Sometimes the answer is just staring you in the face

In a rather astoundingly useless poll by CNN/USA Today/Gallup 49 percent of the US people say Bush is a divider, another 49 percent say he’s a uniter and the remaining 2 percent don’t care one way or another.

It must have taken superhuman restraint from the CNN editor to keep the obvious conclusion off the writeup.

Meanwhile CNN is working on a poll to study if people think water is wet.

-TPP

T-Mobile does not inform customers their customer database cracked

Apparently a cracker gained full access to the entire T-Mobile customer database sometime in 2003. The feds got a wind of the breach by March 2004, because the crackpot was selling confidential Secret Service documents online. T-Mobile was made aware of it by the feds in July 2004, although it is possible they also knew of the breach earlier.

What did T-Mobile do to protect the identity and confidential information of its customers? Nothing. Not a single warning was sent to customers, they did not force customers to change their passwords, they simply wished customers didn’t notice. This, btw, is illegal (civil) in California provided a law enforcement agency did not ask the company to postpone notifying the customers.

As a T-Mobile customer I’m amazed by the irresponsibility of T-Mobile. Thankfully my one-year contract with them is already expired and I’m free to switch to any provider I choose.

1/13/05 Edit: T-Mobile claims cracker only had access to 400 customers and all those customers were notified as soon as T-Mobile found out about the breach. I wonder, if T-Mobile knew at 2003, why the cracker still had access to a Secret Service agent’s account in March 2004.

-TPP

Do as we say, not as we do

Washington Post is reporting on how the Republicans are relaxing the ethics rules so that it would be harder to report ethics complaints against House representatives. Last month they changed the ethics rules so that their majority leader, Tom DeLay, could remain the majority leader even if indicted of accepting illegal campaign donations.

The ethics rules are, in part, designed to ensure the legislators are not unduly influenced by outsiders with which the legislators might have vested interests in. This is why state government officials and judges are supposed to recuse themselves when deciding on issues they have personal involvement in.

According to the Washington Post article the Clinton administration legislated that administration officials could not hold a lobbying position until five years after resigning from their administration position. Well, on his second term, just before his people started leaving the government, he overturned that law. How convenient.

The article outlines several high profile instances of vested interests, for example Bill Tauzin negotiating himself a lucrative lobbying position within the industry he was supposed to be regulating at the same time.

One has to wonder how these fine and upstanding politicians are supposed to reconcile relaxing ethics rules on themselves while trying to impose tougher penalties on questionable business practises in the insurance and financial services industry.

And they wonder why people are turned off by politics. It seems that they only have to look in the mirror. They’d see a person more interested in serving his/her own interests, increasingly often, at the expense of the interest of the people s/he is supposed to represent.

-TPP

Selling our future

Bill Moyers’ Global Environment Citizen Award acceptance speech is a pointed commentary on the current state of affairs in the US Government in regards to our environment.

It’s being sold, piece by piece, to the highest bidder, to be used as the highest bidder pleases regardless of consequences. The politicians allowing this to happen do not care, because the consequences will not be apparent until long after they’re gone from politics and thus won’t negatively affect their chances of re-election.

I wonder if my grandchildren can sue GWB’s grandchildren for destroying the world? I doubt it.

-TPP

It’s not about copyright, it’s about control of the medium

Looks like the movie studios don’t want DVDs copied, at all. Not for personal use, not for backups, no copies whatsoever, even though making personal copies is perfectly legal.

DVD Copy Control Association (DVD CCA) sued a company that produces a DVD jukebox that copies DVDs into its harddrive then allows users to play the DVDs from the hard drive. Sounds like a great device, but one that will probably be unavailable sometime soon. The manufacturer will go bankrupt fighting this frivolous lawsuit.

I wonder what’s the point when the general public goes “enough is enough”. We’re fast moving towards an era where nothing you buy is yours, but licensed with terms that allow the owner of the merchandise to dictate everything you can or can not do with the merchandise. You can’t resell or give it to anyone (charity, relative, friend), because it is not yours. You can’t transport it to another location, because the license terms prohibit it. You can’t augment the capabilities with a third party add-on, because the license terms prohibit it. Want to move to another content/network provider, too bad, gotta buy THE SAME device again, because the license terms prohibit you from moving it to another provider. You can’t use it aboard, because the license terms prohibit it.

End result: you have to buy or pay more to do what the merchandise was already capable of doing, but was articifially restricted from doing.

Great for businesses. Really bad for consumers. If only the legislators would understand this.

-TPP

Has the entertainment industry completely bought out the government?

The entertainment industry is big, and it’s powerful, but I never thought they ran the United States. Even when the DMCA was passed I didn’t think so. But today I read two news stories that make me wonder.

The first one is so absurd you really have to read it twice to believe it. It seems the FCC is claiming it has authority to regulate all instrumentalities, facilities, and apparatus “associated with the overall circuit of messages sent and received” via all interstate radio and wire communication. That, btw, includes personal computers, PVRs, and any other device that could receive digital TV signals now or in the future. FCC’s basis for this argument is that they have to do it to make HDTV adoption happen. This is why the FCC now thinks they can dictate what you can or, rather, can not do with your audiovisual gadgetry.

The second item comes straight from the lobbying arm of the RIAA and MPAA via your friendly entertainment industry representatives in the US Senate. It seems like there’s a new copyright bill in the books every week. This time it’s something called the Intellectual Property Protection Act (HR2391). Now, it has all the usual “share music or movies online and go to prison for the rest of your life” stuff all the other bills have, but this bill goes even further. It actually has the audacity to prohibit skipping commercials or other promotional announcements when recording movies for home viewing. At least they let you skip the commercials when viewing the recording though, for now.

-TPP