Chargone 's Techdirt Comments

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  • On the post: Canadian Cities Looking To Opt-Out Of CETA Rather Than Get Roped Into An ACTA-Like Situation

    Chargone ( profile ), 27 Jul, 2012 @ 01:54am

    Re: Sigh

    to be fair: ANYONE who actually knows what the fuck they're talking about and wants their home to actually Develop economically is against free trade.

    that way lies colonial supply-region economies in every region that does not already dominate an industry.

    the only time you can get away with free trade is if you have a separate currency on the city-region level, at which point the fluctuations in the currency value achieve the Same Effect. (note that they do NOT if you have a National currency, or bigger, as the various cities states dampen and mask one another, resulting in erroneous feedback into the system and preventing error correction. at best.)

    seriously, free trade is terrible.

    (that said, production subsidies are even worse. as in: up there with copyright on the 'stupid' level for anything that A: there isn't shortage of and B: you can do without.)

    the obsession with free trade is an obsession with keeping the big multinationals in control as much as possible. nothing more. aside from that, it encourages hyper-specialisation, which makes lots of money for a very short time, and leads to utter economic collapse the moment the markets shift. which leads to even more emphasis being put on preventing disruptive changes, because those Cause said market shifts, and thus trigger the catastrophe which results from the collapse of such an unstable setup.

    basically, can have free trade if you have, economically at least, independent city states. you can have a national or super-national currency ... if you don't mind imposing trade barriers. otherwise you're creating a problem.

  • On the post: Google Fiber Is Official; Free Broadband Up To 5 Mbps, Or Pay For Symmetrical 1 Gbps

    Chargone ( profile ), 26 Jul, 2012 @ 08:25pm

    Re:

    any cap low enough to affect anything meaningfully would be low enough to completely gimp the service, i suspect.

    and why would they cap it? there's plenty of evidence that such caps (in the states at least) have Nothing to do with infrastructure limits or costs.

  • On the post: Google Fiber Is Official; Free Broadband Up To 5 Mbps, Or Pay For Symmetrical 1 Gbps

    Chargone ( profile ), 26 Jul, 2012 @ 08:22pm

    Re:

    actually, that's probably the second most important toe (and third most important body part if you ignore the whole 'must be connected to everything else to work' side of things) for staying balanced under less than perfect conditions. (the Big toe coming immediately before it and the ankle coming before that)... yes, yes, i know this isn't very precise, but don't underestimate the importance of such things :P
    (i'd argue that the next one in from the big toe is probably the one you can most afford to lose... and least likely to be lost to accident without taking something else with it.)
    also: appendix: less expendable than you might think. (circumstantial and anecdotal evidence only on my part here though. prior to having it removed i had food allergies and intolerances and such ... and less problem with milk and dairy products than most supposedly normal healthy people. had my appendix out, within a month (maybe two. i don't quite remember) i had developed a significant and noticeable lactose intolerance. used to drink more milk than water in a day and be the better for it. now, consuming it in any way is a brilliant way to make myself very sick.)

    fear the random trivia!

  • On the post: SOPA/PIPA Wakes Up Internet Giants To Realize They Need To Be More Engaged In DC

    Chargone ( profile ), 26 Jul, 2012 @ 06:06am

    Re: Re: How about this instead

    technically possible but incredibly unlikely?

  • On the post: SOPA/PIPA Wakes Up Internet Giants To Realize They Need To Be More Engaged In DC

    Chargone ( profile ), 26 Jul, 2012 @ 06:03am

    Re: Re: Re: Re:

    while your point is well made, might want to double check the facts there.

    there may or may not have been soldiers involved (i am unsure) but to the best of my knowledge said individuals were NZ law enforcement. meaning they are not SWAT but the Armed Offenders Squad. who are not as heavily armed and who's methods seem to generally involve less shooting and blowing up of things (mostly due to the need for it coming up less, granted) than i understand to be the case with SWAT, but can and do get military backup when necessary. (nothing like an NZLAV to ruin your day. 22.x mm autocannon, anyone?)

  • On the post: Truth In Erroring: IETF Proposal Includes New 451 Censorship Error Code

    Chargone ( profile ), 26 Jul, 2012 @ 05:18am

    Re: Re: Another good error code is 1984.

    4891

  • On the post: Truth In Erroring: IETF Proposal Includes New 451 Censorship Error Code

    Chargone ( profile ), 26 Jul, 2012 @ 05:14am

    Re:

    a desire to avoid riots and violent unrest due to inflammatory individuals behaving in a way designed to cause such for no good reason says otherwise. (to be fair: things censored by the chief censor's office of NZ in the last few decades amount to the following: a shirt deemed to be excessively offensive to damn near everybody, a book which denied the holocaust took place at all (among other issues), said book's Author (actually, i'm not sure if that was the chief censor or not, and it wasn't entirely about the book) and various pornographic material deemed unlawful (mostly child-porn) they're also responsible for asigning ratings to films, games and tv programs and the like, the R ratings being legally binding and carrying a penalty on selling them to those who are under-age. additionally, before something is even considered for censorship (except porn and things which require ratings stickers) someone has to actually have complained about it. then the censor has to also deem it to be a major problem.)

    also: in times of war, it can be quite significant (and that's where the office actually comes from.)

    note this: there are a number of commonwealth countries where this office exists. most of them have substantially less censorship than the USA :P

    (that said, it's VERY much one of those jobs where anyone who actually WANTS it should not get it, and probably should be arrested on sight... One of my mother's relatives(from memory. certainly someone she knows.) actually had the job for a while. retired when he simply could not stomach the material which had to be checked any more. this is the stuff deemed so bad that it couldn't even be given an R18 label.)

    this post was funded by the World Society for Parenthetical Statement Awareness.
    :P

  • On the post: Two-Cent Doughnuts Breed Decades Of Bad Blood: It's Not So Easy Going From Free To Paid

    Chargone ( profile ), 25 Jul, 2012 @ 06:40am

    Re:

    nah, they're neither crazy, nor competent, enough for that.

