"Unions work in other countries like Sweden and Japan. Unfounded claims to the contrary, we're nobody special and they can work here too."
Your logic fails, because your premise is flawed, because you see, whilst they may or may not work in those two countries, they also most certainly don't work here in Britain. I was a union member for 7 years and even went on strike with them but I totally agree with the OP, they're a waste of space.
You see, there's a certain irony in British unions (and by the sounds of it from personal anecdotes above, American unions), they don't really serve the union members. They serve the union leadership. The union members are pushed to support what the union leadership wants, to serve them.
It's great that you know what unions were historically, but the problem is they've become what they set out to deal with, the needs of the members are irrelevant, it is the wishes of the union leadership that now matters.
Can you be sure Sweden and Japan's unions wont just go the same way? Your assumption that US unions can improve is not necessarily a good assumption as it could be quite the opposite- that Swedish/Japanese unions will get worse and end up like British, American and French unions. The fact that unions used to work in these countries suggests that it's quite lilkely as time goes by that unions actually get worse, not better. I'd imagine it's because as their needs are served they become obsolete and start wasting space instead.
Same experience here, I was in a union in the UK for years, and even went on strike with them but really came to realise they're a waste of space.
I'm not sure about supressing wages, they always pushed for payrises but what fucked me off is that they pushed for stupid payrises. Payrises across the board even for people who didn't deserve them, same percentage payrises for the overpaid as for the underpaid meaning the gap became even bigger despite the difference between the job requirements and abilities of the overpaid and underpaid often being non-existent.
Defending the inept was probably the biggest concern though, and I can even see how it happens. The problem is, many people would do union duties to avoid doing their actual job as much as possible, the people doing union duties were the lazy slackers, people with shit work ethic who just wanted an excuse to not do real work. When it came to defending people then they'd defend people just like them- people equally lazy and inept, whilst not giving a shit about the hard workers. They'd justify it to themselves because the people just like them were obviously right, why shouldn't they be allowed to browse the net for 4 hours of the working day? The people they'd defend would use the same non-justifications for whatever they were in trouble for as they would.
Political propaganda was indeed rife, I got sick of being sent such propaganda by the union, they'd tell me who I should vote for, they'd tell me who to not vote for, and it's not even based on which party best suits the union but simply on who those at the top of the union vote for. I wasn't paying them money so they could spend it printing out propaganda telling me who I shouldn't vote for and who I should vote for, I'm quite capable of deciding that for myself.
I'm just glad to be shot of unions, I wouldn't waste my time or money with them again. Ultimately in the UK we have laws in place to limit the extent to which an employer can cause problems for an employee- minimum wage, working hour limits, employment tribunals for bullying/harassment, strong equal opportunities laws. Effectively then the only reason unions now exist in the UK is to protect workers who are inept and lazy because there's nothing they can do that isn't already well covered by law anyway.
Besides, if your job is really that bad, go get another- despite what many unemployed will tell you, it's really not hard to just get another job if you're even half way competent.
The point is, blocking in the hosts file with a massive blacklist is stupid because it slows down all DNS requests as the file may have to be parsed each time you do a DNS lookup even if you're not using say HTTP which the blacklist benefits.
The sensible option is a browser based ad blocker because then it doesn't slow down other DNS lookups, it only blocks when it needs to block.
You don't want slow DNS lookups when you're trying to connect to say, game servers as a side effect of trying to protect your web access.
It depends if we're talking about corruption relating to IP laws or general corruption.
If it's the former, which I presume it is because that's what the topic is about then this simply isn't true. The only nations showing the level of corruption of the US are those who have moved their economies towards imaginary property. This includes the likes of Britain and France, but countries that have more of a manufacturing or natural resources focus so far seem to have little interest in pushing strict copyright laws (Russia, China), because it doesn't benefit them and only benefits their competition (again, the US, Britain, France etc.).
We're in this situation where in the West, economies are built around imaginary property because it means people can paid a lot for doing relatively little whilst the other countries do all the hard work for us. The problem is that the other countries want to be in this situation too, and as we've seen with outsourcing to Asia, they can do it cheaper. So we have this situation where competitors are beginning to eat away at our cushy jobs, and the Western governments are beginning to panic, the movie/music industry is the next big industry at risk and governments (arguably wrongly) assume this is for the same reason. Stricter patent laws, stronger anti-piracy laws and other similar laws are all being put in place to try and stop the fall of our easy lifestyle and the natural balancing out of jobs.
I don't see laws fixing it long term, I think it's inevitable that it'll happen regardless, I believe we'll see equalisation of jobs across the world regardless and this does mean a rise in manufacturing jobs. I think it's good for the world overall, but you try telling that to the government being nagged at by 1500 IT call centre workers that just got laid off because India can do their arguably quite simple jobs cheaper- governments will desperately try and protect against that even if it is inevitable.
