Entries by Alistair Hoel

Have you ever attributed something you came up with to someone smarter than yourself? Like, for instance, saying something similar to: “I think it was Mark Twain who said…” when you know darn well it was actually you?

I’ve done it enough times that I’ve begun to ponder the likelihood that Mr. Clemens really said even a fraction of the things that his made-up name has been credited with. To that end, I’ve decided to only attribute smart-sounding things to MY OWN made-up name from this point on.

Here’s one from a few days ago:

”’Tis the action of a fool to place a price on the value of another man’s time.” —Alistair Hoel.

I think the importance of what Alistair was getting at is “value,” rather than “price.” For instance, hiring managers routinely assign a wage to employees—which, in essence, could be construed as a “value.” But I submit—er, Alistair submits—that a wage is merely a price. The value one holds over their own time only includes price as a small factor; for me, my hourly wage (or, “price”) is not enough to make my time at work worthwhile¹. But when you factor in the feeling of security and personal-value that a fulfilling job provides, things tip towards balancing out the “value” side of things.

When I was a senior in high school, one of my bullshit “CWP” classes¹ had a visit from a member of our local law enforcement to talk to us about the evils of underage drinking. All the usual “scare tactics” were employed to convince us not to drink (until we reached that magical age when it’s suddenly OK, anyway), essentially wasting an entire class period.

The ending of the officer’s speech caught my attention, however. He actually told us to call him if we did decide to enjoy some underage consumption of hooch. He told us that he’d come act as taxi—with no questions asked, even—so that we wouldn’t kill ourselves and others in the process of driving home, yet not be restricted from having a good time.

I raised my hand and cleared my throat, indicating that I had an important question, while he was in the middle of his next sentence. Because none of the other bored-to-death students had shown even an ounce of interest in the hour preceding my interruption, our handsome police officer seemed to take pleasure in stopping to hear what I had to say. He shouldn’t have done that.

“Excuse me,” I said. “Would you say that ‘upholding the law’ would be a fair description of what it is—as a police officer, I mean—that you do? It seems to me that you’ve just spent an hour of our time—of ‘protect and serve’ time, as a matter of fact —telling us how important it is that we not drink because the law says not to, yet you’ve just told us that you’ll go ahead and not enforce said law if ever we are in a situation that would require you to. Since it doesn’t seem as if that law is very important to you, why would you expect it to be to us??”

“You’re missing the point here—”

“No, you’re missing the point. The point being that you have the power—no, the duty—to ‘protect and serve’ us, yet you’re standing here telling us that you’ll just go ahead and not do your job because you don’t feel like it.”

“Actually, as a Law Enforcement Officer,” he said, the capital letters audible, “I’m to use my discretion to determine what laws I need to enforce. That’s my job, and I assure you, I am doing it.”

“I see,” I said. “You know, I never really understood why people hold such negative opinions of cops until this very moment. It really is just one big power trip, isn’t it? You desperately want to seem cool, so you’re either offering to ‘look the other way’, or you’re simply lying to us outright to gain our trust. Either way, it’s just great. This whole hour has been a huge freakin’ waste of time. I’ve never had a drop of alcohol in my life, but I darn well want to go get drunk so I can say ‘Officer Joe’ said it was OK. Thanks for the enlightenment.”

“Officer Joe” was speechless, the rest of my classmates had rejoined the land of the living, and I was elated at having proven my point so effectively, besting a cop in the process. I was what you would call “a quiet kid,” one who rarely spoke, let alone would confront a cop, so it was quite a surprise.

I’m pretty sure that none of my classmates ever called “Officer Joe” for a ride, and I would be surprised if he ever offered the service again.

This TSA bullshit really irks me.

Here’s a nice little quote from an article on the effect the alleged British suicide bomb attempt has had on airline security:

In both countries, travelers with babies were forced to taste their baby food before boarding.

Come on, people. Use your heads. Do you really think that if someone was planning on blowing the shit out of themselves in a few minutes, they’d have any qualms about tasting some explosives, going “Mmm, strained peas,” and smiling?

Hell, if they’re going to blow up a baby anyway, what’s to stop them from filling it with explosives, bypassing the baby food altogether?

