This decision establishes that The Consulting Association's actions were illegal.
No it doesn't. That won't be established until the court rules on it, and it hasn't come to court yet.
In the US, The Consulting Association would now be the target of lawsuits from workers affected by those illegal actions. I'm not quite sure if it's the same deal in the UK.
Not yet, because it's not yet established that the actions were illegal. Even if the ruling goes the way everybody here assumes it already has, all it will establish is that the data was being sold by a company not properly registered with the DCO, not whether the selling of the data is itself illegal. Indeed, it seems it isn't, because (from the RA) 'A spokesman for the Department for Business said it did have the power to make blacklists illegal and would "review whether to use this power if there was compelling evidence that blacklists were being used".' Since the selling of the blacklists is apparently not illegal at the moment, it might not be so easy for those affected to get redress.
The penalty does apply per incidence. There is once incidence. The prosecution is for failing to register the company with the data protection office, not for selling the data. And the summary also appears to be wrong to say that the DCO has closed down the company; all the report says is that it has already ceased trading.
I certainly get irritated if a site doesn't render correctly, especially if it's a website I need and the website owner tells me to use Internet Explorer because it's been tested on that. Until it was integrated into the Transport for London website, the website for my local bus company (giving details or timetables and routes) omitted the trailing semicolon on all HTML character literals -- a Microsoft quirk that MSIE rendered as the intended character but Firefox rendered (correctly) as the # and the hex code. HTML-anything compliance would have fixed that.
Of course anybody has a duty of care to anybody in their building. But the case in question is when the pupil fails to turn up, in which case they are not in the building. If the 16-year-old is getting hit by a bus then they are presumably not in the college (unless it's a very determined bus) and so not within the college's duty of care.
More of an issue than not giving a rating is that they just quoted the acid3 scores. According to the Acid3 test, "To pass the test, a browser must use its default settings, the animation has to be smooth, the score has to end on 100/100, and the final page has to look exactly, pixel for pixel, like this reference rendering". I've just run it on Firefox 3.0.7 and it was very jerky, the colours final page were not the same as the reference rendering and there were spurious artefacts on the page. Just quoting the score is only a small part of the Acid3 picture.
I've recently finished a major contract in Zurich, and spent absolutely ages waiting for delayed trains in and around the city. Long enough to work out that the seconds hand on Zurich station clocks click on one second in slightly less than a second, completing a revolution in 59 seconds and then waiting for an extra second at the top. You can imagine how long I spent waiting around to get that bored.
Age 16-18 you are not "under their care". At 16 in the UK you are old enough to marry (with your parents permission; not needed in Scotland), leave school and set up your own home or join up with the military. You're considered enough of an adult to look after yourself (though not enough of an adult to go and see a film showing stuff that you're pretty much expected to be doing if you're married. Err...)
Your correspondent may be familiar with US law but clearly is abysmally unlearned in philosophy. A fact is a statement which is clearly discernable, cannot be disputed, can be proven scientifically, and is valid across all cultures, e.g. "The sun always rises in the east."
As they say, "citation needed". You seem to have only considered a rather narrow spread of philosophical position. Some philosophical positions will only accept facts that are clearly discernable (notably empiricists), but others (notably neo-Platonists) will accept that something can be a fact even though we do not (and maybe cannot)know it to be a fact. And what do you mean by "can be proven scientifically"? On the most widespread current philosophy of science (Popper's idea of "falsifiability"), your example case of "The sun always rises in the east" cannot be proven scientifically. It is either true by definition ("East" is defined as the direction in which the sun rises), or it is a best working hypothesis that may at some future time be falsified.
Oh, and your notion that there is anything that cannot be disputed amongst philosophers is amusing, unless you meant to indicate that there are actually no facts (in which case some philosophers will dispute that).
The basic figures are here. Note that on the mainline the target is only 85% within 5 minutes, and they don't start issuing refunds unless it falls below 82%. And it doesn't count if they can find an excuse for being late, such as it snowing in winter.
