ahref=http://www.silicon.com/publicsector/0,380001 0403,39164553,00.htmrel=url2html-16447http://www.s ilicon.com/publicsector/0,3800010403,39164553,00.h tm>
The current British government are pretty keen on technology like this (despite having a tendency to bugger it up a lot), though I think they are more interested in the monetary and surveillance than the safety aspect. Personally I think fuel duty is a pretty effective pay-per-mile implementation, and I'm sure a computer can monitor the road ahead and communicate in a local ad-hoc network without being globally trackable.
Also, the chances of getting hold cheap tuning software in the future is about as likely as getting cheap software now, unless the EFF buys out GM or Ford.
So if I steal a car and use it in a robbery, the bank can sue Ford for making cars easy to get hold of? As far as I'm aware, YouTube do remove copyrighted content when they find it. This has "shooting the messenger" written all over it, and it seems a popular past-time for some.
And in reply to an earlier comment, the reason USENET (and NNTP in general) survives so well is because it's completely decentralised, there is no one owner (unlike pretty much every other p2p or distributed network) and it's spread over multiple jurisdictions. People have routed around repressive regimes before with networks like this, and they'll do it again.
Whup de doo, that's one server down.. now for the other several hundred.
I've got a Pre-N router/card combo, and It's not "basically G". The "Basically G" router I used to have, would be hard pushed to give me a signal at the bottom of the garden. It also had a major problem with DECT phones, and if anyone decided to use the microwave oven, I could kiss goodbye to any data transfer during cooking. Now I'm blackspot-free, there's a clear signal all the way to a friend's house three doors up across the street, through his house into the fields beyond, and my signal is about as likely to get jammed by a leaky oven or noisy telephone as a fly is to knock out a 40 ton truck.
Perhaps it wouldn't cost much to have a little drop-down box on the order form. "What distro do you want our engineer to bung in the drive before he goes for a tea break? Suse/RedHat/Ubuntu/etc.."
"When did the F/OSS community start to gain this elitist attitude?"
You mean it hasn't been like that at some point?
Seriously, it seems to be getting less so now. Linux distributions like (K)Ubuntu are easy enough to use that even someone born and raised the Windows way can at least navigate the system and run programs. You don't need to compile every damned application from source any more, there are package management systems that make Microsoft Installer cry into its cornflakes, and lots of hardware now is increasingly becoming the sort that "just works" with Linux.
True you still get snotty bastards who think they are God's gift to computing, but they seem to be on the decrease. You never know, give it another century and FOSS operating systems might be viable for the mass market.
Blockbuster movies already rake in money from product placements and other advertising methods. Despite the inevitable protests about targetting children (anybody bought a Happy Meal lately?), it wouldn't surprise me if blockbuster games follow suit. What would annoy me most though wouldn't be so much the beautifully-rendered Nike T-shirt worn by the game's main protagonist, as much as a heapload of splash screens and animations at the start that I can't skip. I paid money to play a game, not watch advertising jingles!
Thank you for responding to the identity card consultation on 1 June.
This is further to our email of 4 June.
I should explain at the outset that the Government's decision to proceed with the introduction of a national identity cards scheme is based in part on the fact that we will have to introduce more secure personal identifiers (biometrics) into our passports and other existing documents in line with international requirements. Right across the world there is a drive to increase document security with biometrics. If our citizens are to continue to enjoy the benefits of international travel, as increasing numbers of them are doing we cannot be left behind. It is worth remembering that 21 of the 25 EU Member States (all apart from the UK, Ireland, Denmark and Latvia) have identity cards.
I must emphasise that we have never said that the identity cards scheme is intended to be the sole solution to identity fraud, illegal immigration and working, or terrorism. The scheme is therefore not being designed to be the primary method of combating these problems.
However, the Security Services have said that an ID card will help combat terrorism. Sir John Stevens says it will help. We trust the judgements of those people whose job it is to fight terrorists. A card scheme would disrupt the use of false identities by terrorist organisations, for example in the money laundering and organised crime. We know that at least one-third of terrorist suspects make use of false identities. The scheme would also be a useful tool in helping to monitor and disrupt the support activities of terrorist networks.
