> Then lock them up for that. It's a crime to not provide your key under the RIP bill. Ah, but according to the article you the user don't actually have access to the key - it's inside a chip. Quoth: The system uses BitLocker Drive Encryption through a chip called TPM (Trusted Platform Module) in the computer's motherboard.
It is partly aimed at preventing people from downloading unlicensed films or media.
"This means that by default your hard disk is encrypted by using a key that you cannot physically get at...
I doubt that even this government would try to lock you up for being unable to retrieve a key from a protected silicon chip. Then again, their stupidity seems to know no bounds, so I wouldn't be too surprised. On the upside, they can presumably get the key from the manufacturers anyway, so it's all a storm in a teacup.
I'd still like to hear how many successful prosecutions there have been under the RIP bill though. Methinks if it had netted them lots of child-molesting, money-laundering, drug-dealing terrorists we'd hear about it.
>The Government has been itching to abolish the House of Lords and replace it with elected (read: identical) officials. The last thing we need is for the one last group of semi-independent observers to be kicked out in favour or a bunch of clones and sheep.
No, the government wants to appoint the Lords. I would be happy if they were elected (ideally directly if the Commons was proportional). Failing that, I prefer the grandson of George V mistress to Tony's son's godfather as an appointee. But what do I know, I just pay taxes in this country.
> When legitimate, democratic governments start wanting such tools of control, no matter how noble the alleged purpose, it's worth examining all the ways in which they can be abused, and the regimes which have abused them in the past. All it takes for abuse to start is a few bad people.
My apologies for labouring (sic!) the point, but a government that's elected with less than a third of the popular vote is not legitimate, even if it manages to get a majority in parliament due to archaic electoral rulse.
> By that kind of logic we should get rid of the olympic torch right away, because it was introduced in 1936 in Berlin (look it up if you are in doubt).
Motorways and the VW beetle were also spawns of Fascism. So was the Saturn-V, albeit indirectly.
ID cards are neither bad nor good in themselves; after all, all countries have passports which is just a fancy form of ID for international travel. The specific problems with the UK ID card are: 1. It's ludicrously expsnsive 2. It doesn't address any of the issues it is purported to address - Terrorism, Immigration, Benefit Fraud - so what are the real motives? 3. It won't work; the UK govnmnt has never managed to get any moderately complicated IT system to work on time, or on buget, or on scope. In fact, their modus operani is to sue people for the last version while taking them on as preferred bidders for the next. 4. Any ID card system that is not compulsory is, ipso facto, pointless. Not that a compulsory ID card system makes a lot of sense (e.g. Germany and Spain have one, and they aren't noted for lack of terrorism, ID theft, illegal immigration or fraud), but an ID card is simply pointless unless it's compulsory. "Who are you?" "I won't tell you!" "OK then". Give me a break - If they wanted to solve an actual problem, they'd make it compulsory to carry your driving license and insurance details while driving, instead of letting you makeup a name on the spot.
> I don't get it. Did the British learn nothing from World War II?! yeah, they learned that they need to call on the US to protect civilisation. Ah. Bugger.
> (Would you really be any worse off at this point if the Nazis had won?) You mean apart from the fact that he would have killed all the jews in britain as well? If you ask that question in earnest, you must be so detached from reality that further debate is pointless.
> I've often wondered this myself. There's a line of thought that suggests that Hitler would not have invaded Britain had the UK kept out of Germany's affairs. There even appears to be evidence that Hitler admired Britain because of it's empire and the fact that in a country with such a high population density, people were controlled enough to not turn on each other. If this had been the case, Britain would have been less likely to have lost it's empire, would not have been bankrupted and would probably have remained one of the worlds top powers.
Once he was finished with the rest of Europe, do you really think Adolf would have stopped at the channel for the sake of civility? As for "population density" - Holland? Belgium? Face it, the only viable option was to team up with the US and Russia and get rid of Hitler, Just thank God you had Churchill and not just Chamberlain; I do,
> Well given the amount of fatal shootings in the US compared to the UK, quite frankly I'm happy for guns to be controlled. It's not as if you can't get one if you legitimately need it, but the whole place feels somewhat safer not having everyone wandering around with a gun to protect themselves from everyone else who's also wandering around with a gun.
Given the amount of guncrime in the UK, it seems that criminals don't find it too hard to get their hamds on guns. So gun control seems to be effective only insofar as it stops the UK athletics team from training in the UK, which somehow doesn't make the world that much safer.