It's likely over time we'll see a move towards more balanced economies all round which personally I can't wait for, frankly I think it'll cut all the chaff out of the IT and other industries which plague it and who really aren't competent enough to be working in it. They'll be pushed back to relatively dumb manufacturing jobs where they're better suited. We wont have credit crunches like now because we wont have entire countries dependent on fiddling financial figures as they'll have to have a manufacturing base too.
So then, ACTA is one of those things that's just there to try and prevent the inevitable, it's an attempt to stem the flow of balance across the world, it's not a sign of corruption per-se, but a sign of desperation more than anything, the rest of the world certainly isn't as corrupt as those pushing it though because the corruption of those pushing it stems from the self-interest and the harm it causes to the rest of the world and those who get in the way of said self interest.
Or just chuck the tangled outboard motor overboard and slot a new one in it's place if we're talking about the small boats somali pirates launch from the larger vessels for actually boarding the ships?
Then it's lucky you're not in charge of this sort of thing. Seamen aren't trained in combat, they have no combat experience, if they get into a firefight against Somalis who have been practicing gunning each other down for the last two decades then they're going to die. A net that they can fire without needing much aim due to the spread factor and then run and hide is a far safer bet than trying to aim a machine gun that they're simply not skilled at handling whilst coming under RPG and AK-47 fire. You're talking about getting civilians to engage in a firefight against battle hardened militia. Pirates wont kill the sailors if they don't fight back because they're worth ransom, but if they're weilding arms the pirates will see them as a threat and shoot to kill. What do you think is going to enrage them more to the point they may kill crew members, getting them caught up in a net or shooting at them and possibly managing to wound or kill one of their friends whilst failing to kill the rest?
You mean Nicolas "Sorry Obama, I just can't stop humping your leg" Sarkozy? and the French military being the same French military that avoids combat operations in Afghanistan preferring to only patrol the relatively quiet, realtively safe areas, whilst Britain and Canada do the majority of the work that requires actually blood and sweat to help the US out who take the biggest burden? The same French military that has come under the same accusations by Afghans living in those areas as Italy in that they pay Taliban militants not to attack them?
Did you really just suggest that Sarkozy was the toughest pro-Western leader in the last 50 years? Even Margaret Thatcher had bigger balls, and she is a woman. Even if you cut back from 50 years down to the last 10, 5 or 2 years you still say, for example, Merkel, who again, despite being a woman has bigger balls than Sarkozy.
Sarkozy can't even hold a press conference without making sure everyone around him is shorter than he is so he doesn't start crying about his height.
The idea of Sarkozy as being some tough guy makes me chuckle, he would probably get away with being the most insecure leader in Europe in the last 100 years if that is in fact what you meant?
Stalling deforestation in the Amazon and such is important regardless of the effect it may or may not have on climate change, simply because there are so many undiscovered plant and animal species there that may offer cures for various illnesses we've yet to find cures for. We're destroying these resources before we've even discovered them.
On the fuel side of things, moving to devices that consume less power to do the same job through efficiency gains and cutting dependance on oil that creates great conflict are examples of things that would make the world better.
Yep, I agree it may be preferable to not bother with an IDE for some stuff, but if you don't use Visual Studio for developing say as an example, ASP.NET MVC apps then you're just being a waste of space basically. There's no real advantage to not using it for that type of app and you'll see a massive productivity decrease if you don't.
It really depends on the apps being built.
I agree with your last paragraph also but I don't think competence is the right word, there's this idea that assembly programmers are somehow better and more competent than again, say, high level web devs, but really, having done both there's no less complexity in building a scalable distributed web application that requires proficiency in technologies and standards (HTTP, XML, WSDL, UDDI, SQL etc.). You've then got to understand the way the web server in question handles concurrency, you've got to understand higher level security threats (SQL injection, XSS).
The fact is nowadays, whilst things have become more abstract, the amount of abstract technologies that good developers need to understand is so vast, there's certainly no more complexity, level of skill and knowledge required at the high end than there is at the low end. Realistically, if someone is competent enough to get their head around all the high end abstracted layers and technologies that are needed for modern large scale apps, then there's no reason they couldn't also get their head around low level assembly development as well and vice versa.
Whilst there are many web developers who wouldn't touch assembly, I have also encountered quite a few lower level developers (ASM, C etc.) that have this attitude that because they work at low level are awesome, but have then had some reason to build a web application that they've hacked together in PHP and it's the most god awful insecure, unmaintainable piece of crap you'll ever see, often with the wheel reinvented multiple times within.
"The internet is actually a smaller place than most people think."
No, actually, the internet is a much larger place than most people think. Most people think like you, that there are only a few sites for each topic, and not much beyond that. The fact is it's simply not true. English language sites are all most people know and yet English language sites now account for less than 60% of the entire internet, that means there's a whopping amount of sites out there in foreign languages that most people never ever actually stumble across.
