Do keep in mind that (assuming TFA is correct) we are only talking about a small sample of the data here to investigate whether Google was breaking the rules. We're not talking about handing over the entire collected data set for some government intelligence agency to go on the biggest fishing expedition in history, nor for the government to supervise the destruction of all affected hard drives for that matter.
In recent years? EU governments (or Germany in particular) vs. US corporations (or Google in particular)? Seriously?
Europeans have learned some hard lessons from history, some of them still within living memory. One of them is a healthy distrust of government; you may have noticed that we have removed several formerly powerful administrations from office in recent years. But another is that the US does not hold its businesses to account very effectively. Thus, we tend to take a rather stricter line with big business in many respects, privacy and data protection among them.
As long as it is the privacy/data protection authorities who are arranging the destruction of the data (and potentially bringing legal action against Google), and not any other branch of government who have no more legitimate right to access that data than Google, I would far rather the drives were removed from Google's hands.
That's not to say that Isaac Newton is neither interesting nor important - only that it isn't strictly necessary to teach every student "the classics."
The thing about science is that once you move away from the scientific method, from evidence-based investigation and falsifiable hypotheses, you aren't really doing science at all. When it comes to teaching these ideas to children, IMHO there is no substitute for hands-on experimental discovery, using magents and prisms and test tubes and microscopes.
It might be very topical to teach "climate change" or "large hadron colliders" or "nuclear power", but these things have no substance, nothing a child can see and hear and feel in a lab at school. It's bad enough already, with seemingly ever-reducing hands-on experimental time in schools in some countries, but once you start teaching "science" that is mere conjecture and faith, you're basically doomed.
We know because it is a matter of public record that Google have been sending out StreetView cars, and that those cars were equipped with systems not normally fitted in cars for the purposes of recording data transmitted using wireless networks belonging to other parties.
This was a systematic data collection exercise on an international level over a period of several years by the largest data mining company in the world that is probably a criminal offence under the law in at least a dozen different jurisdictions. I am... bemused, I suppose... that you seem willing to overlook all these facts and let them off, just because one person at Google wrote a few words in a blog post.
I'm not filled with happy thoughts that everything will all get put right just like that. I suspect it would take a written constitution and a lot of case law in a constitutional court to really fix the damage done by successive governments operating under a climate of fear that they themselves have helped to perpetuate. But I would be happy to see things at least start moving in the right direction again, and I am optimistic that with the increased influence of the Lib Dems we will see more real improvement than we otherwise might have.
Exactly: punishing someone for mere possession of information is the creation of thoughtcrime.
The trouble with thoughtcrime is that not only does it not consider intent, which is hard to determine in absolute terms in court anyway, it also does not consider action, which is the objective basis for most court cases. Where do you draw the line, if your society is not going to allow people to explore information?
I personally have no interest in making chemical weapons or nuclear bombs, but I can imagine that a research chemist might overlap the former and an engineer working on a nuclear power plant might overlap the latter. Maybe I'm irrational, but I like the idea that pharma companies can develop new drugs to improve our health, and power firms can provide enough electricity to keep the lights on.
I do have an interest in driving, and was taught many of the same techniques as police drivers by my ex-police driving instructor, to help me avoid accidents and stay safer on the roads. At what point does knowledge of these techniques become "acts preparatory to terrorism" or something like that, given that I am familiar with some of the defensive driving techniques that security officers would use to protect a VIP?
I also have a background in martial arts. I probably know a lot of things that would help me if I were ever to confront a police officer with their usual array of weapons and defensive equipment. I have no reason to do so and never have done so, but if we're allowing thoughtcrime then when does this knowledge change from an academic interest in historical arts or the results of training for perfectly legal contact sports into something sinister and worthy of suspicion or even prosecution?
I would guess that a high proportion of responsible, normally law-abiding adults in the UK could be fitted up with some sort of thoughtcrime without too much effort. As Cardinal Richlieu famously said, "Give me six lines written by the most honest man, and I will find something in them with which to hang him."
This is one of the reasons I am so happy we have changed government and the new guys are planning a "mass repeal" bill to restore civil liberties.
