I doubt it. The McEliese cryptosystem from 1978 is immune to attack even by quantum computers, whereas current quantum cryptography has already been broken and can be sampled without detection (if the sample rate is about the same as the noise in the system), but highly secure facilities are investing in QC, not McEliese. Why? Because nobody really cares that much, not at that level. Once you pass a certain point, people become far more vulnerable than technology, so improving the technology won't help security. All it might do is attract funding, which is why QC is so good - fully buzzword-compliant - and old tech that's superior is bad.
At the moment, my bet is that RSA are sitting very tight on the facts and a press statement of "RSA said that they were hacked" would not make for much of an article.
It's doubtful any new law could be passed given the current paralysis (especially as the Tea Party can't make any money off an Internet law), but I'd have no objection to a law mandating strong crypto be used for all traffic on the Internet, where "strong" should be defined in relative terms so that it's never obsoleted as technology progresses.
Likely. The most common cyber-attack is via social engineering, but social engineering is only effective if there's a single point of failure that can be attacked.
I thought all Americans passed through a membrane from another reality. That covers the fact that politicians come out of the population pool and get voted on by said population.
What's more, the ICU charges a small fortune for said standards documents.
Part of the blame is on the ICU - the carriers started advertising 4G before the standards came out, forcing the standards to meet the claims. This is no different from how Netscape and Microsoft killed HTML 3.1 when it finally came out and forced the W3C to adopt a nonsensical bunch of crap as a replacement. The fragmentation that followed permitted Microsoft to kill Netscape and caused much of the crap that followed. The W3C will be picking up the pieces for years.
Standards bodies should be flexible but they must ultimately be the law enforcement of all technology and crafts. They are the modern version of the guild hall, the corporations are merely the apprentices within.
True, but that's stupid. People with great minds often say very stupid things - even Einstein appears on the Fortune Cookie program. You absolutely do not want to have the best brains crippled by socially-maladjusted bullies and gangster-wannabes, and the Internet makes for faceless victims with few (if any) rights. There is no solution to this out there, and nobody is within a decade or three of developing one. Therefore, there needs to be some intermediate solution that's not perfect, causes the least disruption, but can be made do with until something better comes along.
The BBC is currently running a story on Frankenstein's monster. It is worth noting that said monster started off a poet and a philosopher, only becoming savage and murderous because peer pressure said that this is how it should be. That is how people are, sure, but it is highly unnecessary and harmful to both the individuals and society as a whole. We choose to go down that road, but it is a choice and if we bothered to look we'd probably find far better roads to go down.
I would say that the closest existing principle that exists today is that information collected on individuals by Britain is subject to the 100 year rule - other countries may vary in the time they keep the information sealed. Such information is preserved but it is not available to do harm (in theory) within the probable lifetime of the individual.
I would argue that personal data held by corporations should be subject to a similar rule - it cannot be exposed to a broader audience inside a similar timeframe. In fact, I'd tighten up the rules a bit in places like the US so as to impose a European-style data privacy law (only one that actually works a bit better).
Blogs today are no different from editorials in newspapers a generation ago. The difference is in number. Indiscrete posts are not great but neither were indiscrete columns. As for the reaction, well, I put that down to society promoting the every-man-is-an-island view. If you can't cause consequences, not real ones, then why should you care what you say? Of course, we know that what you say and do does have an impact on others. There are always consequences for everything. The experiments proposed by various moral and ethical philosophies is how to optimize the result - maximizing the desirable consequences and minimizing the undesirable ones - though this assumes some agreement between people as to what is and is not desirable.
Define "remarkable". I'd argue that the archaeology of Mellor, Greater Manchester, is insignificant in many ways (it's not even listed in Britain's ARCHI database of archaeological sites). It is, however, remarkable in that it has led to some fascinating discoveries about the local area. The article is highly rated and even made the front page but it is ultimately of very limited interest.
I personally agree with the article existing (and wrote the early versions of it - not fond of the rewrite but if that's what works then that's what works) but to explain why it is still there at all, or gained such Wikipedia accolades, requires that "remarkable" be defined not by Wikipedia but by the intended readership.
