of herpes. Worse, you risk infecting all your friends. Klout’s business model is flat-out illegal in the UK (and, I believe, throughout the EU) and if you have an account with them I would strongly advise you to delete it and opt out; if you’re in the UK you could do worse than send them a cease-and-desist plus a request to delete all your data, then follow up a month later with a Freedom of Information Act request.

[H/T Chuckles]

That’s interesting because at the same time, another reader wrote, “A bit less of the political posts, all right?”

Trying to be all things to all people is clearly impossible and stats indicate [on those who come into the site proper, as distinct from RSS feeds], that there are quite a few who like the magazine type articles, the features but some who just want the caustic rants about this stupidity or that. There’s a post being composed at the moment about EBM and it pulls no punches, like the Duke on windfarms.

Another reader suggested I run two blogs – one for the political people and one for the s*** posts. Someone said put the political on OoL and the magazine on my own site. I know those who like one type sometimes find the other type a bit distressing.

In a nutshell, these are my options:

1. A workable nourishingobscuritydotcom which is reaching the end of its life, spacewise, where you are now.

2. A workable [I've just been in there] nourishingobscuritywordpressdotcom which can be used if and when.

3. The original nourishingobscuritydotblogspotdotcom which doesn’t allow control of comments unless I run moderation – it’s still fine as a usable site and can be used at any time.

4. OoL but only as a contributor on certain posts of interest [or not] on liberty.

The task – to nut out how best to use these sites.

About the only part of this quite frightening time which might find me very well on the street or in a hostel soon – and I’ve gone into the red this month for the second time, after I’d kept above the line for so long – is the impact on blogging.

Food’s not the issue yet – I can reduce to one main meal and a snack a day, using coffee to fill the gaps and am by no means near ferreting around in bins as yet, as one of the Onassises has apparently been doing and though the home heating issue will blow up just before Christmas in a utilities nightmare, currently on hold, the main issue for me is, as mentioned, is the blogging.

It’s not so much the internet connection, which I estimate I’ll cease being able to pay for about January but the impact on time.  As they make you do this or that, they take great chunks of time out of you for no  productive result and one such is today.  It’s not only that but the people doing it, steeped in PCism, utterly ignorant, can shut anyone down with a stroke of a pen and then the true nightmares begin.  This female is even mocking my situation – she thinks it’s light banter but I aim to set her straight today, in the nicest possible way.

Look, much of this I brought on myself and there are others far worse off but as I keep saying, it’s not that so much but that I can’t spend the time doing the proper research to construct good posts, can’t get around the blogs and other sites and while that’s neither here nor there to anyone else, it weighs on me because in terms of my contribution to anything these days, that’s been the most productive.

Someone said recently that I should just reduce the posts.  That’s not the issue – putting together the short pieces can be done in a minute or two and Chuckles has been great, along with others, in sending lines of enquiry to pursue, JD is running a nice thread too on various matters and is building a nice readership, which pleases me no end.

No, I’m talking of the pieces hardly anyone seems to read, which take hours of searching and ferreting and involve twelve or so tabs open at any one time – real blogging, I’m talking about.  These are the ones I should be doing, particularly on the issues facing us.  Time?  Yes, of course one can find those hours if one really, really wants but you know very well out there that it’s not just the hours – it’s the domestic issues, the demoralization and depression over what’s going on, at the chance that at any minute you’ll be on the street.

And please don’t say I worry too much because I know I do.  And Christians will say what about this faith which kicks in when the chips are down?  Well,it does and not just that – I always seem to be delivered when the wolves close in.   It’s a wonderful thing to know you’ll not actually be down-and-out whilst there are still things left to be done, providing you’re still doing them, of course.

The thing which galls the most is that in losing the time to to devote to these, including constructing a new future, I’m forced to endure this new type of bureaucrat deciding what she thinks is what I should be devoting hours to.  I don’t need that but she has her quotas to fill and so the battle is joined, in the nicest, sweetest way possible.

OK, so the next two days are out and some days next week as well apparently.  Clearly I need to rethink the blogging and shall do – have to go now but will check back at lunchtime, if I can escape.

RMS, for all his flaws, understands that the stakes in this argument go beyond narrow issues like what computer or smartphone to buy. Human cognition is messy and all sorts of ethical and aesthetic reasoning run together in peoples’ heads; we cannot expect people to love tyranny in small things like smartphones without becoming less resistant to tyranny in larger matters. That is why Appleolatry has implications for more than just what goes on in consumer-electronics stores — and little wonder that RMS lost his temper over it.

