The problem with these sorts of "educational" issues lies within the nature of the public educational system itself which--in addition to the rest of its inherent failures--is necessarily political. Were this a private school, then such an issue would be trivial: simply do what the parents demand, and if you don't, you'll lose paying customers.

And thus is demonstrated the insane perversity of government confiscating its citizens' wealth to produce entertainment (or, even, news, but no matter). Boing Boing wouldn't see that as the problem, however, but rather efforts to use DRM to protect that government-funded material from being copied against the governm...

Oh, Hell, it's not worth trying to figure out. Just suffice it to say that Boing Boing has no problem with government's involvement in this sort of thing, but rather the story just elicits their usual kneejerk reaction to DRM.

My definition of American-Iranian normalization? Iran as a parking lot and, after the glow is gone, us parked right on top of them.

I have a seven-year-old son. This story almost brought me to tears.

Literally.

And these "Freedom Fighters," as Michael Moore would like us to think of them, are fighting not for freedom from an oppressive regime, but rather the freedom to oppress.

I hold to my position that we should only fight wars that are in our direct interests. But as long as we're fighting people like this, I say we turn each and every last one of them inside out.

Literally.

Courtesy of Little Green Footballs, a story that should turn your stomach. Hamas is not our friend, and yet we give them money that they turn into weapons (of course; I almost feel silly simply writing that sentence).

To me, it's tantamount to treason.

I doubt that video games are actually more popular than music. They're just more expensive per unit, and they're harder to pirate. I admit to not reading the linked story that closely, and I might be missing their point entirely. But, that was my first reaction, and I went with it.

And here, I'd say, is the real power and value of the Internet. Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Blogger, Flickr, del.icio.us, and for God's sake, Digg, etc., mean nothing--and, actually, less than nothing--in the face of instantaneously accessing the works of Leonardo Da Vinci.

In this age of digital photography and video, why, oh why, can't anyone EVER get a clear picture of a UFO? I mean, seriously, how will we EVER prove this stuff with nothing but grainy photos of non-descript shining blobs?

And, please tell me: why are airline pilots supposed to necessarily make such credible witnesses?

This may save your life someday.

I love Mythbusters. If only there were more of them.

Note to federal authorities: I'm not calling for a revolution here. But, the Founders were right, I think, in thinking that a little revolution is good for a nation every now and then. Because this stinks to high heaven, and as I stated earlier, I have no doubt that others, including Clinton, have been guilty of precisely the same sort of things. They're just not publicized so, ahem, often.

Now's a good time for my obligatory "I hate politics" statement...

I'd say, this is the brightest Digg yet. And, it doesn't just describe the average Diggster, it describes Digg itself.

Dugg!!!

Uh, yeah, this site's credible. But I will say: I hope it's true that we plan to use nukes against Iran. I can think of no simpler way to resolve the tension in the Middle East than to show the radical Islamists that we really, really, really mean business, and that even if they get one or two nuclear weapons--well, golly, we have thousands.

They could possibly hurt us, maybe even badly, but we could make it as if they never even existed. Except for the glow, of course.

I have a unique idea: if you tell your boss you're going to work from home, how about actually, well, working?

I highly doubt that this is the only area where Noam Chomsky is dead wrong.

Our government has become so large, so bloated, so powerful, and so corrupt that the layman cannot possibly make heads nor tales of this sort of thing. I fear that our media can't, either, and so they draw their conclusions based on whatever their political leanings might happen to be. Since they tend to be Leftist (and I'd require a significant treatise to convince me otherwise), this sort of this will be ascribed to Bushitler and Cheney far more quickly than it ever was to Clinton. And in my mind, Clinton was by far the more treacherous.

Ultimately, who can really blame the average American, with families to take care of, bills to pay, and, yes, in general, lives to live, for not spending the hours, days, weeks, or months it would require to unravel even a single issue like this one. In writing this blog, I spend far more time than most people on such issues, and I often (almost always, really) feel like I'm just getting sucked farther down the rabbit hole.

I have no idea of the veracity of this, and it's a helluva long read for someone who might want to quickly compare it to other Jefferson writings, but if you want to see what Jefferson (might have) thought about Jesus and the New Testament, take a quick read here. Or not so quick, maybe.

