Posts by Rich of Observationz
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Attlee was elected immediately after WW2, with the UK finances in dire straits. He managed to create the NHS, a free education system, nationalise coal and railways, implement social security and build houses for the many who’d lost them in WW2 bombing. He did this mostly by taxing the rich - when you go to the UK and get to visit stately homes now belonging to the National Trust, that's why - the government took the money from the people who lived in Downton Abbey style houses and gave it to the ordinary people. That is the answer to people who say such things are impossible in today's (much richer) world.
That’s what I call a successful left wing leader (the problem they had was an excessive authoritarianism – they didn’t give ordinary people any more control over their employers, suppliers and institutions than private ownership had).
All Blair did was to remove from UK voters the ability to choose between left and right, replacing it with a choice between a rurally based right wing party and an urban based one. In many ways Blair was worse than his Tory predecessors, because he had no effective opposition.
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Also, what I would like to see is an integration of (alternative/student) radio into a streaming service, such that you can listen to a radio station's livestream and get given options to buy / favourite the tunes you hear.
Personally, Active is my main curator and guide for music (in Auckland, it was B and George), but going from hearing a tune to buying a copy is something I don't get around to as much as I'd like. If I could click "like" and have it recorded, then have buying options (including maybe which local record stores had stock) that would be awesome.
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I had a play with Baboom and, for comparison, Spotify.
Baboom would have the better UI (newer, I guess) and the ability (which I didn't test) to upload your own music collection. It seems a bit thin on content, especially if your tastes don't align to the Loop Recordings catalogue. I'm not sure how useful the music collection thing would be without an offline mode - given I'd want to listen to my tunes on roadtrips when I won't have a 3G connection.
Spotify has one of those UIs that buries the "free" link in the hope that you'll give up and fork over a credit card number. It's got better suggestions, but it rolls all forms of dance music into the "cheesy EDM" genre.
I think both services could vastly improve the search / suggestion features. I was expecting much better (Netflix is also crap in this area). Even Juno (a shop rather than a streaming siet) has better suggestions.
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we had lots of other indie things but not much radio
There was all the pirate radio with transmitters on tops of tower blocks and TPTB trying to catch them and confiscate the gear, right?
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Does it do a stream of suggested music, or do you need to select your hundred tracks and it shuffles them?
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I think the harshness is due to the "crime" being something that many people don't see as illegal (or they have the cognitive dissonance thing going on where they smoke weed themselves but still think it should be banned. This is surprisingly common).
Hence, some judges might see a harsh sentence as they only way of asserting the attitude of the state over that of a large number of its subjects. See also (historically) poaching, smuggling.
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There was a time, I think, when prosecuting council simply presented the facts of the case and didn't express a view on sentencing. I guess this changed through one iteration of the usual knee-jerk moral panic over "criminals" getting off "lightly"?
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Envirologue: Too Big to Fail – Why…, in reply to Alfie,
They have 5 dams and a wind farm.
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For instance, given that "authorization" requires an entity to be in a position of ownership or control, the scope of a "computer system" would generally be limited to that part of a system under the control of a single entity.
Personally, I think the law should minimise the extent to which it deals with novelties. They should repeal this section, and instead extend s.11 of the Summary Offences Act (Wilful Damage) to include the state of a computer system within the definition of "property".
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The approach in the UK tends to be to cancel ones rent payment a bit early, such that the outstanding rent exceeds the bond amount.