I have a maths degree, but completely screwed up some basic arithmetic recently. Arithmetic is, as you said, a branch of mathematics, but it not the sum total (pun intended) or even a necessary part. Rather than equating it with not knowing the letters of the alphabet, I'd liken it to being unable to spell:
Good spelling, while useful in every day life isn't nearly as important as being able to write well and understand complex texts; a computer can help you with spelling. Similarly in maths, good arithmetic can be useful in life in speeding things up a bit, but with calculators on every phone and computer it isn't crucial. Whereas the important bits of maths (analytical thinking, the rigours of proof, reasoning, deduction etc.) are much harder to get a computer to help with, and are much harder to spot in oneself if not present.
It doesn't really matter if people can't remember how to do long division or multiplication by hand; what matters is that they find out/work out how to do so when needed. Given that, the OP's point does have some validity, and is not merely pedantic. That said, the title mentions "numeracy", not mathematics.
Of course, the real problem seems to be not that people cannot do maths (which, anecdotally, ime, they usually can when given encouragement and a few pointers), but that they're being taught to answer maths test questions, rather than understand the principles behind the problems; as such, it's easy to forget the specific methods, and hard to work them out later when needed. Sadly this seems to be a problem across much of the UK education system.
An oft forgotten fact about laws in the UK is that they are not absolute, indisputable edicts. Ultimately the courts decide on the scope of any law, and that is what case law and precedent is all about.
That kind of depends on who you asked. The government and Parliament like to think their laws are supreme and cannot be questioned (aside from within Parliament, or through a process set out in another law, i.e. the ECA or HRA). Judges sometimes have a different idea. In this case, though, an ASBO is a court order, so given by a judge (or magistrate). Reading the article it seems that TFL have just applied for it, but haven't been given it yet. Hopefully the judge will realise just how silly it is, but sadly I'm guessing there's no downside for TFL in applying for the strongest, toughest order they can.
Of course, this just goes to show how ASBOs are being abused (surely banning people from talking is... anti-social itself, and exploring isn't..?) and how we really need our courts to take a stand against the ludicrous abuses of power our executive get up to.
Of course. In the Google case they're accused of using their "Universal Search" feature to rank their own services (such as maps, shopping, news, video) higher than competition, by applying a different ranking criteria to it (hence the idea of "search neutrality"). The main counter arguments are that Google is free to rank sites by whatever criteria it likes, alternative search engines are just a click away, and Google should be able to rank its services higher as, presumably, it thinks they're better.
Then you have the various rebuttals to that, but having spent about 3 hours debating this with some of the people involved, I'm not sure that I can do all the various arguments justice here. I imagine that within a view years there will be a court judgment or two covering them anyway.
Multimap seems now to have been absorbed into Bing, so it's kind of a moot point. Following the above-mentioned meeting I did try a week without using Google search-related services, to see how the competition compared. Bing Maps had some nice features, but I'm now back to Google (partly due to streetview, partly due to the interface, partly due to Bing (and streepmap) failing the first search I tried...).
The moral of this? Nobody owes you a living.
As someone with socialist leanings, I'd dispute that, but... yes, I understand the principle that if company A relies on company B for their business, unless they have some contract, they can't really complain if company B doesn't do exactly what A wants. That said, there's then the issue of competition/anti-trust law, in this case abusing a dominant position in one market to drive out competition in another market. Whether that's (a) actually happening, and (b) unjustified is what various agencies, courts etc. are looking into at the moment.
Perhaps I should have added an "I am a law student, currently provide some legal services (for free) and aim to be a lawyer in a few years" disclaimer to that...
Many lawyers are aware of their image; and try to do as much free work as they can - unfortunately in many places the cost of being a lawyer is high enough to make that difficult.
I think you need to re-watch the The Next Generation pilot if you think sending lawyers and legalists to the moon would be a good idea. Once you take away those who understand and apply the law, you cease to have any practical law.
Unless, of course, you're going to create a comprehensive legal system whereby the layman can fully understand and apply it... but good luck with that.
