USA's answer to global warming; stick mirrors in space or add "reflective dust" to atmosphere to reflect sunlight.

What the fsck?

The American administration is off it's collective head. Reflect the life giving sunlight back into space to stop us warming up??

Sorry, but have they not had a basic biology class? The one where the teacher lays out that every living thing relies on sunlight to live?
Instead of actually tackling the problem at its root (cutting CO2 emissions and cleaning it out of the atmosphere), we're spending resources on dicking about with SciFi ideas.

Gah, everythings failing around me.

Car failed the retest, although the garage only charged me £25 for the test; back brake pipes are still too corroded, but the front one is now advisory; joys, now to replace every brake pipe on the car to ensure it passes. It passed the emmissions tests again though, and theres no advisory on the oil leak.

My computer also barfed running a Java app, taking my running application's config files with it, so I must start on Lapwing-Linux asap to remove this problem.
Many thanks to ben's company who has taken over from streamline as the webhosters for lapwing.org, the upload speeds are much much greater than streamlines.

Right, off to have a cuppa, then on with system decompositions, java, LCD PIC controllers and brake pipe replacement kits.

Cheerio

http://www.zeropaid.com/news/8258/Record+companies+want+ISPs+to+block+access+to+file-sharing+websites

Once again people; Suing your customers does not stop piracy, DRM does not stop piracy, over pricing does not stop piracy.

The IFPI wants your local ISP to block or filter P2P technologies to stop you "pirating" their member's content.
OK, I will start a company that only uses P2P technologies to deliver content (such as, I dunno, Skype?) then sue the IFPI for throttling my business model.
I'm sure they'd like the irony and attention.

Just to demonstrate the absolute absurdity of these ideas, an analogy; many thousands of people die in car accidents every year due to illegal driving (I'm including drink driving, speeding, car theft etc in this).
What to do about this? If you subscribe to the IFPI's view, you shouldn't go after the motorist that caused the accident, you should go after the Highways Agency because they maintain the roads, or the car show rooms for selling the car, or the car manufacturer for making the car.

Absurd, no?

Do the people at the IFPI not read the news, or visit sites on the net? The ones that demonstrate DRM workrounds? The 2nd most successful, non-DRM'ed MP3 site eMusic? Or that physical copying of the disc is more of a problem than P2P? Maybe they are filtered in IFPI/RIAA/MPAA Towers ...

Not that I wish to encourage USE P2P! civil disobedience over copyright DOWNLOAD MUSIC! infringements, there are a number of easy ways to get around filtering by your ISP; proxies, FreeNet, ENTROPY, non-encrypted wireless networks, Internet cafes, libraries, work, or maybe even physically copying CDs/DVDs without any copy protection.

Next big thing from the IFPI/RIAA/MPAA/ScrewTheCustomerSociety; turn off the Internet. Go on, you know it makes copyright sense, right?

How to tell if Americans are stupid; ask them who Tony Blair or Kofi Annan is, or ask them if they should invade the country marked North Korea that looks suspiciously like Australia ...
http://cryptogon.com/?p=223

It doesn't really surprise you if you've the "breast and brightest" at the top
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Ux3DKxxFoM

If you're bored, go joy ride a 30 ton train
http://www.columbusdispatch.com/news-story.php?story=dispatch/2007/01/17/20070117-A1-05.html

Or maybe teach Incessant Delusions ("Intelligent Design") or Irreducible Idiocy ("Irreducible Complexity")
http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid=8173723631706439574&q=war+on+science

Or maybe stop it raining over the weekend so I can get my car fixed?

Some small soul searching among bloggers about Microsofts dishing out of free Vista-ized laptops;
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2006/12/28.html

OK, perfectly honest, if Microsoft were to ever give me a laptop with Vista pre-installed, I would;

1) Not even bother booting it up or taking it out of the packaging,
2) Stick it on ebay,
3) Donate all the proceeds to the One Laptop Per Child project,
4) Blog about it,
5) Send MS a nice email stating their laptop generated X pounds for the One Laptop Per Child project BillyG loves to bits.

I like being a nice guy