Not that I'm advocating US style laxness on gun issues, but the publicity focused "gun control" measures in the UK in recent years have done zilch to stop gun crime. Just like banning fox hunting has done zilch for animal welfare, or the human rights act had done fuck all for human rights in the UK, since the government feels it can opt out of whatever is invonvenient.... but I digress.
>I think you will find their policies involve taking liberties.
That's the old fashioned way of thinking. In the old days, Labour used to be for civil liberties; New Labour has taken away more freedom than all of the conservative governments combined.
> Animal activists stole the remains of a dead old lady?! To set the bitch free? If you firebomb people to "save" rats & guine pigs, then you are either a) a terrorist b) craxy c) both
Regardless, your sorry ass needs to be locked in an institution 'til kingdome come.
As a German living in the UK for far too long, I'll happily sue each of these companies.
>"As of 1 July 2008, we will only serve alcohol to people who can produce ID, regardless of their apparent age. The only acceptable form of ID is a UK ID card or passport". Here's my EU passport. Will you serve me my lukewarm cervisia, or should I sue you for racial discrimination?
>"As of 1 July 2008, this company will be taking positive steps to ensure illegal immirants aren't employed. To that end, anyone applying for a job must show a UK ID card before they will be offered a role". Any reputable company already takes a copy of your entitlement to work in the UK - i.e. passport or EU ID card. Or foreign passport and work visa.
> "In order to combat Identity Theft, as of 1 July 2008, you will be required to show your ID card when paying by debit/credit card". Pull the other one, it's got bells on. In big shops in the UK, you can pay for £0.20 worth of chewing gum on your credit card if you want; they're not going to want to ask for your ID. Why would they? Together with the banks they've just swapped the "If we can't prove you made the payement, you're not liable" system for the "If someone can observe or guess your 4 digit pin, you're fucked" chip and pin system. More ID would only hurt the retailers and the banks.
"In line with Money Laundering Regulations, we will only open a bank account for people who can demonstrate their identity. As of 1 July 2008, we will only accept an ID card issued by an EU member state." That's already pretty much the case. Of course you could get a birth certificate instead, which is obviously fairly useless. But you'll need that to get the ID card in the first place, so it's basically a coverup.
What really needs to be addressed with the UK Scheme is that: 1. It's ridiculously expensive. Whether you pay upfront or through taxes is really irrelevant. 2. It is completely ineffective against all the things it is supposed to solve:
2.1 Benefit fraud: The government admits that 95% of it is "misrepresentation of circumstances", not ID fraud. You can throw biometrics at me 'til the cows come home; if I say my back hurts you still can't prove me wrong. Until you catch me playing sqash, but ID cards don't help much on that.
2.2 Terrorism. All the tube bombers would have been able to get their squeaky clean ID cards. As would Richard Reid. Ok, so identifying bodies might be a tad quicker, so clearly that would be 19.2 billion well ( spent, Not like we need that money anywhere else.
2.3 Immigration. If you're an illegal immgrant without any documets, will you fret about not having another document? No? Exactly. Earth to Labour, Earth to Labour - bugger, they're not receiving common sense anymore.
2.4 Health Care. Health care. At the moment, if you show up at a hospital with a non-life-threating problem, it will take hours before you're seen. Fair enough, in a nasty sort of way. On the other hand, if you're actually about to die, you will get treated, with the full whack that modern medicine can deliver. And it's not cheap. I know an old gentleman of foreign extraction who managed to rack up about £40K before leaving the High Dependency Unit. Are they going to let old men die on the street for lack of ID?
Anyway, the UK government has no respect for human rights. In some former governments, that would have been expected; in a nominally labour government, it's shocking. Intercepting people's private communications without warrant; locking people up indefinitely without trial; making the political system even less accountable. Shame I can't blame them for the first past the post system, but they only benefit from it rather than introducing it. On the other hand, they repl
If two out of three people who bothered to vote voted against these morons, do they really deserve to be shot at? Any more than the 49.5% of moderately sane americans?
I do wonder.... sometimes I think Tony just turned coat completely - imagine you voted for Amnesty International, and when they get into power they turn into Pinochet..... other times, you think, Cherie is a human rights lawyer who makes a lot of money out of sueing the UK government for trampling on human rights. Either they are maximising the family income, or they must have interesting dinner table conversations.
