09 Apr 2003
Saddam the Pirate

As readers are no doubt aware, I follow the machinations of the RIAA and MPAA regarding copyright very closely. But this is what showed up today during my news scan for 'pirate' - (also shows up on American Realpolitik)

The palace had been stripped of most personal items, but the building boasted a sophisticated audio-video system. Troops looking in one cabinet found a collection of pirated movies, "Les Miserables" among them.

[from Yahoo!News]

So, the bastard wasn't only a brutal dictator - he was a pirate! I wonder if the above mentioned organizations plan to file a claim with whatever "war crimes" commission is set up to cover their "losses"?

00:00 /Copywrongs | 0 comments | permanent link

Keep on Paying

In light of this article I think that we need a new definition for "hubris":

Sell Your Computers, Keep Paying MS For Licenses [Slashdot]

00:00 /Copywrongs | 0 comments | permanent link

Anonymous Patent Help

"Anonymous" funds patent foe. An anonymous sponsor gives open-source advocate Bruce Perens a $50,000 annuity to support his work against software patents that he says are stymieing industry standards. [CNET News.com]

This is a good thing ..... Perens is certainly capable of spearheading the educational effort to dump software patents back into the abyss from whence they came. I just gotta wonder if his benefactor isn't HP incognito.

00:00 /Copywrongs | 0 comments | permanent link

Going Operational

Well, an interesting day, to say the least. I'm finally back into it: we have 10 cows, four calves, two bulls, a goat, a llama (Dalai - no kidding!) a miniture donkey and 20 sheep roaming our pastures. Quite a zoo ... farming again!

They're not ours - a neighbor, Kevin, approached us with an offer to rent the pastures for his herds. As our viewpoints are quite similar (MIG - Managed Intensive Grazing for livestock, minimal use of herbicides/pesticides, as close to the way Nature intended us to farm as we can get) this partnership in grazing lands may blossom into something more. But even if it doesn't, I'll bill more than $1000 as farm income this year, which makes us a "real" farm according to the USDA. Who said the family farm is dying? We're coming back!

We're already talking about coop marketing meat, wool and other products. We're looking into buying for ourselves a few head (<10) of Scottish Highland Cattle and Icelandic Sheep - the latter probably unregistered for the time being, as we'll be selling for meat and fiber and not breeding stock.

I'm sure that Kris will get some good pictures - we set electric fence all day around the permimeter of our property and didn't have much of a chance to do anything else. We've got some serious fence work on the east side of our pasture, but everything else is in pretty fair shape, actually.

The cattle, even the bulls, are pretty docile, and that's a good thing. Hammer (our horse) was sure skittish when we were setting up, but once he was introduced to Mouse, the mini donkey, he was OK. In fact he was enarmored of Mouse, but the donkey wanted as little as possible to do with Hammer! Poor guy - just we he figured we finally got him a buddy he faced rejection.

But now, having traisped around the fields all day, I'm heading to bed. Setting fence is a lot more strenous than coding, that's for sure.

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Copyright Loss

Bad news ....

ACLU loses digital copyright battle. A judge ruled against the American Civil Liberties Union, which attempted to challenge a controversial copyright law through a lawsuit against filtering-software company N2H2. [CNET News.com]

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