My understanding is there are some parasites that affect human brain functions - apparently there's a worm of sorts that can infect people through puncture wounds, but I wasn't able to find a specific reference to it in my quick search. There is a parasitic microbe in cats that some scientists believe could have influenced the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxoplasma_gondii">de velopment of whole human cultures.
Then there's the Gordian Worm seen forcing a cricket to drown itself here. Apparently it grows inside the host until it releases a chemical that sends the host searching for a convenient place to do a header.
Creepy stuff.
YAIE (yet another inflammatory extremist) said: I really fear for the United States because, believe me, the jihadists? They're not playing the video games. They're killing real people over there
Funny. I guess Bill Oreilly's never heard of Special Force. Oh wait. That's right - he doesn't use the Internet. It might disconnect him from reality.
Your second observation may depend on the circumstances...At a company which provides all of the equipment, central IT might have more power to impose policies on the employees. If central IT is smart and knowledgeable, policies which make sense and are supported by the technically trained employees can work. However, stupid policies imposed because the IT office has lots of power can backfire; complaints to the management may reduce the power of central IT or good employees may start leaving...In my opinion, central IT is often its own worst enemy.
Phragmen-Lindelof, I believe you're generally correct in your assessment. You do miss one key point (it doesn't change your conclusion, but supplements it):
A well run company won't brook having an internally focused department prevent an externally focused department from performing their job - particularly if that job generates revenue. The moment a customer facing or revenue generating group stops performing a key task because an internal department makes it too difficult or impossible, that internal department will face serious repercussions. Admittedly, this isn't the case in industries with low employee involvement, but most people wouldn't actually want to work in such an environment.
I find your description interesting, Phragmen-Lindelof. I work in a company that has similar organizational needs but haven't yet well formalized the sort of arrangement you describe.
The company's core business involves providing varying degrees of technical support to several thousand customers, who run different services off of a combination of different hardware platforms. Each machine runs one of several different Unix or Windows configurations (Unix heavy). This necessitates maintaining a staff of skilled support admins. The company is still relatively young (born out of the mid90's) but medium sized and growing by leaps and bounds. Until recently the IT department was made up exclusively of former support admins who were most concerned with maintaining a growing service infrastructure and not so worried about providing help desk support for various office workstations.
The company is now building up a more fully featured help-desk/IT department complete with the usual staff of MS paper-certs and MIS graduates. This newly reworked IT department faces a dilemma. The support admins, by necessity, run a wide range of software on their workstations. They've grown into a role that simply doesn't allow them to relinquish administration of their workstations.
The non-technical administrative staff (sales types, accounting, marketing, etc, etc, ad nauseam), on the other-hand, require NOT having admin access to their own machines. Like most end-users, they only need a limited set of applications and can't be expected to learn wise security practices.
Naturally, IT has begun the process of taking over maintenance of the various machines on our internal network. Just as naturally, our support admins will not relinquish administration of their workstations to a group they view as having questionable competence and a lack of respect for the machines they (IT/help-desk) admin.
There were some initial battles over this, but (lacking any other choice) IT has slowly adopted an unofficial policy of only taking over machines running Microsoft software and slowly sequestering the support admins' machines on VLANs that can't get to the "IT administered" windows workstations. Those support admins who choose to run Windows and still refuse IT "assistance" are lumped in with this group on the condition that they allow licensing audits of the software running on their machines.
This compromise has worked so far - IT feels that the "threat" has been safely sequestered and the support admins are happy that they no longer have to see all that garbage broadcast traffic from improperly maintained Microsoft machines. The threat that IT's unofficial policy may eventually be abandoned leaves the possibility of a future confrontation in the back of people's minds, but I'm not certain this is necessarily a bad thing. Hopefully the spectre of such a confrontation reminds IT that they're in place to provide a service to every member of the company - not to define corporate work-flow.
BaldGhoti, the IT department isn't top-dog even in every corporate environment. In fact, my experience is that many IT departments are only marginally more technically competent then the departments they service and (in the case of technical companies) are often far LESS technically competent then some of the other departments (if they were more competent, they'd be tasked with performing revenue generating work). Since they exist solely to make other people's jobs possible, members of many IT departments must often put aside the Napoleonic prejudices of one who started off in the industry with dreams of becoming a "security specialist" and deal with reality.
