Posts by Cynic_999

Yes. Maybe the ludicrously out-dated idea that it is necessary to prove guilt beyond reasonable doubt. If we could just convict people on the basis that the "police know he is guilty", and do away with the red-tape of having to provide evidence, then we could get far more convictions.

Re: Railway Lines?

Pretty easy to automatically identify & eliminate such data.

Re: Who's driving?

That's easy - it's the same issue wrt speed cameras. Just make it a legal requirement for anyone who was a passenger in a speeding vehicle to identify the driver.

Re: HP

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It was less than a year old, if not used for a couple of weeks it would jam up so the print head wouldn't start, the simple remedy was a tap on the side, that quickly became a routine.

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I suspect that a small drop of machine oil on the printhead runner would have constituted a longer term fix.

Re: "legally, a member-based non-profit organisation"

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But in reality, it is a de facto dictatorship.

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As are just about all private companies. Running a company as a democracy doesn't work.

All that is needed to ensure that a company is non-profit is to increase the executive salaries until they equal the excess of income over expenditure. Simples

Re: "Legalising a lot of drugs would reduce the value to criminals"

ISTM that we already know what happens in a Western society when you (a) prohibit a recreational drug and (b) when you subsequently remove that prohibition. Because it happened in the US with alcohol. So there is really no need to speculate or guess.

Prohibiting a popular commodity leads to the rise of organised crime, and the consequent rise in other crimes and gang violence. It also results in people consuming unsafe toxic substances (e.g. methanol) sold as being the less harmful variety.

Removing the prohibition results in regulation and taxation of the substance which generally becomes cheaper for the end-user, so that the government gets more funding and organised crime less funding. Some degree of control is also possible, and the substance manufactured according to established standards to prevent inadvertant overdosing and poisoning. People can also be made aware of how to use the substance safely in moderation to avoid addiction rather than just being told not to use it at all, and help openly provided for addiction. Information promulgated about the substance tends to be based more on fact and less on hype and scaremongering.

Re: More to the point

Yes. I find the entire explanation extremely far-fetched. Even if the telly emitted enough RF in a single short burst to disrupt a signal in a pair of copper wires on the other side of the village (which I should think would require MWs of power), surely the link would re-sync within a second or so, and normal TCP/IP error correction would mean that most people would not even notice the disruption.

Re: Yet another elastoplast with unexpected consequences?

OK, here's how I think having a fixed MAC can be used by a state actor to track huge numbers of people. State agencies (NSA, GCHQ, FBI etc.) place thousands of small cheap listen-only WiFi monitors near well-travelled WiFi hotspots. They monitor and log every MAC address they see (WiFi encryption does not prevent the harvesting of MAC addresses). This allows the authorities to run correllation algorithms to see whether the same MAC address(es) appear at the time & place as other events, which MAC addresses have been in proximity many times over a time period (implying the people are travelling together) etc. It also allows them to track the past location history of any suspects more accurately than cell tower logs can provide.

Many devices will automatically connect to (or at least handshake with) open WiFi routers even if the owner of the phone has not explicitly commanded it to connect.

Re: Yet another elastoplast with unexpected consequences?

"... but for a lot of public WiFi you need to register anyway ..."

Exactly. Hence the reason it is desirable to use something else to track you - if you always had to register you could be tracked by the registrations. If you can identify that the same phone has been used in 50 different locations, then even if its owner only registered in one of those locations it is identifyable everywhere - and in retrospect. A bit like leaving fingerprints or DNA all over the place - completely anonymous until they are matched to you just single time in your life.

Re: Yet another elastoplast with unexpected consequences?

By having sites that run a script that puts your MAC address into a cookie, perhaps?

Re: In other news...

Drones don't need to be controlled remotely, so jammers are no use. Just give it the target coordinates and let it navigate itself around buildings etc. It is not significantly more complex than a car's GPS.

Re: No fair trial in the US

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... the evidence gained wouldn't be admissible in court ...

