Despite the fact that he's an avowed atheist, a convicted murderer, and a card-carrying member of the KKK and proud of it, KY's really a nice guy most of the time. Like me, he's been trying to get Amy to give up her horrible lifestyle. Unlike me, he has ulterior motives.

He's a few years older than me, and his nickname, which everyone uses, comes from the fact that his home state is Kentucky. "I haven't had a hard on for five years, but damn that girl gives me wood!" he told me.

She was in rehab after she and her new husband had been staying at the Salvation Army homeless shelter. To stay there you have to attend church services, and her husband, who was as atheist as KY is, found God there and kept going to church even after he no longer had to. I've been trying to bring Amy to God for years, with little apparent effect.

One Saturday while she was in rehab, which KY had been happy to see, he and I were in Felbers having a beer. "I'm gonna break her out of rehab," he said. Only half jokingly, of course. But he got his wish when Amy called. "I'm on your porch," she said. "Where are you?"

"Why aren't you in rehab?" I asked. She was supposed to have been there for three months, after being hospitalized for a mental breakdown and spending two weeks at McFarland's, a looney bin on Springfield's far south end.

"I just left, I'll tell you about it. Come get me!" So I did.

"We're not supposed to have phones, but a guy had a smuggled cell phone and let me use it, and I called Tim's work and they told me they fired him for no call no show. I know he's out on a binge..."

"Yeah? So now you have to, too?"

"Take me to the bar and buy me a beer!"

She crashed on my couch most of the week, unable to find her hubby. I mostly listened to her sob stories and of course asked if she'd go to church with me on Easter. By the time Easter weekend came around she'd made the choice to be baptized. She finally found Tim, who had indeed gone on a binge (he's as bad as she is) and lost his job, but had another one at Gabatoni's by the third street tracks.

Friday after work we went to Felbers -- I wanted some reefer and there's usually quite a few potheads there. I couldn't find any, so after two beers we went home. Going up Ash street a black fellow in a minivan decided he was going to pass the car in front of him and swerved into me, not bothering to see if anybody was there. I slammed on the brakes and swerved to the right, but since there's a curb and a sidewalk he still hit me.

Amy got out of the car when I did. "My neck! I'm hurt!"

"Bullshit," I said. "Shut the fuck up and get back in the car!"

The black fellow was profusely apologetic and said that it was OK and that he had insurance, but he seemed really nervous, and I got the sense that he didn't want any police involvement. "Should I call 911?" he said.

I shrugged. "That side of the car's already messed up anyway, so it's up to you." The look of relief on his face was indescribable, and he started thanking me profusely, putting out his hand. I shook it and he asked if there was anything he could do. "Are you a Christian?" I asked. He answered in the affirmative, so I said "visit West Side Christian Church this Sunday." He promised he would, and Amy and I went home and put a movie in.

I was home before I realized he'd knocked my mirror off. Shoulda called the cops...

The next morning was the Saturday after Good Friday, and I make it a tradition to watch Passion of the Christ on that day, since it spans Good Friday to Easter. Easter is, after all our holiest of days.

As usual, when they were beating the shit out of Jesus with the cat-o-nine-tails and blood was splattering everywhere and his poor mother looking on (damn but that woman is a good actress) I had tears streaming down my face. Few movies have ever brought me to tears, but that one always does. Amy ran to the bathroom and puked.

That is the most intense movie I've ever seen. What other movie has no sex, no nudity, no vulgar language, yet still carries an R rating? Gibson's good, but he outdid himself on that film. Pity he's such an anti-Semite.

Amy had a hard time with the scene in The Jackal when Jack Black gets his arm blown off, too.

Stomach emptied, she came back to the couch watching the crowd screaming "crucify him!" and said "I wish I had something clean to wear to church tomorrow."

"Don't worry, God'll make sure you're ok. Just pray," I said. She bowed her head.

Five minutes later the door knocked. "I'll bet that's Tim," she said. I opened the door, and Connor was there. They had been together before she met Tim, and had a lot of her belongings -- a WHOLE lot, and was holding them hostage. He'd wanted her back.

But not any more. He was cursing and screaming at her as she brought in half a dozen trash bags filled with clothes, shoes, purses, makeup, and stuff like that. He left.

"I didn't expect that!" she said, grinning ear to ear.

"Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition" I replied.

Woosh. She's not a Monty Python fan.

"Wow... just wow. God sure does work in mysterious ways!" she said. I smiled. After the movie we went to Felbers for a couple of beers, and she excitedly talked to anyone who would listen about the miracle, minor that it was, that she'd just experienced. And I found someone with a bag of pot for sale.

I was looking forward to getting her dunked the next day.

We got to church and sat down at a pew, filled in the cards; it's a huge, rich church on the town's west side and unlike a smaller church where the preacher sees all twenty of the people in his congregation, thousands attend West Side, and the cards are their only way of telling who comes regularly.

Before I found West Side I went to church because I felt I should. At West Side, it's the highlight of my week. If it were a house of mammon rather than a house of worship, tickets would go for a hundred dollars each and the place would be even more packed than it is. But of course, it's free. As is the coffee there. You can't help but smile and be in a good mood in that place!

The professional stage lighting came up and the professional (except on Sunday, when they work for free) singers and musicians started playing, and every song seemed to be aimed at Amy. I had tears of joy, and I don't remember that ever happening before.

"Good morning, West Side," the preacher said. "Good morning, Eddie," the congregation replied. The sermon that week was "when life doesn't go like you planned," and Amy's life sure hadn't. Not ever. It was as if his sermon was directed at her personally, just as the music had been.

When the singing before communion started, we made our way to the waterside room to see about getting her baptized. I went back for communion as she talked with Chip, one of the church's staff, who gave her a bible, a DVD, and other materials (one of which was West Sides 12 step program).

As we walked back to the car, she said "Wow. Just wow. That was really something! I really like Abundant Faith" where she and Tim had been going, "but wow. I REALLY love your church!"

The baptism will be next week, God willing, and we're hoping it will be a double baptism, with both her and Tim.

She hasn't been drunk yet this week.

The Lord works in mysterious ways -- and nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition.

Composer and orchestra baton twirler Aaron Copeland wrote a piece that was printed at the RIAA web site fragging file sharers and defending his RIAA masters against allegations of greed with a hastily penned ditty that you can't dance to called "Are Record Labels Greedy?"

        What's the difference between a bass player and a pizza? A pizza can feed a family of four.

