F$@& the **AA

[**AA insanity]
"Please make us legal monopolies. We won't abuse our power, we promise!"

"VCRs/Jukeboxes/Radios/TiVo/RiVo will destroy our business model, and should therefore be illegal!"
[/insanity]

I've really had about enough of the RIAA, MPAA, and other large media interests. This is a weird rant for me to make, but I just can't help it. Before too long, we're only going to get one point of view on any issue, spoon fed to us at the time and manner deemed most profitable by our overlords. This is the exact opposite of what should be happening in the so-called Information Age.

Companies should, obviously, be able to protect their copyrights. However...
The NFL does not have a natural, god-given right to enforce telecast blackouts - it's nothing more than one particular way of doing business given the available technology. Likewise, The RIAA and MPAA do not have the natural right to cripple distributed media with DRM and force consumers to abide by it - it's just one particular way of selling recorded entertainment.

The RIAA/MPAA and their ilk are dinosaurs. If they're smart, they'll adapt like they did after losing the Betamax case in the U.S. Supreme Court. If they maintain their current line of thinking, they'll die a painful death and grassroots/indie creativity will flourish. If they're lucky, they'll defeat innovation and consumer rights, and leave us in a wasteland of $15 Britney Spears CDs that can't be copied to an mp3 player to use at the gym and 5,473 channels of CNN People that we can't record while we're at our kids' soccer games.

Many others have articulated these feelings better than I, but what kind of rant would this be if it was well thought out, clear, and concise?

Random Intarweb Goodies

1) Remember that flash game where you hit the pingu (penguin) with the bat? It turns out there are 8 games in that series (Yeti sports). Awesome. Be warned: clicking that link might make the next couple hours of your life disappear (in the good way).

2) Sam Falcone is a normal, red-blooded, meat-loving fella. If you are a dirty hippie, PETA supporter, or are otherwise opposed to his flesh eating ways, he's willing to accept a small donation in return for not eating meat for a day! Put your money where your mouth is, you silly herbivore.

3) It seems like the whole world has started to hate us since soon after 9/11. Kim du Toit is an example of a foreigner (and naturalized citizen) that understands why the US of A is still the best damn place on Earth. That link points to one of my favorite bits on his site, but he has 19 other essays there (listed along the left side of the page) in addition to a ton of community links and quite a bit of blog-style, general commentary. The essays are definitely the best of the site's content, though. Do yourself a favor and read a few.

Music for the gym...suggestions?

I'm getting a little bored with my current selection. I need new albums that have some cojones...know what I mean? Below are some examples of my current gym favorites.

Linkin Park - "In the End", "Faint"
Saliva - "Click Click Boom"
Eve 6 - "Open Road Song"
Blink 182 - "All the Small Things"
Kottonmouth Kings - "Wickit Klowns"
Eminem - "Till I Collapse", "Crazy in Love"
DMX - "Damien", "Here We Go Again"

So, friends - care to help a fella out?

I'm [finally] an engineer

It's been a long time coming; 9 months, to be exact. I have to do a little math, for once. I deal with price vs. time vs. performance problems every day. I use mass/energy/species balances. Arrhenius is my closest coworker and my greatest adversary.

I'm also as busy as a poor, fat kid at OCB. The 40 hr work week is now just a pleasant memory. We're not talking slave labor here, but the move to a 45-50 hr week is definitely noticeable. The upside is that my days fly by at this new job. The downside is that, if I have any errands to run after work, my evenings feel pretty compressed.

I'd talk about what exactly is keeping me so busy, but a lot of it is pretty sensitive. That's another nice thing about this job: I get to work on unique, cutting-edge widgets and the systems that utilize them.

...that last paragraph seemed like a pretty abrupt way to end the post, so I added this little bit. Much better, huh? :)

Stupid proverbs...

"A watched pot never boils."

Taken literally, this is a ridiculous statement. Maybe that is the reason that I am wholly unable to abide by its figurative wisdom. Not only does my dumb ass sit near the pot whenever possible, but I stare at the pot. Often, I try to trick the pot by looking at it only out of the corner of my eye. Even if the pot doesn't directly notice my (super-sneaky!) gaze, I'm pretty sure the fact that I'm only two feet away counts as "watching" it.

I'm so scared about missing that first vapor bubble that I let everything else pass me by.

Do you want to know the worst part? Sometimes I don't even turn on the stove. It's like I expect the pot of room-temp water to say "Woohoo! Let's boil!" and heat itself up.

PSA: Mars, Venus, etc.

Surprisingly, a great many people today fail to grasp even the most basic tenets of male/female interaction in Western culture. Such ignorance should not be tolerated. For your viewing pleasure, below I have linked to two excellent resources on the subject. Read, learn, enjoy.

Ode to Nice Guys
This is a nice, short piece that details one of the unfortunate consequences of the laws and theories laid out in the more thorough reference below. It only presents one side of the story, but that's okay because it's the _right_ side*.

Ladder Theory
The material on this website is a masterful work of human behaviorism and has been published in many of the top -ology journals**. Start at the beginning, and you'll be amazed as the author progressively unveils the simple dynamic that can determine the fate of a relationship before it even begins. The full documentation for Ladder Theory even includes rebuttals for commonly-proposed weaknesses and failures in the Theory. This is a _must read_. I hear it's even going to be on Oprah's Book List Thingy***.

*Yes, it is.
**No, it doesn't matter which ones. If it's an -ology, it's clearly scientific, important, and true.
***I probably made this up.

Spam. On my phone.

As an avid user of the intarweb, I am familiar with spam. I even get spam at email addresses that I've never used or told anyone about. I don't care about it too much, mostly because email accounts are free and relatively portable. I'm accustomed to it. Almost oblivious to it, even.

My cell phone service is neither free nor easily portable, and today I got my first text message spam. I have never texted with my phone, or surfed the internet, or used any other fancy schmancy non-phone-call service. Still, the bastards found me. At least they were nice enough to offer me a cheap vacation to Jamaica: only $200 per person!!!1!1!!oneone!!