Mike's Blog

"Rolex Spam Anti-Massacree Movement"

I guess it's not really dumbass clueless lawyers, but dumbass clueless companies who hire such lawyers and basically are saying to them, "I'm clueless, stupid and have lots of money, have your way with me and bill me, oh and by the way since I really am stupid and clueless bill me lots and even when everyone laughs at me, keep billing me and I'll keep paying". Kind of the same relationship that little old ladies in the south have with televangelists. Shameless behavior.

Serving Rolex Spam at Alice's Restaurant
by Adam C. Engst ... Since the FreeS/WAN list is archived on the Web, Rolex Watch U.S.A., Inc. (remember Rolex? It's an article about Rolex) found the post in searches for the counterfeiters of Rolex watches. It's obvious to anyone over the age of 13 (and probably lots of people under that age) that the spam appearing in the FreeS/WAN archive is something that happened to the FreeS/WAN list, not something that the FreeS/WAN list intentionally propagated. It was an accident, and an unfortunate one at that. But obvious though this is, a group of highly paid attorneys hired by Rolex couldn't figure this out and sent a cease-and-desist letter (undoubtedly accompanied by twenty-seven eight-by-ten colour glossy pictures with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one) to John Gilmore telling him that, as the person who registered the freeswan.org domain, he could be liable for damages up to $1,000,000 for posting content that violated the Rolex trademark, promoted counterfeiting, and diluted Rolex's intellectual property rights. Now that's adding injury to insult! First spam makes it through to a list you run, and then you're threatened by lawyers because of it....

"Kids, we don't like your kind, and we're going to send your cease-and-desist letter off to the Web Archive. And friends, somewhere in the Internet, enshrined in some database, is a study in black and white of that cease-and-desist letter. And the only reason I'm writing you this article now is cause you may know somebody in a similar situation, or you may be in a similar situation, and if you're in a situation like that there's only one thing you can do and that's post a note to the nearest blog, just write right in and say, 'Counsel, you can't get what you want with pointless strong-arm tactics.' You know, if one person, just one person does it, they may think he's really sick and they won't listen. And if two people, two people do it, with trackback, they may think they're both faggots and they won't listen to either of them. And three people do it, three, can you imagine, three people posting a note about a similar situation on their blogs? They may think it's an organization. And can you, can you imagine fifty people a day, I said fifty people a day posting notes about strong-arm legal tactics? And friends, they may think it's a movement. And that's what it is, the Rolex Spam Anti-Massacree Movement, and all you got to do to join is post a note on your blog the next time a pointless cease-and-desist letter comes around on the net."

...(link via BoingBoing)

"Should I attack it or pee on it..."

I remember a card I'd gotten a long time ago that had a drawing of a cat looking at a new stove.  The thought bubble on over it's head said "Something new, should I attack it or pee on it?". Anyone who has cats,  especially Siamese, knows that's not just a joke, that's a caricature of their true behavior.

It seems like there is a certain 'breed' of lawyers who also think that way.  And some companies, namely SCO, seem to have a expansion tactic of, 'no, we don't need to hire more development engineers or do any product design, we'll just hire more lawyers and sue people for their products,.  Well I guess, for some reason I wouldn't have expected HP to behave in the same way, and it's not really the same except they have a group of attack lawyers, who are saying, hmm, something, new, we need to either attack it or pee on it.  What is that some lawyers don't get about the internet?  It's something new we need to sue it and/or write legalese to threaten people as in some stupid TOS BS about linking policies.

Anyway another example of stupid corporate BS and stupid lawyer BS.

HP sends Sun's President a nastygram for blogging
Back in August, the President of Sun Microsystems posted a little dig at HP on his blog, saying: To me, HP's problems spawn from the death of... their operating system, HP/UX. Like IBM, they've elected to ask their customers and ISV's to move to Red Hat Linux or Microsoft Windows on x86 systems. And if you're an ISV, how does that differentiate HP? - they're a box vendor. If you're a customer, where does that leave you with your HP/UX investments? Facing untimely change - with a vendor no longer in charge of their OS. Pretty innocuous, right? Well, HP didn't think so. They had their jackass lawyers send a nastygram to Sun, demanding that they take down the blog entry. Riiiiight....(link BoingBoing)

Do I hear a flip-flop on stem cell research on it's way?

Haven't we seen this type of behavior in another president not too long ago?

