alQpr | what you see is what you get

More Media “levy” Madness

Posted on 2011-05-13 by alan

Howard Knopf doesn’t like the idea of extending the tax (or calling it one).

I didn’t like having to pay a tax, or “levy”, on the CDs I bought years ago to store photos and backup my HD, but I don’t see any difference between that bit of theft and this one. In fact, although I resent the presumption that the tax, or “levy”, is a fee for some service that I have no intention of using, I can live with the idea of a tax on media being used to support creative activities if that is the collective will of the nation.

Just don’t call it a “levy”, and interpret it as a fee for service, unless

(a)it entitles me to fill it with unlimited personal use copies of any works that I do buy, and

(b)there is some provision for levy-free media which are precluded from being used for copyright material (like the coloured tax-free fuel that is available in some places for farmers).

Posted in arts and culture, canada, copyright | Leave a comment

Time for a Change

Posted on 2011-05-03 by alan

OK today must be the start of a four year campaign to reach agreement between the NDP, Greens, and remaining Liberals to:

Support an electoral reform which will provide for proportional representation – NOT based on party lists but on something more democratic like STV or some other preferential balloting system
Educate the Canadian public as to the acceptability, efficiency, and desirability of “coalition” governments – even (or perhaps especially) when not including the party which happens to have the most seats in parliament
Commit to endorsing strategic voting in the next Federal Election in order to achieve these ends

Posted in canada | Leave a comment

The Escape of Osama Bin Laden

Posted on 2011-05-03 by alan

In retrospect it is obvious that the mission had no hope of success. Obviously anyone with the resources available to Osama bin Laden, when building a special-purpose hiding place, would have included an escape shaft from his apartment which led to a subterranean bomb shelter with a tunnel connecting it to the outside. At the first appearance of US helicopters OBL surely walked into the escape closet climbed down the shaft to his bomb shelter and by the time that the SEALs had fought their way up to his apartment he was well on the way down the half kilometer long tunnel from which he climbed out at an unknown location on the bank of a nearby gully or river. Good luck finding him now!

Posted in uncategorized | Leave a comment

Only Obama

Posted on 2011-05-03 by alan

Only Obama Succeeded Where Bush Failed (“Great shot sir!”)

Only Obama can deal with the financial collapse caused by the right wing libertarian attitude towards proper regulation of financial institutions

Only Obama could persuade us that the Lion King was born in Hawaii

But Only Limbaugh could come up with the slogan which will should drive the great Democratic election sweep of 2012

Posted in usa | Leave a comment

Goodbye CBC

Posted on 2011-04-12 by alan

As a complement to today’s federal leaders’ debate the CBC had a group of first time voters watch and comment. But while the clear majority felt that the NDP’s Jack Layton was the winner (as demonstrated by holding up pictures) there was no identification made for those that couldn’t clearly see and interpret the photos and the segment was edited so that the only leaders or parties mentioned by name were Harper and the Liberals. While this token item may be small in its actual impact, it may be one of the most blatant examples of media distortion I have ever seen in Canada and unless it is corrected I will no longer be a “Friend of the CBC”

Posted in canada, politics | Tagged cbc, media distortion | Leave a comment

Creationism at the Royal Society

Posted on 2011-04-09 by alan

This would be old news but for the fact that the Royal Society’s president at the time was Martin Rees – who might now be seen by some as finally getting his reward for letting it happen. On the other hand, Rees does seem genuinely bemused about the award so perhaps, in his mind at least, there is no connection. Many evangelical atheists object that Reese’s accepting the Templeton prize lends credibility to the foundation – something I wouldn’t have given much credence to except for the fact that someone called Mark Vernon is crowing exactly that.

Posted in religion, science | Tagged templeton | Leave a comment

Retail Internet Pricing – Without Slogans

Posted on 2011-04-07 by alan

All sides in the debate on “Usage Based Billing” are off base. The issue is quite complicated and not helped by the use of simplistic slogans which often either ask for the impossible or run counter to the interests of those tricked into reciting them. Continue reading →

Posted in canada, web | Tagged net neutrality, usage-based billing | Leave a comment

UBB – How Should Cost and Price be Linked?

Posted on 2011-03-29 by alan

Michael Geist is concerned because internet service providers do not match price of service at all levels to its actual cost.

But when a commodity is in short supply, selling at the cost price will lead to shortages. (In the internet billing situation, users downloading tons of movies will degrade the quality of my own less demanding service)

What the ISPs are doing is aggressively penalizing heavy use in order to keep the total demand within the capacity of the system (or perhaps just to make a lot of extra money). It should be noted that despite the rhetoric this is NOT “Usage Based Billing”. It is a differential pricing scheme set to penalize both high and low usage rates.

Perhaps a fairer idea is to have true Usage Based Billing with the uniform unit price matching what the cost of supply would be if supply were extended to meet all demand (and then get on with actually providing that extended service).

Posted in canada, web | Tagged UBB | Leave a comment

Anti-Nuclear Inflation

Posted on 2011-03-26 by alan

I was disappointed to see Geoff Olson’s citation of a totally bogus figure for the number of deaths due to Chernobyl in his anti-nuclear panic piece in the Vancouver Courier on Friday.

