Just made me crack up, being the Simpsons fan I am...

URL: Wired News: Simpsons Plant Seeds of Invention

If there were ever a stupid article, this is it. 1.4 million people deleted ALL their MP3s from their computer? For what reason? Just to not be sued by the RIAA or just to support the artists? No one deleted their files. They just aren't sharing them any more with the world (read: RIAA lawyers). They still have them, just don't share them. Come on people, let's use some common sense before we believe what one survey company says.

URL: CNN.com - Study: Millions delete all music files - Nov. 6, 2003

In one of the stupidest FCC decisions of late, voting 5-0 to include a "flag" in future digital broadcasts is one of the worst ideas I've heard. This "flag" would then prevent tvs, vcrs, dvds, or anything else that receives a digital stream from somehow transmitting the broadcast on the internet. While I realize the extreme fear of everything being pirated on the internet, this "flag" scheme makes no sense. The second it's released, you're going to have some sort of box that you can plug in to whatever vcr, dvd player, or anything else that complies with the "flag" scheme that deletes the flag. Since it's just one bit of data, either on or off, it will be extremely simple to crack and extremely simple to turn off. While it might prevent your grandparents from copying digital television streams or dvds and posting them on the internet, there's no way to stop the community as a whole. Remember CSS? It didn't do much to prevent the cracking of DVD encryption.

URL: PCWorld.com - FCC Endorses Built-In Copy Controls

What?? Downloads beat out CD Single sales? How could this be? After the RIAA put so much time and effort into making us believe that everyone on the Internet is a pirate, stealing anything and everything they can. How can it be that we'd actually pay for our music when it's free in other places? How could the RIAA be wrong? Oh wait, that's right - they're a huge corporation that really has no understanding of new technologies, and rather than trying to grow with them, they tried their darndest to shut them down. Now, it appears that online sales of music have skyrocketed, despite these songs most likely being found free in other places, but I guess now that they've figured out that not everyone out there is going to steal every chance they get, they'll finally embrace digital downloads rather than trying to stop it completely.

URL: BBC NEWS | Entertainment | US downloads beat CD sales

I'm going to go see The Matrix: Revolutions tonight (yeah, I probably should have underlined, rather than italicized, but I never get that right), and while I couldn't wait to see The Matrix: Reloaded, I'm kinda feeling "eh" about this one. It looks better, but Reloaded was such a let down after the first film, I'm just not really into it any more. On the other hand, I cannot wait for Return of the King and I'm almost to the point where I'm counting down the days...

URL: The Matrix: Revolutions

I had the strangest dream last night. For some reason it was my birthday and I was out celebrating it at a picnic of some sort with about 20 other people there when all of a sudden, Sandra Bullock walked up and wished me a happy birthday. It really made no sense at all, but then, after she walked up, apparently the next activity was something to do with paint and everyone had yellow paint. So now, there's me with Sandra Bullock and we all have cans of yellow paint and big fat brushes. One of the things we did (because apparently this park had parking spaces similar to those at UCSD), is we changed some of the parking stalls to "S" spots with our yellow paint, but I really can't remember much more than that. I believe there was a long wall that we painted a yellow line down the middle of. Then Sandra left and I cursed myself for not having my camera with me, so I had no proof of the meeting. Try and dissect that one now...

Oh yeah, the Lakers are now 4-0 and play the Spurs tomorrow night - luckily it's nationally televised (as last night's game wasn't), so I'll get to watch it. Go Lakers!

I received about a dozen of these "spams" today. Not quite sure what they mean, what they're for, or why I got so many:

Thinking of re-electing President Bush?
Think again.

Thanks,

Eda Boot (EdaBoot@optonline.net)

Each one had a different name/e-mail, but the message was always the same. Do they really think they can change my mind about who I vote for by spamming me? It almost makes me want to vote for Bush more. If the spammers don't like him, I do.

Also, the Lakers have now won all three of their games. In the first two, they were the first to a hundred, but since there's no KCAL in San Diego, I am unable to watch their away games unless they're nationally televised, so I don't know if they got the tip-off. Now taking bets on which team will be the first to beat the Lakers...

I was going to objectively watch the story on 60 Minutes regarding the piracy of movies via the Internet. But when they start out by saying that (paraphrased), "We all know that piracy has decemated the music industry, costing them millions as people download their songs rather than buying them," I just couldn't lend objectivity to the rest of the story. Though facts vary from source to source, online downloading has not ruined the RIAA, but instead, less new releases, higher prices, and the same old content being rereleased each year has hurt record sales.

As the story continued on, they talked with the head of Fox who said that in a day, hundreds of thousands of copies of movies are downloaded each day (maybe even millions he said). Now, that sounds extremely high. I very highly doubt that anywhere near one million copies of movies are downloaded each day. I know there's people out there that only download movies instead of going to the theaters, but I also know that the general population a) don't know how to download/watch movies on the internet or b) download a few movies that they aren't going to see in theaters anyway and watch the majority of movies in the theater.

While I don't really have a solution to the problem, I don't think following the RIAA's lead is the correct answer. According to the Fox studio executive, suing downloaders may be the next step. But suing users who download a movie or two will only cause the problem to continue to rise. And on another note, placing these stupid "stop piracy" trailers in theaters is completely counter-intuitive. I've already paid to see the movie - don't start preaching to me about what I can and can't do when I go home. It should be interesting to see what the studios do in the future. But rest assured, whatever they try and do will be worked around in mere minutes by the Internet community.