        I mentioned on April Fools day that Copeland's article was a rebuttal of my piece, but it WAS April fool's. Actually, I think he was arguing Courtney Love's celebrated Salon piece from early last year (or the year before?) titled "Courtney does the math" which I unfortunately can't find; if one of you kind folks will send me a URL I'll link it here. The gist of Love's treatise was that after expenses, she'd be better off working at Hardees while her label and its executives were making millions of dollars a year. And backed up her allegations with numbers.

        Copeland (or his ghost writer) writes, "The amount of accusations of greed and ineptness leveled at record companies recently is only half as shocking as the record industry's meekness at defending itself."

        Meekness? At defending itself? Is there anybody in this industry that can't tell a bald faced lie with a straight face? Sheesh, compared to Hillary Rosen's diatribes and legal warfare, George Bush is "meekly" defending the nation against terrorism. WTF has Copeland been smoking? Perhaps he's talking not about the music industry but about the gun or tobacco companies?

        "The public has been led to believe that CDs are highly overpriced by greedy companies who are also stealing from the artist in their thirst for profit."

        Led to believe? No, we don't have to be "led to believe" it. All we have to do is buy a stack of blank CDs for the price of a single RIAA offering, then buy an indie CD for a fifth of the price to know that the label's CDs are overpriced.

        Copeland seems to think that his industry's usary prices are the reason for p2p song swapping- "Therefore it is quite okay for everyone to download freely on Napster or some other vehicle to redress this 'evil.'"

        No, it would be ok even if the industry could somehow sell CDs for two bucks each. MP3s are worthless; Copeland's rant is worthless, this site is worthless. The entire internet is worthless- from a financial point of view. There is no money to be made s obscene raps and Ringo's and Cher's "singing".

        He babbles on about how these bands are only being teenagers (or some such nonsense)- "The world of rock & roll has always played on its anti-establishment origins. Rich rock stars are a somewhat 'embarrassing' phenomena, so they want to retain their popular roots and revolutionary anti-establishment ethic."

        So why is the heavy metal, "antiestablishment" Metallica for his cause? If what Copeland says wasn't utter bullshit, Metallica would be on Courtney's and The Offspring's sides, not Copeland's.

        "With the advent of Napster and other downloaded technology, we all - artist, record company and the public itself - have to take a step back and say 'What does this all mean?'

        It means a free ride for that dumbass Copeland- except he is there, like Metallica, and no longer needs a ride, free or paid. Mp3s are free advertising. MP3s are better than the radio. MP3s sell CDs! The only trouble for the record industry is that they sell as many or more indie CDs than label CDs.

        "For the artists, biting the hand that feeds them will soon mean that the hand won't be there to bite anymore. For the public, there will always be music, but the music available will change its content and quantity. Live bands will survive, but those that are largely studio animals depending on record sales will become an endangered species. When sources of income diminish in variety, music variety will also diminish."

        You know, after fifty damned years of the same lies, from "cassettes will kill the music industry" to "VCRs will kill movies" the lie is getting pretty danmned old. Again and again this bullshit is shown to be the same stale stinking pile of hardened cow turds and they keep expecting us to swallow it. If the "record industry" dies than good riddance! They are morally bankrupt, greedy, indicted felons who hire the likes of Snoop Doggy and Ice T and call them "artists".

        What about "largely studio animals?" You mean the studio musicians playing sax and cello that bands used to hire before the sampling midi synthesizers put them out of business? Or are you referring to the likes of Milli Vanilli who need a "ghost singer?" Or those pop sensations my daughter Leila listens to who need a computer to clean up their lack of range, dynamics, and to splice out the bad takes?

        If you can't play live you shouldn't call yourself a musician. Hell, I decided against a music career in my youth, after learning guitar, when I decided I liked weekends off and didn't like working New Year's Eve- because THAT is what it means to be a musician.

        Besides, who are these bands who never play live (besides Steely Dan?)

        "The accusation that record companies have been slow to respond to the Internet may be a valid one, but there is good reason for this. We can't figure out how to make a business out of it, pay royalties (honor the contracts we already have with the artists) and not lose our shirts. The funny thing is, NEITHER CAN ALL THE INTERNET GENIUSES. They are going bankrupt, left, right and center. Most Internet companies seem more like stock market scams than real businesses. I have a strong suspicion that the Internet revolution will turn out to be like the French Revolution. The revolutionaries will spend much energy and talk about overthrowing the "old regime," only to soon find themselves with their heads in the guillotine."

        I don't expect the lame Mr. Copeland to understand business any more than me, as he is a conductor and not an MBA, but it doesn't take a business genius to understand that not every business expense has to bring revenue directly.

        They can't "figure out how to make a business out of" advertising, either. But they pay millions for it. They pay all sorts of incidental expenses to help sell product, from electricity to Armani suits. And the thing about the MP3s is an MP3 costs nothing for the label to produce. The record has been cut and sold, one person spending ten minutes in front of a PC turns those big CD sound files into MP3s.

        They were "slow to respond" because they didn't have to. Napster went strong for two years before the Labels sued them, likely cheering them on, as Napster sold millions of CDs for them. During the time Napster flourished, so did CD sales.

        The industry only "took notice" of the internet when the bands NOT tied to the labels started selling- without industry help, and at a greatly reduced price. Suddenly, despite rising sales, Napster was somehow hurting business.

        Now you know HOW it was hurting business.

        Notice he mentions "pay royalties (honor the contracts we already have with the artists)". Tell me, Mr. Copeland, why didn't the label allow The Offspring to post their entire Original Prankster CD on their web site as MP3s?

        No, the record industry is run by a bunch of greedy scumbags who make way too much money at the expense of me, you, and the musicians we support with our ticket and CD purchases. The industry as we know it will die (barring their ability to buy their way out with political bribery), and no one will miss them or the trash they call "music" one bit.

  4/4/2002 Springfield Fragfest

Previously...

"I don't know what this is going to mean," Gumal said, "but the number guys say something's terribly wrong. As wrong as two plus two equaling five and having it be the correct answer. Something to do with reality not agreeing with itself."

Rority laughed. "You mean like going back in time and shooting your grandfather before your father was conceived?" He laughed even louder.

"No, seriously, that's exactly... well, not exactly it, but close. Things that happen didn't, and things that didn't, did. Like, their maths say that I don't mind being noboticly manipulated into a protohuman."