The same should be true of all other articles. If the readership deems the article to contain relevant, important, non-contentious information then that should be sufficient. That's the whole idea of a wiki.
On the one hand, journalists have a responsibility to report the truth (even if they rarely do) especially in matters of corruption. On the other hand, they also have a responsibility to the public interest (even if they usually ignore it) and tensions in Egypt are sky-high right now.
It is right and proper that the public have evidence of torture by the former Secret Police, and that documents are being destroyed, as this puts pressure on the military there to crack down a bit harder on said Secret Police. However, it's got to be done with an eye to not provoking mindless violence - something Egypt has been fortunate to avoid so far. This isn't about the fringe groups - they've never mattered. Rather, it is about the attitude of those participating in general. What you do during a regime change is usually a good indicator of what you will do afterwards. Thus, keeping your cool and helping others keep theirs is probably a good policy.
I am bothered by the fact that the military even allowed anyone near the Secret Police buildings - including members of said police. Given how much potentially incriminating evidence said police will have on the military and any budding politicians, you'd think that allowing the former regime access to such material might not be the smartest move. Even if the military didn't particularly want a fair democracy, they'd probably want something less likely to take reprisals for the military's inaction in the uprisings.
That the military are relying heavily on the police is less surprising. Absolutely no military is trained in law enforcement, the Egyptian army is way too understaffed to manage something the size of Egypt even if they had the training, and shutting down a heavily armed organization that is used to having power is not for the faint-of-heart. Especially if said organization likely outnumbers and out-guns the army. The options were always going to be limited.
That the police are using their reprieve to shred everything and anything that can be used against them (unless they can use it for them) is no surprise at all but makes it more and more likely that all the options left will be bad ones.
The ESA has used a GPLed SPARC processor on space missions and SUN had GPLed the UltraSPARC before they went AWOM (absent without money). True, these weren't the "full" designs, but they're probably complete enough for Japanese universities and corporations to exploit them. Fujitsu has probably got full licenses to develop from the complete designs whatever they like, with the net result that Oracle's opinion isn't going to be worth shit. Fujitsu can replace the proprietary bits using clean-room techniques (same as the BSD crowd replaced AT&T's patented bits to create BSD4.4lite from the BSD4.3 tapes). Oracle is unlikely to want to fight an entire country and Japan has absolutely no reason to pay any attention to any lawsuit Oracle might want to bring were Fujitsu to do that. (America can't afford a trade-war with Japan - hell, it's unclear it can afford the catastrophic shutdown of industry across Japan at the moment due to the earthquake, tsunami and reactor shutdowns, even if by some miracle Japan were to totally revive in record time.)
Since the current generation of GPUs are essentially vector processors and GPUs are proving to be very very good at the kinds of problems supercomputers are used for, I'd not want to bet against the Japanese decision. (Indeed, this is why China currently holds the number 1 spot on the Top500 list.) I've a suspicion that their hunch will turn out to be the correct one as the x86 is just not going to play nice at scales much above where it's being used and there just aren't enough people working on the POWER CPU for IBM to keep the processor competitive forever.
The SPARC architecture is an interesting choice, what with the T2 being GPLed, as essentially the entire Japanese computing industry can crowdsource. It's what they tried to do with home computers, back in the 80s, so don't be surprised if there's active use of the Open Source community to build a better CPU.
MIPS is a tougher bet. Although the specification is open (which is good), it hasn't been seriously worked on as an architecture since SGI screwed their business model up. Manchester University developed some fascinating asynchronous MIPS processors but nobody wanted to use them and as far as I know that line of work was more-or-less abandoned by them. Which is a damn shame. Asynchronous chips might be exactly what you want when scaling to World Simulator sizes, since it gets rid of assumptions that just don't scale well and it cuts down on power consumption. Both very good things.
(Such bacteria could be quite interesting in mining metals that are hard to extract in their normal ore form. Convert the metal from a hard-to-extract form to an easy-to-extract form. So long as you could keep them where they should be.)
