BunkBlog

Yet another attempt to get broadcast flags enshrined in law is coming up this week. Take action to stop them, please.

What is the problem with the broadcast flag and audio flag, you ask?  Simple – they don’t do anything worthwhile and are an obstruction to technological progress. If you’re a Republican, do you believe in more governmental regulation or do you believe in letting the market decide?  Well, broadcast flag legislation protects one business model to the exlusion of letting the market decide.  If you’re a Democrat, do you believe in the government bowing to the orders of large corporations?  Well, the broadcast flag legislation exists only because of the efforts of the entertainment industry, not due to any grassroots campaign from actual individual citizens.

All these flags and the PERFORM Act do is stop innovation. They make it so that the United States will remain the technology ghetto of the world.  We keep our recording devices at the same technological level as analog cassette tape in the 21st Century.  What the hell?  Read Engadget sometime – every day there is some new piece of audio or video gadgetry that will never arrive in the United States, because the Asians don’t have retarded laws protecting the RIAA and MPAA from competition.  It’s like we went back in time and killed the Ford automobile because buggy whip makers were pissed off.  Absurd now, isn’t it? Yet you know that the buggy whip makers were campaigning for just such a thing at the time. Why let the RIAA and MPAA tell you that you can’t record what you want on your stereo or television? Why let the recording industry control your electronics? Do your elected representatives represent you or Hollywood?

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has launched a new approach to consumer activism: The Corruptibles. The cartoon is pretty cool, and gives a reasonably simple overview of what the entertainment industry would like to have Congress give them. So far, the congresscritters have given them pretty much everything the industry has paid for wanted, so there’s a great deal of confidence that they’ll get everything else they’ve bought asked for as well.

I’m sure some people don’t care that their iPod only works with music they buy from Apple, and that Sony enjoys building virus-like rootkit hacking tools into music CDs, and the industry wanting to halt all technology at the level of analog cassette tapes, but maybe some of you realize that giving one business model special protection is a bad thing.

Only we can stop…The Corruptibles!

Congress just passed a bill to increase the maximum indecency fine by an order of magnitude. This is the same day they voted on the completely symbolic “we hate gays” amendment. Could the legislature possibly have actual work to do that could somehow assist the citizenry in any way? If not, maybe they should stay out of DC for a while, because they’re just wasting our tax dollars and causing more stupidity than we need.

The fact that this article is not accessible on-base is probably just a remarkable coincidence regarding AETC-mandated proxy-server updates or something.  Right.

Apparently the First Lady is totally enveloped in the infamous Bush Bubble.

“I don’t really believe those polls. I travel around the country. I see people, I see their responses to my husband. I see their response to me,” she said.

Well, of course you don’t believe it. All the people you see around the country are hand-selected for their zeal. Does anyone in the Bush White House live in the “reality-based” world?

So Porter Goss resigned unexpectedly. Maybe it was to be expected, if he’s the person described as the “person who now holds a powerful intelligence post” who is also a former lawmaker, who just so happens to be one of the participants in that whole sex scandal. You remember the Poker Party story, right? C’mon, it’s only been a couple days! You don’t remember the sex scandal that was all over the news this week? Oh, right. It wasn’t all over the news. Of course, that darned liberal media kept it from you. Which is really amazing, considering that the only people implicated are Republicans, but that liberal media is wily. They must just be biding their time, waiting for the next thing they can attack the President with.

What I can’t figure out is why all this stuff keeps happening at the Watergate Hotel. You’d think people would stop going there, what with the whole “every scandal has a -gate” thing. They don’t even have to make a stupid “Plamegate” or “Iran-contragate” out of it – it actually is the Watergate!

To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. (1918)

Theodore Roosevelt

This week, Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert was shown driving off in a hydrogen-powered vehicle, and two blocks later hopping out and getting into his gigantic gas-guzzling SUV. Politicians being mendacious and venal is not news. But, the news continues to refer to the hydrogen “energy source” of the future.

Hydrogen is not and will never be an energy source. It is an energy storage system, like a battery that you can charge with a hose instead of an outlet. And, it’s not a very good replacement for gasoline anyway.

Gasoline stores nearly 10 killowatt-hours worth of power in a liter of space. Liquid hydrogen can only store one quarter that density. What’s amusing is that gasoline actually has more hydrogen embedded in it chemically per liter than liquid hydrogen does.  Yes, gasoline is a way to store and transport hydrogen that is more efficient than the raw hydrogen. Brain hurt yet?

