"But Pete, the industries own figures show an increase in Single sales since the people began to use P2P networks, surely that shows you they are having a positive effect on your market ?"
Pete replied:
"No, well yes they are increasing but that is probably just a blip, nothing to do with filesharing. Filesharing is illegal and it's wrong and you shouldn't do it and that's what we all need to remember here."
According to Pete Waterman ( Stock, Aitken & Waterman ) it doesn't matter that UK single sales are actually rising, this is just a blip / does not alter the fact that filesharing thieves are damaging the industry. Well actually not the industry because that is doing OK but it is damaging the poorer artists who are now going to get even poorer.
Filesharing, he says, is illegal. Just like recording songs from the radio is illegal but the bottom line so far as he is concerned is that people are listening to music and he's not getting paid for it. I really don't like Pete Waterman.
I don't think anyones arguing whether Saddam ever had WMD at any point in his long career, we know that he did. The question is whether he had any at the time we decided to invade Iraq and take over.
I think the Iraq survey group who's job it is to find all these alledged WMD that he had says it best.
They say that he had no WMD but would probably like to have acquired some if he could. Who knows why, maybe he was worried his country was likely to be invaded by a massively superior military force in the near future and would have liked to protect himself a bit.
He used all that Poison Gas he bought off the USA and other similar countries, unfortunately he has since had trouble proving he used it all or destroyed the rest in some less lethal fashion.
I would imagine that migrating the servers would be pretty straightforward, after all the admins etc should know enough about their network structure etc to pick up very easily how all the parts function just on a different platform.
However having spent a number of years talking to these kind of administrators I get the impression that very few of them know anything about how their network actually works beyond the realisation that clicking buttons in various dialog boxes changes things. It took our Network and Firewall team 18months to successfully route NTP requests from a server on a nearby network to a suitable time server, for 16 of those 18months they thought that their firewalls would make no difference despite it being pointed out to them the server was effectively outside of their firewall in another network which did connect to theirs and that everything else they had set up on that network couldn't get through their firewall without authentication so why should NTP stuff be any different ?
Ok, damn you got me there they have found 1 single shell which may have contained Sarin gas. I guess that clinches it.
Back in reality however this is one single shell, we know Saddam has had these kinds of weapons in the past and this is probably just one which has got lost somewhere and recently found.
This is not credible proof that Sadddam had WMD or a WMD program when he was invaded. In order to show that you'd need to have warehouses full of these kind of shells, factories and laboratories, supply chains etc. In short some form of infrastructure geared towards creating and maintaing these WMD's.
As yet nothing like this has been found, most rational people have concluded this is most likely because it never existed.
It doesn't appear to contain much alcohol either. I went to New York for a week or so a couple of years ago with a mate and I think we must have visited 99% of the bars around Times Square and the place we were staying at, somewhere near Lexington I think.
We were just ordering regular beers ( lagers in British terms ) and found we could drink 4 or 5 times as much as we normally could back home before reaching a similar level of inebriation. We concluded it must be because the alcohol level is much lower in the US ( New York at least ) than the 4-5.5% standard in the U.K. for most general beers.
Whether that is a good or a bad thing I am not sure !
I agree with a lot of your reasoning but I don't agree with your conclusion.
It is very important for all businesses and especially large businesses on whom a lot of people rely for various services to have effective disaster recovery plans, planning for a major data centre being destroyed is a responsible course of action. However the kind of data which is under discussion here is exactly the kind of data companies need to effectively plan just this kind of recovery and so restricting it will reduce the effectiveness of this kind of planning.
It does appear, on the face of it, that what the government is trying to prevent here is just the kind of "absurd threat" you talk about in your post. It's not clear in any concrete terms exactly how this will prevent any kind of terrorism other than some notion that the less terrorists know the less harm they can do. To apply this thinking to possible steps which could have been taken before 9/11 would include not revealing the location of the World Trade Centre to the world and imposing restrictions on anyone informing anyone else of where it was and restricting anything other than military flights in mainland USA.
The reason these plans were probably never considered either now or then is because of the detrimental effect this would have on American business and on it's people so it's entirely fair to say that when thinking of new legislation to help prevent terrorism the needs and requirements of the public must also be taken into account.
