Posts by Stephen Judd
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Errr, from what I remember of 18th century pamphlets, that long-standing tradition certainly includes abundant and vituperative ad hominem abuse.
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Something I read just now:
The most telling laugh line in Obama's stump speech is his description of the dreadful charge his opponents make against him. "Obama's talking about hope again," the candidate says, mimicking his foes. Then his tenor drops to a low, conspiratorial pitch: "He's a hope monger."
Maybe one of those striking writers is donating labour to Obama? That line is perfect.
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fireworks on new years eve is a new Zealand tradition doesn't everyone save fireworks from guy fawkes?
I can clearly remember being surprised in Germany, 1987, at the fireworks on New Years Eve, and thinking that nobody did that in New Zealand. Hoarding Guy Fawkes fireworks for later is quite recent, I think.
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When he would drift off to the sound of her purring his head would drop and the cat would sit up, apparently startled, stretch out a paw and touch him softly on the arm and meow. He's say, "no, it's okay, I'm not dead" and she'd lie back down on her chest and tuck her paws under again, watching his face the whole time.
So she never got to eat him then?
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If anyone can hook me up with a Kalamari Bushmen CD or whatever that would be great - my cassette tape is toast.
Do you read me Hal? Do you read me?
Our little guy definitely believes I am a cat. If I let him, he vigorously grooms my (number 2-clippered) head. Once, in a spirit of scientific inquiry, I decided not to stop him, and see whether he would do my whole head, but after he got about a third of the way I had to stop; it was just too weird. Exfoliated my scalp beautifully though.
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Torrenting it now, Keith. The big problem is prising it off Hannah for long enough to try it - she loves that little lappy.
Damnit, I should have bought it for me and got her a book voucher or something.
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And a couple of other things:
- while it doesn't make me any more sympathetic, AFFCO's profit last year was only 1.2m. In 02 and 98 they made a loss. This is a pretty chunky sum for them, big company or not.
- I can see how the dope-smoking rumour could start. Unpleasant repetitive jobs are made easier by a wee toot, and AFFCO has had repeated trouble in the past with this. (Remember the stoush over covert surveillance in the showers a couple of years back?) -
Fletcher: you have to read the article RB posted about! There it's laid out fairly clearly that while this is indeed unintuitive, it IS what AFFCO signed up for.
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"is it a viable option to put ubuntu on a memory stick, and boot and run the os from that."
I did exactly that the other when experimenting to see how well Ubuntu ran on my daughter's new Asus eee.
A certain amount of jiggery-pokery might be required depending on the laptop hardware as the stock live CD may not have the correct drivers etc. But a competent person could easily make a bootable pendrive for you that did have the right stuff on it, given a little while to experiment.
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Mozart? Mozart? Not sure what the state of copyright law was in the Austrian empire, but Mozart supported himself variously as a concert artist, a court composer, and from commissions. And his output ripped off other people's tunes and stories in a way that couldn't happen today. (What modern composer could do a theme and variations without licensing the theme?)
Stephen Foster was famously poor precisely because he received bugger-all from the the copyrights to his songs; what little there was went mostly to his publishers.
Berlin and Ellington achieved their success under a regime where copyright lasted for only 20 years.
You also have to look at the counterfactual - would they have starved without copyright protection? What other artists might have arisen? And so on.
I agree that some copyright protection has enabled a great flowering of creativity, and removal of all copyright protection would be bad. I'm not going to cry about the demise of DRM, however.
Personally I favour strict legal enforcement of a limited set of rights (eg death + 70 years as it is in the US is ridiculous). But I don't think the sky is going to fall for the average musician, or the genius either. The people who have enjoyed outsized profits through a legal monopoly are the ones who are really going to suffer.