Can we have a new tag: "Rhetorical questions to which the answer is 'No'"

Oh, yeah? Then why is the first google hit for "Ja Me Yoon" a link back to this slashdot article?

Everyone that watched the debate last night was pretty horrified at how broken the "wash up" process was,

Really? Everyone? How terribly precise you polling must be.

Support the Open Rights Group and also support the Pirate Party UK who are currently raising money to field candidates. You can donate to the Pirate Party here if you are so inclined:

Or, alternatively, fold your ballot paper and shove it up your arse. It's cheaper, and the overall effect will be precisely the same.

Strange, isn't it, when you think about it.

Not when you consider the people who work in the media. Shock, novelty and outrage are their stock in trade. It's what they understand, so artists who provide these elements get written about. Aesthetic/decorative (for want of a better term) art is more difficult to write about -- there is a fundamental subjectivity involved that is very hard to get past -- and notions of beauty tend to be difficult to explain.

So art criticism, and music criticism, tends to focus on novelty and fashions If you're hip, it doesn't matter if your high concepts are dismally let down because you lack the talent to execute them very skillfully. So Tracy Emin and Animal Collective get on the front pages of the broadsheet culture sections, without very many people actually liking them, while high street art dealers sell local landscape watercolours in far greater quantities.

As the old saying goes: being difficult isn't difficult.

That's a very good point. Turn any object into art merely by signing it and putting it in a gallery.

Frank Zappa had a good point. He claimed that the only thing art required was a frame -- metaphorical or literal. To make something art, all one had to do was simply put it in a frame -- i.e. declare it to be art. Anything that was created with the purpose of being art is, intrinsically, art.

Of course, as Frank was quick to point out, that doesn't make it good art, or worthwhile art, or a good idea. Just that the artists intent is all that matters as to whether something is art or not.

sitting down too much is not good for you,

Well of course it is.

Because that is what "TOO MUCH" means. If you do something a lot, but its not detrimental, its not "too much". When it becomes detrimental, thats when we say its "TOO MUCH".

Fuckitty Fuck McFuck. English, motherfucking slashdot editors. Learn to fucking speak it.

Please do the calculation and tell us what the difference in transit times is for, say, 40m of cable.
Clue: do actually believe that a band who's musicians use different length guitar/mic cables cannot possibly play in time?

His point totally passed you by there, didn't it.

Your country has its own equally insane legal idiocies. Go count how many people you imprison for possession of marijuana.

You misunderstand. You *agree* an overdraft of 20 pounds. That way, when you go 1 pound overdrawn, you don't get a penalty charge at all. Simple. Not as simple as you, but pretty simple.

If someone is overdrawn by £2 and then the bank charges a £35 unauthorised-overdraft is "fair"

It is excessive. I wouldn't sign up for that deal. If you signed up for that deal, and didn't arrange a small overdraft at the time (say 20 quid, which would almost never be refused) to cover precisely that contingency, you're not competent to deal with your own finances. Seek professional advice.

The Supreme court got involved and funnily enough ruled that this was not the case which now means banks can charge what they like.

No, they can charge the customer agreed to when they opened the account. What the Supreme Court said was "If you don't like the charges, don't open the account. Don't expect the courts to bail you out on something you agreed to."

And this is good for two reasons:
i) Personal responsibility is a good thing.
ii) My banking is free, because people who pay unauthorised-overdraft fees subsidise it.

Proposals to suspend the internet connections of those who repeatedly share music and films online will leave consumers with a bill for £500 million, ministers have admitted.

I know that you're a USian and I have a policy against attacking people who do not use English as their primary language but "proposal" does not mean "signed into law".

The particular irony here, is that in the rest of the article, no minister admits any such thing. Hell, no minister is even named in association with such a claim. There's no support in the article for any of the claims in the headlines/opening, or the slashdot article here. It's a non-article, based on a heady mix of supposition, exaggeration and invention.

Obeying the law is not a loophole.

Of course. It is: that's what "loophole" means - something that is within the law, but allows someone to avoid something to which, morally the should be liable.