Robots *could* demand rights...

What? what? what!

I can't believe I have just read this -

"Robots could demand legal rights" according to some inane babbling on the BBC site.

They can only demand rights if we let them, and even then only some whining Guardian readers would argue that robots are people too, or some other drivel. Don't be so stupid - why would we ever give robots rights?

That said, I'd pay money to have a robot like Bender Bending Rodríguez, and it would have the right to drink beer with me. Oh yes.

Wind power a load of guff

I was having my daily look at news sites, and the BBC has a rather amusing, if not unexpected (given their usual environmental doom and gloom babbling) article on micro-renewable wind turbines.

In short, it says what most people with even a slight engineering / scientific background have suspected for a long time. Mini turbines to stick on your house are crap and do not work.

The equation to tell you how much power you get out of one of these turbines involved the cube of the wind speed - which means you need a gale force wind to generate any useful electricity from the mini turbine, and in a moderate breeze, you get approximately fuck all.

How can this possibly be "green"? It would seem this is yet another case of people hyping a technology they don't understand hoping the shroud of the environMENTAL religion will shield them from the real world.

ID IT plan not a backdown

Oh no, no backdown here. Nothing to see... Move along.

Could it be they have no chance of getting the one system to work they have decided it would be "better" to leave data in a couple of (existing) databases.

According to the BBC article:

The government has reportedly spent about £35m on IT consultants since the ID cards project began in 2004.

I really should have gone in for that. Trouble is, I don't think they'd be able to pay me enough to compensate me for the emotional damage of working for the government on something that is a fucking stupid idea in the first place.

With any luck the good people at No2ID will have their way soon enough.

MSPs piss and moan about Trident

Well, just as well MSPs have no say in matters of national security then, isn't it?

Grapevine chatter has finally got the better of the BBC who report that MSPs are content to waste yet more taxpayers money by debating things that don't concern them.

Shock! Horror!

They'll argue against a replacement for Trident, then they'll moan at the job losses.

Abolish the wee pretendy parliament, and lets get on with our lives!

10 years of flash? How did we cope before?

Apparently, Flash, that wonderful technology for making web pages inaccessible and unnavigable, is having its 10th birthday. How many pages have you seen with crap Flash intros, or are entirely written in Flash because some pimply youth had waaay too much time on their hands, and someone with more money than sense and taste let them do their website with Flash?

Good for it.

Flash is good for only one thing.

Ah, ok, maybe two things.

£20m bill for policing Faslane against hippies.

The bill for policing Faslane in October alone stands at £1.75m. The Herald reports that since October 1st, there have been 327 arrests, but no court action.

One of the protest organisers seems confused by the police presence...

"We are totally non-violent. There is no reason to have civilian police there at all. We are trying to stop the greatest breach of the peace there is, mass murder."

The police are there to stop you getting shot by base security for doing stupid things. The police are there to allow people to enter and exit the base, and go about their legitimate business.

Why don't we take the police off the Faslane gates, and just shoot anyone who enters the base? A vastly cheaper alternative to police constables who seem to be engaged in "catch and release" at the moment. For people obstructing the Queen's highway, perhaps running them over might make them question their resolve.

Actually, maybe we'd better leave some police officers there, to hose the protester's blood off the road.