"But 'paradoxes', as the ancients called them, don't exist in the real universe. They can't. No matter how hard you tried, even if you could go back that short of time without the feedback destroying your ship, no matter how hard you tried you couldn't kill him. It's a law of physics."

"Not being able to go faster than light was once a law of physics," Gumal answered.

"Yes, but the protohuman Einstein got his math right, it was just that we discovered ways around the roadblocks."

Rority's Guiness hit the floor with a crash. "What the... Gumal! I can't see!"

Gumal didn't answer. "Gumal? Where are you?"

As bad as going blind is to protohumans, it's even worse for neohumans. Neohumans don't get sick; not any kind of sick. The nobots repair any damage to any cell before it has a chance to cause real damage, so going blind is unthinkable for a neohuman. For the first time in his life... indeed, the first time in anybody's lives for millions of years, Rority was scared. Not just scared, terrified. He got up cautiously, and it seemed his chair felt different than it did when he could see. He stretched his arms out and groped in the direction Gumal had been sitting -- and hit a solid surface.

Well, almost solid. It felt kind of like cloth, sort of soft. He heard what almost sounded like muffled screams on the other side of the barrier. He pushed harder and the obstacle gave way. "Gumal?"

"Who's there?" a voice said in the darkness. And... it seemed to Rority that it wasn't quite as dark now. There was a tiny bit of greenish light that he could almost see by. He saw that he was in a sort of cube, maybe five meters to a side, and there was a hole in it where he'd pushed through.

"It's Rority, is that you, Gumal? I can't see!"

"No, my name's Gromwel. I don't know any Gumal. I can't see, either. You say your name's Rority?"

"Yeah," he replied. "I was sitting here drinking a beer with my partner Gumal and everything went black."

"Same here, I was playing Babel with my friend Ornda and it went black and she's gone!"

"What in the spacetime continuum could have happened?"

"I don't know, but I think the nobots stopped working. Do you know any good programmers?"

Rority said "Dunno, maybe programmers wouldn't be any help. The nobots seem to be completely gone. And so is the world."

"The world's not gone, but I don't know where we are. I was outside and now apparently I'm not. And I think I can see now... a little... but it seems really dark in here, wherever 'here' is."

They both started tearing at the fabric, which sparked faintly with every tear. An hour later they'd discovered a dozen other people in similar cubes. One of them was an expert in nobotics, who said his name was Noob. "I'd think it was an EMP that did this, but how in the hell could an EMP blast through this? At any rate I don't have the tools I need to research it. It also appears that they didn't teach me everything about nobots, and I hold a PhD!"

Gromwell snickered. "Everybody holds a PhD!"

"Yes," Noob said, "but mine is in nobotics. What's your field?"

"I'm an ortholinguarian."

"Really? You study the language of birds?"

"Yep. Not much use in this situation, is it? What should we do? The air doesn't seem to be getting thinner, and there's a tiny bit of light. Find more people?"

As they discussed the situation, Gumal stared at Rority, who sat there like a stone, not even breathing. "Rority? You OK?" He got up and walked over to him and lifted Rority's hand -- which came off in a shower of nobotic dust before disintegrating, along with the rest of Rority.

"Shit!" Gumal exclaimed. "Rority's a nobotic robot! Newspaper!" he ordered, and a "book" appeared in his hand, risen from Rority's ashes. The headline read "supernova almost wipes out life in southern hemisphere." Gumal swore again and read on, not thinking of the conversation he'd been having with the apparently now-deceased Rority, only how much he was going to miss his friend and partner. Then he realized where he was -- he was visiting Rority at Rority's place. Why was there a robot impersonator? And why did it stop? He called Ragwell, a nobot programmer he often drank and stratodoobed with.

"I can only talk a second," Ragwell said. "Really busy. Half the nobots on the planet are dead, and we're starting to learn that reality isn't real."

"Huh?" Gumal asked, puzzled. "Isn't that the math boy's domain?"

"No, that's not what I meant," Ragwell said. "I mean that you're not where you think you are. The supernova unearthed evidence that millions of years ago we stopped face to face communications and all live in nobot fantasies that are actually just cubes containing us. Nothing you've ever done in your life is real. Nothing. It's all a farce!"

"So, what do we do?"

"Now? Study. Live nobots are already rebuilding the matrix on the southern hemisphere and we hope that even though the EMP from the nova knocked the nobots out, maybe they were enough of a shield to keep radiation harmful to us out. Now I have to go, I need to get trillions of nobots to the other hemisphere so if there are survivors they'll have food, drink, and medical attention for the radiation poisoning they may have suffered."

"Wait! How do I get out of the fantasy? What do you mean by 'matrix'?"

"It's a matrix of cubes made from nobots. Getting out is what we're working on now. I'll call."

Continues...

Note: I was going to post a new chapter to "Everything You Know Is Wrong" today, but I can't find the thumb drive it was on. I hope I left it at work. If so I'll post it Monday, if not I'll have to rewrite it and it will probably be a few more days. Sorry. Here's a ten year old post about Linux to hold you over.

        Yes, the newest game I've been playing lately is Linux.
        So far I have it fully installed (kinda) and running (mostly, I think).
        Linux is most definitely NOT "harder than Windows". There seems a bit of nonsense is being regurgitated by people who haven't even tried Linux.
        One is that it's more like DOS than Windows, and you have to use a command line and memorize a bunch of arcane commands.
        Nope, I haven't seen a Linux command line since I installed Mandrake 8.1. I could if I wanted to, but so far there's been no need.
        I discovered a "Mandrake Control Center" (actually, it was an icon on the desktop) that configured my DSL pretty much automatically. Windows won't do that; you have to run SBC's program to make DSL work in Windows.
        When I said "kinda sorta" working, I mean I haven't got the local network working. But that's more Windows fault than Linux.
        It's set up to use DHCP, which is a dynamically configured host (what, in fact, "DHCP" stands for). The Windows network is set up with a static IP address for each machine, and I don't want to have to reconfigure every machine on the network whenever I want to switch from Windows to Linux or back on the DSL computer.
        So far, there have been no nasty surprises; I imagine I'll need Samba or something to get the networking right.
        CRAP, as soon as I said that the cursor jumped to yesterday's topic on this XP laptop. Plenty of nasty surprises in Windows.
        There are a lot of things I've discovered about Linux that have no Windows counterpart.
        I have an on-board video chip, which I superseded with a TNT card. When installing, it asked me if I wanted to choose one, or just use both. You can't do that in Windows!
        When I first bought Windows 95 I set it up to not use a password; it wasn't connected to any other machine. When I got WWWed, I had to enter a password again. With Windows you have to password in. Linux figures it's possible this isn't a corporate machine, and lets me configure it to enter the password for me; so not only do I not have to remember a password, I can use a super strong one I could never remember If I were forced to! I can plug in the PC, pour a cup of coffee, and have Netscape or Konquerer (or any of half a dozen other browsers installed by default) open Spew or Sgt Hulka's for me without as much as touching the mouse, let alone the keyboard!
        When it boots, it checks the atomic clock at a university and sets my PC's clock to within a millisecond. The other two computers are always off by a minute or two, as you have to log in to the atom clock manually with them, so they only get set twice a year.
        But perhaps the nicest thing is I don't have to reboot to make a change take effect.
        One down side to Linux I've found is- it's a damned good thing you don't have to reboot. It takes forever to get to its desktop.
        One more thing- no damned registry! WooHoo!!!

