He may be of the left (I do not concede that he is of the extreme left), but Tony Benn is not a raving nutter. I agree that his political views carry very little weight with any of the mainstream political parties in the UK at the present time. As for your points about his support of Sinn Fein, yes he did support it, however the US used to allow Sinn Fein leaders into the country to do fund raising via Noraid...a fact conveniently forgotten by the US People & Politicians when talking about the War on Terror...however it has always been the case that one person's terrorist is another person's freedom fighter (I am reminded of the time that Thatcher labeled Nelson Mandela as a terrorist).
Sinn Fein is a legitimate political party, IMHO Tony Benn was right in his insistence that the UK Government should enter into dialogue with them.
I certainly do not agree that Tony Benn is regarded as an object of ridicule here in the UK, whilst most people do not agree with his views, he is still regarded as being an honest politician and a nice person...
There was no UN Resolution declaring the war in Iraq to be illegal, however that was not required as there was no UN Resolution delaring the war in Iraq to be legal...No resolution was passed under Article 42 (Chapter VII) of the UN Charter...therefore the war was illegal...
Sorry to be pedantic, but Tony Benn was not a Cabinet member at the time that Rumsfield visited Iraq on behalf of the Reagan administration, Tony Benn was a Labour Member of Parliament. The Labour Government was voted out of office in 1979 and replaced by the Conservative Party.
"...but his co-worker wasn't able to see a doc for weeks..."
Is this weeks to see a doctor to get it diagnosed, or weeks to see a specialist after it has been diagnosed?
If the former, then sorry I cannot believe that, normally you can arrange a doctors appointment here in the UK within a couple of days...alternatively there are the Accident & Emergency departments at the Local Hospitals where the person would see a doctor within hours...
If the latter, then that is more believable, there is something of a postcode (or zip code to you in the US) lottery for healthcare in the UK. The waiting lists for certain treatments vary from area to area (actually from each NHS Trust).
"1.5 days per month accumulative sick leave to 120 days max (weird logic applies after that)"
How does that work? Is that the effective equivalent of extra holiday?
In the UK employers tend to be very keen on reducing sick days, at a previous company 3 separate sick leaves (of any duration) in 1 year or 1 sick leave in excess of 5 days got disciplinary action in the form of a written warning (even if the sick leave was covered by a doctors note). One member of staff was involved in a near fatal car accident and got a written warning because of the time he was out sick...
True enough, though I suspect it is just as likely that the person did format it, then reloaded the OS from the original media and either did not patch or got infected whilst online and trying to patch...
Monofilament Blades were also mentioned in the Shadowrun game / books from FASA.
If memory serves me correctly there was also a reference to a monofilament blade in the original RingWorld book by Larry Niven, though that was used in conjunction with a stasis field around the blade.
"A better solution would be to make copyrights uniform, and set them at a much lower level - say, 5 or 10 years."
I have zero problems with this as this would mean that copyright law was uniform and all would gain the same potential benefit from it. If it was purely down to the lifetime of the creator then those that created a work both early in their career and in life would gain far more financial benefit from it than those that created a work shortly before they died. In the first case that person would of course be able to pass on more to the family than the latter would...
...to try to cure the current problems, afterall the priority should be getting the systems back fully patched and operational in the shortest possible time.
However, that is not to say that they should not be considering Linux as a longer term solution to their problems...
"Nope. Copyrights should be good for the lifetime of the artist who creates the work, and requires a specific delcaration of assignment of rights to allow a corporation to make use of that copyright for the lifetime of the artist, or some shorter period of time, with the rights reverting to the artist."
Sorry, I have to respectfully disagree with this, if it is purely for the actual lifetime of the artist then there is no protection for the family / estate of the artist.
Personally I have no problems with harmonising the world's copyright laws so they all last the same amount of time, however only new works created after that date should benefit from the extended duration.
"Because the actors for the apendicies are under contract for different movies / jobs now, and aren't just able to fly out to the recording studio on a whim and film their takes / scenes? Logistics isn't some trivial thing. Try working in the industry before you say 1 more month is horrendously slow."
Actually that was the case since the bulk of the filming was completed (2000 or 2001, sorry can't remember), however all the actors had it in their original contracts about availability for pickup scenes.
Indeed there is reference to the actors coming in for pickup scenes in the extended dialogues...
"but also some responsibility on the retards who didn't get a secure system - MS is officially unsuitable for this sort of thing."
Hmmm
How about any unpatched operating system is officially unsuitable for this sort of thing.
