Monthly Archives: June 2003

Still Down the Hatch

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The new headline at PC World reads:

Senator Softens Threat Against Pirates
Destroying PCs for copyright violation may be drastic, Hatch concedes.

What the Senator says is this:

“I made my comments at yesterday’s hearing because I think that industry is not doing enough to help us find effective ways to stop people from using computers to steal copyrighted, personal or sensitive materials,” he says in the statement.
“I do not favor extreme remedies–unless no moderate remedies can be found. I asked the interested industries to help us find those moderate remedies.”

What he said yesterday:

“If we can find some way to do this without destroying their machines, we’d be interested in hearing about that,” Hatch said. “If that’s the only way, then I’m all for destroying their machines.”

So some editor at PC World thinks saying the same thing using different words and structure softens the threat?

I still say let’s shove this guy down the hatch.

Down the Hatch

This entry was posted in Uncategorized on by

Amish Tech Support asks the million dollar question:

Also will the RIAA and the Entertainment Lobby be calling for Senator Hatch to step down from his post on Judiciary, or will they just settle for getting their money back?

Hatch probably hadn’t a clue that he’d be hoist with his owne petar‘ when he said:

“There’s no excuse for anyone violating copyright laws,”

as he, in essence, advocated handing over police and judicial powers to the RIAA/Entertainment industry.

If those folks don’t ask him to step down, if he does not do it on his own, the rest of us should give him a shove.

What’s Your Temperature?

This entry was posted in Humor on by

Judging from the time stamps on a series of posts beginning at 1:36 AM The Apostropher didn’t get much sleep last night. This clearly was partially due to a prodigious amount of blogging and this post, entitled 2:06 AM tells the rest of the story:

In acknowledgement of the time of this entry, I’ll mention this story. Japanese researchers at Akita University School of Medicine published a study indicating that viewing computer monitors at night, particularly bright ones, produces physiological changes that could disrupt the sleep cycle.

Read it all here for the chuckle and something to think about the next time you are up late at night polishing that next post.

The Economy is Going Again!

This entry was posted in bush on by

As reported* by Mr. Bush at last nights party the economy is better:

We got the economy going again because we worked with the US Congress to pass historic tax relief not once but twice

I’m sure that all those unemployed folks feel a lot better.

I wonder if as many people believe this already as believe that WMD’s have been found in Iraq?

A third of the American public believes U.S. forces found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, according to a recent poll. And 22 percent said Iraq actually used chemical or biological weapons.

Does he really believe his own words?

*In NPR News this morning. Audio is labeled Bush Launches Re-Election Fundraising Campaign

Eurostrictions

This entry was posted in Constitution on by

Here is the new deal: Say something not nice about some public figure; maybe someone who, though without much substance, still likes to bark like Bill O’reilly.

Then, prepare to provide space on your blog for whiny O’reilly to use to respond.

This very scenario is being proposed by the Council of Europe, a quasi-governmental body oft used to test proposals for new EU laws. As you can imagine some folks are not happy with this idea. From Peeve Farm:

And now the EU wants to regulate blogs, guaranteeing any criticized party the right to rebut any such criticism prominently on any such blog or website that issues it.

And from Perry at Samizdata:

People in the US, who take notions of Freedom of Expression and Private Property for granted, will be astonished by the latest steaming pile of wisdom to emerge from the clenched cheeks of our European would-be masters.

This is the kind of stuff that makes me want to climb right up on the battlements with Perry. Can’t the folks that dream this stuff up just go find a real job?

Update: Perry has more and if you have lots of time den Beste covers this at length.