[Quote:]

Fox News commentator Tony Snow agreed Tuesday night to become White House press secretary after top officials assured him that he would be not be just a spokesman but an active participant in administration policy debates, people familiar with the discussions said.

Here’s some of what he’s had to say about the President:

– Bush has “lost control of the federal budget and cannot resist the temptation to stop raiding the public fisc.�? [3/17/06]

– “George W. Bush and his colleagues have become not merely the custodians of the largest government in the history of humankind, but also exponents of its vigorous expansion.�? [3/17/06]

– “President Bush distilled the essence of his presidency in this year’s State of the Union Address: brilliant foreign policy and listless domestic policy.�? [2/3/06]

– “George Bush has become something of an embarrassment.�? [11/11/05]

– Bush “has a habit of singing from the Political Correctness hymnal.�? [10/7/05]

– “No president has looked this impotent this long when it comes to defending presidential powers and prerogatives.�? [9/30/05]

– Bush “has given the impression that [he] is more eager to please than lead, and that political opponents can get their way if they simply dig in their heels and behave like petulant trust-fund brats, demanding money and favor — now!�? [9/30/05]

– “When it comes to federal spending, George W. Bush is the boy who can’t say no. In each of his three years at the helm, the president has warned Congress to restrain its spending appetites, but so far nobody has pushed away from the table mainly because the president doesn’t seem to mean what he says.�? [The Detroit News, 12/28/03]

– “The president doesn’t seem to give a rip about spending restraint.�? [The Detroit News, 12/28/03]

– “Bush, for all his personal appeal, ultimately bolstered his detractors’ claims that he didn’t have the drive and work ethic to succeed.�? [11/16/00]

– “Little in the character of demeanor of Al Gore or George Bush makes us say to ourselves: Now, this man is truly special! Little in our present peace and prosperity impels us to say: Give us a great man!�? [8/25/00]

– “George W. Bush, meanwhile, talks of a pillowy America, full of niceness and goodwill. Bush has inherited his mother’s attractive feistiness, but he also got his father’s syntax. At one point last week, he stunned a friendly audience by barking out absurd and inappropriate words, like a soul tortured with Tourette’s.�? [8/25/00]

– “He recently tried to dazzle reporters by discussing the vagaries of Congressional Budget Office economic forecasts, but his recitation of numbers proved so bewildering that not even his aides could produce a comprehensible translation. The English Language has become a minefield for the man, whose malaprops make him the political heir not of Ronald Reagan, but Norm Crosby.�? [8/25/00]

– “On the policy side, he has become a classical dime-store Democrat. He gladly will shovel money into programs that enjoy undeserved prestige, such as Head Start. He seems to consider it mean-spirited to shut down programs that rip-off taxpayers and mislead supposed beneficiaries.�? [8/25/00]

[Quote:]

The multimillion-dollar lobbying effort to repeal the federal estate tax has been aggressively led by 18 super-wealthy families, according to a report released today by Public Citizen and United for a Fair Economy at a press conference in Washington, D.C. The report details for the first time the vast money, influence and deceptive marketing techniques behind the rhetoric in the campaign to repeal the tax.

It reveals how 18 families worth a total of $185.5 billion have financed and coordinated a 10-year effort to repeal the estate tax, a move that would collectively net them a windfall of $71.6 billion.

[..]

In a massive public relations campaign, the families have also misled the country by giving the mistaken impression that the estate tax affects most Americans. In particular, they have used small businesses and family farms as poster children for repeal, saying that the estate tax destroys both of these groups. But just more than one-fourth of one percent of all estates will owe any estate taxes in 2006. And the American Farm Bureau, a member of the anti-estate tax coalition, was unable when asked by The New York Times to cite a single example of a family being forced to sell its farm because of estate tax liability.

“This report exposes one of the biggest con jobs in recent history,�? said Joan Claybrook, president of Public Citizen. “This long-running, secretive campaign funded by some of the country’s wealthiest families has relied on deception to bamboozle the public not only about who must pay the estate tax, but about how repealing it will affect the country.�?

