well, that and the entire basis for the existence of a legitimate central government falls apart if we get rid of the monarchy.
also: most people don't care about the monarchy As Such that much so much as they really, REALLY don't trust the idea of the type of people who can win elections being the ultimate authority on anything.
then there's the whole 'moral authority' thing... a reigning monarch makes it much harder for would-be dictators to amass the personal authority needed to actually take over. legitimacy, ya know?
... ... ya know, a much greater percentage of the stuff i've had cause to use on linux has 'just worked' than is the case with windows.
just, you know, fyi.
all sorts of crap on windows doesn't work, often for No Apparent Reason, sometimes when it worked just fine the day before (i'm still baffled by the fact that one particular ME2TW mod will not work if windows vista is set to automatically adjust for daylight saving time. how the hell do those two functions even interact?)
the only things that ever Didn't work on Linux were some windows things running through WINE... and they probably would if i were inclined to put the effort in to learn about them.
from an end user point of view, the more stuff that 'just works' the better, because the less it gets in the way of what we're actually DOING.
people aren't getting dumbed down, really. the human brain is just set up to not learn (or even remember after having learned) anything it doesn't have to, simply because there's Too Much Stuff to learn. limited data storage, even with automatic compression (which isn't lossless).
technically Dotcom is not a citizen of New Zealand, just a Resident. though i believe the difference amounts to him being on probation and our government can chuck him out if he doesn't meet the terms.
which is completely unrelated from this (as they'd send him back to a country he does have citizenship in, i believe. or possibly whichever one he was last in prior to coming here. either way, not the USA.)
... is there a word for 'the entire system'?
you say 'government' and people tend to go 'oh, the opposition party are fine then'.
'administration' is the wrong word here, yes, but mostly because it doesn't include the bureaucracy, which is where a lot of the problem (though certainly FAR from all of it) lies.
basically, you guys need a revolution. (because logistics mean that the only sort of attack i see working to bring the US down any other way start with covert insertion of nuclear devices into your major cities, which is kind of uncool)
I'm pretty sure he means (or should) 'by telling the US to fuck off as they didn't have a case and/or not enacting an illegal warrant with what amounted to commando raids and other such bullshit.'
the only people who 'hold their breath' wanting anything from the US is various government twits who are obsessed with 'free trade' deals, no matter how damaging.
pretty much everyone else would really rather US interests just fucked off and left us alone. likewise Chinese. (we're not huge fans of the French, either, when we bother thinking about it, though that's an entirely different story.)
seriously, so far as i can tell, ignoring the entire stupid situation with dairy products, we'd do fine ditching all interaction with everyone but Australia, Korea, and Japan. (and the smaller pacific islands that don't count as 'south east asia', but that's more for their benefit. also, we have issues with Japan sometimes, but they're of an entirely different nature. mostly over whales. an issue which can be directly traced back to US actions, apparently.)
this probably isn't terribly accurate when you get down to the numbers and such, but it certainly looks and feels that way. (seriously, our primary interactions with the US seem to be adding troops to their stupidity, usually engineers to reduce how badly screwed over the locals get, and getting dicked over by our government's reactions to their diplomats and 'intelligence' agencies.)
also, i think you mean rescind (i think that's the word i'm after) not resend :P
meaningful economic entities:
city-regions
the world.
the internet is the latter.
nothing preventing a government requiring a tariff on things imported just because you payed for it over the internet.
free trade =/= free market.
IP in general undermines the free market.
it has Nothing to do with free trade.
the internet greatly facilitates the free market and trade in general.
it does not Require free trade. it does not even really have, so far as i can tell, meaningful effect in favour of or against free trade.
the problem is that 'protectionism' is used as the opposite of free trade to cover both regulation that is actually beneficial to the economy of the place being protected (good regulation) AND regulation used specifically to cripple other people's ability to compete to protect specific lobbies, industries, whatever. (bad regulation.)
basically, protecting the economy of a city-region is a good thing.
protecting a specific industry, cartel, or business is Not.
IP is about the latter. modern US 'free trade' agreements are more about that than about actual free trade.
basically, ideally, you want to replace imports with local production so that A: your internal economy grows, B: you an afford to import new things instead, and C: you can produce more things to export (and thus import more.) ... this process is ever changing as to exactly What things are being produced where.
regulation should be set up to encourage the replacement of imports with local production, and discourage the collapse of local industry due to outside sources being simply Cheaper (as opposed to the product being obsolete (which is the case if the outside product is superior, too.)). generally speaking, if a city-region has it's own currency, simple fluctuations of the value of that will do the job by itself, or at least most of it. if not, you need to introduce tariffs to replace the effect. the internet doesn't change this at all. it just introduce a category of goods (digital) which is its impractical (and, GASP! unnecessary!) to introduce a tariff on.
when your regulation is set up entirely to support an industry which is producing obsolete product in an inferior manner at a greater cost (or some sufficiently negative combined value of these factors), discouraging innovation and constant import replacement/export development which is needed to compensate for market shifts over time... that regulation is instead strangling your economy, and and should be stripped away.
modern copyright, patents, and to a lesser extent trademarks, are the latter sort of regulation.
unfortunately, unitary system says that all local government derives authority from the crown, which is fine... except the way things are run these days that means they have exactly the authority parliament grants them, and parliament is quite within their rights to dissolve them. (and it doesn't always take a law to do so.)
and they're quite willing to do it when it suits them.