Get some Creationist propaganda with your kid's grilled cheese sandwich.

It's good to know that the up-and-coming generation has at least some ingenuity. Call me a curmudgeon, but I'm not terribly optimistic.

And here might be the only case where I can imagine intellectual property piracy being a good thing. The less money that goes to Michael Moore, the better.

Digg Report: Today's #1 Digg, at 6432 Diggs, is a complaint about the new Digg comment system. Of which, of course, I was completely unaware, and uncaring, unlike many of the commenters who obviously take things like this personally.

Yawn.

Another light blogging day. Much in the way of personal things to get done. More tomorrow.

Cox and Forkum on Sir Salman Rushdie. Hee hee, in a sick sort of today's reality way.

And in the meantime, Iran's Imajihadist, or whatever the Hell his name is, gets away free as a bird.

Incidentally, I can think of a few uses for the butter knife.

The ten most hated words on the Internet. They seem rather innocuous to me, but whatever.

Another good article from Capitalism Magazine, this one on the shift from "global warming" to "climate change" as today's environmentalist mantra. I'd noticed this myself, but only peripherally. This story makes the point explicit.

I couldn't agree more with this Capitalism Magazine story. By whatever means, the Iranian regime needs to be removed and, as in Germany and Japan, a constitutional republic imposed whether the Islamists like it or not. And, we should do so at their expense, and not for their benefit but for ours. We can't have vacuums in the Middle East for terrorists and radical Islamists to step in and control, but our goal isn't to make their lives better.

It's to make our lives more secure. If the Iranians want to avoid such actions, then they need to stand up and remove the current regime from power themselves, and demonstrate that they hold no ill-will toward America. In that case, I'm sure we'd be happy to help out.

Thus demonstrating one of the reasons why America is not a democracy. The Founders feared oppression of a minority by the majority just as much as of the majority by a minority. I can only imagine what they would have thought of oppression by the stupid.

This is awesome, and I want one. Hell, I want two. I'm just not sure what I'd do with them. I don't have any proteins that need folding at the moment.

People have often predicted that we'll have supercomputers on our desks (probably, in our hip pockets, or in our hips). By some measures, we're already there. The Singularity looms large, and I for one am looking forward to it.

Google. Do no evil. Compete on the strength of their own products.

Right.

And the CCA would do this, because every DVD sold clearly states that unauthorized copying is not allowed. If people really wanted to change things, they'd simply boycott CDs and DVDs until the distributors came up with better ways of dealing with things.

Oh, silly me. A boycott wouldn't work, because the people who really care about this issue don't buy CDs and DVDs in the first place--they just pirate them off of Bittorrent.

RealTechNews kind of misses the point here. It's not population per se that dictates CO2 emissions, it's industrial output, automobile use, etc. At least, so the theory goes as I understand it.

What this really shows is that the more advanced the industrial society, the more technology it can bring to bear on the issue. China is much more heavily reliant on burning dirty coal, hence their #1 ranking. One should also remember that the Chinese economy is still only about a fifth (or maybe a bit less) the size of the American economy, and so their CO2 emissions are even more egregious. Where the US to be as backwards in energy use as the Chinese, our own CO2 emissions would be stratospheric (no pun intended).

That is, to the extent that one believes any of it's meaningful in any sense.

I'd think that this might be a surprisingly pro-American post by Boing Boing, except I remember that Boing Boing doesn't really think making money is a good thing.

And how exactly does Boing Boing propose that government keep us secure, since they're basically against government doing anything?

The government's evil and bad and has the Patriot Act and Bushitler and Cheney and Halliburton and all sorts of eavesdropping equipment that can track our every move and we Leftist bloggers are the only safeguards against attempts to take away our freedoms and freely traded MP3's that some of us paid for and everything!

But boy, those government agencies sure have ineffective computer systems, and should fix them pronto! Incompetent dolts, using contractors, even!

Something about this is just simply unappealing. Maybe it's European hygiene.*

*That was a lame attempt at humor. I actually don't know that European hygiene is any worse than American hygiene, except anecdotally. Well, there is that thing about European women and shaving, but I'm not sure if that's the same.

