What is interesting to me is that there has been quite a delay - over a day, so far as I can tell, between this sendmail update going into the CVS tree, first into -CURRENT, the following very quickly into -STABLE and the various RELANG 4_x out there, and it appearing as first a FreeBSD security advisory, and being officially announced by email.
From my point of view, it was a day without email anyway while I moved up main machines several -pX releases. Not a real problem, but yet another reason to teach myself how to use another mailserver than sendmail, as it seems to get this kind of thing quite often.
I'm not really sure how you find 1(b) offensive, unless you think that you should have a right to privacy 'on the net (hint - you don't).
Hint I do. If I don't bother to encrypt anything, always use telnet, and so on maybe I can expect to be snooped. But if I do bother to protect my privacy I sure has hell shouldn't go to jail for it.
As for 1(c), if your cable provider allows you to hook up multiple televisions, then you're not breaking the law. If your ISP allows NAT boxes, you're not breaking the law.
So what? If I am a public executioner I can kill people, if I'm in the army I can use military grade ordinance and proper machine guns. The point about freedom is freedom to do things without needing someone elses approval.
Now, rebroadcasting your cable feed to people who (presumably) haven't paid for cable isn't exactly the kind of behavior that's going to win you a boy scout patch - that's obviously an illegal act,
Not to me it isn't. It is a naturally benificial use for the technology I own.
and I dont know what would make you think otherwise.
I don't know what would make you think that rebroadcasting cable transmissions could possible be criminal. Criminal things are things like murder and robbery. If I had gone to the cable company, pointed a gun at them and forced them to provide me with a feed, that would be illegal. Doing what I like with it after having paid them is not. I don't even see how it is a breach of contract, as contracts have to be enfoceable and this patently isn't.
You think that you oughta be able to take your the cable feed from your neighbor? How about all of your neighbors share 1 cable feed?
What, set up my own telco? That sounds like an idea. I wonder why no one else has thought of that. Wait a minute...
I know - let the entire city split the tab for 1 cable bill, then you could even afford all those fancy movie channels!
Which is exactly what cable companies do at the moment. QED.
I have a Ericsson T68 too. It's such a good phone. I am normally on Vodaphone in the UK, but I've also used in the Republic of Ireland, France, in DC, rural Maryland gun ranges, and Knoxville and Nashville, and deep in woods in Tennesse and Knoxville, and in Baltimore. Worked fine at all times.
What is the point in having the American military install them a CMDA system if all the neighbours (actually the whole rest of the world, including Britain) use GSM, and all the equipment is standard cheap off the shelf stuff that Iraqi businesses will set up for themselves about five minutes after Saddam is out of power?
For God's sake, even Somalia in on GSM, and they don't have a government at all.
What on earth is the point of all this mercantilist crap coming from America? It's bad imperialism. We English learnt (and we copied that from the Romans) that you should never try to impose your own systems on a conquered country. That is why their was never a currency union in the British Empire, why we never told people what side of the road to drive on, all sorts of basic sensible things that make life so much easier for the ruling power. The important thing about Iraq is establishing speedy US military control, not stuffing around trying to force them to use your betamax phone system, which incedently has a vastly lower takeup than in Europe
well, if you define $GOD as 'an entity on which all things can be blamed, when one needs such a thing' then it does rather fit.....
Definitions definitions. What I think you are doing there is defining God into existance by weakening the normal monotheistic defintion - that God is the one monotheistic god (a tautology), with real power to do stuff as shown in the Bible and is still doing stuff today, as claimed by monotheists.
It seems to me that with God being just something that people blame for events not caused by obviouse things, there doesn't necessiarily have to be any existance in your definition, just the act of blaming.;-0
"If Microsoft didn't exist it would be necessary to invent them."
So you are equating Microsoft to God. Interesting...
Although Voltair may have said "If God didn't exist it would be necessary to invent him" it is another matter as to whether Microsoft resembles Him. I would have said that Microsoft was just anouther popular-for-now company with nothing to fall back on. Nothing special in the long run.
However,if you want to be really picky, they have the advantage of existing and actually being pointable-to, unlike God.
I've never had anyone im my family get quite so confused, but really, there isn't much else you can do but support them from time to time. If I made them buy commercial support it would about one hundredth of the quality of service they get from me, at a price that would be daylight robbery.
