Posts by Joe Wylie
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Mozart and Beethoven both composed without any significant copyright protection.
Mozart appears to have been something of a copyright-cracker, thanks to his supposed faculty of "eidetic memory", which enabled him to commit a score to memory from hearing a single performance. The story of how he broke the Vatican's monopoly on Allegi's Miserere is briefly recounted here:
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F06E6DC163BF936A1575BC0A963948260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all -
This is from a seminar they gave at least 3 years ago to government knowledge managers/librarians because CCL were trying to persuade them to rigorously pay up based on their photocopier stats.
I wonder if these could be the same buffoons who I received a letter from back in the 80s, when I ran a small animation studio, demanding a levy on behalf of those creatives who they alleged were being plundered by the studio's humble photocopier. Back in those pre-digital days the photocopier was the ultimate drudgery-alleviating device, used to transfer our own drawings to clear cel material to be hand painted.
I took the trouble to phone them and explain the situation, explaining that our humble photocopier was as much a creative item as printmaker's press. No way - you employ one of these tools of the devil, you join the ranks of the exploiters. Dark threats were made, but nothing more was heard from them.
I wonder if they still employ pettifogging bureaucrats to carry out these pointless fishing expeditions, paying them with the dosh they've collected ostensibly to pay the creatives in whose interests they claim to operate. -
Nelson College used to have a scholarship for boys who could prove they were of "pure British stock".
Amazin'. Only strapping young Oxo cubes need apply eh?
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. . . anyone who thinks the current iteration of the GOP is 'conservative' in any sense worthy of the name, is flying in the face of reality.
In line with John Stuart Mill's "Not all conservatives are stupid people, but most stupid people are conservatives", the GOP seems pretty conservative to me.
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Judges are there to see justice done, that is all.
With the current glacial pace of cases coming to trial, justice is being done in it's own sweet time. It's a situation that appears to advantage the guilty while penalising the innocent.
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I think you'll find that the police didn't "slander" anyone as a terrorist, and in fact carefully avoided using the term. They were obliged to advise people that warrants had been issued in relation to potential offences under the Terrorism Suppression Act and the Arms Act.
I'm sure that you know more about this than you'd rather say right now, but a couple of things bother me.
First, the police obviously were able to act with some degree of discretion, as was shown by their decision to bypass their own local liaison people in the Urewera.
Second, Ahmed Zaoui's innocence was widely proclaimed on this blog and elsewhere, long before he was released and effectively exonerated. Surely there are people caught up in last October's clumsily wide-ranging raids who will be shown to be no more terrorists than was Zaoui. They're waiting an awful long time for their names to be cleared. Some of the same fine 'security and intelligence' minds involved in building a case against Zaoui were no doubt involved with last October's events. -
Many lawmakers contend that Ms. Palin is overly reliant on a small inner circle that leaves her isolated. Democrats and Republicans alike describe her as often missing in action. Since taking office in 2007, Ms. Palin has spent 312 nights at her Wasilla home, some 600 miles to the north of the governor’s mansion in Juneau, records show.
Compared to Dubya and his extended vacations at Crawford, Palin sounds to pretty hands-on.
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Joe Wylie - your wit, your humour, your perspicacity. I truly admire you.
Make that trolling for rough trade Sagie. Oughta keep you engaged till your regular domestic arrangements resume.
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And, uh, she also happens to represent, be governor of a state that's right next to Russia. She understands Russia.
I bet she does - in much the same way that Vladimir Zhirinovsky understands Alaska:
Zhirinovsky has advocated forcibly retaking Alaska from the United States (which would then become "a great place to put the Ukrainians"
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Over to you chaps, you have had some days rest from me but my wife has gone away again, so I have nothing to do in the evenings.... :^)
Cruising PA for rough trade when you could be whacking off over Sarah Palin . . . . . doesn't get much more elitist than that.