Digg Report: Today's #1 Digg, at 4366 Diggs, is another story about some poor fool roughed up "unnecessarily" by the police. It's one side of the story, of course, which is bound to make the police officers look bad. Who knows, maybe it's a legitimate complaint.

But this is Digg, y'know?

And I suppose all this Internet traffic is the trading and/or viewing of perfectly legal, non-infringing personal content.

And here's an area where I agree completely with Techdirt: government has no legitimate authority to censor (except perhaps--perhaps--in times of national emergency and war, and then only to protect direct threats to national security). Indeed, censorship is one of the keystones of oppression. From what I can tell, though, Brits are used to this sort of thing.

I maintain my position: mixes and mashups are not original, "innovative" works. They're entirely derivative. They might be "creative," but that's not the same thing. I also don't believe that they constitute any sort of "fair use," and so they're common theft and should be treated accordingly.

It's interesting how the "artist" in this Techdirt story talks about how much his albums would cost if he were required to pay royalties to all the copyright holders he steals from. Interesting concept.

And here, Techdirt misses the point: Madison was talking about government-granted monopolies in the general sense, that is, one company being granted the legal right to control all production and sale of a given product, service, or raw material (e.g., a government-granted cable monopoly), as being evil things. And indeed, such monopolies, when granted by government, are evil things, because they infringe on the rights of any individual who may desire to do business in such property.

Protecting the right to control one's own intellectual property, which does not infringe on anyone's right to sell theirs or any other property, is not the same sort of monopoly. After all, we all have "monopolies" on the uses of our time and energy, for example Michael Jordon could always have withheld his preeminent basketball skills--to the detriment of us all--and been entirely within his rights. The same can be said of an author, artist, musician, etc.

Indeed, I'd guess that upon reflection, Madison would rather not have used the term "monopoly" at all with regard to intellectual property. He might rather have used the term "priviledge," which at the time meant the same as "right" today, as something that government should protect. As usual when considering what the Founders said about some issue, one must be careful to consider their use of the language and how it differs from ours.

Read the story to which Techdirt links. It's a bit different than Techdirt's version. I also concede that my reading might not be precisely the Volokh Conspiracy's, but then I'm not making entirely the same point.

This is ominous. But, no profiling!

I suppose that spending five years in a warzone would have an affect on a person. Doing so with no discernible, rational philosophy would probably be a sort of personal, self-inflicted hell. I read as much of this account as I could, but the nihilism and naturalism was too much to bear.

It sort of felt like looking at birdshit on the crumbling facade of a post-modern office building made to look like it had been through an earthquake. If you know what I mean.

Wow, another free Wi-Fi scheme. I'm sure it'll be secure and reliable.

Why is it that IT folks will go to such ridiculous lengths to get something for free? It's not like they're historically underpaid, or anything.

Digg Report: Today's #1 Digg, at a high (for the topic) 6489 Diggs, is a list of countries that haven't yet converted to the metric system. Yes, the US is one of them. And yes, the rest of the world can kiss our American asses. The cost of conversion here would be far more than elsewhere, and, well, we just don't want to. And the rest of the world will continue to work with our quaint, antiquated English system because they must.

So all you Diggsters can just sit and spin.

As I've hinted before, the lack of intellectual property protections will drive things underground.* Companies will stop patenting things, and start treating them as trade secrets. The result will be essentially the same as if there were adequate IP protections--companies and invidividuals would be required to come up with truly innovate works, not just derivatives--but the timeframe would be extended beyond the patent's inherently limited scope.

Note that this applies to patents. Copyrights, on the other hand, remain a mess. Perhaps someone will come up with unbreakable encryption that can be applied to copyrighted material, including software, that will render digital copyright infringement almost impossible. That'll do away with physical distribution in a heartbeat, of course, leaving only the computer-equipped able to enjoy music, video and other, non-physical art.

And those who oppose intellectual property rights will only have themselves to blame.

*Note: I'm not sure if this is exactly what the linked story is saying. It's my take on the issue, however.

"Arabs Unwilling to Accept Responsibility." Today's obvious recurring theme. I believe thas has been the case for, oh, about a century or so?