Good luck detecting that.

I’ve been using the “podcast” format for 100% of my daily auditory entertainment for close to 2 years now.

A couple observations:

1. the potential that podcast affords people is utterly amazing, whether they want to produce content or simply absorb it.

2. the word “podcast” is freakin’ retarded. Whoever came up with it needs to be shot.

3. too many podcasts contain the word “podcast” in the title. “You’re listening to the Bondage Fetish Knitting Podcast.” I know it’s a podcast, you don’t have to keep telling me.

“The Greatest Jesus I’ve Ever Drawn”

I’ve been thinking a lot about Jesus lately, which is a subject that I haven’t historically spent a whole lot of time pondering. I hope you bear with me, as I’m hoping this actually gets somewhere towards explaining to you (and me) what it is that I really believe in the big scheme of things.

While I was growing up, my family attended church, which is where I learned all about Jesus. This means that I knew all there was to know and didn’t really need to give it much more thought than that. What I learned is that Jesus is a very important man who died so that I wouldn’t have to suffer for the sin inherent in man – you know, if I didn’t want to – and now lives up in Heaven with God, who is his father and also part of Him. Despite not really understanding the concept of the Trinity, the most thought I had regarding it was that of course I didn’t want to suffer in eternity for the sins inherent in man. On top of that, I was grateful that He gave his life for such a cause, even if I didn’t really understand what such a sacrifice meant or entailed.

When I was 9 or 10, my parents divorced¹ and I was whisked away to a magical land with my father. That land was a tiny island in southeast Alaska (which Bono would be excited to find contained many streets having no name) that had no church. The church we went to before was a precursor to the newfangled “MegaChurches” that are so popular now, where the focus is on being absolutely enormous with a gigantic facility with all the amenities. Sunday morning in this new town was spent in the back room of the one restaurant we had, and the service was presided over by a Baptist minister who traveled among all the small towns on the island which I lived. Worship consisted of a somewhat in-tune guitar and a dusty old hymnal. The messages were of a different sort than I had ever heard before (the MegaChurch we attended was “non-denominational”, which just means “we gloss over most of the crazy stuff that people argue about, so as not to offend anyone and keep those offering baskets coming in full”), the music was loads better (our MegaChurch seemed completely infatuated with those damned Maranatha concerts/albums that were so popular in the 80’s and styled all the music after it), and there was never more than a handful of people there. Apparently there was also a travelling priest who performed a Catholic Mass as well, but I never even knew where that took place, let alone attended. I probably should have.

While living in Alaska I would spend the summer “down south” so as to visit relatives and whatnot. I usually spent at least a week with my Aunt Terria who is probably the most religious person I know. In addition to the daily chores, we had scheduled time for various Christ related activities: reading the Word, speaking in tongues, praying, and the occasional treat of hearing “prophecy” from my aunt. The only thing I remember from that is her saying that she saw me as being a spiritual leader of some sort, likening what I’d do to when Moses helped his army win a war by holding his arms up. Basically leading by example and helping people through trying times. The interesting thing is that now, I can totally see that. I’m certainly no Moses, but I’ve helped a lot of people to think about things critically and challenge the beliefs that they’ve always held. Not to mention spending much time listening to people’s problems and helping them see a different perspective on it. I really pride myself on the number of times I’ve heard people say “I never thought of it like that. You always have such a different perspective on things.”

Let’s jump through time. Now it is high school, and I live back in civilization again, and am currently attending a different church than my parents (who are both now remarried and attending different churches). I started going there because of being invited to the Wednesday night youth group thingy with my new friend Stephen, and it really seemed to fit me. It wasn’t too long after I started going that I became somewhat involved in the church. It was a small church (not nearly as small as the one in Alaska, unfortunately) that met in a local high school, so every Sunday there were hours and hours of setup and teardown time, which I volunteered to help with. Pretty soon I became involved in all sorts of aspects of the church, and seeing how Stephen’s dad was on the “elder board”, I heard about all the stuff that was going on that most people didn’t get to. Like with every organization, there was lots of bullshit going on that I thought was really stupid. Long story somewhat less long, I quickly learned that not only was this church completely taking advantage of my good graces, but it was making me hate the very idea of church in general. I quit going.

