Jimmy Dean Chocolate Chip Pancakes & Sausage on a Stick sounds too damn delicious, even if it is filled with nothing but fattening goodness. How can you not like the sound of a chocolate chip pancake wrapped around a sausage on a stick? Wonder when these nifty boxes will make their way to my part of the world?
September 30, 2006
Kissing is Inappropriate Behaviour While Flying 4
Just when you thought flying was the worst possible mode of transportation imaginable these days, things have gotten worse. Not that this is in the league of veiled terrorist threats like liquid explosives but nonetheless. A homosexual couple that was flying American Airlines was told to stop touching and kissing while onboard the flight because, according to the stewardess, kissing is “inappropriate behavior on an airplane.”
Shortly after takeoff, Varnier nodded off, leaning his head on Tsikhiseli. A stewardess came over to their row. “The purser wants you to stop that,†she said.
“I opened my eyes and was, like, ‘Stop what?’ †Varnier recalled the other day.
“The touching and the kissing,†the stewardess said, before walking away.
American Airlines offered up a transparent public relations response to the so-called incident by stating that the response from the stewardess was reasonable and would have been offered to a heterosexual couple just as quick as a homosexual one. I find that truly difficult to believe; sounds like some red-state conservative stewardess was onboard and could not handle reality. The stewardess that complained to the couple, and American Airlines, ought to be reprimanded for their obtuse view of today’s climate.
Couples wishing to fly to their honeymoon destination should boycott American Airlines. After all, everyone wants to join the “mile high club,” right? If kissing and touch is considered inappropriate behaviour then I can only imagine what the company considers intercourse at 40,000 feet!
September 26, 2006
Limewire Sues RIAA for Antitrust 4
In their infinite wisdom, the RIAA sued Limewire last month after the company behind the software opted not to entertain any of their strong-arm “licensing talks.” These “discussions” mainly took place as a prelude to the lawsuit, as a means of feeling out Limewire and see if they would back down. Turns out that Limewire opted not to and they received an RIAA packaged lawsuit because of it.
The RIAA seems to believe that the Supreme Court’s decision on Grokster was an invitation for media companies to outright sue any other company that attempts to monetize entertainment in ways that may compete with the industry. What the Supreme Court really said was that service providers could be held liable if they were shown to be actively inducing infringement. It is arguable whether or not Limewire does that, which is a point lost on the RIAA. The RIAA loves to pretend that any file-sharing network that has unauthorized media content available on it is absolutely illegal.
Limewire apparently had enough, as today they returned a rather smashing volley by claiming that the RIAA has violated antitrust law, engaged in consumer fraud and other such transgressions. Their claim appears to state that Limewire is actually a competitive method of media distribution and this is why the RIAA desires to shut the company down; that the RIAA is afraid of competition or the perceived loss of the traditionally monopolistic control the RIAA currently maintains.
In Arista v. Lime Wire, in Manhattan federal court, Lime Wire has filed its answer and interposed counterclaims against the RIAA for antitrust violations, consumer fraud, and other misconduct. Lime Wire alleged that the RIAA’s goal was simple: to destroy any online music distribution service they did not own or control, or force such services to do business with them on exclusive and/or other anticompetitive terms so as to limit and ultimately control the distribution and pricing of digital music, all to the detriment of consumers. (Counterclaim, paragraph 26, page 18).
It is about time that someone has decided to dispute the fraudulent claims of the RIAA. I am not entirely certain that this defense, or offense, is going to work but it is worth exploring. What will ultimately end up happening, because the RIAA’s worst fear is setting a precedent for future lawsuits, is the companies will settle out of court and we will all remain in the dark, sitting back at square one.
If the case does proceed, and the RIAA eventually does lose on the antitrust claim, it will be interesting to see how the outcome will affect the record labels. Will an RIAA loss be the very industry changing catalyst that “we†have all been waiting for?
Shinzo Abe Elected as Japan’s New Prime Minister 2
Shinzo Abe has been elected as Japan’s new Prime Minister during a closed Diet session late Tuesday afternoon. Abe (pronounced ah-beh) succeeds Junichiro Koizumi, who relinqueshed his position after more than 5 years running Japan.
Koizumi’s reign as Prime Minister is largely seen as a major success. Since keeping records, Koizumi has the second highest “approval rating” of any Japanese Prime Minister. Abe will have some tough shoes to fill, especially considering he is the youngest Prime Minister ever, and the first to not have been born before World War II.
Abe replaced former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi who stepped down Tuesday after five years and five months in office. At 52, Abe is the youngest prime minister in the post-war period and first head of government born after the end of World War II.
I really adored Koizumi. He was born and raised in Yokosuka and therefore was quite sensitive to foreigners in the sense that he was far more familiar with “gaijin” than the average “old” Japanese politician. However, with Abe being so “young” it will be very interesting to follow his leadership and watch to see where can he can take Japan.
Those of us who live in Japan are definitely in for some interesting times from here on out.
Adobe released the renamed Photoshop Lightroom Beta 4 a couple nights ago. This latest beta offers up the final name that the product will be released as, among other more interesting features and fixes. If you have been playing with the betas, like me, then this is a must download.
WordPress.com VIP Hosting 2
Wordpress.com offers VIP hosting for Wordpress powered blogs that are in need of being able to withstand exceptionally high loads of traffic.
As a result of building and running WordPress.com, we’ve answered all of these questions. We’ve invested hundreds of thousands of dollars and countless hours in to solving these problems, and the proof is in the pudding: on any given day we do millions of pageviews and tens of millions of hits. Digg and Slashdot don’t even make a blip. Most pages are served in under a tenth of a second from geographically diverse datacenters. There are multiple copies of every bit of data synced from Dallas to San Diego and backups are made hourly.
Sounds like an exceptional service. The catch? Wordpress.com is only offering this in limited quantity and for the somewhat steep price of $500 to setup your site and $250 a month. However, if you are running a high profile blog then that might be mere change therefore this service might be worthwhile to some.
Doubtful, however, that anyone reading this would be interested, but nonetheless I thought I would pass the information along.
