Posts by dan1980

Re: "with no conviction'

@silent_count

A good behaviour bond may be issued without conviction in accordance with the Crimes (Sentencing Procedures) Act (1999), Section 10(1)(b).

As the Judge explained:

"The decision to record or not to record a conviction is not a reflection on whether a person is guilty or not."

The Judge gave her reasoning for not recording a conviction at some length, listing the "objective factors" (i.e. ones not in any dispute) to be as follows:

• She did not violate a highly secure data.
• She did not access highly sensitive data.
• Although the data was not in the public domain, it was not of a commercially sensitive nature or relating to the security of persons (such as a residential address or bank account details).
• The breach of trust is towards the lower end of the scale and can be contrasted with police officers who misuse the COPS system, bank or civil servants who authorise payments to their own accounts, or airline staff assisting in narcotics importation.
• No significant harm was caused.
• No other aggravating factors are present.

As subjective factors, she lists Ms Newman's good character, remorse and immaturity, along with a mention of her motivation which, while it "does not excuse her conduct", does help to explain it and as being "motivated by a sense of injustice rather than a desire for personal notoriety, greed or any desire to embarrass the student".

Judges are given a "wide discretion" in how they apply sentencing in such cases and so the Judge, upon weighing the factors, found the case to be:

". . . towards the lowest end of the scale for offences under this section."

And, thus, she decided upon a good behaviour bond. with no conviction.

@Mark 85

"Thee or me".

That reminded me of Justice Scalia's dissent in Maryland v King - "The Court repeatedly says [it] will not befall thee and me, dear reader, but only those arrested for serious crimes."

No relation to this issue - just reminded me of it and so brought a smile to my face (something I needed) as I very much enjoyed that line and how it brought a kind of mock conspiratorial tone to it.

@Psyx

You and everyone else seem to be ignoring my point - which is causing me genuine upset. Why won't you just read my posts?

What I am saying and all I am saying is that what he says accords with his actions. He really appears to believe that this will happen and this provides an alternative explanation for his ("dodgy" in Matt's words) behavior. As in an alternative to "he's a rapist looking to avoid justice".

I never - not once - suggested that the case should be dropped and quite the opposite: I think they need to MOVE IT FORWARD. But the only way to do that at this point is to interview him in the UK. If this process is a legal requirement before charges can be laid (I accept that correction - I genuinely didn't know) then the refusal of the Swedish police to conduct this interview in the UK prevents the case proceeding.

Yes, Assange shouldn't have left Sweden. Yes, he shouldn't have skipping bail and yes. But he DID do those things and the Swedish police have to accept that and deal with the situation at hand now. They have to look at the options they have and decide what to do.

I want the case to progress, which is why I am so much in favour of them taking this course of action.

To address the second paragraph, no, mentally unstable or paranoid people must be deal with. BUT, they sometimes must be coaxed into 'coming along nicely'. I am not saying that this necessarily applies to Assange - I am just addressing your point. To broaden so it might apply to Assange, the police need to look at each situation as it is and figure out the best way to do their jobs and accomplish the goal. Sometimes that's barging in somewhere with force, sometimes that's a formal request for compliance, sometimes that's negotiation.

Re: dan1980

3, actually: Don't negotiate to a wanted bail-jumper and let the bugger sit and stew.

Which advances things how?

I am not saying any particular action is right or wrong but they have just two options - talk to him in the UK or don't talk to him at all. Your suggestion is functionally equivalent to "don't talk to him at all".

"Frankly anything before then was eclipsed by that series of deeds."

Sure - that certainly changes the situation. Why didn't see it before!? He's bound to come out and face the music now that you've laid that down. Wow - they should have just asked you first. Quick - run and tell the Swedish police; it's been solved.

And people the world fucking over escape justice by hightailing it off to some fuck-off nation. Russia houses fucking WAR CRIMINALS in luxury villas, all for the low-low price of the money the earned killing and torturing their own people. Don't pretend that this is the first time someone has evaded justice by hiding behind a sympathetic country. Precedent is hardly the word.

Re: dan1980

Apologies for the strong language. It's been a particularly tough week, personally, but that doesn't excuse rudeness.

I'll not remove the post because that would be dishonest - I don't hide behind an AC tag so I won't pretend I didn't say something I did.

There does seem to be a strong anti-Assange sentiment pervading this site which I think at times crosses the line to black-and-white "Assange = bad" bias but each to their own. For my part, I am neither pro- nor anti-Assange but that hardly seems to matter. You'll all be sorry when I'm gone, etc...

