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Comment The London Bus is a good place to start (Score 4, Interesting) 491

The biggest inefficiency with a (short-route) bus is stop-starting a heavy vehicle laden with people.

We have electric and hybrid buses in London, but using a Flywheel (first developed as a fuel-saving measure for F1 cars) to preserve kinetic energy has made the greatest difference to efficiency for London buses.

Comment Re:Benjamin Franklin said once (Score 3, Interesting) 391

Ironically the Daily Mail, who are normally an ultra-right, police-supporting newspaper in the UK, have actually condemned the police's statement that merely viewing is an offence.

There would also be no public interest in prosecuting a someone for viewing if they didn't intend to promote IS. It would be absurd. So for the Met to say that viewing a video in and of itself could constitute an offence seems to me to be far from reality - Barrister Adam Wagner

Comment Re:yes. Especially per passenger. (Score 1) 151

The sad fact though is that flying from London to New York still takes the same time as it did 40 years ago.

Nope. (almost) 40 years ago we had... Concorde!

That miracle of modern engineering took 3h 30min instead of the subsonic 7-8 hours it takes now. And why was Concorde retired? It just didn't make any money.

At the end of the day people want slow, cheap and unbearable to fast, stylish and extortionately expensive.

Comment Re:Let's see if I get this right... (Score 4, Informative) 133

Only if you read the summary, and not the actual reported news. They arrested the proxy server owner. That needs a warrant of arrest. There's no 'skipping due process' for the police, or the charges don't stand when the person arrives in court.

PIPCU arrest Nottingham man believed to be running proxy server

The Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit has arrested a man in Nottingham on suspicion of running an ‘umbrella’ website providing access to other websites which have been subject to legal blocking orders.

The 20-year-old man was questioned by detectives from the City of London Police unit at a local police station before later being released on bail.

The operation, supported by the Federation Against Copyright Theft, uncovered evidence of the proxy server providing access to 36 other websites that had been blocked for offering illegal or infringing content. The domain names of these sites have been voluntarily handed to police and the related web pages now show a police warning banner.

The arrest is part of the City of London Police unit’s ongoing drive to clamp down on websites providing access to illegal or infringing content, known as Operation Creative. Last week it was announced that PIPCU are replacing advertising on copyright infringing websites with official force banners, warning the user that the site is currently under criminal investigation.

Comment Re:Good (Score 5, Interesting) 183

Don't worry, according to the website they were just 'joking'.

Ah yes. The good old 'We were just joking' defence. AKA 'The smiley at the end of the insult'.

Dear guests of Union Street Guest House,

Yesterday Union Street Guest House went viral for all the wrong reasons. News articles, blog posts and social media posts were published about our policy to charge wedding parties a $500 fee for every negative review.

Quite frankly, I’m embarrassed. This indeed was a policy of the Union Street Guest House. It was originally intended as a joke and never something I told employees to enforce. However, since it was listed on our website it did represent an official policy. I now realize this joke was made in poor taste and not at all funny. This is no longer a policy of Union Street Guest House and we have taken it off of our website.

I’ve also read the reviews from guests saying we tried to enforce the negative reviews policy on them and for that I apologize. It was never my intention for anyone to pay this fine. The instances where an attempt was made to collect the fees were a breakdown in communication between my staff and me, and for that I accept full responsibility.

Including the fine for negative reviews as part of our policy was a mistake. That’s not the type of business that we run. It was a case of a joke gone very, very bad. The internet, social media and review sites are very powerful platforms and this situation has taught me valuable lessons about them. Feedback from our guests is very important to us. I admit that at times it can be tough to see a negative review and I could do a better job of taking that criticism in stride. We value each and every one of you and want to hear about your experience with Union Street Guest House, even if it’s a negative experience. Your reviews give us an opportunity to improve our service and make the Union Street Guest House experience better for everyone.

I’m a novice when it comes to the internet and digital communication. My background is in music and hospitality. That’s by no means an excuse, but a realization that I need to learn and continually educate myself on technologies that affect my business. I vow to do that moving forward to avoid mistakes like this in the future.

All of the team here at Union Street Guest House invites you to come visit us in Hudson, New York, and give us a chance to show you who we really are – a group dedicated to making your stay in the beautiful Hudson area a positive and memorable one.

Please also accept my offer of a 10% discount on a visit to Union Street Guest House within the next three months as further apology. Just mention this letter. And I encourage you to leave a review about your experience (positive or negative) after your stay.

I hope we see you in Hudson in the future.

Best,
Chris Wagoner
Owner
Union Street Guest House

Comment Doublethink (Score 2) 78

As with the other Ministries in the novel, the Ministry of Truth is a misnomer and in reality serves the opposite of its purported namesake: it is responsible for any necessary falsification of historical events. In another sense, and in keeping with the concept of doublethink, the ministry is aptly named, in that it creates/manufactures "truth" in the Newspeak sense of the word. The book describes a willful fooling of posterity using doctored historical archives to show a government-approved version of events.

Am I living in the real world, or a book?

Comment Re:Well at least they saved the children! (Score 5, Insightful) 790

if encrypted email is a letter and unencrypted email is a postcard, the storing pictures in email on google's servers is leaving your postcard collection with a warehouse that stores postcards for free.

Would you be surprised when a warehouse reports you for storing illegal postcards there? Just because it's google doing the reporting doesn't automatically make it bad.

Comment Re:Online in England, maybe (Score 4, Insightful) 282

There is a third possibility, taking into account the normal modus operandi of security-related law-creation in the UK

1. lawmakers propose outrageous idea that no sane person could possibly agree to
2. after outrage, lawmakers say they will redraft the law in consultation with the public
3. lawmakers proudly present a 'watered down' version that any reasonable person would still say was kafta-esque, were it not for the previous suggestions of step 1
4. the laws they wanted all along make it onto the statute book

This simple process was used time and again by former home secretary David Blunkett, and the Conservative party have learned his methods well.

Comment Re:Combine it with the other announcement. (Score 1) 216

Since embedded computers are so pervasive in domestic appliances, it seems as though some lateral thinking by the security services could result in all sorts of breaches of the law.

EG:

People have fridges with embedded computers, that can re-stock themselves with food by ordering online. Disrupting that computerised fridge could be seen as attempting to starve them to death with a computer:

'cause deadly civil unrest through cutting off food distribution, telecommunications networks or energy supplies'

Comment Re:Why not the death sentence while You're at it? (Score 4, Informative) 216

Until 1998, we had the death penalty as a punishment for high treason against the crown, so under that law it would have been possible to punish a computer offence with death if the defendant had disrupted a computer network with the intention of committing treason.

But not only was the death penalty for treason abolished; we're prohibited from restoring the death penalty (for any offence) as long as we're signed up to the European Convention on Human Rights.

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