Wednesday, January 17, 2007

Sore winner

Georgia loves its Bulldogs; me, I’m more of an Italian Greyhound fan.

The Georgia Florida game, until May 2006, was known as The World’s Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party. Following the 2006 season, Georgia held a 46-37-2 advantage in the all-time series. Still, yesterday:

The House passed a resolution praising the Florida Gators on their recent National Championship.  These things are usually passed unanimously and give said honoree something official to recognize whatever they accomplished.

Not so fast my friend on this one, it passed 414-1.  Who in their right mind would go on record against Florida winning the championship?  A misplaced Ohio State fan?  Steve Spurrier’s sister?  Some Auburn booster?

None of the above.  Ladies and gentleman, meet Jack Kingston, Georgia’s representative from their first district.  For this, his party doesn’t matter.

Jack Kingston, whose website is designed in Bulldog red and [black] (I goofed), could not let his personal feelings go for 15 seconds to honor 83 kids for a long, hard, season.  Mind you he voted for a resolution FOR Boise State, passing 415-0, but could not bear to vote for the Gators.

Way to show your young people about sportsmanship, sir.  Go Gators.

Via Wonkette, “We sort of admire his juvenile protest vote. Watch Kingston make Stephen Colbert uncomfortable in this video clip.”

RIAA on Atlanta DJ raid

MTV:

Brad Buckles, executive vice president of the RIAA’s Anti-Piracy Division in Washington, DC, said the case was developed in Atlanta. For more than a year, police have been investigating the manufacturing and distribution of pirated material in the city and “during that time, we’ve been working with police and picking up pirated product, going back and forth with local law enforcement to figure out where it’s coming from,” Buckles said. “[Tuesday’s raid] was just one of the many series of raids that have occurred.”

Many retail outlets have been raided for selling mixtapes in recent years - the RIAA press release cited four in the Atlanta area in 2005, and claimed 1 million pirated CDs were seized in the city that year - but Tuesday’s raid was the first involving a figure of DJ Drama’s stature.

Buckles was vague when asked about the product that had been seized, saying that he only knew what he had read in the report: that “the product violated state law” and that “I’m given to understand that the CDs also contained a variety of works and different artists” that weren’t licensed or cleared, and were being sold illegally.

When asked if Tuesday’s raid was part of a larger series of raids targeting mixtapes, Buckles said, “We don’t consider this being against mixtapes as some sort of class of product. We enforce our rights civilly or work with police against those who violate state law. Whether it’s a mixtape or a compilation or whatever it’s called, it doesn’t really matter: If it’s a product that’s violating the law, it becomes a target.”

More background here.

Not just on South Park anymore

According to Atlanta’s Fox 5, Atlanta police raided a recording studio and “cleaned the place out.” 17 people detained; 2 arrested “for making and selling illegal CDs.” Sounds like a South Park episode to me:

Via Boing Boing. More here.

Despite auto-updates, IE share falls, Firefox grows

Information Week:

Although Microsoft recently touted the 100 millionth installation of Internet Explorer 7, Web measurement firms said that the new browser is simply being swapped out for older editions and hasn’t had an impact on Firefox’s continued climb. [...]

Firefox’s share of the U.S. browser market, says [Web metrics analyst Geoff] Johnston, is at 14%, and has continued to grow each of the last three months. “I thought that IE 7 might flatten Firefox’s growth, but it’s not taken a hit from IE 7. All the movement there has been internal, from IE 6 users upgrading,” he says.

Another Web metrics vendor, Net Applications, confirmed the switch to IE 7 in its most recent data, and also noted the continued slide of IE overall.

According to Net Applications, Internet Explorer accounted for 79.6% of all browsers used in December 2006, a drop from the 80.6% during the previous month. Firefox’s use, meanwhile, measured 14% in December, up from 13.5% in November. Also gaining ground in the last month of 2006 was Apple’s Safari, which climbed to 4.2% from 4%, and Opera, which saw its share increase from 0.7% to 0.9%.[...]

The gain in IE 7 is largely due to Microsoft pushing the new browser to end users via Windows’ Automatic Updates setting, which is usually reserved for downloading and installing security fixes on PCs. Microsoft began issuing IE 7 to Windows XP users through Automatic Updates in early November as part of a controversial scheme to get the new browser in as many hands as possible as quickly as possible.

Atlanta pastor: out, proud, defrocked?

He says he’s been out and gay from the start. it’s only when he entered into a relationship that he got in trouble:

The popular head pastor of a Northeast Atlanta church will soon know whether he can remain at the pulpit. Hearings get underway Friday for Pastor Brad Schmeling who is openly gay.

Pastor Brad Schmeling has preached behind the big red doors of St. John’s Lutheran Church for the past 6 years. When it comes to his personal life, he proudly says the only thing that has changed is that he’s now in a committed relationship. Because of that, he knows he could be de-frocked.

“Because I am in a lifelong committed relationship, the Bishop has filed charges,” explained Pastor Brad.

Of course this is absolutely backwards. A single closeted pastor is more likely to get caught up in the kind of behavior that we read about in the newspapers.