Posts by Robert Harvey
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One of the best songs ever by The Roches, 'My Winter Coat'.
"The fit is generous and loose / The coat is filled with down of goose
Should I feel guilty about that? / I wouldn’t wear the fur of a cat
The coat is black so in New York city / It doesn’t look dirty it stays pretty
The cuffs are purple which perfectly suits / A pair I already had of boots
Can’t help sharing on a personal note / A secret I have concerning the coat
One of the reasons that it got my vote / Is the way it lies open around the throat
For me the collar mustn’t come too high / Because well all right my skin is dry
So each morning I rub my face with oil / And the fabric you see the grease could soil
Can we speak a moment about the lining / After my own heart’s designing
It’s nylon so your skirts don’t wind / Up in a bunch around your behind
When the time comes for the coat to clean / You throw this thing in the washing machine
Drying you doubt but the filling does fluff / I’m here to proclaim this coat is enough
The length of the coat is below the knees / So in the cold your legs don’t freeze
I’m nuts about another one of it’s charms / There’s plenty of room underneath the arms
The coat’s not bulky it weighs about an ounce / And it’s practically void of any frivolous flounce
I will admit it has shoulder pads / All things considered it’s not so bad
It looks all right even from the side / I guess because the bottom isn’t overly wide
Okay so you say you’d prefer something hipper / But can I just tell you about the zipper
I searched for it for many years / Last one I had I tore up in tears
It turned me into jack the ripper / But now I stepped in cinderella’s slipper
It runs from the gullet to just south of the crotch / And workin’ it’s a task you can hardly botch
It’s made of a material that will not rust / It won’t get stuck you don’t get fussed
It undoes easily in the usual way / But you can also pull it up if you’d like to, let’s say
There’s snaps as well which I don’t even use / But they beat out buttons if I had to choose
I remember the night I went to the store / Fighting my way across the cloak-stuffed floor
Suffocating I was it seemed / When from a rack this last hope beamed
Of all my requirements I pursued the trail / To find furthermore the damn thing was on sale
It had a small chain at the back of the neck / So you could hang it on a hook but it broke what the heck
With the end of each sleeve I’m totally smitten / Ample space for to emerge a thick mitten
If you wanna be warm it wins far and away / It’s like walkin’ around in your bed all day
I know you’re not supposed to be so fond of a thing / But today this is my heartfelt inspiration to sing
I hope you don’t think I’m merely trying to be clever / I wish this coat would last forever." -
What a can of worms this opens up! Some aspects have even entered the language as aphorisms, e.g. ‘might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb’. Perhaps its proponents would like to bring back transportation? IANAL, but it seems to me that the logical framework of our legal system is undergoing change. For a long time we have had trial and sentencing principles that require those involved to ignore prior crimes and deal with the present problem in isolation, but now a defendant’s judgement history becomes integral to sentencing (and therefore, necessarily, trial procedures). Not just ‘three strikes’, but also the traffic ticketing points system operate this way, so no doubt other areas will follow (repeated bankruptcy, perhaps?). We may get more consistent sentencing out of this development, since anomalies show up more vividly as Graeme points out, but we will also get all the ills which the previous system took great care to avoid.
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I will still continue to purchase my music on CD while downloads (whether DRMed or not) are compressed (granted, a very, very few aren't) mostly because compressed music sounds so washed out, but also to get the album notes which (on the better music) often has useful and interesting information about the music, its composers and performers. But I guess I'm in a minority.
Just my 2 cents.
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The worrying thing about the current state of the investment market is that there appears to be no remedy being put in place to prevent such confidence trickery recurring in the future. There has been a major loss of public confidence, when even reputable companies have had their investors burnt by the flow-on effects of bull-market profiteers. Where does this leave anyone attempting to plan for their retirement? Government sponsored retirement funds such as Kiwisaver are under threat, normal superannuation provides the bare minimum of existence, and now any private savings/investments you might have are evaporating. So what’s your plan for when you jack in (or are unable to continue) the day job?
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Delights:
1 Westmere - the people whose xmas display is formed from suitably coloured soft drink cans, arranged into a tree and at first, xmas greetings, then happy new year. Not to mention the wry comment on coca cola's co-opting of xmas' style, and on Franklin Road (and others) conspicuous consumption.
2 The chap who drives around the area in the vintage Austin seven roadster, having an obviously wonderful time (at least, when it's fine) in a car which has none of the safety measures which contemporary governments have imposed, though its top speed of I'd guess 60kph might help.
3 Sitting eating takeaways at Western Springs one evening, watching a group of Indians/Pakistanis/Sri Lankans? in a not-so-casual game of tennis ball cricket.
4 Getting to the top of Mt Albert to see the comet and joining quite a gang of friendly people also drawn to the evening sky.
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One corollary aspect of the IP debate is that royalties due to the artists and publishers goes to collection agencies to be divided up amongst the various deserving. However the administration of these funds seem not to be as transparent or audited, from the artists point of view, as it might be, viz Olivia Newton-John's sueing her label for unpaid royalties from 'Grease'. For the great body of less wealthy artists things are much worse. So it would be great if at the same time that we got IP rights sorted out we could also get the distribution of royalties sorted out. Some background at:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/11/03/peter_jenner/ -
Hmmm. Every time I try to vote I get:
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Server Error in '/' Application.
Procedure 'WordVote' expects parameter '@wordV', which was not supplied........However, if I have managed successfully to register 'bling' as word of the year, I would like to vote for that word.
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Rich: point(s) taken.
I guess my interest is in the specific legalities as distinct from the practicalities, which are as you describe. Although note that the peering issues in Wellington have (I understand) routed some Parliamentary email via Australia.
But does a postie 'intercept' communications if he or she reads it before delivering it? And what if they make a copy of the contents? Because every mail host server will (a) have a copy on disk made as part of the transmission process, and (b) likely make a backup copy (which in some jurisdictions (e.g. US/UK) they are required to keep for several years) which means that the postie's "copy" action (right or wrong) has happened as part of normal email practise. Granted that none of this is an issue for most people/most emails, but when court cases are threatened these points become quite sticky.
What I mean is, any threat of legal recourse to exposed emails is by no means a clear case of illegality, in my mind, and could be extremely difficult to establish. -
Theft of emails, etc. Caveat: IANAL.
There is a widely held misconception (deriving from an inappropriate choice of metaphor) that emails are an electronic form of posted letters. This is dangerously misleading. The nearest physical equivalent is more like a postcard, whose contents can be read by anyone who happens to handle it en route.
There is no provision built in to the email communications protocol to conceal the message contents at any time during its passage between sender and recipient. Email contents can be encrypted, but this (though freely available) is rarely used, except by IT security geeks.
An email will pass through several computer systems en route, some of which may well be outside NZ (even for emails whose source and destination both lie within NZ). Each of these computers will have a copy of the email, readable by anyone able to access it. This includes the system administrators and owners of the computers.
Since this is the way the email service works, any user (especially one with official advisors) can be presumed to accept that their email messages are not private, in the same way that postcards are not private.
Under such circumstances quotation from the contents of an email appears to be no more illegal than quotation from a postcard. Unethical, maybe.
At least, that's my analysis.
Perhaps a lawyer might comment on the postcard exposure aspects, especially now that posties are no longer government servants but employees of a private company.