[..]

The stakes of the campaign are great, not only for the super-wealthy families, but for the public. If the families’ repeal bid succeeds, it will cost the U.S. Treasury a trillion dollars in the first decade – roughly what it would cost to provide health insurance for every uninsured person in the United States.

[Quote:]

To those who know her best, Hannah is the ultimate girly girl. She enjoys socializing in the neighborhood, wearing fancy outfits and pursuing a shoe fetish that would rival any Hollywood starlet.

But Hannah doesn’t wear shoes — she eats them. Still, that didn’t stop this 2-year old English bulldog from beating out 49 others to claim top prize in the 27th annual “Beautiful Bulldog” contest Monday.

Dressed as a state trooper, Vinnie walks across the stage. The dog is owned Kevin and Jamie Johnson, of Logan, Iowa. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)

Bella Star waits in line to have her photo taken. The dog is owned by Amanda Price of Urbandale, Iowa. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)

Dressed as a construction worker, Porterhouse. The dog is owned Kevin and Erin Bell, of Minneapolis. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)

Armstrong. The dog is owned Greg Mertz, of Lincoln, Neb. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)

Kurdish children stand next to a picture they said showed victims of street clashes with Turkish police in southeast Turkey. Eighty children who took part in riots in Turkey’s troubled, mainly Kurdish southeast face up to 15 years in prison, according to an indictment seen by Reuters on Tuesday. (Francois Lenoir/Reuters)

Ever had your weblog postings reviewed by a ZDNet columnist?

I have…

And he got the money quote as well…

[Quote:]

President Bush woke up early and rode his mountain bike along the Clara Burgess Trail to the top of Murray Hill, which affords a spectacular view of the Coachella Valley and Little San Bernardino Mountains.

The trail is considered strenuous for riding, with a 500-foot elevation gain. The total round-trip was a little more than 7 miles.

“He said it was a pretty tough terrain, but he enjoyed it,�? Press Secretary Scott McClellan said.

Jim Foote, acting manager of the Santa Rosa and San Jacinto Mountains National Monument, said the Clara Burgess trail is also among those monument managers ask people to avoid part of the year to prevent disrupting endangered Peninsular bighorn sheep.

The trail is one of about 10 in the monument under a “voluntary avoidance�? program. People are asked to stay off the Clara Burgess trail from Jan. 1 to June 30 during the sheep lambing season, he said.

It was uncertain Sunday night if White House organizers accompanying President Bush knew about the “voluntary avoidance�? program.

[Quote:]

Follow the rabbit tracks. BAM! The tracks suddenly end where the wing prints of an owl start. This picture was taken by a friend of a friend who teaches in Bethel,Alaska. Photo by Susan Barstow.

And on another site, another picture:

[Quote:]

When Bob told me he was submitting a couple of images that he took 8 years ago, I told him they would not make it in this feature because we only accepted images from this winter. I lied. The old images of a raptor print in the snow were so spectacular that I had to include them. This sort of print occurs when a raptor (hawk, eagle, owl) snatch a prey animal from the snow.

[Quote:]

Those familiar with the area just south of Mammoth Hot Springs will be able to identify the lower slope of Bunsen Peak on the left side of this image.

[Quote:]

Modern operating systems like Linux and Mac OS X operate under a security model where even administrative users don’t get full access to certain features unless they provide an in-place logon before performing any task that might harm the system. This type of security model protects users from themselves, and it is something that Microsoft should have added to Windows years and years ago.

Here’s the good news. In Windows Vista, Microsoft is indeed moving to this kind of security model. The feature is called User Account Protection (UAP) and, as you might expect, it prevents even administrative users from performing potentially dangerous tasks without first providing security credentials, thus ensuring that the user understands what they’re doing before making a critical mistake. It sounds like a good system. But this is Microsoft, we’re talking about here. They completely botched UAP.

