Perhaps you have forgotten what happened to Alberta the last time a PM decided to kill Albertan oil production and what effect it had on Alberta's economy. He was called Trudeau, and his name's still a curse word in the province. Albertans are one-issue voters because that one issue is the difference between big trucks and *years of grinding poverty* for many families, and that one issue has come up before in the worst possible way.

That said, I'm disgusted beyond words with the Tories and wouldn't shed a tear if a meteor hit Parliament. /shrug

Wow, you're really mad about this, huh? Okay. I have a clarification and a question.

The clarification is that I was talking about completed works after the artist's death.
The question is this; you describe the idea of society being owed the creative work as "rubbish" and "ridiculous" and "sociopathic" and "infantile" and that releasing work "should be" the artist's choice. Why? I get that you don't buy the idea that all art is theft- though I disagree with you on that- but you haven't explained what systems or assumptions you use instead.

Except that Michael Jackson was influenced by Little Richard, James Brown, and Diana Ross. And Michelangelo lifted Ghiberti's Gates of Paradise for the posing of the Sistine Chapel. And every artist ever is influenced tremendously by all the artists that preceded them, and no art is created ex nihilo. The arguments for not releasing an artist's work (ie copyright) are never that the artist doesn't owe anything to society, but that the artist needs to make a living, or to ensure that their children are provided for.

In other words, yes, society really is entitled to everything a person creates, ever, even if they never published it, because that person appropriated the majority of their work from society in the first place. Our societies have, in the last 400 years, been willing to trade some of what we're owed in free speech in order to provide monetary reward to the artists, but we're still owed that speech. Disney didn't invent Cinderella, Dan Brown didn't invent the Catholic church, Dan Bull didn't invent either rapping or Skyrim (nor did Bioware invent fantasy adventure or videogames, nor did Tolkien invent magic rings or elves, etc.., etc., etc.).

Disagree slightly.

If HR is limited to things like managing benefits packages, publishing internally generated job descriptions to job sites, pushing applicants back to the departments without gatekeeping, handling workplace complaints, and being a clearinghouse for interdepartmental transfer, then HR contributes usefully to its company. If, on the other hand, it becomes a job-defending gatekeeper that prescreens applicants, spends all its spare time coming up with workplace behaviour rules, and setting arbitrary limits on staff remuneration, then it's a parasitic infection that ought to be burned out.

It is a sad fact that in our imperfect world, most HR departments are more like the latter than the former.

Correction. Quick, easy, makes a lot of money, legal; pick three.

To use slightly more widely recognized examples of "real art," which might speak to the luddite, Michelangelo's Creation of Adam in the Sistine Chapel was a copy of Lorenzo Ghiberti's bronze casting of the same theme in the Gates of Paradise.

You know what impact the internet has had on _me_ as a Canadian? I found out about http://www.heroesofthenorth.com/, that's what. The internet allows Canadians to produce material and post it online for other people- including other Canadians- to watch. What a /tremendous/ surprise that the head of a government agency dedicated to dictating to Canadians what their culture is equates loss of government control with loss of culture. Weapons to protect cultural identify my ass; these are the guys who told the CBC to drop Air Farce and 22 Minutes, ffs.

"I would like someone to define "Canadian culture" for me"

Tim Horton's, maple syrup, hockey, decent beer, snow, bitching about the unreasonable people in provinces other than your own, health care, toques, a 3rd-to-5th-generation western-chinese-blend restaurant in nearly every small town, a broad array of the most amazing ethnic/immigrant restaurants in every large city, real bacon, real cheddar, maritime comedians, indie rock, poutine, block heaters in every car, the #1 highway, the railroad, and complaining that we have no identifiable culture.

Not complete, but I think most Canadians would recognize most of that list.

Only if you hold that the fetus is human. Which /I/ do, but many don't. Afaik, the federal government doesn't, which is why abortion is legal in America. She can claim assault, maybe, but not murder.

GWtW was rejected 14 times? So what? It was accepted once. Gibson submitted stories and got rejected constantly. Everyone struggles to survive, that's why it's called "work." The number of times a work gets rejected isn't an indicator of its value. Pro writers spend all day every day writing, they've got a pile of work they keep submitting to every publication they can, and of 30 stories they submit in a month, 2 or 3 get accepted, maybe- enough to pay rent and food. If they sell a book a year, they're doing well. If they can't sell anything, either they suck or they haven't kept trying long enough.

Look, I think there's a difference between "amateur/likes to write sometimes" and "professional writer." It's not the quality of their work, it's the quality of their work ethic when it comes to writing. Consider Jim Butcher as an example. The guy writes even on his off days. He puts out a book a year, he's on the bestsellers lists, he's a successful writer. Is he the second coming of Poe or Shelley? No. Is he a writer that makes a living by writing? Yep.

I'm not saying a writer that can't make a living sucks as a writer- certainly the challenges facing a writer are higher than for a coder, for making a living. But Tolkien wrote LOTR while he was a philology prof, not while he was a "professional writer." The prolific can churn out magazine short stories for rent while they work on their magnum opus, the less prolific can find another job to support them while they work on their magnum opus, and there's nothing wrong with a writer not having a magnum opus and just scrabbling along doing what they love and selling a couple short stories a month to publishers to pay their rent.

a) Good for you, and thanks, because I do use Linux and thus probably have some of your code. I appreciate it.
b) Writers can earn a living by writing. If they're good writers, they make a decent living. *shrug* We've got plenty of people willing to pay for stories.
c) I'm in... not exactly the same boat, obviously I'm not as good a coder as you, but... the computer stuff isn't my passion, it's my protection against eating dog food. People with a passion for X should do X, and if they're not willing to risk rent/food on X, they can do Y to pay for their doing X. There's nothing wrong with contributing to society as a hobbyist, I don't think.

I'm a theology grad student with a bunch of history courses. There's plenty of us doing fairly well in Canada, mostly because we don't think "being valuable members of society" means the same thing as "paid a lot of money." Those of us who want money get an undergrad in something practical, like computers, and then spend the time and money we have to pursue our passion. Kids who get an art history degree for their undergrad, well, that's fine- but kids who get an art history undergrad and then bitch about not getting employment are being whiny entitled losers.

To be more clear; if someone gets a degree in an area of study generally considered to be /socially/ rather than /materially/ valuable, and then makes a lot of noise about disagreeing with the capitalist/commercial economic system, they don't really make sense if their conclusion is that they're not being _paid_ enough, or _employed_ enough. They could complain that nobody listens to them, or that the government is suppressing the expression of ideas, and that's a valid complaint to make.

But complaining that a philosophy grad isn't being paid well is like complaining that an industry magnate isn't being taken seriously in the Journal of Philosophy and Ethics.

That's some high-value laundry washing, right there. I'd expect a little more out of it than housework, myself... but I've been watching a lot of GITS, so maybe I'm biased.

Welcome to the slow crawl up the far wall of the uncanny valley.

practical != fun