Blog
Welcome to my blog. This is where you get to learn about me and what I feel like ranting about at the moment. If you know me, you know I have a lot to say about stuff. This is my chance to just spit it out and, just maybe, get some feedback about it. Take a minute and read what I have to say. If you want to respond, well, that is what comments are for.
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Okay, now that that is over with, in case you haven't heard, Lori Drew is an evil bitch. There was some sort of drama between her daughter and another girl (13-year-old Megan Meier). So, in response she pretended to be a teenage boy, feigned interest in Megan, and then broke it off in the most horrible way she could. Soon after, Megan killed herself. This might sound like a plot out of some twisted Shakespeare play. But it is real. And what Ms. Drew did was quite possibly legal. You might wonder what it's doing in my "technology" category. You might also wonder why Ms. Drew might have gotten away with it. Surprisingly, those answers are related...
When I moved to St. Louis, I decided I might save myself the hassle of parking downtown and maybe even a little cash by riding MetroLink, St. Louis's light rail system. There is a station about a mile from my condo complete with plenty of free parking. My commute is about 40 minutes, but most of that is spent dozing on the train. The train also lets off 2 blocks from work, so that's great, too. Of course, Metro can't help but suck, can it?
Read on after the break...
So if you read the article carefully, you will discover something interesting. Yes, that's right: The 69% of teens who believe that copying CDs is not a crime are probably right. So basically what this tells is is that the RIAA ran a study to see if teens thought copying CDs was legal. They got results that "angered" them. They published those results to show how misinformed the teens were. Then the author of the article thought they might go ask a real live lawyer what they thought, and low and behold: The teens are right?!
According to the article: Distributing free copies of a purchased CD or DVD is only a federal copyright crime if the value of the copied discs exceeds $1,000.
And oh yeah, Look at the bottom of the article Google Ads just crack me up.
Let me tell you a story about a boy named John.
John was born in Canada to a wealthy family. When he was 4, his family moved away from Canada, leaving behind his friends and everything he knew. His father, like the rest of his family, was a very conservative man with a strict set of values and beliefs. He told John that there were people out there that didn't agree with those beliefs. He was told that there was a new power in the world that did not agree with his values. This new power was aggressive and strong. Their power was greater than any other in the world. And they hated John's family and what they believed in.
John's father had a friend who was in charge of a resistance group. A group that fought against the overlords who were dominating the world. The overlords wanted very much to destroy the resistance. John was trained to fight the overlords and to do anything he could to stop them.
The overlords preached propaganda to the world. They claimed that they wanted to unite the world under a flag of peace and justice. They claimed that they respected everyone's freedom to do what they believed.
But John's father told him the truth. John's father told him that the overlords were aggressors. He told John that the overlords would not let John believe what he wanted because it was different from what the overlords believed. He told John that one day the overlords would come. They would attack John's country and topple its government. They would occupy his country and take his friends prisoner. They would hunt down and murder John's father and his friends and everyone in the resistance.
John's father also told of a more horrible fate. He said that if John was captured, he would be taken away to a deep dark dungeon. He would be humiliated and beaten. The overlord soldiers would mock his beliefs and degrade him. John couldn't believe this was true, but his father had never let him down before.
Then one day, when John was 14, the soldiers came. They came and attacked John's country. They toppled John's government. They occupied John's country and they started taking prisoners. They had no respect for John's beliefs and mocked him in the street. The soldiers called him names and badmouthed John's family.
One day, John got hold of a grenade. He thought that if he could kill just a couple of the soldiers, it might help to scare the soldiers out of the country. He was afraid for his father, for his family, for his friends, and for his way of life. He threw the grenade at the soldiers and killed one of them. He started to run away, but before he got far, the remaining soldiers caught him. They attacked him and took him away.
John knew what was coming next. He was put in a plane and they flew him to an island. On the island there was a dungeon. The dungeon was dark and dank. While John was there the guards taunted him. They were worse than the soldiers in John's homeland. They would degrade John and if John didn't react how they wanted, they would beat him.
John had heard the propaganda. The overlords had said they were committed to justice and freedom. They had said they prided themselves on the "fairness" of their "trials" and that everyone was entitled to their "day in court". But John knew better. His father had told him there would be no trial. And there wasn't. For 4 years, John sat in that dungeon. He was alone and afraid. Other prisoners even killed themselves to escape the pain. He heard rumors of torture. He didn't know when his turn would be. But he knew it would be soon...
You will notice that there is a little graph off to the left that shows "Movie sales" surging up over the last 10 years. Over the last year or 2, "for some reason" the profits start to level off. It must be those pirates who are stealing all the money. We could hunt them down and sue them, or maybe we could grab the nearest Econ. 101 student to explain to us what this graph means.
Enter Econ. 101 Student
Well class, to explain what you are seeing, we are going to reconstruct the "Graph" on a smaller scale:
The following is a letter I wrote to the editor of Fortune Magazine. It probably will not be published. But I want to post it so someone other then my mom might actually read it:
The article "Online scams create 'Yahoo! millionaires'", glorified young “Akin” as a new-age entrepreneur. It glorified this young man as some sort of local hero, who at 14, has already become a millionaire and is the primary provider for his family. It does inform the reader that Akin's scams are against Nigerian law, but it also refers to his crimes as a “national pastime.” Akin is a disruptive child who is committing international wire fraud and flaunting it to his neighbors and even the international press. The article does not mention that the victims of so-called “419 scams” are not always rich and don't just lose their own money. John W. Worley, whose story appeared in the May 15th, 2006 issue of the New Yorker, was sentenced to jail time and owes more then $600,000 after his run-in with a 419 scammer like Akin. What Akin is doing amounts to nothing more then international, cybernetic burglary. If I were to break into a bank's computer system and steal $1,000,000, should I be praised for my entrepreneurial spirit and my family commitment? I could claim that Banks “are too gullible. They are rich, and whatever I gyp them out of is small change to them.” But of course I would be wrong. I would go to jail, because I committed a crime. Akin is committing a crime. We should not praise him, we should put him in jail.
