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MPAA my MPAA$$

I saw an add for respectcopyrights dot org while watching 24, which I had TiVoed so I could watch it today. Anyways, there’s this add for respectcopyrights dot org which I’m all for…usually. There are certain instances when copyrights are really just plain stupid, for example, the Disney/Mickey Mouse incident. Back to the main point: the MPAA (Motion Pictures Association of America) is claiming that people stealing movies is bad for them. Well, yes, it is. Studios lose millions of dollars on every film because of pirates and don’t take me wrong, I’m not advocating pirating. However, the MPAA has severe issues with their claims and, to me, it feels like the MPAA is putting up a
facade. The MPAA has 4 main claims:

Cheating ourselves, threatening the livelihood
of thousands, making our computer ulerable, and breaking the law. For the
first claim, the MPAA says: Only 4 out of 10 films turn a profit. If people
take
the films for free and the Studios can’t recoup their investment, they may
not be
able to make the big summer movies we all enjoy so much; the TITANICs, the
SPIDER-MANs, the JURASSIC PARKs. So, not only will the creators lose, in the
end, you, the consumer, will end up with fewer choices at the
multiplex.

I don’t know about you, but I think fewer choices would be good. There are reasons that 40% of all films don’t turn a profit…it’s called sucking! If studios stopped making bad films, they wouldn’t loose as much money. Claim two:

But, when movies are illegally downloaded from the Internet,
these are the people that suffer the most.
It’s the woman who does the make-up,
the guy who rigs the lighting,
the sound technician,
the costume designer,
the set decorator
and the caterer.

What a load of crap. As far as I know, studios are in the business for profit. That means that all the above listed people get paid a flat amount for the work they do. Some actors, directors, and produces might get a percentage of the profits, but everybody else doesn’t. If the MPAA really wants to be fair, how about implementing equal wages across the board. Once every single person on the set gets the same salary and has somesort of profit sharing plan, then the MPAA can bring that topic up. The last two claims fall into the category of scare tactics. Yes, you could download a virus but you probably have anti-virus software…and if you don’t then your stupid, SOL, and probably shouldn’t be even using a computer. If you fall into this category, let me know and I’ll be more than willing to take that computer off your hands. The legal mombo-jumbo is pretty acurate, although somewhat missleading. Most ISP’s try their best to keep customer information private. Take Verizon suing the RIAA. Yep, in a turn of events “Verizon sued the RIAA for citing the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (PDF) as a way to subpoena ISPs for the names of their subscribers.” (Wired.com, 2004). And for those who have highspeed access at home, work, or school, don’t worry too much about getting caught. While work and school most likely track who’s using what IP address at what time, those logs won’t stick around for long. It’s too much datajstorage for something too mundane to track. At home, if you have more than one computer connected to the internet, it’s almost impossible for the MPAA to determine what computer was used to download movies illegally without actually having access to the computer itself. And if you notice, I didn’t actually link to respectcopyrights dot org, this was done on purpose. As Verbal might say, “A litte FU from me to the MPAA.”

*Sigh*, I feel a wee bit better know. I know that was long, but it was worth it. In other news, I’m heading off to Colorado next week for 4 some days. I’ll be touring a few colleges, so expect some pictures when I get back. Perhaps the coolest part of the entire trip will be flying to Denver on a 777. I’m so excited!

One Last Trip to Mexico

Every year, for the past 3 years, I have gone on a mission trip to Mexico with my church youth group. The youth group is for high schoolers, and as I am a senior, this will be my last trip down to Mexico. However, I didn’t realize how much I will miss going down to Mexico until today. We had our meeting to find out who was in our group and it was great fun. I started to think about all the fun stuff we get to do in Mexico, especially the small things. This year will be the best year yet…of course I always say that about everything.

What happens if I don’t think?

