Friday, March 27, 2009

Parliament Supports Earth Hour ... By Leaving All PCs on Over Weekend


Great news that parliament is supporting Earth Hour on Saturday evening, by urging all staff to turn off non essential lights. Good stuff. Get that carbon footprint down! Oh, er, hang on, what's this? An email to all parliamentary staff this afternoon. What does it say? Oh...


Left hand, right hand, anyone?

15 comments:

Paul Halsall said...

There seems to be a rational reason.

PhilC said...

I think it's Earth Hour.
Earth House is wot a badger or a fox lives.
But, yes, anybody would think their taking part was only for show.

Horlic said...

In Malaysia, 2009 Earth House use as publicity tools instead. Those participate are commercial companies like TV station, Restaurant and coffee shop, shopping mall and banks.

Sue said...

They're probably all infected with the Conficker virus and they have to be scanned.. there's security for you.

The Grim Reaper said...

It's not just Parliament that does this. At my workplace, (an amusement arcade, of all places) the office computers are left on 24 hours a day for some reason. It's standard procedure, I'm told. I haven't the faintest idea what the point of doing that is - doesn't it shorten the life of the computer in question?

Anonymous said...

I'm guessing the reason is that many of Parliament's Windows boxes have been infested by the rather nasty Conficker worm. This bit of malware needs to be removed from god knows how many machines in the next few days before it comes to life.

The sorry story suggests that Parliament is nearly as ignorant of IT security as the government itself. A patch for the affected parts of Windows has been available for months and should have been automatically installed on any machine which uses Windows Updates. That vulnerable machines are still on the Parliamentary network suggests that their IT staff are not enforcing updates on all machines, aren't locking down machines and are allowing unauthorised machines on the system.

The Register has the story here:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/03/27/conficker_parliament_infection/

cassandra said...

To all thise real people who actually truly care for the earth and its inhabitants I urge you all to mark this event by turning every light on you can find!

The ecomentalist loonytunes need reminding of their bankrupt poverty inducing democracy hating fascist ideology, they need reminding that their lies and crooked scheming to impoverish us have no place in the modern world.

So please switch your lights on and poke these hypocrites in the eye, burst the balloon that is their grossly inflated egos.

For the real truth about climate go to sites like 'watts up with that' and 'antigreen.com' and climate audit',
Once you realise what these AGW whackos are upto it will make your blood boil!

Not a sheep said...

Hold on, that seems fair enough if there is an IT update to be run over the weekend.


WV: pedicar - didn't Fred Flintstone have one of these?

johnAKAmark said...

Earth Hour - wot a load of reactionary, socialist bollocks.

DespairingLiberal said...

Lots of firms do this when doing a software update. Just a (not untypical) cheap shot by Mr Dale.

If you really want an enviro-target, what about all those spectucalar lights left blazing all night long in the banks' HQs at Canary Wharf?

jas88 said...

Grim Reaper: It shouldn't; it's switching the machines on and off which puts the greatest strain. Machines will often run happily non-stop for several years, then fail to power on again following a power cut or maintenance shutdown.

I'm thinking of making sure I run the tumble dryer, washing machine and electric shower for Earth Hour, just to make sure the figures show less support for this ridiculous eco-charade. That should cancel out a few dozen light bulbs being switched off!

(I have nothing against efficiency, or avoiding wasting power - but I detest the eco-lobby and their tax-dependent pseudo-industry of wind power and subsidy-harvesting.)

Heather said...

I'm just sorry I don't have a washing machine, tumble dryer, dish washer etc., just so that I could delay cleaning everything until 20.30 tonight.

Hope they don't close the local launderette!

Lady Finchley said...

There is a virus which is making some of the computers all but unusable and they need scanning. It is disgraceful that there is such a lack of security.

I for one will have all my lights blazing at Earth Hour. I refuse to be cowed by the eco nazis.

Lady Finchley said...

Oh I just heard the UN is sponsoring this - now every tv and stereo in the place as well as washing machine and dryer will be one!

Delusions of Grandeur said...

The computers have become unbearably slow - it's a miracle anybody got any work done last week. In some instances it's been taking up to ten minutes to load a webpage, and every application is running about 5x slower than usual.

Documents have been going missing, people are constantly being locked out of their accounts, and PICT don't seem to have a clue what to do about it.

I know a number of researchers,myself included, who will be heading in later on today in the vain hope that they may have fixed things.

Whoever would've thought that a computer virus could undermine democracy, eh?