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Swedish pirates raided | Jun 02, 2006 15:04
The Sweden-based torrent website, The Pirate Bay, has just been raided by Swedish authorities under suspicion of copyright violations, aka "piracy". Duh.
The Pirate Bay, one of the most comprehensive and reliable sites for finding torrents of TV shows, movie, software and everything else, operated openly under the premise that they did not host any copyrighted material themselves. They only held the torrent files, which are basically pointers that help users who want the material connect with users who have it.
This peer-to-peer system means that millions of people around the world are guilty of piracy, but not the central host, who never does the dirty deed.
This was the idea behind Napster.
The site is offline as the police have seized the servers to collect evidence. Really, if they'd just emailed me, I could have given them the 6 episodes of Lost that I (may or may not have) downloaded and watched yesterday. (They may or may not have been awesome.) Still, it does smell a bit fishy - the site has been around for years, it's public and open, if they wanted to gather evidence, all they needed was a browser.
The raid on The Pirate Bay heralds another aggressive campaign by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA, aka "the studios") to shut down a technology that threatens their hold on distribution. But unlike Napster, high-speed internet, advances in video compression and the "swarm" transfer technology of torrents means that high-quality TV shows and movies - rather than just music - can be downloaded with ease.
The quality is remarkably good, it's easy and it's fast. Or so I've heard.
Whether the studios are protecting legitimate rights or whether they're just fighting the future is an argument best left for another day (no prizes for guessing which side I'm on), but The Pirate Bay's logo speaks volumes: It's a pirate ship with a tape and cross-bones, a logo appropriated from the British Phonographic Industry's Home Taping is Killing Music campaign of the 80s.
The Pirate Bay will probably be up again in a few days and you can check it out for yourself. Don't go engaging in any intellectual property piracy, though, ye scurvy land-lubber.
Arrrrr.
[Random aside: I'm usually on the other side of the debate when it comes to pirates, because usually it's a debate on Ninjas vs Pirates. I'm a firm supporter of ninjas. I mean, how can you fault stealthy killing machines? Pirates, on the other hand, have poor personal hygiene and nutrition, and by necessity of living on a ship, exclusively enjoy the company of men. Now, certainly, I have nothing against alternative lifestyles, but a hundred men on a ship, no soap and one cabin boy - that does not make a pretty picture.]
[More serious aside: Man, did you see Guyon Espiner's interview with Cullen last night? Surely, they're both on some pretty dicey ground. Espiner aired stuff that was arguably off-the-record. The crew was still setting up behind Cullen, so he had every reason to believe that the interview had not begun. It was good material, but it was a betrayal of trust, too. I imagine that he'd be getting the "Little Creep" treatment for a while.
But Cullen, too, doing a Tamihere and venting where he really shouldn't, but also for holding a grudge for so bloody long. He's been convinced that the Gallery reporters who reported that there'd be a tax cut in the last Budget have a personal grudge against him for making them look like asses; but of course, he reciprocates this because they made *him* look like an ass. Time to let it go, dude.]
Newsflash: Tax causes cancer | May 30, 2006 13:31
Okay, I'm misquoting Brash terribly here. He didn't say that tax causes cancer - only that it was responsible for increasing the mortality rate of breast cancer. What is he, a fricking doctor? Oh, wait... he is. An economist-doctor, in fact, so I guess he'd know about death and tax. (Ba-da-cha!)
National's been doing a good job of screaming "tax cuts" and people are apparently listening. It's a good way to generate volume for their case, but in all the din, the case has become a mishmash of unconnected arguments. Time to clean up the strands.
1) High tax rates are driving Kiwis to Australia
Australia's GDP per capita is USD$32,686 (2006). New Zealand's GDP per capita is USD$24,769 (2005). Why can Kiwis earn more in Australia than in New Zealand? "Lower taxes" is the wrong answer here.
Tax rate is obviously a part of the income equation, but, you know, income is kinda important, too. Even if New Zealand's tax rate was lower than Australia's, Kiwis would still make more money in Australia (or any number of countries around the world).
New Zealand is never going to be the best place in the world for making money.
Boo-frigging-hoo.
2) The rich are getting disproportionately taxed
For example, David Farrar cites the statistic that 12% of people pay over 50% of taxes, and that the top 3% pay over 25%.
First, that's as much a function of income distribution (aka "capitalism") as it is of the tax rate. In Hong Kong, for example, 2% of people pay nearly 50% of taxes. It's not because they're communists, it's because some people are really really rich.