Springfield Fragfest 3/24/2002

Sorry there haven't been any good, new JEs lately, but life gets in the way. Patty's cat died, and she blames me for the elderly cat's demise. I'm not going to write about that, it's painful to think about. Calie was always by the door waiting for me when I got home, and I miss her. Been trying to shake the blues.

I could never be a professional writer. A pro sits down and hacks out something readable, and on demand. I can't. I have to have the muse hit me, or at least a new idea, I have to be in the right mood, then when I write, well, I don't know how to write. I just do it, and then read it, change what I don't like, rinse, repeat, until I'm either satisfied with it or bored of it.

The time travel stories have hit a dead end. They're to the point that they're not as much fun to write as they kind of almost write themselves, boringly, they are contradictory so fitting them into a book would be hard... an the muse seemed to have left for a while.

And then last night in a reefer and beer haze, a story that had been rattling around my head unwritten for a long time came to the surface and I realized that it would fit Rority's world perfectly, explain the contradictions, and take the story to a whole new place. A real plot twist is coming.

New time travel story tomorrow; it's almost done now.

The crusty old science fiction writer Harlan Ellison used to be one of my favorites.
        Used to be.
        I don't think I'll buy any more of his books. I've decided I don't want my money supporting his cause or his lifestyle.
        Ellison has sued AOL because a fellow named Stephen Robertson posted Ellison's stories on AOL's usenet service.
        I'd give the surly old bastard a break if he had stopped at Robertson and the newsgroup, even though I think "fair use" ought to cover posting stuff online. My view is that copyrights are supposed to (rightly) keep me from selling Ellison's work, not giving it away; does Ellison want to abolish libraries? Erm, prolly...
        At any rate, as I said I'd give him a break except for the AOL suit. The single bright point in the DMCA, IMO the worst US law written in the last fifty years, is that it holds ISPs blameless for stuff posted on their servers; responsibility lies, as it should be, with the poster.
        Ellison apparently doesn't give any more of a rat's ass about the law than the people selling XP CDs in Singapore. All he cares about is his filthy lucre.
        Fortunately, the judge in the case does give a rat's ass about the law and found in AOL's favor. It's my hope AOL countersues the ornery old son of a bitch into the poorhouse under the guise of "fighting a nuisance suit". to keep his fellow hacks from this sort of tomfoolery.
        Normally I'm 100% against this kind of suit, but Ellison has chosen his side- and the side he chose was the dark side.
        So screw him, I'm not reading any more Ellison, let alone buying any. I may erase that tape with "City on the Edge of Forever," Ellison's contribution to the Star Trek franchise. You know the one, that tape Paramount would like to label me a felon for taping? Despite the fact that the Home Recording Act legalized it?
        Imagine, this old geezer wants me to pay him for "work" he performed long before I was born! The DMCA isn't the only thing wrong with 21st century copyright laws.
        I have perhaps a dozen or two of Isaac Asimov's 500+ books. I'd like to have a copy of all of them. I'd especially like to fill out the Foundation series, which he pretty much tied together before he died.
        But I can't. These books are not available. Not at all. They are out of print, and will be out of print forever unless Asimov's widow, who he married after he wrote most of them, lets them be published and a publisher thinks they would make money.
        If copyright law were what it was when Harlan Ellison (or at least Asimov, who was older iirc) was born, these works- all of the late Asimov's and a lot of Ellison's, would now be in the public domain.
        But our politicians, always on the lookout for campaign cash, sold out to MGM and the Disney corporation all throughout the last century, and extended the copyright from the constitutional "for a limited time", less than twenty years, to the author's lifetime plus ninety five years! So those Asimov books I don't have I'll never get to read again. Franklin is spinning in his grave.
        There was a hobo poet in the early 20th century named Vachel Lindsay. He is little known outside the Springfield, IL area.
        His son has reissued Lindsay's work, and "cleaned up the grammar" to make the hundred year old speech palatable to 21st century ears. You may not see any of these works as they were originally written. You can only see a hackneyed, contemporary rewrite lacking all of the original's flavor.
        This is NOT what the Founding Fathers wanted. It isn't what I want either. Unfortunately, we do not live in a Democratic Republic, where all people are equal under the law, but in a Plutocratic Republic where access to the law costs cash, where the more money you have, the more you are worth in all senses of the word "worth".
        Regardless, like Don Quixote tilting at his windmills I still vainly write my congresscritters asking that if we are to have these insanely unconstitutional copyright lengths, the very least these buggers can do is to make sure they are only protecting an author's money, and not giving his heirs the right to censor his work after he has died.
        I'm asking you to join me in writing your legislators. Mine don't even listen to me and I can vote against them. I can't vote against Orren Hatch, much as I'd like to. So if you can vote against Hatch, please do, and let him know why you did. We need to adjust copyright law one more time.
        Any work which is not commercially available after its first publication should immediately go into the public domain. With our insane copyright lengths and the even more insanely evil DMCA, we are in danger of losing our artistic, literary, and musical heritage.
        This greedy insanity needs to stop now! We are giving authors a four generation monopoly; we should expect a little in return! Springfield Fragfest 3/19/2002

I got home from work the week before last to find two Amerin trucks outside my house. One of the guys in one of them said they'd shut off the neighborhood's gas, since a backhoe had ruptured the line when they were installing a new sidewalk down the street. It was back on in half an hour, and one of them lit my water heater's pilot.