...In the July/August Atlantic, James Fallows wrote an illuminating piece on the then-upcoming debates between George W. Bush and John Kerry. For his article, rather than talking to campaign spinners for each side and reporting what they said, he dove into the archival record of each man's debates, and made an astonishing discovery: 10 years ago, George W. Bush was an articulate, forceful debater. Tough to belive, but when Fallows reviewed the tapes of Bush's 1994 debate with Anne Richards, he found that not only did Bush win the debate, but he spoke well....(link)

With video examples and some good links to follow up on.

Wall Street is not amused...:-)

Arrogance and partisan politics by the media may make some people feel good, but it's not perceived well by Wall Street. As I'm sure someone is saying something like 'We don't care about your stupid politics - your stupidity and arrogance are costing us MONEY!' - about $100 MILLION since early October.

Sinclair: the free-fall continues
by kos Tue Oct 19th, 2004 at 18:10:38 GMT

The wingers were all proud of themselves for getting Dan Rather to apologize over some memos that didn't detract from the 60 Minutes story in any way. The self-important fools refer to the event as "memo-gate". But they can have their little victory.
I'd rather help take down an entire media empire....(dKOS)

link Yahoo stocks

And the response...

This was typical of many of the repsonses sent back to The Guardian. There were a few that were positive, thankful and hopeful but many were along the lines of the following. Makes one just so proud to be American.

KEEP YOUR FUCKIN' LIMEY HANDS OFF OUR ELECTION. HEY, SHITHEADS, REMEMBER THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR? REMEMBER THE WAR OF 1812? WE DIDN'T WANT YOU, OR YOUR POLITICS HERE, THAT'S WHY WE KICKED YOUR ASSES OUT. FOR THE 47% OF YOU WHO DON'T WANT PRESIDENT BUSH, I SAY THIS ... TOUGH SHIT! PROUD AMERICAN VOTING FOR BUSH! (link)

As others see us...

Excerpts from several excellent articles in The Guardian. Also an interesting approach in freeing the world from the evil thuggery of the Bush regime. They are facilitating an e-mail letter writing campaign. The reader can obtain the e-mail address of of a registered voter in Clark County Ohio - a very teetering swing county in a swing state. They are then to send an e-mail discussing their view of how George Bush affects others in the world. The e-mail address they obtain is from a registered voter; they could be either pro or anti Bush.

Operation Clark County
The result of the American election in less than three weeks could have huge consequences for the whole world. Yet those of us outside the 50 states have had no say in it. Until now, that is....
A few tips about writing to Clark County:
Be courteous. Remember that it's unusual to receive a lobbying letter from someone in another country. Think about how you would respond if you received a letter from Ohio urging you to vote for Tony Blair - or Michael Howard...

Dear Clark County voter, Give us back the America we loved. Yours sincerely, John Le Carré

Three prominent Britons hit the campaign trail
...Probably no American president in all history has been so universally hated abroad as George W Bush: for his bullying unilateralism, his dismissal of international treaties, his reckless indifference to the aspirations of other nations and cultures, his contempt for institutions of world government, and above all for misusing the cause of anti-terrorism in order to unleash an illegal war - and now anarchy - upon a country that like too many others around the world was suffering under a hideous dictatorship, but had no hand in 9/11, no weapons of mass destruction, and no record of terrorism except as an ally of the US in a dirty war against Iran....John Le Carré

...When you vote - and please do vote by the way, even if you disagree with everything I am about to say - that vote will have as much effect on my future and the much longer future of my children and grandchildren, as it will on your own. For this is a crucial election, the most crucial, I believe, of my lifetime (and I first voted in 1955!).

First of all, if you back Kerry, you will be voting against a savage militaristic foreign policy of pre-emptive killing which has stained the great name of the US so hideously in recent times. A policy that Bush and his gang are set to continue - if they get the opportunity....Antonia Fraser

...In the service of his long-planned war (with its catastrophically unplanned aftermath), Bush not only lied about Iraq being the "enemy" who had attacked the twin towers. With the connivance of the toadying Tony Blair and the spineless Colin Powell, he lied to Congress and the world about weapons of mass destruction. He is now brazenly lying to the American electorate about how "well" things are going under the puppet government. By comparison with this cynical mendacity, the worst that can be said about John Kerry is that he sometimes changes his mind. Well, wouldn't you change your mind if you discovered that the major premise on which you had been persuaded to vote for war was a big fat lie?...Richard Dawkins

'The Case Against Bush'

An excellent but long post making the case against Bush. Not difficult to do on many fronts but this post goes a long ways to discuss the points and the decisions which led to many of the present situations. Also, and something I like when I read are lots and lots of hyperlinks to read the original articles and educate onself about many of the points. I don't like to just read someones thoughts or ideas on something. This post presents the case and hyperlinks to the evidence. A here's what I think and here's why.

