It’s starting to get windy outside… no rain yet, though. I’m impressed, though; the hurricane was still in North Carolina when it clouded over here in Toronto. That’s a large storm…
According to “this article”:http://techcentralstation.com/081803C.html in “Tech Central Station”:http://techcentralstation.com/, it is legal to copy music for the private, personal use of _the person doing the copying_. Fascinating; if this is true (and I have no reason to believe that it isn’t), it significantly lowers my objections to the blank media tax…
The ideas in “David Brin”:http://www.davidbrin.com/’s “Transparent Society”:http://www.davidbrin.com/privacyarticles.html are interesting. On the other hand, “This article on identity theft”:http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20030911.html is a major reason why I am a privacy advocate.
This is one of the things that bug me about the American political system; completely off-topic amendments.
In “Missouri Senator Tells California To Sit Down And Shut Up About Pollution”:http://www.plastic.com/article.html;sid=03/09/08/14590591 we learn that:
* California wants to add catalytic converters to small engines to reduce pollution
* Briggs & Stratton, the largest manufacturer of small engines in the US has two plants in Missouri
* Senator Chris ‘Kit’ Bond (R-Missouri) is chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee.
The result: Abusing his position, Bond inserts a provion into the 2004 federal spending bill that prevents states from enforcing small-engine emission regulations more stringent than the federal Clean Air Act.
bq. “I will use every legislative tool at my disposal to stop California bureaucrats from trying to solve their own air quality problems at the expense of almost 2,000 workers and their families in Poplar Bluff and Rolla,” he said.
What a crock…
It seems to me that these days, U.S. Federal spending bills have very little to do with spending, and instead are a catch-all for hundreds of little laws to appease special interest groups, many of which would never get passed if they were out in the open, subject to public scrutiny…
The Commandments and immorality
bq. The first four of the commandments have little to do with either law or morality, and the first three suggest a terrific insecurity on the part of the person supposedly issuing them.
Eric Carroll pointed out this “NOAA News Online Story”:http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories/s2015.htm where they have published NOAA and AFWA (Air Force Weather Agency) images from the DMSP (Defense Meteorological Satellite Program). The difference is pretty striking:
Before:
!http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories/images/nightlights-081403-0121z3.jpg!
After:
!http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories/images/nightlights-081503-0103z3.jpg!
Toronto, Ottawa, Buffalo and Rochester have all clearly vanished, while Montreal continues to shine brightly…
(Image Credit: NOAA/DMSP. More are available from “the NOAA page”:http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories/s2015.htm ).
And Montreal still shines! Let’s hear it for Montreal!
I took “a couple of photos”:http://www.cfrq.net/gallery/blackout-2003 before the batteries in my camera died on Thursday afternoon…
I’m still looking for a night-time satellite photo of the area from Thursday night; I think that would look really cool, especially when compared to the “normal nighttime view”:http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap001127.html …
me says: Hey-
Newsweek printed side-by-side satellite photos of August 13 and 14 nighttime views. It’s pretty neat.
So at around 16:10 Thursday afternoon, the power went off. With a couple of quick cell-phone calls we determined that the power outage was city-wide; never a good sign, because there are three relatively separate grids in Toronto. It was only once were in the car, listening to the radio, that we found out that it was most of Ontario _and_ the north-eastern USA.
People were very well behaved. Traffic was pretty bad, but most drivers were stopping at all intersections, and many civilians were in the intersections directing traffic. It took us 1.5 hours to get home, about twice as long as usual. Lots of people ran out of gas, though; no electricity to run the pumps :-). Fortunately, we filled up on Monday.
We had a very nice BBQ dinner, and sat and played Pirateer (by candlelight) and talked until about midnight. Somewhere in there we dragged the kids outside to look up. It was a beautiful clear night, and (just before moonrise) we could actually see the Milky Way, from inside a large city! That doesn’t happen often. We saw mars, of course, and about 10 satellites and several shooting stars before the mosquitos drove us back inside.