Now it’s been close to 10 years since I quit going, and I’ve found myself thinking about religious matters more and more, most recently due to my outrage at the militant atheism inherent in the otherwise great Amazing Meeting of skeptics we attended in Vegas in January. What I’ve been trying to get to since I started this post is the idea behind Jesus dying for my sins, which I think I can put in a slightly different perspective. Ah crap, I gotta go tangent again. I suck at this.

During my “spiritual journey” I’ve learned that the Bible is not the divine Word of God; I can clearly see the hand of Man all over it. Without getting into the argument of whether or not God would allow his Word to be written incorrectly, or even the argument of whether or not there even is a God, it is clear that man has at the very least “interpreted” the scripture, at worst completely making it up to manipulate the masses into acting in a more controllable manner, or inciting them into despicable acts. In any case, most people’s faith in the divinity of Jesus relies on the Biblical record, as did mine. As the Bible is no longer trustworthy, I can no longer be sure there even was a Jesus, let alone whether or not he was the son of God.

So here’s the thing, which I can finally spit out: It doesn’t matter whether or not Jesus existed, or whether or not He was the son of God when it comes to “dying for our sins.” If you treat the teachings of Christ in the manner that I believe He intended them to be taken (you know, if He ever existed), they’ll help you live your life in a positive manner, help people through difficult times, and generally be a happier, better person. If people who are early on in their spiritual growth learn of all Christ sacrificed for them, they’ll be fairly likely to try to emulate Christ’s actual behavior, and thus live a happier better life. A life which I assume is filled with less sinful behaviors. You no longer have to suffer for the sin inherent in man because you’re trying really hard not to be that way. Even though he probably didn’t exist, if you changed your behavior as a result of the story of his sacrifice he really did “die for your sins.” I’m past that myself now, I strive to only do things that impact others in a positive fashion and basically try to live the “good life” because I believe it is the right thing to do, not because of guilt or fear or because of Christ’s literary atonement. I’m sure the story of Christ’s death helped play a part in my realization of how I need to live though.

I no longer believe that Christ was the son of God, and highly doubt that He even existed at all, but I very much believe that He was on the right track in nearly everything that He taught². If everyone—especially those manipulating others under the pretense of being spiritual leaders—lived at least a little bit in the manner that Christ did we’d all be better off.

I’m now more anti-church than at any other point in my life, I’m disgusted at the very idea of a MegaChurch, this country’s well-known spiritual leaders all make me want to assassinate them, and I desperately want to sever the mutually beneficial ties between our government and organized religion, but I think that Jesus was a pretty cool cat who we could all learn a few things from. I sure know I could, for instance with that bit about wanting to assassinate our well-known spiritual leaders.

Oh! I almost forgot the most intriguing bit: If I hadn’t started going to that church with Stephen, I wouldn’t have gotten the job that lets me work 4 day weeks, freeing up my Fridays to spend at LAN parties where I met the crowd that I later began to hang with more frequently, eventually meeting D as a result. Now we just bought a house. Pretty much every aspect of my life is a direct result of the influence of Christ in an earlier incarnation of my life³. It’s pretty tough to argue with that.

2: If you treat Jesus Christ like you do Sherlock Holmes you’ll be just fine. Holmes never existed in actuality, but that doesn’t lessen the impact he has had on the world. There’s plenty to be learned by studying the teachings of Sherlock Holmes, and very few—if any – people believe he is our Lord and Savior.

3: I wonder if that’s how reincarnation really works. See, throughout my life I’ve had very different periods, which while looking back on them almost seem like a different person. Scratch the almost. I’m sure not the same person that I was at any of the first few paragraphs of this missive, and at least in this stage of my life I feel I’m a better person.

I’m going to try to show some restraint and make this entry as short and to the point as possible. I’ll start with the following query:

Why is child pornography illegal?

