If you get spam that appears to be willingly sent from China, report it to the Ministry of Commerce.
Given the Chinese record on human rights, your concience might be better served by NOT reporting it to any Chinese government body whatsoever.
I wouldn't sleep at night knowing that my spam complaint had lead to a dozen people being rounded up, tortured and shot, but I can assure you that this wouldn't trouble the Chinese Ministry of Commerce one jot.
Spammers deserve prevention and punishment, but nobody deserves what the Chinese judicial system dishes out.
The channels aimed at British audiences (ie. for those who pay the licence fee) do not carry adverts. These are BBC1, 2, 3, 4, Children's BBC, CBebbies (for toddlers), News 24 and BBC Parliament. Same goes for audio services Radio 1,2,3,4,5,6,7, Asian Network, BBC Cymru (Welsh language), BBC Local Radio etc. These are almost entirely funded by the licence fee.
The channels aimed at international audiences (ie. for those who do not pay the licence fee) are funded by a mixture of foriegn office taxpayer's money, adverts and in some cases subscriptions. These include BBC World, BBC Prime and BBC America and are handled by a slightly seperate commerical company called BBC Worldwide and are broadcast on a number of satellites with coverage for most countries.
The international audio stations such as BBC World Service and BBC English By Radio are funded solely by the foreign office (similar to the funding for the Voice of America).
British viewers can also see BBC programming on non-BBC channels with advertising such as S4C (Welsh language), UK Gold (comedy & soap repeats) and UK History (documentary repeats). Some of these channels are entirely funded by advertising, some also have small injections from various government departments such as the Welsh Office, Scottish Office and European Union, in the case of regional language programming such as Welsh or Scots Gaelic. For instance, the popular Welsh soap opera Pobl Y Cum (Valley People) is made by the BBC but broadcast on independent station S4C supported by both advertising and government funding [PDF, Welsh and English].
When paying by cash, how do you know you can afford the item? Eg: If the item costs US$9.50 and I have a US$10 note, how do I know if I can afford the item?
This must be terribly bad for business. All those people who thought they didn't have quite enough money, when actually they did!
In addition, they should incorporate sales tax INTO the price so that the price you see is the price you pay. If an article is $4, it's $4!
I don't understand. Surely the price marked is the price you pay? That's the way it works in the European Union; traders can get fined if they don't mark prices thusly.
I sure as hell couldn't work out what +17.5% VAT (sales tax) was on, say, 3.99. I'd know it was about 4 quid plus four times 20p minus a little bit, say about 4 pounds 70 ish, but I wouldn't be able to figure out the exact two decimal places without a calculator. Are Americans better at percentages, do they carry around calculators, or are the taxes done on a simpler system than percentages? Or do they just spend their entire lives never quite knowing how much anything costs until they're already at the till?
AC: Little chance of gasoline being outlawed... so I guess soap has to go
Owning gasoline and soap is not illegal. Shipping them ready mixed without licenced safety procedures is.
Same with this law. Owning model rocket motors will still not be illegal. It will just be illegal to put them in the US post without licenced safety procedures.
I fly my Estes rocket once a month or so, they're great fun if you can find a field big enough not to loose them in the descent. I knew there had to be at least one bonus for living out here in the sticks so far from broadband...:-)
A network of cameras, which look like blue lampposts on trunk roads (highways) and fly-swatters on motorway bridges (interstates) digitally capture registration numbers (licence plates) and time how long it takes to get from A to B, or A to C etc. If a significant portion of numberplates arrive at A but don't arrive at B or C, then the computer presumes that there is a blockage somewhere near A. It also uses averaging to spot changes in normal traffic flow which indicate delays rather than blockages.
Interestingly, the trunk road system can be easily socially hacked with very major results. There are many classic cases of Trafficmaster being confused by temporary major changes in traffic flow, particularly infrequent events such as village fetes, town picnic days, jousting re-enactments, fireworks etc. If a bunch of cars all go past camera A and then turn off to park in a field for two hours to watch fireworks, the system will flag up point A as a traffic blockage!
