Edwards and Bush both have their speeches today shown Lehrer's Newshour, and they're saying some of the same things. For example, they're both going to help the economy by creating jobs. Here I thought these people were running for President of USA, but apparently the candidates think they're running for chairman of the Central Committee for Economic Planning.

But we really did win the cold war. You see, it's a four year plan, not a five year plan. Those darn Soviets were so arrogant, thinking they could see that many years into the future.

(Hey, I know I'm beating a long dead horse here. But I still wanted to blow off some steam about it. I think one of the things that pissed me off, is that the Newshour's own reporters was calling the people who want to pass that marriage amendment, "conservatives." A lot of people really see it that way, don't they? Wow.)

Oh well, happy Bastille Day.

They're an old classic rock band, and rock they do. It looks like they're about to leave USA, but just in case they're passing near you, have a few beers and kick out the jams. When I just saw 'em, they had Suffrajet open for them (but I think this was their last night with 'em) and locals The Dirty Novels, who were a perfect fit (but you won't get to see them either).

In case you're thinking, "But I don't know any MC5 songs," you're wrong. You know them. You just don't know you know them. ;-) When the music starts, you'll get it. Oh yes, you will.

This weekend, I was like everyone else so I went to the movies too. It was a double-feature; I saw The Big Heat and Human Desire.

I bet I had a better time than people who paid $8 to see that propaganda film. Ya know, I don't hold it against anyone who goes to see that.. after all, Ebert says F911 is actually a good movie (regardless of whether or not Moore tells it like it is) and I think his judgement has been pretty good lately. So I might go see it when it's $1, and that should still happen in time for me to get brainwashed for November.

The downside: 'Human Desire' got trains on my mind, so then I then wasted Sunday evening playing Railroad Tycoon 2. D'oh. :(

On another note.. I must be on a 1950s kick, because on Saturday I read "Day of the Triffids" by John Wyndham. Whoa, this book reminds me of Romero's ".. of the Dead" movies. Both have catastrophes that leave civilization in ruins, with an aftermath of survivors who have to deal with menacing, but managable, monsters. Good fun.

It's really 2004. 2004 was once a distant dream, but we're finally there, in a sense of it being more than just a number on a calendar: stuff is starting to really happen. Cassini is on the fringes of the Saturn system (though not really going into orbit for a few more weeks) and doing a close (2000 kilometers) flyby of one of the moons today.

[Update: Eh, there was a front page article on this, just a couple hours later. I should probably just delete this.]

Anyone seen this lately?

$ nice -20 yadda yadda...
nice: `-20' option is obsolete; use `-n -20' since this will be removed in the future

Gee, thanks. Let's arbitrarily change a UI that people have been using for years.

Back in the 80s I used to just use the 'nice' command without any sort of priority argument. But then the Amiga days spoiled me, and I got used to a static priority scheduler. I like to be able to completely starve less important processes (or to put it another way: I like for important processes to get all the CPU time that they want, without becoming "jerky" and getting preempted by stuff I don't care about).

When I finally moved away from the Amiga to Linux, I found the dynamic scheduling to be annoying. My first reaction was to run unimportant stuff at just the lowest priority I could (nice -20), but they still didn't starve enough. In the 2.2 days I even hand-modified the scheduler to never run a lowest-priority process if there was anything else to do. (No, this doesn't make me a uber-elite kernel haxx0r; if you haven't ever taken a look at the Linux source (at least as of 2.2) you might be surprised just how small, managable, and simple it is.) But it was a pain in the ass to keep doing this every time I updated my kernel, and I eventually stopped.

But I still retained the habit of passing that -20 arg to nice, to at least minimize the amount of unjustified preemption that happens. If you can't eliminate, then mitigate. This became especially important when I moved to Gentoo about a year and a half ago, since it's now a lot more common that I have CPU-intense stuff (e.g. emerge -uD world) going on, which I don't want slowing down my actual use of the computer at all. (My 50 MHz Amiga could run over 100 processes, with plenty of them CPU-bound, and still be 100% snappy. Why can't Linux on my GigaHertz machine do that?!?)

But I digress... I didn't mean this Journal Entry to be about how dynamic schedulers annoy me. I just want to rant about a UI issue.

Someone, somewhere, has decided that nice's -20 argument is too terse and convenient, and I should use -n and some number, instead. I can adapt, but why the heck did some busybody bother doing this? There are plenty of things that could be improved in Linux or GNU userspace tools, and someone decided that changing the nice command's user interface was a good use of their time? And the maintainers decided that everyone else should get this "improvement"??!?

