Even then there's incidental evidence - the person disappearing out of any context of having done something like that or shown a tendency to, leaving affairs unsorted so it's unlikely they're running away or committing suicide, motive on behalf of the accused, unusual behaviour patterns on behalf of the accused, etc. If I simply say "I killed Lord Lucan" - the fact that I made a confession and Lord Lucan is missing, whereabouts unknown, would not be enough to secure my conviction. Even in the absence of a body there is always other evidence.
I don't know which country you're from, but in most countries a case won't be prosecuted if there is insufficient evidence. A confession alone is not sufficient since it can be retracted, there'd have to be something else, even if the accompanying evidence was weak and the confession was the only strong evidence. Here in the UK the Crown Prosecution Service decides whether a case has sufficient weight to secure a conviction and if it doesn't, it never gets to court.
Well if the military did officially purchase one of the solutions it would mean a big cash injection and it might drive some interesting development which would filter through to consumer phones, so while it might not make a huge difference to your next phone purchase, it's likely it will still have some impact.
You seriously can't think of a good reason why you might not want to make your phone more bulky (not to mention heavier since you're effectively carrying two batteries) to carry and operate in battelfield situations? What do you gain by your solution as a trade off to just having a phone that takes the battery directly and doesn't have to carry a useless secondary battery around inside the device?
I'm not sure you'd be reducing the points of failure. So far as I know a USB battery still requires a working actual battery in the phone, so if your actual battery is faulty the USB battery is a waste of space. Then you either have to have a USB cable to attach it (introducing another point of failure) or if you can find a USB battery with a compatible connector that doesn't require a cable, you have to have a clunky battery stuck directly in the phone's USB port, bump it on something and you'll likely screw up the port, introducing yet another point of failure, and you gain nothing because you're still carrying around batteries. Seems spare phone batteries would still be a better option.
I'd even query the better battery management - my Desire doesn't seem any better or worse than my GF's 3GS, but the Desire is known as a battery hungry phone so that's no great recommendation, and there are plenty of Android phones that are much bettery in terms of battery life. The ability to micromanage the phone's resources to a finer degree than the iPhone would probably help here, too.
A charger is also going to be bulkier than a spare battery, so you either have to give it to one guy in the unit to carry and risk losing it if anything happens to him, or you give chargers to several soldiers and increase the weight of kit the unit is carrying unecessarily. The beauty of spare batteries, like spare rounds, is that everyone can carry one without adding much weight, and assuming everyone's using a compatible device you can get a replacement from anyone else in the unit, you're not putting your eggs in one basket.
You don't see the benefit of charging the device up during the night, when you don't want to draw attention to yourself with light or noise, so it's fully charged and ready to use for the next day, when you don't care so much about light and noise?
Totally agree - the sound is definitely 50% of the entire experience. I replayed the game a while ago on XBLA, I expected to be a bit disappointed but actually the sound (though low quality) was just as atmospheric and the gameplay just as twitchy and I found I could appreciate little nuances in the gameplay that I never noticed back then, having had a decade and a half more experience with other FPS games. The graphics are obviously hideously dated, but I'd forgot about that by about halfway through the second level (I was also surprised how much I remembered about hidden areas and surprise ambushes etc. from only two or three plays through all that time ago).
Even then our technology would bypass the evolutionary system - if heavy sleepers were being killed in their sleep we'd respond with better security systems. We're probably beyond the point of much natural evolution anymore (even disease and illness which we have not developed defences against tend to happen later in life after the genes have been passed on).
At first I read that as "Unisex Security Symposium" and wondered why they would have a technical symposium for only one gender.
I don't think unisex means what you think it means:
adj.
1. Designed for or suitable to both sexes: unisex clothing; unisex hairstyles.
2. Not distinguished or distinguishable on the basis of sex; androgynous in appearance: cultivated a unisex look.
n.
Elimination or absence of sexual distinctions, especially in dress.