I've known some mischevious parish council members specifically plan their event parking arrangements around buggering up Trafficmaster, making sure that the parking entrance is *after* the blue lamp camera...:-)
TiVo died because UK already had better: Sky Plus
on
TiVo switches off UK sales
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· Score: 4, Insightful
TiVo may have seemed revolutionary in the USA, but in the UK it was just one of many enhanced TV systems.
TiVo's biggest rival, Sky Plus (Sky+) did everything that TiVo did, and more, came pre-packaged with an installation engineer's visit and had the branding and backing of the UK's largest pay-TV provider, Sky (backed by Rupert Murdoch/Fox corp).
Sky already had a shedload of TV toys. For instance, I remember one of my business meetings in Texas two years ago, the CEO of this oil firm was saying something like "In the future, you'll be able to watch a football match and zoom in on individual players".
Slipgun: Since the UK 'got rid of' handguns in 1996/7, violent crime rate has gone up by about 40%, and handgun crime has doubled.
UK handgun legislation was designed to tackle ad-hoc killing sprees.
Total number of killing sprees involving guns in the UK since handgun law passed: ZERO
The legislation you're talking about was NEVER designed to, nor did it claim to, deal with day-to-day gun usage such as organised crime (drugs gangs, bank robberies etc). It was designed to counteract the problem of mentally unstable people suddenly getting hold of guns and going on a killing spree. This used to be a problem in schools and shopping centres.
Since the handgun legislation, there have been several attempted killing sprees using machettes and swords. In each case the perp did not manage to kill more than one person and in each case the perp was quickly and easily brought down by the UK's existing heavily armed response units. UK police don't carry handguns; when armed, they usually carry assault rifles and SMGs. The UK police's weapon of choice is traditionally the P90 and the MP5. No point in pissing about with toy.45s like their US amateur counterparts. Few parts of UK are more than a few minutes from an armed response unit and in high crime areas and ports, firearms are routinely secured in police cars. In sensitive areas such as airports you will see British police walking around with P90 submachine guns strapped to their waists.
I speak as a fan of target pistol shooting, I've owned and used air pistols all my life, I have a perfectly legal high velocity air pistol in my house and a target range in my back garden. I support the anti-spree handgun legislation.
180 is not just the top speed in mph, it's the maximum range, too.
What exactly is the point of a car that can only drive for one hour [1] before being refuelled/recharged?
Why do boffins create such useless vehicles? Why are boffins obsessed with all-electric cars when dual-fuel is patently the more practical option? This kind of coverage of environmentally friendly vehicles is making these new vehicles a laughing stock. If boffins stopped harping on about all-electric and started publicising dual-fuel, maybe people would actually make the switch.
You can't save the environment with all-electric cars if people won't buy them.
e. Entertainment technical games are those, whose result depends exclusively on the ability and skill of the player, and are used solely for entertainment.
...
2. Operation of games of type (e) is allowed
Entertaintment-only games machines, such as Space Invaders, are specifically ALLOWED by the act. On the first page. Can't you chaps read? Even the English translation?
The only about arcade games being banned is PLACING BETS on the outcome. For instance, betting on who might win a Space Invaders multiplayer tournament.
What they're banning is electric and electronic muscle-meter games, because they are played by muscle-bound idiots who start fights with each other. They are also banning part-electric part-electronic part-mechanical games such as fruit machines, because they're played people who are too stupid to understand probability theory, who are therefore probably also too stupid to get a job and spend their entire social security allowance on them. I guess the part-mechanical element might also be applied to pinball, but since they don't make pinball machines anymore, it hardly matters.
Bartmoss: Why not just increase taxes paid for the cars by car owners?
Because rural folk buy cars and petrol from the same places townies buy cars and petrol.
Because rural folk actually need a car, and townies don't.
Because rural folk don't contribute to congestion when they drive their cars out in the sticks, but when they visit the towns, they are just as much of a problem as the townies.
I live fifteen miles out of town. It's not until the final two miles that I get stick in a jam. You don't need to discourage me from driving the first thirteen miles, only the last two.
I've done the maths, and other than for city centres in rush hour when you (and I) really should take the bus anyway, I think this will actually result in a net saving for UK motorists.