In this particular case, where no clear terrorist threat has been identified which could make use of this information and where the information clearly benefits emergency planners you have to wonder why it is being considered.
The answer would appear to be because the telecommunications companies would prefer they had complete control themselves as to when, if or how this - by definition - detrimental information about the service they provide is disseminated. They have gained a good win for themselves under the guise of helping the war on terrorism.
It would help everyone if terrorists were dealt with effectively through well thought out sensible plans and legislation and it helps no one ( except the terrorists ) when dealing with terrorists is used as an excuse for other agendas and the key problem is never actually addressed.
Number 1 is clearly the most dangerous threat here, terrorists have overran the US ( and the rest of the world ) and are carrying out numerous acts of terrorism on a daily basis. That's why there is this war against them.
If the "war on terrorism" is now being won then the worst should nearly be over.
If that's the case then whilst the terrorists would certainly have been very busy over the last few years using this information to plan their numerous attacks in the US now that the attacks are beginning to decrease as the situation comes under control it should be getting safer and so this kind of legislation is not needed.
Obviously it depends how common the attacks are already, it would be interesting to see for instance how many attacks per day the telecoms network is currently experiencing thanks to this information being available.
By the sounds of it this 'anti matter' is a useless method of providing power, is fantastically expensive, is extremely hard to control and useful only in the development of more powerful weapons which could be extremely small and easy to hard.
I'm all for investigating stuff but I think there does come a point where we should do it in terms other than devising better ways to kill people.
When you are in charge of a country and those agencies you are now claiming are the culprits for providing you with "False Information" ( referred to a either lies or mistakes in common English ) then there is no difference.
History has proved that when Blair said there were WMD ready to go in 45 mins that this was not the case. He was misrepresenting the truth, lying.
"Oh wait, they DID find banned weapons which Iraq was destroying (or not since they apparently had SOME that were ready to fire at us when the invasion began)"
This makes no sense, if they found weapons which Iraq was in the process of destroying then that is what Iraq was supposed to be doing and there would be no problem.
I didn't see any reports of any WMD being used when the invasion began or at any point after that ?
"They were more than likely hiding something; be it plans for a renewed weapons programs in chemical, biological or nuclear weapons or leftover samples for use in those revived programs. I don't think anyone truely believed that Iraq was clean. We found out later that they weren't.
No one justified this war on the basis that Saddam was "more than likely" to have WMD becuase no one would have agreed to a war on those terms. Evidence and proof are the basis for making decisions not supposition and Mr Blair claimed he had that evidence and that proof when in fact he didn't.
No trace of any WMD weapons or programs have since been discovered in Iraq so saying that "We found out later they weren't [clean]" is simply wrong since we have found out no such thing.
Politicians are always very cautious about calling each other liars because they are all too aware of their own positions in regard to the truth to risk it.
It depends on which European country they are compared to, some things are done better in some countries where it is better than in the UK and some things are done worse in other countries where the UK system does work better.
This is kind of my point really, there are differences throughout Europe in the way countries are goverened and those differences have come about through the collective preferences of the people living in those countries. Whilst we should certainly learn from each other we shouldn't impose a common government which tries to run everything in a uniform manner where local conditions may dictate a different approach.
I would say that that is a virtual certainty given the number of highly armed factions who control their own armies of dedicated followers.
The Americans aren't going to be there for ever and everyone who wants to rule Iraq must surely realise that and think to themselves:
"Let's see if we can get elected properly and if not let us just gather together our supporters and take power, in the meantime lets not let the Police become such an effective force they could ever stop us."
This will certainly lead to a power struggle of some sort and with every chance that whoever comes out on top will be every bit as hostile to the US as Saddam ever was.
Slashdot Mirror
If he didn't agree to having the car inspected then it would have looked highly suspicious.
Luckily now he is concentrating on things like Pop Idol which is much better, whoops no that's just as bad. Annoying man.
It is, it's hilarious ! Consistently and unfailingly. That Georgie Bush, and we laughed !
This was from Channel 4 news, Krishnan said:
"But Pete, the industries own figures show an increase in Single sales since the people began to use P2P networks, surely that shows you they are having a positive effect on your market ?"
Pete replied:
"No, well yes they are increasing but that is probably just a blip, nothing to do with filesharing. Filesharing is illegal and it's wrong and you shouldn't do it and that's what we all need to remember here."