I've spent the last ten years or so gradually improving the systems they use, and it really takes very little of my time. Last month I showed their lodger how to plug her laptop into the network, and showed my mother how to use LaTeX (plus installed MikTeX/WinEdt) for her book. Sometime next month I will upgrade the firewall from Redhat 6.2 to FreeBSD 4.8, and sometime in the summer I'll upgrade the Internet connection from modem to ADSL. No big deal really.
Don't bother with Redhat on it. You will be delighted by FreeBSD 4.7/4.8. I'm using it on a whole range of machines, from a k6-2/333 desktop to intermediate print/file/dns/dhcp servers, to a 16mb Pentium 75 firewall with no CDROM or floppy, and it is just so much better. The CVSUP update process works so well, and the ports tree is wonderful, if you don't mind waiting around while it compiles stuff. I have upgraded a number of machines previouslly running Redhat 6.2 or 7.0 to FreeBSD 4.x, and it mackes a vastly better upgrade path than bloated later Redhats, and is extremely fast and reliable. Just don't use FreeBSD 5.0/5.x yet because it is not reliable enough yet - it is a pre-production release, and labeled as such.
That's interesting, but I don't understand why your servers won't boot non-bzImages or any 2.4/2.5 kernels. Even before I switched to FreBSD for everything (because of a new employer), I was installing early 2.4 kernels without problem - reliabilty was an issue back then, but not instaling. I did have to use vmlinux on sun hardaware, but that is what you are supposed to do, right? After all, why _use_ bz compression for a kernel not stuck with Intel size restrictions?
I had some horrible experiences with 2.4 around about 2.4.3, then I got really put off by performace problems with 2.4.6. Then there was the new VM in 2.4.10 and disaster with 2.4.11 and 2.4.13.
At that point I switched to FreeBSD 4.x, and I must say, I've never looked back. I find FreeBSD 4.x superb on servers (max 2 cpu, but who ever uses more than that?) and great on my low spec desktop. I now only have one Linux machine left, and that is my parents firewall running Linux 2.2.20 on a partially updated Redhat 6.2 setup.
My next decision is whether to try and update their present system (which is why I'm reading everything here at -1 nested) or just to wait for FreBSD 4.8 to come out and use that on it instead. Currently, unless 2.2.24 in a very important update, I think FreeBSD will be the way I'll go, simply because it is so much easier to upgrade (with make update for cvsup, make buildworld etc. etc, and portupgrade, plus the superb ports tree).
I'm still following 2.2.x though,even though I've mostly crossed over. And I am assured Linux makes a more responsive desktop. I suppose what really makes me use FreeBSD is two things, the bloatedness of Redhat and the political aganda of Debian. Having that against Debain may be unfair, but FreeBSD does just completely lack that and have a much faster release schedule.
I do have a Surfboard SB4100, though; I have conciderably less faith in the nasty little CM ntl use now. The ethernet connector barely works in half of them.
In my experience the NTL installation guys are pretty free with new cable modems. When I last moved house they took away my old one and gave me an identical new one for no reason at all. The downside of that was that I had to reregister its mac addresss with them again, before I could use it for anything other than pings everywhere and tcp connections to their subscription website.
So, is it possible to power an NTL cable moden on 240v AC via the ethernet socket? Does it still work now? Do they need to send someone round to fit a new one?
[Obviously I've never done anything like that myself, and my second NTL modem was unasked for when I moved!]
I use FreeBSD too, and until recently I was completely foxed my the fact that maybe once or twice a day the connection started going down for periods of up to an hour. - dropping every second packet. Now I have learnt to do "ard -ad" every five minutes as a shell script running in the background, and my connectivity problems are gone.
Find one country on this planet that doesn't tax its population.
Dubai certainly has no taxation system, as AKAIK do the other Emitates, Saudia Arabia and Kuwait. Absolute monarchies do not generally tax.
Jesus, some people want everything handed to them on a plate, while giving fuck all in return.
What exactly am I getting on a plate, and why should I give whoever reckons they're giving it to me any more than "fuck all", considering I didn't want it anyway? And don't give me any of that "protection from being thrown in jail" crap, that's just the logic of the protection racket.
It takes its money from people who live there by force. So what if the government where you live is elected - I didn't vote for them, I hate almost everything they do (they in my case being the "British" government and the warmongering fool who runs it), and if I don't pay up they really would arrest me and send me to jail.
Just as I wouldn't want to be lumped in with a bunch of techno-illiterate nutcases in London, I'm sure there are plenty of people in Japan who wouldn't like to be associated with what their government does.
