Posts by durandal

Re: Too one-sided

> If they don't have sufficient grounds to believe that you have committed a crime they should be leaving you alone rather than carrying out speculative identity checks

Well, yes. That's what the law says. The scanners are there to be used when somebody who would be liable to arrest because there are doubts as to their identity can, instead, have their ID checked on the roadside.

If you can confirm that Mrs Miggins is in fact Mrs Miggins, then you open up alternative avenues such as a voluntary attendance interview, on-street charge or a PND, rather than nicking her just because you can't confirm her identity.

This isn't new technology and neither are the processes behind it. This is newsworthy because the MPS have developed their own implementation.

Scotland Yard, Great Scotland Yard or (New) New Scotland Yard?

Re: No accountability

At the time of the arrest, the police officers had reasonable grounds to suspect that a warrant was outstanding, based on the information available to them at the time.

The fact that the information was wrong is irrelevant; the grounds for arrest simply need to be objective and an officer needs to be able to articulate them.

"You're under arrest because I believe you have an outstanding warrant"

"Nah, bruv. I was in court two days ago"

<insert custody systems check>

"Ah, so you were. Sorry about that, enjoy the carnival!"

Harassment, for ease of reference, requires a course of conduct and an intention to harass, and there's a general exemption for people acting in good faith.

Re: What <i>the hell</i> are Microsoft doing going through our files?

Ben W Wells, the attorney representing Soto, in a phone interview with The Register explained that Microsoft reviews content ilsted in Bing and stored in OneDrive

Emphasis mine. It could really have done with being spelt out in a bit more detail.

My missus does this sort of thing for a living. People are actually that stupid that they will post, store and share child abuse material in plain sight.

Re: Truecrypt + Notepad

Only psuedo-random? Tsk, you've left an obvious backdoor right there.

The point of the disclosure system was that employers seeking to place certain individuals into positions involving access to kids and vulnerable adults would need to have sight of an individual's criminal record in order to make an informed employment decision - hence the exemption to the ROA.

The CRB was never meant to be a 'certificate of good conduct', and is not meant to be a mechanism of shortlisting. The difficulty is that employers and volunteer organisers are best described as 'risk averse', or ruddy mental.

Apart from the obvious ones, an adverse disclosure is not a bar to employment. If an employer cannot accept the risk posed by a 10 year old minor shoplifting matter, then they need to be repeatedly struck with a clue-bat until such time as they come to their senses, and preferably stopped from being in a position where they're responsible for safeguarding children or vulnerable adults.

There are very cogent reasons for a CRB system (Ian Huntley, obvs), but the application of the CRB needs to take place at a point at which the CRB'ee can obtain damages if an employer decides to unreasonably withdraw an offer on the basis of that disclosure.

Or (as I would personally expect) will everybody get off scot-free, and all because it's 'for the children'?

While I'm not one especially worried abouut Paedogeddon which is always around the corner, this system is working to remove actual images of child abuse. You know, the pictures of children being raped and whatnot.

Even if the scheme was put together with no consideration of the possibility that a hash of a given image might raise a false positive somewhere, then the very nature of the work means that the image would need to be looked at by a live operator who is quite capable of telling the difference between a tourist picture of the Colosseum and an image depicting child abuse. Remember, the hashes work on a file level, it's not an automated comparison system of the actual image content (so you're not going to get odd false positives relating to the computer not being able to work out the context of a given image).

The worst comes to worst, a hypothetical image sharing site decides that they'll simply disallow uploads if a file hits the checklist, and you'll end up not being able to share that photo of Our Margaret with that horrific sunburn, how we laughed when Our Kev swapped the factor 50 for tanning oil.

Re: for dogs only

Apparently, it is. Back when i were moving faders for a living, I had the opportunity for a chat with a bloke from Klark Technik (they make rather good graphic equalisers, amongst other things) and while most of the conversation disappeared some way over my head, he made the point that they engineered their kit to take account of harmonics outside the threshold of human hearing simply because it seemed to make a difference. These weren't mental 'put your speakers inside a pyramid' audiophiles, these were people building robust kit that was going to be put into flight racks and sent around the world.

Something, something psychoacoustics, if I recall correctly.

Re: Pro tip

Unfortunately, the breathaliser isn't especially interested in the smell but rather the alcohol content. The design is such that it disregards the first part of the blow and does its work on the last gasp. The only purpose the mints serve is to try and disguise the smell from the copper. The machine cares not.

