Secondly, there's no way to vote against a petition. You can only sign FOR it. What if I think the petition is stupid? There's no way for me to express that.
I did email the Gov people and suggest that whenever someone starts up a new petition it should be possible to vote For or Against it. This would be a pretty small change and make the site a bit more even handed!
Robot parents? Those thawed embryos won't last long without a placenta, a uterus, nutrition and waste control (i.e. placental supply), and parents to bring them up and change their stinky stinky bot-bots.
So if I do write my own songs, what should I do if these songs eventually turn out to be cover songs because I unintentionally copied something that I had heard a decade ago into my own songs? I seem to remember that George Harrison ("My Sweet Lord") and Michael Bolton ("Love Is a Wonderful Thing") got burned by this.
I don't know. It seems like a pretty niche problem though! My guess is that if no one realises that there may be, for want of a better phrase, prior art issues before the CD is created then it will probably go the same way as your two examples. I could ask the Sellaband people, but I expect they'd just shrug.
What happens when this sort of occurence crops up with the existing record companies, and why should it be any different for Sellaband?
OK, A couple of things here... The music publishers are really just music distributors who distribute music from their artists. A long, old (2000) but fascinating, article from Coutney Love shows, I guess only from her perspective, how she gets along with the record companies, and she details how she would be happy to give away her music for free, because (as she eloquently explains!) she's pretty much doing that anyway!
It would seem that the music publishers/distributors, record companies, whatever you want to call them, are shafting the artists right royally and are just throwing their toys out of the pram because they can see their gravy train ride coming to an end!
From the other end of the argument comes Sellaband who have setup a method for indepent artists to reach a wide audience of believers who can choose to buy parts in the production of a CD in advance (others have done this before off their own bat, like Marillion, and I thing Dodgy did it too!). The difference here is that a bunch of music industry savvy people have gathered together to offer a real alternative. Sellaband also only tie the artist in for the first year after the CD is created, so rights to the music is returned to the artist and they can choose to stick with Sellaband or decide to move on elsewhere.
OK, I am a SellabandBeliever myself, and I have believed in a number of the artists, most of whom I don't know. Artists from around the world, one of which, Cubworld, has made the $50K and is in the process of making his first album!
Multiple opinion polls showed that the majority of Brits were in favour of a ban.
I will concede that some polls showed a lean towards banning the practice (the link shows a poll with 57% for banning fox hunting). As I mentioned above, I am generally against it, and if asked to chose between not banning it or banning it I would probably have to say ban it (with a shug!), but I guess the point I am making is that a small minority of people made sufficient noise that the question be asked in the first place. Had there not been the vocal minority kicking up a fuss, how many people would have even considered the question? I'd have to say not many! The majority, I would conclude, simply don't care.
I agree with your point about opinon polls vs petitions though! The website should be redesigned so that there is automatically a petition setup to offer the alternative view point, or you can vote for or against!
It would be like banning a drug because the doctors administering it are too poorly trained to administer it safely all the time
Good analogy. If medical trials were undertaken for a new drug and it was found that the Drs couldn't administer it correctly, do you think the powers that be would:-
a) Issue a licence for the drug anyway, because the Drs will get the hang of it eventually
b) Send it back to the drug companies until they can provide a simpler administration system
My guess is they'd send it back to the drug company.
Sure, work to make the technology foolproof, but in the meantime don't foist a half-baked technical solution on the public just because it sounds like a good idea. The fact of the matter is that this kind of technology just isn't foolproof yet and there will be security leaks, and for that reason the tech is simply not ready to be rolled out yet!
1) The world appears to be getting warmer
Yes, I agree, it does.
2) What is causing it?
I see 3 options here:-
a) Humans
b) Something other than Humans
c) Something other than Humans AND Humans
3) Who will suffer if it all goes tits-up?
er, Humans, most definately.
4) Who should at least think about things we can do to stop it, or reverse it?
Well smart as they are, the fscking Dolphins aren't going to help are they! It would seem it's down to us then.
5) What can we do?
