BBC News: Comedian Richard Pryor dead at 65
Groundbreaking black US comedian Richard Pryor has died after almost 20 years with multiple sclerosis.
He died at the age of 65 of a heart attack at Encino hospital near Los Angeles, his wife Jennifer Pryor said.
Goddam I fucking loved his shit. One of the greatest stand ups ever.
Just watched Sahara which I thought was a cracking movie despite the poor reviews it’s received.
Yeah so it’s got plotholes the size of craters from meteor strikes and it ain’t going to win any Oscars but it did exactly what it said on the tin in my opinion.
Just a very enjoyable action adventure.
The pairing of Matthew McConaughey and Steve Zahn works really well, totally believable as friends since being kids. Zahn was great not just a comedy sidekick but a balls to the wall action hero in his own right.
The New Yorker: Everybody’s an Expert
Putting predictions to the test. by LOUIS MENAND
It was no news to Tetlock, therefore, that experts got beaten by formulas. But he does believe that he discovered something about why some people make better forecasters than other people. It has to do not with what the experts believe but with the way they think. Tetlock uses Isaiah Berlin’s metaphor from Archilochus, from his essay on Tolstoy, “The Hedgehog and the Fox,” to illustrate the difference. He says:
Low scorers look like hedgehogs: thinkers who “know one big thing,” aggressively extend the explanatory reach of that one big thing into new domains, display bristly impatience with those who “do not get it,” and express considerable confidence that they are already pretty proficient forecasters, at least in the long term. High scorers look like foxes: thinkers who know many small things (tricks of their trade), are skeptical of grand schemes, see explanation and prediction not as deductive exercises but rather as exercises in flexible “ad hocery” that require stitching together diverse sources of information, and are rather diffident about their own forecasting prowess.
A hedgehog is a person who sees international affairs to be ultimately determined by a single bottom-line force: balance-of-power considerations, or the clash of civilizations, or globalization and the spread of free markets. A hedgehog is the kind of person who holds a great-man theory of history, according to which the Cold War does not end if there is no Ronald Reagan. Or he or she might adhere to the “actor-dispensability thesis,” according to which Soviet Communism was doomed no matter what. Whatever it is, the big idea, and that idea alone, dictates the probable outcome of events. For the hedgehog, therefore, predictions that fail are only “off on timing,” or are “almost right,” derailed by an unforeseeable accident. There are always little swerves in the short run, but the long run irons them out.
Foxes, on the other hand, don’t see a single determining explanation in history. They tend, Tetlock says, “to see the world as a shifting mixture of self-fulfilling and self-negating prophecies: self-fulfilling ones in which success breeds success, and failure, failure but only up to a point, and then self-negating prophecies kick in as people recognize that things have gone too far.”
Is the debacle that is the aftermath of the Iraq War due to perhaps there being too many hedgehogs in the White House.
A free democratic Iraq is a good thing but those that believed that merely deposing Saddam Hussein and the Baathists making the Iraqi people free and then establishing democratic elections would bring that about were clearly wrong. The prediction based on the big idea of freedom and democracy failed to take into account that many Iraqis didn’t want freedom or democracy and many that did didn’t want an overseas power like the US imposing their idea of freedom and democracy upon them.
An amalgamation of what would have been a number of seperate posts that I then decided to unite under the banner of the Surveillance Society. Every day there seems to be further incursions into the public’s privacy.
Firstly we’ll llok at the recent news that media companies wish to use legislation that was proposed to combat terrorism, by allowing the police access to communications data, in order to tackle illegal file-sharing.
Fight for your right to privacy
BBC News: Media companies want to take advantage of laws designed to counter terrorism. Bill Thompson thinks they have to be stopped.
The Guardian: Music industry seeks access to private data to fight piracy
The music and film industries are demanding that the European parliament extends the scope of proposed anti-terror laws to help them prosecute illegal downloaders. In an open letter to MEPs, companies including Sony BMG, Disney and EMI have asked to be given access to communications data – records of phone calls, emails and internet surfing – in order to take legal action against pirates and filesharers. Current proposals restrict use of such information to cases of terrorism and organised crime.
