The Squat

Dearest beloved and most devoted blog readers.
Geeklawyer did say that that he would dismiss you from his mind for the duration of his skiing holiday. Alas, like an old mistress well past her prime who is now given to nagging and gratuitous vexatious interventions, Geeklawyer cannot, nonetheless, refrain from delivering affection and devotion against all common sense. He pines for MsR, Mary and Ruthie and, well, all the Geeklawyer harem. *sob*

He has had a peculiar Skiing holiday so far: two days and the holy planks have yet to be attached to his feet. So far he has spent the first and second days procuring affordable telecommunications resource with which to indulge his Internet habit.

On the first day it was a half day trip to Mayerhofen to buy a ‘Data Only’ SIM card for his phone. Followed, this was, by a drinking session in a pub that left the good intent to ski for the remaining day in tatters.

The second day the SIM card was found not to work. A collective of Geeks (a Nerd? A Linux?) then decoded cryptic German SIM error messages to divine that Geeklawyer’s phone was still locked. Geeklawyer then attempted, in the bar over a beer, to negotiate with T-Mobile in the UK an unlock code in the manner previously used to coerce concessions from a hard-nosed opponent in a multi million dollar IP deal. This time however, he failed. He was a little puzzled amused and flattered that his mild attempts to extract a change of position in T-Mobile were regarded by his skiing chums as a massively aggressive and an intimidating attack of Geeklawyer in full-on Nazi lawyer mode.

It is at times like this that one wonders if one’s profession, like the holding of the One Ring to Bind Them All, skew’s one’s character perception and soul in a manner perceptible only to others. One hopes not.

The Austrians have decided Geeklawyer is irredeemably weird: his choice of fasting on Mondays and Fridays while drinking beer an walking up mountains rather than skiing down them.

Rather having degenerate sex with Austrian/German totty Geeklawyer has spend the last hour in the basement of his hotel with a German chum circumventing the vagaries of Windows in an attempt to connect his Data SIM to a mobile & then to a laptop and thence for a sharing of this connection with Geeklawyer’s Macbook.

Yes, Geeklawyer’s head span too. But it has all been worth it as you can now read his drunken perusings. For it is Friday. Geeklawyer walked up a mountain today, fasted, but drank beer and schnapps. so his chums and the Austrians think he is behaving rather oddly. They may be right. This post may thus make less sense even than normal. The typing and grammar may be more egregious than usual. Geeklawyer would apologise but he imagines that you are so pleased to hear from him that you won’t whine too much.

Tomorrow is yet another odd day: a hurricane, Yes! a hurricane, in Austria. Speeds of 190Km/hour winds are expected to descend. Unsurprisingly all skiing is off.

Oh dear. Geeklawyer will have to spend the day in the pub.

 Geeklawyer is a bit hot with the ladies and he did look with some amusement at this article. It illustrates different nationalities approach to chatup lines. Hugely embarrassing is the British approach:

“On the plane was a conspicuously attractive Spanish attendant, who was receiving a great deal of attention from the Brits at the back. The Brits had calculated that if they ordered as much booze as possible from her, then with every repeat order, they would get more confidence and therefore another opportunity to charm her with their self-deprecation.”

Of especial interest was the comment:

Katherine says. “In comparison with Poms, I have met a heap of English guys who are wittier, and that’s a bit of a winner with Aussie girls, I think.”

Geeklawyer now has two Ozzie stalkers so knowing how to cool their understandable ardour, without having his bunnies killed, is a matter of self-preservation.

None of this is relevant to fidelity: Geeklawyer may shag like a rabbit on Viagra but he expects his bitch hoes to remain faithful and pine. Or else…

Geeklawyer is spending 10 days in Austria. While he loves you all and cares for you in a deep non-sexually threatening way he cannot pretend he will give you a moments thought once he puts the holy planks on his feet.

Yes, that is a little offensive it’s true but he thinks it appropriate that lla relationships should be honest ones. OK he may think of the ladies a teeny teeny bit: Ruthie, MsRobinson, Lawminx and OpinionatedBean and only insists on honesty from you.

Most of the rest of his time will be spent getting drunk eating bad Austrian mountain restaurant food and trying to pull Germany totty with lines such as: “Hey tussi! blasen me ein” - it’s not worked yet but statistics can’t be beaten.

Geeklawyer may blog from the resort but it’ll depend on connectivity which is somewhat flaky there.