More to the point of this discussion, while my example is a bit Unix biased (SP2's obviously not an issue for my SuSE workstation), it does underscore the fact that many IT departments can't afford to maintain iron-handed control of the machines they oversee. In the end, it's not for IT to dictate what legitimate use another specialist in a different vertical may have for a piece of equipment. So, the problem with SP2 remains - not every well run IT department can reliably predict how every machine needs to behave.
> Don't tell me what I need or don't need in my > software.... it's not for you to decide what I > should or should not be able to do with my > software
It's not your software. It's Microsoft's software, you're just allowed to use it (for a fee).
Megane said: > I'll bet the monitor in question is connected > with a VGA plug
And Zorilla responded: > That Dell monitor is probably a rebadged Samsung > or LG.
Megane,
I have one of the Dell 2001FPs connected via a VGA cable (it's on a machine that doesn't get used for much gaming so it's connected to a slightly older video card) and I haven't notice a lag when moving the mouse (although I'm in front of my Hercules right now, so I can't actually test to see if the Dell shows the symptoms displayed in his video).
Zorilla,
You're partially correct. The Dell 2001FP contains a LG.Philips LM201U04 panel. The rest of the monitor is Dell designed; although not Dell built.
That was my initial thought when I went laptop shopping a few months ago. All the laptops with nice, large screens are now widescreen.
You'd be surprised at how nice widescreen is, though. At work, on my 1600X1200 LCD, I can run two browsers side by side by shrinking the width of one window slightly; but I'm out of luck if I want to run an IM window, a monitoring window, an xterm, or show portions of my desktop (for gdesklets) at the same time. With the 1900X1200, you can run two 800X1200 windows side by side and still have room for either some desktop space, an IM window, or gkrellm. This gets VERY addictive.
> How I've longed to take package A from Redhat and install it seamlessly on SuSE.
Dude. Source RPMS. I move rpms back and fourth between multiple versions of SuSE and RedHat all day long.
The nice thing about it is that you can make it work even when the rpm equivalent of "just double clicking" doesn't just work (a rarity in and of itself). With something like InstallSheild, if it doesn't work the first time, you're probably SOL.
I'm not a coder. I do some scripting for administrative tasks and integration work, but mainly I maintain mass numbers of machines.
My hatred for java started with the bizarre things it used to do to my browsers. The browsers (and jvms) have evolved, now java in web pages is less likely to make my eye twitch.
Since then, however, I've seen java from the backend.
The application servers: I've not seen a single well documented Java application server. Tomcat, for instance, has tons of documentation on how to write and install your code. Nada on how to actually configure and administer the server. Sure, Oreilly has a pretty good book that came out, but that's a recent development. You'd think the guys responsible for as well documented a server as Apache would've done better.
Quality of Code: There are good (perhaps even great) java coders. I've seen one or two. The number of Java coders who suck far out number them. I can't begin to count the number of servers I've logged into that are bogged down to a crawl because some piss poor java application has three or four memory leaks that the developer can't seem to track down. I've seen whole development teams replaced three or four times before a qualified java crew was finally assembled. You can always tell they're qualified because code thats dragging the four way Xeon to it's knees could all of a sudden run on an old 300 Mhz Celeron with an eighth the memory and still have horsepower left over. And don't get me started on how most Java coders don't seem to care about exception handling. GRRRRR!
>Only if your leaders/educators are really lazy. >Otherwise it's simple to engineer the problems >with racism and the main cause of racism out of a >socialist society to begin with; by eliminating >the possibility of ENVY and GREED.
Actually, it can happen if their leaders are lazy, biased, inexperienced, foolish, or merely have personalities predisposed to favoring a rigidly hierarchal "command and control" type structure.
The key problem with any system that enforces decision making from on high is that the weakest link in your organization (government, society, company, whatever) is the person at the top of the pyramid. As go they, so goes the group.
With a flatter, more self-organizing/self-regulating structure the weaknesses of particular individuals tend to get covered by others.
Also, "Eliminate the possibility of ENY and GREED"? Wow. Thats a tall order. In truth, utterly impossible. People will find reasons for Envy and Greed no matter how comfortable their lives are and people look for differences in even the most homogenous of societies.
At the risk of sounding fatalistic, xenophobia seems to be built into our basic psychology. You don't combat it by preventing it from happening, you combat it by providing people with the tools they need to recognize, understand, and address their fear, uncertainty, and doubt.
> What mortar fire in airports? Never heard of it.
