Last week Phillip Ruddock (the Australian Attorney-General) was on Radio National (similar to NPR I guess) defending these new laws to listeners who were calling in. Apart from a couple of musicians/industry people, every caller was scathing about the new laws, and most were attempting to broaden the debate to cover the usefulness or otherwise of copyright in the modern, digital world.
Ruddock's basic position was that all the complaining listeners were just the other side of the argument from the "content-producers" who had been complaining to him that the laws didn't go far enough. He trotted out the "content-producers" arguments unquestioningly, and seemed fairly uninterested in the whole debate. The callers arguments boiled down to the fact that massive collateral damage would be caused by Ruddock's attempt to absolutely protect the copyright interests of the "content-producers", but Ruddock seemed completely unperturbed by this.
IOW, you can't make an omelette without breaking some eggs, and the more we can ensure the financial compensation of the omelette makers, the more omelettes will be made, so you complainers should shut up and eat your goddamn omelettes and be grateful for them.
Why is there no "race" for short blue-eyed people? Or curly-headed people with big noses?
You're taking a set of physical characteristics and matching them against social factors to declare that there is such a thing as race. But without the social factors you may as well say that there is a race of curly-headed big-nosed people.
It should be pointed out that the phenomenom of "updates not in user's best interests" only occurs with closed-source software. In the open-source world the nasties in the new version would be stripped out by the user-community.
You just can't include anti-user features in open-source software.
We who use Google products aren't the end users. We're the product that Google sells to the advertisers. It's the same with any other advertiser or advertising-supported medium.
No, it's a little different with Google.
In other ad-supported mediums, the people who control the medium also control the content on the medium. To the extent that Google-users trust Google to relay the internet to them faithfully and accurately, Google do not control the content. If they tried, their user-base' trust in them would disappear in a minute, and they would be quickly swallowed.
I'm an Australian and I know of four police officers who are absolutely aware of my mp3(/ogg) collection...So I ask; how can the police enforce a law/requirement that they themselves do not respect?
Because copyright infringement is a civil law, not a criminal law. It's got nothing to do with the police. If there's a copyright owner somewhere that wants to sue, they can, but either way, the police will not be involved as a matter of law.
I don't know about guard rails, but the evidence suggests that both mandatory seatbelt laws (throughout the world) and mandatory bike helmet laws (in Australia and New Zealand) have not reduced the rate of death and serious injury of car occupants and bike riders respectively.
If MS put their weight behind an anti-DRM push I can't see any pro-DRM competitors getting their software to run smoothly on Windows. MS have no qualms about using their OS monopoly for their own advantage, and here they had an opportunity to use their monopoly to everybody's advantage but instead fell into line with the media companies.
MS caved. I'm not sure whether it's because they see a buck in it, or whether they simply don't care about the issues that DRM raises. But don't kid yourself - MS had (still has) the market power to kill DRM stone dead any time they want.
I've heard that argument before - that media companies won't release content unless it is DRM'ed, and therefore you as a consumer have a choice - DRM'ed content or no content.
But those making that argument are underestimating the power of a unified resistance to DRM. If Gates et. al. joined in with consumers in their natural resentment against DRM, the media companies would back down real fast on their "DRM or nothing" ultimatum. But instead Gates is breaching the wall of that consumer resentment. He's fallen for the media companies' bluff instead of calling it. And he's therefore doing their bidding instead of his customer's bidding.
Yes, I have the same problem, so no Skypeout for me. If you check the Skypeout forum you'll see that many other people have this problem, and that the Skype people don't seem to have any solution.
Back in the 1970s, people on the left used the term "ideologically sound", first as something of a compliment, and later as a semi-sarcastic put-down applied to people who took themselves and their political positions too seriously.
Eventually "ideologically sound" gave way to "politically correct", which better expressed the sense of ludicrousness that many on the left felt for other lefty's self-seriousness.
And then, out of nowhere, the right somehow overheard the term, and began using it in a completely serious way to disparage the left. What had formerly been a term one lefty used to poke gentle fun at another lefty became a serious weapon in the hands of the right.
The bizarre thing is that this transformation in the way "political correctness" began to be used coincided with the rise of the right, and the withering away of the public left. The ironies were too much - at a time when mainstream politics lurched to the right, the right began using a left-wing term of irony to attack the left for their supposed dominance. Absurd, and yet it worked for the very reason that the left were so weak and the right so strong.
