Slashdot Mirror

If I absolutely had to die and had a choice in the manner, I would most certainly choose being shot over being stabbed. Sounds like "knife crime" replaced "gun crime" in Britainia quite as predicted.
 
No thanks, I'll take instant-death from a shot to the head, or the low pain bleed out of a bullet wound (in comparison to multiple stabbings).

If I absolutely had to die and had a choice in the manner, I would most certainly choose being shot over being stabbed. Sounds like "knife crime" replaced "gun crime" in Britainia quite as predicted.
 
No thanks, I'll take instant-death from a shot to the head, or the low pain bleed out of a bullet wound (in comparison to multiple stabbings).

Shame the same can't be said for your civil liberties and things like progress..

As a Brit all I can see is America is entering a new medieval dark age where religion is most important than rights and reason.

What I except is more things like This

You're correct. The Guardian has a better article, that touches on your point -- this approach will only work for those viruses that keep their protein coat once inside the cell; if they shed it on entry, they will not be affected in the way described.

Really? The Reagan administration is sitting on funding and permission for the United States Air Force to go ahead with a program in 2009 and 2010?

Mainly because of a bill passed in 2007 by the Democratic majority that came into Congress following the 2006 elections.

Zombie Reagan has more power than I thought.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan/30/air-force-liquid-coal-fuel

http://www.govexec.com/dailyfed/0109/013009kp1.htm

"We don't want new sources of energy that are going to make the greenhouse gas problem even worse," House Oversight Committee Chairman Henry Waxman, D-Calif., said in a recent interview.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23811258/

What if you have a liberal/conservative government? In the UK liberal is becoming conservative

Governments do not seem to mind that these measures do nothing. A recent example in the UK concerns the power of the police to search anyone on suspicion of terrorism. Last year, the police searched over 100,000 people that way. Those searches did not lead to any convictions or even charges. In fact, they didn't even lead to any ARRESTS for terrorism-related offenses.

Because most of the people being searched were Arab Muslims, the searches aggravated those people and thus might have increased the chance that they would assist in a future terrorist attack.

Full story in The Guardian:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/oct/28/terrorism-police-stop-search-arrests

Governments are obviously using the security theater for something other than real security.

Can we stop comparing wages based on actual dollar figures, and compare based on standard of living (or something else)?

According to a survey by Mercer, Seoul ranks 14th among large world cities for cost of living. The other U.S. cities in the top 100 are:

New York, NY 27th

Los Angeles, CA 55th

White Plains. NY 83rd

Chicago, IL 91st

San Francisco, CA 93rd

Miami, FL 100th

I think they're justified in having a complaint.

Oh, you mean like this: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jan/31/us-halts-haiti-patients-evacuations

Or you are talking about the "they are niggers, let them die" policy used in New Orleans after Katrina?

The US military for 2010 was 685.1 BILLON. Got that? 685.1 BILLON. Haiti's GDP is ~6BILLION. Ok? Got that? Haiti's GDP is less than 1% of the money the US spends on murdering people every year. If the US military had done any amount of actual work in Haiti, it would be MORE than noticeable. All they did was send a few planes, then cancel them.

The only reason the US military exists is to maintain the very profitable war industry, which keeps the right pockets full. It also takes care of shaping the political layout of the world so that certain markets such as oil can stay extremely profitable for the US.

I need to stop replying on this thread. It's obvious that most people don't want to listen, regardless of their party affiliation.

I'm sorry that you think that those evil Republicans filibustered the closing of GITMO.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/may/20/close-guantanamo-funding-senate-obama

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124234679032521923.html

Lie? That infers malice.

Here is the story they had on their front page on the day the leak was publicized.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/oct/22/iraq-war-logs-military-leaks

Here is the excerpt from the story mentioning the helicopter.

A US helicopter gunship involved in a notorious Baghdad incident had previously killed Iraqi insurgents after they tried to surrender.

I can probably safely assume the guardian had the story you linked to on the same day I read the story they published on the front of their webpage because it was published on the same day (I'm not saying the Guardian is so lacking of credit that they would falsify publication dates).

