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A foreign company filing such a suit is a novel approach though.

Not at all, it's called, "forum shopping," and it made England a popular destination for libel lawsuits for a number of reasons.

Evidence submitted by the Media Law Resource Centre (MLRC)
New rules to discourage 'libel tourism' in Britain

We must also do something about the quantum of damages that is being sought. In a civil procedure on a technical matter, it amounts to blackmail

He was clearly just quoting Lord Lucas

People broke the law and now they're being told they have to pay for their crime?

Not quite. People are accused of breaking the law (in a way that may or may not be a crime - where I am it is merely a civil offence) and are told to pay or face a costly trial. In many cases, merely saying "I've talked to a lawyer" is enough to get them to back off. Unfortunately "innocent until proven guilty" doesn't quite hold that much weight when the cost of proving innocence (or even any sort of defence) is prohibitively large. It makes little difference to the plaintiffs (or claimants, whatever you call them) whether the accused is actually guilty/liable.

Incidentally, this has been going on for years over here (in the UK) and has been referred to as "a scam" and "legal blackmail" by politicians with one of the lawyers involved facing a disciplinary tribunal at the moment.

Actually, concerning capital punishment in the U.K., I find it curious that the members of Parliament can give lengthy speeches on the inequity of the death penalty, and indeed to call for European and British intervention globally, when public opinion appears to be in favor of the penalty. I took a brief look at "Bring Back the Death Sentence" on the suggestions website, and the majority of comments indicate either complete or conditional support for the death penalty.

That's a nice theory, but it's actually not about the party. The Home Office has been pushing for these powers since long before New Labour came to power.

In fact, the Tories under John Major were pushing for ID cards in 1995 - a move opposed, ironically by Tony Blair.

If you think that a Tory government will be any different then, you will be sorely disappointed.

http://www.privacyinternational.org/article.shtml?cmd%5B347%5D=x-347-61886

> First I've heard of this, I know of the Dangerous pictures act, but dangerous writing? Where did you hear this?

I've not heard of the "Dangerous pictures act". I don't think such a thing exists. There's a Bill called the "Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill":

http://www.parliament.the-stationery-office.co.uk/pa/cm200607/cmbills/130/07130.43-46.html

which has a section largely concerned with images, but which contains the following:

--------------
(7)
In this section "image" means-- ...
(b) data (stored by any means) which is capable of conversion into an
image within paragraph (a).
--------------

Data, such as a string, is easily convertable into an image, because many scripts stored in XML, CSV or even plain human readable language formats are capable of being parsed and turned into images. I'll write one, if I have to, to demonstrate that this law does apply to writing, as well as images.

Once this law is passed, the definition will subsequently be widened to include all sorts of images, just like the existing "anti-terror" laws are used to snoop on peoples lives and data 99 times for every 1 time they're used in an attempt to prevent terrorism.

Give the ballot box a try first. And seeing as there's been a rash of gun violence in London, I doubt it would be that difficult for the population to arm themselves if need be.

It's rather ironic that the reason the UK is becoming a surveillance obsessed banana republic is because they lost control of border controls in the first place, and now have to monitor the communication of half a million people, track the journeys of every single car in the country, yet fail to give our armed forces all the armour, ammunition and support that they need when abroad, let alone decent accomodation.

Seeing as most people can't be bothered to vote, I can't see there ever being a violent uprising.

Just wait until they implement road tax pricing by GPS/Galileo - it will be like the poll tax and water metering all over again.
The poll tax attempted to make the residents of accomodation responsible for the payment of property tax on a per day basis - for rented properties with transient populations (students, DHSS, casual labour), it was nearly impossible to collect, especially if they changed location every month. The worst PR was when bills were sent out to mourning claiming the tax for several days of occupation by their now their deceased relative. With water metering, middle class house owners just poured cement over their meters. Now with this system, cars will be fitted with tracking devices from the manufacturer, presumably wired into the electrics. It will be a criminal offence to tamper with this device - so even swapping fuses in the fuse box will be illegal, removing cables from the battery/distributor will also be illegal. Is this system going to be extended to rickshaws, amphibious vehicles, and cyclists? How will it be able to handle complex road systems such as Spaghetti junction. Given that there is over 250,000 miles of road in the UK, how are the operators going to be able to index and price every segment of road? Either method is going to require wireless communication that can be jammed, and create a black market in either jammers or untracked vehicles.

