Posts by Lucy Stewart
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Hard News: Friday Visions, in reply to Steve Barnes,
Because all opera is crap, there I said it. Am I now banned from the Middle Class?.
No, but we're going to confiscate all your sav blanc.
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Up Front: Fairy-Tale Autopsies, in reply to recordari,
The Best _ ?
At everything. That's right. Everything.
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Hard News: The file-sharing bill, in reply to nzlemming,
Jayne’s way smarter than that.
At the very least, he has much better taste in colleagues.
Can’t stop the signal.
Or take the Sky (content)? ;)
This distraction into Firefly/Serenity matters is somewhat appropriate given the means by which I first encountered the programme.
For me, that's actually an excellent example of how downloading works in conent-holders' favour - I never would have shelled out the very large amount of money for the Region-1-only Firefly DVDs if I hadn't watched it through rather less legal means. Ditto for Serenity, obviously.
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Hard News: The file-sharing bill, in reply to Russell Brown,
I think so. Apart from anything else, that is plenty of legitimately-shared content on P2P networks, Blizzard and other game companies use the same protocols to legitimately serve their updates, etc. OTOH, the ignorant blatherings of Lee,Shanks and Young are hardly cause for confidence.
Even if they did push that through, it wouldn't stop file-sharing - it'd just stop really easy file-sharing. At seventh and last, any digital media can and will be (eventually) copied by someone, and then it can and will be distributed. Torrenting is just the most efficient way to share stuff, currently.
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Hard News: The file-sharing bill, in reply to Danyl Mclauchlan,
I don’t know how it’ll work, but I suspect they will go after people seeding new or unreleased albums/blockbuster movies.
The interesting thing to see will be whether they go after people seeding stuff unlikely to be released in NZ (e.g. plenty of lesser-known overseas TV shows), or whether they stick to the really big stuff.
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Hard News: The file-sharing bill, in reply to glennd,
The only way that the NZ-end ISP could stop it is by suspicion of the identity of the server being used to setup the other end of the encrypted link and block the VPN altogether. But then they run the risk of blocking legit activities by companies and individuals using VPNs for the normal run-of-the-mill business.
And, realistically, they're not going to go after the people with the technical know-how; there will always be ways to stay two steps ahead of detection. They're going to go after the low-hanging fruit, the people with enough understanding to successfully torrent things but not enough to be smart about it.
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Up Front: Fairy-Tale Autopsies, in reply to Emma Hart,
But I find it interesting how many borderline lurkers (and thank you so much for your comemnts, because lurkers are just the hardest people to get information on, by definition) are concerned about their comments being ignored, rather than strongly judged.
Probably fairly - conversation moves fast here, and it's easy to get lost in ongoing debate, and then feel like there was no point bothering to comment, or that your comment must have been stupid and/or irrelevant if no-one bothered to respond to it. Or to just give up because the thread's jumped five pages since you had a chance to check it.
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Up Front: Fairy-Tale Autopsies, in reply to Jacqui Dunn,
But humans as a group can and do declare war on others in another group, often, as if they are completely separate. It’s one of the saddest things about our race, wouldn’t you say?
But this is, almost always, a group behaviour. It's the perception of others as individuals that allows us to be nice to them; it's when we descend into seeing people only as representatives of the nation/ethnic group/religion/group we don't like, the Others, that the sort of mindless nastiness you're talking about really comes to the fore. When humans engage as individuals, without preconception, as Bart says, they're usually perfectly pleasant. The trouble being that those preconceptions can be pretty hard-wired, and that it's also a very human thing to want to categorise other people as soon as possible.
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Up Front: Fairy-Tale Autopsies, in reply to Danielle,
Oh for goodness' sake, Danyl, what utter tosh. Before tonight's silliness kicked off I've probably mentioned you off my own bat about... four times in 4000 tweets, over however many years?
Having been in a similar situation some years ago, the real problem is that if you ever tweet about him ever again, it will be taken as evidence that he was right. (The difference, of course, is that you're not seventeen and will have the sense to realise that's not so, a concept I took years to grasp.)
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Up Front: Fairy-Tale Autopsies, in reply to Richard Wain,
Makes it sound like gays are some sort of endangered species then… whereas in my experience, friends and family who just happen to be gay, also happen to be pretty tough nuts. Maybe that’s because of past persecution and society, or even present – but surely merely mentioning a subset of society is hardly offensive? And, ditto unionists.
Women are hardly an endangered species either, but that didn't make John Tamihere's comments about All Teh Womenz And Gayz Conspiring Against Me acceptable criticism. A history of persecution is usually regarded as a reason to not go out of one's way to casually stereotype a group and/or accuse them of conspiracy.