> Average charge proposals per mile
> Top charge: 45p, central London, rush-hour
> Motorway weekday: 3.5p
> Other roads weekday: 4.3p
> Rural roads busy times: 1p
> Rural roads off-peak: free
> Birmingham to Manchester - £7.40
> Leeds to Liverpool - £6
> Road tax scrapped
> Fuel duty cut by between 2p and 12p
Depending on the efficiency of your car, UK petrol currently costs between 5p and 15p per mile (70p/litre, US$4/gallon).
With a 12p (20%) reduction in petrol prices, this would mean petrol would cost between 4p and 12p per mile, a saving of between 1p and 3p per mile.
Road tax (aka tax disc) costs between GBP100 and GBP160 per year. Having ZERO car disc tax would give a further saving of between 0.5 and 2p per mile, depending on the category of your car and the miles you drive per year.
Total saving of between 1.5p and 5p per mile on petrol & disc tax combined.
Let's say we drive an efficient car with average yearly milage of around 12,000 miles (normal for a Brit). We'd get a 4p reduction per mile.
Rural roads, even at peak times, would be cheaper to drive on.
Motorways (interstates) would slightly cheaper, and trunk roads (highways) would be about the same cost.
Meanwhile, you just wouldn't be able to regularly afford to drive in city centres in rush hour.
My opinion is that these figures sound fine for a 12p reduction in petrol tax and zero tax disc, but anything significantly less than a 12p reduction and zero tax disc would be a problem. I'd also like to see a stricter definition of "rural" and "other" roads (are A roads that pass through rural areas "rural" or does "rural" only apply to B & unclassified roads? If only B&C roads, that could mean an increase in rat-runs).
It will also require a huge increase in park-and-ride bus schemes. Many of these existing schemes are on, or butted against, "green belt" conservation areas. There are potential conflicts of interest in granting planning permission to expand these sites.
FYI, I live in the Cotswolds, a rural area near Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, UK.
Stop thinking string. Start thinking air.
on
Broadband Obstacles
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· Score: 2
Every time people talk about broadband, it's the bloody same. Cable this, copper that, fibre optic whatnot, local loop blah blah, last mile blah.
Stop it! We do NOT need more string.
The people stopping the rollout of broadband aren't the string companies (telcos, cablecos).
The people stopping the rollout of broadband are those who limit the use of the airwaves (FCC USA / Radio Authority UK). Open up more radio spectrum and then everyone can have broadband, with no last mile, no local loop and no silly string.
Have a look at "Broadband Cowboy" in the January 2002 issue of Wired.
Sad truth: artists need record companies
on
Preview the New Napster
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· Score: 3, Informative
AC: record companies are indeed a great evil
Why specifically record companies? Why not anyone who deals in someone else's intellectual property? Booksellers, publishers, librarians... all these are scum of the earth too, according to your logic.
Thing is though, your logic is flawed. You presume that the artist is the thing that deserves the most reward.
It's not actually that difficult to make a really good song. It's not even difficult to distribute it, provided it is done digitally. So how come there aren't lots of great songs going around on Morpheus that don't exist on CD?
Because what is difficult is to market a really good song. As in, publicise it, take it to the masses and actually bring in the money.
Firstly, radio station playlists don't come from a team meeting of benevolent DJs who spend their time searching out new sounds. Playlists come from record companies bombarding radio stations with publicity. Wise up, sucker. Commercial radio stations (and even the BBC) have fixed playlists controlled by marketting hype. It's only on the unprofitable grass-roots stations that have DJs who actually do any research.
Secondly, every artist who has tried to make a living (actually pay their bills, without claiming social security) SOLELY out of online trading of their IP has failed. You can only do this if you are already established, ie. have already shifted lots of coasters. Not forgetting that you need a decent way to accept payments.
So the horrid harsh reality is that ARTISTS NEED RECORD COMPANIES. Sorry, but they do. Record companies are not evil, they are actually the largest part of what makes pop music pop.
My Dad worked on one of those!
on
Electronic Abacus
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· Score: 4, Informative
For a wealth of information on the computer mentioned in the article, the LEO, see:
What you have to realise is at the time, my Dad and other people working on the LEOs genuinely believed that these were the world's first computers ever, not just the world's first business computers as they later became known.