Well, apparently there's a lot of small scale things we can do, that don't really hurt us too much, such as trying to control our CO2 emissions. I'm not saying here that cars are the problem (I seem to recall reading that transport based CO2 emissions were responsible for 3% of the problem - however one might be able to quantify that! - and that cars were a small percentage of that, so if everyone stopped driving tomorrow it would actually have little or no effect!), but curbing our enthusiasm isn't a bad idea.
6) Carbon Footprint
I've heard this so much in January, and hardly at all before. Your carbon footprint is all the things you do that release CO2 into the atmosphere (I think!). Driving, flying, heating your house, etc. The fact that no one seems to mention is that it is a Pyramid Scheme, and perhaps the Final Pyramid Scheme. If you have kids, they WILL have a carbon footprint of their own, and it should be tagged onto yours, as should their kids, and their kids, etc. Everyone on the planet is a consumer, and consumers ALL generate CO2. So, the question I'd like answered is this:-
How fast is the collective Carbon Footprint growing, just as a factor of the population growth, and can we actually reduce our own personal Carbon Footprint enough, for ever, to counteract that growth?
I've no idea about the first part of the question, but my guess is that the answer to the second half of the question is a big, fat, CO2 belching, NO.
We should be packing our bags and preparing to go elsewhere!
when the stunning Comet McNaught was clearly visible on the southern horizon at dusk, several people wrote to the local paper saying how much better it would have looked if the daylight saving trial hadn't occurred and the sky was darker.
When we try and make something idiot proof all that happens is that natural selection defeats us again by providing us with a bigger idiot!
Never understimate the stupidity of people in large groups!
I've often thought that there should be some "qualifying questions" on polling forms to try and show that the voters have at least had a stab at understanding the issues! I'd bet money that elections are won and lost but a large number of voters just turn up and vote the way they did last time without even looking at the issues and promises of the various parties! Perhaps a start would be to remove the affiliated party names from the polling forms so you have to know at least the name of your chosen representative!
Give me a benevolent dictatorship over the current crop of jokers anytime! If the Queen would just use her armed forces to clean house in the Government I really think we'd be better off, and it'd save us a fortune in politicians salaries and election costs too!
Both the Scottish and the Welsh devolution referenda were in their respective areas only (ie, The Scots got to vote on Scotland and the Welsh on Wales) but doesn't that seem a little odd? Try asking a class of kids if they should have free sweets! Let's have a referedum on whether Manchester United should be able to field 12 players instead of the more usual 11, but let's only ask the ManU fans - oh, now there's a surprise, they seem to be in favour!
I've seen it advertised in various weekly motoring magazines, and on breakfast news (on the BBC), so I guess it's possibly the marketing rather than nefarious means.
On the other hand, Fox hunting is a very polar issue. And while it is represented here as having support, there is no indication as to how many people are against it.
That's true, but it was banned the exact same way. Think about it for a second. Who is most likely to express an opinion, the people who dislike fox hunting (actually, mostly they disliked the fox hunters!), or the people who don't care one way or the other!
It's ALWAYS the minority group who makes the most noise who gets listened too. I, personally, don't like fox hunting, but I don't think it should have been banned. All banning it did was whip up support for a dwindling pasttime! If they'd left it alone it would have died out eventually anyway, and now, because of the ham-fisted, mostly classwar lefties, fox hunting pretty much continues with added support, and to top it all, more foxes are killed by shooting, and that is often not a clean kill!
If road pricing was in place and I knew that driving on a motorway between 7-9am would cost me more than driving outside of that time I would see if I could change my travel plans. In effect reducing road congestion, which is the whole point of the bill.
That's actually a good point and potentially worthwhile, but could this be achieved by other means because I REALLY don't want a tracking device in my car!
A short story: A friend was recently called by a bunch of blackmailers who threatened his family unless he paid them some money. He obviously called the police who whisked him and his family away to a safe house and stationed an armed response unit near his house for when he came back to recieve the next call (somewhat surprising his father-in-law!). They caught them, as it happens, but there is NO WAY IN HELL that he will allow his wife and kids to drive around in a vehicle that ANYONE could track, and therefore aid in the finding and kidnapping of his family. It just won't happen! And don't tell me that "only the authorities" will have access to the system because I've worked in IT for over 20 years and I just don't believe you!
