Entries Tagged 'opinion' ↓

So I got up late this morning, grabbed a cup of coffee, and was generally feeling pretty good about myself and life — well, as good as possible for me, so over all that’s a plus — when I happened to go into Twitter and find Holocaust Denial was a Trending Topic.

“Okay, why the hell is that a trending topic?” I thought.

(For those of you wondering, a Trending Topic on Twitter is something that’s mentioned very frequently by multiple posters — enough to become a trend.)

It turns out, Facebook had allowed groups centered on Holocaust denial to be created on their site, and various people (including Mark Cuban’s brother) were calling for the groups’ removal. Much like recent debacles over Amazon accidentally removing listings for all books featuring sexuality (which means 99% of GLBT-centric books) and LiveJournal running an ad for National Organization for Marriage, the InterTubes were once again in a pitchfork and torch-wielding rage over people saying, posting, or believing stupid things.

*sigh*

Recently, one of the free local newspapers in my area ran an anti-gay editorial. The four-paragraph hate-rant was full of religious rambling and completely free of any logic, facts, or historical evidence to support the author’s claim that God created marriage, because, well, no supreme being did, in fact, create marriage. I could give you the historical evidence about marriage being a Church-instituted ceremony in the late middle ages to generate wealth after the selling of indulgences and other favorite money-making schemes became passe. I could point you toward books about the nature of human beings, which is evolved from a psychological proclivity to serial monogamy. I could use logic and reason to show how, even if you believe that homosexuality is a sin in your religion, you should still tolerate the difference of opinions between yourself and others and allow for human rights to be equally granted to all human beings, regardless of sex, gender orientation, sexual orientation, race, religion, or intelligence. I could even argue it from a religious perspective — let he who is without sin cast the first stone — and point out all of the other sins committed on a daily basis, by Christians, which are considered an abomination by the very same chapter that demonizes homosexuality (such as wearing a cloth made of a blend of more than one fiber!)

I would do all of that, except there’s a notice at the bottom of the page which says the paper does not publish letters to the editor.

And that, dear readers, is where the difference between Facebook and the bigot in The Hamiltonian ends. Because when you put one opinion out there, and you leave no room for debate of that opinion, that newspaper or website is, in fact, endorsing that opinion. The Hamiltonian is, in fact, saying that it as a newspaper supports gaybashing and bigotry. So I’m writing a letter demanding they stop putting their newspaper in my mailbox because of the are a hate-filled tabloid.

What I am not doing is demanding a retraction, demanding an apology from the author or even for the author to be fired. He has a right to free speech, and private companies have a right to publish what they want. It is not the right of the individual to dictate what speech can and cannot be published in a private area. It is not my right to demand a retraction. It is my right, however, to tell them to go fuck themselves and stop subscribing.

It is the same for Amazon and for LiveJournal. If you do not like their content, leave. Tell them why you’re taking your business elsewhere, and leave. There are alternatives — Barnes and Nobel and DreamWidth, respectively. Take your business elsewhere if you do not like what they do or how they treat your group — and if you want to say, tell them that you’re regrettably leaving. Don’t make demands or create ultimatums — that’s what immature people do. Just take your business elsewhere and see what happens. In the case of both Amazon and LiveJournal, as soon as they realized what they’d done had upset their customers, they fixed the problems posthaste.

However, I’d point out, that in the case of Facebook, people threatening to leave, writing hateful letters, and otherwise tantrum is beyond unreasonable. Unlike Amazon and LiveJournal, where the questionable actions seemed to come from an internal source and therefore espoused the negative, bigoted beliefs, Facebook’s content in question is user created, and a group for Holocaust survivors, believers, apologists, etc. could just as easily be created to counter the information, to present truth to counter the lies, to balance the perspective so that an individual searching the term “Holocaust” could find all the information and make up their minds about it as an individual.

Oh, but people don’t LIKE that! There’s a general thread the connects conservative and liberals, Republicans and Democrats, atheists and Christians, and it goes like this: all people should only think nice thoughts, good thoughts, the thoughts that I approve. Hate speech and hate crime legislation is an example of this. The goal of crimes against bigoted, unintelligent, uninformed thoughts and speech is to keep all alternative opinions closeted, buried, to give the appearance of a uniform consciousness of society that is only good and benevolent. Alternative ideas must be buried, and those that are particularly disdainful removed from public sight.