The only reason that the term "politically correct" became so popular is that it was precisely wrong. Had it been correct, the right would never have the cultural power to make it stick.
Conclusion: Today, "political correctness" means the opposite of what is intended. It is evidence of the dominance of the right.
...MS would lose very little if everybody switched to Firefox.
MS could potentially lose everything.
Firefox (gecko) is an OS-independent platform for application development. We're already seeing some fairly sophisticated apps being developed using the browser as the platform (Gmail and Flickr for example), and that trend will take off if Firefox (and technology like Xforms) reaches critical mass. Microsoft could find themselves in a situation where almost all new software development for the desktop is being done for a platform that they don't control.
This would make Windows irrelevant. And once that happens, Microsoft's lever on the rest of the software industry is gone.
Not only is real estate more expensive in Japan - but perhaps living at home with Mom and Dad isn't viewed in the same negative "slacker" connotation that it is here. Just like the desire for cooler gadgetry is a cultural thing so too, it would seem, is the accepatability of living with mom/dad even after you are capable of living on your own.
I live in Japan, and can vouch for this being totally correct. There is no stigma about living at home, and even when people get married it is common for them to continue to live in one of their parent's homes.
Renting an apartment is difficult in Japan - there are enormous up-front, non-refundable charges to be paid to the real-estate agent and landlord, and leases are typically fairly long-term. Also, for cultural reasons, it is rare for yong people to share a house/apartment together, making living away from the parental home a massively expensive proposition.
Also, parents seem to be fairly comfortable about having their children bring people home to have sex with.
Hopefully an option to delete your entire trash folder in one go is in the works...
As somebody with over 70,000 messages in my Gmail Trash, I badly need a "Delete Trash" button. There's no way I'm going to delete them a screenful at a time.
The 3rd reich was a democracy. Hitler won the leadership by popular vote. There were certainly undemocratic elements to the structure of the 3rd reich, just as there are with modern America. Reforming Germany after WWII didn't have too much to do with "introducing democracy", it was about de-nazification.
Japan is interesting in that it had a home-grown democracy movement which had been suppressed by the Japanese leadership. And guess what happened during the US occupation? The US began to get the red scare, and the fact that the Japanese home-grown democracy movement was basically socialist in orientation meant that the US cracked down on them in exactly the same way that the wartime Japanese leadership had. In fact, the US managed to reinstate many of the same wartime leaders precisely because they were strongest at suppressing their own people.
Japan has been a virtual one-party state since the US occupation. It's about as democratic now as it was before and during the war.
Forcing people to vote doesn't work as people forced to vote do not pay attention the the issues and just randomly check somebody.
As somebody who lives in a country (Australia) with compulsory voting, I can tell you that that is not true. Compulsory voting actually has the effect of making a greater number of people pay attention to politics. Only a small minority seem to vote randomly.
Compulsory voting does create a different political climate to what you would be used to in the US. There is no need to "get out the vote", and no need to appeal to your "base". Elections become very tightly focussed on the small segment of swinging voters, and the partisans on either side are completely taken for granted.
We also have instant runoff voting here, so we can vote for "third" parties safe in the knowledge that our vote will not be wasted. The US electoral system seems very backward and rudimentary from our perspective.
Most professional movie reviews are lame attempts by the reviewer to find something nice to say to reward the company that gave them free tickets and is advertising in their newspaper/magazine/TV station.
The world's oldest (and possibly most stable) democracy is New Zealand. This is primarily due to the fact they were the first nation to allow women to vote.
You can't call yourself a democracy if 50% of the adult populatiuon is barred from voting.
Slashdot Mirror
Last week Phillip Ruddock (the Australian Attorney-General) was on Radio National (similar to NPR I guess) defending these new laws to listeners who were calling in. Apart from a couple of musicians/industry people, every caller was scathing about the new laws, and most were attempting to broaden the debate to cover the usefulness or otherwise of copyright in the modern, digital world.