Re: dan1980

@Lucrelout

"Why should they?"

Why? BECAUSE HE'S NOT GOING TO LEAVE THE FUCKING ECUADORIAN EMBASSY!!!

Why is this so fucking hard for everyone to fucking understand? Down vote me if you want but it's the simple truth. HE IS NOT LEAVING. You can say WHATEVER you want but he is NOT LEAVING..

If you are the person in charge of this investigation you have two choices:

1. - Insist on extradition and don't interview him.

2. - Agree to do it in the UK and do interview him.

If you want to interview him you only have one option.

As I have said - perhaps there is enough found from such an interview and he is formally charged and Assange still refuses to leave. But if you are seriously pursuing justice then you can't let that risk halting your entire process.

WHATEVER you all feel and whatever he did is, at this point, beside the point. The ball is in the the Swedish Police's court - are you really telling me that the best thing they can do is insist on a course of action that they have all the reason in the world to believe will be utterly ineffective?

None of you seem able to take this as it currently IS. All I read is "what about this" and "if he hadn't done that" and "he should have done something else". You let me know when that changes the equation as it stands now. He is holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy and he is not going to Sweden to answer questions.

If you believe he is guilty would you rather he answer the questions in the UK or not answer the questions at all? There is no third option and the Swedish police's insistence that there is just doesn't achieve anything.

Despite our shared nationality I really have no feelings for this man. (But then I find empathy taxing at the best of times so I am perhaps not a good measure here.) But, my feelings do not alter the FACTS of this situation, and neither do your feelings. You just have to play the ball as it lies.

Re: Tough choice...

@vociferous

The 35yr sentence is what he is claiming he will get if extradited to the US.

Again, and for the umpteenth time - I don't care if it's really true or not. All I am saying is that I believe that he believes it is true.

That may make him delusional but his detractors could hardly argue with that - they have alwasy maintained that he thinks he's more important than he is. In this instance, assertions of that delusion count in his favour as if one believes that he is delusion and believes he is public enemy no 1 in the US then his actions have plausible motive beyond the otherwise more obvious reason of trying to run from a guilty charge.

Re: It's about rape.

@Vociferous

This is an excellent point, though I understand he was living in the UK at the time - whatever that counts for.

Re: How long does Ecuador's London embassy lease have left?

The effect is the same.

Treaties are essentially a bunch of countries all getting together and promising to do what they say they'll do.

The UK police could get Assange RIGHT NOW even if the embassy was foreign soil. It certainly wouldn't be the first time a person has been abducted from a foreign country by state forces.

If they did so, however, the diplomatic backlash would be huge - not just from Ecuador but from every country with whom they have embassies and who have embassies there.

Rape and sexual assault are serious crimes. On a 'world stage', however, wanting to question someone about a rape just can't justify breaking these treaties.

@Mark 85

Perhaps, but even that is consistent with what Assange has maintained this whole time - he is convinced that if he goes to Sweden he will end up in a US prison for charges utterly unrelated to the matter at hand.

If you genuinely believed that if you complied with one lawful order - carrying a penalty of some few years prison should you refuse - that you would end up being tried in the US for espionage and serving 35 years in a country that considers you to be a terrorist, what would you do?

Now, maybe you would comply anyway, stoically resigned to whatever fate had in store for you and that is a fine trait. But I feel that most people - if they really believed that- would choose a charge of breach of bail and 2-3 years in jail in the country they lived in over what they believed was an assured 35 years in a US jail on charges of espionage. What do you think your friends would do? Your family? Your partner? Your children? What would you want them to do?

My point, as in a post above, is that Assange's behaviour is consistent with his stated beliefs which do go someway to offset the guilt that is inevitably implied by his actions.

Re: "select markets"

@therealmav

"The Swedish investigation needs to take place in Sweden . . ."

Actually no, that's not correct. The interviews CAN take place in the UK.

This is one of the big problems so far as public opinion goes. Yes, Assange comes across as a self-righteous, holier-than-thou type. And yes, he absolutely appears to have acted in rather bad faith as regards his exit from Sweden and his skipping bail.

BUT, and this is a huge 'but' - those acts have a ready explanation. You (and Matt and anyone else) may not believe it but there is no doubt that Assange can provide an answer as to why he did what he did. There is no doubt in my mind that he truly believes he will be extradited to the US if he ever sets foot on Swedish soils again - whether or not you think those fears are reasonable is largely beside the point. He may be paranoid with delusions of importance - picturing himself as a fighter for justice being targeted by government - but the point is that he believes that what he says will happen to him will actually happen to him.