"How many large torrent trackers are there really? Twenty, Thirty? I doubt it's over a hundred. Depends on your definition of large perhaps, but I'll make mine; A tracker which hosts TV, Movies, Music, Games and Software, and which has a large number of seeders and leechers (>10000). How many of these site are there? I estimate that there are about a dozen who really count."
It doesn't matter, the trackers aren't really going down because they've not for the most part been the target of litigation, only the public facing index sites have. So the state of seeders/leechers on these trackers hasn't really changed, all that has changed is how you must find a torrent to connect to such a tracker.
"Throw out as many platitudes as you like, but the RIAA et al are putting the bittorrent genie back in the bottle."
You're possibly right but only in the case of the most paranoid inexperienced people who live in the most strict of countries like Britain- do you really think Canadians, South Americans, or many Asians care when their governments have shown no real interest in stopping them? but what they haven't done is put piracy back in the bottle as many people move to other networks and methods of distribution, like usenet.
"Technology has not kept pace with legal manoeuvres and one by one the top sites are being shut down."
See my above points for a response to this. Effectively all that is being shut down is technology that hasn't kept pace, but that doesn't mean technology as a whole hasn't kept pace because there are plenty of sites and methods of transfer still thriving. An example is The Pirate Bay's switch to DHT, it's old tech got sent offline, but it's new tech. has worked around that.
"With them goes the hundreds of thousands of technically inexperienced seeds and leechers need to keep torrents healthy. Trackers need critical mass for torrents to be useful, but this mass makes them an easy target for legal action."
Go to http://btjunkie.org/ and scroll down to most popular, look at the seeders and leechers figures. Does that really look unhealthy to you? Does it really look like legal action has had any measurable effect?
"The Chinese government has proven that the internet and its users can be brought to heel on a massive scale."
No it hasn't, Iran has more strict monitoring and filtering than even China since the elections and look how well they were able to stop protests and prevent footage of their government sponsored milita killing civilians getting out, hint: not at all. At best they've stopped people stumbling on things they don't want them to see, they've been able to do nothing to prevent determined searchers or to prevent communication between dissidents.
"Netizens in general, and in particular the geeks whose obligation was to defend the network, have shown though lack of innovation that they are not going to defend users freedoms, anonymity or rights online."
Now this I actually agree with, and I'll admit I'm partly responsible myself in not doing more. I think we have got lazy, complacent, I think there is much more we could do. There are people out there who are still doing a great job though although again they seem more focussed on anti-censorship in places like Iran and China than assisting piracy- perhaps the old defenders of the internet grew up and tend towards these more important causes now? I have to admit the decline of the assembly language programm
- If you access the BBC from outside the UK, ads are displayed which likely makes it cost neutral alone
- The BBC run a commercial arm for overseas business that subsidises the UK operations making it cheaper for UK citizens in terms of license fees whilst retaining high quality, the website helps advertise the BBC's prescence
- Contrary to bad press, a lot of us UK citizens are sharing folk and I don't think to be honest anyone apart from the most racist/xenophobic people (i.e. BNP/UKIP members) has a problem with people overseas accessing the BBC website, sharing is caring! As a license payer I would have no problem with the idea of people in different countries accessing content even if I am footing the bill and the ad revenue doesn't cover it. That said in a way it does benefit us I guess, at the bottom of many BBC articles you'll see a form asking if you were at an event and whether you have images or information about the news event, by letting foreign people participate, they can also provide information to editorial staff making news better for us, as well as them
- Finally, to a lesser extent, the BBC unofficially acts to spread ideology of freedom and so forth, hence why it attempts to counteract for example anti-Western Iranian propaganda in Iran via a satelite service to bypass state control of media. Whilst it is by no means a propaganda machine (the government etc. has no power to mandate what the BBC broadcasts), it does at least try to put the Western viewpoint across where it is under-represented just as the likes of Al Jazeera attempt to put the Arabic viewpoint across in the West for example
Perhaps it's because I don't live in the US, but really here in the UK we absolutely are at a point where political correctness is doing far more harm than good. In fact, the rise of the BNP (an extremely racist, far right political organisation) is gaining strength partly off the back of the idea that special treatment should be given to minority groups, because they are minority groups.
We reached a point where of course there was still racism, but for the most part it was dying out, we are a massively multi-cultural society, but in recent years a reverse trend is occuring. Don't assume the US wont (if it hasn't already) reach a peak where attitudes have to change and people have to be treated equally else you see racism get worse as the equality pendulum sways too far away from equilibrium in the other direction.
I never realised that, that's quite sad as the ICC is one of the best organisations out there IMO.
People like Luis Moreno-Ocampo have defied political pressure from China and many African nations with vested interests in protecting the guilty when attempting to bring justice for crimes in Darfur, it's probably one of the most honest, least corrupt organisations out there.
But presumably, that's also why it hasn't got a massive amount of political support worldwide either:(
I'm not sure what country you're referring to but that's not the case in the UK. Many tickets have been overturned because the cameras didn't manage to get a clear image of the driver.
