Bush War Lies, Part 2

The London Guardian today published a report that Colin Powell and his UK counterpart Jack Straw -- the point men for selling this whole Iraq invasion thing in the first place -- had serious doubts about the intelligence they were given even as they publicly trumpeted it.

The article also provides a nice summary of the many items we were fed that we now know to be outright lies. (see here)

Thank heavens there are still journalists (sadly not in America, but at least in Britain) who have the integrity to objectively work through the web of deceit and get to the truth.

Kpn It Shrt

One of the things that I simultaneously love and loathe about America is the ability (or perhaps that should be compulsive obsession) of Americans to boil (or dumb) down, to condense, to get to the nitty-gritty. It can be good or bad, but it's pretty uniquely American.

This strange gift/mental condition manifests itself in lots of ways. One that particularly gets under my skin is the way people will insist, without checking with you first, on giving you a short nickname of some kind, regardless of your actual name. How "Richard" becomes "Dick" or "William" becomes "Bill" I'll leave to lexicographers. But take any name -- even a one-syllable name like "Charles" -- and Americans feel compelled to find a way to shorten it somehow. Chuck, Chas, Chaz, Charlie, CM ... and so on. After I spent several fruitless years fighting it, I gave up and picked a preferred nickname (Chas) that bothers me least. When I lived in England, nobody ever called you by anything less than your full first name unless specifically instructed not to (indeed, it was rare that you were called anything but "Mr. Martin" in the academic setting I was in).

It can be useful, however, when you're a big country and have to plow through a lot of information every day. Indeed, at least part of President Bush's odd popularity stems from his folksy style of dumbing-down. People (particularly dim people from the midwest) really seem to like his "if it's complicated, I don't wanna know about it" mentality and his Perot-like ability to boil even extremely complicated problems into catchy little phrases like "double taxation" for dividend taxes, "regime change" for illegal overthrow of non-invading nations, and "tax refund" for record-breaking deficit spending.

Indeed, if I had to point to a single problem the Democrats face, it's figuring out how to beat President Bush and the NeoCon fascists he represents at this "fewest and shortest words possible" game of his. Saturday Night Live had it pegged even prior to the 2000 election fiasco:

Gore: "Lockbox."
Bush: "Strategery."

See, the Democrats think that talking about Bush's failures, lies, corruption and illegal acts will get the public to sit up and take notice. Bad idea. What they really ought to do is have one of them come out and say simply "Regime change starts at home" or "Deficits cost jobs" or "Are we better off?" Something simple like that, because simple is apparently all people have the capacity or time to handle anymore.

That said, you gotta hand it to the few remaining wits out there -- they take a challenge like "make something prescient, witty and memorable in six words or less" and they run with it. I recently saw a forum posting where some wag had taken our entire fractured American society and "boiled it down" to it's purest form:

"Which bothers you more: blow jobs or snow jobs?"

It's moments like this that almost make me proud to be an American again. Don't even think that any other country could have come up with something so succinct.

Bush War Lies: A Short Roundup

1. Still no WMDs. Not even anything close to WMDs. Rumsfeld now admits that the WMDs were "probably buried or destroyed years ago, I don't know."

2. The British press are reporting that the dossier used by both Tony Blair and George Bush (and Colin Powell) to justify the illegal invasion of Iraq was a plagerised version of a paper written at least five and more likely 10 years ago. New "information" was added to it that has no verification, such as the claim that Saddam Hussein had nuclear weapons that he could use within 45 minutes. It's already been established that one of the early reports used to justify the invasion was plagerized from a fictionalised paper.

3. CBS says that the bunker we bombed at the start of the invasion doesn't even exist. Yessir, US intelligence under the Bush administration is rapidly becoming a contradiction in terms.

4. NPR reports that the Bush administration discarded real intelligence reports in favour of made-up reports from Donald Rumsfeld's associates, which have no basis in fact.

5. The family of Private Jessica Lynch, who was rescued from Iraq, have been told that they cannot talk about her rescue. They did add, however, that she has full memory of the events. They (and she) just can't talk about them.

This on the heels of a BBC (you know, those pandering bleeding-heart leftwingers who were the only actual allies in our "coalition"?) report that the "rescue" was a staged event. Witnesses interviewed by the BBC claim there were no Iraqi soldiers present at the hospital, that Pvt. Lynch never suffered bullet wounds, was never under guard, and that nobody offered the slightest bit of resistance to her "rescue."

