Posts by BenWilson
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Sounds like he pushed it too hard. He could have just dialed back a notch on the persistent enemy he had made, and continued to get away with it. But I expect the rudeness itself was a little intoxicating to him.
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Hard News: The file-sharing bill, in reply to giovanni tiso,
Yes, if you were torrenting kiddy-porn, then the authorities would really want to know who exactly was responsible. But that's not going to be of interest to copyright enforcers - they're not interested in real crimes.
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Up Front: Fairy-Tale Autopsies, in reply to Bart Janssen,
Would save time for everyone really :P.
I think we already established what was involved in a tremendous dick competition. Anything less is bluff and bluster.
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Hard News: The file-sharing bill, in reply to glennd,
Sometimes I idly wonder if the end goal of certain groups is just to get P2P and similar activity banned altogether,
That would be a wet dream for a lot of companies that have been hurt by file sharing. Can't see it ever happening, though.
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Hard News: The file-sharing bill, in reply to Russell Brown,
In practice ... good luck with that.
Even trickier, WIFI hotspots.
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Hard News: The file-sharing bill, in reply to chris mcnair,
With the lack of available IPV4 addresses, more and more ISPs will be utilising NAT to share fewer IPs with more customers. It is happening already.
Yes, how many people with broadband do *not* have a NAT router? I presume these rules will be applying to the account holder of the router.
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Up Front: Fairy-Tale Autopsies, in reply to Danyl Mclauchlan,
Is that a valid interpretation, or have I totally misremembered the film?
There are elements of that, but it's not a full reading. His kind of crazy, at its root, is meant to be a deeply scary kind, that his entire mission on the day is actually to kill his family. It is only funny when various people make the mistake of getting in his way. By no means are these people restricted to minorities. He takes on shopkeepers, muggers, rude people, beggars, neonazis, a fast food chain, some rich golfers, council workers wrecking the roads, etc.
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Up Front: Fairy-Tale Autopsies, in reply to Danyl Mclauchlan,
It'd be kind of interesting to watch 'Falling Down' again to see how it's dated. I suspect - from my hazy ~20 year old memories of it - that it's incredibly racist.
Not really. There's some Hispanic gangsters and a Korean shopkeeper...that's about it. I don't think it especially glorifies the unnamed character played by Douglas, either. It's pretty clear his wife's intuition that he had an untapped anger that scared her was actually correct. The main accusation you could make is that the comic reversals that happen all through it glorify violence as a solution. I presume that is why the character has to die at the end.
Edit:
The worst bit about it is that the ending's a full-on cop-out: It's not the fault of the system that he went crazy - he was mentally ill all along!
I think it's a lot more ambiguous than that. He had a capacity for anger, and was angry and sad because of what he perceived to be failures of the system. And the events of the day did rather conspire to bring out his crazy side.
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Hard News: What Now?, in reply to Matthew Poole,
I would say there's probably sufficient data for actuarial calculations to be carried out for indemnity insurance for nuclear plant operators
I don't think so. It's a pretty conservative business, insurance. Insuring against the chances of being sued off 3 data points in 3 totally different countries, for 3 quite different kinds of plant.
I guess smaller punts could be made, though, insuring only up to a certain point, say 100 million dollars. My feeling on why no one does this (and at the right premium it's easy money), is because the plants and investors themselves don't feel the need. They make so much money from the power they generate, that the cost of the suing isn't a significant business risk. The cost of losing the plant is probably the much bigger risk.
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Up Front: Fairy-Tale Autopsies, in reply to Emma Hart,
concerned about their comments being ignored, rather than strongly judged.
It's a fair concern too, being ignored invalidates the effort spent, which might be considerable. Especially the emotional effort, for first timers. That's why I take Russell's cue in trying to be helpful to them, even if I'm not always bowled over by what they're saying. It pays off too - just because they are a new voice, sometimes the perspective change is really insightful. They should also be aware that I'm rather nervous too - I might be one of the people they profoundly disagree with, and my attention might discourage them. But I figure, how else am I going to find out?
ETA Snap on Lucy. And herein is my solution: I consider what I'm saying to be complementary to Lucy's contribution, rather than lessened by it.
Misanthropic apathy, mostly.
You're being too harsh on yourself. You share your thoughts - that is a gift. You don't want to scrap over them - perfectly understandable. Probably quite sensible for a busy person with sufficient self-knowledge to know that arguing can make them act in ways they don't like.
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