There is another alternative, and one that means the tin-foil hat can be left on its hook. Leaving in a tax break for an already profitable part of an economy would have left them open to critisism (and accusations, ironically, of underhand lobbying from the games industry), so what they've done instead is to distribute the breaks around a number of different parts of the small business economy; think of it as spreading the risk.

Thus, we have the lowering of corporation tax; potential (although I think currently undefined) breaks for companies setting up outside London and the South East; and, savings on National Insurance payments for new small businesses. VAT, which admittedly may hit the business-to-consumer games industry more than business-to-business industries, will still only add 85p to a £40 game.

Personally, I don't think the reason was lobbying. It was the realisation that they could actually use the Budget to help the entire small business economy - of which the video games companies are just a part.

Much as I enjoy kicking them now they're down, to be fair the main reason for that was the range of marks an 'A' grade covered. 'B' could, in theory, cover 60 to 69%, whilst 'A' covered 70% all the way up to 100%. 'A*' simply made it possible to differentiate between the increasingly common (for other, more fundamental reasons) 'A'-grades.

The danger is that in the future, people will forget exacrly when A*s were introduced, and judge 'old' A grades as being inferior.

By the time you've done two years of an A-level, you'll have picked up a lot more than 'Programming for Dummies'. I saw a lot of people on my course go from no programming ability to would-make-a-good-developer during those two years. Plus, by the time they finished they also knew whether they wanted to take it further - and, if they had the ability to do so.

Going back to the original poster, their issue was that the language chosen for them to learn initially was a complex one. Because of that experience, people who had the intelligence and enthusiasm for computing - but, lacking the experience of how alien computer languages can appear - may have been put off entirely, and the industry a worse place for it. People learn at different rates, and assuming that everyone should start on possibly the most complex mainstream language in existence smacks of elitism.

That was the point I was making, yes. People are treating this story as if it relates to a (non-existent) A-level in Computer Programming, not one in computer science itself, albeit one with the more generic title of 'A-level Computing'.

Before I start, please learn how to quote posts properly. It makes dismissing your points so much easier.

A Levels aren't about 'institutions producing the best'. They are about learning a subject to a reasonable level, before potentially going on to study it at university. Furthermore, programming is only a part of the qualification.

They are also a University. A Levels are not taught at University. This isn't about trying to weed people out, it's about trying to bring them into a subject. If the post as quoted does represent your true attitude - rather than just being a clumsy attempt at a troll with Dilbertian comparisons thrown in - then elitist attitudes such as yours don't help.

As a developer, the amount of paperwork I have to do is minimal, and I expect to be able to do it during my working day, as part of the work I do. If I am not finished by the end of the day, I put it down and pick it up the next morning. If I need to learn a new language, that becomes part of my daily work and I actively use it in new projects to assist with that learning.

A teacher, on the other hand, is routinely expected to stay late in the school doing out-of-hours INSETs, and to take work home with them for marking and assessment, planning future lessons and producing any additional resources that may be needed. I would imagine that a fair number of them simply don't have the time to keep up-to-date learning new languages, and as a result a lobby group somewhere has insisted that older languages - whose runtime is still supported even on Windows 7 - be allowed. This is possibly also the rationale behind Pascal / Delphi being on the list.

(Don't bother mentioning 'long holidays' until you've lived the life of a teacher: just because you don't see the work happening in front of you, doesn't mean it isn't happening.)

It tells me that the class is not made up of people with previous programming experience, but rather people who needed to be taught programing concepts first, not a specific programming language.

Just to clarify, are you stating "Don't learn this, because I think they teach different things in a University in another country"? I quite honestly do not understand the point that you're making.

My A level course taught Pascal. My degree covered Modula-2, Mathematica, Miranda, Prolog, 68000 assembler, and a few more I can't remember offhand. I don't think not having been taught any of these at A level caused me any problems.

Firstly, the A level is in Computer Science, not Computer Programming. The students aren't there to learn how to program for later commercial use, they are there to learn how computers work and are used. Programming is just one part of the course, and one of a number of areas of assessment.

Secondly, a lot of people - many of whom, I assume, are experienced programmers - seem to be focussing specifically on which would be the best language to learn for themselves, rather than putting themselves in the position of a 16-year-old who had never programmed before. On my course[1], we were taught Turbo Pascal[2]; however, I remember Logo also being studied. Not because we would ever use Logo in anything other than an academic environment, but because most of the students were programming novices and needed to learn concepts, not code.

Show these people C, they would have run a mile: for complete novices, the syntax can seem very intimidating. Show them Pascal, they might actually realise that programming isn't as scary as they thought and consider learning C at a later date.

[1] Between 1991 and 1993.
[2] How well it was taught, I don't know; those of us who already understood programming were allowed to skip those lessons.

My question was more, who would the warrant be addressed to? RIPE? IANA? Would the rightsholders necessarily know to contact AAISP - or any other ISP that also implements this tactic - in what is effectively their role as just an upstream provider?

(I guess they could just traceroute and pick the ISP immediately before the customer, but that's starting to get awkward).

Just out of interest, who would the rightsholder be allowed to approach (going by the DEA and AAISP's definition of 'subscriber') if the individual's personal details are suppressed?

By 'require', I was referring to the fact that the DEA allows rightsholders to send their complaints to an ISP, and the ISP is required by law to pass those complaints on and (I think - I've not read it in a while) take further action where they relate to a subscriber of that ISP. AAISP's view is apparently that they can alter the status of their customers away from 'subscriber' to circumvent this requirement.

They seem to believe otherwise. It is quite possible (I'm not going to say 'likely', these things are notoriously difficult to predict) that the judge will view the legal definitions as strictly as they are written, and AAISP can be shown to be in the right legally. At which point, court orders again become a requirement in order for the holders to contact the potential infringers directly.

None of this is directly aimed at taking the legal system out of the loop when it comes to copyright infringment. That is still something that can be put before a judge in a court of law. AAISP are, it seems, simply applying a large 'RESET' button that puts things back to how they were before this section of the DEA was put into law.

They also seem the strongest generally when it comes to following common-sense approach to science; evidence-based policy is one phrase I've heard being banded around as well, which after the various allegations of ministers ignoring their own scientific advisors in the past few months is a welcome relief.

However, I'm more than just a geek. When it comes to my vote in a week's time, I also have to consider the pros and cons of each party to all the other aspects of my life: my wife, baby son, job, house, local environment, health, personal and moral beliefs, just to name a few. Being geek-friendly is a positive trait, but there are also areas important to me in which the LibDems are weaker.

Either you or I have misunderstood this particular section of the Digital Economy Act, and the balance of probabilities suggests that it's you. At issue is not the legality of sharing the files - the DEA doesn't deal with that, that's part of pre-existing Copyright acts - but the short-cut that now exists that enables rightsholders to harrass suspected filesharers through their ISP without the need for a court order.

Before the DEA, firms were required to issue a court order to the ISP - a timeconsuming and potentially expensive process if done in bulk - in order to collect enough information to contact the individuals themselves. With the DEA in place, they can simply require the ISP to do their donkey work.

The loopholes definitely exist, I've seen the various discussions that led to A&A making the implementations discussed and it is quite clear from the wording of the DEA itself (which, combined with the Telecommunitions Act IIRC, is very specific in its definitions of the parties concerned). The legal route, where the case can be presented in front of a judge, does still exist: it just requires more effort on the part of the rightsholders, and specifically the amount of effort that they should have had to take in the first place before the DEA came into effect.