That’s a pretty simple straightforward question with an even simpler answer. It is illegal because the creation of the pornography harms an actual child. Without question harming a child in this manner is wrong and child pornography is rightfully illegal. But what about animated child porn? Animated child porn is just as illegal as actual child porn, except that no actual children are being harmed. It doesn’t seem to me that there’s any legal reason behind the illegality of it. “But wait, a pedophile might see this animated child porn and want to go have sex with an actual child, surely that accounts for the illegality, right?” you might ask. Well, yeh, that’s a possibility, but laws in this country don’t seem to be based on the “what this might cause” type logic in other cases. Take for instance murder. Shooting another human being to death in the face is currently against the law. Why? Well, because you’re harming the person who is being shot in the face. Yet in practically every movie to be released, at least one person appears to have been shot to death in the face. A depiction of someone being shot to death in the face is not illegal, because no actual people are being harmed, and is exactly the same as a movie which depicts a not real child being not really harmed, except that in the latter case, it is illegal. So does the same argument apply in this case as it does to the child porn case? Will potential viewers possibly be motivated to go shoot someone in the face? If so, it doesn’t seem to be enough of a concern to go passing laws about it. Which is worse: someone is raped, or someone is murdered? It seems to be that someone being “incited” to murder would be a much larger concern than someone “incited” to molest a child, yet it isn’t.

Please don’t get me wrong, I think the idea of animated child pornography is horrific, I just don’t see any basis for actualy making it illegal. At least not without making every other visual simulation of illegal acts just as illegal, because they’re just as likely to “cause” someone to commit a crime. I think there’s a problem when we go making things against the law just because they’re in bad taste. It seems to me that in order for there to be a crime committed, there needs to be a victim, not just someone offended.

I’ve been saying for years that internet distribution of audio and video is the only logical progression the industry can make, and that it will ultimately benefit everyone involved. Whether it be purely the lack of manufacturing/shipping costs (not to mention environmental effects) or just the ease of getting your product to people, there’s really no downside. This seems like a no-brainer when it comes to music and movies, but even that has taken the industry way too long to figure out. What wasn’t as much of a no-brainer at first though, was television.

Ever since I first downloaded an episode of a TV show like 6 or 7 years ago, I realized that broadcast television as we know it would not be around too much longer. I mean, if you’re a network, would you rather have 5-6 “prime time” hours to fill with programming to compete with whatever your competition has on in those time slots, or the complete freedom to make shows that various groups of people will like and watch? The problem with the time slot system is that even if you have a good show, if it’s up against a Lost or Desperate Housewives—2 shows which I’ve never seen, just for the record—you’re going to lose your shirt. So that leaves prime time to be filled with whatever the networks think will best be able to compete with the current time slot champion of sucking in viewers.

With a system that completely takes time out of the question, content producers will be able to crank out tons of shows that will appeal to a broader range of people, without having to worry about who they’re “up against.” Tivo and other lesser PVR owners have already mostly figured out this time removal system. They simply specify what shows they want, and then watch them whenever they feel like it, which—provided two shows they want to watch aren’t on at the same time – completely removes the concept of a time slot, and without question they love it. Now all that’s needed is a system that allows shows to be fed to the PVR box on top of the tv without needing to use a scheduled broadcast over physical airwaves.

Here’s were things are beginning to deviate from my ideal scenario. In comes iTunes. Steve Jobs introduces an iPod that can play video, and suddenly there’s an enormous demand for digital downloads of television programming, which iTunes slickly slid into place to provide for. I wouldn’t have guessed that it would have happened as quickly as it did, but it has. So the problem now lies in the fact that, like with albums and singles, iTunes is rapidly becoming the defacto standard for all networks to distribute their content via the internet. This is a problem for several factors, only one of which I’m going to get into here.

That problem is, once again, the DRM that Apple has chosen to use to restrict the use of your files. It is amazingly convenient to be able to quickly and easily grab the latest Desperate Housewives off iTunes for $1.99, provided you don’t want to do anything other than watch it on your iPod. Apple touts the fact that you don’t need an iPod or a Mac to watch the videos you purchase from iTunes, but I defy you to try to play it on your PSP, Treo, or burn it for playback on your portable DVD player, or hell, even the one hooked to your TV. You don’t want to steal the programming, if you did, you’d simply go download it illegally like I am forced to. You pony up your cash to pay for it like a good citizen, but you are treated like a criminal because of it. Just because someone might steal it, the people who have no intention of stealing it can’t use it the way they want.

