Buying off the 'net counts as distance selling, which in turn means I have a seven days from when I receive the item to send it back just because I feel like it: http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/Governmentcitizensandrights/Consumerrights/DG_183048

Here in the UK, for reasons similar to those you describe, we have three rates: standard, reduced and zero; books are zero rated here.

The "original" version was actually the radio series, and it was self consistent(ish), only once the books started being written did us fans embrace the inconsistencies as part of it's charm, enough to make many think that the books came first; so they made DNA write book 5 and retconned it into radio (after having made a TV series). That's why it's inconsistent. (Mostly) Not by design. The 'problem' with the movie is that it felt more like a story in the H2G2 world rather than H2G2 itself. Here the inconsistencies were deliberate because IIRC DNA always felt he had under developed Trillian as a character, so used it as an opportunity to make her more relevant (and thus had to re-write much of the story - some fans didn't like that; personally I like the movie, but think of it as set in an alternate universe. Mostly I really wish I was old enough to have bought the H2G2 towel though ;p Seriously M&S did an H2G2 Towel for a short time when the original series was aired & was at the peak of it's popularity here in the UK. They must be worth a fortune to the right people now.

Apart from the actors, so does a book. The Lord of the Rings trilogy and the Harry potter movies show that you can make half decent movies when you already have story, dialogue etc. in place; it's just another medium for telling the same story*, some people like video games, others like movies, others prefer books. Many like a mix - I don't like FPS games, but if they released a good movie of one, I'd watch it happily.


*The Hitchhikers guide to the galaxy was released for radio, TV, as books, as a computer game, as a film, and last but not least, it was also released as a towel. None of these versions are consistent with each other so this does not always entirely hold...

Not necessarily true; it might have recessive benefits - I carry the gene for Thalassemia, a nasty blood disorder, but it means I'm less likely to get malaria, thus having a genetic advantage. If I have a child with another carrier they have a 25% chance of developing full-blown Thalassemia, but 50% chance of being carries and getting malaria resistance. Something similar could be (and probably is) true of a hypothetical "gay gene".

Not to mention that Lord Lucas had parliamentary privilege, you can libel and slander whoever you like on the floor of the Lords.

That's a shitty employer you work for, personally, if an employer gives me inane rules, I ask "why?" to see if they can justify them. Even then if I think that the justification was dumb, I'll only follow them in my workplace, not at home or elsewhere. Indeed, if I'm at my place of work, but at lunch or on another break I won't follow them then, either. Their rules only apply when they're paying.

Like you, I'm in the UK but from press reports, all this stuff was classified up to "secret" and was on a single database accessible by around three million people: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/nov/28/us-embassy-cable-leak-diplomacy-crisis Hence the ability of a single disgruntled employee to download and leak it all. The reason for this ease of access was because before 9/11 the US government's various agencies were having problems sharing info.

As much as I love Terry Pratchett, he didn't invent or popularise the concept of "Turtles all the way down" I don't think that line is even in any of the Discworld novels as the great A' tuin is swimming through space (destination unknown) right from the colour of magic; in one of the books we see baby world turtles, but none of them stand on each other...

Furthermore, ask any honest cosmologist and he'll tell you that at our current level of understanding the universe is turtles all the way down, or more accurately turtles all the way out and turtles all the way back; they're just standing on the big bang. Underneath that there are just more turtles. Eventually we'll hopefully be able to eliminate the turtles, but for now we still have a turtle problem.

Why is parent modded troll? He's entirely correct; there's almost no way that a British newspaper will ignore a D-Notice. Of course once the info reaches UK bloggers they might report that that fact. They'll also talk a lot about how this info is all over the internet. The only publication that may ignore it is Private Eye because AFAIK as they don't attend government press conferences etc. anyway - they also tend to be far more informed about the behind the scenes goings on at Wetminster... If it's really juicy and implicates senior British politicians they may well publish and be damned.

Nominet administers all *.uk domains, but only *.uk domains, so .com, .org etc. will be unaffected.

UK case law rests on his side, not yours. It's not just semantics - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxford_v_Moss

Woah, Woah, this is slashdot. You can't come here and admit the other person might have a point!

You're meant to argue semantics about how this law is loosely worded and could be abused, or perhaps go really libertarian claim that this is government intervention is artificially driving down the cost of treasure by increasing supply. I was saving replies for both of those. ;p

Anyway, shock over, thank you for having a civil and courteous debate rather than degenerating into the name-calling and general douchery that slashdot debates usually end up in. It's been a pleasure.

Totally understandable, however if all of it was the property of the land-owner, there would be no reason for people to hunt for treasure and you would have got zero because the guy with the metal detector didn't search your land. He needs an incentive too.
You could make the argument that the metal detector people should all draw up contracts with all the individual land owners but what land owner would want to pay for a lawyer to draw up or check a contract every time some nutter with a metal detector wanted to search his land? Again, you get zero profit as no treasure is found because you decide it's not worth the hassle of letting him on your land for the remote chance he finds something.
This law incentivises both detectors and land owners so that a profit can actually be made, there would be far less treasure found without it. It actually makes it easy for ordinary people to get a fair and just solution without having to involve lawyers and courts, with the bonus that the rest of the country also benefits because our heritage is preserved. IMO it's a rare example of a good law.

The way it works in practice is that anything found and declared "treasure" (i.e. old enough or otherwise culturally significant) is automatically the property of the crown, in return the crown usually gives a reward split between the finder and the land owner, the value of the reward is usually the price they get at sale from a museum or similar institution. As I said, if not for this law there would either be countless civil cases about who gets the treasure and\or reward or the crown would take it without giving one. Neither of these are desired outcomes, the law is a compromise.