Bewildering.

Ok, I guess I better get the pathetic part of my vacation out of the way, before I start talking about CMF.

Except for Chicago itself (a special case that I'll talk about later), I stayed at fairly good(?) hotels along the way. Not super-expensive 4-star places (which I don't think OKC/STL/KC has anyway) but rather, from a geek point of view, nice places in that they offer more than just a "dataport" for someone to plug their modem line into.

The Westin in downtown OKC and the Marriott in downtown STL give you good ol' fashioned ethernet on a rj45 connector, right there in your room.

I expected the Marriott in downtown KC to be the same. I was wrong. They had high-speed internet, but it was wireless. 802.11b. As it happened, I hadn't gotten around to really testing out Warwick's wireless networking yet. But in KC, I had to, or else go netless.

Mandrake had always detected the hardware fine, but never could really bring the interface up. I always thought that was because I was never around a hotspot. Nope. Here I was in a place I knew was buzzing with 802.11b frames (even if my naked eye couldn't see them) and Mandrake just couldn't get it up.

I had the basics -- I mean, the rawest stage 1 basics, with a few minor things added -- of my Gentoo system installed on another partition, and a kernel for it (I was scared to use the existing Mandrake kernel to run Gentoo; Yog-Sothoth only knows what all is in there!) So I put that kernel onto my /boot partition (I always separate /boot out from my root) added it to grub which Mandrake had already installed for me. Booted it, and now I was actually running Gentoo.

And of course, unlike fucking Mandrake, Gentoo initialized my eth1 just fine. Got an address from some dhcp server, set up /etc/resolv.conf to get names from somewhere, it was like magic. I had a tiny running system, but it had working wireless.

Now here's where I ran into a little problem: the Marriott doesn't really give you free wireless internet. Oh no. This isn't some friendly neighbor providing wireless access to anonymous users. No, all their names resolve to, and all their routes go to, one special little web server, so you can sign up for access using your web browser. Then when they have some money, you are on the internet.

I didn't have a web browser. No Mozilla or even an X display to run it on. I didn't even have telnet. At least, not on my Gentoo environment. Sure, boot up Mandrake and I have more crap than I know about, but then the interface won't work, whether due to the Mandrake version of the kernel or their weird init scripts, I don't know.

Then I got the idea of mounting the Mandrake partition and running their lynx binary. That worked. So I signed up for their ripoff^H^H^H^H^H^Hconvenient internet access, and then I was really on the net and Gentoo could start fetching packages.

The thing is, this all took a while. And once you have xfree built, then you just can't resist getting your favorite window manager (unless you're one of those twm perverts). You know how it is: when a nerd and a computer that he cares about get together, one thing leads to another.

Hey wait ... why did I want to get on the internet in the first place? Well, to email some people. And look up the address of some museum. Oh wait, that museum closed hours ago.

So the sad fact is, I spent too much of my time in Kansas City in my hotel room, playing with my computer and setting it all up the way I wanted it to be -- stuff I had intended to do the weekend before my trip started, but didn't do, because the machine got shipped to me late.

At least I'm fairly happy with the machine, now.

The question now, is which is worse: that I "wasted" my stay in KC, or that Elmegil was right? ;-)

I'll tell ya'll about Chicago (which ruled) and Kansas City (which was pathetic) later, but for now, I just want to say...

Here I am at a truckstop in Tulsa (on my Fujitsu, now running Gentoo instead of Mandrake -- part of my Kansas City story) that has Wifi, just checked my mail for the last time 'til I get to OKC. And DexterPexter hasn't answered any of my emails after the first, where she suggested maybe we could meet when I was on the way back.

Feh. Everyone, please join me in shaking your head and muttering a sentence the begins with the word "Dames."

("This will go down in your permanent record." Ooooh, my permanent record. That should make a drunk person think twice. But thinking once is hard enough.)

Too many impressions to list. But I will go ahead and digress on one point..

Tulsa has a river. I saw a few rivers on the way over here. More to the point, STL has a river, and it's a famous one.

Albuquerque has a river, too. It has an impressive name. El Rio Grande. Que grande! I think the name may have been chosen with a bit of a sense of irony, given what I've seen today.

