And the problem is ?

How is this different to walking down the street with a tape-recorder ? If people are having a conversation in public, then they have no reasonable expectation of privacy.

If you broadcast information over an unsecured WiFi link, you are putting it in the public domain.

If you don't want it listened to, encrypt it.

Yo Iceland, listen up

We said send CASH

"Precision" guidance ?

For nukes ? Surely the same postcode does the trick...

"...now racist undertone free"

To be replaced presumably by racist overtones ?

ouch

"Low earth orbit ? On a Sunday ? It's not the parts, guv, its the callout charge... it's gonna cost ya"

Zoom shmoom

Like the man said, if you're pictures are no good, you're not close enough.

Judicially Review them

Officials can be compelled by the courts to do their duty:

1. It would appear that Ms Bear has legally changed her name.

2. The law (and the UK passport's services own guidance) entitle her to obtain a passport in that name.

3. The UKPS's purported discretion to refuse her one appears to have no basis in law or be founded on any lawful policy.

It is nothing to do with "human rights" - its to do with acting lawfully - which the UKPS appear to regard as optional.

Perhaps a quick judicial review would serve to remind them it is not.

(and yes, IAAL)

223 different IDs

The system can read 223 different IDs - presumably one is a Palace of Westminster pass ? That'll come in handy for expenses....

Bias and appearance

Don't know about Sweden, but here the test in not just whether the judge is actually biased, but whether there is an appearance of bias.

"The question is whether the fair-minded and informed observer, having considered the facts, would conclude that there was a real possibility that the tribunal was biased." per Lord Hope in Magill v. Weeks [2001] UKHL 67

As Lord Hoffman found out to his cost when he failed to recuse himself from the Pinochet case - despite being a member of Amnesty International, which had filed amicus briefs in the case.

Your healdine: prosecute != sue

The state prosecutes crimes. If defendants are convicted they may pay a fine.

Individuals or companies sue (by bringing a lawsuit). If the defendants are found liable (ie lose) then they pay damages.

There's a special place in hell

... waiting for this torture-apologist eye-candy. Ye gods, she's the only one in Gitmo who actually deserves wiring up to the mains for some enhanced interrogation.

As for the Public Affairs low-life who dreamed this up, hell's too good for him. Or maybe he's a twisted genius who's ironically referencing Apocalypse Now, sticking two fingers up to his superiors while pretending he's doing his job.

Nah. He's probably a white-bread all-American redneck proud to be defending Truth, Justice and the American Way.

We do need military commissions. To try these fuckers for offences against good taste.

Homosexual defamatory ?

Prof. Goldman would be right to say that (thankfully) we have moved on and being homosexual is not something that would lower someone in the estimation of right-thinking members of society. However, a statement that someone is of a particular sexual orientation (straight or gay) may be libelous if it implies to those who know the person that the subject of the statement has misrepresented their identity.

It may be potentially libelous for example to say that Graham Norton is in fact straight.

Coming soon from Cyberdine Systems

What's the hand signal for "find Sara Connor" ?

A modest proposal...

We live in hard times, and expense must saved.

We have more and more drones, more and more surveillance footage, and fewer and fewer qualified intelligence analysts and pilots prepared to take the strain.

The surveillance drone footage can be made available on the interweb, and members of the public can log into view it live.

If someone spots a person of ill-intent bent of destroying our way of life, he can log onto one of the drones flying in a holding pattern in theatre, take control and light that sonofabitch up.

It would keep costs down, keep more eyeballs on targets and give frag-hungry teenagers something to do. Hell, people would even pay for the privilege. Win-win proposition.

Oldie but goodie...

...the device shall be known as an iPlod.

Well surely the Doctor can fix that...

..what with being a Timelord and all. He can go back in time and - oh you work it out

That's no stock photo...

...its plod's e-fit.

Score one for The Man

Its not uncommon for large and reputable organisations (*cough* BBC *cough*) to use large numbers of "freelancers" - who basically work the same job as permanent staff, get taxed like permanent staff, except they don't have the pay, job security, benefits or protection employees have.

Fear not, citizen!

If you have done nothing wrong, you have nothing to fear! Therefore, if you fear, you must have done something wrong. Now bend over while I insert a rectally fitted GPS tracker. Its for your own good.

