| Friday, November
4, 2005 Subject: Re: Regarding the recent
MPAA comment
Much appreciated. Your site is the only place I can
think of where one can read a reasoned argument of both sides of a
complicated topic without wading through a morass of uninformed opinion and
rude comments.
On a technical note, I'd like to correct Mr. Hamit on
a point of law. Copyright registration is not compulsory for filing a
copyright lawsuit, though it must be completed within 60 days of such a
lawsuit being filed.
The question of electronic rights is -really- thorny.
Many times, dealing with various Japanese animation series at work, the
various rights packages had been parceled out to different companies, and
then resold to other companies, who then went bankrupt and were bought out
by other companies who eventually went bankrupt - more than once, a neat
project had to be cancelled simply because nobody could figure out from whom
we needed permission! To say nothing of rights issues affecting the music,
which is a topic of much horror, though probably little general interest.
On balance, Amazon is probably going to get burned
quite badly, simply because it's a big corporate target and thus can pay a
big judgment in a fairly easy to prove case. Rather, it's very unlikely to
come to fruition, because the legal liability will greatly exceed any
profits from the venture... and for once, rightly so!
At least we can be somewhat cheered by the rise of
BitTorrent as a distribution mechanism. It's vastly superior to competing
architecture in terms of transfer efficiency, but it requires a big, dumb,
absolutely-not-anonymous tracker to function, making a relatively easy
target in cases of infringement. (And efforts to distribute the tracker
function would make the system vulnerable to efforts to "pollute the
file"... replacing bits of the requested file with admonitions not to commit
piracy would be a fun challenge, anyway!)
Andy Kent
========
Read, mark, comprehend, hear, and believe:
Subject: Sophisticated Phishing
Red Alert
Jerry, you should read this link, then post it for
readers:
http://www.websensesecuritylabs.com/alerts/alert.php?AlertID=329
The executable installed by the phishing email
modifies the DNS server settings so that you're using an owned DNS server,
instead of your ISP's. Then when you type in www.paypal.com, the bad-guy dns
server directs you to the Phishing server for you to put in all of your
important data!
Needless to say, Paypal (and banks and ...) are NOT
going to send you an email with a link to a download for security purposes.
Not gonna happen.
*** Side Note ***
It may be a Friends of Papa Darwin thing, but you
know, if we let phishing go on unhindered, then the people who fall for
phishing attacks will soon be too poor to afford Internet access. Then
they'll be offline, not buying viagra from spammers, nor putting their
windows 98 box right on the DSL modem, to become a spam zombie some 15
minutes later. So phishing is (a) self-correcting and (b) making the 'Net
smarter (on average). Hmmm.
best,
.brian
Thanks. Be careful out there.
===============
From another
conference:
Subject: The Beginning of the French Civil War
All,
Sarkozy will eventually win and his political
colleagues will eventually lose. How many citizen's cars will be torched
before the army is sent in is unknown, though.
It's cool that the blogosphere is spreading the word
when the mainstream media will not.
Jim
http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/429
Ramadan Rioting in Europe's No-Go Areas
From the desk of Paul Belien on Wed, 2005-11-02
21:12
This is from Sweden:
"'If we park our car it will be damaged - so we
have to go very often in two vehicles, one just to protect the other
vehicle,' said Rolf Landgren, a Malmo police officer. Fear of violence has
changed the way police, firemen and emergency workers do their jobs. There
are some neighborhoods Swedish ambulance drivers will not go to without a
police escort. Angry crowds have threatened them, telling them which patient
to take and which ones to leave behind."
This is from France:
"Sarkozy says that violence in French suburbs
is a daily fact of life. Since the start of the year, 9,000 police cars have
been stoned and, each night, 20 to 40 cars are torched."
This is from Brussels:
"The police has been told [by the Mayor] that
it is 'not expedient' to patrol [in the Brussels suburb of Molenbeek] and
officers are not allowed to drink coffee or eat a sandwich in the street
during ramadan."
This is from Denmark (and it is hot news
relating to the Muhammad cartoons):
"For several nights in a row Rosenhřj Mall has
been the scene of the worst riots in Ĺrhus for years. 'This area belongs to
us', the youths proclaimed. [...] 'The police have to stay away. This is our
area. We decide what goes on down here'. [...] Falck, a Danish private
emergency service, sent a group of fire engines under police escort to the
Kjćrslund nursery on Sřndervangs Allé, right across the street from Rosenhřj
Mall. A window had been shattered at the back of the house, and the fire had
been blazing, apparently caused by gasoline poured onto the floor and lit.
