> On 20 Jan 2016, at 23:15, Tom Hill <[email protected]> wrote: > > Ah come on. Don't tell me you've given up?
No it's just inevitable, partly owing to our approach in responding to these issues. > See, I know you do care really. But I'm very perplexed as to how excited > you could be over something that will have such a negative effect. I > agree that it might be fun in a vacuum, as an exercise, but actually > *doing* this to a country of >60M people should remain prohibitively > abhorrent to anyone with a conscience. And that's why we have a democracy dood! It's not up to a band of engineers to decide what the world should get as laws or not. If the 60M people don't want it - they can choose not to have it but if we as a minority decide that we don't like it therefore you can't have it because of some BS technical reasons - then we are as equally, if not more so, guilty of abhorrent behaviour as those who seek to put these laws into place. > Besides, China have done it already (see Marek's link) and the world is > generally aghast as a result. There really is very little Engineering > 'achievement' to be had here. China hasn't done it this at all and by comparing to what goes on in China to this bill demonstrates ignorance of a pretty high level - what goes on in China is terrible don't get me wrong but it's an enormously different situation (and I looked after a few Networks in China). And I don't agree on the achievement part! Building big scalable systems is what we've been doing since the 50's - this is just another one. I'm sure the notion of having billions of people posting about their favourite cat on a computer system across the world in 1969 would be equally impossible but it's been done. > >>>> * Because even if you were gravely mortified on purpose, it's >>>> quite perturbing to see how excited about it you are here. >>>> Despite being Engineers, history teaches us that we all need a >>>> sense of morality above all. >> I strongly don’t agree. >> >> History teaches us to fight the arguments on the right front rather >> than some BS about it not being able to be done or that it will be >> too expensive - because there are smart engineers all over the world >> that can and will make it happen and happily take government or other >> money. If you want to live in the “lala" world of its impossible >> knock yourself out :-) I make no apologies for taking on tough >> engineering challenges! Silicon can be respun and optimised, software >> re-written. If it wasn’t for our engineering drive we’d still live in >> caves. > > I don't think it's impossible, far from it. It's expensive because we're > bloody paying for it, and it's diabolical because it will be ineffective > and unduly invasive. There really is nothing to be jovial about (again, > see above; it's been done). It could be done pretty much for free in my view in time. Nobody here disagrees with the pointlessness of what this is and how it won't actually help the authorities do what they are trying to do. That's the argument we need to win - otherwise this will just come back over and over again. > > > Well there's been no law passed - not even a court order - and yet it > still happened. That didn't seem like much of a fight to me. Perhaps > someone was too eager to take on the Engineering challenge? ;) > It's nothing to do with laws or court orders. The market moved on this after suggestions from a number of stakeholders the government being one of them. Not all service providers have done it and those that don't like it are free to move from those that do to those that don't. Pardon me for noticing but there hasn't been a mass exodus of customers from any of the ISPs who have done this and there don't appear to be any reports of the network not performing as well as it did before this was put in place (despite the doomsayers saying it would be the end of the world) and yes thanks to amazing engineering we are able to do this for almost zero, whilst enabling a feature that the market wants and enabling choice. I'm sure folks thought seat belts were an inconvenience once upon a time! My point is fight the right fight or face this stuff happening perhaps not this time around but the next time around. Regards Neil.
