28 Feb 2003
Agreeing with Nader

It was bound to happen someday, I suppose. I actually agree with Ralph Nader (well, at least in his new role of 'Patent Buster').

00:00 /Copywrongs | 0 comments | permanent link

Using the DMCA

I'm positive this is exactly when Congress had in mind when they passed the DMCA in the first place. (uh, NOT!)

Lexmark Wins Injunction in Toner Cartridge Suit [Slashdot]

00:00 /Copywrongs | 0 comments | permanent link

Holocaust on Your Plate

OK, this got the rant juices flowing....

Holocaust on Your Plate from our national village idiots at PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) compares eating meat to being a Nazi participant in the Holocaust!

Such so-called 'ethical vegetarians' are just STUPID. In the most literal sense of the word. Little Cindy Vegan's carrot salad is just as drenched in animal blood as Johnny Omnivore's steak sandwich. Do these people have any idea what really goes on in farming: any kind of farming, even organic, earth friendly farming? Have any of them ever talked with any farmer?

When I plant a vegatable garden (or a field of grain) do I just sit back and let the native wildlife feast off my labors? Uh, NO! I do everything in my power (in my case, short of using chemicals) to stop my crop from being devoured by anything but myself and my customers!

This includes keeping barn cats, which love to eat them mousies! It includes encouraging hawks and owls. Crows must see me as a veritable terrorist by setting up those scary dolls to terrify their young! How could I be so awful? Why, I've even been known to shoot a coyote or two for menacing my horses and sheep! Butchery!

Do I stop my plough and carefully navigate around all the little bunny warrens? No. Think of all the bugs I murder! It's a Holocaust! I've even murdered Bambi's little brothers and sisters for munching my cornfields to nubbins! Can you believe it?!!! And all so my little vegetarian cousins can have their organic peppers and corn tortillas .... while wearing their organic wool sweaters, of course.

These people have no idea what organic means: "of or relating to living matter". They don't stop to consider what comes at the end of every life: death! No conception of how the world works at all - I guess that without us humans eating them, every animal would live forever in peace and harmony! Tell that to the sheep!

These are the kind of people who believe that food just springs from the Earth, crunchy and ready to eat! I can only hope that when they complain about the "brutality of agriculture" they have the good graces not to do it with their mouth full!

They show no understanding at all of the cycle of life and death - no idea that death is part of life, and life is part of death. They're aren't "friendly to the enviroment" - they are the most hostile and virulent foes the Earth has ever known! They would upset the balance utterly, destroying countless eons of evolution for the sake of their own, misguided (and I'm being kind here) feel good, fluffy-bunny philosophy.

If they really care about the Earth, about human society and creating a sustainable future for the whole planet, I would suggest they read anything by Wendell Berry, a rational, even tempered voice of sanity crying in the wilderness of factory farming and animal rights nuts!

I can only hope they all join The Church Of Euthanasia and practice what they preach!

00:00 /Agriculture | 0 comments | permanent link

Scared of M$

This is scary stuff:

Windows Update keeps tabs on all system software. Spy on the wire [The Register]

I'm concerned about the potential for abuse by Software Update as well. Any system that 'phones home' without your knowledge or intervention has the potential to send information you may not want distributed.

Worse is the potential for such as system to be abused by the legal process. Microsoft wants to stamp out piracy. Suppose an automated updater simply does what the BSA recent did and confuses 'Open'Office with M$ Office? According to the terms of the new Microsoft EULA they could disable your workstation until you proved you weren't pirating their product!

What happens when some crusading congresscritter get ahold of the idea to scan users systems for something really obnoxious, say, child porn? Is that file 'nekkid_kid.jpg' kiddie porn? Or is it your wife giving your month old a bath in the kitchen sink? You can tell, and even the local prosecutor could tell (eventually, after they seized your entire computer and went thru every file over the course of several weeks) but could an automated update tell? Given the marginal performance of various web filters, I don't think so.

Perhaps Orwell had in wrong - perhaps the new slogan won't be 'Big Brother is Watching' but rather, 'Big Brother is Scanning' .....

00:00 /Technology | 0 comments | permanent link