I saw a lot of complaints on the "have your say" thread on the program on the BBC news website - including my own. But they wouldnt read those of course.
I am and I'm not. I totally agree with your assessment.
The fear of being sued has reduced the content of news stories to soundbites so that all of the sensible conjecture based on facts collected by journalists at the scene is no longer reported - and the resulting inquiry / court case / academic study never gets reported unless it is either a possible cause / cure for CANCER. In addition to which the population is assumed to be so dumb that advertising works (i.e. thick as pigshit). So the only role left for news is entertainment!!! and its content is mainly about whether the players are in danger of becoming celebrities or losing celebrity status. (even football news is only about whether the team manager should be sacked - not a word about how well the game is played). In addition to which the people actually putting the news together are ideally less than thirteen years old because anyone else is seriously out of touch with what is happening and now.
So its no surprise that WiFi is only of interest as a potential competitor to Bird Flu or Aids rather than a component of a social revolution slightly more important than the inventing of the printing press.
But what the heck, its been obvious for decades that western civilization for the common person has been on a hand cart to hell since the naivety and optimism of the 60's was exploded. Thats probably why so many people are attracted to the healthy debates on this site where the application of science and engineering to problems is still regarded with some respect by those who have some understanding of it - that it can still do good things for the world and be fun and artistic all at the same time.
All engineering projects carry some risks, at this moment in time though the relative risk of WiFi is quite well understood as being substantially less than using a mobile phone. So this BBC report comes over as sensationalist unjustifiable speculative rubbish. Its pretty sad that this will not be causing resignations and any action to prevent similarly poor journalism in the future - unlike the mass furore over a children's tv show naming their pet cat something other than what the viewers voted for.
Bad BBC, don't do it again! your credibility is rapidly heading south.
Yes but where do you stop? Here in the UK we have a well meaning socialist government which takes this attitude with everything they can get their hands on and they have introduced laws and taxes and licenses for just about any human activity you can think of - and they desperately want to have more control over us to enforce their view of how we should behave on us.
Its a grim business because the whole thing is predicated on the belief that the control method has to be based on the worst behaved in society. My name is not Winston and I do not love the state or want anything to do with its crap services, in fact the less I have to deal with it the better. So no it isnt a great idea for the state to try to regulate everything in detail, the churches used to do it and evil states would like to continue the practise. Just say no! I'd vote for the flying spaghetti monster any day.
You totally miss the point of texting in the US because its just not loud enough for you.
Text is asynchronous and does not demand an instant response, voice on the other hand is instant, insistent and unpardonably rude. There quite simply is the reason Europeans use texting and Americans do not, Europeans are reserved and polite and Americans are loud and rude.
Remarkably this differentiation even extends to the youth who we usually associate with the next appalling fashion in uncouth behavior, they like texting even more than their elders and betters. Alas this may be the real reason that texting is so fashionable amongst the youth of Europe. You see old fogy's - dribbling old folk such as ancient parents in their thirties. Well they live in the black and white silent movie past where push button phones are a bit flash. Mobile telephones are what people in starships called the Enterprise use and talking to one of these new fangled things is already stretching the boundaries of the possible. Its particularly tricky for them to find the button that connects them to other people, the rats nest of multifunction menus jog dials and soft keys often make this a task filled with horror.
But you Americans for some reason have obedient pliant youth who maintain the traditions of their elders and rather than texting just to demonstrate how inadequate their parents are - they persist in holding actual human to human voice communications, how quaint is that!
I'm not surprised that the gentleman is finding his audience resistant to buying his 'music'. Technically the product he sells is not music. Its a stage show backed up by a caricature of heavy rock music with a very limited range of variation. The music is entirely a secondary matter in his product so we can hardly be surprised that it is treated as the valueless disposable rubbish that it truly is. I look forward to hearing a proper rock band when the reformed Led Zeppelin perform in London on Dec 10. The whole pop mainstream heavy rock genre is excruciatingly embarrassing these days. The whole thing went off the rails in the UK when the hard working but talentless Motorhead took the genre away from its melodic roots. Bugger, Spouting all this trial rubbish means I must be over 40 too. Drat.
speculation might have it that the acronym was more along the lines of Multi User L*** Timeshare I*** Computer System, but that would be too obvious:-) and wild guesses for the L and the I could be Limited Individual but I'm sure there are better ones.