It is the Japaese government that is spending the money, not "Japan". This may seem off-topic, but a country is different from its government. The amount Japan spends on Linux would be all the money all Japanese people and companies spend on Linux and Linux related things, not what the government did there. Governments are just another organisation and for most countries the main source of their problems.
If that is the case it sounds like he really should fork off and set up TrueBSD or something. It would be a OS where the BSD way from the good old days was followed.
Well, if everybody had perfect privacy, then crime would not be solvable.
"My brother went to your house to talk about buying a car from you. He's not been back. Where is he? What were those gunshots I heard just now?"
Perfect privacy, crime still gets solved.
Or take the example of the princes in the tower. Richard III, as their uncle, was responsible for their safety. First of all he makes himself King simply because he has enough of he posse around Westminster Abbey and he holds the Archbishop of Canterbury, but the Princes are still in the tower, and are seen playing in the garden there. Then they aren't seen anymore. People become suspicious, Richard can't show where they are, people rise up and Richard gets killed on Bosworth Fields and justice is done, inspite of him having privacy and actually being King at the time.
So for real crime privacy doesn't matter. Maybe it makes victemless crimes impossible to detect, but where there is a victem people are bound to find out. Victemless crimes are not crimes, anyway.
You have a right to tape over your numberplate - your numberplate, your tape, your right. You've got to learn to stand up to these burocrats and their pettyfogging regulations.
Even if everyone's identity papers are in order, sensible people don't get mixed up with Nigerian frauds.
I don't think any amount of ID will stop some people falling for fraudsters every now and again. All part of life's rich tapestry. The most I can do is try not to defraud people myself.
Brakes can fail at any time after or before an MOT test, and driving an old car myself (not a BMW, btw), I'm responibile for the condition of the brakes. I don't see how the MOT test alters that, as cars with failed brakes are virtually useless. Nor do I see how my saying that I will bear the consequences of my own actions makes me sound like...
"the twat in a BMW who rear-ended my rusty, rotten old Volvo (scratching my bumper and destroying the front of his car), who now wants to take me to court, because he has no insurance."
How is it that whenever someone says that people shouldn't have to have government annual car test you imediately think of some guy who crashed into you in a fancy new car and then brought false legal charges against you? What is the connection? It can't be insurance because his only legal insurance requirement in the UK is third-party cover, that is, cover for who he hits but not himself.
I don't see how I've got anything in common wih some guy who crashed into you. Are you saying he didn't have a valid MOT certificate like you and I both have? I bet he did, or I bet his car was under 3 years old and didn't need one.
Just out of interest Alan, what was to stop the guy who pulled a knife on you from telling you to open the door or he'd cut your throat, and then cutting your throat? Even I wouldn't behave in such a cavalier way when my life was at stake. Anyone pulling a knife or gun on you is already desperate by definition, so if you can't defend yourself why provoke them?
Being done for manslaughter and hopefully getting away with a suspecded sentence (not the norm AKAIK, 5 years more like), becuase you shot a burgler in your house does not make it "not particularly legal". It makes it illigal and gives you the kind of criminal record that means you'll probably never work again. I don't believe anyware else in the world would have convicted Tony Martin. When violent criminals break into your house you have a right to take action against them. Maybe he should have held off if they had surrended and had their hands up, but running away carrying stolen goods is no moral protection from the householder taking shots at you.
Regarding pistols and revolvers, when I say legal I mean legal for me to own one, that is, a law abiding person over 21. I don't mean police firearm instructors or armourers.
I do object to giving a policeman the right to inspect my gunsafe, if I had one. I don't see the point of keeping them in a gunsafe anyway, unless it was a very valuable antique or something, and even if I did I object to warrentless searches of my house when there isn't any evidence of my doing wrong. When you say "No inspections, no licence, simple as that." I suspect you don't understand the difference between right and law.
And yes, there is no reason why a MOT inspector should poke around in my car every year to see if I can still drive it "legally". It's my car, and if it falls apart on me I will bear the consequences. Many countries (including Australia) have no such requirement and and it doesn't make anything less safe for other road users - rusty old cars just aren't the threat that new high powered sports cars are, any fool can tell that.
[CCTV cameras] are also used by the police to cut down on shoplifters and pickpockets during the day, and as a result neither is as bad a problem as it would be.
I suppose it would be too much to excpect the police to actual patrol these places during the day and at night, maybe actualy doing their job for once rather than relying on useless cameras?
What the Slashdot knee-jerk crowd forgets is that there is a balance between privacy and safety. Different countries opt for different points on the scale. Sure, we could have more privacy at the expense of a higher crime rate, but why do we need it?
