When C.P. Snow wrote about two cultures, the Arts and Sciences, he was writing about the English. The land of Brunel and of Berners-Lee has long been run by technologically illiterate nit-wits. Sad but true.
Nobody who knows anything about technology is allowed anywhere near the British Government. They proposed to make a law against encryption "to stop criminals using it". We spent more per head "fixing" the Y2K bug than anyone else. (Quite fun, that bit). We don't have DSL yet. We pay in pounds sterling prices, the US dollar prices for computer kit.
The upper echelons of Britsh society are composed of rich, technologically illiterate nit-wits. Oh, and the nonsense that can come out in the media has to be heard to be believed. The TV told me *twice* that 40,000 tons of fireworks were set off for the millenium display. Laugh? I nearly cried. You have to have an Arts degree to work in the media as anything but a technician, it sometimes seems.
My guess is that some engineers have played on the credulity of Government and the media here in the hope of juicy research grants.
To make a point, you have to stick to the point. Wandering about and mixing in other issues just confuses the message. Every writer knows that. Uhh, almost every writer. Opening yourself to "Gun nut supports copyright piracy" cracks is just not smart. It dilutes and confuses both messages.
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Now my two cents worth... For me, the issues of guns and free (as in free speech) software have nothing at all to do with each other. I don't know why people try to link them, or perceive them as being linked, although I have read some of the reasoning. What I have found is that a lot of this reasoning consists of trotting out (unsupported) "facts". But for me the desirability or not of a gun-laden society rests on ethics and morals. And "is" does not prove "ought".
In my culture there is no right as such to defend oneself - well, OK, there is, but only just. Faced with provocation, insult, aggression, even outright attack, a person's first duty under English law is to quit. Get out of there. Flee. Run away. Oh yeah, and then tell the cops.
Funnily enough, this doctrine didn't play too well in early America, when it was incredibly hard to find a cop to tell. The legal code there inclined more to the view that "A man is not born to run away" from provocation and insult - and the escalation that often follows. "Stand your ground and be a man" actually worked better for most folk back then.
Scientific American have an interesting article on this background at http://www.sciam.com/1999/0699mens/0699nisbett.htm l
Well, the local reports I read here were that shops were obliged to dig out their old manual machines: you know, the ones that take a "tracing paper" copy of the card. I understand that merchants are covered by some kind of insurance to cover situations when on-line validation is unavailable through no fault of theirs. People were not pleased, but a law suit against the bank who made the terminals? Well, I'm no lawyer, but recourse to Law in these sort of situation is *much* less likely here that in the US. First off, under English Law, it's comparatively easy to predict the outcome of a suit; so why bother, why not just settle! Also, "contingent fees" are hardly used here; and Courts suggest that mediation is used to settle disputes far more than in the (as seen from here) overly litigious US. Anyway, here's the (local) BBC coverage http://news2.thls.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/business/ne wsid%5F583000/583280.stm
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But copyright protection was extended from 50 years to 70 years. And that applied retroactively.
I demand a score of 4 for correcting a post that scored 3.
Nobody who knows anything about technology is allowed anywhere near the British Government. They proposed to make a law against encryption "to stop criminals using it". We spent more per head "fixing" the Y2K bug than anyone else. (Quite fun, that bit). We don't have DSL yet. We pay in pounds sterling prices, the US dollar prices for computer kit.
The upper echelons of Britsh society are composed of rich, technologically illiterate nit-wits. Oh, and the nonsense that can come out in the media has to be heard to be believed. The TV told me *twice* that 40,000 tons of fireworks were set off for the millenium display. Laugh? I nearly cried. You have to have an Arts degree to work in the media as anything but a technician, it sometimes seems.
My guess is that some engineers have played on the credulity of Government and the media here in the hope of juicy research grants.
--------------
Now my two cents worth... For me, the issues of guns and free (as in free speech) software have nothing at all to do with each other. I don't know why people try to link them, or perceive them as being linked, although I have read some of the reasoning. What I have found is that a lot of this reasoning consists of trotting out (unsupported) "facts". But for me the desirability or not of a gun-laden society rests on ethics and morals. And "is" does not prove "ought".
In my culture there is no right as such to defend oneself - well, OK, there is, but only just. Faced with provocation, insult, aggression, even outright attack, a person's first duty under English law is to quit. Get out of there. Flee. Run away. Oh yeah, and then tell the cops.
Funnily enough, this doctrine didn't play too well in early America, when it was incredibly hard to find a cop to tell. The legal code there inclined more to the view that "A man is not born to run away" from provocation and insult - and the escalation that often follows. "Stand your ground and be a man" actually worked better for most folk back then.
Scientific American have an interesting article on this background at http://www.sciam.com/1999/0699mens/0699nisbett.htm l
Well, the local reports I read here were that shops were obliged to dig out their old manual machines: you know, the ones that take a "tracing paper" copy of the card. I understand that merchants are covered by some kind of insurance to cover situations when on-line validation is unavailable through no fault of theirs. People were not pleased, but a law suit against the bank who made the terminals? Well, I'm no lawyer, but recourse to Law in these sort of situation is *much* less likely here that in the US. First off, under English Law, it's comparatively easy to predict the outcome of a suit; so why bother, why not just settle! Also, "contingent fees" are hardly used here; and Courts suggest that mediation is used to settle disputes far more than in the (as seen from here) overly litigious US. Anyway, here's the (local) BBC coverage http://news2.thls.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/business/ne wsid%5F583000/583280.stm