Of course I do not support terrorism and I want to see those who would murder others stopped. But the fear-driven Labour government went way beyond that, moving us into a world where censorship and thoughtcrime seem to be significant parts of our legal system. There comes a point where I would rather take my chances with the bad guys than see our basic freedoms and way of life eroded any further.
If you read the actual Google blog post, it's made very clear that getting content was not intentional.
Fortunately, we do not have to trust the corporate PR of a business in making that determination. We can instead consider the facts in evidence.
Did Google deliberately send out vehicles, specially equipped to capture this kind of information, systematically over a period of several years? We know they did. Did they, in fact, collect that information and retain it? We know they did. Did one of the biggest data mining company in the world not know what kind of information they would be collecting? I doubt you're going to convince many courts of that. How exactly is this not obtaining the data with intent?
Well, firstly, I wasn't talking about the postman reading mail. But in any case, the principle of saying that someone vulnerable to harm is not automatically at fault if someone else then causes that harm is exactly the same, whether we are discussing invasion of privacy, theft from an unlocked car, date rape, or murder with a sniper rifle from 500m. No-one is trying to equate the damage caused by these different offences, but the immorality of the "asking for it" defence is the same in every case.
Sorry to reply to my own post, but I should correct myself: the law I cited doesn't allow jail time for that particular offence, only a fine. There are other similar offences (e.g., accessing data on a computer without authorization, under the Computer Misuse Act) that do carry jail time, but without talking to a lawyer I don't know if they would apply here.
The law I'm thinking of is actually written rather carefully. It does not criminalise all networking or monitoring broadcasts that would normally be intended for public use. It does criminalise either intentionally obtaining certain types of information or disclosing such information even if it was obtained unintentionally.
I suspect even Google's lawyers would have difficulty arguing that employees of one of the most high-tech companies in the world, driving around in a specially equipped vehicle, with the goal of monitoring and recording transmissions from other people's wireless networks, storing personal messages or other sensitive information, did not breach the "intentionally obtaining" part of the Act.
Sure, and your sister was asking for it with that dress she was wearing, right?
Fortunately, most of the world is enlightened enough to realise that such statements are absurd, and just because someone is vulnerable to something unpleasant that does not make it their fault if someone else does that unpleasant thing to them.
FWIW, the actions described would probably be criminal and carry jail time if they occurred in the UK (e.g., under the Wireless Telegraphy Act 2006).
I think the point is that C and C++ are not just used where low-level control and performance are critical. Today, they probably should be (at least for new projects) and even the performance argument is weakening as time goes on and other technologies improve.
Your argument implies that you think it is impossible to make one simple, hard to find and debug fuck-up in Java.
But this is exactly the point: for certain types of f-ups, it is impossible to make them in some languages. You cannot overflow a string in Java. You can in C. Java is unambiguously safer in this respect.
This is not a black and white issue. It is safer to use a language where there are fewer opportunities for human error, even if there are still some such opportunities.
True, they almost never catch anyone using CCTV, really like never, but the British love their useless feel good bandaids.
This is one of those remarkable areas where "surveys" sometimes show a significant degree of public support for greater use of CCTV, yet I never seem to run into any of those people. Of course, my collection of friends and family may not be completely representative of the nation's population as a whole, but they certainly do represent a diverse range of political and ethical views on this sort of subject, and still I've never heard any of them argue that ubiquitous CCTV is a good thing. At some point, you have to start questioning what those surveys really asked and who they asked it to.
Meanwhile, I have met plenty of people who doubt whether CCTV brings significant benefits in terms of reducing crime and who don't believe in the surveillance state in general. Also, after the only crime I am aware of where CCTV footage might have helped to identify the thieves, the authorities didn't even care enough to check the previous night's tapes within a window of a couple of hours when several thousand pounds was known to have been stolen, and a prominent CCTV camera overlooks the only public access to the building from which it was taken. If that's the kind of benefit CCTV brings us, screw it.
Fair point, but so far I haven't seen much evidence that bailing out any failures during the recent economic crisis has done anything but dump a huge load of additional risk on people who didn't cause the problems in the first place, while letting those who made a bad investment off the hook.