If they had all this information and choose to leave out the relevant parts on the story that is going to be linked and read by the majority of the people, then they need to do a thorough scrub of their editorial principles and just report things as they happened in the future, even in their summaries.

The longer story states "enemy gunners try to make their escape in a dumper truck," then "then they came out wanting to surrender" and finally "The two Iraqis try to take refuge in a shack." There were several 2-13 minute delays in between each of those actions. All this language in this more specific story is more or less pulled straight from the actual documents. I am glad they published the details in full, but it doesn't absolve them of their lack of accuracy in other stories. You're assuming everyone read every story this place publishes, instead of just reading the summary article. The internet is a big place, and I'm glad there's people like you who can spend time researching all these things. People like the Guardian who research these things should spend the extra 20 words to be accurate.

Time magazine gave a similar one sentence summary that the Guardian did and didn't mention the second time the combatants fled. I didn't even misrepresent the facts in my one sentence statement that you claim is a lie. No reasonable person would think I have to read every single story the Guardian ever published when there are 399,999 other documents as well to read with facts in them. If I can't trust a publication to summarize something correctly when I have superior knowledge easily available, then I have no duty to continue reading the rest of their stuff.

I don't give legal advice, I just state the facts.

No you don't, you lie.

You said:

The guardian specifically has misrepresented many of the actual source documents. The incident where US helicopters supposedly shot people who surrendered was not explained in full.

So, what the the Guardian hide? You say:

The people who "surrendered" had mortared US troops, fled, "surrendered" and while waiting on ground troops, fled again

The Guardian said:

The detailed account of events on that February morning begins with a common occurrence: insurgents near the huge Taji airbase start lobbing rockets and mortar shells, in the hope of killing Americans. US troops return the shelling, and Crazyhorse 18 is dispatched on a mission to see whether the retaliation has had any effect. At 11.34am, three minutes after takeoff, the crew spot the insurgents fleeing their launch site with a mortar and tripod on the back of a Bongo – a light truck manufactured by Kia.

The crew confirm a "positive identification" of the enemy. But it is 13 minutes before the pilots are officially "cleared to engage" with automatic cannonfire by their headquarters.

The Apache opens fire, and two Iraqis fling themselves out of the Bongo as the heavy shells blast the truck and cause its stock of mortar ammunition to "cook off".

The enemy gunners try to make their escape in a dumper truck, driving northwards. At 12.33pm, the Apache reports that it has fired on the truck, "and then they came out wanting to surrender".

Two minutes later, "Crazyhorse 18 reports they got back into truck and are heading north". Four minutes after that: "Crazyhorse 18 cleared to engage dumptruck. 1/227 [1st Battalion, 227th Aviation Regiment] lawyer states they cannot surrender to aircraft and are still valid targets."

The two Iraqis try to take refuge in a shack. After a 13-minute delay, another instruction appears to come from a remarkably high level: the office of the commander [IH6] of the Ironhorse brigade at Camp Taji.

The signal reads: "IH6 approves Crazyhorse 18 to engage shack."

After the killing, the helicopter pilots summarise what for them and their superiors has apparently been a successful chase: "Ix engagement with 30mm. 2x AIF killed in action. 1x mortar system destroyed. 1x Bongo truck destroyed with many secondary explosions. 1x dumptruck destroyed. 1x shack destroyed."

At 1.25pm, their gunship heads home to Taji to refuel and reload with ammunition.

So, what exactly did the Guardian hide?

But it isnt 0 people as well, right? Right? What are you trying to insinuate exactly?

The AC who replied to me noted that Win7 was also the largest pre-order in history.

In August, 2009OS/X hit the #1 spot for a Software pre-release on Amazon.

In October, 2009 Win7 hit the #1 spot for any pre-release of any kind on Amazon.

From the pre-order article Millions of computer users will be getting their first taste of Microsoft's latest operating system tomorrow, when Windows 7 goes on sale worldwide.