Why?

When we bury ignorant hate speech, when we make bigotry a thought crime, we are giving credence to the paranoid belief of most extremists that they are a persecuted mass whose numbers would grow if they were not being deliberately and systematically oppressed by the Government.

When we bury hate speech, we are in direct violation of the very principles this country was founded upon — the idea that all speech, no matter how repugnant, was protected as long as you didn’t incite others to violence. Burying hate speech is possibly the least patriotic thing you can do.

When we add additional punishment to the sentence an individual receives for committing a crime because he was thinking thoughts that society deems incorrect and morally reprehensible, we are creating Thought Crimes. We are marching, in lock step, toward the dystopian future of 1984.

When we punish someone for thinking bigoted thoughts, we are only solidifying the thoughts in that person’s mind.

Hate speech and hateful thoughts will always exist; we cannot control or wipe away the ideas of the human mind. Someone will always think that homosexuality is bad, just as there are people today who believe that interracial marriage is immoral and wrong. Just as electing a black president did not officially end racism, censorship of those who deny the Holocaust will not end anti-Semetism, nor will it bring back the millions of people, Jews and gentiles alike, who were killed by the Nazi regime.

All censorship does is provide fertile breeding grounds for the ideas that are being censored.

When a publication endorses an opinion we do not like, we have the right to vote with our dollars to take our business elsewhere. When a publication allows equal time to all sides of an argument, we have the duty to support the enlightened side, not by bashing, censoring, or harming the opposing side, but by offering to debate with reason, by showing love and unwavering support for the human being that is behind the horrible ideas they spout.

My parents, I am embarrassed to say, are racists, especially my mother. She’ll even tell you as much, though she has a few black friends, “The good ones,” she says. She drops the n-word a lot when discussing matters of race. It was how she was raised, by parents who were authoritarian and for whom she still holds a child-like reverence. It has been a long, hard struggle for me to accept that I can still love my family for the good people they are and overlook the ignorance in which they live. When my mother makes a blanket generalization about black people, I have to stop myself from yelling at her, and instead look at her and say, “Now, you don’t really believe that’s true, do you? What about your friend Anna*? She’s a nice person, and she’s black, right?”

“Yes, but she’s one of the good ones.”

“Maybe they’re all ‘good ones’ and maybe the man that cut you off just now is just an asshole?”

She sulks and stops talking, possibly because she knows I’m not going to let her win this one, but possibly because she knows, in her heart, that I’m right.

I would urge everyone to treat those in the world who are complete fucking morons and believe that the Holocaust never happened, that gay marriage will destroy the world, that Arabs hate our freedom and will destroy America with the same compassionate argument. They are not always our mothers, but in a wider sense, in the sense of the human spirit, they are our brothers and sisters, and they need to be educated, the need to be encouraged to question the ignorant beliefs they hold. They should not be shouted at, pushed down, and forced underground where they can sew more seeds of hatred. We need to keep them on the surface, to prepare our counter arguments, to see what they’re saying and why they’re saying it so that we can present a reasoned, intelligent, and compassionate response.

Instead of shutting down the Holocaust deniers, let’s talk to them.

I know that reason and logic will always be anathema to some very hateful, very stupid, very ignorant people, but in censoring them, are we not stooping to their level, going to any length to “shut them up.” Are we, ourselves, not committing hate crimes by targeting our vengeance upon a specific group of people — the ridiculously ignorant — for no reason other than the fact that they will not listen to reason? And if we can’t shut them up, what next? Jail time? Forced re-education? Lobotomies for the haters? Fear is what breeds hate, and isn’t threats of silencing their voices at any cost just giving a real and logical fear to back up illogical ones?

Being an idiot is not a crime; we need to accept that and move on as a society. Maybe only when we can tolerate all thoughts — intolerant or not — and accept that not everyone is going to think nice, happy thoughts can we, as a society, make the appropriate steps toward ending hatred and bigotry in our society.

Just as the papers I read in England are divided between the comically conservative (The Daily Mail) and the absurdly liberal (The Guardian), so too are divided the papers in the United States. Reader reactions in The New York Times to President Jesus’ speech span the gauntlet from hand job to out-right worship of a demi-god, divine made flesh on earth. Meanwhile, the readers at The Wall Street Journal heard a message of a different kind — fire and brimstone, the Whore of Babylon riding through the streets, and saw the spector of four horsemen on the horizon as they headed to Lowes, Home Depot, and the nearest supermarket to stock up on hand-crank radios and canned goods.