It's not that different from some of the lobbying we've seen (paying people to make it seem like there's a grassroots movement, hiring agent provocateurs to manufacture causes, etc). I'd argue that we'd be better off banning lobbying entirely and requiring individuals to petition their representatives in a more open, honest way. Those caught paying others to express a specific view to Congress should be jailed or forced to appear on the Barney show.
It depends on whether it can be blamed on someone who sounds important but doesn't really do anything any more. In politics, it is better to seem like you're doing something than to actually do something.
Which is why, when the FBI announces they rescued two or three or maybe a dozen in a raid, I'm not terribly impressed. I seriously doubt a police force would brag about a 0.01% to 0.1% rate of solving cases. It's better than nothing, but this is a yearly at-risk figure, so the cumulative total of slavery in the US is going to be insanely high - probably on-par with the total number of people in prison. (Assuming one slave owner or other active participant per slave, plus one full-time councilor to help a former slave through rehabilitation, it doesn't take long to figure out what would happen if there was a serious effort to purge the US of such degeneracy. Like a malignant tumour that has metastased, cutting it out cleanly may have become too difficult.)
There was actually an airborne brigade sitting right next to the ammo dump, but they were too busy preparing to invade Baghdad. Reports by farmers were that locals took substantial quantities of the high explosives and sold them on to foreign fighters working for Al Queda. It was selling for far more than any crop. Not good.
Oh, I absolutely agree that it is a good argument against invading as a method of regime change. I agree 100% with you on that. Indeed, my point is that invasions of any kind (even ones that are nominally internal) can expose such material to theft (and potential use) by absolutely anyone for precisely the reason you gave - there's no security forces and the substitute is likely to be very distracted.
I agree that the Egyptian army is on the side of stability, and that is unquestionably a Very Good Thing. My concern is that they're not trained in police work and a significant percent of the police appear to have gone rogue and/or support the prior regime. That's not so good and may lead to problems.
When it comes to regime change, I absoutely believe that the majority of Egyptians did exactly the right thing, the army included. If there's a safe way to replace an entire system, then what they have done is probably as close to the ideal as you can get. My observation (which I accept could be wrong) is that the way people conduct themselves during a revolution is how they will conduct themselves afterwards. On that basis, I expect the result to be calm, determined, thoughtful and peaceful, provided there is no major upset whilst things are still fluid.
And that is what worries me so much. It takes time for things to crystalize and there's rather too many wannabe kingmakers in the world who may well try to stir things up and exploit any weakness in the security system (particularly the police and any intelligence units cooperating with the now-deposed vice president).
The good news is that the populace of Egypt seem to be rather aware of this, forming human chains around important buildings when they've been under threat until the army could get there. That is staggering and gives me a lot of hope. If anyone can reform an entire nation in short order, then I'd have to say they're the ones who can do it. They certainly have the grit.
For the next few months, though, I'd say that any outside interference (including the purchase of anything stolen in Egypt) has the potential to change the scene in highly unpleasent ways and the ones best-equipt to protect Egypt (the police and the intelligence services) from these specific threats (theft and external hostility respectively) are the ones who are most likely to help in stirring up trouble.
I truly want this to go well for Egypt. They've had a rough few hundred years. It might also be highly educational for nations better-known for their ideas of using force to solve problems, which would be highly beneficial for everyone. However, this is merely the beginning, not the end, of their reformation.
The British system, as I recall, requires a mental evaluation beforehand. It is one of the most rigorous systems in the world, but it does not stop gun ownership. (IIRC, the official stats from HMG say there's over 3 million guns legally owned in the UK out of a population of 60 million.) Since the added restrictions after Dunblane and the resulting Snowdrop Petition, gun crime has dropped about 14% and 9 deaths in 2007 was considered a bad year for the country.
It's not perfect, by any stretch. There's still around one mass shooting every ten years or so. (Err, yeah, once a decade. Hungerford was in 1987, Dunblane in1996, and the Cumbria shootings in 2010.) That hasn't changed with the added restrictions, but heat-of-the-moment shootings are measurably lower.
