A quick thought...

Bread and circuses, a quick fact check, and a few definitions...

Back on the subject of a VolksCruiser...

Of course, a cheap boat is going to have some issues but considering that for a lot of people it's a choice between being able to go cruising or only dreaming of going, which are you going to do?

It's a simple choice...

Listening to Seasick Steve

So it goes...

Some VolksCruiser thoughts...

I'll believe it when I see a bunch of rich dudes doing perp walks, Lat 38 weighs in on the Italian tax, and in a world with real problems what new laws are in the works?

Several readers apparently want to know what I'd consider a VolksCruiser and the best I can seem to come up with is it all depends...

Obviously, it has to be affordable and by affordable we do not mean affordable by someone with a trust fund or a Swiss bank account so let's just say something a blue collar worker or someone who works at the local Starbucks can put together with some hard work and a bit of sacrifice. So, for the sake of argument, let's say the VolksCruiser is going to set you back somewhere south of $25K.

Ah, I can hear you saying to yourself "But, I can't get a boat for less than $25K!"... Well as luck (or the destruction of our economy) would have it, there are a lot of cheap boats out there... Go to Craiggers and do a search for sailboats under $10K and you will see lots of interesting boats there for a lot less...

Because the VolksCruiser needs to be affordable to sail and keep up, it most likely would be under forty-feet in length and not a multihull (Hey, I LIKE multihulls but you're simply not going to find one or keep it sailing on a VolksCruiser budget). The smaller the boat the easier it is to keep things cheap and as the saying goes...  

"Small boat small problems"

More on the subject tomorrow...

Listening to The Flying Burrito Bros

So it goes...

Sure pigs can fly...

Isolated incidents, a good case against corporate friendly tweaks, and did someone say "Zombie"?

Over at Attainable Adventure Cruising there is a pretty good post and discussion on the idea that there is a need for a "Model T" bluewater cruiser... Not that I actually agree with most of it but it is a good starting point for a discussion. Personally, my take is that the idea of a "VolksCruiser" makes a lot of sense but it is impossible to do it within the current marine trades mindset without losing the greed factor and getting rid of all the marketing input... So, I'm not going to hold my breath (then again, I'm told that with a big enough trebuchet you can make a pig fly).

The funny thing is with current tech developments it is actually a lot easier to produce a good boat for less money these days. For instance, carbon and other fibers of the same ilk used correctly really can have an amazing cost cutting effect on a boat build resulting in a stronger, lighter and more easily built hull and boat...

Of course, that is not how the marine trades work, so any cost savings wind up as added profit and the use of carbon and other miracle materials becomes just another way to jack up the cost.

That said, in the real world, home builds or rehabbed classic plastic and other older no longer fashionable boats are the real "VolksCruiser" and wishing for the marine industry to changes its stripes is simply wishful thinking and forum fodder...

On a serious note, rehabbing an older boat is a much more sustainable and ecologically sound practice than a new build and if your sailing needs can be met by an older boat all the better and the world will be a whole lot better for it... just saying.

Listening to the new album from Mr Big

So it goes...

A new book...

Rewriting history, the libertarian climate change conundrum, and just what do you buy with that $5 million...


I'm currently reading the new Robert Crais book which is something of a novelty, as being in the Caribbean you just don't get a book on its publication day. The usual way of things is seeing that Crais has a new hardcover out and waiting till it comes out in paperback then ordering it from Amazon. So, by that standard, I'd be getting my hands on "Taken" sometime in January of 2013.


Part of the problem of waiting for books to come out in paperback is the avoidance of reviews and any mention of an eagerly awaited book because of possible spoilers and suchlike. I mean, don't you hate when you find out who did it a year before you get to read the damn book?


Being boatfolk, the answer was never to buy the hard cover as it's expensive and they take up too much precious shelf space...


