Posts by Tim Wesson

Why the Victim Does Count

@idryl

The victim does matter, for a proportion of those who piss on random drunks will be doing worse than they imagine to be. By facing the same risk profile in punishment, it encourages such folks to think "Hey maybe it's not just a drunk", since the risk of the higher punishment will be (more likely to be) at the back of their mind.

Fusion, yes

Indeed.

Poverty is the greatest priority, but given that rich countries don't really care about poorer ones in general, we should be comparing like with like. For example, "climate change" should be compared with rich-country insurance, rather than their (ridiculously low) generousity to others. I'm not saying how this calculus works out, BTW, only that the suffering of the poorest is a bit of a distraction, resembling the mother's "Think of the starving in Ethiopia" when encouraging their kid to eat.

With regard to Nuclear Power, you might be right, especially if I am wrong about the slope of the curve on the log-log graph.

As I said, I don't have the data to hand, so I can't say a load more.

Success with fusion would certainly remove a worry.

At Last, "Quantum Jump" Being Used Correctly!

"Overall, we feel we've made a quantum jump on our core relevance," Nadella said.

A quantum jump or leap is of course the smallest possible change in energy - to the next quantum level!

Who forgot Bruce Schneier?

http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/08/bruce_schneier.html

Re: TALON?

Fluffy Bunnies is no good. Jobs that involve power are no good if it's all responsibility. Power is appealing because it puts the powerful individual higher up in the pecking order. To this purpose, obscurity is no good.

Fluffy Bunnies would only be sensible as a name if the power were really being used in the citizen's interest, or else the Pentagon was really a conspiracy against the citizen. In truth, it is simply a matter of those with power strutting their stuff. Genes make us dumb, as well as cunning.

Five Years?

This ruling troubles me. Five years stikes me as excessive for inducing fear without assualt. We are increasingly responding to phantoms in our legislation and court-cases, and this is not good for society.

A ruling based upon perception rather than real risk fits right in to our modern "we're very scared" attitude, but is clearly a signpost on the road to serfdom.

The judge appears to be ruling that it wouldn't be much worse if the guy had used a real gun. This is such obvious nonsense, it is hard (for me) to comprehend. Do we want to encourage armed robbery?

ICANN?

Surely a better name would be UCANT ?

Observation

It seems to me that those who are supporting liberty (ie. the restraint of law) in the face of terrorism are resorting to facts, whereas those who are supporting the state are exaggerating one-off incidents, or looking to arguments like "What are you going to tell the families of the victims?".

It all comes down to whether we should have a rational policy or one dictated by emotion as felt by authoritarians (the viceral dislike of government encroachment as felt by libertarians doesn't count).

Historically, government has always reassured people, emphasised the odds, and told people to continue going about their business in the face of terrorism. By steering from the responsible course, it is the government that is exposing authority to ridicule. But what other course is available to those who want a responsible policy reinstated? Argument doesn't appear to work.

Disasters (explosions, floods, chemical fires, road accidents) occur every day. Families are always distraught. They reasonably ask whether a factory could have had better saftey procedures, or whether cars could be made to go slower along a stretch of road. A billion pounds allocating to saving lives from such accidents would almost certainly lead to none being spend upon terrorism, except as a useful side-effect of other spending.

What makes terror different isn't the sufferring of relations, or the degree of commitment by professionals; it is one thing only: media coverage. The sufferring of those close to the victims is a smokescreen for our own feelings of empathy. But our empathy is uninformed, since so much sufferring isn't news.

The result is governernment by not reason but emotion. If you want oppression, this is where you start.

Illiberalism

Purple for Labour, then (and for the Cameron). But a complete absence of yellow.

The message is obvious, if their policies aren't enough to persuade you:

Labour and Conservative alike are moving to a new /illiberal/ stance on everything. New slogan: tough on everything. Tough in the head!

Justice and Intent

Richard Simpson's comment misses something important: patent law is primarily of interest to business, or (more generally) to economic agents. It would be unjust to make a matter of simple arbitration long-winded, for that makes it impossible for such agents to plan.

Surely such law should be resolved in the interests of business, unless there's a clear public interest otherwise. It is worth remembering that the lone inventor is also protected in that the decision, if made in his favour, cannot be overturned by the EPO.

Europe is pro big business; more so than Britain. If you doubt this, look to who gains the most from the Common Agricultural Policy. Further, the EPO have been lobbying strongly for software patents to be valid, whereas a British court has ruled that they are not.

This decision helps the small guy. The judge's reasoning was about business interest in speedy resolution, not about big business interest. Speedy resolution favours the small guy, as larger business cannot simply cause court costs to hemorrhage.