pmccool

> the US-Australia free trade agreement ensures US copyright law applies to and overrides Australian copyright law).

Can you elaborate on this? I understood treaties to have no legal force in Australia until domestic laws were passed to give them force. I know there are exceptions to this rule (like Teoh) but AFAIK they don't involve overriding domestic law

I think the problem with this sort of scheme is field testing. Short of getting hold of a traffic camera (which sounds difficult), a meaningful test invokes breaking the law with all the attendant problems.

edit: traffic camera, not speed camera.

The photograph was a bit unnerving. I couldn't see much of a gap to ride through. I wonder how right-of-way would work?

The reference to the bike share scheme is interesting too -several such schemes have started up recently here in .au.

I imagine they spent a lot more on advertising their anti-"piracy" message. Compared to that, the ROI is probably pretty good. I therefore expect the lawsuits will continue, more's the pity.

In at least some incidents, it was impossible to change into neutral(owing to some electronic failsafe) and not at all obvious how to switch the ignition off. Non-obvious is bad bad bad when your throttle is suddenly stuck wide open.

But they're looking at actual infringements. 1 download, 1 infringement. The size of the audience, potential or otherwise, is here nor there.

Here's hoping this is Conroy trying to let this scheme fade away without the need for a humiliating backdown.

Can it be coincidence that this means nothing will happen until after the next election? I think not. I also think that it will only come up after the election if they still want Fielding onside.

In my mind, there are two distinct arguments: that copyright is about the moral rights of the owner, and that copyright is economically useful. The moral argument has nothing to do with payment as such; it is all about control.

Agreed, technology has some interesting effects of the notion of ownership: consider sampling and wikipedia to name but two. It affects the economic argument much more than the moral one; technology doesn't so much invalidate the concept of ownership as make certain modes of ownership uninteresting.

edit: spelling

In my mind, there are two distinct arguments: that copyright is about the moral rights of the owner, and that opyright is economically useful. The moral argument has nothing to do with payment as such; it is all about control.

Agreed, technology has some interesting effects of the notion of ownership: consider sampling and wikipedia to name but two. It affects the economic argument much more than the moral one; technology doesn't so much invalidate the concept of ownership as make certain modes of ownership uninteresting.

As I understood his argument, it had nothing to do with ease of duplication. Instead, it was about ownership. His contention that the creators (who are by implication the owners) of intangible things have rights too is not invalidated by technology.

This assumes that the change dispenser is emptied at the same time that the machine is refilled. This is a reasonable assumption, but not a self-evidently correct one.

Given the increased power of the judiciary in this scenario, what should be done about bad judicial precedents? I can't see a sunset clause working there.

Assuming this limit to be practicable (which I doubt; consider complex subjects like corporations law) it would have the effect of giving the judiciary more power. Such succinct laws would need considerable interpretation. I note that bad common-law precedents are a problem as well as bad legislation. Shorter laws don't help this situation. Nor does a more powerful judiciary.

Have you considered ed? I dimly recall trying a line editor over a slow-slow link and being pleasantly surprised at the difference it made...

It's ancient and wierd because it gets the job done even if all you have is a teletype. It's very rare nowadays that you need something that can work in that sort of situation.

I'm a vi guy. IME the big virtue of vi and it's various clones (vim, etc) is that it's easy to install and likely to already be there. Vim is pretty feature-rich too.

I don't know that it's worth learning unless you work in a UNIX environment. I myself use it in Windows precisely because I can't be bothered learning another, different-but-no-better text editor. Is it worth learning from scratch if you live in Windows? I honestly don't know. In UNIX, of course, the historical reason for knowing vi (and ed, its line-editor cousin) was ubiquity. It's less of an issue these days - the odds of vi being your only choice are, I daresay, slim.

The downside is that its UI is ancient and wierd.

If I had to make a recommendation, it would be to learn the very basics. It won't take long and it might come in handy one day.

Seems like a good time to try their luck though. Demand for non-petroleum powered cars is building, nobody is established as a manufacturer and it seems the technology is now up to the job. It's still a gamble, but the odds seem a bit better than usual.

I wondered the same thing. If you assume that the level of investment dictates the number of trips, then the ROI is steadily decreasing. Whether it's any worse than the ROI on, say, roads I have no idea.

My opinion, and I have no hard data to back it up, is that it's not a case of build it and they will come, but a case of they come, they complain bitterly about the lack of facilties and then and only then does it get built.

Stated in a general manner. What's being alleged rather than the evidence to support it.

Yeah, the analogy with theft, particularly physical theft, is unconvincing. Counterfeiting is nearer the mark, but there are obvious differences there as well.

My big complaint with these analogies, though, isn't with their accuracy or lack therof. It's that they shed absolutely no light on whether copyright laws are good, bad or indifferent. They imply a moral imperative for copyright laws. This is, to put it mildly, controversial.

The theft analogy has no bearing on the question of whether the bad effects of copyright laws outweigh the good. I'd rather see the copyright lobby concentrate on that question (other than by quoting implausible estimates of the cost of "piracy"). That, at least, is a defensible position that can be debated constructively.

edit: spelling, punctuation.

More to the point, illicit downloading is not piracy. Equating downloading with armed robbery(or worse) at sea is silly.

What happens if Viacom appeals and wins? Presumably it gets sent back for trial or something?

Ah, but some of the exercise time is time that would be spent commuting anyway. That's one major advantage of commuting-as-exercise.

Video replays make for longer stoppages. To my mind, football is more enjoyable to watch when the action is more or less continuous. Replays would interfere with that continuity.

Where they have could some value is in dealing with automatic suspensions. If a player is wrongly red-carded, for example, I see no reason a replay couldn't be used to exonerate them and undo the automatic suspension that follows a red card.

I recommend doing something manual, e.g. carpentry or paving. I find it's a great contrast to working in front of a computer. Actually building something tangible is a good feeling. For example, I plan on rebuilding a bicycle wheel this weekend - very relaxing.

Practice answering questions under time pressure. Time management can be a big problem in exam situations.

Indeed, and this book takes account of that. The recipes I've looked at have pretty quick, straightforward preparation and don't use many utensils.

Sure, but I think that there was an implicit assumption that the person under consideration was explaining something within their area of expertise. Otherwise the article would be claiming that a smart person can explain anything simply, which amounts to equating "smart" with "omniscient".

The other assumption I made about the article was that it was discussing a useful heuristic, not a 100% reliable test. The inherent complexity of the world is one of the things that can make it give the wrong result, but not the only one.

I agree, mostly. Being smart and being good at explaining aren't the same thing, though. They may often go together, but it isn't necessarily the case.

I've heard of people filling physical carts with (non-perishable) goods and abandoning them in the store to protest against a supermarket chain. This makes me wonder whether a similar online tactic might be effective.