This leads to a similar situation because then effectively the driver can choose to contest it in the courts and if he does the police can choose to accept the challenge in the courts or drop the charge, in many cases they simply drop the charge because they know they don't have a leg to stand on.
What you certainly don't have to do is prove it wasn't you in the car, the police have to prove it was you in the car and that's the key difference.
That's also how it should be here, but as the law companies has no actual evidence putting you at blame then it's not a case they can win, hence why they normally vanish into silence as soon as people question their claims rather than pursue it in the courts.
The point is, you're not liable until they can really prove you're liable, which they can't. The onus is not on you to prove you're innocent, only to turn up to court and refute their attempts to lie or manipulate the courts if they pursue this path to attempt to obtain a judgement in their favour, you will only receive a default judgement if you do not turn up at all.
The problem is I believe a good portion of those 30,000 (although the BBC article only says 15,000 by the way) will be completely unaware of any campaign or what to do and will just pay up regardless.
For what it's worth though, the BBC article also states the company ACS:law is under investigation by the law society and some solicitors grouping, I don't know what standing they have, but it may be that they will not be practicing too much longer anyway with any luck. Lawyers and solicitors in the UK generally have a better reputation than the US and I believe such a grouping will be unhappy with being brought into disrepute, at least, I'm keeping my fingers crossed.
For what it's worth, I shall contact my MP without being one of the people to receive such a letter- there is no need to wait to see if you're one of those that receives such a letter before you decide to act.
This is why the viewpoint in the summary is flawed. I do not believe for example that the BBC would be allowed to delist from Google due to laws governing it because it's publicly funded and can't show competition bias.
I doubt the BBC is unique in this situation either, and the reality is for every thousand companies that delist from Google and follow Murdoch, there'll still be a BBC picking up the search results.
Users wont stop using Google, they'll just pick whatever the first result is on a search whether that's Fox, or the BBC and again, there'll always be the BBCs of the world there.
There's a difference between you explicitly allowing someone to use your connection for those purposes, and someone using the connection for those purposes against your knowledge.
If your connection is used without your knowledge due to open wifi or a compromised PC then they are sharing against your will and you most certainly did not allow that person to do it- they did it without such permission and you are therefore not liable.
As Slashdot requires a car analogy, it's like someone breaking into your car and then joy riding in it and running someone over and killing them. When that happens you are not guilty of manslaughter or in fact guilty of anything at all.
On the contrary, in both cases, you are actually a victim of a crime, whether you choose to report and prosecute is up to you, but you certainly cannot be punished whether you do or not.
This is why the whole "Digital Economy Bill" is a complete farce. All measures that would improve connectivity and the digital economy have been removed/indefinitely delayed, whilst the only measures that remain are things like this which require investment in technologies that inevitably have to slow down the network and that sidetrack money away from infrastructure improvements.
The net effect of the "Digital Economy Bill" is to lessen innovation and worsen the UK's internet infrastructure. The fact this bill goes completely against what is intended demonstrates how hopelessly incompetent government ministers, and the opposition that also support this are.
Yep, America is also threatening Britain that they will cease intelligence sharing with us if we use evidence of CIA torture against a British citizen in a British court also.
There was a few years ago the case of a US A10 pilot who killed a British soldier and wounded 3 others, also blowing up 2 of our armoured vehicles in a friendly fire incident in Iraq. We did not want to put the pilot in trial but simply wanted to carry out an inquest to see why it happened and whether it was preventable. The US would not send the gun camera footage, they would not name the pilot or let us ask him questions about the incident. The gun camera footage was at least leaked in the end, but the US never to this day cooperated with the investigation.
If the US wont even allow us justice when we've been fighting alongside them as allies and they screw up, then why the hell should we even consider extraditing a British citizen over something so relatively minor? They kill our troops, they torture our citizens, and they want us to extradite someone who connected to a bunch of their machines that had blank and default passwords?
It really shows how little interest our government has in looking after our country when they support such a request.
Yes it does, it certainly doesn't excuse what he did I agree with that, but it's completely relevant to the handling of his punishment.
Do you know what happens if you put an Asperger's sufferer in a situation where he may have to deal with some extremely nasty people in prison? Or where he may not be able to carry out the types of focussed tasks he is mentally pushed to do by his condition? I am not saying he does not deserve punishment, but putting him in a situation as the US wishes to that has a very high chance of pushing him to suicide is not justice, particularly in the context of his crime. It's not as if he's a murderer, rapist of paedophile. He accessed a few machines with blank or default passwords.
Slashdot Mirror
"Unions work in other countries like Sweden and Japan. Unfounded claims to the contrary, we're nobody special and they can work here too."
Your logic fails, because your premise is flawed, because you see, whilst they may or may not work in those two countries, they also most certainly don't work here in Britain. I was a union member for 7 years and even went on strike with them but I totally agree with the OP, they're a waste of space.
