Posts by EngineersAnon

What about Apple's rights?

I don't think he should have been unable to publish this, and he wasn't. But surely Apple has the right not to sell material which they deem inappropriate?

If this were a story of a shopkeeper being forced to sell material he considered offensive to his faith, for example, who would you condemn?

Yes, I don't use Apple products (beyond iTunes to store/organize/play my music), both because of the price point and the lack of openness, but that lack of openness is Apple's choice, just as I have the choice not to give them my business. But people who do choose to buy Apple devices should not then complain about the fact that they're limited to Apple-approved apps and content in Apple's stores. And it's not like one can't just download Kindle for iOS and buy the book there.

I seem to recall...

Hearing about a study which claimed that, once the production, transportation, and preparation of the food required to account for the increased caloric expenditure was taken into account, there was a smaller carbon footprint to travel by automobile than by foot. Unfortunately, I cannot remember any of the details.

Of course, CO2 is one of the "pollutants" human civilization cannot possibly eliminate; the others being H2O, heat, and various trace components of our excreta. Doesn't make the CO2 portion of this guy's argument any stronger. On the other hand, though, why *SHOULD* bicyclists be exempt from paying for road maintenance. Sure, per vehicle-mile they put *less* wear on the road than automobiles, but they certainly contribute some. And, depending on the road's layout and the individual cyclist's habits, they can be far more disruptive to traffic flow than a similar number of automobiles.

"all sorts of emergency personnel who need to be tracked with an accuracy in centimetres"

Why on Earth would anybody need to track emergency personnel with an accuracy in cm? The only possibility I can think of is for SAR on fire/rescue personnel, in the event of a building collapse - but that's even money to put the rescuee in a Faraday cage, negating tracking signals.

This is why...

The burden of proof should always be on the plaintiff. The solicitors in question were not required to demonstrate that a single claim against them was false. And if the "personal information" was the name and professional information of an officer of the court, your data protection laws need as much overhaul as your libel laws.

And now...

The only remaining question is how much damages the editor will receive from the state. Given that all the equipment he uses for work at home was confiscated on the basis of a warrant to investigate a prima facie bum charge, I expect at least six figures.