The Times website is going to charge money if you want to read it. I read this for nothing, in the Guardian.

I have already pointed out that removal of Murdoch's biased reportage will improve the quality of Google News no end. Why? Let the Times tell you...

We keep investing in journalism, we believe that's what our readers want. We're not dumbing down, we're dumbing up.

Dumbing up? I rest my case.

I just found out that the notorious clone of Mrs Thatcher, the utterly revolting money-grubber Blair is no longer in contention for the post of European Council president. Perhaps now he will start work on peace in the Middle East, or at least stop taking the pay for it.

They have this fine picture of a lenticular cloud, here...

Underneath, the text says...

Sometimes likened to UFOs, lenticular clouds are usually created by gravity waves.

No, they are not. They are created by variations in the speed, density, temperature and humidity of the atmosphere, influenced by the shape of the surrounding landscape. What they are talking about are orographic clouds.

Gravity waves are a physical phenomenon that can be detected, and are nothing to do with clouds. I found a good explanation by Googling.

I feel better for getting that off my chest.

I find them really useful when I'm selling special Lego sets like Cybermaster.

So I was cross today when I had an email from them saying some nonsense about how they were having some sort of Christmas toy sale, and I didn't fit their criteria in some unspecified way. They just took the listing down, and I have no idea why.

Oh well, back to eBay with it...

I just can't seem to stop myself commenting on those idiotic, automatically posted Spam blogs.

Update: I had an example link here, but Rampage has heroically deleted the blog. Hurrah!

"Project Camelot" is probably the biggest load of silly nonsense I have read in absolutely ages. It's such nonsense I can't be bothered to cut and paste a link. If you have time to waste, find it for yourself, if you want to read tripe...

Rupert Murdoch is threatening to stop all his publications appearing in Google News. That will raise the quality of Google News. The bias in his rags does this Australian dinosaur no favours.

I was about to list some of my old computer science books on eBay, but they wanted me to list them with free postage. I have asked for that in the Post Office before now, but they just laughed.

Presumably the idea is that I will include the postage in my starting price, and then eBay can charge their percentage final value fee on the postage as well as the item. Greedy.

Anyway, I have listed the books on Amazon instead. Their charges are fair, and visible when you list the item.

I'm building up to an intellectually stimulating post, by playing a little Spore in between putting stuff on eBay. As you may be able to see, I just terraformed this place to T1 for its inhabitants, and plonked a monolith in their town. Then I gave them some crop circles to look at, and will now wait to see if they are nice guys when they evolve...

This scam looks quite realistic, and could potentially be VERY nasty indeed. The clickable link goes to somewhere in Russia, that will attempt to run a PHP program on your computer.

Avoid!

I'm going to keep it simple because Alan Johnson has problems understanding science, evidence, truth, and above all he seems to have enormous difficulty understanding classifications. Or perhaps he is being bullied into doing stupid things by somebody who wants to "send a message" to us. Anyway, here we have a nice simple example...

A zoo decides to classify its animals, like this...

• A Dreadfully dangerous animals that will kill you if they get the chance
• B Fairly dangerous animals that might be able to give you a painful bite
• C Tame animals that you could keep as household pets

The zoo has a lion. It's quite obviously extremely dangerous, and they put it in group A. Pretty sensible, really.

They also have a few skunks. These don't hunt to to kill, and will only bite you if you really annoy them. They also happen to be able to spray you with an awful smell. Are you with me so far, Alan?

For the benefit of those who like fluffy pets, the zoo has a pussy cat. It can bite and scratch a bit but can not sensibly be described as dangerous. The zoo lets children stroke it, but has a notice on the wall saying it might bite and scratch if they abuse it.

Now I'm pretty sure you can all, except possibly Alan and Gordon, see what I am getting at here. For Gordon and Alan, this is a metaphor for what you are doing with cannabis.

If some cartoon maker comes along and paints the pussy cat black with a white stripe along its back, only Pepe Le Pew is going to believe it is a skunk. It is in class C, no matter how you paint it. Got me?

And, by the way, Gordon, only morons believe that skunks are lethal. Sure, they're pretty stinky, but I don't think a skunk ever killed anyone.

I'm a bit baffled, I must confess, at the fury that has broken out here. On occasion, I have pointed out to people that they have forgotten to separate their tags with commas, resulting in a huge tag that will never, ever, match anything else in the universe. So a five word, fifty character limit on tags seems quite sensible to me. The message telling me about this had a huge list of long tags I had used, and to be honest, none of them were actually written for the main purpose a tag should have.

Which is...

In online computer systems terminology, a tag is a non-hierarchical keyword or term assigned to a piece of information (such as an internet bookmark, digital image, or computer file). This kind of metadata helps describe an item and allows it to be found again by browsing or searching. Tags are chosen informally and personally by the item's creator or by its viewer, depending on the system.

Thanks to Wikipedia.

In fact, I was only bothered at all by the loss of a couple of them, the one which said "09-f9-11-02-9d-74-e3-5b-d8-41-56-c5-63-56-88-c0" which has great sentimental value, and the one which said "Mind you don't step in the Griffin".

I can still find all the posts I have made about politicians eyes by searching on "eyes". So what remains is still a tag system, and the blog servers now hold considerably less inappropriate cruft. So probably searches will be a lot faster too, and that is good.

Update: see! They have noticed the fuss, and have an answer.

It is clear now that Alan Johnson wants to be our next mad eyed prime minister. We already know that he does not believe in science, or actual truth, or evidence, preferring rather the views of the "one-eyed Scottish idiot" (© Jeremy Clarkson) who has been told by his god that something called skunk has actually killed people. His complexion tells us he thinks alcohol is a vitamin, don't you think?

Well, I don't think we need all these politicians. Ever since 1958, I have believed that it would be a good idea to get a committee of proper scientists to run the world. How could it be any worse, apart from anything else?