British businesses are being warned that they could lose their internet connections during the Olympics due to a surge in the number of people going online at key times. The demand could be such that internet companies might be forced to ration access, according to official advice.

The warning, in the Cabinet Office’s official advice, Preparing your Business for the Games, says that the country’s telecoms system may be unable to cope with demand to access the internet in certain areas. Businesses are being encouraged to offer staff flexible working arrangements to try to ease the pressure.
[snip]
The Department for Transport (DfT)will launch Operation StepChange, a week-long pilot across Whitehall departments, in which many staff will work from home. Ministers believe the project could result in a “permanent revolution” in which home-working becomes common practice for civil servants, who are expected to use technology such as video conferencing to communicate with colleagues.

However, the initiative is not without its setbacks. The DfT conducted Operation Footfall, a pilot, last August, that resulted in participating staff experiencing internet connection problems, according to those familiar with the project.

Millions of teenagers will suffer from social media withdrawal. Oh the humanity!

Global warming is the most significant scientific and political issue of recent decades. Manchester United is the most significant soccer club of recent decades. Could the two be linked?

I examined this one afternoon, by looking at global temperatures and Manchester United’s FA cup appearances since 1881. I averaged the data over 11 years, to mitigate the impact of the solar cycle.

The results are remarkable. Each Manchester United FA Cup appearance in an 11-year period raised global temperatures by 0.1º Celsius.

A plot of global temperatures and the Manchester United Climate Model reveals that half of global warming is the result of Manchester United.

As if I needed another reason to hate The Red Scum.

In radical changes to the way mental health conditions are diagnosed, what was once considered a child’s temper tantrum could be labelled ”disruptive mood dysregulation disorder”.

If a widow grieves for more than a fortnight she might be diagnosed with ”major depressive disorder”.

If a mother in a custody battle tries to turn a child against the father, it might create ”parental alienation disorder”.

These are among new conditions proposed for the fifth edition of the psychiatrist’s bible, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), due to be finalised next year.

Some doctors in Australia are arguing the revised manual – used globally to diagnose mental disorders – is pathologising unhappiness.

The changes have also caused an international outcry, with the American Counselling Association, American Psychological Association, the British Psychological Society and others calling for the draft of the new edition to be independently reviewed.

A little soma will take care of your bad day. Orgy porgy time!

In the euphoria following the downfall of the Mubarak regime in Egypt, Wael Ghonim, the so-called “hero” of the revolution proclaimed:

“Technology played a great role here. You know, it helped keeping people informed, it helped making all of us collaborate.”

He said the Egyptian government was “stupid” to close down the internet because that showed the world Mubarak was afraid. The revolutionaries even had back-up plans in the event of a government closure of internet access.

But according to Yale scholar Navid Hassanpour, the apparent positive role the internet played in the revolution has been misrepresented.

In a widely circulated American Political Science Association conference paper, he argues that shutting down the internet did make things difficult for sustaining a centralised revolutionary movement in Egypt.

But, he adds, the shutdown actually encouraged the development of smaller revolutionary uprisings at local levels where the face-to-face interaction between activists was more intense and the mobilisation of inactive lukewarm dissidents was easier.

In other words, closing down the internet made the revolution more diffuse and more difficult for the authorities to contain.

RTFA. An interesting conundrum methinks.

Receiving a photograph obtained from a Facebook account without the user’s permission is the same as receiving a stolen TV, Queensland Police have said after the arrest of a Fairfax journalist.

The head of the Queensland police fraud squad, Brian Hay, admitted this morning that police were “still cutting our teeth” in the rapidly evolving online environment and named cyber crime as the biggest law-enforcement challenge.

He said some aspects of yesterday’s arrest of journalist Ben Grubb could become a test case, adding: “I expect complaints of this nature to continue.”
[snip]
Detective Superintendent Hay used an analogy to describe why Grubb was targeted. “Someone breaks into your house and they steal a TV and they give that TV to you and you know that TV is stolen,” he said.

“The reality is the online environment is now an extension of our real community and if we go into that environment we have responsibilities to behave in a certain way.” He said: “I think the cyber environment represents the greatest challenge to law enforcement in the history of policing.”

He also confirmed that the police media unit misrepresented the situation on its official Twitter feed last night. After Grubb had tweeted about his arrest, the media unit tweeted that he had not been officially arrested, but it was forced to retract that statement this morning.

What the hell are the cops in Queensland smoking?

A central London ice-cream parlour has started selling ice-cream made with human breast milk. The Icecreamists in Covent Garden, London, have named their unusual delicacy Baby Gaga.

The treat is made by mixing breast milk with Madagascan vanilla pods and lemon zest. The milk has been donated by women who were paid £15 for every 10 ounces of their bodily fluid.

The dessert is offered up in a martini glass to those daring enough to try it for £14. Liquid nitrogen is also poured into the glass using a syringe.

Despite its unusual ingredient, the company said the “organic, free-range and totally natural” product sold out when launched today.

[snip]

The company paid women who donated their breast milk after health screening. The Food Standards Agency says there are no specific laws prohibiting businesses from selling human milk products, but they must comply with general food safety laws to ensure the product is safe for consumption.

I wonder how milk is obtained for the non free-range equivalent.

The giants of the film industry have lost their appeal in a lawsuit against ISP iiNet in a landmark judgment handed down in the Federal Court today.

