(192 words, thinly-veiled contempt)

Do you remember Angola? Its wars and infighting left the country devastated back before Rwanda or Sudan or Iraq or the Falkland Islands became the ’cause of the day’. Then the public eye, seldom overly concerned about conflicts half a globe away that mostly involve brown-colored people, turned away, like an infant lured from shiny thing to shiny thing on a mobile.

There is something disturbing that I want you to see. No gore … I wouldn’t do that to you. But you need to have your memory jogged.

Click here —-> MISS LANDMINE – NEWS <—- click here

(This link, like all the others in this article, will open a new browser window.)

And, once you have seen it, I’d like you to post a comment here

Click here to read on, my friend.

A bunch of underage teens are at a party. A false allegation is lodged and with all the maturity at the drunken command of a crowd of hormonally imbalanced teens, the situation quickly spirals out of control to racial animosity and violence. One young man threatens to rape the mother of another. Her husband and son meet that almost-a-man at the end of the family driveway.

Click here to read on, my friend.

Space Probe Finds Four New Worlds

Discovery News : Discovery Channel

(269 words, 1 puzzled grin)

Its prime goal is to look for planets that are made of rock rather than gas, which is the first requirement along with liquid water and a moderate temperature for life as we know it. …

Almost all of the finds have been of uninhabitable gas giants, rather than solid planets.

And they orbit at ranges that are outside the so-called “Goldilocks zone,” where the temperature is not too hot, not too cold, but just right to let liquid water exist.

The two confirmed finds by Corot, called Corot-exo-1b and Corot-exo-2b, both fall into the gas giant category, but one of the “probables” could be a rocky planet if preliminary calculations of its density are confirmed.

So, whaddya think?

I’m gonna go with “And then, all of a sudden, nothing happened.” Click here to read on, my friend.

(145 succinct and well-chosen words)

This kicks off a series of 52 things to consider as you walk through life. I have strongly held religious beliefs. This isn’t about religion. It isn’t about music or technology or taxidermy, either.

I’ll address, eventually, the topic of manners but I am not Miss Manners or Emily Post. This isn’t even the first post in the series … this is a meta-post letting you know that every Monday in 2008, there will be a post from me here with such themes as "making certain of your facts", "defending your personal privacy" and "letting your love run deep". The outline is thumb-tacked above my desk.

Each of the 13 sub-themes I’ve chosen for 2008 will run for 4 subtopics. Each of the subtopics will be explored sufficiently to enable you to say "yeah … that’s a good point".

We now return you to our regularly unscheduled programming.

(315 words, two links)

How much of your life is wasted just ‘accommodating’ the horrible behavior of others?

As my father in law would say “They ain’t ready.” He had a low tolerance for fools.

New author, Garie Thomas-Bass wants you to pull your pants up, wipe your own nose and start acting like you have a purpose on this planet beyond being a pain in the … well, read it for yourself.

Click here to read on, my friend.

I got some encryption software recently that promises to hide my super-secret files (yeah, right) from prying eyes by making them look like something else.

I’m a geek, the software is free … what’s not to like? Plenty.

Click here to read on, my friend.

BBC NEWS | Technology | ‘Digital locks’ future questioned

(304 words, one link, no DRM, no hard drives, 3 pounds of defiance)

“One of the world’s largest hard disk manufacturers has blocked its customers from sharing online their media files that are stored on networked drives.

Western Digital says the decision to block sharing of music and audio files is an anti-piracy effort.

The ban operates regardless of whether the files are copy-protected, or a user’s own home-produced content. “

Click here to read on, my friend.

(409 words, 2 links)

DRM is, for me, a deal-killer. I don’t like doing business with people who start with the basic presumption that I am going to steal from them.

I don’t like the idea at all. I don’t think it right that a DVD I buy in Germany will refuse to play on my US DVD player. And that I can’t show a friend in Ireland the movie I bought in Westland, USA. In both cases I have the right to view the material. In both cases the manufacturers have stymied that right, with permission of the US government.

When copy-protection was all the rage many years ago, I bought a hardware card that defeated the most popular sorts. Copy II PC Option Board, I think it was called.

It cost me plenty … but gave me the satisfaction of knowing that I could exercise my (entirely legal) right to make ‘archival copies’ of the software I had paid good money for.

Later on, when either students or a fellow instructor stole a whole box of the original program diskettes, it was extremely important that I had exercised that right. Not more than a few months later my hard drive threw a screw (literally) and the backup diskettes failed on the fourth diskette of a stack of about 30 when I tried to recover my files. I did lose work … a lot of it … but I didn’t have to buy new software.

I want to make it plain that I used it for that purpose and no other. Yeah, I know of others who did otherwise. But my own hands stayed clean.

Even today, without copy protection, I won’t copy anything illegally. Recently I have been talking up Bowfire and friends have asked me to make ‘archival copies’ of the CD I bought at the concert for them. I have refused and the reason I did so is because it is unethical / immoral to use a legal right for an illegal end. I’ll loan them my (original) copy (it’s out on loan at the moment) … but I will not make copies for them to keep.

Some people – many people – don’t have to be told what is right. I know that I don’t. That is why I don’t own any DRM’d recordings. The entertainment industry tried to solve its theft problems by stealing from me. I solved my problem by boycotting them.

What about you? What is your stand on DRM?

(1,794 words, no links, serious stuff)

Recently my wife found herself being lured into giving out too much information to a bogus online job company. I overheard the tag end of the conversation and gave her the ‘time out’ hand signal. Although neither one of us watches much sports, she understood and closed out the conversation. Don’t you just love how one thing leads to another? Here are some tips for staying safe online and on the phone line. The interplay of the two can crush the unwary.

Click here to read on, my friend.

(1,384 words, 1 link, one ticked-off writer)

<rant mode=on>

“The potential payoff for students and schools from this work, of course, is that the tens of thousands of existing educational applications written for Windows can potentially run on the XO,” said Mr Utzschneider.”

“Potential payoff for students”. “Tens of thousands”. “Existing”. “Potentially”.

Somebody needs to lay off the Pixie Dust.

Click here to read on, my friend.