I heard neither the end of the world nor the second coming in President Jesus’ speech today. I did, however, hear an eerie message that gives credence to the insane ramblings of a lunatic and the chipping away of what made our country great in the name of “progress” and “freedom” but what should be given the name of that which it is: socialism.

A recap of President Obama’s speech:

“My fellow Americans…blah blah blah [socialism] blah blah blah [redistribution of wealth] blah blah blah [take care of the lazy, the weak, those that cannot and will not contribute to our nation's glory] blah blah blah [new world order].

What?

“And to those nations like ours that enjoy relative plenty, we say we can no longer afford indifference to suffering outside our borders;”

Thus spoke Zarathustra.

With those words, President Jesus implied something more powerful than most — other than conspiracy theorists like David Icke — can comprehend. We have to take care of other nations, says President Jesus. We have to not just redistribute the wealth [AKA Socialism] within our borders, but outside as well. And when we start treating all nations as one, we have one world power — the power of he or she who’s charge is the redistribution of that wealth. And he who holds that power holds the world and all of its nations under his control.

That, my friends, is the concept of The New World Order; that, my friends, is what Barack Obama has promised to bring about.

Are you as sick as I am? Did any lingering glimmers of hope die for you with that? Or did your hope vanish with President Jesus’ other promises, as did mine?

“The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works – whether it helps families find jobs at a decent wage, care they can afford, a retirement that is dignified. Where the answer is yes, we intend to move forward. Where the answer is no, programs will end. And those of us who manage the public’s dollars will be held to account – to spend wisely, reform bad habits, and do our business in the light of day – because only then can we restore the vital trust between a people and their government.”

There, my friends, is where my heart turned cold and the skys drew dark on my horizon, where the specter of all that I loathe about the liberal guilt-trip and socialism in shepard’s clothing is given a name and face. No liberal wants to ask if our government is too big because the answer is a resounding yes. Yet for socialism to work — and that is President Jesus’ goal — then we must have big government. So he couched his vision of American government in terms of “does it work?” But for whom does it work is the better question. For people who cannot save for their own retirement, he wants government to work. For those who cannot pick up the pieces of a job terminated, dream deferred, marriage dissolved and move forward under their own power, Mr. Obama wants the government to work. For those who are intellectuals and artists of varying work, our socialist president will provide health care and wages to create ideas and art that may well be worth less than the paper they are not printed upon.

For those who work and are industrious, you are fools under the regime of President Jesus.

“Nor is the question before us whether the market is a force for good or ill. Its power to generate wealth and expand freedom is unmatched, but this crisis has reminded us that without a watchful eye, the market can spin out of control”

President Jesus ignores the SEC and FTC regulators who watched and fiddled while Rome burned and Madoff made off with so many fortunes and continues to roam free to redistribute that wealth in the way he sees fit. He ignores that government is, by and large, corrupt and that corrupt government cannot regulate even itself, let alone private industry.

“The success of our economy has always depended not just on the size of our Gross Domestic Product, but on the reach of our prosperity; on our ability to extend opportunity to every willing heart – not out of charity, but because it is the surest route to our common good.”

And here he is again, adorning his socialist policies in fine words while never giving their true name. Today, his speech revealed that the Emperor wears no clothes, that he is a socialist despite his best efforts to dress it to the contrary. President Jesus will raise your taxes to pay for the food, shelter, education, retirement, and health care of those who choose not to work, of children you did not give birth to and parents who did not bear you.

“As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals. Our Founding Fathers, faced with perils we can scarcely imagine, drafted a charter to assure the rule of law and the rights of man, a charter expanded by the blood of generations. Those ideals still light the world, and we will not give them up for expedience’s sake.”