So here I am, working on physics homework and I’m thinking about Descartes. More particularly, his statement “I think therefore I am.” Nothing entirely unusual. In my course of everyday activities, I often take human conundrums and apply them to computer issues and “I think therefore I am” is no exception to this rule. However, take the inverse of his statement: “I don’t think therefore I am not” which basically asks the question, If one does not think, does one cease to exist? If this is true, does one cease to exist merely for the time one is not thinking or does one disappear forever? Not that this has ever been an issue for me, my mind has always been going somewhere around a mile a minute…well really much faster than that, but you get the idea. I better get back to physics now, perhaps I’ll calculate the radial acceleration of electrons in the brain.

Register to vote

I registered to vote just about a month and a half ago. I would encourage ALL of you to follow the link below and register to vote. You DO NOT need to be 18 to register, you just cannot vote until you are 18. 18-25 year olds are the most underrepresented group of all voters (lower than minorities, lower than low-income, lower than non-high school graduates, lower than independents) with somewhere between 50% and 60% of eligible voters registered. So if you plan on voting for Kerry….or Bush, register now. Your registration must be postmarked 30 days before the first election you wish to vote in, or you can register in person up to 15 days before the election.

For Washington State: http://www.secstate.wa.gov/elections/pdf/vrform.pdf

I’ll try to find some for other states soon!

I turned 18, I smoked a cigar, I am a man

So I turned 18 today. Shouldn’t be a big surprise for those of you who have visited the site anytime in the last few weeks and saw the countdown clock. Anyways, I had a great party…actually, I’m still having the party. But yes, Jeff Staples gave me a cigar, he turned 18 last Saturday, and I smoked it…or some of it. But it really wasn’t that good. So when I next go to Canada, I’ll have to get myself a Cuban or something nice like that.

Why looking at the web log is funny

I finally got around to installing and configuring the server log viewer. I’m trying some new software this time, AWStats. Thus far, I like it a lot. However, I have been noticing some funny things. No, the software is working just fine. I’m talking about search strings used to find my website. For the month of January, the top keyphrase used was…”prom pictures” with 27.9% (61 hits). What the hell? I know I have a few prom pictures on the site, but that many hits? Other notable keyphrases delt with Titus Andronicus, 1984, Pictures from el Salvador, EPA regulations on vehicles, Clockwork Orange, and paideia definition. And another thing. I believe AFdN set a new site record with a total of 3.78 GB of data transferd (bandwidth) for the month of January (which still isn’t over yet!). 90% of that was from WMV files. However, I’m sure that was just an anomoly for this month. I added quite a few videos and I have been testing some new streaming software protocals. By the way, for December, the most common keyphrase was “fergcorp” followed by “fireworks video.” Total about of bandwidth? A mere 238.32 MB.

Virus attack continues

I have recieved over 64 emails in the past 8 hours that are infected with the W32.Novarg.A@mm or W32/Mydoom@MM virus. Funny thing is, they are all coming from 128.95.229.xxx (last octet concealed for privacy) which is the University of Washington.

W32.Novarg.A@mm or W32/Mydoom@MM

At 02:41 PM I recieved an email from someone at the University of Washington. Nothing unusual, except A) I didn’t know this person; and B) The email had an attachment. I figured that it was a virus and so I ran a virus scan, nothing…the file was “clean.” After viewing the content of the file in a quanantined environment, I determined that it had a very high probablility of being a virus. And I was right. The latest virus threat is Novarg or Mydoom, depending on if you use Norton or McAfee, and this is wild one. In the past few years, I have recieved very few virus over email. However, in the last 3 hours,  I have recieved over 25 emails containing the virus. Fortunatly, only the first email made it though before a virus update was issued. My mail server promptly downloaded it and started disinfecting messages.

To learn more about the virus:
http://securityresponse.symantec.com/avcenter/venc/data/w32.novarg.a@mm.html
or
http://us.mcafee.com/virusInfo/default.asp?id=description&virus_k=100983

And please, update your antivirus.

 

Such a long week…but not

This last week has been perhaps one of the longest weeks in my life, especially weird considering it only lastedr 3 days. Finials were pretty much a non-event, Wednesday marked the half-way point of Senior year. That pretty much means I have about 5 weeks of “real” school left.