High Technology?

Fantastic. ADB you save my arse yet again, although the irony of having to use the command line to sync files to one of the most technologically advanced telephones in the world is not lost on me. Still, I guess most people would be using a Windoze 7 pc which understands MTP straight out of the box, and not need the Cli.

On the other hand rooting was as easy as pie, a simple “fastboot oem unlock” and flash an insecure boot image and install the superuser binary, took about five minutes. Swings and roundabouts I guess.

OH has a post up about HS2 in which he says:

If business wants a high speed rail network, business knows what it has to do. Raise the capital and build one – build it and they will come. But no, our glorious politicians are FAR too interested in the glory of the State for national infrastructure to be left to people who actually have money to risk

It strikes me that this will never happen, so long as the State is involved. Business may well know that they need a High Speed Rail service across the country, but they simply will never ever build one. Why? It has been pretty obvious since HS1 was mooted that eventually these lines would be built (at taxpayer’s expense) across the country so why bother? Why risk the capital when you can get the cow for free? /metaphormix

Of course, it will be cocked up. If HS1 is anything to go buy, it will be a ghost train, visiting ghost stations as it will be far too expensive for the majority of people to use on anything but the most splendid of occasions (or people being sent by work, on expenses, in which case it would still be cheaper to send them by car. Hell, I’VE been on HS1 on expenses and it would have been cheaper for work to send me by bus and pay the overtime. Or by DHL, come to that) especially as they have ALREADY PAID for the bloody thing. As a government vanity project subsidised by our bottomless (ha!) pockets there will be no incentive to cut prices to make more money through higher use (or cut costs through efficiencies in building and operating it) as there would be in the private sector.

Instead of a useful piece of infrastructure built by entrepreneurs we will get another expensive Blue Elephant. And Yesterday Cameron was taking on ‘Crony Capitalism???’ Don’t make me LAUGH.

Education is far to important to this countries future to allow those who cannot educate to remain within the system.

Did you spot it folks? Son of a schoolteacher, see. Carry a red pen in my pocket…
From this rather wonderful post at Orphans.

The reason I’ve been on this train of thought is that in my surrounding area there are various buildings that are derelict, abandoned by the owners (mostly pubs, ok you got me there) and they obviously DO belong to somebody… but.
Now, I don’t want to get all moral and socialistic here… I don’t want to start saying things like ‘the community deserves better than to have these derelict buildings around’ and ‘the council should take them over’ and things like that, but what I would like to explore is whether at some point a squatter becomes a homesteader.

Forget the town for a minute. Imagine that somebody claims a piece of land in the wilderness. They build a log cabin, till some soil… then get fed up, or die, or marry some sort in the local town and move there, whatever. They leave. Twenty, thirty, forty years later you, homesteader, are scouting about looking for a place to live and raise your crops… this place is a good place, but the remnants of the log cabin still remain. Can you rightfully claim it? If the cabin is gone entirely, could the descendants of the previous owner turf you off, even after you spent maybe half your life improving that land, perhaps to a better state than that long-forgotten homesteader? In short, does a one-time claim to property, even if not exercised for many years, count?

So, back to the town again. Records possibly exist (although not always) so is it correct in this case? If not, why not? Is it correct in the wilderness but not in the town due to the record of the owner? Is it never correct? You could go crazy on that one… never sure if any land ever belonged to anyone before. Imagine the ramifications if people started laying claim to land that held important things. 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, the Vatican, The Bank of England. Hmmm… If you could prove it… ok.
So. What if no record exists?

So now, for the final part of this thought experiment… we are doing this,without a state. Yesterday, the revolution happened, the State withered away and an anarchist situation entailed. There are no ‘official records’ no ‘official judges’ and only private solutions to these problems. You took over an abandoned pub, moved in, and started a thriving business. Nobody has cared about or visited or improved this building for several decades and it has lain unused for all this time. Are you a squatter? A trespasser? Or have you mixed your labour with something previously (albeit merely recently) unowned?