“The scope of the proposal should be extended to all criminal offences,” says a letter to European representatives from the Creative and Media Business Alliance, an informal lobby group representing media companies. “The possibility for law enforcement authorities to use data in other cases … is essential.” The attempt to pressure MEPs comes as they prepare to vote on an extension to the period for which data must be held by telephone networks and internet service providers. The plans, championed by the British government, would harmonise and extend the broad range of policies across the continent.
The Home Office says such moves are necessary in order to assist proper investigation of suspected terrorist activity. But if successful, it would mean communications companies would be obliged to keep information on phone calls, emails and internet use for as long as three years.
“It is not for us to get involved in the wider issue of national security,” said a spokesman for international music industry association IFPI, parent body of the CBMA.
If the demands were met by European legislators, it would open use of such private information across any number of criminal cases. “Even the Bush administration is not proposing such a ludicrous policy, despite lobbying from Hollywood,” said Gus Hosein, a senior fellow at Privacy International.
The music industry has already pursued a large number of cases against illegal downloaders, but the letter claims that wider access to private information would be an “effective instrument in the fight against piracy” and help secure more legal actions. Critics say it is simply a case of litigious industries attempting to gain access to protected data by the back door.
The proposals, to be put to the vote on December 13, have already faced censure. More privacy-conscious nations such as Germany have voiced concerns about long-term data retention, and telecoms companies say they cannot afford to keep more information about their customers.
“The passing of the data retention directive would be a disaster not just for civil liberties and human rights in Europe,” said Suw Charman, director of digital rights campaigners, Open Rights Group.
The music industry has been waging war against illegal filesharing for some time, with film companies closely behind. An Australian court this week ordered Kazaa, one of the biggest file-swapping services, to filter out copyrighted music from its systems or face closure. Last week the British Phonographic Industry announced its latest batch of cases against illegal downloaders, taking the total number of UK actions to over 150.
Such prosecutions already rely on voluntary data supplied by internet providers, but the music industry would like it made compulsory. At the same time, the legitimate digital download industry continues to grow at a startling pace.
It seems to be that every time that there is some harmonization of EU intellectual property laws they are brought in line with the most restrictive laws that exist in a EU state. But in this case there is no harmonisation taking place as no state has such legislation currently.
Even the US isn’t seeking such powers and they’re the home of the most powerful music industry lobbying for more and more powers to tackle filesharing and to extend the term and scope of copyright.
I oppose the legislation in any case as I believe this wholesale retention of data is a violation of innocent citizens privacy and is unlikely to be more effective in combatting terrorism than a specific targetted wiretap of a suspect’s communications.
But to extend such legislation to cover cases of copyright infringement is ludicrous, government’s should wiegh the demands of industry against the rights of the people they represent. The average filesharer is indeed infringing copyright but they do not pose a major threat to the businesses of the music and movie industries. It is the criminals that are making millions by selling pirated copies of CDs and DVDs that are the real threat and it these criminals that the proposal will not catch.
Unfortunately I don’t have faith in the British government to weigh the arguments and consider the rights of the people.
There was a debacle several months back concerning the proposed UK National ID card. The main stumbling block for the government is that the majority of the British public is opposed to the ID card on the basis of the high cost.
(I wish the public would be opposing it due to civil liberties infringements and the complete uselessness of the proposal to tackle any of the major issues it is supposed to solve but that’s another story)
Anyway there was a leak that the Government was intending to offset the probable cost of the ID card scheme and thus make it more palatable to the British public by the selling of the data in the National Identity Register to private companies. Which caused an uproar and the Government soon announced that in fact they had never considered doing any such thing.
Governments really should not be trusted with our personal data in my opinion. It’s very easy for our privacy to be given away but far harder for us to reclaim it. The obvious counter-argument being that they must hold certain data or else how can such things as passports and driving licences be administered. In fact it is possible to create systems based upon crytographic principles that would allow officials to check whether an individual was authorised to drive a car or leave the country without knowing who they are or where they live or any other personal information about that individual.
I wrote earlier that
Even the US isn’t seeking such powers and they’re the home of the most powerful music industry lobbying for more and more powers to tackle filesharing and to extend the term and scope of copyright.
but that was merely in regard to media companies having access to all communications data.
