On Thursday (5-Jan-06), 700 Club spokesman and former Presidential hopeful Pat Robertson told everyone that Ariel Sharon’s stroke had one simple reason: “God’s wrath.”

Local columnist Sam Venable let him have it but good.

For a man who claims to be a purveyor of Good News, this guy has done more to turn people away from Christianity than an army of atheists.
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The 9/11 attacks?

God’s wrath.

The Gulf hurricanes?

God’s wrath.

(Athletic interpretation: God’s wrath was the reason the University of Southern California lost the Rose Bowl. It had nothing to do with being outplayed and outscored by those heavenly blessed, sin-free cherubs representing the University of Texas.)

In Preacher Pat’s line of reasoning, we should file every unpleasantness in our lives – allergies and flu, monetary and marital failures, vocational and educational woes, transmission troubles and computer glitches – under the general heading of God’s wrath for some sin, known or unknown, that we may have committed.

If so, it’s a wonder the entire lot of humanity down through the ages hasn’t gone insane from guilt.

You have to wonder which Bible it is that Pat Robertson reads, because it really seems to be missing a Testament. It’s probably fallen out with all of the bashing he does with it.

I would urge readers to chip in $0.01 each so we could buy him a new one, with a yellow highlighter marking up the first four books of the New Testament, but I’m sure he’d just hit one of us in the head with it.

All day today, I’ve heard news reports about how “the NSA spying on ordinary Americans by installing software on your computer. Stay tuned, and we’ll teach you how to remove it!”

What a load of absolute nonsense!

The plain truth: The National Security Agency is devoted to the creation, dissassembly and translation of Codes and Cryptograms. It employs some of our country’s best and brightest Linguists and Mathematicians. It is not an organization which is remotely involved in “spying;” this myth is propagated by Conspiracy Theorists and other lunatics who have repeatedly called it “No Such Agency.”

And a Cookie? A cookie is not a piece of executable code, and certainly does not fall under the category of “software.” Cookies are small files which are stored on your hard drive by a website. The most popular example is Forum software, which greets you with, “Hello, Sam!” (or whatever your name is) when you visit. MSNBC, CNN, FoxNews, CBS and ABC all use Cookies.

Cookies are not spyware, contrary to popular myth. Cookies cannot “track your internet usage,” contrary to popular myth.

The most nasty thing a cookie can do is say, “Oh, you’ve seen this banner/pop-up ad already, so we’re going to display a different one.” Nothing sinister there, other than sometimes several sites use the same source for those ads, and they can get an idea where your IP address travels within the realm of the sites they serve. Big deal!

Basically what we had here today was, “Everything that happens in Government is the fault of the President. We have no new news with which to bash said President, so let’s make a big deal out of absolutely nothing and scare the crap out people by making something up!”

It is reprehensible that so many seemingly upstanding, impartial journalists felt that it was okay to run this completely asinine story which is nothing more than a baseless lie.

I’m all for Freedom of the Press, but at this point, it’s painfully obvious that some limits are in order. The so-called journalists who keep peddling this kind of tabloid fodder as fact have made it abundantly clear that the Media as a whole cannot conduct itself in an ethical manner.

Harry Shearer dropped a great video clip of Ann Coulter on his blog. Apparently, like many of her frequent targets — Kerry & company — she’s also unfamiliar with how Cameras work.

In other German news today, Austria denounced Arnold Schwarzenegger for not granting clemency to Tookie Williams. What, like we should have patted him on the back and given him a Nobel Peace Prize?

A bad man died today, but a number of people whose movies I’ll no longer watch are still whining, “Why, he redeemed himself! He became a good Christian! He wrote children’s books! He became a spokesperson, speaking out against hatred! He doesn’t have hate in his heart! He’s all about Love and Compassion!”

Sorry, but I’ve heard this same spiggot of bullshit from or about the KKK, Adolph Hitler and Charles Manson. So why are so many people of the opinion that Tookie Williams didn’t deserve the Death Penalty?

Never mind that Tookie was one of the founders — more on that later — of the violent Crips street gang. Never mind that he was convicted, by a Jury of his peers, of murdering a 7-11 clerk. Never mind that he was convicted, by a Jury of his peers, of killing a Taiwanese family; yes, even their daughter. Never mind that he was convicted of two counts of robbery. Never mind that he was involved in multiple attacks on other inmates and guards while in prison.

No evidence? Never mind that the murder weapon was one he had purchased, legally, years earlier — or that it was found in his home after the murders. Never mind that Tookie bragged about having done these terrible things to many people — including friends, family, roommates and other Crips members. Never mind that others who were with him during the crimes turned on him, as well.

Never mind that this case has had a full twenty-five years of judicial and investigatory review supporting the fact that he is not only guilty, but deserves to die.

Never mind that this guy was not just a “deluded and confused young African-American” who was “in with a bad crowd;” in fact, Tookie, himself, claims that he was the bad crowd: a founding member of the Crips. Never mind that that being the case, we will probably never know all of the atrocious behaviors, that this man personally ordered or coerced, of many deluded and confused young African-Americans.

No, let’s ignore everything we know about Tookie! Let’s make another movie about him depicting him as a humble father who loved children and never hurt anyone!

In my book, being a Man is all about taking responsibility for your actions, and accepting the consequences thereof. It is that mentality that seperates the Men from the Boys.

Schwarzenegger said it right:

“…without an apology and atonement for these senseless and brutal killings, there can be no redemption.”