Media Center Extenders rule. Actually, I am going to back that up and say, Xbox 360's rule. I bought my 360 a while back and I think it is just about the coolest gaming system ever. I love to play games on it just to play them. The graphics are jaw-dropping, and if you haven't played a 360 on an HDTV, go buy one right now. Tell them Pete sent you. Then when they ask who Pete is, tell them to read my blog. Because I need a larger reader base.
I always got a huge kick out of those PSAs on television that talk about not smoking marijuana. While the PSAs do a reasonable job at showing smoking marijuana is bad, they do just as good of a job at showing drinking, smoking (tobacco) and eating candy are bad. "Eating candy?" you ask? Yes, eating candy. The argument goes like this:
I am not, nor have I ever claimed to be, a "geography expert". I wasn't very good at it in school, I could never remember what the capital of Oklahoma was (Is it Tulsa?), where Wyoming is (but the question is, does anyone care?) or what that big country is that is north of us (Mexico?). However, apparently, I am a pretty normal kid. Because according to a study reported by cnn, 2/3 of kids my age can't pick out Iraq on a map. Now, assuming we have some pretty bright soldiers, and they are all in the top 2/3 of the population in geography, we can still safely assume that half of them have no idea where they are.
Maybe if this kind of thing stopped happening, other countries wouldn't laugh at us so much. Seriously.
So as you probably know, I am a fan of World of Warcraft. It is a fun game, and most people aren't jerks. I must admit that I am known to be a wise-ass, but I don't do things such as gank people, or spam the chat. Anyway, I was running around questing last night when I received a notice from a GM (WoW cop) informing me that I had been found in violation of their harassment policy and that I had received a warning. Since I rarely talk to anyone I don't know in WoW, I wondered how I had harassed anyone. Apparently this is what happened:
As you probably already know, I am not a big fan of the RIAA and their scare tactics they use to force people into settlements. Recently, they have even gone so far as to recommend that students drop out of college to pay the "settlements" that are "so graciously offered" by the RIAA to avoid litigation.
Many people don't understand what is going on because it is very technical in nature and the RIAA "simplifies" things to the media in a light that makes it sound like their cases are rock-solid. This is far from the truth, so I plan on writing a series of blog entries that aim to explain some of the fallacies put fourth by the RIAA to hide the fact they really have no case.
The "Freedom Tower" in New York is the new building that will, maybe, someday, "replace" the World Trade Center Towers. Standing a 1,776 (pun intended) feet, it will be the tallest building in the world. Unless you don't count antenna's, in which case there are a couple buildings taller. Or maybe if you count by number of floors (the Freedom Tower will only be 82), in which case there are several taller buildings, including the Empire State Building and the former Twin Towers. Oh yeah, and I shouldn't leave out Burj Dubai, it will be completed far earlier and be far taller (at an estimated 2,500+ feet and 160+ floors). And, yes, that is the same Dubai that is host to the Dubai company that was involved in the craziness with the ports. So the "tallest building in the world" will never actually be that in any sense of the word(s). That is, if the tower ever gets built. Arguments over funding, design, etc, have left the building site untouched for the past 3 years almost.
I know it may sound obvious, but seriously, I get the feeling that people don't understand that. First it was the whole "Dubai port deal", and now it is a Hong Kong company that is taking over the screening of cargo in our nation's ports. While I admit that there may be something more to this new deal then simple racism, I am getting the idea that people are simply waking up to the fact that we are part of a world economy. To put it simply, other countries own a substatial part of the United States.
Florida is going to start paying teachers based on students' test scores. Personally, I think this is a crock. There are several big problems with this, the least of which is that many standardized tests are inherently racist. Imagine, inner-city schools with large minority populations that could really use some good teachers are denied that because no good teacher will work there where the money will always stink because the test is racist and the students won't do as well.
About 2 and a half weeks ago, I had the opportunity to go down to St. Louis for a second interview with Edward Jones Investments. It went alright, but there were a lot of really qualified people interviewing there. So for the past 2 weeks I have been driving my girlfriend (and probably everyone else) crazy because I have been spazzing out about my interview and whether I got a job or not. They told me they would get back to me by last Friday, and when Friday came about, there was no call. So I waiting until Monday, and where there was still no word from them, I called them and asked what the deal was. I was told that they had "not yet made final hiring decisions" and that I should wait around for another week or so.
Okay, I am going to try and make this as accessible to people as possible, so I am going to introduce a couple terms before I begin, uber-geeks can skip ahead.
There are a couple levels of video, there is Standard Definition (480i or 480p) and High Definition (720i, 720p, 1080i, and 1080p). DVDs that you watch today are standard definition, the same quality as your cable TV is. However, in the future, DVDs will give way to Blu-Ray and HD-DVDs. These DVD types are high-capacity and designed to hold High Definition movies. This is really good news for people like me who have HDTV's and want to see their movies in High Def. Or at least it should be good news.
I never liked AOL.
Take that back. I liked them when I was 8 and the only internet access I knew of was AOL. I haven't liked them since. On June 12th, I was offered 17 bucks by someone to do a referral for a free-whatever website. I told them to hold off because I was going on vacation in July and might need the AOL access to check my email while I was on vacation. They told me that if I called AOL and tried to cancel, they would extend the free trial. So I went with it; not everyday someone offers you money to do something you would have done for free.