I'm sure there's other stuff you didn't mention but you give the impression that hardy was working fine for you; intrepid gave serious problems - so you bought an iMac. Errr... why didn't you just stick with hardy?
Although... I am a bit discomfited with the idea that my traffic is being monitored so closely that the mafRIAA can tell that "I" downloaded "copyrighted works".
Most of what they do involves things like participating is popular torrents, using clients which log the IP addresses of any source which supplies them with any file chunks. Anyone can do this sort of thing; the RIAA don't have any special powers.
There doesn't need to be a package repository because, in the respect to third party software, you don't have to have a version compiled for your OS.
You do realize that the repository system isn't *just* about getting the right version for your OS level etc.? In particular, that it addresses one of the main weaknesses of the MS 'ecosystem'? I'm talking about integrity. For many windows programs, people google the name of the program and then go to 'some website' to download it. This is obviously very prone to end up with windows users downloading malware-ridden versions of these programs. The repository system gives you a pretty much guaranteed malware free official source for 99% of your software needs.
This is not the only benefit: how about being able to update *all* your software in one command/click to include the latest security fixes for every program, instead of having 50% of your programs bugging you with their custom updaters, and the other 50% only getting updated when you remember to do it manually?
And you don't think windows would benefit from such a system?
Linux (and other OSes which use repositories extensively) may have many faults, but the repository system is not one of them; it is one of the prime benefits.
Joe Six Pack tells Linux Programmers: " I need to double click to install my app. Programmers response: No! Just type "apt-get install ". Six Pack's idea is shot down!
Oh for fuck's sake. Have you never heard of "add/remove programs" or synaptic - both available in Ubuntu? The *only* common reason command line stuff gets recommended for software installs in forums like the Ubuntu forums is because you can just copy-and-paste it easily.
Currently you don't even have a choice. You can buy a hugely expensive un-branded cellphone and then still have to maintain a contract with the carrier.
In the UK at least there are lots of shops selling decent branded slightly used unlocked phones for not very much, then you can have a pay as you go sim or a sim-only contract.
When MS fails, you look at that debit on your account for $145 or whatever you paid and you keep wondering why you paid for such a failturd.
Come on now, this is hardly a common experience. For the vast majority of people, Windows comes 'free' with a new PC and even if it was billed separately (which IMHO it should be) it's mostly only $30-$50 from large OEMs. In my case, I bought a Dell Inspiron 530 and had the choice of a Windows or Ubuntu install. Sadly, with discounts etc., the Windows (Home premium) version was cheaper than the exact same spec Ubuntu version; so I sighed deeply and bought the Windows version, and installed Ubuntu myself (knowing that the hardware was fully supported). I'm sure there's some seriously anti-competitive behaviour involved...
Assuming I have expertise on a certain subject, and would like to share some of that with the world at no cost. Why would I do so by contributing to a closed Encyclopedia, owned and controlled by a single entity with shareholder-profit as their main motivation, rather than by contributing to an open Encyclopedia with all content equally available to all under a free license ?
There's no answer to this.
Well, there is - but Brittanica probably won't like it. If they want to get people with expertise to help them rather than Wikipedia, they will probably have to offer payment for accepted writing and it will have to be a real sum, not a token amount or a free 'full subscription'. If they offer enough, quite a lot of people might be tempted to write for them rather than creating freely available content.
How the fuck can Microsoft support an OS when they have no idea which browser a given user is running?
In the OEM case MS *don't* give OS support, the OEM does; so *they* can decide if they want to install and support Firefox etc. In other cases, MS can and would treat it like *any other non-ms software* and refer you to the browser supplier. They could even make this clear in the 'browser install' application - "If you chose any browser other than IE you will not get support for it from MS, but from the browser supplier". In case you hadn't noticed, lots of windows installs *already* come with various non-MS software. Simple really, so simple even us "insane retards" can understand it; such concepts are obviously well beyond MS shills though.
Hey, what do you use to rip 'em? What format do you output to?
