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Everyone has got to know about this international intelligence sharing agreement Echelon UKUSA/SIGINT that created 5 eyes by now. Surely? It has been in operation since the 1940's. I shouldn't be surprised that not even the article mentions it. It is the governance document for this kind of telecommunications surveillance.

I have a scan of the agreement however I've found it difficult to find the text online. The NSA links to the UK/USA seems to be broken for me. Maybe they're just interested in who is interested. ;). However a bit more digging and I found this article from the guardian that link to UK National Archive copy of the agreement. It was not available online for some time after I got it - so I suggest you grab a copy to get some idea how this agreement works. After all that's one reason it was kept secret for so long.

Essentially agencies can't spy on domestic citizens so they ask a counterpart agency to spy for them. I read somewhere that even back as far as the 90's it was doing signal processing to "gist" (as in get the gist of) about 500,000 phone conversations using data centers the size of football fields and promote them to analysts automatically. They had two nuclear submarines that would be positioned over undersea fibre optic telecommunications nodes so I think you can surmise just how well funded this agreement is if five western nations are involved.

It is like a Berlin wall of surveillance for the western world.

If UBI is too good it will turn into a lifetime subsidy for do-nothings.

This statement pretty clearly shows your philosophy. You define a person's worth by the work they do, and look down on people who don't satisfy your criteria. This puritanical mind set is slowly becoming incompatible with the modern world.

First, as productivity advances, more and more wealth is being created with less and less human effort. We're at the cusp of producing enough to provide basic living support to everybody with almost 0 human effort.

Second, as technology advances and things change more and more rapidly, the requirements for jobs are starting to grow beyond the average human's capabilities. New jobs need a lot of adaptability, enough intellectual capacity and a lot of study. There are quite a few people that simply won't be able to find meaningful jobs. What then? Would you have us revive the workhouses for the poor?

when was the last time you saw benefits decreased? Almost never. Increased? Almost always.

And this is exactly the way things should be. Not, as you seem to imply, because the "do nothings" are clawing more and more from the worthies (whichever way you define them), but because global productivity has been growing continuously, because more and more wealth is being created, and it makes perfect sense to use this extra wealth to increase programs that benefit the most people.

The Laffer curve is obviously true. Consider. If you have zero taxes you collect zero revenue. If you have 100% taxes you also collect zero revenue because people won't work for free. In between the two there's a curve where tax revenues increase up to some level and then begin to fall.

When Gordon Brown put the top personal tax rate up from 45% to 50% HMRC - the UK equivalent of the IRS - did a study of the 50% tax rate in the UK with Laffer curves in it.

http://webarchive.nationalarch...

Also if you percentage of income tax paid by the top decile vs the top personal tax rate you can see a very Laffer curve like effect

https://imgur.com/zaeEh

(more details here
https://pastebin.com/JU3exgXL )

Here's one for just the Nordic countries. The argument is that they are very comparable because they are so similar. Firstly culturally, particularly the Scandinavian ones. Secondly the share of market income by the richest decile is quite similar.

https://i.imgur.com/q5WNJ.gif

It is not true that the actual corporate tax rate in the US is higher than the other OECD countries. It's a canard, as in lie, as in bogus.

No it's not and I linked to OECD data to prove it.

And saying 'well the effective tax rate is lower' is not a refutation. I'm sure big corporations do all sorts of deals to reduce their effective tax rate in the US - they shop around the states and pick the one who offers the best incentives.

However if you start a new corporation you get hit with the headline rate, until you grow large enough to corrupt the system, go bust or move your business overseas. Which is why 35% corporate taxes are a bad idea.

Here are some links to more information on atomic clocks, their development, and why they're needed:
How and why atomic clocks were invented
How atomic clock accuracy was greatly increased
How atomic clocks work
Animations showing how atomic clocks work
Why atomic clocks are needed for GPS
Video showing how atomic clocks are used for GPS

Fun fact: many countries have been successful at eliminating the gap.

http://webarchive.nationalarch...

Page 85 for example, where some countries have reached parity or even favour girls in mathematics.

