I have to echo Jeff Pulver’s comments about emergency response, in the light of today’s mass murders in London, near where I grew up. [I’m up late, ignore the post dateline.]
When you can’t get hold of your friends and family, it’s seriously not funny — apologies for my resorting to British understatement. The legacy smart network is incapable of degrading gracefully under load. You can’t readily descend from wideband audio to narrowband, to push to talk, to IM and then down to store-and-forward email. The possibilities of IP in emergency service have gone from being an intellectual curiosity to a matter of real urgency.
Oh, and anyone who thinks the British will be their ideological slaves under threat of violence hasn’t read their history books very thoroughly. Too many of our ancestors have crawled out of lice-filled trenches to emerge into freedom for you to stand any hope of victory.
If I was down in London tomorrow I’d be buying a travelcard and spending my day occupying tube trains and buses to enjoy the ride.
Posted by Martin Geddes at 01:38 AMTrackBack URL for this entry:
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If I still lived in London ( I wish I did) I would do the same.
This would be the safest day for a ride on the Tube and on a bus.
I would even choose a bus.
I bet there is not so much traffic and you could really enjoy the sightseeing...
And regarding what you say:
"Oh, and anyone who thinks the British will be their ideological slaves under threat of violence hasn’t read their history books very thoroughly. Too many of our ancestors have crawled out of lice-filled trenches to emerge into freedom for you to stand any hope of victory."
If you want to talk about History, you should really be a little more objective.
Talking also of the IMMENSE richness the Empire accumulated in India using the Indian people.
I would not forget the IMMENSE richness the Empire made out of Africa.
It belongs to the past as much as the "lice-filled trenches" from which the English emerged as many others who fought for freedom.
Everybody is a hero as well as a tyrann.
Patrizia
http://woip.blogspot.com
Posted by: at July 8, 2005 07:55 AMPatrizia, I think you might have missed the point here -- he's not saying that the Brits are the "good guys" of history in every occasion, he's simply saying that past attempts to change the British or cause them to panic and flee in terror have met with abject failure (think Napoleon, Hitler, and quite a few others who may have temporarily succeeded only to be overthrown and absorbed like the Normans and, well, the Anglos and Saxons).
Posted by: at July 8, 2005 08:15 PMI won't be in town today (having a one-year-old, I don't get out much) but I'll make damn sure I sit on the top deck of the next bus I board. Fuck 'em.
Posted by: at July 9, 2005 03:38 PM