You see, at the time, all the World War Two computer developments were covered under the millitary Official Secrets Act.
When these secrets broke to the general public in the 1970s, needless to say my Dad was somewhat dissapointed to discover he was not a great computing pioneer after all!
My Dad fondly recalls being able to boil a kettle and fry bacon & eggs on these monsters.
Try it yourself. Wait for the scene with the trees... suddenly your system will drop to 1-2 FPS.
Trees. That is why we need a better CPU & graphics card.
Notice how all the "good" games are set indoors, in cities, or in deserts? Yet all the fun army combat films take place in rural areas?
Think of all those war or commando films where you've got a lone gunman sneaking around using trees for cover. Now when you look at games, you're always sneaking around using crates and boxes for cover. That's why we need better hardware.
The games run fast on our Duron 800 / GEF2MX systems because those games are set in an environment which is specifically designed not to challenge our hardware. It's always a sewage system, a couple of city blocks, an underground base, a desert airport. It's never a forrest, a farm, a suburb.
Should we just start giving consessions to any state that might have a minority group that doesn't like the US?
Firstly, negotiating is not giving concessions away. Negotiating is bargaining. Negotiation is a sign of intelligence, not a sign of weakness.
Secondly, yes, you should start negotiating to improve relationships with such states.
If the US wasn't so hated, you wouldn't have terrorism. The UK has learned this the hard way over the past few decades. We are now a lot less moralising and control-led than we were thirty years ago, and we have seen a direct decrease in terrorism because of that.
Would it really be so bad if the US stopped funding weapons for Israelis? Or pulled bases out of Saudi Arabia? Or opened up trade with countries which have alternative government systems? Think of the goodwill you could generate by those actions. Think of the 6,000 lives that could have been saved if you hadn't been so pig-headed not to do it before 11/09.
Wise up, America. People dislike you, not because they're pathologically evil, but because you've done bad things.
Admitting that we were wrong in Northern Ireland and negotiating a shared government deal has saved hundreds of lives every year in the UK.
forsaken33: i'd be worrying about diseases, not just anthrax which is supposed to be not that communicable, but other disesases such as smallpox.
Only in America... jeez, get some perspective.
Greetings from the UK. Here, we have learned to deal with terrorism. Let me educate you on the top three tips for dealing with terrorism:
Accept the risk
You cannot prevent acts terrorism, but you can defeat the effects of terrorism; namely, terror.
Live your life accepting risks proportionately. The chances of you being injured or killed by anthrax are tiny in proportion to other daily risks such as crossing the road. If you do not worry about larger risks such as crossing the road, there is no point in you worrying about smaller risks such as anthrax.
Negotiate
Terrorists are too small and secretive to be defeated by millitary force of any size. Diplomacy is the only option that has been proven to work.
Publicise
Terrorists rely on their network of supporters. If you publicise their acts of atrocity, you will weaken their support.
Not true about Not true about MD not taking off...
on
Quarter-sized CD's?
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· Score: 2
Kaneda: but in Japan and Europe, they are a huge success. In the UK you can buy pre-recorded minidiscs in the music stores, like CD's or vinyl.
I can walk to both major UK record chain stores here in Cheltenham, UK and prove you wrong, if you like.
MD was popular for about three hours on Wednesday tea-time a few years back. Almost all stores have stopped selling pre-recorded MDs now. You can still get MD blanks everywhere, mind.
Some of the bigger stores like Tower Records in major cities such as London and Birmingham sell pre-recorded MDs, but if your concept is that you can just pop into any high street record store in an average UK town, you're wrong.
Slashdot Mirror
Given the Chinese record on human rights, your concience might be better served by NOT reporting it to any Chinese government body whatsoever.
I wouldn't sleep at night knowing that my spam complaint had lead to a dozen people being rounded up, tortured and shot, but I can assure you that this wouldn't trouble the Chinese Ministry of Commerce one jot.
Spammers deserve prevention and punishment, but nobody deserves what the Chinese judicial system dishes out.
