For those of you that already read the tech news site The Register, sorry for drawing your attention to three rather interesting articles on there today.
Following on from Anna Raccoon’s article on ASBO’s given to prostitutes/a> the register observes that the police normally object to people publishing details of suspects under investigation. One would assume that unless caught actually in the act by the police, or even then, that a decent lawyer would be able to weaken the value of any witness statements if the ladies concerned ever get taken to trial on the grounds of all the publicity the accusations have received. They also point out the oddity of ASBO’s in that they can be issued easily without the full weight of a trial but as soon as you breach the arbitrary conditions attached (something easier to do when the whole world has been told you have an ASBO) you automatically get a criminal record.
Moving over to the US a shopping mall is appealing its right to prevent you talking to people you’ve just met in their mall. I’m actually torn on this one, on the one hand their mall their rules and if people object they can go elsewhere (though if they do have such rules they better be very well advertised) on the other hand it does seem incredibly draconian and stupid. On balance they should be allowed to ban whatever they like on their premises and hopefully be suitably punished by their customers if the bans are this stupid. Mind if such a ban was in place you could have great fun with a flash mob.
Finally on the subject of stupid yet again it seems that Eco-freindly enthusiasts have no idea what they’re on about, with many of the advocated green things to do being either pointless of actively counter-productive. I didn’t know (assuming the report is accurate) that energy wise aluminium is more eco-friendly than glass. Though I’d assume that not to be true if the old 10p-deposit on returned bottles came back allowing bottles to be cleaned and re-used without being melted down in between uses.
