Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: Kosh on February 21, 2007, 01:21:24 am
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http://yro.slashdot.org/yro/07/02/20/1344200.shtml
"With the largest density of CCTV cameras in the world, and an increasing network of automatic number-plate recognition cameras on main roads, Britain has long been a pioneer for the surveillance society. Now new official figures reveal that UK agencies monitored 439,000 telephones and email addresses in a 15 month period between 2005 and 2006. The Interception of Communications Commissioner is seeking the right for agencies to be allowed to monitor the communications of Members of Parliament as well, something which has been forbidden since the 1960s. It must be that it is bringing their numbers down: on the law of averages they should be monitoring at least 5 of the MPs."
1984 anyone?
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****ing socialists.
We need rid of this lot now.
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Heh, presumably they're worried about the Downing Street 'secret email system'?
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The government there needs to be watched more closely. Look at what happened when nobody was paying attention.
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People were paying attention, but nobody stood up and said "no".
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People were paying attention, but nobody stood up and said "no".
I did.
I got a patronising letter back.
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Re-elect Zombie Churchill - he'll get rid of the surveillance measures and put down that pesky uprising in Mesapotamia.
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Never before in the field of data collection, was so much known about so many by so few
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Our only hope is now government incompetence.
Oh, so we're ok then.
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:lol:
Can't remember who it was, but someone went round Milton Keynes with a group of clowns and then under the data protection act, wrote and demanded footage of himself. When the council replied that they couldn't identify him from their footage, he responded that if they couldn't identify a man with a group of clown on the footage, how the hell did they expect to catch criminals with it?
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I did.
I got a patronising letter back.
Really? Got some details for that, I wouldnt mind hearing the story?
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I did.
I got a patronising letter back.
Really? Got some details for that, I wouldnt mind hearing the story?
It's not as exciting as it sounds; I signed one of those petition things. I think.
The mass outcry of protest led to...spam email. From His Divine Holiness, Beloved Leader Tony Blair himself (well, the work office boy who makes his tea on Wednesdays). Which basically said "you're wrong, you're wrong, you're sooo wrong, this complaint is wrong, this complaint is also wrong, we like these figures so we're not listening to sensible rational ones, oh, and we're going to do it and you can't stop us muwhahahaha"
Well, technically it was a wee bit more patronising. But no less insulting.
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This would be Congestion charging then. Apparently we're all supposed to walk to work. Since the affect of congestion charging on those using road based public transport is likely to be worse than on those driving piggin' cars! Or maybe we should all move to London and use the underground. Someone please stop me here before I really get started.
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This would be Congestion charging then. Apparently we're all supposed to walk to work. Since the affect of congestion charging on those using road based public transport is likely to be worse than on those driving piggin' cars! Or maybe we should all move to London and use the underground. Someone please stop me here before I really get started.
Nah, it was an ID card petition.
Which, considering the oyster card thingies used in London, is probably the same thing.....
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ID cards are fun too. "Can I buy these groceries?", "Sure, I just have to scan your ID card".
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ID cards are fun too. "Can I buy these groceries?", "Sure, I just have to scan your ID card".
"Hmm; our system shows you purchased a turnip last week. Under the Vaguely Imagined Terrorist Threat From Suspicious Turnip Purchase Act of 2008, I'm afraid I will have to call MI5 to arrest you. You'll get your turnip once you complete the 90-day detention period. Oh, and you'll miss the election... but I wouldn't worry about that, our profile states you're a Lib Dem voter and, frankly, I'd be more concerned about the tumour our records show you've been waiting to have treated on the NHS since last year."
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And you make it sound so innocent.
The one I really find amusing is the proposed "tax people for how much they drive". No, not the existing tax on fuel, or road tax.. but the totally new one they're thinking of doing.
I wonder how far they can push the system before people just stop showing up to work.
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You forgot "tax people for how much time they don't spend dangerously staring at the speedo". ie: safety cameras.
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Out of curiosity I just googled "pavement-tax" and turned up this (http://www.thisislocallondon.co.uk/archive/display.var.523454.0.pavement_tax_could_spell_the_end_for_dining_out.php). I don't have time to read through it and see if it's a joke right now though.
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Oh you had to bring those up.