There were big banks and other financial services that conducted themselves reasonably in terms of risk, took the commercial hit they deserved when things went wrong, but didn't have to go crying to national governments for support. There were big manufacturing firms whose business models were not unsustainable when the bubble burst. Heck, there were first world countries whose economies didn't rely on works of fiction, who haven't suffered to the same degree that many have.
Now we're seeing the successful ones in each case suffering the consequences of others' failures, whether that is through national subsidies of failing economies in other states or through additional regulations and taxes on oh-so-evil banks (including the ones who looked after money more wisely, never took government hand-outs, and have basically run a successful business throughout the whole mess).
First you're talking about European immigrants stealing UK jobs, now you're talking about who's a net contributor? Make up your mind.
Sorry, I don't know what you're getting at here.
I'm not sure I recognise your characterisation of my position on immigrants. The way I see it, the practical problem with a sudden shift to being completely open isn't so much the UK jobs market. It's about the resulting overcrowding in the UK, and perhaps to some extent the UK stealing a lot of good workers from the other nations leaving them with less ability to grow their own economies.
These are effects that might well be counter-balanced in the long run as the different states approach economic parity, but you have to change at a pace that is sustainable so you can get that far. Doing it too fast and causing one side of the shift without anything to match it is a danger to both the more established and economically powerful nations and the newer EU members who want to catch up.
For starters, the countries are part of the common economic zone which supposedly is good for trade.
I have nothing against trade relations. We had those before the whole EU thing came along. It's the deeper ties, in terms of centralised government, centralised budgets (with accounts that aren't properly audited), centralised legislation, and so on that I don't like. Why can't we just make agreements for mutual benefit, instead of trying to turn a large number of countries with diverse cultures into some sort of United States of Europe?
As to Greece, my point was that it's not the fault of the Greek people but of their politicians.
Indeed. Speaking as someone in the UK, I'm hardly going to criticise the average citizen in another country because their government took on a silly risk with the Olympics and their political classes are generally not representative or accountable...
Of the older member states you mentioned, only one is a net contributer to EU coffers. More of the laws that apply in my country now come from the EU than from our own government, and these laws are a frequent source of public distrust. So what exactly are the benefits that we now enjoy in the EU because these countries joined?
Oh, and Greece's situation is pretty much entirely Greece's own fault. They took on financially risky challenges like putting on the Olympics, which then ran massively over-budget.
My very point is that not being willing to be one big happy financial centre is just another way to compromise the whole idea.
That's because it is a bad idea, or at least one for which not everyone is ready yet, for the reasons I explained before.
You seem to think we can jump from where we are today to some idealistic future where everyone shares everything and the world is wonderful, without doing anything in between. Reality just doesn't work like that.
A few hours ago, the world's stock markets took a big hit because an EU nation, Greece, which has mismanaged its finances terribly for several years, has had its rating downgraded to junk levels by S&P because it is no longer worthy of credit. Those locked into the Euro with them will now have to struggle to clear up Greece's mess, at their own expense. This did not happen because Greece was some backward country with no resources, it happened because their government screwed up their economy.
By your argument, the rest of the world should now be piling in to help Greece out of its debt hole, even though that would mean pushing other nations further into dangerous levels of debt themselves. This is an odd contradiction with your general view that we are all living in capitalist societies today. In a truly capitalist system, complete with free market economics, you let failing things fail, and you don't bail out the screw-ups at the expense of those who didn't screw up. The Eurozone is, in this respect, about as socialist/anti-capitalist an organisation as you can get.
Exactly. Change does not always imply improvement.
In this case, it is interesting that a small number of people have managed to make a significant amount of money from free software, but that is a long way from showing that an entire industry with millions of people working to produce a vast and diverse array of new software every year could be sustained on the same basis.
That's quite a chip you've got on your shoulder there, my friend.
Concentrating on just the UK and Europe, we do share our wealth: the UK is one of the biggest net contributors to EU funding, for example. I also have nothing aginst the principle of free access to all who share the same way of life as a long term objective, whether that is people coming here because they like our culture or our own people moving abroad to somewhere that is a better fit for them.
However, the practice of just opening the doors wide is not the way to achieve this. Firstly, we simply can't sustain it: there just isn't space in the UK to handle a 15–20% population rise, and our basic local services are falling apart in some areas. If our own economy and government collapse under the pressure, we're not going to be doing anything for anyone else, are we?