5% of the population owning guns therefore seems to be about right, at least for that country. No two societies are the same and you can't simply hammer in one nation's experience into another. Nonetheless, I'd argue that only an idiot would refuse to look at the experience and the consequences (good and bad - and yes, there have been negative consequences too).
In the US, there are also rules, but investigative journalists claim these (including laws on selling to felons) are ignored at gun shows and not always bothered with overmuch at stores. It's possible that the US doesn't actually need any tighter regulation, merely respect for what there is. However, a psych checkup beforehand probably wouldn't be a bad idea if there was the slightest possibility that either the psychs or the populace would give a shit. Pdocs rarely give a shit about the work they currently do, which is why accidental deaths due to drug combinations are almost always incompetently prescribed medications. If they're comfortable with their clientele dying from stupidity, I really can't see them being overly concerned about prevention of anything much less direct, especially as there'd be no money in it.
I dunno about evil. They may well have disliked the book intensely, but they did defer to the "proper authorities" rather than take the matter into their own hands. I'd regard as evil those who put themselves above society and impose their own personal "law". Since nobody will ever know everything, everyone is going to be misguided and/or deluded on something. The entire point of a society is that you absolutely don't want these people going Wild West but to defer to those with a better understanding. In this case, the delusions were only mildly toxic because society's safeguards worked. Which, frankly, is a good thing.
Those who adhere to the belief that they depend on no-one, rely on nothing, and live their own life with absolute independence - they're the ones I'm scared of. They're not going to make use of society's safeguards because "they don't have to". They'll be just as misguided, just as deluded, as the rest of us, only they're going to bypass all the social safety-nets and impose those delusions on others.
However, just as evil are the social safety-nets that, instead of operating with knowledgable people working to their strengths, operate with people just as deluded as the extreme fringes. The FBI's history is, sadly, full of such examples. As, sadly, are Arizona and Texas at the moment. When the lunatics run the asylum, you have problems.
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I salted the popcorn and it ROT13ed.
I doubt it. The McEliese cryptosystem from 1978 is immune to attack even by quantum computers, whereas current quantum cryptography has already been broken and can be sampled without detection (if the sample rate is about the same as the noise in the system), but highly secure facilities are investing in QC, not McEliese. Why? Because nobody really cares that much, not at that level. Once you pass a certain point, people become far more vulnerable than technology, so improving the technology won't help security. All it might do is attract funding, which is why QC is so good - fully buzzword-compliant - and old tech that's superior is bad.
That explains the zombies.
At the moment, my bet is that RSA are sitting very tight on the facts and a press statement of "RSA said that they were hacked" would not make for much of an article.
It's doubtful any new law could be passed given the current paralysis (especially as the Tea Party can't make any money off an Internet law), but I'd have no objection to a law mandating strong crypto be used for all traffic on the Internet, where "strong" should be defined in relative terms so that it's never obsoleted as technology progresses.
Likely. The most common cyber-attack is via social engineering, but social engineering is only effective if there's a single point of failure that can be attacked.
Explanations are futile. The CEOs have already been assimilated.
I thought all Americans passed through a membrane from another reality. That covers the fact that politicians come out of the population pool and get voted on by said population.
What's more, the ICU charges a small fortune for said standards documents.
Part of the blame is on the ICU - the carriers started advertising 4G before the standards came out, forcing the standards to meet the claims. This is no different from how Netscape and Microsoft killed HTML 3.1 when it finally came out and forced the W3C to adopt a nonsensical bunch of crap as a replacement. The fragmentation that followed permitted Microsoft to kill Netscape and caused much of the crap that followed. The W3C will be picking up the pieces for years.
Standards bodies should be flexible but they must ultimately be the law enforcement of all technology and crafts. They are the modern version of the guild hall, the corporations are merely the apprentices within.
Definitions:
New: The price went up
Improved: The price went way up
New and Improved: If we sell any, our CEO will make for Forbes top 10 list
True, but that's stupid. People with great minds often say very stupid things - even Einstein appears on the Fortune Cookie program. You absolutely do not want to have the best brains crippled by socially-maladjusted bullies and gangster-wannabes, and the Internet makes for faceless victims with few (if any) rights. There is no solution to this out there, and nobody is within a decade or three of developing one. Therefore, there needs to be some intermediate solution that's not perfect, causes the least disruption, but can be made do with until something better comes along.