According to Pete Waterman ( Stock, Aitken & Waterman ) it doesn't matter that UK single sales are actually rising, this is just a blip / does not alter the fact that filesharing thieves are damaging the industry. Well actually not the industry because that is doing OK but it is damaging the poorer artists who are now going to get even poorer.
Filesharing, he says, is illegal. Just like recording songs from the radio is illegal but the bottom line so far as he is concerned is that people are listening to music and he's not getting paid for it. I really don't like Pete Waterman.
Here in the UK the cold is on the right and the hot is on the left ( standing facing the taps ).
I don't think anyones arguing whether Saddam ever had WMD at any point in his long career, we know that he did. The question is whether he had any at the time we decided to invade Iraq and take over.
I think the Iraq survey group who's job it is to find all these alledged WMD that he had says it best.
They say that he had no WMD but would probably like to have acquired some if he could. Who knows why, maybe he was worried his country was likely to be invaded by a massively superior military force in the near future and would have liked to protect himself a bit.
He used all that Poison Gas he bought off the USA and other similar countries, unfortunately he has since had trouble proving he used it all or destroyed the rest in some less lethal fashion.
I would imagine that migrating the servers would be pretty straightforward, after all the admins etc should know enough about their network structure etc to pick up very easily how all the parts function just on a different platform. However having spent a number of years talking to these kind of administrators I get the impression that very few of them know anything about how their network actually works beyond the realisation that clicking buttons in various dialog boxes changes things. It took our Network and Firewall team 18months to successfully route NTP requests from a server on a nearby network to a suitable time server, for 16 of those 18months they thought that their firewalls would make no difference despite it being pointed out to them the server was effectively outside of their firewall in another network which did connect to theirs and that everything else they had set up on that network couldn't get through their firewall without authentication so why should NTP stuff be any different ?
Ok, damn you got me there they have found 1 single shell which may have contained Sarin gas. I guess that clinches it.
Back in reality however this is one single shell, we know Saddam has had these kinds of weapons in the past and this is probably just one which has got lost somewhere and recently found.
This is not credible proof that Sadddam had WMD or a WMD program when he was invaded. In order to show that you'd need to have warehouses full of these kind of shells, factories and laboratories, supply chains etc. In short some form of infrastructure geared towards creating and maintaing these WMD's.
As yet nothing like this has been found, most rational people have concluded this is most likely because it never existed.
Why don't you see that this is the case ?
It doesn't appear to contain much alcohol either. I went to New York for a week or so a couple of years ago with a mate and I think we must have visited 99% of the bars around Times Square and the place we were staying at, somewhere near Lexington I think.
We were just ordering regular beers ( lagers in British terms ) and found we could drink 4 or 5 times as much as we normally could back home before reaching a similar level of inebriation. We concluded it must be because the alcohol level is much lower in the US ( New York at least ) than the 4-5.5% standard in the U.K. for most general beers.
Whether that is a good or a bad thing I am not sure !
I agree with a lot of your reasoning but I don't agree with your conclusion.
It is very important for all businesses and especially large businesses on whom a lot of people rely for various services to have effective disaster recovery plans, planning for a major data centre being destroyed is a responsible course of action. However the kind of data which is under discussion here is exactly the kind of data companies need to effectively plan just this kind of recovery and so restricting it will reduce the effectiveness of this kind of planning.
It does appear, on the face of it, that what the government is trying to prevent here is just the kind of "absurd threat" you talk about in your post. It's not clear in any concrete terms exactly how this will prevent any kind of terrorism other than some notion that the less terrorists know the less harm they can do. To apply this thinking to possible steps which could have been taken before 9/11 would include not revealing the location of the World Trade Centre to the world and imposing restrictions on anyone informing anyone else of where it was and restricting anything other than military flights in mainland USA.
The reason these plans were probably never considered either now or then is because of the detrimental effect this would have on American business and on it's people so it's entirely fair to say that when thinking of new legislation to help prevent terrorism the needs and requirements of the public must also be taken into account.
In this particular case, where no clear terrorist threat has been identified which could make use of this information and where the information clearly benefits emergency planners you have to wonder why it is being considered.