The other thing you have to remember in situations like this is that lawyers don't make decisions (in theory), they just advise. It was the California legislature/executive that decided to go with this law, and then fight the challenge; either they received bad advice from their lawyers (about the legality of the law), in which case they should be suing the lawyers for negligence etc., or they ignored the advice, or they didn't seek it (in which case, you can't really blame the lawyers). Alternatively, the issue was close enough that it needed litigating just to find out what the answer was (sometimes that does happen). In that case, aside from placing tougher restrictions on what lawyers can charge (which is usually a good idea) and generally trying to drive down the cost of legal services, there's not much you can do.
And then there's Google Maps, but again there wasn't that much competition before they came along anyway, and Yahoo and Bing still have their maps products (in fact, Bing maps frequently do better than Google IME).
Some map companies, such as Streetmap or Multimap, would counter that point, arguing loudly that Google unfairly drove them out of business (or to a significantly lower level of business) by promoting Google Maps over their services via search, in breach of EU competition law.
At least, they did, a couple of weeks ago, at a meeting about "search neutrality" (Google* the term if you're interested...) in the UK Parliament last week (I happened to be there - it's not quite as insane as it sounds). That said, recent anecdotal experiments I performed indicated that in most ways Google does actually provide a better service (although I do like some things Bing maps does).
Google has caused quite a lot of problems for small businesses trying to "compete" with Google, particularly when Google has a "rival" service and promotes that via their search. That said, it remains to be seen whether or not Google has crossed the line into unjustifiable anti-competitive behaviour over this sort of thing (and the EC/CJEU, and US FTC etc. will likely be ruling on that soon). Not that MS is a strange to anti-competition lawsuits, iirc it's Windows Media Player-related one in the EU is still ongoing, with MS trying to get out of its >€1bn fine...
Yeah, in hindsight that dodgy ruler analogy wasn't all that good (although remember that the "dodginess" is still quantifiable, which is all that matters) - lower down I used a "running a mile" analogy that is much better. Do a search on this page either for my username/ID, or for "mile".
they still need to re-do the neutrino test, according to the last sentence of TFA; at the moment they have merely found out that "data" sent over the fiber-optic cable arrives 60ns earlier then assumed
Why to they need to re-do the test? Isn't the point of this not that their raw data was wrong, but the calculations they did based on that data were wrong? The data should still be fine, they just used a dodgy figure when turning their raw data into a speed calculation.
Kind of like measuring the time it takes someone to run a mile in order to calculate their average speed, getting puzzled as to how fast it was, then realising they only ran a kilometre - the raw time data is still accurate, you just need to use a different value when working out the speed.
Do they really need to re-run the experiment to conclude the cable is to blame? If you measure something with a ruler, find out it's Mmm long, then realise your ruler is out by Nmm, it's quite easy to deduce that the thing is actually (M+/-N)mm long, without needing to re-meausure. Of course, it can be useful to check it with a new ruler, particularly when it's quite an important measurement.
Additionally or alternatively, a 60ns discrepancy in the cable transmission stuff doesn't change their actual measurements/data, all it changes is the calculations based on that data. If they've made the same calculations, using the revised figure, (which, having not rtfa, I'll admit is an assumption) based on the original evidence, and get the "right" result, they don't really need to take a new set of measurements.
I think the Tories were keeping quiet when in opposition because they knew Labour were screwing up at every turn. And now Labour are keeping quiet because they don't have anything to say...
But yes, most people will vote based on what they think the parties stand for, not on actual performance. But in terms of the internal politics of parties, press coverage and point scoring seems to be very much the way to advance, or assert status within the parties.
As far as the general public go, iirc most people typically vote for the same party no matter what. If you look at general election election results since the 60s, neither the Tories nor Labour have dropped below 29% of the vote, so no matter how badly they do, they still get nearly a third of the population to support them. Then, with around 20% for the Liberals (+/- 3%, since the 1980s), that leaves about 20% of the vote left with which to win the election; i.e. 80% of the vote is pretty much fixed. You see a similar result with changes in the number of seats; the biggest swing in recent history was 200 seats to Labour in 1997, but the average is around 90 (something like 1 in 7, or 15% of seats).