RMS is, finally, right about one last thing. Our best hope to keep the good parts of Jobs’s legacy and shed the bad is that his successors will prove far less competent. Tim Cook is not the raucous buffoon that Steve Ballmer is, but neither has he ever been accused of grand vision or the kind of dangerous charisma that Jobs wielded like a blade. Without the Jobs magic, it seems likely that the cultism around Apple will subside. Perhaps the threat to freedom will subside with it.

I’ve been close to three techie people in my computer life and all were PC advocates, all favoured open source and freedom to add on and do whatever manually and all were scathing about Macs and Mac users.  I can see their point because I had that attitude in Russia.  If I needed sound, my guy brought Sound Forge, if I needed OCR, he brought the best software at the time.  If something went seriously wrong – new motherboard.  Monitor burnt out – it was repaired by the guy down the road.  Everything discrete and separate but you could mix and match to your heart’s content.  Hit by something?  Symantec Ghost solved it.

What hadn’t caught up with all this was the internet provision but that happened towards the end of my sojourn there.  This tradition of choosing add-on functionality stemmed from my Olympus days in cameras, where even the winder was a screw-on.  I think I must have been ripe for a Mac near the end because my mouse had six programmable command buttons, which was pretty cool.

But it was still a quantum leap to go Mac and at first I was miffed – I couldn’t add this, it didn’t have that.  PC advocates would choke but I swear the Mac “learned” your ways and the voice commands were possibly a step too far.  The Airport didn’t work and that was tied up with the cable provider there.

About a month in, the multitude of subtle shortcuts, sometimes using the same finger position but soft or hard, turned or straight would bring up whatever I wanted fast.  This was the genius of the machine that Jobs took credit for.  Throw the cursor at the left edge and the menu genied up, throw it at the lower left corner and all windows were displayed … and so on.  It was a user’s dream.  And it was crisp and elegant.

It was designed to make a user feel good and it did.  The keyboard was a dream compared to even my Microsoft Genius clunker on the PC, despite all its media buttons and attempts to come into the 21st century.  The net result was that my posting time on the blog was now about one sixth what it had been on the PC – that’s one hell of a gain but it did involve knowing many of the shortcuts.

It seems to me that the techie is not right about the Mac in one respect – he’s judging by two things, lack of tweakability and the ability to build one’s own system and the amateurish of Mac users who are made to think they’re now computer buffs on a par with anyone.  There’s real contempt from techies for someone with enough cash to go in and buy one of these locked down, unalterable playthings.

They can’t see that for a blogger/journo, for example, the Mac is a true facilitator.  “But it can’t do this, it can’t do that,” howls the techie and then mutters something about effing Mac users.  The Macworship drives them spare.

Look, it does what it does, within the parameters set by the designers and it never goes outside them.  The machine works … and works … and works … and works … and for many of us, that’s all that counts.  That and speed.  What it lacks in overclocking it gains in the system integrity.  Jobs was a control freak?  Fine, if he produced a machine that had to be precisely one particular way.

He was bringing totalitarianism to the computer world?  Yes, that’s bad but the Mac itself is good.

The debate continues to rage.

………..

Another take on him

Every person or account on Twitter has a Kred score, which is made up of two parts: the influence score and the outreach score. Your influence score is a measure of your ability to inspire others. It is a number on a scale from 1 to 1,000, and is based on how often your tweets are retweeted, how many new followers you are gaining, and how many replies you generate. (Kred also looks at Facebook likes and Google +1s, but Twitter is the main source of data). It is very much like your Klout score. The Outreach score is measured in levels and is a reflection of how generous you are with retweeting and replying to others.

Commenters:

#  The most interesting untold part of this story is the fact that Klout and PeopleBrowsr/Kred both have their HQs in the same relatively small building in San Francisco (at 3rd & Bryant). Seems a formula for some tension in the hallways.

#  Only value of any of these tools is in monitoring change. And trying to ask why. There are plenty of people gaming it – it is not hard to figure out the cheap way… If you monitor the change of the value – it is becoming some guidance on your strategy…. Number by itself means nothing.

What I’ve noticed with various bloggers, particularly the alpha-male type who’s a medium level blogger and runs his own little show is that there is enormous ego and enormous resentment on being taken to task.  There’s also enormous pride in being up in the rankings, whatever they happen to be.

