Welcome to the family, russiandell!

There is a new addition to my household. Her name is russiandell, which is pretty self-explanatory when you consider the she's both a gift from my little sis (thanks!!) and a Dell Inspiron 600m.

Poor russiandell, you see, went all gimpy a few months ago. My sister, not being the type of person to fix a computer and definitely being the type of person to want an excuse to buy a new laptop, went out and bought herself a new Apple MacBook Pro.

Me being a helpful brother and all, I diagnosed her problem as a failed hard drive and also discovered, after many hours of thorough research and analysis (or two minutes at http://support.dell.com), that the computer was still under warranty! A couple days later, I had a new hard drive. My awesome sis told me I could keep the computer; after a few weeks of laziness and Broadcom-hating, I installed Ubuntu 6.06 LTS (homepage, Wikipedia page) and haven't looked back.

I could turn this post into a huge gush-fest about Ubuntu and how it pwns windoze, but I'll restrain myself. Instead, I'll just hit 'publish' now and concentrate on enjoying the fact that I'm making this copylefted post on a copylefted browser and operating system, all while sitting on my porch on a beautiful summer evening. :click:

fscking lawyers!

Disclaimer: I understand that there are one or two lawyers out there who are not the spawn of Satan. I really do. That said...

Class-action lawsuits (CALs, from here onward) are among the biggest scams perpetrated on the American public. Recently, I've received letters about two CALs of which I am a member. The first was against Microsoft, regarding the flagrant abuse of their monopoly, and the second was against Sprint, regarding some dodgy billing practices which caused a bunch of people to pay too much in fees.

The payout for both CALs was pretty small, ~$20 or less. Even worse, they were in the form of discounts for products and services offered by the defendant! What kind of bullshit is that?

Let's say I punched 2,000 people in the face, and they turned around and hit me with a CAL. It seems that the 'punishment' I could expect would be an order that I must offer them an UNCLBEN(R)-brand mouthpiece at half-price (which is still enough that I will profit from the sale), but only if they will allow me to punch them again! If they want to go be friends with someone else, who /won't/ punch them in the face, that's too bad; they'll get no compensation for the punch I dealt them.

Of course, CALs continue to thrive because the lawyers get filthy rich. A million people/victims get $10 each in coupons to the offending company, but the five lawyers/piles-of-excrement each get $2,000,000 in cold, hard cash. Fscking lawyers.