That's a side effect of two-party/adversarial politics. The party in power only opposes stuff because they see it as their job to. If the current government proposed a law outlawing the mistreatment of kittens Labour would probably find an angle to argue against it. It's because party politics isn't about serving the people any more (if it ever was), it's about beating the other party at the next election, and that means scoring points wherever possible.
The only thing more depressing than a situation where one side opposes the exact same thing they supported when on the other side of the chamber, is when both sides agree on something, and it gets rushed through without any of the issues being examined.
But unalienable rights only apply to places where they exist and are enforced. I'm not a Saudi lawyer, but I imagine there is no law enforcing the freedom to change religions views (or practices, presumably, as views are hard to prove). There is, however, (from my understanding) a law that makes it illegal to convert away from Islam, with the maximum (possibly minimum) sentence of death.
So, now you have an individual who has arguably committed a serious offence in Country A, has fled to Country B. Country B, it seems, has a rather odd dual-legal system, with the main laws based on the English Common Law (including the concept of freedom of religion) but with Islamic law applying to Muslims. As such, if Country A can show the individual is a Muslim, one assumes apostasy will similarly be an offence in Country B; thus you have dual established (one of the foundations for a sensible extradition law) and the individual should be arrested and sent back to Country A for trial and, if found guilty, punishment.... In legal theory.
In practice, this is a good (if tragic) example that demonstrates both the ineffective nature of "international law" and UN declarations, why capital punishment is a bad idea in principle (once you allow it for one thing, it can end up being extended elsewhere), and why one should never let religion anywhere near a legal or judicial system (not least because it allows for the possibility of a "highest" and "unanswerable" authority, which should not be permitted in any remotely-democratic civilisation).
For future reference, when fleeing a country due to its excessive laws etc., try to go to one that doesn't have similar ones.
Because it's bought and paid for, and his property. The question is, why should someone with low income but fully owned property NOT be allowed to live in it?
Because that's what tax is. It's about taking a bit of someone's fully owned property from them and giving it to the state, so that the state can invest it on large-scale projects, for the benefit of the broader population. Now, I know that some people think that this is unfair, and that the state should keep out of your life (or not even exist), but most places tend to have at least some form of taxation.
But it's not about *soldiers* agreeing on values, it's about the civilian population:
Presumably, the difference between the German's Blitz invasions, and the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour (which has an a in it, by the way; although technically not a u, but propriety forbids me from spelling harbour without it) is that the former were invasions to gain territory, whereas the latter was a hit-and-run attack to destroy military hardware.
Hit-and-run attacks are relatively straight-forward; you go in, you destroy stuff, you leave the enemy to clean up the mess. But with an invasion, you have to go in, destroy the enemy military, then stay. That means you have to expend the resources needed to clean up the mess and rebuild any infrastructure you've destroyed, while trying to keep the locals (that you've just subjugated, probably killing quite a few) under control, and preparing your forces to advance further.
The advantage the Germans had in France (according to the parent post) would be that a significant chunk of the locals supported the Germans, thus they could be left in charge of the clean-up, freeing the German military to push on. Contrast that with the occupation of the Channel Islands where, despite no organised resistance, up to 1 German soldier was required for every 2 locals, tying up a lot of man-power and resources for (tactically) insignificant land
It doesn't matter. Here is how the average idiot American (the people who end up on JURIES - which is fucking TERRIFYING) perceives something like this: "He's obviously guilty - otherwise the government wouldn't be looking into him."
Sadly I've had that argument used against me when discussing issues of detention without trial or charge (such as relating to this year's NDAA-thingamy, or a UK case a few years ago); the argument is something along the lines that it doesn't matter if the people 'arrested' don't get the right to a trial, or an opportunity to plead their case, because the government/state/police are only allowed to use the law on evil terrorists, so anyone picked up must be one - the government wouldn't arrest someone if they didn't know for sure.