Posting Anonymously for non-karma whoring.

Go to straight to the source: Official website of PM's Question Time.

Direct links of the Oct 18 session:
Windows Media.
Real Player.
Transcript

In the UK the later GTA games carry an "18 Certificate", this is not just a recommended guideline but carries legal weight so if a store sells them to a minor they can be prosecuted.

But this seldom happens, the link below shows that last year there were only 11 prosecutions and I do not believe that this is because selling 18 rated games to kids does not happen.

http://www.parliament.the-stationery-office.co.uk/ pa/cm200506/cmhansrd/cm060323/text/60323w38.htm

and that in turn means that only the people who need it are paying for it, as opposed to all of us paying a tax on it.

The provisions of this Act, other than this section, shall come into force on such day as the Secretary of State may by order appoint; and different days may be appointed under this subsection for different purposes.

And the final two paragraphs of this article point out that the Secretary of State hasn't yet enabled the act. Of course, he can any time he wants to.

In summary, the Government can "request" your password/encryption key at any time. Failure to hand it over, or even to disclose to anyone that you have been "asked" is a criminal offence punishable by jailtime. Oh, and a bunch of other goodies which totally make a mockery of our justice system and civil rights.

TV licensing people in the UK do not have a right of entry to your home without a search warrant.

They are often accused of being overly aggressive in their approach, because they will make unannounced visits and then ask for entry anyway, which has been viewed as intimidatory by many residents. See here for an entertaining grilling by the House Select Committee on Public Accounts of some senior BBC staff about their approach to checking on people who don't pay the licence fee. (Note that these proceedings were back in 2002.)

no, more like "The neigbour can accidently walk across the property line because i have no fence?"

That is the case in the UK - you have the right to roam if there is no fence and/or sign (and sometimes even then) as long as you do not set up camp - your analogy is crap Right to Roam Bill

Most of "Nanotechnology" is just hyped up stuff that used to be called "Chemistry" or "Molecular Biology".

In 2003 the UK Science and Technology Committee took evidence from Molecular Biologists and Chemists on the Question of if there was a need to regulate Nanotechnology.
The transcript is available here.

They Work For You indexes, collates and cross-references it all. You can do keyword searches across all speeches and debates. It will let you do such things as look up your MP by postcode, find their speeches, see their track record (my MP rebels against her party fairly frequently, for example), and comment. You can attach comments practically anywhere. They provide a public forum where you can discuss what your government says, as they say it.

It's cross-referenced to all kinds of other political resources on the 'net; it has RSS feeds for just about everything --- it is deeply, deeply cool, and a genuinely important resource to anyone interested in UK politics. Oh, yeah, and it's all open source, of course.

You could do far, far worse to adopt something similar.

depends on the gun used. Last i heard, Mossad only uses .22's in the back of your head to show what lethal/fearless bastards they are. From the U.K. Parliment "They are the chosen weapon of Mossad, the Special Air Services and the professional assassins. Robert Kennedy and Yitzhak Rabin were killed with .22 weapons and Ronald Reagan was nearly killed with one."

"I will explain in aircraft engineering terms how critical loose components are in flying control systems. If on an RAF aircraft we lose a washer or a nut the size of my little finger nail in an engineering procedure, that aircraft is grounded until the component that big (indicates) is found, even slightly smaller than that, or the most thorough engineering examination, often lasting about three days, is carried out before that aircraft is allowed to fly again."

The UK parliment Science and Technology recently discussed nanotechnology, they question experts on how likley senario's like those depected in Michael Crichton's Prey, are to happen.

Useful Nanotech progress in the UK:Nanotechnologies to Cure Disease.

The full phrase is something like "It's a fair cop, guvnor! You've got me bang to rights and no mistake!" See for example, this usage in a debate in the House of Commons on 31 March 1995.

Hutton is a *Labour* peer,appointed by guess who? Yep, Tony Blair.