Second, if the problem is income redistribution, then the solution isn't less tax. After all, if everyone pays less tax, then the rich are still going to be shouldering the same portion of it. No, the solution is to redistribute the tax burden away from the rich and towards the poor. Go on, let me hear you say it.
3) The government is wasting money
If the government wasted the money, then it wouldn't be in the "surplus" now, would it?
4) Because we can
We have an operating surplus of $8.5b, but it's not the real surplus, blah blah blah.
Put it this way: You've had a good year, and at the end of it you find that you've made $8,500 more than you've spent.
Of this $8,500, $1,800 is sitting in your bank account, $2,000 in your retirement savings. Your business has grown in value by $4,700.
Your business is going to slump for the next three years.
You're 45 years old (20 years from retirement).
Do you:
a) Take the $1,800 from your account, draw $4,700 from your business, and borrow another $2,000 against your savings - because you can?
b) Reinvest the money from your business, leave the savings alone and use the $1,800 to pay off debt - because you can?
[Gasp! That last bit sounded a tad sorted.org.nz-ish. And the correct answer is (a). Saving is totally uncool.]
Budget 2006: Balls | May 18, 2006 17:31
Unlike everyone else at the Budget lock-up today, I was genuinely impressed by the Budget. I was practically in awe.
It was a boring Budget, to be sure. They actually had a deep dark secret this time, but lost it. (I suggested that we all act surprised by the unbundling announcement - you know, just to be polite.) Instead, the spin machines gave us three packages with fancy-pants names:
Economic Transformation - raising productivity, building a skilled workforce, raising research capability and investing in our infrastructure.
Families - Young and Old - building stronger families which are healthier, better educated and feel safer in their communities.
National Identity - building a unique national identity through New Zealanders' connections with arts, culture, sporting success and our presence on the international stage through defence and development assistance."
They include (over five years):
* Throwing another $3 billion at Health & Stuff (including $76m for the "Healthy Eating Healthy Action Implementation Plan", aka "Eat Your Goddamn Greens and Get Off the Bloody Couch")
* Paying for election bribe #1 with $1.9 billion for the extension to Working for Families
* Paying for election bribe #2 with $1 billion for student loans
* Spending $1.3 billion on road construction/appeasing Aucklanders/making the Greens cry
* Oh, and there was something about Telecom and wires or something
Okay, the Budget was boring, and even the food sucked compared to last year (though a nostalgic John Campbell was pleased to find that, yes, sausage rolls were indeed on offer).
But it was this very boringness that was impressive. Despite taking widespread criticism from the media, despite nearly losing the election, despite supposed hints from Helen to shuffle along, Cullen did exactly what he did for the last Budget. He is resolutely the same unflinching fiscally conservative Keynesian that he's been since he started. That takes balls.
One reporter said that perhaps I'm giving Cullen too much credit - after all, this is only the beginning of the electoral cycle, so there's little pressure or incentive to splurge. It's true that I shouldn't read too much into this Budget, but I think that when the whole life-cycle of this Government is taken into account, Cullen's master plan begins to emerge.
The big and well-trodden question at the moment is why the Government isn't spending the "Supersize Surplus" (note to National: I don't think "Supersize Me Surplus" makes any sense, and you lose the alliteration) of $8.5 billion. But this figure is the adjusted operating surplus (the Operating Balance Excluding Revaluations and Accounting Changes, or OBERAC). Cullen says that the cash surplus (at $1.8 billion) - *not* the OBERAC (of $8.5 billion) - is the real indication of what the Government can spend.
For an in-depth analysis of the OBERAC, Brian Easton has an excellent column here.
It bears consideration, though, that in the 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004 Budgets, the OBERAC was the *only* surplus that Cullen talked about. In fact, he said that it "may be regarded as the measure of the underlying surplus". Yet, in 2005, the cash surplus became the "real surplus". I called him up on this last year, and this was his response:
Yes, because unfortunately the media - and obviously political opponents, for purely tactical reasons - couldn't get it through their heads that the operating surplus wasn't the amount you could spend. I mean, I just couldn't explain to them: out of the operating surplus came the money that went into the superannuation fund, came large amounts of money from capital investment of other sorts that went off departmental balance sheets, came the retained profits in the SOEs and Crown Research institutes and Crown entities and all the rest of it, and they kept talking of it as though it *was* the cash surplus.
It's still correct, in my view, to say that the OBERAC reflects the *underlying* fiscal position, but that's not [the figure] that tells you what you've got free to spend, over and above what you're spending now."
That's to say, while the OBERAC is an indication of a Government's fiscal performance, a Government that's doing well is not necessarily one that can afford to splurge, *but*, it's still a Government that's doing well.
