Posts by Adrian 4

Re: Embarrassing

s/embarrassing/shameful/

Don't be too hard on yourself. Ours is no better.

Re: Sleep is a Good Thing(TM)

"How else do you explain why the extremely high levels of CO2 identified tens of thousands of years ago, far higher than today's concentrations, did not result in an irreversible climate catastrophe?"

Depends what you call an irreversible climate catastrophe. The planet survived the last few climatic catastrophes and it's going to be fine - it won't fall into the sun or anything and doesn't much care what sort of life, if any, inhabits the surface. But the dinosaurs didn't do so well.

Personally, I'm not that bothered. It's not going to get *that* much worse before I die of old age or advanced cynicism, and when I look at Trump and Bob I think these modern dinosaurs are due for extinction anyway. It's like a wildfire : hold it back if it helps you for now, but ultimately it's good for the ground to have a purge now and again.

I guess if you don't want to go the way of the republicans you might feel it's worth trying harder to preserve the status quo. Best of luck to you, but I'd hedge my bets and start learning to change my metabolism. It's likely to be easier than changing a politician's mind.

Re: Manager who wanted to do email.

It sounds like the 'Yes, Minister' approach to company management. Only give the minister the mail he can be blamed for.

Re: Summing Up

You miss my point. I didn't argue whether or not he is an arse.

I argued that it wasn't a valid charge, and if it were, Funkymunky would also be guilty of it.

I think he's achieved a fair bit of publicity out of it.

I'm not saying I like the bloke, whether or not the rape accusation is true. But I like corrupt and self-serving governments an awful lot less, and ours has already trained me to vote for the least-worst instead of someone I like.

No, it's not out of the air. It's consistent with costs stated elsewhere in these responses.

That doesn't make it correct, justified or appropriate.

Re: £16m of taxpayers' money

Not a bad idea.

But it smacks rather of the situation with traffic fines : pay it immediately and get a discount. I always think that's borderline illegal (discouraging the target from disputing the charge). Yes, it costs more, but so would employing quality staff who made less mistakes, or avoiding illegal practices. Local authorities need to be held to account.

Re: "like a girl"

Downvotes without an argument don't count.

No argument on the case. Yes, it's perfectly fine that he should be sent down. In fact, if he'd been sent down 8 years ago it would saved the unnecessary millions being spent.

The problem is with the spending and the allegation that Assange wasted it. And no, he was not held to the same level of accountability. Can you think of a rape case that comes close ? If you think that's all that's going on, you're being deliberately blind.

Re: Summing Up

As ad hominen is not recognised as a plausible argument, the only conclusion we can come to from your suggestion is that you are also an arse by trying to use it.

So you'd better be glad it's not illegal either. In fact, we usually reward it with promotion.

Arise, Sir Funkymunky of Arseshire.

It's the judges opinion, stated during the summing-up - an opinion which suggests her judgement was far from neutral. Retrials have been demanded for less.

It won't have been stated or challenged in prosecution evidence because it won't have been a charge. His offence was to skip bail. Charging him for the costs the police incurred in stopping him from skipping somewhere else was not on the menu and would have been laughed out of court if it had been.

Re: Place your bets

I don't think it's very polite to refer to Mrs May in those terms, however incompetent she might be.

Re: £16m of taxpayers' money

Well. that's about 2 million a year. If we assume it's necessary to have 2 coppers on duty to cover toilet breaks, that's a million per copper per year (24 hours).

We have 122000 police officers in the UK. Assuming 8 hour shifts, that's 40,000 officer days or 40 billion pounds pa. Apparently we spend 34 billion on public order and safety so the justification is already starting to look dodgy. It would indeed be very interesting to find out how that figure was arrived at, and the justification for spending it.

Over a similar period we actually lost 20,000 officers due to government costcutting. Not sure what that says about government priorities but it isn't very encouraging.

The bit you missed is that Assange did not spend 16 million : the home office did, by their own choice. By all means invoice him for the costs to the ecuadorian government , but that's not for british taxpayers to be concerned about.

It's not as if he posed any threat or harm to the british public which might have required such action : there's no suggestion at all that, if the alleged rapes occurred, they occurred in a vacuum. This is not some predator that creeps around in dark alleys at night : he is accused of unwanted sex with a person with whom he has recently had consensual sex.

This is rape, I agree : but I think only women who know him extremely well have anything to fear. Perhaps the home office would like to prove their point by putting a 24 hour guard on some other accused rapists. I'm sure their victims would be delighted : but the government

apparently doesn't believe in consistent application of the law.

If you think the home office had to spend that money, you're being absurd : they did it because they wanted to or were asked to. Has any either person accused of rape ever had such a sum spent on apprehending them ? I would suggest the only investigation in anything like that order would be some truly hideous child abuse cases.

You might also argue the home office 'had to' do that to uphold the rule of law. In other words, a PR campaign. Their choice, but not a good use of money imho.

It may be that that sum should be the subject of an inquiry into whether the home office is doing an adequate job.

On the other hand, you might look at the costs incurred in protecting our worthless politicians. I have no idea what it is, but suspect it's more like 16 million a month.

The profits are the proceeds of the crime.

If we prosecute a thief, we don't leave them with all the stolen goods and then fine them, we confiscate everything (as far as it can be traced) and THEN consider the punishment.

The appropriate action in the case of a corporation with a serious fine profiting from illegal action is therefore first to sequester the profits (or part of them, if it is determined that some income was earned legally), and then fine them for the offence.

Since they are profits, not income or operating capital, this would not hurt the business or its employees - just the owners and shareholders.

This would stop corporations from simply considering fines as a cost of doing business, and empower shareholders to sack executives whose actions destroyed shareholder value.

Re: Only to be expected

you forgot Nuke from orbit

Re: I can't understand the fuss over CA

That would be so, but CA was chasing a limited number of contracts with its aims. FB is happy to be a supplier of the raw materials to any CA-alike that comes along.

We are the victims

Politicians and corporates are the addicts

CA is a dealer

FB is source supplier.

There is culpability all the way through, including our willingness to believe politicians, but FB is no less guilty than CA.

Re: But...

"Most of these plugs are over 10 years old so to issue a recall for them is not that bad."

Or, to put it another way, they've had dangerous plugs out there for 10 years and have only just recalled them.

I think they're being recalled for faulty design, not because they they're old.

I accept the downvotes : there are certainly dangerous clones. Perhaps MORE dangerous (I'm a fan of Big Clive too)

However, for Apple to throw the first stone, they need to be without sin.