OO.org doesn't have to better than Office 2007 it only needs to be able to do the things required in the GCSE and A level syllabus which it does. It's also close enough to MS Office to justify it's use.
Look up Building Schools for the Future. Find the ICT provision section. ICT provision in schools will be tendered out on a county wide basis to private companies. Money will not be a problem as it's a government flagship project and the tax-payer is footing the bill.
Sorry to spoil the party but what BECTA say counts for bugger all as they have no power beyond recommendation.
I, am the admin of a UK school that has been running Linux on all of our servers for the last three years. It's brilliant! Uptimes are long, hacking is minimal and we save a bloody fortune in licences. Centos backend running LDAP,DHCP,DNS, Mandriva boxes for Samba and Zimbra (Open Source version) running on our mail server. The desktops (much to my despair) are still running XP but the curriculum software our teachers use won't run via WINE. The IT club however is going to be running Ubuntu or Fedora 8 so at least some will get the point but I digress from the point that I wish to make which is "Building Schools for the Future" or "Fucking-up Schools for the Future" as it's often to referred to by those of us that the council claim have been fully consulted when in fact we haven't heard a word.
Building Schools for the Future (BSF) is the governments plan to scratch build new school buildings for every school in the UK. Sounds great doesn't it but what they don't mention is that the building of these schools is a PFI (Private Finance Initiative) project that will lead to these schools; a) costing more long term than keeping them public and b) being run by private companies with the tax payer footing the bill (and the CEO's bonus).
On an ICT front, computing services will be tendered out to private companies along the lines of Capita and RM. Let's play spot the Linux oriented company in this lot shall we? Oh right, they're aren't any and that probably explains why leading edge BSF schools aren't running Linux. Whole counties are run on SIMS (School Information Management System) and it doesn't run MySQL or Postgres as the backend (Take a guess). The collection of data from schools will also be centralised to the governments education department which will require compatible software and all this is happening now.
And here folks is the problem. BECTA have been spouting on about Linux for years now and you will be hard pressed to find anything except Windows in schools because once you get to a certain level of decision maker no-one cares as it's just a few extra zeros on the end of number that's already very large. Part of this is probably down to the fact that no-one actually seems to know how much BSF is going to cost even though they are trying to sign service companies up to it. You can probably throw whatever figure you want at it and it will get paid because, like the Olympics, it's a Government prestige project that the tax-payer will underwrite. Obviously, if Linux did look too promising, educational XP licences would be extended and discounted to ensure that whatever converting cost, it would be more than the status quo.
I'll believe Linux in schools when, and only when I see it. Until then it's a fairy tale.
If Call of Duty taught me anything (which I doubt), it'd be that war a crap thing to be caught up in as death can come at any time from someone you hadn't noticed hiding in a bush or a doorway. This random "died from being in wrong place at the wrong time" with no respawn is probably more likely to convince people of the benefits of couch-potatodom than it is to get them to sign up.
At least after being killed on the screen you can respawn a few times before crossing the floor to the fridge to extract another beer while you comtemplate the fact that you earn more sitting in your office than a soldier does in Iraq without having to put up with being shot at. On the other hand, if you are still at school and can't tell the difference between a game and reality you're more than likely better off in the army as they're probably getting pissed with soldiers who go "off message" on their blogs.
Can you get your man Rudd to phone Gordon Brown and talk some sense into him please. Either that or we'll do you a swap but I don't think you'd be that stupid.
Under the Sale of Goods Act 1979 any items supplied must be as described, of satisfactory quality and fit for purpose. If the hinge is breaking as the result of a manufacturing or design defect it fails to meet these requirements as it is a) not fit for purpose and b) not of satisfactory quality.
These are your statutory rights as a consumer and you should go back, quote the Sale of Goods act and use phrases like "Small Claims Court", "Consumer Rights Program (BBC TV + Radio) and "Daily Mail" a lot. Make it clear that you will seek damages for all the time wasted travelling to and from his store and arguing the toss. He has no right to deny you a repair as Linux could not have contributed to the broken hinge and no contract between vendor and consumer can undermine the SOG act, hence the phrase "this contract does not affect your statutory rights" in nearly any contract worth it's salt so don't take any crap.
