Tattooes appear in many places on the body.
But have you thought what those locations ,might say about you, the tattooed one?
The comments might just be on the money!
Monday, 30 January 2012
Thursday, 19 January 2012
Intellectual Property, Online Piracy and Intellectual Freedom
This article is reproduced from elsewhere, but is a reminder of the issues that are being discussed over access to information. Mull over it, think about it and ask do you want to go backwards or forwards?? Yes, there might be a need for a degree of intellectual property........but the USA has also hammered the Australian copyright system rather savagely in the terms of the US / Australia free trade deal...and Australia got screwed.
Blackout Wednesday: The Time Has Come By Jeffrey Tucker
The blackout is a choice, and a brilliant one, made by founder Jimmy Wales in consultation with the whole Wikipedia community. It is a protest, a statement, a symbolic warning to the world of what can happen if governments attack the free flow of information.
The online protest is directed, in particular, against two bills roiling around Congress right now, called SOPA in the House and PIPA in the Senate. Early versions have been tabled.
The Obama administration has said that it opposes the current versions, but the opposition was weak and suspiciously nuanced.
People who are digitally aware and politically savvy know that this is only round one. The attempt by governments to block information flows on the Web will continue in new and different bills and regulations. No new laws are even necessary; government possesses the power now to crush the information age on a bureaucratic whim.In fact, this goes on every day. That's because governments everywhere, in all times and places, want to control information and will use all their power to do it.
It is also because the legal framework that rules how information is produced and distributed is fundamentally corrupted by the fraudulent notion of "intellectual property," which, if consistently enforced, would put an end to the Internet as we know it...
Just this past week, a judge ruled that a 23-year-old British college student can be extradited to the US for a 10-year prison sentence, all for linking to other servers that illicitly host copyrighted content;
Late last year, US officials shut down 150 domains without hearings or trials on grounds that they were suspected of selling goods that violate trademark law. It was done on "Cyber Monday" for a reason: It was an announcement to the digital world that government is in charge;
In the spring of last year, the FBI arbitrarily shut down every online poker domain they could find and seized the bank accounts of some of the largest and smartest people who play online poker - and all of this happened before the recent announcement that online poker is being re-legalised;
Earlier in the year, the Department of Homeland Security seized 84,000 domains and put up an announcement that each was trafficking in child porn. Problem: It was all a mistake. Not one was actually guilty. To date, there has been no explanation of how this could have happened;
In 2010, the feds seized some 73,000 domains for the crime of linking to content that was said to be distributed illegally in violation of copyright. Already, the damage of this sort of thing is enormous.
Ten years ago, the Internet represented liberation, a new frontier of innovation, commerce, opinion sharing and spontaneous organising.
Today, more and more people are consumed by fear. Bloggers are unclear about what existing law does or does not allow. No one knows for sure how to define "fair use." The deepest pockets are winning case after case.
Faced with this uncertainty, many are choosing less over more content - which is exactly what the government and private monopolists want.
The Wikipedia protest is a way of saying: If this kind of thing continues and ends up institutionalised in new legislation, there will be no more Wikipedia, which is the No. 1 content-rich site on the Web and the main way people learn today (how far we've come from the debunking that was common only five years ago).
And this is just one example.
Individual blogs would only contain government-approved content. Search engines would only produce only government-approved sites. Digital entrepreneurship would be suffocated by fears of threats, confiscations and jails. It is hard to see how even Facebook and Twitter could survive.
It is just marvellous that Wikipedia has taken this bold direction, and it is only possible because of the unique nature of the media in question.
Many large businesses during the 1930s tried their best to protest New Deal price controls. But they could hardly shut down their giant stores. The revenue loss would have been devastating, and the victims would have been the employees. So in the end, the private sector was forced to submit to the controls. It was the same in the 1970s with wage and price controls. How could the merchants resist?
But digital enterprises are in a different position entirely. They can vanish with a few clicks, giving the world a conjectural look at what happens when the state attacks the lifeblood of innovation and progress. Small changes in the law can have a gigantic effect. Just as one click can shut down this site, one law can do the same.
It is not only Wikipedia. Others are doing the same.
WordPress, the open-source platform that powers nearly a quarter of new websites and has the most-popular content management system on the Web, has also stepped out in front with a call for action: "Normally, we stay away from... politics here at the official WordPress project...Today, I'm breaking our no-politics rule...How would you feel if the Web stopped being so free and independent? I'm concerned - freaked right the heck out about the bills that threaten to do this, and as a participant in one of the biggest changes in modern history, you should be, too."There are many such examples.
And even if successful, it is not enough.
With or without SOPA, digital freedom is under attack.
For example, ICANN, the gateway for all domain registration, is now requiring a verified official identity, supplied by government, for domain ownership. This change sets the stage for continuing shutdowns and strangulation.The struggle is intensifying, and the sides are very clear: It is the government and old-line media companies that depend on the state's laws versus everyone else.