It is highly suspicious that this so-called "Special Ops" operation thought to bring along a professional media videographer. For the first and only time ever in their history. Seems kind of odd.

Update: Here's a handy collection of lies from the Bush administration as they sold us this war bill of goods, all in one convenient place. Bravo to Billmon for compiling and sourcing them. Send em to your local newspaper editor.

And there's lots more where this came from. Stay tuned.

Bush: Helping the Rich Stay Rich

Remember that $400 cheque that "poor and working-class families" are supposed to get due to the raising of the child credit in income tax? The one that would "put more money in the pocket of working Americans?"

Oops, turns out that you must be making more than $26,625/year to qualify for that.

So much for helping the poor.

Shameless Cross-Promotion: Making "The Two Towers"

My review of the second of Peter Jackson's epic Lord of the Rings films, The Two Towers, is on display over at Filmmoi. Being that FM is a "pure review" forum, I didn't think it was appropriate to plug some rather geeky article that goes into some depth on the making of the film, but by golly there's no such restriction here.

Apple.com has an interesting and in-depth article about the digital effects sequences in The Two Towers (which is playing the cheap theatres now, and really needs to be seen on the big screen to be fully appreciated, so if you haven't seen it go already!) that would be of high interest to anyone thinking of working in world-class 3D.

As the article illustrates and as I keep telling 3D graphics enthusiasts: PCs certainly have dominance in what I call "amateur-level" 3D apps, but when you're playing for keeps, you start looking at Apple and UNIX equipment. And since Apple now is UNIX, why waste time and money with anything else?

Whoops, There It Is!

A Lot of Moaning and Bellyaching, Nicely Compressed

MSN, We Hardly Loo Ye

Okay, follow the bouncing ball here:

First, MSN (UK) announces (complete with official press release and technical drawings) the iLoo, an internet-enabled portable toilet. I kid you not.

After a week of everyone on the planet laughing their buttocks off, Microsoft haughtily claims it was all just a joke. A hoax.

That they pulled on themselves. Riiiiight.

Now, after strong evidence has come forward that this was a real product and that MSN UK wasn't kidding about it, Microsoft have now reversed themselves yet again and are now saying that it was a real proposal by MSN UK, but that it was "designed to appeal to a different kind of British humour" and so it was both real and a joke.

You got all that?

Remember kids -- this is the company that wants you to believe in their "Trustworthy Computing Initiative."

Here's Your Future, Now Eat It!

The Finance Minister of Thailand was trapped in his BMW for over ten minutes until he was rescued by the fire brigade busting out a window. Why was he trapped? Because the software that controls his new car had crashed.

I'll give you one guess who made the software.

Thanks to Mac-Mike and Rick DeMent for this story. File under "Funny/Scary."

"War" Update

How long before the American public finally senses that it's been fed a pack of lies on this subject?

If Bullshit Was an Export, All Our Problems Would Be Over

Regardless of where you fall on the political spectrum, I think it's fair to say that you really have to work hard to top the bullshit quotient of the Clinton administration.

Never let it be said that the Bush administration doesn't work hard.

The following are some edited exchanges from Treasury Secretary John Snow's appearance yesterday on Meet the Press (hosted by Tim Russert). You can find the entire transcript here if you want to convince yourself this isn't a liberal conspiracy. This is the point man for President Bush's economic policies. You have been warned.

RUSSERT: Our debt is $6.4 trillion. That's $70,000 for every American family. With that in mind, shouldn't Congress vote on lifting the debt ceiling, letting the American people know exactly how much debt we have before they vote for a tax cut?

SNOW: No. No. The two are really different.

RUSSERT: Let me show you the economic record of the first 28 months of the Bush-Cheney administration. And here it is. Dow Jones is down 19 percent. Unemployment rate is up 46 percent. We've gone from a $281 billion surplus to a $246 billion deficit. That's a swing of $527 billion and that's going up, and worst of all, a net loss of 2.1 million jobs.

Let me show you what you said in 1995 and it couldn't be clearer: "The budget deficit puts a hole in the pocket of every American, every day of their lives. It threatens the very foundation of our culture and we must seize and act upon this historic opportunity to solve this, the most pressing issue facing the country." Do you believe the deficit is still the most pressing issue facing the country?

SNOW: No. No. That was 1994 and 1995 when we were in an entirely different set of economic circumstances.

RUSSERT: What was the deficit when you said that?