Secondly, allowing the mass movement of those skilled/talented/experienced enough to make their way here and earn a living deprives their home nations of many of their best workers. If we are going to achieve true economic parity, they are going to need those people more than ever to help them grow their own economies. If we want to help them, we should be providing the support so they can do that, not siphoning off good workers who are (for now) relatively cheap to employ.
To address some of your other points, I don't know where you get the idea that I think we are somehow better than immigrants. That's not true at all. We are simply the people who are already living on an overcrowded island, and I don't see how increasing that overcrowding is going to help either us or anyone else in the long run.
Finally, you seem fixated on this idea that the EU is purely a financial deal and determined to have a dig because we haven't joined the Euro here. The vast differences between how different EU nations have (or haven't) weathered the current economic storm should make it pretty obvious that we aren't ready to be one big happy financial centre yet. Personally, I'm moderately anti-EU: I would rather have a system where most of the laws that I live under are not passed down about fourth-hand from appointed bureaucrats who think they know best, quite a few of whom wound up in Europe because they had no political credibility left at home (not that we can complain too much as a nation, having sent them Mandelson for several years ourselves). In any case, as things stand today, for better or worse, the EU is much more than just an economic collaboration.
UKIP are an odd party. According to a lot of the "Which party's views most closely match your own?" web sites, I should find UKIP relatively attractive on policy issues, at least compared to some of the bigger UK parties. On the other hand, UKIP's short history is just one internal political squabble after another, except for the bits that went public and/or illegal.
If the right person came along and started a party with similar views in the areas I agree with, taking the sensible members of groups like UKIP with them but ditching the political infighting, then maybe I would at least consider voting for that new party. UKIP, however, seem to be damaged goods today, and if you look at a timeline, they were never really anything else.
But he is bound by law to do the most he can to improve sales and shareholder value, regardless of the environmental cost, social need or greater economic benefit.
Slashdot Mirror
Do keep in mind that (assuming TFA is correct) we are only talking about a small sample of the data here to investigate whether Google was breaking the rules. We're not talking about handing over the entire collected data set for some government intelligence agency to go on the biggest fishing expedition in history, nor for the government to supervise the destruction of all affected hard drives for that matter.
Who's track record is better?
In recent years? EU governments (or Germany in particular) vs. US corporations (or Google in particular)? Seriously?
Europeans have learned some hard lessons from history, some of them still within living memory. One of them is a healthy distrust of government; you may have noticed that we have removed several formerly powerful administrations from office in recent years. But another is that the US does not hold its businesses to account very effectively. Thus, we tend to take a rather stricter line with big business in many respects, privacy and data protection among them.
As long as it is the privacy/data protection authorities who are arranging the destruction of the data (and potentially bringing legal action against Google), and not any other branch of government who have no more legitimate right to access that data than Google, I would far rather the drives were removed from Google's hands.
That's not to say that Isaac Newton is neither interesting nor important - only that it isn't strictly necessary to teach every student "the classics."
The thing about science is that once you move away from the scientific method, from evidence-based investigation and falsifiable hypotheses, you aren't really doing science at all. When it comes to teaching these ideas to children, IMHO there is no substitute for hands-on experimental discovery, using magents and prisms and test tubes and microscopes.
It might be very topical to teach "climate change" or "large hadron colliders" or "nuclear power", but these things have no substance, nothing a child can see and hear and feel in a lab at school. It's bad enough already, with seemingly ever-reducing hands-on experimental time in schools in some countries, but once you start teaching "science" that is mere conjecture and faith, you're basically doomed.
We know because it is a matter of public record that Google have been sending out StreetView cars, and that those cars were equipped with systems not normally fitted in cars for the purposes of recording data transmitted using wireless networks belonging to other parties.
This was a systematic data collection exercise on an international level over a period of several years by the largest data mining company in the world that is probably a criminal offence under the law in at least a dozen different jurisdictions. I am... bemused, I suppose... that you seem willing to overlook all these facts and let them off, just because one person at Google wrote a few words in a blog post.