Failing that you could give him a kick in the nuts.
"gives me a weird feeling in my stomache. I'm not sure what it is, but I got a chill up and down my spine. I can't catagorize either feeling as good or bad, just strange."
I think it may have been the same feeling you get when watching Salem's Lot when the Glick kid is floating outside Mark Petrie's bedroom window, scratching at the glass and asking to be let in. Ironically, I suspect that Microsoft has based this business strategy on the plot of Salem's Lot i.e. moving into a new town and picking the residents off from the inside while they sleep.
Ultimately, you don't need to crack DRM. You can just video/DVD record it off the TV, push it into your PC via the SCART socket, turn it into a useful format and distribute it via Torrent. DRM is only a hinderance to people without a clue and can be easily overwhelmed using good old analogue recording. To anyone with half a brain it's a small obstacle while DRM is an expensive waste of money, time and CPU cycles.
The BBC flogged its technology services division off to Siemens..
As happened with the UK train system, as soon as it sold off into private hands it turned to shit. The BBC was originally set up with a public service ethic at its heart. Now that those in power have £ signs in their eyes you can kiss goodbye to that one.
You've got to remember that you're talking about politicians here and we live in a country where giving the impression of doing something about a problem is more important than actually addressing the real causes. King Edward the Eighth was praised for calling for something to be done about unemployment and poverty in Welsh mining villages in the 1930's. Ultimately nothing was done but he made the front page of the papers and is still remembered for calling for it. This is the style of modern politics.
In the last ten years, the British Government has brought in 3500+ new laws, many relating to public behaviour but you still get teenage gangs and binge drinking driven violence because the laws are always aimed at dealing with the effect not the cause. This in turn is due to the fact that dealing with the cause is a) difficult and b) likely to be unpopular with the voters. Similarly, dealing with sexual violence is a difficult task so making a token gesture based on an unproven claim of cause will no doubt be popular with those who never look any deeper than the surface of a problem. When it comes to dealing with social issues, New Labour are truly the party of "low hanging fruit" and so long as the evidence regarding the causes of social breakdown point towards their actions being a contributory factor they will scapegoat anyone in a small enough minority to not affect their chances at the next election.
Which is the equivalent of the state creating roads that only Ford cars can work on and then requiring all users of other cars to replace them in order to use the roads. If DRM is necessary as the BBC claims it is then it's reasonable that a player should be produced for licence fee payers that will run on all the mainstream OSs. We pay for the production of the TV programs and we are paying for the establishment of the new service and we are paying for the creation of the media player. It is not outside of the abilities of the BBC tech department to create their own platform independent media player and, if they believe it necessary, DRM system. It is not however, the place of the BBC to support a convicted monopolist in it's pursuit of dominance in a marketplace.
And in the UK the majority of cars sold are Fords. Given that only TV owners pay the Licence fee and only car owners pay road tax does that mean that the government should create roads that give an advantage to Ford owners? No. The car market is the ideal example of competition in a competitive marketplace and the price, feature set and performance of cars has improved as manufacturers fight for market share.
The OS market on the other hand has been the ideal demonstration of the dangers of monopoly with Microsoft only having to change their ways when the press starting treating Linux as a serious contender, particularly in the realm of security. Roads are platform independent and car manufacturers have a set of known, open standards to which they have to adhere. Manufacturers therefore fight it out based on reliability, feature-set and other competitive tactics. Look at Skoda if you want to see the effect. When it was a monopoly, they made this for 14 years.
It is not the job of the BBC to use licence payers money to support a convicted monopolist and so long as the licence fee provides their funds it's only right that the people who pay their wages have equal rights to access the programs they paid for with whatever brand of computer hardware/OS they choose.
"A standard run of the mill TV at the moment doesn't have access to BBC3 and BBC4, does that make freeview illegal?"