That ignores all of the other benefits of email. It's greener than shipping paper around the country, it's convenient for people who work, it's inclusive for the elderly or less abled who actually might have physical difficulty getting to the post box. You can generally get an instant response to let you know your message got through, you might even get a real response in less than a day as opposed to several days for snail mail. It's easier to save and organise your correspondance, and you don't have to be physically at home to read any replies (useful if you've ever had to spend weeks away from home for work purposes, etc). Not to mention you put the minor annoying barrier of printing and posting your letter in place (and in doing so throw out all the previously discussed benefits), there's still no guarantee that the letter is worthwhile - the guy's hoping to decrease the quantity of the communication, he doesn't care about improving the quality, you may just as well say if you really cared about your message you'd take the time to learn caligraphy, or to carve it on rock, or to train a carrier pigeon.
So block those sites and send them a notice explaining that if the constituents want to email directly from their own accounts that is fine. That way you cut out spam from the sites but you don't stop people who really want to get in touch (and if the sites are responsible they will explain to users that they need to email the following address [...]). Seriously, if Parliament can't find a way to do something as common place as deal with spam, we're all in trouble.
I totally agree - considering we're all being told to be more green and that MPs are trying to push out widespread broadband it's totally counter-intuitive if they're then going to tell us not to send emails. I'd be surprised if the MP doesn't have a civil servant filtering out the dross anyway, if his workload is still too high maybe he chose the wrong vocation, most MPs would be happy to have constituents that are so engaged in the political process.
If there are too many constituent correspondences for the MP to handle, then either the MP is doing something wrong (if nobody else is complaining) or he has too many constituents in his seat and it should be broken up. The way to fix that is not to make constituents jump through hoops to put them off speaking to him, which seems to be what Mr Raabs is trying to do. I wonder what he'd do if he then started receiving the same volume of correspondences in writing (considering it's a lot more effort to open all those envelopes, not to mention the cost to pen, print and post the responses), maybe insist on carrier pigeon or some other obfuscated communication method? These MPs should be welcoming new communication channels and embracing every opportunity to engage with a usually apathetic populace.
Well firstly in the UK it's actually just over a "third" rather than a "quarter" to send the message first class (and if it's important or time sensitive you'll want to send it first class), and much more if you want it recorded to ensure it arrives. You then have to get an envelope, if you don't have a printer you need to find some way to print it out (add on the cost of the paper and printer ink), you have to take the time to go buy these items and then you then have to take more time out to go post your letter and again wait several days to see if you get a response (at least with an email you should get a pretty instant "Thanks for your email", with a letter it could be delayed, lost in the post or just filed in this guy's waste bin and you have no way of knowning). There are all kinds of reasons to send an email over a letter, cost is a minor one, convenience is a much bigger one, and then there are "green" considerations, paperless is much kinder to the environment. When we're meant to be aiming for "Broadband Britain" it seems this guy is actually going backwards. What's the point encouraging schemes to put broadband in the homes of every voter in the UK just to turn around and tell them not to use it for email?
I think the misleading term here is "abandon" - he's not actually saying abandon Earth, that's just the attention grabbing headline, he's just saying spread out over a few planets and we reduce the risk of humanity being wiped out if one of them dies (in other words, more along the lines you're suggesting).
If we live on multiple planets/moons/space stations, then any one disaster would have to be truly fantastic in scope (enormous gamma ray burst large enough to wipe out a large area of space) to take out all of us at the same time.
And now you've said that, sod's law says that if we ever do get off this planet that's exactly the kind of catastrophe we'll now encounter.
Slashdot Mirror
Even then there's incidental evidence - the person disappearing out of any context of having done something like that or shown a tendency to, leaving affairs unsorted so it's unlikely they're running away or committing suicide, motive on behalf of the accused, unusual behaviour patterns on behalf of the accused, etc. If I simply say "I killed Lord Lucan" - the fact that I made a confession and Lord Lucan is missing, whereabouts unknown, would not be enough to secure my conviction. Even in the absence of a body there is always other evidence.