Boing Boing calls this purchase agreement from the early 1900's "abusive." How can one be "abused" when one freely agrees with the terms of a license? When one gives up one's right to make agreements, no matter how onerous they may appear, one gives up the right to control one's existence.

Of course. Boing Boing wants the opposite: to be able to do whatever one damn well pleases if one is a "consumer." If one's a producer, on the other hand, all bets are off. I imagine Boing Boing consumers like Steven King's Lanoliers, all gaping maws eating up whatever's left at the end of time. You'll have to watch the B-movie to get the full effect.

In general, this just shows the long history of recorded intellectual property being licensed, not purchased, giving the lie to those who say that they've "purchased" their music and video and should be able to do whatever they want with it. Again, all I can say is: read the label, and if you don't like the terms, don't buy it. Engaging in theft is not a legitimate alternative.

Go here for a short history of the Middle East as it pertains to Israel and the Palestinians. I'm sure some will call this Zionist propaganda, and so be it. From everything I've read, it's entirely accurate.

It's important for all Americans to watch, to understand the stakes and how such otherwise unfathomable actions in place like Iraq can make some strategic (albeit utterly evil) sense.

Digg Report: Today's #1 Digg, at a healthy 6084 Diggs, is a good public service announcement. One shouldn't publish other people's private information, including that of suspected criminals. Suspected criminals. Or, maybe even convicted criminals.

We sort of have laws against vigilante justice in this country, and for good reason. Many Diggsters, judging from the comments, don't seem to recognize this. On the other hand, there are a fair number of reasonable comments, and so that's something of a positive.

Overall, a rather lame #1, and not a good return for the Digg Report after a few days' absence.

And does Boing Boing and the rest of the looney Left realize what this means about American justice? The very fact that a court can require the release of such information (rightly or wrongly), in the face of Bushitler and the Neocons, demonstrates that plenty of checks remain against legislation like the Patriot Act.

Looks like the conspiracy buffs will need to return to the days of tin hats and lizardroids.

More on Chavez's efforts to buy goodwill in Latin America through cheap PCs. This would bother me, if I weren't so sure it's bound to be a miserable failure.

Update: They're not even that cheap. This guy's a real wacko. That, or crazy like a fox: maybe he'll make PCs just good enough to drive out other private Latin American competition (to the extent that it exists), and then just nationalize the government-supported Chinese "partner."

Once again, a government is organizing (or offering, depending on one's point of view) a service that private companies would provide if they could make a profit doing so. In all likelihood, if even marginaly "successful" (by whatever bureaucratic definition of success used), municipal Wi-Fi will drive out future, better technologies by offering just enough service for the typical user at just low enough of a price. And, once in place, government will have a vested interest in making sure "its" service is successful, up to and including making it prohibitively expensive for competition.

Mark my words. Things like this will set back better technologies, like WiMAX, for years to come.

"Bush says he’ll veto excessive spending bills." When I first read that headline, I figured it must be from The Onion. There's simply no way that Bush can seriously be saying this so late in the game.

I know the American public has a short memory, but it's not that short. And this is just the sort of thing that the Left will go ballistic over. Bush has yet to veto a spending bill; what could possibly be the benefit of starting now except in a fruitless attempt to win back fiscal conservatives?

As I believe I've mentioned, I hate politics.

And so it starts, and when Israel responds, as it must, it will be blamed for "escalating" violence that has been raging for months. Probably, it will also be blamed for ending some truce that's been violently raging for weeks.

And, as expected, government causes dislocations in the economy. And, also as expected, this will inevitably be blamed on "Big Oil."

Frank Lloyd Wright is turning in his grave right about now. Is there any function in this form?

Cindy Sheehan had some powerful friends. Too bad they were among the enemy.

Those silly pranksters.

It's amazing how Boing Boing goes out of its way to show that terrorism is impossible and thus our guarding against terrorist acts must be the height of both stupidity and oppression. While I wrote just previously about the wrongness of a bunker mentality, I do believe (naturally) in using investigative efforts to locate those who might be inclined to commit acts of terror.