Yes blame can and should be placed on MS for the design and security features of their software however a large portion of blame should go to the individuals and organisations that do not regularly update their systems.
As linux takes off in the corporate world I expect there will be an increase in worms targetting that operating system, let's just hope that individuals and organisations learn the lessons and keep the systems patched or the problems will keep occurring regardless of the operating system being used.
"you should tell that to the women of afghanistan who can now go to school and make a future for themselves"
Yes it is indeed excellent that women in Afghanistan once again have access to education for themselves and their (female) children, I say "once again" because the Soviet Union also encouraged female education and careers during its occupation during the 1980's. This sadly came to an end (the education not the occupation) when the fundamentals seized control of the country after the Soviet Union was forced to withdraw its troops.
"I dunno, the Brits seem to just dump out a document box after 30 years without much regard for what's in it."
Sorry not correct, there have been quite a number of times that the British Government has upped the time limit on the information due to be released (more from potential political embarrassment than because the information is sensitive for security reasons).
"Brilliant, then you can get on with your transition to Ingsoc and your licking of Dim Georgie Bush's chickenhawk boots. Whatever happened to "Britons never shall be slaves"?"
Hmmm how to tar and feather all the British People with the same brush, not all of us are arse licking poodles like Tony Blair, there are a substantial portion of British people that dislike George Bush and believe that his war on Iraq was wrong, indeed almost 2 millions people attended a Stop the War rally in London earlier this year...
"Could someone please explain to me the British fetish for its Monarchy ? The government is now a constitutional democracy, so why is there so much homage paid to the archaic traditions and figureheads of the past?"
Hmmm
I am not sure that we do pay that much homage to them, certainly the Queen's Golden Jubilee Celebrations were tiny compared to those that happened for her silver jubilee (celebrating 50 & 25 years of being crowned).
Yes there are a number of British people that do care a great deal about the royal family, there are a sizeable number that believe we should have followed our French Cousins and got rid of them years ago and there whole lot of people that are just plain indifferent about them...
I certainly did not understand the public mourning for Diana (both here in the UK and abroad), It certainly pissed me off that on the day she died all but 1 of the tv channels abandoned all other coverage to only report her death (and the one that showed normal coverage then had complaints leveled at it for not showing enough respect).
I certainly wish they would abolish them (and the House of Lords at the same time)...though it may be bad for Uk PLc's Tourism figures I believe it would be a price worth paying...hmmm in fact if we borrowed Madame Le Guillotine from our French Cousins we may even increase our tourism income...:-)
The points I raised in my previous post were not bad code implementations for the most part, they were design / configuration decisions.
I could have listed more points, but I concentrated on those that made privelage elevation easy, as such they helped to negate/bypass a lot of security features that NT had (at the time of NT 3.51 / NT 4).
Security in NT has improved massively over the last 8 years, I believe that Win2003 is better than previous versions and that MS is now starting to take security seriously (or least more seriously than they had done).
"NT _Was_ designed from the ground up with security in mind. "
What version of NT are you referring to? I have been using NT since about 1995 so I have been administering all versions from NT 3.51 upwards.
A number of glaringly obvious "NT features" lead me to question your statement:
NT by default gave group Everyone full control of the filesystem. NT by default had Guest Account Enabled. NT by default had no minimum password length (ie blank passwords were acceptable). NT by default allowed commands submitted via the at command (to schedule a job) to be run in a higher security context than that of the user who submitted the job.
Most of these "features" were eventually fixed but the fact that they were all originally allowed makes me believe that NT was not "...designed from the ground up with security in mind.".
Now I am far from being a Linux or Open Source Zealot and I freely admit that security _has_ improved on MS Operating Systems but I don't believe that any non biased person could honestly state that NT "..was designed from the ground up with security in mind".
"They could also use the stearing method that motorcyles use which takes advantage of gyroscopic effect to lean the bike and make it turn. (Anything above a walking pace you actually turn the opposite direction you want to turn.) "
Hmmm on a Motorcycle you lean _in_ to the corner, if you are turning left, you lean to the left, turn to the right and and you lean right...so I am not sure where you are getting this "turn the opposite direction you want to turn" from...
"...a lot of pollution comes from Third World countries that have no pollution laws, or don't enforce the ones they have..."
The USA is the largest polluter and consumer of resources on the planet. Since bush came to power he has also helped to relax a number of environmental pollution laws _and_ withdrawn the USA from the Kyoto aggreement, so don't go blaming other countries when your own is also guilty.
