We have a tradition in the USA in which we allow the user the right to purchase technologies which can be used both legally and illegally. For example, a camcorder can be used to film a documentary, a child’s first steps, or a birthday party. It can also be used to sit in a movie theater and film the movie to then illegally distribute it on the internet. So is the solution to ban all camcorders? No, that would be silly and there are plenty of legal uses for a camcorder. The correct solution is to police movie theaters to make sure that such persons do not gain entry. In fact, in the Betamax case, the judge ruled that VCRs were legal because although they could be used to bootleg movies, they could also be used to watch legally purchased movies and time-shift programs, allowing the user to watch television on his or her own schedule. VCRs can also be used to copy tapes which the owner has the right to copy - such as his own footage.

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Photo Sharing

A big Thank You to all those who have protected us over the past 200+ years. Here are two wonderful veterans who were key to the success in World War II. Click on the pictures to see a short summary of their stories.

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Photo Sharing

Photo Sharing

Photo Sharing

The same dork who, last December, was trying to claim that the GPL ruined his ability to program because the software was available for free, appealed last December’s decision. Well, on 9 November, he was handed another blow from the US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. The Judge was a pretty smart guy and asserted that if Linux was so anti-competitive by being free, why do more people have Windows and Macintosh computers than Linux? Why do people use Photoshop instead of The GIMP. I love it when our government officials actually know about technology! (Unlike the congressmen who passed the DMCA!)

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Photo Sharing

The same way that aspiring writers are told to write at least one thing per day and it will improve their writing over time, I have decided to take one picture a day. So join me as I post 1 A Day…

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Photo Sharing

So, today I heard the biggest shock of 2006, Donald Rumsfeld was sacked! This was a surprise because Bush emphatically declared, going into the election, that he would not get rid of Rummy. It was also a surprise because I thought Bush would let the democrats fight to get rid of Rumsfeld, thus putting the blame on them if things went wrong. Instead, the day after the election he was out and Gates, a former CIA head is in. I didn’t really like a lot about Rumself and the way he ran the Pentagon, but hopefully we haven’t taken a step into WORSE policy!

So, readers may remember that when I upgraded to Fedora Core 6, I lost dual screen abilities. Well, after today’s update of the nVidia drivers from livna, it suddenly was working again (after I tried to set it up). But then compiz no longer wanted to work! That frustrated me as I wanted to have both the advantages of dual screen as well as the helpful and fun eye candy of compiz. Well, Yupman in Fedora’s freenode chat helped me through it and showed me how to change my xorg.conf to make it work.

MSNBC predicts Democrats control the House of Representatives with anything from 7 to 47 seat majority. The Senate is nearly 50-50. This will leave us in a very interesting place where they will either need to get all bipartisan or nothing at all will get done. With the voting machines and their uncertainties I predict there will be massive calls for recalls. The Republicans will not just go out without a fight. And I don’t blame them - the democrats would do the same in their shoes.

Newegg.com has begun selling them and they have a Plextor brand Blue Ray burner for $835.99. Sounds similar to how much a DVD burner would have set you back just a few years ago. Now they are selling for $60 and less. So I’m predicting that Blue Ray technology burners will be about this price in 3-5 years. Also, there was a fiasco with DVD+R and DVD-R just as there is now Blue Ray and DVD-HD. Yet burners now burn both DVD + and - so it may end up the same with the newer technologies.