Well, they can try, but...

The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more LaserDiscs will slip through your fingers.

I'm fairly sure that a lynch mob intent on doing away with people who had acted as executioners would not be particularly interested in discussing a 20% probability of whether that person was using a rifle loaded with a blank.

And if it ever did get as far as a courtroom, someone would surely bring up the obvious point that they were, after all, willing to pull the trigger in the full knowledge that they had an 80% chance of having a live round. Someone who is prepared to bring in an ex post facto law would probably also have few qualms about ensuring that not having achieved what you set out to do through sheer dumb luck would not count as a defence.

so close them and sell advertising to the German market from Austria... (only because you've got a decent chance of recruiting German speakers in Austria - otherwise you could sell it from anywhere else in the EU)

Have you got a source for that? I've seen those sorts of figures chucked about before, and it kinda feels true, but it would be good to see some actual statistics.

"It is a telegram, it is ordering an advance, but it's addressed to a 'Catpain Blackudder'."

Well, ok, up to 150% of what the prosecution are being paid then...

Another interesting idea may be to allow sanctions to be levied against, or to give a successful defendant a cause of action against a prosecutor who brings charges which are eventually found not to have been supported by a preponderance of the evidence (ie if they couldn't get over the civil standard, the charges should not have been brought).

We expect them to be professionals who do their job without using court filings to take sarcastic potshots at the defendant for having the temerity to defend themselves.

I think my kitchen scales are off - let's just weigh a litre of tap water and find out...

from the last paragraph of the first page of the article:

They want him to do it and give them the information, not create a backdoor for them to use. That way it's not illegal.

Unbelievable. The correct response is for the countries in which the gambling sites in question, who are having their lawful business interefered with, reside to start taking retaliatory action - trade embargoes, expelled ambassadors, moratorium on extradition, closing airbases, etc.

You say:

But then you say:

I think we know whether they're a professional organisation...
Let's also take a look at their website, and their 'Cart00ney' publication of legal documents Piratebay-stylee.
If they're not an outright illegitimate organisation, they're a jolly dubious one.
They also seem to imply that they're involved with 'Bavarian municipals', but seem awfully coy about naming them.

A good response may be to draw the attention of the service providers you can't get email through to as to the nature of the outfit they're getting their blacklist from.

Absolutely agree about writing.

I've answered telephones in an office. If I don't want to transfer you, you don't get transferred; doubly so if the person you want to be transferred to has specifically told me not to transfer you to them. I was by no means a tyrannical martinet on the phone - there are people who are much more effective gatekeepers than I - any company trying to delaying paying its bills will have employed such people to ward off telephone calls.

Actually, it's completely right.

This is one of those situtations where 'context' is just muddying the issue.

The key question is: At the point where the officer took the decision to fire the Taser, was she posing a sufficient threat the the officer, or someone else (within the officer's reasonable, articulable, perception) to justify its usage?

Ah, but it's not.

You can't put a picture of the pain caused by a taser onto every television screen in the nation. You can put the photographs of a smashed face onto a television screen.

The courts.

The general principle is that you're not allowed to use violence against other people. There are, of course, exceptions written into the law. It is the job of the courts, and not departmental policy, to decide if those exceptions apply to this particular circumstance.

Ergo, the whole department policy angle is a smokescreen.

We need to lose this presumtion that police officers are justified in their use of force unless proven otherwise. Any officer who uses more than minimal force (a hand on the arm, etc) against a member of the public should be prosecuted, and forced to defend their actions before a jury, as a matter of course.

It's technology news in that it provides more proof that the taser has inevitably slipped down the slope from a weapon to be used for defence to a pain-compliance device to be deployed on people who won't do what they're told.