IR35 was introduced because contractors often pay less income tax than employees (by using dividends from their one-man limited company, and by deferring income to maximise use of allowances). So the government is out money.
It seems they're fine being out this money if it's genuinely a business-to-business kind of deal. But not if it is disguised employment.
The only time I was ever asked to fill out IR35 paperwork I pointed out that I was contracting as an individual, rather than through a limited company, expressly because the contract was basically tantamount to employment and I had no interest in paying less than the full rate of tax. They were... surprised.
It can fire them, by removing them from their system. And they are paid wages - on a piecework basis rather than per hour, but at the employers' rates. This used to be very common in the UK before the trade union movement was strong.
The ruling actually gave 'worker' status, not 'employee'. The former carries only some of the obligations of the latter and is a sort of half way house between ongoing employment and being in business on your own account.
Critically, it does cone with rights to the minimum wage and holiday pay, though.
If you read the actual court judgment, you'll find a slight nuance. The algorithm was invented by Thales. They licenced it to EM. EM and another company called Delphi make immobilizer equipment using it and then sell the kit to Volkswagen and others. The researchers informed EM; EM failed to inform anyone else. VW found out a few weeks before publication and were pissed off.
Which is not to blame the researchers (except perhaps for notifying everyone, rather than simply the maker of the one component they compromised) but it does explain why the judge was fairly scathing: "It may well not be the defendants' fault that Volkswagen were not told earlier, but once the defendants were told about Volkswagen 's concern a responsible academic, concerned with responsible disclosure, would have realised that publication should be delayed, at least for a reasonable period, to allow for discussion with Volkswagen."
Sure. And those costs would then be offsettable against your profits for the purposes of paying tax on the bitcoins mined. You have been declaring them as taxable income, right?
It's worth bearing in mind that this is the second time that the Lib Dems have killed this particular bill. Also that their members are pretty virulently pro-privacy, and that the party currently has the balance-of-power in Parliament.
I'm sure something similar will be proposed again, but I'd be waiting until after the next election (2015) before it's likely to be passed.
Problems of schools gaming the stats not withstanding, this isn't a good approach. Your friends and family will have only anecdotal evidence of some schools at some periods of time; reputations tend to catch up with actual quality in the long run, but this can take several years.
In short, your algorithm is an excellent way of finding out what some people like you thought were good schools some years ago - it's not an efficient way to find out where your kid might be best off in the future.
Oxford's campus-wide wireless LAN project, OWL, operates like a hotspot scheme with open access points and a redirection to a login page for temporary credentials when you open a web browser. If you're a student or faculty member, you can instead use Cisco Anyconnect to access the university VPN and bypass the login screen.
Not only does the university support Anyconnect on Linux clients, it also provides guidance for setting up an entirely Free Software alternative for those who would rather not download the official software. It's really quite good.
There's actually quite an extensive economic literature on what the optimal economic term of copyright might be. See for example Pollock, R., 2009. Forever Minus a Day? Calculating Optimal Copyright Term. Review of Economic Research on Copyright Issues, 6(1), pp.35-60.
The short answer is that the rational term is much lower than the present one - of the order of twenty years or less. The majority of works make no money that long after release, so the average economic value of the longer term is tiny, especially when the net present value of the income is calculated at a reasonable discount rate.
It's worth pointing out, for those who don't know much about the British parliamentary system, that the title of this post isn't true. One of the Parliamentary Select Committees has recommended that the NHS should stop funding homoeopathy. This is not a decision and will not automatically result in the money being withdrawn.
This should be seen as the starting of a conversation on the issue in Parliament. In reality, the government has effective control over public spending and unless and until the Department of Health decides to change the way its money is spent then there will be no change in practice.
Re:Because no one here exerts any effort..
on
Slashdot in Politics?
·
· Score: 4, Informative
Congresspeople and other politicans pay attention to three things: (1) manually typed, manually signed letters from registered voters with reasonable arguments and tone (2) contributions of $$$ (the more the better, but any amount gets attention) (3) contributions of manhours.
Disclaimer: I just answer these letters, I don't actually make policy...
We don't care if letters are posted, faxed, emailed or if people ring in. In either case we'll read 'em, log 'em and you'll get a letter back (love the franking privilege). You don't have to manually type it, though we prefer people who make an effort to write their own letters rather than paying a company to fax us on any issue the company feels is important (that's just evil).
If you don't want to write by hand, there's a web form at www.house.gov/writerep/ to work out zip->representative and send an email. If your rep doesn't like email, WriteRep will tell you.
