Question of the day

Customer: "Does this need Java?" (In reference to a WebEx session)
Adam: "I'm not certain. Is it giving you an error?"
Customer: "Yeah, it says that it requires Java. I'll download it real quick."

That is when I hit the mute button.

Illegal downloads

The Pirate Bay lost it's court battle Friday, and while I don't have much to say about this case in particular, I do take serious issue with copyright holders attacking technology.

Sites like The Pirate Bay, obviously, are kind of asking for it. The problem that I have is when technology is attacked as a byproduct of cleaning up piracy. Napster, Kazaa, and Bittorrent are good examples. None of these technologies host(ed) copyrighted material. All of these technologies have the ability to be used in a perfectly legal manner.

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) allows users to keep one "backup" of copyrighted material. This means if I own a Rush CD (I legally own every Rush album and DVD), it would be legal for me to download any Rush album. If I have a friend who legally owns that same album, it would be legal for me to transfer a copy to that friend. I am not certain how legal it is or is not for me to provide that content to any random person on the network (I have never shared any Rush album publicly). I presume it is illegal. The DMCA may cover that, but I have not read the entire document, it's long.

If we start requiring web sites to monitor every byte of data, we face a bit of hypocrisy. We don't attempt to monitor much of what is transferred over our highways. The transfer of information over a network is very similar to the transfer of goods over a roadway. If we sue every site that doesn't scrutinize the data it let's users transfer, then couldn't we sue the government for not scrutinizing every car or truck that could be carrying drugs, illegal weapons, or known criminals over their roadways?

Somalia has a flourishing pirate industry

OWND!

Three out of four pirates are taken out by snipers shooting from the deck of a nearby destroyer. This was reportedly done on choppy waters, which isn't that big of a deal for a destroyer class warship, but can be substantial movement for a 28' lifeboat.

If you think further about what happened, they couldn't have picked off the pirates one by one because they would have used the hostage as a human shield and moved into the visual obscurity of the lifeboat interior. So that means 3 Navy SEALS fired in unison and all hit their target.

Now think of it from the 4th pirate's perspective. You are on the lifeboat, it's getting dark, and are hit by a splash of what your mind perceives as warm sea water. About a half second later the report of the three sniper rifles reaches your ear and you realize that "sea water" was too warm. It was the blood of your former comrades, now lifelessly falling off the boat and into the choppy ocean. You turn and stare at the massive destroyer that instantly changed your fate from one of control, to possible instant termination at their discretion. Survival instincts kick in and force you to drop your weapon and raise your arms in surrender. You feel so very French.

Indians crack me up

At work, we have a lot of systems in Bangalore India. A few things that are common for all Indians are that they can talk crazy-fast, their accent is often difficult to understand, and the phone network there must be very unreliable, because if you don't make some noise every five second, they ask "hello?" to see if you are there. After about five times in a minute, it gets annoying. So after the 6th time, instead of answering with "yes" or "I'm still here", I answer with "annyong".

A side note, if someone says "annyong" at work on the third shift, there will be 2-5 replies of "annyong". I've trained them well.

Possibly the best way to tell someone they are lazy

LMGTFY