Falck stopped on Viby Square, a couple of kilometers from the site of the
arson attack, waiting for the police to turn up so they could be escorted to
the nursery."
The Nightmare of Permanent Conflict
If you want to know what is the matter with
those that are described by the mainstream media as rioting "youths," read
Theodore Dalrymple's poignant analysis in the latest issue of City Journal.
We are just witnessing the beginning of Europe's problems: "The sweet dream
of universal cultural compatibility has been replaced by the nightmare of
permanent conflict."
Our mainstream media, in attempts to preserve
the Left's chimera of "universal cultural compatibility," hardly write about
all this. Nevertheless, for some years now West European city folk and
police officers have been familiar with the reality that certain areas of
major European cities are no-go areas, especially at night and certainly if
you are white or wearing a uniform. Three years ago, a French friend who had
his car stolen learned that the thieves had parked the car in a particular
suburb. When he went to the police he was told that the police did not
operate in that neighbourhood and consequently would not be able to retrieve
his car. This is Western Europe in the early 21st century.
Nicolas Sarkozy became France's most popular
politician by promising to restore law and order in the whole of France,
including in the areas abandoned by previous governments. Since Sarkozy
became Interior Minister he has insisted on more police presence in Muslim
neighbourhoods. This triggered last week's riots in the Paris suburb of
Clichy-sous-Bois, when policemen went in to investigate a robbery and two
teenagers stupidly got themselves electrocuted while hiding from the police
in an electricity sub station. Many French politicians now probably regret
that the police had the audacity to investigate a robbery in Clichy. The
result of the incident so far has been six consecutive nights of rioting
that is now engulfing the entire Paris suburban area and might soon affect
other parts of the country. Last night at least 69 vehicles were torched in
nine suburbs across the Paris region. Officials say that small, mobile gangs
are harassing police, sometimes even shooting at them. The gangs are setting
vehicles, police stations and schools on fire throughout the region.
Though the world is taking no notice, the same
is currently happening in certain parts of Denmark.
Bring in the Army
Sarkozy has referred to those whom the media
call "troublesome youths" as scum and rabble. "I speak with real words," the
minister says. "When you fire real bullets at police, you're not a 'youth,'
you're a thug." Unfortunately, it looks as if Clichy-sous-Bois might become
Nicolas Sarkozy's Waterloo because he seems to be losing the support of his
colleagues in the government. Moreover, Sarkozy does not even seem to have
the means necessary to fight the "youths."
The riots in France have been going on for a
week now. During the second night of street fighting in Clichy, police
officers already warned that they are not up to the task Sarkozy has set
them. "There's a civil war underway," one officer declared. "We can no
longer withstand this situation on our own. My colleagues neither have the
equipment nor the practical or theoretical training for street fighting." If
there is, indeed, a war going on, Sarkozy cannot win it with troops that are
mere policemen and fire fighters. As Irwin Stelzer pointed out last July
when discussing the British reaction to the London bombings: In a war, use
the army, rather than police. The latter, however, is unlikely to happen. If
the politicians bring in the army they are acknowledging what the policemen,
the fire fighters and the ambulance drivers know but what the political and
media establishment wants to hide from the people: that there is civil war
brewing and that Europe is in for a long period of armed conflict. This is
the last thing appeasing politicians want to do and so they have begun to
criticise Sarkozy.
The appeasers are found not only in the
opposition parties but also within Sarkozy's own party, where Prime Minister
Dominique de Villepin, who envies him his popularity, is eager to bring his
rival down. Apart from political intra-party rivalry, however, there are two
reasons why most politicians seem to be of the appeasing kind.
The first one is that the Muslim population in
Western Europe has become so large that politicians fear what it might be
capable of. Commenting on the situation in Britain, Theodore Dalrymple wrote
in City Journal: "Surveys suggest that between 6 and 13 percent of British
Muslims - that is, between 98,000 and 208,000 people - are sympathetic
toward Islamic terrorists and their efforts. Theoretical sympathy expressed
in a survey is not the same thing as active support or a wish to emulate the
'martyrs' in person, of course. But it is nevertheless a sufficient
proportion and absolute number of sympathizers to make suspicion and
hostility toward Muslims by the rest of society not entirely irrational,
though such suspicion and hostility could easily increase support for
extremism. This is the tightrope that the British state and population will
now have to walk for the foreseeable future." It applies to all West
European nations. Where, however, is the boundary between carefully walking
the tightrope and falling victim to the Stockholm syndrome? The latter would
mean that Western politicians act as hostages of the Muslim extremists.