You see, there's a certain irony in British unions (and by the sounds of it from personal anecdotes above, American unions), they don't really serve the union members. They serve the union leadership. The union members are pushed to support what the union leadership wants, to serve them.
It's great that you know what unions were historically, but the problem is they've become what they set out to deal with, the needs of the members are irrelevant, it is the wishes of the union leadership that now matters.
Can you be sure Sweden and Japan's unions wont just go the same way? Your assumption that US unions can improve is not necessarily a good assumption as it could be quite the opposite- that Swedish/Japanese unions will get worse and end up like British, American and French unions. The fact that unions used to work in these countries suggests that it's quite lilkely as time goes by that unions actually get worse, not better. I'd imagine it's because as their needs are served they become obsolete and start wasting space instead.
Same experience here, I was in a union in the UK for years, and even went on strike with them but really came to realise they're a waste of space.
I'm not sure about supressing wages, they always pushed for payrises but what fucked me off is that they pushed for stupid payrises. Payrises across the board even for people who didn't deserve them, same percentage payrises for the overpaid as for the underpaid meaning the gap became even bigger despite the difference between the job requirements and abilities of the overpaid and underpaid often being non-existent.
Defending the inept was probably the biggest concern though, and I can even see how it happens. The problem is, many people would do union duties to avoid doing their actual job as much as possible, the people doing union duties were the lazy slackers, people with shit work ethic who just wanted an excuse to not do real work. When it came to defending people then they'd defend people just like them- people equally lazy and inept, whilst not giving a shit about the hard workers. They'd justify it to themselves because the people just like them were obviously right, why shouldn't they be allowed to browse the net for 4 hours of the working day? The people they'd defend would use the same non-justifications for whatever they were in trouble for as they would.
Political propaganda was indeed rife, I got sick of being sent such propaganda by the union, they'd tell me who I should vote for, they'd tell me who to not vote for, and it's not even based on which party best suits the union but simply on who those at the top of the union vote for. I wasn't paying them money so they could spend it printing out propaganda telling me who I shouldn't vote for and who I should vote for, I'm quite capable of deciding that for myself.
I'm just glad to be shot of unions, I wouldn't waste my time or money with them again. Ultimately in the UK we have laws in place to limit the extent to which an employer can cause problems for an employee- minimum wage, working hour limits, employment tribunals for bullying/harassment, strong equal opportunities laws. Effectively then the only reason unions now exist in the UK is to protect workers who are inept and lazy because there's nothing they can do that isn't already well covered by law anyway.
Besides, if your job is really that bad, go get another- despite what many unemployed will tell you, it's really not hard to just get another job if you're even half way competent.
Yep, I'm not a physicist and I'm still amazed at how rapidly they're getting this thing going again, it's really quite impressive in itself.
"I believe (from a little experience dabbling in web design) that browsers generally run inline javascript as they encounter it"
Are you sure? How would it handle the case where a piece of inline Javascript tries to manipulate part of the DOM that hasn't been loaded in yet?
The point is, blocking in the hosts file with a massive blacklist is stupid because it slows down all DNS requests as the file may have to be parsed each time you do a DNS lookup even if you're not using say HTTP which the blacklist benefits.
The sensible option is a browser based ad blocker because then it doesn't slow down other DNS lookups, it only blocks when it needs to block.
You don't want slow DNS lookups when you're trying to connect to say, game servers as a side effect of trying to protect your web access.
According to yesterday's BBC article on it, early 2010.
It depends if we're talking about corruption relating to IP laws or general corruption.
If it's the former, which I presume it is because that's what the topic is about then this simply isn't true. The only nations showing the level of corruption of the US are those who have moved their economies towards imaginary property. This includes the likes of Britain and France, but countries that have more of a manufacturing or natural resources focus so far seem to have little interest in pushing strict copyright laws (Russia, China), because it doesn't benefit them and only benefits their competition (again, the US, Britain, France etc.).
We're in this situation where in the West, economies are built around imaginary property because it means people can paid a lot for doing relatively little whilst the other countries do all the hard work for us. The problem is that the other countries want to be in this situation too, and as we've seen with outsourcing to Asia, they can do it cheaper. So we have this situation where competitors are beginning to eat away at our cushy jobs, and the Western governments are beginning to panic, the movie/music industry is the next big industry at risk and governments (arguably wrongly) assume this is for the same reason. Stricter patent laws, stronger anti-piracy laws and other similar laws are all being put in place to try and stop the fall of our easy lifestyle and the natural balancing out of jobs.
I don't see laws fixing it long term, I think it's inevitable that it'll happen regardless, I believe we'll see equalisation of jobs across the world regardless and this does mean a rise in manufacturing jobs. I think it's good for the world overall, but you try telling that to the government being nagged at by 1500 IT call centre workers that just got laid off because India can do their arguably quite simple jobs cheaper- governments will desperately try and protect against that even if it is inevitable.