I don't know which country you're from, but in most countries a case won't be prosecuted if there is insufficient evidence. A confession alone is not sufficient since it can be retracted, there'd have to be something else, even if the accompanying evidence was weak and the confession was the only strong evidence. Here in the UK the Crown Prosecution Service decides whether a case has sufficient weight to secure a conviction and if it doesn't, it never gets to court.
Well if the military did officially purchase one of the solutions it would mean a big cash injection and it might drive some interesting development which would filter through to consumer phones, so while it might not make a huge difference to your next phone purchase, it's likely it will still have some impact.
You seriously can't think of a good reason why you might not want to make your phone more bulky (not to mention heavier since you're effectively carrying two batteries) to carry and operate in battelfield situations? What do you gain by your solution as a trade off to just having a phone that takes the battery directly and doesn't have to carry a useless secondary battery around inside the device?
I'm not sure you'd be reducing the points of failure. So far as I know a USB battery still requires a working actual battery in the phone, so if your actual battery is faulty the USB battery is a waste of space. Then you either have to have a USB cable to attach it (introducing another point of failure) or if you can find a USB battery with a compatible connector that doesn't require a cable, you have to have a clunky battery stuck directly in the phone's USB port, bump it on something and you'll likely screw up the port, introducing yet another point of failure, and you gain nothing because you're still carrying around batteries. Seems spare phone batteries would still be a better option.
I'd even query the better battery management - my Desire doesn't seem any better or worse than my GF's 3GS, but the Desire is known as a battery hungry phone so that's no great recommendation, and there are plenty of Android phones that are much bettery in terms of battery life. The ability to micromanage the phone's resources to a finer degree than the iPhone would probably help here, too.
A charger is also going to be bulkier than a spare battery, so you either have to give it to one guy in the unit to carry and risk losing it if anything happens to him, or you give chargers to several soldiers and increase the weight of kit the unit is carrying unecessarily. The beauty of spare batteries, like spare rounds, is that everyone can carry one without adding much weight, and assuming everyone's using a compatible device you can get a replacement from anyone else in the unit, you're not putting your eggs in one basket.
You don't see the benefit of charging the device up during the night, when you don't want to draw attention to yourself with light or noise, so it's fully charged and ready to use for the next day, when you don't care so much about light and noise?
The start of the greedy re-label it and sell it again era? I remember said era being around way before then...
Totally agree - the sound is definitely 50% of the entire experience. I replayed the game a while ago on XBLA, I expected to be a bit disappointed but actually the sound (though low quality) was just as atmospheric and the gameplay just as twitchy and I found I could appreciate little nuances in the gameplay that I never noticed back then, having had a decade and a half more experience with other FPS games. The graphics are obviously hideously dated, but I'd forgot about that by about halfway through the second level (I was also surprised how much I remembered about hidden areas and surprise ambushes etc. from only two or three plays through all that time ago).
It's probably also a good way to get punched in the face by someone who is in a deep sleep and is suddenly electro-shocked awake.
Even then our technology would bypass the evolutionary system - if heavy sleepers were being killed in their sleep we'd respond with better security systems. We're probably beyond the point of much natural evolution anymore (even disease and illness which we have not developed defences against tend to happen later in life after the genes have been passed on).
how much would you pay a month to see no ads on any website?
Nothing?
And no doubt you expect it to 'lead' by eliminating the pesky 'free' part, just as China does.
Well, signing up to initiatives like Kyoto would at least be a start.
At first I read that as "Unisex Security Symposium" and wondered why they would have a technical symposium for only one gender.
I don't think unisex means what you think it means:
adj.
1. Designed for or suitable to both sexes: unisex clothing; unisex hairstyles.
2. Not distinguished or distinguishable on the basis of sex; androgynous in appearance: cultivated a unisex look.
n.
