Fri
30
Jun
One teensy note with the article - I discovered that a RewriteRule must all be on one line; the article tends to show it (on my screen) as broken over two lines. ©
Thu
29
Jun
Wed
28
Jun
Tue
27
Jun
Personally, I think this is a pretty gutsy move by the owner of M&S. Also, if I had time I'd love to do a Slate's Today's Papers for Canadian papers. ©
Mon
26
Jun
A charity with $31 billion to spend has much potential power and influence. The Foundation has the resources to eclipse what Ottawa or provincial governments contribute. With one cheque, it more than doubled the Northwest Territories' library budget last year; and it sent a cheque for two-thirds of the current central library budget of New Brunswick. After visiting Nunavut, the Gates emissaries talked about how, for a pittance (by their standards), they could carry out the government's five-year plan to wire the territory for Internet access in a matter of weeks. And with some more serious spending, say $14-million, they could boot Nunavut to the leading cusp of the 21st century, with sophisticated hookups in every town. Fourteen million dollars -- that would represent almost 5 per cent of the total budget of the Nunavut government. It's what the Gates Foundation, by law, has to give away, every three days.©
Sun
25
Jun
Fri
23
Jun
And the myth that only the United States has been able to resist socialism will soon end. The bull market, bred and sustained by Bill Clinton and his links to communist China, will be slaughtered during the George Bush Jr. administration. Mr. Bush, the Republican Party and Wall Street won't know what hit them.According to the socialist plan, all other conservative leaders, such as prime minister Day, will be swept out of office in the wake of a Bush humiliation.
With members in high journalistic places, the socialists have easily and increasingly painted anyone involved with either new conservative parties, such as Reform, or with any new Christian sect, as radicals, racists, sexists and/or anarchists.
Any fresh, conservative thought, or even the simple mention of Jesus Christ, and the propaganda machine is unleashed.
Stockwell Day's biggest enemies continue to be his friends.
For those who don't recall Michael Moriarty is, he played Ben Stone on Law & Order. ©
Thu
22
Jun
Wed
21
Jun
Tue
20
Jun
Mon
19
Jun
Sun
18
Jun
Fri
16
Jun
Thu
15
Jun
IN THE PHYSICAL WORLD, when a CD is purchased, the mechanical license fee is set by law -- hence it is known as the statutory rate -- at 7.55 cents per song. When your kid sister picked up a copy of the 12-song Christina Aguilera album, approximately 90 cents is going to the songwriters through their publishing companies. For its services, the Harry Fox Agency takes approximately 4.5 percent of the gross monies collected.Now say your sister wants to make a digital copy of the CD through the My.MP3.com service. Because it can normally take upwards of an hour to digitize a 12-song compact disc, MP3.com decided to save a user's time by having already copied Christina's CD onto its own server; thus, when you pop the CD into your hard-drive, you're flashing it as you would a proof-of-ownership card, and once ownership is verified, you're now entitled to access MP3.com's Christina album as your own via the site. Once you have proved you possess the CD, their Christina music is your Christina music. It's instantaneous fake-uploading, as opposed to drip-drip-drip real-uploading.
However, since MP3.com ripped that CD itself, the company has created what a 1995 addendum to the Copyright Act calls a "digital phonorecord delivery" and English speakers call a "copy." This means that the company owes the publishers its mechanical license, at 7.55 cents per song, every time a user stores that song, while the majors collect their 1.5-cent payment. Although only one copy of Christina Aguilera was bought, Harry Fox and music publishers -- as well as the majors -- will collect their money twice, a practice caustically referred to in the music business as double-dipping. (Rival storage service MyPlay requires you to spend the hour and physically upload the CD to your locker, thereby avoiding the payment in question).
...
Once that Christina Aguilera album is stored in a locker, your sister will, it stands to reason, want to listen to it. According to reports, MP3.com will pay the labels roughly a third of a cent each time a track is streamed. If your sister listens to the melismatic overload of Christina's "I Turn to You" 20 times, MP3.com must pay RCA roughly 7 cents. Because a stream, like a terrestrial radio broadcast of a song, is considered a public performance, MP3.com will also pay a fee to performing-rights societies Ascap and BMI, which eventually gets distributed to the publishing companies and their songwriters. To make matters worse for MP3.com and its ilk, Harry Fox contends that they too should receive remuneration every time a song is streamed.
Amazing. (And by the way, inside.com is proving to be worthwhile reading. I'm not likely to pay though. :-) ©
Wed
14
Jun
These small signs of a rethink will be welcomed by all those people, including The Economist, who do not share the affection for the death penalty held by so many Americans. To those outside the United States, that country’s love of executions is surprising: surprising to find such a tolerant place in the same camp as China, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Congo (the only four countries to execute more people); surprising to find such a religious place addicted to a habit that most religious leaders abhor; surprising, too, to find the crucible of liberty decried in so many international reports on human rights.©
Last November, a Congressional aide named Mitch Glazier, with the support of the RIAA, added a "technical amendment" to a bill that defined recorded music as "works for hire" under the 1978 Copyright Act.©He did this after all the hearings on the bill were over. By the time artists found out about the change, it was too late. The bill was on its way to the White House for the president's signature.