Everyone else consists of the independently active, privately owned global society that lives and thrives in the digital age. The astonishing innovations of this age have taught an entire generation about the miraculous power of information generation and delivery, about the capabilities embedded in the spontaneous actions of individuals, about the capacity of people around the world to generate order and progress through cooperation and exchange.The notable thing is that the Web as we know it has been built by private hands working together, not by bureaucrats and politicians. This is the great lesson that our Jetsons world has taught us, and it points to a truth that all governments want to suppress: namely, that order is the daughter of liberty.
How dare the bureaucrats and politicians presume to be the lords of what they had nothing to do with creating! If government gets its way with this legislation and these overall trends, the costs will be immense and tragically unseen. Digital media and information freedom is directly and indirectly responsible for most of the economic growth we've experienced over the last 20 years. Without it, government controls, taxes, regulations and wars would have instituted a new dark age by now.
For government to attack Internet freedom today would be akin to burning the seventh-century manuscripts of St. Isidore of Seville, who produced, in the hardest times, the book that summarised all the knowledge of the ancient world (a Wikipedia of his time) and remains a primary source today.
It would be like murdering Venerable Bede in the eighth century, so that he could not have written his history of England that passed on knowledge and wisdom in the darkest of times.
It would be like smashing the 15th-century Gutenberg presses so that printing could have never gotten off the ground.
Historians constantly remind us that all great leaps in human history are inspired by the sharing and spreading of information. This is the precondition. When the first crusaders returned with new manuscripts from the ancient world, we began to see the first signs of the birth of modernity in the West.
When populations moved to cities where they could leave behind their isolation and collaborate with others, economic growth followed. And when the Internet blasted down the barriers around the world and allowed anyone to discover new ideas, we saw a new dawn of technology and efficiency.
Information is the most-valuable commodity, and one that so happens to be infinitely reproducible.
But today, governments have rallied around this notion of "intellectual property" and used it as an excuse to set up monopolies and censor ideas. We'll never be safe from this kind of legislation and arbitrary dictate until this fallacy is pulled up from its very roots and we are better able to distinguish between real and fake property rights.
The two dominant trends of our time are, on the one hand, the darkening of the physical world ruled by governments and, on the other hand, the re-enlightening of the world thanks to the spontaneous order of digital media controlled by everyone else.
Governments are seeking to drag it down and shut off the lights. The protests against these proposed controls constitute a mighty statement that we will not let the raiders, the barbarians, the vandals, have their way.
This article first appeared in The Daily Reckoning USA
Examine the Creative Commons concept.......a positive development, and quite useful. Plenty of information online if you want to know more.
Blackout Wednesday: The Time Has Come By Jeffrey Tucker
The blackout is a choice, and a brilliant one, made by founder Jimmy Wales in consultation with the whole Wikipedia community. It is a protest, a statement, a symbolic warning to the world of what can happen if governments attack the free flow of information.
The online protest is directed, in particular, against two bills roiling around Congress right now, called SOPA in the House and PIPA in the Senate. Early versions have been tabled.
The Obama administration has said that it opposes the current versions, but the opposition was weak and suspiciously nuanced.
People who are digitally aware and politically savvy know that this is only round one. The attempt by governments to block information flows on the Web will continue in new and different bills and regulations. No new laws are even necessary; government possesses the power now to crush the information age on a bureaucratic whim.In fact, this goes on every day. That's because governments everywhere, in all times and places, want to control information and will use all their power to do it.
It is also because the legal framework that rules how information is produced and distributed is fundamentally corrupted by the fraudulent notion of "intellectual property," which, if consistently enforced, would put an end to the Internet as we know it...
Just this past week, a judge ruled that a 23-year-old British college student can be extradited to the US for a 10-year prison sentence, all for linking to other servers that illicitly host copyrighted content;
Late last year, US officials shut down 150 domains without hearings or trials on grounds that they were suspected of selling goods that violate trademark law. It was done on "Cyber Monday" for a reason: It was an announcement to the digital world that government is in charge;
In the spring of last year, the FBI arbitrarily shut down every online poker domain they could find and seized the bank accounts of some of the largest and smartest people who play online poker - and all of this happened before the recent announcement that online poker is being re-legalised;
Earlier in the year, the Department of Homeland Security seized 84,000 domains and put up an announcement that each was trafficking in child porn. Problem: It was all a mistake. Not one was actually guilty. To date, there has been no explanation of how this could have happened;
In 2010, the feds seized some 73,000 domains for the crime of linking to content that was said to be distributed illegally in violation of copyright. Already, the damage of this sort of thing is enormous.
Ten years ago, the Internet represented liberation, a new frontier of innovation, commerce, opinion sharing and spontaneous organising.
