Posts by Intractable Potsherd

Re: Perhaps "the most fundamental change to transport"

One of the interesting things in what has been written here is that the optimum lane for car-trains would be lane 2 (the middle lane on most motorways). There is no reason why they would not be able to travel at 70mph (which is the general speed in lane 2*), which would allow slower vehicles to inhabit lane 1 most of the time, and faster vehicles to use lane 3. Personally, I'd be quite happy to latch on to a car-train (though at a safe distance) since it would make adequate progress in a reliable way.

I confess that I love the idea that car-trains would be a way of encouraging Audiots and BuMWees to use indicators - no indicator, no exit!

* Subject to the lorry driver that just "has" to go 1mph faster than the lorry in front of it, and the (usually) woman that seems to think that lanes one and three are very wide pavements and that the national speed limit is 55mph.

@ unwarranted (presumably, without a warrant) triumphalism

Yes, I stand up for the rights of "criminals", because they are people. I stand up for the rights of all people. Your comment suggests that you don't.

Re: Freedom of movement. @AC "Cutting your nose off to spite your face"

Totally agreed - but I don't think you have gone far enough. There is no good outcome. Regardless of whether the UK stays in or goes out, there is going to be backlash from the EU and many other groups - NATO and the Council of Europe, for instance. What the Little Englanders have done is prove that "With friends like Britain, who needs enemies?" No-one is going to trust a country that, at a time of integration around the world, wants to rely on past glories, instead of looking to the future and co-operating. The country is going to have to beg and plead for everything, which is a poor negotiating position. Even becoming the 51st state of the USA, which is the best that can be hoped for in the next 20 years following an exit from the EU, will involve great loss at the negotiating table.

Re: MonkeyCee Yawn.

Well good for you, Matt. Your anecdote shows that there is absolutely nothing to worry about, and I'll change my opinion of the inadvisability of massive State over-reach immediately!

Of course, what you have written just reinforces the opinion of those who think you are an apologist for State surveillance because you are part of it ...

Re: UN, ECJ, ECHR.

That's very true (I'm trying to get my students to see the difference at the moment). However, it will not be difficult for the government to see a referendum result to leave the EU as a mandate to leave the Council of Europe (which, as can be seen regularly, very few people have heard of), <sarc>and throw off the shackles of those pesky Human Rights that are "undermining our sovereignty".

All that will be left is to join with those bastions of recognising State sovereignty, the USA, and all will be well ...(/sarc>

@ x 7

I don't care about what is "sensitive" or not. If the photographer is on public land, even the shit-head coppers have no right to question anyone going about their business with some sort of suspicion. Simply having a camera does not count as cause for suspicion, regardless of the size of lens.

Re: It's a shame we don't see programming as a basic skill @kmac449

I agree with you re: practical work. My wife and I are due to have twins in a few months. Being older and (possibly) wiser than previously, I am trying to work out how to make sure that the children will have the best set of opportunities in the future, and prepare them for a job-market where education may be less than valuable than practical skills. At the moment, home-schooling seems to be the way to go - state education does not address the right things, and, when it tries, it doesn't have the right people to do it. Those skills neither my wife or I have, we could buy in, but the key thing will be to deal with the underpinnings of learning - for instance, when I was at school, for many years I thought grammar was something that only applied to foreign languages, because we weren't taught English as a language!

You are correct about the snobby attitude towards practical skills - when I was at school, my teachers were dismayed when I took woodwork as one of my options (they didn't do metalwork or car-mechanics, which would have suited me better), because it didn't fit with the academic route they had planned for me, yet my practical skills have enabled me to make a bit of money at various times.

Re: 30 years in prison will reduce their extortion demands

First - catch them. Second - find a way to prosecute them. Neither are so easy to do. The second aspect alone requires them to be in a country that would allow prosecution either by their home country or by another. Also, how do you decide which country gets to prosecute when their actions have affected people in many countries? This is not easy to sort out, and has made geo-political aspects of law enforcement interesting.

Re: not a team player

At the moment, a colleague and I are trying to get the management of a large medical school* to realise that students using their personal GMail/Hotmail etc accounts for sending case studies is not secure, and should be made clear to them, followed by disciplinary action. We are both excellent communicators, but because a) we are not doctors and b) we actually know something they don't and have had the temerity to point it out, we are getting nowhere. I have tackled this from all angles - benefits to students, benefits to patients, the picture of what is going to happen if one of these things leaks, but no - it is as if we were pointing out that some of the doors don't shut quietly.

