A court in Moscow has confirmed that the head of the company that runs allofMP3.com is NOT breaking any Russian laws. Prosecutors originally bought a case against him for selling MP3s without (mainly Western) record companies’ permission, nor paying them. Russian music labels are not thought to have kicked up a fuss, as they have mostly signed up to a scheme to receive some royalties for each download. Check the BBC article for further information. It would basically appear that Russia has a different approach to intellectual properties, and if Western companies do not want to sign up to schemes that undercut their retail outlets (and so be seen to approve of AllofMP3.com) Russian authorities do not care.
Over here in Kazakhstan, although software is now a little more limited (it is now rarer to see pirated MS Windows or Office products on display for example), you can still easily pick up copies of Albums, MP3 compilations of a wide range of artists, and games for most CD/DVD based gaming systems, including PCs. It certainly saves a lot of money for the average Kazakh consumer, who otherwise could not afford to pay for the original real McCoy, especially at Western prices. The pirated copies are mostly produced in Russia, and other than being sold in CD cases, rather than larger sized cardboard boxes, are normally pretty indistinguishable from the retail versions in Britain. Manuals are often included as a PDF on the disc, and the case inserts are normally above average colour copies of the originals, though the back is often re-designed to include the contact details and logos of the Russian pirates/company involved.
Aug 30 2007
Russian Copyright Obligations Clarified
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Aug 29 2007
The Barrel Restaurant
As I mentioned in the previous post, we (Ira, Me, Balzhan, Ildar, Masha, Dr. Natalya, Sasha & Sveta) went out to celebrate Dr. Natalya & Sasha’s new car. In the same way as you ‘wet’ a baby’s head, major accomplishments are celebrated with a drink over here; if you have something to drink, you should have a meal with it. So, we went to the restaurant that uses huge barrels as outdoor dining areas. We all had pork sashliq (kebabs) a little to drink, and generally nattered a little. Before hand, we went and inspected the VW Golf, which is a definite improvement over their old soviet-style car (could have been an old-style Lada?). After that, Sasha dropped the car back at the flat and walked to the restaurant, so he could drink as well.
Anyway, enough of the text, onto the photos…
So first we have a few shots of the car
Now we have the food, starting with the lovely, straight from the oven, lepioshka bread, followed by the potato sausage thingies, some (apparently) delicious salad and the main course – the sashliq 🙂
Oh, and the leftovers 😉
Finally we have the attendants of the evening’s festivities…
Lastly, Balzhan’s nails, of which she was very proud. We had been waiting a while for our food by this time, so Dr. Natalya was threatening to start nibbling on Balzhan’s hands…
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Aug 16 2007
Don’t Vote For Me!
If you remember, I entered a competition over at StarGazer.at a while back. The blog owner (who also wrote the WP-HeadlineAnimator plug in 🙂 ) is going on a road trip across Austria for a children’s charity. On a moped! Anyway, the voting has now started on the various logos that have been submitted. I personally quite like the Arkion.de logo, and have voted for that. I personally submitted an entry at the beginning because there was only one other at the time, and I thought the post looked a little sparse. Anway, head over to the Austrian Road Trip logo competition and place your vote now.
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Jul 23 2007
Brown Holds Emergency Meetings Re. Floods
The British Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, held a Cobra committee (Cabinet Office Briefing Rooms) meeting regarding the response to the national flooding problems. Glos.’s Gold Command emergency response team was represented by Tim Brian – it’s head. He was included in the meeting (via a phone link up) as my home county (Gloucestershire) was one the hardest hit counties. There was the normal amount of slopey shoulders and buck passing, as the government has come under fire for not providing help to prevent the flooding, and assistance to clear up the mess. Some have stated the current military deployments in Afghanistan and Iraq had made their assistance difficult in areas; the response was, no that isn’t the case, anyway, sandbags are the local council’s responsibility…
hey ho.
On a more positive note, it looks like there will be more funding put in place for proper flood defence systems in the future – whilst these may not completely prevent future floods, they may help to stem the flow, and give better warnings.