What makes you think it's a trade off? Most other countries have fewer spy cameras and are safer. It isn't a case of "opting" for a point on the scale. That attempting to exchage liberty for safety left you with neither was obvious even in Benjamin Franklins day. Today almost the entire history of the 20th century proves the point that your own freedom was directly proportional to your own safety. Whenever you get a government claiming to offer safety for freedom they are always lying - just ask a resident of East Berlin where their exchange got them - a tyranny lasting from 1933 to 1989.
This assumes that cars are all alike, but in a society where numberplates were not the norm people would still want to identify their own cars, typically by painting a name on it as with boats. Its only in the current situation of having numberplates that cars become anonymous without them: the same crowding out effect on other forms of identity that countries with mandatory government ID cards get, where people really can't concive how they could live without their ID.
People might be more tempted to drive off after an accident without numberplates, but very often there are reasons why that wouldn't make sense - a huge bloodstain on the front of the car for one, or a broken windscreen or other damage, or just basic decency and taking responsibility for your own actions.
This may sound spurious to you, but at the end of the day the fundamental problem remains, that by driving a car you are carrying around a prominent government serial number that directly identifies you. Getting away from that situation is worth it, even if it means finding some other way of coping with hit and run incidents.
What planet are you living on! It is not legal to shoot burglers in the UK, even when you life is at threat. Several people have gone to prison recently for that and the law banning self defence has been in force since 1954. Also, we have laws banning people from carrying defensive weapons on the street ('cos nobody ever gets mugged in the street, right?) and handguns have been made completely illegal by Blair. Anyway, what use are most guns being legal with a licence if you you have to geep them locked up in a gun safe and you give the local police the right to plod around the house "inspecting" them whenever they like?
Firearms laws and restrictions on the right of self-defence are easily the strictest in the world in Britain, and unquestionably the reason for the rapid increase in violent crime here.
Slashdot Mirror
From my point of view, it was a day without email anyway while I moved up main machines several -pX releases. Not a real problem, but yet another reason to teach myself how to use another mailserver than sendmail, as it seems to get this kind of thing quite often.
Hint I do. If I don't bother to encrypt anything, always use telnet, and so on maybe I can expect to be snooped. But if I do bother to protect my privacy I sure has hell shouldn't go to jail for it.
As for 1(c), if your cable provider allows you to hook up multiple televisions, then you're not breaking the law. If your ISP allows NAT boxes, you're not breaking the law.
So what? If I am a public executioner I can kill people, if I'm in the army I can use military grade ordinance and proper machine guns. The point about freedom is freedom to do things without needing someone elses approval.
Now, rebroadcasting your cable feed to people who (presumably) haven't paid for cable isn't exactly the kind of behavior that's going to win you a boy scout patch - that's obviously an illegal act,
Not to me it isn't. It is a naturally benificial use for the technology I own.
and I dont know what would make you think otherwise.
I don't know what would make you think that rebroadcasting cable transmissions could possible be criminal. Criminal things are things like murder and robbery. If I had gone to the cable company, pointed a gun at them and forced them to provide me with a feed, that would be illegal. Doing what I like with it after having paid them is not. I don't even see how it is a breach of contract, as contracts have to be enfoceable and this patently isn't.
You think that you oughta be able to take your the cable feed from your neighbor? How about all of your neighbors share 1 cable feed?
What, set up my own telco? That sounds like an idea. I wonder why no one else has thought of that. Wait a minute...
I know - let the entire city split the tab for 1 cable bill, then you could even afford all those fancy movie channels!
Which is exactly what cable companies do at the moment. QED.
I have a Ericsson T68 too. It's such a good phone. I am normally on Vodaphone in the UK, but I've also used in the Republic of Ireland, France, in DC, rural Maryland gun ranges, and Knoxville and Nashville, and deep in woods in Tennesse and Knoxville, and in Baltimore. Worked fine at all times.
For God's sake, even Somalia in on GSM, and they don't have a government at all.
What on earth is the point of all this mercantilist crap coming from America? It's bad imperialism. We English learnt (and we copied that from the Romans) that you should never try to impose your own systems on a conquered country. That is why their was never a currency union in the British Empire, why we never told people what side of the road to drive on, all sorts of basic sensible things that make life so much easier for the ruling power. The important thing about Iraq is establishing speedy US military control, not stuffing around trying to force them to use your betamax phone system, which incedently has a vastly lower takeup than in Europe
Definitions definitions. What I think you are doing there is defining God into existance by weakening the normal monotheistic defintion - that God is the one monotheistic god (a tautology), with real power to do stuff as shown in the Bible and is still doing stuff today, as claimed by monotheists.