The BBC is currently running a story on Frankenstein's monster. It is worth noting that said monster started off a poet and a philosopher, only becoming savage and murderous because peer pressure said that this is how it should be. That is how people are, sure, but it is highly unnecessary and harmful to both the individuals and society as a whole. We choose to go down that road, but it is a choice and if we bothered to look we'd probably find far better roads to go down.
I would say that the closest existing principle that exists today is that information collected on individuals by Britain is subject to the 100 year rule - other countries may vary in the time they keep the information sealed. Such information is preserved but it is not available to do harm (in theory) within the probable lifetime of the individual.
I would argue that personal data held by corporations should be subject to a similar rule - it cannot be exposed to a broader audience inside a similar timeframe. In fact, I'd tighten up the rules a bit in places like the US so as to impose a European-style data privacy law (only one that actually works a bit better).
Blogs today are no different from editorials in newspapers a generation ago. The difference is in number. Indiscrete posts are not great but neither were indiscrete columns. As for the reaction, well, I put that down to society promoting the every-man-is-an-island view. If you can't cause consequences, not real ones, then why should you care what you say? Of course, we know that what you say and do does have an impact on others. There are always consequences for everything. The experiments proposed by various moral and ethical philosophies is how to optimize the result - maximizing the desirable consequences and minimizing the undesirable ones - though this assumes some agreement between people as to what is and is not desirable.
Define "remarkable". I'd argue that the archaeology of Mellor, Greater Manchester, is insignificant in many ways (it's not even listed in Britain's ARCHI database of archaeological sites). It is, however, remarkable in that it has led to some fascinating discoveries about the local area. The article is highly rated and even made the front page but it is ultimately of very limited interest.
I personally agree with the article existing (and wrote the early versions of it - not fond of the rewrite but if that's what works then that's what works) but to explain why it is still there at all, or gained such Wikipedia accolades, requires that "remarkable" be defined not by Wikipedia but by the intended readership.
The same should be true of all other articles. If the readership deems the article to contain relevant, important, non-contentious information then that should be sufficient. That's the whole idea of a wiki.
On the one hand, journalists have a responsibility to report the truth (even if they rarely do) especially in matters of corruption. On the other hand, they also have a responsibility to the public interest (even if they usually ignore it) and tensions in Egypt are sky-high right now.
It is right and proper that the public have evidence of torture by the former Secret Police, and that documents are being destroyed, as this puts pressure on the military there to crack down a bit harder on said Secret Police. However, it's got to be done with an eye to not provoking mindless violence - something Egypt has been fortunate to avoid so far. This isn't about the fringe groups - they've never mattered. Rather, it is about the attitude of those participating in general. What you do during a regime change is usually a good indicator of what you will do afterwards. Thus, keeping your cool and helping others keep theirs is probably a good policy.
I am bothered by the fact that the military even allowed anyone near the Secret Police buildings - including members of said police. Given how much potentially incriminating evidence said police will have on the military and any budding politicians, you'd think that allowing the former regime access to such material might not be the smartest move. Even if the military didn't particularly want a fair democracy, they'd probably want something less likely to take reprisals for the military's inaction in the uprisings.
That the military are relying heavily on the police is less surprising. Absolutely no military is trained in law enforcement, the Egyptian army is way too understaffed to manage something the size of Egypt even if they had the training, and shutting down a heavily armed organization that is used to having power is not for the faint-of-heart. Especially if said organization likely outnumbers and out-guns the army. The options were always going to be limited.
That the police are using their reprieve to shred everything and anything that can be used against them (unless they can use it for them) is no surprise at all but makes it more and more likely that all the options left will be bad ones.
I dunno. Live in a particularly nice cave and you might be good for a reality tv show.