Amy dropped by before I left for work the next day and asked if she could use the phone in the morning to call some social service agencies. I said "sure". When I got back for lunch, she said "Leila called, she sounded like she was crying. I think it was Leila." Regular readers know that Futurama spelled my oldest daughter's name wrong. In fact, that's not all they got wrong -- her sister Patty is the mutant, not Leila. An it isn't one eye, it's one kidney.

Their mother has recently converted to the cult of Mormon. That really upset Patty, because when her mother remarried she couldn't attend the wedding, as you have to be Mormon to enter a Mormon church.

Mormons aren't Christians no matter what they say. Patty had called me once, worried because her mother told her you can't get in heaven unless you're baptized. Coincidentally, there's a TV preacher that answers bible questions written in by viewers, and one asked him the very same thing. He pointed out that Jesus told the repentant but unbaptized thief who was on the next cross, "on this day you will be with me in paradise."

That damned woman left ten years ago and she's still causing trouble.

Patty called back that evening, cursing me because Amy had answered the phone. Then she showed up at the door the following Sunday, shortly after I got home from church and had popped open a beer to listen to the blues show on WQNA that an old friend DJs. She cursed me for an hour before getting her sister to visit my mother. Cursing me for drinking, for the house being messy, for having an auto accident a month ago, everything. When she got back in town with her sister she continued the beration.

It wasn't fun, and I had a hard time holding my tongue. I felt like slapping the brat. She's been having a hard time making it on her own, but it's no excuse to take it out on me.

The next morning at work the phone rang. It was leila, in tears, crying so hard I could barely understand what she was trying to say. She'd broken her headphones and her sister had gone off on her about the headphones, when she should have been sympathetic. "And she was out until 4:00 AM drinking," Leila said. That after berating ME for drinking!

She went back to Cincinnati and I took Leila to get a new pair of headphones.

That weekend Amy dropped by again, crying. Jesus, what is it with these teary eyed women and their drama, anyway? Her new husband Tim had told her to meet him halfway to where he said he was, and he wasn't even there. Amy has clinical depression and hadn't been taking her meds, and I wound up taking her to the hospital to keep her from committing suicide. If you're on an SSRI, don't stop taking them or the result may be suicide. If you're not on them, don't start unless you're already suicidal -- the only time in my life I ever contemplated doing myself in was when the doctor took me off Paxil while my house was being foreclosed. Nasty stuff!

That night tornados hit Illinois, Kentucky, Indiana, and Ohio, and a few other states as well. They were very close to the GameStop Patty works at in Kentucky. The tornados seemed to calm Patty right down, and we've had pleasant email exchanges since.

She's worried about her customers, many of whom surely have lost everything, if they're even still alive. We both went through the twin tornados that hit here in March 2006 so she knows what they're like and what they can do. Pray you are never in one. Being inside a tornado is like being inside a giant blender.

Today I got an email from her saying that God is indeed watching over her. Since her car broke down irreparably, she's been taking the bus to work. Yesterday she overslept, so called a friend for a ride.

The bus stop blew up right where she would have been standing right when she would have been standing there. She didn't say what caused the explosion, my guess is a broken gas line.

Maybe someone wants to keep her on her toes...

In yesterday's Hackers Nab Unreleased Michael Jackson Tracks From Sony Someone made a comment that artists and writers don't owe the public anything, and it seemed as if this guy was in favor of perpetual copyright and letting authors do what they wanted with their work. I responded with a quote from the US Constitution, and got not one but two flamebait mods. Here is the comment:

I'm sorry, is "society" really entitled to everything a person created, ever? Even if they themselves never published it to the world?

Yes. Article 2, section 8 of the US Constitution:

The Congress shall have power to... promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;

Copyright is granted in order for more works to become the public domain's. I don't own the stories I write, you do, as does everyone else. I merely have a limited time monopoly on its publication.

My opinion is that, no, society isn't entitled to everything

Your opinion is completely unimportant. It doesn't matter of your opinion is that the sky is green, it's still not green. Your opinion is ignorant and wrong.

And I'd like to add that were copyright lengths sane, this stuff wouldn't be locked up in the first place.

I'm wondering how anyone could construe that comment as flamebait? I have no worries about karma, few of my comments get modded down. But this downmod puzzles me. Someone from the MAFIAA had mod points yesterday? Or did I say somthing that I didn't realise I said?

Reuters and the rest of the mainstream news media would like for you to believe that they are impartial and unbiased.
        They're not. Nobody is. Not even me. (but you knew that, right?)
        Reuters posted a "news" story (at least I don't call my opinion pieces "news" for God's sake, it's nooze, dammit!) quoting a movie industry flak as saying "Our content must be protected from unencrypted, illegal file sharing... We're in the process of raising a generation to think that stealing is okay." No where in the story was there any semblance of balance. No where in the story was there the tiniest hint that maybe this guy's opinion was the utter bullshit it is. Nowhere was the existence of an opposing opinion mentioned at all!
        I don't believe the industry believes its own lies. The RIAA certainly must be aware of the organized boycott against its wares, but it deliberately avoids mention of said boycott when it says patently stupid things like "the current downturn in record buying is Napster's fault". Of course, sales soared during Napster and plummeted with Napster's demise and the onslaught of the boycott against mainstream CDs (Keep buying those Pietasters CDs), but reading Reuters or the RIAA's own (unlinked here) site you would think we were still in a good economy and that there was no boycott.
        Millions of people will see the Reuters article with its disingenuous opinion presented as fact. Only dozens will see this piece. Ok, maybe thousands if you count people who will see it after it's archived, but that's still a tiny drop compared to Reuters' ocean.
        The fact is that a generation is being raised to incorrectly believe that sound waves can be owned, that bits can be controlled, that capturing numbers that flow through your own computer in your own home is somehow "stealing".
        The law in my state says if unordered merchandise is put in your mailbox, it's yours. As long as the supplier can produce no signed order form, you are not stealing- he is giving you a gift.
        "But," the flak would likely retort, "the person who sent you those bits, those numbers, those sound waves, did not own those bits."
        Why not? They bought many of them at Sam Goodie's or WalMart. Others were given to them. Nearly every single song or movie on Bearshare or Kazaa was bought and paid for by the first person to open its folder to the world.
        Furthermore, the pieces that were not opened to the public by someone who bought a copy were put there by the original artist. Only the established (many talentless but still filthy rich) musicians don't want their tunes traded- because If I've never heard the song, there is absolutely NO way to sell me the CD. And for all but the elite few let past the RIAA gatekeepers, nobody gets on the radio.
        No, stealing is stealing. If I steal your car, you have no car. If I steal your CD, you no longer have that CD. You may be able to play the CD's music, even at CD quality if you ripped it to wav, but you can't play the CD, or enjoy its cover art or liner notes. It's GONE, unlike swapped, "stolen" music.
        It pretty much pisses me off when a thief and con artist like ANYBODY in the music or movie industries rails against the "theft" of something that was never stolen in the first place!
        In the end, by calling file sharing "thift" these amoral people who would guard our nation's moral fabric are confusing young people about what is and what isn't theft, so in fact are themselves helping raise a generation of thieves who won't stop at taking the bits, but the plastic the bits are stored on as well.
        Theft deprives someone of property. We should expect our news organizations to understand the meaning of a five letter single syllable word, but nobody ever accused any journalost of having an excess of neurons. 3/3/2002

