Posts by Doctor Syntax 42273 publicly visible posts • joined 16 Jun 2014
"But nobody wants it to go that far."
I'm not sure about this. There's considerable danger of setting a precedent, even if it's a precedent for the sort of fudges you suggest. At some point countries - and that includes Canada - need to defend their electronic borders or just accept that such borders don't exist. I doubt they - and again, that includes Canada - want the latter.
I'd guess they do have considerable power to compel the RCMP to back off.
Alternatively to argue put in an amicus appearance to argue that the order should not be allowed on various grounds, one being that courts should not stray into matters which are properly the realm of international treaties and another being that they really do not want a precedent set which would allow their spray-tanned neighbour to delve into Canadian affairs.
I'd guess that the end-run was attempted because the case didn't meet the protections in the MLAT.
I'm looking forward to hearing about the Canadian ambassador being called in to the French foreign ministry to explain why a Canadian court is trying to override French law or maybe a French court issuing an arrest warrant and request for extradition of the judge. If "sovereign" is to mean anything then it's got to be defended in this way if need be.
"But refusing the Canadian order risks contempt of court charges."
I'd have thought that that would be the easier alternative to defend. The Canadian arm can ask the French HQ for the information and can report refusal. It would surely be up to the prosecution to demonstrate that the local office has authority over HQ to do more, especially as a MLAT route exists.
"Though I'd hate to be a spreadsheet informationeer. Likely as not, one would find all the horrific mistakes made in the originals, making it difficult to discern what the original intent actually was..."
In a regulated environment there needs to be that once a spreadsheet gets above a fairly minimum level of complexity it needs to be treated as an initial sketch of a properly constructed system which has a written specification etc.
Not so much spitefulness by the sound of it, more like the old inability of manglers everywhere to start demanding changes after a design is agreed. Just go back to the original plan and then fire every official who demands a change. In fact, be pre-emptive and fire all those who demanded the changes last time around.
I'd guess somebody halfway up the foodchain (err maybe not the best word in the circumstances) found himself with a bit of a dilemma. He couldn't ignore it but didn't dare pass it further up and took what seemed likely the easiest way out. Obviously legal didn't take advice from Ms Streisand before deciding to fight it rather than make a quick, quiet settlement.
A former colleague of mine in Belfast had also worked at Windscale at the time of the fire and told of going round the countryside collecting bits of radioactive debris using a fluoroscope to identify them. I think we've probably learned a bit since then.
I suppose it would have been about the same time that I was given a tour of the local mill. AFAICR the steam engine was being used to generate electricity. It was coal fired, of course.
"the concept that once the tools are smart enough nobody needs to understand what they're doing any more is a growing general cultural problem that we allow to take firm root at our peril."
Oh, I don't know. it sounds like a good way to boost contract daily rates for sorting out the mess.
"Any computer running a same program using the exact same input should result in the exact same output. "
That was the point being made in TFA.
If the program acts in the manner of a wayward human making inconsistent choices then, in absence of more specific terminology, "choose" seems a reasonable verb to describe it.
Yes. GPs have been giving vaccinations for generations. That's prevention. I've also been given a prescription for keratosis to prevent it becoming cancerous. When I was very young my doctor sent me for an appendectomy to prevent appendicitis from killing me.
But on the larger scale public health, relying on statistics, has been saving lives by preventative measures ever since John Snow removed the handle from the Broad Street pump.
A plan for an epidemic of an existing illness for which many have at least partial immunity from existing exposure or vaccination is going to be bugger all use against a novel infection against which there is no existing immunity and very little data as to its severity or rapidity of spread, especially when such data as does exist suggest it is very bad.
If a 20 year old dies because of the impacts of lockdown COVID, they could well have lost 60+ years.
In the absence of evidence that is the cautious line of thinking and it's the nature of novel pandemics that you don't have evidence and caution is in order.
It's one thing to review matters with hindsight but you also need to review them from the standpoint of what was known at the time.
Hindsight tells us that we were ill-prepared. We could also have been even worse prepared in that the techniques needed to produce vaccines at the speed they were produced was only recently available. Hindsight should also tell us it was significant that some Chinese workers got the genome sequence out at the beginning of the year; a secretive county like China could very easily have clamped down on it and delayed vaccine production by several weeks.
An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
Public health and its statistical approach is about prevention.
If you catch a disease the treatment to cure it may or may not be available depending on what you caught.
If you catch a disease for which a treatment is available it may or may not cure it because treatments don't always work, they may be given too late, etc.
If you don't catch a disease you don't catch a disease. This is preferable to relying on treatment.