The bad news, then, is that UAP is a sad, sad joke. It’s the most annoying feature that Microsoft has ever added to any software product, and yes, that includes that ridiculous Clippy character from older Office versions. The problem with UAP is that it throws up an unbelievable number of warning dialogs for even the simplest of tasks. That these dialogs pop up repeatedly for the same action would be comical if it weren’t so amazingly frustrating. It would be hilarious if it weren’t going to affect hundreds of millions of people in a few short months. It is, in fact, almost criminal in its insidiousness.

Let’s look a typical example. One of the first things I do whenever I install a new Windows version is download and install Mozilla Firefox. If we forget, for a moment, the number of warning dialogs we get during the download and install process (including a brazen security warning from Windows Firewall for which Microsoft should be chastised), let’s just examine one crucial, often overlooked issue. Once Firefox is installed, there are two icons on my Desktop I’d like to remove: The Setup application itself and a shortcut to Firefox. So I select both icons and drag them to the Recycle Bin. Simple, right?

Wrong. Here’s what you have to go through to actually delete those files in Windows Vista. First, you get a File Access Denied dialog explaining that you don’t, in fact, have permission to delete a … shortcut?? To an application you just installed??? Seriously?

OK, fine. You can click a Continue button to “complete this operation.” But that doesn’t complete anything. It just clears the desktop for the next dialog, which is a Windows Security window. Here, you need to give your permission to continue something opaquely called a “File Operation.” Click Allow, and you’re done. Hey, that’s not too bad, right? Just two dialogs to read, understand, and then respond correctly to. What’s the big deal?

What if you’re doing something a bit more complicated? Well, lucky you, the dialogs stack right up, one after the other, in a seemingly never-ending display of stupidity. Indeed, sometimes you’ll find yourself unable to do certain things for no good reason, and you click Allow buttons until you’re blue in the face. It will never stop bothering you, unless you agree to stop your silliness and leave that file on the desktop where it belongs. Mark my words, this will happen to you. And you will hate it.

[Quote:]

The problem with the Security Through Endless Warning Dialogs school of thought is that it doesn’t work. All those earnest warning dialogs eventually blend together into a giant “click here to get work done” button that nobody bothers to read any more. The operating system cries wolf so much that when a real wolf– in the form of a virus or malware– rolls around, you’ll mindlessly allow it access to whatever it wants, just out of habit. As Rick Strahl notes, this is the ultimate form of nagware:

Then there are the security dialogs. Ah yes, now we’re making progress: Ask users on EVERY program you launch that isn’t signed whether they want to elevate permissions. Uh huh, this is going to work REAL WELL. We know how well that worked with unsigned ActiveX controls in Internet Explorer – so well that even Microsoft isn’t signing most of its own ActiveX controls. Give too many warnings that are not quite reasonable and people will never read the dialogs and just click them anyway… I know I started doing that in the short use I’ve had on Vista.

[Quote:]

IN a certain city there lived a physician who sold yellow paint. This was of so singular a virtue that whoso was bedaubed with it from head to heel was set free from the dangers of life, and the bondage of sin, and the fear of death for ever. So the physician said in his prospectus; and so said all the citizens in the city; and there was nothing more urgent in men’s hearts than to be properly painted themselves, and nothing they took more delight in than to see others painted. There was in the same city a young man of a very good family but of a somewhat reckless life, who had reached the age of manhood, and would have nothing to say to the paint: “To-morrow was soon enough,�? said he; and when the morrow came he would still put it off. She might have continued to do until his death; only, he had a friend of about his own age and much of his own manners; and this youth, taking a walk in the public street, with not one fleck of paint upon his body, was suddenly run down by a water-cart and cut off in the heyday of his nakedness. This shook the other to the soul; so that I never beheld a man more earnest to be painted; and on the very same evening, in the presence of all his family, to appropriate music, and himself weeping aloud, he received three complete coats and a touch of varnish on the top. The physician (who was himself affected even to tears) protested he had never done a job so thorough.

Some two months afterwards, the young man was carried on a stretcher to the physician’s house.

“What is the meaning of this?�? he cried, as soon as the door was opened. “I was to be set free from all the dangers of life; and here have I been run down by that self-same water-cart, and my leg is broken.�?

