I haven't seen any statistics to back up your claim of widespread gun use lowering violent crime. I have seen (same link as before, different paragraph) reports that US violent crime is more prevalent across the entire country than in the UK.
Your understanding of UK law is also wrong. Under common law you're allowed to use "reasonable force" to defend yourself. If you beat someone senseless, that would maybe get you prosecuted depending on circumstance. Depends on whether it was deemed reasonable by the police, and ultimately a court (if the police thought it wasn't reasonable).
If you pound him till he runs off, I can't think of any circumstance (there's bound to be one or two!) that will get you in trouble. The guy who attacked you can certainly be prosecuted, under any circumstance.
Personally I don't see a problem with this. If a boy scout targets you with a toy catapult, you can't beat him to a pulp, if two men set upon you, you're justified in either running away (!) or hitting them hard depending on your belief in your abilities. Using more force in the presence of more adversaries would be reasonable, after all.
Interestingly, both of these are easily explicable without invoking racism.
#1 In Japan, you do not go to the public hot-tub to get clean - you are washed and clean before you get in. You may know that, and I know that, but the vast majority of western visitors think a hot tub is for getting washed in. Since it's also not the done thing to point out another's faults, just about the only thing they *can* do is leave.
In other words it has nothing to do with any intrinsic "dirtyness", but is an observed difference in culture.
#2 Er, this is about religion. If you were to go to one of the bible-belt US states and let it be quietly known that you were recruiting for the worship of satan, in private in your own house, do you think you would be welcomed with open hearts ? (Grin: See thread about guns:-)
Basically, as soon as you invoke religion, you've already descended into madness, sorry, a "belief system". You need not invoke racism to explain anything at that point...
For what it's worth, I don't think the US is inherently racist - at least I've met as many people in lots of countries (I've travelled a lot) which have just as wide a spectrum of views on race as I have in the US. I remember being spat upon in Curacao because I was white, for example. Racism is about power or the lack of it, not colour, skin colour is just a convenient distinction.
I think you're inheriting a problem laid down from when blacks in the USA *were* slaves, and it's still working through your society... I don't see it being solved in my lifetime. If you want a similar example for the UK, you only need look at the Northern Ireland Question, and the 'troubles'. Oh what wonderful things euphamisms are...
When Brits say 'New York', they mean the city not the state. We tend to refer to 'The state of New York'. The numbers I quoted that refer to 'New York' actually refer to NYC, since the sentence doesn't really make sense in the article unless you're just comparing cities. There is a previous statement in the linked article about the US and England/Wales as an additional comparison.
I'm not really that bothered about the murder risk in either city - I was just a bit upset that the OP was using the higher incident rate of muggings as a gun justification. I don't think (as (s)he states in a subsequent post) that anyone and everyone should be walking around with instant death for others in their jacket pocket. It's just an opinion.
There's a fine quote from Eddie Izzard about guns. Something like "The NRA say that guns don't kill people, people kill people, and you know, that's probably true. I think (pause) the guns help though, don't you ? Just pointing your finger at someone and shouting BANG, well they'd have to have a pretty weak heart.." (he goes on, and as with all good comedy, the timing and delivery help, which is pretty hard to do in text:-) I'd say this probably typifies most people in the UK's attitude to guns, in a semi-humorous fashion, of course:-)
The murder rate in London is 2.9 per 100,000 compared with 8.6 per 100,000 in New York and 49.15 per 100,000 in Washington DC.
A report produced by the US Department of Justice in 1998 would appear to support the Home Office's claims.
It shows the murder rate was 5.7 times higher in the US than England and Wales and the rape rate was about three times higher.
You are indeed more likely to get roughed up wandering around London's dark streets in the small hours than in New York. No argument there.
You are also more likely to get killed in New York than in London. You are FAR MORE LIKELY to get killed in the USA capital than in the UK capital. Lets compare like with like after all.