SNOW: The deficit was around $200 billion and rising as far as...

RUSSERT: It was $164 billion.

SNOW: I said around $200 billion.

RUSSERT: Mr. Secretary, when you made those comments, the deficit was $164 billion. The debt was only 4.9 trillion. The deficit today is close to $300 billion, heading to $500 billion, and you know that as well as I do. And, at the same time, you were praising President Clinton for showing political courage in dealing with the budget ... it sounds like a dramatic conversion since you've joined the Bush team.

SNOW: No. No. No.

(chas interjects: is this starting to sound like a Python sketch yet or what?)

RUSSERT: This is The Washington Times, hardly a liberal organ: "Until earlier this year, Mr. Snow was on the board of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a debt- fixated organization hostile to tax cuts and a group that has sharply questioned the merits of Mr. Bush's $1.35 trillion tax-reduction plan."ù That was his first tax cut. This is what the same group says about his new tax cut: "The hard choices have not been made. The President's proposed policies would produce higher deficits and increase the national debt; deficits would grow nearly $1 trillion and the debt would rise $2.7 trillion through 2013."ù

SNOW: And at the end of that period, Tim, the debt and, as a percentage of GDP, and the deficit in 2013, as a percent of GDP, will be far lower than they were in the Clinton years.

RUSSERT: But they are record numbers.

SNOW: We are in a very slow recovery with millions of people looking for work who can't find a job. The real deficit today is a jobs deficit. We need to get our priorities right. The deficit we have is manageable.

RUSSERT: When the president proposed his 2001 tax plan, he said it would create jobs. Since the enactment of the first Bush tax cut we have lost 1.7 million jobs. Why?

SNOW: That recession would have been a lot deeper, it would have been a lot harsher, it would have been a lot worse but for those '01 tax reductions that the president was behind.

RUSSERT: (giving up) Let me turn to the current tax plan. This is how Paul Krugman of The New York Times assessed the House bill. He says: "In fact, the extent to which the House bill favors the rich is breathtaking: the typical family would get a tax break of only $217 next year, but families with incomes above $1 million would get an average of $93,500 each. The [Center on Budget and Policy Priorities] estimates that over the next decade, 27 percent of the tax cut -- about the share that goes to the bottom 90 percent of the population -- would go to these very high-income families, who compromise a mere 0.13 percent of the population."

SNOW: I think the larger point and the more important point is everybody gains when we have growth. Everybody gains when the economy is stronger. Everybody gains when we have a more bountiful economic performance. And that's what the president's jobs plan is all about. You know, a Democratic president advancing tax proposals some 40 years ago said that a rising tide raises all the votes. We need to raise all the votes in this economy.

RUSSERT: Watching what is going on in Congress is quite striking. This was the headline Friday in The Washington Post: "GOP senators endorse tax hikes. Republicans broke from their no-new-tax orthodoxy to propose increases... All told, committee members approved more than 30 tax increases or other revenue raisers to help fund their tax cuts... Americans working overseas would be hit the hardest... 'This is a big tax increase' for oil and gas workers from Louisiana who work overseas,' Sen. John Breaux (D-La.), said."ù Four hundred thousand Americans who work overseas are going to have their taxes increased; 29 other tax increases. It's like robbing Peter to pay Paul. Why would you raise taxes on working men and women?

SNOW: Well, of course, those are called offsets, as you know. And they are the product of negotiations among the senators, the members and the staff on the Senate Finance Committee. They were not in the original proposal of the president.

RUSSERT: Do you oppose them?

SNOW: These offsets are there to make the package larger to accommodate more of the good tax relief that's contained in the president's bill.

RUSSERT: But when you say offsets, Mr. Secretary, what you're saying is: In order to keep the deficit down, in order to keep the debt down, Republican senators are raising taxes on some to provide a tax cut to others.

SNOW: Well, in order to accommodate a larger set of broad and good tax relief.

RUSSERT: Do you support those?

SNOW: Well, I am now in the process of reviewing them. I'm not sure what is contained in all of them. They were not our proposals ... but wherever we come out, I think we're going to have major tax relief for the American taxpayers, and tax relief that'll create jobs. And that's the real point of this.

RUSSERT: But the previous tax cut, as pointed out, there's been a loss of 1.7 million jobs since it was passed. How do you know for certain that another tax cut will create jobs?

SNOW: Well, it just stands to reason that tax reductions of the sort that are being proposed by the president will create jobs.