Slashdot Mirror
Hmmm
He may be of the left (I do not concede that he is of the extreme left), but Tony Benn is not a raving nutter. I agree that his political views carry very little weight with any of the mainstream political parties in the UK at the present time. As for your points about his support of Sinn Fein, yes he did support it, however the US used to allow Sinn Fein leaders into the country to do fund raising via Noraid...a fact conveniently forgotten by the US People & Politicians when talking about the War on Terror...however it has always been the case that one person's terrorist is another person's freedom fighter (I am reminded of the time that Thatcher labeled Nelson Mandela as a terrorist).
Sinn Fein is a legitimate political party, IMHO Tony Benn was right in his insistence that the UK Government should enter into dialogue with them.
I certainly do not agree that Tony Benn is regarded as an object of ridicule here in the UK, whilst most people do not agree with his views, he is still regarded as being an honest politician and a nice person...
Hmmm
There was no UN Resolution declaring the war in Iraq to be illegal, however that was not required as there was no UN Resolution delaring the war in Iraq to be legal...No resolution was passed under Article 42 (Chapter VII) of the UN Charter...therefore the war was illegal...
Hmmm
Sorry to be pedantic, but Tony Benn was not a Cabinet member at the time that Rumsfield visited Iraq on behalf of the Reagan administration, Tony Benn was a Labour Member of Parliament. The Labour Government was voted out of office in 1979 and replaced by the Conservative Party.
"...but his co-worker wasn't able to see a doc for weeks..."
Is this weeks to see a doctor to get it diagnosed, or weeks to see a specialist after it has been diagnosed?
If the former, then sorry I cannot believe that, normally you can arrange a doctors appointment here in the UK within a couple of days...alternatively there are the Accident & Emergency departments at the Local Hospitals where the person would see a doctor within hours...
If the latter, then that is more believable, there is something of a postcode (or zip code to you in the US) lottery for healthcare in the UK. The waiting lists for certain treatments vary from area to area (actually from each NHS Trust).
"1.5 days per month accumulative sick leave to 120 days max (weird logic applies after that)"
How does that work? Is that the effective equivalent of extra holiday?
In the UK employers tend to be very keen on reducing sick days, at a previous company 3 separate sick leaves (of any duration) in 1 year or 1 sick leave in excess of 5 days got disciplinary action in the form of a written warning (even if the sick leave was covered by a doctors note). One member of staff was involved in a near fatal car accident and got a written warning because of the time he was out sick...
True enough, though I suspect it is just as likely that the person did format it, then reloaded the OS from the original media and either did not patch or got infected whilst online and trying to patch...
If memory serves me correctly there was also a reference to a monofilament blade in the original RingWorld book by Larry Niven, though that was used in conjunction with a stasis field around the blade.
With linux, well...tried to configure IPtables lately? I have, and that made me switch back to windows!"
Hmmm
Is that a gap in the market I spot? Is there a need for an Iptables for dummies guide ;-?
Alternatively one could just get the following book : http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0596 005695/qid=1097623820/sr=8-1/ref=pd_ka_1/103-30759 69-1611012?v=glance&s=books&n=507846
I have zero problems with this as this would mean that copyright law was uniform and all would gain the same potential benefit from it. If it was purely down to the lifetime of the creator then those that created a work both early in their career and in life would gain far more financial benefit from it than those that created a work shortly before they died. In the first case that person would of course be able to pass on more to the family than the latter would...
However, that is not to say that they should not be considering Linux as a longer term solution to their problems...
Sorry, I have to respectfully disagree with this, if it is purely for the actual lifetime of the artist then there is no protection for the family / estate of the artist.
Personally I have no problems with harmonising the world's copyright laws so they all last the same amount of time, however only new works created after that date should benefit from the extended duration.
"Because the actors for the apendicies are under contract for different movies / jobs now, and aren't just able to fly out to the recording studio on a whim and film their takes / scenes? Logistics isn't some trivial thing. Try working in the industry before you say 1 more month is horrendously slow."
Actually that was the case since the bulk of the filming was completed (2000 or 2001, sorry can't remember), however all the actors had it in their original contracts about availability for pickup scenes.
Indeed there is reference to the actors coming in for pickup scenes in the extended dialogues...
Stupidity can never be ruled out...
Hmmm
How about any unpatched operating system is officially unsuitable for this sort of thing.
Yes blame can and should be placed on MS for the design and security features of their software however a large portion of blame should go to the individuals and organisations that do not regularly update their systems.