My father got "done" by one of those recently near our home. It was a mobile camera - the sort they sneakily set up to get some extra revenue going rather than actually slowing everything down. Suffice to say he was threatened with some stupidly hefty fine and 6 points on his licence or he could plead guilty to the charge and take "only" a £70 fine and 3 points.
Then there's the tales of these mobile cameras being horribly incorrect and actually being shown to record walls travelling at 30 miles an hour.
It makes you wonder how many speeding fines are justified and how many are just shots in the dark and excellent money makers.
At this rate we're going to end up living in a country where the "average" man is also the slowest, poorest man on the road. Meanwhile those who don't abide the law and don't bother registering for road tax etc. etc. will continue to speed, pay less and generally enjoy hassle free lives.
It's really enough to make an honest man dishonest.
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I think (working) speed cameras are fine so long as they a) put ****ing huge signs up and b) put them somewhere sensible rather than where the cash is best.
That, and raise the speed limit by at least 10mph in about half the roads in the country.
(incidentally, apparently speeding tickets aren't sent by registered post, so if you ignore the first one and pretend it never arrived they generally won't follow up on it)
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My local paper stated Manchester Council's bid for transport improvement money (including the Metrolink "big bang" expansion) would need to include plans for road charging or be dismissed out of hand.
it's always the same. There's an issue. they can either :
A: put the work in to make a genuine improvement
or
B: Use it as a tax hike
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On the subject... (http://www.wits.ac.za/Humanities/LLS/Holistic/bradbury.htm)
The Pedestrian
Ray Bradbury
To enter out into that silence that was the city at eight o'clock of a misty evening in November, to put your feet upon that buckling concrete walk, to step over grassy seams and make your way, hands in pockets, through the silences, that was what Mr. Leonard Mead most dearly loved to do. He would stand upon the corner of an intersection and peer down long moonlit avenues of sidewalk in four directions, deciding which way to go, but it really made no difference; he was alone in this world of A.D. 2053, or as good as alone, and with a final decision made, a path selected, he would stride off, sending patterns of frosty air before him like the smoke of a cigar.
Sometimes he would walk for hours and miles and return only at midnight to his house. And on his way he would see the cottages and homes with their dark windows, and it was not unequal to walking through a graveyard where only the faintest glimmers of firefly light appeared in flickers behind the windows. Sudden gray phantoms seemed to manifest upon inner room walls where a curtain was still undrawn against the night, or there were whisperings and murmurs where a window in a tomb-like building was still open.
Mr. Leonard Mead would pause, cock his head, listen, look, and march on, his feet making no noise on the lumpy walk. For long ago he had wisely changed to sneakers when strolling at night, because the dogs in intermittent squads would parallel his journey with barkings if he wore hard heels, and lights might click on and faces appear and an entire street be startled by the passing of a lone figure, himself, in the early November evening.
On this particular evening he began his journey in a westerly direction, toward the hidden sea. There was a good crystal frost in the air; it cut the nose and made the lungs blaze like a Christmas tree inside; you could feel the cold light going on and off, all the branches filled with invisible snow. He listened to the faint push of his soft shoes through autumn leaves with satisfaction, and whistled a cold quiet whistle between his teeth, occasionally picking up a leaf as he passed, examining its skeletal pattern in the infrequent lamplights as he went on, smelling its rusty smell.
"Hello, in there," he whispered to every house on every side as he moved. "What's up tonight on Channel 4, Channel 7, Channel 9? Where are the cowboys rushing, and do I see the United States Cavalry over the next hill to the rescue?"
The street was silent and long and empty, with only his shadow moving like the shadow of a hawk in midcountry. If he closed his eyes and stood very still, frozen, he could imagine himself upon the center of a plain, a wintry, windless Arizona desert with no house in a thousand miles, and only dry river beds, the streets, for company.
"What is it now?" he asked the houses, noticing his wrist watch. "Eight-thirty P.M.? Time for a dozen assorted murders? A quiz? A revue? A comedian falling off the stage?"
Was that a murmur of laughter from within a moon-white house? He hesitated, but went on when nothing more happened. He stumbled over a particularly uneven section of sidewalk. The cement was vanishing under flowers and grass. In ten years of walking by night or day, for thousands of miles, he had never met another person walking, not once in all that time.