I was home sick last Friday, and when my wife came home from school she had a new hard drive she picked up at Circuit City, a 40mb Maxtor.
        I couldn't get the damned thing to work!
        My old 400mz machine still plays all the new games, and with a little more memory would play them in XP (assuming I wanted to throw away another hundred dollars on a new OS I don't need). Plus, Becky's laptop is the first whole computer I've bought since I purchased a used IBM XT in 1987; I've built from spare parts since.
        I didn't know that older (in this case "older" means about three years) BIOSs couldn't handle drive sizes larger than 30gb. I had run across the same problem years ago while trying to install a huge (for the time) half gigabyte drive in a 386; then, the limit was 512mb. The Seagate I had bought then had come with software to overcome the limitation, and it had worked flawlessly.
        I can't say the same about the new Maxtor!
        I fought with that thing all weekend; its workarounds wouldn't work around. This on top of a defective installation floppy!
        It made Windows freeze at the desktop; then after a Windows reinstall, it was still hosed. Nowhere in the printed documentation was it mentioned, but I finally found a workaround deep inside one of the installation/test programs that involved lying to the BIOS.
        Bingo! It booted into Windows with no problem!
        But the drive wouldn't work. So I rebooted into DOS and did a high level format; the software was supposed to have done it but didn't.
        It booted into Windows and the drive worked!
        I rebooted; it still worked. I copied a half dozen gigabytes of data from the laptop to the new hard drive in the old PC, which it read with no problem. I rebooted again.
        All the data were garbage (and all your base are belong to us).
        I wrote over the garbaged-up data several times and low level formatted the drive one last time, then boxed it up for Becky to return. The new 30gb Western Digital is supposed to get here from JDR Monday afternoon.
        In other broken PC news, Rob Lemos (the Linux guy) writes in ZD News of the "Organization for Internet Safety." This new outfit is supposed to keep your PC secure.
        Microsoft is at the helm. This, of course, means that your data will not be secure. When Microsoft talks "security", they are talking about Microsoft's security, not yours. They don't give a rat's ass about your security, they care about the security forty billion dollars brings and they're not going to let security holes in their software screw that up for them.
        Lemos reports "The group springs from discussions between Microsoft and a handful of security companies on the responsible reporting of software bugs, known as vulnerabilities, that affect a business' security."
        To hell with business security; let Microsoft and Sun worry about their own bottom lines. I don't want to wait for a damned patch to some buggy program some incompetent "programmer" hacked out, I want to know about it now, so I can take the offending piece of crap offline until a patch or workaround has been sorted out. The way I look at it, there is a 50% chance a good guy will find a hole first (assuming there are as many good guys as bad guys, which is doubtful). That means half the time the bad guys have found the hole first.
        Meaning that the bad guys have a way into my machine while the good guys are working on a patch, and only I am kept in the dark.
        People, this is not the way it should be done. If you find a hole, tell the software house about it and then scream it from the rooftops. Very Loudly and with venom. Let the world know how absolutely shitty a company has to be to allow their customers to be compromised like that, and let ME know that there is a hole in (say) Opera, so I can switch to IE; or if there is a hole in IIS so I can switch to Apache (wait a minute, IIS IS a hole).
        If it turns out that I like the "alternate" piece of software or hardware better than the original vendor's, then, well, tough shit! Microsoft security is meaningless to me. I'm worried about MY security. And if I unplug the thing, the only way you can hack it is like the Feds do- with a battering ram.
        The guidelines this group is hacking out should spell out clearly that a vendor, when notified of a hole, should immediately tell all of its customers about that hole, and recommend that they shut off the offending service, software, or hardware.
        Don't hold your breath. 2/23/2002

I'm an idiot. Ignorance is when you don't know, stupidity is when you know better and screw it up anyway.

I knew better than to install version n.10. I'm a moron. But... I thought the n.01 was a Microsoft thing. I never expected Linux to act like that.

No sooner than I'd upgraded kubuntu to 11.10, the Windows notebook felt jealous and decided it needed an upgrade, too... and it wasn't going to stop nagging until I did. *Sigh*... Microsoft, I want a divorce. I thought I'd already divorced you, you goddamned nag. But here you are on my equipment again.

I'd wanted to move some files from the big PC with the CD burner to the notebook, but of course the "essential security updates" were coming first. By the time Microsoft was done with me, lunch was over and it was time to drive back to work.

When I got back home from work I went to move the files, and Samba wasn't working right. It was kinda sorta working; I could see the files and directories in the Windows box, but any attempt to move a file from one machine to the next failed.

Damn. I thought, hell... do I downgrade Samba, or just wipe the hard drive and reinstall 11.04? I decided to put it off until I made a decision; there's always sneakernet.

Plus, I was fixing up an old Dell for Gaal. It had all the CDs, but Windows couldn't find the drivers. I got the network driver off the internet and installed it with a thumb drive. The computer seemed to work fine, until I discovered that there was no sound... and its driver seemed not to exist anywhere on earth, at all.

You guys complain about finding Linux drivers for new equipment? Try finding Windows drivers for a ten year old computer! And it was Service Pack 1, and it refused to upgrade. Fucking Microsoft, just like a damned woman -- always nagging, always insisting things be done her way, and refusing to do essential, uh, "things." Of course, there's a difference between Microsoft and a marriage. After five years, unlike a wife, Microsoft still sucks.