The particular figure, which he quoted fourth hand (from another journalist’s report of a translation of a collection from various other sources), is a hundred times higher than the World Health Organization estimate. This is so far from anything remotely plausible that one suspects it may even be a misprint.

In fact the New York Academy of Sciences explicitly denies editorial endorsement of the book in question (which consists of translations from a wide variety of Eastern European sources), saying “The expressed views of the authors, or by advocacy groups or individuals with specific opinions about the Annals Chernobyl volume, are their own.” It may have been legitimate for the NYAS to bring these materials to the attention of the Western scientific audience for consideration and assessment, but for Olson to report their most extreme assertions as fact was totally irresponsible.

Posted in politics, technology | Tagged energy, nuclear power | 1 Comment

And They have the guns!

Posted on 2011-03-25 by alan

From Discover Magazine:

Posted in canada, evolution, usa | Leave a comment

Moral Realism

Posted on 2011-03-24 by alan

Sean Carroll has taken issue with Richard Carrier over the latter’s position on Moral Realism.

On reading Carrier I think that his real point is (or should be) that realism and relativism are not in conflict. Moral values, like the economic value of diamonds, may be relative but are real nonetheless. The existence of absolute moral values on the other hand is not supported by anything in his argument.

Carrier is probably correct in asserting the existence of such things as “moral facts” that are “true independent of your opinion or culture” in the sense that our moral sense probably does include principles that are the same in all human cultures, and that we may sometimes be mistaken in our judgement of what action will subsequently give us the greatest moral satisfaction. But he provides nothing to support the idea that such principles are mutually consistent or that their “value” has any meaning outside the context of human culture.

I would add that Carrier shares with Sam Harris the blunder of referring to things like “the consequences you would want most”(assuming blah blah blah) without understanding that there is probably no single real variable which measures our level of “total satisfaction” at even a single instant (let alone integrated over time).

Posted in psychology | Tagged ethics, moral realism | Leave a comment

New Atheism=The Tea Party?

Posted on 2011-03-23 by alan

I do not self-identify as an “atheist” let alone a “new” one and certainly not a wildebeest (with which I only identify in the context of computer software). But having read a bit of what is written by some of those that do, and although I do find some of it excessive, I find the claim by Jacques Berlinerblau that they all “disparage all religious people, describe them all as imbeciles and creeps, mock every text and thinker they have ever produced” to be a grossly offensive lie. Such nonsense contributes nothing of value or integrity to the public discussion.

Posted in religion | Tagged new atheists | Leave a comment

Don’t Stop Darlington

Posted on 2011-03-22 by alan

Here is my (slightly edited) version of the Greenpeace Letter.

Dear Premier McGuinty:

I’m writing to support your plan to maintain the nuclear option by continuing with the development of new reactors at Darlington and to encourage you not to be swayed by ill-informed fear mongering.

Like so many others, I am saddened by the tragedy taking place in Japan, but I am also awed by the fact that 40 year old reactors have withstood the worst natural disaster imaginable without contributing significantly to the resulting loss of life. The experience at Fukushima, I believe, will provide lessons that should enable even safer designs and protocols to be applied in the future and so should encourage you to continue with your plans for new reactors.

For this reason, I oppose the calls by Greenpeace and others to stop all approvals of new reactors.

The environmental assessment hearings set to begin next week will provide an opportunity to address the capability of the proposed designs to resist the impacts of a major geophysical catastrophe and I encourage you to proceed with those hearings in order that we can have an informed public evaluation the cost and risks of building new reactors.

Most importantly, we must seriously look at continuing our use of the nuclear option as the most viable high baseline source of non-combustion-based energy.

Sincerely,

Alan Cooper

Posted in canada, technical issues | Tagged nuclear power | 1 Comment

The Sine Qua Non

Posted on 2011-03-18 by alan

. . .for inclusion in an interfaith convention is to have a representative to whom one delegates moral authority, be (s)he priest, rabbi, imam, or “secular chaplain”. But that excludes all who reject such immoral authorities whether they be true atheists or true christians (or Jesus himself for that matter).

Posted in religion | Leave a comment

Looking a Gift Horse

Posted on 2011-03-18 by alan

(via Michael Geist) Some have objected to restrictive license terms on our nation’s new “Open Data Portal” which would stop someone from using the data “in any way which, in the opinion of Canada, may bring disrepute to or prejudice the reputation of Canada.” Treasury Board Secretary Stockwell Day responded to the concern by indicating that was not the intent and that the out-of-date language would be addressed. In the light of our nation’s new name, the language will be corrected to preclude any use which “in the opinion of Harper, may bring disrepute to or prejudice the reputation of Harper.”

Posted in canada | Tagged open data | Leave a comment

Flex in a Week video training | Adobe Developer Connection

Posted on 2011-02-28 by alan

I was using Flash back at the end of the second millennium when it was still called ‘FutureSplash’ (and was identified by the visionaries at CodeMonkey as a “Plugin that Sucks”). Now it is often buggy and crash-prone and Apple is trying to kill it, but I wouldn’t count it out by any means yet. So although I haven’t used it in a long time I may check out this Flex in a Week video training from Adobe Developer Connection.

Posted in web | Tagged flash | Leave a comment