Ruddock's basic position was that all the complaining listeners were just the other side of the argument from the "content-producers" who had been complaining to him that the laws didn't go far enough. He trotted out the "content-producers" arguments unquestioningly, and seemed fairly uninterested in the whole debate. The callers arguments boiled down to the fact that massive collateral damage would be caused by Ruddock's attempt to absolutely protect the copyright interests of the "content-producers", but Ruddock seemed completely unperturbed by this.
IOW, you can't make an omelette without breaking some eggs, and the more we can ensure the financial compensation of the omelette makers, the more omelettes will be made, so you complainers should shut up and eat your goddamn omelettes and be grateful for them.
Why is there no "race" for short blue-eyed people? Or curly-headed people with big noses?
You're taking a set of physical characteristics and matching them against social factors to declare that there is such a thing as race. But without the social factors you may as well say that there is a race of curly-headed big-nosed people.
You're thinking these guys are random kooks, far from it.
You got it - I think they're random kooks. Fucked up loners in very small numbers. A tiny threat.
Sure, in Iraq and Palestine/Israel things seem bigger and more organised, but in the rest of the world it's a phantom menace.
It should be pointed out that the phenomenom of "updates not in user's best interests" only occurs with closed-source software. In the open-source world the nasties in the new version would be stripped out by the user-community.
You just can't include anti-user features in open-source software.
We who use Google products aren't the end users. We're the product that Google sells to the advertisers. It's the same with any other advertiser or advertising-supported medium.
No, it's a little different with Google.
In other ad-supported mediums, the people who control the medium also control the content on the medium. To the extent that Google-users trust Google to relay the internet to them faithfully and accurately, Google do not control the content. If they tried, their user-base' trust in them would disappear in a minute, and they would be quickly swallowed.
I'm an Australian and I know of four police officers who are absolutely aware of my mp3(/ogg) collection...So I ask; how can the police enforce a law/requirement that they themselves do not respect?
Because copyright infringement is a civil law, not a criminal law. It's got nothing to do with the police. If there's a copyright owner somewhere that wants to sue, they can, but either way, the police will not be involved as a matter of law.
I don't know about guard rails, but the evidence suggests that both mandatory seatbelt laws (throughout the world) and mandatory bike helmet laws (in Australia and New Zealand) have not reduced the rate of death and serious injury of car occupants and bike riders respectively.
It's because of a well-known phenomenon called risk compensation.
It's that I'd have to ride on busy streets to get there, and I'm too young to die (or worse).
You might be surprised to find that cycling is no more dangerous than driving.
Follow that link. It leads to a "cycling safety perception" quiz, with some pretty surprising answers.
The future of the car is...
If MS put their weight behind an anti-DRM push I can't see any pro-DRM competitors getting their software to run smoothly on Windows. MS have no qualms about using their OS monopoly for their own advantage, and here they had an opportunity to use their monopoly to everybody's advantage but instead fell into line with the media companies.
MS caved. I'm not sure whether it's because they see a buck in it, or whether they simply don't care about the issues that DRM raises. But don't kid yourself - MS had (still has) the market power to kill DRM stone dead any time they want.
I've heard that argument before - that media companies won't release content unless it is DRM'ed, and therefore you as a consumer have a choice - DRM'ed content or no content.
But those making that argument are underestimating the power of a unified resistance to DRM. If Gates et. al. joined in with consumers in their natural resentment against DRM, the media companies would back down real fast on their "DRM or nothing" ultimatum. But instead Gates is breaching the wall of that consumer resentment. He's fallen for the media companies' bluff instead of calling it. And he's therefore doing their bidding instead of his customer's bidding.
Yes, I have the same problem, so no Skypeout for me. If you check the Skypeout forum you'll see that many other people have this problem, and that the Skype people don't seem to have any solution.
Back in the 1970s, people on the left used the term "ideologically sound", first as something of a compliment, and later as a semi-sarcastic put-down applied to people who took themselves and their political positions too seriously.
Eventually "ideologically sound" gave way to "politically correct", which better expressed the sense of ludicrousness that many on the left felt for other lefty's self-seriousness.
And then, out of nowhere, the right somehow overheard the term, and began using it in a completely serious way to disparage the left. What had formerly been a term one lefty used to poke gentle fun at another lefty became a serious weapon in the hands of the right.