A second reason why some politicians try to
appease the Muslims is that these are now a substantial segment of the
voting population. Demographics are deciding the fate of Europe's democracy.
Time is running out. If Sarkozy cannot win the battle today, it is unlikely
that he or anyone else will be able to do so tomorrow. If Clichy turns out
to be Sarkozy's Waterloo, it will be a catastrophe not just for France.
Trackback URL for this post:
http://www.brusselsjournal.com/trackback/429
L'Intifada
from Don Surber on Fri, 2005-11-04 02:21
As Paris burns, as l'intifada expands beyond
the suburbs, as his nation is under siege, one wonders if Jacques Chirac
does not want to reconsider his decision not to fight al-Qaeda on Iraqi land
instead of France.
Riots in Paris show that the situation in
Europe..
from Tel-Chai Nation on Fri, 2005-11-04 01:55
And all because jelly-spined leaders cannot
bring themselves to stand up and take a hard-lined position against these
Muslim monsters who're committing the crimes. Even Denmark is now having
problems with Arab/Muslim immigrants rioting and causing on...
De rokende puinhopen van de multiculturele
samenleving
from De blog van Evert on Thu, 2005-11-03 23:09
De nacht van 2 op 3 november was de zevende
rellennacht op rij in een twintigtal voorsteden van Parijs. Het ging er
bijzonder onrustig aan toe. 315 auto's werden in brand gestoken. Op vier
verschillende plaatsen is geschoten op agenten
The fighting around Paris continues
from Posse Incitatus on Thu, 2005-11-03 19:50
As the French riots enter their seventh day,
the Posse is reminded of this eerily prescient article from 2002 by Theodore
Dalrymple:The average visitor gives not a moment's thought to these Cités of
Darkness as he speeds from the airport
Nightly rioting continues in France
from The Glittering Eye on Thu, 2005-11-03
18:51
If you get your news from network television
news, you may not have heard of this ongoing story. Rioting in the suburbs
of Paris has continued for the seventh consecutive night: AULNAY-SOUS-BOIS,
France (AP) - France's government faced mountin...
Ramadan Riots
from camedwards.com on Thu, 2005-11-03 16:57
Well, here's an underreported story from
Europe. Sarkozy says that violence in French suburbs is a daily fact of
life. Since the start of the year, 9,000 police cars have been stoned and,
each night, 20 to 40 cars are...
Paris Riots: Coming to an American Street Near
You
from La Shawn Barber's Corner on Thu,
2005-11-03 16:42
Paris is reaping what it's sown, and if we
don't heed the warnings (as if the murder of thousands and destruction of
two buildings in New York City weren't enough), we can expect the same. Lax
immigration policies, prostration to t...
Is Paris Secretly Burning?
from Shenzhen Ren on Thu, 2005-11-03 11:38
Ah, the suburbs! The smell of smoke, the sound
of gunfire, and the leisure activity of.....uh....."youths":
......
SO: have we any bets on when Paris will have
to call in the Paratroops? Shall we start a pool? And how long before we
have similar situations in these United States?
==
Subject: Riots in Europe
Actually, Dr. Pournelle, I found the information about
which I congratulated you in an earlier email (Heinlein Society BOD and
award) while looking for information about Heinlein's book "I will Fear No
Evil" as the society depicted therein seems to be where the world is headed.
http://www.wegrokit.com/i_will_fear_no_evil.htm
"...there is another powerful aspect to the book: the
glimpses one gets of the society Johann Smith has barricaded himself
against. Johann's turn-of-the-millenium America has grown into a sprawling
urban wasteland throughout which the have-nots wage gun battles in lawless
Abandoned Areas. The haves venture out into this war-torn turf only in
armored cars with armed guards riding shotgun, and return home to fortified
enclaves. It is an America which has dismissed Horace Mann's dream and
routinely shunts poor students into "illit" tracks in its public schools,
and in which children can be prostituted in the aforementioned abandoned
areas. It is an America held spellbound by television and sensational news
headlines--classic "Crazy Years" items. Does all that sound a little
familiar?"
This is one instance where I wish Heinlein's "finger
on the pulse of the future" had been less sensitive.
In that alternate universe, I suspect the "Oath of
Fealty" infrastructure is beginning to develop.