  • On the post: UK Judge Rules Even Archived News Articles Can Be In Contempt Of Court

    Chargone ( profile ), 25 Jul, 2012 @ 03:38am

    Re:

    if brains were dynamite, i'm pretty sure we'd all have bigger issues.

  • On the post: UK Judge Rules Even Archived News Articles Can Be In Contempt Of Court

    Chargone ( profile ), 25 Jul, 2012 @ 03:36am

    Re: Re: Re: Libraries

    Kiwis, mostly, it seems :)

    (seriously, our courts are usually pretty good like that.)

  • On the post: Pirate Party ALMOST Ejected From Festival For Giving Out Free Waffles After Vendors Selling Waffles Complained (Updated)

    Chargone ( profile ), 24 Jul, 2012 @ 07:27am

    Re:

    ...
    ...
    ...

    hello person who has clearly never read this site.

  • On the post: Pirate Party ALMOST Ejected From Festival For Giving Out Free Waffles After Vendors Selling Waffles Complained (Updated)

    Chargone ( profile ), 24 Jul, 2012 @ 07:26am

    Re: Re:

    i always like to point out when someone brings up the bottled water argument, that in places like where i live, where the tap water's actually really good, the product is the Bottle. the water is a bonus. hehehe. (sorta like how publishers like to think they're in the business of content, but really they're in the business of convincing random citizens to fund the ink and paper industries.)

    not that that's terribly on topic.

  • On the post: Pirate Party ALMOST Ejected From Festival For Giving Out Free Waffles After Vendors Selling Waffles Complained (Updated)

    Chargone ( profile ), 24 Jul, 2012 @ 07:23am

    Re: Re: Re:

    ...

    ladies and gentlemen, the reason why i have Very little respect copyright maximalists and american-political types in general (specific exceptions excepted).

    socialism has NOTHING TO DO WITH THIS ISSUE.

    further, if you want to get into all the IP nonsense, socialism still has nothing to do with it, but the Valid objection to socialism is an excess of state interference and control. i would like to point out that, in the case of IP, that interference and control comes in the form of the creation and protection of Monopoly Rents in the form of copyright and patents.

    absent government intervention, those Would Not Be Things.

    so... yeah...

    i mean, you could make a case complaining about anarchy, maybe, if you really wanted to, but Socialism?

    seriously, get back under your rock.
    *evil muttering about stupid-right-shifted US politics and cold-war era propaganda*

  • On the post: Skype No Longer Willing To Claim That Its Calls Are Untappable By Law Enforcement

    Chargone ( profile ), 24 Jul, 2012 @ 04:46am

    Re: Conspiracy

    ... i think your / tag only needs half the words it currently has.

  • On the post: Meet The Internet Defense League (And Join It, Too)

    Chargone ( profile ), 22 Jul, 2012 @ 04:37pm

    Re: Re: Re: It's a shame that it needs to exist

    always?
    no.
    entirely?
    no.

    usually and mostly? sure.

  • On the post: Does Batman Need Copyright Protection?

    Chargone ( profile ), 20 Jul, 2012 @ 09:36am

    Re: Re: Re:

    pirate mice, clearly.

  • On the post: Looks Like Canada & Mexico Will Be Blocked From Next Round Of TPP Negotiations As Well

    Chargone ( profile ), 20 Jul, 2012 @ 05:49am

    Re: You really don't know?

    i get the impression that once you take cost to effect to time ratios into account, they're probably cheaper than hookers, too.

  • On the post: Looks Like Canada & Mexico Will Be Blocked From Next Round Of TPP Negotiations As Well

    Chargone ( profile ), 20 Jul, 2012 @ 05:48am

    Re:

    to be fair, most of the proposed alternatives are worse and do not solve the basic problem: human nature.

    also, people seem to have something against nations that are actually manageably sized and insist on empire-esque monstrosities.

  • On the post: Resolution Introduced To Make Public Domain Congressional Research Finally Accessible To The Public

    Chargone ( profile ), 20 Jul, 2012 @ 02:14am

    Re: LOL

    ...
    I'm pretty sure that would be noticed by more people if more people had ever heard of that one. (i certainly haven't.)

    also:

    Quigley is an amusing name.
    where does that one even come from?
    (i find, as a rule, the weirder a word is and the less sense it makes the more likely it is to have it's origin in england rather than as an import... odd that.)

  • On the post: Meet The Internet Defense League (And Join It, Too)

    Chargone ( profile ), 19 Jul, 2012 @ 09:13am

    Re: Re:

    unless it is (failed) pre-emptive troll-trolling, which is not unusual here... in which case i suppose it's still obvious trolling, but...

    ok, yeah, i lost my point.

    yarn!

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