End of YouTube as we know it?

YouTube rolls out filtering tools

Video site YouTube is launching filtering tools to clamp down on the sharing of video without permission. The tools, called Video Identification, will block copyright material from appearing and spreading on the site. The firm says it currently removes copyright works when it has been told of their existence on the website.

The new tools, which are being tested, also give copyright owners the chance to leave their video on the service and to sell advertising around the content. Google and YouTube began working on the copyright protection technology six months ago and have partnered with Walt Disney and Time Warner in testing the tools.

It's only a matter of time before big business completely takes over the web. Already it is massive companies like Google who dominate. They will partner with other big concerns who have not, up to now, been able to gain an internet presence. Forget about posting a snippet from your favourite TV show or rock concert. We'll be left with phone camera recordings of girls getting their tits out or lipsynching to some awful pop music. Get downloading your favourite YouTube videos now!

I prefer to host my own videos, I get greater control over their appearance and I know they won't suddenly disappear one day. If Viacom want to sue me so be it. I also always download any videos I'm interested in from YouTube so that I have a permanent copy. Of course peer to peer exchanges will continue so for the serious web user things will remain pretty much the same. But for most web users  the future will increasingly consist of control of content, heavy advertising and extra costs.

In the end it's all about money. I've lived through this sort of thing before. It was called the sixties. Oh how we were going to change everything. Sharing and caring, rock shops and co-ops. Bullshit! Where did it end up? With Felix Denni$ writing about his private jet and his luxury home in the Caribbean  in his book 'How to Get Rich'.  Counter culture!  Counter culture!  Wheeeeeeeeeeeeee!

...or are you just pleased to see me? Clearly not

Jackie Danicki - And you think Americans are prudish

I think I've been blocked by Ms Danicki. Oooh how exciting! I'll have to post my comments on her latest drivel here. Ms Danicki has discovered this pathetic piece about Terry Wogan's lunchbox-sighting on Points of View which she says caused a 'furore'.

What makes her think we are prudish? What makes her think there was a furore? The only place this story appeared was in The Daily Mail. The story refers to a 'flurry of complaints'.  There are 35 messages on the Points Of view messageboard.  One of them (the one that the Mail quotes, surprise, surprise) is vaguely critical. The other 34 are jokey comments made mostly by Tel's supporters.

Prudish? Furore? I think not. A non-story in the MSM becomes a non-story on a blog. Is there anything sadder? Well, yes there is now that you mention it. It's Danicki's own comment:

I think I have a little crush on Terry Wogan now. He’s not well-endowed, but he’s got a great attitude about all this. One balances out the other, then you add his millions and I’d possibly go there.

So there we have it. Ms Danicki's opinion on the size of Terry Wogan's knob together with an insight into her criteria for assessing the attractiveness of men:

Small cock+no money+poor attitude=Fuck off

Small cock+great attitude+money=Fuck me

Big cock+great attitude+money=Fuck me now, big boy.


Ah, blogging at it's finest.


UPDATE:
Ms Danicki has emailed to say: Sorry, I only allow comments from those with a sense of irony. Please re-apply soon! :-D

I missed the irony?!!  Shit, I must be losing my touch. Can anyone help me find it? It must be in there somewhere!
This is her entire post:

The furore over Terry Wogan’s “revealing” trousers is hilarious. Good for him for not apologizing!

Nope, sorry, just can't seem to spot it. I've looked really hard. No, can't see it anywhere. Are you sure you meant irony?

No such thing as a dear lunch

Pub lunch prices soar, says guide

Long gone are the days when pub grub meant a lacklustre ploughman's or a packet of pork scratchings. But gone too is the idea that eating in a pub is a cheap alternative to a restaurant: a "middle-of-the-road" two-course pub lunch with a glass of wine costs on average £20, according to the latest Good Pub Guide.

Depends what you mean by the 'average' pub lunch. On the Today programme this morning I heard an explanation of how this research was carried out. The methodology was not, shall we say, robust. In order to determine a 'typical' pub-lunch price the researchers took the cheapest and the most expensive items on the menus and wine lists and simply averaged them. They also chose only pub-restaurants from the Good Pub Guide. That leaves thousands of perfectly good places to eat which do not appear in their august publication.

I'm surprised that the Good Food Guide, who should know something of how menus and wine lists are put together went along with this flawed method. Many wine lists have extremely expensive items on them. There may only be a bottle or two in the cellar but it looks good on the list. The reality is (like coffins) most people choose the second or third cheapest option available. A similar situation exists with regard to menus. There will always be an expensive starter and main course which very few people order. Again most people will choose from the cheaper items (which make up the bulk of the menu) so I think this report overstates the case somewhat.