Imagine being a boy in one of those countries. Someone tells you that boys just aren't as good at maths, or as literate, on average. It's biology, your brain just isn't wired for those subjects. They show you the latest exam result stats as incontrovertible proof.

I'm afraid I don't have a prepared list of copy/paste links to counter all the other stuff. Did you assemble them yourself or grab them from one web site?

In the Iceland and New Zealand girls overtook boys in mathematics at school several years ago:

http://webarchive.nationalarch...

Page 85. The gap varies by country, thus cannot be entirely biological, maybe not even at all biological. Other research suggests that biology plays almost no part.

Translating the charge against him to "rape" is already fucked up.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assange_v_Swedish_Prosecution_Authority

It's technically a charge of "lesser rape"- we wouldn't call it rape in the English speaking world. Sweden has three types of "rape" on their laws, only one of which we would call rape, and the least serious of which is what Assange is accused of.

This is a common argument made by Assange supporters - that the "rape" allegation is only "rape" in Sweden.

Its a bullshit argument.

Here in the UK, for extraditions to be approved by the court, the reasons for extradition need to meet the "dual criminality" test - they need to be equitable crimes here in the UK, and if they are not then the extradition is not carried out.

Assanges lawyers tried arguing that "its only rape in Sweden" to the UK High Court during their appeal in July 2011 - the court threw their arguments out, giving a lengthy ruling on this very exact issue:

See points 104 to 127 in the High Court ruling - the court spends five and a half pages giving its reasons why the court has judged that the fourth offence being considered against him is also considered "rape" in the UK.

Five and a half pages. And that doesn't even count the pages spent giving reasonings for the other three offences being considered!

And yet people like you still use the "its only rape in Sweden" line!

Yes, pollution is bad for your health. In no way is that a false statement.

At the same time, living in a pre-industrial society is also very bad for your health. As it living in a poorer society for a number of important reasons.

And since (unfortunately) we cannot yet have an industrial society without some pollution, it's disingenuous to say that pollution causes those deaths because we don't know if reducing it, and thereby reducing our output, would be beneficial or harmful at each margin. It's somehow implying that the pollution isn't accepted as part of trade-off -- or that we intentionally pollute with no side benefit -- which is ludicrous.

Of course, by the same vein that not all polluting activities are harmful on the margin, not all are beneficial on the margin either. Clearcutting rainforest to make room for banana groves is almost certainly a net harm. Burning natural gas to electrify rural areas that didn't previously have power is almost certainly a net gain. In between there's a whole realm of less obvious answers.

There's a future where all our power comes from nuclear and renewable and all our food is grown or synthesized on a small amount of land. We aren't there yet, and so we have to pick and chose.

Strange how the UK itself disagrees with you. "The United Kingdom is made up of four countries: England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Its full name is the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Great Britain, however, comprises only England, Scotland and Wales..."

You realise that on all of the counts listed in the European Arrest Warrant, dual criminality was asserted and thus no UK judge found grounds to dismiss on the basis of lack of criminality in the offences listed?

See page 15 of the following PDF:

http://webarchive.nationalarch...

And you should also check out what the offences listed actually are, because your description is quite a way off.

The offence described as rape is as follows:

[quote]
On 17 August 2010, in the home of the injured party (SQ) in Enkoping, Assange deliberately consummated sexual intercourse with her by improperly exploiting that she, due to sleep, was in a helpless state.

It is an aggravating circumstance that Assange, who was aware that it was the expressed wish of the injured party and a prerequisite of sexual intercourse that a condom be used, still consummated unprotected sexual intercourse with her. The sexual act was designed to violate the injured party's sexual integrity.
[/quote]

Offence 4, Page 3 of the above document.

The lack of a condom used also shows up in Offence 2, Page 2, for a different injured party (AA).

How about you Assange supporters actually get your facts right about what the arrest warrant actually lays out? You can harp on about "such silly charges" but its patently obvious you have never actually read the rulings against Assange, which makes it trivial to dismiss you out of hand.

It is a claim by an MP in UK Parliament, made back in 2005.