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Jul 02 2007
Kazakh HIV Case Completed
More positive news to follow, but this recently caught my eye over at the BBC web site.
21 people from Shymkent, involved in the medical profession, have been found guilty of producing an HIV outbreak. This incident has so far been known to take the lives of 10 children, with another 110 infected. The case was that these workers, through negligence, fraud and bad medical practice, needlessly engineered situations where patients received un-necessary treatments. As blood was used in transfusions that had not been properly screened, infected samples were used, and so patients were put in extremely high risks. Just as often, medical apparatus was not properly cleaned between procedures, so infections from previous blood supplies were carried over to the next batch.
Some have commented that is not very surprising that the ex-head of the regional health department and her deputies only received suspended sentences.
Jun 19 2007
Pres Answers The Public
And it is KZBlog to the rescue again 🙂
They have posted a small summary (and some relevant links to other related posts) of President Nazarbayev’s online press conference, where he answered questions electronically submitted by citizens. See What Would You Like To Ask Him? for a little background on the process that occurred leading to this conference.
He answered some of the questions people were asking re. Aliev (Aliyev?), which is definitely an improvement over what may possibly have occurred years ago, with a blanket ban on such matters being aired in public. Whilst this country, if directly compared to ‘matured’ democracies in the West, still has a long way to go in some respects, there does seem to be an acceptance that some discussion is unavoidable, and that it is better to deal with/manage a situation, rather than simply stick your head in the sand.
May 08 2007
Something Rotten
Something Rotten – Jasper Fforde
Last (see end of review) book in this series of 4, Jasper seems to have bowed to public expectation, and plays a great deal on the possibilities of what happens when ego-centric fictional characters enter the real world (Hamlet being one, hence the title of this book). Thursday has worked her way up to position of Head of the literary police force Jurisfiction, based in the literary world.
However, Thursday has had her son, and is now itching to return to the real world. She longs to try and rescue her husband from his current state of non-existence and reunite her whole family together for the first time. When she returns to reality though, things are going seriously awry again, and she has a lot of work to do. Goliath have publicly atoned for their previous transgressions, and with a nod to the Church of Scientology, have decided the most profitable business path to go down is turn itself into a religion.
I’m looking forward to the next, and possibly last 🙁 , book in this series by Jasper Fforde which I think is due to be published this summer. I’ll try and find it and write a review when it becomes available.
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May 04 2007
Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions
Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions – Edwin A. Abbott
If you’ve never read this book, skip this review, go buy it and read it now! It really was that good. Again, like Isaac Asimov’s I, Robot, there have been so many cultural references to this piece of work, it is quite amazing.
Anyway, I’m skipping head of myself there, sorry. The basic idea of this book revolves around dimensions. Or social classes and their detrimental effect on society. Or just a funny story. It all depends what level you want to read this book at. In terms of dimensions, these days it isn’t too difficult too imagine a transition from 2-D to 3-D. At the most basic level, if you think about any time a 2-D animated cartoon has featured either ‘real’ human actors on screen, or 3-D generated computer graphics, you’ve already understood the concept of moving from 2 dimensions to 3. Now imagine going from 2 dimensions to 1! Not only do you have no depth, there is no height either (in this book’s case at least)!
The characters in this world are all basic flat geometric shapes, and their society is divided up along the lines of how many sides their shapes have. A perfect circle is the most elevated possible position to attain, but you can only get there through many generations of offspring. Simple triangles, especially of the non-equilateral variety, are the most base form of life in this society, and so are restricted to manual work. At this point you can probably see how this book was also written as a critique of the society (Victorian?) that surrounded Edwin A. Abbott as he wrote this novel.
Many people have made reference to this book, and the clever way it attempts to describe the seismic changes required to comprehend the lack of, or addition of, a dimension. Considering when this book was written, it has aged incredibly well. Are you still reading this? STOP, go and buy the book, please 🙂
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