Let alone the concept of the Gov being able to track you. I seriously don't swallow the "congestion" argument either as it must be incredibly expensive to throw this technology at the problem when a row of toll booths could do much the same, and increasing tax on petrol (move the Road Fund Licence - UK Only - onto petrol too!) will mean you pay more for a more thirsty car, or if you drive it more aggressively, or if you drive in rush hour. Not perhaps quite the granularity of satallite tracking, but way-way-way cheaper to setup!
Fully electric, runs off overhead powerlines. Makes me wonder if the same approach could work for electric trucks on interstate highways.
If it's interstate then why not spend the money on a long distance rail network instead and keep the trucks for local deliveries from the rail terminii.
Not just Australia, most European countries ditched the 1 and 2 eurocent coint some years ago as well.
I was in Amsterdam for the Sellaband New Year Concert and had a bunch of change from previous European trips (mostly Spain as it 'appens). I was in a coffee shop (actually buying coffee!) and picked out ten 1 eurocent coins as part of the payment. The chap behind the counter took the change and threw it in the bin saying that people just throw them away (other customers all nodding in agreement). So, unasked, I obviously offered him a 10 eurocent coin in replacement and he wouldn't take it! Man the Dutch are nice people. I pretty much had to force him to take an extra large tip!
I just throw the suckers away now too, and they are a lot smaller than the US 1 cent coin too. It does seem silly, but perhaps in London we might get over the whole change issue when the Oyster card stuff is rolled to shops and cafes for transactions under 10 UKP.
recycle something if that recycling doesn't cause more energy use and chemical pollution than making an new one
That is indeed a good point, and well made. I think my point wasn't that we should recycle everything, regardless of cost (be it fiscal or physical), but that the concept of recycling needs to be ingrained into the psyche so before we throw something we at least think whether we can recycle it. Obviously, once that's done it's worth thinking about whether or not we should recycle it, but at the moment a lot of people haven't taken the first step.
I guess the religion of environmentalism may be attempts to bring the subject to people's attention, but you may be correct in what I percieve to be your underlying message that it's a bunch of beardy zealots, and zealots are seldom the right people to be tasked with carrying an important message!
Almost any expansion onto other planets that we can easily forsee is just that, an expansion, not a migration.
Yes indeed. I didn't mean for ALL of us to survive, I meant for the (our) species to survive. Self sufficiency elsewhere is a long way off, but I still reckon we could be developing technologies to allow us to start thinking of possibilities.
One idea I've heard bandied about, which sounds like pure SF, is to pick a suitable asteroid, build a habitat inside, and set it sailing off into the void, presumably towards somewhere we know there is a planet. How large a colony does it have to support to be able to travel for multiple generations without suffering from genetic disorders due to in-breeding (could it carry a far larger library of genetic material to help with the problem). All sorts of questions to be asked. I think my point is that no one is even asking the questions, well, almost no one.
Sorry Ian, but this thread is old now so not many people reading it!
Over the long term we are going to need to manage it like some sort of garden if we are to survive.
Depends on how long your long term is, but ultimately, we have to get off this rock if we are to survive, and we really should be thinking about it sooner rather than later! That said, it obviously makes sense not to crap on our own doorstep any more than we have to - so pick a more economical car and drive it less, swap in some eco lightbulbs, don't run your air-con so high/low, turn off electrical stuff yer not using, and recycle recycle recycle.
It's the equivalent of Nuclear Power, Communism and Drugs for the new millenium.
Indeed, it appears to be the modern day McCarthyism! The whole concept to stopping whatever your country decides are children from experimenting with each other is ludicrous! Obviously, there's a problem with predatory adults (and sad to say usually males!), but to apply those same rules to 16 year olds is crazy!
Age of Consent by country (some examples from the page):-
UK - 16
USA - up to 18 (differs by state!)
Spain - 13
Madagascar - 21
Spain seems low to me, but I guess I am just used to the UK's 16. 18 seems high, and who'd want to grow up in Madagascar!
Maybe the issue is just when there's a large age range between the (otherwise) consenting parties? There was a case recently in the UK of a substitute teacher who the school governers discovered had a previous sex offence with a 15 year old when he was 30-something. A big to-do in the papers (Daily Mail!) about it. He lost his job - probably never worked again as a teacher, which is all well and good you might say - serves him right! Turns out, they married a year or so later and are still married now! Perhaps he really did love her?