RUSSERT: But you're also going to increase the deficit. It is now approaching 3 percent of GDP. It was only 2.2, by the way, in 1995. It is on the increase, Mr. Secretary. Let me bring you back...

SNOW: Why do we worry about deficits? We worry about deficits because of concerns that the deficit, the government sector, will push out private capital. That's not happening today. We worry about deficits because deficits drive up interest rates. You know, Tim, we have the lowest interest rates in 40 years. So I think those concerns about the deficit, while we always have to have them in mind, are misplaced today in terms of this particular tax plan.

RUSSERT: Well, in 1995, you wrote an op-ed page in The Richmond Times saying the exact opposite, that a big deficit would really create a dramatically negatively effect upon the economy.

SNOW: We had a fundamentally different economy in 1995 than we have today.

RUSSERT: Let me bring you back to a speech you gave at the Commonwealth North in Alaska on July 21 of 2001 because it's very strong language, and I'll give you a chance to see if you still agree with your own comments. Let's watch:
(Videotape):
SNOW: The U.S. economy is very weak. In fact, I would say it's the weakest I've seen it in 20 years. The economy we're looking at is pretty bleak.
(End videotape)

RUSSERT: Do you agree with that?

SNOW: Oh, yeah, it was bleak. And the '01 tax plans that we talked about helped bring us out of that and gave us the shallowest and shortest recession in modern times.

RUSSERT: When you made those comments, Mr. Secretary, "the weakest economy in 20 years,"ù let me show you what the economic numbers were compared to now. The Dow was at 10,000; it's now 8,600. Unemployment was 4.6; it's now 6. There were 132 million people working; there are now 130, a net loss of 1.7 million. The economy is much weaker now than it was when you said it was the weakest in 20 years.

SNOW: Tim, you know too much about economics to believe that statement.

RUSSERT: After President Reagan had his large tax cut, there were three subsequent tax increases because Republicans and Democrats in the Congress became concerned about deficits. If, in fact, the deficits keep building, 450, 500, 600, and the debt keeps going up, would you consider going back and raising taxes to deal with the deficit?

SNOW: Well, I'm not going to deal with a hypothetical because I don't think that's going to happen. I really firmly believe that as we get the economy growing, and this tax plan will, government receipts will increase. As people have more jobs, as businesses are more profitable, the tax receipts for the federal government will go up.

RUSSERT: The tax receipts now are the lowest percent of GDP since 1959 after the first Bush tax cut. What makes you think that's going to change?

SNOW: Well, what's going to make it change is companies becoming more profitable, the stock market becoming more buoyant, more jobs. And as people have additional work, of course, they pay more taxes.

RUSSERT: And if you're wrong?

SNOW: Well, I'm not going to be wrong on this. We know that these tax proposals are going to create jobs and growth.

(Chas again) Okay, people ... you tell me. This is the guy in charge of our money, President's Bush's most trusted economic advisor. A guy who flip-flopped 180 degrees on the importance of the deficit the moment he got offered a government job. Do you trust him? Do you trust Bush's economic policies now that they've been explained to you?

Lost in the Apple Music Store

Not for the first time am I saying this: anybody reading this not running Mac OS X is missing out. Apple's new Music Service is just incredible, a dream come true for ethical people everywhere, a gold mine for the record companies and artists if they will just take advantage of it, and the death knell for overpriced corporate CD stores (but not mom-and-pop CD stores -- read on to see why).

There's a lot to explain for those of you not using Macs, but let me try to boil it down as much as possible.

In a single application (iTunes, which Windows users may finally get by the end of this year), I can buy music legally, listen to music, create MP3s etc, burn CDs, stream radio, share music throughout my network and so much more. The way it's been created and laid out means that anybody with any level of computer skills (or none at all) can do this, and the advantages are stupendous. There is no PC program that even comes close to the iTunes experience -- just ask any PC magazine.

A lot of PC people out there scratch their heads and wonder why anybody would pay for music anymore. They've been thieves for so long now they can't imagine paying for something when it's not nailed down. These are the people who never pay to support PBS, who steal office supplies from work by the dolly-full, and who grow up to run companies like Enron and vote Republican.

I'll try to explain why buying your music for 99 cents a track is a better idea:

ï Better selection. Apple's music service already has over 200,000 songs, with more being added constantly. Those of us who have moved beyond boy bands and teeny-pop queens will find a lot of goodies in every genre, including jazz and classical (and religious and spoken-word and blues and new age and so on). There's still a lot to do in this area, but give it a little time (or better yet, browse). You'll be pleasantly surprised at what's already there, and the obscure and indie artists are coming.