Yahoo maps is pretty neat. Not only will it help you find a place, but it will help you decide what place to go to, too. With a little click, it will display restaurants of a various type, for example, You probably knew that. It's not shocking. But it will also display 802.11 hotspots. Did you know that? I need to try out Warwick's wireless. The hotels have all been offering a cat5 connection for $10 per day -- a mere $300 per month for an ISP. What a racket. But day-to-day, it doesn't seem like a big deal. What's $10? Pretty fuckin' convenient, that's what.

But back to Yahoo maps... In April 2003 I visited Charlottesville Virginia with some friends and they introduced me to Indian food. Not Indian as in Navajo, but Indian as in nuclear-war-with-Pakistan. Today, I started suffering chile withdrawal symptoms, and being afraid of Mexican restaurants (because I just know that I would find plenty to bitch about) I figured Indian would be an acceptable substitute. Yahoo Maps to the rescue! It showed me a place near my hotel, called "Curry in a Hurry." Fast food Indian? I was intrigued. Alas, the hours are only 11am to 2:30. It's just a lunch place. I'll have to try it tomorrow.

Later it hit me: a place can stay in business in downtown St Louis, only being open 3.5 hours per day? I should be impressed. I bet it'll be crowded when I get there.

I ended up eating at an Italian place near there, as I've had hankering for Italian lately, as well. It was pretty good. Beer selection was a bit limited. (No IPA. I think I explained my recent IPA infatuation in Em's journal.) Waitress suggested Amber Bock to me, so I went with that. Amber Bock is what I used to often drink at The Launchpad back home, 'cause they had a $2 special on it. So I always think of the Launchpad now, whenever I drink that stuff.

Speaking of bars, after my expensive (but big and delicious) speghetti, I went to a place called "Creepy Crawl". It looks like I was on-the-mark with this place, but I'm here on the wrong day. There were punk bands here, and finished with a weird "Celtic Punk" band. I don't know what else to call it. But I think they sometimes have metal here. Maybe I'll check back tomorrow.

Creepy Crawl ran out of limes for my Coronas, so I had to settle with lime juice from a bottle, added to my last one. Hmm. I don't like when bars run out of limes. It makes me think they're not taking their responsibility seriously.

Other things...

Near the beginning of Missouri, they had fifth-mile markers. Instead of the markers going 17,18,19,20, they go 17,17.2,17,4.17.6, etc. What's up with that?

Dex, I regret we didn't get to meet. The winds of fate of viciously cruel. May the 19th (when I pass through OK again in the opposite direction) work out better. If that day doesn't work out, then I'm going to tell everyone on Slashdot that I asked you out, and you said No. Then you'll be in real trouble.

My Neuros has developed a problem with the power connector. It now runs on battery power even when it's plugged into the cig lighter socket. and the battery doesn't charge. So when it died right in the middle of a Pagan's Mind song, I had to either live with silence, or try the radio. This was in Oklahoma. I was afraid that on the radio, I would find only "both kinds of music" (Blues Brothers reference, if you know what I mean). But after channel surfing, I heard Boston's "Don't Look Back" which was followed by some AC/DC and Rolling Stones and Steve Miller. Ok, Classic Rock, I can live with that. The station even called itself "classic rock." Then they played Nirvana's "Heart Shaped Box." Ok, I don't have a problem with that song, but is 90s grunge really classic rock? WTF is happening to the world? Is "classic rock" merely defined as anything that was commercially successful 10 or more years in the past? That's creepy.

I saw a cop do something amazing today on I-44. But first, an apocryphal anecdote. There was once a cop, in full uniform, who went to a drug dealer's house, and asked to buy drugs. The drug dealer said, "Dude! You're a cop!" The cop said, "It's ok, I'm cool." So, the dealer sold him drugs. And the cop arrested him.

Today I saw the speeding equivalent of "It's ok, I'm cool." I had my eyes peeled for ellie, so when I (speeding) came up behind a cop, I squinted, growled, cursed and slowed down .. not to the speed limit, but to as fast as the cop was going, and stayed back a couple hundred meters from him.

Other drivers, trusting the cop's "coolness" got a little closer. They kept pace with the cop, right physically near the cop. I shook my head. "You idiots!" I screamed. Then I watched it unfold. The cop slowed down a bit .. to the speed limit. Not being an idiot, I slowed down too, keeping my distance behind him. His "speed-mates" kept going, passing him. What idiots. Then he got behind one of 'em and flashed his lights. I laughed my ass off. People really fall for it! The drug dealer anecote is probably real.

