There was an interesting experiment on TV a few weeks ago where they took a group of 5 year olds to 2 parties on 2 different days. They told the parents that at one of the parties they would be feeding the children all the sugary junk food they could get there hands on and at the other party they would feed them healthily on vegetables, nuts and healthy stuff. The other thing was that at the healthy food party there were lots of active, boisterous party games whereas the junk food one was more subdued.
All the parents had to do was guess which party their child had eaten what at. All of them got it wrong because in fact the type of interactions with the other children were much much more of a factor than the food they ate.
They really did eat a ton of sugar at the unhealthy party too, literally a heaped dinner plates worth each.
I think you're being overly glib about the sad plight of the monetarily disadvantged in our society.
First of all they clearly deserve to be fed pizza and require more investment in power stations to power their sauna like heating requirements and cable TV because they are on the lowest rung of society and through social disadvantage and societal prejudice and no fault of their own are they unable to pay for these things by themselves.
But why should they also be denied the chance to voyage through space ? We shouldn't deny them this right as well and should do all we can to build them a fleet of spaceships worthy of their god given rights. If necessary we should all work 100 hour weeks and sink all our investments and wages in building them this escape route from the torment they suffer at our hands.
It would probably be a good idea first of all to upgrade their televisions so they can keep on eye on us and check we're not slacking off from our labour. From their armchairs they can provide feedback and add extra requirements to their spacefleet so we do not accidentally miss anything which might bring further disenfranchisement, misery or lack of comfort. OK it may mean we all have to work a little harder but we should realise this is no more than we deserve.
Once the fleet of rockets has been built we can load all the poor into them and blast them off into space. So long as we can beam up Trisha, Eastenders and other staple programs of the disadvantaged generation they might not even realise we have loaded in a course to the dark side of the sun.
Sure, a violation of privacy you must cry, but if you have nothing hurting kids, the future of the world, then there's no reason to worry as that is all that Omni-Potent protects Absolutely I think its right to complain about what he was doing and how he was doing it, this is someone who has hacked into the computers of over 3000 people and read all the e-mail and private journals he can get his hands on.
That is a massive invasion of privacy for the 2000 or so innocent people who have nothing to do with kiddy fiddling. If looking at pictures of children is a crime then someone getting off on reading my private thoughts and sitting in judgement on them is definitely also a crime.
I'm not denying that he has caught some genuine paedophiles but thats not the point, I could end all paedophilia right now by killing everyone over the age of 18 and so could the police but the reason I and the police don't do this is that you need to consider the rights of other people in society and one of those rights is to not have 19 year old weirdos sitting in the dark getting off on reading your e-mails.
I couldn't agree more, I only rob banks which I'm fairly sure are using illegal accounting practices and I only rob old ladies houses where I'm sure they're harbouring some dirty secret.
Fair enough I'm also doing it for my own enjoyment but if at the end of day I rob 3000 old ladies and happen to find one who can be prosecuted for the crimes I've uncovered than I agree thats absolutely fair enough.
By the sounds of it he doesn't have much life to be ruined in the first place.
This mans snooping through the personal lives of 3000 people seems to me a far greater crime than a little kiddy fiddling and the fact that he is stupid enough to go to the Police with the results of his illegal, voyeuristic "investigations" just illustrates the sort of fantasy world he is obviously inhabiting. This man needs to be locked up, for his own good as well as the good of the people he is "investigating".
Far from being a hero I think this is one very sad individual who is very clearly breaking the law and motivated primarily by a desire to spy on people.
He should be locked up for whats done already and to put a stop to his creepy voyueristic behaviour once and for all.
Probably lots but the question is are the people who hold those patents the same people who Microsoft will go after if they follow through on these threats or will these patent holders see any benefit in joining in to defend Linux in general.
In answer to the first point it's very unlikely Microsoft would be going after anyone whos going to turn around and say "Indeed we might infringe on a couple of your patents but how about we knock the royalties for those off royalties from the 500 Million patents we own which you infringe on ?".
With the second point I guess MS would have to be careful only to go after companies which aren't likely to be helped out by the one or two huge patent holders lurking in the background.