And you clearly haven't been to a German speaking country lately if you think they still make the trains run on time! Still, they charge you less for waiting around on a platform than the UK does...
Thing is, there's religion in Africa and there's religion in Asia, so you have to do a lot more work to show that religion comes into it.
A far more credible explanation is geographic. Early technologies were primarily plant and animal based. Those technologies could spread more readily east-west, where climate stays more-or-less constant, than north-south, where climate changes rapidly. That meant that technologies could spread rapidly across the Eurasian land mass, but Africa and India remained relatively isolated, giving those in the northern temperate zone an advantage. Nothing to do with religion, nothing to do with intelligence, just being in the right place (a big east-west land mass) at the right time (as early technologies were emerging).
So, someday, after you have posted a picture of yourself butt-naked sharing a twelve-pack with your buddies outside the local convent, and you remain unemployed, you will be able to sue. All you will have to show is that X percent of the population does such things, and if a particular employer has significantly less than X percent of such people among their employees, they are therefore guilty of discrimination.
And what's more, if being a butt-naked near-convent 12-pack drinker correlates with some other characteristic (a particular gender, for example), it's impossible to balance both the numbers of butt-naked near-convent 12-pack drinkers and the numbers having that other characteristic, so there will likely always be somebody who can sue.
After RTFS, xenophobe doesn't even begin to describe Stephen Conroy. Pluriphobe would be a better description, for want of a better word. In Holland we would use the phrase "more pious than the pope", but I know of no English expression that can explain his thickheadedness.
The phrase exists in English too. In England we might describe such a person as "Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells, but I doubt that phrase crosses the Atlantic well, never mind making it all the way across the Pacific too.
Now everyone stop complaining about Chrome having no extension! If Chrome is really that good for everything else except has no add-ons, and if you really so sick of getting that noscript/adblock add-on, why not develop one yourself and contribute back to the project?
Am I missing something?
Yes. Not all potential users are developers. In fact, I suggest that the majority of potential users are not developers. Telling a random user of web browsers that they need to learn to program to make it do what other free browsers already do is unlikely to convert them. And of those of us who are developers? Well, lets see: shall I spend my free time developing tools for Chrome that are already working perfectly satisfactorily for me in Firefox, or shall I spend my free time doing someting that I think actually needs doing?
This is why I hope people that are considering voting Lib Dem do so, not because there's any hope of them getting power, but because there is at least hope of them holding the balance of power which is a major step forward on the last couple of decades. This is going to be a really important election for people to learn to vote for the party they want rather than voting tactically to avoid the party they don't want (which inevitably ends up in the situation we have now!).
Agreed completely -- I think the problem occurs when a government has so much power that it effectively loses accountability, whatever the political complexion of the government, so I would see a hung parliament or a fragile majority as a good thing. Unfortunately, the polls are moving the other way at the moment, with previous LibDem voters deserting to the Tories. That makes your prediction of a hung parliament look optimistic, unfortunately.
The trouble is, when this lot goes it's almost certain that a much worse lot will get in. Do you want to eat shit or eat shit with razorblades?
Although it's perhaps not so easy a call. Do you want evil that pretends to be good (this lot) or evil that admits it's evil (the tories)? I suppose the openness of the tories' evil does have a refreshing honesty about it. "Evil" in the sense of D&D 3.5 alignments, if no other.
Looking at your comments page (out of vague curiosity to see if you're a genuine troll or just an ordinary user saying something vaguely trollish), I notice that this is your second comment. Your only other comment was made way back in June 2005.
Slashdot Mirror
This decision establishes that The Consulting Association's actions were illegal.
No it doesn't. That won't be established until the court rules on it, and it hasn't come to court yet.
In the US, The Consulting Association would now be the target of lawsuits from workers affected by those illegal actions. I'm not quite sure if it's the same deal in the UK.