Your choice guys, but frankly I'd rather be roughed up than killed. Just like the USA, btw, the figures for outside the capital are not even vaguely related. There are still much better odds of survival in the UK than the USA.
Not to sound lika an apologist for the cameras, but we also have things called video recorders. What tends to happen is that X gets mugged, X reports it, and the tape of the event is retrieved and watched. Y gts apprehended, shown the video, confesses because there's no room for manouvre, cost far less in court time, and is off the streets faster.
Personally though, I disagree with them as an invasion of my life. My right to anonymity shouldn't be restricted to the confines of my home, at least IMHO.
... but I just can't resist plugging hostip.info which attempts to geolocate IP addresses to a latitude / longitude map (and give a nice zoom-in if you're located or (if you're unknown) once you have put in your details...
I've got Spybot on my Windows box at work, and the number of times it triggers is just amazing (yes, even on/. adverts...) On a commercial site, you've got about a 25% chance (empirical estimate) of getting a popup saying that XXX has been blocked...
Also important is the low latency of the service. I've tried one of the high-latency ones (satellite based), and it's really not worth it - good for downloading large files, and for web-browsing, but useless for interactive use.
No-one ever seems to mention the latency though, just the bandwidth...
I suppose it makes sense for a school of music to embrace Napster, it's not as though they'll have nothing to offer. Presumably they're paying Napster here though, so perhaps they intend to make some of the money back via their "developed services".
I reckon this is probably a move on two fronts though - first it prevents the College being sued because it's officially above-board. Second, it establishes the college as a "happening" place - it's not just teaching string quartet music, it's working with new media in new ways. All very attractive to potential students...
s/stolen/copied without consent, not paid for, with no financial reward going to the original owner or publisher/
Sure, it's not the technical definition, but if I was dependent on sales of my works for income (and I'm not saying anyone else is or would be) I'd feel pretty strongly about someone "stealing" my works.
There's an argument that as people listen to downloaded (stolen) MP3's, they'll be tempted to go to the shops and buy them, thus not depriving the shops of their cash or devaluing the commodity. I wonder how books will pan out.
If you could somehow get free diamonds, I doubt many of us would throw them away or buy them instead, (unless you're Dutch) but with digital "objects" it's a bit more difficult to quantify. Copying is easy, delivery is easy. The sole advantage for the pay-for dead-tree-version is that you can cart it around with you - but with the advent of ever-more-clever phones, PDA's etc., will this advantage disappear, and with it, the open-source book ?
Which is currently only on Mini-ITX boards, it's an evolution from the Cyrix line of processors and isn't a great performer. Fine for low-CPU things or MPEG playback (it has hardware assist) but currently limited to ~1GHz, and even then performs more like an 800MHz P3.
We don' need no stinkin' speculation, why this is as obvious as a cow on a haystack!
Seriously, just what grounds do you need for bringing charges of industrial manipulation of the market by the two largest players ? Ok, there's no evidence (yet!), but just how thin can you stretch credulity before SNAP! ?
Whoops, as has been pointed out, the quote is actually in the article description (!) All I can say in my defence is that I saw a link to groklaw and had to click it quick before Slashdot completely destroyed PJ's server yet again...
... from the soon-to-be-slashdotted groklaw site. Darl asked 'did anyone get hit by the MyDoom virus', indicated one bloke should answer, and the guy said 'No, I run Linux':-))))
If you're a software developer who has no control over what distributions your software will run on (no "supported distributions"), then your best be would be to do one of:
Distribute the shared libraries you rely on with your application (and wrap your application in a shell script that sets an appropriate LD_LIBRARY_PATH)
Distribute them as non-shared binaries. Link something statically, and it'll work on any distribution since there's no dependencies.
If your question was more about user-interface issues (KDE, GNOME), then I was under the impression that they came with installation helpers, or had standard installation places. I'm not a great fan of either desktop (I tend to code under Linux, and the "normal user" desktop accoutrements just get in the way), so there's probably better people to answer, but I've never heard it raised as a problem before...