“Dear me!�? said the physician. “This is very sad. But I perceive I must explain to you the action of my paint. A broken bone is a mighty small affair at the worst of it; and it belongs to a class of accident to which my paint is quite inapplicable. Sin, my dear young friend, sin is the sole calamity that a wise man should apprehend; it is against sin that I have fitted you out; and when you come to be tempted, you will give me news of my paint.�?

“Oh!�? said the young man, “I did not understand that, and it seems rather disappointing. But I have no doubt all is for the best; and in the meanwhile, I shall be obliged to you if you will set my leg.�?

“That is none of my business,�? said the physician; “but if your bearers will carry you round the corner to the surgeon’s, I feel sure he will afford relief.�?

Some three years later, the young man came running to the physician’s house in a great perturbation. “What is the meaning of this?�? he cried. “Here was I to be set free from the bondage of sin; and I have just committed forgery, arson and murder.�?

“Dear me,�? said the physician. “This is very serious. Off with your clothes at once.�? And as soon as the young man had stripped, he examined him from head to foot. “No,�? he cried with great relief, “there is not a flake broken. Cheer up, my young friend, your paint is as good as new.�?

“Good God!�? cried the young man, “and what then can be the use of it?�?

“Why,�? said the physician, “I perceive I must explain to you the nature of the action of my paint. It does not exactly prevent sin; it extenuates instead the painful consequences. It is not so much for this world, as for the next; it is not against life; in short, it is against death that I have fitted you out. And when you come to die, you will give me news of my paint.�?

“Oh!�? cried the young man, “I had not understood that, and it seems a little disappointing. But there is no doubt all is for the best: and in the meanwhile, I shall be obliged if you will help me to undo the evil I have brought on innocent persons.�?

“That is none of my business,�? said the physician; “but if you will go round the corner to the police office, I feel sure it will afford you relief to give yourself up.�?

Six weeks later, the physician was called to the town gaol.

“What is the meaning of this?�? cried the young man. “Here am I literally crusted with your paint; and I have broken my leg, and committed all the crimes in the calendar, and must be hanged to- morrow; and am in the meanwhile in a fear so extreme that I lack words to picture it.�?

“Dear me,�? said the physician. “This is really amazing. Well, well; perhaps, if you had not been painted, you would have been more frightened still.�?

[Quote:]

In 1980, the U.S. military made radical modifications to 3 C-130H Hercules so it could take off and land almost like a helicopter. The aircraft was equipped with lift rockets slanting downward, slowdown rockets facing forward, missile motors facing backward, and still more rockets to stabilize the plane as it touched down. The mission — land in a Tehran soccer stadium, 53 American hostages held captive in Iran, and get out.

Operation Credible Sport, also known as Operation Honey Badger, was a United States military operation plan in late 1980 to rescue the hostages held on American soil in Iran using C-130 cargo planes modified with rocket engines. The Credible Sport operation was to follow the dramatic failure of Operation Eagle Claw in which a C-130 Hercules and a Sea Stallion helicopter collided in the Iranian desert, killing 8 servicemen. Credible Sport was abandoned after the election of Ronald Reagan as President.

This spectacular video (mpg) shows one reason why they decided not to go through with it.

Making any statements during the screening process? I guess this must be the one place they still take ‘the right to remain silent’ seriously, huh?

[Quote:]

Former National Security Agency Director Lt. General William Odom dissected the strategic folly of the Iraq invasion and Bush Administration policies in a major policy speech at Brown University for the Watson Institute- America’s Strategic Paralysis . “The Iraq War may turn out to be the greatest strategic disaster in American history. In a mere 18 months we went from unprecedented levels of support after 9-11..to being one of the most hated countries…Turkey used to be one of strongest pro-US regimes, now we’re so unpopular, there’s a movie playing there- Metal Storm, about a war between US and Turkey. In addition to producing faulty intel and ties to Al Qaida, Bush made preposterous claim that toppling Saddam would open the way for liberal democracy in a very short time… Misunderstanding the character of American power, he dismissed the allies as a nuisance and failed to get the UN Security Council’s sanction… We must reinforce international law, not reject and ridicule it.�?

