Music Wars:
The RIAA strikes back again

Apparently, from this article the RIAA can indeed get your IP:

File swappers hoping to share music and other works online without exposing their identity to the prying eyes of copyright enforcers face a tough choice.

Popular peer-to-peer networks such as Kazaa, where the lion's share of online trading of music and other files takes place, are designed so that participants who wish to remain completely anonymous must pay a severe price in terms of convenience and usability, experts warn.

snip...

Hiding on a file-sharing system is hard for a very simple reason: peer-to-peer networks are designed for efficiency, not anonymity. They rely on a straightforward mechanism that is ruthlessly efficient at trading files. But, by broadcasting the contents of shared folders, the system leaves users vulnerable to identification and, therefore, to possible legal action.

snip...

In a ruling last week in the Aimster case, a federal appeals court went even further, suggesting that a file-swapping network that cloaks its users' activities might run afoul of copyright law, precisely because it is designed to conceal illegal acts.

"Aimster hampered its search for evidence by providing encryption," wrote Judge Richard Posner, a respected economist and jurist. "It must take responsibility for that self-inflicted wound."

Posner, who serves on the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals, wrote: "A service provider that would otherwise be a contributory infringer does not obtain immunity by using encryption to shield itself from actual knowledge of the unlawful purposes for which the service is being used."

snip..

Marc Rotenberg, director of the Electronic Privacy Information Centre, says that anonymity should remain the default condition both online and offline. "It is in many different contexts in the physical world, whether it's travel or commerce," Rotenberg said. "The burden typically falls on organisations that want your personal identity to justify their reason."

Given the RIAA's history of lawsuits, Rotenberg said he fears the worst. "To the extent that anonymity appears on the RIAA radar screen -- as have P2P and other technologies that stand in the way of copyright enforcement -- you can be sure that RIAA attorneys will launch a frontal assault, regardless of the constitutional implications," Rotenberg said.

This article seems to contradict what Myself has read in other articles about anonymous P2P networks. Given the source, ZD Net, which is generally pro-establishment, Myself takes this article with their leanings in mind. It does however raise Some concern for Myself, who relies on the "the RIAA can't sue 20 million individuals" meme. They can send cease and desist notices and that, even Myself will admit is daunting. There are uses for P2P that are completely legal, which is why the software itself can't be outlawed, which is incidentally why we have CD burners. The RIAA is going to fiercely persue it's policy of stopping all P2P music swapping, and only time will tell if programmers can keep one step ahead of them. Businesses that provide anonymous IP protection, shake in fear of even having to defend themselves against potential RIAA action, and opt not to extend their products to cover P2P networking, (which is understandable if your tyring to grow your business), but Myself is fairly certain there will be lone hack out there who doesn't give a shit and will post an anonymizer (not a real word I know, but it works), maybe even make it open source, just like DVD encryption. I'm fairly certain it already exists, out there, somewhere, if not then REAL SOON NOW.

The Volokh Conspiracy has a handful of excellent, in-depth, (read: long, involved) essays on the slippery slope of gay marriage here, here, here, and here. Yes four of them. Read them all. Be ready to put your thinking caps on, these guys are lawyers after all.

Jer-ry! Jer-ry! Jer-ry!

Yes that's right, Jerry "My fiancee is in love with another man" Springer has officially filed papers on Monday to run for the U.S. Senate from Ohio.

Springer, the former mayor of Cincinnati, will make a final decision on whether to run by the end of the month. State Sen. Eric Fingerhut has already announced his candidacy for the Democratic nomination and the right to challenge first-term Sen. George Voinovich, R-Ohio, who served as governor of Ohio from 1991-99.

Voinovich, who won in 1998 with 57 percent of the vote, is considered a formidable candidate.

Although he still has time to make a final decision, Myself is betting he goes for it. Now, to be sure there will be lots of jokes to go around, David Letterman made one last night, something about teenage prostitutes if I remember, but you know what? I'd vote for the guy, if only for the jokes.

In a somewhat related story Former Minnesota Governor Jeesse "The Body" Ventura may get an MSNBC talk show While he's definitely not a democrat, he's not exactly a conservative republican either, more like an independent-libertarian, from what I've seen and heard, at least he's a damn site better than Michael "You should only get AIDS and die, you pig" Weiner Savage, I hope. Surely more entertaining. (hey I said somewhat related)

what's in a name

Here in Hawaii, our state capitol building that houses both legislative chambers, all of their offices as well as the offices of the Governor and Lt. Governor, has a fairly large underground parking lot. Now this parking lot is maintained by the state, as well as dozens of other parking lots across the state. Each lot has a three letter code, in which the first letter designates which county the lot is in and the remaining two letters indicate the individual lot. I had a chance to view the breakdown and it is as such: Oahu i.e. the city and county of Honolulu, parking lots are designated "A", and the two letter code for the capitol lot is, (here it comes), "SS". Yes thats right boys and girls, the "official" code for the state capitol underground parking lot is "ASS". This, Myself swears is absolutely true.

