I intercepted an exchange about copyright infringement and movie downloading, the illegal kind.

Apparently its illegal to host torrent files, according to some pending court case's, but in this exchange a very interesting point is made:

I'll call them Bob and Doug.
----

Bob:

You know about this movie. You know this movie is owned by its copyright owners. You know the upload of it to PirateBay was illegal.

Doug:

That's interesting. How exactly does one upload a complete movie to the PirateBay? Take your time, we'll wait.

Bob:

The whole point is that you don't upload to Pirate Bay, it is a search engine, like Google points to web pages (which may be copyright) but [snip] and shut down, how dare the give access to torrent links? and other copyright material?

Doug:

Good point. The media really does twist the scenario, don't they?

Bob:

It's not the media. The fact is MPAA/ RIAA don't want to piss-off google, and get all their links blocked, or re-directed to porn sites. [grin]

---

And there you have it, the best explanation why MPAA/RIAA is against some copyright trading, but not anything else.

The Making of Strawberry mead.

I now have a blue smurf barrel in my den full of what will eventually be a lovely elixir.

While I was fulfilling my daily work duties. In this case driving around town buying parts, my co-worker wanted to stop by a container business to get buckets to place used oil in.

As we looked about the place, I noticed several 250 gallon white square contaniers, and pointed this out to Bob. He makes wine from his farm every year.

As things would have it the barrel was cheap, 50$. Of course it was used, but came from a food grade source. In this case Clover Honey.

SO he buy this and a couple days later pick it up, along with the blue smurf barrel. The smurf thing held strawberry flavoring, which according to the label was 70% alcohol!!!

The interesting thing about that type of barrel is a *lot* of the original fruit flavor permeates the new contents, which in this case was going to some wine.

The white container was also found to hold almost 4 gallons of honey!!

So with little prompting, I ended up taking home the honey and a fruit flavor barrel!

With Honey at 2$ a pound, the 4 gallons was equal to 45lbs of honey or 90$+ a bargin when we got it and a big container for only 50$. I think the smurf barrel was 5$.

Now I wait impatiently for the next couple months to let this all ferment out into what I hope to be a wonderful Strawberry flavored mead.

I'll keep you Posted.

It was the spring of 2007, March to be exact, when I made a purchase at best buy for a Sansa C200 MP3 player. Not too expensive and to me, not to difficult to adapt to the controls.

3 Weeks later while taking a 750 mile trip the left channel took a hike. As fate would have it, this was at the beginning of the journey.

Arriving in Arkansas I stopped at the first Best Buy, traded this back in and replaced it with a new model.

Fast forward 3 months. The left Channel stopped again. Now mind you this event both times was the Major point which forced me to return the player. Also encountered were skips in the music while playing and some other odd sound effects that typically could be fixed by formatting the player.

Walking out of Best Buy with Sansa C200 Number 3, this played well enough for the next 15 months.

PS, I did purchase the 2 year extended warranty. Glad I did.

Unlike the first two, the left channel; as well as the right continued to function. What started happening was the occasional music skip/silence in certain songs began becoming more occasional than occasionally. Certain songs would not even play!

I could take an unplayable song from the Sansa and put in on a computer and it would play perfectly and a format of the Sansa did not fix this problem. The same songs used to play fine, but now did not.

I take the Sansa to Best Buy and they call up get an RMA since this was a second return on a extended warrently. The first had none, it was in the 30 day window for returns.

Soon I'm walkingout of the Store with a Brand new Sansa Fuze 8Gb. Take it home and right out of the box its got issues. Turn the volume up to about 2/3's and the sound stutters and breaks up and higher it completely shuts down the sound output.

Soon I'm back at the store returning Sansa #4! I think that, what, with a fifth I should get one ethat works, well maybe or not quite.

Take player 5 home, test the volume thing works, I'm happy and I'm backon the road listening to my music.

Next day, the thing starts acting up like the first! Now it was left out in the sub zero cold, which should not effect it, but you just can't tell. After a bit of fussing I discover that it will play fine if I keep it warm.

No problem, I just take it in and out of the house as needed whan I'm traveling. Certain songs seem to exascerbate the break up at high volume levels, and I just work around those.

I find that the Fuze apparently need time to adjust to its new owner. After I have it for a week plus, I noticed that its now working fine when it has been left out in the cold. Its now playing the same songs that would break up the sound, perfectly fine.

I never knew these things could be so fussy. I'd expect this from a cat, not an MP3 Player!

So How long will the 5th one last? Don't care, when it goes, I'm trading it for a Sony.

Bush strategy reveiled

Sheldon Richman made this comment:

The Bush administration says terrorists attacked us because we are
rich and free, and vows that this should never happen again. So it's
boldly acting to impoverish and enslave us.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheldon_Richman

Palin: Loose Cannon

Well its interesting to hear that as a VP Palin has taken on the
powers that be.

She has openly criticizes her running mates position on withdrawing
the campaign staff from Michigan.

Not once, but twice. You would think that she know far more than
Senator McCain does about politicking and campaigning, seeing as he
has done this sort of thing for decades and she's only had a few
years total in all her experience.

Unfortunately this sort of action boarders on treason and is a highly
undignified action for a VP. If elected as such, can you imagine
that every time the president make some statement or sets an official
policy she starts in complaining about how she wouldn't do that?

I don't think so. Obviously she has not a clue on what her role is
and randomly attacking her own boss and political party is political suicide.

I feel sorry for the McCain campaign.

McCain Out of Michigan

So I'm prophetic.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/politico/20081002/pl_politico/22895

The writing was on the wall for all to see, I've even been talking to
a lot of my military friends and they are not voting for McCain, so
that tells you something about the election already.

Palin: Like a Rock! (UNCLASSIFIED)

Classification: UNCLASSIFIED
Caveats: NONE

In what has come to pass the meteoric rise in popularity amongst the
conservative base, has stopped. Sarah Palins rating have dropped like a rock
and conservatives are asking, not so subtly either, for her to withdraw her
acceptance as the VP.

Major Campaign push by McCain in Michigan has not gone unnoticed. Over the
last few weeks, the number of road signs have increased along my drive to
work from 2 to nearly ten! 400% increase, Yea!

Unfortunately there is still a good 2:1 ratio, or better, of Obama:McCain
signage.

So if the republican base isn't supporting the campaign to elect John McCain,
who is?

Classification: UNCLASSIFIED
Caveats: NONE