Elimination or absence of sexual distinctions, especially in dress.
Conversely, it's easier for someone up to no good to throw on fake plates than it is for them to switch out all their tyres or spoof the tags.
That ignores all of the other benefits of email. It's greener than shipping paper around the country, it's convenient for people who work, it's inclusive for the elderly or less abled who actually might have physical difficulty getting to the post box. You can generally get an instant response to let you know your message got through, you might even get a real response in less than a day as opposed to several days for snail mail. It's easier to save and organise your correspondance, and you don't have to be physically at home to read any replies (useful if you've ever had to spend weeks away from home for work purposes, etc). Not to mention you put the minor annoying barrier of printing and posting your letter in place (and in doing so throw out all the previously discussed benefits), there's still no guarantee that the letter is worthwhile - the guy's hoping to decrease the quantity of the communication, he doesn't care about improving the quality, you may just as well say if you really cared about your message you'd take the time to learn caligraphy, or to carve it on rock, or to train a carrier pigeon.
So block those sites and send them a notice explaining that if the constituents want to email directly from their own accounts that is fine. That way you cut out spam from the sites but you don't stop people who really want to get in touch (and if the sites are responsible they will explain to users that they need to email the following address [...]). Seriously, if Parliament can't find a way to do something as common place as deal with spam, we're all in trouble.
I totally agree - considering we're all being told to be more green and that MPs are trying to push out widespread broadband it's totally counter-intuitive if they're then going to tell us not to send emails. I'd be surprised if the MP doesn't have a civil servant filtering out the dross anyway, if his workload is still too high maybe he chose the wrong vocation, most MPs would be happy to have constituents that are so engaged in the political process.
If there are too many constituent correspondences for the MP to handle, then either the MP is doing something wrong (if nobody else is complaining) or he has too many constituents in his seat and it should be broken up. The way to fix that is not to make constituents jump through hoops to put them off speaking to him, which seems to be what Mr Raabs is trying to do. I wonder what he'd do if he then started receiving the same volume of correspondences in writing (considering it's a lot more effort to open all those envelopes, not to mention the cost to pen, print and post the responses), maybe insist on carrier pigeon or some other obfuscated communication method? These MPs should be welcoming new communication channels and embracing every opportunity to engage with a usually apathetic populace.
Well firstly in the UK it's actually just over a "third" rather than a "quarter" to send the message first class (and if it's important or time sensitive you'll want to send it first class), and much more if you want it recorded to ensure it arrives. You then have to get an envelope, if you don't have a printer you need to find some way to print it out (add on the cost of the paper and printer ink), you have to take the time to go buy these items and then you then have to take more time out to go post your letter and again wait several days to see if you get a response (at least with an email you should get a pretty instant "Thanks for your email", with a letter it could be delayed, lost in the post or just filed in this guy's waste bin and you have no way of knowning). There are all kinds of reasons to send an email over a letter, cost is a minor one, convenience is a much bigger one, and then there are "green" considerations, paperless is much kinder to the environment. When we're meant to be aiming for "Broadband Britain" it seems this guy is actually going backwards. What's the point encouraging schemes to put broadband in the homes of every voter in the UK just to turn around and tell them not to use it for email?
I think the misleading term here is "abandon" - he's not actually saying abandon Earth, that's just the attention grabbing headline, he's just saying spread out over a few planets and we reduce the risk of humanity being wiped out if one of them dies (in other words, more along the lines you're suggesting).
How would that shield us from a planet-wide extinction level asteroid impact? You're taking the term "use some protection" far too literally.
We've had workable space travel for half a century. What we're lacking is cheap workable space travel.
If we live on multiple planets/moons/space stations, then any one disaster would have to be truly fantastic in scope (enormous gamma ray burst large enough to wipe out a large area of space) to take out all of us at the same time.
And now you've said that, sod's law says that if we ever do get off this planet that's exactly the kind of catastrophe we'll now encounter.