Savage television

After a very relaxing four day weekend (called in sick yesterday) it seems that I may have missed a few things, among them: Radio talk show host turned television show host Michael Savage was fired from his MSNBC show yesterday :

The incident that resulted in his firing began innocently enough. Savage was taking viewer phone calls about airline horror stories, and a male caller began talking about smoking in the bathroom.

"Half an hour into the flight, I need to suggest that Don and Mike take your ..." the caller said, before he was cut off and his words became unintelligible.

"So you're one of those sodomists. Are you a sodomite?" Savage asked.

The caller replied: "Yes, I am."

"Oh, you're one of the sodomites," Savage said. "You should only get AIDS and die, you pig. How's that? Why don't you see if you can sue me, you pig. You got nothing better than to put me down, you piece of garbage. You have got nothing to do today, go eat a sausage and choke on it."

He asked for another phone caller who "didn't have a nice night in the bathhouse who's angry at me today."

These bums "mean nothing to me," he said.

Can't say I'm surprised either, Myself has always wondered why this man, who apparently has an opinion against gays (to put it nicely), chooses to live in San Francisco? But I digress, Myself has listened to his show, (know your enemy, and all that) and try as I might, Myself can listen for ten minutes or so until he goes on a rant, then Myself has to turn the station. After five minutes or so turn back, if he's not braying about the hell in a handbasket the country is and/or has become because of liberals/democrats or anyone to the left himself, he can actually be entertaining at times. But unfortunately he never stays on nuetral topics for long. So the question is: Did the GLBT Political action wing cause his cancellation? Maybe in part, surely they were a thorn in his side at the very least, organizing sponser boycotts and the like. But not entirely Most of the blame rests squarely on Savage himself. He snapped, his very subjective behavior, with regard to gays got the better of him and he snapped, and he insulted a gay caller, (he regularly insults and yells at radio callers who don't kiss his ass on the air). And he paid the price. Although he does issue an apology claiming he thought he was off the air (which is hard to believe, reading the transcript), Myself doubts anyone other than his loyal followers, and maybe other conservatives believe him. Savage, Rush and Dr. Laura who have all tried and failed at converting their radio show to TV. They are on the radio for a reason, that reason is because, in reality, no one want to look at them, nor does any one want to merely see their radio show. Let's face it none of these are exactly "lookers" if they were they'd be on TV in the first place. Further when you listen to a radio show 9 out of 10 times you are doing something else, working, driving to somewhere, whatever. A TV show requires you to sit and pay attention and watch, the most you can do is eat or drink. And if Myself has to give either of the three aforementioned people his relatively undivided attention and look at your face.. well forget it

if it didn't work once...

Wow, the US is offering a $25 million reward for

information leading to the capture of Saddam Hussein or confirmation of his death — an effort to resolve the fate of the ousted Iraqi leader and help end the violence blamed on his supporters.

also a cool $15 mil each for his two boys. Since it was so very successful when we offered $25 mil for Osama catch me if you can Bin Laden I'm sure this will be a rousing success and I predict he will be captured any day now. Yup it's gonna be REAL SOON NOW.

In a (somewhat) related story the World's Policeman U.S. is begining plans for intervention in Liberia:

"The president ... is exploring all of the options, political options, diplomatic options and military options," Powell told reporters. "All of these factors are being taken into consideration ... but we've made no recommendation to the president yet."

snip...

He spoke of America's "unique history" with Liberia, which was founded in 1847 by freed American slaves, saying there was "a greater sense of expectations" of the United States.

Ya screw Burma.