They got their number by essentially guessing. Cause there is no such number as "passengers per vehicle".

Fuel consumption estimates for buses are based on National Atmospheric Emissions Inventory (NAEI) estimates combined with road passenger kilometres taken from the 2002 Transport Statistics for Great Britain.

Except there is no such value as "passenger kilometres" for buses in the source as you can't use that for buses - cause they operate by "zones" and not by destinations.
Same price for one stop as it is for three or five and passengers keep getting on and off along the way.
A ticket price is not related to the of distance that a passenger WILL BE traveling but to the MAXIMUM distance ALLOWED to travel.

So, they rounded it down to the lowest common denominator.
"9 passengers average" might be stretched as technically not a "wrong" number - just factually completely inaccurate as an average, minimum or maximum number of passengers.

It's actually the minimum number of passengers a bus must be able to carry in order to NOT BE CONSIDERED a "not-a-bus".
If it talks like a bus, drives like a bus... then it is not a taxi, which CAN be used as a bus but it is NOT a bus.
So what is a bus? Anything from 9 seats and up.

Transport Statistics Great Britain, 2002, 5 Public Transport: Notes and Definitions

Taxi industry: 5.9
A taxi, or hackney carriage, is a vehicle with
fewer than 9 passenger seats which is licensed to
âoeply for hireâ (i.e. it may stand at ranks or be
hailed in the street by members of the public).
This distinguishes taxis from Private Hire
Vehicles (PHVs), which must be booked in
advance through an operator and may not ply for
hire (taxis may also be pre-booked). Taxis must
normally be hired as a whole (i.e. separate fares
are not charged to each passenger). However,
taxis may charge separate fares when a sharing
scheme is in operation, when they are run as a
bus under a special PSV operators' licence or
when pre-booked (PHV operators may also
charge passengers separately if they share a
journey).

5.2 Bus and coach services: vehicle stock:1 1990/91-2000/01

1990/91 1991/92 1992/93 1993/94 1994/95 1995/96 1996/97 1997/98 1998/99 1999/00 2000/01
Single deckers:
Thousands
up to 16 seats 8.1 7.9 8.7 9.4 9.3 8.8 10.0 10.5 10.9 11.6 10.9
17-35 seats 11.5 12.4 13.5 14.5 15.9 16.5 16.6 13.6 14.4 13.9 15.0
36 plus seats 30.2 29.8 29.5 30.8 30.4 30.8 30.5 34.9 36.4 37.8 38.0
All single deckers 49.8 50.1 51.7 54.7 55.6 56.1 57.1 59.0 61.7 63.2 63.8
All double deckers 22.2 21.3 20.9 20.1 19.7 19.6 18.6 17.1 17.0 16.8 15.9
All vehicles 71.9 71.4 72.7 74.8 75.3 75.7 75.7 76.1 78.7 80.0 79.7
         

That "9 passengers average" is like saying that average number of seats for motor vehicles is 1 - because motorcycles.

Nobody is suggesting we turn off all fossil fuels RIGHT NOW (that would be a strawman). What is being suggested is that we phase out fossil fuel dependencies and phase in a mix of the many carbon-neutral energy technologies (solar, wind, nuclear, geothermal etc etc) over the next few decades, rather than pretending we don't need to do anything, ever.

There have been numerous major studies about this. For example, the Stern Review makes it clear that the costs of inaction easily outweigh the costs of transitioning our energy supply, and more recently this Harvard Univesity study concludes that not only can the US switch to 100% renewable energy by 2050, it can do so while spending less than business-as-usual.

That STEP link you quoted elsewhere is interesting, though "pre-industrial carbon levels in 10 years" sounds wildly optimistic without throwing massive amounts of cash at it to develop it at huge scale.

You seem to think that a carbon tax would kill the economy. Carbon price legislation has been proposed in the US at least four times, and has accordingly been studied by the Congressional Budget Office as well as the EPA, EIA, and others (see citations), and concluded the impact would be less than 1% on GDP, compared to business as usual - without even considering the additional economic impact of climate change on the BAU scenario.