I'm actually in the middle of ripping my entire 300+ CD collection which starts with CDs from about 20 years ago. And yes, some of them do 'rust', but this doesn't necessarily mean you can't get a good rip from them. The central factor is (command line tool) cdparanoia. I use two gui interfaces which use cdparanoia. Mostly, I use rubyripper. This uses cdparanoia with no error correction etc. - but it rips in chuncks two or more times and compares the results, and rerips (only the) bad chunks repeatedly. For 'good quality' CDs it rips much faster than any other reliable method. For about 1 cd in 50 with bad scratches or corrosion I use Grip, which by default uses cdparanoia in 'maximum paranoia mode'. This can be *a lot* slower than using rubyripper but it will rip any but the most damaged discs.
Woo! While typing this comment I've discovered my missing (genuine shop bought) copy of Marillion's "Script for a Jester's Tear" in the wrong CD case.
Anyhow, I've ripped about 200/300 now with complete sucess using the above.
You also asked what format to rip to. With current disc space prices, the *only* answer is lossless. FLAC is probably best, you can easily convert this to wav or any other format and it doesn't take much more space than good quality compressed. If you've got plenty of disc space, like I have, you might as well use uncompressed wav format - makes life simpler. My whole music collection uncompressed will fit in about 200Gb
When Apple "bundles" Safari with Mac OS X, is that antitrust? When you install Ubuntu and Firefox is "bundled" with it, is that antitrust?
For fuck's sake: NO and NO because Apple and Mozilla are not convicted monopolists in the OS market. How many times does this have to be repeated before this sinks in?
Again: MS has been convicted of abusing its OS monopoly by putting competitors out of business using bundling with the OS. If you have 10% of the OS market, you can bundle what you like *and* shut out any application you don't like. If you have 90% of the OS market, you can't. That's the law. Understand?
The fact that this article got marked as flamebait is demonstrative of how disconnected from reality a lot of people on this site are. What happens when Firefox gets to 50% or more of the browser market? Are Opera going to sue them as well for predative price fixing with Microsoft and Apple?
You're making a fool of yourself - if Firefox got 50% of the browser market it would be on its merits - not because it was preinstalled on the 'Firefox/Mozilla Operating System'. The whole point - which you are presumably deliberately missing - is that MS uses its operating system dominance to create browser dominance, which is potentially illegal under competition law. Once again: Having a monopoly is *not* illegal;using it to create a monopoly in another area is.
Really? Here's a question for whatever 80 year old, possibly Amish, European dumbass thought that one up. If Windows doesn't come with a web browser, how do you get one?
Well-deserved flamebait mod especially since there are a number of simple, consumer friendly solutions, such as: 1/ MS ships a simple gui application which behind the scenes has a config file and uses ftp to download a browser. Any browser supplier for windows can have an ftp link included in the config file if they want. The user just sees a list of browsers and clicks on the one they want which is ftp'ed to their PC and installed. Each browser supplier could include a short description/promotional spiel to be shown before their browser selection is made. or 2/ OEMs decide which browser or browsers to include. or 3/ IE is installed but can only be used initially to choose (and download if necessary) a browser
It doesn't make a lot of sense to teach basic computer literacy on Linux when 90% of the computers they will encounter are Windows.
*Basic* computer literacy is virtually identical on Windows and Linux. Using a web browser, emailing, basic word processing, basic spreadsheet, organizing files, copy, paste, rename, delete, all manner of basic operations are essentially identical. Plus using Linux you'll have fewer worries about the pupils introducing viruses and other malware or goofing off playing games.
If you go for Windows on the grounds that 'this button is exactly in this place, and this menu entry is always below this menu entry' etc. then the pupils will be completely lost when they have to cope with a different version of Windows.
IBM doesn't provide support, unless by support you mean allowing their you to hire their overpriced consultants.
This is not true as a generalization. From my direct experience over the last 15 years, IBM provides excellent support for their mainframe products - as in writing fixes quickly for a bug that *only you* have encountered, or at least a good circumvention until the next release. Typically you are (if necessary) put in touch with the actaul code maintainers. Of course, we pay a lot of money for this, but it doesn't involve any consultants.
Of course, their non-mainframe support may be lousy.
The British Parliament has nothing to limit the damage it can cause to its own citizens. All it takes is a simple 50%+1 vote to take away British citizens freedoms. Like speech.
Not really accurate. You need a majority in *both* houses of parliament to get a bill passed, and the House of Lords does not have a majority for the governing party. The house of lords *can* be overridden (via the parliament act) but this takes considerable time and will not always succeed (because if the house of lords is being overridden it can be very awkward and delay virtually everything in order to get concessions on a particular issue). The prime recent example is 42 days detention without trial - this was effectively blocked by the Lords and then abandoned by the government. There have been a number of other civil liberty issues where the Lords have blocked changes or forced concessions. That's not to say that the Lords block everything 'bad' but they do act as a considerable safeguard.