I assume it is informative because it lays out the relevant laws, with some analysis of why or why not they might have been breached. At no point did I state whether or not his actions were a crime in the UK (although, obviously, the judge in this case held that they were, but possibly at a lower standard of proof than required in a full criminal trial). However, I do agree that there's a lot of misinformation going around suggesting that this absolutely wasn't criminal (some, I think, emanating from the defence team over the last few months). It's legality was always in question (with no precise precedent and unclear laws), and while the judge ruled one way today, that still isn't a definitive answer.
Oh, I appear to have missed a "this defence didn't apply" in between "vetted" and "Imho" - sorry for that.
That's s107 (2), which isn't in play here, but yes, "article" in that context hasn't been defined , which is why prosecutors in the UK have been able to use s107(1)(e) to go after non-commercial file-sharers before (despite s107(2A)(b) being added specifically for that purpose), claiming that an.mp3 file etc. is an "article". I don't have access to all my legalish resources at the moment, but I imagine that "article" in this context merely means "thing" - but I don't think s107(2) has ever been used against software specifically.
However, the CDPA is rather badly-written in some places and a real mess - much of it being written on behalf of the legacy publishers in the 80s, so it doesn't really know about computer stuff, and the rest has been cobbled together following subsequent lobbying and EU legislation. The UK really could do with a new Copyright Act, but hopefully we're currently at the high point in the scope of copyright, so it might be worth struggling on for a few more years until copyright law is a bit more reasonable.
That doesn't stop him arguing the facts, it just means the court won't listen. Which in some ways is where the crux of these extradition cases (O'Dwyr, McKinnon, even the Assange one to a degree) - there are no issues with getting a "fair trial" or humane treatment in the other country *in theory*, we just don't trust them in practice.
Again, this is the extradition hearing, not the actual trial. Magistrates' Courts are the venue for extradition hearings because they have the appropriate powers to deal with the issues (i.e. to issue arrest warrants, bail conditions) and as extradition requests are often mere formalities (ticking the right boxes) a full Crown Court trial is a bit wasteful.
The first citation will probably be somewhere in here - the full text of the Review of the UK's Extradition Arrangements. Unfortunately it's 488 pages long and even I have up after a few dozen pages, and I'm far too obsessed with this sort of thing as it is.
Under extradition law, I think "probably" is enough. Remember, this is just the extradition hearing, the actual trial will take place in the US (if he gets that far). In theory, the fact that the trial is in the US not the UK shouldn't make that much of a difference. That said, he can appeal this ruling before we get to that stage.
Nope - same goes for about 20 other countries, and then an even lower standard applies for EU countries. The theory is that the US authorities need to have sufficient evidence back in the US to get their arrest warrant (i.e. satisfying probable cause) that asking them to prove the same in the UK is redundant.
It's kind of like when flying, and taking a connection, not having to go through security twice; if the second flight trusts the first flight, they can assume that you've already been sufficiently checked.
It's worth keeping in mind that this decision was made in a Magistrates' Court. That is basically the lowest court in England... It sounds like this wasn't a typical case for such a court, but the implication is still that this is only the first step down a long road. I imagine there are several rounds of appeals to go through before the guy in question is in any danger of actually leaving British soil.
Extradition cases in England are always heard, by convention, in Westminster Magistrates' Court; they're in a Magistrates' Court because it's the appropriate level court, and in Westminster because that one has 'jurisdiction' over the government etc., so on that count, this is a typical case for the court, although it will rarely have to deal with copyright issues. However, you're right in that this will likely end up going through a few more courts before anything substantial happens.
But we can get criminals from America to the UK right? Err No.... Which retarded judges / laywers decided this was a good idea?
Traditionally, in the UK, it's *politicians* that write laws, lawyers and judges are then left with the mess of sorting them out. In any case, the Extradition Act 2003 is, in my opinion, being rather unfairly criticised by a lot of groups - it's not nearly as bad, or unusual, as it's made out to be. What's happened is that, in a couple of high-profile cases, there have been some abuses by the other country (usually the US), which should be sorted out by their legal system, but aren't being.
That said, I agree with what you said about getting decent politicians elected...