If I was IBM I'd start up an insurance company right about now where anyone who thinks they might be in Microsofts sights can pay a small monthly fee for protection but ultimately this just underscores the damage patents can do and illustrates very clearly why other countries should not follow the US lead in adopting them.
Microsoft is a multinational company, they could sue anyone anywhere. Well they could try but in countries which don't have software patents they're not likely to get very far.
The map is almost always the most interesting thing on those devices. I'd really like them to have external cameras linked up to it as well, I've seen the option for this on some systems but it never seems to be working.
So far as I can see this is just a wish list written by American media companies, it would be very surprising indeed to see them putting anything in this report which doesn't have a direct influence on maximising their profits and protecting their market.
The problem arises if the US government, as the article suggests, simply uses this document as a blueprint when passing legislation or when making trade agreements with other countries.
I would again expect the US government to attempt to gouge the best deals for it's own industries in the international community but unlike private companies I would also expect that the US as a democratically controlled country would also take into account more factors than simply their financial bottom line, but if this what the people want then the US is in an excellent position to force there opinions on the rest of the world.
It's clear that what is suggested for other countries is also desired, and presumably being worked towards, in the US its self so I think it is in the interests of the US citizens to stand up and prevent the undiluted dreams of their entertainment industry to be dictated to the rest of the world because once the rest of world falls into line with their dreams then it will be harder for the US citizens to resist these changes being rolled back into their own country.
Ideally the rest of the world needs to stop allowing the US to dictate their commercial policies and decide these things for themselves without being threatened by the US.
Maybe the simplest view then would be that a person who has an ID card just... has an ID card. Which allows them to identify themselves if needed. I'm fine with the idea of an opt in ID card which people can have if they choose to provided that I don't have to pay for it.
In practice this wont happen because I don't see that many people will want them so it will cost a lot more per card to pay for the scheme. You would have to allow for identification by both the ID cards and other methods which would again be more expensive and finally a lot of the supposed benefits of the ID scheme are negated if not everyone has to use one.
In fact I think the proposed scheme wont become compulsory for 10 years or so after its started which will again rack up the costs as everyone implements dual ID systems.
A scheme which did just that set up by the banks would probably be useful to some people.
Personally I don't open bank accounts or take out mortagages every day so I'm not constantly having to carry massess of ID around with me and I quite like the fact that on the few occasions I do need to do this the authentication lies with a few separate documents since this makes it easier for me to prove who I am and harder for anyone else to impersonate me.
What I don't see the need for is to create a huge database, link the card into absolutely every facet of government and force me to buy it.
I think what he means is that the actual card will contain less information than a Tesco store card. The databases it will connect to will contain vastly more.
Not exactly a very honest statement from Mr Blair but then what would you expect by now ?
He certainly has done a lot for the country it's just a shame that none of its been for the good.
I don't remember the UK being in a mess at the end of the Conservative government, I thought the economy was very healthy at that point. Since then New Labour seem to have been implementing basically Tory policies it's just that have no real commitment to Tory principles and so end up with a lot of half finished badly thought out disasters.
1) Yes, you can choose whether you get a driving licence another acceptable form of photo id or a passport. If you only intent to travel in Europe you need only pay for a driving licence and not a full passport. The choice is yours.
2) First of all you cannot opt out of having an ID card so you will have to pay whatever the government choose to charge you. Currently this is around £30 which is somewhere around 45 Euros I think but this is only a ballpark figure and is likely to rise and not fall.
In addition to the forced cost of £30 to buy the card the databases and other, massive, infrastructure to support the ID card system will cost enourmous amounts of money which wont be covered by the cost of the card so we will be paying for them from general taxation which would otherwise be spent on other things; perhaps more policemen, turning the home office into an effective organisation etc.
3) There are disparate huge databases in use now by various departments of the government. Each department has a database specific to it's remit e.g. the NHS has all our health details, the DVLA contains details about our driving licences. What the ID scheme is proposing is to replace all of these with one massive database encompassing everything and accessible by every part of the government and sold to private companies.