Amnesty International 2003 report on China
It'd be pretty damn noticable on my British Telecom phone bill.
Not everywhere has free/inclusive local calls, remember.
The channels aimed at British audiences (ie. for those who pay the licence fee) do not carry adverts. These are BBC1, 2, 3, 4, Children's BBC, CBebbies (for toddlers), News 24 and BBC Parliament. Same goes for audio services Radio 1,2,3,4,5,6,7, Asian Network, BBC Cymru (Welsh language), BBC Local Radio etc. These are almost entirely funded by the licence fee.
In the case of advert-free satellite signals these are quite literally "aimed"; the BBC broadcast advert-free from a satellite with tight coverage of the UK mainland with only very minimal bleed into the rest of Europe.
The channels aimed at international audiences (ie. for those who do not pay the licence fee) are funded by a mixture of foriegn office taxpayer's money, adverts and in some cases subscriptions. These include BBC World, BBC Prime and BBC America and are handled by a slightly seperate commerical company called BBC Worldwide and are broadcast on a number of satellites with coverage for most countries.
The international audio stations such as BBC World Service and BBC English By Radio are funded solely by the foreign office (similar to the funding for the Voice of America).
British viewers can also see BBC programming on non-BBC channels with advertising such as S4C (Welsh language), UK Gold (comedy & soap repeats) and UK History (documentary repeats). Some of these channels are entirely funded by advertising, some also have small injections from various government departments such as the Welsh Office, Scottish Office and European Union, in the case of regional language programming such as Welsh or Scots Gaelic. For instance, the popular Welsh soap opera Pobl Y Cum (Valley People) is made by the BBC but broadcast on independent station S4C supported by both advertising and government funding [PDF, Welsh and English].
Expro: I would like to put up a server to serve up Gutenberg, etc. a page or so at a time for low-end WAP phones
I got bored last Christmas and did this.
www.wapnovel.com (WAP or desktop)
There's also an as yet unused discussion group at:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/wapnovel
It's not there. Are these details wrong?
When paying by cash, how do you know you can afford the item? Eg: If the item costs US$9.50 and I have a US$10 note, how do I know if I can afford the item?
This must be terribly bad for business. All those people who thought they didn't have quite enough money, when actually they did!
In addition, they should incorporate sales tax INTO the price so that the price you see is the price you pay. If an article is $4, it's $4!
I don't understand. Surely the price marked is the price you pay? That's the way it works in the European Union; traders can get fined if they don't mark prices thusly.
I sure as hell couldn't work out what +17.5% VAT (sales tax) was on, say, 3.99. I'd know it was about 4 quid plus four times 20p minus a little bit, say about 4 pounds 70 ish, but I wouldn't be able to figure out the exact two decimal places without a calculator. Are Americans better at percentages, do they carry around calculators, or are the taxes done on a simpler system than percentages? Or do they just spend their entire lives never quite knowing how much anything costs until they're already at the till?
Nope, American measures such as the Gallon are different to Imperial.
Americans need to come up with their own name for their own measurement system. Or just go metric and stop crashing so many spacecraft.
Metric IS English.
You can't argue with me on this one; I am English. Top trumps.
England, part of the United Kingdom, has been metric since the 1970's and before, with the exception of road signs and beer.
Owning gasoline and soap is not illegal. Shipping them ready mixed without licenced safety procedures is.
Same with this law. Owning model rocket motors will still not be illegal. It will just be illegal to put them in the US post without licenced safety procedures.
I fly my Estes rocket once a month or so, they're great fun if you can find a field big enough not to loose them in the descent. I knew there had to be at least one bonus for living out here in the sticks so far from broadband... :-)
Ditto here in the UK, we have been using this system for at least three years.
Trafficmaster
This data feeds most of the radio, TV, PDA, satnav and breakdown agency traffic reports. You can view live reports here:
Royal Automobile Club
Automobile Association
A network of cameras, which look like blue lampposts on trunk roads (highways) and fly-swatters on motorway bridges (interstates) digitally capture registration numbers (licence plates) and time how long it takes to get from A to B, or A to C etc. If a significant portion of numberplates arrive at A but don't arrive at B or C, then the computer presumes that there is a blockage somewhere near A. It also uses averaging to spot changes in normal traffic flow which indicate delays rather than blockages.