The answer would appear to be because the telecommunications companies would prefer they had complete control themselves as to when, if or how this - by definition - detrimental information about the service they provide is disseminated. They have gained a good win for themselves under the guise of helping the war on terrorism.
It would help everyone if terrorists were dealt with effectively through well thought out sensible plans and legislation and it helps no one ( except the terrorists ) when dealing with terrorists is used as an excuse for other agendas and the key problem is never actually addressed.
I've never seen that BBC Watch site before, what a load of crap !
That information is classified. You think we're not only going to give them the information but tell them how to use it too !
So that's what, the 1st example of 3 terrorist attacks on the US Mainland, over how many years ?
And since this was undertaken by US Citizens anyway it's not quite in the same league as the foreign terrorism we are currently all so scared of.
Duh ! Haven't you been listening ?
Number 1 is clearly the most dangerous threat here, terrorists have overran the US ( and the rest of the world ) and are carrying out numerous acts of terrorism on a daily basis. That's why there is this war against them.
If the "war on terrorism" is now being won then the worst should nearly be over.
If that's the case then whilst the terrorists would certainly have been very busy over the last few years using this information to plan their numerous attacks in the US now that the attacks are beginning to decrease as the situation comes under control it should be getting safer and so this kind of legislation is not needed.
Obviously it depends how common the attacks are already, it would be interesting to see for instance how many attacks per day the telecoms network is currently experiencing thanks to this information being available.
No way would the US just give WMD to Saddam, the most evil dictator in the world. No, they probably sold them to him.
I say they just chuck the stuff out if it's junk. There's only a limited amount of space on those space stations.
Sure, if you could work out how to get the anti matter without an extremely expensive and energy intensive manufacturing process maybe you could.
By the sounds of it this 'anti matter' is a useless method of providing power, is fantastically expensive, is extremely hard to control and useful only in the development of more powerful weapons which could be extremely small and easy to hard.
I'm all for investigating stuff but I think there does come a point where we should do it in terms other than devising better ways to kill people.
Read the rest of this comment... No thanks.
When you are in charge of a country and those agencies you are now claiming are the culprits for providing you with "False Information" ( referred to a either lies or mistakes in common English ) then there is no difference.
History has proved that when Blair said there were WMD ready to go in 45 mins that this was not the case. He was misrepresenting the truth, lying.
"Oh wait, they DID find banned weapons which Iraq was destroying (or not since they apparently had SOME that were ready to fire at us when the invasion began)"
This makes no sense, if they found weapons which Iraq was in the process of destroying then that is what Iraq was supposed to be doing and there would be no problem.
I didn't see any reports of any WMD being used when the invasion began or at any point after that ?
"They were more than likely hiding something; be it plans for a renewed weapons programs in chemical, biological or nuclear weapons or leftover samples for use in those revived programs. I don't think anyone truely believed that Iraq was clean. We found out later that they weren't.
No one justified this war on the basis that Saddam was "more than likely" to have WMD becuase no one would have agreed to a war on those terms. Evidence and proof are the basis for making decisions not supposition and Mr Blair claimed he had that evidence and that proof when in fact he didn't.
No trace of any WMD weapons or programs have since been discovered in Iraq so saying that "We found out later they weren't [clean]" is simply wrong since we have found out no such thing.
Politicians are always very cautious about calling each other liars because they are all too aware of their own positions in regard to the truth to risk it.
It depends on which European country they are compared to, some things are done better in some countries where it is better than in the UK and some things are done worse in other countries where the UK system does work better.
This is kind of my point really, there are differences throughout Europe in the way countries are goverened and those differences have come about through the collective preferences of the people living in those countries. Whilst we should certainly learn from each other we shouldn't impose a common government which tries to run everything in a uniform manner where local conditions may dictate a different approach.
"If civil war erupts..."
:
I would say that that is a virtual certainty given the number of highly armed factions who control their own armies of dedicated followers.
The Americans aren't going to be there for ever and everyone who wants to rule Iraq must surely realise that and think to themselves
"Let's see if we can get elected properly and if not let us just gather together our supporters and take power, in the meantime lets not let the Police become such an effective force they could ever stop us."
This will certainly lead to a power struggle of some sort and with every chance that whoever comes out on top will be every bit as hostile to the US as Saddam ever was.