And bloody Mandleson and the other wonks in the UK. He'll be reading about what China are doing and drooling at the thought of replicating it here.

It used to be the case that trends in the UK followed from the US, but when it comes to the internet, China is the clear leader.

I got one of their ME1 multimedia enclosures. It's great, and uses Busybox. I can't find the source code anywhere on their web site.

http://www.emprex.com/03_support_02.php?pg_no=10&group=84&kind=1

This is to reduce piracy. Seems reasonable.

"Introduce fixed fines of £750.00 minimum
Introduce statutory damages of £750.00 as a minimum for each act of copyright infringement (such provision exists presently in the United States);

ISPs to provide names of internet account holders
Make all Internet Service Providers produce, on request of a copyright owner or licensee, the identities of the account holders of the internet connection used for illegal file sharing of their copyrighted material. The cost of producing such information would be met by the copyright owner requesting it;

Strict liability for internet account holders
Make the account holder of the internet connection strictly liable for infringements where their connection was used for illegal file sharing

Simplify the court process
Streamline, simplify and speed up the court process of a copyright owner applying for the identities of the account holders from ISPs (this is presently a complex and time-consuming procedure); and

Standardise letters of claim and court documents
Secure approval and consensus for standard-form letters, documents and claims making the process of notification and prosecution of an identified infringement clear and easy to understand, with the presumption of innocence until guilt is proven."

Sorry, did I say reasonable, I meant horrifying.

You might have a point there.

IF there wasn't a huge history of racists calling black people monkeys. If black football players (both in the UK and in europe) weren't greeted with chants of "ooh ooh ooh" and didn't have bananas thrown at them, you might have had a point. As things stand, it is a very common racist insult to liken a black person to a monkey. And let's get this clear - it is a RACIST insult, not an insult about a single person, but an insult about their race.

But I'm sure the person who made the picture was absolutely horrified to discover all this, right?

OK then, what IS the implication? That she's stupid in the same manner as George Bush? Come on. I don't think so. It's obvious to anyone who's not in total denial, that the intention IS to be racist.

Fair point, but the JCB, fork-lift, jack etc., is doing the work by proxy, i.e. you are not in intimate contact with the load in the way you are with this suit. If a JCB fails you'd have to be unlucky to be underneath the load. If this suit fails, you WILL get the load dumped on you.

I wouldn't want to be lifting something heavy if one of those suits broke and dumped the entire weight of the load on me.

I suspect you know the answer and are just trying to avoid it, but let me explain. George Bush being photoshopped to look like a monkey is a personal insult implying he is as intelligent as a monkey. Michelle Obama being photoshopped to look like a monkey is a personal insult because it is implying her race makes her equal to a monkey. The former isn't racist, the latter is.

I'm not a business person, but it seems slightly (actually totally) insane to try and kill off the part of your market which is actually growing. "What? We are making more money out of rentals than we used to? We have to put a stop to this." Bizarre.

"I think some people forget that there is an endless amount of freely playable, listenable and viewable content on the web...."

I think they are well aware of it, and want to nip it in the bud by effectively outlawing it and restoring their position as the only distributors of content. While they might be genuinely concerned about piracy, I think they also realise that this is also a prime opportunity to make a land grab for all internet content.

"Just works" as in I plugged in my new printer and nothing obvious happened. "Bugger", I thought and started piddling around. After a few seconds it became apparent that rather than nothing happening, Ubuntu had detected the printer, got the drivers and set it all up for me - it just hadn't bothered to tell me it had done all this. The printer was ready for use with absolutely no input required from me.

That's how I like things to "just work".

Or "rm ~/.bash_history" after you've done your business. There are always at least a couple of different ways of doing things with Linux.