One the other side, however, the Swedish police/prosecutors.just don't have a reasonable explanation for why they are refusing to conduct their interviews as things stand now. The judge has said that they can interview Assange in the UK but they refuse to do so, insisting instead on extradition to Sweden first.

Given - again - that extradition to Sweden is not a legally-necessary pre-condition for conducting a formal interview, this clearly raises questions as to the motives behind the insistence that he be extradited.

Whatever you or Matt may think - and indeed whatever the actual truth of the matter is - this is a bad look. It is easy to understand the reasons why Assange felt he needed to do what he did and those reasons are entirely consistent with his claims now - he believes the aim of all this is to ship him to the US. It is far harder to understand the reasons why it is being insisted that he MUST be extradited to Sweden - especially when the (Swedish) judge has said that it is not necessary.

In short, Assange's actions add up. Whether you think he is imagining things or lying or a raping, lying terrorist who wants to help Al Qaeda to bomb your children's school - his stated reasons and actions are consistent. As much cannot be said for the other 'side' in this palaver.

Personally, I disapprove of the way Assange has acted but I understand it. I do not understand the actions of the Swedish police and prosecutors.

Now, perhaps he gets interviewed and they decide to press formal charges and he still refuses. Okay, so you take that when it comes but the Swedish police are now on the front foot, at least so far as opinion is concerned. At that point, at least some of Assange's support evaporates. Perhaps nothing, ultimately, changes but how exactly is that different from the situation now?

Re: dan1980

Is it possible for you to discuss a topic without saying things like "A$$nut"? Why do you do that all the time?

While I accept all you points (though not the delivery) the question again comes back to: "why can't they question him in the UK"? Even the Judge is basically now asking the same thing.

This is my point - if you want to question him then do so. Okay, Assange is not being as cooperative as the Swedes would like but he has never once said that he would refuse to have the formal interview, only that he did not accept that he should be deported to Sweden to do it.

In this he is - in a way - supported by the judge, who has said that he can be questioned in the UK. So why don't they do that?

Is insisting on a course of action (extradition to Sweden) that is very unlikely to happen better than conducting the desired process in a different location?

Whatever your (or anyone else's) view of Assange or his actions now or in the past, this is the situation RIGHT NOW. He's not going to Sweden to answer questions so the prosecutors have to ask themselves which the better outcome is.

The Judge is apparently nearly at that point - saying that there really isn't a good reason NOT to interview him in situ.

Re: dan1980

@Matt

My point was just to correct that his lawyers were requesting the detention order to be dropped, not "the whole thing".

Can you put aside you own bias long enough to agree with that?

@Marketing Hack

To be clear, Assange's council is not asking them to "let the whole thing go" - they're asking them to revoke the detention order.

In this case, the detention order is counter-productive because they want to detain him - in Sweden - for questioning. Given that it appears quite clear he won't leave the embassy while the order remains, the purpose that is claimed to be served (questioning Assange) is not being fulfilled.

I was going to say that they don't have to drop the charges but - oh right - he's not been charged with anything.

Re: Tough choice...

@Mark 85

Eh? "Live forever" is an option now?

Re: reminds me

"Digital presents a challenge in preventing illegal copying, but the principle still stands on ownership of an asset. Or are we suggesting that music should self destruct on CDs when the original purchaser dies?"

The problem is that the massive influence that 'big content' has over our politicians has led to them believing that protecting against 'copyright theft' is more important than protecting consumer/user rights.

Re: Apple's view

"Since electronic content doesn't really have any physical form then when you think about it the rights you get are actually not that dissimilar to the ones for content on physical media."

It's amazing - the right to exploit a copyrighted work can be passed down through generations when someone is making money off a fucking cartoon mouse but - surprise - the 'right' we purchased to watch a video of that mouse can't be passed on to our next of kin.

Fucking hypocrites.

Re: They may be rocket scientists...

@AC

To be honest I haven't looked at it but on reading I simply assumed some kind of reciprocating - possibly pneumatic - hammer. I.e. a 'jackhammer'.

Trevor

A couple of issues with your post. Points of order, perhaps.

". . . about the comets that seeded life here . . ."

