Hard News by Russell Brown

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Hard News: On receipt of a not-so-nastygram

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  • rodgerd,

    Ahh, nobody, what a wonderfully mendacious bit of evasiveness. The Censor doesn't think 13 year olds should be able to watch Passion, and the appeal to which you refer was by the SPCS who do, in fact, think that 13 year olds should be able to watch it.

    Nor would you have to look to far to find people who think gay porn should be available to adults. If you weren't trying to ignore the point, it isn't that simple. Your standards are not everybody's. Tough.

    And yes, actually, I do think it's less armful for a 13 year old to watch a simple gay porn flick featuring oral sex than Misogynist Mel's gory, pornographic, anti-Semetic tirade.

    Wellington • Since Nov 2006 • 512 posts Report

  • Jeremy Andrew,

    what in the hell is an anal bead?

    Well, odds are against the book still being in the Tokoroa High School library after 20 years, so I can't send you to the original source. From memory, the novel was called something like Grey Matters, and involved a lot of Futuramaesque heads in jars.

    Hamiltron - City of the F… • Since Nov 2006 • 900 posts Report

  • Stuff n Things,

    Would it really hurt to have otago.ac.nz point to a webpage?

    <cough> Have you tried looking at publicaddress.co.nz or publicaddress.net.nz? Surely I'm not the only one to screw this up :-)

    I suspect youtube has a policy of removing anything that anyone complains about automatically, so long as it looks like it's official.

    It would appear so: http://www.stuff.co.nz/4027172a28.html

    Wellywood • Since Apr 2007 • 50 posts Report

  • DPF,

    Why is that?

    For example, Queens' Uni, Belfast is in .uk, as it should be since the UK is "the United Kindom of Great Britian and Northern Ireland", so if .uk should be .gb and ireland is .ie then Northern Ireland, which is part of the UK, would have to have its own designation, but it isn't a different country (well, no more than England, Scotland, Wales, the Channel Islands, the Isle of Man.... are).

    Heh I was hoping someone would ask that. The codes are meant to come from ISO3166-1 for ccTLDs. If you check that list you will see the GB is the official code the United Kingdom. They got .uk delegated to them before the ISO-3166 list usage became official in 1994.

    Wellington, New Zealand • Since Nov 2006 • 78 posts Report

  • Steve Reeves,

    DFP:

    so why, seeing as the UK already had .uk given to them to use, and was using .uk, did the ISO standard have .gb?

    Or is this another great example of standards being a graveyard for the efforts of people with nothing better to do (speaking as aomeone who ha worked on an ISO standard, you understand :-) )?

    Near Donny Park, Hamilton… • Since Apr 2007 • 94 posts Report

  • Nobody Important,

    Ahh, nobody, what a wonderfully mendacious bit of evasiveness.<quote>
    You're calling me a liar - what have I lied about?

    <quote>Nor would you have to look to far to find people who think gay porn should be available to adults. If you weren't trying to ignore the point, it isn't that simple.

    I presume you mean 'shouldn't' instead of 'should' - but what are you on about? Where did I say gay porn shouldn't be available to adults? Where?
    Of course there are those that would seek to ban gay porn because it's gay, just as there are those that would seek to show 13 year olds gay porn (is there a local chapter of NAMBLA, Rogerd?)

    Your standards are not everybody's. Tough.

    To quote PeeWee Herman: "No, you are!"

    expat • Since Mar 2007 • 319 posts Report

  • Nobody Important,

    damn that dodgy preview button!

    expat • Since Mar 2007 • 319 posts Report

  • Leigh Kennaway,

    Hmmm, thirty or so years ago, school holiday with my grandparents in Papatoetoe... Grandma and I sharing our piles of library books as we so often did. I picked up a sci-fi novel from her pile, and got engrossed... particularly as it developed in to the sort of torrid lite-porn that can get a grip on a teenage boy's brain. The hero of said novel had worked out the key to time-travel, and ended up meeting himself, sometimes in multiples.... and ended up engaging in <ahem> some steamy self-love.