It appears that the terrorists have won, our way of life has been destroyed. We are also going to be seriously short of chemical engineers in future. The way things are going I think the West rather deserves to lose - the empire of the Mullahs is sounding more and more attractive each day. I bet they haven't banned chemistry sets.
A very telling comment - "from the days when people sat down and listened to music" - no wonder so much recent music is rubbish - no one actually listens to it!
I'm impressed. I have been living with a JVC mininote laptop for the last two years. It cost £700 and runs XP, has a 7" screen, WiFi and goes everywhere with me. Plugs into a usb dock fed by 3 hard drives, 20" monitor and keyboard & mouse at home. I think every man and his dog will be buying one of these - if it edits video then it will go in the hand luggage along with the digital camera on holiday.
I am suprised that it took so long for this form factor to come in at a low price. Portable computing power just rocks. Add a 2.5" portable hard drive and you can take your entire (300Gb?) media collection with you too.
Alto I'm going to buy one of these because it has a linux distro on it and I'm not ever going to buy a Vista machine, so I'm going to change the market by voting with my wallet.
Oh I don't know, I think Stalin would be proud of them.
You mistake socialism for something that does good things for the people, theres very little evidence that most so called socialist regimes are any different from any other form of dictatorial government. The only difference is that they believe that their impositions on society are for our own good and that they can somehow improve the lot of those at the bottom of the food chain by discriminating against those at the top.
Amazing what garbage people in officialdom spout these days - and am I the only one who finds it odd that reporters despite being uniformly aggressive and rude when interviewing anybody, never question these platitudes and lies by state representatives. Its a self reinforcing highway to hell that nobody ever questions the 'perceived wisdom' of the day.
We will be watching video of babies being pitchforked into furnaces next if the media doesn't start questioning how far the information society is turning us into numbers that will be data mined and dealt with as enemies of the state for some spurious reason or other.
What is it with the British that they want to find a minority to hate and vilify? Its here today for fat people and smokers but it wont be long before we see people with genetic diseases being acutely discriminated against and no-one will speak out against it because the ordinary pleb will save $1. This Socialist lot that are in power now are the most intolerant and evil bunch, they think they are going for the greater good but all they actually do is identify minorities and crush them to further their ideological improvements to society.
I too like portable minidisc recorders, how else would you record live music and events?. I used to use cassette Walkmans for the job but the quality is much better than them despite the lossy compression. Whilst we are at it, how come mobile phones and mp3 players are about as useful as chocolate teapots for recording?
I also played on a DEC computer in 1981 with an ASR-33 teletype for a terminal and still have the printout of the single all night session that a group of us undertook to solve the whole thing in one go. Happy days indeed:-)
I'm not surprised but rather saddened by the fact that the text adventure has failed to materialize in the world of portable entertainment. Why does my mobile phone have Tetris but not Adventure? Adventure wasn't completely entertainment of course, the maze puzzle is really quite difficult and you have to have an interest in drawing maps to solve it. It also lacks violence, torture or sex which all modern escapist entertainment has to have to compensate for our sanitized and overly safe lives. On the other hand I cant think of any computer game which doesn't have some root in this game, its the granddaddy of them all. As such, playing it should be a compulsory part of education.
Your assessment is 100% correct as far as I am concerned. The West is about to get flushed down the U bend of history as China et al take over. They don't fart about with patent war chests and passing so much safety legislation they turn into squishy pansies like the Americans. Heck, they just copy stuff and compete on price.
Heh, from your listings you should get on with them ok. I'm surprised they dont feature in the online stores though, seeing as they had the exposure of the Soprano's thing. I'm not usualy one for listening to lyrics but most of their tunes get a chuckle out of me, all very knowing stuff if you know what I mean. I fondly imagine that the folks over at Alt.Slack might play music like this.
The only thing I know about the Sopranos is that Alabama 3 made some music for the show, the theme tune I suspect. Alabama 3 is a great band, go see them live if you ever get a chance. In case you hadn't noticed they are from from Brixton, London.