The BBC has this timeline that includes a reference to one of the three mortar attacks on Heathrow perpetrated in 1994. Apparently only one of the three attacks actually resulted in detonations within the airport, but all three attacks were launched within a relatively short time frame and under increasingly tight security.
I think you'll find that the number of US police officers shot and killed is far lower than many people perceive - particularly if you take into account the size of the country. Police officer murder's AREN'T a daily occurance, even nationwide. The total number per year may be higher than elsewhere, but if you view it as a ratio of police killed to police employed I'd be very surprised to find the US out of whack with the rest of the western world. Especially when you consider the fact that we employ so many more per capita than smaller countries. The only numbers I can find are for the decade of the 90's and only contain statistics for the US. According to this study the highest number of "felonious police deaths" of the decade were 60 in the year 1995. The decade ended with an all time low of 34 after several years of steady decline.
That's thirty dead in one year out of a nation of 294 million. I don't know how many police officers the US has, but I do know how many local police departments, sheriff's offices, state police agencies, and federal police forces exist within the contiguous states - 18,000. Presumably police officers themselves number in the millions. Taking into account the inevitablity of the occasional crazy, 30 seems like an amazingly reasonable number.
Especially when you compare that to the UK. A country of about 52 million with a total of 42 police forces employing 126,000 police (25,000 of which, BTW, are employed in Greater London) had 14 police officers killed in the line of duty last year. (see numbers here and here). As best as I can tell, the problem's gotten BETTER in the US and WORSE in the UK.
You're right that a US police officer being gunned down in, say, New Orleans isn't a nationwide news story; but that has more to do with:
A - the size of the country and
B - the fact that most US news is regional.
In the US, national news only comes to the forefront during massive catastrophes (high visibility terrorist attacks, Pee Wee Herman molesting a child, presidential elections, etc). International news only gets attention during a war. In the UK, national and international news get much more play time. (The US, for instance, doesn't have a tax funded international news agency)
My point is this - comparing crime in the UK and the US is comparing apples and oranges. Different social pressures, different sample population sizes, radically different landmass, different presumptions, different histories, utterly different beasts. The perception of people outside the environment in question is no more accurate than the perceptions of the people within the environment - they're both perceptions. Little better than opinions.
Weird. I don't know about you, but the standard UK stereotype in my part of the country is "stodgy if sometimes rowdy".
Yet, when I was actually there, the level of random violence was absurd. We're talking about a country with 5th generation unemployed. I had the distinct displeasure of witnessing a "glassing" in Edinburgh. I've never seen anything like that in the US and I've been in a few tough spots.
Admittedly, US teenagers are particularly foolish about violence. They tend to slowly work themselves up to displays of violence. Facing off, insulting each other for a while, followed by pushing and shoving until someone throws a punch. More agrressiveness ensues and then someone tries to find a way to bow out while saving face. It's like watching one of these Nature Channel specials on primate territoriality or aboriginal ritual combat.
The US version is foolish and immature. You really shouldn't get in a fight unless you want to cause permanent damage or death. The Brits realize this, but a disproportianate number of them seem to want to cause permanent damage. Take your pick, juvenile delinquency or random acts of criminal sociopathy. Six of one, half a dozen of the other. The flip side is the Brits don't have school shootings. Mortar fire in airports, but no school shootings.
Personally, I suspect violence is a bigger problem in the UK then in the US - in the US we're just a bit more afraid of the violence that does exist. It doesn't matter, though. In the end it's a matter of degrees.
My personal suspicions aside, I realize that most members of most modern societies have at least some respect for the social contract. Discussions about who respects it more or who respects it least are foolish - every country has their layabouts and malcontents, people who feel powerless and don't grok reasonable escalation. Governments respond to it differently - on the one side they crush the violators (or perceived violators) under a steel boot, on the other they encourage fellow citizens to take responsibility for one another and act appropriately. Most countries try to strike a balance between the two extremes, but many definitely lean in one direction or the other. It's up to each individual to decide which approach they prefer. Trying to convince people that your preference is better is like trying to convince your roommate that blondes are superior to redheads or vice versa.
Slashdot Mirror
My understanding is there are some parasites that affect human brain functions - apparently there's a worm of sorts that can infect people through puncture wounds, but I wasn't able to find a specific reference to it in my quick search. There is a parasitic microbe in cats that some scientists believe could have influenced the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxoplasma_gondii">de velopment of whole human cultures.
Then there's the Gordian Worm seen forcing a cricket to drown itself here. Apparently it grows inside the host until it releases a chemical that sends the host searching for a convenient place to do a header. Creepy stuff.