Windows has retained an extremely large retail sales majority

You have your head in the sand if you think Win7 retail sales dont completely dwarf all forms of (Snow)Leopard sales. Its laughable, and I dont mean laughing at the idea; I mean laughing at the person with the idea. A person with that idea it obviously under the spell of some form a zealotry.

Its OK to hate Microsoft (or love Apple) while also remaining RATIONAL about it. You should give it a try.

in-q-tel knows what they are doing, just look how much personal information & profit they've gotten out of that facebook thing.. http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/jan/14/facebook

but the news sites that have had access to the database for much longer are not alleging that US troops tortured anyone.

In Samarra US troops interrogating captives threatened to turn them over to the Iraqi "Wolf Brigade" (Iraqi Interior ministry commandos) knowing they would be tortured. Maybe you think their hands are clean.

In Samarra, the series of log entries in 2004 and 2005 describe repeated raids by US infantry, who then handed their captives over to the Wolf Brigade for "further questioning". Typical entries read: "All 5 detainees were turned over to Ministry of Interior for further questioning" (from 29 November 2004) and "The detainee was then turned over to the 2nd Ministry of Interior Commando Battalion for further questioning" (30 November 2004).

"On 14 December 2005, a raid was conducted whereby five individuals were detained for suspicion of emplacement of IEDs [improvised explosive devices] as a result of a pid [positive identification]. "During the interrogation process the RO [ranking officer] threatened the subject detainee that he would never see his family again and would be sent to the 'Wolf Battalion' where he would be subject to all the pain and agony that the 'Wolf Battalion' is known to exact upon its detainees."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/oct/24/iraq-war-logs-us-iraqi-torture

Gutenberg's great, but what we need is e-lending from Libraries. In the UK, this is sort of possible via Overdrive - if you have an "approved" device then you can borrow eBooks from UK libraries. For some reason they seem to be keeping this a secret despite having done it in some form since 2004.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/oct/26/libraries-ebook-restrictions
Only works on some devices, like the Sony readers.
To me, this is the killer app and I'd buy an eReader that allowed easy borrowing (i.e. time-expired downloads ) of current fiction in a heartbeat...

Here's the original source... from July 2006.

Actually, I thought the original was by Roald Dahl in 1964;
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_and_the_Chocolate_Factory

But in the one I last saw, Mike Teevee nailed it;
    "All you had to do was check the manufacture dates, offset by weather and the derivative of the Nikkei Index - a retard could figure it out"

Here's the original source... from July 2006.

And some people only pay after playing the game and ensuring it's good, so piracy deterrence actually loses a sale, because they'll play and pay for some other game.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2009/apr/21/study-finds-pirates-buy-more-music

I find it very funny, that a believer in UFOs decided to post about what is fringe and what is not.

In this case there are no "fringe" arguments - any and all travesties commited by the troops in Iraq should be mentioned - time and time again.

The truth is that the war in Iraq was caused by the US. Therefore, the US cannot just brush away accusations of civilian deaths by saying "well, it's a warzone". It is a warzone only because the US made it so, and therefore it should now accept the responsibility and admit to the real number of casualties caused.

Human nature is hell, but when you provoke a war, don't pretend that it's not your fault when all hell breakes loose.

And even as far as warzone behaviour goes, the US' is pretty extreme. Read the Guardian article about US troops shooting up the British - on a regular basis. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/oct/22/american-troops-friendly-fire-iraq

This makes me wonder if they are doing this because scientists say that Global Warming will increase the strength and frequency of hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes and other natural disasters.

Why not try to combat the sources of global warming at the same time? Green, renewable energy might also help the insurance industry save money.

With regard to the Digital Economy Act 2010:

The Lib Dems promissed to repeal it if elected.

The Tories said that if they were elected, they would drop any "flawed" legislation. Shortly after, Cameron said that "rejecting the Bill then or reconsidering the entire piece of legislation now would be an unacceptable set-back for the important measures it contains."

After the election, the LibDem-Conservative coalition released the Great Repeal Bill to undo some of the over-legislating of the Labour party. Sadly, the Digital Economy Act wasn't on the list.

With regard to the Digital Economy Act 2010:

The Lib Dems promissed to repeal it if elected.