That may have seeded life here. As you say, life is just "a bunch of chemical interactions" and those chemicals are "bloody everywhere". 'Spontaneous' creation of various precursor compounds has been observed and one of the big barriers - the bonding of ribose and nucleotides - has been rendered that bit less problematic with a plausible alternate process whereby ribonucleotides can be generated without requiring 'free' ribose.

'The probability of life arising on another world is down to one simple question: "how rare are Earth-like planets?"'

Not so. It's down to several questions but one of the biggest ones is: "does life need an 'Earth-like' planet?". The answer is: "Probably not", meaning that life is even more probable. Still, I feel that the Earth is rather special (though highly unlikely to be unique) because it is a combination of a lot of factors. I just don't believe that 'life' really requires all those factors. Life as we know it does, but it is spectacularly closed-minded to believe that any possible life must be as we know it. (I am not saying that you are suggesting anything of the sort, of course.)

"But I would bet my life, and lives of everyone on this mudball that we are not alone."

Hmmm . . . Well, that depends on what you classify as 'alone'. Other sentient life or any type? If we talk about any complex life then less likely to be so confident. Why? Because 'humans' have only existed for (at a high estimate) 200,000 years. Given the most generous estimates of planet formation of ~2bn years after the big bang, humans have been around for about 0.0017% of that ~12bn years in which life has been possible.

The question is not whether life HAS or WILL arise on other planets - that, statistically is almost certain. The real question is whether we are, currently, the only sentient life in this universe. For me, I count that as 'alone'. A semantic differentiation perhaps but I do not class something akin to cyanobacteria as 'company'.

The REAL question, I suppose, is: "is humanity the current pinnacle of 'life' in this universe?"

Even putting that aside, we are alone. Utterly, inescapably so. While the sheer size of the universe makes in vanishingly unlikely that we are the only 'life' to ever come into existence, it also makes if unlikely that we will ever meet another sentience.

How would we?

Chance alone. Pure, desperate chance. Even at light speed, it takes a long time for our signals to reach anywhere. They would have to reach a civilisation at a time when they were capable of receiving it and they would have to have or develop the capability to reach us (somehow) before we were no longer on the planet our signals originated from. Or vice-versa, which is equally unlikely.

The unfortunate reality is that any "intelligent" signal we may recieve is quite possibly from an extinct civilisation.

Plotting the expected trajectory of the universe, in ~150bn years (quick google search), our own, merged, supercluster will be the only thing in the observable universe. It will be impossible to travel or communicate outside of this bubble.

That will of course bring multiple galaxies together, but space is bloody roomy and even with the collision of the combined 1.3 trillion stars of Andromeda and our own Milky Way, there is next to no chance that any stars will actually collide. (Quick wikipedia search : )

Ramble, ramble, but my point is that while the universe has a LOT of stuff in it, it is spread out over truly mind-buggering distances.

So, as likely as life is, isolation is just as assured.

Someone didn't take their meds today.

Re: bfwebster

"Do you realize that a large set of organic molecules have been detected throughout interstellar space, don't you?"

Maybe that's why the Philae lander was equipped with capabilities specifically designed to test for the presence of organic molecules.

We have meteorites that have fucking amino acids in them for heaven's sake - yes, we know that these compounds exist 'out there', but the story is pretty much that Philae seems to have found one of things it was theorised that it would find.

Given the coverage and the problems that it has had, this is excellent news for those involved and indeed for any future missions.

It's also important to find out exactly which compounds might have hitched a ride here because some hypotheses posit reactions or that might have been unlikely with known conditions and require a little extra to be more plausible. One I mentioned in a previous post is ribose, which pairs with nucleotides to form the ribonucleotides that form RNA. The problem is that people can't seem to find enough of it being produced given the chemical compositions posited and the reactions known about. Perhaps 'seeding' from meteorites played a part in that or some other puzzle.

Re: @dan1980

@stu 4

People who accept established facts like evolution and the antiquity of the Earth and the universe that contains it are in my view much less "misguided" than those people who insist on a young Earth and a special creation, flatly denying those same facts.

If any of those "moderates" - and there are many gradations - still believe in, say, original sin, while accepting evolution then those people are perhaps misguided* but I would submit that a failure to adequately analyse the nitty-gritty consequences or inconsistencies of one's beliefs is being "misguided" to far less of a degree than someone who would discard evidence out of hand.

Essentially, much of this evidence goes towards disproving traditional religious beliefs. Some discard the evidence in favour of their beliefs while others accept the evidence but don't go so far as to actually re-evaluate those beliefs that might be in conflict.

