rant: June 2002 Archives

Man... it hasn't even been 24 hours since I read the first article on how Universal and Sony will start selling unprotected digital music online.

And already the walls are shaking, and cracks are appearing.

I just finished a suspiciously timely article about how when Disney broke ranks with the other major movie studios and started selling their movies to be broadcast on Television in the early days of broadcasting, it broke the studios resolve and they all started offering their products up for sale. Of course, this resulted and still results in massive new amounts of income for the studios.

The New Scientist has an article that speculates movie studios may start abandoning copy protection on their DVDs, since the copyprotection is likely costing more than it is worth. I say this was a test ballon, to see how well a Movie like Harry Potter, which should rack in millions, fares when people are able to copy it from their neighbors.

The same site features articles (1, 2) on some already well documented stories like Panasonic (the owner of the copyright on Compact Disc technology) being unhappy with copy-protected CDs, and the ease of breaking most copy protection schemes.

I feel like I'm living in Jericho, and somebody just started playing the horn.

(Did you catch the musical reference there... damn I'm good!)

Money.

Money. Money. Money.

Money. Money. Money. Money. Money. Money. Money. Money. Money. Money. Money. Money. Money. Money. Money. Money. Money. Money. Money. Money. Money. Money. Money. Money.

Does anyone else think the Shrub is on a spending spree with someone else's credit card?

I've seen him do nothing but sign into law new multi-billion dollar initatives. Five billion dollars today for bioterrorism protection efforts.

Fucking hell, man.

We were three trillion dollars in debt back when I was in grade school. That is an obscene amount of money. It would take essentially every last cent collected in income tax this year to pay a debt like that. If it hadn't continued to grow. If the money wasn't needed elsewhere. If it wouldn't destabalize the entire world market.

And here the Shrub is spending more money each day than even Bill Gates makes?

If only it would happen.

Money. Money. Money.

Come back to me in 10 years. Show me 3 of these programs that recieved all the funding they were promised. I'll buy dinner at Georgia Brown's.

"This weekend, in a luxury hotel outside Washington, D.C.," said the announcer, "Europe's secret rulers are meeting their American counterparts %uFFD0 or that's what some people believe. Today is the start of the annual gathering of the Bilderberg group. Never heard of it? That's the whole point. It's officially described as a private gathering, but with a guest list including the heads of European and American corporations, political leaders and a few intellectuals, it's one of the most influential organizations on the planet."

-- BankIndex.com