] But there is one group of animals in which the peculiar
] combination of the contraction of these muscles and the
] closure of the glottis does serve a clear purpose:
] primitive air breathers that still possess gills, such as
] lungfish, gar and many amphibians.

Interesting. That also offers some explination as to why you get them when you are excited. Triggering when you need more oxygen. Shrug.

Hiccups a holdover from when we had gills

Rosen does a bunch of interviews, and she comes off looking really good. (I thought) Valenti does an interview, and he comes off looking like Satan. Allow me to share a few of the high points with you before you plunge into this link...

] I wasn't opposed to the VCR.

... we just wanted a peice of all the money from it.

] It was a 5-4 Supreme Court decision that determined VCRs were
] not infringing, which I regret. As a result, we never got the
] copyright royalty fee, but everything I predicted came true.

Bullshit. Nothing you predicted came true. And I would take to task the $3.5 billion figure he cites for analog piracy. I am will to bet thats based on the number of blank VCR tapes sold, which dosen't mean shit. Not to mention, it assumes that something copied is something not bought, and in turn a complete loss. Their formulas are flawed.

] Now the difference between analog piracy and digital piracy
] is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug.

He used the "lightning and the lightning bug" line AGAIN! Hasn't someone told him yet that it dosen't even make any sence?

] It now costs about $350,000 to produce a CD; it costs $80
] million to make and market a movie. Big difference.

And DVDs are only slightly more expensive then movies.. But I'm bashing Valenti and the MPAA here, not the RIAA. I digress.

] Right now, any professor can show a complete movie in
] his classroom without paying a dime--that's fair use. What
] is not fair use is making a copy of an encrypted DVD, because
] once you're able to break the encryption, you've undermined
] the encryption itself.

ARGH! This guys must masturbate while looking at a copy of the DMCA.

] But you've already got a DVD. It lasts forever. It never
] wears out. In the digital world, we don't need back-ups,
] because a digital copy never wears out. It is timeless.

BULLSHIT.

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/01/31/1043804519345.html

] Today, it's illegal to copy a videocassette. No one has a
] fair use to copy a videocassette. If you lose it, you get
] another one, and there's nothing wrong with that. That's
] what people have been doing for generations.

ARGH! ARGH! ARGH!! I don't even know where to start with this one..

] If you don't have tightly focused, narrowly drawn mandates,
] either regulatory or congressional, then, if I'm a maverick
] computer maker in Taiwan, I can say, "Hell, I'm not going
] to play by the rules. I'm going to do it so everybody can
] copy." Then Toshiba and Sony and IBM can say, "Well if he
] does that, then I want to do it." We always operate on the
] fact that everybody needs to know that there's a 55 mph
] speed limit. That's called a standard.

Has he been in a box for the past 10 years? Or maybe someone drives him everywhere? Or he is too busy looking at the DMCA and masturbating to notice that the 55 mph limit is gone.

] At all costs, the government should stay out of censorship,
] except in war.

Jack dosen't want freedom of the press either..

] But in any other arena, I'm totally opposed to censorship
] in any form. I'm a great believer and defender of the
] First Amendment.

You can't have it both ways Jack...

] I think lobbying is really an honest profession.

sigh.

] Known for his sharp rhetorical abilities, Valenti always
] speaks about piracy in calamitous terms, prophesizing the
] eventual death of the movie industry.

These are 'sharp retorical abilities' ?!?

Lightning and the lightning bug? The 55 mph thing? Saying one statement and then pretty much contradicting yourself in the next sentence?

This guys sucks. Really..

Hey, look! Valenti is making himself look like an idiot! (again)

] These are the key points of the US Secretary of State
] Colin Powell's briefing to the Security Council on Iraqi
] non-compliance with UN resolutions.

No commentary in this one. Just a summary of Powell's points.

BBC | Powell UN briefing: Key points

] "I'm not aware of it ever happening before," Casey said.
] ".gov, .edu and .mil carry a feeling of
] trustworthiness...People have learned to place more faith
] in them."
]
] Claiming credit for the deleted .gov site is a man who
] calls himself Robert L. Taylor III, whose name and
] contact information appeared in documents on the AONN.gov
] site.
]
] Taylor, who appears to reside near Everett, Wash.,
] declined to explain how, exactly, he secured a .gov
] domain for the group, calling AONN's operations
] "classified."
]
] "We have exploited a security hole in the bureaucracy,"
] Taylor said in a telephone interview. "There are
] loopholes, there are security holes, there are holes in
] the system."

It may be the first time a .gov domain has been jacked..

Used to happen all the time with .edu domains. I remember an old text ezine named Radioactive Aardvark Dung getting rad.edu several years go. This isn't the only example of it, but its the only one I can think of at the molment.

