Consumer Rights:
There is an interesting new story about Sony's new DRM online, and it illustrates another of the many deceptions the big media companies use to skew perception. Just like piracy had nothing to do with the RIAA's fear of digital audio tape (they were really afraid musicians would be able to create their own masters without the studios), Sony's new DRM on their music compact disks has nothing to do with piracy either; it appears to have more to do with competition from Apple.

Sony/Columbia - this is disgusting. Get over it, you made the wrong call in the portable digital music market. Take your lumps and focus on what you do well, screens and video cameras. The age of the Walkman(tm) has been replaced with the age of the iPod(tm). Many of us have never been in the market for either device, but we collect compact disks from our favorite music artists; but only those disks without your crappy DRM inhibitions (I do play my cds on my Mac frequently, using iTunes).

Update: the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has an excellent web page on how to determine if your computer is impacted by the Sony XCP rootkit exploit, read more here (includes list of infected CDs).

Politics:

Campaign financing scandal alert! The Bob McDonnell campaign has been getting huge donations from the RLSC. The RLSC is not revealing who, in turn, it's own doners are until well after the Virginia Election is over. This violates the intent, if not the letter of Virginia's laws requiring full and solid disclosures of all contributions over $100. So what is Bob McDonnell hiding?

Waldo Jaquith has an excellent and detailed investigation reported here. As of today, candidate McDonnell has reported nothing about who these mystery contributers are, and his campaign site is full of lies about candidate Creigh Deeds, who has an excellent record working to strengthen our laws agaist offenders of all types. Mr Deeds's own campaign site has an appeal to the McDonnell campaign to abide by the intent of Virginia's laws and show us where the money is coming from here. Who's contributions are so tainted that McDonnell does not want us to know who is contributing until after the election?

More importantly, how important is it to Virginian voters that their next Attorney General actually abide by the laws he or she is supposed to enforce? I guess we'll find out November 8th.

Politics:

In case anyone still had doubts that the recent Kilgore advertizing blitz was nothing but a pack of lies, factcheck.org has a detailed exposure of the facts here. Basically it is nothing but a smear campaign. Tim Kaine would use the death penalty to enforce the law, even though he has misgivings about it. The truth about the Rosenbluth case was exposed by factcheck.org as well:

"In fact, Kaine didn't volunteer to represent the killer; an attorney in Kaine's law firm was routinely appointed by the court to handle the appeal. Kaine says he had almost no personal involvement in the case."

Sadly, with a few weeks still remaning until the November 8th election, Virginia voters are likely to get bombarded with a few more rounds of smear tactics and deception before this is all over with. Gotta go retch now.

Politics and Hypocrisy:

About two weeks ago a brochure arrived in my mailbox from a political candidate. This brochure made me very mad because of the very misleading statements sprinkled all over it. I have been speechless because I was so angry I wanted to settle down before posting about it, and someone far more eloquent than myself beat me to the punch in this past weekend's Washington Post. Thank you William E. Henry of Bristow, whomever you are, for an excellent and eloquent statement (2nd letter: "Taking Credit Not Due") of the feelings I share about the deceptions and hypocrisy of Delegate Robert G. Marshall.

Taking Credit Not Due

The epitome of hypocrisy arrived in my mailbox Tuesday! It was a four-color brochure extolling the virtues of Del. Robert G. Marshall (R-Prince William) in meeting the transportation needs in our area.

Surely this can't be the same Mr. Marshall who voted no on the recent bipartisan tax increase enacted by the General Assembly to keep Virginia solvent and its highly valued triple-A bond rating. Surely this can't be the Del. Marshall who has offered little or no leadership in meeting the fiscal needs of the state. Surely this must be the same Mr. Marshall whose main mission in Richmond has been to attempt to write Catholic dogma concerning abortion into state law. That, of course, would mandate that every woman of childbearing age in Virginia would have to follow the dictates of the Vatican concerning her own body!

His brochure is cleverly presented. It features four-color photographs of transportation work in action, as if he had anything to do with any of it. The accompanying letter features such phrases as "we directed" and "we designated" such and such. What he is saying, however, is the General Assembly enacted the enabling road legislation. The record clearly shows that Del. Marshall voted no on the GOP-Democrat-sponsored tax increase and appropriations measure that provides the money to make such road work possible!

It is obvious that his generally extremist political stance is causing him a bit of trouble in running for reelection. He even cites Gov. Mark R. Warner (D) and Sen. Charles J. Colgan (D-Prince William) in his mailing. He even mentions Del. Harry J. Parrish (R-Manassas), who was the only member of the Prince William delegation to vote for the tax increase and appropriations bill. (Parrish quickly became the target of ultra-conservative Republicans to defeat in the upcoming election.) The whole Del. Marshal mailing is a cleverly conceived campaign piece that flies in the face of reality, if not ethics.

