Tyco CEO to Judge: "I am too damn stupid to convict"

Dumbest CEO EVAR!

“I just was not thinking when I signed my tax return that I had a $25 million loan forgiveness,” Kozlowski said. “Year in and year out at Tyco, my tax returns for the most part had been correct. I didn’t pick up on it.”

That's right. This guy is such a dunce that he forgot 25 MILLION DOLLARS.
Dear God. He got 62 million dollars in bonuses that year, and somehow managed to "forget" almost HALF of them when it came to tax time.
And, as if that weren't enough to deal with, this couple in Britain got hit - in their bedroom - in bed - asleep - with a FLYING CAR.
Everybody's favorite rocker, Bo Bice from American Idol, narrowly avoided being charged with felony cocaine possession. Woohoo!
Oh, and while I'm at it, ITunes is about to get some competition they won't be able to handle - legal movie downloads for 99 cents each. (British, of course, that translates into about $1.88 US. Still - if you could buy 6 minutes of music, or 2 hours of movie, for $2, which is a better deal?
I'd have to say "the movies, duh."

Your Friend, The Government

A French court does something right?

On April 22nd, the Paris Court of Appeal prohibited the use of DVD-based copy protection systems. The reason? The incompatibility of this practice with private copying rights.

Yes, that's right. A French court just ruled that applying copy - protection to DVDs is a violation of your right to make backup copies of legitimately purchased media, because it requires you to break the law to circumvent the protection. Killer.


Now what this means, hopefully, is that some organization in the US, maybe the EFF will try and win a similar lawsuit in the US, thus removing the ability of the media companies to either criminalize, or require multiple purchases by, their customers.

The thing about "fair use" is that it is just that - a FAIR use. If you purchase a DVD from a store, you have not only purchased the physical DVD storage media, you have purchased a single copy of the media content stored on it. This means that it is your right to use that content as you see fit - whether to edit it to keep your kids from seeing objectionable bits (if ClearPlay can do it, so can I,) or to move that content onto another storage medium for YOUR viewing convenience. Even if that means, for example, putting it onto your computer's hard drive, or onto a VHS tape.

Where you cross the line outside "fair use" into criminal territory is when you start making copies for your friends, selling copies, or distributing it to hundreds of downloaders on the Internet. That's NOT the right thing.

The trouble is, the media companies have your right of fair use under attack right now, and sharing files online seems to be the most effective way to fight back. Not the BEST way, mind you, but seeing as young people can't be bothered to go to the voting booths during elections, and more importantly, repeatedly vote for the same idiots who pass this legislation, the only effective way.

Just When You Thought The NYPD Was Good Again...

You find out they're taking bribes.

According to New York Post, two NYPD veterans are being investigated for allegedly accepting illegal payoffs from MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) in return of arresting vendors of pirated DVD's.

Great, the media companies aren't satisfied with the progress of the courts and the Congress in suppressing DVD pirates, so now they're paying off the cops.
Really, this doesn't need much help; it's completely outlandish as is.
I would write more about this, but really, I don't need to; the New York Post said it all already.
Amazing.

Congress, Your Best Friend

The Family Entertainment and Copyright Act has been passed by the House and Senate, and they're just waiting for the President to sign it into law. Isn't that great?

Making a movie available electronically prior to its release can now result in a three year sentence...

This, from The Register's article on the subject. Please note that their title is accurate; this gives p2p filesharing of a movie prior to its theatrical release date the same legal penalties and degree of severity of manslaughter; I dunno, to me KILLING SOMEONE seems a little worse than watching a movie a few days early.
Not surprisingly, this bill is yet another sponsored on the floor by our favorite Senator of all, Orrin G. Hatch of Utah. What a great guy. He's sponsored endless legislation to prevent anybody anywhere from doing anything online, driven hard not only to criminalize filesharing, but to equate it with murder, as per today's main article, and... oh, hell. Here's his voting record. Look for yourself. Oh, and here's his financial records, too.
In other news, it's not just our government that's stupid. I'd say "Thank God," except it's not something you'd actually WANT.
The thing about government is, they do things you'd think you'd want, except they use those things to hide the things they do that you don't want at all. For example: The Family Movie Act. See, the trick here is that this bill, which seems on the surface to be useful, is in fact camouflaging yet another attack on filesharing. Here, the tactic is to declare filesharers to be bootleggers - and get this - subject to an ADDITIONAL set of penalties because the versions of movies distributed via filesharing are "unauthorized in content and / or quality."
Mmmmhmmmm. It's not just MUUUUUUUUUUURRRRRRRDEERRRRRRRRR, it's also bad copies. Amazing.