Today, more and more people are consumed by fear. Bloggers are unclear about what existing law does or does not allow. No one knows for sure how to define "fair use." The deepest pockets are winning case after case.
Faced with this uncertainty, many are choosing less over more content - which is exactly what the government and private monopolists want.
The Wikipedia protest is a way of saying: If this kind of thing continues and ends up institutionalised in new legislation, there will be no more Wikipedia, which is the No. 1 content-rich site on the Web and the main way people learn today (how far we've come from the debunking that was common only five years ago).
And this is just one example.
Individual blogs would only contain government-approved content. Search engines would only produce only government-approved sites. Digital entrepreneurship would be suffocated by fears of threats, confiscations and jails. It is hard to see how even Facebook and Twitter could survive.
It is just marvellous that Wikipedia has taken this bold direction, and it is only possible because of the unique nature of the media in question.
Many large businesses during the 1930s tried their best to protest New Deal price controls. But they could hardly shut down their giant stores. The revenue loss would have been devastating, and the victims would have been the employees. So in the end, the private sector was forced to submit to the controls. It was the same in the 1970s with wage and price controls. How could the merchants resist?
But digital enterprises are in a different position entirely. They can vanish with a few clicks, giving the world a conjectural look at what happens when the state attacks the lifeblood of innovation and progress. Small changes in the law can have a gigantic effect. Just as one click can shut down this site, one law can do the same.
It is not only Wikipedia. Others are doing the same.
WordPress, the open-source platform that powers nearly a quarter of new websites and has the most-popular content management system on the Web, has also stepped out in front with a call for action: "Normally, we stay away from... politics here at the official WordPress project...Today, I'm breaking our no-politics rule...How would you feel if the Web stopped being so free and independent? I'm concerned - freaked right the heck out about the bills that threaten to do this, and as a participant in one of the biggest changes in modern history, you should be, too."There are many such examples.
And even if successful, it is not enough.
With or without SOPA, digital freedom is under attack.
For example, ICANN, the gateway for all domain registration, is now requiring a verified official identity, supplied by government, for domain ownership. This change sets the stage for continuing shutdowns and strangulation.The struggle is intensifying, and the sides are very clear: It is the government and old-line media companies that depend on the state's laws versus everyone else.
Everyone else consists of the independently active, privately owned global society that lives and thrives in the digital age. The astonishing innovations of this age have taught an entire generation about the miraculous power of information generation and delivery, about the capabilities embedded in the spontaneous actions of individuals, about the capacity of people around the world to generate order and progress through cooperation and exchange.The notable thing is that the Web as we know it has been built by private hands working together, not by bureaucrats and politicians. This is the great lesson that our Jetsons world has taught us, and it points to a truth that all governments want to suppress: namely, that order is the daughter of liberty.
How dare the bureaucrats and politicians presume to be the lords of what they had nothing to do with creating! If government gets its way with this legislation and these overall trends, the costs will be immense and tragically unseen. Digital media and information freedom is directly and indirectly responsible for most of the economic growth we've experienced over the last 20 years. Without it, government controls, taxes, regulations and wars would have instituted a new dark age by now.
For government to attack Internet freedom today would be akin to burning the seventh-century manuscripts of St. Isidore of Seville, who produced, in the hardest times, the book that summarised all the knowledge of the ancient world (a Wikipedia of his time) and remains a primary source today.
It would be like murdering Venerable Bede in the eighth century, so that he could not have written his history of England that passed on knowledge and wisdom in the darkest of times.
It would be like smashing the 15th-century Gutenberg presses so that printing could have never gotten off the ground.
Historians constantly remind us that all great leaps in human history are inspired by the sharing and spreading of information. This is the precondition. When the first crusaders returned with new manuscripts from the ancient world, we began to see the first signs of the birth of modernity in the West.
When populations moved to cities where they could leave behind their isolation and collaborate with others, economic growth followed. And when the Internet blasted down the barriers around the world and allowed anyone to discover new ideas, we saw a new dawn of technology and efficiency.
Information is the most-valuable commodity, and one that so happens to be infinitely reproducible.
But today, governments have rallied around this notion of "intellectual property" and used it as an excuse to set up monopolies and censor ideas. We'll never be safe from this kind of legislation and arbitrary dictate until this fallacy is pulled up from its very roots and we are better able to distinguish between real and fake property rights.
The two dominant trends of our time are, on the one hand, the darkening of the physical world ruled by governments and, on the other hand, the re-enlightening of the world thanks to the spontaneous order of digital media controlled by everyone else.
Governments are seeking to drag it down and shut off the lights. The protests against these proposed controls constitute a mighty statement that we will not let the raiders, the barbarians, the vandals, have their way.
This article first appeared in The Daily Reckoning USA
Examine the Creative Commons concept.......a positive development, and quite useful. Plenty of information online if you want to know more.
