I'm no fan of MS, but what exactly do you propose they do?
Personally, I propose that Microsoft fuck off and die (in a chemical fire.) So far, they've declined my offer, though things look promising for the new year:)
You miss the point that the EU human rights laws have been enacted in UK national law as the Human Rights Act. So, no more need to appeal up to Strasburg. As you say, sometimes stupid laws make it onto the statute book, and I certainly don't mean to discourage anyone from writing to the papers, their MP, Mr Burnham himself, et cetera, to point out some of the absurdities of what he's suggesting.
What makes you so sure that expecting major social upheaval and breakdown is delusional? Expecting it *tomorrow* is pretty delusional, but a couple of months ago it looked like it was a few weeks away at most. I don't think many people yet realise how close we came to a real catastophe back in September/October. And no, a world-wide recession or even depression is really an escape from what nearly happened.
Even more impressive is that the guts of the whole last.fm empire was built by a tiny team - a couple of dozen IIRC. They just fired 20% of their staff, incidentally, bringing the numbers down to... 80.
Don't worry; he's talking out of his arse, he hasn't a cat in hell's chance of getting a Bill through parliament to implement this spatchcock guff. We have this thing called the Human Rights Act... and if they repeal that, there's the European Court. Seriously, this is a slow new season attempt to get himself a bit of personal PR, and if he doesn't get the proverbial short walk around the back of the chemical sheds come the next reshuffle, I'll eat my hat.
Twelve feature-length episodes might be enough to capture Moore & Gibbons original on-the-page work but it'd be unbelievably boring. As Moore himself has said, one of the key things about Watchmen is that it's written to take advantage of all the possibilities of the ink-on-paper format. You can't flip back a few pages in the film to compare the composition of a frame with an earlier one.
Everybody forgets that this really is rocket science.
That's exactly the point. It's rocket science, not sightseeing trips in a hot air balloon. Seems to me SS2 is selling sightseeing tickets on vehicle of a/type/ that has only made two previous flights. Would you have got on the third flight of any type of rotary wing aircraft? Good luck to them, I know Scaled are very good at what they do, and I hope it all goes well for them. That's all.
I was just reading an interesting piece on the media presentation of stories relating to consensus vs. the "lone genius":
The scientist-as-hero meme is a very popular narrative device and is widespread in most discussions of progress in science. While it's clearly true that some breakthroughs have happened through the work of a single person (special relativity is the classic case) and someone has to be the first to make a key observation (e.g. Watson and Crick), the vast majority of scientific progress occurs as the accumulation of small pieces of new information and their synthesis into a whole. While a focus on a single person makes for a good story, it is very rarely the whole or even a big part of the real story.
It's a deliberate publicity stunt. Stuff like this might seem bizarrely incompetent or a deliberate attempt to sabotage themselves, but you've got to remember this will play really well with the grassroots.
You could just about persuade me to take a trip in the mothership, but I wouldn't go near the SS2 for all the tea in China - not until they've done, say, one percent of the number of test flights needed to certify a typical normal civil light aircraft, and not had any unfortunate incidents like the one that so nearly killed the pilot on the first SS1 launch. It blows my mind that people are willing to slap down hundreds of thousands of dollars for the chance to be torn to shreds by centrifugal force, incinerated by an engine failure, or even simply spiralling gently down with half the control surfaces missing for a nice leisurely twenty minutes before lithobraking.
On the other hand, conneisseurs of huge explosions are eagerly awaiting the first test flight of Falcon-9, which as the name suggests bundles nine of the Falcon S1 engines that put their test mass into orbit a few months back. Unlike F1 which have been at Kwajelien Atoll in a US army test range, F9 launches from the Cape. There's no keeping spectators and TV crews away from that baby, no sir!
Don't you think it might just be seen as some sort of, I dunno, news item or something? "Journalist finds columns rewritten on the internet". "Guardianunlimited.co.uk filtered". "liberty-human-rights.org.uk unavailable after Special Branch seize servers" - that sort of thing? I suspect it miiiiiiiight just attract a bit of media attention.
Yeah, great idea! Punish those pondscum copyright mafiaa types for their insidiously evil attacks on personal freedoms and human culture by giving them money. They'll put collect it all into a huge pile of gold, put it into a hedge fund and wake up one day to find they've lost the lot. That'll show 'em!
Oh noes, the police are enforcing laws which limit my liberty to do whatever the fuck I want?!?!?!?! It's a police state!?!?!?! Bollocks.
Your response is typical ignorance. If you want immoral, draconian, hateful and authoritarian laws to ruin people's lives then you should move to North Korea.
Filtering child porn is immoral, draconian, hateful and authoritarian, is it? Riiiiiiiiiiiight.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm no fan of MS, but what exactly do you propose they do?
Personally, I propose that Microsoft fuck off and die (in a chemical fire.) So far, they've declined my offer, though things look promising for the new year :)
Microsoft rocks!