I arrived pretty late in OKC and it wasn't until about 11:50 that I was able to go look for some fun. (BTW, aside: western OK is gorgeous. Right near the eastern edge of the Texas panhandle, the terrain stops looking like the brown deserty New Mexican terrain that I'm used to seeing all the time, and it turns GREEN. And then in OK the dirt turns red, so it's red'n'green. I liked seeing that, until it got dark.)

In Albuquerque, the "happening place" on a Saturday night is downtown, near where the relatively tall buildings are. That's where there's a bunch of bars and people.

OKC's equivalent appears to be a place called bricktown, which is a little east of the tall buildings. So that threw me a bit. But no matter -- I found it.

It was kinda depressing. The hip hop infection here is severe. I wandered around, finding music I didn't like. But Jager shot 'n' Corona tastes the same everywhere, so that was ok. The only thing I liked was a street performer who was playing Black Sabbath riffs on his guitar.

Oh, then I found some kinda jazzy stuff that was ok, but I think it was after 1 and they wouldn't let me in. I swear the bouncer guy said something like, "we're not taking money anymore" but maybe I misheard him. A literal truth, though. They woulda had my money if they let me in. So I wandered off.

Then I stuck gold! I had given up on bricktown and was staggering back to the Westin, when I heard distant drums. "What's that?" I thought. I couldn't figure much out, at the distance,. Hey, did I mention this is a windy place? My hair was blowin' all around, and distant sounds come and go.

I followed the sound, and then discovered it was rockin' blues! Awesome! Just the second best type of music after heavy metal. The band's name is "Danger [somethin', I don't remember] and the Danger Zone." Maybe Danger Dan? The problem with bein' drunk (I started drinking Jack at this place, whatever it was called) is that it's hard to remember stuff. But I remember this, because I repeated it to myself over and over as a I staggered back: I talked to the lead guy and he says they're playing tomorrow at 4 at a place called Galileos. Galileo, you know, the gravity solar-centric heretic guy. I am so there! It's at .. um .. Paseo near 29th street. Good thing I'm typing this down, that way I can look it up tomorrow. What, you thought this JE was for the sake of your sorry ass? I don't think so...

Well, this Saturday I start my epic vacation: Oklahoma City, then St Louis, then several days in Chicago for CMF4, then Kansas City, then .. I dunno, maybe I should come home. Or maybe I'll go to Denver.

Er, anyway, I long ago decided I need a portable computer for keeping in touch while on the road. Using 3rd party computers just isn't cool, because typing your access credentials into an untrusted computer just ain't right .. no, I'm not really paranoid, but it's the principle, ya know?

I looked at things as small as Zaurus, and as "large" (yeah, right) as 12" Powerbook. But in the end, I went in between. I just got my Fujitsu Lifebook P1120 in the mail today. It's tiny (8.9" screen) but not as small as a handheld, so it won't fit in a pocket. That's a slight bummer, but other than that, it should be ok.

And I just realized something: I lost my Microsoft Virginity. I have never bought Windows before now, even indirectly. The last time I owned a computer that had any Microsoft stuff on it, was my C64 with its Microsoft-crafted BASIC interpreter. (And heck, my parents bought that, not me.) All my previous x86 machines were built from parts. This thing supposedly came with Windows preloaded, and although I'll never see it, I can be counted in some database as "another satisfied customer." And believe me, it's true: Windows was totally painless. It did not get in the way at all, when I deleted its partition.

I'm taking a break from my usual Gentoo zealotry, and I'm going to try out Mandrake. It's installing right now. The real reason for this, it that installing Gentoo without a CDROM is a bitch! Except for the HD, all this machine can boot off is network and floppy. It won't boot off a USB CDROM. I tried a lot of Linux boot floppies .. all I needed was something that would load the network driver, have a few utilities (wget, tar, etc) and a bash prompt, and from there I know I can get Gentoo going. So many boot floppies failed me, one way or another, and I evnetually gave up. I found out something: a lot of Linux floppy distros, use weird 1.7MB formatted floppy images: 82 tracks, 21 sectors per track. I was able to format 'em and put images onto them from another machine, but this Lifebook didn't like booting them. Some floppy images that did work, would just give me installation programs and no way out to bash, not even on other virtual consoles.

Anyway, a floppy boot for Mandrake worked fine, and now I'm downloading the packages from some ftp mirror. Maybe it'll be done tomorrow. ;-) I'll give Mandrake a fair chance. But I did leave room for a Gentoo root near the beginning of the drive, so if Mandrake cheeses me off, I'll just use it to get Stage 1 onto the other partition... or maybe OpenBSD, though probably not. Then my existing mandrake will become my new encrypted /home or something.