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I have a maths degree, but completely screwed up some basic arithmetic recently. Arithmetic is, as you said, a branch of mathematics, but it not the sum total (pun intended) or even a necessary part. Rather than equating it with not knowing the letters of the alphabet, I'd liken it to being unable to spell:
Good spelling, while useful in every day life isn't nearly as important as being able to write well and understand complex texts; a computer can help you with spelling. Similarly in maths, good arithmetic can be useful in life in speeding things up a bit, but with calculators on every phone and computer it isn't crucial. Whereas the important bits of maths (analytical thinking, the rigours of proof, reasoning, deduction etc.) are much harder to get a computer to help with, and are much harder to spot in oneself if not present.
It doesn't really matter if people can't remember how to do long division or multiplication by hand; what matters is that they find out/work out how to do so when needed. Given that, the OP's point does have some validity, and is not merely pedantic. That said, the title mentions "numeracy", not mathematics.
Of course, the real problem seems to be not that people cannot do maths (which, anecdotally, ime, they usually can when given encouragement and a few pointers), but that they're being taught to answer maths test questions, rather than understand the principles behind the problems; as such, it's easy to forget the specific methods, and hard to work them out later when needed. Sadly this seems to be a problem across much of the UK education system.
An oft forgotten fact about laws in the UK is that they are not absolute, indisputable edicts. Ultimately the courts decide on the scope of any law, and that is what case law and precedent is all about.
That kind of depends on who you asked. The government and Parliament like to think their laws are supreme and cannot be questioned (aside from within Parliament, or through a process set out in another law, i.e. the ECA or HRA). Judges sometimes have a different idea. In this case, though, an ASBO is a court order, so given by a judge (or magistrate). Reading the article it seems that TFL have just applied for it, but haven't been given it yet. Hopefully the judge will realise just how silly it is, but sadly I'm guessing there's no downside for TFL in applying for the strongest, toughest order they can.
Of course, this just goes to show how ASBOs are being abused (surely banning people from talking is... anti-social itself, and exploring isn't..?) and how we really need our courts to take a stand against the ludicrous abuses of power our executive get up to.
Of course. In the Google case they're accused of using their "Universal Search" feature to rank their own services (such as maps, shopping, news, video) higher than competition, by applying a different ranking criteria to it (hence the idea of "search neutrality"). The main counter arguments are that Google is free to rank sites by whatever criteria it likes, alternative search engines are just a click away, and Google should be able to rank its services higher as, presumably, it thinks they're better.
Then you have the various rebuttals to that, but having spent about 3 hours debating this with some of the people involved, I'm not sure that I can do all the various arguments justice here. I imagine that within a view years there will be a court judgment or two covering them anyway.
Multimap seems now to have been absorbed into Bing, so it's kind of a moot point. Following the above-mentioned meeting I did try a week without using Google search-related services, to see how the competition compared. Bing Maps had some nice features, but I'm now back to Google (partly due to streetview, partly due to the interface, partly due to Bing (and streepmap) failing the first search I tried...).
The moral of this? Nobody owes you a living.
As someone with socialist leanings, I'd dispute that, but... yes, I understand the principle that if company A relies on company B for their business, unless they have some contract, they can't really complain if company B doesn't do exactly what A wants. That said, there's then the issue of competition/anti-trust law, in this case abusing a dominant position in one market to drive out competition in another market. Whether that's (a) actually happening, and (b) unjustified is what various agencies, courts etc. are looking into at the moment.
Perhaps I should have added an "I am a law student, currently provide some legal services (for free) and aim to be a lawyer in a few years" disclaimer to that...
Many lawyers are aware of their image; and try to do as much free work as they can - unfortunately in many places the cost of being a lawyer is high enough to make that difficult.
I think you need to re-watch the The Next Generation pilot if you think sending lawyers and legalists to the moon would be a good idea. Once you take away those who understand and apply the law, you cease to have any practical law.
Unless, of course, you're going to create a comprehensive legal system whereby the layman can fully understand and apply it... but good luck with that.