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In the U.S. such evidence would not be admissible, but in the UK it most certainly would be admissible. The UK has no equivalent to the "fruit of the poisoned tree" clause that makes illegally obtained evidence inadmissible.

Re: No fair trial in the US

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If someone breaks into a house and reveals information about, say, a fraud being perpetrated by one of the residents, does that excuse the housebreaking?

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In law it certainly does if the housebreaking in question was carried out by law enfocement equipped with a search warrant. And while a private citizen cannot get such protection from the law, the morality of the situation is 100% identical.

Re: Blackmailed

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If you're going to do illegal things while being a parent, it is you and you alone who are putting your child at risk, especially when your adversary is known to play hardball.

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Yes - and that's the reason why very few Germans did anything against the atrocities perpetrated by the Nazis.

Re: Blackmailed

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Suggestion: Don't do anything to get incarcerated if this matters to you.

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Yup. If you see a police officer beating someone to death, turn a blind eye. If you know that a politician is being bribed to influence government policy - stay silent.

Just don't then complain if your kids then have to grow up in a police state or malevolent dictatorship.

Re: Blackmailed

Yes, the child of the mass-murderer would also be taken into care - but the father in that case would not be offered the chance of preventing it by implicating someone who the FBI didn't like. No matter whether deliberate or as a natural consequence, if a witness has benefitted or is likely to benefit considerably as a result of their testimony, that testimony should be treated with a very large pinch of salt. It's why I do not trust the testimony of people who claim they were abused decades ago when they stand to be paid large sums of compensation as a consequence of being given official victim status.

It works both ways - a defence witness who stands to gain significantly if the defendent is aquitted should also not be relied upon.

Re: Blackmailed

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"You have two options, one of which involved a lot of hard time and separation from your family, and the other involves helping is nail a bigger fish"

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Yes, I understand the reason. The problem being that it is a powerful incentive to provide false testimony against an innocent person as well. What's better - provide truthful evidence against a "Mr. Big" who would very likely have you tortured to death for being a grass, or provide false evidence against an innocent person who is in no position to retaliate?

Re: Surprise, surprise...

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... will be by radio signals transmitted at a higher power than most localised terrestrial signals ...

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Sure, but they are *highly directional* signals, so the probability that any happen to be aimed at a distant star during the window when someone is listening for them is low. In addition, a higher and higher percentage of radio signals are being modulated by multiplexed digital information, which is a lot harder to recognise as being artificial than analogue information. In fact GPS signals are spread spectrum and below the background noise floor, and so virtually undetectable even on the surface of the Earth unless you know exactly what you are looking for.

It's also likely to be a relatively short period of time that such communication methods are used - already we are seeing experiments in laser communication with space craft, which are both narrower and lower power. And the future may see us using neutrinos or other exotic means to communicate over a distance.

Re: we don't need to frikking deal

Having done a lot of sailing, I can confirm that Britania does not have a very straight ruler.

Re: Testing? Are you having a larf?

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Or ferries stuck in port because there's nowhere to disembark while waiting for customs

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Ports, like airports, have large areas where passengers & vehicles can wait to clear customs after disembarking from the ferry. If they become full, then I suppose vehicles will be stopped from embarking at the other end.

Re: Testing? Are you having a larf?

Might be better to send freight on small rubber dinghies ...

Re: ?

Even if it was just luck, the odds are pretty good. If there was equal chance of landing anywhere on Earth (which admittedly is not the case with most satellites), then there would be better than a 70% probability of landing in an ocean, and only about a 3% probability that it would land in an area where there is a significant human population.

Re: "retired in 1971"

The Moon has remained in orbit for a tad longer than 50 years ...

Re: Image source

Speed is relative. A nice day in the tropics looks very serene, but in fact everything in sight it hurtling around the Earth's axis at over 1000 MPH. The amount of kinetic energy in every house is thus enormous ...