The fact that the particular folks mentioned in the linked story were fools (and, I don't necessarily take one "security guru"'s word on that) doesn't mean that they weren't ripe for the picking by someone with better knowledge on how to commit mass murder. Finding them and incarcerating them, thus removing them from the field of play, seems like a good enough objective on its own.

And as usual, Boing Boing attacks, but it provides no real alternatives.

To me, this is precisely what must happen when a nation assumes a bunker mentality to external threats, rather than removing those threats directly. The Left laments these sorts of things, while simultaneously refusing to allow us to go over those who are directly and indirectly responsible for the threats we face.

If we removed the state sponsors of terrorism, then the terrorists would be that much easier to find, capture, and execute. We haven't found bin Laden because we can't go into Pakistan to look for him, and that's just one example.

The twisted logic in this is impossible to unravel, which is why dealing rationally with the Islamic world is inherently impossible. Salman Rushdie receives Knighthood, which necessarily means that Muslims should commit attacks against... well, non-Muslims, obviously.

An insult can't go unpunished, right?

I haven't listened this podcast, but I find something either simply wrong or just sensationalist about the question "whether it's really possible to make money without doing evil." That's so fraught with straw men and bad philosophy that I don't have the stomach to delve into it. All I'll say for the moment is that millions of people do so every day, and so if one doesn't find it self-evident, one simply isn't looking.

Cox and Forkum's, er, unusual take on Father's Day. It's good stuff, though.

And, to all the fathers (including myself): Happy Father's Day!

This would be cool, if I could stomach DirecTV. Which I can't, and so I won't.

Here we have three major American companies--Microsoft, Yahoo!, and Google-- engaging in precisely the same sorts of competively-driven acquisitions, and the FTC decides to investigate all of them.

How can anyone maintain the illusion that this has anything to do with competition?

I agree that it's a bit over the top to say that intellectual property theft is worse than "real" property theft. At the same time, I hardly think it's any better. The lack of violence may seem worth noting, but in reality there would likely be plenty of violence were one to try to break up the larger and more powerful Asian counterfeit rings. And, there are plenty of "real" property thefts that involve no violence at all.

The one thing that does make intellectual property very different, though, is the ease of it. It's trivial today to steal thousands of pieces of intellectual property, all without leaving the comfort of one's home, and just as trivial to distribute it to thousands--or millions--of other people. It's also relatively easy to do so anonymously; if one is careful, the chances of getting caught approach zero.

One can't say the same about "real" property.

An interesting discussion on atheism and Ayn Rand. I agree: she's the only one who's ever gotten it right. Rational atheism isn't against religion, it's for reason and man's life on Earth.

An interesting debate on the healthcare system. Notice the two different approaches to the argument (any reader of this blog should be able to recognize which argument I support). The comments are also illustrative, at least in part because they demonstrate a lack of knowledge of how government regulation has dictated private insurance policies. The private payor system hasn't developed in a vacuum.

Can anyone wonder what kind of nation China is, that it maintains such tight control over how people name their children?

What this really means is that such decisions should be made by free people via free markets, not by government fiat via political calculations. Had our government acted as it should have when Middle Eastern oil fields were first nationalized, and American investments confiscated, we wouldn't have nearly these concerns.

Here's the money quote in just about all modern discussions of intellectual property:

"For better or for worse, real property should not be confused with intellectual property, which is not subject to the same rules of scarcity."

I'm not sure where this idea of "scarcity" regarding intelletual property, or the lack thereof, orginated. I'll have to do some research, because it's such a ridiculous notion. The only reason that intellectual property isn't scarce nowadays, as opposed to when it was pressed on vinyl, tapes, and CD's, and when books were properly bound, and video provided on tapes and DVDs (let alone simple film at theatres), is precisely because technology has made its copying in virtually infinite numbers entirely trivial.

It's the fact that intellectual property can now be so easily copied that makes it seem like some sort of "non-scarce" resource. Of course, the artists themselves are plenty scarce, which seems to escape those who make this inane argument. The latter use the seemingly infinite nature of digital intellectual property, which is really just intellectual property like any other, only in a digital form, the crux of their argument--thus evading the fact that property requires not just possession, but also control.