I'm not filled with happy thoughts that everything will all get put right just like that. I suspect it would take a written constitution and a lot of case law in a constitutional court to really fix the damage done by successive governments operating under a climate of fear that they themselves have helped to perpetuate. But I would be happy to see things at least start moving in the right direction again, and I am optimistic that with the increased influence of the Lib Dems we will see more real improvement than we otherwise might have.
Exactly: punishing someone for mere possession of information is the creation of thoughtcrime.
The trouble with thoughtcrime is that not only does it not consider intent, which is hard to determine in absolute terms in court anyway, it also does not consider action, which is the objective basis for most court cases. Where do you draw the line, if your society is not going to allow people to explore information?
I personally have no interest in making chemical weapons or nuclear bombs, but I can imagine that a research chemist might overlap the former and an engineer working on a nuclear power plant might overlap the latter. Maybe I'm irrational, but I like the idea that pharma companies can develop new drugs to improve our health, and power firms can provide enough electricity to keep the lights on.
I do have an interest in driving, and was taught many of the same techniques as police drivers by my ex-police driving instructor, to help me avoid accidents and stay safer on the roads. At what point does knowledge of these techniques become "acts preparatory to terrorism" or something like that, given that I am familiar with some of the defensive driving techniques that security officers would use to protect a VIP?
I also have a background in martial arts. I probably know a lot of things that would help me if I were ever to confront a police officer with their usual array of weapons and defensive equipment. I have no reason to do so and never have done so, but if we're allowing thoughtcrime then when does this knowledge change from an academic interest in historical arts or the results of training for perfectly legal contact sports into something sinister and worthy of suspicion or even prosecution?
I would guess that a high proportion of responsible, normally law-abiding adults in the UK could be fitted up with some sort of thoughtcrime without too much effort. As Cardinal Richlieu famously said, "Give me six lines written by the most honest man, and I will find something in them with which to hang him."
This is one of the reasons I am so happy we have changed government and the new guys are planning a "mass repeal" bill to restore civil liberties.
Of course I do not support terrorism and I want to see those who would murder others stopped. But the fear-driven Labour government went way beyond that, moving us into a world where censorship and thoughtcrime seem to be significant parts of our legal system. There comes a point where I would rather take my chances with the bad guys than see our basic freedoms and way of life eroded any further.
If you read the actual Google blog post, it's made very clear that getting content was not intentional.
Fortunately, we do not have to trust the corporate PR of a business in making that determination. We can instead consider the facts in evidence.
Did Google deliberately send out vehicles, specially equipped to capture this kind of information, systematically over a period of several years? We know they did. Did they, in fact, collect that information and retain it? We know they did. Did one of the biggest data mining company in the world not know what kind of information they would be collecting? I doubt you're going to convince many courts of that. How exactly is this not obtaining the data with intent?
Since they made up an excuse before they were caught they're in the clear on this one.
No, they didn't, so no, they aren't. This behaviour was revealed when German authorities asked to audit the data the company's Street View cars gathered.
Well, firstly, I wasn't talking about the postman reading mail. But in any case, the principle of saying that someone vulnerable to harm is not automatically at fault if someone else then causes that harm is exactly the same, whether we are discussing invasion of privacy, theft from an unlocked car, date rape, or murder with a sniper rifle from 500m. No-one is trying to equate the damage caused by these different offences, but the immorality of the "asking for it" defence is the same in every case.
Sorry to reply to my own post, but I should correct myself: the law I cited doesn't allow jail time for that particular offence, only a fine. There are other similar offences (e.g., accessing data on a computer without authorization, under the Computer Misuse Act) that do carry jail time, but without talking to a lawyer I don't know if they would apply here.
The law I'm thinking of is actually written rather carefully. It does not criminalise all networking or monitoring broadcasts that would normally be intended for public use. It does criminalise either intentionally obtaining certain types of information or disclosing such information even if it was obtained unintentionally.
I suspect even Google's lawyers would have difficulty arguing that employees of one of the most high-tech companies in the world, driving around in a specially equipped vehicle, with the goal of monitoring and recording transmissions from other people's wireless networks, storing personal messages or other sensitive information, did not breach the "intentionally obtaining" part of the Act.
Sure, and your sister was asking for it with that dress she was wearing, right?
Fortunately, most of the world is enlightened enough to realise that such statements are absurd, and just because someone is vulnerable to something unpleasant that does not make it their fault if someone else does that unpleasant thing to them.