Odom, now a Yale professor and Hudson Institute senior fellow, was director of the sprawling NSA (which monitors all communications) from 1985-88 under Reagan, and previously was Zbigniew Brzezinski’s assistant under Carter. His latest 2004 book is America’s Inadvertent Empire.

Even if the invasion had gone well, Odom says it wouldn’t have mattered: “The invasion wasn’t in our interests, it was in Iran’s interest, Al Qaida’s interest. Seeing America invade must have made Iranian leaders ecstatic. Iran’s hostility to Saddam was hard to exaggerate.. Iraq is now open to Al Qaida, which it never was before- it’s easier for terrorists to kill Americans there than in the US.. Neither our leaders or the mainstream media recognize the perversity of key US policies now begetting outcomes they were designed to prevent… 3 years later the US is bogged down in Iraq, pretending a Constitution has been put in place, while the civil war rages, Iran meddles, and Al Qaida swells its ranks with new recruits.. We have lost our capacity to lead and are in a state of crisis- diplomatic and military.�?

[Quote:]

[Quote:]

Premier Balkenende heeft dit weekend met stijgende verbazing gekeken naar de berichtgeving over zijn vermeende uitspraken over ‘burgerlijkheid’ in Limburg. Hij ergert zich aan de gemakzucht waarmee de verschillende kranten te werk zijn gegaan.

‘Ik stel vast dat geen van de kranten aanwezig was in Limburg. Men schrijft klakkeloos een ANP-bericht over zonder te constateren dat in datzelfde ANP-bericht staat dat mijn opmerkingen over burgerlijkheid “gekscherend waren bedoeld”.

Balkje verbaasd dat niemand humor van ‘m verwacht?

Balk die zegt “ik ben stijfburgerlijk” is net zo “gekscherend” als Patty Brard die zegt: “ik ben een leeghoofdige doos die de televisie vervuilt”.

Models display body paint at a live exhibition of the Qi Pao, the classic Chinese Dress, to officially launch Australian Fashion Week in Sydney. (AFP/Greg Wood)

[Quote:]

The crown prince rejects a bevy of beautiful princesses, rebuffing each suitor until falling in love with a prince. The two marry, sealing the union with a kiss, and live happily ever after.

That fairy tale about gay marriage has sparked a civil rights debate in Massachusetts, the only U.S. state where gays and lesbians can legally wed, after a teacher read the story to a classroom of seven year olds without warning parents first.

A parents’ rights group said on Monday it may sue the public school in the affluent suburb of Lexington, about 12 miles west of Boston, where a teacher used the book “King & King” in a lesson about different types of weddings.

“It’s just so heinous and objectionable that they would do this,” said Brian Camenker, president of the Parents Rights Coalition, a conservative Massachusetts-based advocacy group.

Camenker said he believes the school, Joseph Estabrook Elementary, broke a 1996 Massachusetts law requiring schools to notify parents of sex-education lessons. “There is no question in my mind that the law is being abused here,” he said.

Gee, I never knew… Of course! “Snow-white and the seven dwarfs” and “Little Red Riding Hood” are actually sex-education lessons! I’m just not enough of a pervert to have realized this before…

[Quote:]

It was the battle of the hotel room for George W Bush and Rolling Stone frontman Mick Jagger, when the singer refused to give up his suite to the US President.

Jagger hired the luxury Royal Suite at the five-star Imperial Hotel in Vienna, Austria, which is rated to be among the top 100 hotel rooms in the world, where the Stones are due to perform in June.

In doing so, he beat Bush’s aides to the punch, when they tried to book it to tie in with a summit meeting.

A source said that Jagger, an out-spoken Bush critic, had refused to budge from the 3,600 a night suite when the US President’s aides came calling.

“White House officials had wanted to reserve the suite and all the other rooms on the first floor. But Mick and the Stones had already booked every one of them. Bush’s people seemed to be under the impression that they would just hand over the suites but there was no way Mick was going to do that,�? The Sun quoted the source, as saying.