So there's a ten year old computer with all of its electronics and mechanics working fine, and what's broken, and broken irreparably? Windows. Without a sound driver and sporting Service Pack 1, I'd say it's broken to the point of absolute uselessness.

My car's ten years old, too. Needs struts, an alignment, and a tuneup. But its electronics work fine. Windows reliable and stable? There's a joke and a half!

Gaal is going to have to learn Linux. Fortunately for him, he knows nothing whatever about computers. He's never used one, not once. So unlike someone moving from Windows and getting used to the slashes not being ass backwards, along with being used to everything about it not being ass backwards, he'll have a computer that follows standards, won't get malware, that he won't have to remember the password to.

Kubuntu wouldn't install. With only a 500mHz CPU and 256M of memory, there's no wonder.

I'd given the Mandriva 2007 CDs away, so I installed Mandriva 2005. It installed without a hitch, but it looked... ugly. Primitive. That wouldn't bother Gaal, but I'd like to have something better on his computer. So I searched for Mandriva 2007, started downloading a torrent, and after running for two weeks, it's 15% finished. A new distro will come down the wire in less than an hour. Not many people have Mandriva 2007 in their upload queue, it seems. The predicted finish for the download is sometime after the heat death of the universe.

So I fire up the notebook.. and it wants yet another reboot; two of the upgrades didn't take. I upgraded again. And rebooted again. I hadn't done anything with it since it nagged me.

And I discovered the problem -- Windows wouldn't let me into some of the directories on my own computer! Jesus H. Christ, ain't that like a woman? I think I know why so many slashdotters are Microsoft fans. Microsoft is their "woman." They're Microsoft's bitches, bitches!

It wasn't kubuntu or Samba after all! God damned evil Microsoft. I guess I won't get to wait to replace the DVD on the big computer to install the latest Mandriva or Mint Linux. both of which are downloaded and waiting for a DVD to burn. Kubuntu is going on the notebook.

Pack your bags, Microsoft. Again! And this time, STAY OUT!

Boy, this new laptop gets warm...
        An old friend, Todd, just bought one of those new PS2s and promised, promised a review. It's supposed to be a head to head against the X-Box (X-Box="used to be a box but got fired"), since his next door neighbor has one of those.
        Ahem... Todd??
        Meanwhile, Becky's in class and left her snazzy new laptop at home, so I'm typing this with that. There are a lot of things I like about this new windows- but not enough to get me to buy two more copies.
        Man, this laptop gets hot!
        Plus, there are some things that are downright annoying about it.
        If I want to use the modem in the old PC downstairs with win98, I have to manually reconfigure it. With XP, if the network is unplugged it looks for another network, and if it doesn't find one, it dials up.
        But it's still annoyingly, stupidly stubborn. Sometimes, when it's happily reconnected to the network it wants that modem, and won't give up a web page without it. You have to shut down the laptop, do a little magic dance and restart it with your left foot held just so (with your fingers crossed) to get it to see the network internet connection.
        The new media player sounds like total crap when playing MP3s or CDs. Fortunately there's Winamp.
        Plus, it took all afternoon to configure the network when five minutes would have done it with win98- they changed everything, and documented none of it.
        My Linux learning has been slowed a bit by this XP crap, but I think I'll just get a new hard drive for Linux.
        WOW! MY DICK'S ON FIRE! OWWWW!!!!!!!!!
2/11/2002 The Springfield Fragfest

https://slashdot.org/journal.pl?op=list&uid=92797 works again! At least in FF on Win7, haven't tried it on the other two machines.

A little further down the page is absolute proof that I'm no prophet.

Brain cells forgot to breathe
        Some dufus has finally created a virus that causes not computer damage, but human brain damage.
        Earlier this week some nitwit emailed "links" to "mypartypics.com" with a note something like "sorry you couldn't attend my party, here are some pictures" to all the people in their address books (kinda).
        I didn't see the actual virus; most of the people in my address book know how to not get a virus by now. However, this virus doesn't have to even affect your computer to do damage.
        I saw news of this virus in the tech publications this week- the "My Party" virus. Immediately, the old, horrible tune with its screechy, nails on a blackboard, bitch voices that can barely hold the trite tune starts playing in my head...
        "It's my party and I'll cry if I want to..."
        Oops, I just infected you. Sorry! My cure is to grab a few beers and kill a few brain cells... 2/1/2002 Springfield Fragfest

Microsoft security was squished
More computer fairy tales
        (I'm getting behind in posting these...)
        Last month, B.Gates sent a memo "to microsoft employees" that was "leaked" to the press about how Microsoft needed to start taking security seriously. Reactions were mixed, ranging from "about damned time!" to "Microsoft security? That's an oxymoron!" (to the famous "BWAHAHA! HA HA HA HA! STOP IT YER KILLIN' ME!")
        Well, we finally found out how serious they are about security-
        They appointed a lawyer as "security czar". What's even funnier is they expect nobody will notice.
        Whats funniest is that nobody will!
        In other dumbassed legal moves, Napster is dead (long live Morpheus) and its killers are dying. C|NET reports that the judge in the case, Marilyn Patel "was about to open a process examining whether the big record labels had misused their copyrights."
        One day later they asked for a month to settle out of court!
        "I'm really confused as to why the plaintiffs came upon this way of getting together in a joint venture," C|NET quotes Judge Patel as saying last October. "Even if it passes antitrust analysis, it looks bad, sounds bad, smells bad."
        Cary Sherman, an RIAA scumbag lawyer lied, "Our companies are not worried about these claims, they are worried that time is running out on Napster's ability to pay damages." Knowing full well that we are all morons, he said this with a straight face. Napster offered the labels billions before being bought out by one of them. 2/2/2002 Springfield Fragfest