The main reason it's similar is that MS sees a potential serious competitor within a market it wants to own. MS wants to ringfence the desktop and datacentre market (well, it's got to gain the datacentre market first, but it was on the way to doing that before Linux became popular).
It's the argument that searching is about to become really important to them as a business sales technique - the new filesystem is a database, the integration of a web search engine makes your PC behave like a cache of the 'net. Etc. Owning the 'search' territory will help their marketing significantly, so they'll be serious about trying to get it.
I wouldn't write them off either - just because we all use google now doesn't mean we won't switch at the drop of a hat if something "better" (better can be 'easier to use' rather than 'more appropriate results') comes along. Altavista, anyone ?
they're completely innocent of any wrongdoing here. Significant claims require significant evidence of dirty deeds , and I see none at all.
It's a pity that AA (who despite the badmouthing above) are a well-meaning organisation, have tried for the sensationalist argument here. A real pity - it'll reduce the effectiveness of their statements in the future.
The other point is that it's in the (spit!) Observer, not the Guardian. The observer is the best advert for not cutting down trees that I ever did see, and that includes the argument that trees make Oxygen for us to breath!
... the entire world starts to DDOS you, to see if an expected DDOS is taking place yet [huge grin:-]... A company that monitors uptime starts a deathwatch on your site... That same company publically ridicules you on their homepage:-)
1) MS might be forced to either bundle competitors (Go Ogg!) or disable Windows media (which the commission don't seem to fancy)
2) The commissioners claim to have learnt from the mistakes of other regulators when dealing with MS, and have pre-emptively included a number of 'you can't do it *this* way' examples in their recommendations:-))
Slashdot Mirror
Linux people typically prefer blog-type sites than flash-enabled marketroid zero-content stuff that pointy-eared bosses prefer.
:-(
Given that it uses a comments section, it'll probably turn into a useful technical resource as well... Could do with a decent search though
Simon
I haven't seen any statistics to back up your claim of widespread gun use lowering violent crime. I have seen (same link as before, different paragraph) reports that US violent crime is more prevalent across the entire country than in the UK.
Your understanding of UK law is also wrong. Under common law you're allowed to use "reasonable force" to defend yourself. If you beat someone senseless, that would maybe get you prosecuted depending on circumstance. Depends on whether it was deemed reasonable by the police, and ultimately a court (if the police thought it wasn't reasonable).
If you pound him till he runs off, I can't think of any circumstance (there's bound to be one or two!) that will get you in trouble. The guy who attacked you can certainly be prosecuted, under any circumstance.
Personally I don't see a problem with this. If a boy scout targets you with a toy catapult, you can't beat him to a pulp, if two men set upon you, you're justified in either running away (!) or hitting them hard depending on your belief in your abilities. Using more force in the presence of more adversaries would be reasonable, after all.
Simon.
Interestingly, both of these are easily explicable without invoking racism.
:-)
#1 In Japan, you do not go to the public hot-tub to get clean - you are washed and clean before you get in. You may know that, and I know that, but the vast majority of western visitors think a hot tub is for getting washed in. Since it's also not the done thing to point out another's faults, just about the only thing they *can* do is leave.
In other words it has nothing to do with any intrinsic "dirtyness", but is an observed difference in culture.
#2 Er, this is about religion. If you were to go to one of the bible-belt US states and let it be quietly known that you were recruiting for the worship of satan, in private in your own house, do you think you would be welcomed with open hearts ? (Grin: See thread about guns
Basically, as soon as you invoke religion, you've already descended into madness, sorry, a "belief system". You need not invoke racism to explain anything at that point...
For what it's worth, I don't think the US is inherently racist - at least I've met as many people in lots of countries (I've travelled a lot) which have just as wide a spectrum of views on race as I have in the US. I remember being spat upon in Curacao because I was white, for example. Racism is about power or the lack of it, not colour, skin colour is just a convenient distinction.