The ESA has used a GPLed SPARC processor on space missions and SUN had GPLed the UltraSPARC before they went AWOM (absent without money). True, these weren't the "full" designs, but they're probably complete enough for Japanese universities and corporations to exploit them. Fujitsu has probably got full licenses to develop from the complete designs whatever they like, with the net result that Oracle's opinion isn't going to be worth shit. Fujitsu can replace the proprietary bits using clean-room techniques (same as the BSD crowd replaced AT&T's patented bits to create BSD4.4lite from the BSD4.3 tapes). Oracle is unlikely to want to fight an entire country and Japan has absolutely no reason to pay any attention to any lawsuit Oracle might want to bring were Fujitsu to do that. (America can't afford a trade-war with Japan - hell, it's unclear it can afford the catastrophic shutdown of industry across Japan at the moment due to the earthquake, tsunami and reactor shutdowns, even if by some miracle Japan were to totally revive in record time.)
Since the current generation of GPUs are essentially vector processors and GPUs are proving to be very very good at the kinds of problems supercomputers are used for, I'd not want to bet against the Japanese decision. (Indeed, this is why China currently holds the number 1 spot on the Top500 list.) I've a suspicion that their hunch will turn out to be the correct one as the x86 is just not going to play nice at scales much above where it's being used and there just aren't enough people working on the POWER CPU for IBM to keep the processor competitive forever.
The SPARC architecture is an interesting choice, what with the T2 being GPLed, as essentially the entire Japanese computing industry can crowdsource. It's what they tried to do with home computers, back in the 80s, so don't be surprised if there's active use of the Open Source community to build a better CPU.
MIPS is a tougher bet. Although the specification is open (which is good), it hasn't been seriously worked on as an architecture since SGI screwed their business model up. Manchester University developed some fascinating asynchronous MIPS processors but nobody wanted to use them and as far as I know that line of work was more-or-less abandoned by them. Which is a damn shame. Asynchronous chips might be exactly what you want when scaling to World Simulator sizes, since it gets rid of assumptions that just don't scale well and it cuts down on power consumption. Both very good things.
The bacteria you should worry about are the ones that consume metal. Accelerating those could do some really nasty things. (They're already doing nasty things in Britain.)
(Such bacteria could be quite interesting in mining metals that are hard to extract in their normal ore form. Convert the metal from a hard-to-extract form to an easy-to-extract form. So long as you could keep them where they should be.)
It's not that different from some of the lobbying we've seen (paying people to make it seem like there's a grassroots movement, hiring agent provocateurs to manufacture causes, etc). I'd argue that we'd be better off banning lobbying entirely and requiring individuals to petition their representatives in a more open, honest way. Those caught paying others to express a specific view to Congress should be jailed or forced to appear on the Barney show.
It depends on whether it can be blamed on someone who sounds important but doesn't really do anything any more. In politics, it is better to seem like you're doing something than to actually do something.
Which is why, when the FBI announces they rescued two or three or maybe a dozen in a raid, I'm not terribly impressed. I seriously doubt a police force would brag about a 0.01% to 0.1% rate of solving cases. It's better than nothing, but this is a yearly at-risk figure, so the cumulative total of slavery in the US is going to be insanely high - probably on-par with the total number of people in prison. (Assuming one slave owner or other active participant per slave, plus one full-time councilor to help a former slave through rehabilitation, it doesn't take long to figure out what would happen if there was a serious effort to purge the US of such degeneracy. Like a malignant tumour that has metastased, cutting it out cleanly may have become too difficult.)
There was actually an airborne brigade sitting right next to the ammo dump, but they were too busy preparing to invade Baghdad. Reports by farmers were that locals took substantial quantities of the high explosives and sold them on to foreign fighters working for Al Queda. It was selling for far more than any crop. Not good.
Oh, I absolutely agree that it is a good argument against invading as a method of regime change. I agree 100% with you on that. Indeed, my point is that invasions of any kind (even ones that are nominally internal) can expose such material to theft (and potential use) by absolutely anyone for precisely the reason you gave - there's no security forces and the substitute is likely to be very distracted.
I agree that the Egyptian army is on the side of stability, and that is unquestionably a Very Good Thing. My concern is that they're not trained in police work and a significant percent of the police appear to have gone rogue and/or support the prior regime. That's not so good and may lead to problems.
