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Comment Re:That is not how conspiracy theories work. (Score 0) 497

Nope. Mann's work, just like every other scientist on the planet, should be judged on the basis of what he has published.

If the email revealed wrong-doing in generating those published results, that should also be part of the judgment.

You can't pretend like Climategate didn't reveal a bunch of nasty stuff that should not have been going on (intentional lack of transparency, deleting data, subverting peer review, and chopping off inconvenient data that showed discrepancies in published graphs). It's better for this to have been aired than kept under wraps, even if it some of it was taken out of context (no, global warming isn't a massive hoax, but it isn't "settled" science, either).

Climategate was email leaked from CRU. Too bad something similar didn't happen at UVA. We need more transparency, not less.

Comment Re:Seems appropriate (Score 1) 353

People have argued the right to not incriminate themselves right up to the European courts, but it was rejected. When you are arrested in the UK you are told that if you fail to mention when questioned anything you later rely on in court it may harm your defence, so there is no right to silence either.

I enquired about that. Here's a situation where it "may harm your defence". Let's say you are a crime suspect. You say you have a witness you can give evidence that you were nowhere near the crime scene. What should happen is that you tell the police who your witness is, they question your witness, and either let you go because the witness convinces them you were not there, or the witness says your story is bullshit, or they decide not to believe your witness and investigate further. In the last two cases this will then come up in your court case.

But let's say you refuse to say who the witness is. The police has no chance to check if the witness says the truth or not because they don't know who the witness is. And in your court case you suddenly present the witness. In that case, the judge can throw that witness out because the police had no chance to investigate.

So you do have the right to remain silence, and it doesn't harm your defense if you remain silent all the time including the court case. It _can_ harm your defense if you remain silent but only until you appear in court.

User Journal

Journal Journal: Mars, Ho! Chapter Twenty Nine

Movies
Destiny and me woke up at the same time the next morning. We cuddled a while, made love again, then made coffee and took a shower together while the robots made us steak and cheese omelettes and toast and hash browns. Destiny put on the news. There was something about a problem in one of the company's boat factories; some machinery malfunctioned and killed a guy. I sure took notice of that! They didn't really have much information about it, though

Comment Re:What if he forgot it? (Score 1) 353

Wait a second... That's not my experience at all. If a car with a license plate matching your license plate is caught speeding, you will get a letter asking you whether you were driving the car. If you say "yes" you can accept a low (ish) fixed penalty and points without going to court. If you say "no" or "can't remember" or insist on going to court they start investigating. The matter will end up with the driver in court, there will be a higher fine plus court cost, but there will not be more points.

But seriously, you can't remember who is driving your car? I mean before you let anyone drive your car, you have to make sure that they have a valid driving license, and that they have insurance, so please tell me how can you forget who was driving? Or are you saying you were so drunk that you can't remember driving?

Comment Re:But it wasn't for "national security" (Score 2) 353

Since when is a password in itself evidence, or in any way incriminating yourself? What the police find from access granted by said password is another matter.

It would be incriminating in rare cases. For example, if the police don't know for sure that it is _your_ computer involved in a crime, then providing a password would prove that it's your computer, and it would be incriminating. That's why for this law to apply in the UK, the police must already have evidence that you have the password.

Comment Citation needed please (Score 3, Interesting) 497

"the same mistake the anti-eugenics movement made in 1925 with the Scopes Monkey Trial [wikipedia.org], which fought the teaching of evolution in schools"

All the history of the Butler act I ever read mention they simply feared teaching of evolution would weaken faith, and that they refused our descendance from great apes, as it would shows us as descending from lower beings like animals. At no point the proponent of Butler's act mentioned eugenism, that sound like a modern rewriting of the history. In fact the prominent web sites which promote this thesis are : answeringenesis and creation.com. Fancy that.

Comment Re:Obvious! (Score 1) 231

I bought 40~ used iphones off ebay and at least 12 of them were still logged into social media accounts (facebook, twitter, instagram, snapchat) and had thousands of photos and videos. i did not see any nudes but i did have fun with some of their profiles.