I don’t even want to hear why this so-called ‘man’ deserves to be exalted the the status of Nelson Mandela by offering him Nobel Peace Prize.

And if State-Sponsored execution does in fact upset Austria’s sensibilities and remind them of Hitler during World War II, so be it. That’s a sure sign that they need to start denouncing Hitler more and Schwarzenegger less.

     By order of Chief US District Judge Marilyn Hall Patel, Napster is shut down. Earlier this morning, she signed an injunction to shut them down pending the outcome of their trial.

     If you’re not familiar with Napster, or if you think you are, I’ll give you a run-down of what it is. Basically, it’s a program that allows users to download free music. The Music Industry claims that Napster is a “dangerous Internet rival that could short-circuit traditional music sales.”
     Plain and simple, right?

     In a word, No…

     Not only is the whole Napster ordeal reason number one hundred and seventy-eight why people think Metallica suck, there’s also the fact that technically it’s only a Network. More specifically, it’s an Internet Relay Chat (IRC) Server not altogether unlike Undernet or DalNet that a lot of Internet users chat on. Instead of using an IRC-client however, there’s a front-end program that allows users to share files. Again, this is not altogether different than the DCC file servers and such available to IRC users, but whereas with standard IRC most people are chatting, the majority of Napster users are transferring files.
     When one logs into Napster, the contents of a shared directory on your hard drive are made public to everyone logged into the server. Running the “Search” inside the program searches a database of all connected users and finds matching filenames in those shared directories and lists them.
     Napster itself, as an entity, doesn’t have any of those files, which are Songs in this case. The users share them between one another.

     Officially, Napster itself claims that they do not promote the use of their product for the illegal transfer of copyrighted or trademarked material. Music information on their website, despite what you’ve heard, is restricted to un-signed artists who opt to self-promote their music.
     It’s been great. Finally, there was a way for un-signed musicians to promote themselves and make a few dollars without being raped by Music Industry thugs who care more about marketability factors and profitability rather than the Art of Music.

     Basically what the Recording Industry Association of America (incorrectly referred to as the “Music Industry”) is attempting to do is overturn many former legal precedents set worldwide so they can make a quick dollar. The case is ludicrous, and could be easily overturned (with damages granted to Napster for their loss of Advertising revenues during the injunction period) if only their Lawyers would do some very basic legal research and urge the Honourable Patel to uphold the verdict of another Judge. No Judge likes to see their verdict overturned, especially by a lesser-experienced, un-impartial Judge with a mindset strictly adverse to the Spirit of Law.

     The defence avenue that comes immediately to mind is BLAHBLAH (insert litigant here) vs. America Online (Internet Service Provider). In each of these cases, it was ruled that a content or service provider cannot be held liable for the actions of its users. Some AOL user had posted a web site in bad taste in their free space on AOL, someone was offended and tried to sue AOL instead of the person who did it.
     In most cases, the content was actually illegal (either defamation, hate-crime related or boasting of illegal behaviour) and violated AOL’s Terms of Service, something that a simple e-mail to tos@aol.com could have taken care of it. But Lawyers, intent on getting as much money as they could rather than using a bit of common sense, saw the need for legal action such that a Precedent could be set and their other Lawyer-buddies could make even more money if the case was actually won.
     (Ian C. Ballon, Esq. comes to mind — the man who attempted to sue a child a few years ago for the use of the domain name “gumby.org” claiming that regardless of whether it was the kid’s nickname, it was a registered trademark of Prema Toy Co. — as he claimed [on his Hong Kong partners’ site] that he lost at least one of these AOL cases. After writing a long volume about the verdict being wrong, he proceeded to draft revisions of standing laws and claimed [again on the Hong Kong site] to have submitted some to the series now dubbed the International Intellectual Property and Trademark Acts. I’m sure he’ll sue me for using his name here, actually. Common Sense and any interpretation of Law says, however, that even though I have, and even though I think he’s a wanking leech and a bottom feeder, he can’t sue me for Libel or Slander as what I have posted is A. truthful by information he or his colleagues have given, B. within the realm of public knowledge, and C. a matter of subjective opinion protected under an inherent right of Freedom of Speech.)

     The bitch of it all is that there is a world-wide Common Sense which says that a manufacturer can’t held liable for damages caused by illicit use or misuse of their product. If your kid goes out tomorrow and overdoses on Viagra (strangely not uncommon), are you going to sue the manufacturer of Viagra? What if he/she shoots him/herself with your shotgun, are you going to sue the gun manufacturer?
     What if your next door neighbour puts up a web page on Ihug claiming you’re a rapist? You’re using the ‘net to read this, so you know that you’d sue the neighbour, and that the provider can’t possibly police everything on their network.
     What if someone with a Hotmail address e-mails you a Trojan that sends someone all of your business records and then deletes them from your machine? Of course, you can’t sue Hotmail. But what if that person started distributing your confidential information to people on auckland.nz.undernet.org? Would you try and get the server shut down?

     Of course not.

     You prosecute the offender, not the means by which they offend. It doesn’t take a barrister’s degree to figure that out.

     But if things keep going the same way in the United States, look out. New Zealand has signed the same laws on Copyrights, Trademarks and Intellectual Property, and it might just turn into a mess here, too.

     But if it should happen that the manufacturer of the Napster program is found liable for the illicit actions of its members and New Zealand follows suit, then I should bloody well be able to sue Clear Telecommunications for that loud, screaming bastard who kept calling me over and over with the wrong number in the middle of the night.