Geeklawyer is in despair over the reports (via the hugely useful Inner Temple news blog) of the criminal ineptness of the Independent Police Complaints Commission. Charges allege that, almost universally, poorly trained inexperience junior staff who are rude slow and police biased are supervised by unqualified inexperienced barely trained managerial staff.

Fucking jesus!

However much Geeklawyer may whinge we do at least have some semblence of a system of fair trials. For those in Afghanistan the story is different: a 4 minute trial with no right to defend oneself or appeal followed by a death sentence.

Even sicko Blair wouldn’t have turned our justice system into this: but only because he’d never have succeeded; not that he didn’t want to.

And what are those cunts on about at the Sun with their campaign for the death sentence to be reinstated? Oh yea Geeklawyer remembers, cheap publicity gimmicks. Geeklawyer is all in favour of the death penalty for Sun journos but no-one else (ooh, is that calling for their death too?

If you are a little sick of the state of the right to protest in this country - given that you can be forbidden to protest near Parliament unless the police are, effectively, happy and give you permission to do so on terms they can set, then do something about it on March first: attend this rally (link via Melonfarmers).

Yea, protests are old fashioned but there’s nothing on telly anyway so WTF.

Geeklawyer just did a podcast with Charon on filesharing - among other topics. The sound is awful at Geeklawyer’s end and that is his fault not CharonQC’s, but it is still a good listen.

Hear it here.

Geeklawyer, along with his mates at the keepblairforpm website, have long decried the ‘enemy within’: the lawyers liberal meeja, and judiciary who have a secret agenda to undermine our beloved land of St George.

These scum would compel us to wake at 6.30 every morning and turn to face Mecca and worship Satan, or ‘the Prophet Mohammed’ as muslims prefer to call him.

Now, this heavenly mission is being frustrated by a traitor in their midst. A judge, so low than one can barely refer to him as “Justice” Collins, has deliberately released an undoubtedly guilty man knowing full well that he intends, following one lawyer’s site’s advice, to assassinate Tony Blair, the Queen, all of Parliament and the every child at the School for Handicapped Children at Hailsham East Sussex.

It is political correctness gone mad Geeklawyer says.

Geeklawyer recently attended the illuminating Web2.0 Transformational government conference at Parliament. It was attended by a small number of very switched on Government types who ‘got’ the Web and the possibilities of collaboration and open standards.

Great, but regrettably it was chaired by the total cock Alun Micheal who displayed the modesty and self-deprecation, in the face of criticism, that one would normally associate with Geeklawyer - except that he meant it!
So all government web facing IT is good? Erm no.

William Heath at the very readable IdealGovernment blog alerted Geeklawyer to an astonishing set of T&Cs at the site of the DirectGov website that purports to govern the conditions under which any website may link to them.

Apparently:

a) you must ask their permission to link,

b) you must describe DirectGov as they wish (i.e. you may not say anything uncomplimentary about them),

c) and you must remove the link if they want you to, immediately. Presumably if you don’t the same cops that executed Charles de Menezes will turn up at your door.

Geeklawyer is willing to provide free legal consultancy services to DirectGov on this issue. In the form of an executive summary, and free of charge here, it is:

1. No. No-one can be forced to accept T&Cs just by linking. Cretinous.
Where’s the explicit agreement? Hard, it is, even to see how one could
reasonably construe it in the circumstances. Tosh of the first order.
One isn’t bound by them.

2. The issue here is one of defamation and it can get a bit complex.
But broadly if the Government department is crap then a voter is perfectly entitled in law to say so. It is a partly matter of free speech and democracy and in addition
there is good law to say that governments can’t sue for defamation.

3. Removal of links: again, no. As a government agency they would be in all sorts of trouble if they tried to do so. Secondly if someone, e.g. Google or any random blogger, chooses to tell someone where to find some Government site that is publicly and lawfully available but the Government don’t like it then tough fucking titties, they can take their own site down. Suck my sweaty melons mr Brown.

Lawcareers.net has described Geeklawyer as ubiquitous. Geeklawyer had always thought omnipotent was better. It ponders that he must not get much work done. Had he not known better he’d would have sworn that that line was written by my failed co-blogger. In fact nothing could be further from the truth. Geeklawyer works massively fast - tho’ work is a little light at the moment it’s true. Apart from that he is disappointed that his mention on the column doesn’t really amount to much more than this comment. Ho hum.

Simon Myerson does a good review of the site.