That's fucking stupid

Archive for the ‘Quote of the Day’ Category

James Murdoch has been blathering on about piracy like he knows something about it.

He’s made that classic mistake of saying that piracy is like

going into a store and stealing Pringles or a handbag.

Of course that’s largely because he’s an idiot. Let’s clear things up shall we?

Piracy is nothing like walking into a store and stealing a handbag or some pringles, it’s more like studying a handbag then buying your own leather and making an exact replica; or in the case of pringles buying your own cocaine and rubbing it on crisps.

Sharing music online is more like taking those aforementioned home made copies and making more copies to give away to your friends for free.

Where you would be crossing the line was if you sold those handbags or crisps to others, and profited from the similarity to the original. This is like downloading a movie and then selling it on DVD down at your local laundrette.

So really, the law has kinda got it licked. They don’t stop you making your own handbags/crisps but they do try to stop people selling counterfeit handbags, although I don’t think there have been many cases of counterfeit pringles.

Can we end this bullshit piracy debate now that we’ve got that cleared up?

Odious toad, Nick Griffin, says:

We had to do it [change the constitution] for legal reasons. Many of our members think it’s a good thing.

A lot of people said we should have done it some time ago but that’s really by the by.

Our problem with this is a government funded, taxpayer-funded quango telling people who they can and can’t associate with, [which] is a fundamental outrage.

Nevertheless, we recognise legal reality, so we have done it and now, for one thing, they can’t call us racist any more.

Spot on there, Nick, because changing your constitution to allow non whites in to your little gang because you have to is the very definition of not being racist.

BBC have a nice article about online giving which mentions the very wonderful Justgiving. They go at lengths to explain that although companies like Justgiving charge for their payment processing services they actually save charities money by consolidating the payment processing and doing it cheaper than the charities could do it themselves. If you give your money direct to a charity you aren’t giving it to an organisation entirely staffed by volunteers, it still costs money to employ them to process your donation. Even so, one bright spark has commented thus:

It’s good to finally see a big not-for-profit player in this market. Regardless of how well the charities have done out of the existence of JustGiving & co, it always grates when making charitable donations to be handing a cut to a for-profit business.
Peyman, London

Dude, words fail me. Even if you ring up a charity direct you are going to be costing them:

• A portion of the cost of the donation phone line
• A portion of the wages of the person writing down your bank details and punching it into a machine
• The payment processing costs which are paid to the card companies
• A portion of the wages of the person who posts off the information to HMRC to claim the gift aid
• A portion of the wages of the accounts people who keep track of it all and auditors who make sure it’s legit
• If you donate via the charity’s website you’re looking at server and maintenance costs as well as hosting and bandwidth, plus most of the above

For a small charity that’s just not practical and those that attempt it themselves can expect to end up spending more than if they got Justgiving to do it for them.

It’s a little quiet on the news front today. Well, it is in some papers. It’s mainly quiet in the scaremonger press because the big news story of the day is something they don’t want to shout about. So this one’s for all the parents who still think that the MMR jab is linked to autism: Yes, you lot. People who say stuff like:

‘I feel the children are being used as political pawns – it has not been about protecting the children. It is about protecting MMR.

‘I firmly believe these doctors are going to be hung out to dry because they dared to question MMR.

‘Dr Wakefield and his colleagues are the only doctors who ever really listened to us. I fear now that no doctor will want to have anything to do with helping any child that is harmed by any vaccine in the future.’

She said that after Michael had the MMR jab when he was 14 months old he began ’screaming and making a high pitch screeching like a cat’.

She added: ‘He was like a wild animal he was in so much pain.’

Shut the fuck up already.

CEO of IBM UK & Ireland, on winning the Stonewall top employer award:

“We have done much to re-evaluate and strengthen our LGB strategy as part of our overall commitment to diversity. We’ve looked more closely at the LGB network group – its value proposition and its life-cycle – to ensure that it continues to deliver value, both to the corporation and to its members.

“At IBM, we pride ourselves on delivering a working environment which reflects equality of opportunity and experience for all. Diversity constitutes our character, our identity and ultimately our success – it is in our DNA.”

No, I don’t have a fucking clue what it means either. Think I might email this to the Plain English Campaign as an early contender for their Golden Bull awards.