And, it was Bush throwing in the towel first, for the hotel confirmed that he would no longer be staying there.

[news:]

%whois cwi.nl

Domain name:
cwi.nl

Status: active

Registrant:
Centrum voor Wiskunde en Informatica
Kruislaan 413
1098 SJ AMSTERDAM
Netherlands

Domain nameservers:
ns1.cwi.nl 192.16.191.8
ns2.cwi.nl 192.16.191.35

Date registered: 01-05-1986
Record last updated: 04-02-2005

Record maintained by: NL Domain Registry

[Quote:]

Sun Microsystems announced Monday that its longtime chief executive Scott McNealy is stepping down from the helm and will be succeeded by the struggling computer and software company’s No. 2 executive, Jonathan Schwartz.

[Quote:]

Bombers have struck again at a resort in Egypt’s Sinai peninsula, killing at least 23 people in three nearly simultaneous explosions in a market and restaurant area popular with foreign tourists.

The dead in the budget resort of Dahab, a beach and diving center for backpackers, included a young German boy and two other foreigners, the Egyptian Interior Ministry said.

Sixty-two people were wounded in the bombings on Monday evening, including three Danes, three Britons, two Italians, two Germans, two French people, a South Korean, a Lebanese, a Palestinian, an American, an Israeli and an Australian, it said.

I’ve made some great dives at Dahab. Somehow it’s different when you’ve been at the places that are getting hit…

This looks like a pretty good rant. And it’s only Part One!

[Quote:]

Sorry, Jerry, sorry Pat. No James, Tony, Tom – and especially not you George – you’re not going to be snatched up bodily to Heaven, nekkid as the day you were born, your shriveled grey Republican asses extracted by the Lord from your 1000-dollar suits, leaving them in a puddle on the drivers seat of your SUV or the pulpit of your mega-church.

You’re not the elect, the just or even, we suspect, the saved, who because of your incomparable virtue will be whisked out of harms way by the aforementioned Lord when he comes to wreak genocidal revenge on billions of us unelect, unjust and unsaved.

You’re the latest in a millennia-long line of money-grubbing power-hungry hypocrites and hucksters who offer the lonely, threatened, frustrated, and as always, those with a limited supply of marbles, a lovely lie. Not only are they saved but those they hate, fear, envy and blame are damned! Not only will they be snatched up to heaven way ahead of schedule, but – A Special Final Days offer! – they DON’T HAVE TO DIE!

That’s the beauty part of the Rapture, a new American twist on an old, old Euro-scam: no massive heart attack, no terminal cancer, no being crushed by a truck on I-95. You’re snatched up to heaven just the way you are.

Read the rest here.

It’s well worth reading some of the high quality comments….

[Quote:]

Usual definitions of torture include the use of practices such as solitary confinement, non-medical application of psychiatric drugs, unprovoked beatings, starvation, and verbal abuse as means to change a person’s behavior. Many Americans are reluctant to support the use of these techniques even on criminals, much less teenagers with behavioral problems. Unfortunately, this is exactly what is being done on a large-scale basis as “tough-love�? programs have become a booming industry. These programs come in several varieties, including boot camps, “therapeutic�? boarding schools or academies, and wilderness programs. At the cost of several thousand dollars per month (up to $40,000/year), these schools supposedly provide a climate where troubled teens can continue their regular education while receiving treatments designed to improve their behavior.

In the philosophy of these schools, reform involves two goals: to break kids down through strict discipline and routine, then to build them back up through self-examination and therapy of various sorts. Usually, only the former is accomplished. So successful is the breaking down process that former inmates of these institutions often suffer symptoms of post-traumatic stress syndrome, even years after being freed. Ex-students call themselves, with good cause, “survivors�?.

[Quote:]

For the last few years, a coalition of technology companies, academics and computer programmers has been trying to persuade Congress to scale back the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

Now Congress is preparing to do precisely the opposite. A proposed copyright law seen by CNET News.com would expand the DMCA’s restrictions on software that can bypass copy protections and grant federal police more wiretapping and enforcement powers.