Music Wars:
The RIAA Strikes Back

No sooner than the RIAA announced they will now target indivuduals who are downloading music, comes the P2P network that claims anonymous file swapping. Now as Myself has previously posted on this, the RIAA needs to wake up here, anything they try will be immediately countered by someone out there who has realized what the RIAA has not: that people will continue to download, knowing full well that this is illegal, or at least in violation of current copyright laws. Myself can already download an plug-in IP spoofer that will mask my real IP address anytime Myself is on Kazaa, and I'm sure Kazaa does not want to have its user base erode, giving up their number one slot in market share of music pirates, and will have some new version which will effectively thwart the RIAA.

hypocracy

well this is just way to stupid, shame of both sides:
full article

Bush calls for faith-based hiring rights
Wed Jun 25, 8:09 PM ET

Gay.com / PlanetOut.com Network

SUMMARY: President George W. Bush (news - web sites) encouraged Congress on Tuesday to allow federally funded religious groups to hire and fire workers according to their faith or sexual orientation.

President George W. Bush encouraged Congress on Tuesday to allow federally funded religious groups to hire and fire workers according to their faith or sexual orientation.

Under current law, faith-based groups that receive government funding for social services work are bound by state and local nondiscrimination hiring laws -- many of which ban bias according sexual orientation and gender identity. But Bush's plan, as outlined in the White House position paper circulated on Capitol Hill Tuesday, aims to hold those agencies only to federal law, which does not address sexual orientation or gender identity discrimination.

As reported in the Washington Post, the president's position paper argues that hiring autonomy -- even if it involves discrimination -- is part of a group's civil rights.

Except when it comes to affirmative action of course.
and then it goes to this
..snip..

"It is counterproductive and wrong to fight social injustices like poverty and hunger by promoting another social injustice like discrimination, said Winnie Stachelberg, political director of the Human Rights Campaign (HRC).

Except when it comes to affirmative action of course.

c'mon people, can we have a little consistency here? Myself asks the left: you're more than willing to have some reverse discrimination as far as affirmative action, but yet not willing to allow a little discrimination in this case? and to the right Myself asks: is this "fair"? should not performance/qualifications alone determine who gets a job? When political organizations react this way, well, it makes my head feel like its going to explode.

daily affirmation

I have to comment on a blog on my list Jesus' General At first glance one would think that this is a conservative-christian-ex-military-man blog. And for all appearences it is. But Myself has to say that it is, in fact, just the opposite, which is the real beauty of this site. A closer inspection of the site reveals blog links to mostly center and lefty blogs. no LGF no Instapundit, no freeper, no Scrappleface. Links are to Eschaton, Tom Tomorrow, Tbogg and the like (unless of course this is a clever ploy). There is a disclaimer noting the site should be taken in the context of satie and parody. But the real funny thing is that in the comments, some of his readers appear to be thinking he is actually a conservative-christian-ex-military-man. Which of course leads Myself to further his thinking his life theory #16 is Correct: "While I am fully aware that there are many, many people smarter than Myself, there are more people dumber than Myself than there are people smarter than Myself"

Update Seems the General has given his farewell on 6/30/03, ah well so long, and thanks for all the fish.

Why is Myself not surprised?

Abercrombie & Fitch is being sued for racial discrimination

Several Hispanic and Asian plaintiffs said in interviews that when they applied for jobs, store managers steered them to stockroom jobs and away from the sales floor because they did not project what the company called the "A & F look." That look, these plaintiffs said, is overwhelmingly white, judging from the low percentage of minority members who work on the sales floor and from the company's posters and quarterly magazine, which overwhelmingly featured white models.

snip

Juancarlos Gomez-Montejano, who worked in sales at an Abercrombie in Santa Monica, said that after a corporate official visited his store, he and four other minority sales workers were terminated, told that the staff was too large. A few weeks later, he said, the store hired five white fraternity members from U.C.L.A.

Myself does not own any A&F clothes, mostly because whenever I go into one to browse, all the clothes strike myself as "white people shit", a phrase learned from my black/Filipino boyfriend. Now Myself has had his suspicions confirmed and I will not be purchasing anything from there. The Banana Republic jab at the end was very funny though, especially because its true.

wither WMD?

Personally, Myself thinks it's still a wee bit early yet to say this but, I gotta admit its looking more and more like it was a ruse. Billmon at The Whiskey Bar has quotes from Bush and his cabinet, that have been made over the course of nearly a year, makes its case pretty effectively. Myself is still not yet ready to go postal on this yet, I am still willing to give the benefit of doubt, but just barely. The nagging little voice inside Myself is saying we were lied to, it was a matter of urgent national security, they said, Saddam can and will put WMD's in the hands of "terrorists groups like Al-Quieda" (but not AQ themselves mind you, because you told us they are defeated, even though they are not), and who knows what those evil-doers will do, being the evil-doers that they are. Well we have yet to see any substantial cache of actual weapons. Two canvas sided trucks? Well, supporting evidence maybe, yes Saddam had a weapons program, and he was a very bad man, and Myself is thinking the Iraqi people are better off now that he is not is charge (but he is not gone). Bottom line, Where are the biological, chemical, nuclear weapons? This voice getting louder, and a bit angrier. At some point its going to completely drown out those other voices. If it drowns out the one that tells me to paint my body orange, and run naked through the airport with a bunch a bananas strapped to my head, screaming "I am the monkey king!", well maybe that's ok then.