I think you're inheriting a problem laid down from when blacks in the USA *were* slaves, and it's still working through your society... I don't see it being solved in my lifetime. If you want a similar example for the UK, you only need look at the Northern Ireland Question, and the 'troubles'. Oh what wonderful things euphamisms are...
Simon.
When Brits say 'New York', they mean the city not the state. We tend to refer to 'The state of New York'. The numbers I quoted that refer to 'New York' actually refer to NYC, since the sentence doesn't really make sense in the article unless you're just comparing cities. There is a previous statement in the linked article about the US and England/Wales as an additional comparison.
:-) I'd say this probably typifies most people in the UK's attitude to guns, in a semi-humorous fashion, of course :-)
I'm not really that bothered about the murder risk in either city - I was just a bit upset that the OP was using the higher incident rate of muggings as a gun justification. I don't think (as (s)he states in a subsequent post) that anyone and everyone should be walking around with instant death for others in their jacket pocket. It's just an opinion.
There's a fine quote from Eddie Izzard about guns. Something like "The NRA say that guns don't kill people, people kill people, and you know, that's probably true. I think (pause) the guns help though, don't you ? Just pointing your finger at someone and shouting BANG, well they'd have to have a pretty weak heart.." (he goes on, and as with all good comedy, the timing and delivery help, which is pretty hard to do in text
Simon.
You are indeed more likely to get roughed up wandering around London's dark streets in the small hours than in New York. No argument there.
You are also more likely to get killed in New York than in London. You are FAR MORE LIKELY to get killed in the USA capital than in the UK capital. Lets compare like with like after all.
Your choice guys, but frankly I'd rather be roughed up than killed. Just like the USA, btw, the figures for outside the capital are not even vaguely related. There are still much better odds of survival in the UK than the USA.
Yeah I know, mod me down. Yadda yadda.
Simon.
Not to sound lika an apologist for the cameras, but we also have things called video recorders. What tends to happen is that X gets mugged, X reports it, and the tape of the event is retrieved and watched. Y gts apprehended, shown the video, confesses because there's no room for manouvre, cost far less in court time, and is off the streets faster.
Personally though, I disagree with them as an invasion of my life. My right to anonymity shouldn't be restricted to the confines of my home, at least IMHO.
Simon.
... but I just can't resist plugging hostip.info which attempts to geolocate IP addresses to a latitude / longitude map (and give a nice zoom-in if you're located or (if you're unknown) once you have put in your details...
Simon.
How low ? Don't go there ...
/. adverts...) On a commercial site, you've got about a 25% chance (empirical estimate) of getting a popup saying that XXX has been blocked...
I've got Spybot on my Windows box at work, and the number of times it triggers is just amazing (yes, even on
Simon
Also important is the low latency of the service. I've tried one of the high-latency ones (satellite based), and it's really not worth it - good for downloading large files, and for web-browsing, but useless for interactive use.
No-one ever seems to mention the latency though, just the bandwidth...
Simon
I suppose it makes sense for a school of music to embrace Napster, it's not as though they'll have nothing to offer. Presumably they're paying Napster here though, so perhaps they intend to make some of the money back via their "developed services".
I reckon this is probably a move on two fronts though - first it prevents the College being sued because it's officially above-board. Second, it establishes the college as a "happening" place - it's not just teaching string quartet music, it's working with new media in new ways. All very attractive to potential students...
Simon
s/stolen/copied without consent, not paid for, with no financial reward going to the original owner or publisher/
Sure, it's not the technical definition, but if I was dependent on sales of my works for income (and I'm not saying anyone else is or would be) I'd feel pretty strongly about someone "stealing" my works.
Simon.
There's an argument that as people listen to downloaded (stolen) MP3's, they'll be tempted to go to the shops and buy them, thus not depriving the shops of their cash or devaluing the commodity. I wonder how books will pan out.