ï Pristine encoding. Apple's AAC file format sounds better than MP3s, particularly those stolen off services like Kazaa. No blips, no drop-outs, no glitches, no low-bitrate, no half-completed songs, and no mis-labelled stuff.

ï Fast. Those of you who steal music, have you ever thought about how long it takes you to really do this? First you have to connect to a p2p network, then you have to pray for a connection, then you have to find the song you want, at a decent bitrate, from a provider that looks like it's actually going to complete the download sometime today. Then you wait. And wait. And wait. And if you're very lucky, the song you just downloaded will play without glitches all the way to the end, and actually be the song that the title of the file says it is (constant problem).

In addition to stealing money out of the artists' pocket, you are also stealing money out of your own pocket! Isn't your time worth something to you? I'll wager that most of you are "paying" yourself less than $5/hour (iow, you're getting at most five good songs per hour spent) to steal music. And that's with a broadband connection, you dialup users can just dream on.

With Apple's service, I can locate, purchase and download whole albums in less time than it takes you to find a single song, and yes I feel good knowing that some of that money it going to the artist (as opposed to music thieves, who claim to be "fans" but who do not pay the artist one red cent for all their work).

ï Previews. You're not sure if that catchy new song you heard was Avril Lavagnie or some other faux-punk corporate "grrl" rocker. Now you can find out before downloading. Instant, high-quality 30-second previews on every track in the store.

ï One click. You find a song you like, you press one button and it's yours. Done. Easier than buying a book off Amazon. Or, if you prefer not to have it be that easy, you can take the "shopping cart" approach.

ï Artwork. Album cover artwork is included in every file.

ï Exclusive tracks and videos. You can't buy the videos (yet), but featured artists have a great platform to promote their work, and the use of exclusive tracks means new customers coming in every week.

ï Levels the playing field. No longer will your favourite but uncommercial artist have to worry about shelf space. No more having to spend years tracking down a beloved old song just because it's no longer in print or in style. No longer will you forget to buy a record you've wanted but slipped your mind because you haven't seen it in stores. Eventually, artists may decide to offer recordings directly through the Apple Store, bypassing "evil" record companies all together. Indie labels are clamoring to get in. This is more than just a new revenue stream for the parties involved, it's a (sorry) paradigm shift in how consumers can buy music. It will change the nature of the business forever.

ï Buy what you want, leave the rest. No more buying a $15 or more CD just to get the two or three songs you really love. Just buy the good stuff for .99/each and skip the rest. I should mention, however, that there is a discount for buying albums through the Apple Store -- most are $9.90 even if there are more than 10 tracks. This is a heck of a lot less than you can buy it in the store, and everybody still makes money. Instantly. From the comfort of your desk (or lap).

ï Format freedom. There's a lot of older folks (by that I mean beyond the 10-30 age demographic) who love older music but haven't bought a CD in years. They get by on oldies radio stations and complaining that the stores never have anything they like anymore. Well take a look at what Apple already has in Jazz and Classical and New Age and World Music and Inspirational and Folk and on and on and on. Sure it's hardly everything, but I think you'll be impressed.

ï Good kharma. In your heart you know you are hurting the artists you admire when you steal music and don't pay for it, and please don't give me that bullshit about how you only use the p2p services for checking out new bands. Yeah, right. Talk to the hand. You steal music and you keep it and you don't pay the artists for it.

Well now's your chance to make amends. I mean, sheesh, what's 99 cents? Would it kill you to buy a few tracks, an album or two? No it wouldn't, and it's the right thing to do. If everyone just steals music, the record industry collapses (yay!) and all your favourite artists go away (boo!) because there's no incentive for them to make music to earn a living. It's your moral obligation to pay for the things you use and keep. Apple has made it as easy as falling off a log. If nothing else, they should be rewarded for being the first corporate music enterprise that doesn't treat you like a criminal.

