Can someone (ahem Netmom?) please point me to any and all laws concerning the sale of beer at a grocery store in OR? Nodbob (6 months shy of 21) and I went to a grocery store to buy beer, and they wouldn’t sell it to me unless he showed them his ID as well. I was carrying and paying, he was just my ride. Are they going to start refusing me beer when I have my kids with me?
I think it’s cuz he has a bitchin’ mohawk.
All of this local stuff has kept me away from talking about the crushing blows to consumerism that the big telco’s are getting ready to rain down on people like me, and some things have gone unTumored for a while.
I mentioned the anticipated merger of Bellsouth and AT&T a few months ago, and there hasn’t been much to say. They’ve been cutting through the red tape of an FCC that would just love to close the book on 20 years of regulating monopolies in the telecom industry (after all, if the government can be a monopoly, why can’t big business), and being pretty successful. First of all, last week Bellsouth and AT&T shareholders voted overwhelmingly to approve the merger (despite the ACLU, being a shareholder in Bellsouth, wanting feds to investigate those pesky reports that Bellsouth was giving the .gov phone records without subpoenas).
Our next bit of news comes from Will Street, where Bellsouth and AT&T both posted good looking second quarter profits. Woot.
Finally, the great state of Kentucky has approved the merger in the state, with the caveats of not raising local land line rates for 5 years, keeping a state headquarters, and probably some goats or whisky or something.
So, we’re pending FCC approval, a few more states, and we’ll have a super powerful AT&T-Bellsouth monster to deal with. Yep, that sounds fun. I’m glad AT&T is starting with us on its great path to resurrecting Ma Bell, that way we can complain the loudest about the high assed internet and phone prices, because once it becomes a duopoly between Comcast and AT&T things are going to get ugly.
So, last night our own Bos got up in front of the remaining 15 or so people after waiting patiently for 3.5 hours in a city council meeting, only to meet with complete and abject disregard by the council. More specificly, what was said after he described a classmate of his 5 year old kindergartner was to the effect that the city council didn’t have an iron in that fire, and that he needs to take it up with the school board.
Indeed.
I’m not sure that the council could have described an abject lack of concern for Oak Ridge’s citizens any better.
Conceeded, the school board appears to have cut busses and endangered children (over other cuts that could have been made) in an attempt to rile parents up and get the city to change their mind. While I side myself with the board in this case, thats underhanded and risky. If something happens to one of these kids, the board will be as responsible as the council. However, you see this as an issue, whereas what the council isn’t allowing is intimation that their underfunded budget is any way responsible. I believe one of them said something to the extent of “Harumph harumph, we gave them a set of guidelines, take it up with the school board”.
Council, you suck. You sat in there for 3.5 hours ignoring the biggest issue in Oak Ridge right now and passed the buck as soon as somebody else brought it up. The right thing to do is fully fund the school system and stop screwing kids with your damn politics.
Or volunteer to ferry these walk zone kids back home with your Russia trip money.
According to Wired News, premier bittorrent tracker site Piratebay.org has been shut down by Swedish police.
I was always familar with the Piratebay as the site that would receive legal cease and desist notices, reply back with fairly intelligent, law-aware, scathing responses, and fall back on Swedens lack of intellectual property laws. Unfortunately, the other shoe dropped, Sweden bowed down to Big Content’s pressure, enacted laws cracking down on these piratey dregs, and laid the hammer down.
If you check the Piratebay.org site right now, theres a little defiant blurb about the raid, and what will happen next. Hopefully this won’t go down like the Lokitorrent.com takedown a few years ago, where after the MPAA sunk the website, the owner allegedly sold the member list and logs to the MPAA, causing pits of fear and shrunken testacles for college students the world over.
What about me? Well, after my little brush with Johnny Comcast and the C&D Blues, I’ve been laying low on the downloading movies front. Instead, I’ve been renting em, ripping em, and copying em to DVD.
HA HA, MPAA, HA HA, Comcast, score one for ME! How about you and your lawyers come and kiss my unlawful use ass as we watch movies from my rapidly growing DVD collection and drink foul mexican tequila!
/just kidding, please don’t sue.
//no, seriously, don’t sue me, but do kiss my ass. Besides, how am I supposed to rip those scratched up crappy movies from Hollywood Video anyway? Damn, what do these weird bastards do with these DVDs anyway? Dog toys?
///sorry about the arr joke… couldnt’ resist.
////man, this tequila does suck…