Interestingly, the trunk road system can be easily socially hacked with very major results. There are many classic cases of Trafficmaster being confused by temporary major changes in traffic flow, particularly infrequent events such as village fetes, town picnic days, jousting re-enactments, fireworks etc. If a bunch of cars all go past camera A and then turn off to park in a field for two hours to watch fireworks, the system will flag up point A as a traffic blockage!
I've known some mischevious parish council members specifically plan their event parking arrangements around buggering up Trafficmaster, making sure that the parking entrance is *after* the blue lamp camera... :-)
TiVo may have seemed revolutionary in the USA, but in the UK it was just one of many enhanced TV systems.
TiVo's biggest rival, Sky Plus (Sky+) did everything that TiVo did, and more, came pre-packaged with an installation engineer's visit and had the branding and backing of the UK's largest pay-TV provider, Sky (backed by Rupert Murdoch/Fox corp).
Sky already had a shedload of TV toys. For instance, I remember one of my business meetings in Texas two years ago, the CEO of this oil firm was saying something like "In the future, you'll be able to watch a football match and zoom in on individual players".
Then I glanced down at the predicted coverage map for my GPRS phone in Texas...
Slipgun: Since the UK 'got rid of' handguns in 1996/7, violent crime rate has gone up by about 40%, and handgun crime has doubled.
UK handgun legislation was designed to tackle ad-hoc killing sprees.
Total number of killing sprees involving guns in the UK since handgun law passed: ZERO
The legislation you're talking about was NEVER designed to, nor did it claim to, deal with day-to-day gun usage such as organised crime (drugs gangs, bank robberies etc). It was designed to counteract the problem of mentally unstable people suddenly getting hold of guns and going on a killing spree. This used to be a problem in schools and shopping centres.
Since the handgun legislation, there have been several attempted killing sprees using machettes and swords. In each case the perp did not manage to kill more than one person and in each case the perp was quickly and easily brought down by the UK's existing heavily armed response units. UK police don't carry handguns; when armed, they usually carry assault rifles and SMGs. The UK police's weapon of choice is traditionally the P90 and the MP5. No point in pissing about with toy .45s like their US amateur counterparts. Few parts of UK are more than a few minutes from an armed response unit and in high crime areas and ports, firearms are routinely secured in police cars. In sensitive areas such as airports you will see British police walking around with P90 submachine guns strapped to their waists.
I speak as a fan of target pistol shooting, I've owned and used air pistols all my life, I have a perfectly legal high velocity air pistol in my house and a target range in my back garden. I support the anti-spree handgun legislation.
180 is not just the top speed in mph, it's the maximum range, too.
What exactly is the point of a car that can only drive for one hour [1] before being refuelled/recharged?
Why do boffins create such useless vehicles? Why are boffins obsessed with all-electric cars when dual-fuel is patently the more practical option? This kind of coverage of environmentally friendly vehicles is making these new vehicles a laughing stock. If boffins stopped harping on about all-electric and started publicising dual-fuel, maybe people would actually make the switch.
You can't save the environment with all-electric cars if people won't buy them.
[1] Only in Germany, obviously
Read the English translation for yourself. To quote:
e. Entertainment technical games are those, whose result depends exclusively on the ability and skill of the player, and are used solely for entertainment.
...
2. Operation of games of type (e) is allowed
Entertaintment-only games machines, such as Space Invaders, are specifically ALLOWED by the act. On the first page. Can't you chaps read? Even the English translation?
The only about arcade games being banned is PLACING BETS on the outcome. For instance, betting on who might win a Space Invaders multiplayer tournament.
What they're banning is electric and electronic muscle-meter games, because they are played by muscle-bound idiots who start fights with each other. They are also banning part-electric part-electronic part-mechanical games such as fruit machines, because they're played people who are too stupid to understand probability theory, who are therefore probably also too stupid to get a job and spend their entire social security allowance on them. I guess the part-mechanical element might also be applied to pinball, but since they don't make pinball machines anymore, it hardly matters.