Rules are (usually) good, but the blanket application of rules will pretty much ALWAYS come across cases where the rules should be flexible or there will be injustices.
If these childporn hackers are looking for PCs why don't the authorities setup some honey-trap PCs without firewalls etc, and catch the people who use them - spammers, pornographers, whatever! Surely that would be the sensible thing. The pornographers are seeding (potentially!) innocent people's PCs with illegal pictures to try and grey the concept of guilt, why not fight back with honey-trap PCs so the hackers have a grey area to ponder on about whether this really is a safe PC for them to take over!
Don't forget the whole road pricing fiasco, coming to roads near you real soon! The Gov. and legislated to allow Transport for London to charge tolls on major trunk routes around London, but only if they use technologies compatible with the envisaged UK-wide road pricing system - this is a heads up people, it is coming.
Know what this means? GPS transponders, or the like, in your car so the system can tell where you are, and when, and charge you accordingly. A suspicious by-product of which is being able to track you driving around!
I'm not happy about this for a number of tin-foil hat related reasons. Do I really want people to be able to track my movements? An old school friend of mine had an unpleasant experience a couple of years back where someone called him and asked for several thousand pounds or they'd come round to his house and kill his family. This obviously doesn't happen a lot, but it does happen (the Police caught them as it happens - must've had a day off from catching speeding motorists!), and the idea that it is possible to track where his wife and kids are at any time is something he is not so keen on. If the Gov can do it, you can bet the better connected miscreants will be able to get access.
Perfect for burglars - OK, both cars are away from home and heading away. Please call me when they start to head home, I'm off to work!
In a nutshell, that's exactly what I object too. Stupid regulations that makes our life (ie the normal ordinary people going about our business) more difficult and has no affect whatsoever on anyone who might be up to no good. It does nothing to help, security-wise, but it costs more in personel and in everyone's time.
Surely better to do something useful with that effort?
I just flew back from Amsterdam (at the Sellaband New Year's Party as you're asking) and there's new regulations in the EU where you have to put all lotions etc into a small (1 litre) clear plastic bag. One bag per person, and it has to be re-sealable.
No one looked at it. I got selected for the low level X-ray (and I'm not sure about that!), as did my wife, but seperately, so I ended up with both clear bags of lotions, which was apparently fine, even though there was so much stuff neither of them were closable.
This lotions stuff all comes from some apparent plot to blow up a plane with the contents of a milk bottle (or something). Just a knee-jerk reaction. All the hassle with the plastic bags doesn't really help the security situation, it's just more work for the airport people and more hassle for us.
If the great unwashed public didn't seem to fall for it, it'd be laughable, as it is, it's just sad!
Watch out for a rash of minor vandalism followed by emmigration!
This could be the solution to all our current problems. Just imagine, all the neanderthal chavvy thugs smash a window on camera, post the video to youTube and fuck off to Canada. I'm not sure where the downside is for the UK, as replacing a bunch of windows when they're kids has got to be cheaper than cleaning up after them when they're adults!
Slashdot Mirror
I did email the Gov people and suggest that whenever someone starts up a new petition it should be possible to vote For or Against it. This would be a pretty small change and make the site a bit more even handed!
They should also weed out the more silly ones (Blair to stand on head and juggle ice cream, for example!).
Yes, where's the fetus gonna gestate? In a box?
Oh great, so this is the damn drum solo, and next up is some freak on bass for a hundred thousand years!
I don't know. It seems like a pretty niche problem though! My guess is that if no one realises that there may be, for want of a better phrase, prior art issues before the CD is created then it will probably go the same way as your two examples. I could ask the Sellaband people, but I expect they'd just shrug.
What happens when this sort of occurence crops up with the existing record companies, and why should it be any different for Sellaband?
It would seem that the music publishers/distributors, record companies, whatever you want to call them, are shafting the artists right royally and are just throwing their toys out of the pram because they can see their gravy train ride coming to an end!