Irrelevant. If freeview could only be viewed on one brand of TV or digital converter then the situations would be comparable. The freeview digital broadcast standard is open enough for many chip, TV and box manufacturers to make compliant boxes which encourages competition in the marketplace. Iplayer on the other hand requires you to use Windows (at first) excluding users of other OS's, and you have to remember that the licence fee pays for the programs to be produced. This means that even though I have paid an equal share of the BBC's funds I am banned from viewing the material I have already paid for while the BBC supports supports a monopoly that has been deemed illegal by the EU. Their is value in access to the BBCs archives and not being able to access it will put people off of considering alternatives in the same way that.doc did.
It's really a 21st century way of fucking your own tourist industry. Let's see, I can take a holiday in Spain, Italy wherever or I can submit all my personal information to a foreign government and apply in writing two days before departure risking deportation if the customs guy doesn't like my face. Tough choice......
If they're not doing anything wrong they have nothing to worry about, at least that's what politicians and the Police say every time civil rights groups complain about the public being CCTV'd everywhere they go.
Whilst at the same time taking control of interoperability to pre-empt the EU from forcing them to open up protocols and APIs involuntarily at which point they wouldn't have their hands on the wheel and would have no control.
I'm not denying that armed robbery is a major offence but that falls more under the category of "Fuck off you can't prove it" than the quote about minor offences. This is more a sign of a general lack of respect for authority on one hand and other people in general on the other.
One of the other replies in the thread put the blame on poor parenting skills and to be quite honest I concur with his opinion. Whereas 20-30 years ago people were more likely to stay in the same community for much of their lives, a situation which meant they were known to those living around them and generally had extended family within reach to provide support and guidance, a combination of a more mobile population and social isolation/community fragmentation means that kids can do what they like relatively locally with little chance of being identified or caught.
Society has changed hugely and sadly, part of that change has been the desire for instant gratification. In the UK up until the end of the 1970's, you would have been hard pressed to get a bank loan for anything unless you were interviewed by your Bank Manager first and people's expectations were lower. Now it's hard to avoid credit and people are bombarded with advertising promising that life will be so much better if they have the right trainers, mobile phone, car, iPod, or any one of the myriad other toys on offer and all because "you're worth it". Armed robbery and burglary have, as a result, become quite an attractive career option as you can obtain a high volume of fashionable goods that would take years of work to pay for without having to run up a credit bill in the process. And in the unlikely event that an overworked and neutered Police force catch you 250 hours community service is a realistic punishment 'cos let's face it, you're a poor underprivileged soul from a deprived background, i.e. you're parents never gave a shit and nor do you, meaning that all the thousands of pounds worth of gear you nicked results in basically going to work for 31.25 days (at 8 hours a day). Quite a bargain that one. And I'm sorry, I don't go for this underprivileged shit. My dad grew up in the 1920's and his family were poor to the point where he had to wear his sisters hand down shoes because they couldn't afford to buy the kids a pair each. After passing the 11+ and being offered a place at Grammar School he had to turn it down because at the age of 14 he was the only one in the family that could get a job. After working in a mill all day he'd go to night school and after serving in the RAF in WW2 he went back to night school and ended up as an engineer at Fords. He could have sat of his arse moaning about how shit life was but chose not to and as a result lived a pretty comfortable life. Every child in the UK has an education on offer paid for by the tax payer. They choose as to whether they listen and learn or arse around thinking they look cool as a result.
Another poster in the thread picked up a major problem which is arrest targets for police officers. The job of police is twofold, i.e. to preserve law and order and to collect the evidence required to prosecute/arrest criminals. Preserving law and order in itself does not require an arrest. A 10 year old kid riding their bike on the pavement is committing an offence but given the madness on the roads it may be safer for the kid to be there with just a warning to go slow and watch out for pedestrians. A police officer could then make a judgement related to whether or not he/she should intervene, give a warning, whatever, but targets actually encourage the police to go after "low hanging fruit" as it's easier to nick the 10 year cyclist than it is to catch the teenager with the knife mugging people for laptops. When faced with being penalised for being an under-performing copper or running up a high total of piss easy arrests the choice is clear. One copper in Sussex was on the local news a month or two ago having left the Police because "I want to protect the public but the Police is not the right place to do that
It's not so much a matter of Police competence as it is paperwork. Twenty years ago, the Police didn't have to fill in an hours worth of paperwork for an arrest for a minor offence which is why they were on the streets doing their job in the first place. For each minor arrest, a copper can be kept off the streets for a minimum of 1 hour documenting every detail of the incident. If a kid vandalises a car, robs someone and is picked up on a description the reaction is more likely to be "fuck off you can't prove it" than "I won't do it again".
