A pet peeve of mine: Get rid of those useless e-mail disclaimers

E-mail disclaimers are one of the minor nuisances of modern office life, along with fire drills, annual appraisals and colleagues who keep sneezing loudly. Just think of all the extra waste paper generated when messages containing such waffle are printed. They are assumed to be a wise precaution. But they are mostly, legally speaking, pointless. Lawyers and experts on internet policy say no court case has ever turned on the presence or absence of such an automatic e-mail footer in America, the most litigious of rich countries.

Many disclaimers are, in effect, seeking to impose a contractual obligation unilaterally, and thus are probably unenforceable. This is clear in Europe, where a directive from the European Commission tells the courts to strike out any unreasonable contractual obligation on a consumer if he has not freely negotiated it. And a footer stating that nothing in the e-mail should be used to break the law would be of no protection to a lawyer or financial adviser sending a message that did suggest something illegal.

Whenever I’ve been asked to use those silly disclaimers underneath my e-mails I’ve always been quick to point that they are in fact (at least in Europe and probably in most other places), completely meaningless.

So, please, save space in our mailboxes and delete those unnecessary lines of text…

Using Google Voice with Skype and any international number through Rebtel

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Rebtel

I love Google Voice, but since I travel a lot and Google Voice only routes to US-based numbers, I often find I can’t use it because I’m not connected to a US cell. However, using another great serivce – Rebtel (disclaimer: I used to work for them!) – together with Google Voice you can solve this problem (as well as do neat things like connect GV to Skype). Using them together gives you the following benefits:

1. All the benefits of Google Voice, but with ability of routing your calls to Skype or an international number

2. Ability to use Rebtel’s low call rates for international calls

3. Connect Google Voice and Skype through your Rebtel account

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First homosexual caveman found

Cave art

Archeologists believe they have discovered a ‘transsexual’ or ‘third gender grave’ in the Czech Republic Photo: ALAMY

The male body – said to date back to between 2900-2500BC – was discovered
buried in a way normally reserved only for women of the Corded Ware culture
in the Copper Age.

The skeleton was found in a Prague suburb in the Czech
Republic
with its head pointing eastwards and surrounded by domestic
jugs, rituals only previously seen in female graves.

“From history and ethnology, we know that people from this period took
funeral rites very seriously so it is highly unlikely that this positioning
was a mistake,” said lead archaeologist Kamila Remisova Vesinova.

“Far more likely is that he was a man with a different sexual
orientation, homosexual or transsexual,” she added.

An interesting find, but somehow unsurprising? It seems quite natural that there should always have been, and will continue to be, a broader spectra of gender and sexuality than “male” and “female” (especially since even “sex” seems to be a spectrum).

For those claiming that homosexuality is somehow a modern construct that needs to be removed – yet another spike in the coffin for that theory.

Read the full article at :

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/8433527/First-homosex…