And yet, I believe that we will see new waives of censorship in the name of playing nice, of not offending anyone, of bringing back the Clinton-era Thought Police who searched for thoughts against the government, as Bush did, and for thoughts that weren’t nice or politically correct or in line with what others believe.
“The false choice between our safety and our ideals.” He danced around the word freedom, because we will not be free under a man, a president, who believes freedom is something that can be granted by government. Freedom, my President Jesus, is intrinsically free. You are not giving freedom when you dole out benefits to the undeserving or the unfortunate. You are not spreading freedom in your social programs any more than Bush spread freedom in Iraq and the middle east. Freedom comes from being able to think or say or do whatever one wishes. Freedom is my ability to take my wages earned with my blood, my sweat, my tears, and give it to those whom I think deserving, not you, Mr. President, not you. Freedom is not compromising, not backing down, the ability to say that 2+2=5, as George Orwell put it; the freedom to know that if I buy a TV and the man next door to me cannot feed his family, he does not have the right to take my TV to sell to buy a proverbial loaf of bread because it is mine, free and clear. Yet all that freedom is would be sacrificed by President Jesus, to make sure we all have the security of retirement, food on every plate, and a roof over every head — the later promise being the promise of several presidents that caused the housing market bubble (that could only burst) in the first place.

I think Benjamin Franklin answered President Jesus best when he said “those who sacrifice freedom for security deserve neither.” Your social programs do exactly that, President Jesus–sacrifice freedom in the form of private property rights for personal security that can be attained, a point which you yourself are proof of–and per Mr. Franklin, I believe that you and your supporters deserve neither.

A (not so) final word on BoingBoing jumping the shark into hypocrisy and The Communist’s Consumerist creates new “commenting rules” so ridiculous and censorial that I gave up reading it. Continue reading →

First, she sued possibly her biggest fan over the Harry Potter Lexicon, essentially a concordance to the Harry Potter books that will surely damage the franchise the way Biblical concordances have stopped people from reading the Bible and ruined all of Christianity! Name one modern, famous Christian. I bet you can’t, and it’s all because of the concordance!

Now, however, Ms. Rowling (AKA Mrs. Murray) says that her child cannot be photographed in public! Yesterday, a British court of appeals overturned a ruling against Ms. Rowling in a lawsuit the billionaire author initiated against a publication who wished to print photos of her son. The court’s ruling was that ordinary people would expect a level of privacy when wandering about in public insomuch as they would not expect their child to be photographed.

Really?

Maybe that’s the way it is in England, but in America, you can photograph people in public, famous or not. You cannot reprint without permission if the person is not famous and is clearly the subject of the photograph, but famous people are not held to this same standard (obviously — without such there would be no tabloid press to speak of) and even this standard of privacy in public is not uniform. For the most part, if a photographer takes a photo of you and your child in public at a public event, in a crowd, etc. it’s going to be published, probably whether you like it or not.

Now, about Ms. Rowling: yes, her son was the subject of the photograph, but guess what sweetheart, you are famous, and so is your husband and your children because they are caught in the reflected glow of the light of fame that hangs around you. Sure, when you were a frumpy single mother toiling away in coffee shops at your labor of love while your child napped (if that story’s even true — there is some debate) you never imagined this would be your life. But then your books exploded. Now, you could have kept yourself hidden away like J.D. Salinger, or even just led a ho-hum life like Stephen King or John Grisham, neither of which are photographed constantly despite being their work being guarenteed on the best seller list. Oh no. You got the hair done, the nose fixed, the face lifted or at least botoxed. You’ve had work done, you’ve bought glamour girl clothes, and you’ve gone out in public, seeking that attention that you do deserve. I don’t begrudge you that. You earned it, live it up.

However, just as I’d say to any Hollywood starlet turned mother, you’ve made the bed, and now you have to lie in it. You’re a famous face by your own doing and you cannot try to protect your children from the limelight. It won’t happen. If you’re lucky, you’ll go back to having some sort of cult status and your child will either emulate you with bad writing or just drop off the face of the earth and lead a normal life, like Frieda and Nicholas Hughes, respectively.

But that’s if you’re lucky and if you do your damnedest to stop suing people and just live a quiet, normal life away from all the Hollywood premiers and parties and shit. Fade away and collect your millions every year. If you stay in the spotlight, your children will stay in the spotlight. If you are lucky, your child will be the next Stella McCartney or Sean Lennon. If you are not, your son will be the male version of Paris Hilton.

Here’s a problem from 2007 that’s making a comeback: a lack of connectivity when you update 10.4.10 or later updates for MacBook.

This was back during my honeymoon period with Apple, when I implicitly trusted them and allowed them to automatically update my OS whenever they told me I should. I mean, it’s Apple. It just works, right? I’d had no problems with my MacBook in the seven or eight months since I bought it, and all other updates worked flawlessly. I couldn’t believe anything would ever go wrong with it.