The problems with this is that first of all it's going to be extremely expensive, every government department will need to change the way it works to use this new system ( and as yet not one of them has any idea how much this would cost them ).
The second problem is that someone in Swansea who is supposed to be dealing with driving licences could be browsing through my health records or even changing them.
The third problem is that theres nothing actually wrong with maintaining seperate databases as is the case now. Being as the government seems currently unable to make these databases talk to each other you'd have to question there ability to create a gigantic one successfully especially if you look at how badly the NHS Patient Records project is going.
4) ID cards will not help immigration because immigrants currently already have to have a biometric ID card and the Home Office still does not have any idea where thousands of immigrants who have outstayed their visas actually are. Despite them having ID cards.
ID cards will not help with crime since banks and shops are highly unlikely to drop their own cards and use the government ID card it will make no difference to credit card fraud.
Identity theft is bound to still be possible even with ID cards and once a criminal has stolen your identity it will be very hard for you to get it back again.
ID cards will not help with terrorism since the last terrorists here were all living here quite legally anyway and no-one knew they were terrorists and most other terrorists in the world have always had valid ID on them when they have committed their terrorist atrocities.
In any case it's up to Blair to prove that it will make a big difference in all of these areas and when questioned previously he and his ministers have agreed that it will not solve all the problems with any of the above topics and in fact in most cases the situation will be no better than before.
5) I certainly hope ID cards don't cause an economic collapse but thats not my main concern. My main concern is that this is a massively expensive white elephant which will not provide enough benefits to justify it's cost. This my money which would much better spent elsewhere and I'd like it to be spent elsewhere and not on nonsense like this.
Yes there are lots of problems with biometric ID cards but my concerns are mostly about the government spending massive amounts of my money on something with no obvious benefits.
I don't think the terrorists will even need to go to these lengths. Since the last lot have been UK citizens and actually living here in the first place whether they had an ID card or not is totally irrelevant unless the government knows when they check the card that the person is actually a terrorist.
I suspect the governments main method of deciding of whether people are terrorists or not is based on whether they've blown themselves up in a suicide bombing lately but even if its more sophisticated than that its not going to make a blind bit of difference.
Mr Evil Terrorist has never been in the UK before but leaves his lair in Birmingham, Alabama and flies over intent on blowing up the prominent anti creationist Dr Richard Dawkins in a giant suicide fireball. He arrives at UK immigration, they say
"Hello sir, you'd like to emmigrate from your home in Borneo to the UK would you and you say your name is Mr Friendly Creationist ? Well fine, here's your ID card for the time you're in the country. Have a nice day now."
I would also like to discuss some of the claims about costs - particularly the way the cost of an ID card is often inflated by including in estimates the cost of a biometric passport which, it seems certain, all those who want to travel abroad will soon need. This is bollocks, first of all there is no requirement from any country in the world for the kind of biometric information they are proposing putting on these ID cards and it would be a lot easier to change the current passports to include what they actually need to include without building this whole ID scheme around it.
On the face of it I agree with you however there are numerous problems with the scheme as proposed which are why I don't support it.
1) You don't currently have to have a passport and I believe you can travel in the EU without one. 2) You will be forced to have an ID card which you will need to pay for yourself and pay for its renewal every 10 years or so 3) A huge database will be created linked to the ID cards which will be accessible to every branch of government and even private companies such as banks etc. The government refuse to say what kind of information will be in this database but it will be extensive 4) ID cards cannot be shown to help in the fight against a) immigration, b) terrorism, c) crime, d) benefit fraud 5) All of this will be very very expensive, a nuisance to deal with and useless in most practical terms.
If Tony Blair hadn't spent most of the rest of his time in office lying through his teeth I might be inclined to believe him now but from what I've seen so far I've come the conclusion that he is a pathological liar and willing to say absolutely anything to anyone provided he thinks it will help him get his own way.
I really wonder why they have set up this on-line petition in the first place when it's clear already that it's not going to make a blind bit of notice to any policies this government actually, attempt, to enact.