Of course as you would expect the U.S. government wants to peer into phone service networks
The federal government wants to peer into your computer communications, forcing companies that provide high-speed access or Internet-based telephone service to design — or redesign — their networks to accommodate surveillance…
“This is like saying, `Everybody has to keep their doors unlocked because the FBI might need to get in,”‘ said Mark Rasch, a former attorney who handled computer crime cases for the Justice Department and is now senior vice president and chief security counsel of Solutionary Inc., an Omaha, Neb., computer security consulting company. “The harm of everybody keeping their doors unlocked all the time is much greater than the benefit.”
As I argued above as they already have legislation in place to allow targetted wiretaps such a proposal is unnecessary and overreaching.
On a far more local level my car number plate is being read every time I drive into Bath to work and checked against a database to see whether I’m a wanted criminal. The Bath Chronicle: Cameras scan for criminals
Now I don’t know if the data is retained or if the number plates are only in the system as long as it takes to make the check against the database. But I am worried that this data is indeed being retained and thus my and every other communter or Bath resident movements are being in effect tracked.
I have therefore pledged to create a standing order of 5 pounds per month to support an organisation that will campaign for digital rights in the UK.
The pledge is currently only a small number away from reaching it’s target.
Also I intend to use the Write to Them service to contact my MP and MEP in order to express my opposition to the EU data retention legislation.
Tags: computer security, copyright, security, surveillance, terrorism
The Guardian reports that The Royal Society is urging against freely publishing research on the internet.
The Royal Society fears it could lead to the demise of journals published by not-for-profit societies, which put out about a third of all journals. “Funders should remember that the primary aims should be to improve the exchange of knowledge between researchers and wider society.”
Open access proponents said the Royal Society position statement confuses open access publishing, in which authors pay for their research to be published on the web, with author self-archiving. The latter, which has already been carried out in some disciplines for years, relies on academics publishing on the internet articles that have been accepted by journals.
Slashdot weighs in on the issue.
Tags: science
A number of things I recommend people download this weekend. All excellent and all free.
Civilization 2
The classic game of world building probably the best PC game of the 90s.
A 1200 page Physics textbook in pdf format.
This book from Motion Mountain is Both entertaining and fascinating. It is comprehensive but easy to read and is even better for being free to download. I believe everyone should have a knowledge of physics in addition to classic literature.
BlackLight from F-Secure
With the news that some CDs from Sony have installed rootkits on users PCs it would be wise for people to download the Blacklight rootkit scanner and remover. It’s unlikely that you have a rootkit installed but for piece of mind take 10 minutes of your weekend to do this. There is an expiry date of 1st of January 2006 for this software so download and run before the end of the year.
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Pat Morita, the Japanese-American actor who gained fame as the wise Mr. Miyagi in the “Karate Kid” movies and on the television show “Happy Days,” has died in Las Vegas at the age of 73.
The Las Vegas Palm Mortuary home said Morita died of natural causes on Thursday.
Morita, who was born in California and sent to a Japanese-American internment camp during World War II, won a supporting actor nomination for his portrayal of the witty karate mentor of a young boy in 1984’s “The Karate Kid.“
Morita played the wise handyman, Mr. Miyagi. who befriended a new boy in town, played by Ralph Macchio, and helped him stand up to bullies by schooling him in Eastern philosophy and martial arts.
The film proved to be a box-office sensation and earned Morita the distinction of becoming the first Asian-American to be nominated for an acting Oscar. He lost that year to Haing S. Ngor of “The Killing Fields.”
I’m far more cut up to hear that Pat Morita died than to hear of the death of George Best. He made want to take up Karate and got me interested in Bonsai, I shall miss him.
I continue to try to catch flies with chopsticks but as yet to no avail.
Daniel: Hey, what kind of belt do you have?
Miyagi: Canvas. JC Penny. Three ninety-eight. You like?
[laughs]
Daniel: No, I meant…
Miyagi: Daniel-san… karate here.
[he taps his head]
Miyagi: Karate here.
[he taps his heart]
Miyagi: Karate never here
[points to his belt]
Miyagi: Understand?
The Karate Kid is without doubt the best portrayal of the relationship between master and pupil in a movie that I can think of. RIP Morita-sama.