Which brings us to the big bugaboo that's got all the PC nerds up in arms -- DRM, or Digital Rights Management. Yes, the files from the Apple Music Store are protected. There are a few (extremely minor) restrictions on what you can do with them. I hear you yelling that all DRM is evil and you want totally unrestricted content or death. Yeah, whatever, Patrick Henry. The problem is that unrestricted files cause people to steal music and not pay the artist. If there wasn't some DRM in the file, you'd just rip the artist off. So there has to be DRM. End of discussion. The question is, how much DRM? Too much and the consumer finds it incredibly restrictive (see Microsoft's Windows Media Player ideas for more on truly restrictive DRM). Too little, and the record companies will never go along with it. The trick is to strike a balance between protecting the right of the record company (and artist) to prevent widespread theft, and the right of the consumer to put a purchased song pretty much any damn place he wants to.

Apple has hit exactly the right balance.

So, what can you do with a purchased track? You can burn it to all the audio CDs you want, no limit. You can put it on all the iPods you want (and future music devices that will play the AAC format), no limit (if you don't know about iPods, you've been living in a cave, daddy-o). You can stream it (not copy it) to any machine on your network (or even the internet), no limit. Share your purchased music with a friend, no problem -- you have the record companies' blessing. You can make all the backups of your purchased music that you want, no limit.

What can't you do? Well you can't make more than 10 copies of the exact same playlist (a sensible precaution to prevent album bootlegging). You can't (easily) re-rip the AAC file into an MP3 (which actually makes sense, since the AAC is already a compressed file and you'd lose some sound quality re-ripping it -- but for those who really have to, you can certainly do it). You can't keep copies of your purchased music on more than three computers (done to prevent p2p filesharing).

That's pretty much it. There, that wasn't so bad now was it?

I've heard a few whiners complain that .99/song is too much. It should be half that, or a quarter a pop, they say. To them, I quote the sage philosopher Penn Gillette: "Bullshit."

It's not magic fairies that deliver this incredible selection and elegant storefront to your home, it's millions upon millions of dollars and years of development costs. It all costs money and Apple is being really generous with the bandwidth (high-quality previews you can listen to all day with no obligation to purchase a damn thing). There's people involved, licenses to clear, artist (and evil record companies) to pay, and of course Apple would like to make a buck or two on the thing if that's okay with you. Albums on the iTunes Music Store cost a bit more than half their full (brick & mortar) retail price, but that's still not good enough for these folks? Bullshit. They wouldn't buy this stuff if it were a dime. They want it all, and they want it for free. They don't care about the artists, and they lack even the most basic moral compass to spare a thought for the consequences. The Apple Store not only can't stop these morally-bankrupt losers, it actively doesn't want them. People who don't understand the importance of ethics have never been welcome at Apple.

But what, you cry, about the poor independent CD store? What about them, I reply. The mom-and-pop stores have little to fear from Apple, and a lot more to fear from Worst Buy and Wal-Mart. People don't buy their top-40 crap from Park Ave. CDs, they buy them from Borders and Target. Indendent CD stores offer things the Apple Store either doesn't presently offer or can't offer: tiny indie labels, cutting-edge stuff, experimental formats like "special package" CDs, SuperCD Audio format disks, audioDVDs, music-related video DVDs/tapes, accessories and supplies and of course used CDs. Those stores will be fine. Border's and Barnes and Noble, on the other hand, had better start to think about what they want to do with the floorspace they now dedicate to music.

If you're still scratching your head over why people would pay to download music, consider this: in the first week, Apple sold 1,000,000 tracks. A million. And keep in mind that this service is limited to only Mac users running OS X 10.1.5 or higher (a minority even among Mac users!), who know about it and who live in the US. You're talking about a total theoretical audience (at the moment) of about 5 million people. How many tracks do you think Apple will be able to sell when they:

a) double the size of their music library?
b) open the store to Mac users outside the US?
c) bring in Windows users, who outnumber Mac users 10 to 1?

It's conceivable that Apple could be selling 5 million tracks a week, maybe more, by this time next year. Meanwhile the RIAA is going to continue suing pirates who run servers and shutting down p2p networks everywhere they can. They recently forced four students to pay them between $12,000 and $17,000 each for sharing music to their dorm. Still feeling good about breaking copyright law?

Apple's DRM and 99 cents a song starts to sound pretty good, doesn't it? I encourage you to check it out. If that means buying a Mac and an iPod (and at least for now, the Mac part is mandatory), believe me you'll thank me later.

I Mean, What Else is There to Say, Really?

U.S. says Canada cares too much about liberties.

"Some U.S. law enforcement officers (code phrase for "Attorney General John Ashcroft") have expressed concern about Canada's privacy laws."

You mean they still have some?