Posts by James Butler
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Hard News: #NetHui: it's all about you, in reply to Kumara Republic,
By this analogy, the non-materialistic self-made would drive classic cars.
And all this time I thought I was being off-topic.
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Hard News: #NetHui: it's all about you, in reply to Islander,
Hillmans were another family thing (for vehicles…)
Apart from aforementioned engine, my dad had no truck (so to speak) with the Rootes Group - although I believe this had as much to do with the indifferent local build quality as the cars themselves.
Our family cars in the '80s and '90s were DKWs - an F102 and an F12.
Mind you, I do not wish to discuss my beloved & esteemed mother’s purchase of a Hillman Imp…
At least the Imp was an honest attempt at innovation, something the British motor industry as a whole was fatally allergic to.
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Hard News: #NetHui: it's all about you, in reply to Don Christie,
But you knew I was going to say that, right?
No, that's very interesting - thanks for the link.
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Hard News: #NetHui: it's all about you, in reply to 81stcolumn,
We might have got from here to here but what about this, this and this?
Gah, unmarked NSF(certain kinds of)W...
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Hard News: #NetHui: it's all about you, in reply to giovanni tiso,
Not to worry, some of those government officials will be crossing over to beneficiary soon enough.
Whatchoo talkin' 'bout? There's heaps of jobs on TradeMe!
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Hard News: #NetHui: it's all about you, in reply to giovanni tiso,
I also have no beef with Disney holding on to Mickey Mouse to be honest. It’s not as if it’s a life-saving drug or anything.
Mickey Mouse is a weird one. In my childhood memories Mickey has no association at all with anything other than branding of various dubious consumer tat - the classic cartoons I watched as a kid were all Warner Brothers, and all Disney was good at were terrible boring "family" comedy films. I think Disney long ago forgot that Mickey was ever anything other than three black circles and a ™ sign, and have thus lost any of the claim to children's hearts that they still seem to bank on.
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Hard News: #NetHui: it's all about you, in reply to 81stcolumn,
When I want to make the next Ben Hur (or whatever) I will need to go to the money men. Unfortunately the money men have money precisely because they can exploit my creativity. As to how this equation gets re-balanced is quite beyond me.
Likewise. Corporate copyright is a completely sensible idea, too. The copyright of all the code I write is owned by my employer, as it should be - I mean seriously, what would I do with it? Optimize supply chains at home in my spare time?
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Hard News: #NetHui: it's all about you, in reply to Islander,
(EXCEPT- Humber Super Snipes, a car I am still vaguely in love with, had Commer truck engines in ’em. The vans, sure as shit, didnt…)
The largest Commer trucks had a really fantastically innovative two-stroke engine. I have various fond memories of being with my Dad when he would suddenly stop, tilt his head, sniff the air and exclaim "Commer TS3! Two blocks west, quick!", and off we'd run - eventually I'd catch the faintest hint on the breeze of a sound like ripping hessian, then a little later we'd round a corner to see the back end of an ancient, crumbling lorry or bus struggling away with clouds of smoke billowing behind it.
<sigh> Those were the days.
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Hard News: #NetHui: it's all about you, in reply to Andre Alessi,
people who see being a dick on the Internet as a right
Since when has that not been a right? I'm outta here...
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Hard News: #NetHui: it's all about you, in reply to Russell Brown,
I think what we do with copyright needs to be finer-grained than what you suggest. What is productive, useful and reasonable, and what isn’t? I suspect we’d agree on a much more liberal regime for non-commercial uses. But then you get into the argument of what is actually “non commercial” …
Surely (at least) half the problem is nothing to do with how long copyright lasts, but who is exercising the right. I like to think that creative types themselves have on the whole a greater regard for the kind of reasonable "fair use" which is necessary for creativity, and are perhaps more likely to look kindly on creative transformation than a multinational content corporation or, in the worst case, a copyright troll like Righthaven. But what we have built is a system in which the rights are exercised by the trolls, and I'm not sure how it could be fixed.
ETA: To be clear, there are two different kinds of trolls in this thread...