Telling it like it is

Salt Lake City discovered this morning what a humourless prick Dell Schanze really is. One of the local radio stations were doing quite a funny stunt to do with "superdell"s latest radio commercials. Basically it's about the Shiffer tribe who died out because they weren't intelligent enough to survive, and so if you weren't intelligent enough to buy his product, you had Shiffer-brains. So the radio station had a guy dressed as an indian chief sitting outside Dell's house this mroning, chanting and tooting his horn. Schanze not only phoned the police to have him arrested, but get this - came out of the house in full combat gear with an SKS assault rifle pointed at the guy's head. Schanze you idiot - that just isn't funny. You're not funny. Your radio and TV spots suck. Your products suck. Get a life. You may have made a million by making other people miserable with your lousy products, but at least give us the grace of having a sense of humour you

Now this is neat. My $18 webcam arrived today so I've plopped it on top of my cube wall and run the cable to my PC. Now I can see what's going on in the cubefarm right from my desk. Neato.

Remember the shift-key copy-protection override story from a couple of weeks ago? John "Alex" Halderman discovered that by simply pressing the Shift key when loading a copy-protected music CD into a computer's hard drive, he could disable SunnComm Technologies' MediaMax CD-3 software, which is supposed to prevent CDs from being ripped. He published his finding on his website. On Wednesday, shortly after the disclosure, SunnComm's stock plummeted 25%. The company then threatened to sue the student, charging him with violating the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, or DMCA. Under the law, it is illegal to bypass any technology measure in place that protects copyright material -- perhaps even by pressing the Shift key. It's nice to see that another arm of the music industry is governed by the same idiot lunatics as the RIAA. SunnComm knew this was a hole in their product, as did BMG, the music company using it. So why then are they trying to hide behind the DM

I'm as bad with the English language as anyone, but this has got to stop. People - there is no such word as "burglarized". The word is "burgled" for Chrissake. If the word "burglarized" existed, it could only be applied to a human. He became burglarized - ie. he took on the properties of a burglar. When some light-fingered tosspot chucks a brick through your window and steals your Sony, he's BURGLING your house, not burglarizing it. Thank you.