Cynically I might think they are simply using the system to target the most active people opposed to their schemes so they can deluge them with tailored propoganda and try to change their minds and that having a petition on-line will reduce the impact and exposure of having people come to Downing street to deliver their petitions.
Considering the government ignored everyone who said anything against their ID card scheme during the "consultation" phase including the thousands of responses sent through Fax Your MP it's hardly surprising their still ignoring public opinion on the matter now. I'm fairly sure they will be voted out of power before they implement the scheme and that it will then be scrapped by the Tories but you never can tell quite how many muppets will come out to vote these cretins back into power:-(
Should it ever go ahead it's going to be a disaster from day one, there is no way the government can manage a project like this without screwing it up totally and thats what will happen but it will take a lot of tax money before it finally dies.
The other petition doing quite well was the one against road charging which the government is also totally ignoring. I would say that 95% of the population are totally against this scheme and yet the government, in response to the petition, says that we just need to be better educated and they need to sell the scheme more effectively !
I basically agree with you, the fact is we have no data at all on how common intelligent life is and we really wont until we actually meet some other than ourselves.
I think life in the Universe is a practical certainty but if you look at the life which does exist and has existed over the how ever many years its been on Earth and then think of the only strain of life which has any chance at all of building spaceships and undertaking general exploration it looks like that kind of life isn't going to be all that common although this is obviously a massive extrapolation from the particular circumstances that have arisen on this one planet.
We agree that so far as the Earth is concerned we are the only intelligent species on the planet but it seems to me that that kind of intelligence isn't particulary a general evolutionary end point given the number of species which have been around a lot longer than us and are perfectly capable of living in their own environment but don't know how to use a screwdriver.
I read last week that from the obeservations that the lakes are changing in volume the thinking is that they are connected by an extensive river system under the ice. I don't think it says but I would imagine that this may affect the plans to explore Lake Vostock, which has previously been thought to be a completely self contained eco-system but which may now be connected to a larger eco system if rivers do indeed flow into or out of it.
I wander if these rivers do ever emerge from under the ice, you'd have thought they would still flow downhill and therefore end up at the coast sooner or later.
Exploring these lakes and rivers systems would be an amazing experience, it's probably totally unfeasible to explore them with SCUBA equipment and also probably still very dangerous to explore them in submarines but I'd definitely like to see it done.
I agree, everything in its place and all that. We've already had 1 topic about global warming today and with this potentially interesting topic the mention of GW in the write up is just uncessary and likely to derail any interesting discussion about these lakes into the usual GW flame fest which is a shame.
Slashdot Mirror
There was an interesting experiment on TV a few weeks ago where they took a group of 5 year olds to 2 parties on 2 different days. They told the parents that at one of the parties they would be feeding the children all the sugary junk food they could get there hands on and at the other party they would feed them healthily on vegetables, nuts and healthy stuff. The other thing was that at the healthy food party there were lots of active, boisterous party games whereas the junk food one was more subdued.
All the parents had to do was guess which party their child had eaten what at. All of them got it wrong because in fact the type of interactions with the other children were much much more of a factor than the food they ate.
They really did eat a ton of sugar at the unhealthy party too, literally a heaped dinner plates worth each.
Sanitation
A good idea, we could also put him to work on the 440,000 people the police want to phone tap.
I think you're being overly glib about the sad plight of the monetarily disadvantged in our society.
First of all they clearly deserve to be fed pizza and require more investment in power stations to power their sauna like heating requirements and cable TV because they are on the lowest rung of society and through social disadvantage and societal prejudice and no fault of their own are they unable to pay for these things by themselves.
But why should they also be denied the chance to voyage through space ? We shouldn't deny them this right as well and should do all we can to build them a fleet of spaceships worthy of their god given rights. If necessary we should all work 100 hour weeks and sink all our investments and wages in building them this escape route from the torment they suffer at our hands.
It would probably be a good idea first of all to upgrade their televisions so they can keep on eye on us and check we're not slacking off from our labour. From their armchairs they can provide feedback and add extra requirements to their spacefleet so we do not accidentally miss anything which might bring further disenfranchisement, misery or lack of comfort. OK it may mean we all have to work a little harder but we should realise this is no more than we deserve.