    Not the sort of literature I expected either the Papatoetoe Public Library or my Grandmother to stock.....

    Western Bays • Since Feb 2007 • 79 posts Report

  • Emma Hart,

    From memory, the novel was called something like Grey Matters, and involved a lot of Futuramaesque heads in jars.

    Okay, see, now I'm curious. What are heads in jars doing with anal beads?

    Christchurch • Since Nov 2006 • 4651 posts Report

  • Mark Easterbrook,

    Wearing them as necklaces?

    Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 265 posts Report

  • Nobody Important,

    <quote>Wearing them as necklaces?<quote>
    Now, that was definitely on Futurama!!

    expat • Since Mar 2007 • 319 posts Report

  • Jeremy Andrew,

    I found a copy on Amazon with some suspisciously glowing reviews. I woudn't have called it the best SF book ever...
    Basically the heads in jars were hooked up to computers which duplicated all the nerve input necessary to let them think they had bodies & could get up to whatever they could imagine. Not too bad for a book written in 1974.

    Hamiltron - City of the F… • Since Nov 2006 • 900 posts Report

  • andrew llewellyn,

    Not too bad for a book written in 1974

    Should we sue the Wachowski brothers on his behalf?

    Since Nov 2006 • 2075 posts Report

  • andrew llewellyn,

    and ended up meeting himself, sometimes in multiples.... and ended up engaging in <ahem> some steamy self-love.

    Followed by Audrey Niffeneger, who MUST have read this book.

    Since Nov 2006 • 2075 posts Report

  • Che Tibby,

    Should we sue the Wachowski brothers on his behalf?

    not unless you're willing to sue hjortsberg on behalf of descartes.

    the back of an envelope • Since Nov 2006 • 2042 posts Report

  • Riddley Walker,

    need... fresh... meat

    AKL • Since Feb 2007 • 890 posts Report

  • Rich of Observationz,

    According to my passport it's the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

    So UK *and* GB are arguably reasonable abbreviations, although UK is probably more pedanticaly correct.

    The "GB" plate has always been used on the back of British cars when driven overseas. GB is the ISO code (hence GBP is the code for the pound). Yachts used to use "K" for "..Kingdom.." but now use "GBR".

    Back in Wellington • Since Nov 2006 • 5550 posts Report

  • TracyMac,

    Rachel sez:

    ...but if you're publishing links to other websites in your own website, my understanding was that you can only link to the home page of other websites, as linking to specific pages/sections/items within the website does breach copyright unless you have obtained permission.

    I might have missed someone else reponding to this, but in short, nup. It's ridiculous, although I have seen some people attempt to claim it. By default, everything on the Internet is assumed to be copyrighted. There is no need to assert an explicit copyright, unless some mumbo-jumbo in the UK copyright law is relevant (there's some kind of qualitative difference if you "assert" your copyright in your own name, which is why recently published books will have that language included).

    Anyways, web content is copyrighted whether you read it on the front page, the middle page, or somewhere in the sidebar. If your page is publically accessible... well, it's publically accessible, and thus able to be linked-to. If you do not want the average punter to see it, you put it behind some kind of security.

    Fair use provisions come into it as well. Copying and pasting the content of an entire webpage into your own and trying to pass it off as yours is wrong. Creating some kind of iFrame where publically-available remote content gets sucked into your page dynamically (and where it looks like your content) is the same, unless you attribute where the content came from. So too with images. While I don't think "hotlinking" an image (putting an embedded link to it in your page) is technically illegal - since the original link is in your code - it's distinctly tacky (and "steals" someone else's bandwidth). Taking that image and hosting it on your own site without permission is definitely illegal.

    I'm sure there are other aspects that other people are more knowlegable about, but linking to any page on the internet that is not protected, and that you are not purporting to have created, is absolutely fine. A link is not the actual content, after all.

    Canberra, West Island • Since Nov 2006 • 701 posts Report

  • DPF,

    Steve the ISO codes long predated having domain names. The UK was using .gb for other things as their official code, just not for domain names.

    Wellington, New Zealand • Since Nov 2006 • 78 posts Report

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