reciprocity

Thanks to Rant Dude for the blogroll link, for actually reading my blog, and throwing more gas on Myself's rant on Amercanization of Asian Americans.

showcase week2

Results of week 2 in the new blog showcase at Truth Laid Bare. Congrats to Mac-a-ro-nies and thanks for linking to my post. Myself had a respectable showing of 4 links which put me somemwhere in the middle of the pack. better that last week. I think the mandatory voting had something to do with it. At least now I've evolved from microbe to lowly insect, yipee. I have two more chances to enter. Still deciding.


Update: Guess I can't enter, only new blogs allowed. I did get some exposure that I would not have gotten otherwise, so it's all good.

Myself as Emily Litella

Myself is a bit tempted to go trolling (tempted, because Myself would never, ever do such a thing), to every right-leaning blog that defended the Tax-cut package which removed the tax credit for the lowest income wage earners. Those who obediently towed the party line, saying the poor don't pay taxes anyway, so it's just welfare, it's not their money, it's mine because and I do pay, etc. seem to be left twisting in the wind with a knife in your back, (well, maybe thats a bit much). If it were me I'd be pissed at congress, royally pissed. First, if you idiots didn't cut it to begin with, none of this liberal, See I told you this was a tax cut for the rich, punishment of the poor, class warfare, etc. screeds would have happened in the first place. (Myself does not know of anyone who posited against low income tax credits before it was taken out but Myself could, of course, be wrong). Second you idiots then put us in the position of having to defend your actions, which we did (even Myself will admit), quite well, utilizing some often wonky arguments to justify an action in order to enact and economic policy that is, purposefully non-wonky. Thirdly you then caved like a house of cards, voting 94-2 to restore the credit, while adding more stuff, further eroding your stance of keeping a *ceiling* on the size of the tax/economic package. OTOH I could just say, oops, never mind.

Ever the microbe Myself

note: posting date modified to keep near top of page

NZ Bear's feature New Blog Showcase results for week one, Myself did not win, (hell I was tied for dead last ZERO links), not overly dissapointed though, (does my writing suck that badly?), given the number of blogs. I even voted for a few but got no reciprocity, even though by voting for someone else it lessened my chances of winning, but as a citizen of Blogistan, I felt it was my duty. Apparently NZ Bear has made three votes mandatory for upcoming weeks. Oh well, I guess I can enter again, from my latest site meter reports, there were only a few people that even bothered to look, so I'll just use the same post. If I'm not last his time I'll be happy. On a brighter note I got a blogroll link at Cooking for Losers, even posted a modified post of mine. The site is not really a blog more like a site which has funny, quirky stuff about food, cooking, cooking disasters, with some actual real and practical recipes thrown in for good measure. Big Alohas for you.

If any of you bloggers did vote for me, let me know

Votes for Week2:

The Whiskey Bar This often Atrios commentor/contributor does excellent work on use of sound bites to characterize this administration's matter of empahsis and props for sourcing each quote also.

Myself votes again for Happy Furry Story Time with Norbizness sure he doesn't back up his statements with any supporting arguments, but with this level of cranky, curmengeon-ness, (not a word I know) you don't have to. Also for his use of the word fucktard.

RandomActOfKindness in reciprocity for your same, although a bit Chicago/Illinois centered, well written and thoughtful.
Tiger:Raggin&Rantin good objective reviews of the showcase blogs as well as other blogs and current events, makes me want to pop in now and again.
Mac-a-ro-nies another often Atrios commentor/contributor offers democratic veiwpoints that Myself can't help but agree with, You go Girl.
David E's FablogNot exactly breaking news, but still I have to give credit to family that have paved the way for Myself to be here and queer (althought I still have a bit of a problem with the in your face stuff, sometimes)



comments:

- Myself has noticed that some people's permalinks for their entry posts do not work. This is probaly NOT a Blogspot problem it is most likely because your post is too recent. Blogspot automatically generates an archive at the end of the week. Thus, if your entry was written this week you have no archive. you must manually create the archive. Hey if Myself can do it how hard can it be?
- Fiskings are for the most part, pretty lame. It's failry easy to go line by line and pick apart a left/right opinion piece, that you don't agree with. Myself realizes it's a common blogger tool, but try and take into account what the original text is saying, and not interpet it such an obviously unintended fashion for the sole purpose of making straw men arguments that you gleefully knock down. (Note to Myself: possible blog topic)
- If you want to blog like Atrios/Instapundit, go for it, but do it properly, link to the source of all your quotes, use indentation, italics or something to indicate what is the quote and what are your words. At least try to resemble the quasi-journalism-news-blog writing syntax that the big boys use.
- Myself tends to prefer blogs that have some personality, either some emotion (humor, anger, joy whatever), or reveal some aspect(s) about your person (who you are, what you do).

question

if video killed the radio star; what did the internet kill?

hanabata days

The other day I asked my niece what she was snacking, which looked like some dark green powder in a plastic container the size of a small test tube. She informed me that it was called Raven-something-or-other-like-that, Myself tried it and it was extremely sour and tart. It had the added effect of turning my tongue a hideous blackish-purplish-greenish color. Needless to say I loved the shit. It did remind me of the strange things I used to snack on when I was in the third grade, such as ramen tar tare, take a package of dried ramen, crush it into pieces, dump the seasoning packet on the ramen crumbs, shake it up and scarf it down. Yum. Also Jello™ straight out of the box, as well as instant pudding, Nestle Quick™ and Ovaltine™. I was also known to munch on a cinnamon stick.
I remember when I got busted for taking the jello:
Mom is looking in the kitchen cupboards:
Mom: "What happened to all the Jello?"
Myself: "I ate it"
Mom: "You ate it?"
Myself: "I ate it for recess snack"
Mom: "Who made it?"
Myself: "No one, we just ate it"
Mom: "You just ate it right out of the box!?"
Myself: "uh huh"
Mom: "well, don't do that anymore"

Myself's microbe votes

From Truth Laid Bare these are the blogs from the New blog Showcase that I liked:

Happy Furry Story Time is like a grumpy George Carlin (is that redundant?)
RantDudes RavingsThis guy is like Jerry Seinfeld on meth.

In General these blogs are all very well written, and, unlike myself, shows considerable thought was put into them.

things that I didn't like:
- If you use the word hyperdifferentiation I will very likely stop reading at that point.
- Overly left/right wing blogs, there's more to life (and few things more boring) that blogging hooray for our side and boo on the other. Sure my political leanings are readily proffered, but not in every other post.
- the weather: If you really feel the need to blog about it, then just say where you are and what it's like, I really, really don't want a detailed weather report. What I sometimes do is give them my weather report: Hawaii, 80°, clear blue skies with cooling 5-15 mph tradewinds, just to f**k with them.
- broken links - If the link that you post as the one to use for your vote doesn't work or takes you to your homepage - FIX IT - I fixed mine.
-

Microbes on Parade

I entered my blog in the New Weblog Showcase at Truth Laid Bear. It should be appearing the first week in june. Maybe I can evolve into a multi-cellular organism. I read some of this weeks blogs and I have to say some of these are good, (makes myself look kind of slack), I was especially impressed with some of the customized templates. I loathe dicking with the template I have, (again, pretty bad for a techie), it's just that HTML is such a pain to deal with, I'd rather look at at an abend dump, well maybe not, how about JCL? (end geekspeak).

Any other microbes out there looking for a little consentual reciprocal linking? (safe only, limits respected).
Vote early and vote often.

Update: Apparently I'm already there, but the link is not working (oops, no votes for myself), oh well, maybe I can re-enter next week.
looks like the only archive link that is working is the oldest one, (sigh).
UpUpdate:my bad, I have to archive pages myself and set the settings, permalinks should work now. (this is the point where I get a whack on the back of my head)

get away

It"s a good thing to get away from it all even if you never go anywhere. I took off from work last Thursday and Friday and with the weekend and the Memorial Day Holiday, I had five days of nothing, so did not check my email, never checked the various blogs and discussion groups, and had a mini vacation. I did some household chores, went to the beach and got a suntan, rode my bike around town and in general goofed around doing not much of anything. I watched a Japanese lantern ceremony on Memorial day, at sunset, they float literally hundreds of lanterns in memory of those who have been lost. There was something very peaceful and calming watching hundreds of lights floating away on the ocean. I enjoyed it immensely. The only problem is that sitting at my desk I'm wanting to go on vacation again.