Once the fleet of rockets has been built we can load all the poor into them and blast them off into space. So long as we can beam up Trisha, Eastenders and other staple programs of the disadvantaged generation they might not even realise we have loaded in a course to the dark side of the sun.
I think this would solve a lot of problems.
That is a massive invasion of privacy for the 2000 or so innocent people who have nothing to do with kiddy fiddling. If looking at pictures of children is a crime then someone getting off on reading my private thoughts and sitting in judgement on them is definitely also a crime.
I'm not denying that he has caught some genuine paedophiles but thats not the point, I could end all paedophilia right now by killing everyone over the age of 18 and so could the police but the reason I and the police don't do this is that you need to consider the rights of other people in society and one of those rights is to not have 19 year old weirdos sitting in the dark getting off on reading your e-mails.
I couldn't agree more, I only rob banks which I'm fairly sure are using illegal accounting practices and I only rob old ladies houses where I'm sure they're harbouring some dirty secret.
Fair enough I'm also doing it for my own enjoyment but if at the end of day I rob 3000 old ladies and happen to find one who can be prosecuted for the crimes I've uncovered than I agree thats absolutely fair enough.
By the sounds of it he doesn't have much life to be ruined in the first place.
This mans snooping through the personal lives of 3000 people seems to me a far greater crime than a little kiddy fiddling and the fact that he is stupid enough to go to the Police with the results of his illegal, voyeuristic "investigations" just illustrates the sort of fantasy world he is obviously inhabiting. This man needs to be locked up, for his own good as well as the good of the people he is "investigating".
Far from being a hero I think this is one very sad individual who is very clearly breaking the law and motivated primarily by a desire to spy on people.
He should be locked up for whats done already and to put a stop to his creepy voyueristic behaviour once and for all.
Probably lots but the question is are the people who hold those patents the same people who Microsoft will go after if they follow through on these threats or will these patent holders see any benefit in joining in to defend Linux in general.
In answer to the first point it's very unlikely Microsoft would be going after anyone whos going to turn around and say "Indeed we might infringe on a couple of your patents but how about we knock the royalties for those off royalties from the 500 Million patents we own which you infringe on ?".
With the second point I guess MS would have to be careful only to go after companies which aren't likely to be helped out by the one or two huge patent holders lurking in the background.
If I was IBM I'd start up an insurance company right about now where anyone who thinks they might be in Microsofts sights can pay a small monthly fee for protection but ultimately this just underscores the damage patents can do and illustrates very clearly why other countries should not follow the US lead in adopting them.
The map is almost always the most interesting thing on those devices. I'd really like them to have external cameras linked up to it as well, I've seen the option for this on some systems but it never seems to be working.
So far as I can see this is just a wish list written by American media companies, it would be very surprising indeed to see them putting anything in this report which doesn't have a direct influence on maximising their profits and protecting their market.
The problem arises if the US government, as the article suggests, simply uses this document as a blueprint when passing legislation or when making trade agreements with other countries.
I would again expect the US government to attempt to gouge the best deals for it's own industries in the international community but unlike private companies I would also expect that the US as a democratically controlled country would also take into account more factors than simply their financial bottom line, but if this what the people want then the US is in an excellent position to force there opinions on the rest of the world.
It's clear that what is suggested for other countries is also desired, and presumably being worked towards, in the US its self so I think it is in the interests of the US citizens to stand up and prevent the undiluted dreams of their entertainment industry to be dictated to the rest of the world because once the rest of world falls into line with their dreams then it will be harder for the US citizens to resist these changes being rolled back into their own country.
Ideally the rest of the world needs to stop allowing the US to dictate their commercial policies and decide these things for themselves without being threatened by the US.
In practice this wont happen because I don't see that many people will want them so it will cost a lot more per card to pay for the scheme. You would have to allow for identification by both the ID cards and other methods which would again be more expensive and finally a lot of the supposed benefits of the ID scheme are negated if not everyone has to use one.
