Posts by Thomas Lumley
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Some sort of definition or interpretation of unauthorised access based on circumventing security seems like it would be useful. If you use someone else's password without their permission to log in to their gmail account, that's unauthorised access even if you also have a gmail account. If your computer was set up so that playing solitaire required an administrator password, then using your boss's password would be unauthorised access.
I say definition or interpretation because I don't know if this is something that would need a law change or whether the courts could do it.
This still wouldn't make clear whether it was an offence to access files that were open on the Labour Party server but without links, and where access was fairly obviously not intended. It's similar to the situation when Keith Ng (inscrutable hacker and master of disguise) showed the WINZ documents were accessible on their kiosk systems. Personally, I'd prefer that not to be illegal, but I don't think it would be as indefensible as your solitaire example.
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PS: I think enactogenic should be entactogenic in the quote from Paul Quigley.
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In the Matters of Substance feature you quote Quigley as having "little time for the argument that nothing can be approved without animal testing."
For drugs where there's already a lot of acute-toxicity information from human use, such as MDMA or cannabis or LSD I'd agree. Reasonable people can argue over whether LSD is safe enough for general sale to adults or not, but animal data isn't going to help settle the issue, and animal data won't help with anything beyond acute toxicity.
For new molecules, though, I'd be worried about not having animal testing, for two reasons. The first is the overdose profile: moderate overdoses are going to be fairly common, and it's important how their risks compare to 'recommended' doses. That seems to be the main problem with both the synthetic cannabi{noid,mimetic}s and the NBOMe hallucinogens.
The second issue is teratogenic effects. I assume this was part of the NZ shutdown (given the confusion about the taxonomic status of rabbits), since that's the main reason for testing on rabbits in addition to rats/mice. Early effects are especially relevant, since some users of these new substances will be pregnant but not know it yet.
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Why does Rangitoto never look red?
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I see that the current law doesn’t cover non-citizen residents of New Zealand unless they are stateless. Is the rationale that NZ can simply refuse to let them back in (or deport them), so they are Someone Else’s Problem?
(added later: I see the Mercenary Offenses Act has broader extraterritorial provisions)
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Visiting the Sun Yat-Sen Memorial Garden in Vancover this week
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Hard News: Decidedly Undecided, in reply to Russell Brown,
But he does have a point (which he expressed on the show) that polls also play a hugely valuable role in establishing what the public really thinks on controversial issues.
If an issue is already controversial, this is much more valuable than a petition -- it's really hard to get a few percent of the population to sign a petition, but it's much easier to sample people and ask their opinion. Binding petitions and referenda make sense in principle (if not necessarily in practice), but I think we'd be much better off replacing non-binding self-selected opinion samples by proper surveys.
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And I was able to tell the world that Maori Television’s news and current affairs division is poised to become a player this year. It will be polling all seven Maori electorates, at least two of which (Te Tai Tokerau and Waiariki) may be critical at a national level.
That's great! Does anyone know what plans there are to poll Epsom and wherever Colin Craig is standing?
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Hard News: Decidedly Undecided, in reply to Ianmac,
That's one possibility, but we simply don't know -- at least, not based on the published polls. It could be that all the net new undecideds will go back to voting Labour (in which case the increase in National's vote will disappear) or it could be that they will not vote (in which case the increase won't disappear) or it could be that they will vote for someone else when it comes to it. Or any mixture.
If the increase in undecideds is new and matters (and it probably is and does), that means we don't have any historical data to decide what they will do at the election. Simple cross-sectional samples won't answer that sort of question. You'd need more detailed interviews -- qualitative research, as well as quantitative.
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It's true that the Coroner didn't rely on any evidence in making his recommendation (as usual). It's not true that there isn't any evidence
A brief search on Pubmed finds:
1. Visibility aids for pedestrians and cyclists: a systematic review of randomised controlled trials2. A Cochrane Review Interventions for increasing pedestrian and cyclist visibility for the prevention of death and injuries.
3. Conspicuity and bicycle crashes: preliminary findings of the Taupo Bicycle Study.
and relevant if not precisely on point
4 High visibility safety apparel and nighttime conspicuity of pedestrians in work zones.Putting these together, there's pretty good evidence that high-visibility clothing really does make you more likely to be seen.
The observational evidence on actual injuries from the Taupo Bicycle Study is supportive of quite a large benefit, though there are possible biases. The two most obvious (to me) biases are in opposite directions. Firstly, people who ride in more dangerous conditions may be more likely to wear hi-vis clothing (which would lead the study to underestimate the benefit). Secondly, people who wear hi-vis clothing may be more cautious/paranoid/realistic and so have a low crash rate for that reason, which would lead the study to overestimate the benefit).
