Posts by Stephen R
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Hard News: Sick with Anger, in reply to Mark Easterbrook,
The second story...well. I have a creek, and a 4 year old on the spectrum. One is drawn to the other like a magnet. He likes throwing rocks in it, or paddling across it and climbing up the bank on the other side.
I'm not Aspergers, but when I was five we used to spend days at a time playing in and around the creek down the back of the gulley. It was normal, it was fun, and as long as we were home by tea-time, it was all good.
Sometimes I wonder if we're doing the kids today out of a childhood of adventure and exploration, in the hopes of stopping one or two of them having a bad accident.
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Thanks for this Hadyn, I appreciate it a lot.
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OnPoint: The Big Guns: Truecrypt and Tails, in reply to BenWilson,
a file stored in an anonymous internet storage area, etc.
Assuming that the government is interested in you, if you upload the file from your home network, they probably know exactly where you stored the file. If you upload it from an internet cafe using a laptop that you use for other purposes, and you say, check your gmail from the same internet cafe using the same laptop, then they can probably find out where you stored the file.
When David Petraeus was caught, it was because his lover checked her personal email from the same cafe wireless network that she'd checked their shared gmail account, and the FBI(?) checked all the places that that machine had browsed to, and identified her that way.
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Cracker: Lundy and Me., in reply to Matthew Poole,
The Bain, Watson and Lundy cases were considered flaky as the cell doors closed
I'd throw the Peter Ellis (Christchurch Creche) case in with that lot too.
That was very disquieting, and I knew a lot more about it than the three you list. -
At the time of the Murder I owned a phone which kindly told me which cell-tower I was connected to at any particular time. I lived 30 minutes drive from Petone, but was regularly connected to the Lower Hutt cell tower. Thus the whole "his phone was connected to this cell tower" argument was less convincing to me. It's why I was willing to give the prosecution some leeway on the driving time issues.
I'd also suggest that different people have different reactions to grief and stress. Lets say Lundy didn't do it, and his grief reaction was essentially to lock down all external emotion. Let's also posit that he's smart enough to figure out that he's being looked at seriously as a suspect, and that he thinks his own reaction looks bad. Trying not to look guilty, he tries to act the grief out the way he thinks people expect, and is a terrible actor.
To me, it isn't proof of guilt.
I agree the brain matter evidence was presented as pretty conclusive, although the North and South article casts a fair bit of doubt on the validity of it.
The judge said that if the timing of the deaths wasn't 7pm, or thereabouts, then the case fell over. What was Lundy supposedly up to at 1am to prevent him doing it late at night instead of early in the evening?
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Hard News: Thursday Music: Doing the Business, in reply to Simon Sjorn,
As the marketing machine spins up around Ender's Game, what do think are the odds of anyone getting media time in the US to talk about the rather fraught and complex cultural politics of this appropriation of ta moko. (For the record: I'm profoundly uncomfortable with it, but there's no right answer from the Maori Borg.)
In the book, Mazer Rackham is supposed to be from New Zealand (of Maori descent if memory serves) and obviously, the way to show that is...
Does that count as appropriation if the character is supposed to be Maori?
Of course, they could always have chosen a Maori actor, rather than Ben Kingsley.
It seemed all so lazy to me.
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OnPoint: The Big Guns: Truecrypt and Tails, in reply to Bill Brown,
So, if the cops are knocking at my door, and I do that - what's their recourse?
What the cops do then is say that your actions are evidence that you were up to no good, probably something criminal, and therefore they should be able to confiscate all your stuff under the proceeds of crime act, (which Labour proposed and National passed when they got in) which does not require conviction on a criminal charge, merely convincing [a judge?/ a jury?] that on the balance of probability, you were doing something naughty, and that although they can't prove what it was, it was probably for making money, and therefore they want your house/car/goldfish as proceeds of a crime.
Basically, it's very difficult to beat the Government at a game where they can change the rules if they want to.
I had a long conversation with Annette King (Then minister of police) about the proceeds of crime bill, and she was very keen on people "we know are bad people" being punished by having their toys taken away. It's part of why I stopped voting Labour. My counter-claim that if they couldn't get a conviction then they didn't actually "know" and therefore that such an approach was unsafe was met with a response of "but there are people we really know are bad, trust us".
On the other hand, I am very grateful to both Annette King and the Labour government of the time that I could stand on a street corner and have a spirited conversation about such topics with the minister of police (or at least, my local MP) where she actually engaged with my argument, without a coterie of bodyguards / flak-catchers to interfere. I don't think the same could be said of Anne Tolley, although she's not my local MP, so I can't be sure.
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Hard News: No Red Wedding, in reply to Paul Williams,
I wonder if he will none the less retain his spot?
That's what I was thinking when I listened to it too.
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I loathe and despise paying by bank account unless there's no other choice. The bank doesn't need to know what I spend my money on.
The look on Kieth Ng's face when a complete stranger handed him some folded cash was satisfying (and the lady sitting next to him went, "Oh, I've been meaning to do that" and handed him some more).
But it's been a while since I saw you in the flesh, so that's less of a plan.
Contribution away.
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Hard News: No Red Wedding, in reply to Russell Brown,
Matthew Hooton basically lost the plot – and had to be brilliantly put in his place by Kathryn Ryan – on Nine to Noon last week, repeatedly accusing Cunliffe of lying about his background
RadioNZ published an apology this morning on 9 to noon.
http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/ninetonoon/audio/2570658/statement-regarding-politics-segment