prying open my third eye

my new e-machine monitor is up and running, thanks to elly's family. it was good to see elly and tim last week; they were in for elly's sister's wedding. i went out to eat with tim and a couple guys from faith fellowship church on wednesday, which was a nice distraction from my bad day. we hung out with the family on thursday, and i emerged victorious after another bitter match of apples to apples. that game is always one huge argument waiting to happen. i can only imagine what would happen if rob and i played that together. blood would be shed, that's for certain.

middle to late may is now the new deadline work has announced for letting everyone know about future staffing (i.e. letting us know when we'll be laid off). we were supposed to know by next week, but once again they fail to just be straight-up with us. jen told me that whether or not someone gets severance pay depends on whether they've been actively looking for other jobs within the company. the severely drops my hopes of getting severance since #1 - i'm pretty sure the majority of jobs open within the company are either full time or outside the realm of possibilities for me, and #2 - i really don't think i have any desire to work another job in the company anyway. so i've decided i need to just start looking for another job and hopefully quit as soon as possible.

i saw an alarming article on digg.com today, about a new digital copyright bill being proposed in congress. in my opinion, it's a scary thought. the whole thing reeks of lobbyists from the likes of the RIAA sending their lackeys to washington and then scaring the politicians with buzzwords like "piracy" and "terrorism". there's nothing quite as wonderful as having politicans make decisions over issues they are entirely ignorant about. i would hope that if congressmen really understood what a "rootkit" was, they wouldn't be pushing legislation that would make removing it illegal. here's a few highlights from the article on the proposed legislation:

It also represents a political setback for critics of expanding copyright law, who have been backing federal legislation that veers in the opposite direction and permits bypassing copy protection for "fair use" purposes. That bill--introduced in 2002 by Rep. Rick Boucher, a Virginia Democrat--has been bottled up in a subcommittee ever since.
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Jessica Litman, who teaches copyright law at Wayne State University, views the DMCA expansion as more than just a minor change. "If Sony had decided to stand on its rights and either McAfee or Norton Antivirus had tried to remove the rootkit from my hard drive, we'd all be violating this expanded definition," Litman said.
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The proposed law scheduled to be introduced by Rep. Smith also does the following:

• Permits wiretaps in investigations of copyright crimes, trade secret theft and economic espionage. It would establish a new copyright unit inside the FBI and budgets $20 million on topics including creating "advanced tools of forensic science to investigate" copyright crimes.

• Amends existing law to permit criminal enforcement of copyright violations even if the work was not registered with the U.S. Copyright Office.

• Boosts criminal penalties for copyright infringement originally created by the No Electronic Theft Act of 1997 from five years to 10 years (and 10 years to 20 years for subsequent offenses). The NET Act targets noncommercial piracy including posting copyrighted photos, videos or news articles on a Web site if the value exceeds $1,000.

• Creates civil asset forfeiture penalties for anything used in copyright piracy. Computers or other equipment seized must be "destroyed" or otherwise disposed of, for instance at a government auction. Criminal asset forfeiture will be done following the rules established by federal drug laws.

• Says copyright holders can impound "records documenting the manufacture, sale or receipt of items involved in" infringements.

Jason Schultz, a staff attorney at the digital-rights group the Electronic Frontier Foundation, says the recording industry would be delighted to have the right to impound records. In a piracy lawsuit, "they want server logs," Schultz said. "They want to know every single person who's ever downloaded (certain files)--their IP addresses, everything."

wire-tapping over the suspicion of something like downloading an mp3 illegally? making it illegal to remove unwanted third-party software from your own personal, private property? not being allowed to copy cds on you purchased with your hard earned money onto the computer you also purchased with your hard earned money? this bill sounds as american as communism. come on republicans and bush administration, you're striking out on this one. get out of bed with the music and movie industries already, and pass something to defend our rights.