YAIE (yet another inflammatory extremist) said:
I really fear for the United States because, believe me, the jihadists? They're not playing the video games. They're killing real people over there
Funny. I guess Bill Oreilly's never heard of Special Force. Oh wait. That's right - he doesn't use the Internet. It might disconnect him from reality.
FYI - went ahead and tested FireFox beta1 RC3 and none of the Google extensions function correctly at the moment.
;)
As always, back up your Mozilla directory before playing with experimental builds
Has anyone tried any of the RC's with the various Google extensions (notebook and browser sync) installed? Any word on how well they work?
Wow, it's not every day a Troll manages to post bait on the front page. meetmeonaholiday, you are a master of your craft
Your second observation may depend on the circumstances...At a company which provides all of the equipment, central IT might have more power to impose policies on the employees. If central IT is smart and knowledgeable, policies which make sense and are supported by the technically trained employees can work. However, stupid policies imposed because the IT office has lots of power can backfire; complaints to the management may reduce the power of central IT or good employees may start leaving...In my opinion, central IT is often its own worst enemy.
Phragmen-Lindelof, I believe you're generally correct in your assessment. You do miss one key point (it doesn't change your conclusion, but supplements it):
A well run company won't brook having an internally focused department prevent an externally focused department from performing their job - particularly if that job generates revenue. The moment a customer facing or revenue generating group stops performing a key task because an internal department makes it too difficult or impossible, that internal department will face serious repercussions. Admittedly, this isn't the case in industries with low employee involvement, but most people wouldn't actually want to work in such an environment.
Sorry if this strays too far off-topic, but:
I find your description interesting, Phragmen-Lindelof. I work in a company that has similar organizational needs but haven't yet well formalized the sort of arrangement you describe.
The company's core business involves providing varying degrees of technical support to several thousand customers, who run different services off of a combination of different hardware platforms. Each machine runs one of several different Unix or Windows configurations (Unix heavy). This necessitates maintaining a staff of skilled support admins. The company is still relatively young (born out of the mid90's) but medium sized and growing by leaps and bounds. Until recently the IT department was made up exclusively of former support admins who were most concerned with maintaining a growing service infrastructure and not so worried about providing help desk support for various office workstations.
The company is now building up a more fully featured help-desk/IT department complete with the usual staff of MS paper-certs and MIS graduates. This newly reworked IT department faces a dilemma. The support admins, by necessity, run a wide range of software on their workstations. They've grown into a role that simply doesn't allow them to relinquish administration of their workstations.
The non-technical administrative staff (sales types, accounting, marketing, etc, etc, ad nauseam), on the other-hand, require NOT having admin access to their own machines. Like most end-users, they only need a limited set of applications and can't be expected to learn wise security practices.
Naturally, IT has begun the process of taking over maintenance of the various machines on our internal network. Just as naturally, our support admins will not relinquish administration of their workstations to a group they view as having questionable competence and a lack of respect for the machines they (IT/help-desk) admin.
There were some initial battles over this, but (lacking any other choice) IT has slowly adopted an unofficial policy of only taking over machines running Microsoft software and slowly sequestering the support admins' machines on VLANs that can't get to the "IT administered" windows workstations. Those support admins who choose to run Windows and still refuse IT "assistance" are lumped in with this group on the condition that they allow licensing audits of the software running on their machines.
This compromise has worked so far - IT feels that the "threat" has been safely sequestered and the support admins are happy that they no longer have to see all that garbage broadcast traffic from improperly maintained Microsoft machines. The threat that IT's unofficial policy may eventually be abandoned leaves the possibility of a future confrontation in the back of people's minds, but I'm not certain this is necessarily a bad thing. Hopefully the spectre of such a confrontation reminds IT that they're in place to provide a service to every member of the company - not to define corporate work-flow.
BaldGhoti, the IT department isn't top-dog even in every corporate environment. In fact, my experience is that many IT departments are only marginally more technically competent then the departments they service and (in the case of technical companies) are often far LESS technically competent then some of the other departments (if they were more competent, they'd be tasked with performing revenue generating work). Since they exist solely to make other people's jobs possible, members of many IT departments must often put aside the Napoleonic prejudices of one who started off in the industry with dreams of becoming a "security specialist" and deal with reality.