So if the Government is "doing well", but not having any cash, then where's the money going? It's building up assets, putting money from Crown entities back into investment, saving for the Super Fund, and even making capital investment out of the operating surplus. Cullen calls this an "unusual position" for the Government to be in, while National calls this cooking the books, because capital investment should be paid out of debt (the rationale is here).
Bottom-line: There is money in the system, but it's going into savings and assets, so it's not available for spending - but it could, in theory and in practice - be, if you take it out of the system or borrow in its place.
So what's all this asset hoarding leading up to? In this Budget, Cullen lays the rhetorical groundwork for his moment of glory:
Cash deficits are forecast of $1.5 billion for 2006/07, $2.1 billion for 2007/08, $2.7 billion for 2008/09, and $1.1 billion for 2009/10, in all some $7.4 billion over the period. Operating surpluses are also expected to fall to an average of $4.8 billion or 2.8 per cent of GDP. This, however, includes returns from the New Zealand Superannuation Fund. Excluding these, the forecast operating surplus averages $3.8 billion or 2.2 per cent of GDP.
This Government does not intend to react to this situation by slashing government expenditure, thus making the slowdown worse. The fiscal prudence adopted over the previous six years, in other words allowing the automatic stabilisers to work on the upside, means they can now be allowed to work on the downside. This contrasts with the position in 1999 when the previous Government reacted to a downturn by such moves as cutting the level of New Zealand Superannuation."
As the economy slows down and the Government's cash surplus turns into a deficit, the Government will be in the perfect position to let loose with the purse strings. The economy will be in a crawling along, begging for some fiscal stimulus; the Government books will be healthily in the black, which will make it conscionable for Cullen to spend beyond the Government's means.
Cullen will be the smug squirrel with the stockpile of acorns when the inevitable winter comes. He can, should and will pump the money that he's hoarding now back into the economy. And if that just happens to be before the 2008 election... well, cie la vie.
Cullen's legacy will still be the Super Fund, but that's for the history books. Between now and then, seeing Keynesian economics work like it does in the the textbooks will be his reward. He'll love every minute of it, and I'm sure that he won't be shy about letting us know.
Of Penguins and Chinese | May 16, 2006 14:54
Salient is being dragged over the coals once again - this time, it's being accused of racism. At the best of times, it's a serious accusation, but in the shadow of the Wen Biao case, the university, interest groups, international students and even Salient's own students' association have slammed the student mag as insensitive, stupid, juvenile and racist. Then the Chinese Embassy got involved, and now the story is making its way through China.
So what's the fuss about?
Three issues ago, Salient printed on their jokes page:
Top five species we should be wary of
1) Those damn dirty apes
2) Choloepus Didactylus
3) Penguins
4) The Chinese
5) Very poisonous snakes
Humour is a tough business, and some forms of humour don't translate well. The problem with this one was that it relied on reasonably obscure cultural references as well as irony.
"Those damn dirty apes" is a reference to Planet of the Apes - a science-fiction movie based on the rather dumb premise that monkeys will take over the planet.
"Choloepus Didactylus" is the scientific name for a sloth. Sloths eat leaves and sleep two-thirds of the day, so the idea that they are dangerous is pretty ridiculous.
"Penguins" is a reference to the character called The Penguin in Batman. In particular, in the second Batman movie, The Penguin raises an army of heavily armed penguins to attack Gotham city. Again - more cute than menacing.
In this context, "The Chinese" is not actually talking about Chinese people. Like the other three, it's mocking scenarios in which the Chinese is considered "a species to be wary of" and suggesting that it is stupid - like the idea of an army of penguins. It is mocking xenophobia and racism by saying that it's the same as these other really stupid ideas.
The fifth, "very poisonous snakes", is a comedy twist. The first four are really stupid, then the fifth is a serious one. The sudden reversal in tone is funny. For example:
Top five items on the Al Qaeda wish-list
1) Nuclear device
2) Bioengineered plague
3) Nerve agent
4) Dirty bomb
5) Grand Theft Auto on the PSP
That's it. It was a joke. It had no racist or malicious intent. The target of the joke was not the Chinese, but the people who consider the Chinese as a threat. This was mocking racists.
Salient has nothing to apologise for. Please take it easy and stop sending angry emails to the editor. Those who have been sending death threats should be ashamed of themselves.
(Didn't find any of it funny? Well, dissecting jokes is like dissecting frogs - they don't tend to survive the process. In this case, I think the joke is well and truly dead.)
Keith Ng was a satirist for Salient (2002-2005). He is also Chinese. He is currently writing this disclosure in the third-person.