Yeah its not as if petrol/diesel cars ever catch fire...

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/36467/FSGB_2011_to_12.pdf
http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20120919132719/http://www.communities.gov.uk/pub/894/FireStatisticsUnitedKingdom2003PDF1724Kb_id1124894.pdf

14,000 or so in the UK last year, which is a massive drop from the 28,800 in 1993 and those are just the accidental fires...

Newsflash: technology gets more reliable over time and the Tesla is still brand new compared to internal combustion that has had over 130 years of safety problems, development work and improvements. How often do you hear of mobile phones and laptops bursting into flames these days? For a while it seemed to be happening all the time...

Hahahah..

So It's the nasty French muslims who are buring between 42000 and 60000 cars a year.

So who burns between 40000 and 70000 cars a year in the UK?

See page 50:
http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20120919132719/http://www.communities.gov.uk/pub/894/FireStatisticsUnitedKingdom2003PDF1724Kb_id1124894.pdf

There is a lot of active research in climate science.

But this article doesn't discuss what they all are. It shows that with better modelling of wind-sea interactions in the southern ocean, we can get a much better handle on what is happening to the southern sea ice.

I might be hypersensitive to the climate conspiracy theorists on the internet, but I read "therefore cannot accurately predict what will happen in the future", as the common wrong argument that therefore trying to reduce emissions is not justified, and this is why you try to hit this point despite its irrelevance to the article?

Higher uncertainty of the regional effects of global warming is not a good argument for not taking action, unless those regional effects have a very significant effect on global costs of adjustment. The CBR is running at about $10 in benefit for each $1 in emission reduction costs at the moment. With the developing world bearing most of the disbenefit of inaction, and that coupled with the least ability to finance. (You may remember the Stern Review ... The number date a bit, and you can argue the discount rate, but the orders of magnitude are pretty robust)

Ah yes, detailed, studies conclude that mitigating climate change will save us trillions by 2100, but you prefer to believe some guy on YouTube who naïvely extrapolates a number he pulled out of thin air (exactly where did he get that ridiculous starting figure from anyway?). You're right about the "simple" part.

Can be ordered / viewed via the National Archive https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/news/prem-highlights-1983.htm, http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/SearchUI/s/res?_q=PREM%2019/972, http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/SearchUI/Details?uri=C13497591 & http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/aug/01/national-archives-cabinet-papers-1983 As for use of the lasers weapons, I can find no links but with suspicions of such weapons being deployed on the Kirov I expect it added another thing to be considered by the attacking airman.

Can be ordered / viewed via the National Archive https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/news/prem-highlights-1983.htm, http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/SearchUI/s/res?_q=PREM%2019/972, http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/SearchUI/Details?uri=C13497591 & http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/aug/01/national-archives-cabinet-papers-1983 As for use of the lasers weapons, I can find no links but with suspicions of such weapons being deployed on the Kirov I expect it added another thing to be considered by the attacking airman.

Can be ordered / viewed via the National Archive https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/news/prem-highlights-1983.htm, http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/SearchUI/s/res?_q=PREM%2019/972, http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/SearchUI/Details?uri=C13497591 & http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/aug/01/national-archives-cabinet-papers-1983 As for use of the lasers weapons, I can find no links but with suspicions of such weapons being deployed on the Kirov I expect it added another thing to be considered by the attacking airman.

Not so fishy: http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ukusa/

Yeah, I am not called by a different name when I am speaking another language. Even if that language has a similar name. Translating a name does not make good sense.

Actually, in some languages, it does. The Romans didn't just translate names out of snobbery -- Latin just doesn't work without appropriate endings that allow the name to be assigned a grammatical class to match its function in the sentence. Check out the way it worked in Latin here. Navajo has its own complex system of noun declensions, so a name has to be well-formed in the language or you simply cannot use it properly.

You betcha. The Government Service Design Manual comes from GDS, a part of the Cabinet Office. GDS also created GOV.UK - the new single domain for the UK government. The GOV.UK stack is almost entirely open-source software, which can be found on Github under the Open Government License.