They would certainly do that, but as I just noted in a post above, there will be no OEM preloading of OO.o because Microsoft would destroy anyone who attacked it in such a direct way. Simply forcing them to buy Windows at the retail OEM rates would be more than enough to do it and 100% legal. So that's off the table.
Firstly, I'm not convinced that MS could/would take on and 'destroy' a company like Dell.
Secondly, this tactic is almost certainly anti-competitive and *not* '100% legal' in the EU. It would probably get them tied up in another lengthy case with the European commission, which they give the impression of being keen to avoid.
However, it's probably more likely that a company like Dell would use the threat of OO to get MS to give them a really cheap deal on selling (say) Office Home & Student with new PCs.
Of course, Dell *does* already sell some PCs with OO preloaded - just not the ones with Windows...
I've read (probably previously on/.) that unused flash devices may/will lose their data in 10-20 years. But obviously it wouldn't be that difficult to rotate them (say) every 2-5 years.
Actually, I don't think you need a modern guide. COBOL hasn't changed much, older books may be ok.
I work with IBM z Series mainframes and frankly there *is* a big difference between COBOL 74 (IBM OS/VS COBOL), COBOL 85 and subsequent versions. The '74 version was really difficult to write structured code in; you couldn't even code an inline loop without using GO TO. '85 introduced most of the standard structured constructs (inline perform, nested programs with their own local variables, proper statement terminators etc.). The current version of IBM COBOL (Enterprise COBOL) is almost overloaded with features, including built-in XML parsing. It really is a very different language today; but so much code is legacy and just doesn't use these features.
I wouldn't recommend using a book from before the late 90's or early 00's.
Of course, if the American military disbanded, I would give it 10 years before some country do a full-blown invasion of the USA.
Unlikely; the almost unimaginably massive preparations for such an invasion would be so obvious and long drawn out that the US, with its massive resources, would have plenty of time to re-establish a purely defensive military. It's much more likely that there would be multiple attacks on various US-supported governments around the world.
Time on Unix platforms basically doesn't go backwards. It's defined as seconds since 1970, and the number of seconds since then goes only one way.
If you run your IBM mainframe in the recommended fashion, the system time is always set to CET/GMT and so never goes backwards. Applications may use the system time or the local time. However, if you use the local time, this *will* potentially jump back one hour, and if your application is not written to deal with the same time occurring twice, it will have problems.
Essentially the issues on mainframe or *NIX platforms must surely be the same? You can run the system clock itself on local time (with DST) or CET; the applications can request the absolute time or the local time. Some of these combinations will give incorrect results, particularly where there are very old applications which ask for the system time when they should be asking for the local time, because when they were written system time was always local time. So although the issues are the same on the different platforms, problems will probably occur more often on mainframes due to the relative code age.
this is a purely hypothetical plan and, like most things the government does, will probably come to nothing.
This probably won't pass before the next election even if it is progressed. What we need is for someone to get the Tories** to give a clear statement opposing this. Since they'll probably form the next government in 2010 it will make it more difficult (although not impossible) for them to do exactly this thing when they get their turn. This is probably going to work with id cards; the Tories have promised so repeatedly that they will scrap them that it would be very, very embarrassing for them to flip-flop on this. Incidentally, I believe if the Tories *had* been in power during the current 'War on Terror' that *they* would have been the ones introducing id cards, CCTV, logging of Internet activity etc. What we seem to have at present is two parties - Labour and the Conservatives - who essentially both behave in an authoritarian way when in power, and both become more libertarian when in opposition. Neither of them can be trusted with civil liberties. I'm desperately hoping that the next election will result in a hung parliament with the Lib Dems holding the balance of power. They are the only party I would currently give any trust to at all on the civil liberties front.
** The current Conservative opposition in the UK (for info for those not into UK politics)
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I'm sure there's other stuff you didn't mention but you give the impression that hardy was working fine for you; intrepid gave serious problems - so you bought an iMac. Errr... why didn't you just stick with hardy?
Although... I am a bit discomfited with the idea that my traffic is being monitored so closely that the mafRIAA can tell that "I" downloaded "copyrighted works".