At OoL, we ran a survey of readers as to whether posts should be scheduled, spaced out so that one post doesn’t swamp another and if the readers had said nah, just let ‘em do as they wish, we would have been fine with that.  As it turned out, readers said the scheduling was the least worst option and so it’s been ever since.

I heard on the grapevine that certain bloggers with big heads did not appreciate being “scheduled” by me and combined with this mindless “conspiracy theory” response to anything someone brings up, combined with my refusal to let Christianity be bad-mouthed in ways it doesn’t deserve [fine about the ways it does deserve], together with my stance on WTC7,[ i.e. just look at the effing evidence, would you], then I’m not the most popular lad about.

Add to that the feminist movement, how gays [erroneously] think I feel about them, chavs, radical Muslims, gnostics and many many more, it’s a wonder I have any friends at all.  It’s also a wonder that the blog is doing fine, thanks very much, due in no small part to fellow authors and contributors.  We really are trying to offer a balanced blog.

So where is all this influence then?  On the strength of kreds and Klouts, I’d have to say close to zero.  However, I know this blog is read, mainly in RSS and there are things which need to be said and said loudly.  End of story in my book.

So yes, when I go in to sitemeter every few days [more often at peak times], of course I glance at the uniques and if it’s in the right area, I go to referrals, to find out whom to visit first that day.

And that’s it – that’s as much social networking and influencing and so on that I can stomach.  I can’t be doing with all these Kreds and Klouts and whatever – as a friend of mine observed: “Sad, wretched lives.”  There was a time, let’s be honest, when it concerned me  – look at the “others say” page and you’ll see some awards from 2007/8 but after that I just gave all that away as pointless.

If a blogger is blogging for rankings and stats in the main, then don’t you think something is wrong with that person?  If you’ve anything interesting to say, they’ll come.  If you continue to have something interesting to say, they’ll continue to come, even if they’re p***ed off with you.

That’s all any blogger can ever hope for.  Stuff Klouts and Kreds ['scuse my French].

Adrian Short:

When you use a free web service you’re the underclass. At best you’re a guest. At worst you’re a beggar, couchsurfing the web and scavenging for crumbs. It’s a cliche but it’s worth repeating: if you’re not paying for it you’re the product not the customer.

If you use a paid-for web service at someone else’s domain you’re a tenant. A second class citizen. You don’t have much control. You’ll probably have to live with your landlord’s furniture and decoration and a restrictive set of rules.

When you own a domain you’re a first class citizen of the web. A householder and landowner. What you can do on your own website is only very broadly constrained by law and convention. You can post the content you like. You can run the software you want, including software you’ve written or customised yourself. And you can design it to look the way you want.

Discuss.

Hackers recently compromised the website hosting the open-source MySQL database management system and caused it to infect the PCs of visitors who used unpatched browsers and plug-ins, security researchers said.

MySQL.com was infected with mwjs159, website malware that often spreads when compromised machines are used to access restricted FTP clients servers, a blog post from Sucuri Security reported. The hack caused people visiting the site to be redirected to a site that attempted to install malware on visitors’ computers using code from the Blackhole exploit kit, separate researchers from Armorize said.

My site is continuously asking to allow redirection in the last few days but my browser stops it [I've directed it to] and I’d like to explain how I think it came about.

It was fine until I went to my googlemail and there was a message from Facebook, telling me I had not used it for days and there were messages or whatever waiting.  Fine, I thought – I’m in Facebook [though I detest it], here was the link to the log-in.

Click.

There was nothing special on my Facebook page at all.  Going back to my own site, it now wished to redirect and of course, I don’t allow it to.  So a Firefox bar sits across the top, telling me it has stopped a redirection, which I ordered it to do [to stop it] and so it is ugly having that bar up there but it has to stay there until the hacking runs its course.

Suggestion – be very careful with anything concerning Google.  I’m not suggesting that they themselves are evil muvvers [unlike Facebook] but that there are people who appear to have a vested interest in interfering in Google’s interface with you.  Google are still my main way of doing net business but for how long, I’ll have to see.

http://nourishingobscurity.blogspot.com/2009/08/common-purpose-meanwhile-in-america.html

http://nourishingobscurity.com/2009/12/02/why-i-think-amanda-knox-is-guilty/

… and to a lesser extent:

http://nourishingobscurity.com/2011/09/22/the-fatal-error-of-the-ptb/

The last was because of Ranty, the middle because of TJMK and the first – don’t really know why after all this time but it’s getting hit significantly this evening.