Have you forgotten Westminster City Council? Dame Shirley Porter is still refusing to repay a penny of the 30 million or so she spent evicting poor people from marginal wards [Hansard (page down if you find juicy scandals more entertaining than the Fishery Limits amendment they were supposed to be debating)]. Not that that was the Electoral Commission's doing, mind you.

What about the recent protests of dwarfs, claiming it is a racist term. They prefer to be referred to as "Restricted Growth People". They even came to the House of Commons.

I wonder when they'll sue Disney. "Snowmulticoloured and the 7 restricted growth people".

My god, NO! They're worse than these voting machines, I afraid you're living in a fools paradise :-

- GTech must prove its fitness to keep running lottery
- Just one of the concerns raised in the British Parliament over the years (Hansard).
- Watchdog investigates lottery company's ethics

etc, etc. Not so long ago there was technical problems with their kit resulting in tickets not being centrally registered, they tried to cover it up but an employee resigned an blew the gaff, he was subsequently threatened in various ways.

Mind you, that's nothing compared to the various political mud pools they find themselves in.

My dad, a former aerospace electronics engineer, still spits fire at the mention of Goldring. It was something to do in the long, dark Scottish winter evenings.

It shows that digital still has a long way to go compared to the current UK practice of printing on vellum... in other words goats skin !!!

Quote: "... we compare longevity of 250 or 500 years [of long-life paper] with the 1,500 years of vellum"

The problem is, if the House of Lords debate is any indication, the possiblity of any laws whatsoever being passed is fairly minimal.

Well, let's see. The American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO), New Zealand, South Africa and the United Kingdom, for starters.

What does more damage, 167 Volvos or 1 Expedition? Hmm, going to have to say the Volvos...

And according to experts around the world, you'd be wrong.

I think the item that took my interest was this. Ever get the feeling that nothing ever actually gets done in the House of Lords?

Quotes include Baroness Sharples: My Lords, can the noble Lord say whether ring-pull cans are safer than ordinary cans which are opened with a tin-opener? Which is safest?

Clueless humor, I suppose, but humor.

No, actually quite sharp humour. If you go back to the menu of what the Lords were discussing that day, they'd just had an interesting discussion about corned beef, in particular when tinned, and how it can injure people. Link.

Lady Saltoun of Abernethy: My Lords, is the Minister aware that if, having taken off one end of the corned beef can with the twisty thing provided-assuming that you have not lost it-you then take a common, ordinary, household tin-opener and take off the other end, it is very easy to push the corned beef out of the tin without any danger to yourself?

Lord Sainsbury of Turville: Yes, my Lords, I was aware of that, and I am very glad that that essential piece of information is passed round for the benefit of this House.

"Get too content with being the global big dog and the next thing you know you're not number 1 anymore."

Actually, a large part of the (later) shrinking of the British Empire was to do with the costs of fighting two world wars (even though we were on the winning side both times). Believe it or not, the UK is still repaying the USA for its help during the second world war (look towards the bottom of the page - I believe the debt is still partly outstanding).

Still, freedom is much more more important than money.

The United Kingdom is a signatory to the Sixth Protocol to the European Convention on Human Rights which outlaws the application of the death penalty. Consistent with the convention, the Extradition Act 1989 provides that extradition may be refused if the fugitive stands accused or convicted of an offence for which he could be or has been sentenced to death. The United Kingdom/United States Extradition Treaty also provides that extradition may be refused unless the requesting party gives satisfactory assurances that the death penalty will not be carried out. In practice, US extradition requests involving capital crimes are very rare. Not all US states continue to apply the death penalty. Those which do stand ready in extradition cases to provide assurances that the death penalty will not be carried out.
Source: Written reply to Parliamentary Question asked of Lord Marlesford by Lord Rooker, 8th November 2001

...and I suspect this is exactly the point of this Bill. Here's a BBC Watchdog Report on mobile phone theft in the UK, dated 29 Jan 2002.

key points:

• ~700,000 mobile phones stolen in the UK in 2001 including at least one cited fatal shooting
• an estimated 48% of these phones were stolen from under-18's, often with a threat of violence
• only Orange and One-to-One currently track IMEI's
• Cellnet (name changed to O2 since the article) and Vodaphone refused to implement IMEI tracking citing estimated costs of £18million each, (<£1.50 per subscriber)
• a network providing service to a stolen handset can expect to make about £30/month from the subscriber
• all four major networks give statements at the end, and Vodaphone and Cellnet both explicitly state that they will not implement IMEI tracking because it is not a bar to crime, because IMEI's can be easily reprogrammed.