As linux takes off in the corporate world I expect there will be an increase in worms targetting that operating system, let's just hope that individuals and organisations learn the lessons and keep the systems patched or the problems will keep occurring regardless of the operating system being used.
"you should tell that to the women of afghanistan who can now go to school and make a future for themselves"
Yes it is indeed excellent that women in Afghanistan once again have access to education for themselves and their (female) children, I say "once again" because the Soviet Union also encouraged female education and careers during its occupation during the 1980's. This sadly came to an end (the education not the occupation) when the fundamentals seized control of the country after the Soviet Union was forced to withdraw its troops.
"I dunno, the Brits seem to just dump out a document box after 30 years without much regard for what's in it."
Sorry not correct, there have been quite a number of times that the British Government has upped the time limit on the information due to be released (more from potential political embarrassment than because the information is sensitive for security reasons).
Hmmm
:-)
Slightly taller than him
and as you asked to be corrected, it was not all of Europe he took over..
"Brilliant, then you can get on with your transition to Ingsoc and your licking of Dim Georgie Bush's chickenhawk boots. Whatever happened to "Britons never shall be slaves"?"
Hmmm how to tar and feather all the British People with the same brush, not all of us are arse licking poodles like Tony Blair, there are a substantial portion of British people that dislike George Bush and believe that his war on Iraq was wrong, indeed almost 2 millions people attended a Stop the War rally in London earlier this year...
"Could someone please explain to me the British fetish for its Monarchy ? The government is now a constitutional democracy, so why is there so much homage paid to the archaic traditions and figureheads of the past?"
Hmmm
I am not sure that we do pay that much homage to them, certainly the Queen's Golden Jubilee Celebrations were tiny compared to those that happened for her silver jubilee (celebrating 50 & 25 years of being crowned).
Yes there are a number of British people that do care a great deal about the royal family, there are a sizeable number that believe we should have followed our French Cousins and got rid of them years ago and there whole lot of people that are just plain indifferent about them...
I certainly did not understand the public mourning for Diana (both here in the UK and abroad), It certainly pissed me off that on the day she died all but 1 of the tv channels abandoned all other coverage to only report her death (and the one that showed normal coverage then had complaints leveled at it for not showing enough respect).
I certainly wish they would abolish them (and the House of Lords at the same time)...though it may be bad for Uk PLc's Tourism figures I believe it would be a price worth paying...hmmm in fact if we borrowed Madame Le Guillotine from our French Cousins we may even increase our tourism income...:-)
" So, the next time England goes to war are Elton John, Paul McCartney and Mick Jagger going to be leading the charge?"
One can only hope...:-)
Hmmm
The points I raised in my previous post were not bad code implementations for the most part, they were design / configuration decisions.
I could have listed more points, but I concentrated on those that made privelage elevation easy, as such they helped to negate/bypass a lot of security features that NT had (at the time of NT 3.51 / NT 4).
Security in NT has improved massively over the last 8 years, I believe that Win2003 is better than previous versions and that MS is now starting to take security seriously (or least more seriously than they had done).
"NT _Was_ designed from the ground up with security in mind. "
:
What version of NT are you referring to? I have been using NT since about 1995 so I have been administering all versions from NT 3.51 upwards.
A number of glaringly obvious "NT features" lead me to question your statement
NT by default gave group Everyone full control of the filesystem.
NT by default had Guest Account Enabled.
NT by default had no minimum password length (ie blank passwords were acceptable).
NT by default allowed commands submitted via the at command (to schedule a job) to be run in a higher security context than that of the user who submitted the job.
Most of these "features" were eventually fixed but the fact that they were all originally allowed makes me believe that NT was not "...designed from the ground up with security in mind.".
Now I am far from being a Linux or Open Source Zealot and I freely admit that security _has_ improved on MS Operating Systems but I don't believe that any non biased person could honestly state that NT "..was designed from the ground up with security in mind".
"They could also use the stearing method that motorcyles use which takes advantage of gyroscopic effect to lean the bike and make it turn. (Anything above a walking pace you actually turn the opposite direction you want to turn.) "
Hmmm on a Motorcycle you lean _in_ to the corner, if you are turning left, you lean to the left, turn to the right and and you lean right...so I am not sure where you are getting this "turn the opposite direction you want to turn" from...
"...a lot of pollution comes from Third World countries that have no pollution laws, or don't enforce the ones they have..."
The USA is the largest polluter and consumer of resources on the planet. Since bush came to power he has also helped to relax a number of environmental pollution laws _and_ withdrawn the USA from the Kyoto aggreement, so don't go blaming other countries when your own is also guilty.