The appeal dismissed today had the potential to impact internet users and the internet industry profoundly as it sets a legal precedent surrounding how much ISPs are required to do to prevent customers from downloading movies and other content illegally.

The film studios had sued iiNet arguing that, by not acting to prevent illegal file sharing on its network, it was essentially “authorising” the activity.
[snip]
iiNet chief executive, Michael Malone, said the case had so far cost his company $6.5 million. “All this legal action hasn’t stopped one customer from [illegally] downloading in Australia,” Mr Malone said said outside court this afternoon.

“We urge the Australian film industry to address the growing demand for studio content to be delivered in a timely and cost effective manner to consumers and we remain eager to work with them to make this material available legitimately,” he said in a statement.

Amen

A drunk man has been bitten on the leg after trying to ride a five-metre saltwater croc named Fatso.

The man, who had earlier been turfed out of a Broome tavern for being drunk, told police he climbed into Fatso’s enclosure at a local crocodile park because he wanted to give him a pat.

“He made his way into the crocodile park and then climbed into the compound with a large, male five-metre saltwater croc named Fatso,” Sergeant Roger Haynes said.

“He has attempted to sit on its back and the croc has taken offence to that and has spun around and bit him on the right leg.

“For an unknown reason, the crocodile has let him go and he’s managed to scale the fence and exit the park.”

He made his way back to the nearby tavern to get help.

He aint no Steve Irwin.

Facebook’s prude police are out in force yet again, this time threatening action against a Sydney jeweller for posting pictures of an exquisite nude porcelain doll posing with her works.

Victoria Buckley, who owns a high-end jewellery store in the Strand Arcade on George Street, has long used dolls as inspiration for her pieces and hasn’t had one complaint about the A3 posters of the nudes in her shop window.

But over the weekend she received six warnings from Facebook saying the pictures of the doll, which show little more than nipples, constituted “inappropriate content” and breached the site’s terms of service.

The warnings said Facebook would remove the images and Buckley is worried she will be banned from the site if she posts them again.

I’ve noticed nipples disappearing all over the place in the media. Why do these people find the human body so offensive?

Drug hysteria hits a new high. (pun accidental)

The man who inspired the Fort Hood shooter, the Christmas Day attacker, and the Times Square bomber is launching an online magazine in English aimed at aspiring jihadists. Lloyd Grove on why it has American officials worried.

Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, known by the acronym AQAP at the CIA, is about to release its first English-language magazine. It’s a Web-based journal of propaganda aimed at inciting violent acts among would-be terrorists living in the United States, Great Britain, Australia, and other Western countries.
[...]
It’s apparently the project of New Mexico-born jihadist Anwar al-Awlaki, a Yemen-based former imam who is said to have “inspired” three of the 9/11 hijackers; the perpetrator of the Fort Hood massacre, Army Major Nidal Malik Hasan; the Christmas Day underwear bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab; and the Times Square bomber, Faisal Shahzad. The 39-year-old Awlaki—dubbed “the bin Laden of the Internet”—is a prime target of U.S. counterterrorism operations.

“The U.S. government is aware of this new propaganda vehicle by al Qaeda in Yemen and Anwar Awlaki,” a counterterrorism official told The Daily Beast on Wednesday. “AQAP and Awlaki are clearly trying to incite terrorist activity overseas, and to recruit new extremists. The packaging of this magazine may be slick, but the contents are as vile as the authors.”

For real? Since when have ‘slick magazines’ recruited terrorists?

Seems dubious.

In a large hall at the Institute of Biomedical Problems in Moscow, six astronauts have begun the first full-duration Mars simulation mission. After a brief ceremony, the hatch of their mock-up spaceship was closed on 3 June. It will not open again for 520 days – the time it takes to get to Mars and back using conventional rocket technology.
[...]
Living in five modules divided between areas for work and rest, the crew will first simulate a 250-day outbound flight to Mars, followed by a landing. Then, during a 30-day Mars surface stage, three of them will move to the Mars lander simulator, don space suits, and walk around in a specially designed sandpit that is standing in for the Red Planet. Finally, there is the 240-day return trip to Earth.
[...]
Some of the previous isolation missions have not gone well. An eight-month mission in 2000 contained something not seen in this expedition: alcohol and women crew members. There were two women – a Russian and a Canadian – among a crew of six. The Russian said afterwards that she felt it had gone OK, as any Russian woman knows how to keep their men at bay.

The Canadian was not so lucky, and was once grabbed by the arm as a prelude to an unwanted kiss. She locked herself in her room and said later, “I had lost my dreams about astronauts and cosmonauts, who had always been heroes for me.” The mission descended into threats and a violent incident. One male crew member walked out. Alcohol has been banned ever since.
[...]
According to the mission timeline, the six astronauts in Moscow have already left Earth’s orbit and are headed for the uncharted blackness of interplanetary space. Soon, the only people they will talk to will be each other – and hell, it has been said, is other people. If they stay the entire 520 days, they will be paid 3m rubles, or about £64,000. The expedition’s commander, 38-year old Alex Sitev, may be looking forward the most to getting out. He got married just a month before his voluntary incarceration.

It kinda takes the sting out of a simulation knowing that you won’t die horribly from a collision with space crap or from giant swirly space anomalies.