Don't take their word for it...

I mean, if Prof Hawking is wrong, and black holes don't evaporate, it would be a Very Bad Thing.

But you don't have to trust a bunch of gruyere-munching über-nerds - you can check it out yourself. The entire documentation for the LHC is available online: http://www.iop.org/EJ/journal/-page=extra.lhc/jinst

Now I happen to have a few bits left over from a radical hard-tail chopper project in the shed, and I've built my own. And just to reassure you all, I'm going to whack a few protons together at 10^20 TeV.

There, I've flipped the switch.

Its perfectly saf ---NO CARRIER---

iPod Classic - New, now with less storage

There is now only one size of iPod Classic. "One size fits all" says Apple - and that new size is 120GB. So the message from Cupertino is if you have more than 120GB, you have too much music - get a life.

Or get onto eBay and snap up a 160GB Classic while you still can.

So....

He was disarmed and then rearmed. How very German.

@jai Re: re: Wish list - cut & paste

"how would you implement the "cut and paste" on a system with no keys and only finger input?"

The beauty of Apple's approach (and the breakthrough idea arguably) is the use of more than one finger (eg pinch zoom).

There's already the magnifying glass tool to allow cursor placement - a chorded tap (ie tapping with a second finger while holding down the finger keeping the magnifying glass active), would not be beyond the skill of most users to learn - particularly if there are keen enough to want to cut and paste in the first place. A less elegant, but more obvious and less RTFM way would be to have an interface element (button, pop-up menu etc) that appears along with the text entry tools.

Not an insurmountable problem considering the gargauntuan pile of cash Steve & Co are sitting on.

Wish list

Stevey boy, listen up:

1. Cut-and-frackin-paste. MacOS 1.0 had that.

2. User filespace. We like to keep stuff and use different apps on it

3. Global search. We need to find stuff.

Having said that, it does what it does so well, I feel like I'm complaining my Ferrari doesn't have a cup holder

Government computer FUBARed...

...like they said when Calvin Coolidge died: How could they tell ?

Cue quote from Moonraker

(an awful film, but appropriately cheesy)

[Closing sequence - Bond has got the girl - M comes on the videolink]

M: What are you doing Commander Bond ?

Bond: Attempting re-entry

So 1998...

These days you use a Facebook app - just tick the friends you want dead. An for an add-on fee, you can have video of the hit sent to your iPhone.

4th Amendment, RIP

Since our American cousins clearly aren't using their constitution anymore, can we have it ? We could do with a bit of judicial oversight...

Second-order correlation

AKA, the skeptics mantra - "correlation does not prove causation".

The poorer you are, the less percieved control you have over your life (google "internal locus of control" and "social status"). You are more likely to attribute your bad job, bad housing, bad health to external forces (star sign, evil spirits or bearded supernatural white guys with divine status)

The poorer you are, the lower you will tend to score in IQ tests (google "underfunded schools").

Not suprisingly therefore the two tend to co-occur.

Likely too that IQ will correlate with driving Bentleys - for the simialr reasons (with some statistical outliers for footballers)

It does make ID cards pointless

If you've already been done for something, you're on the dabs database, so who cares what you're calling yourself - you're nicked.

If you haven't been done yet, you're a civilian, so plod have something better to do with their time than harass you for you bit of plastic. And surely there's more useful toys that the money for ID cards can be spent on.

Legal to offer the service, but...

Whether it legal to use it depends what you do with it. The answer (which can be obtained by googling "Fraud by false representation" is left as an exercise for the reader

Plod need to brush up...

The Public Order Act is not designed to protect people's feelings - its designed to protect, er, public order. So even if what you say is offensive, it must be offensive and threaten public order - hence the requirement that the behaviour or words be within the sight of someone likely to be caused harassment, alarm or distress.

You also have a complete defence if you prove that your conduct is reasonable.

Then there's the oft-maligned Human Rights Act, which guarantees your right to freedom of expression (Article 10 of the European Convention). Ok, its qualified, and not as robust as the US 1st amendment... but its better than nothing. Come to think of it, as the Americans aren't using their constitution, can we borrow it ?