Communication only works if the other person wants to hear, regardless of the skill of the speaker.

Oh, and yes - we would be at the head of the next redundancy list if we went the "sign this" route.

*An organisation where lots of doctors who fancy taking time off from patients fail to effectively teach new doctors because they all think being a doctor means that they perfect teachers too!

Re: Forrest Knight???

Yes, but should a bear shit in the Forrest?

On the other had, I've never been quite sure of what specific risks people are thinking of wrt thinking that tracking their children is a good idea. The risks from paedoterrists are small, and very unlikely, so why surveil your children?

Re: David Cameron... ... is starting to piss me off now. @nijam

So few people realise that the HoL is something that should be kept - a bunch of people who do not have to worry about elections, and so can take a long-term view. Its historical excesses are long gone, and it is one of the main things keeping the venal arsewipes in the Commons in check. The worst case scenario is that the UK will leave the EU, and then "reform" the HoL into another elected chamber filled with the same arsewipes as the HoC - just like the USA!

Re: What about battery life

Yep - I am trying to find out this sort of stuff because a car upgrade is needed (twins arriving later this year, so a car with sliding rear doors is on the shopping list*). We have enough money to get a reasonably new (~5 y.o.) Toyota Previa or Kia Sedona***, but these are new enough to have the gubbins that drains the battery. Trying to find out whether it will be practical to leave these things for a few days is really difficult, and I don't fancy lugging one of those huge booster packs around.

* If the car is parked on the roadside, there is a reasonable chance that one of the babies will be posted in from the roadside. People who have a rear car door open into the road whilst they contort into bizarre shapes to fasten the seats in clearly do not understand the risk they run - or give a fuck about other road users.**

** I know - the little signs saying "Baby on Board" are warnings about the driver of the car bearing them.

*** Top of the list at the moment, though I could be swayed if I saw an interesting grey import.

Re: Police to do defence's job

Actually, since the Crown Prosecution Service took over the role of prosecution from the police, investigating the crime in an even-handed manner is exactly what the police should be doing. Evidence for either side should be put forward. The fact that the police are still allowed to go on thinking that they work for the prosecution is part of the huge bundle of problems we have with the police.

Re: I don't see the problem here

We're so far down the comments that I doubt anyone will read this, but, from the report, the FBI have an order from a magistrate. In every jurisdiction I know of, a magistrate is right at the bottom of the judicial hierarchy, and in some (such as the England and Wales) they are volunteers with no legal training. One of the things about magistrates is that they are usually extremely deferential to law-enforcement agencies. For these reasons, I would say that the order is suspect, and that Apple should not give in until it has been reviewed by a (or more than one) "real" judge(s).

Re: Pushing it ? Why ?

"In Napoleonic law, you are guilty until proven innocent. There is no 'presumption of innocence' - that is an Anglo-Saxon notion..."

I'd never heard that before, so I looked it up, and - guess what? - it is Not True! You will find a) that the Napoleonic Code (which even then isn't accurate - it is the "Code Civil") applies only to civil cases. Criminal matters are dealt with by the "Code Pénal" and the "Code de Procédure Pénale". b) Under the French Bill of Rights, the French justice system works under the rules established in the "Déclaration des Droits de l'Homme et du Citoyen", which states in the ninth article that:

"As all persons are held innocent until they shall have been declared guilty, if arrest shall be deemed indispensable, all harshness not essential to the securing of the prisoner's person shall be severely repressed by law."(Wikipedia's translation)

There is a nice explanation at http://message.snopes.com/showthread.php?t=82288, but logic would show that the ECHR would make such a system illegal - the accuser must always have the onus of proving that someone did something, not the other way around. The French prisons would be stuffed to rafters if your assertion was correct.

Re: Legal questions

As has been said many, many times here, the extradition treaty the UK has with the USA needs tearing up and throwing down the crapper. It does nothing to protect UK citizens against the USA, and everything to protect US citizens against the UK (though it did take the courts in the USA to make that clear). The fact that the UK government has failed to protect the people it allegedly represents in favour of another sovereign state says everything you need to know about the fucknozzles in Westminster.

