Posts by Andre Alessi
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Muse: Monday Linky Love (With Added Geekery), in reply to James Butler,
Any reader who has a problem with an author failing to “properly” resolve a story ought to be sentenced to read only Samuel R. Delaney novels for the rest of their lives.
No, they should be forced to watch LOST every day until they die from ennui.
EDIT: In case the reference wasn't apparent, I'm referring to this.
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Up Front: Fairy-Tale Autopsies, in reply to Sacha,
Lately we seem to have developed an informal "+1" custom.
What amuses me about that is that on Balloon Juice, "+n" indicates the number of drinks you've had before posting your response.
It actually works on multiple levels in that case.
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Hard News: Friday Visions, in reply to Geoff Lealand,
Oh, Gawd! I am distracting myself whilst I mark student essays and I just read the following sentence (sic) Most of France movies are speaks French. Admittedly from an ESL student but bloody hell!
A friend who works in tertiary education for a performing arts course once had an ESL student hand in an essay that had been translated in to English, 150 words at a time, by Babelfish. It was beyond incoherent.
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Busytown: A new (old) sensation, in reply to linger,
The only thing that would be more depressing would be if it were a deliberate strategy rather than an unedited hissy fit on her part. (But it’s pretty clear that lack of self-editing is by far the more likely explanation.)
Well, it worked for DecorMyEyes.com. (Long read, but well worth it.)
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Hard News: The file-sharing bill, in reply to nzlemming,
Fiona RaeApril 14, 2011 at 2:04 pm
The phrase was “creditably eager”. Not the same thingSomebody get that woman a regular gig posting on here!
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Hard News: The file-sharing bill, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
A court order would seem to apply to a single ISP. There isn’t any provision for a register of banned users (it might be possible for a rights holder to try and gain an order banning a user from a second ISP, but they’d need to identify them as a customer first).
Yeah, this is what makes me think this won't be much of an issue for the people the legislation is supposedly targetted at. It's poor Iremia in Onehunga (my stepbrother's name, not a random hypothetical) who wants to download the latest Bones or CSI: Miami who will get hit hardest if everything works the way we're told it should.
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The “termination” will be a six-month suspension, which appears to leave the infringer free to go and get another internet connection.
OK, now that I’ve thought about it a bit, this will be the out used by the real “problem customers” (if you want to frame high-volume illegal file sharing users this way.) This is already a problem with the industry as a way of skipping out on unpaid bills, particularly since the Telecom Wholesale arrangement became the standard way for telcos to deliver services to customers.
The way it works is that a customer signs up with a telco, doesn’t pay their bill for three months, then signs up with a new telco before they can be disconnected for nonpayment (which also be before the old telco has referred their overdue bill to a credit agency, meaning credit checks turn up nothing on the customer.) They can keep doing this, skipping from provider to provider (with no disruption of service because the physical circuit remains in place throughout) until one finally reports their ass to Baycorp, etc and the next provider they try and sign up to picks that up on a credit check.
Now replace “overdue bill” in that scenario with “suspension for illegal file sharing”. This won’t shut down those users at all, especially if they’re still paying their bills. There would have to be an industry-wide “Do Not Connect” register to police the termination/suspension, which would be unworkable given the current fragmentation within the market. (Believe it or not, many smaller telcos will do everything they can to target these customers in the short term, because any sale is better than no sale at all.)
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The “termination” will be a six-month suspension, which appears to leave the infringer free to go and get another internet connection.
Probably a little bit too inside baseball for most people involved in this debate, but as someone who will be involved in the practical side of this, I'd say the discussions as to how this actually works between telcos will be very interesting.
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Busytown: A new (old) sensation, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
Ah, yes – fans with entitlement issues. It is a wonderful if creepy article, and should be followed up with Neil Gaiman’s legendary “George RR Martin is not your bitch” blog post.
It should be repeated loudly and often though that it's not as if Martin were writing the sequel to the Bible. It's the cumulation of a not-always-good fantasy series, and comments to the effect of "I wish he'd hurry up and get on to it" aren't completely out of place as long as they're read as desires, not demands.
Personally, I've been evangelising to everyone who will listen (and a good many who won't) for Steven Erikson's Malazan books instead. Ten books (plus more by Ian C. Esselmont and a bunch of short stories) with far more interesting characters and themes than anything Martin's ever written.
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A New Zealand literature thread where fantasy is discussed and noone mentions Hugh Cook or Russell Kirkpatrick? For shame!
Sure they're not at the "quality" end of the prose scale, but Kirkpatrick has quite obviously been learning as he goes, and elements of his books are startlingly good.