People's identities are incredibly valuable and too easily stolen - ID fraud is a growing crime, costing the country more than £1.3 billion per year. Multiple or false identities are used in more than a third of terrorist related activity and in organised crime and money laundering. Lack of clarity over someone's identity also presents risks to the public and private sectors when providing services. It is crucial we are able to confirm and verify our own and others' identities quickly and easily. (Consequently, we believe that there are further clear benefits to be gained from biometric identity cards.)
Certainly, it is expected that the cards scheme will be attractive to counterfeiters and fraudsters, just as current identity documents are. This is why we are looking at strengthened identity checking procedures, biometrics, an effective Register and improved physical security measures both for existing identity documents and for identity cards. The existence of a biometric and the fact that this will be checked should act as a major deterrent to criminals.
With regards to your concerns on cost, it is envisaged that most people will join the scheme when they apply for or renew their driving licence or passport for which charges are already levied. The minimum charge to obtain a 10-year passport from the UK Passport Service is £42 and the full cost of obtaining an initial 10-year driving licence from DVLA is £38. In practice the cost that many people currently pay for these documents is around £8-£10 higher when taking account of the cost of photographs and services that check that forms have been completed correctly and the right documentation enclosed. These costs would be included in a national identity cards scheme.
If the Government did not implement a scheme which covered everyone but concentrated purely on implementing more secure passports and driving licences including biometrics, initial estimates suggest that the 10 year cost of passports would rise to around £73 and driving licences to around £69. Under the national identity cards scheme, our best initial estimates are that the annual running costs of the UK Passport Service by 2008/9 are £415m; by introducing ID cards on top of already-planned passport enhancements an addition cost of £85m has been estimated; this would combine to an
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ahref=http://www.silicon.com/publicsector/0,380001 0403,39164553,00.htmrel=url2html-16447http://www.s ilicon.com/publicsector/0,3800010403,39164553,00.h tm>
The current British government are pretty keen on technology like this (despite having a tendency to bugger it up a lot), though I think they are more interested in the monetary and surveillance than the safety aspect. Personally I think fuel duty is a pretty effective pay-per-mile implementation, and I'm sure a computer can monitor the road ahead and communicate in a local ad-hoc network without being globally trackable.
Also, the chances of getting hold cheap tuning software in the future is about as likely as getting cheap software now, unless the EFF buys out GM or Ford.
So if I steal a car and use it in a robbery, the bank can sue Ford for making cars easy to get hold of? As far as I'm aware, YouTube do remove copyrighted content when they find it. This has "shooting the messenger" written all over it, and it seems a popular past-time for some. And in reply to an earlier comment, the reason USENET (and NNTP in general) survives so well is because it's completely decentralised, there is no one owner (unlike pretty much every other p2p or distributed network) and it's spread over multiple jurisdictions. People have routed around repressive regimes before with networks like this, and they'll do it again.
Whup de doo, that's one server down.. now for the other several hundred.
I've got a Pre-N router/card combo, and It's not "basically G". The "Basically G" router I used to have, would be hard pushed to give me a signal at the bottom of the garden. It also had a major problem with DECT phones, and if anyone decided to use the microwave oven, I could kiss goodbye to any data transfer during cooking. Now I'm blackspot-free, there's a clear signal all the way to a friend's house three doors up across the street, through his house into the fields beyond, and my signal is about as likely to get jammed by a leaky oven or noisy telephone as a fly is to knock out a 40 ton truck.
Mmmm, I like N. Even the dodgy draft versions.
Perhaps it wouldn't cost much to have a little drop-down box on the order form. "What distro do you want our engineer to bung in the drive before he goes for a tea break? Suse/RedHat/Ubuntu/etc.."
'You aren't "renting" the land from the government, you are "paying" for soldiers to prevent invasions and loss of said land.'