It seems to me that with God being just something that people blame for events not caused by obviouse things, there doesn't necessiarily have to be any existance in your definition, just the act of blaming. ;-0
So you are equating Microsoft to God. Interesting...
Although Voltair may have said "If God didn't exist it would be necessary to invent him" it is another matter as to whether Microsoft resembles Him. I would have said that Microsoft was just anouther popular-for-now company with nothing to fall back on. Nothing special in the long run.
However,if you want to be really picky, they have the advantage of existing and actually being pointable-to, unlike God.
I've spent the last ten years or so gradually improving the systems they use, and it really takes very little of my time. Last month I showed their lodger how to plug her laptop into the network, and showed my mother how to use LaTeX (plus installed MikTeX/WinEdt) for her book. Sometime next month I will upgrade the firewall from Redhat 6.2 to FreeBSD 4.8, and sometime in the summer I'll upgrade the Internet connection from modem to ADSL. No big deal really.
Don't bother with Redhat on it. You will be delighted by FreeBSD 4.7/4.8. I'm using it on a whole range of machines, from a k6-2/333 desktop to intermediate print/file/dns/dhcp servers, to a 16mb Pentium 75 firewall with no CDROM or floppy, and it is just so much better. The CVSUP update process works so well, and the ports tree is wonderful, if you don't mind waiting around while it compiles stuff. I have upgraded a number of machines previouslly running Redhat 6.2 or 7.0 to FreeBSD 4.x, and it mackes a vastly better upgrade path than bloated later Redhats, and is extremely fast and reliable. Just don't use FreeBSD 5.0/5.x yet because it is not reliable enough yet - it is a pre-production release, and labeled as such.
That's interesting, but I don't understand why your servers won't boot non-bzImages or any 2.4/2.5 kernels. Even before I switched to FreBSD for everything (because of a new employer), I was installing early 2.4 kernels without problem - reliabilty was an issue back then, but not instaling. I did have to use vmlinux on sun hardaware, but that is what you are supposed to do, right? After all, why _use_ bz compression for a kernel not stuck with Intel size restrictions?
At that point I switched to FreeBSD 4.x, and I must say, I've never looked back. I find FreeBSD 4.x superb on servers (max 2 cpu, but who ever uses more than that?) and great on my low spec desktop. I now only have one Linux machine left, and that is my parents firewall running Linux 2.2.20 on a partially updated Redhat 6.2 setup.
My next decision is whether to try and update their present system (which is why I'm reading everything here at -1 nested) or just to wait for FreBSD 4.8 to come out and use that on it instead. Currently, unless 2.2.24 in a very important update, I think FreeBSD will be the way I'll go, simply because it is so much easier to upgrade (with make update for cvsup, make buildworld etc. etc, and portupgrade, plus the superb ports tree).
I'm still following 2.2.x though,even though I've mostly crossed over. And I am assured Linux makes a more responsive desktop. I suppose what really makes me use FreeBSD is two things, the bloatedness of Redhat and the political aganda of Debian. Having that against Debain may be unfair, but FreeBSD does just completely lack that and have a much faster release schedule.
In my experience the NTL installation guys are pretty free with new cable modems. When I last moved house they took away my old one and gave me an identical new one for no reason at all. The downside of that was that I had to reregister its mac addresss with them again, before I could use it for anything other than pings everywhere and tcp connections to their subscription website.
So, is it possible to power an NTL cable moden on 240v AC via the ethernet socket? Does it still work now? Do they need to send someone round to fit a new one?
[Obviously I've never done anything like that myself, and my second NTL modem was unasked for when I moved!]
Do you get that too?
Dubai certainly has no taxation system, as AKAIK do the other Emitates, Saudia Arabia and Kuwait. Absolute monarchies do not generally tax.
Jesus, some people want everything handed to them on a plate, while giving fuck all in return.
What exactly am I getting on a plate, and why should I give whoever reckons they're giving it to me any more than "fuck all", considering I didn't want it anyway? And don't give me any of that "protection from being thrown in jail" crap, that's just the logic of the protection racket.
Just as I wouldn't want to be lumped in with a bunch of techno-illiterate nutcases in London, I'm sure there are plenty of people in Japan who wouldn't like to be associated with what their government does.