What a tiny little machine. The first other person who saw it was a woman, and naturally, she said "oh, how cute!" I guess size matters. Cute, huh? Can I use this computer for picking up girls? Is it like a puppy?!? Then after I have their interest with the computer, I can start talking about Linux, and describe my Mandrake-vs-Gentoo predicament. "Hey wait, why are you walking away?" Bad puppy!

Oh geez, Mandrake installer says it'll be 4 hours hours. Hm. Off to the bar.

Whew! I just got a little more involved in the Spam Wars than I wanted to.

A few years ago, I bought a mailbox at spamcop.net, and I have a couple of domains registered with gandi.net.

Spamcop provides an IMAP server (and web access to the mailbox too, if you want), spam filtering, and automated spam reporting tools.

Gandi is a DNS registrar (with a nice low rate and good terms of service -- I recommend them), but also provides a few network services as well. One of the services they provide, is that they can host a domain and have the MX record point to themselves, and then forward any mail sent to that domain, to another address. If you have a domain that you use for email only, and don't want to bother setting up a server for it, it's convenient. In my case, I used that service and had it forward mail to my spamcop mailbox.

(See where this is going, yet? You do, don't you. Yes, the audience has the luxury of that omniscient point of view, where two trains are on the same track, going in opposite directions. The camera cuts to one, then the other, each showing a contented train engineer, blissfully unaware of what is about to unfold.)

Sometimes spam gets through Spamcop's filters, and I report it. It's just a few mouseclicks in the web browser, the details totally automated. Clicky clicky, and abuse@somewhere is told about spammer@somewhere. There have never been any nasty consequences (at least for me). Until today.

Somehow, Gandi itself (who does not run an open relay, but does provide the forwarding service) got identified by Spamcop's software, as being complicit in the spamming. And I didn't notice or follow up on who my automated complaint was about to hit. It was so routine.

Then Gandi.net got added to bl.spamcop.net. Then Gandi notified me that they were cutting off my forwarding service, so that I would no longer receive spam from them and complain about them.

Oops. My bad.

After a bit of explanation, apologizing, and grovelling, I just got Gandi to restore my mail forwarding, and I haven't heard back from Spamcop yet about getting them removed.

Anyway, I feel like a particularly wussy nerd, since I happen to also run a virtual machine at linode.com, so why don't I just run my own SMTP and IMAP servers for those domains too, instead of using Gandi and Spamcop's servers? Duh. Brushing up on my postfix config file lore...

Of course, running my own SMTP server will probably get me even MORE personally involved in the Spam Wars. Hey, isn't that why I signed up for Spamcop in the first place, so that someone would just do stuff for me? Oh well.

I must admit, in that stupid game, I have been a complete bastard. It has been an outlet for my evil side, you might say.

I have attacked people just because they voiced annoyance at being attacked. You know, to teach them that that the squeaky wheel gets .. the warblade. The more they scream, the more I enjoy it. Whenever Commander Mekkab or Fortknox mentioned a squeaker, I delighted in joining in, further taunting and harrassing the fool. Cruelty and sadism suit an orc well.

Loyalty, on the other hand, does not suit an orc. I attack Fortknox every once in a while, not even giving a Slashdotter a break. But he doesn't bitch about it, so I don't enjoy it, and only do it reluctantly when he happens to have a lot of gold to steal. And I think I once threatened my own Commander Mekkab, when he wondered out loud if he should show mercy to someone.

But back to the sadism... there's this guy who I have been farming for a few weeks. I pretty much attack him every day or so, sometimes for a really nice haul. Never heard a peep out of him, which took most of the fun out of it, but at least the gold was useful. About 3 million per week, I guess.

After today's 577k haul, he finally had enough:

Lokk man. I have 3,639 turns to use. Go farm elsewhere. i am areally pissed off with you

And now my shame: I almost decided to let it go. I must be getting soft, because I actually briefly entertained the idea that I had profited enough from this guy and should give him a break. After all, this message is more of a stand-up threat, than whining. The reference to attack turns is a sign of strength (the only thing orcs respect), not weakness.

This is what happens to orcs when the get old, I guess. Somebody should kill me and take over the gang. A true orc knows that the fact he spoke up at all, means he's hurting and that all my attacks have finally gotten emotional results. It's the smell of blood in the water!