And there's the truth of the matter. Everyone in the UK knows their rights but too many have no sense of responsibility and they are fully aware of the fact that some smart arse lawyer who doesn't give a shit about truth because that's not what he's paid for will get them off on some minor procedural technicality. And the worst part is that it's a small section of the Police that bought this situation about. Remember the West Midlands Serious Crime Squad that caused as much crime as they stopped? The Birmingham 6 & Guildford 4 convictions, the Special Patrol Group etc. Normally, when things get out of control there's a swing back towards the other side five years down the line only in this case, the swing has continued to the point where your average thug has the same immunity to consequences that the above had in the 70's and 80's.
CCTV should not be a necessity. Unfortunately, in this "have your cake and eat it" society it is a sticking plaster over the gaping wound of idiot thuggery that seems trendy at the moment. If you can work out how to make being an evil little tosser uncool then you may have a chance of improving things but sadly it seems to be evil little tossers that run this country seem happy to put up more cameras.
"Microsoft counters that it is a matter of principle. "We live in a world where we honor, and support the honoring of, intellectual property," says Ballmer in an interview. FOSS patrons are going to have to "play by the same rules as the rest of the business," he insists. "What's fair is fair."
Since when? Of all the corporations that have trampled small businesses IP rights Microsoft have to be the biggest shower of shits in existence. Most of their product range is based on other people's ideas and much of that, e.g. IE was ripped from small business with minimal reward to the innovator.
Basically, name them. Yep, name the infringements. Don't hide behind lawyers and withhold information, BE SPECIFIC!! Many of the IP claims that Microsoft put forward to the EU were minor extensions to existing Open Source software and are no "innovative" enough to justify the high fees requested, equivalent to making an add on to a car and claiming IP over the entire car. If accidental infringment has occured then it's reasonable to allow the FOSS authors the chance to remedy the situation by rewriting code but it's also reasonable to give them access to the information required to perform the task.
It's a constant embarrassment to me that the toadying twat that runs my country saw fit to give a convicted monopolist and proven unfair player like Gates a knighthood and until Microsoft starts behaving in a reasonable and honest manner Gates, Ballmer and Co. can stick their royalties up their arses where their heads have been for the last twenty years.
To reiterate, STATE YOUR CLAIMS IN FULL. Stop hiding behind misinformation, partial information and the pathetic, sad bullshit that has for so long been a trademark for Microsoft business practice.
"What Novell are doing is legitimizing MS claim to Linix IP rights."
Not exactly. What Novell are doing are giving an unproven hint at some vague possibility that MS may have some IP claim over Linux. The only thing that could legitimise MS's claims over IP is for MS to explicitly state which parts of Linux are infringing and provide proof of infringement.
Until they do this their claims are at best FUD and at worst an act of fraud. In the UK at least, there's a criminal charge of obtaining funds by deception. Dunno about the states but maybe someone should call Microsoft's bluff and force them to show what kind of hand they're really holding.
"[rant]F***ing Blair. We elected a leader, and he became a Bush follower and sold us out. I'll piss on his grave when he dies for the damage he's done to the UK sovereignty. [/rant]"
Then I suggest getting there early 'cos I suspect they'll be a hell of a queue. By the end of day one the Blair grave will probably have developed a swampy texture.
Slashdot Mirror
OO.org doesn't have to better than Office 2007 it only needs to be able to do the things required in the GCSE and A level syllabus which it does. It's also close enough to MS Office to justify it's use.