It's likely over time we'll see a move towards more balanced economies all round which personally I can't wait for, frankly I think it'll cut all the chaff out of the IT and other industries which plague it and who really aren't competent enough to be working in it. They'll be pushed back to relatively dumb manufacturing jobs where they're better suited. We wont have credit crunches like now because we wont have entire countries dependent on fiddling financial figures as they'll have to have a manufacturing base too.
So then, ACTA is one of those things that's just there to try and prevent the inevitable, it's an attempt to stem the flow of balance across the world, it's not a sign of corruption per-se, but a sign of desperation more than anything, the rest of the world certainly isn't as corrupt as those pushing it though because the corruption of those pushing it stems from the self-interest and the harm it causes to the rest of the world and those who get in the way of said self interest.
Or just chuck the tangled outboard motor overboard and slot a new one in it's place if we're talking about the small boats somali pirates launch from the larger vessels for actually boarding the ships?
Then it's lucky you're not in charge of this sort of thing. Seamen aren't trained in combat, they have no combat experience, if they get into a firefight against Somalis who have been practicing gunning each other down for the last two decades then they're going to die. A net that they can fire without needing much aim due to the spread factor and then run and hide is a far safer bet than trying to aim a machine gun that they're simply not skilled at handling whilst coming under RPG and AK-47 fire. You're talking about getting civilians to engage in a firefight against battle hardened militia. Pirates wont kill the sailors if they don't fight back because they're worth ransom, but if they're weilding arms the pirates will see them as a threat and shoot to kill. What do you think is going to enrage them more to the point they may kill crew members, getting them caught up in a net or shooting at them and possibly managing to wound or kill one of their friends whilst failing to kill the rest?
You mean Nicolas "Sorry Obama, I just can't stop humping your leg" Sarkozy? and the French military being the same French military that avoids combat operations in Afghanistan preferring to only patrol the relatively quiet, realtively safe areas, whilst Britain and Canada do the majority of the work that requires actually blood and sweat to help the US out who take the biggest burden? The same French military that has come under the same accusations by Afghans living in those areas as Italy in that they pay Taliban militants not to attack them?
Did you really just suggest that Sarkozy was the toughest pro-Western leader in the last 50 years? Even Margaret Thatcher had bigger balls, and she is a woman. Even if you cut back from 50 years down to the last 10, 5 or 2 years you still say, for example, Merkel, who again, despite being a woman has bigger balls than Sarkozy.
Sarkozy can't even hold a press conference without making sure everyone around him is shorter than he is so he doesn't start crying about his height.
The idea of Sarkozy as being some tough guy makes me chuckle, he would probably get away with being the most insecure leader in Europe in the last 100 years if that is in fact what you meant?
Yep.
Stalling deforestation in the Amazon and such is important regardless of the effect it may or may not have on climate change, simply because there are so many undiscovered plant and animal species there that may offer cures for various illnesses we've yet to find cures for. We're destroying these resources before we've even discovered them.
On the fuel side of things, moving to devices that consume less power to do the same job through efficiency gains and cutting dependance on oil that creates great conflict are examples of things that would make the world better.
Yep, I agree it may be preferable to not bother with an IDE for some stuff, but if you don't use Visual Studio for developing say as an example, ASP.NET MVC apps then you're just being a waste of space basically. There's no real advantage to not using it for that type of app and you'll see a massive productivity decrease if you don't.
It really depends on the apps being built.
I agree with your last paragraph also but I don't think competence is the right word, there's this idea that assembly programmers are somehow better and more competent than again, say, high level web devs, but really, having done both there's no less complexity in building a scalable distributed web application that requires proficiency in technologies and standards (HTTP, XML, WSDL, UDDI, SQL etc.). You've then got to understand the way the web server in question handles concurrency, you've got to understand higher level security threats (SQL injection, XSS).
The fact is nowadays, whilst things have become more abstract, the amount of abstract technologies that good developers need to understand is so vast, there's certainly no more complexity, level of skill and knowledge required at the high end than there is at the low end. Realistically, if someone is competent enough to get their head around all the high end abstracted layers and technologies that are needed for modern large scale apps, then there's no reason they couldn't also get their head around low level assembly development as well and vice versa.
Whilst there are many web developers who wouldn't touch assembly, I have also encountered quite a few lower level developers (ASM, C etc.) that have this attitude that because they work at low level are awesome, but have then had some reason to build a web application that they've hacked together in PHP and it's the most god awful insecure, unmaintainable piece of crap you'll ever see, often with the wheel reinvented multiple times within.
"The internet is actually a smaller place than most people think."
No, actually, the internet is a much larger place than most people think. Most people think like you, that there are only a few sites for each topic, and not much beyond that. The fact is it's simply not true. English language sites are all most people know and yet English language sites now account for less than 60% of the entire internet, that means there's a whopping amount of sites out there in foreign languages that most people never ever actually stumble across.