When it comes to regime change, I absoutely believe that the majority of Egyptians did exactly the right thing, the army included. If there's a safe way to replace an entire system, then what they have done is probably as close to the ideal as you can get. My observation (which I accept could be wrong) is that the way people conduct themselves during a revolution is how they will conduct themselves afterwards. On that basis, I expect the result to be calm, determined, thoughtful and peaceful, provided there is no major upset whilst things are still fluid.
And that is what worries me so much. It takes time for things to crystalize and there's rather too many wannabe kingmakers in the world who may well try to stir things up and exploit any weakness in the security system (particularly the police and any intelligence units cooperating with the now-deposed vice president).
The good news is that the populace of Egypt seem to be rather aware of this, forming human chains around important buildings when they've been under threat until the army could get there. That is staggering and gives me a lot of hope. If anyone can reform an entire nation in short order, then I'd have to say they're the ones who can do it. They certainly have the grit.
For the next few months, though, I'd say that any outside interference (including the purchase of anything stolen in Egypt) has the potential to change the scene in highly unpleasent ways and the ones best-equipt to protect Egypt (the police and the intelligence services) from these specific threats (theft and external hostility respectively) are the ones who are most likely to help in stirring up trouble.
I truly want this to go well for Egypt. They've had a rough few hundred years. It might also be highly educational for nations better-known for their ideas of using force to solve problems, which would be highly beneficial for everyone. However, this is merely the beginning, not the end, of their reformation.
2004.
The British system, as I recall, requires a mental evaluation beforehand. It is one of the most rigorous systems in the world, but it does not stop gun ownership. (IIRC, the official stats from HMG say there's over 3 million guns legally owned in the UK out of a population of 60 million.) Since the added restrictions after Dunblane and the resulting Snowdrop Petition, gun crime has dropped about 14% and 9 deaths in 2007 was considered a bad year for the country.
It's not perfect, by any stretch. There's still around one mass shooting every ten years or so. (Err, yeah, once a decade. Hungerford was in 1987, Dunblane in1996, and the Cumbria shootings in 2010.) That hasn't changed with the added restrictions, but heat-of-the-moment shootings are measurably lower.
5% of the population owning guns therefore seems to be about right, at least for that country. No two societies are the same and you can't simply hammer in one nation's experience into another. Nonetheless, I'd argue that only an idiot would refuse to look at the experience and the consequences (good and bad - and yes, there have been negative consequences too).
In the US, there are also rules, but investigative journalists claim these (including laws on selling to felons) are ignored at gun shows and not always bothered with overmuch at stores. It's possible that the US doesn't actually need any tighter regulation, merely respect for what there is. However, a psych checkup beforehand probably wouldn't be a bad idea if there was the slightest possibility that either the psychs or the populace would give a shit. Pdocs rarely give a shit about the work they currently do, which is why accidental deaths due to drug combinations are almost always incompetently prescribed medications. If they're comfortable with their clientele dying from stupidity, I really can't see them being overly concerned about prevention of anything much less direct, especially as there'd be no money in it.
I dunno about evil. They may well have disliked the book intensely, but they did defer to the "proper authorities" rather than take the matter into their own hands. I'd regard as evil those who put themselves above society and impose their own personal "law". Since nobody will ever know everything, everyone is going to be misguided and/or deluded on something. The entire point of a society is that you absolutely don't want these people going Wild West but to defer to those with a better understanding. In this case, the delusions were only mildly toxic because society's safeguards worked. Which, frankly, is a good thing.
Those who adhere to the belief that they depend on no-one, rely on nothing, and live their own life with absolute independence - they're the ones I'm scared of. They're not going to make use of society's safeguards because "they don't have to". They'll be just as misguided, just as deluded, as the rest of us, only they're going to bypass all the social safety-nets and impose those delusions on others.
However, just as evil are the social safety-nets that, instead of operating with knowledgable people working to their strengths, operate with people just as deluded as the extreme fringes. The FBI's history is, sadly, full of such examples. As, sadly, are Arizona and Texas at the moment. When the lunatics run the asylum, you have problems.