From the other end of the argument comes Sellaband who have setup a method for indepent artists to reach a wide audience of believers who can choose to buy parts in the production of a CD in advance (others have done this before off their own bat, like Marillion, and I thing Dodgy did it too!). The difference here is that a bunch of music industry savvy people have gathered together to offer a real alternative. Sellaband also only tie the artist in for the first year after the CD is created, so rights to the music is returned to the artist and they can choose to stick with Sellaband or decide to move on elsewhere.
OK, I am a Sellaband Believer myself, and I have believed in a number of the artists, most of whom I don't know. Artists from around the world, one of which, Cubworld, has made the $50K and is in the process of making his first album!
Maybe, what with budget cuts and all, we might just get a Minnie Driver
Sorry. I'll get my coat.
Er, should that be stain gauges?
Now there's a mental image I could've lived without!
I will concede that some polls showed a lean towards banning the practice (the link shows a poll with 57% for banning fox hunting). As I mentioned above, I am generally against it, and if asked to chose between not banning it or banning it I would probably have to say ban it (with a shug!), but I guess the point I am making is that a small minority of people made sufficient noise that the question be asked in the first place. Had there not been the vocal minority kicking up a fuss, how many people would have even considered the question? I'd have to say not many! The majority, I would conclude, simply don't care.
I agree with your point about opinon polls vs petitions though! The website should be redesigned so that there is automatically a petition setup to offer the alternative view point, or you can vote for or against!
Good analogy. If medical trials were undertaken for a new drug and it was found that the Drs couldn't administer it correctly, do you think the powers that be would :-
a) Issue a licence for the drug anyway, because the Drs will get the hang of it eventually
b) Send it back to the drug companies until they can provide a simpler administration system
My guess is they'd send it back to the drug company.
Sure, work to make the technology foolproof, but in the meantime don't foist a half-baked technical solution on the public just because it sounds like a good idea. The fact of the matter is that this kind of technology just isn't foolproof yet and there will be security leaks, and for that reason the tech is simply not ready to be rolled out yet!
1) The world appears to be getting warmer
Yes, I agree, it does.
2) What is causing it? :-
I see 3 options here
a) Humans
b) Something other than Humans
c) Something other than Humans AND Humans
3) Who will suffer if it all goes tits-up?
er, Humans, most definately.
4) Who should at least think about things we can do to stop it, or reverse it?
Well smart as they are, the fscking Dolphins aren't going to help are they! It would seem it's down to us then.
5) What can we do?
Well, apparently there's a lot of small scale things we can do, that don't really hurt us too much, such as trying to control our CO2 emissions. I'm not saying here that cars are the problem (I seem to recall reading that transport based CO2 emissions were responsible for 3% of the problem - however one might be able to quantify that! - and that cars were a small percentage of that, so if everyone stopped driving tomorrow it would actually have little or no effect!), but curbing our enthusiasm isn't a bad idea.
6) Carbon Footprint :-
I've heard this so much in January, and hardly at all before. Your carbon footprint is all the things you do that release CO2 into the atmosphere (I think!). Driving, flying, heating your house, etc. The fact that no one seems to mention is that it is a Pyramid Scheme, and perhaps the Final Pyramid Scheme. If you have kids, they WILL have a carbon footprint of their own, and it should be tagged onto yours, as should their kids, and their kids, etc. Everyone on the planet is a consumer, and consumers ALL generate CO2. So, the question I'd like answered is this
How fast is the collective Carbon Footprint growing, just as a factor of the population growth, and can we actually reduce our own personal Carbon Footprint enough, for ever, to counteract that growth?
I've no idea about the first part of the question, but my guess is that the answer to the second half of the question is a big, fat, CO2 belching, NO.
We should be packing our bags and preparing to go elsewhere!
When we try and make something idiot proof all that happens is that natural selection defeats us again by providing us with a bigger idiot!
Never understimate the stupidity of people in large groups!
I've often thought that there should be some "qualifying questions" on polling forms to try and show that the voters have at least had a stab at understanding the issues! I'd bet money that elections are won and lost but a large number of voters just turn up and vote the way they did last time without even looking at the issues and promises of the various parties! Perhaps a start would be to remove the affiliated party names from the polling forms so you have to know at least the name of your chosen representative!