FWIW, the actions described would probably be criminal and carry jail time if they occurred in the UK (e.g., under the Wireless Telegraphy Act 2006).
I think the point is that C and C++ are not just used where low-level control and performance are critical. Today, they probably should be (at least for new projects) and even the performance argument is weakening as time goes on and other technologies improve.
Your argument implies that you think it is impossible to make one simple, hard to find and debug fuck-up in Java.
But this is exactly the point: for certain types of f-ups, it is impossible to make them in some languages. You cannot overflow a string in Java. You can in C. Java is unambiguously safer in this respect.
This is not a black and white issue. It is safer to use a language where there are fewer opportunities for human error, even if there are still some such opportunities.
We did all that years ago...it's only the uneducated C hackers who keep giving C++ a bad name.
Well, that and the facts that
anyway.
True, they almost never catch anyone using CCTV, really like never, but the British love their useless feel good bandaids.
This is one of those remarkable areas where "surveys" sometimes show a significant degree of public support for greater use of CCTV, yet I never seem to run into any of those people. Of course, my collection of friends and family may not be completely representative of the nation's population as a whole, but they certainly do represent a diverse range of political and ethical views on this sort of subject, and still I've never heard any of them argue that ubiquitous CCTV is a good thing. At some point, you have to start questioning what those surveys really asked and who they asked it to.
Meanwhile, I have met plenty of people who doubt whether CCTV brings significant benefits in terms of reducing crime and who don't believe in the surveillance state in general. Also, after the only crime I am aware of where CCTV footage might have helped to identify the thieves, the authorities didn't even care enough to check the previous night's tapes within a window of a couple of hours when several thousand pounds was known to have been stolen, and a prominent CCTV camera overlooks the only public access to the building from which it was taken. If that's the kind of benefit CCTV brings us, screw it.
Fair point, but so far I haven't seen much evidence that bailing out any failures during the recent economic crisis has done anything but dump a huge load of additional risk on people who didn't cause the problems in the first place, while letting those who made a bad investment off the hook.
There were big banks and other financial services that conducted themselves reasonably in terms of risk, took the commercial hit they deserved when things went wrong, but didn't have to go crying to national governments for support. There were big manufacturing firms whose business models were not unsustainable when the bubble burst. Heck, there were first world countries whose economies didn't rely on works of fiction, who haven't suffered to the same degree that many have.
Now we're seeing the successful ones in each case suffering the consequences of others' failures, whether that is through national subsidies of failing economies in other states or through additional regulations and taxes on oh-so-evil banks (including the ones who looked after money more wisely, never took government hand-outs, and have basically run a successful business throughout the whole mess).
First you're talking about European immigrants stealing UK jobs, now you're talking about who's a net contributor? Make up your mind.
Sorry, I don't know what you're getting at here.
I'm not sure I recognise your characterisation of my position on immigrants. The way I see it, the practical problem with a sudden shift to being completely open isn't so much the UK jobs market. It's about the resulting overcrowding in the UK, and perhaps to some extent the UK stealing a lot of good workers from the other nations leaving them with less ability to grow their own economies.
These are effects that might well be counter-balanced in the long run as the different states approach economic parity, but you have to change at a pace that is sustainable so you can get that far. Doing it too fast and causing one side of the shift without anything to match it is a danger to both the more established and economically powerful nations and the newer EU members who want to catch up.
For starters, the countries are part of the common economic zone which supposedly is good for trade.
I have nothing against trade relations. We had those before the whole EU thing came along. It's the deeper ties, in terms of centralised government, centralised budgets (with accounts that aren't properly audited), centralised legislation, and so on that I don't like. Why can't we just make agreements for mutual benefit, instead of trying to turn a large number of countries with diverse cultures into some sort of United States of Europe?
As to Greece, my point was that it's not the fault of the Greek people but of their politicians.
Indeed. Speaking as someone in the UK, I'm hardly going to criticise the average citizen in another country because their government took on a silly risk with the Olympics and their political classes are generally not representative or accountable...
