Posts by Tom Semmens
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Hard News: MegaBox: From f**k-all to zero, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
British soldiers arriving in France in 1914 spent a lot of time trying to communicate with bewildered locals in pidgin Hindi, on the basis that the world spoke two languages - English and that of the principle subject people of their empire. Most Americans now seem to know at least a smattering of Spanish...
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I don’t have a dog in this fight so I can see both sides of the mega-key and ad-blocker yay/nay argument. To be honest, I am more troubled by the potential of unbreakable encryption to be used by paedophile rings and the like than KDC’s grab for ad revenue via a piece of mega-key spamware, which I won’t download anyway.
However from the perspective of a pure consumer I find the argument that the website owner has some sort of right to dictate what I see a weaker one than the right of the consumer to choose what he or she sees delivered to their screen, and it kinda flies in the face of the whole trend towards customising the customer experience. The customer, after all, is always king.
From my POV I reason that I pay for Sky TV so I can use MySky to filter the ads (x12 baby!!!). I bitterly resent Sky’s abuse of it’s monopoly position to continually siphon of the best content to Rialto and the Arts channel and whatever else new channels they may invent behind the new paywalls they throw up, so I keep an eye on the listings of what might be interesting on those channels and then use torrent sites to pull down those shows – a good example of that would be the Art Nouveau documentaries currently being advertised as showing on the arts channel. Saw the ad, downloaded the documentaries, watched them all in one enthralled sitting, job done and two fingers to Sky’s monopolisitic business practices (BTW – I only ever download via an anonymous proxy and our sky account is in someone else’s name). So I pay for a service where I see it as reasonable and where I don’t, I don’t – and nowadays I have the power to not just refuse to pay, but to circumvent what I see as unreasonable corporate behaviour. The point is I keep the control of my commercial relationship with Sky with me as much as I can.
Now, I also pay for my internet connection in exactly the same way as I pay for my Sky subscription. Because I pay for a good broadband connection I expect to be able to fashion my web experience exactly as I want it, not as anyone says I should see it – and that includes ads, within reason. For example, I use pop-up blockers but not ad blockers, but recently the SMH started running ads which consisted of annoying embedded video so now I ad block those. I will sit through 15 second ads on Youtube because I like to give the artists something, but I wouldn’t bother with 30 seconds. The principle is, again, that I am the one who pays the service provider, so I have a reasonable expectation to control my experience. So while I may chose to view ads, to my mind it is entirely my perogative to do so, and it cannot be an expectation to be set by the site owner, ever.
As for Kim Dotcom – he has done us all an enormous favour by reminding us that in this country our so-called security and intelligent services use a veil of secrecy largely to conceal the fact they are incompetent buffoons who regard themselves as above the law and who routinely engage in criminal behaviour. His exposure of our neo-colonial political establishment as generally incompetent and venal and outright Quisling when it comes to dealings with the United States also deserves thanks. And anyone who can say, when asked by RNZ what he would say to John Key if he were at the launch of Megaupload, that he wouldn’t say much because the PM would probably just forget it anyway, has got to melt even just a little the iciest of socialist hearts.
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even though the perverse effects of the law stare us in the face
I couldn't help wondering if even the slowest politician struggles reconciling this story with the facile cut and paste rubbish from this story just a week later. It seems to me that people hugging each other on MDMA is far more preferable to
... violent seizures and hallucinations in people thought to have taken pills known as "red rockets"... ....Some users were so aggressive that they required sedation...
Still, a win is a win for the boys in blue, I guess.
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Congratulations, I thought this was about gun control in the USA, but after 182 odd posts we can all heave a sigh of relief and get back to playing the usual game of Public Address identity issues bingo.
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Hard News: Cultures and violence, in reply to Lucy Stewart,
Assault weapon bans have only been challenged so far in state courts; From what I can read legal thinking in America seems to be that an assault weapon ban should it come to the SCOTUS would be reviewed only in terms of the second amendment with little regard to state rulings. Now, from what I have read it is on the balance of probability that the SCOTUS would uphold an assault weapon ban but, paradoxically, the more assault weapons there are in circulation the less likely a ban would succeed in the supreme court, since the test seems to be how common they are (the less common, the more likely to be banned). Anyway, it seems to me that given how conservative the US Supreme Court is at the moment going to it for a judgement would be very risky, since a ruling in favour of assault weapons could open a Pandora's box of currently questionable weaponry to the general public.