There was no Channel 4 series. Channel 4 only made a TV "movie", actually a one hour pilot.
The only series made was the American series.
It was this American series which was broadcast by Channel 4.
Geeknote: One episode features a "rebel" school which uses books without copyright licences, very similar to a Richard Stallman essay...
-- Andrew Oakley
Because rural folk buy cars and petrol from the same places townies buy cars and petrol.
Because rural folk actually need a car, and townies don't.
Because rural folk don't contribute to congestion when they drive their cars out in the sticks, but when they visit the towns, they are just as much of a problem as the townies.
I live fifteen miles out of town. It's not until the final two miles that I get stick in a jam. You don't need to discourage me from driving the first thirteen miles, only the last two.
I've done the maths, and other than for city centres in rush hour when you (and I) really should take the bus anyway, I think this will actually result in a net saving for UK motorists.
Here are the proposed charges as per the BBC .
> Average charge proposals per mile
> Top charge: 45p, central London, rush-hour
> Motorway weekday: 3.5p
> Other roads weekday: 4.3p
> Rural roads busy times: 1p
> Rural roads off-peak: free
> Birmingham to Manchester - £7.40
> Leeds to Liverpool - £6
> Road tax scrapped
> Fuel duty cut by between 2p and 12p
Depending on the efficiency of your car, UK petrol currently costs between 5p and 15p per mile (70p/litre, US$4/gallon).
With a 12p (20%) reduction in petrol prices, this would mean petrol would cost between 4p and 12p per mile, a saving of between 1p and 3p per mile.
Road tax (aka tax disc) costs between GBP100 and GBP160 per year. Having ZERO car disc tax would give a further saving of between 0.5 and 2p per mile, depending on the category of your car and the miles you drive per year.
Total saving of between 1.5p and 5p per mile on petrol & disc tax combined.
Let's say we drive an efficient car with average yearly milage of around 12,000 miles (normal for a Brit). We'd get a 4p reduction per mile.
My opinion is that these figures sound fine for a 12p reduction in petrol tax and zero tax disc, but anything significantly less than a 12p reduction and zero tax disc would be a problem. I'd also like to see a stricter definition of "rural" and "other" roads (are A roads that pass through rural areas "rural" or does "rural" only apply to B & unclassified roads? If only B&C roads, that could mean an increase in rat-runs).
It will also require a huge increase in park-and-ride bus schemes. Many of these existing schemes are on, or butted against, "green belt" conservation areas. There are potential conflicts of interest in granting planning permission to expand these sites.
On the whole though, this is a superb idea.
As for privacy, your numberplate is tracked in the UK already (do you seriously think the police can't get your movements out of Trafficmaster? Get real!).
FYI, I live in the Cotswolds, a rural area near Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, UK.
Every time people talk about broadband, it's the bloody same. Cable this, copper that, fibre optic whatnot, local loop blah blah, last mile blah.
Stop it! We do NOT need more string.
The people stopping the rollout of broadband aren't the string companies (telcos, cablecos).
The people stopping the rollout of broadband are those who limit the use of the airwaves (FCC USA / Radio Authority UK). Open up more radio spectrum and then everyone can have broadband, with no last mile, no local loop and no silly string.
Have a look at "Broadband Cowboy" in the January 2002 issue of Wired.
Why specifically record companies? Why not anyone who deals in someone else's intellectual property? Booksellers, publishers, librarians... all these are scum of the earth too, according to your logic.
Thing is though, your logic is flawed. You presume that the artist is the thing that deserves the most reward.
It's not actually that difficult to make a really good song. It's not even difficult to distribute it, provided it is done digitally. So how come there aren't lots of great songs going around on Morpheus that don't exist on CD?
Because what is difficult is to market a really good song. As in, publicise it, take it to the masses and actually bring in the money.
Firstly, radio station playlists don't come from a team meeting of benevolent DJs who spend their time searching out new sounds. Playlists come from record companies bombarding radio stations with publicity. Wise up, sucker. Commercial radio stations (and even the BBC) have fixed playlists controlled by marketting hype. It's only on the unprofitable grass-roots stations that have DJs who actually do any research.