That TV in your living room is really the last hurdle to getting all programming distributed in this way, and there are many people trying to overcome that hurdle now. The next Mac Mini is undoubtedly going to integrate right into iTunes, which will finally allow people to purchase and watch the programming right from the couch. Providers like Comcast and DishNetwork are eventually going to start to fear revenue loss, so they’ll buddy up with Apple and incorporate iTunes into the receivers they already have in your living rooms.

So this is why I’m concerned that so many shows are starting to show up on iTunes. It will actually solve the “time slot” problem that concerns me so much, but at what cost? If you want to watch quality programming on your time for a nominal fee it will be convenient, but you won’t be able to do any of the things that you should be able to with the content you’re purchasing.

One suggestion that I have that would make the whole scenario more palatable to me would be for iTunes to adopt a content provider style monthly fee, making them just like any other television content provider. If you were to pay for instance $20 a month for access to the library of programming, it wouldn’t be falsely giving you the impression that you’re owning anything. It’s like Netflix. Netflix is awesome because of the way they’ve priced it and because of the library they offer. Hell, “premium” channels like HBO and Showtime could even add on a surcharge just like they currently do on satellite and cable providers. I’d be much happier with a scheme like that, and I’m guessing so would most people. Sure, I’d still have to watch it in my computer (if I had one that Apple will allow it to play on, which I don’t), but I wouldn’t be at all upset about not being able to burn it to disc or watch it on my PSP or whatever.

OK, so I’m lying; I won’t actually pay someone to provide me something I can’t use however I see fit. I’ll just continue to illegally download content until the day when someone allows me to legally do it the same way I currently do.

I’m kind of annoyed with the boys over at South Park.

See, everyone on the net is abuzz at how Comedy Central refused to air an image of the prophet Muhammad, thus caving into censorship as a result of fear when South Park decided to poke fun at the Danish Muhammad Cartoon Controvery^tm. In case you didn’t see it, Matt and Trey crafted a scenario in the South Park Universe wherein FOX’s show The Family Guy was airing an episode featuring the prophet Muhammad. In the South Park Universe, FOX caved to political pressure and decided to censor out the image of Muhammad, angering the Family Guy writers (in the South Park Universe who threatened to quit if the next episode’s appearance by Muhammad was edited out as well. All the while Stan and Cartman travel to FOX headquarters to try to prevent them from airing Muhammad’s image, and the episode ended with a cliffhanger style teaser (“Will Cartman and Kyle succeed in preventing Family Guy from airing, will yadda yadda, etc”) finally adding “Will Comedy Central puss out? Tune in next week for the shocking conclusion.”

So upon seeing this, I reasoned that obviously Comedy Central is not going to air the image of Muhammad, and this is all an elaborate (and hilarious) prank to show that Comedy Central is a bunch of pussies, by just airing a completely unrelated episode the next week. People following the issue would get the joke, people not following the issue wouldn’t realize anything was going on. Well, I was wrong.

Even though they knew full well that Comedy Central wouldn’t air Muhammad’s image, they still carried on with the pointless second half of the episode, teaching all about how wrong it is to censor something out of fear. Finally the moment of truth was to come, when in the Family Guy episode (within the South Park Universe) Peter proclaims, “This is just like the time the prophet Muhammed came to the door and gave me a salmon helmet..” which prompted one of those fucking annoying Family Guy cutaways to a completely irrelevant gag. Instead of seeing Muhammed hand a salmon helmet to Peter though, the screen went black, and in white text the South Park crew explained that Comedy Central refused to air an image of Muhammed, and described what happened in the scene. In the immediate blog-o-sphere backlash against Comedy Central, an interview with a South Park producer explained that Comedy Central didn’t censor the episode, they> did, because they wanted people to know why it was edited rather than just let Comedy Central remove the scene.

So let me get this straight: you’re doing an episode all about how censoring things out of fear is never right, but you’re told that Comedy Central is going to censor your show if you deliver it as is, so you censor it yourself out of the fear that people will think you censored it? That is seriously fucked up.