However if you don't pay up you get thrown out all the same.
"When did the F/OSS community start to gain this elitist attitude?" You mean it hasn't been like that at some point? Seriously, it seems to be getting less so now. Linux distributions like (K)Ubuntu are easy enough to use that even someone born and raised the Windows way can at least navigate the system and run programs. You don't need to compile every damned application from source any more, there are package management systems that make Microsoft Installer cry into its cornflakes, and lots of hardware now is increasingly becoming the sort that "just works" with Linux. True you still get snotty bastards who think they are God's gift to computing, but they seem to be on the decrease. You never know, give it another century and FOSS operating systems might be viable for the mass market.
Blockbuster movies already rake in money from product placements and other advertising methods. Despite the inevitable protests about targetting children (anybody bought a Happy Meal lately?), it wouldn't surprise me if blockbuster games follow suit. What would annoy me most though wouldn't be so much the beautifully-rendered Nike T-shirt worn by the game's main protagonist, as much as a heapload of splash screens and animations at the start that I can't skip. I paid money to play a game, not watch advertising jingles!
Dear Sir or Madam,
Thank you for responding to the identity card consultation on 1 June.
This is further to our email of 4 June.
I should explain at the outset that the Government's decision to proceed with the introduction of a national identity cards scheme is based in part on the fact that we will have to introduce more secure personal identifiers (biometrics) into our passports and other existing documents in line with international requirements. Right across the world there is a drive to increase document security with biometrics. If our citizens are to continue to enjoy the benefits of international travel, as increasing numbers of them are doing we cannot be left behind. It is worth remembering that 21 of the 25 EU Member States (all apart from the UK, Ireland, Denmark and Latvia) have identity cards.
I must emphasise that we have never said that the identity cards scheme is intended to be the sole solution to identity fraud, illegal immigration and working, or terrorism. The scheme is therefore not being designed to be the primary method of combating these problems.
However, the Security Services have said that an ID card will help combat terrorism. Sir John Stevens says it will help. We trust the judgements of those people whose job it is to fight terrorists. A card scheme would disrupt the use of false identities by terrorist organisations, for example in the money laundering and organised crime. We know that at least one-third of terrorist suspects make use of false identities. The scheme would also be a useful tool in helping to monitor and disrupt the support activities of terrorist networks.
People's identities are incredibly valuable and too easily stolen - ID fraud is a growing crime, costing the country more than £1.3 billion per year. Multiple or false identities are used in more than a third of terrorist related activity and in organised crime and money laundering. Lack of clarity over someone's identity also presents risks to the public and private sectors when providing services. It is crucial we are able to confirm and verify our own and others' identities quickly and easily. (Consequently, we believe that there are further clear benefits to be gained from biometric identity cards.)
Certainly, it is expected that the cards scheme will be attractive to counterfeiters and fraudsters, just as current identity documents are. This is why we are looking at strengthened identity checking procedures, biometrics, an effective Register and improved physical security measures both for existing identity documents and for identity cards. The existence of a biometric and the fact that this will be checked should act as a major deterrent to criminals.
With regards to your concerns on cost, it is envisaged that most people will join the scheme when they apply for or renew their driving licence or passport for which charges are already levied. The minimum charge to obtain a 10-year passport from the UK Passport Service is £42 and the full cost of obtaining an initial 10-year driving licence from DVLA is £38. In practice the cost that many people currently pay for these documents is around £8-£10 higher when taking account of the cost of photographs and services that check that forms have been completed correctly and the right documentation enclosed. These costs would be included in a national identity cards scheme.
If the Government did not implement a scheme which covered everyone but concentrated purely on implementing more secure passports and driving licences including biometrics, initial estimates suggest that the 10 year cost of passports would rise to around £73 and driving licences to around £69. Under the national identity cards scheme, our best initial estimates are that the annual running costs of the UK Passport Service by 2008/9 are £415m; by introducing ID cards on top of already-planned passport enhancements an addition cost of £85m has been estimated; this would combine to an