Secondly, every artist who has tried to make a living (actually pay their bills, without claiming social security) SOLELY out of online trading of their IP has failed. You can only do this if you are already established, ie. have already shifted lots of coasters. Not forgetting that you need a decent way to accept payments.
So the horrid harsh reality is that ARTISTS NEED RECORD COMPANIES. Sorry, but they do. Record companies are not evil, they are actually the largest part of what makes pop music pop.
For a wealth of information on the computer mentioned in the article, the LEO, see:
www.leo-computers.org.uk [i.hate.square.brackets] [probably.already.slashdotted.to.hell]
What you have to realise is at the time, my Dad and other people working on the LEOs genuinely believed that these were the world's first computers ever, not just the world's first business computers as they later became known.
You see, at the time, all the World War Two computer developments were covered under the millitary Official Secrets Act.
When these secrets broke to the general public in the 1970s, needless to say my Dad was somewhat dissapointed to discover he was not a great computing pioneer after all!
My Dad fondly recalls being able to boil a kettle and fry bacon & eggs on these monsters.
Grip3n: I have a 800 Duron system with a Geforce 2 MX. It plays any new game at 1152x968 flawlessly.
I too have a Duron 800 and Geforce 2 MX, and until last week I would have totally agreed with you.
Last week I installed 3D Mark 2001 .
Try it yourself. Wait for the scene with the trees... suddenly your system will drop to 1-2 FPS.
Trees. That is why we need a better CPU & graphics card.
Notice how all the "good" games are set indoors, in cities, or in deserts? Yet all the fun army combat films take place in rural areas?
Think of all those war or commando films where you've got a lone gunman sneaking around using trees for cover. Now when you look at games, you're always sneaking around using crates and boxes for cover. That's why we need better hardware.
The games run fast on our Duron 800 / GEF2MX systems because those games are set in an environment which is specifically designed not to challenge our hardware. It's always a sewage system, a couple of city blocks, an underground base, a desert airport. It's never a forrest, a farm, a suburb.
Firstly, negotiating is not giving concessions away. Negotiating is bargaining. Negotiation is a sign of intelligence, not a sign of weakness.
Secondly, yes, you should start negotiating to improve relationships with such states.
If the US wasn't so hated, you wouldn't have terrorism. The UK has learned this the hard way over the past few decades. We are now a lot less moralising and control-led than we were thirty years ago, and we have seen a direct decrease in terrorism because of that.
Would it really be so bad if the US stopped funding weapons for Israelis? Or pulled bases out of Saudi Arabia? Or opened up trade with countries which have alternative government systems? Think of the goodwill you could generate by those actions. Think of the 6,000 lives that could have been saved if you hadn't been so pig-headed not to do it before 11/09.
Wise up, America. People dislike you, not because they're pathologically evil, but because you've done bad things.
Admitting that we were wrong in Northern Ireland and negotiating a shared government deal has saved hundreds of lives every year in the UK.
Only in America... jeez, get some perspective.
Greetings from the UK. Here, we have learned to deal with terrorism. Let me educate you on the top three tips for dealing with terrorism:
You cannot prevent acts terrorism, but you can defeat the effects of terrorism; namely, terror.
Live your life accepting risks proportionately. The chances of you being injured or killed by anthrax are tiny in proportion to other daily risks such as crossing the road. If you do not worry about larger risks such as crossing the road, there is no point in you worrying about smaller risks such as anthrax.
Terrorists are too small and secretive to be defeated by millitary force of any size. Diplomacy is the only option that has been proven to work.
Terrorists rely on their network of supporters. If you publicise their acts of atrocity, you will weaken their support.
I can walk to both major UK record chain stores here in Cheltenham, UK and prove you wrong, if you like.
MD was popular for about three hours on Wednesday tea-time a few years back. Almost all stores have stopped selling pre-recorded MDs now. You can still get MD blanks everywhere, mind.
Some of the bigger stores like Tower Records in major cities such as London and Birmingham sell pre-recorded MDs, but if your concept is that you can just pop into any high street record store in an average UK town, you're wrong.