Speaking of shelf space, I already have eighty-five books on my Kindle (most of those free as it happens) and they range from "The Riddle of the Sands" to "Boats with an Open Mind" (for some reason the Bolger no longer seems available on Kindle) on the nautical front and "Dracula" to the most current Crais novel in fiction...

At this rate I'm going to be able to have lots and lots of books as well as have room enough for a new double neck guitar.

Is progress cool or what?

Listening to Leslie West

So it goes...

Those little eureka moments...

Just a bit of right wing political behavior, Moldy Chum points out something of interest, and about those thirty job bills...

The redesign/evolution of the galley continues and other than working out a better gimbal for the single burner stove and some more storage tweaks, it's now just a matter of putting all of the bits together and simply get to building.

Of course, that's after I finish the new dinghy...

The eureka moment on the whole project came about when I quit thinking in terms of a two burner with oven stove (as cool as it was) and realized I only needed a single burner which I never would have considered if we had not bought our stove top oven which radically made me rethink the whole cooking process...

Listening to Mr Big

So it goes...

A quick note about stitch and glue...

An interesting read, a note on a passing, and “If you want to walk fast, walk alone. If you want to walk far, walk together.”

Throwing together a stitch and glue dinghy is pretty easy and working a couple hours a day for a few days you wind up with a dinghy that performs just fine at a fraction of the cost of an inflatable...

In my mind, the real advantage is that it's easy to tweak whatever dinghy you are building for your own use. In the case of the one sitting on my deck right now, I'm pretty sure I'm going to be glassing in a couple of rod holders, a place for the dinghy anchor and rode to sit, as well as a means of keeping jerry cans immobile when I ferry water out to the boat.

The best book on the subject for me will always be Dynamite Payson's  "Build the New Instant Boats" which will tell you everything you need to know on the subject and give you some great building plans as well... 

Fun stuff...

Listening to Kassav

So it goes...

Something of a conundrum...

A freedom of the press workaround, Cartel enforcers, and, there's always more to the story...

I'm curious about something and I wonder if any Boat Bits readers have a clue as to the answer...

Last night I noticed an anchor light in an odd place but figured I was just a little turned around as we had an evil swell so none of the boats were in the usual places. This morning I see that the anchor light in question was provided by a boat that is anchored right in the middle of the channel through the reef.

Now, maybe it's just me, but anchoring in a marked channel seems like an odd place to drop the hook, especially when that channel is used all the time by inter-island freight boats who are in a hurry and made of steel.

The thing is, it's not an unusual occurrence. The first couple of times I simply wrote it off to the doofus factor but it happens so regularly these days I'm starting to wonder if it's in the guide book or the new ASA syllabus...

So anyway, if any readers have the answer to why folks seem to think anchoring in a buoyed channel is OK, do let me know as it's been keeping me up nights...

Listening to Sons of Bill

So it goes...

Dumpster diving heaven...

An interesting talk, some thoughts on "hard work", and something to think about...

"There's a sucker born every minute"

- most likely not said by P.T. Barnum

Way back when, in Las Palmas a few days before the ARC was due to depart, a guy was humping a Simson Lawrence 555 manual windlass up the dock and as we passed each other I asked if he was getting it repaired...

"Nope, I'm going to go put it in the dumpster" 

At the time it seemed like the man had taken some leave of his senses but I was already late to a paying job on another ARC boat so I did not have time to chat about the reason someone was hauling a perfectly good, newish, and if not pristine, expensive bit of gear to the dumpster...

A couple of hours later with a job done and cash money in my pocket I decided a visit to the dumpsters was in order.

What I found at the dumpsters was, for me at least, a thing of awesome splendor... a cornucopia of perfectly good batteries, VHF radios, sat navs, solar panels, Lorans, at least three manual windlasses, and one complete Aries wind vane, all being pawed over by a handful of cruisers of my ilk (translated roughly as non-ARC folk) who were busy making piles of stuff to take back to their own boats...