[..]

But one of the more controversial sections may be the changes to the DMCA. Under current law, Section 1201 of the law generally prohibits distributing or trafficking in any software or hardware that can be used to bypass copy-protection devices. (That section already has been used against a Princeton computer science professor, Russian programmer Dmitry Sklyarov and a toner cartridge remanufacturer.)

Smith’s measure would expand those civil and criminal restrictions. Instead of merely targeting distribution, the new language says nobody may “make, import, export, obtain control of, or possess” such anticircumvention tools if they may be redistributed to someone else.

Do you realize there is one common anticircumvention tool that is massively “made, imported, exported, and possessed” in the USA? It’s called a “computer”. If you have any, you’ll be arrested soon!

But at least we’ll never hear about a Sony root-kit again.

because communication about it will be illegal as well..

[Quote:]

The Iraqi actor who plays the lead hijacker in the new 9/11 film United 93 has been refused a visa to the United States to attend the premiere, it was reported today.

[Quote:]

Bush likes to listen to the Beatles on his Ipod. However, there’s no way Bush can have a legal copy on his Ipod according to the RIAA. We got it on tape.

Earlier this week CNN reported that the Beatles might be available in the Itunes store in the near future. Until today however, they refused to put their songs online.

Since the Beatles are not available in the Itunes music store (or elsewhere), they must have come from a “ripped cd�?. And that’s NOT fair-use according to the RIAA

“Nor does the fact that permission to make a copy in particular circumstances is often or even routinely granted, necessarily establish that the copying is a fair use when the copyright owner withholds that authorization. In this regard, the statement attributed to counsel for copyright owners in the MGM v. Grokster case is simply a statement about authorization, not about fair use.�?

So those songs on Bush his Ipod are illegal, let’s sue

[Quote:]

Democrats running for Congress are moving quickly to use the most recent surge in oil and gasoline prices to bash Republicans over energy policy, and more broadly, the direction of the country.

[Quote:]

A Rockmart family is being sued for illegal music file sharing, despite the fact that they don’t even own a computer.

A federal lawsuit filed this week in Rome by the Recording Industry Association of America alleges that Carma Walls, of 117 Morgan St., Rockmart, has infringed on copyrights for recorded music by sharing files over the Internet. The lawsuit seeks an injunction and requests unspecified monetary damages.

The lawsuit states, “Plaintiffs are informed and believe that Defendant, without the permission or consent of Plaintiffs, has used, and continues to use, an online media distribution system to download the copyrighted recordings, to distribute the copyrighted recordings to the public, and/or to make the copyrighted recordings available for distribution to others.�?

This came as shocking news to the Walls family, who were notified of the lawsuit Friday afternoon by a newspaper reporter. James Walls, speaking on behalf of his wife and family, said they have not been served with legal papers and were unaware of the lawsuit.

After being shown a copy of the court filing, Walls said he found the whole thing bewildering.

“I don’t understand this,�? Walls said. “How can they sue us when we don’t even have a computer?�?

[Quote:]

The advance of freedom in the greater Middle East has given new rights and new hopes to women. And America will do its part to continue the spread of liberty.

– George W. Bush, March 12, 2004

[Quote:]

No one knows how many young women have been kidnapped and sold since the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003. The Organization for Women’s Freedom in Iraq, based in Baghdad, estimates from anecdotal evidence that more than 2,000 Iraqi women have gone missing in that period. A Western official in Baghdad who monitors the status of women in Iraq thinks that figure may be inflated but admits that sex trafficking, virtually nonexistent under Saddam, has become a serious issue. The collapse of law and order and the absence of a stable government have allowed criminal gangs, alongside terrorists, to run amuck. Meanwhile, some aid workers say, bureaucrats in the ministries have either paralyzed with red tape or frozen the assets of charities that might have provided refuge for these girls. As a result, sex trafficking has been allowed to fester unchecked.

Message to advertisers: stop with the “funny” bags, already. It’s no longer original.