Nice try, Mr. Marshall. But I suspect Prince William voters are too smart and sophisticated to be taken in by such not-so-subtle trickery.

Beautifully said, Mr. Henry! I hope to be as well spoken (or written) someday. I'd like to add a more detailed list of my specific objections to Delegate Marshalls deceptive letter and brochure. Let's start with the letter, in which Delegate Marshall attempts to discredit his challenger, Bruce Roemmelt (though neither Delegate Marshall, nor Mr. Henry actually mentions the name of the challenger in this race for the Delegate seat in the legislature):

So far he has raised $116,000, much of it from out of state.

According to VPAP only $6,016 of the $107,526 recorded so far is from out of state. My little calculator says that is a smidge under 5.6% of the challenger's contributions. How does that constitute "much of" unless Delegate Marshall is deliberately and unethically attempting to mislead us about his opponent?

Delegate Marshall's brochure goes on to cite many road projects that he did not have anything to do with, aside from being a member of the legislature when the project was underway! Sorry Delegate Marshall, but as Mr. Henry stated in his letter to the editor, this Prince William County (and district 13) voter is too smart to be taken in by your deceptive and misleading brochure. A quick comparison of what you will do compared to what Mr. Roemmelt will do is online at ReduceTraffic.org now, and the choice is pretty clear. It is time for change.

Making Science out of what was Science Fiction:

Wow - yesterday brought the amazing news that transparent aluminum, as depicted in Star Trek IV (aka: Save the Whales) is close to reality, sort of (they are actually talking about super-strong, transparent ceramics).

Topping that, today brings us the news that flexible electronic paper displays, like those described in Neal Stephenson's "Snow Crash" is closer to reality. That's really cool!

Is this Sci-Fi becomes Sci-Fact week or something?

Dancing:

In general I like the trend amongst advertisers that have finally figured out that dancing is cool! Recently I have seen Michelin tire commercials and BASF commercials with Tango dancing. Now there is this re-make of the old Gene Kelly "Singing in the Rain" number from Volkswagon (Golf GTI Commercial). Pretty awesome dance moves, though one friend as issues with the intellectual property rights being abused by advertisers. I have not given that much thought, but do appreciate the dance moves.

Politics:

So the Virginia State General Election is only a month away. This week is the deadline to register to vote for this election (so if you are not registered, register right now). It is astonishing to me that Jerry "the crook" Kilgore has been able to keep up with Tim Kaine this long. In any sane state, the crook would have fallen behind the excellent candidate months ago, but not in Virginia... sigh. Please go vote! Turnout is usually low for state office elections, so your vote counts for more this year than in a national election as it is compared to fewer other votes.

The Kilgore campaign is afraid to debate. They know their candidate will be exposed as an unacceptable extremist, so they have only allowed debates that are out of state (the first debate was in West Virginia, and video cameras were not allowed) or restricted to remote areas where the video of the debate is prohibited from being published or broadcast over a wide area. Jerry knows he can't stand up to the reason and maturity of Tim Kaine, so he simply is not allowing the voters to see the two of them side by side.

If you do not think state officials have an impact in your lives, check out HB 1807 (Creates a Class 6 felony for providing a minor with a contraceptive or contraceptive device if the person knows or has reason to believe that the minor is engaging in sexual relations with a person three or more years older than the minor). This bill would make it a felony for my brother to provide his teen aged daughter condoms if she is dating twenty something boyfriend. Think about that.

No, really, think about that for a minute. If your teenaged daughter was dating a 22 year old boyfriend, wouldn't you want them to have birth control available? How are they going to get it without your consent and help? Our state already makes it difficult for teenagers to get birth control. The only reason I bring up my brother and niece is because my neice at 16 was dating a 20 year old. A felony? Please go vote some sanity into the house of delegates. Vote this November 8th, and get the patron of HB 1807, and all his "yea" voting companions out of our lives.

Fun:

Last night we went to see Serenity at WorldGate. For all you Firefly fans out there, it was awesome, though also more than a little sad. "That Evil Joss" pulls off several more of the bait the viewer and then surprise the view stunts he became famous for in the Buffy, Angel, and Firefly TV shows. There are several surprises, more Alliance history is explained and Reavers are no longer such a mystery. This is mostly a show about Mal and River, and a new character, who is quite compelling, though very scary.

If you are a fan of good Science Fiction, you must go see this movie, it is impressive. It combines rich, deep characters with action and story. Unlike so many movies, some good guys to get killed, and that is where the sadness comes in.

I believe this movie will be great even if you never saw the Firefly TV shows, though some of the depth in the characters may not show through. For fans, it shines. Now I have to get some dinosaur toys to glue to my own "console" (my monitors and desk at work).