29. juni 2003

Flamewarrior archetypes Flamewars, heated discussions, are unavoidable on Usenet groups, message boards, maling lists and other online fora. If you've been hanging around any of those places for any length of times, you can't have avoided running into some of these "warrior" types. Great descriptions and funny illustrations. 9:39:35 PM    comment []

Tired of being treated as a criminal? The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is fighting the good fight against the record companies who care more about litigation than making music available to their potential customers. The record companies have let up ten-plus years of great chances to make music available online, and now they try to criminilize every one of their customers instead of owing up to their own stupidity. It is certainly possible to make a system that both allows music lovers to listen to their favourite music, even if it isn't in the top 10, and still compensate artists for their work. We need to face the fact that copyright law currently is broken. It is making criminals out of music lovers and technologists. College students are being sued, ISPs are being forced to rat out their customers, some members of Congress are calling for college students to be jailed for file sharing, the list goes on and on. But there are more than 60 million people in the United States alone who use file sharing--more than the number of people who voted for our current President. If we all band together and stand up for our rights, we can change the law. Alas, lobbying power is more important than voting powers for congressmen. 8:12:10 PM    comment []

Reclaim the public doman Lawrence Lessig is among those who are working to drum up support in the US Congress for a Public Domain Enhancement Act, an effort to stop the indeterminate extension of copyright for works the copyright holders have no particular interest to exploit anyway. 8:04:05 PM    comment []

Germany's Schröder does a Bush Germany's Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, who rose to power on a wave of anti-Americanism, has prescribed the same medicine for his country's economic woes as his overseas collegue: tax cuts. He has now taken steps to rush the proposed 18bn euro ($20.6bn) income tax cut, making it effective already next year. Like Bush, he hopes the across-the-board 10 % tax cuts will provide stimulus for the troubled economy. Germany is Europe's largest economy, but it has been shrinking 0.2% in the first quarter this year: Schröder is convinced that this is the medicine the country needs: "10% less tax means 10% more consumption" There has been warnings that Germany will not meet the stringent EU demands for budget balances with this new plan. Something about Schröder's logic, not to say math skills, confuse me a bit, however. If you reduce the tax rate by 10%, there will be far less than 10% more available for consumption. Assuming the income tax rate is 30%, being reduced to 27%, the increase in net pay will be no more than 4%. 5:33:18 PM    comment []

Another deck of crooks After the US came out with the now famous "deck of cards" listing the most-wanted Iraqi leaders, there has been an endless amount of card decks issued supporting various political points of view. George Bush and his government, of course, were quickly put on a deck of cards by war protesters, and rightists responded with a "deck of weasels" including war opponents ranging from French president Jacques Chirac to actor Martin Sheen. The "Stacked Deck," however, may be one that most people will agree about, as it lists corporate crooks, depicting 54 of the most notorious figures in the US corporate scandals. The whimsical cards include notable white-collar shysters like queen of clean cum Queen of Hearts Martha Stewart and bad-boy former Enron CEO Kenneth Lay. The inscription beneath Lay's mug on the Ace of Spades reads: "This part-time Bush advisor and full-time millionaire was selling company stock while telling employees to buy. Big surprise, Enron folded under his watch. Note: he's still a free citizen ..." Now we're waiting for the deck of cards of people making one deck of cards too many. 4:21:41 PM    comment []

BBC journalist threatens to sue minister The row between the BBC and the British government has escalated into a full-scale war as journalist Andrew Gilligan has threatened to sue Phil Woolas, the Deputy Leader of the House. Woolas had accused Gilligan of 'misleading' the Foreign Affairs Select Committee in the discussions over the Iraq WMD dossier. At the core of the row is Gilligan's claim that the Blair government had made the intelligence services 'sex up' the weapons dossier by adding the claim that Saddam Hussein could use chemical and biological weapons within 45 minutes. The Committee, however, seems to side with the Government in this case. Officials said that the 'weight of evidence' reveals that the 45-minute claim was based on a direct assessment of the intelligence services. Number 10, the committee will say, did not intervene to make sure the claim was put in the dossier. Evidence laid before the committee by the Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, in private session on Friday revealed that the claim was originally contained in a Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) assessment. The criticism will come as a blow to the BBC, which has refused to back down on allegations in reports by Gilligan that Campbell sexed up' the dossier. This unprecedented threat of legal action, however, reveals that the BBC is not going to take the defeat very well at all. 4:12:08 PM    comment []

Supreme court decision If you haven't read the full text (PDF format) of the US Supreme Court decision in the "Texas sodomy" case yet, you should. The reasononing is impressive and sound, and it obviously will have consequences beyond this particular case and law (as the opponents have noted). My favourite quotation: It must be acknowledged, of course, that the Court in Bowers was making the broader point that for centuries there have been powerful voices to condemn homosexual conduct as immoral. The condemnation has been shaped by religious beliefs, conceptions of right and acceptable behavior, and respect for the traditional family. For many persons these are not trivial concerns but profound and deep convictions accepted as ethical and moral principles to which they aspire and which thus determine the course of their lives. These considerations do not answer the question before us, however. The issue is whether the majority may use the power of the State to enforce these views on the whole society through operation of the criminal law. Our obligation is to define the liberty of all, not to mandate our own moral code. [bold added] Dare I say: amen! 3:10:16 AM    comment []

Horse singing Ok, it's weekend and that's the time for silly and funny entertainment links (this is both): the horse chorus. Requires flash and sound. Click the dumb animals, and you can be entertained for hours. Hey, it's a Swedish site so what do you expect? 2:40:41 AM    comment []

© Copyright 2003 Jan Haugland. Last update: 01.07.2003; 00:27:07.