A quick google turns up some info on that one:

http://public.planetmirror.com/pub/textfiles/history/radexposed.txt
] we wanted to get our own domain, instead of a long url like
] we had. so phorce, with all of his infinite knowledge, told
] me he could get and host a .edu domain. one catch, you have
] to be a four year institution of higher learning to get that
] -- and we were a stupid humor zine. phorce wrote up a flyer
] in publisher for raleigh art & design school & faxed it to
] internic. yes, it was that easy. we had our domain in a
] few days, with our own .edu e-mail addresses. a feat that
] has never been and will never be topped in the 'zine scene.
] to make this believable, i added a little note at the main
] page that said "radioactive aardvark dung is joint project
] done by the senior staff at raleigh art & design school."
] and we never had a problem with it.

Feds pull suspicious .gov site - CNET.com

] Eisner fired a salvo two years back, when, during
] congressional testimony about Internet piracy, he singled
] out Apple's "Rip, Mix, Burn" ad campaign, infuriating
] Jobs. Eisner has since apologized, but Jobs now deals
] mostly with Disney's more easygoing studio chief, Richard
] W. Cook. Still, the studios continue to maneuver. To keep
] Lasseter onboard, Jobs extended his contract and gave him
] a $1.25 million bonus. Disney signed Shrek producer John
] H. Williams to make three computer-generated films.

Talk is abound about how Jobs has a conflict of interest because he is head of a media company and a computer company. His media company makes computer based movies. If there is a conflict of interests, its likely because either the media industry is broken or the computer industry is broken. They _should_ be able to work together considering most hollywood movies are nothing more then special effects bonazas. Being this is Disney and Eisner we are talking about, I think the media industry is likely the broken one. If you take into account Disney's drop in quality over the past several years, it nails down that argument for me. Disney has not made anything I've been interested in seeing for a long time now. Walt has rolled over in his grave at least 10 times now.. Or his head has turned around in the pool of liquid nitrogen.. Whatever..

BW Online | Is Steve Jobs About to Move His Cheese?

] In fact, Norton called the Arctic Refuge "one of the most
] environmentally appropriate places we can look for
] energy." Why? Because of all the things that can be done
] "in a high-tech way" to protect it.
]
] Congress has yet to approve drilling in the Arctic
] Refuge. Six Republican senators recently signed a letter
] saying they won't be part of any effort to sneak it
] through in a spending bill without open debate.
]
] Yet, Bush's proposed budget assumed $2.4 billion in
] revenue from the first oil lease sale in the Alaska
] preserve.
]
] The Republican Party learned -- painfully -- in the 1990s
] that the environment can be a new third rail in American
] politics. President Clinton played against the perceived
] extremism of House Speaker Newt Gingrich in cruising to
] re-election in 1996.

... and we all know you don't piss on the third rail..

This is an issue I've done a fair amount of bouncing back and forth on. While I do think we need to tap that reserve, and I think that it is possible to do it in a "high tech" way that will not damage the environment, I have my doubts about it being implemented properly. I always have doubts when the key thing I'm concerned with can simply not be followed thru on. I fear we get all the promises, congress oks it, we drill, it falls off the media radar, next thing you know a section of the refuge looks like the area of Jersey around EWR commonly referred to as "The Oil Wasteland". Yeah, I know thats an area where processing happens, not drilling, and drilling can be done cleanly, but this is a Bush plan we are talking about..

The title of this oped piece is reason enough to blog it.

In the Northwest: Bush smiles at environment, but his teeth are fangs

] Company says in SEC filing it may have to cut its
] software prices because of increased popularity of
] open-source offerings.

This has been all over the news. Although, its not as significant as some people are making it out to be. The OSS community does a pretty good job of turning any squeak out of Microsoft into a rally cry of success... I don't see a problem with that, as long as time goes on they/we don't get cocky. Microsoft has long been regarded as invincible. That time is ending, but most of the OSS companies are still far from putting away the red ink.

The main reason I'm blogging this is because so many people told me that Open Source Software was never going to have any kind of signifigant effect on Microsoft's bottom line. A good chunk of those people work at Microsoft now. Told you so. I think I said "about another 2 years" at the time too.. Looks like I was 100% right. It will continue.

Viva Freedom. Viva the public domain. We will share our best works in the future. We will use information technology to empower, not to control. Its the right way to do it, and you know it.

InformationWeek | Microsoft Warns Of Open-Source Pricing Threat

If you agree with Thompson's perspective on America, and you're looking for a worst case scenario, you could do worse then to read this book. Its a psycho analysis of the reasons that people establish totalitarian states. This is what fear does to societies.

Amazon.com: Books: Escape from Freedom

:P (|)

slurp!

Geek Pr0n (SFW)

This is funny as hell. I love the closeup of the VCR in the third frame. If Disney did redo the Pirates of the Caribbean ride to have animatronic portrayals of P2P users and overseas DVD duplication labs, I would make the trip to see it. Thats my idea of entertainment.

Link from boingboing.net.

Fox Trot and the War on Technology