(the Environment Canterbury (a regional resource management and conservation type government entity with large quantities of democratic participation) was dissolved basically because the farmers kept bitching about not being allowed more and more water rights for raising more and more cattle (which the area is wholly unsuited for), especially as there were issues about dealing with the resulting run-off. the issue was going through proper processes, many people were speaking against it, ultimately, from memory, E-Can ruled that it couldn't be done, or was about to. Farmers complained to the national government that E-Can was deliberately stalling and being 'obstructionist' and other such rubbish... the national government responded by dissolving E-Can. ... ... to be fair, our national government has ALWAYS somehow confused 'milk output' with 'economic growth'... it was nonsense under Muldoon, it's nonsense now. (again, that way lies a supply-region economy and economic collapse in the face of market shifts. which has HAPPENED here before, to some extent, but the lesson remains unlearned.))
free trade does not create jobs, except Possibly in the transport industry.
when it appears to, it's at the expense of More jobs in other sectors or locations.
the exception being when previous regulation of such was badly applied in such a way as to reduce jobs, in which case it's the effect of getting rid of negative elements, not the 'positive' of free trade.
(if you don't get it or disagree, i suggest reading Jane Jacobs' 'the economy of cities' and 'cities and the wealth of nations'. in that order. they're cheap enough to get hold of and very clearly written and well explained. i disagree with a couple of her ultimate conclusions in terms of 'these are the only things we can do about it' at the end of the second one (seperate-enough currencies don't really REQUIRE separate sovereignties, exactly.) but the rest of it's spot on, and quite blatantly obvious when you look at it without getting tangled up in neo-clasical economic nonsense.)
On the post: Why Are New Zealand Prosecutors Seeking To Suppress All Images & Video Of Megaupload Raid?
Re: Re: Re:
also: most people don't care about the monarchy As Such that much so much as they really, REALLY don't trust the idea of the type of people who can win elections being the ultimate authority on anything.
then there's the whole 'moral authority' thing... a reigning monarch makes it much harder for would-be dictators to amass the personal authority needed to actually take over. legitimacy, ya know?
On the post: Game Developers Concerned About A Potentially Closed Windows 8
Re: Re:
just, you know, fyi.
all sorts of crap on windows doesn't work, often for No Apparent Reason, sometimes when it worked just fine the day before (i'm still baffled by the fact that one particular ME2TW mod will not work if windows vista is set to automatically adjust for daylight saving time. how the hell do those two functions even interact?)
the only things that ever Didn't work on Linux were some windows things running through WINE... and they probably would if i were inclined to put the effort in to learn about them.
from an end user point of view, the more stuff that 'just works' the better, because the less it gets in the way of what we're actually DOING.
people aren't getting dumbed down, really. the human brain is just set up to not learn (or even remember after having learned) anything it doesn't have to, simply because there's Too Much Stuff to learn. limited data storage, even with automatic compression (which isn't lossless).
On the post: Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt
Re: Apple plays My Cousin Vinny
On the post: Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
but yeah. pretty much.
On the post: US Has Ignored New Zealand Court Order To Return Data It Seized From Megaupload
Re: Re: appeals
On the post: US Has Ignored New Zealand Court Order To Return Data It Seized From Megaupload
Re: Re:
which is completely unrelated from this (as they'd send him back to a country he does have citizenship in, i believe. or possibly whichever one he was last in prior to coming here. either way, not the USA.)
On the post: US Has Ignored New Zealand Court Order To Return Data It Seized From Megaupload
Re: Re:
On the post: US Has Ignored New Zealand Court Order To Return Data It Seized From Megaupload
Re: Re: Surprise, surprise....
you say 'government' and people tend to go 'oh, the opposition party are fine then'.
'administration' is the wrong word here, yes, but mostly because it doesn't include the bureaucracy, which is where a lot of the problem (though certainly FAR from all of it) lies.
basically, you guys need a revolution. (because logistics mean that the only sort of attack i see working to bring the US down any other way start with covert insertion of nuclear devices into your major cities, which is kind of uncool)
On the post: US Has Ignored New Zealand Court Order To Return Data It Seized From Megaupload
Re:
didn't they pass a law to that effect sometime in the last few years? 'US citizens don't get extradited' or something?
On the post: US Has Ignored New Zealand Court Order To Return Data It Seized From Megaupload
Re: Re: Re: For shame.
because, seriously, none of it was done right.