If you could somehow get free diamonds, I doubt many of us would throw them away or buy them instead, (unless you're Dutch)
but with digital "objects" it's a bit more difficult to quantify. Copying is easy, delivery is easy. The sole advantage for the pay-for dead-tree-version is that you can cart it around with you - but with the advent of ever-more-clever phones, PDA's etc., will this advantage disappear, and with it, the open-source book ?
Interesting to see how it pans out...
Simon
Which is currently only on Mini-ITX boards, it's an evolution from the Cyrix line of processors and isn't a great performer. Fine for low-CPU things or MPEG playback (it has hardware assist) but currently limited to ~1GHz, and even then performs more like an 800MHz P3.
Lots of info at www.mini-itx.com
Simon.
[sarcasm>] ... since we all now know that Linux users (especially in Norway) are all avid DVD-copiers...
[/sarcasm]
Simon
We don' need no stinkin' speculation, why this is as obvious as a cow on a haystack!
Seriously, just what grounds do you need for bringing charges of industrial manipulation of the market by the two largest players ? Ok, there's no evidence (yet!), but just how thin can you stretch credulity before SNAP! ?
Simon
Whoops, as has been pointed out, the quote is actually in the article description (!) All I can say in my defence is that I saw a link to groklaw and had to click it quick before Slashdot completely destroyed PJ's server yet again ...
:-)
Oh well, next time
Simon
... from the soon-to-be-slashdotted groklaw site. Darl asked 'did anyone get hit by the MyDoom virus', indicated one bloke should answer, and the guy said 'No, I run Linux' :-))))
:-)
Bet that made his day
Simon
Is there a comparison of this new version and Fedora/Redhat/Debian anywhere ? Given it's coming up to 'desert Redhat' time, this could be timely :-)
ATB,
Simon
If your question was more about user-interface issues (KDE, GNOME), then I was under the impression that they came with installation helpers, or had standard installation places. I'm not a great fan of either desktop (I tend to code under Linux, and the "normal user" desktop accoutrements just get in the way), so there's probably better people to answer, but I've never heard it raised as a problem before...
Simon
The main reason it's similar is that MS sees a potential serious competitor within a market it wants to own. MS wants to ringfence the desktop and datacentre market (well, it's got to gain the datacentre market first, but it was on the way to doing that before Linux became popular).
It's the argument that searching is about to become really important to them as a business sales technique - the new filesystem is a database, the integration of a web search engine makes your PC behave like a cache of the 'net. Etc. Owning the 'search' territory will help their marketing significantly, so they'll be serious about trying to get it.
I wouldn't write them off either - just because we all use google now doesn't mean we won't switch at the drop of a hat if something "better" (better can be 'easier to use' rather than 'more appropriate results') comes along. Altavista, anyone ?
Simon
... obviously :-)
Simon
They have customers who've asked for a missing feature. They've decided to supply that feature. That's it.
Er, stuff that *matters* ?
Sure, it's nice to know UserLinux will have KDE, but surely this rates as a slashback at most ? Slow news day perhaps...
Simon
they're completely innocent of any wrongdoing here. Significant claims require significant evidence of dirty deeds , and I see none at all.
It's a pity that AA (who despite the badmouthing above) are a well-meaning organisation, have tried for the sensationalist argument here. A real pity - it'll reduce the effectiveness of their statements in the future.
The other point is that it's in the (spit!) Observer, not the Guardian. The observer is the best advert for not cutting down trees that I ever did see, and that includes the argument that trees make Oxygen for us to breath!
Simon
... the entire world starts to DDOS you, to see if an expected DDOS is taking place yet [huge grin :-] ... A company that monitors uptime starts a deathwatch on your site ... That same company publically ridicules you on their homepage :-)
Simon
... are that
:-))
1) MS might be forced to either bundle competitors (Go Ogg!) or disable Windows media (which the commission don't seem to fancy)
2) The commissioners claim to have learnt from the mistakes of other regulators when dealing with MS, and have pre-emptively included a number of 'you can't do it *this* way' examples in their recommendations
Simon