People that actually do forensics hate CSI because its making everybody think that they all can perform miracles. The courts and police services aren't happy with it either because according to CSI, DNA is king and you can do a test in about 30 seconds.

For CSI computers however, 9 enlarged fuzzy pixels will be enhanced to a multi mega pixel image which they'll then work out the reflections on a shirt button to show you who was taking the photo. Screw using that algorithm to enhance photos. I'd use it to compress HD quality video into a couple KB/s stream and become ultra rich overnight.

Zone 4 means frozen soil in the winter? In which case spring planting is best. Raised beds would be a good idea for veg beds, it's also much better to irrigate via some kind of leaky pipe system, waste much less and you can automate it. You get hot summers there don't you?

Not much variety for zone 4 on arborday, try this:

http://www.naturehills.com/catalog/fruit_trees.aspx?&zone=4

Apricots are easy as long as you can keep squirrels off them (they eat the kernels and discard the flesh), there are quite a few good apples and cherries too. You may be able to grow some chestnuts, and I believe there are grapes that will be hardy too, as long as you have some summer heat and enough good weather in autumn to ripen them.

Nah, you'd probably meet a similar fate as that of Jan Sloot.

Yeah it freezes in the winter and get's pretty hot in the summer. Also right now I only have direct sun because there are no trees. I'm not necessarily looking for fruit bearing trees just any trees that would survive and provide some shade / wind protection.

Come back from holiday and find this thread got very long. Amused me immensely

- me too, but it's a bugger to reverse the vasectomy

Ahem

That wasn't really what I was getting at, it was about there not being any shortage of footage from all sorts of sources in the first place.

Anything involving computers in CSI cracks me up.

20,000 square feet is enough to start messing with some pretty serious trees. Dawn redwood? Beeches? Silver birch? Aspen? All are claimed to be hardy to Zone 4.

Peter

I'm enjoying reading the comments here. The "Nanny State" topic is, of course, discussed widely. Just today I found some interesting reading over at Slashdot.

It is indeed, loads of stuff if you're not worried about fruiting. Sounds like a great opportunity to plant a little woodland.

Just had another look at the naturehills site, loads of trees and shrubs that are hardy there, some notable/useful ones:

Chinkapin Oak
White Oak
American Hornbeam
Linden
Kentucky Coffee Tree
Chinese Chestnut
Chestnut Oak
Lilac
River Birch (probably others too)
Star Magnolia (probably others too)
Crabapple

I reckon there must be plenty of honeysuckles, hawthorns, elders, maples, pines, firs etc that are hardy there too.

Ah, the UK press. There are a couple of ways of categorising the various publications. There's this comedy-standard view:

The Times is read by the people who run the country
The Daily Telegraph is read by people who think the country isn't run as well as it used to be
The Guardian is read by people who think they do run the country
The Daily Mail is read by the wives of those that run the country
The Financial Times is read by the people that own the country
The Daily Mirror is read by people who haven't got a clue who runs the country
The Express is read by people who think the country should just give up and play bingo
The Morning Star is read by people who think the country should be run by another country.
The Sun is read by people who don't care who runs the country as long she's got big t*ts

More relevantly:
- The Sun, Times, Sunday Times and News of the World are all Murdoch
- FT is part of a large publisher, Pearson
- Telegraph is owned by a pair of very litigious billionaire twins
- Express is owned by a pornography publisher
- Mirror is separately owned by a newspaper publishing group
- Guardian is separately owned by a newspaper publishing group
- Independent is owned by an Irish industrial entrepreneur
- Daily Mail is owned by a newspaper publishing group whose biggest shareholder is the founding family, now headed by a guy with a UK title who lives in France to avoid UK tax

The Times, Guardian, Daily Telegraph, Independent and FT are the serious ones, though it's not unfair to say that only the FT is really serious and the others now contain more than a couple of pages of 'feature articles'.

Exactly. I mentioned previously that I didn't like what was being slowly tested in this country, because in some ways, the population is too passive, just like in the UK.

If anyone quotes back for Andy to read, this isn't about me (or anyone) being right nor wrong. This is opinion pure and simple. What I think is wrong are the actions of government in many cases. For the main points of this thread, those actions and implements that take away our privacy and freedoms.

In Canada the only automatic number plate identification system rolled out in a fully functional and production-level state is that used on the 407 highway. I believe it was invented originally in Portugal (though perhaps that was only the transponder portion of their system), but I could be mistaken. It's definitely from Europe.

As far as plate ID being introduced onto police cruisers, I don't really have a problem with that. Officers already routinely type plate numbers into their computers while driving around or stopped at traffic lights (I currently know a couple of police on two forces as personal friends and have known a handful of others in the past). What I don't want to see is a camera on every street corner with this implemented so that car (any car) can be easily tracked. Facial recognition in a single office is also a lot different than putting that tech into street cameras, again which can be used to track movement, even real-time.