Either way, Tony's government position on human rights and civil liberties makes Margaret Thatcher and Michael Howard look like a bunch of bleeding hippies, which is quite an achievement.
Oh, and the trains still don't run on time. At least Mussolini managed to get that done.
. Try to imagine the outcry that would happen in the USA if any remotely similar scheme was tried here (and rightly so too!)
Yes, I'm sure the American's would overthrow the govrenment in a trice if, for example, it turned out that it wiretaps people illegaly. That's what you have your assault rifles for, after all.
Meanwhile, back in the real world, the TV licensing inspector is not directly an agent of the state, and while I understand that they like to pretend that they have the right to enter, they don't actually.
You already pay your ISP for how much traffic you pay (or at least how much bandwidth is allocated to you). Want a fast pipe and stream video? You pay for it.
What they're proposing is to get paid twice by the provider and once by the consumer.
> Just because Bush is against human cloning and other such human experiments does not mean he's against science as a whole. True, that's not sufficient evidence to draw the conclusion that he is against science.
His behaviour in other areas, however (ID, Climate Change, Wildlife protection, pressure on researchers to change results) leads one to suspecct strongly that he and his administration are anti-science.
> The US Constitution is a wisely written document, and that's why it has survived for over two centuries. Actually, it's probably survived more by being ignored whenever expedient./ducks
> Bush has ethics. No, he has religion, which superficially looks like ethics, but actually is something entirely different. Quite often it's diametrically opposed.
> The scientific method ignores ethics. The scientific method has nothing to do with ethics. To summarise crudely: 1. Hypothesis. 2. Test. No ethics involved in the method.
Ethics has no more to do with the scientific method than with solving quadratic equations.
Now, when it comes to experiments, then of course ethics can be important in the experiments; but that has nothing to do with the method. And you'll find that any experiments which pose ethical problems - which essentially means anything involving animals or humans - have to be vetted by an ethical standards board.
> Two things. Either Bush is anti-science, or he is merely trying to inject morality and ethical thinking into the scientific community. Or he's trying to enforce a narrow-minded, biblically-literal worldview on the whole world, perhaps?
> One would hope that Bush's statements on scientific advances prove that he is not anti-science, no more than pro-lifers are anti-women.
Everyone is for life; the people you refer to are against women's choice. The debate would be a lot clearer without misleading euphemisms.
> it doesn't make sense that any President would actively work to thwart something like scientific progress in general. It's unlikely that the President would actively work to harm the country he's leading; it's not quite so unlikely that he would harm the country by taking actions he believes to be beneficial but which are detrimental. I won't bother giving examples since they're too numerous to list here.
> try to understand why his position is what it is - you just might discover that there are intelligent arguments on all sides of the table Yes, you might. On balance, though, you might well find that there aren't.
I see a huge difference between genetic modification to fix a genetic degenerative fatal disease in humans, and genetic modification to increase the yield on subsidised corn by a few percent. Don't you?
> A human embryo does not have a brain. Nor does it have a functional nervous system. Surely that depends on the stage of development?
> Therefore it can neither think nor feel. Therefore, experimentation on them involves no suffering or loss of freedom (for the embryo). Animals definitely think and feel, to degrees varying by species. Should we allow animal experiments? IMHO, yes, but you've not argued the case.
> Besides, "Thou shalt not use embryos in scientific experiments" isn't in the Bible anywhere. I read it cover to cover. It's not there. "Thou shalt not eat shellfish" is; "Thou shalt not insider trade" is not, neither is "Thou shalt not launder money". "Thou shalt not drive drunk" isn't, either, "Thou shalt not kill", however is. Which is the basis of this argument at some level.
I don't disagree with your position, but you're not convincing.
> The BBC tests are not IQ tests, they are a combination of basic reasoning and knowledge of popular culture. You've clearly failed the basic test and mistaken them for something serious, rather than the light entertainment with an occasionally serious side point that they are meant to be.
> If the tests required a decent level of intelligence to answer they'd alienate most of the British population, something that goes against their mantra of "accessibility". Journalists like to have an audience. Being inaccessible doesn't necessarily make you smarter, and besides, if stupid people pay their license fee, surely they're entitled to be able to understand the programs? At least some of them.
> Contrary to popular belief the BBC is not exactly a bastion of the intelligentsia, I'm not sure that that was ever the popular belief, but if it was, "Strictly come dancing" laid it to rest.
