Not only that, but presenting people with facts can entrench them further in their beliefs. People willfully ignore facts that don’t correspond to their opinions.

“This bodes ill for a democracy, because most voters — the people making decisions about how the country runs — aren’t blank slates. They already have beliefs, and a set of facts lodged in their minds. The problem is that sometimes the things they think they know are objectively, provably false. And in the presence of the correct information, such people react very, very differently than the merely uninformed. Instead of changing their minds to reflect the correct information, they can entrench themselves even deeper.”

A very good article

How facts backfire – The Boston Globe.

The EU is going  to discuss whether or not to force ISPs to save the searches you make in online search engines, such as Google, Yahoo, whatever. Apart from the privacy implications, who is going to pay the ISPs for the massive extra storage capacity they’ll need, but more importantly: what defines a ‘search’ – what about if you’re looking through a job site, or a housing site or a forum? Why not force ISPs to store any and every bit of information passed through a form? Creepy stuff.

Emerce – Technologie nieuws: Bewaarplicht mogelijk uitgebreid met zoekopdrachten.

It looks like the UK is starting to be saved allreay! The ConLibs are devoted to things such as personaly privacy and are against mammoth centralised databases (such as the National ID fiasco). The government is looking to increase the safety of your data and keep much less of it. Well done, I hope this becomes a continuing trend!

ConLibs to outlaw kiddyprinting without permission • The Register.

Opinion piece by a former CIA operative on its current lack of operational capability,

On December 30, in one of the deadliest attacks in CIA history, an Al Qaeda double agent schemed his way onto a U.S. base in Afghanistan and blew himself into the next life, taking seven Americans with him. How could this have happened? Agency veteran Robert Baer explains, offering chilling new details about the attack and a plea to save the dying art of espionage

http://www.gq.com/news-politics/politics/201004/dagger-to-the-cia

Basically it’s all about the movie and music industry being able to kick you off the net and subject you to huge fines without any proof – just an accusation of filesharing is enough.  It’s also about giving the business secretary the power to make up penalties and enforcements at whim.

It’s not about stimulating creativity, new business, ensuring that everyone has broadband, etc.

Looks like labour has it’s pockets filled with copyright holders hands!

Britain’s new Internet law — as bad as everyone’s been saying, and worse. Much, much worse. – Boing Boing.

The head of Gazprom is building a most luxurious palace in the style of the XVIII century worth $ 50 million
Design documentation for anticipated future residence of the head of Gazprom, Alexei Miller, who looks like a huge palace in the style of the XVIII century.
Impressive, very similar to the mansion in Peterhof, suddenly brought up on the shore of the Istra reservoir palace initially caused a lot of noise in the blogs.
But officially the head of Gazprom, Alexei Miller, who recorded in the real owners of the palace, that he has the attitude toward him, not admitted.
“Our company has no relation to the” Istra Manor “- the spokesman said Gazprom” Sergei Kupriyanov. But at the same time, membership
mansion Miller refused to comment, that is neither confirmed nor denied.

English fail via Google Translate, but you get the idea.  Check out the Google Maps images at the bottom of the fishki link.

http://fishki.net/comment.php?id=60416

Translated via Google Translate

An interesting article – if you have bank customer information, which you’ve stolen from a bank, governments will pay you for that information.

If you’re a spy you’d be shot for it. It’s not right that the Dutch government is using tax payers money on criminally attained information to find people who have foreign cash assets. In a court of law, evidence obtained this way is also not allowed and for good reason.

Booming business, steal and sell to governments « Frederik Van Lierde.

Looks like the British are blithely going where the French couldn’t go by adopting a 3 strikes rule for illegal filesharers. First you get warning letters and then you get disconnected from the internet.

Not only does this mean that basically your internet connection will be monitored for this kind (and what other?) behaviour, but also that people will be forced to switch to encrypted internet connections, making police and MI5 work much more difficult.

Lord Mandelson sets date for blocking filesharers’ internet connections | Technology | guardian.co.uk.

What the fuck is going on in the UK?! It turns out that under new legislation if you leave your kids at another person’s house to mind the child, that other person will have to be vetted by the government. If you want to take care of other people’s children (either as a babysitter or as a reciprocal favour) then you will need to be vetted by government. If you drive kids to sports activities… you guessed it… you need to be vetted!

Vetting not only entails an intrusion to your privacy, but you will receive training and need to make modifications to the area the child(ren) will be staying in.

Which basically means you have no right to decide how to bring up your own child!

Nation’s parents prepare to be vetted • The Register.

Yet again the UK has managed to fluff it, losing a USB stick with all the logon data (yes, and passwords) to the UK Government Gateway. This holds all kinds of data about UK Citisens.

