BBC News | SCI/TECH | Piracy fight gets serious Oops! So they've effectively decided to legalise things like DoS attacks on the P2P networks from Record Companies. Well that could prove to be a mistake. After all, a lot of P2P services are actually used by people with way more experience in hacking! So if a company does a "Denial of Service" on a sharing network, they might just find that their main Web and Email servers have just been similarly DoS'd.

Yet Another Government Knee-jerk Reaction

Ref: BBC News | HEALTH | Tough new mental health laws proposed I'm really not too keen on the new proposals to the Mental Heath Laws. Suddenly Doctors are given powers to get patients with "severe mental illness" or "severe personality disorders" to get detained in hospitals if they refuse the treatment advised for them. I realy think that this would be the first step down a very wrong path. For one thing, exactly where do you draw the line as to what classes as a "severe" case? And why should Doctors be given the power to efectively "bully" patients into accepting any given course of treatment? For one thing, this is going to decrease the amount of people who actually seek medical help for mental problems. Trust me, although I'm not a "severe" case (as far as I know), I do know that there's no way I'd have ever gone to the doctor's about it if I didn't think I had a choice in the subject. Also, more importantly, I simply don't think that the UK Medical System is good enough to make ths a viable option. I've been quite lucky with the doctors I've been to, and the few times I've been referred to a psychiatrist I've actually found them to be uhelpful peopel who actually listen, and take what I say seriously. I also know that several people aren't quite so lucky. Medication get's prescribed with little to no extra treatment. Medication isn't prescribed when perhaps it should be. And the idea of being forced to follow "Doctor's Orders" in a realm of medicine which has plenty of horror stories[*]? Well I'm sorry, but I can't accept that that's ever a good idea. Whatever happened to "Patient Choice"? [*] Having suffered Depression myself, and frequented discussion forums with otehr similar people I've come across a lot of stories that you don't hear much of in the Media. You hear a lot about where "Mentally Ill people" have hurt other people. But what you don't hear about as much is when it's the mentally Ill who are the victims - usually of inefficient medical help. The main thing that worries me is that this will increase the level of stigma attached to mental Illness. It's like the Government is effectively saying that "Mentally Ill People Aren't Safe" - what kind of message is this going to send to the average people on the street? And, as I mentioned earlier, who exactly decides what problems class as "severe" anyway? Yes, some very bad attacks have been committed by the Mentally Ill in the past. But the world has to set up and realise that the attackers are also victims. Let down by a system that can't doesn't know how to successfully treat them. Even those who could be classed as "Dangerously Unstable", well I doubt that they'll have chosen to be that way. Yet just becuase the system doesn't know how to deal with them properly, they're allowed to shut them away just in case they might commit a crime in the future? I thought Civilisation had advanced in the past Century. But this seems like a potential step backwards. It this law does get passed, it will be a massive kick in the teeth to Human Rights. After all, unless someone's actually comitted a crime, they won't have forfeited their Rights, they'll have had them stolen.

Breeze 2002 It seems to be some sort of Music Event happening in Millennium Square in Leeds.