Free as in Freedom | May 15, 2006 02:44
The State Services Commission has re-released its briefing paper on the legal issues surrounding the use of open source software by the state sector to, understandably, little fanfare. OSS is a bit of geekery that doesn't have much public appeal, but then again, so was local loop unbundling.
The SSC has been talking about open source for quite sometime now, with a solid report back in 2003 (makes for excellent background reading). Back then, the report was described as a boost to the open source movement, and it's been slowly working its way through the state sector maze.
The latest paper deals specifically with the legal issues surrounding licencing, which isn't terribly exciting, but a) it's another step in removing the barriers towards OSS use, and b) it was funny because its first draft got a rather prickly response from the Greens.
Why? The report was drafted by Chapman Tripp, "a law firm which has done extensive work for Microsoft in the past", and it described some open source licences as "infectious" and requiring "quarantine". The Greens were convinced that this emotive language stems from the same malice and fear with which Microsoft CEO Steve Bullmer described Linux as a cancer.
I think that most geeks didn't really notice. Not that we'd know emotive language if it crawled inside our cold, beeping hearts, but "infection" is a key idea behind open source licences. The story goes something like this: The creator of the GNU General Public Licence (GPL), Richard Stallman, was a programmer back in the wild days before there was a dot-com to boom. A company called Symbolics asked Stallman for access to the source code of a programme Stallman was working on. Stallman gave them a public domain version of his work, Symbolics worked on it and improved it, but when Stallman wanted access to those improvements, Symbolics refused. As Nelson would say: "Har-har!"
Programmers wanted to share their ideas and collaborate openly. It's an effective way to work because it allows everyone to build on the work of everyone else and draw upon a common pool of resources (in terms of existing programmes as well as expertise). It's similar to what, for example, academics and scientists have done since forever. (If they didn't, they'd have to literally reinvent the wheel every time they wanted to design a car.)
The problem for programmers such as Stallman was that if they relinquished copyright, then someone would come and build on what they created, then close it off and refuse to share it with anyone else. And so the GPL - and the open source movement - was born. Open source licences such as the GPL allow for open access of the source code, but only on the condition that the GPL applies to all subsequent modifications. So in Stallman's case, it would allow other programmers to modify, improve or build upon his work, but the new programmes would also be covered by the GPL, meaning that anything that improved on those would also be covered by the GPL, and so on. That propagation of the licence from the original work to its derivatives is the "infection" - the insidious cancer of freedom.
Anyway, SSC was mortified: they weren't trying to imply that open source was evil at all. They went back and rewrote the report, using "encumbered" and "containment" instead of "infectious" and "quarantine". Now it's marginally more pleasing to the eye and open source gets another boost in the state sector.
But why should us non-programmers care about open source?
The Greens are the only ones who are active on open source at the moment, though Rodney Hide makes noises about it every now and then. "I don't see it hoovering up a whole lot of votes," Nandor frankly admits, but he says that it's a strategic issue.
Germany, Indonesia and China, for example, use OSS because they don't want their national security to be reliant on American software that they can't "pop the hood" on. Without access to the source code, you can't really know what it's doing. South Africa also has a policy of using OSS for government applications, not for security, but to foster their own IT industry. By having more local open source support, they're developing their own base of IT expertise, which is economically beneficial and reduces their demand on foreign skills.
That local IT skills base ("knowledge economy", etc.) is part of the Greens' vision for the NZ economy, and Nandor argues particularly for the use of OSS in the education sector, so that kids will leave school being able to do more than click the Start button. He argues that, while Microsoft is dominant in the market today, these things can change rapidly, and OSS is already gaining ground. Kiwis need to be comfortable working in different operating environments (i.e. Not Windows).
It's a good idea. I remember doing Computer Science at university, there was two distinct group - the computer users and the real computer users. Those who had never ventured beyond the icons and buttons of Windows had this sudden terror in their eyes when they were forced to give the computer commands via keyboard.
"Where do I click? Where do I click? THERE ISN'T EVEN A POINTER!!! EEEEEEEEKKKK!"
Etc.
Those of us who had mucked around with Linux or even DOS (that thing before Windows) had a much better fundamental understanding of how computers worked. It's a bit like people who study a second language - their first language improves, too, because the difference between the two gives them an appreciation for what language is, beyond the assumptions that monolinguists have.
But good ideas don't necessarily happen. When I asked him why nobody else talks about Open Source, Nandor says that most MPs aren't particularly computer literate, and as a result, are not confident in their ability to engage with it. But then again, hope many MPs know how unbundling works?
