Kate's Journal

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wave looks seriously seriously cool
Warning this is an 80 minutes intro from the google IO conference

( I aim to add comments about it under this cut as i go along )

why I'm an agnostic solipsist
i'm realy really sorry

star trek is bloody brilliant
just went to see it. to say anything would be a spoiler, all i can say is go see it!!!!

oh and I'm going back to see it again as soon as possible

I will be buying this on DVD as soon as its out!!!!

Wyntons 12 ways to practice (life)
I have this up on a poster in my room but i thought I should put it up here as well

1. Seek out a private teacher.
2. Write out a schedule to organize your practice time and follow it every day.
3. Set goals to chart your development.
4. Concentrate when practicing.
5. Relax and practice slowly.
6. Practice hard parts longer.
7. Play (with expression).
8. Learn from your mistakes, but don't be too hard on yourself.
9. Don't show off.
10. Think for yourself. Use common sense
11. Be optimistic.
12. Look for connections to other types of music or art and life.

http://www.trumpetlessons.net/pract/wyntons12ways.html

Pirate bay is a search engine
Search engines are critical systems in the internet age. Lose access to the search engines and effectively you lose the net. lose the net and you have a virtual impenetrable trade barriers. Please explain how a court can tell difference between indexing different sorts of data, when data can be transposed into any format and when all search engine constantly use other people copyrighted data on their own sites?
from a discussion in the economist ( in the wake of the decsion by a swedish court to find the pirate bay search engine guilty of assisting in breaking copyright )

surelly some mishtake march 31st in transgender visability day - who says? Surly its April 1st!
Just relied to a post doing the rounds on trans spaces

a quick summary for those who don't want to read the whole thing
If you took the transgender out of the LGB community all you would have left is a bunch of closeted or straight acting gay lesbian and bisexuals. DRAG is transgender, Butch women is transgender, femmme men is transgender, being camp is transgender, being visibly gay is transgender, challenging 'traditional' assumptions about gender is transgender

( I would love to know who decided that march 31st was supposed to be transgender day of visibility, it should be april 1st. No really! It's a much better choice of day. I don't remember people discussing it with me. )

political meme: USA: New Bill Threatens Organic Food -
US-ian friends, please read, take action and forward to all your other US-ian friends.

===============================

March 20, 2009
New Bill May Threaten Organic Food

The Bills are:
House HR 875
Senate S 425

There is an enormous rush to get this into law within the next 2 weeks before
people realize what is happening.

Main backer and lobbyist is (guess who) Monsanto.

This Bill will require organic farms to use specific fertilizers and poisonous
insect sprays dictated by the newly formed agency to "make sure there is no
danger to the public food supply".
( more info )

an apology
I recently switche to a new computer, and it was being set up for me by

the_borderer for various reasons. Now she is a wonderful girl in many ways but she chose for some reason to arrange that most of my mail would automatically be put into sub-folders. (something i rarely do), AND THEN NOT TELL ME!!!!! i been wondering why i been getting much less mail and nobdoy has commented to anything i wrote. Now I know!

so sorry if i haven't replied, its like censorship, if you don't what you lost how can you tell?

i kept saying house prices were going to fall
I kept telling people that house prices were over valued and house prices would fall but i was always told they would go to the limit then tail off, yet this limit never seemed to happen

guess i was right. Doesn't make me feel good though

"House prices remain out of kilter with what people earn. No matter what the government does, they will head lower until they reach a level which people can afford, which history has shown to be about three times earnings. And they will probably overshoot this to the downside because of the scale of the preceding boom and the oncoming bust. There is nothing anyone, not tycoon nor politician, can do to stop this inevitable course. All they can do is delay it."

average uk national income is approximately £24,000 per annum , uk average house is 3 bed. long term bank maximum mortgage was 3.5 times first person earnings plus 1.5 times the other persons earnings that's 5 x earnings, that means a three bed house should end up at 120,000 maximum in the long term.

oh and the reason that interest rates will go to 15% is that we are currently massively inflating the economy to stop deflation. that will have to be paid back. Also we have been using M3 money that hid the real inflation rate for years, the cost of that still needs to be repaid as well in falling house prices

british goverment wants to limit access to websites - for everyone is Europe
The UK government not content to just force through ever more draconian powers with the aim of turning Britain into a "Pdifferent" state, now wants the rest of Europe to follow suit.

"The UK government wants to cut out users rights to access Internet content, applications and services. Some of the information used to justify the change has been cut and pasted from the Wikipedia."

The aim obviously is that whilst net access will be for everyone, net content will be restricted to government "approved websites"

Brussels, March 6th − La Quadrature du Net publishes a document, drafted by the British Government, with amendments to the telecoms package1. This proposal would turn the Internet into a Cable-TV network. First, there is a proposal to introduce conditions of access, alluding to the Conditional Access Directive2 regulating that very market. It is a subcription-TV-like concept reading through the lines. Second, there is language which overrides the end-to-end principle of the Internet. The idea behind it is that the Internet provider shall be allowed to limit the number of websites users can access, in exchange for a lower fee. Who wants telcos-controlled sub-Internet in Europe?

The national regulator will have the role of endorsing this new business model rather than protecting user's fundamental rights to information, culture and public services, as laid out in the UK amended article 8(4)(g):

“NRAs shall promote the interests of the citizens of the European Union by inter alia:

(g) applying the principle that end-users should be able there should be transparency of conditions under which services are provided, including information on the conditions of to access to and/or use of and distribute information or run applications and services, and of any traffic management policies of their choice

“NRAs shall promote the interests of the citizens of the European Union by inter alia:

(g) applying the principle that ~~end-users should be able~~ there should be transparency of conditions under which services are provided, including information on the conditions of to access to and/or use of ~~and distribute information or run~~ applications and services, and of any traffic management policies ~~of their choice~~

“In a context where markets like mobile telecommunication or entertainment industries, merging with telecommunication operators, are controlled by oligopolies, relying on the only information of the consumer leaves the consumer without any choice. Competition law would be the only remedy, and they proved to be totally inefficient against Microsoft or mobile operators cartels. Therefore, it is essential to define a positive guarantee of access to services without discrimination.” comments Jérémie Zimmermann, co-founder of La Quadrature du Net.

This preposterous proposal has already been included in the Council's compromise (pp 32-33)3 which will be discussed behind closed doors next week.

“The way these amendments are presented is deceptive: they are introduced as an information for consumer, while the point is to remove almost guarantee of access to Internet services. This is clearly a manoeuvre to break the balance of the text. MEPs must strongly reject it.”, concludes Zimmermann.