I think you are dead right. This is where the churches of all religions fall apart. Information about the world is being accrued at a greater rate than the religious meme can adapt to. The information contradicts the gold standard of a church and the church cannot adjust its interpretation of the gold standard (usually a book of wisdom which has achieved status by being hundreds of years old). The problem the church has is that it has to maintain authority over the population and it is incapable of adjusting its teaching without losing face and therefore authority. A church in principle is an excellent human institution because it maintains a gold standard of behavior in questions of morality (read "how to control breeding and raising of children" or "a template for good verses bad behavior - why crime, corruption, unhealthy living is 'bad'".) Unfortunately like most imperfect human institutions it can only exercise power by consent or resort to violence to achieve its aim. Consent requires respect and this is weakened by rapid change. We don't have a problem these days with the idea that the earth goes round the sun but the Christian church was unable to adjust to the idea when it was first proven, because its teaching had placed earth and man at the center of gods universe. We don't have a problem with being 'Christians' these days and acknowledging that the earth goes round the sun. Time has modified the central tenet of the early Christian church that because man is gods creation, his planet has to be at the center of the universe. Man may still be at the center of gods universe but the universe itself just got a lot larger.
The problem with the creationists is that they are backward and stupid. If they thought about the problem of creationism in the same way that they apparently can do for the 'earth going round the sun ' difficulty then there would be no problem. Unfortunately they confuse the attack on this moronic evolution denial with an attack on the more useful gold-standard morality of the church. Personally I am quite happy to let churches fly the flag for moral gold standards. Its certain that free market economics have no sensible way of doing this and its becoming clear that democracy is quite weak in defining how to live. The politician will happily gas six million Jews if it means they are re-elected. However the churches must adapt faster as we become more educated and more knowledgeable about the world if they are going to avoid a confrontation with us. They fight back by trying to indoctrinate the young and occasionally atheist states arise to resist this despicable behavior. This doesn't help much because atheist states usually behave very badly and fail as did the former soviet union when the people just gave up on it.
Rather than attack the morons spouting creationism we should be calling out for churches to find ways of accommodating reality. If this doesn't happen then there will be civil war. Because I'm not going to let these idiots run my world.
Talking of regulation, I could probably set myself up to telecommute a few days a month. But it isnt worth the bother - theres a list of rules that have to be fulfilled which are complete overkill. Everything from having metal locked filing cabinets to annual electrical safety checks and working in a dedicated room.
Of course its all horse shit to stop me suing the company if I accidentally fall of my chair and bruise my elbow - but you also get the feeling that they would fire you if they found out that you were actually telecommuting from a laptop in a treehouse with work stuff stored in a clapped out refrigerator.
In general, regulation should set the goal, not the means to a goal.
If the trend towards higher fuel efficiency had continued instead of reversing I don't see exactly how that would have made anyone poorer. We expect to get more floating point operations out of the same sized piece of Silicon each year and this seems to have created amazing new industries, jobs and profits. What exactly is your point?
Even if the unlikely assertion that there is more oil in Alaska than the geologists predict is true - its only going to be double or quadruple the quantity given to date. So its going to supply the US for less than 5 years at current consumption rates. This is bugger all and best kept in the ground for fueling the military when you really do have to invade people to get their oil.
I'm in full agreement that Governments are terribly inefficient and generally totally incompetent at supplying public transportation systems. On the other hand I'm also not at all impressed with the efficiency of large corporations and don't believe they would do a better job. I have seen one truly fantastic public transportation system - it was in Stockholm. The Swedes may pay a hell of a lot of tax but they do have a brilliant transportation system.
Actually most of the oil in the world in in Saudi Arabia, the rest of it will run out decades before theirs does. The US is going to have to team up with China to invade them anyway - either that or face having the supply of all manufactured goods used in the US cut off.
I believe that the petrol tax in the EU performs two functions. It makes usage more efficient and it subsidizes all other forms of power.
You can speculate why its being done, cutting greenhouse gases or cutting demand to reduce the impact of the up and coming oil wars. Subsidizing other forms of power so that there is the chance that some other infrastructure will be around when oil runs out or the price triples overnight because someone let off a dirty bomb in Saudi. Around the middle of the century either the US or China will have to invade Saudi in any case to kick out the fanatics that will be in power by then. China will be using as much as the rest of the world put together and the supplies from everywhere except Saudi will be running out, so its going to get very messy.
Problems with the oil supply is 99% more likely to make your children's life hell than any other cause, its certain that our generation will be hated for not doing something about it. Never mind global warming or any of the other legacies we will be leaving. High taxes on petrol could be set against lower income tax or purchase tax if you insist on keeping the overall tax burden the same. However you introduce them they are a very good idea.
The story seems obviously wrong and I think that your point makes it absolutely clear why the arrests are nonsense. The translations themselves are only attachable to the original work or copies of it - it is the possible theft of copies of the original work which they appear to have been arrested for.
