Posts by Christoph 3317 publicly visible posts • joined 24 Dec 2007
Precisely. Security agencies always hype up the scare stories so they can be awarded more powers, and get forgiven when it's found they have been breaking the rules.
Every time the true facts have emerged it's been found that the scare stories bear no resemblance to reality.
Add together all the harm caused by all the terrorists combined, and it doesn't begin to approach the over a million deaths in Iraq due to the lies of the intelligence agencies.
"a legitimate source of income"
If you consider it's legitimate to sell to the US government so they can plant malware on millions of computers to help them spy on the whole world.
Planting malware on computers in foreign countries is still a crime in those countries, even if the US government has said it's OK.
"Throwing random bits of the French language into a English conversation just makes a person look like a tit"
Are we to assume then that you are going to eliminate all words and phrases of foreign origin from your postings?
You're going to have a bit of a job there sunshine!
Time for the James Nicoll quote again?
"The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary."
The information involved is far more sensitive. If that was published, some of the women involved would suffer serious social harm. Some of them would suffer serious physical harm.
If you are holding that kind of sensitive information you MUST PROACTIVELY make sure it is secure. "I didn't know" is not good enough.
"The police and the CPS do excercise discretion strange though it may seem. Even were you to be charged there would still be a court case and the argument in that case would hinge around the definition of possession."
So the police can charge you if they feel like it. If they want a high profile case. Or if the Mail has just run another batch of stories. Or if there's been another case like Saville and they've been told to jump on everyone possible.
There will be a court case? Really? In an atmosphere of hysteria it is extremely common for people to wrongly be found guilty. Look at the number of IRA cases that were reversed many years later because they were blatantly unsafe convictions.
And if you do manage to get found innocent, the mud will stick forever. You will ALWAYS be the person who was charged with child porn but managed to get away with it. Anyway by the time the case grinds through a lot of the damage will already have been done.
So to go with the people wandering along the road holding shouted conversations with thin air, we will now have people walking along, or sitting opposite on the tube, pulling a succession of weird grimaces so they can talk to their ears.
The world won't actually be full(er) of raving loonies, it will just seem that way.
"Chlorine Trifluoride and MMH."
Don't even think of working with Chlorine Trifluoride.
Just don't, OK?
"we bring in a multiplier for every thousand people that your crime affected."
Exactly. Penalise them for the consequential damages.
When they cut the cable they know for a certain fact that it will cause great inconvenience and expense to a large number of people, and endanger the lives of some.
They are deliberately causing that harm by a criminal action. I see no reason they cannot be penalised for that harm. But then that would be logical, and this is a matter of law :-(
"Actually spawned by OTHER parent stars 'far, far away'"
Not necessarily. It's not clear from this story, but the planets might have been formed much further out and then migrated inwards.
The story does mention that forming further out is possible, and the various 'hot Jupiters' are thought to have migrated inward.
The trucks would never get as far as the terrorists.
The first village the convoy comes to, a few people stand in the road. Convoy stops. A swarm of villagers climb over the trucks and remove the cargo and anything else moveable.
A couple of minutes later the aerial surveillance arrives and finds empty trucks and no sign of the cargo.
"Because the fee is levied on every household"
No. It's on every household that has a television.
The best bit of this change is if it stops them sending people to bang on my door and accuse me of being a criminal, and sending endless insulting letters. Because they are so hopelessly incompetent that they cannot grasp the idea that there are many people in this country who DO NOT HAVE A TELEVISION.
I don't have a television. I don't want a television. I don't have time to watch a television. There's practically nothing on television that interests me.
Yet they keep sending me letters with the envelope marked "immediate action required". Some dodgy salesman trying repeatedly to sell me a service that I have made it clear I do not want has no right whatsoever to 'demand' action from me. The only action they get is the letter straight into the recycling, unopened.
And the ones who bang on my door get told to get off my property.
But they still keep coming over and over.
Roll on the abolition of the licence fee!
"Early hopes that neutrinos from the new explosion might be detectable from Earth, however, appear to have been dashed because of the dusty environment of the explosion"
Some mistake surely? Neutrinos aren't going to notice something as trivial as a dust cloud. You need a light year's thickness of lead to have a reasonable chance of stopping a particular neutrino.
"the leaflet might appear as junk mail to any householder who only opens and reads post that is personally addressed to them."
My lot were obviously worried that some households might think the leaflet was junk mail.
So they wrapped it round a whole load of actual junk mail before delivering it, to make bloody certain most people assumed it was junk.
"I got a few thumbs down for saying it, but the American constitution and system of government is a historically amazing human achievement. It was an isolated event drawing much inspiration from the French revolution (via B.Franklin ), and coming "hot on the heels" of the English civil war. But the ideal of "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" is simply an amazing observation."
Unfortunately one of the reasons it's isolated is that many other countries who established democratic governments found themselves invaded or subverted by the US to put in dictatorships who would be more amenable to doing what the US wanted rather than what their populations had voted for.
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