The other thing you have to remember in situations like this is that lawyers don't make decisions (in theory), they just advise. It was the California legislature/executive that decided to go with this law, and then fight the challenge; either they received bad advice from their lawyers (about the legality of the law), in which case they should be suing the lawyers for negligence etc., or they ignored the advice, or they didn't seek it (in which case, you can't really blame the lawyers). Alternatively, the issue was close enough that it needed litigating just to find out what the answer was (sometimes that does happen). In that case, aside from placing tougher restrictions on what lawyers can charge (which is usually a good idea) and generally trying to drive down the cost of legal services, there's not much you can do.
And then there's Google Maps, but again there wasn't that much competition before they came along anyway, and Yahoo and Bing still have their maps products (in fact, Bing maps frequently do better than Google IME).
Some map companies, such as Streetmap or Multimap, would counter that point, arguing loudly that Google unfairly drove them out of business (or to a significantly lower level of business) by promoting Google Maps over their services via search, in breach of EU competition law.
At least, they did, a couple of weeks ago, at a meeting about "search neutrality" (Google* the term if you're interested...) in the UK Parliament last week (I happened to be there - it's not quite as insane as it sounds). That said, recent anecdotal experiments I performed indicated that in most ways Google does actually provide a better service (although I do like some things Bing maps does).
Google has caused quite a lot of problems for small businesses trying to "compete" with Google, particularly when Google has a "rival" service and promotes that via their search. That said, it remains to be seen whether or not Google has crossed the line into unjustifiable anti-competitive behaviour over this sort of thing (and the EC/CJEU, and US FTC etc. will likely be ruling on that soon). Not that MS is a strange to anti-competition lawsuits, iirc it's Windows Media Player-related one in the EU is still ongoing, with MS trying to get out of its >€1bn fine...
*See what I did there?
Yeah, in hindsight that dodgy ruler analogy wasn't all that good (although remember that the "dodginess" is still quantifiable, which is all that matters) - lower down I used a "running a mile" analogy that is much better. Do a search on this page either for my username/ID, or for "mile".
they still need to re-do the neutrino test, according to the last sentence of TFA; at the moment they have merely found out that "data" sent over the fiber-optic cable arrives 60ns earlier then assumed
Why to they need to re-do the test? Isn't the point of this not that their raw data was wrong, but the calculations they did based on that data were wrong? The data should still be fine, they just used a dodgy figure when turning their raw data into a speed calculation.
Kind of like measuring the time it takes someone to run a mile in order to calculate their average speed, getting puzzled as to how fast it was, then realising they only ran a kilometre - the raw time data is still accurate, you just need to use a different value when working out the speed.
Do they really need to re-run the experiment to conclude the cable is to blame? If you measure something with a ruler, find out it's Mmm long, then realise your ruler is out by Nmm, it's quite easy to deduce that the thing is actually (M+/-N)mm long, without needing to re-meausure. Of course, it can be useful to check it with a new ruler, particularly when it's quite an important measurement.
Additionally or alternatively, a 60ns discrepancy in the cable transmission stuff doesn't change their actual measurements/data, all it changes is the calculations based on that data. If they've made the same calculations, using the revised figure, (which, having not rtfa, I'll admit is an assumption) based on the original evidence, and get the "right" result, they don't really need to take a new set of measurements.
I think the Tories were keeping quiet when in opposition because they knew Labour were screwing up at every turn. And now Labour are keeping quiet because they don't have anything to say...
But yes, most people will vote based on what they think the parties stand for, not on actual performance. But in terms of the internal politics of parties, press coverage and point scoring seems to be very much the way to advance, or assert status within the parties.
As far as the general public go, iirc most people typically vote for the same party no matter what. If you look at general election election results since the 60s, neither the Tories nor Labour have dropped below 29% of the vote, so no matter how badly they do, they still get nearly a third of the population to support them. Then, with around 20% for the Liberals (+/- 3%, since the 1980s), that leaves about 20% of the vote left with which to win the election; i.e. 80% of the vote is pretty much fixed. You see a similar result with changes in the number of seats; the biggest swing in recent history was 200 seats to Labour in 1997, but the average is around 90 (something like 1 in 7, or 15% of seats).