Then, there was OS update 10.4.10

Afterwards, I could connect to any open network after the install (which was helpful, as the neighbors have an open, unguarded network) but not any with WPA encryption. Frustrated, but too proud to call the Apple Care support line I paid for, I reinstalled OS X version 6 and upgraded to version nine, the last update that worked.

That was in July of 2007.

Then, a few weeks ago, I bought Final Cut Express for a project I was working on, which necessitated an upgrade to 10.4.10 or later, and because of the problems I’d had previously, I installed the next update, 10.4.11. Surely Apple would have fixed the problem, right?

Nope. Final Cut worked, but once again, my uber-encrypted home network was rendered useless. The solutions seemed to be either take off encryption (and thus leave others in the household unable to do their confidential work at home — and possibly compromise my anonymity) or keep leeching off the neighbor’s network until a solution presented itself, as Apple’s website seemed to be ignoring the problem.

A quick google search revealed that more than one user had found themselves in similar situation, but the only solution seemed to be to either go backwards to 10.4.9 or go forwards to Leopard. Could it be that Apple was deliberately ignoring the problem so as to either force people to pay for the phone tech support or force them to upgrade to Leopard? One individual took his MacBook (duo core) back to the Genius Bar. A week later it was returned working, though the Geniuses could find nothing wrong with it, supposedly. Hmmm.

I was tempted, but still too proud to call or go into the freshly-opened store in my area. It’s not that I’m an elitist — only that I’m a recent convert to Mac, and I’m still operating on my experience from PC days: fix it yourself or get a hacker buddy to fix it for you (usually, you can bribe a college student with food to do this for you, by the way,) because Microsoft products are a piece of shit and tech support is laughable.

After (two) weeks of (not so) diligent searching, I finally stumbled upon a solution that worked. For the record, I did this while simultaneously installing WPA2 so either one solution works independent of the other or they work in combination. However, the solution listed below seems to be one which most will find useful.

1. Download Pacifist
2. Download Airport Extreme update 2007-002 Later updates will not work.
3. Download the 10.4.9 Combo Update
4. Go to /system/library/extensions and copy appleairport.kext and appleairport2.kext to a backup location just to be safe and then delete them from the extensions folder.I used a USB drive for the backup task.
5. Also in the extensions folder you’ll find IO80211Family.kext and copy it to backup folder and then delete it.
6. Open Pacifist
7. Open Package and choose the airport extreme update
8. In Pacifist you will now see all the files that are in the package. Find system and expand it’s tree by clicking on the triangle. then expand library and then extensions. You will now see the IO80211Family.kext file. Click once on it so it’s highlighted and then click “Install”.
9. When it’s done copying files expand coreservices and then menu extras. Highlight “Airport Menu” and click install.
10. When it’s done copying close the window in Pacifist for the airport update.
11. Open Package and choose the 10.4.9 combo
12. Again find the system folder and expand it and then expand the library and extensions folders.
13. In the extensions folder you’ll see a bunch of files. Look for appleairport.kext and highlight it. Click “Install”.
14. Repeat the previous step with appleairport2.kext
15. Reboot FTW

You should be back up and running in no time!

Edit #100,000: If this post has appeared on your RSS feed reader a million times in variations, it is because WordPress does not handle certain commands particularly well and I had to go through the directions, line by line, to find which lines WordPress found objectionable and re-write them several times to edit out the confusing phrases.

According to an article by the BBC, certifiableed financial genius and Chairman of the Federal Reserve Ben Bernanke has stated that he may cut interest rates *again*:

In his semi-annual report to the US Congress, Mr Bernanke said the Fed would continue to “act in a timely manner as needed to support growth”.

Analysts said his comments increased the likelihood of another rate cut at the Fed’s next meeting on 18 March.

Are you kidding me?

Okay, it seems counterintuitive for any rational American to be upset about interests rates being cut, I mean, it’s going to prevent a recession, right?

WRONG!

Here’s what happens when the fed cuts rates: mortgage, loan, and credit APRs decrease by fractions of a percent, which the Fed hopes will spur people taking out newer, bigger loans at the lower APR to pay off those old, high ones, also known as refinancing (re-fi). When people re-fi, banks can try and sell more money than they need to them, so that the borrowers can spend the extra cash while paying the same amount on their home or credit card (with credit cards, it’s called a balance transfer onto a newly opened account. Car loans are immune to this sort of re-fi). Even if you just take the exact amount to pay off the high interest balance and end up with lower monthly payments overall, this will free up your wallet for extra spending and spur the economy.