Be careful with cash, as well - it's not legal to receive campaign contributions on federal property so sending $50 to Washington offices is a bit icky.
Basically, as a constituent you'll get decent treatment, and there's probably nothing you can put in your letter to make it get in front of your representatives themselves. If the staffer thinks it's an important enough issue (or if the volume is high enough) then action will be taken.
I'm working on Capitol Hill ATM, generally dealing with constituent mail. Here are a few observations...
Do write. If someone raises an important issue, we look into it. If we don't know about the harm something will cause, it won't get opposed.
Do use email. Our office at least treats email the same way as anything else. And it's a lot less wasteful to send email replies than the hundreds of USPS letters we will send in response to a postcard campaign. Faxes (particularly standardized ones with just the names changed) are evil.
Call if you want, though don't expect to speak to the member of congress. Concerns expressed over the phone count the same as those by email or fax (except that a good number of those who phone in are nutters, unfortunately).
Don't contact a member who isn't your representative (so don't write to everyone who has cosponsored something). Your message will be given to your representative at best, thrown away at worst.
Volume is good, though not the key factor. In a representative's view, a wrong issue expressed by a hundred people is still wrong. Strength of feeling does change votes, though, particularly if your representative has no principles (or is responsive to his constituents, or something).
Money, unfortunately, is better. Re-election campaigns are expensive and the US campaign finance system is broken.
Above all, though, don't be apathetic. Enough people making noise (with their reps or otherwise) can get results.
I was in one of the House of Representatives office buildings near the Capitol this morning, when the reports came in from New York and then from the Pentagon, across the river.
The place was pretty calm, but our Congressman ordered us to get out and later the whole building was evacuated. It was a fairly bizarre experience being on the Hill surrounded by all kinds of people (aides, politicans, interns like myself, senior officials from various places around for meetings) with us all being moved away from the Capitol (the presumed target of any attack on Capitol Hill itself) and told to get home, whilst simultaneously the entire city was gridlocked and the metro system suspended.
There wasn't blind panic, but there was a definite feeling in the air that we were a serious target if there were going to be more attacks. Fortunately, there were not, and I managed to get home soon after 12, once Union Station's metro stop had been reopened.
The scariest thing about the whole experience, though, was not the possibility of attack against Congress, but the certainty that the event will be used as justification both for additional killings ("We must strike back against those responsible for harbouring these terrorists"), probably without taking the time to find out who really did it (just look at the debacles over the Lockerbie bombing and the US missile attack on a Sudanese asprin factory) and also for a forfeiture of even more civil rights in the name of security.
Speaking as an outsider, but one who has been working within the US political system, I find both prospects deeply scary.
4. Write your congressmen all you like: your letter represents an investment of $0.33 and they just don't give a rat's ass comparing that to $20,000 campaign contributions. To get the attention of Congress you need millions.
That depends very much on the congressman involved. I'm interning on the hill at the moment, and weight of noise/opinion does matter. If enough people write in about something it becomes an issue. Sure, your representative might not do anything about it, but it will come to their attention. Also, only the truly corrupt will make decisions based purely on how much cash they've been bunged. Most reps may be swung by the slick presentations, but that won't be the only factor involved.
On the other hand, I'm working for a representative with principles. I don't know how common that is:-/
The battle for legislation is very much the battle for the agenda. It doesn't matter so much how many people there are, it matters how much publicity there is. If an issue can be put onto the agenda, it will make people (representatives and people) think - and if your cause is genuinely strong, that is often enough.
Not exactly. It's about people being able to make informed decisions, and influence the forces that control their lives.
My worry with the increased corporatisation of the internet is not even so much that people's control over their lives will be reduced (that's pretty low already, what with pretty undemocratic political systems and zero effective control over corporations) but that with the majority of people getting their information from the same sites (that 50.4%) people will end up less informed (or only observing the news/internet from the biased perspectives of a few corporations) than they would have been otherwise.
That is just as direct a challenge to "democracy", as without informed participation democracy does not exist in any meaningful way.
There is a story that Berwick is still at war, as it was included at the start of the Crimean war, but excluded at the end. Dunno how acurate this is though.
Don't know whether including Berwick seperately is just a nicety or whether it has any legal force, but some guy from Russia came over in the late 50s (IIRC) and signed a peace treaty for the end of the Crimean War with the mayor of Berwick, allowing him to assure citizens of Russia that they could now sleep safely in their beds.
Would have been fun being the mayor, you can't deny it.