> like all publicly funded organisations its tolerance for stupidly is boundless. That dictum applies, in my experience, to most organisation, regardless of funding, as well as a disturbingly large proportion of the population.
> The BBC is nothing more than Fox News with nice accents and the occasional long word thrown in. I know you begrudge them the license fee, but that's just silly. Yes, the accents are nicer, even if they've sadly forsaken proper Queen's English for estuary; but they also add a few nice tidbits like:
* Admirable, if not perfect, objectivity. Fairness and balance in the content, not just the label.
* Better global coverage than any other news organisation I'm aware of.
* One of the better news websites, IMHO And, of course, a number of television channels with an admittedly variable quality. Excellent, non-advert driven children's channels. Radio 1, which I understand is quite popular with the younger generation; Radio 2, which apparently still has the odd listener; Radio 3, which offers phantastic classical music - the "Bach Christmas" was wonderful; and Radio 4, which among a few awful things like the Archers and idle chitchat like "You and Yours" offers interesting and occasionally thought-provoking programmes. Plus a number of digital radio channels, though I haven't checked them out. And of course the world service, which probably has done more good for the British reputation abroad than the last five governments combined. All without the bloody irritating radio ads that commercial stations are plagued by.
> Now, you and I know that in this day and age, in a country with a professional military, civil insurrection is largely futile anyway. Someone forgot to tell the Iraqui's;) Not that I particularly disagree with you....
>I support the social changes that firearms made possible (liberal democracy etc.), but I am unsure about the morality of self-defense. I'm curious how you've drawn the conclusion that firearms were the cause for liberal democracy; I mean, if you look just at the US, close one eye and squint really with the other, I can just about see it. Barely. But that doesn't explain other countries, like Switzerland (yes, they have guns, but as part of the military; it just so happens that citizens are soldiers, too), Sweden, etc, South Africa, Great Britain, Ireland.....
Slashdot Mirror
> The chip is a DRM enforcment chip. It is designed to prohibit any reading and copying by ANYONE, even the manufacturer and various governments.
Okay, I didn't know that. Makes sense from a DRM perspective, although why a consumer would be willing to pay for that I don't know.
> Then lock them up for that. It's a crime to not provide your key under the RIP bill.
Ah, but according to the article you the user don't actually have access to the key - it's inside a chip. Quoth:
The system uses BitLocker Drive Encryption through a chip called TPM (Trusted Platform Module) in the computer's motherboard.
It is partly aimed at preventing people from downloading unlicensed films or media.
"This means that by default your hard disk is encrypted by using a key that you cannot physically get at...
I doubt that even this government would try to lock you up for being unable to retrieve a key from a protected silicon chip. Then again, their stupidity seems to know no bounds, so I wouldn't be too surprised. On the upside, they can presumably get the key from the manufacturers anyway, so it's all a storm in a teacup.
I'd still like to hear how many successful prosecutions there have been under the RIP bill though. Methinks if it had netted them lots of child-molesting, money-laundering, drug-dealing terrorists we'd hear about it.
>The Government has been itching to abolish the House of Lords and replace it with elected (read: identical) officials. The last thing we need is for the one last group of semi-independent observers to be kicked out in favour or a bunch of clones and sheep.
No, the government wants to appoint the Lords. I would be happy if they were elected (ideally directly if the Commons was proportional). Failing that, I prefer the grandson of George V mistress to Tony's son's godfather as an appointee. But what do I know, I just pay taxes in this country.
> When legitimate, democratic governments start wanting such tools of control, no matter how noble the alleged purpose, it's worth examining all the ways in which they can be abused, and the regimes which have abused them in the past. All it takes for abuse to start is a few bad people.
My apologies for labouring (sic!) the point, but a government that's elected with less than a third of the popular vote is not legitimate, even if it manages to get a majority in parliament due to archaic electoral rulse.
> By that kind of logic we should get rid of the olympic torch right away, because it was introduced in 1936 in Berlin (look it up if you are in doubt).
Motorways and the VW beetle were also spawns of Fascism. So was the Saturn-V, albeit indirectly.
ID cards are neither bad nor good in themselves; after all, all countries have passports which is just a fancy form of ID for international travel. The specific problems with the UK ID card are:
1. It's ludicrously expsnsive
2. It doesn't address any of the issues it is purported to address - Terrorism, Immigration, Benefit Fraud - so what are the real motives?
