For people living there, is anything of this true?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tx_LbxfEYTk

  (And I would prefer answers that are not of the kind "it's not true because
I can't believe it's true", but instead answers that are based on knowledge
and facts.)

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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And lo On Tue, 25 Jan 2011 15:48:29 -0000, Warp <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> did  
spake thusly:

>   For people living there, is anything of this true?
>
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tx_LbxfEYTk
>
>   (And I would prefer answers that are not of the kind "it's not true  
> because
> I can't believe it's true", but instead answers that are based on  
> knowledge
> and facts.)

The Eavesdropping part - no audio, but video is not a problem so you can  
film whoever you like so long as you turn the microphone off.
Cops not obliged to protect you - Of course if you look at it logically.  
The purpose of the police is to enforce the law, the protection part  
simply falls under that. So if a cop sees someone come at you with a knife  
they're going to stop that person - not to protect you but because trying  
to stab someone is an offence.

-- 
Phil Cook

--
I once tried to be apathetic, but I just couldn't be bothered
http://flipc.blogspot.com

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Phil Cook v2 <phi### [at] nospamrocainfreeservecouk> wrote:
> Cops not obliged to protect you - Of course if you look at it logically.  
> The purpose of the police is to enforce the law, the protection part  
> simply falls under that. So if a cop sees someone come at you with a knife  
> they're going to stop that person - not to protect you but because trying  
> to stab someone is an offence.

  The example in the video was more drastic, though: The police couldn't
be bothered to investigate an ongoing kidnapping.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Warp wrote:
>   For people living there, is anything of this true?
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tx_LbxfEYTk

Eavesdropping laws basically are usually reasonable. They only apply (in 
theory) when you're in private. So if she was in, for example, the 
investigator's office, then yes, she's eavesdropping.  But if he filmed the 
cops arresting him on the street with random individuals walking past, 
you're not eavesdropping. Note that the eavesdropping laws were mostly 
passed when telephones were getting popular, making it illegal to record a 
private conversation unless one (or both) of the participants knows it's 
being recorded.

States are passing laws making it illegal to film arrests, regardless of 
whether it's "eavesdropping". Illinois is extra bad in this respect right 
now. Most of the other states are trying to use wire-tapping laws to keep 
you from filming police, but it turns out it's not working.

And yes, the Supreme Court decided that police are not obligated to enforce 
laws. Which makes sense in the abstract, because otherwise every crime where 
the police were too late to stop it would wind up in court.

But this sort of tendency was exactly what I was talking about when I asked 
if you think your government is taking care of business. If this happened in 
your country, would you be shocked and outraged? Or would you just say 
"Well, of course the police aren't on your side."

She probably would have been better off with a civil suit, where her lawyer 
would just say "It's his word against yours, and you're going to lose, so 
just forget it."

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
  "How did he die?"   "He got shot in the hand."
     "That was fatal?"
          "He was holding a live grenade at the time."

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Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> But this sort of tendency was exactly what I was talking about when I asked 
> if you think your government is taking care of business. If this happened in 
> your country, would you be shocked and outraged? Or would you just say 
> "Well, of course the police aren't on your side."

  I have not heard any relevant horror stories about the Finnish police,
and overall they seem to be quite ok, competent and on people's side.
Any dubious police activity most often happens because they don't have
any choice as it's the lawmakers who force them to act, rather than it
being caused by the policemen themselves being a**holes. (In fact, police
officials sometimes publicly comment on laws they don't find very pleasant
because of many reasons, the least of them not being that they needlessly
take valuable resources away from solving more serious crimes. For example,
the police has to spend significant amount of resources to enforce the
stupid and draconian copyright laws, and these resources are away from
solving more serious crimes such as rapes, homicides, robberies and
violence.)

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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On 1/25/2011 8:48 AM, Warp wrote:
>    For people living there, is anything of this true?
>
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tx_LbxfEYTk
>
>    (And I would prefer answers that are not of the kind "it's not true because
> I can't believe it's true", but instead answers that are based on knowledge
> and facts.)
>
Was a court case recently where people died, and others raped. The 
conclusion reached by the courts was that, "Cops have no obligation to 
timely defense of people in their own homes.", or some similar idiocy. 
Guess we need to change all the damn cars to say "To serve and eat 
donuts", though, that might even confuse a few of them, who would show 
up trying to sell you donuts door to door, or something...