If you were wondering about the other alternate fuel vehicles, liquid natural gas (which is an energy source) holds about 75% of the energy per liter as gasoline; liquid propane holds about the same.

So, why do I say hydrogen is not an energy source? Because, unlike natural gas or petroleum or coal, we don’t harvest or discover hydrogen. The way we produce hydrogen today is to create it from other molecules, through electrolysis (splitting water molecules), or microbes exhaling it, or gasification of peanut shells and the like. Regardless, the difference between making gasoline and making hydrogen is pretty stark. We drill for oil, and refine it to make gasoline. This wastes a little energy in the process, but is necessary because crude oil doesn’t explode very well (gasoline does explode under pressure very nicely). Assuming we use natural-gas fired electrical generators to make hydrogen, we would use the entirety of our current natural gas consumption to make the hydrogen to power the current level of transportation that uses gasoline.  Shoot, that leaves no electricity for keeping our houses lit and comfortable.  Well, whatever shall we do?

Current nuclear reactors are considered low-temperature reactors, and produce mostly hot water as waste. These reactors can produce electricity approximately four times more expensively as natural gas (which explains why nukes are so rare still). A new direct thermodynamic conversion can produce hydrogen with only a 30% penalty compared to natural gas (at least with today’s prices for natural gas – as NG becomes more expensive, nukes become more attractive). Japan, Korea, and China are all working on these and also on pebble-bed reactors. The Japanese estimate they’ll have an operational high-temperature reactor producing somewhere around 100-200 tons of hydrogen per day.

So, those hydrogen-powered cars are actually electric cars with hydrogen fuel-cells storing the energy which was originally produced by burning natural gas or oil, more likely than not. Any time you see “hydrogen-powered” in the news, think “hydrogen-battery electric” instead.

The recording industry mafia have gotten a new one – they are suing a family for filesharing when the family doesn’t even own a computer. I believe it is quite difficult to infringe copyrights (not steal any darned thing) the way the RIAA accuses them of without at least some kind of computer to use.

So, the morons have shaken down little old ladies, small children, dead people, families without computers…how many cases has the RIAA won? Not a single one. That’s right; no matter how much they bully people, not a single case has been decided in their favor. Of course, almost no cases have been decided at all. The strongarm tactics and extortion that the cartel has used are effective. People know they have no reasonable chance of fighting the RIAA in court because the RIAA can afford better lawyers, and in the modern judicial system money talks. So, when the mob boss industry lawyer offers people a way out of the multi-million dollar suit, they tend to take it. Unsurprisingly, the amount of money the RIAA settles for varies from case to case – it is generally defined as, “what do you have?” One college student was told to max out his student loans to maximize the industry profit. Think this will encourage that student to buy more CDs next year? Yeah, me neither.

The gummint sure does think they can get anything approved if they just claim it’s to stop child pr0n. Of course, any decent criminal will just use Tor or some other system to avoid their data being collected. The rest of us get to pay for a series of massive data warehouses holding every chat log and email we send. Go, Big Brother! Won’t someone think about the children?

This video has to be seen if you want to truly understand how long it will take to rebuild New Orleans.  It’s 22 minutes long, 82 megs in size, so don’t be impatient with it (or use dialup).

As ikilled007 has said, years – not months – years to bring it back, if ever.

Have we gone completely down the rabbit hole now? The man who was shot (accidentally, yes) is apologizing to the man who shot him?

Boy, those congresscritters really don’t seem to get it. Nobody outside the MPAA and RIAA wants a broadcast flag, no matter what you call it. As always, Cory Doctorow’s analysis is fantastic.

Under the DCPA proposal, digital media technologies would be restricted to using technologies that had been certified by the FCC as being not unduly disruptive to entertainment industry business-models.

Unduly disruptive? Hey, folks, the disruptive technologies are the ones that drive us forward and upward to ever-higher levels of economic and creative success. Phonographs, automobiles, computers, compact disks, radio, television – all disruptive technologies in their time. There is no Constitutional right to protect existing business models, and isn’t Congress supposed to be in the business of protecting the Constitution and the sovereign people of the United States? Or are they instead in the business of protecting campaign donors against their own customers? Yeah, that was rhetorical, thanks.

