Friday, September 16, 2005

Hate Crime hope

The Carpetbagger asks is the entire anti-gay crusade falling apart? He points to this week’s House vote:

Unexpectedly, the House voted 223 to 199 in favor of an amendment by Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) that expands current hate crime law to include some crimes involving sexual orientation, gender and disability. Under current law, the federal government assists local and state authorities prosecuting limited types of crimes based on the victim’s race, religion or ethnic background.

The House has been the chief obstacle in numerous previous attempts to expand hate crimes law, and Joe Solmonese, president of the Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest gay rights group, said it was an “incredibly historic vote” that could give momentum to similar action in the Senate.

Raise taxes!

I’ve said it before - before New Orleans - and I’ll say it again: we should raise taxes.

I guess there’s no way for a pol to say it, least of all George Bush, but I so would have liked to hear last night that we’re going to rebuild New Orleans and we’re going to have to pay for it so…

Instead what we get, with the Heritage Foundation to back him up, is our president pledging none:

President Bush on Friday ruled out raising taxes to pay the massive costs of Gulf Coast reconstruction, saying other government spending must be cut to pay for a recovery effort expected to swell the national debt by $200 billion or more.

Video here:

Reporter: What will it cost?

Bush: Well, it’s gonna cost whatever it costs, and we’re gonna be wise about the money we spend. I mean, you’re ask- I, I, I - we haven’t totalled up all the bridges… and highways.

That’s conservative?

Has anyone ever heard the saying that you don’t get something for nothing??? I just honestly don’t get how we can put our head in the sand and spend our way into oblivion.

Bill Clinton, talking sense, at least wants to repeal the tax cuts.

TiVo DRM: “bug” no excuse

MegaZone says “TiVo isn’t alone” and “doesn’t have much choice.” I know they’re not alone, unfortunately, but they have made a choice. It’s the wrong one.

Here’s Wendy Seltzer on the meaning of TiVo’s DRM bug:

It might well have been a bug in this instance, but bugs like that don’t just come from nowhere, with fully formed error messages alerting viewers that “Due to policy set by the copyright holder, ‘Keep until I delete’ is not permitted.” Maybe it wasn’t meant to show up here and now, on broadcast TV, but someplace in TiVo’s corporate innards, someone decided that unrequested expiration was a feature.

Nothing in copyright law mandates this “feature.” To the contrary, once you have a lawful copy of a copyrighted work, the first sale doctrine says you have the choice whether to save, lend, or discard it, while Betamax says timeshifting creates a lawful copy. If not copyright law, then copyright-holder muscle probably sits behind TiVo’s design. Copyright holders work with Macrovision to implement extra-copyright controls, then jointly lean on TiVo to respond to them. Together, they restrict user rights beyond copyright.

The bug also illustrates the fallibility of proprietary technologies (particularly those with automatic update). “Update” doesn’t always mean “improve”—an update can take away functions you’ve come to enjoy, just because someone else objects. This misfeature of any DRM that implements “revocability” gives “planned obsolescence” a whole new meaning.

UPDATE: Flag on IFC, another bug?

Heterosexuals weaken marriage again

This is what happens when you leave marriage to the heterosexuals:

Bridget Jones is untying the knot. Renee Zellweger, who played the lovelorn Brit in “Bridget Jones’s Diary,” and country music star Kenny Chesney will have their four-month-old marriage annulled, Chesney’s publicist, Holly Gleason, and Zellweger’s Los Angeles-based publicist Nanci Ryder, confirmed to The Associated Press on Thursday.

People magazine first reported the breakup, which brings to an end a whirlwind romance that began shortly before a surprise wedding in May. The 36-year-old actress and Chesney, 37, wed in a small ceremony on the Caribbean island of St. John in the U.S. Virgin Islands. It was the first marriage for both.

Via James Joyner.