I Googled some pub-restaurants at random and it is still perfectly possible to eat a decent lunch in pleasant surroundings for around a tenner plus wine. Sunday lunches, where competition is intense, are even cheaper. A decent roast will set you back about £7 to £8.

Quick, pour me a stiff drink

Middle class are biggest abusers of alcohol


Read this report carefully. There is not an epidemic of alcohol related illness amongst middle class drinkers there is an ‘epidemic of dangerous drinking’. And what is ‘dangerous drinking’? It is whatever people like Professor Gilmour says it is and, at the moment, that is three bottles of wine a week.

But surely we would be seeing the harmful results of this dangerous middle-class drinking? Well, conveniently that is something that the good professor can only PREDICT for the future. A bit like all those other predictions. Remember? Britain decimated by a plague worse than the Black Death (AIDS). Thousand due for a grissly end because of vCJD. The population dropping like flies from heart disease caused by eating too many eggs (that one lasted for 34 years until it was quietly dropped as scientific nonsense) and so on…

Recently the advice to expectant mothers about alcohol consumption was revised. It seems that an odd glass of wine during pregnancy doesn’t lead to foetal alcohol syndrome after all. Something many of us new all along. (FAS occurs overwhelmingly in cases where the mother is an alcoholic and is fairly easy to spot. The delivery room usually smells like a brewery.)

Where is the evidence that drinking more than 26 fluid ounces of Carlsberg a day is harmful?

These people don’t need evidence. They simply come up with an arbitrary limit for something (like 2 eggs a week) based on poor science, or no science, then decide that anything over that limit is dangerous and spend all their efforts trying to get people to change their behaviour. Eggs, alcohol, marijuana, passive smoking… the list goes on. It’s the new puritanism.

And the solution to this ‘problem’? Yes, you’ve guessed it:

Prof Mark Bellis, the director of the NWPHO, suggested “substantial” increases in the price of alcohol could help to tackle the problem.

I can think of another solution. I suggest a “substantial” cut in the salaries of professors could help to tackle the problem.

Can’t wait for the day some government funded research discovers that working more than five hours a day is seriously harmful or that paying tax leads to health damaging stress. Yeah, right.

UPDATE: This is a real killer! -

The safe limits were introduced in 1987 after the Royal College of Physicians produced its first health report on alcohol misuse. In A Great and Growing Evil: The Medical Consequences of Alcohol Abuse, the college warned that a host of medical problems – including liver disease, strokes, heart disease, brain disease and infertility – were associated with excessive drinking. The report was the most significant study into alcohol-related disorders to date. But Richard Smith, the former editor of the British Medical Journaland a member of the college’s working party on alcohol, told The Times yesterday that the figures were not based on any clear evidence. He remembers “rather vividly” what happened when the discussion came round to whether the group should recommend safe limits for men and women. “David Barker was the epidemiologist on the committee and his line was that ‘We don’t really have any decent data whatsoever. It’s impossible to say what’s safe and what isn’t’. “And other people said, ‘Well, that’s not much use. If somebody comes to see you and says ‘What can I safely drink?’, you can’t say ‘Well, we’ve no evidence. Come back in 20 years and we’ll let you know’. So the feeling was that we ought to come up with something. So those limits were really plucked out of the air. They weren’t really based on any firm evidence at all. It was a sort of intelligent guess by a committee.” On that basis, a nation’s drinking destiny was determined. The Government accepted the recommendation and 20 years later Professor Mark Bellis, director of the North West Public Health Observatory, which produced this week’s study, felt able to say that anyone exceeding the limits was “drinking enough to put their health at significant risk”. That a host of epidemiological studies had filled the intervening years with evidence to the contrary seemed not to matter one jot.

Illogical and irrational

Lib Dem assassins: I’m sorry, they haven’t a clue

Stepping up to prove what I suggested yesterday, that most political commentators talk out of their arses, comes Tim Hames in The Times today. According to this political sage, dumping Ming was 'logical but irrational'.  The Lib-Dems have now rushed into a leadership contest and Hames: 

"cannot avoid the conclusion that they should have waited for Christmas, by which time it would have been clearer if what has taken place in the polls is a blip or, at a minimum, there might be more of an explanation for why they have been battered."

Ah yes, I see, that would allow them time to assess what it is about them that the voters don't like  so they can better choose a suitable candidate. Sounds reasonable enough? But, hang on:

"Despite that, there is only one direction that the Liberal Democrats can and should take to limit the damage of this debacle. Nick Clegg is so plainly the superior contender for the post that, if he does not win, the party will have opted for collective suicide after committing two murders."