Look up Building Schools for the Future. Find the ICT provision section. ICT provision in schools will be tendered out on a county wide basis to private companies. Money will not be a problem as it's a government flagship project and the tax-payer is footing the bill.
OK, time to piss on everyone's parade.
Sorry to spoil the party but what BECTA say counts for bugger all as they have no power beyond recommendation.
I, am the admin of a UK school that has been running Linux on all of our servers for the last three years. It's brilliant! Uptimes are long, hacking is minimal and we save a bloody fortune in licences. Centos backend running LDAP,DHCP,DNS, Mandriva boxes for Samba and Zimbra (Open Source version) running on our mail server. The desktops (much to my despair) are still running XP but the curriculum software our teachers use won't run via WINE. The IT club however is going to be running Ubuntu or Fedora 8 so at least some will get the point but I digress from the point that I wish to make which is "Building Schools for the Future" or "Fucking-up Schools for the Future" as it's often to referred to by those of us that the council claim have been fully consulted when in fact we haven't heard a word.
Building Schools for the Future (BSF) is the governments plan to scratch build new school buildings for every school in the UK. Sounds great doesn't it but what they don't mention is that the building of these schools is a PFI (Private Finance Initiative) project that will lead to these schools; a) costing more long term than keeping them public and b) being run by private companies with the tax payer footing the bill (and the CEO's bonus).
On an ICT front, computing services will be tendered out to private companies along the lines of Capita and RM. Let's play spot the Linux oriented company in this lot shall we? Oh right, they're aren't any and that probably explains why leading edge BSF schools aren't running Linux. Whole counties are run on SIMS (School Information Management System) and it doesn't run MySQL or Postgres as the backend (Take a guess). The collection of data from schools will also be centralised to the governments education department which will require compatible software and all this is happening now.
And here folks is the problem. BECTA have been spouting on about Linux for years now and you will be hard pressed to find anything except Windows in schools because once you get to a certain level of decision maker no-one cares as it's just a few extra zeros on the end of number that's already very large. Part of this is probably down to the fact that no-one actually seems to know how much BSF is going to cost even though they are trying to sign service companies up to it. You can probably throw whatever figure you want at it and it will get paid because, like the Olympics, it's a Government prestige project that the tax-payer will underwrite. Obviously, if Linux did look too promising, educational XP licences would be extended and discounted to ensure that whatever converting cost, it would be more than the status quo.
I'll believe Linux in schools when, and only when I see it. Until then it's a fairy tale.
If Call of Duty taught me anything (which I doubt), it'd be that war a crap thing to be caught up in as death can come at any time from someone you hadn't noticed hiding in a bush or a doorway. This random "died from being in wrong place at the wrong time" with no respawn is probably more likely to convince people of the benefits of couch-potatodom than it is to get them to sign up.
At least after being killed on the screen you can respawn a few times before crossing the floor to the fridge to extract another beer while you comtemplate the fact that you earn more sitting in your office than a soldier does in Iraq without having to put up with being shot at. On the other hand, if you are still at school and can't tell the difference between a game and reality you're more than likely better off in the army as they're probably getting pissed with soldiers who go "off message" on their blogs.
Can you get your man Rudd to phone Gordon Brown and talk some sense into him please. Either that or we'll do you a swap but I don't think you'd be that stupid.
Under the Sale of Goods Act 1979 any items supplied must be as described, of satisfactory quality and fit for purpose. If the hinge is breaking as the result of a manufacturing or design defect it fails to meet these requirements as it is a) not fit for purpose and b) not of satisfactory quality.
These are your statutory rights as a consumer and you should go back, quote the Sale of Goods act and use phrases like "Small Claims Court", "Consumer Rights Program (BBC TV + Radio) and "Daily Mail" a lot. Make it clear that you will seek damages for all the time wasted travelling to and from his store and arguing the toss. He has no right to deny you a repair as Linux could not have contributed to the broken hinge and no contract between vendor and consumer can undermine the SOG act, hence the phrase "this contract does not affect your statutory rights" in nearly any contract worth it's salt so don't take any crap.