For Cris, please find me some discussion or article or anything that makes an argument for the UK *not* being a nanny state, *not* having more CCTV that any other nation. I don't want to see Canada as the UK part 2, thanks, regardless of how well accustomed to the cameras you (or anyone else) have become or how little they're minded. I see that as a problem. Apathy is already a huge problem in Canada. We can't even elect a bloody majority government nor get a decent number of people to the polls. Most people don't give a rat's ass. A large number that do, only care enough to make an occasional grumble in conversation, but won't step up to do anything about it, like vote, make a call or write a letter.

We're being taxed more and more each day, even as most people are being placated by a percentage drop in our federal GST. This country has no long term memory either. We're still spending millions of tax dollars dealing with a crooked past PM (Brian Mulroney), both in investigating his acceptance of illegal cash bribes, obviously not reporting them as income and now his legal costs.

Don't get me wrong, citizens of plenty of places have cause to be upset. Just look at how much money the US pisses away each year on military spending.

Anyway I know from a previous discussion regarding Google Streetview that Andy is all for cameras and doesn't think they're a privacy violation, so I understand why he has a problem with my opinions to the contrary. I've only added a new post because most people seem to be able to talk about this without a problem. And without pointing anyone out or making personal insults.

Now (Cris or anyone else) feel free to make observations about Canada, its government and people. I'll probably agree with most of your points anyway.

EDIT: Incidentally, this is what paranoid delusional looks like.

I'm afraid that's the way it's got to be, rolling news and the internet have taken away stop press news and in a way most of the content will be one form of comment or another, often dressed up as news stories.
Where the regional press go, particularly the weeklies is a more vexing problem: Do they have a role at all? The regional press is substantially paid for by what are called the three pillars of classified: Recruitment; Motors and Property - I would think that it's hard to argue that those aren't internet strengths, and probably all that's delaying the demise is that 42% of people in rural areas don't have an acceptable broadband speed, and 70% of the over 65%'s don't have internet access.

Did somebody say something?

Cheers

Cris.

A long time ago there was a show on Discover or some other channel like that. They would show actual operations without the big blured out areas like everything has now. One episode they showed a vasectomy reversal. After seeing that I can't believe anyone has it done. I'm not fixed yet even but I can't imagine getting that done and your not even guaranteed to be successful. I say adopt or get a donor.

Well 20K isn't really all that big by flyover USA standards but I should be able fit some trees in here. My plan was to get a bunch from arborday.org and plant too many so when some don't make it I will still have some. The trees they sell are small but they are cheap so I can afford to get a bunch.

So if you do a raised bed garden do you need to till somehow still ? How deep should they be ?

Small trees are MUCH better than big ones, they'll establish quicker and better. It's always a good strategy to plant extra and allow for wastage or thinning. You can achieve some great effects that way, an area of a nice birch planted densely will start looking good almost immediately, as they get bigger you can selectively remove to allow room for the others to grow. Weedkilling the planting area (before planting) and mulching after planting will ensure good survival rates, if you have deer/rabbits in the area you'll also need some kind of tree guards.

I've never grown in a raised bed but I reckon it's probably sufficient to turn over the top layer of soil/turf and then maybe 8" of soil on top of that? Might be worth weedkilling the turf first.

Back to the non arborial subject matter!

To recap, Robotic posted a link to a slashdot article about a guy who was having a private party, and was IMHO stupid enough to put it on Facebook and got 30 policeman turning up instead of 30 guests.

I've gone back to it, because today, as it seems to be every other day, there's an aricle about someone who did the same and 2-300 drunks turned up and trashed the place (googling gives you well on the way to a million, but, of course, many will be repeats).

So maybe the police were a little heavy handed, but what's wrong with them being pro-active? There was a very great risk that otherwise they would be turning up to a much nastier situation, calling for more resource.

The inference of the article was that the police were deliberately trawling Facebook, I find that a little unlikely, but if they were then that to me comes under imaginative crime prevention, not oppressive police state. I think it more likely that "they were informed by a concerned member of the public".

There are those in this thread that would take the opposite view, I think!

Oi! Trees is good.

I'm with boxer on this stuff, I can't see what I stand to lose by the kind of surveillance currently in place. As someone said a few posts back, there's a world of difference between data acquisition and the ability (or will) to do something useful with it. I'm more worried by the data that private organisations hold on me (banks, insurance etc)

Crime prevention? Don't you mean barbecue prevention? When things reach the point where people can be apprehended because in the opinion of the authorities they might commit a crime, then I will concede that Orwell was right. Can anybody say thoughtcrime? Have you watched "Minority Report" recently?

Far better and far less expensive than sending in the SWAT team, helicopter and all, would have been to have a single officer (armed with a two-way radio and without body armor!) come to the party, politely explain to the guests why he was there, and have him watch to see that things didn't get out of hand. He would most likely have been treated as a guest with the added benefit of favorable PR for the local constabulary.