Such clarity of thinking. Such perceptive analysis. You can see why the MSM boys are so dismissive of bloggers can't you.

Never mind poor old Felicity Jane Lowdne

First Interpol unmasked his face. Now it knows his name.

The international police organization, working off tips from people who responded to a global appeal for help, said Monday it has identified a suspected pedophile shown in Internet photos abusing young boys. The man, whose face initially was disguised behind a digitalized swirl, is now thought to be on the run in Thailand, Interpol said.

He is said to be an English teacher at a school in South Korea, a 32-year-old Canadian named Christopher Paul Neil . The man was allegedly shown sexually abusing 12 young Vietnamese and Cambodian boys, apparently ranging in age from 6 to early teens, in about 200 photographs posted on the Internet. Using techniques that neither they nor Interpol would discuss, German police recreated an image of the man's face and released four reconstructed photos of him last week.

And here is is in all his unswirled glory.

A single shot behind the earlobe, about 45 degrees upward should do the trick.

BANG!

It was only a matter of time

Witness tells of bright light shone in front of Diana’s car

Also giving evidence from Paris, Jean-Claude Catheline and his wife, Annick, said that they were strolling on a grassy knoll near the tunnel on the night of August 31, 1997, when they saw two dark cars travelling fast, side-by-side, into the underpass.

A grassy knoll!

No! It can't be. Ha ha! Someone's pulling my plonker.

Those Mafia hitmen get everywhere.

A sit-down pissing contest

Clinton would use violence against Tehran

Hillary Clinton today moved to secure her position as the most hawkish Democrat in the 2008 presidential race, saying she would consider the use of force to compel Iran to abandon its nuclear programme.

In an article for Foreign Affairs magazine intended as a blueprint for the foreign policy of a future Clinton White House, the Democratic frontrunner argues that Iran poses a long term strategic challenge to American and its allies, and that it must not be permitted to build or acquire nuclear weapons.

As Shirley Williams once said of Margaret Thatcher -  "She's not a woman, she's a man with tits."

'I'm NOT old I'm 66!"

One good thing about Ming's departure is that we'll get all the hyperbole and blog bollocks out of the way by Christmas. The Lib Dems are 'falling apart at the seams'.  Cameron is 'the great white hope'. Brown is a 'dead man walking' etc etc. Yawn yawn...

The one thing I've realised over the years is that most political commentators don't know what the fuck they are talking about. You would think that their life of rubbing shoulders  with our great leaders  would grant them better insights into what was going on but it doesn't. They are like that old creeper Jennie Bond, the 'Royal correspondent',  who actually only knew as much about the affairs (of all kinds) of the royals as the rest of us did. 

Who cares whether Ming fell on his sword or slipped on his zimmer frame? With a possible two years to the next general election there was no way he was going to remain as the leader of the Lib Dems, and quite right too.  Getting rid of him was a perfectly sensible political decision.  The argument about who should replace him is a different matter entirely, but that fact of his  departure  should trouble us  for only a very short time.

Have a happy retirement, old boy. You've deserved it. Next!

Better pissed than the rest of 'em sober

Get Charlie back!

Ghetto

Ant and Death

Ants have a sense of their own mortality

Worker ants accurately gauge their life expectancy, regardless of their actual age, and take on riskier tasks as they feel their days ebbing away. In social insects such as ants, bees and wasps, workers change tasks depending on their age. Older workers do the relatively risky foraging outside the nest, while younger ones engage in safer maintenance tasks within it. By extending the workers' average life span, this fine-tuning helps to maximise the fitness of the colony. However, no one knew whether the division of labour in ants was activated by age-related physiological changes or through some other mechanism.

The rest of the article is behind a subscription wall but I read the piece in the magazine the other day and the conclusions are fascinating. Half the ants in a colony had their life expectancy shortened either by CO2 exposure or by direct injury to their surface leaving them prone to infection. All the CO2 damaged ants started foraging away from the colony earlier and more often with the ones which had the most serious CO2 damage starting soonest. The physically injured ants followed the same pattern except that the more seriously injured started no sooner than the less serious ones.

It would seem that both the CO2 damaged and the physically damaged ants 'knew' their life span had been shortened and behaved in the same way as uninjured but aging ants do, that is, taking on more risky activity. The reason the most seriously physically harmed ants did not behave differently from less seriously harmed ones seems to be about the difficulty in gauging early death through infection as opposed to nervous system damage via CO2 exposure.

Amazing stuff.