twistedmentat 's Techdirt Comments

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  • On the post: Guy In Australia Pleads Guilty To Criminal Trolling On Facebook, Faces 3 Years In Jail

    twistedmentat ( profile ), 22 Jun, 2016 @ 12:39pm

    There's a pretty big difference between calling someone an idiot and using sexually violent language to intimidate and pressure someone to be quiet.

    As with most good laws the serious offense statement leaves room to move as society changes without having to micromanage the legislation. Serious offense is also likely defined by existing case law. Could it be abused? Of course. That's always a risk with any legislation.

    And it's pretty damn unreasonable to imply that they'll be getting 3 years for this. Unless this person has a history of convictions like this they are likely to get a fraction of that if any prison time at all. Especially if it is a first offense. Australia is not the stupid US when it comes to this stuff.

  • On the post: Caught With A DUI In New Jersey? You Can Now Blame The Bar That Served You

    twistedmentat ( profile ), 21 Jun, 2011 @ 04:59pm

    It's already illegal in NZ

    Down here in New Zealand it is illegal for a licensed premise to serve alcohol to anyone that is intoxicated. Whether they're driving home or not.

    As we also have a UHC and ACC the only thing the licensed premise has to worry about are bad press, massive fines, and losing their license.

  • On the post: Oops: Dropbox Left All User Accounts Wide Open For Four Hours This Weekend

    twistedmentat ( profile ), 21 Jun, 2011 @ 04:01am

    How about TrueCrypt

    One thing you can do is put an encrypted volume up as a file and then wherever you go use something like TrueCrypt to access it. Thus if someone gets access to the cloud storage they can't get easily access to the data.

    In the long term what these companies need to do is tie the password into some decent encryption so you cannot access the data without having the password. Like how LastPass does things.

  • On the post: New Zealand Uses Earthquake As An Excuse To Sneak 3 Strikes Law Through

    twistedmentat ( profile ), 13 Apr, 2011 @ 01:22pm

    It wasn't attached to other legislation.

    Just wanted to give out a quick correction.

    When parliament went into urgency yesterday the Section 92A legislation was put on the docket as a seperate piece of legislation. The only connection it had with the shit earthquake legislation is that they were both put through under urgency.

    Otherwise they were entirely seperate pieces of legislation. For example the S92A bill could have not passed while the Earthquake bill did.

    And to understand exactly what parliament sitting under urgency is the NZ Parliament site has a page describing it. http://www.parliament.nz/en-NZ/Features/8/f/a/00NZPHomeNews170220091-What-is-urgency.htm

  • On the post: Study Suggests Placebos Don't Have To Be Secret To Work

    twistedmentat ( profile ), 27 Dec, 2010 @ 12:56pm

    Science Based Medicine Writeup

    The folks at the Science Based Medicine website did a great review and writeup of this study.

    Unlike what the more general media has been reporting it looks like the study showed a very minor improvement and despite the authors saying they gave them participants labeled placebos they couched it in language clearly implying they were magical. And the study was done by a group that spends its time looking at fake medicine.

    This of course throws the small improvement into more doubt. If you want to read the full article it's here. Placebo effects without deception? Well, not exactly?

    So there could be something interesting but its still very much in the early stages of any research. I know I'll still be listening to the GP and Pharmacist when I need some proper medical help. :)

  • On the post: People Will Pay For VoIP Because It's In A Game?

    twistedmentat ( profile ), 22 May, 2009 @ 04:37am

    CCP tried something like this

    CCP, the developers of the MMO EvE Online, tried a similar thing when integrating VOIP into the game. At first it was a pay system but after so few people used it they decided to just throw it into the game as included as part of the subscription.

    It was also difficult as most corps and alliances had and still have their own Vent or TS servers and still don't use the ingame VOIP capabilities.

  • On the post: Maryland Ramps Up Traffic Cameras… But For Safety Or Revenue?

    twistedmentat ( profile ), 07 Apr, 2009 @ 04:10am

    How about people follow the rules?

    Unless the municipalities are putting the speed cameras in places right before changes in the speed limit why is it such an alien concept that people folllow the road rules? Same with red light cameras, which I don't think are as popular down here in NZ as they are up MD and US way in general.

    The cops down here when people coplain about speeding tickets pretty much say slow down. Though to their credit I've never seen speed cameras in stupid places like 20m before a change in the speed limit.