Slashdot Mirror
I saw a lot of complaints on the "have your say" thread on the program on the BBC news website - including my own. But they wouldnt read those of course.
I am and I'm not. I totally agree with your assessment.
The fear of being sued has reduced the content of news stories to soundbites so that all of the sensible conjecture based on facts collected by journalists at the scene is no longer reported - and the resulting inquiry / court case / academic study never gets reported unless it is either a possible cause / cure for CANCER. In addition to which the population is assumed to be so dumb that advertising works (i.e. thick as pigshit). So the only role left for news is entertainment!!! and its content is mainly about whether the players are in danger of becoming celebrities or losing celebrity status. (even football news is only about whether the team manager should be sacked - not a word about how well the game is played). In addition to which the people actually putting the news together are ideally less than thirteen years old because anyone else is seriously out of touch with what is happening and now.
So its no surprise that WiFi is only of interest as a potential competitor to Bird Flu or Aids rather than a component of a social revolution slightly more important than the inventing of the printing press.
But what the heck, its been obvious for decades that western civilization for the common person has been on a hand cart to hell since the naivety and optimism of the 60's was exploded. Thats probably why so many people are attracted to the healthy debates on this site where the application of science and engineering to problems is still regarded with some respect by those who have some understanding of it - that it can still do good things for the world and be fun and artistic all at the same time.
All engineering projects carry some risks, at this moment in time though the relative risk of WiFi is quite well understood as being substantially less than using a mobile phone. So this BBC report comes over as sensationalist unjustifiable speculative rubbish. Its pretty sad that this will not be causing resignations and any action to prevent similarly poor journalism in the future - unlike the mass furore over a children's tv show naming their pet cat something other than what the viewers voted for.
Bad BBC, don't do it again! your credibility is rapidly heading south.
Yes but where do you stop? Here in the UK we have a well meaning socialist government which takes this attitude with everything they can get their hands on and they have introduced laws and taxes and licenses for just about any human activity you can think of - and they desperately want to have more control over us to enforce their view of how we should behave on us.
Its a grim business because the whole thing is predicated on the belief that the control method has to be based on the worst behaved in society. My name is not Winston and I do not love the state or want anything to do with its crap services, in fact the less I have to deal with it the better. So no it isnt a great idea for the state to try to regulate everything in detail, the churches used to do it and evil states would like to continue the practise. Just say no! I'd vote for the flying spaghetti monster any day.
You totally miss the point of texting in the US because its just not loud enough for you.
Text is asynchronous and does not demand an instant response, voice on the other hand is instant, insistent and unpardonably rude. There quite simply is the reason Europeans use texting and Americans do not, Europeans are reserved and polite and Americans are loud and rude.
Remarkably this differentiation even extends to the youth who we usually associate with the next appalling fashion in uncouth behavior, they like texting even more than their elders and betters. Alas this may be the real reason that texting is so fashionable amongst the youth of Europe. You see old fogy's - dribbling old folk such as ancient parents in their thirties. Well they live in the black and white silent movie past where push button phones are a bit flash. Mobile telephones are what people in starships called the Enterprise use and talking to one of these new fangled things is already stretching the boundaries of the possible. Its particularly tricky for them to find the button that connects them to other people, the rats nest of multifunction menus jog dials and soft keys often make this a task filled with horror.
But you Americans for some reason have obedient pliant youth who maintain the traditions of their elders and rather than texting just to demonstrate how inadequate their parents are - they persist in holding actual human to human voice communications, how quaint is that!
I'm not surprised that the gentleman is finding his audience resistant to buying his 'music'. Technically the product he sells is not music. Its a stage show backed up by a caricature of heavy rock music with a very limited range of variation. The music is entirely a secondary matter in his product so we can hardly be surprised that it is treated as the valueless disposable rubbish that it truly is. I look forward to hearing a proper rock band when the reformed Led Zeppelin perform in London on Dec 10. The whole pop mainstream heavy rock genre is excruciatingly embarrassing these days. The whole thing went off the rails in the UK when the hard working but talentless Motorhead took the genre away from its melodic roots. Bugger, Spouting all this trial rubbish means I must be over 40 too. Drat.
speculation might have it that the acronym was more along the lines of Multi User L*** Timeshare I*** Computer System, but that would be too obvious :-) and wild guesses for the L and the I could be Limited Individual but I'm sure there are better ones.
It appears that the terrorists have won, our way of life has been destroyed. We are also going to be seriously short of chemical engineers in future. The way things are going I think the West rather deserves to lose - the empire of the Mullahs is sounding more and more attractive each day. I bet they haven't banned chemistry sets.