-- 
void main () {

     if version = "Vista" {
       call slow_by_half();
       call DRM_everything();
     }
     call functional_code();
   }
   else
     call crash_windows();
}

<A HREF='http://www.daz3d.com/index.php?refid=16130551'>Get 3D Models, 
3D Content, and 3D Software at DAZ3D!</A>

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Patrick Elliott wrote:
> "Cops have no obligation to timely defense of people in their own homes.", or some
similar idiocy. 

Unfortunately, when you actually look at the actual reality of things, this 
makes perfect sense.  Most people who get outraged over things like this (or 
who propose, for example, a cap on incomes or similar nonsense) don't stop 
and think that the rule has to apply to cases other than the one they're 
specifically considering at the moment.

Like Joel Spolsky bitching about the power menu 
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2006/11/21.html and ignoring the fact 
that not everyone is running a laptop with a lid that can be closed, or who 
might get on a plane and need to actually turn it off all the way, or might 
be connected to a computer in a different country and need to reboot it 
without turning it off, or ....

(That, incidentally, was the post that taught me Mr Spolsky is a dipshit in 
many ways.)

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
  "How did he die?"   "He got shot in the hand."
     "That was fatal?"
          "He was holding a live grenade at the time."

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On 26-1-2011 6:33, Darren New wrote:
> Patrick Elliott wrote:
>> "Cops have no obligation to timely defense of people in their own
>> homes.", or some similar idiocy.
>
> Unfortunately, when you actually look at the actual reality of things,
> this makes perfect sense. Most people who get outraged over things like
> this (or who propose, for example, a cap on incomes or similar nonsense)
> don't stop and think that the rule has to apply to cases other than the
> one they're specifically considering at the moment.
>
> Like Joel Spolsky bitching about the power menu
> http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2006/11/21.html and ignoring the
> fact that not everyone is running a laptop with a lid that can be
> closed, or who might get on a plane and need to actually turn it off all
> the way, or might be connected to a computer in a different country and
> need to reboot it without turning it off, or ....

I am not sure I agree with you on this one. On most computers there is 
one way I normally turn it 'off'. That is the one that should be easily 
accessible, both as an icon and as button. For the special cases I'd be 
happy with a big GUI.
One that asks If I want power down completely or keep everything in RAM 
so I can reboot fast. I mean explain what the various option mean other 
than just the sleep/hibernate/whatever labels for the options that I 
normally don't use. And on the bottom line apply/cancel/use this in the 
future. That should also solve the problem of accidentally selecting the 
wrong option and going through a five minute hibernate/reboot cycle to 
select the right one.
BTW the Dutch translation for hibernate in this context is sluimer which 
means slumber. That sounds less asleep to me than just sleep. 
Restricting a complicated concept to one word may cause confusion when 
using a machine set in a different language.

In short, I agree that this interface is stupid, but that I would have 
simplified it in a different way. And so would you ;)  Perhaps this was 
the compromise the design team could finally agree on.

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andrel wrote:
> I am not sure I agree with you on this one. On most computers there is 
> one way I normally turn it 'off'. That is the one that should be easily 
> accessible, both as an icon and as button. For the special cases I'd be 
> happy with a big GUI.

And Windows has that. Joel is bitching that it duplicates what's on the 
menu.  He even talks about it having multiple icons in addition to the menu 
and how stupid that is.

> One that asks If I want power down completely or keep everything in RAM 
> so I can reboot fast. I mean explain what the various option mean other 
> than just the sleep/hibernate/whatever labels for the options that I 
> normally don't use. And on the bottom line apply/cancel/use this in the 
> future. That should also solve the problem of accidentally selecting the 
> wrong option and going through a five minute hibernate/reboot cycle to 
> select the right one.