The Tories said that if they were elected, they would drop any "flawed" legislation. Shortly after, Cameron said that "rejecting the Bill then or reconsidering the entire piece of legislation now would be an unacceptable set-back for the important measures it contains."

After the election, the LibDem-Conservative coalition released the Great Repeal Bill to undo some of the over-legislating of the Labour party. Sadly, the Digital Economy Act wasn't on the list.

And yet about 490,000 public sector jobs are about to be axed.

The Digital Economy Act (that's brought in these laws) was drawn up after Peter Mandleson dined with (music industry exec.) David Geffen at his Corfu holiday villa, despite a government commissioned report (the Digital Britain Report) just having recommended against some practises (three-strikes; disconnection) proposed in the bill, and hurriedly pushed through into law just before the elections with just about everyone opposing it.

Looks more like simple corruption to me.

And yet about 490,000 public sector jobs are about to be axed.

The Digital Economy Act (that's brought in these laws) was drawn up after Peter Mandleson dined with (music industry exec.) David Geffen at his Corfu holiday villa, despite a government commissioned report (the Digital Britain Report) just having recommended against some practises (three-strikes; disconnection) proposed in the bill, and hurriedly pushed through into law just before the elections with just about everyone opposing it.

Looks more like simple corruption to me.

Embrace the Dark Side, come into the Cloud! Doctorow: Not every cloud has a silver lining

I'm undecided about that. When it comes to this kind of information, at this time, public is probably safer than would-be anonymous.

If anything happens to Assange, the entire world knows where to look. Even the Mossad can't make public figures disappear without leaving a trail. Whereas a would-be anonymous leaking organization can be easily disappeared or infiltrated.

The problem with being anonymous is that you never actually are.

Mossad suck, they can't even steal passports and get away with it :)

Too bad the diagram illustrating all the current patent litigation doesn't depict each individual suit; but then, if it did, I guess it would be pretty much illegible.

I agree that people put way too much blame and credit on the president for how things go, and by extension not enough on congress. However, saying there isn't much he can do is a bit misleading. For one thing he could order the various executive departments to stop doing everything they could to ignore basic rights.

Justices to Hear Appeal by Ashcroft Over Detention Suit
US justice department argues former detainees have no constitutional rights
Obama adopts Bush view on the powers of the presidency.
Ruling Against Bush Wiretaps Also Slaps Down Obama's Executive Overreach

Studies say that Jenny McCarthy says that the MMR will give you the dreaded Autism. Andrew Wakefield told me so, and his patent for a competing vaccine has nothing to do with it

So which shot is "the autism shot" you could probably ask 10 moms and 5 would tell you "MMR", even though the whole thing is obvious fraud horseshit.

I have no idea why "information" is perpetuated so quickly but "rebuttal" is so slow.

We've known this for a while. Here's *how* they do it: http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2003/dec/07/health.businessofresearch

Terrorism criminal charges still pending.

Or more specifically his case is currently adjourned and expected to be dropped.

You could get some better economies of scale with larger reactors than we build now but it's hard to transmit and distribute electricity from anything much larger then what we build now.

1. The Big Potential of Micro Nukes.
2. Mini nuclear plants to power 20,000 homes.
3. Toshiba's building a "Micro Nuclear" reactor for your garage?
4. Micro-nuclear plants for local power
5. Bill Gates and Toshiba teaming up to build small, 100-year nuke plant?
6. Scaling nuclear power for villages, apartment buildings, shopping malls, factories, and ships

You were saying what again?

Falcon

Are the walls nice and padded for you?

Yes, AC, I'm posting from an asylum. Because if I were seriously mentally ill, that would just be the pinnacle of amusing, and it's also true that people sectioned with serious mental illnesses get unsupervised access to the Internet. You're not only an ignorant fool, but shockingly cruel. What a horrible little man you are.

Once again you don't have a response to my argument, just more masturbation.

Your argument has been repeatedly countered with syllogism, example and reductio. As if I had accidentally stood a blind man in front of a beautiful painting, I must apologise: it is not that you do not want to see, but that you are unable.