Forgot to cite my uk numbers, http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20110218135832/http://rds.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs07/hosb0207.pdf that is the source of the numbers involved in the uk.

Fantastic. You've found a 106 page paper that says a 4 degree rise would be bad.

But nowhere says "doing enough to slow that by 2 degrees could consume almost our entire GDP".

So the citation for your alarmist claim is still needed.

Another source claims:

Using the results from formal economic models, the Review estimates that if we don’t act, the overall costs and risks of climate change will be equivalent to losing at least 5% of global GDP each year, now and forever. If a wider range of risks and impacts is taken into account, the estimates of damage could rise to 20% of GDP or more.

In contrast, the costs of action – reducing greenhouse gas emissions to avoid the worst impacts of climate change – can be limited to around 1% of global GDP each year.

Actually, that's not true anymore - they do have expiry dates as of 1988.

The duration of Crown copyright varies depending whether material is published or unpublished. Unpublished material was originally subject to copyright protection in perpetuity. However, the 1988 Act removed this concept from British law. Transitional provisions that apply for 50 years after the entry into force of the 1988 Act provide that no unpublished material will lose its copyright protection until January 1, 2040. New Crown copyright material that is unpublished has copyright protection for 125 years from date of creation. Published Crown copyright material has protection for 50 years from date of publication. Those works protected under Letters Patent have perpetual control of reproduction claimed over them despite being published. Works where copyright is assigned to the Crown by an author are subject to the normal term of protection for that particular type of work, for example life of the author plus 70 years for a literary work.

Also pretty much everything produced by the devolved Governments (Scotland and Wales) and a lot produced by the main Government, is now covered by the Open Government Licence which means you are free to reproduce in full and adapt for other uses, including commercial.

The King James is a tricky one because it was not actually produced by the Crown - so under any definition of Crown Copyright since 1911, it would not be covered. But since it was grandfathered in after being granted to the Crown it is still covered - but only until 2040 (only!) at which point it loses it's protected status under the 1988 act.

Here's what the Conservative/LibDem Coalition apparently promised before they were elected: (copy-pasted from http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20100919110641/http://programmeforgovernment.hmg.gov.uk/civil-liberties/index.html) We will implement a full programme of measures to reverse the substantial erosion of civil liberties and roll back state intrusion. We will introduce a Freedom Bill. We will scrap the ID card scheme, the National Identity register and the ContactPoint database, and halt the next generation of biometric passports. We will outlaw the finger-printing of children at school without parental permission. We will extend the scope of the Freedom of Information Act to provide greater transparency. We will adopt the protections of the Scottish model for the DNA database. We will protect historic freedoms through the defence of trial by jury. We will restore rights to non-violent protest. We will review libel laws to protect freedom of speech. We will introduce safeguards against the misuse of anti-terrorism legislation. We will further regulate CCTV. We will end the storage of internet and email records without good reason. We will introduce a new mechanism to prevent the proliferation of unnecessary new criminal offences. We will establish a Commission to investigate the creation of a British Bill of Rights that incorporates and builds on all our obligations under the European Convention on Human Rights, ensures that these rights continue to be enshrined in British law, and protects and extends British liberties. We will seek to promote a better understanding of the true scope of these obligations and liberties.

No, I meant trillions. It was over two billion British pounds of raw wealth goods before the 1920's, cumulative over 150+ years, with a lot of the wealth drain coming early on, which works out to well over a trillion dollars if you normalize over that period and adjust for inflation. And that's just for trade deficit to Britain for raw goods and precious metals. It does not include the fact that up to 40% of India's entire budget was spent on their military, which was under British control at the time, and was "the backbone of the power of the British empire". Yes, Britain did some good things in India, but it was a huge net loss for them. You can start reading about it here, and work your way out from there. An AC using a term like "utter rubbish".. heh... I don't know many people outside the UK who use terms like that ;-)

The two papers are now available to view at the National Archives at Kew, west London.

Published is a very broad term.
Paper on statistics of repetitions by A M Turing
Report on the applications of probability to cryptography by A M Turing

The two papers are now available to view at the National Archives at Kew, west London.

