Category: Law

To quote Eric Frank Russell

I feel like a half stunned cripple, and Jeff collected a few bruises and scrapes as well, but the big furniture is in and I slept on at least a portion of my bed in the new place last night.  Yahoo, as they say.  I should have been pushing stuff into corners after we got here, but the lure of watching the first two episodes of Deadwood with Jeff was too great.  I slept with the door open and Eddie came to visit me sometime around four.  He makes as much noise as a person walking.

This guy will never be President.

Sigh.  We can dream about it.
Mind you, neither will these gents.

Phew.

Today, unpacking, bed assembly, and then over to St James Hall for the dress rehearsal of the show and then to visit the Luddite. I just wish I felt more like moving.

I’m home,

but I’m not where my bed is.  I pulled out the guit and the mando tonight and HOLY CRAP is my bedroom LIVE when it doesn’t have any furniture in it.  It’s a little tiled cell in which the sound of my breathing echoes like there’s a Balrog stuck in the corner.  All I practiced was Spinal Clinic and one of the new ones (These Things Happen).  This after watching Robert Downey Jr (can he do a bad acting job? the man is incredible) in this movie.
I am a woman of noisy enthusiasms.  Jeff keeps scowling at me; if I laugh at something with my usual vigour  (read volume) whichever of the cats is cuddling with him messes off the couch with a disgusted air.   And hey, two new-to-me Robot Chicken episodes and the season finale of Atlantis (it being the first Stargate Atlantis I’ve ever seen).  I’ve heard his fame well sung, that Rodney guy from Stargate Atlantis…. Now’s the time to queue up some Lady Miss B.
Patricia let me cry on her today. Thank you Patricia.  I’m not very aesthetic at the best of times; snivelling over onion rings is an incorrect form.  It was a summer storm, I’m not upset anymore.  She wants to meet the Luddite.  Like Ambrose Bierce, I have my doubts that all my friends should be introduced to each other even if they all rock.

Lady Miss B’s instrument was plucked from its case whilst being inspected by TSA goons, who played it laughing and broke a string.  May they receive the blessings of heaven and it not enough to spare them the lashings of hell.

An open letter to the Defence Minister

February 24, 2008

The Honourable Peter Gordon MacKay
Minister of National Defence
National Defence Headquarters
Major-General George R. Pearkes Building
101 Colonel By Drive
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
K1A 0K2

Dear Sir:

I was alarmed to learn via the National Post that Canada is currently
negotiating an agreement with the United States to allow American
troops on Canadian soil and vice versa for the purposes of mutual
assistance during civil emergencies.

There is no question that the US and Canada as part of NATO must
rehearse and communicate coordinated military maneuvres and strategy.
American troops on Canadian soil, even in the event of an emergency,
is an entirely different — and to me, horrifying – prospect and unless
the locality affected by the disaster (ie province, municipality)
specifically asked for the assistance and expertise of the US military
and coordinated the request with the federal government, not to be
borne.

Why do we want US troops on Canadian soil when they mismanaged the
Katrina response so badly that the US became the shame of the
developed world?  Civilian Canadian responders were on the ground in
the lower lying parishes faster than the US military anyway.

As a citizen of Canada and resident of BC, the first thing I thought
when I read that is that we’re going to have US troops walking up and
down the streets of Whistler in full combat gear during the Olympics
in 2010.  I can think of other, equally gloomy and distasteful
scenarios.

Unless the full text of the agreement is publicized prior to
government approval (I am assuming that this will be passed by an
order in council rather than being exposed to the harsh light of
parliamentary democracy) this proposed coziness with the American
military is a looming disaster for Canadian civil rights and
sovereignty.

Please publicize the details of the agreement.  Perhaps I’m upset over
nothing — but at this point I can hardly be sure.

Yours very truly,

Allegra Sloman

Stupid criminals

This happened in Toronto, more than 20 years ago.

A friend of mine had a daughter who worked at an answering service (remember those?) in the same building as a parole office. She left the office door open for cross ventilation because the building was rather stuffy and they could actually open windows. There were two women on shift at time. Their desks both faced the door.

As it happened, the open door was situated directly in front of a fire hose cabinet. The women watched in astonishment as a man on his way to the parole office stopped in front of their open door, looked up and down the hallway, and then carefully stashed his bag of pot in the firehose cabinet. Miraculously, the phone in the office didn’t ring while he was standing in front of the door. He then went to his appointment.

One of the women, who was vehemently opposed to pot use, got up from her desk, got the bag, flushed the contents down the john, threw out the bag, and sat back down at her desk. A few minutes later Mr. Stupid Criminal came down the hall, opened the firehose cabinet, and went wtf? He looked up the hall, he looked down the hall. He never once looked through the open door at his back, while the two women, purple from suppressed laughter, got a thirty second demonstration of the cognitive skills that had him visiting a parole office in the first place.

Sundry and various

Check out the Robot Chicken video about how they make their characters…. it’s cool! The rest of the site has some, uh, good parts too.

OMG exploding pies. Well, not so much.

I don’t feel competent to explain WHY I don’t like this story, but I sure don’t.

All of the movie “Who Killed the Electric Car.”

Growing the finks of tomorrow, today.

$14 for a cup of coffee?

Yecch.

Merry Christmas everybody. 

DRM letter to Mr. Prentice

Dear Sir:

I am not in favour of the Canadian government legislating what it cannot adequately and clearly explain, in the light of the powerful interests pushing for the DRM legislation.  I am not in favour of how fast, given the other important matters facing Canadian legislators, the bill is going through.

I am a content producer.  I hope to some day make my living using the internet as a songwriter and op-ed writer. I have a burning interest in copyright law and I’d be leery of supporting the incoming legislation without more explanation.

I have uploaded a song, currently on Youtube, which is protected under a creative commons licence.  BUT what will happen under this new law if I make a video and this video is uploaded to a server that uses drm software? Can I remove that protection from my own video? As I understand the legislation, I can not modify or kludge any DRM that any legal entity attaches to my work even though I control the copyright.  As the person who made the content in the first place, this is a real kick in the head, and not exactly a spur to my creativity, unless it’s to put more rants about DRM legislation on my site.

If I understand the legislation correctly I won’t be able to adopt new technologies for old content.  Let me tell you something.  I work with geeks and they are NOT sending you emails or begging you to reconsider the legislation.  They will merely, because it’s what geeks DO,(small edit here) subvert and end-run EVERYTHING your government tries to enact with respect to this legislation, and they will laugh at your discomfiture and ignorance (and mine, frankly) while they are doing it.  I have absolutely NO ability to circumvent DRM.  But some of my friends, who are REFUSING TO COMPLAIN about this legislation because they don’t want to be singled out for special treatment later, sure as heck do.

Did you ever consider that the technology to support this DRM was made by human beings who may just have built a ‘back door’ into it which will make the legislation the laughing stock of the free world?

My rights as a content creator are going to be messed over by this legislation, from everything I see, and my friends and colleagues will work tirelessly to pull the teeth of the legislation as fast as you can enact amendments to it! Seems like a waste of time, and an attempt to wring the last little bit of lobbying money from buggy whip media industries.

Don’t do it Mr. Prentice.  The flood of emails and letters you are getting is now the same weight as a tombstone for your political career; please let me know that you’re smarter than the rest of your government, and more far-sighted than the frightened media moguls who are trying to buy a few more years of profits on the back of your career.

Allegra Sloman

I am indebted to Douglas Green, who posted to a CBC website, for providing me with a template for this letter.  If I had a way to contact him and ask his permission, I would have done it, but somehow I don’t think he’d mind.  The link to his comment of November 29 is here