Open source in the state sector is slowly happening, though, even without political pressure. It costs a lot for big companies to make a major shift like this, but it's happening. And if you're a small business owner, then you really should be all over this already.
There are many open source programmes available for Windows, too. Firefox and OpenOffice are the most popular. But my favourite project is Transcriber, which helped me transcribe all those interviews last year.
Go on - give them a try. They're not scary at all.
Ringaringa ceremonies: Archaic, irrational and sexist | May 10, 2006 03:03
As a product of the Enlightningment, I am proud to embrace modernity and reject archaic, irrational hokey-pokey in all its forms. So, defenders of progress, join me in calling for an end to the time-wasting, nonsensical ceremony that is rotting the core of our nation: Te ringaringa, which can be roughly translated as "the handshake".
The original reason for shaking hands was to demonstrate to strangers that you are not holding a weapon in your hand. Come on people - get with the 21st century! I mean, are you really expecting some guy you meet at a party to have a sword behind his back?
(Hmmm, actually, I was at a party a few weeks ago where a guy was toting around a real sword. He chopped up a PVC pipe that was, up until that point, attached to the house. It was wicked. But, um, ignore this fact. Nobody carries a sword around.)
Why would we want to waste time performing a ceremony that is the equivalent a pat-down when it serves no real purpose? Further, isn't it *offensive* that we are expected to submit ourselves to these humiliating weapon checks? When someone offers up their hand with the expectation that you shake it, aren't they saying: "Oi! Stranger! Are you armed? You'd better not be armed. Show me your hand to prove you're not armed."
By playing along with this social fiction, you're perpetuating a cultural of paranoia and militancy. Every time you shake someone's hand, you're entrenching the idea that everyone is a potential threat. In civilised society, where violence is contained by law, wouldn't it make more sense to hold up your cellphone to prove that you don't have a lawyer on speed-dial?
And of course, handshakes are sexist. The handshake is the default greeting with men, but women are sometimes not offered a handshake.
Apparently, "the correct etiquette" is that men shouldn't initiate a handshake with women, but that the reverse is okay. What's the rationale? Is it because a) women are assumed to not carry swords, b) it was too forward of a man to touch a lady's ungloved hand, or c) it risks the inadvertent transfer of man-coodies?
I don't really know what the rationale is, but if it's considered okay for men to not offer to shake a woman's hand, then *obviously* it's a sexist ceremony that's denigrating to women.
No true citizen of the modern world can humour such raving lunacy. But of course, the point of this is to enlighten, not offend, the poor savages who still practice this primitive ritual. So, it would be inappropriate to initiate a handshake only to retract it and advise the other party that they are "too slow".
The polite course of action would be to wait until the other party offers up their hand, then turn around and announce to everyone that you're not going to shake their hand because the ceremony they're asking you to perform has no place in modern society, and that it's insulting for them to expect you to waste your time shaking their stupid goddamn hand.
Offer up a more appropriate gesture yourself, such as a casual-yet-elegant chin-nod, accompanied by a raised eyebrow. If you wish to formalise the greeting, use the gender-non-specific form: "fo' shizzle my nizzle". For less formal occasions, you may wish to use the variation: "fo' sheezy mah neezy".
Your underlying sentiments of life-affirming liberal humanism will be revealed through this gesture, which will be warmly received by the savages, who will then realise that you were right all along and come to adopt your perfectly rational and culturally unbiased ways.
Pocabprescon Debrief | May 08, 2006 17:55
The State Services Commissioner is "not in a position to report" anything on the Telescum leak at this stage - not expecting a full report for at least a month. Helen is tight-lipped. But is she worried about the possibility of a mole operating right under her nose? "I expect that they will be quite apprehensive at this stage..."
Not a very exciting week at the Post-Cabinet Press Conference. Helen was asked what response she'll make to Judith Collins' letter of complaint over her comments on radio this morning about the whole powhiri affair. Helen: "None."
She's good at those one-liners.
The affair's turned into a bit of she-said-she-said, with Collins claiming that she was scalded for insisting on sitting at the front during a powhiri, while Clark says that Collins was being rebuked for being rude by chatting and turning her back while a haka was being performed to welcome her.
So was she being Rosa Parks, or just a bit of a punk?
At the press conference today, it was revealed that CYFS (who organised the visit), along with many other government departments, actually have standing orders from their respective ministers for women to be allowed to sit at the front at powhiri ceremonies. It's not a government-wide policy, but a matter for individual ministers, but apparently it's pretty widespread - something that snuck in after the whole Josie Bullock affair without anyone (outside of the civil services?) noticing.
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