Most of what they do involves things like participating is popular torrents, using clients which log the IP addresses of any source which supplies them with any file chunks. Anyone can do this sort of thing; the RIAA don't have any special powers.
"I will keep my left eye shut, promised!"
Naah. Just say "Hang on babe, I'll just remove my left eye and put it away in this draw so we can have some privacy...". That'll have her drooling!
There doesn't need to be a package repository because, in the respect to third party software, you don't have to have a version compiled for your OS.
You do realize that the repository system isn't *just* about getting the right version for your OS level etc.? In particular, that it addresses one of the main weaknesses of the MS 'ecosystem'? I'm talking about integrity. For many windows programs, people google the name of the program and then go to 'some website' to download it. This is obviously very prone to end up with windows users downloading malware-ridden versions of these programs.
The repository system gives you a pretty much guaranteed malware free official source for 99% of your software needs.
This is not the only benefit: how about being able to update *all* your software in one command/click to include the latest security fixes for every program, instead of having 50% of your programs bugging you with their custom updaters, and the other 50% only getting updated when you remember to do it manually?
And you don't think windows would benefit from such a system?
Linux (and other OSes which use repositories extensively) may have many faults, but the repository system is not one of them; it is one of the prime benefits.
Joe Six Pack tells Linux Programmers: " I need to double click to install my app. Programmers response: No! Just type "apt-get install ". Six Pack's idea is shot down!
Oh for fuck's sake. Have you never heard of "add/remove programs" or synaptic - both available in Ubuntu? The *only* common reason command line stuff gets recommended for software installs in forums like the Ubuntu forums is because you can just copy-and-paste it easily.
Currently you don't even have a choice. You can buy a hugely expensive un-branded cellphone and then still have to maintain a contract with the carrier.
In the UK at least there are lots of shops selling decent branded slightly used unlocked phones for not very much, then you can have a pay as you go sim or a sim-only contract.
When MS fails, you look at that debit on your account for $145 or whatever you paid and you keep wondering why you paid for such a failturd.
Come on now, this is hardly a common experience. For the vast majority of people, Windows comes 'free' with a new PC and even if it was billed separately (which IMHO it should be) it's mostly only $30-$50 from large OEMs.
In my case, I bought a Dell Inspiron 530 and had the choice of a Windows or Ubuntu install. Sadly, with discounts etc., the Windows (Home premium) version was cheaper than the exact same spec Ubuntu version; so I sighed deeply and bought the Windows version, and installed Ubuntu myself (knowing that the hardware was fully supported).
I'm sure there's some seriously anti-competitive behaviour involved...
Err...you should know it's 'partitions' not 'parititians' or 'partitians'
Assuming I have expertise on a certain subject, and would like to share some of that with the world at no cost. Why would I do so by contributing to a closed Encyclopedia, owned and controlled by a single entity with shareholder-profit as their main motivation, rather than by contributing to an open Encyclopedia with all content equally available to all under a free license ?
There's no answer to this.
Well, there is - but Brittanica probably won't like it. If they want to get people with expertise to help them rather than Wikipedia, they will probably have to offer payment for accepted writing and it will have to be a real sum, not a token amount or a free 'full subscription'. If they offer enough, quite a lot of people might be tempted to write for them rather than creating freely available content.
How the fuck can Microsoft support an OS when they have no idea which browser a given user is running?
In the OEM case MS *don't* give OS support, the OEM does; so *they* can decide if they want to install and support Firefox etc.
In other cases, MS can and would treat it like *any other non-ms software* and refer you to the browser supplier. They could even make this clear in the 'browser install' application - "If you chose any browser other than IE you will not get support for it from MS, but from the browser supplier". In case you hadn't noticed, lots of windows installs *already* come with various non-MS software.
Simple really, so simple even us "insane retards" can understand it; such concepts are obviously well beyond MS shills though.
Hey, what do you use to rip 'em?
What format do you output to?
I'm actually in the middle of ripping my entire 300+ CD collection which starts with CDs from about 20 years ago. And yes, some of them do 'rust', but this doesn't necessarily mean you can't get a good rip from them. The central factor is (command line tool) cdparanoia. I use two gui interfaces which use cdparanoia. Mostly, I use rubyripper. This uses cdparanoia with no error correction etc. - but it rips in chuncks two or more times and compares the results, and rerips (only the) bad chunks repeatedly. For 'good quality' CDs it rips much faster than any other reliable method. For about 1 cd in 50 with bad scratches or corrosion I use Grip, which by default uses cdparanoia in 'maximum paranoia mode'. This can be *a lot* slower than using rubyripper but it will rip any but the most damaged discs.