Published is a very broad term.
Paper on statistics of repetitions by A M Turing
Report on the applications of probability to cryptography by A M Turing

Via ZDNet:
Paper on statistics of repetitions
Report on the applications of probability to cryptography

Via ZDNet:
Paper on statistics of repetitions
Report on the applications of probability to cryptography

Not that it's fun to be informed, when you can share your "i walked on the moon" story, but the research comes from a 1998 Workplace Employee Relations Survey. The sample appears to have been conducted in the UK exclusively, focusing on small businesses. I wouldn't want to make inferences about a population when the sample is isolated or at least a decade old. http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/+/http://www.bis.gov.uk/files/file12525.pdf

Up until about 1820, there were 400 offenses in England that carried the death penalty. http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/victorianbritain/lawless/default.htm

And the prisons were indeed terrible places

This did not make for a safer, more law-abiding society.

Actually, it did. Victorian England was a lot safer than today's England.

From here:

"The number of indictable offences per thousand population in

1900 was 2.4 and in 1997 the figure was 89.1."

And the prisons were indeed terrible places

This did not make for a safer, more law-abiding society.

It's been heartening to see the increased recognition the computing pioneers at Bletchley Park have received over the last few years, after being neglected for decades. Gordon Brown's posthumous apology to Alan Turing for the persecution he received for his sexuality was a great moment. Most people have never heard of Turing but he deserves recognition. They ought to put his face on a banknote or something. About three years ago when I was at university a guy visited from Bletchley Park to give a talk on the work that was done there, and he brought with him a genuine Enigma machine and demonstrated its operation. Fascinating stuff.

A statue, a memorial or at least a postage stamp

A stamp would be the most visible remembrance, so if the government tries to ignore this issue a statue somewhere in the wild is more likely.

but wait:

So on behalf of the British government, and all those who live freely thanks to Alan’s work I am very proud to say: we’re sorry, you deserved so much better.

it was late, it was little* - but the government is not too much to blame here.

*) some other items are a plaque at his birthhouse or this statue at Bletchley Park

In the UK for 2006 (latest I can find with numbers rather than graphs here):

2.5 car deaths per billion passenger km (i.e. terametre, Tm)
0.1 rail deaths per passenger Tm
(and 31 / cyclist Tm , 36 / pedestrian Tm -- less car use would also reduce these. More rail could increase deaths from people jumping barriers at level crossings, or maybe reduce them if trains are more frequent so people know the risk is higher?)

US in passenger Tm:
4.9 car deaths per passenger Tm (0.79/0.161) ...and the rail figure isn't comparable. See the note in the table "A Train-mile is the movement of a train (which can consist of many cars) the distance of 1 mile. A Train-mile differs from a vehicle-mile, which is the movement of 1 car (vehicle) the distance of 1 mile. A 10-car (vehicle) train traveling 1 mile would be measured as 1 Train-mile and 10 vehicle-miles. Caution should be used when comparing Train-miles to vehicle miles."

2 train fatalities in 2006 from the table you linked. I don't know which kind of rail journeys (from here) that includes -- perhaps just Amtrak? Amtrak provided 54.1 hundred million passenger miles in 2006, which comes to 0.2 deaths per passenger Tm.

If it's in the UK, all products have a lifetime for a minimum of 6 years.

"Goods are of satisfactory quality if they reach the standard that a reasonable person would regard as satisfactory, taking into account the price and any description."

Apple honoured a repair I had to my iMac that died when it was three and half years old when I stated the Sales of Goods Act. The machine required a new PSU and logic board. The repair would have been around £800.

http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/+/http://www.berr.gov.uk/whatwedo/consumers/fact-sheets/page38311.html

This is raw data, not a spending report. We also have spending reviews; before the general election they were on the HM Treasury Site but now they've been archived. Without the legal requirements for clarity associated with private sector financial reporting, civil servants are able to hide key data in impenetrable waffle. It is also a rather different kettle of fish to the US; our government is ludicrously centralised and almost all spending is from Whitehall. The report is thus so broad in scope as to almost be meaningless. It also makes wading through this raw transaction data much more daunting.