Charles Brumbelow
You are shocked, of course.
I have said this before. Remember this
useful phrase, you will need it again and again: "Liberalism is a philosophy
of consolation for Western Civilization as it commits suicide."
And see below
=======
Subject: Estonian database spidering for fun and
profit.
http://www.sec.gov/news/press/2005-155.htm
- Roland Dobbins
I post this largely because Estonia always
triggers recognition and memory for me. I have a medal from the old Estonian
government in exile (it wasn't technically that: it was the diplomatic corps
of the Estonian Republic; when the USSR incorporated Estonia into the Soviet
Union, the US did not recognize that incorporation, and until the Treaty of
Leningrad ended all that, the US had Captive Nations Week and various events
to commemorate the Captive Nations held by the USSR). I've even worn it on
occasion.
==========
Subject: I don't *think* it's April First
A couple of slashdot stories:
Patents being issued for plots: <http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/11/04/0239221&tid=155&tid=17>
I thought this was resolved with the Betamax case:
<http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?
sid=05/11/04/0535231&tid=188&tid=126&tid=17>
-- "The difference between theory and practice is
that, in theory, there is no difference between theory and practice, but in
practice, there is." (Tom Vogl) Harry Erwin
I tend to avoid slashdot, lest I become
enmired. What happens there is perhaps the main reason I do not allow people
to post here until I have read what they want to say, and perhaps comment on
it. That takes up time I don't have, but that's as nothing compared to the
time it would take to go through and eliminate the 'me too' and 'you're a
jerk', 'am not' messages not to mention the sheer nonsense.
=========
Subject: Purpose of Microsoft Live
Dr. Pournelle,
MS Live serves a couple of purposes, but it is mostly
aimed at convincing MS Office users not to abandon that cash cow. The
threats to Office are from the freeware OpenOffice, and from coming online
Office-like apps being offered by Google, Yahoo and others. (These offerings
also present the additional threat that they are platform independent -- O/S
is irrelevant.)
MS Live will be hooked into a user's copy of MS Office
on their computer, with the promise of some value-added features. MS Live
will also generate ad revenue for Microsoft. And the entire model will move
user's toward acceptance of the idea that you no longer purchase software,
but rather pay a recurring fee for its use. Forever.
Me? I like my software and my content on my computer
where I can keep an eye on it. I don't imagine I'm alone in this.
Don -- Donald W. McArthur
Thanks for the view.
I am preparing a section of the upcoming
column on this.
=============
From another discussion forum: An educated
French correspondent on the riots:
What will happen next?
Depending on the level of organization of the
Djihadists, these riots will last, or not. I would believe that it is not
yet the "Grand Soir", and that these riots will stop soon, or just continue
at a very low level as background noise. In this case, this will have been a
repetition, a training for a next real Intifada.
What is sure:
- Government will give new advantages to Muslim
rioters, money will be given, new laws created, etc.
- At one moment, Djihadists will require the power in
France: there is more than 10% of Muslims in French population, and it is an
Islamic obligation to take power in this situation (Sourate IX).
My opinion: Intifada Al Aqsa could be such a success
only because of the help of western media on the visit of Sharon and Mohamed
Al Dura affair. In this case in France, there is nothing like that: until
rioters are able to stage their own Al-Dura affair, and have it accepted
worldwide by media, they will be in a delicate situation. More propaganda is
needed.
P
========
Francis Fukuyama: History in the Remaking
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/
article/2005/11/02/AR2005110203304_pf.html
By Philip Kennicott Washington Post Staff
Writer Thursday, November 3, 2005; C04
Francis Fukuyama knows how to toss out an idea
that, like a baby rattle, is big enough for small minds to hold onto. And in
the past three years, ever since he broke with his fellow neoconservatives
and opposed the war in Iraq, he has emerged as one of the most devastating
and prescient critics of the Bush administration. So the stars were in
alignment for a little drama last night when Fukuyama delivered the National
Endowment for Democracy's second annual Seymour Martin Lipset Lecture at the
Canadian Embassy.
Perhaps a few told-you-so's, a little salt in
the wounds of his fellow travelers who pushed the United States into a war
that has lost the support of the people?