Failing that you could give him a kick in the nuts.
"gives me a weird feeling in my stomache. I'm not sure what it is, but I got a chill up and down my spine. I can't catagorize either feeling as good or bad, just strange."
I think it may have been the same feeling you get when watching Salem's Lot when the Glick kid is floating outside Mark Petrie's bedroom window, scratching at the glass and asking to be let in. Ironically, I suspect that Microsoft has based this business strategy on the plot of Salem's Lot i.e. moving into a new town and picking the residents off from the inside while they sleep.
Your comment proves the point so perfectly. If you could just let the BBC know it'd save licence payers a whole lot of cash.
Ultimately, you don't need to crack DRM. You can just video/DVD record it off the TV, push it into your PC via the SCART socket, turn it into a useful format and distribute it via Torrent. DRM is only a hinderance to people without a clue and can be easily overwhelmed using good old analogue recording. To anyone with half a brain it's a small obstacle while DRM is an expensive waste of money, time and CPU cycles.
The BBC flogged its technology services division off to Siemens.. As happened with the UK train system, as soon as it sold off into private hands it turned to shit. The BBC was originally set up with a public service ethic at its heart. Now that those in power have £ signs in their eyes you can kiss goodbye to that one.
You've got to remember that you're talking about politicians here and we live in a country where giving the impression of doing something about a problem is more important than actually addressing the real causes. King Edward the Eighth was praised for calling for something to be done about unemployment and poverty in Welsh mining villages in the 1930's. Ultimately nothing was done but he made the front page of the papers and is still remembered for calling for it. This is the style of modern politics.
In the last ten years, the British Government has brought in 3500+ new laws, many relating to public behaviour but you still get teenage gangs and binge drinking driven violence because the laws are always aimed at dealing with the effect not the cause. This in turn is due to the fact that dealing with the cause is a) difficult and b) likely to be unpopular with the voters. Similarly, dealing with sexual violence is a difficult task so making a token gesture based on an unproven claim of cause will no doubt be popular with those who never look any deeper than the surface of a problem. When it comes to dealing with social issues, New Labour are truly the party of "low hanging fruit" and so long as the evidence regarding the causes of social breakdown point towards their actions being a contributory factor they will scapegoat anyone in a small enough minority to not affect their chances at the next election.
Which is the equivalent of the state creating roads that only Ford cars can work on and then requiring all users of other cars to replace them in order to use the roads. If DRM is necessary as the BBC claims it is then it's reasonable that a player should be produced for licence fee payers that will run on all the mainstream OSs. We pay for the production of the TV programs and we are paying for the establishment of the new service and we are paying for the creation of the media player. It is not outside of the abilities of the BBC tech department to create their own platform independent media player and, if they believe it necessary, DRM system. It is not however, the place of the BBC to support a convicted monopolist in it's pursuit of dominance in a marketplace.
And in the UK the majority of cars sold are Fords. Given that only TV owners pay the Licence fee and only car owners pay road tax does that mean that the government should create roads that give an advantage to Ford owners? No. The car market is the ideal example of competition in a competitive marketplace and the price, feature set and performance of cars has improved as manufacturers fight for market share.
The OS market on the other hand has been the ideal demonstration of the dangers of monopoly with Microsoft only having to change their ways when the press starting treating Linux as a serious contender, particularly in the realm of security. Roads are platform independent and car manufacturers have a set of known, open standards to which they have to adhere. Manufacturers therefore fight it out based on reliability, feature-set and other competitive tactics. Look at Skoda if you want to see the effect. When it was a monopoly, they made this for 14 years.
It is not the job of the BBC to use licence payers money to support a convicted monopolist and so long as the licence fee provides their funds it's only right that the people who pay their wages have equal rights to access the programs they paid for with whatever brand of computer hardware/OS they choose.
UK and ex-pats only though.
http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/iplayer/
"A standard run of the mill TV at the moment doesn't have access to BBC3 and BBC4, does that make freeview illegal?"
.doc did.