Good old Thatcher, that libertarian man.

Here's a fair article summarising the hypocritical, simplistic nature of the average libertarian and pointing out his corporatist affinity to Thatcher and similar conservative men.

'Perhaps offering 25% of cuts will concentrate minds in these establishments on what is important for the tax-payer to fund and what is a frivolous waste of money.'

Whoosh! (or am I missing your irony?). That particular 'frivolous waste of money' is from the Christmas issue of the BMJ, where it's traditional to publish Ig Nobel-worthy studies of not exactly serious intent ('Methods: Three authors (DC, HJMacM, AP) searched the internet for episodes of soap operas shown in the United States in which a character was unconscious for at least 24 hours after an injury or medical event. The initial search strategy used Google, with the search terms "soap opera" and "unconscious" or "coma."').

See also:

http://www.bmj.com/content/331/7531/1498/reply

('The case of the disappearing teaspoons: longitudinal cohort study of the displacement of teaspoons in an Australian research institute').

The year before they had an investigation into the psychology of Gollum:

http://www.bmj.com/content/329/7480/1435/reply

Somehow, I don't think a great deal of money was spent on these studies. Of course the specifics of the savage cuts the ConDem coalition has planned for us are likely to be based on an equally superficial reading of the situation, and their extent has as much to do with implementing a particular political agenda (deliberate decimation - in a more than Roman sense - of the public sector) as it has to do with genuine economic necessity. Excellent article here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/oct/02/john-lanchester-comprehensive-spending-review-george-osborne

'The idea is that instead of being grumpy that some of them have lost their jobs, everybody who is still in work will instead be grateful, relieved and suitably cowed. It will be a change in direction for the British state, and will give a clear way forward for the Conservative party as it returns to its traditional identity as the party of the smaller state. "If they can't do it now," a Tory friend told me, "when can they do it?" In other words, there will never be a more opportune moment for the party to set out its stall to cut spending. Hence the tearing-off-the-arm eagerness to seize the opportunity.'

Cuts are necessary, but at the proposed levels (several times worse than anything Margaret Thatcher dared to try) there's a very serious risk of creating a new, greatly extended recession, while incidentally destroying the public services that help hold the country together (not to mention damaging UK science for years to come).

I don't know if it was anything to do with Asimov, but there's a study that alleges that Agatha Christie's writing quality got much worse both statistically and critically as she grew older.

And college textbooks are another thing altogether. The incentive for publishers is to keep them fat, because that means:
A) they can justify the outrageous prices they charge.
B) their books look more complete.

There definitely has been textbook bloat. My calculus teacher in HS had unearthed a 1940s calculus textbook. It was less than 100 pages-- probably closer to 50-- and still covered the whole year's material. Without the look-up tables, of course.

oh, you mean the ones that don't indicate manipulation

oh, you mean the ones that don't indicate manipulation

oh, you mean the ones that don't indicate manipulation

That basically means the only viable solution left is no more digital music - live performances only.

Study finds pirates 10 times more likely to buy music
Another Study Finds Pirates Buy More Music

If a majority of the population decided bank robbery was okay, does that mean we should re-evaluate if robbing banks is really a bad thing? Of course not!

Ultimately, yes. Either you convince them that they benefit more from not doing so, or you legalize it.

Ultimately, copying someone else's IP, to which you have no rights

Says who? You are you to say what person A should share with person B using their personal property?

, means someone didn't get paid.

Assuming they would get paid in the other case. Which not only isn't certain, in many cases is definitively not true. Especially when that "someone" has been dead for years.

And if you copied it, you have assigned some value to it.

Yes.

At best, it means you've inflicted direct financial harm by devaluing of the product in question. If you doubt me, I encourage you to verse yourself in the basics of economics.

So I have when I resell my stuff instead of destroying it.

No bones about it, if you pirate IP, you absolutely are harming the IP owners. Either that, or *everything* published on economics is wrong. The reasonable, safe bet, is the former rather than the later.

Again, the only harm is the same as when you resell something. Doesn't mean it should be illegal.