Assuming media continues to get bigger, the snowball effect is mitigated significantly.
That's the principle that the Leeds University archiver works on. As the tapes are continuously getting bigger, if the system is set up semi-automatically, data can be continually transferred to current media without significant time expenditure. The ISS reckon this can continue pretty much indefinitely.
You will also notice that some of these categories get their own domain classes. (.mil.gov.com.edu) It would greatly serve the internet, IMHO, to have domain classes for each of these "continents". (.sex.tec.alt) This is what DNS was designed for, and it's sad to see this feature go unused.
Bravo, there. If there's one thing that saddens me about the current internet, it's the abuse of the DNS. Lets face it,.com is far too broad and says nothing about the organisation in question. If there was a.sex (or.xxx or something) TLD, and sex sites were removed from.com (and.net and.org) then it would also be much easier to operate filtering.
Oh, and people using.org domains for commercial purposes should have them permanently removed - it completely defeats the point of differentiated TLDs.
So for the 150th time, if the majority of people want it that way, what's the big deal?
Because the people aren't always right? One of the reasons you have entrenched rights in something like the US consitution is to prevent your popular, elected government from doing things that are wrong.
I don't claim to be right all the time, "the people" shouldn't make the same claim. Allowing that to be true, it's our duty to stand up and be heard when we think society as a whole is making a shortsighted and misguided decision.
...that if MS was a European company they wouldn't be pulling this sort of thing. This is merely trade protectionism hiding under the guise of anti-trust regulation, similar to all those bogus claims about GM foods and such the Euros like to get all excited about.
A couple of quick rebuttals before I get onto my main point. Firstly, the furore about GM foods was very little to do with our governments and very little to do with trade protection (we don't grow much soya, to start with). It was ordinary people (possibly ignorant and wrong ordinary people, led by their newspapers, but that's a different issue) complaining about GM that brought UK government action in the first place. Until they realised how unpopular it was, the UK govt was actually pro GM. Secondly I take some offence at your portrayal of "Euros" as a homogeneous group. We're not. I, for one, don't get excited about GM or trade protection, in general.
Alright, on to the main point. This is not about trade protection. "Europe" doesn't have a competing commercial OS, so there's nothing to protect. Xenophobic bigotry aside, don't you think that the EU could be as concerned about MS strongarm tactics as the US DoJ is? Afterall, EU consumers are getting screwed over to the exact same degree that US ones are. And finally, the EU does have a record for taking unpopular action against its own firms and industries. Indeed, that's one of the reasons it is somewhat reviled in the UK - people object to the introduction of compulsory decimalised labelling of goods, for example. Especially the firms that have to implement it.
The EU has many problems, but this is not one of them.
Um, unless I'm grossly missing it, aren't geeks more inclined to hate or be disgusted with pop culture? After all, is the the popular culture that has rejected many of us and made us what we are. I can't stand pop culture...filled we Britney Spears and Backstreet Boys, Pokemon, and all the other worthless trappings of rampant commercialism.
I don't know about Britney Spears and Pokemon (I know a lot of "mainstream" people who are equally as scathing about them;-) but I'm uneasy with the claim that geeks reject the worthless trappings of rampant consumerism.
Looking from the perspective of a geek at University it seems that the worthless trappings of a consumer society are exactly what many geeks are looking for. I suppose it follows: rejected at school, with a resentment against the people that did the rejecting, what better way to get one back at myopic and shallow mainstream culture than by beating its proponents on their own terms?
It's the "Geeks being essential to the workings of modern computerised life" bit. How many people have revelled at the possibility of making shedloads of money from a net-bubble IPO and becoming instantly rich? Granted that many people wouldn't consider that an aim, I reckon there are many people who do want all the trappings of consumerism. After all, what is one of the central tenets of the libertarian philosophy that many geeks (myself not included, I must add) hold up as the ideal? The right to become wealthy through the operation of the free market - and damn the consequences for anyone else. Not the "self contained subculture" that geekdom is sometimes made out to be, but inherently consumeristic.
Many geeks don't want to eschew the liberal good life, with the attendent nice house, financial independence and ton of shiny computer kit, they just want it on their terms. Or at least that's how it looks from here.
I expect acid-free paper to survive long enough after an ecological catastrophe or, say, a meteor strike, to be useful to the survivors (better start moving the engineering textbooks down into the bunkers).
Has anyone read "A Canticle for Leibowitz" by Walter M Miller Jr? A post-apocalypse book, it is based on the premise that it is not just random environmental degredation that destroys our data and hence our science after the nuclear holocaust, but that people were so disgusted at how our knowledge had been used that there was a mass orgy of book burnings.