It is the Japaese government that is spending the money, not "Japan". This may seem off-topic, but a country is different from its government. The amount Japan spends on Linux would be all the money all Japanese people and companies spend on Linux and Linux related things, not what the government did there. Governments are just another organisation and for most countries the main source of their problems.
If that is the case it sounds like he really should fork off and set up TrueBSD or something. It would be a OS where the BSD way from the good old days was followed.
"My brother went to your house to talk about buying a car from you. He's not been back. Where is he? What were those gunshots I heard just now?"
Perfect privacy, crime still gets solved.
Or take the example of the princes in the tower. Richard III, as their uncle, was responsible for their safety. First of all he makes himself King simply because he has enough of he posse around Westminster Abbey and he holds the Archbishop of Canterbury, but the Princes are still in the tower, and are seen playing in the garden there. Then they aren't seen anymore. People become suspicious, Richard can't show where they are, people rise up and Richard gets killed on Bosworth Fields and justice is done, inspite of him having privacy and actually being King at the time.
So for real crime privacy doesn't matter. Maybe it makes victemless crimes impossible to detect, but where there is a victem people are bound to find out. Victemless crimes are not crimes, anyway.
You have a right to tape over your numberplate - your numberplate, your tape, your right. You've got to learn to stand up to these burocrats and their pettyfogging regulations.
I don't think any amount of ID will stop some people falling for fraudsters every now and again. All part of life's rich tapestry. The most I can do is try not to defraud people myself.
"the twat in a BMW who rear-ended my rusty, rotten old Volvo (scratching my bumper and destroying the front of his car), who now wants to take me to court, because he has no insurance."
How is it that whenever someone says that people shouldn't have to have government annual car test you imediately think of some guy who crashed into you in a fancy new car and then brought false legal charges against you? What is the connection? It can't be insurance because his only legal insurance requirement in the UK is third-party cover, that is, cover for who he hits but not himself.
I don't see how I've got anything in common wih some guy who crashed into you. Are you saying he didn't have a valid MOT certificate like you and I both have? I bet he did, or I bet his car was under 3 years old and didn't need one.
Just out of interest Alan, what was to stop the guy who pulled a knife on you from telling you to open the door or he'd cut your throat, and then cutting your throat? Even I wouldn't behave in such a cavalier way when my life was at stake. Anyone pulling a knife or gun on you is already desperate by definition, so if you can't defend yourself why provoke them?
Regarding pistols and revolvers, when I say legal I mean legal for me to own one, that is, a law abiding person over 21. I don't mean police firearm instructors or armourers.
I do object to giving a policeman the right to inspect my gunsafe, if I had one. I don't see the point of keeping them in a gunsafe anyway, unless it was a very valuable antique or something, and even if I did I object to warrentless searches of my house when there isn't any evidence of my doing wrong. When you say "No inspections, no licence, simple as that." I suspect you don't understand the difference between right and law.
And yes, there is no reason why a MOT inspector should poke around in my car every year to see if I can still drive it "legally". It's my car, and if it falls apart on me I will bear the consequences. Many countries (including Australia) have no such requirement and and it doesn't make anything less safe for other road users - rusty old cars just aren't the threat that new high powered sports cars are, any fool can tell that.
I suppose it would be too much to excpect the police to actual patrol these places during the day and at night, maybe actualy doing their job for once rather than relying on useless cameras?
What the Slashdot knee-jerk crowd forgets is that there is a balance between privacy and safety. Different countries opt for different points on the scale. Sure, we could have more privacy at the expense of a higher crime rate, but why do we need it?
What makes you think it's a trade off? Most other countries have fewer spy cameras and are safer. It isn't a case of "opting" for a point on the scale. That attempting to exchage liberty for safety left you with neither was obvious even in Benjamin Franklins day. Today almost the entire history of the 20th century proves the point that your own freedom was directly proportional to your own safety. Whenever you get a government claiming to offer safety for freedom they are always lying - just ask a resident of East Berlin where their exchange got them - a tyranny lasting from 1933 to 1989.
People might be more tempted to drive off after an accident without numberplates, but very often there are reasons why that wouldn't make sense - a huge bloodstain on the front of the car for one, or a broken windscreen or other damage, or just basic decency and taking responsibility for your own actions.
This may sound spurious to you, but at the end of the day the fundamental problem remains, that by driving a car you are carrying around a prominent government serial number that directly identifies you. Getting away from that situation is worth it, even if it means finding some other way of coping with hit and run incidents.
Firearms laws and restrictions on the right of self-defence are easily the strictest in the world in Britain, and unquestionably the reason for the rapid increase in violent crime here.