3. It won't work; the UK govnmnt has never managed to get any moderately complicated IT system to work on time, or on buget, or on scope. In fact, their modus operani is to sue people for the last version while taking them on as preferred bidders for the next.
4. Any ID card system that is not compulsory is, ipso facto, pointless. Not that a compulsory ID card system makes a lot of sense (e.g. Germany and Spain have one, and they aren't noted for lack of terrorism, ID theft, illegal immigration or fraud), but an ID card is simply pointless unless it's compulsory. "Who are you?" "I won't tell you!" "OK then". Give me a break - If they wanted to solve an actual problem, they'd make it compulsory to carry your driving license and insurance details while driving, instead of letting you makeup a name on the spot.
> I don't get it. Did the British learn nothing from World War II?!
yeah, they learned that they need to call on the US to protect civilisation. Ah. Bugger.
> (Would you really be any worse off at this point if the Nazis had won?)
You mean apart from the fact that he would have killed all the jews in britain as well?
If you ask that question in earnest, you must be so detached from reality that further debate is pointless.
> I've often wondered this myself. There's a line of thought that suggests that Hitler would not have invaded Britain had the UK kept out of Germany's affairs. There even appears to be evidence that Hitler admired Britain because of it's empire and the fact that in a country with such a high population density, people were controlled enough to not turn on each other. If this had been the case, Britain would have been less likely to have lost it's empire, would not have been bankrupted and would probably have remained one of the worlds top powers.
Once he was finished with the rest of Europe, do you really think Adolf would have stopped at the channel for the sake of civility? As for "population density" - Holland? Belgium? Face it, the only viable option was to team up with the US and Russia and get rid of Hitler, Just thank God you had Churchill and not just Chamberlain; I do,
> Well given the amount of fatal shootings in the US compared to the UK, quite frankly I'm happy for guns to be controlled. It's not as if you can't get one if you legitimately need it, but the whole place feels somewhat safer not having everyone wandering around with a gun to protect themselves from everyone else who's also wandering around with a gun.
Given the amount of guncrime in the UK, it seems that criminals don't find it too hard to get their hamds on guns. So gun control seems to be effective only insofar as it stops the UK athletics team from training in the UK, which somehow doesn't make the world that much safer.
Not that I'm advocating US style laxness on gun issues, but the publicity focused "gun control" measures in the UK in recent years have done zilch to stop gun crime. Just like banning fox hunting has done zilch for animal welfare, or the human rights act had done fuck all for human rights in the UK, since the government feels it can opt out of whatever is invonvenient.... but I digress.
>> Conservatives are for civil liberties
>I think you will find their policies involve taking liberties.
That's the old fashioned way of thinking. In the old days, Labour used to be for civil liberties; New Labour has taken away more freedom than all of the conservative governments combined.
> Animal activists stole the remains of a dead old lady?! To set the bitch free?
If you firebomb people to "save" rats & guine pigs, then you are either
a) a terrorist
b) craxy
c) both
Regardless, your sorry ass needs to be locked in an institution 'til kingdome come.
So yes, I'm speciesist. So fuck off.
As a German living in the UK for far too long, I'll happily sue each of these companies.
>"As of 1 July 2008, we will only serve alcohol to people who can produce ID, regardless of their apparent age. The only acceptable form of ID is a UK ID card or passport".
Here's my EU passport. Will you serve me my lukewarm cervisia, or should I sue you for racial discrimination?
>"As of 1 July 2008, this company will be taking positive steps to ensure illegal immirants aren't employed. To that end, anyone applying for a job must show a UK ID card before they will be offered a role".
Any reputable company already takes a copy of your entitlement to work in the UK - i.e. passport or EU ID card. Or foreign passport and work visa.
> "In order to combat Identity Theft, as of 1 July 2008, you will be required to show your ID card when paying by debit/credit card".
Pull the other one, it's got bells on.
In big shops in the UK, you can pay for £0.20 worth of chewing gum on your credit card if you want; they're not going to want to ask for your ID. Why would they? Together with the banks they've just swapped the "If we can't prove you made the payement, you're not liable" system for the "If someone can observe or guess your 4 digit pin, you're fucked" chip and pin system. More ID would only hurt the retailers and the banks.
"In line with Money Laundering Regulations, we will only open a bank account for people who can demonstrate their identity. As of 1 July 2008, we will only accept an ID card issued by an EU member state."