Even given that you can't book-burn an optical disc (though it could easily be destroyed) surely an equal worry to the slow deterioration of our media is that people may not want to preserve data that future generations may consider valuable?
My university has an archiver with a "preserve everything" policy because when they migrated their systems at the end of the 70s they only saved the "important" stuff like source code. They had a request a few years ago for binary code from an obsolete system that someone was trying to emulate - and they couldn't give it, even though it would have been exceedingly useful, because it had been deemed "worthless" and lost.
Perhaps we should be equally concerned about what we're preserving, as well as how we're doing it. Tom Harris
Slashdot Mirror
IR35 was introduced because contractors often pay less income tax than employees (by using dividends from their one-man limited company, and by deferring income to maximise use of allowances). So the government is out money.
It seems they're fine being out this money if it's genuinely a business-to-business kind of deal. But not if it is disguised employment.
The only time I was ever asked to fill out IR35 paperwork I pointed out that I was contracting as an individual, rather than through a limited company, expressly because the contract was basically tantamount to employment and I had no interest in paying less than the full rate of tax. They were... surprised.
It can fire them, by removing them from their system. And they are paid wages - on a piecework basis rather than per hour, but at the employers' rates. This used to be very common in the UK before the trade union movement was strong.
The ruling actually gave 'worker' status, not 'employee'. The former carries only some of the obligations of the latter and is a sort of half way house between ongoing employment and being in business on your own account.
Critically, it does cone with rights to the minimum wage and holiday pay, though.
If you read the actual court judgment, you'll find a slight nuance. The algorithm was invented by Thales. They licenced it to EM. EM and another company called Delphi make immobilizer equipment using it and then sell the kit to Volkswagen and others. The researchers informed EM; EM failed to inform anyone else. VW found out a few weeks before publication and were pissed off.
Which is not to blame the researchers (except perhaps for notifying everyone, rather than simply the maker of the one component they compromised) but it does explain why the judge was fairly scathing: "It may well not be the defendants' fault that Volkswagen were not told earlier, but once the defendants were told about Volkswagen 's concern a responsible academic, concerned with responsible disclosure, would have realised that publication should be delayed, at least for a reasonable period, to allow for discussion with Volkswagen."
Sure. And those costs would then be offsettable against your profits for the purposes of paying tax on the bitcoins mined. You have been declaring them as taxable income, right?
It's worth bearing in mind that this is the second time that the Lib Dems have killed this particular bill. Also that their members are pretty virulently pro-privacy, and that the party currently has the balance-of-power in Parliament.
I'm sure something similar will be proposed again, but I'd be waiting until after the next election (2015) before it's likely to be passed.
Problems of schools gaming the stats not withstanding, this isn't a good approach. Your friends and family will have only anecdotal evidence of some schools at some periods of time; reputations tend to catch up with actual quality in the long run, but this can take several years.
In short, your algorithm is an excellent way of finding out what some people like you thought were good schools some years ago - it's not an efficient way to find out where your kid might be best off in the future.
Oxford's campus-wide wireless LAN project, OWL, operates like a hotspot scheme with open access points and a redirection to a login page for temporary credentials when you open a web browser. If you're a student or faculty member, you can instead use Cisco Anyconnect to access the university VPN and bypass the login screen.
Not only does the university support Anyconnect on Linux clients, it also provides guidance for setting up an entirely Free Software alternative for those who would rather not download the official software. It's really quite good.
Further details at http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/network/wireless/
There's actually quite an extensive economic literature on what the optimal economic term of copyright might be. See for example Pollock, R., 2009. Forever Minus a Day? Calculating Optimal Copyright Term. Review of Economic Research on Copyright Issues, 6(1), pp.35-60.
The short answer is that the rational term is much lower than the present one - of the order of twenty years or less. The majority of works make no money that long after release, so the average economic value of the longer term is tiny, especially when the net present value of the income is calculated at a reasonable discount rate.
The school trips part of your argument (at least) is bogus. At state schools in Britain, nobody is obliged to pay for school trips (see http://www.education.gov.uk/popularquestions/childrenandfamilies/parenting/a005627/i-have-received-a-letter-from-my-childs-school-asking-for-contributions-towards-a-school-trip-do-i-have-to-pay) and merely being unemployed isn't going to stop you getting the begging letter.