Give me a benevolent dictatorship over the current crop of jokers anytime! If the Queen would just use her armed forces to clean house in the Government I really think we'd be better off, and it'd save us a fortune in politicians salaries and election costs too!
Can no one really see a problem here?
I've seen it advertised in various weekly motoring magazines, and on breakfast news (on the BBC), so I guess it's possibly the marketing rather than nefarious means.
That's true, but it was banned the exact same way. Think about it for a second. Who is most likely to express an opinion, the people who dislike fox hunting (actually, mostly they disliked the fox hunters!), or the people who don't care one way or the other!
It's ALWAYS the minority group who makes the most noise who gets listened too. I, personally, don't like fox hunting, but I don't think it should have been banned. All banning it did was whip up support for a dwindling pasttime! If they'd left it alone it would have died out eventually anyway, and now, because of the ham-fisted, mostly classwar lefties, fox hunting pretty much continues with added support, and to top it all, more foxes are killed by shooting, and that is often not a clean kill!
That's actually a good point and potentially worthwhile, but could this be achieved by other means because I REALLY don't want a tracking device in my car!
A short story: A friend was recently called by a bunch of blackmailers who threatened his family unless he paid them some money. He obviously called the police who whisked him and his family away to a safe house and stationed an armed response unit near his house for when he came back to recieve the next call (somewhat surprising his father-in-law!). They caught them, as it happens, but there is NO WAY IN HELL that he will allow his wife and kids to drive around in a vehicle that ANYONE could track, and therefore aid in the finding and kidnapping of his family. It just won't happen! And don't tell me that "only the authorities" will have access to the system because I've worked in IT for over 20 years and I just don't believe you!
Let alone the concept of the Gov being able to track you. I seriously don't swallow the "congestion" argument either as it must be incredibly expensive to throw this technology at the problem when a row of toll booths could do much the same, and increasing tax on petrol (move the Road Fund Licence - UK Only - onto petrol too!) will mean you pay more for a more thirsty car, or if you drive it more aggressively, or if you drive in rush hour. Not perhaps quite the granularity of satallite tracking, but way-way-way cheaper to setup!
If it's interstate then why not spend the money on a long distance rail network instead and keep the trucks for local deliveries from the rail terminii.
I was in Amsterdam for the Sellaband New Year Concert and had a bunch of change from previous European trips (mostly Spain as it 'appens). I was in a coffee shop (actually buying coffee!) and picked out ten 1 eurocent coins as part of the payment. The chap behind the counter took the change and threw it in the bin saying that people just throw them away (other customers all nodding in agreement). So, unasked, I obviously offered him a 10 eurocent coin in replacement and he wouldn't take it! Man the Dutch are nice people. I pretty much had to force him to take an extra large tip!
I just throw the suckers away now too, and they are a lot smaller than the US 1 cent coin too. It does seem silly, but perhaps in London we might get over the whole change issue when the Oyster card stuff is rolled to shops and cafes for transactions under 10 UKP.
That is indeed a good point, and well made. I think my point wasn't that we should recycle everything, regardless of cost (be it fiscal or physical), but that the concept of recycling needs to be ingrained into the psyche so before we throw something we at least think whether we can recycle it. Obviously, once that's done it's worth thinking about whether or not we should recycle it, but at the moment a lot of people haven't taken the first step.
I guess the religion of environmentalism may be attempts to bring the subject to people's attention, but you may be correct in what I percieve to be your underlying message that it's a bunch of beardy zealots, and zealots are seldom the right people to be tasked with carrying an important message!
Yes indeed. I didn't mean for ALL of us to survive, I meant for the (our) species to survive. Self sufficiency elsewhere is a long way off, but I still reckon we could be developing technologies to allow us to start thinking of possibilities.
One idea I've heard bandied about, which sounds like pure SF, is to pick a suitable asteroid, build a habitat inside, and set it sailing off into the void, presumably towards somewhere we know there is a planet. How large a colony does it have to support to be able to travel for multiple generations without suffering from genetic disorders due to in-breeding (could it carry a far larger library of genetic material to help with the problem). All sorts of questions to be asked. I think my point is that no one is even asking the questions, well, almost no one.
Sorry Ian, but this thread is old now so not many people reading it!