"How many large torrent trackers are there really? Twenty, Thirty? I doubt it's over a hundred. Depends on your definition of large perhaps, but I'll make mine; A tracker which hosts TV, Movies, Music, Games and Software, and which has a large number of seeders and leechers (>10000). How many of these site are there? I estimate that there are about a dozen who really count."
It doesn't matter, the trackers aren't really going down because they've not for the most part been the target of litigation, only the public facing index sites have. So the state of seeders/leechers on these trackers hasn't really changed, all that has changed is how you must find a torrent to connect to such a tracker.
"Throw out as many platitudes as you like, but the RIAA et al are putting the bittorrent genie back in the bottle."
You're possibly right but only in the case of the most paranoid inexperienced people who live in the most strict of countries like Britain- do you really think Canadians, South Americans, or many Asians care when their governments have shown no real interest in stopping them? but what they haven't done is put piracy back in the bottle as many people move to other networks and methods of distribution, like usenet.
"Technology has not kept pace with legal manoeuvres and one by one the top sites are being shut down."
See my above points for a response to this. Effectively all that is being shut down is technology that hasn't kept pace, but that doesn't mean technology as a whole hasn't kept pace because there are plenty of sites and methods of transfer still thriving. An example is The Pirate Bay's switch to DHT, it's old tech got sent offline, but it's new tech. has worked around that.
"With them goes the hundreds of thousands of technically inexperienced seeds and leechers need to keep torrents healthy. Trackers need critical mass for torrents to be useful, but this mass makes them an easy target for legal action."
Go to http://btjunkie.org/ and scroll down to most popular, look at the seeders and leechers figures. Does that really look unhealthy to you? Does it really look like legal action has had any measurable effect?
"The Chinese government has proven that the internet and its users can be brought to heel on a massive scale."
No it hasn't, Iran has more strict monitoring and filtering than even China since the elections and look how well they were able to stop protests and prevent footage of their government sponsored milita killing civilians getting out, hint: not at all. At best they've stopped people stumbling on things they don't want them to see, they've been able to do nothing to prevent determined searchers or to prevent communication between dissidents.
"Netizens in general, and in particular the geeks whose obligation was to defend the network, have shown though lack of innovation that they are not going to defend users freedoms, anonymity or rights online."
Now this I actually agree with, and I'll admit I'm partly responsible myself in not doing more. I think we have got lazy, complacent, I think there is much more we could do. There are people out there who are still doing a great job though although again they seem more focussed on anti-censorship in places like Iran and China than assisting piracy- perhaps the old defenders of the internet grew up and tend towards these more important causes now? I have to admit the decline of the assembly language programm
A few reasons:
- If you access the BBC from outside the UK, ads are displayed which likely makes it cost neutral alone
- The BBC run a commercial arm for overseas business that subsidises the UK operations making it cheaper for UK citizens in terms of license fees whilst retaining high quality, the website helps advertise the BBC's prescence
- Contrary to bad press, a lot of us UK citizens are sharing folk and I don't think to be honest anyone apart from the most racist/xenophobic people (i.e. BNP/UKIP members) has a problem with people overseas accessing the BBC website, sharing is caring! As a license payer I would have no problem with the idea of people in different countries accessing content even if I am footing the bill and the ad revenue doesn't cover it. That said in a way it does benefit us I guess, at the bottom of many BBC articles you'll see a form asking if you were at an event and whether you have images or information about the news event, by letting foreign people participate, they can also provide information to editorial staff making news better for us, as well as them
- Finally, to a lesser extent, the BBC unofficially acts to spread ideology of freedom and so forth, hence why it attempts to counteract for example anti-Western Iranian propaganda in Iran via a satelite service to bypass state control of media. Whilst it is by no means a propaganda machine (the government etc. has no power to mandate what the BBC broadcasts), it does at least try to put the Western viewpoint across where it is under-represented just as the likes of Al Jazeera attempt to put the Arabic viewpoint across in the West for example
Perhaps it's because I don't live in the US, but really here in the UK we absolutely are at a point where political correctness is doing far more harm than good. In fact, the rise of the BNP (an extremely racist, far right political organisation) is gaining strength partly off the back of the idea that special treatment should be given to minority groups, because they are minority groups.
We reached a point where of course there was still racism, but for the most part it was dying out, we are a massively multi-cultural society, but in recent years a reverse trend is occuring. Don't assume the US wont (if it hasn't already) reach a peak where attitudes have to change and people have to be treated equally else you see racism get worse as the equality pendulum sways too far away from equilibrium in the other direction.
I never realised that, that's quite sad as the ICC is one of the best organisations out there IMO.
People like Luis Moreno-Ocampo have defied political pressure from China and many African nations with vested interests in protecting the guilty when attempting to bring justice for crimes in Darfur, it's probably one of the most honest, least corrupt organisations out there.
But presumably, that's also why it hasn't got a massive amount of political support worldwide either :(
I'm not sure what country you're referring to but that's not the case in the UK. Many tickets have been overturned because the cameras didn't manage to get a clear image of the driver.