If you ask me which of the two I would consider as a partner or want making decisions on my behalf in government or teaching my (imaginary) children, well, that's an easy one.

* - I say "perhaps misguided" because I believe "uncritically accepting of established views" to be more precise.

Re: Secret mode?

@P.Lee

It's impossible - or at least unproductive - to have any such discussion that fails to define the terms properly.

There are a bunch of steps that need to happen to go from inorganic matter on a newly-formed earth to the matter with the kind of self-replication and hereditary characteristics upon which natural selection can act.

Many of those steps are still unknown but well-supported, such as the 'RNA-world' theory, wherein RNA was the based of some form of "life" that pre-dated RNA and that these reactions actually formed some kind of selective pressure and competition whereby some chains of ribonucleotides were more successful than others.

You have the question of how these ribonucleotides got there in the first place and this is a quandry as it seems difficult to 'make' these in the conditions suspected on the pre-biotic Earth, not least of all because it is unclear how sufficient quantities of free ribose could arise based on the reactions known or suspected. But even then some research has shown, however that ribonucleotides can form without the necessity of having the two components available from the start.

And so it goes.

BUT, all this is really pre-evolution in the way the term is generally used. The point is that the path from inorganic to "life" is as yet unknown but more and more parts are being filled in all the time. We may never know exactly what did happen but scientists are putting together impressive collections of plausible scenarios - enough to show that it could have happened.

Re: Panspermia

"Maybe we'll seed another planet with microbes before we expire . . ."

Maybe we'll even do it deliberately.

Re: Secret mode?

@CarbonLifeForm

Well, that really depends on a few definitions, specifically, what you define as "life" and "evolved".

Presumably, one would say that "life" is that which is "alive". Is a basic organic compound "alive"? Most would argue that no, "organic" does not imply "life". (Actually, there you'd need to define "organic" as well, though whatever the definition, the amino acids found on meteorites so far certainly qualify!)

To the other term, "evolved" is problematic because you have to define exactly what you mean by that. It is a more general word and so one can talk about the "evolution" of opinions, or the "evolution" of a star or a whole galaxy.

So, one could also say that there was an "evolution" from basic organic compounds to more complex ones through to DNA. However, when the word "evolution" is used, it is most frequently used to denote evolution by natural selection, which as a pre-requisite, requires the transmission of data to subsequent generations of the organism - however you define that.

Thus, "evolution" only starts up once something like DNA is on the scene.

One problem faced (depending on the hypothesis) is the particular sugar (ribose) required for RNA and DNA is not necessarily created overly abundantly by any known reactions as these produce many other, different compounds as well. Thus the idea that pre-RNA compounds may have arrived via meteroites. We already know that meteorites can carry organic compounds including amino acids so this is not at all a stretch.

It may be that the required pre-cursors came from a meteorite or it may be that a meteorite simply enriched an existing 'soup' with enough extra goodness to pass some critical threshold where more of the required self-assembly could occur and thus give the process a leg-up.

Re: Panspermia

@Trevor_Pott

"For now. Science will find the answer, eventually."

Only if you mean science as an abstract idea or method. It is entirely possible that human science never will. Earth may well become uninhabitable* before we have developed suitable technology to preserve our species adequately. Grim but completely plausible.

Perhaps some other beings out their have figured this out with their science.

One can imagine a series of steps going from barren rocks to the pinnacles of sentience. You start with planets. Only a tiny number exist in such a state that life ever could develop. Only a tiny number of those ever will get to the stage of organic compounds. Of these, only a tiny number will get to basic 'life'. And so on up to sentience. From there, though, we posit that only a small percentage of those sentient species survive long enough to develop any kind of science. Of those, only a small percent manage to escape their own planet, and so on.

Who knows how far away the knowledge or our true origins lies and if we are one of the species that will get to the stage of actually knowing.

* - For any number of reasons.

Re: Because then we're probably not alone

@Chemist

"But at the mo' it's just organic compounds, not DNA, RNA whoa. Wait for the data."

I think that makes it all the better. Personally, I find the idea of very BASIC organic compounds being distributed by meteors to suggest that it's even more likely that life exists elsewhere.

After all, having more 'evolved', complex compounds may make them more 'picky', in that only a small subset of potential life-bearing worlds would have the correct properties to support that specific type of compound.

Simpler compounds might be able progress to more complex compounds suitable to the particular environment they encounter.

So, DNA/RNA would be possibly unique to Earth, having developed here from simpler precursors that, had they landed on another planet, may have developed into something that performs a similar function but is not the same.