On the post: US Has Ignored New Zealand Court Order To Return Data It Seized From Megaupload
Re:
On the post: US Has Ignored New Zealand Court Order To Return Data It Seized From Megaupload
Re: Re: Re: Re: Ahem:
the only people who 'hold their breath' wanting anything from the US is various government twits who are obsessed with 'free trade' deals, no matter how damaging.
pretty much everyone else would really rather US interests just fucked off and left us alone. likewise Chinese. (we're not huge fans of the French, either, when we bother thinking about it, though that's an entirely different story.)
seriously, so far as i can tell, ignoring the entire stupid situation with dairy products, we'd do fine ditching all interaction with everyone but Australia, Korea, and Japan. (and the smaller pacific islands that don't count as 'south east asia', but that's more for their benefit. also, we have issues with Japan sometimes, but they're of an entirely different nature. mostly over whales. an issue which can be directly traced back to US actions, apparently.)
this probably isn't terribly accurate when you get down to the numbers and such, but it certainly looks and feels that way. (seriously, our primary interactions with the US seem to be adding troops to their stupidity, usually engineers to reduce how badly screwed over the locals get, and getting dicked over by our government's reactions to their diplomats and 'intelligence' agencies.)
also, i think you mean rescind (i think that's the word i'm after) not resend :P
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Re: Re:
On the post: Congress Has Lost All Perspective When It Considers Prosecuting Journalists As Spies
Re: Re: Re: UW
...
...
what does that example even SAY?
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Re: Re: Re:
On the post: Canadian Cities Looking To Opt-Out Of CETA Rather Than Get Roped Into An ACTA-Like Situation
Re: Re: Re: Re: Sigh
On the post: Canadian Cities Looking To Opt-Out Of CETA Rather Than Get Roped Into An ACTA-Like Situation
Re: Re: Re: Sigh
meaningful economic entities:
city-regions
the world.
the internet is the latter.
nothing preventing a government requiring a tariff on things imported just because you payed for it over the internet.
free trade =/= free market.
IP in general undermines the free market.
it has Nothing to do with free trade.
the internet greatly facilitates the free market and trade in general.
it does not Require free trade. it does not even really have, so far as i can tell, meaningful effect in favour of or against free trade.
the problem is that 'protectionism' is used as the opposite of free trade to cover both regulation that is actually beneficial to the economy of the place being protected (good regulation) AND regulation used specifically to cripple other people's ability to compete to protect specific lobbies, industries, whatever. (bad regulation.)
basically, protecting the economy of a city-region is a good thing.
protecting a specific industry, cartel, or business is Not.
IP is about the latter. modern US 'free trade' agreements are more about that than about actual free trade.
basically, ideally, you want to replace imports with local production so that A: your internal economy grows, B: you an afford to import new things instead, and C: you can produce more things to export (and thus import more.) ... this process is ever changing as to exactly What things are being produced where.
regulation should be set up to encourage the replacement of imports with local production, and discourage the collapse of local industry due to outside sources being simply Cheaper (as opposed to the product being obsolete (which is the case if the outside product is superior, too.)). generally speaking, if a city-region has it's own currency, simple fluctuations of the value of that will do the job by itself, or at least most of it. if not, you need to introduce tariffs to replace the effect. the internet doesn't change this at all. it just introduce a category of goods (digital) which is its impractical (and, GASP! unnecessary!) to introduce a tariff on.
when your regulation is set up entirely to support an industry which is producing obsolete product in an inferior manner at a greater cost (or some sufficiently negative combined value of these factors), discouraging innovation and constant import replacement/export development which is needed to compensate for market shifts over time... that regulation is instead strangling your economy, and and should be stripped away.
modern copyright, patents, and to a lesser extent trademarks, are the latter sort of regulation.
hopefully these thoughts are clear.
On the post: Canadian Cities Looking To Opt-Out Of CETA Rather Than Get Roped Into An ACTA-Like Situation
if only...
unfortunately, unitary system says that all local government derives authority from the crown, which is fine... except the way things are run these days that means they have exactly the authority parliament grants them, and parliament is quite within their rights to dissolve them. (and it doesn't always take a law to do so.)
and they're quite willing to do it when it suits them.
(the Environment Canterbury (a regional resource management and conservation type government entity with large quantities of democratic participation) was dissolved basically because the farmers kept bitching about not being allowed more and more water rights for raising more and more cattle (which the area is wholly unsuited for), especially as there were issues about dealing with the resulting run-off. the issue was going through proper processes, many people were speaking against it, ultimately, from memory, E-Can ruled that it couldn't be done, or was about to. Farmers complained to the national government that E-Can was deliberately stalling and being 'obstructionist' and other such rubbish... the national government responded by dissolving E-Can. ... ... to be fair, our national government has ALWAYS somehow confused 'milk output' with 'economic growth'... it was nonsense under Muldoon, it's nonsense now. (again, that way lies a supply-region economy and economic collapse in the face of market shifts. which has HAPPENED here before, to some extent, but the lesson remains unlearned.))
so, yeah, Go Canada!
On the post: Canadian Cities Looking To Opt-Out Of CETA Rather Than Get Roped Into An ACTA-Like Situation
Re:
when it appears to, it's at the expense of More jobs in other sectors or locations.
the exception being when previous regulation of such was badly applied in such a way as to reduce jobs, in which case it's the effect of getting rid of negative elements, not the 'positive' of free trade.
On the post: Canadian Cities Looking To Opt-Out Of CETA Rather Than Get Roped Into An ACTA-Like Situation
Re: Re: Sigh
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