So, what could make these ARC cruisers behave like Lemmings and start ripping perfectly good stuff off their boats a few days before their Atlantic crossing? A mania for lightening up their boats, maybe an urge to shed expensive gear and return to the simple cruising lifestyle, or was it something more sinister?

It would seem that at the various ARC workshops of that year, mostly taught by various marine business concerns, a lot of the advice on offer was of the "you'd be a fool to cross the Atlantic without new batteries/windvane/electric windlass/new GPS/etc and as it happens I have just the thing right here and can install it before the fleet leaves" sort... The phrase "shooting fish in a barrel" does come to mind and the only thing I feel needs to be said is that you should always question advice from a man who has a vested interest in selling you something.

So, for a few days in Las Palmas folks were either selling gear at silly cheap prices or simply throwing it away and to this day those dumpsters in Las Palmas have a special place in my heart and I'm looking forward to going back right about ARC time...

Listening to Lucy Kaplansky

So it goes...

That sinking feeling...

A cool mini-Simmons, Gin & Tacos has a must read, and a moment of reflection on Iraq now a healthy democratic state...

So, since we have the weather from hell going on at the moment I'm trying to sort out various needful stuff for the new galley project...

I'm pretty sure I've sorted out the new stove situation and the only thing that remains to figure out is a sink and plumbing, and, it's raining and I'm bored, what better way to waste some time and see what a proper boat sink costs?

Well, for starters, I went over to the West Marine website to see what they have and sure enough they have a really nice sink, about the right size, and it costs $224.99...

Next stop was Defender, who had a round sink about the right diameter but not quite what I was looking for (too shallow) but, that said, at a much more affordable $110.99...

Oh damn, I'm getting that sinking feeling... (by the way it just so happens that the Bill Forsyth film "That Sinking Feeling" is one of my all time favorite films, so if you ever get a chance to see it, do so) but, what am I thinking of even looking at marine stores for galley products, don't I ever learn?

So, let's check out Ikea and see what they have... It would seem that they have a stainless sink just the right size for $46.98. As one does while shopping a site, I came across a sink that, while not round, was the right shape to fit the space I have perfectly for $26.98 and who really needs a round sink anyway...

Listening to Marah

So it goes...

Important stuff if you read blogs like Boat Bits...

About those drums in the background, Robert Reich makes a point, and all is good now that we have TSA compliant cupcakes!

What is so bad about SOPA and PROTECT IP?

Threat to online freedom of speech

According to the EFF, proxy servers, such as those used during the Arab Spring, can also be used to thwart copyright enforcement and therefore may be made illegal by the act.

On TIME's Techland blog, Jerry Brito wrote, "Imagine if the U.K. created a blacklist of American newspapers that its courts found violated celebrities' privacy? Or what if France blocked American sites it believed contained hate speech?" Similarly, the Center for Democracy and Technology warned, "If SOPA and PIPA are enacted, the US government must be prepared for other governments to follow suit, in service to whatever social policies they believe are important—whether restricting hate speech, insults to public officials, or political dissent."

Laurence H. Tribe, a Harvard University professor of constitutional law, released an open letter on the web stating that SOPA would “undermine the openness and free exchange of information at the heart of the Internet. And it would violate the First Amendment.”

The AFL-CIO's Paul Almeida, arguing in favor of SOPA, has stated that free speech was not a relevant consideration, because "The First Amendment does not protect stealing goods off trucks."

Negative impact on websites that host user content

Journalist Rebecca MacKinnon argued in an op-ed that making companies liable for users' actions could have a chilling effect on user-generated sites like YouTube. "The intention is not the same as China’s Great Firewall, a nationwide system of Web censorship, but the practical effect could be similar", she says.

The EFF has warned that Etsy, Flickr and Vimeo all seem likely to shut down if the bill becomes law. According to critics, the bill would ban linking to sites deemed offending, even in search results and on services such as Twitter.