The power at our house was still off this morning when we got up. Officials have declared a state of emergency, meaning only essential personnel are supposed to be going to work. There’s no GO Transit and no subways running. Of course, the financial companies consider everyone essential all the time (and the markets _are_ open :-). There are four of us in the office today, working on critical customer issues; everyone else is home.
The kids’ camp was up and running this morning, but they’ve been informed that there is a scheduled blackout at 1300; apparently they’re rotating power across sections of the city until they can get the full grid up and running. They’re asking everyone to turn off air conditioners and other non-essential things, but I wonder how many people will actually do so.
It was interesting walking through the underground. Tim Horton’s was open, and most food places were getting ready to open late. The mom ‘n’ pop businesses (print shops, shoe repairs, newsstands, etc.) were all open, but the large chain stores were all closed. That’s the difference between being an owner and an employee, I guess.
Anyway, we survived :-). We’ll probably lose the food in our fridge, but other than that, it’s been an inconvenient adventure, not a crisis. We were lucky; some people spent the night in elevators, and it took hours to evacuate the subway system…
Jeff K says: I have a generator, so I was able to save my fridge and freezer food, but I shudder to think of the losses and shortages at the grocery stores. Driving around though, I could hear the rumble of diesel generators here and there, I wonder who was using the biggees. I only found one other dwelling with a small generator like mine.
Glad to hear you guys were ok through the blackout. We lost power again this afternoon, but it seems to be back…for now. (fingers crossed)
Debbie
During the time of the blackout me and my family spent the whole time playing cards and talking. It was really cool to be able to see the stars without any lights on.
Despite disapproval from the Russians, “Yuri Malenchenko married Ekaterina Dmitriev”:http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/topstory/2040806 while he was on ISS and she was in a meeting room at NASA’s Johnson Space Center.
bq. Texas law allows one — or even both — of a couple to be absent from the ceremony as long as the proper affidavits are filed.
[…]
bq. Malenchenko and Lu wore their standard fare blue-gray flight suits, augmented with bow ties and cumber bunds.
The wedding almost didn’t happen. Yuri’s Russian superiors initially denied his request to marry an American; Russian law doesn’t allow marriages where one partner is absent; and ” the nuptials were definitely not part of the official flight plan of the space station”.
bq. In the end, Dmitriev said, Russian officials allowed the marriage, but said it won’t be official in Russia.
bq. The couple plan a religious wedding in Russia next June. “I want it to be when people can get there and it’s not so cold,” Dmitriev said.
I think it’s time to check the basement for pods?
What would English be like without French?
This Christian Science Monitor article explores the possibilities:
The Franco-American
disputefalling out over the bestapproachway todisarming Iraqtake away Iraq’s weapons has resulted in perhaps the highestlevel ofanti-French feeling in the UnitedStatesLands since 1763.
Worth it for the humour value, at least…
This is getting _completely_ rididculous. In a Yahoo! News story, we read:
bq. House cafeterias will be serving fries with a side order of patriotism Tuesday with a decision by GOP lawmakers to replace the “French” cuisine with “freedom fries.”
bq. The House action follows moves by several restaurants around the country to remove “French” fries from their menus to protest French opposition to U.S. military action in Iraq.
Don’t they have more important things to do? This is kindergarten diplomacy, fer crissakes!!
They’re called “french” fries because the process of cutting things into long skinny strips like that is called “frenching”. It’s apparently called that because the English couldn’t handle the word “julienne”…
bq. Politics is show business for ugly people.
Liberal MP Carolyn Parrish, while “giving her side of the story”:http://www.canada.com/ottawa/story.asp?id=%7BB9CB4BCC-DD3A-4401-9ABA-CC05AE6F895A%7D on Open Mike with Mike Bullard on Monday night.
If you read nothing else today, read this essay: “Eject! Eject! Eject!: COURAGE”:http://www.ejectejecteject.com/archives/000033.html.
Nothing I can say about it will do it justice. Trust me, it’s worth 20 minutes of your time.