Ever since the beginning of the show, the crew at South Park has had to deal with things Comedy Central refuses to air. There has been constant bargaining back and forth about many things, many, many times. Comedy Central taking this stand is not at all unprecidented, and while it is rather stupid, it is their decision to make. Matt and Trey trying to make it out that Comedy Central has suddenly lost balls and won’t let them show what they want to is just plain inaccurate. They’ve always had to play by the rules Comedy Central has put forth, and they’ve never made a big deal out of it before.

What should have happened is: upon hearing that Comedy Central wouldn’t air the episode as-is, they should have just not delivered it, subsequently suffering the consequences. (I don’t know what kind of consequences those are, other than fans being pissed off that there was no episode that week. Although, how pissed off could they really be, afterall the prior week ended with “Will Comedy Central puss out and not air the episode?”) Better yet, they shouldn’t have even wasted the time making the episode in the first place, since they knew full well what Comedy Central’s reaction was going to be and they’d have to censor it. Trying to bully Comedy Central into showing Muhammad is as equally bad as Christian groups trying to bully Comedy Central into not showing South Park in the first place.

I’ve always been really proud of the things Matt and Trey have done to point out hypocrisy and idiocy throughout all the greatly entertaining episodes of their fine show, but I cant get behind them on this. While the message presented by the episodes is a good and important one, I really feel that they are exhibiting hypocrisy here by caving into the very censorship they’re calling Comedy Central a “pussy” for. Not cool guys.

This week’s episode was started before both the “Cartooon Wars” episodes, so I’m hoping that next week’s episode might try to show me how they aren’t actually hypocrits. Maybe they can convince me, but until then, I’m very disappointed in them.

I’m sure by now most people on the planet have seen the Chris Bliss juggling video, and then Jason Garfield’s response video where he does the same routine as Bliss, but with 5 balls rather than 3, showing people that Bliss isn’t really that good of a juggler. Jason, like many people who are really, really good at something, seems to think that people shouldn’t get excited at how good someone is at something when they aren’t really all that good at it. I would have to agree with Jason on the fact the Bliss isn’t technically as good of a juggler, and that people who email the video around should really understand that, but I have to disagree with where he goes after that.

His website has a page outlining all of the stolen tricks that jugglers are performing, and a list of rules where readers can calculate the level of hackitude they can be expected to be treated by other jugglers depending on the tricks they’re doing in their routine. Many of the “stolen routines” are pretty specific, including the lines of patter that go along with tricks, and might have some level of legitimacy, though I’m not sure I’m willing to agree to the ligitimacy on most of it. The “drop object and reduce count by 1” thing is pretty obvious and isn’t necessarily stolen from a particular person. The “this is going to hurt… twice” ping pong ball thing is pretty specific, but is the line any more stolen than the actual ping pong ball mouth juggling it is going along with? It seems to me that if you want to go there, you might have to include “if you throw objects into the air and then catch them repeatedly without dropping, then you’re doing a stolen trick” to the list of rules. I mean, where do you draw the line?

Some of the rules on the other hand, aren’t specific at all. I’ll paste the 5 rules which determine whether or not you are a hack here:

1. Juggling while eating an apple.
2. Passing around a volunteer and knocking something out of their mouth.
3. Juggling Chainsaws
4. Juggling Knives
5. Juggling fire (Torches)

Now I can kind of see his point on the knives, chainsaws and torches (which is that to the uninformed they make it seem like what you’re doing is more difficult than it really is), but one thing he isn’t allowing for is that no one who knows anything about juggling pays to go see other jugglers. These so-called “hacks” are just performing for the crowd in front of them, and are trying to dazzle them in ways that they’re expected to be dazzled. It is very true that juggling 3 flaming clubs is no more difficult than 3 non-flaming clubs, but to someone who doesn’t juggle (read: everyone in the world) 4 or 5 non-flaming clubs is no more impressive than 3. I wish I had a dime for every person who has seen me juggling 3 clubs and wondered why I didn’t have more. “Don’t you want to juggle 4 or 5 clubs?” Of course I do, but I haven’t put in the time to learn how. It is really not the same thing. “Now if you could light them on fire, you’d really have something…”

Now if one of these hacks is doing 5 clubs in addition to the 3 flaming ones, is he still a hack? What if he busts out 7 clubs, then puts them aside and gets all scary and talks about the death-defying 5 flaming clubs? Is he now a hack because of resorting to flashy showmanship in addition to his non-hack juggling skills in his attempts to make the evening memorable for his crowd? I really don’t think he is. I think Jason’s points are valid to an extent, but I think he’s being rather limiting in how he is defining these things.