Well worth the time and something that can be read through and then gone back to for more researched reading. He has a sort of mini - table of contents which is a short list of hyperlinks to major sections. I read through the post and followed some of the links which always leads me to going to other links, and then other links, and then, oh yeah, where was I.

Anyway, well worth spending time on this. Even if you are pro-Bush you might enjoy reading a post that is not pro-Bush, an anti-Bush post backed by facts and reasoning and one that is not just an ABBB rant. Well, probably not really, if you're pro-Bush you probably wouldn't be here:-)

The Case Against Bush...I try to stay as nonpartisan as possible on this blog, and it's generally not too hard, as I strongly dislike our plurality two-party system, partially because I'm a moderate libertarian who's roughly equidistant from both parties ideologically. So I'm not really joking when I say that I plan to vote for Tyler Cowen, even though he's not actually running (although honestly, I haven't yet ruled out Libertarian Party candidate Michael Badnarik either). But that's mostly because California is not a swing state. If I did live in a swing state, I wouldn't vote for a third party candidate. Unlike 2000, it's already clear that John Kerry and George W. Bush are very, very far apart, and I think it's pretty clear which one is better qualified to lead...( fling93 loves fishes)

And if there was ever any doubt as to the difference between those who live in large cities, are informed and deal with many socio-economic groups, thoughts and ideas and not just those in a small rural surrounding, take a look at a county by county red/blue coloring of swing state voting in the 2000 election. link The New York Times.

How rich are the Japanese?

Good post on relative prices in Japan. He lists a number of items, such as a house, rent, BigMac and compares those to an average annual income in Japan. He has a Java app which invites you to enter the prices and average income of your country or your income and then does a calculation to compare your results with the Japanese. It was interesting though that in his drop down list of countries to select from did not include Israel. Although not a large country it's certainly more prominant that say, Aruba or Latvia. I only mention this as I'd listened to an NPR show a week or so ago about the Japanese media and they said that if they wanted to say something negative about Americans they would use the word "Jew". There are very very few Jews in Japan so if they directly offended them, no big deal, but they didn't want to appear to directly offend Americans in general. No anti-semitism or anything on his site or hints of it. And it's completely off the topic of any of this posts. But what I find interseting is that he pulled his drop down list from someplace, probably in Japan, to get a list of countries and Israel was excluded when a number of countries with less global influence were on there. (link - Extraordinary Ordinary Guy in Japan)

I'm impressed

I received this comment from FastCompany on my recent post on silly unenforceable linking policies. They have responded to what they've come to better understand and have updated their linking policies. That post and related links on BoingBoing must have really had an impact.

IP Address: 204.52.234.67
Name: Heath Row
Email Address: [email protected]
URL: http://www.fastcompany.com

Comments:

Lest you have missed all of the subsequent blog entries and online discussion about Fast Company's linking policy, it has been changed -- you can now link to any Fast Company Web page without our permission... and without notifying us. We considered people's feedback -- and we responded given their input. Thanks for the mention!

"Stupid is as stupid does..."

A while back I posted a mini-rant on the stupidity of the Olympic Committee linking policy. Well all that brilliance wasn't just thunk up by them all by their lonesome. They were following in the example of some very large and clueless corporations. The link text I choose below doesn't have any real significance but I came across a 'legal' section in one of them about disguising the url, and wanted to choose an appropriate text string to 'disguise it'. F%&* you (KPMG), and f%&* you (AMEX - well maybe the link text is appropriate here) and f%&* you (Fast Company) and I wouldn't think of endorsing you (WPS Health Insurance) and if for whatever quirk of the universe you might think about endorsing me then I hereby and heretofore and herewith and forthwith impose the same linking policy posted on Boing Boing. The reason I was poking around in this again was a post on BoingBoing today titled "Boing Boing has a linking policy". Plus I'd been reading around on just way too much shit on politics and the war in Iraq as a recent article in Wired titled "The Crusade Against Evolution". (At least I know it's all due to the faeries and I think we should give equal time to them as well). and just needed a fun little diversion. Here's a fun site that's a bit out of date but for a while collected links to sites with stupid and clueless linking policies.

And in poking around at sites and doing some googling I just happened to come across this cool site with a collection of messages such as The site is best viewed in Internet Explorer because I am too lazy to test it in anything else. This site has been visited by 0041748 people I don't care about. And another great site on "Stupid Listener Questions". None of these are related to anything other than they were in the theme of "Stupid is as stupid does"!