eBay should have used a smaller gun
H&R Block tripped on her own grenade
Best Buy forgot to breathe
        It appears that eBay has trademarked the word "bay."
        ZD News reports "Lego-trading site Brickbay.com has changed its name to BrickLink.com after a request from eBay. eBay warned site owner Dan Jezek last month that his site's name infringed on eBay's trademark. The online auction giant threatened legal action against Jezek if he didn't change the name. Jezek's site, unaffiliated with Lego, hosts dozens of online stores where enthusiasts can buy Lego parts and sets".
        The article (actually, that one paragraph was the whole article) didn't mention that eBay is suing Tampa Bay for using the word "bay" in its name. They are not suing PC case makers for installing drive bays, and reports are that they are not suing the very late Stephen Foster for the lyrics to Camptown Races "Somebody bet on the bay".
        The last suithappy dotcom was pets.com, suing Conan O'Brien for the sock puppet that existed before pets.com did. I hope this is an indication of how things go for these damned (yes, DAMNED, literally) companies. The suit against Brickbay was stupid, and businesses run by stupid people usually don't last.
        Like Pets.com.
        Some time last spring (sorry, can't find the link) I ranted about K-Mart and advised everyone with stock in it to sell. It appears that nobody took my advice that time, your loss! Here are a couple of other "non-performing stocks" that are in danger of extinction.
        I have been using H&R Block's tax service for over ten years. After two bad years in a row, this year was the last. Their sin? The same as K-Mart, lack of customer service, arrogance, and downright incompetance. No company that neglects its customers to the point of not writing down an appointment is doomed. So is a company whose employees aren't trained in the use of their computer equipment and software.
        To be fair, they were very polite. However, I'll take a surly professional over a pleasant but incompetant moron any day.
        I'll say something nice about Best Buy too- it's not crowded any more.
        My wife Becky decided (after we got a big tax refund this year) that she needed a laptop PC for school. Actually, I suspect that now that she needs a computer she doesn't want to go down to the cold basement to use it like I and the kids do. But any way, we went shoppping for a laptop. I hit a few web sites (not eBay), and we decided to look locally ( JDR seems to only carry Toshiba and I don't like Japanese design). First stop was Best Buy. It had been a while since i had been in there. Well, actually we went in for some compressed air but since we were shopping for a laptop... she fell in love with a Hewlett Packard model, really nice one with a big hard drive, nice big clear screen, lots of memory, DVD CD burner, modem, network card... and most importantly to her, pretty blue lights above the keyboard.
        Best Buy staff were puttering around doing... actually I'm clueless, they didn't look to me like they were doing more than trying to look busy and avoid customers. We grabbed a salesman, who told us he'd be right back... this happened three times. We finally got some pimple faced kid who informed us that he had a Gateway and it was crap. "Just a minute and I'll get this ready"... this a half hour after deciding on what to buy.
        They were offering free internet access through MSN. Now, if I didn't already have an ISP (and likely DSL) would I be buying a computer with a LAN card and modem? They were also offering zero percent financing, which I also didn't want; I had cash in the bank.
        Never mind that I didn't want it, it "will take about five minutes to set up the computer, he can do it while we're filling out paperwork." WTF, was I buying a house, or an antiaircraft missle? Paperwork???
        We stood there in line a full half hour before the girl was ready to check us out. As we waited, Becky whipped out her phone and called the bank to make sure we had enough cash to pay for all the crap, over $2000.00 worth. The computer sat there, unopened and un-checked out.
        Best Buy wouldn't take our check. After a two and a half hour ordeal of mostly waiting, we walked away from over two thousand dollars in merchandise and won't be back. The sales girl tried to blame some other company!
        H&R Block tried to blame a different company, too. I guess business are all taking lessons from Microsoft. Here's a clue for all of them- you can't stay in business like that without a monopoly.
        My guess is Best Buy treats everybody like this. If so, I'll give them two more years, maybe with Enron accounting they can survive three or four. I'll give H&R Block five to ten (and they should be glad I'm not a judge!)
        Becky bought her HP laptop the next day at Circut City, where they had pleasant salespeople (unlike Best Buy), it took fifteen minutes to buy, and they gratefully took her check without any bullshit.
        Do you have stock in H&R Block, Best Buy, or the companies that own them? If so and if I were you, I'd sell it before they go the way of Kmart/Enron. 2/6/2002 Springfield Fragfest

Player joined the game
        AAAAGH I HATE learning new operating systems.
        No, I'm not talking about Linux, I'm talking about Windows XP, on my wife's new laptop. Took me all afternoon just to get the network working when it should have taken ten minutes- but they changed it completly around, as expected. Once again I'm ignorant. 2/7/2002 Springfield Fragfest

I have GOT to get off my lazy ass and install Linux on that notebook. Fucking Microsoft. Does that company hate its users? Sure seems like they do.

Yesterday must have been Patch Tuesday. Adobe's been nagging me to restart the damned thing for a week now. Every time I take it out of hibernate. Yesterday the stupid balloon... at least it's better than Clippy, but not much. At least unlike my work computer it doesn't keep coming up telling me I have unused icons on my desktop. What in the hell does it care if I'm using those icons or not?

Jesus H. Christ, are all Windows users idiots, or does Microsoft just think they are?

Um, I digress. I was saying that yesterday that stupid balloon (hey, kindergarten kiddies, this OS is for you!) came up saying that there were a bunch of security fixes, so I applied them. Uh, there were more for IE than Windows, and I don't even use that shitty browser! WTF?

Then adding insult to injury, Linux pulled a Windows and allowed Adobe Flash to lock the damned thing up tight as a drum. Experience tells me if I'd just gone to the bars for a few beers it would be working fine when I got back, with a sad faced lego block telling me it crashed and asking me to send yet another bug report. Um, didn't you assholes look at the previous nine million reports from when I clicked it? Screw Adobe, just reload the page.

Anyway, I had to yank the power cord since I didn't want to wait an hour for Adobe to give me my computer back. As expected, it came back with Aramok and K3B and the file manager and FireFox open, with FireFox apologizing profusely.

So I decide to check my email at lunch and got the notebook out (the big computer's keyboard usually sits on a shelf; I only get it down on the rare occasion I need to type on the HP. Adobe nagged me to reboot, then Windows nagged me to reboot. Screw it, I rebooted and sat it on the shelf and put a CD in the HP to rip.

Windows wasn't shutting down; FireFox didn't want to shut down. I told it to force a reboot and it warned me that FireFox might lose data... yeah, uh huh.

And of course it annoyed me that I had to reboot, since it was Windows. Rebooting Linux is no problem. It comes up exactly how you shut it down, even if you shut it down by pulling its plug. Windows comes up blank.

Neither FireFox nor BitTorrent were in the tray any more. So I go to open FireFix from the start menu -- and it wasn't there, either! God DAMN Microsoft. Motherfucking dickweeds!

It was buried two menus down in the start menu. I put it back in the tray and repinned it to the start menu... HEY DOJ, they're up to their old tricks again, the shit-eating bastards! How about another antitrust investigation? Just to give them a taste of the hassle they put their users through.

So FireFox opens with the message that there are critical updates to FireFox...