What a great semi-conciliatory tape we’ve seen transcripts of today.  I’ll have to ask my Arabic-speaking coworkers what he really said when they get to hear it themselves – nobody trusts the translations in the media, especially when they vary from outlet to outlet.

Regardless, if anyone thinks it’s a good idea to negotiate with this fruitbat, please leave. Not the country, the planet – if you think Osama is a reasonable person who can be trusted, you are a danger to yourself and others.

It may be a surprise that I don’t personally agree with a lot of scary things that our current administration is doing, and that our timing and rationale for going into Iraq was flawed at best.  But, there is no way I’d trust Osama more than I trust President Bush.  Does Bin Laden actually expect people to just forgive and forget?  Oh, that unprovoked attack against thousands of civilians?  Bygones!

From the story about Oregon’s assisted suicide law.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., in his first dissent, sided with the Bush administration.

Anyone surprised?

The idiot governor of my adopted state says, Add intelligent design to teaching

From the article linked:

Marvin Olasky, a University of Texas journalism professor who has written favorably on intelligent design

That pretty much says all that needs to be said about Intelligent Design. No scientist is behind any of this. The college professors trotted out to be the educators willing to back ID are all liberal arts types. Nothing against my liberal arts friends, but you’re not scientists.

When we need someone’s expert opinion on Chopin, we ask a music professor. When we need an expert opinion on Shakespeare, we ask an English professor. When we need an expert opinion on biology, we ask…a journalism professor?

USSID 18 and the new interpretation of it.

No comment needed.

For decades, the liberals have been professionally offended. “You said Oriental instead of Asian! Shame!” and all that rot. Now, the conservatives (or at least those who watch too much Fox News) are professionally offended. The target, of course, is the wholly mythical campaign against Christmas.

When I was a kid, I sold greeting cards for a while (a year or so, I don’t remember – it’s been a long time!). Many of those cards said “Happy Holidays” (which of course is a contraction from Holy Days in case you forgot) or “Season’s Greetings.” Never once did I hear someone put on a show of being offended that not every card said “Christmas” on it. Not a single time. I guess back then we didn’t have the benefit of a 24-hour news channel which needs ratings so badly that they can tell us exactly when and at whom we should be offended or outraged. Ah, those old days when we had to form our own opinions about things, instead of being spoonfed by Bill O’Reilly and his ilk.

There is plenty of documentation out there about the total lack of ethics practiced by Mr. O’Reilly, particularly in the craven nature of his lies about the anti-Christmas contingent. Every story I’ve seen that O’Reilly has touted as an example of people banning Christmas has been completely debunked. Have fun with your non-controversy, Right Wing Nuts.

After a completely pointless resolution was introduced to protect the symbols of Christmas, the longest-serving member of the House had something to say.

Rep. John Dingell (D-MI): “Madam Speaker, I have a little poem.

‘Twas the week before Christmas and all through the House,
no bills were passed `bout which Fox News could grouse.
Tax cuts for the wealthy were passed with great cheer,
so vacations in St. Barts soon should be near.

Katrina kids were all nestled snug in motel beds,
while visions of school and home danced in their heads.
In Iraq, our soldiers need supplies and a plan,
and nuclear weapons are being built in Iran.

Gas prices shot up, consumer confidence fell.
Americans feared we were in a fast track to ….. well.
Wait, we need a distraction, something divisive and wily,
a fabrication straight from the mouth of O’Reilly.

We will pretend Christmas is under attack,
hold a vote to save it, then pat ourselves on the back.
Silent Night, First Noel, Away in the Manger,
Wake up Congress, they’re in no danger.

This time of year, we see Christmas everywhere we go,
From churches to homes to schools and, yes, even Costco.
What we have is an attempt to divide and destroy
when this is the season to unite us with joy.

At Christmastime, we’re taught to unite.
We don’t need a made-up reason to fight.
So on O’Reilly, on Hannity, on Coulter and those right-wing blogs.
You should sit back and relax, have a few egg nogs.

‘Tis the holiday season; enjoy it a pinch.
With all our real problems, do we really need another Grinch?
So to my friends and my colleagues, I say with delight,
a Merry Christmas to all, and to Bill O’Reilly, happy holidays.
Ho, ho, ho. Merry Christmas.”

The non-binding, totally ceremonial resolution passed, of course – 401 to 22.

Richard Pryor has passed on. Coincidentally, I recently started listening to the box set of his albums.

Think I’ll head over to Netflix and update my queue. A little Stir Crazy seems about right.