Oh, and while I'm at it, did you know that using your DVD player or VCR's "Fast Forward" feature to avoid commercials might soon be illegal? Yep, That's right, the Intellectual Property Protection Act of 2004 would make it illegal to avoid commercial content by fast forwarding. Enforcement will cost the government (they claim) $17 million, although I'm not sure, short of requiring manufacturers not to install the feature, how you'd prevent it, or even know who did it.
The very idea is, to me utterly incredible: that media companies have the right to FORCE you to watch advertising. I remember the First Amendment saying that you have the right to say anything you want, but oddly enough I don't remember it saying anything about other people being required to pay attention to you while you do it. The real issue here is that the movie companies feel like they're losing money - not because they're irritating the crap out of you, oh no, it's because you're not watching the ads - and thus, because GOD FORBID they should change their business to meet the new market, they will force you by law to conform to their way of doing business.
What utter claptrap.

There's A New Pope, WOOHOO!!!1!

CNN brings us this tidbit:

"I am consoled by the fact that the Lord knows how to work and how to act, even with insufficient tools, and I especially trust in your prayers."

This, from our new Pope, formerly Cardinal Ratzinger of Germany, now to be known as Benedict XVI. Great. Just what we need. As though the Catholic church weren't aligned heavily enough against American interests, now we have a Pope from Germany.
God forbid any Catholics here should vote the way they're told to by the Pope - oh, wait, they do. Wonderful. Yet another voting bloc determined to prevent America from getting anywhere, by keeping our government so busy trying to pacify interest groups that it's incapable of helping anyone else out.

Truly, it amazes me how blind people are to the way things work in the world. When the second war in Iraq started, and all the idiot peaceniks came out to tell the world that we were being bad, evil imperialists, I was soooooooo tempted to go to New York to join the protest, wearing a shirt saying "Stop Yankee Imperialism! Help Saddam Murder Millions!" or something similar. Oh, wait. Someone did.

Finally.
Now, that's what I like to see.

Someone who will go to an affirmative action rally, carrying this:


God bless 'em. Thank you, Protestwarrior.com, for saying / carrying / wearing all those nasty truths that liberals don't like to hear.

Maybe we SHOULD get around and nuke the moon, before it's too late to do any good.

...And Now For Something Completely Different...

No New Pope Yet...

(AP) - Black smoke poured from the Sistine Chapel's chimney Monday evening, signaling that the cardinals sequestered inside for the first papal conclave of the new millennium failed to elect a new pope. The black smoke meant the 115 voting cardinal "princes" of the church would retire for the night and return to the chapel Tuesday morning for more balloting in their search for a successor to Pope John Paul II.

Now what's really cool about this is that ABC, in a stunning departure from the norm for them, interrupted their normal scheduled programming to tell us this, and then spent 35 minutes analysing what it meant.
Sadly, they didn't have anything new to tell you after that; there's no new Pope, and the old one's still dead.
That is a news report that could have been finished in a whole big scary five minutes, maximum, but instead they wasted a huge chunk of time rambling on and on about the "implications" of it all.

Booooooooring.

FOX News channel does the same thing, though; on Sunday night they interrupted the audio feed from House Majority Whip Tom DeLay's speech to the NRA to explain to us what he was saying.
Errrrr, thanks, guys, I'd rather hear it myself.
Topping that off was the fact that the talking head they got to report on the speech was Geraldo Rivera, he of the KKK-fighting broken-nose TV show where they bring ridiculous people on TV and then take them seriously for no reason anyone with a lick of sense can understand.
Great for the old FOX credibility, you know?

The good news is that the site is back; now that I have a place to post from, semi-regular updates will resume.
*pause for cheers of excitement*

*crickets*

Hmmmmm.