Time and time again the pirate position seems to be, I want it. You can't stop me. Its unlikely I'll be prosecuted. Therefore, I'm entitled to whatever I can take. If you try to stop me, you're a bad person.

The position I see is: I bought the CD, I should be allowed to do what I want with my property. Who are you to tell me what I should do with my CD?

When a massive number of people feel entitled to take what isn't theirs, what do you expect is going to happen. Draconian laws are the only likely result. And frankly, you can't really blame them.

iTunes dropped the DRM, sales are up. Clearly draconian measures work better.

If you worked and didn't get paid time and time again

MPAA revenue has been rising every year, so that's clearly not true for movies.
Music artists revenue is also rising.

The only people losing revenue are the labels. Cry me a river over their outdated business model. We should now ban cars for the poor carriage drivers in the unemployment. Or ban cellphones because of the telegraph companies.

And constantly re-scanning everything in existance every 10 years is not an option. :-(
Probablly the best option at the moment is to keep the data live on servers. As servers become unreliable or uneconomical they get replaced with new ones that store more for a given cost and size. Hard drives are now big enough that this form shouldn't be cost prohibitive. If we assume a megabyte per page (which is way more than needed for most documents) and 1000 pages per book then that is still a couple of thousand books on a modern hard drive!

Formats becoming obsolete is a possible concern but pdf, png, jpeg etc have all been with us for over a decade and have multiple implementations in both closed and open source software so I don't see the ability to read them going away any time soon and if support does start to decline it should be a gradual process with plenty of warning to get the data converted.

Heck, even the "Digital Doomsday book" lasted only 15 years instead of 1000! http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2002/mar/03/research.elearning [guardian.co.uk]

That is partly because it was a construction before it's time and as such relied on some pretty specialised equipment. It was also an interactive system which is always more complex to handle than noninteractive stuff in standard formats.

Had it just relied on a BBC micro i'm sure the roms sites would have kept copies and got it running in emulators no problem. The real problem was the special laserdisk player that the system relied on.

Because technology is fleeting, but paper remains (at least for a few hundred years).
Consider that the best backup tapes from ten years ago are generally unreadable in most organizations. Nevermind things like Bernoulis, ZIP discs, CDs, 8mm tapes -- it all goes in the junkpile. There is simply no permanent technological solution available at any price. We have a hard time today reading the old NASA tapes from Apollo (and we saved some of that equipment!) Imagine what happens in 2110 when someone wants to find something?
Heck, even the "Digital Doomsday book" lasted only 15 years instead of 1000! http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2002/mar/03/research.elearning

And constantly re-scanning everything in existance every 10 years is not an option. :-(

For your information, solar subsidies in Germany have been a failure http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/georgemonbiot/2010/mar/11/solar-power-germany-feed-in-tariff $1 billion per month cost to the German taxpayer and still barely produces 1% of total electricity used in Germany while actually causing a net loss of jobs. Same with Denmark, the "world leader in wind power" (thanks to subsidies by Danish taxpayers) with the highest electricity costs in Europe to show for it. I'm all for renewable energy when and if it starts making economic sense, but not if it means blowing taxpayers money on something just because it sounds green.

For heaven's sake, think.

Fortuitously, here's a relevant news item, from the Guardian newspaper:
"Police lied to persuade CCTV staff to monitor drink-drive suspects"
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/oct/06/devon-police-cctv-drink-driving

"Devon police admitted inventing information to induce CCTV operators to monitor drink-drive suspects.

Police were criticised today for inventing intelligence to persuade civilian CCTV operators to snoop on suspected drink-drivers outside pubs.

Officers in Devon were said to have regularly asked operators to watch for people who might be over the drink-drive limit by making up false information about them.

Campaign group Liberty said the disclosure was a reminder that there was scope for CCTV cameras to be abused. Adrian Sanders, the Liberal Democrat MP for Torbay, said the practice was unacceptable. "There are strict guidelines between the sharing of intelligence between police and other agencies and similar controls with what happens as a result of sharing that intelligence," he said.