But no. Fukuyama, author of the best-selling
1992 book "The End of History and the Last Man," is an academic and
intellectual, not a politician, and he's moved on to a new preoccupation:
the problem of Islamic terror in Western society. He spoke about it for
almost an hour, without lobbing any sound bites or suggesting anything that
would make a good book title. If there was a bold statement, it was that the
real problem of Islamic terrorism isn't over there, in the Middle East, but
in Europe, in the heart of the Western, liberal democratic world, which is
producing the very young men who are attacking it -- in London last summer,
and in the Netherlands a year ago, when a Dutch filmmaker was brutally
murdered by a Dutch-born Muslim.
If Western society is based on tolerance,
openness and democratic values, how should it respond to people within its
own compass who do not share these values? The problem is particularly
disturbing for Fukuyama because in "The End of History," his most widely
read book, he argued that the world was coming to consensus about basic,
liberal, democratic values. The Soviet Union, which looked invincible, fell
apart; so did authoritarian governments in Portugal and Spain and Greece,
and throughout Latin America. If history is a struggle for the right kind of
society -- liberal democracy -- that struggle was ending. Or so it seemed.
But now something is brewing within liberal democracy that threatens to
unsettle not just riders of the London underground, but also Fukuyama's own
(perhaps overly optimistic) grand thesis.<snip>
=========
Subject: Copyright enforcement - a heretical view
Hi Jerry,
A heretical comment, given that you and many of your
readers earn your living by producing copyrighted works. However, I forge
fearlessly ahead:
The world has changed dramatically from when copyright
law was formulated. We are now in a situation where the vast tracts of the
population is technically in violation of the law - in many cases without
even realizing it, because copying (be it with a photocopier, a scanner, a
CD or a DVD) is so easy.
When large parts of the population are in violation of
a law, I submit that the law is wrong. Copyright holders - particularly the
big companies, but indeed all of them - must needs find new ways of selling
and profiting from their works. Copy protection and enforcement is not the
way.
As an example, you may have read about the recent
discovery of the Sony "root kits". It turns out that, in a bid to control
their music, Sony audio CDs played on a computer install special low-level
drivers that monitor your computer activity. The slightest error in their
software, or indeed an attempt to remove this software will disable your
computer - because, among other things, your computer will no longer be able
to find the driver for its CD drive. For the original article, see http://www.sysinternals.com/blog/2005/10/sony-rootkits-and-digital-rights.html.
This is beyond the pale, but the entire situation is
beyond control. For example, does it bother no one that we all pay a fine -
in advance - on every device that can be used for copying? It is assumed
that we are all guilty of copyright infringement - and it's not far from
true!
The existing copyright (and patent!) laws should be
entirely abolished, and something very different put in their place...
Cheers,
Brad
Ain't your ox that was gored, right?
===========
On the riots in
Europe:
Jerry,
Interesting discussion about the Muslim "occupied
territories" in France and Sweden. As a Frenchman, I am only moderately
surprised at the current outburst of urban jihad, but the similarity with
the situation in Sweden had escaped me. Such is the power of self-censorship
of the media in Europe. Many a town in France has had its burning cars
nights for a decade, but these politically incorrect things are never
mentioned unless the damage and amplitude of the violence become completely
impossible to ignore. That's an application of an old Leninism principle:
make the discontents believe that they are alone and that their unhappiness
is abnormal.
The article you quote from http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/429
("Ramadan Rioting in Europe's No-Go Areas") suggest that since the French
police force is obviously overwhelmed, untrained and unequipped against a
street jihad, the French PM should send in the army to stop the riots. One
little detail: about 23% of the French recruits are Muslims, mostly of
North-African descent (2nd or 3rd generation). Career officers are
increasingly clashing with rebellious privates who want the pay, the nice
uniform (works wonder on girls), but not the orders from a roumi. Cultural
and religious clashes now permeate the French barrack life.
I don't think it would be wise to rely on these
troublemakers to keep roumis safe from other Muslims. The French authorities
know it, even if they don't dare write it in the watered down slop that
passes for a free press in Paris. So nope, no army, sorry Monsieur, and the
police can't protect you, so your car will burn, the buses won't circulate,
stay home.
I'd like to be able to promise some hope to my fellow
Frenchmen. Hope that, for instance, when the Mullahs will finally establish
a Muslim regime ruled by the Shariah, the French will be safe and simply
have to convert in order to avoid violence. Unfortunately, the atrocities
that followed the end of the Algerian war in 1962, and resulted in a mass
exodus of both French and Arabs, show that even this meager hope could be
denied.
(Name deleted for obvious reasons)
Liberalism is a philosophy of consolation
for Western Civilization as it commits suicide. Remember this useful phrase.
You will need it again and again.
And see below
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