Depends on how long your long term is, but ultimately, we have to get off this rock if we are to survive, and we really should be thinking about it sooner rather than later! That said, it obviously makes sense not to crap on our own doorstep any more than we have to - so pick a more economical car and drive it less, swap in some eco lightbulbs, don't run your air-con so high/low, turn off electrical stuff yer not using, and recycle recycle recycle.
Indeed, it appears to be the modern day McCarthyism! The whole concept to stopping whatever your country decides are children from experimenting with each other is ludicrous! Obviously, there's a problem with predatory adults (and sad to say usually males!), but to apply those same rules to 16 year olds is crazy!
Age of Consent by country (some examples from the page) :-
UK - 16
USA - up to 18 (differs by state!)
Spain - 13
Madagascar - 21
Spain seems low to me, but I guess I am just used to the UK's 16. 18 seems high, and who'd want to grow up in Madagascar!
Maybe the issue is just when there's a large age range between the (otherwise) consenting parties? There was a case recently in the UK of a substitute teacher who the school governers discovered had a previous sex offence with a 15 year old when he was 30-something. A big to-do in the papers (Daily Mail!) about it. He lost his job - probably never worked again as a teacher, which is all well and good you might say - serves him right! Turns out, they married a year or so later and are still married now! Perhaps he really did love her?
Rules are (usually) good, but the blanket application of rules will pretty much ALWAYS come across cases where the rules should be flexible or there will be injustices.
If these childporn hackers are looking for PCs why don't the authorities setup some honey-trap PCs without firewalls etc, and catch the people who use them - spammers, pornographers, whatever! Surely that would be the sensible thing. The pornographers are seeding (potentially!) innocent people's PCs with illegal pictures to try and grey the concept of guilt, why not fight back with honey-trap PCs so the hackers have a grey area to ponder on about whether this really is a safe PC for them to take over!
Don't forget the whole road pricing fiasco, coming to roads near you real soon! The Gov. and legislated to allow Transport for London to charge tolls on major trunk routes around London, but only if they use technologies compatible with the envisaged UK-wide road pricing system - this is a heads up people, it is coming.
Know what this means? GPS transponders, or the like, in your car so the system can tell where you are, and when, and charge you accordingly. A suspicious by-product of which is being able to track you driving around!
I'm not happy about this for a number of tin-foil hat related reasons. Do I really want people to be able to track my movements? An old school friend of mine had an unpleasant experience a couple of years back where someone called him and asked for several thousand pounds or they'd come round to his house and kill his family. This obviously doesn't happen a lot, but it does happen (the Police caught them as it happens - must've had a day off from catching speeding motorists!), and the idea that it is possible to track where his wife and kids are at any time is something he is not so keen on. If the Gov can do it, you can bet the better connected miscreants will be able to get access.
Perfect for burglars - OK, both cars are away from home and heading away. Please call me when they start to head home, I'm off to work!
Just Say No!
In a nutshell, that's exactly what I object too. Stupid regulations that makes our life (ie the normal ordinary people going about our business) more difficult and has no affect whatsoever on anyone who might be up to no good. It does nothing to help, security-wise, but it costs more in personel and in everyone's time.
Surely better to do something useful with that effort?
I just flew back from Amsterdam (at the Sellaband New Year's Party as you're asking) and there's new regulations in the EU where you have to put all lotions etc into a small (1 litre) clear plastic bag. One bag per person, and it has to be re-sealable.
No one looked at it. I got selected for the low level X-ray (and I'm not sure about that!), as did my wife, but seperately, so I ended up with both clear bags of lotions, which was apparently fine, even though there was so much stuff neither of them were closable.
This lotions stuff all comes from some apparent plot to blow up a plane with the contents of a milk bottle (or something). Just a knee-jerk reaction. All the hassle with the plastic bags doesn't really help the security situation, it's just more work for the airport people and more hassle for us.
If the great unwashed public didn't seem to fall for it, it'd be laughable, as it is, it's just sad!
This could be the solution to all our current problems. Just imagine, all the neanderthal chavvy thugs smash a window on camera, post the video to youTube and fuck off to Canada. I'm not sure where the downside is for the UK, as replacing a bunch of windows when they're kids has got to be cheaper than cleaning up after them when they're adults!