The practice was revealed by the case of John Joseph, 54, of Torbay, after he parked his car outside a pub in 2007. A police officer asked CCTV operators to watch Joseph, also known as calypso, reggae and soca singer and performance poet Antigua Joe, who was later arrested on suspicion of drink-driving and put in handcuffs and leg restraints. A breath test proved negative.

Joseph was awarded £17,500 compensation after complaining about his arrest. A police standards investigation rejected Joseph's allegation that he was targeted because of his race. But a report into the case flagged up an admission by one officer involved that he invented intelligence about Joseph to get the CCTV operators to watch him.

"To get the council CCTV control room personnel to watch the vehicle he [the police officer] would have to give them a good reason for doing so. In order to do this he had told them he knew the occupant very well and knew he would be drinking," the report said.

"[The officer] admitted this was invented by him and a lie. He went on to say that he and his colleagues targeted vehicles outside public houses and regularly persuaded CCTV operators to watch vehicles by inventing intelligence."

Joseph was charged with resisting arrest and a public order offence but cleared on both counts. He was held for nine hours after his arrest in 2007. The report said Joseph's detention was unlawful.

A complaint against the officer of "falsehood and prevarication by making a false report to CCTV operators" was upheld.

A spokesman for Devon and Cornwall police's professional standards department said: "Mr Joseph did make a complaint against police following his arrest. Elements of his complaints were found to be proven and a number of officers received a range of sanctions as a result."

The force refused to comment on the use of CCTV."

You missed one statistic. In areas of CCTV, how many crimes has it PREVENTED by just the aspect of them being there.

Unfortunately this is a statistic that is not easy to calculate, unless we employ mind reading.

Well, the numbers of crimes haven't gone down* significantly - so, essentially, none.

Also, if you look at the percentage of crimes solved, from the link I posted originally, you'll see that the crime-clear-up figures are below average, and haven't increased - and are worse in the areas with more CCTV cameras.

Oh, and the police are saying it too.

Does this make me a mind-reader now?


* specifically: "of 24 studies carried out in city centres, only 13 showed crime had fallen since CCTV cameras were installed. Crime rates rose significantly in four other cities."

10,524 CCTV Cameras - £200 million over 10 years.
Crimes Solved: 10 per year
Cost to solve once crime with CCTV: £2 million per crime.

Crimes per year: 4.4 million
Crimes solved by police: 22%
Police: 136,000
Crimes solved per year: 968,000
Crimes solved per officer per year: 7
Average Police wage: £30,000
Cost to solve one crime: less than £5,000.

I don't see how this is workable. Either I've got my figures wrong, or some CCTV company is making way too much money.

There's nothing wrong with photography in public places although that doesn't stop Police from harrassing photographers. Perhaps people looking for "suspicious activity" are going to have an expectation bias when viewing innocent activity? Afterall, you could be a terrorist.

As to the OP's theory, what evidence do you need?

Ministry of Sound has been struggling a lot lately, http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/feb/21/ministry-of-sound-threat . They haven't really stayed relevant in the electronic music world lately, so it won't be a big loss to see them disappear in the near future irregardless of file sharers. As a music producer and dj here in Austin, I feel obligated to buy the music I play and remix (mainly because I'm friends with producers who've burned that unspoken respect into my style, Francis Preve, Josh Gabriel, etc.). When labels go out of their way to pursue file sharers, I feel obligated to go out of my way to find their tracks through non-conventional methods. Not everyone has money to dish out for music, but they will pay to go to shows, clubs, raves, etc. Let them appreciate the art! When was the last time Ministry of Sound put out a track that reached the top 10 charts on beatport.com ? When was the last time Toolroom Knights did? Music evolves, and it feels like they pressed the B button to hold themselves back on purpose.

Hey may only be ten years older than you but his illness is getting pretty bad, I think this has to do with all his recent talking and slow down in hard core output. His assistant that researches with him has admitted things are taking a lot longer than they did when he first started.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/apr/20/stephen-hawking-ill-hospital

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/sep/29/earth-like-planet-gliese-581g
Another article on this that backs up my claim.