That's already pretty much the case. Of course you could get a birth certificate instead, which is obviously fairly useless. But you'll need that to get the ID card in the first place, so it's basically a coverup.
What really needs to be addressed with the UK Scheme is that:
1. It's ridiculously expensive. Whether you pay upfront or through taxes is really irrelevant.
2. It is completely ineffective against all the things it is supposed to solve:
2.1 Benefit fraud: The government admits that 95% of it is "misrepresentation of circumstances", not ID fraud. You can throw biometrics at me 'til the cows come home; if I say my back hurts you still can't prove me wrong. Until you catch me playing sqash, but ID cards don't help much on that.
2.2 Terrorism. All the tube bombers would have been able to get their squeaky clean ID cards. As would Richard Reid. Ok, so identifying bodies might be a tad quicker, so clearly that would be 19.2 billion well ( spent, Not like we need that money anywhere else.
2.3 Immigration. If you're an illegal immgrant without any documets, will you fret about not having another document? No? Exactly. Earth to Labour, Earth to Labour - bugger, they're not receiving common sense anymore.
2.4 Health Care. Health care. At the moment, if you show up at a hospital with a non-life-threating problem, it will take hours before you're seen. Fair enough, in a nasty sort of way. On the other hand, if you're actually about to die, you will get treated, with the full whack that modern medicine can deliver. And it's not cheap. I know an old gentleman of foreign extraction who managed to rack up about £40K before leaving the High Dependency Unit. Are they going to let old men die on the street for lack of ID?
Anyway, the UK government has no respect for human rights. In some former governments, that would have been expected; in a nominally labour government, it's shocking. Intercepting people's private communications without warrant; locking people up indefinitely without trial; making the political system even less accountable. Shame I can't blame them for the first past the post system, but they only benefit from it rather than introducing it. On the other hand, they repl
If two out of three people who bothered to vote voted against these morons, do they really deserve to be shot at? Any more than the 49.5% of moderately sane americans?
I do wonder.... sometimes I think Tony just turned coat completely - imagine you voted for Amnesty International, and when they get into power they turn into Pinochet..... other times, you think, Cherie is a human rights lawyer who makes a lot of money out of sueing the UK government for trampling on human rights. Either they are maximising the family income, or they must have interesting dinner table conversations.
Either way, Tony's government position on human rights and civil liberties makes Margaret Thatcher and Michael Howard look like a bunch of bleeding hippies, which is quite an achievement.
Oh, and the trains still don't run on time. At least Mussolini managed to get that done.
. Try to imagine the outcry that would happen in the USA if any remotely similar scheme was tried here (and rightly so too!)
Yes, I'm sure the American's would overthrow the govrenment in a trice if, for example, it turned out that it wiretaps people illegaly. That's what you have your assault rifles for, after all.
Meanwhile, back in the real world, the TV licensing inspector is not directly an agent of the state, and while I understand that they like to pretend that they have the right to enter, they don't actually.
You already pay your ISP for how much traffic you pay (or at least how much bandwidth is allocated to you). Want a fast pipe and stream video? You pay for it.
What they're proposing is to get paid twice by the provider and once by the consumer.
> Just because Bush is against human cloning and other such human experiments does not mean he's against science as a whole.
True, that's not sufficient evidence to draw the conclusion that he is against science.
His behaviour in other areas, however (ID, Climate Change, Wildlife protection, pressure on researchers to change results) leads one to suspecct strongly that he and his administration are anti-science.
> The US Constitution is a wisely written document, and that's why it has survived for over two centuries. /ducks
Actually, it's probably survived more by being ignored whenever expedient.
Please change your login name; you're giving DaDa a bad press.
> Bush has ethics.
No, he has religion, which superficially looks like ethics, but actually is something entirely different. Quite often it's diametrically opposed.
> The scientific method ignores ethics.
The scientific method has nothing to do with ethics. To summarise crudely: 1. Hypothesis. 2. Test. No ethics involved in the method.
Ethics has no more to do with the scientific method than with solving quadratic equations.
Now, when it comes to experiments, then of course ethics can be important in the experiments; but that has nothing to do with the method. And you'll find that any experiments which pose ethical problems - which essentially means anything involving animals or humans - have to be vetted by an ethical standards board.
> Two things. Either Bush is anti-science, or he is merely trying to inject morality and ethical thinking into the scientific community.
Or he's trying to enforce a narrow-minded, biblically-literal worldview on the whole world, perhaps?