It's worth pointing out, for those who don't know much about the British parliamentary system, that the title of this post isn't true. One of the Parliamentary Select Committees has recommended that the NHS should stop funding homoeopathy. This is not a decision and will not automatically result in the money being withdrawn. This should be seen as the starting of a conversation on the issue in Parliament. In reality, the government has effective control over public spending and unless and until the Department of Health decides to change the way its money is spent then there will be no change in practice.
Disclaimer: I just answer these letters, I don't actually make policy...
We don't care if letters are posted, faxed, emailed or if people ring in. In either case we'll read 'em, log 'em and you'll get a letter back (love the franking privilege). You don't have to manually type it, though we prefer people who make an effort to write their own letters rather than paying a company to fax us on any issue the company feels is important (that's just evil).
If you don't want to write by hand, there's a web form at www.house.gov/writerep/ to work out zip->representative and send an email. If your rep doesn't like email, WriteRep will tell you.
Be careful with cash, as well - it's not legal to receive campaign contributions on federal property so sending $50 to Washington offices is a bit icky.
Basically, as a constituent you'll get decent treatment, and there's probably nothing you can put in your letter to make it get in front of your representatives themselves. If the staffer thinks it's an important enough issue (or if the volume is high enough) then action will be taken.
HTH,
Tom
I'm working on Capitol Hill ATM, generally dealing with constituent mail. Here are a few observations...
Above all, though, don't be apathetic. Enough people making noise (with their reps or otherwise) can get results.
HTH,
Tom
The place was pretty calm, but our Congressman ordered us to get out and later the whole building was evacuated. It was a fairly bizarre experience being on the Hill surrounded by all kinds of people (aides, politicans, interns like myself, senior officials from various places around for meetings) with us all being moved away from the Capitol (the presumed target of any attack on Capitol Hill itself) and told to get home, whilst simultaneously the entire city was gridlocked and the metro system suspended.
There wasn't blind panic, but there was a definite feeling in the air that we were a serious target if there were going to be more attacks. Fortunately, there were not, and I managed to get home soon after 12, once Union Station's metro stop had been reopened.
The scariest thing about the whole experience, though, was not the possibility of attack against Congress, but the certainty that the event will be used as justification both for additional killings ("We must strike back against those responsible for harbouring these terrorists"), probably without taking the time to find out who really did it (just look at the debacles over the Lockerbie bombing and the US missile attack on a Sudanese asprin factory) and also for a forfeiture of even more civil rights in the name of security.
Speaking as an outsider, but one who has been working within the US political system, I find both prospects deeply scary.
Tom
That depends very much on the congressman involved. I'm interning on the hill at the moment, and weight of noise/opinion does matter. If enough people write in about something it becomes an issue. Sure, your representative might not do anything about it, but it will come to their attention. Also, only the truly corrupt will make decisions based purely on how much cash they've been bunged. Most reps may be swung by the slick presentations, but that won't be the only factor involved.
On the other hand, I'm working for a representative with principles. I don't know how common that is :-/
The battle for legislation is very much the battle for the agenda. It doesn't matter so much how many people there are, it matters how much publicity there is. If an issue can be put onto the agenda, it will make people (representatives and people) think - and if your cause is genuinely strong, that is often enough.
Democracy is about majority rule.
Not exactly. It's about people being able to make informed decisions, and influence the forces that control their lives.
My worry with the increased corporatisation of the internet is not even so much that people's control over their lives will be reduced (that's pretty low already, what with pretty undemocratic political systems and zero effective control over corporations) but that with the majority of people getting their information from the same sites (that 50.4%) people will end up less informed (or only observing the news/internet from the biased perspectives of a few corporations) than they would have been otherwise.
That is just as direct a challenge to "democracy", as without informed participation democracy does not exist in any meaningful way.
Don't know whether including Berwick seperately is just a nicety or whether it has any legal force, but some guy from Russia came over in the late 50s (IIRC) and signed a peace treaty for the end of the Crimean War with the mayor of Berwick, allowing him to assure citizens of Russia that they could now sleep safely in their beds.
Would have been fun being the mayor, you can't deny it.
--
Tom Harris
http://www.harris.ukgateway.net
That's the principle that the Leeds University archiver works on. As the tapes are continuously getting bigger, if the system is set up semi-automatically, data can be continually transferred to current media without significant time expenditure. The ISS reckon this can continue pretty much indefinitely.
--
Tom Harris
http://www.harris.ukgateway.net
Mary Poppins is the only film ever to score 100% on the CAPalert system. Enough said, really.