In fact I think the proposed scheme wont become compulsory for 10 years or so after its started which will again rack up the costs as everyone implements dual ID systems.
A scheme which did just that set up by the banks would probably be useful to some people.
Personally I don't open bank accounts or take out mortagages every day so I'm not constantly having to carry massess of ID around with me and I quite like the fact that on the few occasions I do need to do this the authentication lies with a few separate documents since this makes it easier for me to prove who I am and harder for anyone else to impersonate me.
What I don't see the need for is to create a huge database, link the card into absolutely every facet of government and force me to buy it.
I think what he means is that the actual card will contain less information than a Tesco store card. The databases it will connect to will contain vastly more.
Not exactly a very honest statement from Mr Blair but then what would you expect by now ?
He certainly has done a lot for the country it's just a shame that none of its been for the good.
I don't remember the UK being in a mess at the end of the Conservative government, I thought the economy was very healthy at that point. Since then New Labour seem to have been implementing basically Tory policies it's just that have no real commitment to Tory principles and so end up with a lot of half finished badly thought out disasters.
1) Yes, you can choose whether you get a driving licence another acceptable form of photo id or a passport. If you only intent to travel in Europe you need only pay for a driving licence and not a full passport. The choice is yours.
2) First of all you cannot opt out of having an ID card so you will have to pay whatever the government choose to charge you. Currently this is around £30 which is somewhere around 45 Euros I think but this is only a ballpark figure and is likely to rise and not fall.
In addition to the forced cost of £30 to buy the card the databases and other, massive, infrastructure to support the ID card system will cost enourmous amounts of money which wont be covered by the cost of the card so we will be paying for them from general taxation which would otherwise be spent on other things; perhaps more policemen, turning the home office into an effective organisation etc.
3) There are disparate huge databases in use now by various departments of the government. Each department has a database specific to it's remit e.g. the NHS has all our health details, the DVLA contains details about our driving licences. What the ID scheme is proposing is to replace all of these with one massive database encompassing everything and accessible by every part of the government and sold to private companies.
The problems with this is that first of all it's going to be extremely expensive, every government department will need to change the way it works to use this new system ( and as yet not one of them has any idea how much this would cost them ).
The second problem is that someone in Swansea who is supposed to be dealing with driving licences could be browsing through my health records or even changing them.
The third problem is that theres nothing actually wrong with maintaining seperate databases as is the case now. Being as the government seems currently unable to make these databases talk to each other you'd have to question there ability to create a gigantic one successfully especially if you look at how badly the NHS Patient Records project is going.
4) ID cards will not help immigration because immigrants currently already have to have a biometric ID card and the Home Office still does not have any idea where thousands of immigrants who have outstayed their visas actually are. Despite them having ID cards.
ID cards will not help with crime since banks and shops are highly unlikely to drop their own cards and use the government ID card it will make no difference to credit card fraud.
Identity theft is bound to still be possible even with ID cards and once a criminal has stolen your identity it will be very hard for you to get it back again.
ID cards will not help with terrorism since the last terrorists here were all living here quite legally anyway and no-one knew they were terrorists and most other terrorists in the world have always had valid ID on them when they have committed their terrorist atrocities.
In any case it's up to Blair to prove that it will make a big difference in all of these areas and when questioned previously he and his ministers have agreed that it will not solve all the problems with any of the above topics and in fact in most cases the situation will be no better than before.
5) I certainly hope ID cards don't cause an economic collapse but thats not my main concern. My main concern is that this is a massively expensive white elephant which will not provide enough benefits to justify it's cost. This my money which would much better spent elsewhere and I'd like it to be spent elsewhere and not on nonsense like this.
Yes there are lots of problems with biometric ID cards but my concerns are mostly about the government spending massive amounts of my money on something with no obvious benefits.
I don't think the terrorists will even need to go to these lengths. Since the last lot have been UK citizens and actually living here in the first place whether they had an ID card or not is totally irrelevant unless the government knows when they check the card that the person is actually a terrorist.
I suspect the governments main method of deciding of whether people are terrorists or not is based on whether they've blown themselves up in a suicide bombing lately but even if its more sophisticated than that its not going to make a blind bit of difference.