Christian Dawson, COO of Virginia-based hosting company ServInt, predicted that the legislation would lead to many cloud computing and Web hosting services moving out of the US to avoid lawsuits. Conversely, Michael O'Leary of the MPAA argued at the November 16 Judiciary Committee hearing that the act's effect on business would be more minimal, noting that at least 16 countries block websites, and the internet still functions in those countries. Denmark, Finland, Ireland and Italy blocked The Pirate Bay after courts ruled in favor of music and film industry litigation, and a coalition of film and record companies has threatened to sue British Telecom if it does not follow suit. Maria Pallante of the US Copyright Office said that Congress has updated the Copyright Act before and should again, or "the U.S. copyright system will ultimately fail." Asked for clarification, she said that the US currently lacks jurisdiction over websites in other countries.

Weakening of "safe harbor" protections for websites

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), passed in 1998, includes a provision, known as the Online Copyright Infringement Liability Limitation Act, that provides a "safe harbor" for websites that host content. Under that provision, copyright owners who feel that a website is hosting content that infringes on their copyright are required to submit a notice to that website to ask for the infringing material to be removed, and the website is then given a certain amount of time to remove such material. SOPA would override this "safe harbor" provision, by allowing judges to immediately block access to any website found guilty of hosting copyrighted material.
According to critics of the bill such as the Center for Democracy and Technology and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the bill's wording is vague enough that a single complaint about even a major website could be enough to cause the site to be blocked, with the burden of proof then resting on the website to get itself un-blocked. The focus of much of the criticism is on a statement in the bill, that any website would be blocked that "is taking, or has taken deliberate actions to avoid confirming a high probability of the use of the U.S.-directed site to carry out acts that constitute a violation." Critics have read this to mean that a website that does not actively monitor its content for copyright violations, but instead waits for others to notify it of such violations, could be guilty under the law.

Law professor Jason Mazzone wrote, "Damages are also not available to the site owner unless a claimant 'knowingly materially' misrepresented that the law covers the targeted site, a difficult legal test to meet. The owner of the site can issue a counter-notice to restore payment processing and advertising but services need not comply with the counter-notice".

Goodlatte stated, "We're open to working with them on language to narrow [the bill's provisions], but I think it is unrealistic to think we're going to continue to rely on the DMCA notice-and-takedown provision. Anybody who is involved in providing services on the Internet would be expected to do some things. But we are very open to tweaking the language to ensure we don't impose extraordinary burdens on legitimate companies as long as they aren't the primary purveyors [of pirated content]".

The MPAA's O'Leary submitted written testimony in favor of the bill that expressed guarded support of current DMCA provisions. "Where these sites are legitimate and make good faith efforts to respond to our requests, this model works with varying degrees of effectiveness," O'Leary wrote. "It does not, however, always work quickly, and it is not perfect, but it works."

General threat to web-related businesses

A news analysis in the information technology magazine eWeek stated, "The language of SOPA is so broad, the rules so unconnected to the reality of Internet technology and the penalties so disconnected from the alleged crimes that this bill could effectively kill e-commerce or even normal Internet use. The bill also has grave implications for existing U.S., foreign and international laws and is sure to spend decades in court challenges."

Art Bordsky of advocacy group Public Knowledge similarly stated that "The definitions written in the bill are so broad that any US consumer who uses a website overseas immediately gives the US jurisdiction the power to potentially take action against it."

On October 28, 2011, the EFF called the bill a "massive piece of job-killing Internet regulation," and said, "This bill cannot be fixed; it must be killed."
Gary Shapiro, CEO of the Consumer Electronics Association, spoke out strongly against the bill, stating that "The bill attempts a radical restructuring of the laws governing the Internet," and that "It would undo the legal safe harbors that have allowed a world-leading Internet industry to flourish over the last decade. It would expose legitimate American businesses and innovators to broad and open-ended liability. The result will be more lawsuits, decreased venture capital investment, and fewer new jobs."