That's a side effect of two-party/adversarial politics. The party in power only opposes stuff because they see it as their job to. If the current government proposed a law outlawing the mistreatment of kittens Labour would probably find an angle to argue against it. It's because party politics isn't about serving the people any more (if it ever was), it's about beating the other party at the next election, and that means scoring points wherever possible.
The only thing more depressing than a situation where one side opposes the exact same thing they supported when on the other side of the chamber, is when both sides agree on something, and it gets rushed through without any of the issues being examined.
But unalienable rights only apply to places where they exist and are enforced. I'm not a Saudi lawyer, but I imagine there is no law enforcing the freedom to change religions views (or practices, presumably, as views are hard to prove). There is, however, (from my understanding) a law that makes it illegal to convert away from Islam, with the maximum (possibly minimum) sentence of death.
So, now you have an individual who has arguably committed a serious offence in Country A, has fled to Country B. Country B, it seems, has a rather odd dual-legal system, with the main laws based on the English Common Law (including the concept of freedom of religion) but with Islamic law applying to Muslims. As such, if Country A can show the individual is a Muslim, one assumes apostasy will similarly be an offence in Country B; thus you have dual established (one of the foundations for a sensible extradition law) and the individual should be arrested and sent back to Country A for trial and, if found guilty, punishment. ... In legal theory.
In practice, this is a good (if tragic) example that demonstrates both the ineffective nature of "international law" and UN declarations, why capital punishment is a bad idea in principle (once you allow it for one thing, it can end up being extended elsewhere), and why one should never let religion anywhere near a legal or judicial system (not least because it allows for the possibility of a "highest" and "unanswerable" authority, which should not be permitted in any remotely-democratic civilisation).
For future reference, when fleeing a country due to its excessive laws etc., try to go to one that doesn't have similar ones.
Because it's bought and paid for, and his property. The question is, why should someone with low income but fully owned property NOT be allowed to live in it?
Because that's what tax is. It's about taking a bit of someone's fully owned property from them and giving it to the state, so that the state can invest it on large-scale projects, for the benefit of the broader population. Now, I know that some people think that this is unfair, and that the state should keep out of your life (or not even exist), but most places tend to have at least some form of taxation.
But it's not about *soldiers* agreeing on values, it's about the civilian population:
Presumably, the difference between the German's Blitz invasions, and the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour (which has an a in it, by the way; although technically not a u, but propriety forbids me from spelling harbour without it) is that the former were invasions to gain territory, whereas the latter was a hit-and-run attack to destroy military hardware.
Hit-and-run attacks are relatively straight-forward; you go in, you destroy stuff, you leave the enemy to clean up the mess. But with an invasion, you have to go in, destroy the enemy military, then stay. That means you have to expend the resources needed to clean up the mess and rebuild any infrastructure you've destroyed, while trying to keep the locals (that you've just subjugated, probably killing quite a few) under control, and preparing your forces to advance further.
The advantage the Germans had in France (according to the parent post) would be that a significant chunk of the locals supported the Germans, thus they could be left in charge of the clean-up, freeing the German military to push on. Contrast that with the occupation of the Channel Islands where, despite no organised resistance, up to 1 German soldier was required for every 2 locals, tying up a lot of man-power and resources for (tactically) insignificant land
It doesn't matter. Here is how the average idiot American (the people who end up on JURIES - which is fucking TERRIFYING) perceives something like this: "He's obviously guilty - otherwise the government wouldn't be looking into him."
Sadly I've had that argument used against me when discussing issues of detention without trial or charge (such as relating to this year's NDAA-thingamy, or a UK case a few years ago); the argument is something along the lines that it doesn't matter if the people 'arrested' don't get the right to a trial, or an opportunity to plead their case, because the government/state/police are only allowed to use the law on evil terrorists, so anyone picked up must be one - the government wouldn't arrest someone if they didn't know for sure.