Now, here’s the problem: It Doesn’t Work Like That.

What will happen is that your credit card rate will decease by a fraction of a percent. If you are in such dire straights that you need to refi to free up cash to pay on that soon-to-be-repo’d house, sorry, but your credit probably sucks so much right now that no one’s going to lend to you anyway. So you fail, or more accurately, the Fed fails you.

And then there are those of us who have high-yield savings accounts and little to no debt. All this is doing is decreasing your savings because that tiny fraction of a percent you’re saving on my credit cards (assuming that you don’t pay your cards in full every month like I do) isn’t going to make up for the half a percent (or more) hit your bank account interest rate (you know, what they pay *you*) will take, so if you’re are responsible borrower, you lose too! The Fed fails again!

The only people who will benefit are those Middle Class Jerks who live beyond their means, who bounce from 0% card to 0% card with their massive balances from vacations to wherever the $160k-$80k/year people go, who’ll refi their homes to make repairs, who’ll buy repo’d homes and cars and flip them in a few years, who have no savings or retirement accounts because Social Security will take care of things, who vote Republicican….

…I’ve said too much, haven’t I?

No, not the planet and, technically, not all instances of the letter “m” but you wouldn’t know the latter from the disclaimer on the end of recent M&Ms radio adverts which states:

M&Ms and the letter “m” are trademarks of Mars Corporation

Of course, the are referring to the trademark the own on the very specific typeset letter that appears on their candies, but a literal reading of the advert suggests the letter m itself is a trademark of the Mars Corporation — which means I owe Mars royalties for 16 uses of their trademarked letter. Well, seventeen now. Not including the title of this piece or the name of this blog. Shit, that’s eighteen now! Sorry! I just can’t help myself (19)! I love trademark (20) infringement (21), I suppose, or it could be that I am (22) just a criminal (23) mastermind (25) that will, even subconsciously, infringe trademark (26) at all costs!

God, somebody (27) stop me (28) before I infringe again!

Twenty-eight infringements (29) in one post? DAMMIT! (31)

Dear Mr. Jobs,

I have a question for you about iTunes Plus and your new pricing policy regarding said DRM-free music. Recently, you changed the price structure, no longer charging the good people an extra thirty cents to enjoy their music without restrictive Digital Rights Management (DRM) coding, allowing us to spread the joy of Coldplay or Chemical Brothers around and feel the love. The sound quality, by the way, is awesome on the Plus tracks, and I do often dance, backlit, in front of brightly colored backgrounds because of it!

A few of the songs I have in my iTunes library, however, were purchased before iTunes Plus. I intended to upgrade them, but couldn’t really justify repurchasing songs. Even when the repurchase price was the difference in cost between the two file types (thirty cents) I still thought this was too much for something which should be the same price.

And now it is, hurray! And I would upgrade too, save for one cavet:

If I was to buy a DRM-crippled CD…and the alternate DRM-free album was available at the same price, there are very few shops who would *charge me* for the privilege of exchanging the two, yet this is exactly what iTunes and Apple and you, Steve, are doing to me!

Music received for free is not eligible for upgrade….Song upgrades are available for 30 cents –iTunes Plus FAQ

iTunes *still* charges thirty cents per song to upgrade, even though the DRM-free track is the same price as the DRM-crippled track was *and* the fact that you no longer offer Plus tracks in the crippling format for purchase?

WTF, Steve? Did you, or did you not, say that DRM is bad for customers, producers, and artists? On February 6, 2007, did you not say, “If the big four music companies would license Apple their music without the requirement that it be protected with a DRM, we would switch to selling only DRM-free music on our iTunes store… Apple will embrace this wholeheartedly”? How can you charge us a new price for something you believe in wholeheartedly, keeping us locked into something that is bad for consumers because we have to pay thirty cents per song to break free?

“Imagine a world where every online store sells DRM-free music encoded in open licensable formats. In such a world, any player can play music purchased from any store, and any store can sell music which is playable on all players. This is clearly the best alternative for consumers, and Apple would embrace it in a heartbeat.”
–Steve Jobs, February 6, 2007

Yes, imagine there’s no DRM. It’s easy if you try. Imagine freeing crippled songs. Something something pie. Imagine all the people…yeh, that’s gone on long enough, but still, imagine how wonderful no DRM on any songs ever would be!