Re: Best of Breed @Tom 13

You are quite correct in your comment that the move to a test of "appreciable" harm is long overdue. The simple "harm" test was far too low, and allowed for rent-seeking behaviour (though it was rarely sought). However, the judge has made a change to the law which he cannot effectively do. The doctrine of precedent applied by by the court system in the UK* means that he has made a decision in the lowest court. There will now be millions of pounds spent** going to the Court of Appeal, and then probably the Supreme Court, at which time the game stops, (the Supreme Court is, well, supreme - there are no appeals after that***), and their decision is the one that that becomes clear law. In some cases, the High Court judge will be criticised by one or both higher courts in their judgments.

History tends to show that judges who show willingness to interpret law are the ones that become Appeal Court judges later in life, so his may not**** be corrupt, but just a judge with ambitions taking the next step to get noticed.

* This is not a devolved issue, and so it is likely to apply across all parts of the UK.

** Assuming StreetMap has the money to do so.

*** Unless one of the players thinks they can get the European Court of Justice involved, but that's a whole different issue.

**** In fact, it probably isn't.

Re: Dear Biotech Corporations, @ Adam 52

Following on from my comment above, this is one of the things researchers do not grasp. It is easy for identities to be matched via basic demographic data, and adding even part of a postcode makes the chances of an exact match trivial.

Re: Bah!

*Europeans* aren't. Some politicians in EU countries are (Treason May, I'm looking firmly at you). The same can be said about the USA - most US citizens would very much like to have better global data security than their government allows.

Re: A Cat has NINE Lives but Mad May ...

"... so what gives?"

The information she has on everyone through her minions in the security services, I suspect.

Re: I hope you drone pilots have decent insurance @Adam52

Sorry, Adam; you have identified only one type of manslaughter (gross negligence manslaughter). There are others, and simply being reckless (not having regard for the dangers of the actions) would be sufficient to get charged. It is always open to the jury to decide that the charge doesn't stick, so conviction isn't certain, but the defendant would have to have a *very* good defence team to show that flying a drone on the approach to an airport wasn't reckless.

@ a_yank_lurker re: "feral" law

You raise an interesting point wrt the State intervening, but is it that much different from the existence of some States which are very much pro-patent trolling?

Re: It is just me? @Charles Manning

"... you get when you make taking care of people a government program."

So, who, in your opinion, are the correct organisations to fund taking care of people? Private business fails, and charity is only as good as the people who contribute.

To me, it is a basic function of government to ensure that people are cared for when they need it, but I am willing to be educated otherwise.

Re: Your pint has been marked @RoI

Yes - this modern thing for washing a glass every time really annoys me. I want to get a glass at the beginning of the evening, and hang on to it until the end even if I drink from different pumps. This used to be the proper way to drink, but now the bastards will insist on nicking the glass. Some won't even let me cling on the glass if I ask, mumbling "elfin safety and iGene rules" when challenged.

Did you mean James Cameron (film director), or David Cameron (pork-abusing leader of the current government)?

Re: Not to defend the app-peddlars, but... @ Joseph Eoff

"Can you really not get along for those few minutes without receiving calls or text messages?"

I'd love to, but if my wife is with me, she will be running off in all sorts of directions like a terrier in a rabbit warren. The phone is vital to making sure we can find each other once I have gone straight to the thing we actually went shopping for (yes, I'm not a store's favourite kind of shopper). If she isn't with me, though, then I've trained her to realise that I hardly ever have the ringer turned on so it will be hit and miss if I get a message before I get I get home, so I could definitely turn the phone off!

Re: I am not

"It's more convenient than asking friends and family ..."

Just a reminder that "more convenient" isn't always synonymous with "better".

@Dave 126

And so that toys and other Ep VIII merchandise can be sold in the run to Christmas!

FTFY :-)

That's interesting - I got an email from Lewis yesterday, but I have corresponded with him previously. It would be bad if he has been in touch on an email address that was used for something else (like reporting errors).

Re: I lost track at some point... @LucreLout

"So did home taping kill music in the end or not?

"No. In the end, what killed music was Simon Cowell."

Sorry - you aren't old enough. Pop music was murdered by Stock, Aitken and Waterman.

Re: Hoovering up data...

Ditto with retention of DNA samples from people not prosecuted. "Parliamentary sovereignty" is a way of saying "we can never do any wrong". It needs relegating to history.

Re: How can 3 sides can be wrong @DocJames

I was just going to write the same thing - there are some marked similarities!