Know what pisses me off?

Those “Calvin peeing on X” window decals you see everywhere.

Bill Waterson ended the strip because he was tired of fighting off merchandising. Everyone wanted him to approve saturday morning cartoons, plush Hobbeses, coffee mugs, printed underwear, action figures and snack cakes, while he just wanted to create art and not cheapen it by flooding the market with stuff people can buy. They wouldn’t leave him alone, so he retired to spend the days rolling in his millions.

So now some jackass got the idea to pirate the image of Calvin peeing and has created a cottage industry out of it. A Black Market cottage industry where every variation is another act of copyright infringement. If Bill Waterson had wanted Calvin peeing on logos, he would have sold those stickers himself, and the fact that you’re paying some dick so that you can have one is just plain wrong.

As bad as that is, the ones where Calvin is praying are even worse. Stealing is wrong, even if it is stealing for the Lord.

Want to hear what Calvin himself thinks about the issue? (you should check it out, the whole thing is very amusing)

It is quite peciliar to be excited that your trap has eradicated the rodent you didn’t want in your house, while being extremely sad at the passing of a rodent you did.

Watching things you care about die is absolutely horrible.

I heard today that CBS has decided that podcasting Penn Jillette’s radio program in its entirety is actually a good move, and they have it up and running now. This is great because I, like probably 95% of the rest of his listener base, have been listening to one of the many bootleg podcast feeds of the program created by dedicated listeners. Now the only thing that changes is the consistency of quality and the lack of effort expendature on the part of Penn’s listeners, and CBS isn’t out any money because of it.

This is a small victory, and hopefully with time the rest of the media outlets will come to the same realization that CBS has: people, if given the chance, would greatly prefer to consume content in a manner that is free from scheduling. That’s why TIVO and the like have been so popular; it frees up the consumer’s valuable time so that they can use it in whatever manner they choose. Instead of being tied to the tv at 10pm on wednesday for Southpark, they can see it at any point after that.

I think many would have been suprised just a year ago at the popularity of television programming on iTunes, but now it is clear to many, many decision makers that on-demand program viewing is the way all content will be delivered in the future. I’ve been downloading a large percentage of my viewed programming off the internet for years now, and am pleased to see it gain some level of legitimacy, but am a bit disheartened by the success of iTunes.

See, the flaw with the iTunes model is the DRM built into the files. People seem more than willing to shell out hard earned money for content they can’t use, and it really saddens me. Too many people just don’t care. “I can play it on my iPod, right? That’s good enough for me.” Unfortunately that line of thinking breaks down when you consider that the iPod might not be the only mp3 player on the market forever. Even now, here in the early days of portable media content, there are rumors of non-Apple audio/video players that one day might surpass the iPod in price and features. But will you be able to play any of the content you’ve shelled out hard earned money on with any of these hypothetical future devices? No, you will not.

The same goes for future software releases—see, at any time Apple can change the licensing on any file you “buy”. You may suddenly no longer be able to burn it to disc, copy it to a new iPod, play it on Windows Longhorn, etc. Will it matter to Apple that you can no longer use the things you’ve purchased in the manner that you were led to believe you’d be able to forever?

Not a bit. This is why I will not purchase anything that has any kind of built-in controls that prevent me from using it in any manner I see fit. The DRM in iTunes is relatively easy to circumvent, allowing you to use the content you’ve purchased in ways that Apple doesn’t allow, but doing so is breaking the law, in effect causing you to steal the content. If I’m going to have to steal content in order to use it, I’m damned well not going to pay for the privellege.