They like to argue that the creator doesn't actually lose any thing when his intellectual property is taken, but that's not the point. He loses control over it, which is entirely the point. It would be no different if someone were to let me keep my house, but determined who could live in it with me. Even if they added on space so that I wasn't inconvenienced, the point would remain the same.

Anyways, no time to delve into this at the moment, but delving will be done at some point.

The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away. And by the Lord, of course, I mean "government."

Michael Moore's "Sicko" has hit the Internet. I'm sure Moore won't mind, since he's all against things like property and the like. He should be happy, since I'm sure his only intent in producing his sensationalist, journalistically sloppy, exploitative "documentaries" is to enlighten his fellow man, and not to make any money.

Making money is evil, see, in Moore's world. Therefore, he should feel right at home. I think I'll download a copy, clean it up, burn it to DVD, and hand it out to ALL my friends. Not for them to watch, mind you--rather, to burn. To my enemies who already believe Moore's shit, I'll just give free copies to watch to their hearts' content.

Maybe Castro will make up the difference for all the good publicity, courtesy of Moore.

If this is true about Bush deciding not to destroy Iran's ability to develop nuclear weapons, it's vastly disappointing. It's also ironically more destabilizing for the Middle East--it leaves Israel almost no choice but to go it alone. One can only imaging the maelstrom that will occur should Israel attack Iran.

Or, maybe it would just be a tempest in a teapot, centered around the Arab "street" and with most of the West at least silently commending Israel for its actions. Part of me believes in this particular outcome, and so I'm rooting for Israel to do what it must.

This looks like fun. I'm not sure it's worthy of a Ph.D. thesis, though.

And so, who wins here? I'd say, Iran and Syria. Who loses? Israel and the US, because our "leadership" won't let either deal with the obvious repercussions.

As I've always thought, things are bound to get much worse before they get much better.

I really have to wonder at how gullible people must be to fall for such obvious attempts to do nothing but foment sectarian violence. It must be obvious to everyone by now that these attacks are meant specifically to push Iraq toward civil war, and for no other purpose. It's almost as if these people believe that a self-fulfilling prophecy, even fully identified, can't be altered.

Computer problems, and so light blogging today. Maybe some posts tonight if I can get everything resolved.

I'm not sure what Boing Boing means here by the title "Yahoo! blocks anti-censor, pro-human rghts move by sharehoders." It looks like the shareholders themselves simply voted against the measure. And, indeed, who is "Yahoo!" besides the shareholders?

I agree, although I feel this way about all social networking sites. Ultimately, I think they take too much time to maintain, and so unless one makes a career out of them, their attractiveness quickly pales the more of a time-suck that they become. I used LinkedIn, but primarily only to maintain contact with past coworkers--and, not even active contact, but just to know when they've switched jobs.

When I first saw the recent demos of the upcoming OS X upgrade from Apple, Leopard, I thought the same thing. Much of it just seems to be Vista with a little bit more development, and I'm sure that we'll see much of the same in future Vista updates. The Apple stuff is good, but it's not so far advanced over Vista that it offers a compelling reason to switch.

Of course, the fact that a Mac can run Windows (including Vista) has changed things considerably. My next PC will be a Mac, but I'll likely run OS X only as a novelty.

I've kept up with the healthcare industry for almost 20 years, since getting a job straight out of college where researching healthcare payment systems was a primary function. I noted then, and still believe, that government intervention is singularly responsible for the ever-increasing costs, and I remain amazed that our system continues to produce such quality care.

It started with the creation of Blue Cross/Blue Shield back in the 1930's, then continued with government-granted tax benefits for indemnity group health plans (which caused the disconnect we have today between the care that a person receives and how much he pays for it). Medicare has probably singled-handedly held back preventive medicine in this country, by spending hundreds of billions on highly interventionist care in the last few weeks of life, and the National Institutes of Health spends as much on basic research--without the cost-benefit justication that profits require--as the pharmaceutical industry. All of these governmental interventions, among others, have shaped the American healthcare system into the mess that it is today.

This essay by Dr. Onkar Gate of the Ayn Rand Institute just confirms my own beliefs. It's worth a read.

I'd probably do the same, if I had the money. Of course, I wouldn't have chosen an Airbus.