The bizarre thing is that this transformation in the way "political correctness" began to be used coincided with the rise of the right, and the withering away of the public left. The ironies were too much - at a time when mainstream politics lurched to the right, the right began using a left-wing term of irony to attack the left for their supposed dominance. Absurd, and yet it worked for the very reason that the left were so weak and the right so strong.
The only reason that the term "politically correct" became so popular is that it was precisely wrong. Had it been correct, the right would never have the cultural power to make it stick.
Conclusion: Today, "political correctness" means the opposite of what is intended. It is evidence of the dominance of the right.
MS could potentially lose everything.
Firefox (gecko) is an OS-independent platform for application development. We're already seeing some fairly sophisticated apps being developed using the browser as the platform (Gmail and Flickr for example), and that trend will take off if Firefox (and technology like Xforms) reaches critical mass. Microsoft could find themselves in a situation where almost all new software development for the desktop is being done for a platform that they don't control.
This would make Windows irrelevant. And once that happens, Microsoft's lever on the rest of the software industry is gone.
Not only is real estate more expensive in Japan - but perhaps living at home with Mom and Dad isn't viewed in the same negative "slacker" connotation that it is here. Just like the desire for cooler gadgetry is a cultural thing so too, it would seem, is the accepatability of living with mom/dad even after you are capable of living on your own.
I live in Japan, and can vouch for this being totally correct. There is no stigma about living at home, and even when people get married it is common for them to continue to live in one of their parent's homes.
Renting an apartment is difficult in Japan - there are enormous up-front, non-refundable charges to be paid to the real-estate agent and landlord, and leases are typically fairly long-term. Also, for cultural reasons, it is rare for yong people to share a house/apartment together, making living away from the parental home a massively expensive proposition.
Also, parents seem to be fairly comfortable about having their children bring people home to have sex with.
It is not the same in Australia. Rippng and encoding a legitimately purchased CD is LEGAL in the US, but is ILLEGAL in Australia.
Do messages that are filtered straight to the Spam and Trash also get downloaded via POP3?
Hopefully an option to delete your entire trash folder in one go is in the works...
As somebody with over 70,000 messages in my Gmail Trash, I badly need a "Delete Trash" button. There's no way I'm going to delete them a screenful at a time.
She requested the president to die...
Only if you read her at face value. I can't understand why people are taking something literally that is so obviously intended to be humourous.
The 3rd reich was a democracy. Hitler won the leadership by popular vote. There were certainly undemocratic elements to the structure of the 3rd reich, just as there are with modern America. Reforming Germany after WWII didn't have too much to do with "introducing democracy", it was about de-nazification.
Japan is interesting in that it had a home-grown democracy movement which had been suppressed by the Japanese leadership. And guess what happened during the US occupation? The US began to get the red scare, and the fact that the Japanese home-grown democracy movement was basically socialist in orientation meant that the US cracked down on them in exactly the same way that the wartime Japanese leadership had. In fact, the US managed to reinstate many of the same wartime leaders precisely because they were strongest at suppressing their own people.
Japan has been a virtual one-party state since the US occupation. It's about as democratic now as it was before and during the war.
Forcing people to vote doesn't work as people forced to vote do not pay attention the the issues and just randomly check somebody.
As somebody who lives in a country (Australia) with compulsory voting, I can tell you that that is not true. Compulsory voting actually has the effect of making a greater number of people pay attention to politics. Only a small minority seem to vote randomly.
Compulsory voting does create a different political climate to what you would be used to in the US. There is no need to "get out the vote", and no need to appeal to your "base". Elections become very tightly focussed on the small segment of swinging voters, and the partisans on either side are completely taken for granted.
We also have instant runoff voting here, so we can vote for "third" parties safe in the knowledge that our vote will not be wasted. The US electoral system seems very backward and rudimentary from our perspective.
Most professional movie reviews are lame attempts by the reviewer to find something nice to say to reward the company that gave them free tickets and is advertising in their newspaper/magazine/TV station.
Yes, that's exactly what it means.
The world's oldest (and possibly most stable) democracy is New Zealand. This is primarily due to the fact they were the first nation to allow women to vote.
You can't call yourself a democracy if 50% of the adult populatiuon is barred from voting.
I didn't mean to imply that only novice users should be used as testers. Usability testing can work with experienced users as well.