Not yet, because it's not yet established that the actions were illegal. Even if the ruling goes the way everybody here assumes it already has, all it will establish is that the data was being sold by a company not properly registered with the DCO, not whether the selling of the data is itself illegal. Indeed, it seems it isn't, because (from the RA) 'A spokesman for the Department for Business said it did have the power to make blacklists illegal and would "review whether to use this power if there was compelling evidence that blacklists were being used".' Since the selling of the blacklists is apparently not illegal at the moment, it might not be so easy for those affected to get redress.
The penalty does apply per incidence. There is once incidence. The prosecution is for failing to register the company with the data protection office, not for selling the data. And the summary also appears to be wrong to say that the DCO has closed down the company; all the report says is that it has already ceased trading.
Except that the case in question is when the students are not with them.
I certainly get irritated if a site doesn't render correctly, especially if it's a website I need and the website owner tells me to use Internet Explorer because it's been tested on that. Until it was integrated into the Transport for London website, the website for my local bus company (giving details or timetables and routes) omitted the trailing semicolon on all HTML character literals -- a Microsoft quirk that MSIE rendered as the intended character but Firefox rendered (correctly) as the # and the hex code. HTML-anything compliance would have fixed that.
See elsewhere in this thread for my recent experiences of Swiss trains. They were very clean, though.
Of course anybody has a duty of care to anybody in their building. But the case in question is when the pupil fails to turn up, in which case they are not in the building. If the 16-year-old is getting hit by a bus then they are presumably not in the college (unless it's a very determined bus) and so not within the college's duty of care.
Oh, I am, and am well aware of the difference between what is expected and the reality.
More of an issue than not giving a rating is that they just quoted the acid3 scores. According to the Acid3 test, "To pass the test, a browser must use its default settings, the animation has to be smooth, the score has to end on 100/100, and the final page has to look exactly, pixel for pixel, like this reference rendering". I've just run it on Firefox 3.0.7 and it was very jerky, the colours final page were not the same as the reference rendering and there were spurious artefacts on the page. Just quoting the score is only a small part of the Acid3 picture.
Oh, and the Germans I know dispute whether what they speak in Zurich is German ;-)
I've recently finished a major contract in Zurich, and spent absolutely ages waiting for delayed trains in and around the city. Long enough to work out that the seconds hand on Zurich station clocks click on one second in slightly less than a second, completing a revolution in 59 seconds and then waiting for an extra second at the top. You can imagine how long I spent waiting around to get that bored.
Age 16-18 you are not "under their care". At 16 in the UK you are old enough to marry (with your parents permission; not needed in Scotland), leave school and set up your own home or join up with the military. You're considered enough of an adult to look after yourself (though not enough of an adult to go and see a film showing stuff that you're pretty much expected to be doing if you're married. Err...)
Your correspondent may be familiar with US law but clearly is abysmally unlearned in philosophy. A fact is a statement which is clearly discernable, cannot be disputed, can be proven scientifically, and is valid across all cultures, e.g. "The sun always rises in the east."
As they say, "citation needed". You seem to have only considered a rather narrow spread of philosophical position. Some philosophical positions will only accept facts that are clearly discernable (notably empiricists), but others (notably neo-Platonists) will accept that something can be a fact even though we do not (and maybe cannot)know it to be a fact. And what do you mean by "can be proven scientifically"? On the most widespread current philosophy of science (Popper's idea of "falsifiability"), your example case of "The sun always rises in the east" cannot be proven scientifically. It is either true by definition ("East" is defined as the direction in which the sun rises), or it is a best working hypothesis that may at some future time be falsified.
Oh, and your notion that there is anything that cannot be disputed amongst philosophers is amusing, unless you meant to indicate that there are actually no facts (in which case some philosophers will dispute that).
The basic figures are here. Note that on the mainline the target is only 85% within 5 minutes, and they don't start issuing refunds unless it falls below 82%. And it doesn't count if they can find an excuse for being late, such as it snowing in winter.