I assume it is informative because it lays out the relevant laws, with some analysis of why or why not they might have been breached. At no point did I state whether or not his actions were a crime in the UK (although, obviously, the judge in this case held that they were, but possibly at a lower standard of proof than required in a full criminal trial). However, I do agree that there's a lot of misinformation going around suggesting that this absolutely wasn't criminal (some, I think, emanating from the defence team over the last few months). It's legality was always in question (with no precise precedent and unclear laws), and while the judge ruled one way today, that still isn't a definitive answer.
Oh, I appear to have missed a "this defence didn't apply" in between "vetted" and "Imho" - sorry for that.
That's s107 (2), which isn't in play here, but yes, "article" in that context hasn't been defined , which is why prosecutors in the UK have been able to use s107(1)(e) to go after non-commercial file-sharers before (despite s107(2A)(b) being added specifically for that purpose), claiming that an .mp3 file etc. is an "article". I don't have access to all my legalish resources at the moment, but I imagine that "article" in this context merely means "thing" - but I don't think s107(2) has ever been used against software specifically.
However, the CDPA is rather badly-written in some places and a real mess - much of it being written on behalf of the legacy publishers in the 80s, so it doesn't really know about computer stuff, and the rest has been cobbled together following subsequent lobbying and EU legislation. The UK really could do with a new Copyright Act, but hopefully we're currently at the high point in the scope of copyright, so it might be worth struggling on for a few more years until copyright law is a bit more reasonable.
That doesn't stop him arguing the facts, it just means the court won't listen. Which in some ways is where the crux of these extradition cases (O'Dwyr, McKinnon, even the Assange one to a degree) - there are no issues with getting a "fair trial" or humane treatment in the other country *in theory*, we just don't trust them in practice.
Again, this is the extradition hearing, not the actual trial. Magistrates' Courts are the venue for extradition hearings because they have the appropriate powers to deal with the issues (i.e. to issue arrest warrants, bail conditions) and as extradition requests are often mere formalities (ticking the right boxes) a full Crown Court trial is a bit wasteful.
The first citation will probably be somewhere in here - the full text of the Review of the UK's Extradition Arrangements. Unfortunately it's 488 pages long and even I have up after a few dozen pages, and I'm far too obsessed with this sort of thing as it is.
Under extradition law, I think "probably" is enough. Remember, this is just the extradition hearing, the actual trial will take place in the US (if he gets that far). In theory, the fact that the trial is in the US not the UK shouldn't make that much of a difference. That said, he can appeal this ruling before we get to that stage.
Nope - same goes for about 20 other countries, and then an even lower standard applies for EU countries. The theory is that the US authorities need to have sufficient evidence back in the US to get their arrest warrant (i.e. satisfying probable cause) that asking them to prove the same in the UK is redundant.
It's kind of like when flying, and taking a connection, not having to go through security twice; if the second flight trusts the first flight, they can assume that you've already been sufficiently checked.
It's worth keeping in mind that this decision was made in a Magistrates' Court. That is basically the lowest court in England... It sounds like this wasn't a typical case for such a court, but the implication is still that this is only the first step down a long road. I imagine there are several rounds of appeals to go through before the guy in question is in any danger of actually leaving British soil.
Extradition cases in England are always heard, by convention, in Westminster Magistrates' Court; they're in a Magistrates' Court because it's the appropriate level court, and in Westminster because that one has 'jurisdiction' over the government etc., so on that count, this is a typical case for the court, although it will rarely have to deal with copyright issues. However, you're right in that this will likely end up going through a few more courts before anything substantial happens.
But we can get criminals from America to the UK right? Err No.... Which retarded judges / laywers decided this was a good idea?
Traditionally, in the UK, it's *politicians* that write laws, lawyers and judges are then left with the mess of sorting them out. In any case, the Extradition Act 2003 is, in my opinion, being rather unfairly criticised by a lot of groups - it's not nearly as bad, or unusual, as it's made out to be. What's happened is that, in a couple of high-profile cases, there have been some abuses by the other country (usually the US), which should be sorted out by their legal system, but aren't being.
That said, I agree with what you said about getting decent politicians elected...