Woo! While typing this comment I've discovered my missing (genuine shop bought) copy of Marillion's "Script for a Jester's Tear" in the wrong CD case.
Anyhow, I've ripped about 200/300 now with complete sucess using the above.
You also asked what format to rip to. With current disc space prices, the *only* answer is lossless. FLAC is probably best, you can easily convert this to wav or any other format and it doesn't take much more space than good quality compressed. If you've got plenty of disc space, like I have, you might as well use uncompressed wav format - makes life simpler. My whole music collection uncompressed will fit in about 200Gb
When Apple "bundles" Safari with Mac OS X, is that antitrust? When you install Ubuntu and Firefox is "bundled" with it, is that antitrust?
For fuck's sake: NO and NO because Apple and Mozilla are not convicted monopolists in the OS market. How many times does this have to be repeated before this sinks in?
Again:
MS has been convicted of abusing its OS monopoly by putting competitors out of business using bundling with the OS.
If you have 10% of the OS market, you can bundle what you like *and* shut out any application you don't like.
If you have 90% of the OS market, you can't. That's the law. Understand?
The fact that this article got marked as flamebait is demonstrative of how disconnected from reality a lot of people on this site are. What happens when Firefox gets to 50% or more of the browser market? Are Opera going to sue them as well for predative price fixing with Microsoft and Apple?
You're making a fool of yourself - if Firefox got 50% of the browser market it would be on its merits - not because it was preinstalled on the 'Firefox/Mozilla Operating System'. The whole point - which you are presumably deliberately missing - is that MS uses its operating system dominance to create browser dominance, which is potentially illegal under competition law.
Once again:
Having a monopoly is *not* illegal;using it to create a monopoly in another area is.
Really? Here's a question for whatever 80 year old, possibly Amish, European dumbass thought that one up. If Windows doesn't come with a web browser, how do you get one?
Well-deserved flamebait mod especially since there are a number of simple, consumer friendly solutions, such as:
1/ MS ships a simple gui application which behind the scenes has a config file and uses ftp to download a browser. Any browser supplier for windows can have an ftp link included in the config file if they want. The user just sees a list of browsers and clicks on the one they want which is ftp'ed to their PC and installed. Each browser supplier could include a short description/promotional spiel to be shown before their browser selection is made.
or
2/ OEMs decide which browser or browsers to include.
or
3/ IE is installed but can only be used initially to choose (and download if necessary) a browser
etc. etc.
Well...
I used to run Fedora 6/Gnome/Openoffice with 256Mb RAM, it was usable but a bit slow - surely something like that should be fine on 512Mb?
It doesn't make a lot of sense to teach basic computer literacy on Linux when 90% of the computers they will encounter are Windows.
*Basic* computer literacy is virtually identical on Windows and Linux. Using a web browser, emailing, basic word processing, basic spreadsheet, organizing files, copy, paste, rename, delete, all manner of basic operations are essentially identical. Plus using Linux you'll have fewer worries about the pupils introducing viruses and other malware or goofing off playing games.
If you go for Windows on the grounds that 'this button is exactly in this place, and this menu entry is always below this menu entry' etc. then the pupils will be completely lost when they have to cope with a different version of Windows.
IBM doesn't provide support, unless by support you mean allowing their you to hire their overpriced consultants.
This is not true as a generalization. From my direct experience over the last 15 years, IBM provides excellent support for their mainframe products - as in writing fixes quickly for a bug that *only you* have encountered, or at least a good circumvention until the next release. Typically you are (if necessary) put in touch with the actaul code maintainers. Of course, we pay a lot of money for this, but it doesn't involve any consultants.
Of course, their non-mainframe support may be lousy.
The British Parliament has nothing to limit the damage it can cause to its own citizens. All it takes is a simple 50%+1 vote to take away British citizens freedoms. Like speech.