Mr Evil Terrorist has never been in the UK before but leaves his lair in Birmingham, Alabama and flies over intent on blowing up the prominent anti creationist Dr Richard Dawkins in a giant suicide fireball. He arrives at UK immigration, they say
"Hello sir, you'd like to emmigrate from your home in Borneo to the UK would you and you say your name is Mr Friendly Creationist ? Well fine, here's your ID card for the time you're in the country. Have a nice day now."
On the face of it I agree with you however there are numerous problems with the scheme as proposed which are why I don't support it.
1) You don't currently have to have a passport and I believe you can travel in the EU without one.
2) You will be forced to have an ID card which you will need to pay for yourself and pay for its renewal every 10 years or so
3) A huge database will be created linked to the ID cards which will be accessible to every branch of government and even private companies such as banks etc. The government refuse to say what kind of information will be in this database but it will be extensive
4) ID cards cannot be shown to help in the fight against a) immigration, b) terrorism, c) crime, d) benefit fraud
5) All of this will be very very expensive, a nuisance to deal with and useless in most practical terms.
If Tony Blair hadn't spent most of the rest of his time in office lying through his teeth I might be inclined to believe him now but from what I've seen so far I've come the conclusion that he is a pathological liar and willing to say absolutely anything to anyone provided he thinks it will help him get his own way.
I really wonder why they have set up this on-line petition in the first place when it's clear already that it's not going to make a blind bit of notice to any policies this government actually, attempt, to enact.
:-(
Cynically I might think they are simply using the system to target the most active people opposed to their schemes so they can deluge them with tailored propoganda and try to change their minds and that having a petition on-line will reduce the impact and exposure of having people come to Downing street to deliver their petitions.
Considering the government ignored everyone who said anything against their ID card scheme during the "consultation" phase including the thousands of responses sent through Fax Your MP it's hardly surprising their still ignoring public opinion on the matter now. I'm fairly sure they will be voted out of power before they implement the scheme and that it will then be scrapped by the Tories but you never can tell quite how many muppets will come out to vote these cretins back into power
Should it ever go ahead it's going to be a disaster from day one, there is no way the government can manage a project like this without screwing it up totally and thats what will happen but it will take a lot of tax money before it finally dies.
The other petition doing quite well was the one against road charging which the government is also totally ignoring. I would say that 95% of the population are totally against this scheme and yet the government, in response to the petition, says that we just need to be better educated and they need to sell the scheme more effectively !
I basically agree with you, the fact is we have no data at all on how common intelligent life is and we really wont until we actually meet some other than ourselves.
I think life in the Universe is a practical certainty but if you look at the life which does exist and has existed over the how ever many years its been on Earth and then think of the only strain of life which has any chance at all of building spaceships and undertaking general exploration it looks like that kind of life isn't going to be all that common although this is obviously a massive extrapolation from the particular circumstances that have arisen on this one planet.
We agree that so far as the Earth is concerned we are the only intelligent species on the planet but it seems to me that that kind of intelligence isn't particulary a general evolutionary end point given the number of species which have been around a lot longer than us and are perfectly capable of living in their own environment but don't know how to use a screwdriver.
I read last week that from the obeservations that the lakes are changing in volume the thinking is that they are connected by an extensive river system under the ice. I don't think it says but I would imagine that this may affect the plans to explore Lake Vostock, which has previously been thought to be a completely self contained eco-system but which may now be connected to a larger eco system if rivers do indeed flow into or out of it.
I wander if these rivers do ever emerge from under the ice, you'd have thought they would still flow downhill and therefore end up at the coast sooner or later.
Exploring these lakes and rivers systems would be an amazing experience, it's probably totally unfeasible to explore them with SCUBA equipment and also probably still very dangerous to explore them in submarines but I'd definitely like to see it done.
I agree, everything in its place and all that. We've already had 1 topic about global warming today and with this potentially interesting topic the mention of GW in the write up is just uncessary and likely to derail any interesting discussion about these lakes into the usual GW flame fest which is a shame.