More to the point of this discussion, while my example is a bit Unix biased (SP2's obviously not an issue for my SuSE workstation), it does underscore the fact that many IT departments can't afford to maintain iron-handed control of the machines they oversee. In the end, it's not for IT to dictate what legitimate use another specialist in a different vertical may have for a piece of equipment. So, the problem with SP2 remains - not every well run IT department can reliably predict how every machine needs to behave.
> Don't tell me what I need or don't need in my
> software.... it's not for you to decide what I
> should or should not be able to do with my
> software
It's not your software. It's Microsoft's software, you're just allowed to use it (for a fee).
That link only provides feedback to their top story - this link provides feeback to Crossfire:
http://www.cnn.com/feedback/forms/form5.html?7
How does viewing a jpg count as "downloading third party software"?
Megane said:
> I'll bet the monitor in question is connected
> with a VGA plug
And Zorilla responded:
> That Dell monitor is probably a rebadged Samsung
> or LG.
Megane,
I have one of the Dell 2001FPs connected via a VGA cable (it's on a machine that doesn't get used for much gaming so it's connected to a slightly older video card) and I haven't notice a lag when moving the mouse (although I'm in front of my Hercules right now, so I can't actually test to see if the Dell shows the symptoms displayed in his video).
Zorilla,
You're partially correct. The Dell 2001FP contains a LG.Philips LM201U04 panel. The rest of the monitor is Dell designed; although not Dell built.
You ARE behind a NAT - two way NAT, that is. Perhaps you're thinking you're behind a PAT, instead?
That was my initial thought when I went laptop shopping a few months ago. All the laptops with nice, large screens are now widescreen.
You'd be surprised at how nice widescreen is, though. At work, on my 1600X1200 LCD, I can run two browsers side by side by shrinking the width of one window slightly; but I'm out of luck if I want to run an IM window, a monitoring window, an xterm, or show portions of my desktop (for gdesklets) at the same time. With the 1900X1200, you can run two 800X1200 windows side by side and still have room for either some desktop space, an IM window, or gkrellm. This gets VERY addictive.
Is a Steyr M-40 with nightsights and hyrdroshock rounds. Does dead count as injured?
> How I've longed to take package A from Redhat and install it seamlessly on SuSE.
Dude. Source RPMS. I move rpms back and fourth between multiple versions of SuSE and RedHat all day long.
The nice thing about it is that you can make it work even when the rpm equivalent of "just double clicking" doesn't just work (a rarity in and of itself). With something like InstallSheild, if it doesn't work the first time, you're probably SOL.
Or:
/lib/$VERSION4.so /lib/$VERSION3.so
rpm -Uvh $VERSION4 --force
ln -s
rpm -e $VERSION3 --nodeps
rpm -Uvh $VERSION4
I'm not a coder. I do some scripting for administrative tasks and integration work, but mainly I maintain mass numbers of machines.
My hatred for java started with the bizarre things it used to do to my browsers. The browsers (and jvms) have evolved, now java in web pages is less likely to make my eye twitch.
Since then, however, I've seen java from the backend.
The application servers: I've not seen a single well documented Java application server. Tomcat, for instance, has tons of documentation on how to write and install your code. Nada on how to actually configure and administer the server. Sure, Oreilly has a pretty good book that came out, but that's a recent development. You'd think the guys responsible for as well documented a server as Apache would've done better.
Quality of Code: There are good (perhaps even great) java coders. I've seen one or two. The number of Java coders who suck far out number them. I can't begin to count the number of servers I've logged into that are bogged down to a crawl because some piss poor java application has three or four memory leaks that the developer can't seem to track down. I've seen whole development teams replaced three or four times before a qualified java crew was finally assembled. You can always tell they're qualified because code thats dragging the four way Xeon to it's knees could all of a sudden run on an old 300 Mhz Celeron with an eighth the memory and still have horsepower left over. And don't get me started on how most Java coders don't seem to care about exception handling. GRRRRR!
Very Microsoft-like:
Search ErrorMSN Search is temporarily unable to process your request.
Please try again in a few minutes.
EID: f:1658889542 - 1041:1041:10004:1059
HC: 71d61b14
>Only if your leaders/educators are really lazy.
>Otherwise it's simple to engineer the problems
>with racism and the main cause of racism out of a
>socialist society to begin with; by eliminating
>the possibility of ENVY and GREED.
Actually, it can happen if their leaders are lazy, biased, inexperienced, foolish, or merely have personalities predisposed to favoring a rigidly hierarchal "command and control" type structure.