I've always found my Tablet PC to be a great tool, for a number of important functions. I've changed jobs recently, and so haven't had as many occasions to take handwritten notes, but that's the most obvious Tablet benefit. Other than that, there are times when even surfing the Web can be more comfortable on a Tablet in portrait mode.

Here's a story about a novelist who uses a Tablet PC in just about every meaningful way, it appears. If you have any interest whatsoever in the Tablet platform, this might tip you over the edge.

Notice the comments in this story about the WTC. The nutjobs are out in force.

If you'd like to weigh into the intellectual property debate, go here. My answers were the opposite of what I'm sure IPac is looking for, and the system crashed when I submitted them.

I'm sure it was a coincidence. Maybe you'll have better luck.

Digg Report: Today's #1 Digg, at a moderate 5568, is a rather inane bit of Anti-Americanism. Really, it's pretty crude. Judging from the comments, though, the Diggsters appear to like it.

I'm not sure I understand Mark Cuban's position in this post:

I recognize that it puts Google in a tough position. In fact, it could also be considered hypocritical on my part because I feel more comfortable with a user off the street buying and owning a DRM free copy of any or all of our movies or shows than I feel with Google holding DRM free copies of my content in order to protect it from pirated uploads. I dont have a good reason, but I don't trust Google with a copy of the worlds content any more than I would trust MicroSoft , IBM of the 1980s or any corporate SuperPower.

Whether or not a "user off the street" has any particular moral compunctions against sharing a file en masse is of course a crap shoot. The "corporate SuperPower"'s have very specific legal interests in recognizing and protecting copyright. They're the ones with the deepest pockets, and are far more likely to be (meaningfully) sued.

Cuban sometimes arrives at some odd positions...

To those Lefists who hold out some love for Communism... Idiotic comments aside.

I'm currently developing a new Web site, www.paperfreesmb.com that will provide on-going infomation, news, and support for small and medium business either looking to implementat a document management solution or expand an existing one.

If anyone can recommend a free content management system (Mamba, Drupal, etc.?) to use in building the site, I'd much appreciate any input. I'm not exactly sure where to start, but I want to develop a site similar to www.gottabemobile.com, www.tabletpcbuzz.com, and/or www.notebookreviews.com.

Thanks!

P.S. Don't go to www.paperfreesmb.com. There's nothing there yet!

Uh-oh! The Council for Foreign Relations has added a secret weapon in its quest for global domination. If you weren't scared before, you should be now.

Harry Binswanger presents an important argument for Objectivists who dislike libertarianism. It's specific to libertarian anarchy, but I believe libertarianism leads to anarchy inevitably and so it's a good refutation of libertarianism in general.

The gist? Libertarianism is a non-philosophical movement, and as such is prone to intrincism, mysticism, and a laundry list of unsupported and often contradictory positions.

Well, the last time I checked, the American economy's at about $13 Trillion GDP, the Russian economy not quite topping $1 billion. To me, that means Russia's still a pretty minor player in things economic, Putin's assertions otherwise notwithstanding.

More nyah nyah nyah from China.

Celebrity Report: A list of (alleged, until verified, I suppose) celebrity Republicans. It's not terribly important, since being Republican is no guarantee of rationality.

I have to say: I use a DVR in the bedroom, and a PVR (Snapstream Beyond TV, to be specific, and I highly recommend it) in the office. I rarely watch a show live, and I always skip through the commercials, and so I can understand CBS's position on ads and timeshiftng. In fact, this raises an interesting question: are some shows inherently more appealing to people who are more likely to timeshift, and if so, then are those shows necessarily harder to sell to advertisers? I wonder.

The bottom line, though, is that the networks need to develop different ways to monetize their broadcasts.

Hee hee. More Cox and Forkum.

Actually, I found the ending to the final episode of The Sopranos to be quite fitting. It was, after all, a show primarily about how "normal" people (read, neurotic, cynical, greedy) can find themselves conducting or condoning evil acts. The show ended by showing the Soprano family at their favorite diner, eating onion rings and fighting with such mundane aspects of existence as parallel parking.

There was no need to kill Tony off, or take him to jail. That was never the show's point.

And, one can then understand why Galloway was so against going into Iraq.