He came to a cloverleaf intersection which stood silent where two main highways crossed the town. During the day it was a thunderous surge of cars, the gas stations open, a great insect rustling and a ceaseless jockeying for position as the scarab-beetles, a faint incense puttering from their exhausts, skimmed homeward to the far directions. But now these highways, too, were like streams in a dry season, all stone and bed and moon radiance.
He turned back on a side street, circling around toward his home. He was within a block of his destination when the lone car turned a corner quite suddenly and flashed a fierce white cone of light upon him. He stood entranced, not unlike a night moth, stunned by the illumination, and then drawn toward it.
A metallic voice called to him:
"Stand still. Stay where you are! Don't move!"
He halted.
"Put up your hands!"
"But-" he said.
"Your hands up! Or we'll Shoot!"
The police, of course, but what a rare, incredible thing; in a city of three million, there was only one police car left, wasn't that correct? Ever since a year ago, 2052, the election year, the force had been cut down from three cars to one. Crime was ebbing; there was no need now for the police, save for this one lone car wandering and wandering the empty streets.
"Your name?" said the police car in a metallic whisper. He couldn't see the men in it for the bright light in his eyes.
"Leonard Mead," he said.
"Speak up!"
"Leonard Mead!"
"Business or profession?"
"I guess you'd call me a writer."
"No profession," said the police car, as if talking to itself. The light held him fixed, like a museum specimen, needle thrust through chest.
"You might say that, " said Mr. Mead. He hadn't written in years. Magazines and books didn't sell any more. Everything went on in the tomblike houses at night now, he thought, continuing his fancy. The tombs, ill-lit by television light, where the people sat like the dead, the gray or multicolored lights touching their faces, but never really touching them.
"No profession," said the phonograph voice, hissing. "What are you doing out?"
"Walking," said Leonard Mead.
"Walking!"
"Just walking," he said simply, but his face felt cold.
"Walking, just walking, walking?"
"Yes, sir."
"Walking where? For what?"
"Walking for air. Walking to see."
"Your address!"
"Eleven South Saint James Street."
"And there is air in your house, you have an air conditioner, Mr. Mead?"
"Yes."
"And you have a viewing screen in your house to see with?"
"No."
"No?" There was a crackling quiet that in itself was an accusation.
"Are you married, Mr. Mead?"
"No."
"Not married," said the police voice behind the fiery beam, The moon was high and clear among the stars and the houses were gray and silent.
"Nobody wanted me," said Leonard Mead with a smile.
"Don't speak unless you're spoken to!"
Leonard Mead waited in the cold night.
"Just walking, Mr. Mead?"
"Yes."
"But you haven't explained for what purpose."
"I explained; for air, and to see, and just to walk."
"Have you done this often?"
"Every night for years."
The police car sat in the center of the street with its radio throat faintly humming.
"Well, Mr. Mead," it said.
"Is that all?" he asked politely.
"Yes," said the voice. "Here." There was a sigh, a pop. The back door of the police car sprang wide. "Get in."
"Wait a minute, I haven't done anything!"
"Get in."
"I protest!"
"Mr. Mead."
He walked like a man suddenly drunk. As he passed the front window of the car he looked in. As he had expected, there was no one in the front seat, no one in the car at all.
"Get in."
He put his hand to the door and peered into the back seat, which was a little cell, a little black jail with bars. It smelled of riveted steel. It smelled of harsh antiseptic; it smelled too clean and hard and metallic. There was nothing soft there.
"Now if you had a wife to give you an alibi," said the iron voice. "But-"
"Where are you taking me?"
The car hesitated, or rather gave a faint whirring click, as if information, somewhere, was dropping card by punch-slotted card under electric eyes. "To the Psychiatric Center for Research on Regressive Tendencies."
He got in. The door shut with a soft thud. The police car rolled through the night avenues, flashing its dim lights ahead.
They passed one house on one street a moment later, one house in an entire city of houses that were dark, but this one particular house had all of its electric lights brightly lit, every window a loud yellow illumination, square and warm in the cool darkness.
"That's my house," said Leonard Mead.
No one answered him.
The car moved down the empty river-bed streets and off away, leaving the empty streets with the empty side-walks, and no sound and no motion all the rest of the chill November night.
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Can I quote Farenheit 451?
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Can I quote Farenheit 451?
All of it?
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Convert it to binary first so the forums will crach again. :D