I am aware that I live in a litigious society and for the most part am very much against such actions, but had this happened to me (here in the US) you can rest assured that at the very least some watch commander would spend the next six months or so directing traffic in Corncob Junction or some similar hub of activity, and it would be quite some time before he reattained the rank necessary to command anything or anybody again.

tanstaafl.

I think many of us are victims of the media's 'spin' that they put on such stories.
Without the full story, the headline takes priority in our minds. Even the 'complete' text of a report often overlooks or leaves out vital information (or is based on wholly ingenuous methods or data).
I read many of the comments for that Slashdot article and found many viewpoints- both informed and otherwise.
I posted the link to show that the concept of the 'nanny state' is very apropos and cause for much distress and misinformation (and distress about misinformation).

It doesn't take any imagination to see that populations are more controlled in today's world than ever before. The trends (the need to be controlled and the abuse of controlling power) are disturbing, to say the least.

Meaning you're principally gardening for the next generation and the one after, of course, but then perhaps if, like me, you work in an industry that's all about its two-week sprint cycles and six-month release cycles, that's part of the appeal of trees in the first place.

Peter

Not at all, and yes actually

By around year 6 or 7 a 1 or 2 yr old tree will have caught up with a 5 yr old tree planted at the same time. There's a lot of joy to be had in watching the landscape grow up around you; we'll be harvesting apricots, walnuts, peaches, almonds, chestnuts, apples, and pears from trees that we planted in Feb 2006 this year. Some of those trees are pretty sizeable now, and the way they've changed the landscape and biodiversity is well worth the effort.

The landscaping/planting we'll be doing around the new house (if we ever get started) will probably take 30 years to reach anything approaching maturity but it'll be looking quite good from year 3 I reckon.

Are they? Populations have always been controlled, whether by a tribal or religious leader, or some other method. I reckon more in the past than now, especially when literacy and hence any meaningful education was in the hands of very few.

I couldn't agree more, it's what I thought when I first read about it in the paper, maybe my phrase "A bit heavy handed" was a bit mild! Many were the parties in my younger days, where a policeman came and was "just taking a look", which involved a chat and a drink.

It all depends on details that we do not have.

Was it a small group of 30-somethings in a vacant field for an afternoon grill-party with a small tent for escape from possible rain? Was the 'sound equipment' just a boombox for some tunes?

Or was it actually the set-up crew for a rave... which had happened a few months previously in the same field and had upset many neighbors?
(A rave being explicitly outlawed in England)

My point is that the stories do not give us enough detail to make a fair judgement- they only evoke emotions.

Okay. Is trashing a place illegal? Only, one would assume, if it was against the wishes of the owner, in which case, he should probably call the authorities to have them ousted. For that matter, if people showed up that he didn't want there and they refused to leave, he should call the authorities to eject them for trespassing.


A much nastier situation? Based on what? Let's assume for a second that it was going to be a full-on rave. (I understand that an unlicensed party is illegal in the UK, and, by the letter of the law, that's enough reason to disperse it, but we're talking about whether or not the law is oppressive.) My understanding is that you could have the exact same party and it would be fine as long as it was licensed. But let's ignore even that. What if, instead of a birthday party, it was a political rally that the police or government found offensive? It would be pretty easy to claim that they were organizing an illegal rave, wouldn't it? After all, apparently all the evidence they need is a sound system and a dozen people.


I couldn't care less where they came across their evidence. If they were trawling Facebook and came across an advertisement for pipe bombs, that's fine. I don't think anyone else is concerned about where the police obtained their evidence, either.

I don't even really care that much that they showed up to check out what was going on.

What does bother me is that the party-goers were threatened with arrest solely for being in a situation where they might have had the intent of doing something illegal. That's pretty close to the thought police. (As well as 1984, we're back to Minority Report here, though I'm certainly willing to think of the (far superior) short story.)


You planning on going to the empeg meet this year? I guess you'd better hope that a concerned citizen doesn't notice the announcement here on the BBS and have Rob's back yard closed down. I'm sure there are UK-specific references that I'm not familiar with, but this is how the McCarthy era, with it's anti-Communist House Un-American Activites Committee witch-hunts, worked.


Ya think?

The thing that bothers me the most is that you have the (ostensibly) liberal power in charge now. The Tories certainly aren't going to be any better; they passed the anti-rave law to begin with. Who is looking out for your civil liberties, especially since you seem to be unconcerned with them?

User story: As a homeowner, I'd like a lovely green backyard with various trees.
Story points: 13, or maybe a 20
Task: Buy supplies from local home improvement store
Task: Plant 5 apple trees
Task: Plant 6 bushes

20pts / ((15 years) * (26 sprints a year))

Sprint Velocity: .0512 by my calculations.