That subtle change in copyright law will add billions of dollars to record company bank accounts over the next few years -- billions of dollars that rightfully should have been paid to artists. A "work for hire" is now owned in perpetuity by the record company.
Under the 1978 Copyright Act, artists could reclaim the copyrights on their work after 35 years. If you wrote and recorded "Everybody Hurts," you at least got it back to as a family legacy after 35 years. But now, because of this corrupt little pisher, "Everybody Hurts" never gets returned to your family, and can now be sold to the highest bidder.
Tue
13
Jun
"We had a lawsuit with Apple that was a waste of resources. I'd put this one in the same category."
"Having that misguided lawsuit has drawn our team together."
On which of the two Microsofts he would work for:
"That is a hypothetical question that fortunately I will never need to answer."©
Mon
12
Jun
[A] satisfying standard of living is, for most Americans, considerably more difficult to attain than it would have been twenty-five years ago. Over this period the top one percent of earners has captured more than seventy percent of all earnings growth, while incomes of the bottom fifth have declined about ten percent and median real family income has been stagnant. More and more money is spent on SUVs and larger homes, but as a nation we spend less and less on education, the environment, and social goods.
I'd be really surprised if the statistics were any different for Canadians. (Birthplace of adbusters, which gets slagged in the article.) ©
I'd like to argue that open source is the "natural language" of a networked community, that the growth of the Internet and the growth of open source are interconnected by more than happenstance. As individuals found ways to communicate through highly leveraged network channels, they were able to share information at a new pace and a new level. Just as the spread of literacy in the late middle ages disenfranchised old power structures and led to the flowering of the renaissance, it's been the ability of individuals to share knowledge outside the normal channels that has led to our current explosion of innovation. Just as ease of travel helped new ideas to spread, wide area networking has allowed ideas to spread and take root in new ways. Open source is ultimately about communication.
Without a community, open source is nothing. ©
Sat
10
Jun
Thu
08
Jun
Wed
07
Jun
Tue
06
Jun
queequeg:/home/was $ logresolve < access | fixlogs - | analog - > log.html
(Yes my computer's name is queequeg. It's aim is true.) ©
I am deeply saddened that it has come to this: Due to a cease and desist letter, sent by lawyers representing the show's production company, FujiTV, this site's content is current unavailable. What was here represented three year's labor devoted to evangelizing my favorite show. While I would like nothing better than to share with other fans the excitement I have for the show, apparently the production company has other plans.Stupid, stupid, stupid.
Did I mention I think this is STUPID? ©
Consuelo and Saint-Exupery met at the Hotel Majestic in Buenos Aires. He teased her about her height (short), then took her on a plane ride to make up. When she refused to kiss him, he threatened to crash the plane. They were a "modern couple," with infidelities on both sides, but Saint-Exupery agonized over absences from her. They remained married till his death, though his family never liked her, and Encyclopaedia Britannica, among other publications of record, fails to note he was married at all.©
Overwhelmingly, the trend in Canada is to shrug things off. We care less and less about our neighbours, about our environment, about our artists. We have become willfully complacent. The openness of our country, the generosity that allowed newcomers (such as myself) to add their vision to the fluid identity of Canada, is closing in on itself, becoming less curious, more self-centred....
Mr. Parizeau's argument, that our culture is not "a very credible invention," is right in this: Every culture is an invention, a product of the imagination, the tone and colour we give to every basic human activity. Through our need for shelter we invent architecture, through our need to feed ourselves we invent cuisine, through our need for one another we invent the rituals of love, through our need to communicate we invent literature, painting, music, film, dance.
The trick is to believe in our inventions. We don't any longer. It is as if, defeated by the relentless appeals of greed, egotism, carelessness and sheer stupidity, we Canadians now lack the imaginative power to see ourselves at our human best, in all the richness of our creative possibilities.
If you haven't read Manguel's A History of Reading, you really should. indigo.ca link; Fatbrain link. ©
Dance your cares away,And now, thanks to the wonder of the Internet, I'm listening to the theme song as well. Ah, nostalgia. ©
Worry's for another day.
Let the music play,
Down at Fraggle Rock.
Mon
05
Jun
Sun
04
Jun
And make no mistake: irony tyrannizes us. The reason why our pervasive cultural irony is at once so powerful and so unsatisfying is that an ironist is impossible to turn down. All U.S. irony is based on an implicity "I don't really mean what I'm saying." So what does irony as a cultural norm mean to say? That it's impossible to mean what you say? That maybe it's too bad it's impossible, but wake up and smell the coffee already? Most likely, I think, today's irony ends up saying: "How totally banal of you to ask what I really mean." Anyone with the hertical gall to ask an ironist what he actually stands for ends up looking like an hysteric or a prig. And herein lies the oppressiveness of institutionalized irony, the too-successful rebel: the ability to interdict the question without attending to its subject is, when exercised, tyranny. It is the new junta, using the very tool that exposed its enemy to insulate itself.
The essay is part of Wallace's collection, A supposedly fun thing I'll never do again, and I highly recommend you pick it up. Fatbrain link; Indigo.ca link ©