Irrelevant. If freeview could only be viewed on one brand of TV or digital converter then the situations would be comparable. The freeview digital broadcast standard is open enough for many chip, TV and box manufacturers to make compliant boxes which encourages competition in the marketplace. Iplayer on the other hand requires you to use Windows (at first) excluding users of other OS's, and you have to remember that the licence fee pays for the programs to be produced. This means that even though I have paid an equal share of the BBC's funds I am banned from viewing the material I have already paid for while the BBC supports supports a monopoly that has been deemed illegal by the EU. Their is value in access to the BBCs archives and not being able to access it will put people off of considering alternatives in the same way that
"It's really a 21st-century police state."
It's really a 21st century way of fucking your own tourist industry. Let's see, I can take a holiday in Spain, Italy wherever or I can submit all my personal information to a foreign government and apply in writing two days before departure risking deportation if the customs guy doesn't like my face. Tough choice......
If they're not doing anything wrong they have nothing to worry about, at least that's what politicians and the Police say every time civil rights groups complain about the public being CCTV'd everywhere they go.
Whilst at the same time taking control of interoperability to pre-empt the EU from forcing them to open up protocols and APIs involuntarily at which point they wouldn't have their hands on the wheel and would have no control.
I'm not denying that armed robbery is a major offence but that falls more under the category of "Fuck off you can't prove it" than the quote about minor offences. This is more a sign of a general lack of respect for authority on one hand and other people in general on the other.
One of the other replies in the thread put the blame on poor parenting skills and to be quite honest I concur with his opinion. Whereas 20-30 years ago people were more likely to stay in the same community for much of their lives, a situation which meant they were known to those living around them and generally had extended family within reach to provide support and guidance, a combination of a more mobile population and social isolation/community fragmentation means that kids can do what they like relatively locally with little chance of being identified or caught.
Society has changed hugely and sadly, part of that change has been the desire for instant gratification. In the UK up until the end of the 1970's, you would have been hard pressed to get a bank loan for anything unless you were interviewed by your Bank Manager first and people's expectations were lower. Now it's hard to avoid credit and people are bombarded with advertising promising that life will be so much better if they have the right trainers, mobile phone, car, iPod, or any one of the myriad other toys on offer and all because "you're worth it". Armed robbery and burglary have, as a result, become quite an attractive career option as you can obtain a high volume of fashionable goods that would take years of work to pay for without having to run up a credit bill in the process. And in the unlikely event that an overworked and neutered Police force catch you 250 hours community service is a realistic punishment 'cos let's face it, you're a poor underprivileged soul from a deprived background, i.e. you're parents never gave a shit and nor do you, meaning that all the thousands of pounds worth of gear you nicked results in basically going to work for 31.25 days (at 8 hours a day). Quite a bargain that one. And I'm sorry, I don't go for this underprivileged shit. My dad grew up in the 1920's and his family were poor to the point where he had to wear his sisters hand down shoes because they couldn't afford to buy the kids a pair each. After passing the 11+ and being offered a place at Grammar School he had to turn it down because at the age of 14 he was the only one in the family that could get a job. After working in a mill all day he'd go to night school and after serving in the RAF in WW2 he went back to night school and ended up as an engineer at Fords. He could have sat of his arse moaning about how shit life was but chose not to and as a result lived a pretty comfortable life. Every child in the UK has an education on offer paid for by the tax payer. They choose as to whether they listen and learn or arse around thinking they look cool as a result.
Another poster in the thread picked up a major problem which is arrest targets for police officers. The job of police is twofold, i.e. to preserve law and order and to collect the evidence required to prosecute/arrest criminals. Preserving law and order in itself does not require an arrest. A 10 year old kid riding their bike on the pavement is committing an offence but given the madness on the roads it may be safer for the kid to be there with just a warning to go slow and watch out for pedestrians. A police officer could then make a judgement related to whether or not he/she should intervene, give a warning, whatever, but targets actually encourage the police to go after "low hanging fruit" as it's easier to nick the 10 year cyclist than it is to catch the teenager with the knife mugging people for laptops. When faced with being penalised for being an under-performing copper or running up a high total of piss easy arrests the choice is clear. One copper in Sussex was on the local news a month or two ago having left the Police because "I want to protect the public but the Police is not the right place to do that
At which point did I say it was?
