Mostly Harmless

Well, this is a Maverick move.  Or maybe Senator McCain is just nuts.

“We haven’t heard hide nor hair of Sen. McCain in these negotiations,” said Schumer, chairman of the Senate Banking Committee. “He has not been involved except for an occasional, unhelpful statement, sort of thrown from far away, and the last thing we need in these delicate negotiations is an injection of presidential politics.”

McCain suspends campaign, Obama plans to continue

If Senator McCain was so entrenched in dealing with this corporate welfare bailout, then maybe.  But he has not been involved and Senator Obama is right.  Voters need a president who can deal with multiple problems at once. This is just another “Why do they hate America?” stunt.

Why would anyone hesitate to give the Bush administration more cash…?

The proposal “does not include the necessary safeguards,” said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif. She called for “independent oversight, protections for homeowners and constraints on excessive executive compensation.”

Paulson urges quick action on $700 billion bailout.

This might be a “Good Thing” and since it’s election time, it will pass without any examination.  But geez, is it too much to ask that the government setup some sort of monitoring?

So I booted my PC today when I got home today. I had intended to check e-mail before running out.

The damn thing won’t boot.  I’m typing this on the kitchen laptop.  It says the registry file is corrupted and I should boot off of my Vista DVD and select the repair option.  Except my PC has 4 GB of RAM in it, and the DVD I have won’t boot. That particular image will only boot with 2 GB of RAM or less.

Tomorrow I’ll pop out the RAM, pop in the old 2 GB that I have laying around and fix my PC.  How could Microsoft release such a unsupportable mess?  This is why I need to have a dual boot option and install Ubuntu Linux.  If I had an issue with Linux, I could fix it in no time at all.

Nuts.

Amazon is suing New York state over the “Amazon Tax” law. I hope they win for a couple of reasons.

1. This law is just aimed at fixing something the state does not like: people buy items from out of state and don’t pay the use tax. If anyone actually pays this tax I would be surprised. I’m not commenting on if people should of should not pay use tax (it’s the law) but sales tax is collected by the store for the state. If the tax is not collected at the time of purchase, who keeps good enough records for all their transactions?
2. I understand that this law was Eliot Spitzer’s idea. The man was a grandstander who went for big headlines over something useful. Sheriff of Wall Street? More like gadfly of Wall Street. His “penalties” did not really change anything but it did get his name in the papers.

Years ago NY sent officials to photograph NY cars in New Jersey shopping malls. They sent letters to the cars owner saying “Bad Monkey, you should pay your use tax.” This did not go over very well and the idea was quickly abandoned.

If the State of New York does not like federal law they can take it up with Washington. If they want to compete with online stores versus brick based stores in NY then they should fix the tax laws to actually compete and not convince people to go online or even out of state.

It’s tempting for law makers to target companies like Amazon and other online stores. It does not personally cost the lawmaker anything. But it also does not solve anything either and that probably makes it more appealing to the law makers.

Normally, a nut as a judge is just odd. If he makes enough bad calls he gets pulled off the bench.  Some really odd people have been on the bench for years.

The “debate” about water boarding is ridiculous. It’s torture, no arguement about it. The U.S. government tried and convicted other people for doing it. Until the Jack Bauer crowd came into power, it was reprehensible. Now these fear mongers have gotten the U.S. to use phrases like “water boarding, which some consider to be torture”. This is just unbelievable. Whatever happened to people just speaking plainly?

Antonin Scalia is a nut. His idea that “smacking someone in the face” could be justified is beneath that of a Supreme Court Justice. Forget the constitutionality of torturing people, or that it’s a crime under the law. In his Jack Bauer world anything can be justified and the hell with the law or the constitution.

I wish this nut job would just get his cameo on the new season of 24. Just get this stupidity out of his system and then maybe he can actually concentrate on his job instead of being Vice President Cheney’s towel boy.

Looking on Amazon and searching for Steve Jobs and parody comes up with just one hit surprisingly. I don’t usually read parodies since I prefer science fiction but Apple’s lawyers sure tempt me.

Anyone who can’t figure out that FSJ blog is, well, fake probably subscribes to those supermarket tabloids. The one’s that say JFK, Marylin Monroe, and aliens are all bundled together. With Elvis involved somehow.

Apple settled with Think Secret which I guess was good for the Think Secret author. So now FSJ is fair game? That’s really silly and now that FSJ has a sponsor odds are he’ll continue to lampoon Apple’s lawyers. Time for a Fake Steve Jobs Lawyer site?

Apple makes oodles of cash from iPhone mania. Why not take that money and just use this link to find all the sites that say The Great Steve One’s name and sue them for infringement? That ought to keep them busy. In the meanwhile I’ll just continue to read FSJ blog.

After that dim bulb lost the case against the RIAA (gremlins used her computer not her) I was hoping that other opponents against oh say, the MPAA would have better results.

So naturally when TorrentSpy received a complaint they basically went back and modified forum postings and talked about it in a public forum. Arstechnica explains but geez.

It was bad enough when the judge rationalized that data in RAM is a record and needs to be preserved (note: when that happens, you a) kill the network link, and b) ask the judge for help with that, it’s really game over when the judge is that clueless). The judge made a bad call but for them to go back and modify what data they had… that’s just plain stupid.

The MPAA and RIAA continue to shake down people for cash. They intentionally abuse their customers and rationalize it as good for their market. But if you really do break the law (see the RIAA genius) or you are skating on shaky ground like TorrentSpy then don’t make it worse by actually tampering with evidence that is supposed to come out in discovery.

Either this is a gag or let’s hear it for really stupid people.

Note from Apple to a 3rd grader: “There is no Santa Claus. The Easter bunny is dead! THE TOOTH FAIRY IS MADE UP!!” Nice going Apple, sending a 9 year old a C&D letter.

Wow. If that nut wants to block Firefox or Adblock Plus users then he should just do so. “His actions demonstrate a direct intent to defraud web site owners”, what a kook. Wonder what thinks about Lynx?