With the plan to link National ID cards to crime databases, they UK will not only give anyone who can access the databases a whole lot of personal information, but they’ll probably mail it to the local crime syndicate on USB stick, unencrypted.

Now it seems that project STORK is about linking all of these databases – across the EU! This means that the next time the UK loses this kind of data (which it most certainly will), it won’t just be UK citizens and armed forces and MI5/6 personell that are fucked, it’ll be the WHOLE EU!

How much of the EU’s data will the UK lose? • The Register.

This is a great little piece on why the NASA budget was cut after the man on the moon mission Apollo 11, and why we should be exploring space.

Op-Ed Contributor – One Giant Leap to Nowhere – NYTimes.com.

I’m a great believer in space exploration and agree totally that it’s fairly unbelievable that we haven’t made any steps to manned space exploration beyond the moon since the 1960s. So much of science fiction writer’s fantasies have come true – look at the mobile phone, the way we travel and prepare food – but the actual space travel? No, not funded by our governments.

This story is about how little the UK trusts adults to be around children. Allready, the UK has a system in place where you have to register and be vetted in order to be in contact with children (for example to drive them to sports events). Now they want a much larger system of vetting for people who visit schools. Vetting costs GBP 64,- and will include rumors and hearsay about your behavior.
The implication is that adults are somehow out to get children, and children simply can’t be in contact with them without the adult having sinister ulterior motives. The UK needs to get it’s shit together.

Would you leave your child alone with a cabinet minister? • The Register.

This week, the two big political parties ruling Germany in a coalition held the final talks on their proposed Internet censorship scheme. DNS queries for sites on a list will be given fake answers that lead to a page with a stop sign. The list itself is maintained by the German federal police (Bundeskriminalamt).

They have a huge protest movement going, but of course, the Nazi’s don’t listen to their populace; only to the whims of their leaders!

via Slashdot Your Rights Online Story | A Black Day For Internet Freedom In Germany.

So this guy gets a house from parliament: yes, UK MP’s are allowed to live in a tax payer paid house. NL MP’s are too.
He likes his garden, so he does it up – on tax payer’s expenses. Because he gets them as per the law. He owns ducks, so he makes an island for them. Not only will it look nice, it’ll protect them from foxes. This costs £1,645. Because the media hits it with ‘duck island’ he’s forced to resign.

This witch hunt has got to stop!

Croats are supporting a man running for town mayor under slogans such as “all for me, nothing for you”.
They find his honesty refreshing.

That and offering free health care support to get off the drugs has lowered the useage of drugs dramatically as well as turned Portugal into a much safer place.

… but only if it is the same as ours!

Seig Heil to the One Opinion

Sometimes the EU just gets it right. Telling the Telco Carriers they can’t be anti-competitive dicks and filter out applications like Voipbuster or Skype is a great move that lets you think that sometimes – yes – they think about consumers as well.

This is a heartrending story of a stupid woman who thought an all-woman company would be a good idea. In great detail, she shows how badly women get along with each other, ending in the sordid downfall of her company.

Apparently, in a bid to really lower morale on the International Space Station, Russia and the US are forbidding their astro/cosmonauts to use each other’s facilities, extending to sharing food, using the toilet and gym.
Because obviously it’s a politically very very important issue who uses what crapper up there.

Apparently these followers of the paedophile prophet are so worried about people blackmouthing them, they feel that the UN needs to encourage its members to outlaw free speech.

Most surprisingly – the resolution passed.

For the land of the free, it’s a bit strange that the US has 25% of the global prison population – whilst only having 5% of the total population. Where Stalin had his gulags, the US is doing much much worse with its prisons. It has more of its own population behind bars than any other country!

Thankfully there’s a politician in there – Jim Webb – who thinks this is ridiculous and might actually stand a chance of doing something about it.

Yup, the Australians have a censorship list of websites that they’re blocking. The actual list is secret, but has now been unearthed! And – surprise surprise – it contains a whole load of sites that aren’t supposed to be on the list, such as legitimate businesses (who must have gotten on the wrong side of some politician there). Apparently the watchdog that runs the list is accountable to no one and can put whoever they don’t like on it. Well done the “free” world!

As if privacy isn’t enough of a bother for the people of the UK, the government now wants to kill net neutrality: ie the choice to connect wherever you like to on the internet. This bill would allow ISPs to say which sites you can and can’t connect to, a bit like TV stations. One of the reasons TV lost to internet is because you can choose your own content. People are adult enough to make their own choices and don’t need them spoonfed to them, thanks.

SS general Jaqui Smith has found that violence against women is unnaccaptable at any time and is shocked to find that 1 in 5 men find it acceptable if there is sufficient cause for it. She is also surprised to find that 40% of British men think that if a woman has been flirting heavily she’s asking for sex.
Violence against men, however, is so inconsequential, she doesn’t find it worth spending her time on.
Sexist bitch.