Atomictumor

Congress is trying to make the DMCA worse. 

If you’re into technology, civil rights, or screwing people over, you’ve probably got some opinions on the DMCA.  Designed by Congress to stop those evil crackers from getting around the protection on Popcap games, what started out bad for consumers and fair use in general is about to get a lot worse. 

As usual, Ars Technica has an excellent article about it:

To put it bluntly, the claims of the content creation industry do not add up. Here’s what the equation really looks like: Intellectual Property Protection Act of 2006 + analog hole legislation + the broadcast flag = zero Fair Use rights + pay multiple times for the same content. If you don’t like that math, it’s time to get in touch with your congressperson and senators.

Seriously, this isn’t geek stuff.  This is the right to own something.  That movie you used to get in a VHS tape and watch 100 times a day, well, pretty soon you’re going to be renting it.  Don’t like that idea?  Download the movie illegally, and go to jail.   This is evil, and this government is going to cram it down our throats, just like the last one did.

OK, bear me out here. 

Would there be a significant cost savings, or even a measurable cost savings, to purchase raw bandwidth and move forward that Muni thing I was talking about?  I think in the comments somebody made shady comments to the effect that somebody was trying to cloak and dagger their way into doing it, but bugger that, I’m more of a plow right through it kinda guy. 

Now, heres how I see it.  

I was playing with the idea of doing Wifi, but thats a fad.  Face it.  Its a fad.  Hotspots are great and super duper, but the idea of blanketing a town with internet coverage so that the minority of people in the town could have it just isn’t feasible.  That, and theres some questions as to the technical feasiblity of Wimax, which would be the most efficient way of kicking it around these mountains.  The idea of sticking a transmitter on top of the water towers is romatic, but no.  

So, sticking with wires, how do we deliver it to the end user?  Damnation, therein lies the rub, and the biggest reason to use some form of wireless… but I’m just not sure that wimax is a good idea.  What then?  Linked hotspots? 

Finding new blogs is fun and always a minor adventure. There’s serendipity envolved. Well, here’s an interesting blog I found the other day.

Evidently this guy writing the blog is a base camp manager for a mountain climbing team. Here’s the kicker. The team is climbing mt everest even as you read this.

Check the site out here.

Yes, its true, I suck.  But I’ll let you lucky people guess why…

 ***

Hmm… by rights that was supposed to be a poll. It was going to be clever, and cool, and it didn’t work. It should have worked. And thats why I haven’t posted lately.

Not because of the poll, and thanks, but don’t worry about emailing me teling me how to fix it.  I took it out back and shot it.  Polls are ruining honest journalism, and we’re not going down that route on the ‘Tumor.  No, I owe you people more than that.  The simple fact is, I’m burning out.  After only 6 months, I have nothing left to say.

Could it be that I’ve been laid low for the past week with king hell allergies?  Maybe.

What about the fact that I’ve been too busy at work to post, and too busy at home playing Oblivion to post?  Lousy excuse, but maybe.

Could be that news sucks these days.  

Could be that I feel like when I post, I need to expound, ala Evan, rather than short, quick bursts like Doug.  Hell, the short bursts sounds nice, but then I’d have to redesign the theme to make it more accessible.  Too much work.

I think it all boils down to work.  And my not wanting to do it. 

Maybe I’ll make a little phpBB board or something to attract spammers and child molesters.  Not that my site doesn’t have enough weird people coming, what with all the google hits for "I got my cousin pregnant" that we get.  Weird bastards.

So, there you go.  Lemme know what you think I should do. 

Hey folks, got notice both here (in the comments, scroll WAY down), and through the ol’ Oak Ridger, that Becky Erwin, the wa-hay qualified principal of ORHS has been given the rail.  This picture I found through a GIS says it all.