Friday, 6 January 2012
McDonalds Ludmilla - Hamburger Joint Or Road and Car Wash?
What a stupid franchisee! What a bad example to the rest of the community! What a waste!
Very obviously the franchisee could not give a rat’s. Maybe the franchisor might though.
It is the wet season and two nights ago around 30 -50mm of rain fell in Darwin, enough for at least 5 or 6 days to keep the garden and lawns growing.
Not only that, but both November and December have been quite wet with plenty of regular rain. It is over two months since most people needed to use irrigation at home, except for maybe the odd pot plant.
Yes, good old McDonald’s on Bagot Road / Pfitzer Drive corner at Ludmilla where thousands of cars move past both day and night, is still watering the lawn. Not only that, they are watering every evening, and also watering most of the road on both Pfitzer Drive and some onto Bagot road. It is so bad on Pfitzer Drive that the road is showing signs of damage from the water. Your car is watered as you enter the carpark.
There is a simple switch –called a rain off switch, that holds the settings, but stop the irrigation system operating. This is a switch one uses to turn the system off......when it rains. Very easy, very simple. Should have been activated about two month’s ago.
I am sure they can afford the water bill, but why use it?
What a shame they are so silly that they cannot turn it off when it is not needed.
Very obviously the franchisee could not give a rat’s. Maybe the franchisor might though.
It is the wet season and two nights ago around 30 -50mm of rain fell in Darwin, enough for at least 5 or 6 days to keep the garden and lawns growing.
Not only that, but both November and December have been quite wet with plenty of regular rain. It is over two months since most people needed to use irrigation at home, except for maybe the odd pot plant.
Yes, good old McDonald’s on Bagot Road / Pfitzer Drive corner at Ludmilla where thousands of cars move past both day and night, is still watering the lawn. Not only that, they are watering every evening, and also watering most of the road on both Pfitzer Drive and some onto Bagot road. It is so bad on Pfitzer Drive that the road is showing signs of damage from the water. Your car is watered as you enter the carpark.
There is a simple switch –called a rain off switch, that holds the settings, but stop the irrigation system operating. This is a switch one uses to turn the system off......when it rains. Very easy, very simple. Should have been activated about two month’s ago.
I am sure they can afford the water bill, but why use it?
What a shame they are so silly that they cannot turn it off when it is not needed.
Thursday, 5 January 2012
Changes for the New Year
Ah, New Year's Resolutions! Made to be broken or truly a chance to remake you.
Many do not survive the first month, some less than the first week.
7 Things That Will Make You Happy
The New Year's Resolution We Should Be Making
Never Too Late: 5 Bad Habits You Should Still Quit
The graphic shows some of the most common US 2012 resolutions. I would think Australia might be very similar.
One standout for about 16% of the Australian population [ a little less than the US figure] is to stop smoking. Sure, some smokers are happy to keep on killing themselves, but in Australia they are more than ever seen as pariahs, those who continue to smoke, and there are major efforts directed at anti smoking options.
What of the others? Sound familiar?
Source:LiveScience
Many do not survive the first month, some less than the first week.
7 Things That Will Make You Happy
The New Year's Resolution We Should Be Making
Never Too Late: 5 Bad Habits You Should Still Quit
The graphic shows some of the most common US 2012 resolutions. I would think Australia might be very similar.
One standout for about 16% of the Australian population [ a little less than the US figure] is to stop smoking. Sure, some smokers are happy to keep on killing themselves, but in Australia they are more than ever seen as pariahs, those who continue to smoke, and there are major efforts directed at anti smoking options.
What of the others? Sound familiar?
Source:LiveScience
Sunday, 1 January 2012
You Know It Is Hot When.......
The monsoon has gone missing and the weather is hot.
New Year's Day, a slow start that developed into a house clean up, and related requirements, even cleaning the spa [ yikes it needed it......debris off the roof after that was cleaned], is now meandering into late afternoon.
But it has been stinking hot.......so hot that even the dog, who already had had a cooling clean with the hose and a wash decided that it ws so hot a move into the office and the air conditioning was a sensible option. First she moved to lying outside the office with the cool air trickling beneath the office doors, then as the door was opened.......in she went to lie on the cool tiled floor. Where she stayed, while cleaning the house continued.
Sensible dog!!
New Year's Day, a slow start that developed into a house clean up, and related requirements, even cleaning the spa [ yikes it needed it......debris off the roof after that was cleaned], is now meandering into late afternoon.
But it has been stinking hot.......so hot that even the dog, who already had had a cooling clean with the hose and a wash decided that it ws so hot a move into the office and the air conditioning was a sensible option. First she moved to lying outside the office with the cool air trickling beneath the office doors, then as the door was opened.......in she went to lie on the cool tiled floor. Where she stayed, while cleaning the house continued.
Sensible dog!!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)