--
Tom Harris
http://www.harris.ukgateway.net
You will also notice that some of these categories get their own domain classes. (.mil .gov .com .edu) .tec .alt)
It would greatly serve the internet, IMHO, to have domain classes for each of these "continents". (.sex
This is what DNS was designed for, and it's sad to see this feature go unused.
Bravo, there. If there's one thing that saddens me about the current internet, it's the abuse of the DNS. Lets face it, .com is far too broad and says nothing about the organisation in question. If there was a .sex (or .xxx or something) TLD, and sex sites were removed from .com (and .net and .org) then it would also be much easier to operate filtering.
Oh, and people using .org domains for commercial purposes should have them permanently removed - it completely defeats the point of differentiated TLDs.
--
Tom Harris
http://www.harris.ukgateway.net
Because the people aren't always right? One of the reasons you have entrenched rights in something like the US consitution is to prevent your popular, elected government from doing things that are wrong.
I don't claim to be right all the time, "the people" shouldn't make the same claim. Allowing that to be true, it's our duty to stand up and be heard when we think society as a whole is making a shortsighted and misguided decision.
--
Tom Harris
http://www.harris.ukgateway.net
A couple of quick rebuttals before I get onto my main point. Firstly, the furore about GM foods was very little to do with our governments and very little to do with trade protection (we don't grow much soya, to start with). It was ordinary people (possibly ignorant and wrong ordinary people, led by their newspapers, but that's a different issue) complaining about GM that brought UK government action in the first place. Until they realised how unpopular it was, the UK govt was actually pro GM. Secondly I take some offence at your portrayal of "Euros" as a homogeneous group. We're not. I, for one, don't get excited about GM or trade protection, in general.
Alright, on to the main point. This is not about trade protection. "Europe" doesn't have a competing commercial OS, so there's nothing to protect. Xenophobic bigotry aside, don't you think that the EU could be as concerned about MS strongarm tactics as the US DoJ is? Afterall, EU consumers are getting screwed over to the exact same degree that US ones are. And finally, the EU does have a record for taking unpopular action against its own firms and industries. Indeed, that's one of the reasons it is somewhat reviled in the UK - people object to the introduction of compulsory decimalised labelling of goods, for example. Especially the firms that have to implement it.
The EU has many problems, but this is not one of them.
--
Tom Harris
http://www.harris.ukgateway.net
I don't know about Britney Spears and Pokemon (I know a lot of "mainstream" people who are equally as scathing about them ;-) but I'm uneasy with the claim that geeks reject the worthless trappings of rampant consumerism.
Looking from the perspective of a geek at University it seems that the worthless trappings of a consumer society are exactly what many geeks are looking for. I suppose it follows: rejected at school, with a resentment against the people that did the rejecting, what better way to get one back at myopic and shallow mainstream culture than by beating its proponents on their own terms?
It's the "Geeks being essential to the workings of modern computerised life" bit. How many people have revelled at the possibility of making shedloads of money from a net-bubble IPO and becoming instantly rich? Granted that many people wouldn't consider that an aim, I reckon there are many people who do want all the trappings of consumerism. After all, what is one of the central tenets of the libertarian philosophy that many geeks (myself not included, I must add) hold up as the ideal? The right to become wealthy through the operation of the free market - and damn the consequences for anyone else. Not the "self contained subculture" that geekdom is sometimes made out to be, but inherently consumeristic.
Many geeks don't want to eschew the liberal good life, with the attendent nice house, financial independence and ton of shiny computer kit, they just want it on their terms. Or at least that's how it looks from here.
--
Tom Harris
http://www.harris.ukgateway.net
Has anyone read "A Canticle for Leibowitz" by Walter M Miller Jr? A post-apocalypse book, it is based on the premise that it is not just random environmental degredation that destroys our data and hence our science after the nuclear holocaust, but that people were so disgusted at how our knowledge had been used that there was a mass orgy of book burnings.
Even given that you can't book-burn an optical disc (though it could easily be destroyed) surely an equal worry to the slow deterioration of our media is that people may not want to preserve data that future generations may consider valuable?
My university has an archiver with a "preserve everything" policy because when they migrated their systems at the end of the 70s they only saved the "important" stuff like source code. They had a request a few years ago for binary code from an obsolete system that someone was trying to emulate - and they couldn't give it, even though it would have been exceedingly useful, because it had been deemed "worthless" and lost.
Perhaps we should be equally concerned about what we're preserving, as well as how we're doing it. Tom Harris
--
Tom Harris
http://www.harris.ukgateway.net