And you clearly haven't been to a German speaking country lately if you think they still make the trains run on time! Still, they charge you less for waiting around on a platform than the UK does...
And it is text too.
Except when it isn't. If it's encrypted it's still PDF but you're not going to get much joy out of it with a text editor.
Thing is, there's religion in Africa and there's religion in Asia, so you have to do a lot more work to show that religion comes into it.
A far more credible explanation is geographic. Early technologies were primarily plant and animal based. Those technologies could spread more readily east-west, where climate stays more-or-less constant, than north-south, where climate changes rapidly. That meant that technologies could spread rapidly across the Eurasian land mass, but Africa and India remained relatively isolated, giving those in the northern temperate zone an advantage. Nothing to do with religion, nothing to do with intelligence, just being in the right place (a big east-west land mass) at the right time (as early technologies were emerging).
So, someday, after you have posted a picture of yourself butt-naked sharing a twelve-pack with your buddies outside the local convent, and you remain unemployed, you will be able to sue. All you will have to show is that X percent of the population does such things, and if a particular employer has significantly less than X percent of such people among their employees, they are therefore guilty of discrimination.
And what's more, if being a butt-naked near-convent 12-pack drinker correlates with some other characteristic (a particular gender, for example), it's impossible to balance both the numbers of butt-naked near-convent 12-pack drinkers and the numbers having that other characteristic, so there will likely always be somebody who can sue.
>>>>>"more pious than the pope", but I know of no English expression t
>"Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells"
Wow that's obscure
Not in England :-)
After RTFS, xenophobe doesn't even begin to describe Stephen Conroy. Pluriphobe would be a better description, for want of a better word. In Holland we would use the phrase "more pious than the pope", but I know of no English expression that can explain his thickheadedness.
The phrase exists in English too. In England we might describe such a person as "Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells, but I doubt that phrase crosses the Atlantic well, never mind making it all the way across the Pacific too.
Now everyone stop complaining about Chrome having no extension! If Chrome is really that good for everything else except has no add-ons, and if you really so sick of getting that noscript/adblock add-on, why not develop one yourself and contribute back to the project?
Am I missing something?
Yes. Not all potential users are developers. In fact, I suggest that the majority of potential users are not developers. Telling a random user of web browsers that they need to learn to program to make it do what other free browsers already do is unlikely to convert them. And of those of us who are developers? Well, lets see: shall I spend my free time developing tools for Chrome that are already working perfectly satisfactorily for me in Firefox, or shall I spend my free time doing someting that I think actually needs doing?
This is why I hope people that are considering voting Lib Dem do so, not because there's any hope of them getting power, but because there is at least hope of them holding the balance of power which is a major step forward on the last couple of decades. This is going to be a really important election for people to learn to vote for the party they want rather than voting tactically to avoid the party they don't want (which inevitably ends up in the situation we have now!).
Agreed completely -- I think the problem occurs when a government has so much power that it effectively loses accountability, whatever the political complexion of the government, so I would see a hung parliament or a fragile majority as a good thing. Unfortunately, the polls are moving the other way at the moment, with previous LibDem voters deserting to the Tories. That makes your prediction of a hung parliament look optimistic, unfortunately.
The trouble is, when this lot goes it's almost certain that a much worse lot will get in. Do you want to eat shit or eat shit with razorblades?
Although it's perhaps not so easy a call. Do you want evil that pretends to be good (this lot) or evil that admits it's evil (the tories)? I suppose the openness of the tories' evil does have a refreshing honesty about it. "Evil" in the sense of D&D 3.5 alignments, if no other.
Looking at your comments page (out of vague curiosity to see if you're a genuine troll or just an ordinary user saying something vaguely trollish), I notice that this is your second comment. Your only other comment was made way back in June 2005.
The "strong, silent" type, evidently.
Evrybody who is anybody. By definition, I think.
Bill will likely never send out any "I had to reboot my computer for some dumb update
He did. Read the RA.