Lukas Biewald, founder of CrowdFlower, stated that "It'll have a stifling effect on venture capital... No one would invest because of the legal liability."
Booz & Company on November 16 released a study, funded by Google, finding that almost all of the 200 venture capitalists and angel investors interviewed would stop funding digital media intermediaries if the House bill becomes law. More than 80 percent said they would rather invest in a risky, weak economy with the current laws than a strong economy with the proposed law in effect. If legal ambiguities were removed and good faith provisions in place, investing would increase by nearly 115 percent.

As reported by David Carr of the New York Times in an article critical of SOPA and PIPA, Google, Facebook, Twitter and other companies sent a joint letter to Congress, stating "We support the bills’ stated goals — providing additional enforcement tools to combat foreign ‘rogue’ Web sites that are dedicated to copyright infringement or counterfeiting. However, the bills as drafted would expose law-abiding U.S. Internet and technology companies to new uncertain liabilities, private rights of action and technology mandates that would require monitoring of Web sites.” In response to Carr's article, bill sponsor and Committee Chairman Lamar Smith said the article "unfairly criticizes the Stop Online Piracy Act", and, "does not point to any language in the bill to back up the claims. SOPA targets only foreign Web sites that are primarily dedicated to illegal and infringing activity. Domestic Web sites, like blogs, are not covered by this legislation." Lamar also said that Carr incorrectly framed the debate as between the entertainment industry and high-tech companies, noting support by more than "120 groups and associations across diverse industries, including the United States Chamber of Commerce".

Threat to users uploading content

Lateef Mtima, director of the Institute for Intellectual Property and Social Justice at Howard University School of Law, expressed concern that users who upload copyrighted content to sites such as YouTube could potentially be held criminally liable themselves, saying, "Perhaps the most dangerous aspect of the bill is that the conduct it would criminalize is so poorly defined. While on its face the bill seems to attempt to distinguish between commercial and non-commercial conduct, purportedly criminalizing the former and permitting the latter, in actuality the bill not only fails to accomplish this but, because of its lack of concrete definitions, it potentially criminalizes conduct that is currently permitted under the law."
An aide to bill sponsor Lamar Smith has said, "This bill does not make it a felony for a person to post a video on YouTube of their children singing to a copyrighted song. The bill specifically targets websites dedicated to illegal or infringing activity. Sites that host user content—like YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter—have nothing to be concerned about under this legislation".

Threat to internal networks

A paper by the Center for Democracy and Technology says that the bill "targets an entire website even if only a small portion hosts or links to some infringing content."
According to A. M. Reilly of Industry Leaders Magazine, under SOPA, culpability for distributing copyright material is extended to those who aid the initial poster of said material. For companies that use virtual private networks to create a network that appears to be internal but is spread across various offices and employees' homes, any of these offsite locations that initiate sharing of copyright material can put the entire VPN and hosting company at risk of violation.

Answering similar criticism in a CNET editorial, RIAA head Cary Sherman wrote: "Actually, it's quite the opposite. By focusing on specific sites rather than entire domains, action can be targeted against only the illegal subdomain or Internet protocol address rather than taking action against the entire domain."

Threat to free and open source software

The Electronic Frontier Foundation expressed concern that free and open source software (FLOSS) projects found to be aiding online piracy may experience serious problems under SOPA. Of special concern is the web browser Firefox, made by Open-Source advocate Mozilla, which has a plug-in, MAFIAAFire Redirector, that redirects users to the new location for domains that were seized by the U.S. government. In May 2011, Mozilla refused a request by the Department of Homeland Security to pull MAFIAAFire from its website, asking "Have any courts determined that the Mafiaafire add-on is unlawful or illegal in any way?"