That's precisely what Windows does. It doesn't have the "use this in the 
future." You go to the control panel to set that and the actions of the 
buttons. Giving you the choice of selecting what you want it to do is what 
Joel is complaining about.

> In short, I agree that this interface is stupid, but that I would have 
> simplified it in a different way. And so would you ;)  Perhaps this was 
> the compromise the design team could finally agree on.

I don't think the interface is stupid at all. Certainly I don't think 
there's any option there you can simply remove, except maybe "lock" vs 
"switch user", altho I can see someone in a shared-computer environment 
distinguishing those two: "lock" being "I'm in the can", with "switch user" 
being "I'm at lunch."  (For mac users, the difference between "lock" and 
"switch user" is whether you get back to the "login name" prompt or the 
"password" prompt, either of which can trivially take you to the other.)

In particular, I pick each of "log off", "restart", "sleep", "suspend" 
(which isn't even on the menu), or "shut down" at least once a week for 
each. The idea that you could eliminate those from the interface simply 
because Joel can eliminate those from *his* laptop is absurd.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
  "How did he die?"   "He got shot in the hand."
     "That was fatal?"
          "He was holding a live grenade at the time."

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On 26-1-2011 17:57, Darren New wrote:
> andrel wrote:
>> I am not sure I agree with you on this one. On most computers there is
>> one way I normally turn it 'off'. That is the one that should be
>> easily accessible, both as an icon and as button. For the special
>> cases I'd be happy with a big GUI.
>
> And Windows has that. Joel is bitching that it duplicates what's on the
> menu. He even talks about it having multiple icons in addition to the
> menu and how stupid that is.
>
>> One that asks If I want power down completely or keep everything in
>> RAM so I can reboot fast. I mean explain what the various option mean
>> other than just the sleep/hibernate/whatever labels for the options
>> that I normally don't use. And on the bottom line apply/cancel/use
>> this in the future. That should also solve the problem of accidentally
>> selecting the wrong option and going through a five minute
>> hibernate/reboot cycle to select the right one.
>
> That's precisely what Windows does.

On mine it doesn't. (I have a XP64 machine).
To be clear what I would has preferred for myself and the poor souls 
that I have to explain what is there now is:
One icon (ok perhaps two with one the equivalent of lock, windows-L) 
that I can press when I leave the machine. Right clicking brings up a 
GUI that let's me configure this and the physical power button. With 
explained options. Default should be that both act the same, but for 
knowledgeble people you might override that. I don't want a pull down 
for selection. And I definitely don't want options labelled 
sleep/suspend/hibernate.
I think that indeed some configuration is possible in the configuration 
panels (I vaguely remember doing doing just that on my laptop), but a 
quick glance there did not ring a bell. Yet another place where there is 
too much choice. Aggravated by various 3rd party programs putting things 
in there.

> It doesn't have the "use this in the
> future." You go to the control panel to set that and the actions of the
> buttons. Giving you the choice of selecting what you want it to do is
> what Joel is complaining about.
>
>> In short, I agree that this interface is stupid, but that I would have
>> simplified it in a different way. And so would you ;) Perhaps this was
>> the compromise the design team could finally agree on.
>
> I don't think the interface is stupid at all. Certainly I don't think
> there's any option there you can simply remove, except maybe "lock" vs
> "switch user", altho I can see someone in a shared-computer environment
> distinguishing those two: "lock" being "I'm in the can",

What can would that be?

>  with "switch
> user" being "I'm at lunch." (For mac users, the difference between
> "lock" and "switch user" is whether you get back to the "login name"
> prompt or the "password" prompt, either of which can trivially take you
> to the other.)

I hope it is the other way around (or a Chiasmus) . Or I would be 
confused again.

> In particular, I pick each of "log off", "restart", "sleep", "suspend"
> (which isn't even on the menu), or "shut down" at least once a week for
> each. The idea that you could eliminate those from the interface simply
> because Joel can eliminate those from *his* laptop is absurd.

I think he is mainly complaining that there is too much choice visible 
for the average use. It is OK for those that understand the differences. 
'Even' I am always confused between a couple, having to handle 
inconsistent translations on different machine does not make it easier.

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