If you have burglars who are caught by logging into facebook at a victim's home computer and not logging out before they are leaving, what can you expect?

Comment Re:Where the fault lies? (Score 3, Funny) 231

When someone says reset phone and reset data, the OS should ensure a clean wipe not a soft wipe. Should atleast fill it with 0s. And people should try to keep most of their data on sd cards and move those alongs when they get new phones.

There's one phone that just throws away the encryption keys, which are never stored anywhere than on two locations on the hard drive (in encrypted form), so only these two locations need to be wiped. That phone also has the ability to access a small amount of flash memory directly without the firmware interfering, to make sure that no invisible copies of those keys are created. Well, it's not Android...

Comment Re:because it fucking is (Score 4, Interesting) 210

Let's check the differences. On a PC I can still watch a DVD on my big screen at the same time. Note the appear equally as large as my PC screen is far closer to me than my big screen TV. On my PC I can play a full range of FTP MMO, free flash games on the internet. I can browse the internet while watching TV. Never to forget I have a fully functional upgradable, dual bootable Computer and not just a games console. I can also buy much cheaper games without having to pay a quite expensive console tax and games discount sooner. With PC at a lan party everyone has their own screen so far better multi-player gaming. I have found every console port to be not that good games pretty much dumbed down PC games with clumsy controls.

When comparing a console to a PC, you are really only comparing the additional cost of turning a PC into a gaming machine versus the console and the loss of use of your TV or a second TV (youch, you have just paid for your PC gaming rig). Gaming consoles of course do suit a particular IQ range of the video gaming market, there is not doubt about that and I'll stop there.

Comment Re:seems like snowden did the exact same thing. (Score 1) 95

You just don't seem to get it when "endanger his country's ongoing intelligence operations" are criminal activities, they are 'CRIMINAL ACTIVITIES' and are by law required to be reported, to the public so that they can be investigated and prosecuted. Now the reported part has been done, but of course in a very blatant corruption of the law, the investigation bit is sort of happening but not happening whilst of course the prosecution part of not happening at all.

That was the whole idea to basically end, his country's ongoing 'illegal' intelligence operations. What the fuck do you not get about that!?

In a democracy the public has every possible right to know every action of their government if it will impact their vote, to with hold information that will impact the public's vote is a blatant anti-constitutional corruption of that democracy and those who do it should be investigated, prosecuted and imprisoned, every single last one of them, no matter how many thousands of those corrupt arse holes there are.

Comment Re:Kind of like supermarket loyalty schemes (Score 1) 353

I understand how it works. What you do is sell insurance to people who don't need it and when they do refuse to sell it to them any more. So now instead of health insurance you sell accident insurance only with activity insurance add ons. So for healthy young people who have undergone DNA testing and are deemed to be health risk free you provide accident only insurance but if they undertake any high risk activities you charge additional short term premiums, so snow skiing insurance, diving insurance, driving insurance et al. So insurance it's all about charging people who don't need it cheap premiums to make them feel better and when they do need it dropping them.

Of course for ignorant short term thinkers yes when your younger your insurance is cheaper but when you get older you're fucked and either can't get cover or end up paying through the nose for it. So with universal health care you are not paying for everyone else, you are paying to provide coverage for your own future come what may. Cheaper today is not cheaper tomorrow, saving pennies to spend pounds is stupid thinking.

Comment Re:One hundred *billion* dollars? (Score 2) 103

Large hybrid titling ducted rotor quadcopters with electric drives and inboard turbine generators. Don't they already make model aircraft that look much like that and perform pretty well. Just need to up scale it. Now if they want to save money, which really doesn't seem to be the objective. They need to separate out the airframe from everything else. Don't design a military aircraft, design an agile high speed civilian aircraft capable of carrying the final design load, of personnel, munitions and armour. The advantage you have something to directly sell into civilian market to save money. The body shape can then vary according to demand. That research of course has no impact on the remaining research which covers target acquisition and elimination. Survivability is quite simply tied to how much spare mass the design can carry, the more spare mass, the more you can convert that into armour.

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