TomV

It's not that hard. The link in the story is to the explanatory notes. The actual bill is here.

On a topical note, all the griping about "Why shouldn't I be allowed to..." is just slippery slope hysterics.

If you actually want to build a 'phone from components, then you can do whatever the hell you like with it, because you're the "manufacturer". However, if you want to buy a 'phone and then screw around with the identifier on it, you're doing something no different from changing the VIN number on a car. There's only one reason why you'd have to do that: to enable fraud. You can argue "But I own it and I just wanna", but in both cases that's simply an argument that principles are always more important than pragmatics and that nothing should be illegal if there's no direct, immediate victim. The law has to strike a balance between freedom and the probability that an act has a criminal purpose. In this case, it's overwhelmingly likely that an actual crime with an actual victim is involved.

The point of this bill is to enable prosecution of workshops set up to change IMEI's on stolen 'phones. It's a real problem, and it's part of a crime with a real victim, usually on the receiving end of violence. There's actually a very reasonable clause in here that protects equipment that merely could be used to change an IMEI: "The clause makes it clear that the offences are committed only if the person intends to use the equipment or allow it to be used for the purposes of making an unauthorised change to the IMEI number, or knows that the person to whom he supplies it or offers to supply it intends to use it or allow it to be used for that purpose." The prosecution has to show intent, so don't throw a hissy fit just because you've built an IMEI programmer for your self built IMEI 'phone. Not that anyone here has or intends to build such a 'phone.

Still not seeing it? Consider your next car purchase. You inspect the car, note the VIN number, do an HPI check, and it looks clean. Two weeks later, the police turn up and tell you that you're driving a stolen car and you have to return it to the rightful owner. You're completely out of pocket. This happens all the time. Now, how would you feel if you found that the garage that sold you the car had modified the VIN number and documentation, and that this wasn't illegal? And that it wasn't illegal because of the high principled argument that once they'd bought the car, they could do anything they damn well liked to it? Would you be pissed off? I think so. So, do you think that should it be legal to modify VIN numbers? If not, why should it be legal to modify IMEI numbers?

This is a balanced, reasonable, useful bill, and all the shrieking and Chicken Littling doesn't make it otherwise.

What are the ethical issues involved?

Currently, the best source for stem cells is a human embryo. But using human material, such as aborted fetuses, in research is a contensious issue because it can be construed as the sacrifice of human life for scientific progress.

source

Even if much of the potential of adult stem cells is realised, there are circumstances where they are unlikely to be useful.... The isolation and growth of adult stem cells have to date proved very difficult. Stem cells generally represent a very small proportion of cells in adult tissues. Unambiguous identification is difficult as their presence in a tissue or mixture of cells is generally inferred from a research observation rather than indicated by any specific biochemical marker which might aid their purification... Current understanding of the potential of adult stem cells for redifferentiation is still very limited. Although many studies suggest that such processes occur, there is often a degree of ambiguity... In their natural location in the body adult stem cells do not exhibit great potential for differentiation into new cell types but have evolved to give rise only to specific cell lineages.

House of Lords report

While adult stem cells hold real promise, there are some significant limitations to what we may or may not be able to accomplish with them. First of all, stem cells from adults have not been isolated for all tissues of the body. Although many different kinds of multipotent stem cells have been identified, adult stem cells for all cell and tissue types have not yet been found in the adult human. For example, we have not located adult cardiac stem cells or adult pancreatic islet stem cells in humans. Secondly, adult stem cells are often present in only minute quantities, are difficult to isolate and purify, and their numbers may decrease with age. For example, brain cells from adults that may be neuronal stem cells have only been obtained by removing a portion of the brain of epileptics, not a trivial procedure.