http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/domesday/

Some of the details of the Bill started back with the Gowers Review in 2005-06. This contained some quite interesting recommendations including:

• not extending copyright (and in particular, not altered retrospectively),
• a review of the TRIPS agreement (to make the importation of drugs cheaper and easier, among other things),
• allow libraries to format shift their content for archival purposes,
• relax copyright laws (and add more 'fair use' exemptions),
• look into requiring warnings on products with DRM (and making it easier to complain about it),
• not extending patent laws (in particular, to cover software),
• a huge review of the patent system (including ways to encourage competition),
• match penalties for offline and online copyright infringement (the MAFIAA took this to mean that downloading a CD should be as bad as shoplifting one, but it actually only refers to commercial infringement),
• look into legislating against pirates if the situation is bad after 2007.

Somehow, the only one of these that seemed to actually get anywhere was the last... The full text is here.

Interestingly, it included a "scorecard" of how different areas of 'intellectual property' work right now (page 44); out of Copyright, Designs, Patents and Trade Marks, three received "high performance" scores for being balanced, coherent and flexible (as far as the legislation). Copyright, however, got a medium score for balance and low for flexible.

I've seen these celluloid things go into a not-so-mint-anymore condition after mere 10 years on non-optimal attic conditions, while CDs were just fine!

This book is almost a thousand years old. Where's the thousand year old CD copy? Huh?

If you look through the world's museums and archives you won't find a single CD produced before 1979. Clearly these things cannot last more than thirty years. If anyone tries to tell you something different, insist that they show you a hundred year old CD. Sure, they'll probably come up with some lame story which explains why they can't produce one, but we all know the real truth.

That's why I have taken all of my most important data and carved it into the Nazca Plateau. You just can't beat that kind of reliability.

The third batch are at http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ufos/ and then there's a link on the right two the first two batches.

It's fairly interesting that as with the US documents there's no smoking guns here but there are a lot of 'yeah that was experimental or military but we couldn't admit it at the time' and the rest is 'we have no idea what that was.' So either they're playing a meta-game here or there really is nothing but 'man that unidentified thing sure was... unidentified.' I think it's unlikely that two such incompetent entities could do such a brilliant job of covering up something as huge as decades (or millenia) long alien visitations, but this won't prove it either way.

Just so long as they didn't do what the BBC did in the 1980's with the UK's modern "Doomsday Book" history archive project. The archive went on a Laserdisc, and what hardware today can read that format (not the machines on ebay)?

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2003/07/11/bbc_domesday_project_saved/ or
http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/preservation/research/domesday.htm/community.htm

This is the page with the files: http://ufos.nationalarchives.gov.uk/

"Coughs and sneezes spread diseases".

Can't spread anything to anyone if you're at home alone, no matter how much you (or they) cough and sneeze. That's the point - by limiting the amount of social mixing, you limit the spread of the pandemic.

It's also why it's utterly stupid to expect employees to come in when they're sick; not only will they be under-performing the whole time, they'll spread it to their colleagues too.

Is that a picture of the Wright brothers' plane on the UK National Archives website?

The nickname 'Domesday' may refer to the Biblical Day of Judgement, or 'doomsday' when Christ will return to judge the living and the dead. Just as there will be no appeal on that day against his decisions, so Domesday Book has the final word - there is no appeal beyond it as evidence of legal title to land. For many centuries Domesday was regarded as the authoritative register regarding rightful possession and was used mainly for that purpose. It was called Domesday by 1180. Before that it was known as the Winchester Roll or King's Roll, and sometimes as the Book of the Treasury.

CDs should be migrated every few years in order to safely know that they will survive. Again, keep those CDs in separate locations if possible.

TNA have some guidance on media handling on their Digital Preservation pages: Digtal Preservation advice

The National Archives in Kew, London - which administers the UK's public records system - currently archives a selection of British government websites on a weekly basis. Those sites which do not update frequently are archived on a 6 monthly cycle. The UK Government Web Archive can be found here