Indeed - although it seems to be more about flexing muscles and seeing who is actually in control of cert parameters than it is in actually securing the system. Securing the system would best be served with actually properly dealing with revoked certs.

(and not the only one)... is that if 397 days is better than two years then 100 days is better than 397 and 10 days is better than 100 and 1 day is better than 10 and.... why not just treat revoked certs as dangerous rather than trying to second guess how long you can keep trusting one?

Is data protection. They have a different set of obligations to children under EU and UK regulations than they do to adults and in not identifying which is which on their platform they are entering a fairly interesting situation regarding their legal responsibilities. Given that they clearly make no efforts to verify the age of players (as stated by Pence in the hearing) they are most definitely in breach of EU data regulations.

Of course, whether or not the UK can do anything to inspire the EU to take action, right now, is something of a pertinent point in terms of whether or not this practically goes anywhere but.... if it is taken up as an issue the level of fines can be eye-watering.

Yes - what this very much suggests is that the standards are so badly flawed that they can't be trusted and as a result anything else designed to the same standards should be considered suspect.

Really, taking the stance that planes that crash meet your standards might not be the smartest way forwards.

Yes - we had two cats and one was smart and one was about as dumb as a rock (in cat terms, at least). Both were well aware of their own names, though.

I think it's a bit more complicated than that. I think he is upset that his hypothesis isn't being given any credence, even at the level of hypothesis. Which, I think, might be fair.

It is also entirely reasonable that the scientific community is extremely reluctant to be seen giving the hypothesis any real credence. Unfortunately, UFO and panspermia crackpots have poisoned that well.

Except that at the end of his sentence, they can ask for his password again and if he refuses he can be jailed again.

Trollon

Since when were we equating someone's upholstry with diversity? The threat is that you are more likely to damage the vehicle you are going to be a passenger in. You are more likely to be pain in the ass in any number of ways as a drunk passenger.

If the technology can reliably pick out the drunk from the sober, with no false positives then I'm all for it. No false positives is a bit of a dream, though, and I worry about quite what will happen to the poor folks who hold their phone in a 'drunk' way.

It's a lot better, certainly and seems to actually fit the UK legal system more closely than before the 2013/14 changes. It was a massive victory for the libel reform campaign and Simon Singh played a big part in pushing it forwards. There continues to be campaigning for still more reform (especially in Scotland and Northern Ireland where the changes haven't been applied in the same way).

I think that you maybe missed the substantial reform of libel law that happened in the wake of the Simon Singh case (see http://www.libelreform.org/ and https://www.theguardian.com/la...).

The UK still has less of a legal emphasis on protecting free speech than the US does and that definitely tips things more in favour of the accuser than the accused (relative to the US) but the libel reform bill addressed that balance somewhat and brought libel cases into alignment with other UK law in forcing an innocent-until-proven-guilty assumption.

In short - things are pretty much closer to an even balance between accuser and accused now with more protections for uneven fights between individuals and corporate entities and special protections for scientific publications.

Er... so that would be a computer, then?

Sorry - I don't buy the evolution analogy. There's elements of it that match but here's the issue. In a free market, companies don't 'evolve' to innovate. Innovation isn't the end goal, surviving and profiting is. There's a hell of a lot of ways to profit other than innovation and innovation is always a risky strategy to reach that end. Often it's easier to make a measured approach and plan to drag down anyone else who innovates, especially once you're big enough.

A free market is about the profitability and survival being the end goal and whatever achieves that is what happens. This is why licensing is required, to ensure that people don't get trampled underfoot on the way to that profitability.

As Solandri stated, licensing applies to people who could endanger your wellbeing through incompetence or negligence and we all benefit from that. You _could_ argue that people can vote with their feet, avoid restaurants that develop a reputation for food poisoning etc. Noone wants to be one of the ones who dies on the way to building that reputation, though.

Not the source mentioned but this article has a table that shows relative rates between the US and other high-income countries:

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/h...

Their source dates back to 2010 but up-to-date and reliable studies are hard to come by and the stats are unlikely to have changed substantially. It is worth noting that the data covers homicide, suicide and accidental death and compares firearm and non-firearm rates (as a common misconception is that what you shave off one will appear on the other set of stats).

If you read the article you will see that is just what has happened in this case. Cloudflare are pulling the plug and the owners of the site have said it will cause minimal disruption. I would say that probably qualifies...

This actually suggests a possible advantage to using a service like Cloudfare. It won't have been cost and effort free to obtain that court order and it turns out to be largely useless in actually causing any substantial disruption for the sites in question. Now ACS will need to go back to the drawing board and work out how to actually disrupt the sites or give up. Either way, the court order did them little practical good so far.