Stem Cells: A Primer

Other areas (England) that chose to ban guns almost completely have seen a horrific increase in the rate of violent crime and murder.

...to a tiny fraction of the US rate. And I'd point out that at no point in the last 100 years have firearms been generally permitted to the populace.

The only change was a tightening of the rules after March 13, 1996 when Thomas Hamilton armed with four legally held handguns and 743 rounds of ammunition walked into a school gymnasium in Dunblane, Scotland, and without warning opened fire on Gwen Mayor and her kindergarten class. Within 3 to 4 minutes Mrs. Mayor and 16 children were killed, and 17 other children and teachers were wounded.

The Government report on the massacre recommended tightening the gun control laws, but stopped short of an outright ban on guns favoured by many.

Are all NRA supporters so ill-educated and ill-informed?

Yeah... you can just tell those are edited by the internal team, there are some other nice British Govt sites though. Parliament has exceeded itself with modernity.

True, the headline is misleading, but it passed through the commons at 8pm on Wed(26th), with a grand total of 30 MPs and no vote (as far as I can tell from Hansard).

It is now only waiting for Royal Assent (and I can't see the Queen deciding to throw it out). It will almost certainly become law before November.

Found some cases that make interesting reading.

lawsuit over implementation

cross examination. Note how subjective it gets.

more lawsuits

btw, I didn't work for any of the companies mentioned in any of my posts, just in case there are lawyers reading this. My main point is re. the legal fine points that determine whether a work of software is "shoddy" or done according to "expectations". Anybody who has used any software can probably sense the gaping loopholes which can result from describing how software performs, what was expected, etc. It just takes skilled lawyers to determine this in legal terms. Geeks tend to think of technical details when they talk about expections and good results. Lawyers think of law. The former is irrelevant in lawsuits...

The RIP bill requiring ISPs to fit the often-mentioned "black boxes" is, I'm afraid, a myth. The bit of bill which has been taken as requiring black boxes (section 12.1) reads "The Secretary of State may by order provide for the imposition by him ... of such obligations as it appears to him reasonable to impose for the purpose of securing that it is and remains practicable for requirements to provide assistance in relation to interception warrants to be imposed and complied with."
Apart from the fact that this is in appallingly bad English, it seems to say that if the police need an ISP to help them tap someone's traffic then the ISP must comply. Is it really that shocking? Okay the wording "measures which appear reasonable to the Secretary of State" is a bit open-ended, but it only applies to the execution of particular warrants. I dislike the bill very much, I have written to my MP to protest about it, it is flawed in a thousand different ways, but it does not require the installation of any "black boxes" to copy all net traffic to GCHQ.

On the other hand, any government that tries to pass the RIP bill really doesn't have it's citizens (ok, subjects) best interests at heart.

Phillip.

Don't you yanks have nice retirement homes?

More digging: nothing significant was debated in the Commons, but
there was a select committee which discussed feedback to the draft
bill.

Available at

Hansard: Trade and Industry Select Committee Report #14

Very nice site, BTW: a lot of information, well organised, and with
the most helpful site specific search engine I have used
(automatically looks for words with similar roots to those specified,
and explains what it is doing).

It looks as if the plaintext requirement was tagged on in response to
concerns that (i) users might have legitimate reasons not to possess
the key, (ii) concerns that the police might use keys to obtain more
information than authorised, or to hoard keys. They seem not to have
thought of the problem of verification at all.

I had a look at Hansard and found the relevant section. It's available at:


Hansard: Regulation of investigatory Powers Bill

It clearly states that it is not `reasonably practicable' for the
investigated party to provide the key or plaintext, then that is a
defence. Section 47 is about providing information in lieu of a key,
which says nothing about verifying that the decrypted information
matches the ciphertext.

Quick Home Office summary, with Part 3 relating to the crypto stuff.

Full text of Bill as introduced to parliament (Part 3).

Of course it's all written in that sort of legalese which ought to win the International Obfurscated English Contest...

Quick Home Office summary, with Part 3 relating to the crypto stuff.

Full text of Bill as introduced to parliament (Part 3).

Of course it's all written in that sort of legalese which ought to win the International Obfurscated English Contest...