Not really accurate. You need a majority in *both* houses of parliament to get a bill passed, and the House of Lords does not have a majority for the governing party. The house of lords *can* be overridden (via the parliament act) but this takes considerable time and will not always succeed (because if the house of lords is being overridden it can be very awkward and delay virtually everything in order to get concessions on a particular issue). The prime recent example is 42 days detention without trial - this was effectively blocked by the Lords and then abandoned by the government. There have been a number of other civil liberty issues where the Lords have blocked changes or forced concessions.
That's not to say that the Lords block everything 'bad' but they do act as a considerable safeguard.
Low-end Dell desktop (E4500 Core 2 Duo) with Ubuntu 7.10 - 7s first time, 2s subsequently.
They would certainly do that, but as I just noted in a post above, there will be no OEM preloading of OO.o because Microsoft would destroy anyone who attacked it in such a direct way. Simply forcing them to buy Windows at the retail OEM rates would be more than enough to do it and 100% legal. So that's off the table.
Firstly, I'm not convinced that MS could/would take on and 'destroy' a company like Dell.
Secondly, this tactic is almost certainly anti-competitive and *not* '100% legal' in the EU. It would probably get them tied up in another lengthy case with the European commission, which they give the impression of being keen to avoid.
However, it's probably more likely that a company like Dell would use the threat of OO to get MS to give them a really cheap deal on selling (say) Office Home & Student with new PCs.
Of course, Dell *does* already sell some PCs with OO preloaded - just not the ones with Windows...
I've read (probably previously on /.) that unused flash devices may/will lose their data in 10-20 years. But obviously it wouldn't be that difficult to rotate them (say) every 2-5 years.
Actually, I don't think you need a modern guide. COBOL hasn't changed much, older books may be ok.
I work with IBM z Series mainframes and frankly there *is* a big difference between COBOL 74 (IBM OS/VS COBOL), COBOL 85 and subsequent versions. The '74 version was really difficult to write structured code in; you couldn't even code an inline loop without using GO TO. '85 introduced most of the standard structured constructs (inline perform, nested programs with their own local variables, proper statement terminators etc.). The current version of IBM COBOL (Enterprise COBOL) is almost overloaded with features, including built-in XML parsing. It really is a very different language today; but so much code is legacy and just doesn't use these features.
I wouldn't recommend using a book from before the late 90's or early 00's.
Of course, if the American military disbanded, I would give it 10 years before some country do a full-blown invasion of the USA.
Unlikely; the almost unimaginably massive preparations for such an invasion would be so obvious and long drawn out that the US, with its massive resources, would have plenty of time to re-establish a purely defensive military. It's much more likely that there would be multiple attacks on various US-supported governments around the world.
Time on Unix platforms basically doesn't go backwards. It's defined as seconds since 1970, and the number of seconds since then goes only one way.
If you run your IBM mainframe in the recommended fashion, the system time is always set to CET/GMT and so never goes backwards. Applications may use the system time or the local time. However, if you use the local time, this *will* potentially jump back one hour, and if your application is not written to deal with the same time occurring twice, it will have problems.
Essentially the issues on mainframe or *NIX platforms must surely be the same? You can run the system clock itself on local time (with DST) or CET; the applications can request the absolute time or the local time. Some of these combinations will give incorrect results, particularly where there are very old applications which ask for the system time when they should be asking for the local time, because when they were written system time was always local time. So although the issues are the same on the different platforms, problems will probably occur more often on mainframes due to the relative code age.
this is a purely hypothetical plan and, like most things the government does, will probably come to nothing.
This probably won't pass before the next election even if it is progressed. What we need is for someone to get the Tories** to give a clear statement opposing this. Since they'll probably form the next government in 2010 it will make it more difficult (although not impossible) for them to do exactly this thing when they get their turn.
This is probably going to work with id cards; the Tories have promised so repeatedly that they will scrap them that it would be very, very embarrassing for them to flip-flop on this. Incidentally, I believe if the Tories *had* been in power during the current 'War on Terror' that *they* would have been the ones introducing id cards, CCTV, logging of Internet activity etc. What we seem to have at present is two parties - Labour and the Conservatives - who essentially both behave in an authoritarian way when in power, and both become more libertarian when in opposition. Neither of them can be trusted with civil liberties. I'm desperately hoping that the next election will result in a hung parliament with the Lib Dems holding the balance of power. They are the only party I would currently give any trust to at all on the civil liberties front.
** The current Conservative opposition in the UK (for info for those not into UK politics)