> One would hope that Bush's statements on scientific advances prove that he is not anti-science, no more than pro-lifers are anti-women.
Everyone is for life; the people you refer to are against women's choice. The debate would be a lot clearer without misleading euphemisms.
> it doesn't make sense that any President would actively work to thwart something like scientific progress in general.
It's unlikely that the President would actively work to harm the country he's leading; it's not quite so unlikely that he would harm the country by taking actions he believes to be beneficial but which are detrimental. I won't bother giving examples since they're too numerous to list here.
> try to understand why his position is what it is - you just might discover that there are intelligent arguments on all sides of the table
Yes, you might. On balance, though, you might well find that there aren't.
I see a huge difference between genetic modification to fix a genetic degenerative fatal disease in humans, and genetic modification to increase the yield on subsidised corn by a few percent. Don't you?
> A human embryo does not have a brain. Nor does it have a functional nervous system.
Surely that depends on the stage of development?
> Therefore it can neither think nor feel. Therefore, experimentation on them involves no suffering or loss of freedom (for the embryo).
Animals definitely think and feel, to degrees varying by species. Should we allow animal experiments? IMHO, yes, but you've not argued the case.
> Besides, "Thou shalt not use embryos in scientific experiments" isn't in the Bible anywhere. I read it cover to cover. It's not there.
"Thou shalt not eat shellfish" is; "Thou shalt not insider trade" is not, neither is "Thou shalt not launder money". "Thou shalt not drive drunk" isn't, either, "Thou shalt not kill", however is. Which is the basis of this argument at some level.
I don't disagree with your position, but you're not convincing.
Hi Vrai,
> The BBC tests are not IQ tests, they are a combination of basic reasoning and knowledge of popular culture.
You've clearly failed the basic test and mistaken them for something serious, rather than the light entertainment with an occasionally serious side point that they are meant to be.
> If the tests required a decent level of intelligence to answer they'd alienate most of the British population, something that goes against their mantra of "accessibility".
Journalists like to have an audience. Being inaccessible doesn't necessarily make you smarter, and besides, if stupid people pay their license fee, surely they're entitled to be able to understand the programs? At least some of them.
> Contrary to popular belief the BBC is not exactly a bastion of the intelligentsia,
I'm not sure that that was ever the popular belief, but if it was, "Strictly come dancing" laid it to rest.
> like all publicly funded organisations its tolerance for stupidly is boundless.
That dictum applies, in my experience, to most organisation, regardless of funding, as well as a disturbingly large proportion of the population.
> The BBC is nothing more than Fox News with nice accents and the occasional long word thrown in.
I know you begrudge them the license fee, but that's just silly. Yes, the accents are nicer, even if they've sadly forsaken proper Queen's English for estuary; but they also add a few nice tidbits like:
* Admirable, if not perfect, objectivity. Fairness and balance in the content, not just the label.
* Better global coverage than any other news organisation I'm aware of.
* One of the better news websites, IMHO
And, of course, a number of television channels with an admittedly variable quality. Excellent, non-advert driven children's channels. Radio 1, which I understand is quite popular with the younger generation; Radio 2, which apparently still has the odd listener; Radio 3, which offers phantastic classical music - the "Bach Christmas" was wonderful; and Radio 4, which among a few awful things like the Archers and idle chitchat like "You and Yours" offers interesting and occasionally thought-provoking programmes. Plus a number of digital radio channels, though I haven't checked them out. And of course the world service, which probably has done more good for the British reputation abroad than the last five governments combined. All without the bloody irritating radio ads that commercial stations are plagued by.
> Now, you and I know that in this day and age, in a country with a professional military, civil insurrection is largely futile anyway. ;) Not that I particularly disagree with you....
Someone forgot to tell the Iraqui's
>I support the social changes that firearms made possible (liberal democracy etc.), but I am unsure about the morality of self-defense.
I'm curious how you've drawn the conclusion that firearms were the cause for liberal democracy; I mean, if you look just at the US, close one eye and squint really with the other, I can just about see it. Barely. But that doesn't explain other countries, like Switzerland (yes, they have guns, but as part of the military; it just so happens that citizens are soldiers, too), Sweden, etc, South Africa, Great Britain, Ireland.....
Please elaborate
>Why do I have a strong suspicion that the biggest stakeholder, the public, won't matter when it comes to decision?
Experience?