So why are you *still* charging me more for the privilege of DRM-free songs when those who are buying the same songs today aren’t? In your memo, you pointed out that the majority of music sales are still via CD, which is inherently DRM-free. If I was to buy a DRM-crippled CD, as I did when Jared Leto and his fruity little band put out a CD that wouldn’t play in any machine I own because of DRM, and the alternate DRM-free album was available at the same price, there are very few, if any, brick and mortar shops who would *charge me* for the privilege of exchanging a crippled product for the same product of the same monetary value, yet this is exactly what iTunes and Apple and you, Steve, are doing to me!

Please excuse me if I feel absolutely screwed in the ass here.

Love always,

–The Wife

Unless you have been living under a rock recently, you know that law enforcement has been bitch-smacked by the liberal socialist press recently for two incidents, which I like to refer to as “Don’t Tase Me, Bro” and “Wow, I’ve Been Living In A Techno-Cave”. Since we all know about the dickhead who, essentially, wanted to make a name for himself on YouTube and thus started disrupting John Kerry at a speech with questions and then resisted arrest, I won’t discuss any more on that subject.

Here’s what I will talk about: ideology verses common sense in the case of one Star Simpson.

Ideologically, innocence is always innocent — if you only mean one thing and someone takes it the wrong way, that’s someone’s problem, not yours. But, in practice, this simply isn’t the case. Much like in law, ignorance of the law does not excuse breaking the law, ignorance of social mores or cause and effect is not an excuse. For example, if I walked into Germany wearing a swastika because I was trying to say my body is my Hindu temple (or something equally unknown in the mainstream) I would have absolutely no right to look shocked that I was arrested — it is illegal to wear or display the Swastika in that country.

I do not agree with Germany on that policy, but I would not be angry with the police who arrested me when it was *I* who needed to know what the Swastika is interpreted as and how the law is designed around it.

Since the day that two buildings in New York City fell down, terrorism has been a real and imagined concern in the eyes of the populace, but even before that (I say this as a former airport employee, by the way) before TSA and all the Orwellian nightmares they induce, before planes were turned into Weapons of Mass Murder and Destruction, you could not walk into an airport and through security with something strapped on your chest that had exposed wires and an exposed electrical supply and anything resembling plastic explosive on your hands. Would you have been shot — or at least stared down the business end of a gun? Maybe, maybe not. Most people weren’t that stupid. Most people knew the rules, even before water became a threatening substance: no guns, no (large) knives/weapons, and nothing that looks like a bomb.

Remember Pan-Am 103?

So why, in the name of all common sense, would anyone think that an electrically-wired shirt with an exposed battery and wires would make it through security? More over, why would anyone defend this?

Oh, that’s right — because TSA are always wrong. Always.

Now, I’ll tell you something, as someone who was in the airport when there were private security firms, who knows people who lost jobs to the TSA overhaul, who couldn’t go to work for three days because suddenly my security clearance wasn’t up to the newly-imposed standards, who had to deal with John Wayne cowboys who wouldn’t let me take my lunch through security more often than not, even though this was years before the liquids ban, and MPs (Military Police) who sexually harassed me every day I went to work, I hate the TSA more than anyone. Yet, I’m not going to fault them for doing their job. I’d think someone who was walking around with exposed wires and batteries and putty on their hands was up to no good too.

And, ladies and gentlemen, look at what airport this took place at: LOGAN. This was the airport from which two of the buildings fall down day airplanes left from, who took most of the flack for the terrorist attacks of the day. This is an airport in BOSTON, a city which arrested two men who were just putting up some guerrilla marketing and only cared about hairdos of the 1970s, for putting up hoax devices.

None of these things make what they did right, but neither is banning a symbol. Yet that’s the reality you have to live with until we can get enough people petitioning enough politicians to change the law. And, by the way, martyrdom may raise awareness, but it’s a piss poor way to do it, especially when it involves gratuitous acts of stupidity.

You’d have to be an idiot to wear that shirt into Logan Airport and not expect something to happen. Hell, if this was London, she’d have been shot seven times in the head and once in the shoulder.

You’d have to be an idiot, or much like “Don’t Tase Me, Bro”, a fame hound.

You be the judge.