(Thanks to Karen Murphy for the link.)
From the Quote of the Day mailing list:
“We will be facing considerable skepticism on the question of how we can justify confrontation with Saddam when he is letting [United Nations] inspectors into the country, and a diplomatic solution with Kim when he’s just thrown them out.”
– A senior United States diplomat, speaking anonymously on the United States stance toward Saddam Hussein of Iraq and Kim Jong Il of North Korea. (Source: The New York Times, January 3, 2003.)
I wonder how many people actually expect consistency in American foreign relations these days?
Nike is taking their “Right To Lie” lawsuit to the US Supreme Court; details in this article.
It should be interesting; the legal distinction between “person” and “corporation” has been blurring recently, and (hopefully) the Supreme Court will remind corporations that they aren’t people…
RJ says: Doesn’t the US have “truth in advertising” legislation?
A 7 year old girl shot her 6 year old brother dead on Saturday in Mississauga. They found, and were playing with, a .45 semi-auto handgun (unregistered) when the girl pointed the gun at her brother and shot him in the head.
The owner of the gun was the two kids’ 22 year old brother, he has been arrested and charged with criminal negligence causing death and numerous firearms offences, including unsafe storage of both the gun and the ammunition.
The brother (through his lawyer) is pleading not guilty and planning on fighting the charges. So much for taking responsibility for his actions…
The boy is dead. The girl is permanently scarred. The family is irreparably damaged. All because this 22 year old is an idiot.
As chronicled elsewhere in this weblog, I have a friend with many guns. His pistols are locked in a small safe; all of his longarms and ammunition are locked in a separate steel cabinet, which has its own hookup to the alarm system. In addition, they all have trigger locks.
Leaving a weapon lying around unlocked is bad enough; lying around unlocked and loaded? I hope they bury this guy.
Naturally, the pistol was unregistered, showing yet again that the bungled Canadian firearm registry is useless as well as mismanaged.
Story links:
The Toronto Star
The Globe and Mail
Canada.com
CBC News
According to this article in New Scientist, China will attempt to launch a manned spacecraft in the second half of 2003. They’ve already successfully launched four fully functional, but unmanned, capsules.
It’ll be nice to have some competition again; maybe that’ll push the US space program out of the doldrums…
From Spin of the Day:
Nestle’s Christmas Gift to Ethiopia
Faced with a “mounting public relations disaster” over its attempt to sue the famine-stricken country of Ethiopia for $6 million, the Nestle corporation has promised to donate the money to hunger relief. But Justin Forsyth of the hunger organization Oxfam calls the offer a “half measure” and calls on the company “unambiguously to drop the claim and allow the Ethiopian government to spend the money on famine relief. … Nestle has had lots of opportunities to back down over the last year. Sadly it has taken Oxfam and the Ethiopian government exposing them to public outrage to make them see sense.” Source: The Guardian (UK), December 23, 2002
Those guys just don’t get it. They’re still flogging formula over breast-feeding in Africa, despite the fact that it’s killing more people than it’s saving. And now this. “There’s a principle involved” indeed…
Harald,
there’s a ‘private-copy copyright exception’ in the german law, too. And there has been a fee for long for blank media and copying devices (scanners etc).
However now the new german law restricts copyright to media that isn’t ‘physically’ copyright protected. Some media have already mentioned that you *might* be allowed to do *analog* private copies but there has been no final decision about that.
So whatever your taxes are, they will not prevent the lobby from claiming that each time you hum a song you owe them 25 cents or more.
Wolfgang
There is such a thing as intellectual property.
Yes there should be fees for file sharing/theft!
Sure there is. But look; the music industry is receiving a pretty hefty fee for every _blank_ media that I purchase (DAT tapes and DVD-RAMs for backups, CD-Rs for photographs, etc.). The USA has decided that this is a penalty to offset fictitious losses due to piracy. We’ve decided that this is a royalty to pay for the copying that we’re legally entitled to perform. No IP issues or theft here…