It is possible to drink several pints and stay under, but it depends entirely on the metabolism of the subject, their weight and other body factors, the strength and type of drink, time elapsed since drinking, how long it took for the drinks to be drunk etc etc.

Which is a long winded way of saying that the tree just served to make him feel queasier than he already was!

Re: Why "chumps"?

And now with end-to-end encryption.

Re: As an aside

People seem to have trouble seeing emergency vehicles with every bit of warning kit lit up. Lack of engine noise would be the least of the problem for a lot of the motoring public!

Re: Might actually stand a chance of delivering

Plus Inman has some experience with crowdfunding (after the Tesla museum), and isn't likely to stick his name on something that's going to never appear

When Blackberry do keyboards well, they are very, very good. Slide out keyboards, even when built in, aren't the same by a long shot and a crappy Chinese knock off on ebay isn't going to come close.

The fact that people are resisting upgrading their Bolds, etc. suggests that there is a market, but it's not the consumer one that Rim bet the farm on a couple of years ago.

Re: old telly frequencies

You might want to read the linked article from 2012. The idea isn't that the spectrum is entirely empty , but that powerful TV transmitters will be tuned to avoid interfering with each other and the resulting shadow is ideal to stick a small, low powered transmitter in, provided there's a robust database saying what can and can't be used in a given location.

Re: We need to ban handset subsidising

They've not really subsidised phones for a while now. All your two year contract is doing is providing a phone on credit at a bit of a discount to buying it unlocked on a credit card.

Re: Wot no Z10?

Z10 isn't budget territory, though.

Re: Anyone using any web based password manager is just an idiot.

That's handy. I'm going to assume you don't work in environments where USB access is disabled by default.

Re: Anybody know if

There's a specific exemption for using the phone in an emergency.

In the meantime, organised gangs have been trawling London and exploiting CANBUS security flaws and making off with hundreds of BMWs and Range Rovers without needing to bother with pesky things like keys.

The reported flaw is probably nothing, but it highlights that vehicle manufacturers are failing to get to grips with the fact that the in-car IT is vulnerable and can be exploited, and this is just a symptom of the issue.

Re: Just imagine...

Why would the US put up a map of Yorkshire?

Waking up and being able to see without scrabbling for glasses, or being able to go to bed pissed and not worry about pawing a set of contacts out is a hitherto unrealised pleasure.

I had it done, and I can't praise it enough - I couldn't function without glasses, let alone get behind the wheel of a car.

Re: Explanation?

You're thinking of Germany. Here, your conviction data stays on until you hit 100 years of age.

Re: False sense of achievement maxed out...

Buy each other a pint and sit in the boozer talking shite about it. Which is how most of my gaming-meets-real-life things go.

Re: de-oxygenated copper

When D&B were exhibiting their speakers at conventions they'd often challenge a speaker cable manufacturer to a listening contest between the premium product and any old mains cable that was kicking about.

Funnily enough, there were no takers.

Re: Slightly off topic

I enjoy the fact that Hansard has been archived on the slightly scary sounding 'millbanksystems.com', like some sort of black operation based out of the bowels of Thames House.

(http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/)

Re: The only part of this that bothers me is

However, had you looked at the farmer funny, they'd have nicked you for a breach and questioned you without access to legal representation.

It's not all honey and clover north of the border.

Godwin refers to the tendency of any internet discussion to, in due course, make a comparison between the opposing view and nazis.

It's got nothing to with the mention of things like "little hitler" - it shouldn't be used as shorthand for political correctness.

Re: "one core operating system dates back to a 1970s baggage handling system"

From an earlier post, it appears they're talking about about the dispatch system (CAD), which is based on a mainframe airline reservation system.

Given that mobiles are leapfrogging fixed lines across the developing world and doing some frankly astounding good, no.

Re: BlackBerry nixes BlackBerry 10 on PlayBooks

That was my reasoning, although given my purchasing habits, I may as well have just bought a betamax and be done with it.

Find me a way to sync my various different rss clients across my phone and various computers, for nowt, and I'd agree with you.

Re: I always use my phone for Google's GPS when I'm in California

The big problem is that, to date, there's been no appeals to the crown court so its relying on the fairly varied judgement of magistrates to define 'using'.

This isn't a bad thing as such, but it means that there are a lot of prosecutions that are being succesfully defended on the basis of some fairly sketchy arguments. Equally, there're a lot of prosecutions going forward that shouldn't (some over zealous traffic officers extending the definition of handheld to units firmly affixed to cradles, for example).