It's not so much a matter of Police competence as it is paperwork. Twenty years ago, the Police didn't have to fill in an hours worth of paperwork for an arrest for a minor offence which is why they were on the streets doing their job in the first place. For each minor arrest, a copper can be kept off the streets for a minimum of 1 hour documenting every detail of the incident. If a kid vandalises a car, robs someone and is picked up on a description the reaction is more likely to be "fuck off you can't prove it" than "I won't do it again".
And there's the truth of the matter. Everyone in the UK knows their rights but too many have no sense of responsibility and they are fully aware of the fact that some smart arse lawyer who doesn't give a shit about truth because that's not what he's paid for will get them off on some minor procedural technicality. And the worst part is that it's a small section of the Police that bought this situation about. Remember the West Midlands Serious Crime Squad that caused as much crime as they stopped? The Birmingham 6 & Guildford 4 convictions, the Special Patrol Group etc. Normally, when things get out of control there's a swing back towards the other side five years down the line only in this case, the swing has continued to the point where your average thug has the same immunity to consequences that the above had in the 70's and 80's.
CCTV should not be a necessity. Unfortunately, in this "have your cake and eat it" society it is a sticking plaster over the gaping wound of idiot thuggery that seems trendy at the moment. If you can work out how to make being an evil little tosser uncool then you may have a chance of improving things but sadly it seems to be evil little tossers that run this country seem happy to put up more cameras.
And how many countries hand out Knighthoods?
FTA:
"Microsoft counters that it is a matter of principle. "We live in a world where we honor, and support the honoring of, intellectual property," says Ballmer in an interview. FOSS patrons are going to have to "play by the same rules as the rest of the business," he insists. "What's fair is fair."
Since when? Of all the corporations that have trampled small businesses IP rights Microsoft have to be the biggest shower of shits in existence. Most of their product range is based on other people's ideas and much of that, e.g. IE was ripped from small business with minimal reward to the innovator.
Basically, name them. Yep, name the infringements. Don't hide behind lawyers and withhold information, BE SPECIFIC!! Many of the IP claims that Microsoft put forward to the EU were minor extensions to existing Open Source software and are no "innovative" enough to justify the high fees requested, equivalent to making an add on to a car and claiming IP over the entire car. If accidental infringment has occured then it's reasonable to allow the FOSS authors the chance to remedy the situation by rewriting code but it's also reasonable to give them access to the information required to perform the task.
It's a constant embarrassment to me that the toadying twat that runs my country saw fit to give a convicted monopolist and proven unfair player like Gates a knighthood and until Microsoft starts behaving in a reasonable and honest manner Gates, Ballmer and Co. can stick their royalties up their arses where their heads have been for the last twenty years.
To reiterate, STATE YOUR CLAIMS IN FULL. Stop hiding behind misinformation, partial information and the pathetic, sad bullshit that has for so long been a trademark for Microsoft business practice.
There, I feel a bit better now.
"What Novell are doing is legitimizing MS claim to Linix IP rights."
Not exactly. What Novell are doing are giving an unproven hint at some vague possibility that MS may have some IP claim over Linux. The only thing that could legitimise MS's claims over IP is for MS to explicitly state which parts of Linux are infringing and provide proof of infringement.
Until they do this their claims are at best FUD and at worst an act of fraud. In the UK at least, there's a criminal charge of obtaining funds by deception. Dunno about the states but maybe someone should call Microsoft's bluff and force them to show what kind of hand they're really holding.
"[rant]F***ing Blair. We elected a leader, and he became a Bush follower and sold us out. I'll piss on his grave when he dies for the damage he's done to the UK sovereignty. [/rant]"
Then I suggest getting there early 'cos I suspect they'll be a hell of a queue. By the end of day one the Blair grave will probably have developed a swampy texture.