That is why I think the only real chance of change is amending the constitution, a huge but not impossible task.
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Hard News: Cultures and violence, in reply to BenWilson,
"...I think the Australian experience would be the one to look to..."
"Guard with jealous attention the public liberty..." ".... Suspect everyone who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are inevitably ruined." - Patrick Henry"
in other words, the second amendment wasn't just dreamed up in isolation, something the Supreme Court would doubtless bear in mind should any Australian style federal ban be put in place. Also, in the United States gun regulations in general are very much a matter of States rights and are jealously guarded. There is no way the Federal US government could "legislate for that".
The Australian experience is therefore of precisely zero relevance to the United States.
The only way a gun ban of any sort could be imposed by the US Federal government is by amending the constitution by repealing the second amendment, probably by getting three-fourths of the state legislatures approval.
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American gun violence is deeply ingrained in the American culture of exceptionalism and in the American way of seeing the world. Therefore, to me, American gun violence and American exceptionalism are closely linked, insofar as American exceptionalism is usually expressed through the unrestrained violence of the “American way of war”.
This appetite for (once unleashed) unrestrained violence – the cultural tendency of Americans to regard violence and non-violence as sharply different conditions rather than as existing on the same graduated scale – is a real marker of American culture since at least the early nineteenth century. This view of violence as different from non-violence is expressed in the (to us) massive over-reactions of US law-enforcement, and the way that violence, once embarked on, is carried on through to its most extreme logical conclusion. Add to that mix the American fascination with technology (much of the American romance with guns is driven by an infatuation with the technology of the weapons). And now combine that with a culture used to unrestrained access to the resources of an entire continent that translates to a belief in the efficacy of unlimited resources (shooters typically have many, many guns) and a penchant for large scale, continental solutions to conflicts that involve the extravagant use of firepower and it becomes easier to understand just why America loves guns, and why that love of guns produces so many extreme acts of gun violence.
P.S. Surely, one can find no clearer example of American exceptionalism that seeing President Obama pause for twelve seconds and wipe away a tear when talking of the Kindermord in Connecticut. I don’t for a second doubt his genuine emotion; But it is an emotion at the killing of innocents reserved exclusively for Americans.
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Who cares about albums, seriously? I haven’t purchased one for years, but I’ve sat through a lot of 15 second ads on youtube this year.
Here is a question for the crowd: What do PSY (most ever youtube views), Justin Beiber (second place on youtube to the Korean phenomena) and Carly-Rae Jepsen (she of the hottest youtube parody of 2012 from the cheerleaders of the Miami Dolphins, bless them) all have in common?
The answer is their manager, Scooter Braun. Love them or hate them, you can’t deny those three artists have set the pop agenda in 2012. Hell, the Guardian just voted “Call me Crazy” as the best pop song of the year, and I'll admit it - I quite like Beiber's track with Nicki Minaj. As this chap notes, PSy made his money ignoring copyright and it is clear Scooter Braun has worked out the future of the music industry. The album in the sense of being a formal, released body of work is as dead as vinyl. Instead, people will set up their own youtube channels and make money from the ads and the parodies – much like this fellow Robin Skouteris, who makes the most fantastic mashups and whose channel I often check for new stuff.
Youtube is the new album for everyone.
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The thing about the TPP is we are all whistling in the dark, because the whole thing is shrouded in the most ridiculous and undemocratic secrecy. The sort of secrecy usually only invoked in this country because the state has got something to hide (your honour, the prosecution gives you the GCSB and Kim Dotcom). If cheerleaders like O'Sullivan are perplexed by the latent and active hostility to the TPP, and resent being called economic Quislings and worse, then surely they have to look in their own backyard for the reason why and the solutions.
When all you can hear is long banging noises in the darkness out there, you don't know if whether it an angry grizzly bear trying to get into your storehouse or just a mangy bunny in its death throes. But to be on the safe side, people will always fearfully populate their mind with the biggest, baddest bear imaginable.
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New level of brazen
$75??????????????????????