Watch It!…We Donkeys Are Hard!!!

Braying donkey foils attempted burglary

Jaffa the donkey woke his owner up in the early hours of the morning with his 'very loud' braying, seeing off an intruder who ran off

A foster donkey foiled an attempted burglary with his loud braying which raised the alarm.

Jaffa who lives in Preston, Lancashire, woke his owner Mary Beetham in the early hours of the morning as he was “shouting his head off” after an intruder approached her home.

Ms Beetham, 73, said Jaffa seemed in such distress, she left her bed immediately to tend to him during the incident on Wednesday, June 18.

The retired P.E. teacher said: “I was woken up at 1.30am in the morning by the loud bray, he was obviously shouting his head off. He went on and on. It must have gone on for more than 10 minutes.”

She added that when she got up to tend to Jaffa, she “saw someone run down the drive”.

But she did not fear for her safety and said she was concerned for Jaffa, who she had fostered only three months earlier.

“The sound was an incredibly stressed sort of noise. They can die from this sort of incident and Jaffa needed calming down. I stayed with him for 30 minutes and calmed him down.”

“I didn’t consider it [her safety] until afterwards, I only thought ‘what was the matter with my donkey?’ It was later that I thought, ‘what am I doing here in my pyjamas?’”

Ms Beetham called the police in the early morning and said the officers told her they would record the incident and keep an eye on it.

She said the intruder had not taken anything.

The next day, Ms Beetham said, “Jaffa was very quiet and sleepy, he was shaken up. But he’s fine now. He just shouts at the postman now.”

The foster carer has been taking care of donkeys for 17 years and said Jaffa had been badly treated before being rescued in Ireland but “brought back to life” by The Donkey Sanctuary, a charity dedicated to improving the lives of donkeys.

Ms Beetham also is carer to Jacko, who she has fostered for the last four years. She praised the charity's work and said she decided to foster donkeys because of her mother: “When my mum was alive, she wanted a donkey. I thought, if I don’t get one, I never will. It was the best thing I ever did.”

Watch Out …We’re After You.

UK Changed Attitude to Pirates

It seems that the advisors of UK Prime Minister are already unhappy with forcing Internet service providers to send their customers notifications when they pirate films, music and TV shows.

A few days ago, the Prime Minister’s IP advisor claimed that it’s time to realize that the currently employed scheme might fail and the government needs to turn to something more enforceable – for example, disconnections, fines, and even jail sentences.

The industry experts confirm that the UK Digital Economy Act has been running for 4 years on and is seen as pointless in overwhelming majority of cases. The idea was to educate the casual file-sharer about legitimate alternatives in the hope the user would change their behavior.

But this plan failed, as serious file-sharers could ignore the rules by using foreign proxy websites which were untraceable. Ordinary users were receiving 4 notifications and then nothing was happening. The advisor believes that four years is enough for the government to understand that they need to start thinking what to do if these warnings are ignored by infringers.

He says that notifications and fines are first steps, but blocking access to the web and custodial sentencing for damaging infringers should not be ruled out either. Of course, jail won’t be immediately on the cards for infringers. Education has to come first, with a special attention paid to informing consumers that illegal file-sharing is not in their best long-term interests and is not socially acceptable. In the meantime, the industry will be forced to get their product right and attractive to consumers.

But once the authorities had won the hearts and minds of content consumers and offered suitable product, keeps the option of enforcement of copyright legislation on the table when all else has been exhausted. David Cameron replied that he would closely consider his advisor’s report.

Let’s Block It All???

Online Filters Block 20% of Popular Sites

About 20% of the most popular websites on the Internet are being blocked by the porn filters employed on local broadband and mobile networks. For example, it was noticed that a Porsche car dealership, a couple of feminist websites, a blog on the Syrian War and a political website suffered from the filters recently installed in the United Kingdom.

The Open Rights Group has recently surveyed the 100,000 most popular websites to discover that 19,000 of them were blocked by a fixed line or mobile ISP – and sometimes even by more than one provider.

In the United Kingdom, for example, 4 mobile networks have used filters for a while now, following a push by David Cameron. Broadband companies have caught up, introducing porn blocks that allow parents to screen out potentially harmful content. Every subscriber will be asked whether he or she wishes to apply a broadband filter by 2015. Adult content filters screen out pornography, along with suicide and self-harm related content, weapons and violence, gambling, drugs, alcohol and tobacco. Moreover, people can also decide to block dating, music and movie piracy, games and social networking.

The Open Rights Group explained that such filters can stop customers accessing your website, block political commentary or harm your education. In other words, the government pushes people into filtering lots of content that they simply don't need to.

The examples are numerous. An American who moved to the UK wanted to read an article about recovering from childbirth on her mobile phone, but it was blocked by her mobile network, Three, who for some reason imposes a filter as default for all pay as you go customers.

A Porsche brokerage has recently found their website blocked by O2’s filter. Emails and calls brought no results in having the ban lifted, until the company began tweeting about the problem. All O2 responded with was “mistakes can happen”.

Syrian War commentator’s blog was screened out by EE, O2, Sky and Vodafone.

Sherights.com, writing about sexual health, violence against women and lesbian and gay rights, was blocked by TalkTalk a few months ago. The worst thing is that the ban boils down to advertising revenue.

Finally, The Guido Fawkes website is also blocked for subscribers who have selected to screen out all social media. This includes Facebook, Twitter, blogs and chat forums.

Flat For A Donkey??