A very telling comment - "from the days when people sat down and listened to music" - no wonder so much recent music is rubbish - no one actually listens to it!
I'm impressed. I have been living with a JVC mininote laptop for the last two years. It cost £700 and runs XP, has a 7" screen, WiFi and goes everywhere with me. Plugs into a usb dock fed by 3 hard drives, 20" monitor and keyboard & mouse at home. I think every man and his dog will be buying one of these - if it edits video then it will go in the hand luggage along with the digital camera on holiday.
I am suprised that it took so long for this form factor to come in at a low price. Portable computing power just rocks. Add a 2.5" portable hard drive and you can take your entire (300Gb?) media collection with you too.
Alto I'm going to buy one of these because it has a linux distro on it and I'm not ever going to buy a Vista machine, so I'm going to change the market by voting with my wallet.
Oh I don't know, I think Stalin would be proud of them.
You mistake socialism for something that does good things for the people, theres very little evidence that most so called socialist regimes are any different from any other form of dictatorial government. The only difference is that they believe that their impositions on society are for our own good and that they can somehow improve the lot of those at the bottom of the food chain by discriminating against those at the top.
Amazing what garbage people in officialdom spout these days - and am I the only one who finds it odd that reporters despite being uniformly aggressive and rude when interviewing anybody, never question these platitudes and lies by state representatives. Its a self reinforcing highway to hell that nobody ever questions the 'perceived wisdom' of the day.
We will be watching video of babies being pitchforked into furnaces next if the media doesn't start questioning how far the information society is turning us into numbers that will be data mined and dealt with as enemies of the state for some spurious reason or other.
What is it with the British that they want to find a minority to hate and vilify? Its here today for fat people and smokers but it wont be long before we see people with genetic diseases being acutely discriminated against and no-one will speak out against it because the ordinary pleb will save $1. This Socialist lot that are in power now are the most intolerant and evil bunch, they think they are going for the greater good but all they actually do is identify minorities and crush them to further their ideological improvements to society.
I too like portable minidisc recorders, how else would you record live music and events?. I used to use cassette Walkmans for the job but the quality is much better than them despite the lossy compression. Whilst we are at it, how come mobile phones and mp3 players are about as useful as chocolate teapots for recording?
I also played on a DEC computer in 1981 with an ASR-33 teletype for a terminal and still have the printout of the single all night session that a group of us undertook to solve the whole thing in one go. Happy days indeed :-)
I'm not surprised but rather saddened by the fact that the text adventure has failed to materialize in the world of portable entertainment. Why does my mobile phone have Tetris but not Adventure? Adventure wasn't completely entertainment of course, the maze puzzle is really quite difficult and you have to have an interest in drawing maps to solve it. It also lacks violence, torture or sex which all modern escapist entertainment has to have to compensate for our sanitized and overly safe lives. On the other hand I cant think of any computer game which doesn't have some root in this game, its the granddaddy of them all. As such, playing it should be a compulsory part of education.
Your assessment is 100% correct as far as I am concerned. The West is about to get flushed down the U bend of history as China et al take over. They don't fart about with patent war chests and passing so much safety legislation they turn into squishy pansies like the Americans. Heck, they just copy stuff and compete on price.
Heh, from your listings you should get on with them ok. I'm surprised they dont feature in the online stores though, seeing as they had the exposure of the Soprano's thing. I'm not usualy one for listening to lyrics but most of their tunes get a chuckle out of me, all very knowing stuff if you know what I mean. I fondly imagine that the folks over at Alt.Slack might play music like this.
The only thing I know about the Sopranos is that Alabama 3 made some music for the show, the theme tune I suspect. Alabama 3 is a great band, go see them live if you ever get a chance. In case you hadn't noticed they are from from Brixton, London.