Of the older member states you mentioned, only one is a net contributer to EU coffers. More of the laws that apply in my country now come from the EU than from our own government, and these laws are a frequent source of public distrust. So what exactly are the benefits that we now enjoy in the EU because these countries joined?
Oh, and Greece's situation is pretty much entirely Greece's own fault. They took on financially risky challenges like putting on the Olympics, which then ran massively over-budget.
My very point is that not being willing to be one big happy financial centre is just another way to compromise the whole idea.
That's because it is a bad idea, or at least one for which not everyone is ready yet, for the reasons I explained before.
You seem to think we can jump from where we are today to some idealistic future where everyone shares everything and the world is wonderful, without doing anything in between. Reality just doesn't work like that.
A few hours ago, the world's stock markets took a big hit because an EU nation, Greece, which has mismanaged its finances terribly for several years, has had its rating downgraded to junk levels by S&P because it is no longer worthy of credit. Those locked into the Euro with them will now have to struggle to clear up Greece's mess, at their own expense. This did not happen because Greece was some backward country with no resources, it happened because their government screwed up their economy.
By your argument, the rest of the world should now be piling in to help Greece out of its debt hole, even though that would mean pushing other nations further into dangerous levels of debt themselves. This is an odd contradiction with your general view that we are all living in capitalist societies today. In a truly capitalist system, complete with free market economics, you let failing things fail, and you don't bail out the screw-ups at the expense of those who didn't screw up. The Eurozone is, in this respect, about as socialist/anti-capitalist an organisation as you can get.
Exactly. Change does not always imply improvement.
In this case, it is interesting that a small number of people have managed to make a significant amount of money from free software, but that is a long way from showing that an entire industry with millions of people working to produce a vast and diverse array of new software every year could be sustained on the same basis.
That's quite a chip you've got on your shoulder there, my friend.
Concentrating on just the UK and Europe, we do share our wealth: the UK is one of the biggest net contributors to EU funding, for example. I also have nothing aginst the principle of free access to all who share the same way of life as a long term objective, whether that is people coming here because they like our culture or our own people moving abroad to somewhere that is a better fit for them.
However, the practice of just opening the doors wide is not the way to achieve this. Firstly, we simply can't sustain it: there just isn't space in the UK to handle a 15–20% population rise, and our basic local services are falling apart in some areas. If our own economy and government collapse under the pressure, we're not going to be doing anything for anyone else, are we?
Secondly, allowing the mass movement of those skilled/talented/experienced enough to make their way here and earn a living deprives their home nations of many of their best workers. If we are going to achieve true economic parity, they are going to need those people more than ever to help them grow their own economies. If we want to help them, we should be providing the support so they can do that, not siphoning off good workers who are (for now) relatively cheap to employ.
To address some of your other points, I don't know where you get the idea that I think we are somehow better than immigrants. That's not true at all. We are simply the people who are already living on an overcrowded island, and I don't see how increasing that overcrowding is going to help either us or anyone else in the long run.
Finally, you seem fixated on this idea that the EU is purely a financial deal and determined to have a dig because we haven't joined the Euro here. The vast differences between how different EU nations have (or haven't) weathered the current economic storm should make it pretty obvious that we aren't ready to be one big happy financial centre yet. Personally, I'm moderately anti-EU: I would rather have a system where most of the laws that I live under are not passed down about fourth-hand from appointed bureaucrats who think they know best, quite a few of whom wound up in Europe because they had no political credibility left at home (not that we can complain too much as a nation, having sent them Mandelson for several years ourselves). In any case, as things stand today, for better or worse, the EU is much more than just an economic collaboration.
UKIP are an odd party. According to a lot of the "Which party's views most closely match your own?" web sites, I should find UKIP relatively attractive on policy issues, at least compared to some of the bigger UK parties. On the other hand, UKIP's short history is just one internal political squabble after another, except for the bits that went public and/or illegal.
If the right person came along and started a party with similar views in the areas I agree with, taking the sensible members of groups like UKIP with them but ditching the political infighting, then maybe I would at least consider voting for that new party. UKIP, however, seem to be damaged goods today, and if you look at a timeline, they were never really anything else.
But he is bound by law to do the most he can to improve sales and shareholder value, regardless of the environmental cost, social need or greater economic benefit.
In what jurisdiction? Cite, please.