The key problem with any system that enforces decision making from on high is that the weakest link in your organization (government, society, company, whatever) is the person at the top of the pyramid. As go they, so goes the group.
With a flatter, more self-organizing/self-regulating structure the weaknesses of particular individuals tend to get covered by others.
Also, "Eliminate the possibility of ENY and GREED"? Wow. Thats a tall order. In truth, utterly impossible. People will find reasons for Envy and Greed no matter how comfortable their lives are and people look for differences in even the most homogenous of societies.
At the risk of sounding fatalistic, xenophobia seems to be built into our basic psychology. You don't combat it by preventing it from happening, you combat it by providing people with the tools they need to recognize, understand, and address their fear, uncertainty, and doubt.
> What mortar fire in airports? Never heard of it.
The BBC has this timeline that includes a reference to one of the three mortar attacks on Heathrow perpetrated in 1994. Apparently only one of the three attacks actually resulted in detonations within the airport, but all three attacks were launched within a relatively short time frame and under increasingly tight security.
> Your searching for a book on say Operating Systems, guess what category MS falls into.
virii?
That's thirty dead in one year out of a nation of 294 million. I don't know how many police officers the US has, but I do know how many local police departments, sheriff's offices, state police agencies, and federal police forces exist within the contiguous states - 18,000. Presumably police officers themselves number in the millions. Taking into account the inevitablity of the occasional crazy, 30 seems like an amazingly reasonable number.
Especially when you compare that to the UK. A country of about 52 million with a total of 42 police forces employing 126,000 police (25,000 of which, BTW, are employed in Greater London) had 14 police officers killed in the line of duty last year. (see numbers here and here). As best as I can tell, the problem's gotten BETTER in the US and WORSE in the UK.
You're right that a US police officer being gunned down in, say, New Orleans isn't a nationwide news story; but that has more to do with:
A - the size of the country and
B - the fact that most US news is regional.
In the US, national news only comes to the forefront during massive catastrophes (high visibility terrorist attacks, Pee Wee Herman molesting a child, presidential elections, etc). International news only gets attention during a war. In the UK, national and international news get much more play time. (The US, for instance, doesn't have a tax funded international news agency)
My point is this - comparing crime in the UK and the US is comparing apples and oranges. Different social pressures, different sample population sizes, radically different landmass, different presumptions, different histories, utterly different beasts. The perception of people outside the environment in question is no more accurate than the perceptions of the people within the environment - they're both perceptions. Little better than opinions.
PS:
See this odd case - http://www.ecommercetimes.com/story/34123.html
Weird. I don't know about you, but the standard UK stereotype in my part of the country is "stodgy if sometimes rowdy".
Yet, when I was actually there, the level of random violence was absurd. We're talking about a country with 5th generation unemployed. I had the distinct displeasure of witnessing a "glassing" in Edinburgh. I've never seen anything like that in the US and I've been in a few tough spots.
Admittedly, US teenagers are particularly foolish about violence. They tend to slowly work themselves up to displays of violence. Facing off, insulting each other for a while, followed by pushing and shoving until someone throws a punch. More agrressiveness ensues and then someone tries to find a way to bow out while saving face. It's like watching one of these Nature Channel specials on primate territoriality or aboriginal ritual combat.
The US version is foolish and immature. You really shouldn't get in a fight unless you want to cause permanent damage or death. The Brits realize this, but a disproportianate number of them seem to want to cause permanent damage. Take your pick, juvenile delinquency or random acts of criminal sociopathy. Six of one, half a dozen of the other. The flip side is the Brits don't have school shootings. Mortar fire in airports, but no school shootings.
Personally, I suspect violence is a bigger problem in the UK then in the US - in the US we're just a bit more afraid of the violence that does exist. It doesn't matter, though. In the end it's a matter of degrees.
My personal suspicions aside, I realize that most members of most modern societies have at least some respect for the social contract. Discussions about who respects it more or who respects it least are foolish - every country has their layabouts and malcontents, people who feel powerless and don't grok reasonable escalation. Governments respond to it differently - on the one side they crush the violators (or perceived violators) under a steel boot, on the other they encourage fellow citizens to take responsibility for one another and act appropriately. Most countries try to strike a balance between the two extremes, but many definitely lean in one direction or the other. It's up to each individual to decide which approach they prefer. Trying to convince people that your preference is better is like trying to convince your roommate that blondes are superior to redheads or vice versa.