I think you are dead right. This is where the churches of all religions fall apart. Information about the world is being accrued at a greater rate than the religious meme can adapt to. The information contradicts the gold standard of a church and the church cannot adjust its interpretation of the gold standard (usually a book of wisdom which has achieved status by being hundreds of years old). The problem the church has is that it has to maintain authority over the population and it is incapable of adjusting its teaching without losing face and therefore authority. A church in principle is an excellent human institution because it maintains a gold standard of behavior in questions of morality (read "how to control breeding and raising of children" or "a template for good verses bad behavior - why crime, corruption, unhealthy living is 'bad'".) Unfortunately like most imperfect human institutions it can only exercise power by consent or resort to violence to achieve its aim. Consent requires respect and this is weakened by rapid change. We don't have a problem these days with the idea that the earth goes round the sun but the Christian church was unable to adjust to the idea when it was first proven, because its teaching had placed earth and man at the center of gods universe. We don't have a problem with being 'Christians' these days and acknowledging that the earth goes round the sun. Time has modified the central tenet of the early Christian church that because man is gods creation, his planet has to be at the center of the universe. Man may still be at the center of gods universe but the universe itself just got a lot larger.
The problem with the creationists is that they are backward and stupid. If they thought about the problem of creationism in the same way that they apparently can do for the 'earth going round the sun ' difficulty then there would be no problem. Unfortunately they confuse the attack on this moronic evolution denial with an attack on the more useful gold-standard morality of the church. Personally I am quite happy to let churches fly the flag for moral gold standards. Its certain that free market economics have no sensible way of doing this and its becoming clear that democracy is quite weak in defining how to live. The politician will happily gas six million Jews if it means they are re-elected. However the churches must adapt faster as we become more educated and more knowledgeable about the world if they are going to avoid a confrontation with us. They fight back by trying to indoctrinate the young and occasionally atheist states arise to resist this despicable behavior. This doesn't help much because atheist states usually behave very badly and fail as did the former soviet union when the people just gave up on it.
Rather than attack the morons spouting creationism we should be calling out for churches to find ways of accommodating reality. If this doesn't happen then there will be civil war. Because I'm not going to let these idiots run my world.
Talking of regulation, I could probably set myself up to telecommute a few days a month. But it isnt worth the bother - theres a list of rules that have to be fulfilled which are complete overkill. Everything from having metal locked filing cabinets to annual electrical safety checks and working in a dedicated room.
Of course its all horse shit to stop me suing the company if I accidentally fall of my chair and bruise my elbow - but you also get the feeling that they would fire you if they found out that you were actually telecommuting from a laptop in a treehouse with work stuff stored in a clapped out refrigerator.
In general, regulation should set the goal, not the means to a goal.
If the trend towards higher fuel efficiency had continued instead of reversing I don't see exactly how that would have made anyone poorer. We expect to get more floating point operations out of the same sized piece of Silicon each year and this seems to have created amazing new industries, jobs and profits. What exactly is your point?
Even if the unlikely assertion that there is more oil in Alaska than the geologists predict is true - its only going to be double or quadruple the quantity given to date. So its going to supply the US for less than 5 years at current consumption rates. This is bugger all and best kept in the ground for fueling the military when you really do have to invade people to get their oil.
How nice to be young and thoughtless, lets hope you never end up in a wheelchair, you'd hate it.
I'm in full agreement that Governments are terribly inefficient and generally totally incompetent at supplying public transportation systems. On the other hand I'm also not at all impressed with the efficiency of large corporations and don't believe they would do a better job. I have seen one truly fantastic public transportation system - it was in Stockholm. The Swedes may pay a hell of a lot of tax but they do have a brilliant transportation system.
Actually most of the oil in the world in in Saudi Arabia, the rest of it will run out decades before theirs does. The US is going to have to team up with China to invade them anyway - either that or face having the supply of all manufactured goods used in the US cut off.
I believe that the petrol tax in the EU performs two functions. It makes usage more efficient and it subsidizes all other forms of power.
You can speculate why its being done, cutting greenhouse gases or cutting demand to reduce the impact of the up and coming oil wars. Subsidizing other forms of power so that there is the chance that some other infrastructure will be around when oil runs out or the price triples overnight because someone let off a dirty bomb in Saudi. Around the middle of the century either the US or China will have to invade Saudi in any case to kick out the fanatics that will be in power by then. China will be using as much as the rest of the world put together and the supplies from everywhere except Saudi will be running out, so its going to get very messy.
Problems with the oil supply is 99% more likely to make your children's life hell than any other cause, its certain that our generation will be hated for not doing something about it. Never mind global warming or any of the other legacies we will be leaving. High taxes on petrol could be set against lower income tax or purchase tax if you insist on keeping the overall tax burden the same. However you introduce them they are a very good idea.
The story seems obviously wrong and I think that your point makes it absolutely clear why the arrests are nonsense. The translations themselves are only attachable to the original work or copies of it - it is the possible theft of copies of the original work which they appear to have been arrested for.