This leads to a similar situation because then effectively the driver can choose to contest it in the courts and if he does the police can choose to accept the challenge in the courts or drop the charge, in many cases they simply drop the charge because they know they don't have a leg to stand on.
What you certainly don't have to do is prove it wasn't you in the car, the police have to prove it was you in the car and that's the key difference.
That's also how it should be here, but as the law companies has no actual evidence putting you at blame then it's not a case they can win, hence why they normally vanish into silence as soon as people question their claims rather than pursue it in the courts.
The point is, you're not liable until they can really prove you're liable, which they can't. The onus is not on you to prove you're innocent, only to turn up to court and refute their attempts to lie or manipulate the courts if they pursue this path to attempt to obtain a judgement in their favour, you will only receive a default judgement if you do not turn up at all.
I don't disagree.
The problem is I believe a good portion of those 30,000 (although the BBC article only says 15,000 by the way) will be completely unaware of any campaign or what to do and will just pay up regardless.
For what it's worth though, the BBC article also states the company ACS:law is under investigation by the law society and some solicitors grouping, I don't know what standing they have, but it may be that they will not be practicing too much longer anyway with any luck. Lawyers and solicitors in the UK generally have a better reputation than the US and I believe such a grouping will be unhappy with being brought into disrepute, at least, I'm keeping my fingers crossed.
For what it's worth, I shall contact my MP without being one of the people to receive such a letter- there is no need to wait to see if you're one of those that receives such a letter before you decide to act.
This is why the viewpoint in the summary is flawed. I do not believe for example that the BBC would be allowed to delist from Google due to laws governing it because it's publicly funded and can't show competition bias.
I doubt the BBC is unique in this situation either, and the reality is for every thousand companies that delist from Google and follow Murdoch, there'll still be a BBC picking up the search results.
Users wont stop using Google, they'll just pick whatever the first result is on a search whether that's Fox, or the BBC and again, there'll always be the BBCs of the world there.
There's a difference between you explicitly allowing someone to use your connection for those purposes, and someone using the connection for those purposes against your knowledge.
If your connection is used without your knowledge due to open wifi or a compromised PC then they are sharing against your will and you most certainly did not allow that person to do it- they did it without such permission and you are therefore not liable.
As Slashdot requires a car analogy, it's like someone breaking into your car and then joy riding in it and running someone over and killing them. When that happens you are not guilty of manslaughter or in fact guilty of anything at all.
On the contrary, in both cases, you are actually a victim of a crime, whether you choose to report and prosecute is up to you, but you certainly cannot be punished whether you do or not.
The numbers are already messed up, the article above says 30,000, 25,000 of which are BT. The BBC article says only 15,000:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8381097.stm
So how many people really are covered I wonder?
Yes, which is exactly why they're trying to bypass the courts and make it possible for mere accusation to be enough to be punished.
Actually, it's because they're doing it for the government who are pushing it for the music industry.
This is why the whole "Digital Economy Bill" is a complete farce. All measures that would improve connectivity and the digital economy have been removed/indefinitely delayed, whilst the only measures that remain are things like this which require investment in technologies that inevitably have to slow down the network and that sidetrack money away from infrastructure improvements.
The net effect of the "Digital Economy Bill" is to lessen innovation and worsen the UK's internet infrastructure. The fact this bill goes completely against what is intended demonstrates how hopelessly incompetent government ministers, and the opposition that also support this are.
Yep, America is also threatening Britain that they will cease intelligence sharing with us if we use evidence of CIA torture against a British citizen in a British court also.
There was a few years ago the case of a US A10 pilot who killed a British soldier and wounded 3 others, also blowing up 2 of our armoured vehicles in a friendly fire incident in Iraq. We did not want to put the pilot in trial but simply wanted to carry out an inquest to see why it happened and whether it was preventable. The US would not send the gun camera footage, they would not name the pilot or let us ask him questions about the incident. The gun camera footage was at least leaked in the end, but the US never to this day cooperated with the investigation.
If the US wont even allow us justice when we've been fighting alongside them as allies and they screw up, then why the hell should we even consider extraditing a British citizen over something so relatively minor? They kill our troops, they torture our citizens, and they want us to extradite someone who connected to a bunch of their machines that had blank and default passwords?
It really shows how little interest our government has in looking after our country when they support such a request.
Yes it does, it certainly doesn't excuse what he did I agree with that, but it's completely relevant to the handling of his punishment.
Do you know what happens if you put an Asperger's sufferer in a situation where he may have to deal with some extremely nasty people in prison? Or where he may not be able to carry out the types of focussed tasks he is mentally pushed to do by his condition? I am not saying he does not deserve punishment, but putting him in a situation as the US wishes to that has a very high chance of pushing him to suicide is not justice, particularly in the context of his crime. It's not as if he's a murderer, rapist of paedophile. He accessed a few machines with blank or default passwords.