2008 waz teh yere of teh lolcat!!!!
wince
You miss the point that the EU human rights laws have been enacted in UK national law as the Human Rights Act. So, no more need to appeal up to Strasburg. As you say, sometimes stupid laws make it onto the statute book, and I certainly don't mean to discourage anyone from writing to the papers, their MP, Mr Burnham himself, et cetera, to point out some of the absurdities of what he's suggesting.
What makes you so sure that expecting major social upheaval and breakdown is delusional? Expecting it *tomorrow* is pretty delusional, but a couple of months ago it looked like it was a few weeks away at most. I don't think many people yet realise how close we came to a real catastophe back in September/October. And no, a world-wide recession or even depression is really an escape from what nearly happened.
Sounds rather like mirror image of BoingBoing. I kid! I kid!
Even more impressive is that the guts of the whole last.fm empire was built by a tiny team - a couple of dozen IIRC. They just fired 20% of their staff, incidentally, bringing the numbers down to... 80.
Don't worry; he's talking out of his arse, he hasn't a cat in hell's chance of getting a Bill through parliament to implement this spatchcock guff. We have this thing called the Human Rights Act... and if they repeal that, there's the European Court. Seriously, this is a slow new season attempt to get himself a bit of personal PR, and if he doesn't get the proverbial short walk around the back of the chemical sheds come the next reshuffle, I'll eat my hat.
"Justice is coming to all of us no matter what we do."
"I knew you'd say that."
Twelve feature-length episodes might be enough to capture Moore & Gibbons original on-the-page work but it'd be unbelievably boring. As Moore himself has said, one of the key things about Watchmen is that it's written to take advantage of all the possibilities of the ink-on-paper format. You can't flip back a few pages in the film to compare the composition of a frame with an earlier one.
er, someone want to mod parent up?
Off topic, but your .sig needs an update :)
Er,... Hardy Amies?
Versace? OK, so Donatella's still flogging crap but doncha wish she wasn't?
Yves St Laurent?
Ironically, I am a bit of a poof, but I don't own a stitch of designer clothing.
Fashion houses typically go bust or are taken over when the founder dies or retires.
Whoooooshh!!
Everybody forgets that this really is rocket science.
That's exactly the point. It's rocket science, not sightseeing trips in a hot air balloon. Seems to me SS2 is selling sightseeing tickets on vehicle of a /type/ that has only made two previous flights. Would you have got on the third flight of any type of rotary wing aircraft? Good luck to them, I know Scaled are very good at what they do, and I hope it all goes well for them. That's all.
The scientist-as-hero meme is a very popular narrative device and is widespread in most discussions of progress in science. While it's clearly true that some breakthroughs have happened through the work of a single person (special relativity is the classic case) and someone has to be the first to make a key observation (e.g. Watson and Crick), the vast majority of scientific progress occurs as the accumulation of small pieces of new information and their synthesis into a whole. While a focus on a single person makes for a good story, it is very rarely the whole or even a big part of the real story.
It's a deliberate publicity stunt. Stuff like this might seem bizarrely incompetent or a deliberate attempt to sabotage themselves, but you've got to remember this will play really well with the grassroots.
You could just about persuade me to take a trip in the mothership, but I wouldn't go near the SS2 for all the tea in China - not until they've done, say, one percent of the number of test flights needed to certify a typical normal civil light aircraft, and not had any unfortunate incidents like the one that so nearly killed the pilot on the first SS1 launch. It blows my mind that people are willing to slap down hundreds of thousands of dollars for the chance to be torn to shreds by centrifugal force, incinerated by an engine failure, or even simply spiralling gently down with half the control surfaces missing for a nice leisurely twenty minutes before lithobraking.
On the other hand, conneisseurs of huge explosions are eagerly awaiting the first test flight of Falcon-9, which as the name suggests bundles nine of the Falcon S1 engines that put their test mass into orbit a few months back. Unlike F1 which have been at Kwajelien Atoll in a US army test range, F9 launches from the Cape. There's no keeping spectators and TV crews away from that baby, no sir!
Don't you think it might just be seen as some sort of, I dunno, news item or something? "Journalist finds columns rewritten on the internet". "Guardianunlimited.co.uk filtered". "liberty-human-rights.org.uk unavailable after Special Branch seize servers" - that sort of thing? I suspect it miiiiiiiight just attract a bit of media attention.
Yeah, great idea! Punish those pondscum copyright mafiaa types for their insidiously evil attacks on personal freedoms and human culture by giving them money. They'll put collect it all into a huge pile of gold, put it into a hedge fund and wake up one day to find they've lost the lot. That'll show 'em!
Personally I think 2009's going to be the year of the Linux desktop. Seriously.
...because Wordpad's the default helper application for RTF.
Oh noes, the police are enforcing laws which limit my liberty to do whatever the fuck I want?!?!?!?! It's a police state!?!?!?! Bollocks.
Your response is typical ignorance. If you want immoral, draconian, hateful and authoritarian laws to ruin people's lives then you should move to North Korea.
Filtering child porn is immoral, draconian, hateful and authoritarian, is it? Riiiiiiiiiiiight.