Neil Hopcroft

Justice, of a sort

I’m not sure why I find this disturbing – I think the idea that some of these vigilantes are getting some kind of kick out of pretending to be 14 year old girls is probably one of the major factors. In this context, this kind of activity is entrapment, it should in itself be illegal.

There are, obviously, problems that need to be solved here, one of the major ones is the abdication of responsibility by parents, externalisation of the problem – “The internet exposed my innocent child to danger” instead of “My child knows not to talk to strangers”.

The world is a dangerous place. Sorry, you just have to deal with that.

We’re doomed

It seems the New Scientist have lost it. That, or they’ve found an RSS feed they don’t like and are giving it rubbish:

– ‘Blueberries’ are answer to key Mars puzzle
– RFID chips watch Grandma brush teeth
– Space dust to unlock Mexican pyramid secrets

Has it always been this mad? Was I always too tied up in the science they were describing to notice?

Some more gadgetage

Just catching up with everyones journals and there seems to be all kinds of things going on…doubtless its all rumours that you’ve collaborated on, but, what the heck, I’ll bite. Tell me more about:

– the queen mum
– terrorists at victoria

Holidays in the sun looks like a fun festival. Highlights include:

– AntiNowhere League
– Citizen Fish
– Anal Beard
– King Kurt
– Subhumans (woah! they’re still alive!)
– Stiff Little Fingers

On a slightly related note, the revolution has been comoditized

Thanks nadnad, I’d forgotten to put ‘start a record label’ or ‘set up a rock music tour’, or indeed, ‘follow New Model Army round Europe on 15 pence a day’ on the list….

Two more months until the end of my contract here. What do I do next? I’m looking for a project of some kind – I’ve got a few possibilities open to me at the moment, but was interested to hear what everyone else thought.

Some of these thoughts have more structure than others – for instance the US trip would involve going to *somewhere*, buying the daftest car I could find and driving until it didn’t work any more – some are more practical than others, some more tempting, and some need more organisation than others. Whatever happens I’m not going to be far from a net connection for very long.

A long shot…anyone out there got a 3gpp compliant videophone? (which I think means h323/h263 conferencing over either a 32k or 64k transport, but I’m a bit hazy about that kind of thing)

I wanna try something out.

(not sure if non-Orkut users can see this or not)

I love blenders