Ineffectual against piracy

Edward J. Black, president and CEO of the Computer & Communication Industry Association, wrote in the Huffington Post that "Ironically, it would do little to stop actual pirate websites, which could simply reappear hours later under a different name, if their numeric web addresses aren't public even sooner. Anyone who knows or has that web address would still be able to reach the offending website."
An editorial in the San Jose Mercury-News stated, "Imagine the resources required to parse through the millions of Google and Facebook offerings every day looking for pirates who, if found, can just toss up another site in no time."

Deep-packet inspection and invasion of privacy

According to Markham Erickson, head of NetCoalition, which opposes SOPA, the section of the bill that would allow judges to order internet service providers to block access to infringing websites to customers located in the United States would also allow the checking of those customers' IP address, a method known as IP blocking. Erickson has expressed concerns that such an order might require those providers to engage in "deep packet inspection", which involves analyzing all of the content being transmitted to and from the user, and may raise new privacy concerns.

Negative impact on DNS, DNSSEC and Internet security

The Domain Name System (DNS) servers, most often equated with a phone directory, translate browser requests for domain names into the IP address assigned to that computer or network. The bill requires these servers to stop referring requests for infringing domains to their assigned IP addresses.

Andrew Lee, CEO of ESET North America, has expressed concerns that since the bill would require internet service providers to filter DNS queries for the sites, this would undermine the integrity of the Domain Name System.

Representative Zoe Lofgren (D-CA), whose district includes part of Silicon Valley, has called the bill "the end of the internet as we know it."

According to David Ulevitch, the San Francisco-based head of OpenDNS, the passage of SOPA could cause Americans to switch to DNS providers located in other countries who offer encrypted links, and may cause U.S. providers, such as OpenDNS itself, to move to other countries, such as the Cayman Islands.

In November 2011, a new anonymous top-level domain, .bit, was launched outside of ICANN control, as a response to the perceived threat from SOPA, although its effectiveness (as well as the effectiveness of other alternative DNS roots) remains unknown.

Internet security

A white paper by several internet security experts, including Steve Crocker and Dan Kaminsky, wrote, "From an operational standpoint, a resolution failure from a nameserver subject to a court order and from a hacked nameserver would be indistinguishable. Users running secure applications have a need to distinguish between policy-based failures and failures caused, for example, by the presence of an attack or a hostile network, or else downgrade attacks would likely be prolific."

DNSSEC

There have been concerns raised that SOPA would harm the usefulness of the Domain Name System Security Extensions (DNSSEC), a set of protocols developed by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) for ensuring internet security. A white paper by the Brookings Institution wrote that "The DNS system is based on trust," adding that DNSSEC was developed to prevent malicious redirection of DNS traffic, and that "other forms of redirection will break the assurances from this security tool."
On November 17, Sandia National Laboratories, a research agency of the U.S. Department of Energy, released a technical assessment of the DNS filtering provisions in the House and Senate bills, in response to a request from Rep. Lofgren. The assessment stated of both bills that the DNS filtering would be unlikely to be effective, would negatively impact internet security, and would delay full implementation of DNSSEC.

On November 18, House cybersecurity subcommittee chairman Dan Lungren stated that he had "very serious concerns" about SOPA's impact on DNSSEC, adding, "we don't have enough information, and if this is a serious problem as was suggested by some of the technical experts that got in touch with me, we have to address it."

Lack of transparency in enforcement

Brooklyn Law School professor Jason Mazzone warned, "Much of what will happen under SOPA will occur out of the public eye and without the possibility of holding anyone accountable. For when copyright law is made and enforced privately, it is hard for the public to know the shape that the law takes and harder still to complain about its operation."

Who are my congressional representatives and how do I contact them?

Congress needs to hear from all of us or this bill is going to pass. Each representative usually publishes their phone number, email address, or a contact form on their individual official websites. Links to their websites can be found in these directories:

• Directory of Representatives
• Directory of Senators

I don't live in the US. What can I do?

The US State Department constantly speaks out against internet censorship in other countries. Pressure them to speak out against America’s new domestic censorship system.

• Email the State Department

Listening to Lee Michaels

So it goes...