Fortunately, I snapped out of it, and believe I am still fit to lead my gang. (If you hear of my assassination, though, then I guess it will mean one of my boys disagreed.) Here's the reply. I wanted just that right mixture of spitefulness, humiliation, arrogance, and nastiness.

I must say I have profited heavily from our association. I am grateful for what my peasants -- er, excuse me, I mean, the gentlemen you think of as your "warriors" -- have done for me. Toiling all day long, waiting for the now all-too-familiar orc faces to show up, so they can helpfully load the gold into the chests on my war wagons. Don't think I don't appreciate your servitude up to this point. All that money bought me plenty of ale, pleasure girls, bardic entertainers, a nice home, and of course weapons (which you have had the pleasure of seeing). I don't know where I would be today, if it weren't for the hard work of humans like you.

Am I to understand that you wish to retire, or be some other orc's farm? No, my friend, I couldn't bear to part with you. Your services are still quite desired! Please have your gold ready in the usual location, and my boys will be back to pick it up later.

XOXOXO,
Aramchek the Orc

P.S.: I have no fear of your pathetic attack turns, human. I've seen your men fight and they remind me of young orc children practicing with their wooden swords. If you have a desire for action, I recommend you practice with some 100,000-ranked band of elvish wandering thespians.

That XOXOXO is of course, completely necessary. You guys understand.

[Note: there's a little sex talk here. If you prefer to avoid the subject, then you may wish to skip this JE.]

Don't know if people have been following this story, but there's been an HIV "outbreak" in the porn industry. An outbreak consisting of two people who have tested positive and a widespread voluntary industry shutdown.

And now the government is stepping in and is seizing AIM's private medical records without consent.

And they want to start regulating:

And if the county health department and Cal/OSHA get their way, adult entertainment will be condom mandatory in the very near future, with no facials or internal cumshots allowed. They also want production companies to start paying for testing within the industry.

We're not here to shut the adult industry down, Dr. Peter Kerndt, director of the sexually transmitted disease program for the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services. We're just trying to make it safe for those who work in it. The current situation makes it obvious that it is not safe.

I won't try to claim that having unprotected sex with multiple people per day, who in turn regularly have unprotected sex with plenty of other people, isn't dangerous. I concede the danger point, though I would point out that this are only two people, the first time since 1999. (How many people died behind the wheel of a car, today?)

But this is a voluntary risk. (And its not obscure risk either, that people are ill-informed about. Porn workers know what they're getting into, and they know what those industry-mandated every-30-days tests are for.) You can Just Say No to making porn, and even if you do make porn, you can Just Say No to doing unprotected scenes. Why do we need government to force people to not take risk? I am really getting sick of this bullshit. There are plenty of consensual risks in life that I am allowed to take; why regulate some and not others? And even if you play it completely safe, 200 years from now, you're still going to be dust. NOBODY gets out of life alive. Government can't save anyone. So here's an idea: how about protecting peoples' rights instead, so that can make informed choices and manage risks and payoffs however they wish to, to have the best chance of getting what they want out of life?

And why is government seizing private records in the name of an "outbreak" when only two people have tested positive -- and when the industry has very clearly been handling the situation on its own? You can make all the cracks you want about how private industry tends to be irresponsible when it comes to voluntarily policing itself, but at least in this particular story, the response has just been amazing, and the porn producers really did voluntarily shut down way faster than government ever could have forced them to. They were totally on the ball, and the high testing frequency that they (voluntarily) insist upon from their performers, has resulted in the "outbreak" being quantified and contained.

Also.. AIM's services are available to people who aren't "sex workers." But now that their records are apparently up-for-grabs, are you willing to get tested there? Consider this: Even if you're clean, is it any of government's business how often you decide to get yourself tested? Reckless use of government power here, is just going to encourage people to test less often. Government could very well be creating a safety issue here.

Of course, since we mostly talking about porn people, hardly anyone will stand up for their rights. It reminds me [Godwin Alert] of when Neo-Nazis want to have a public demonstration and cops don't let them. Nobody cares, because silencing Nazi scum is a "good thing." Likewise, why should I care about pornstar's rights, since I'm not a pornstar.

[This was a comment I recently posted, and I want to save it in my journal so I can find it more easily. It's a rant I've made many times, but this time I tried to be more explicit and detailed than usual.

I invite my journal readers to attack my argument as mercilessly and pedantically as they can, so I can work out any bugs it might have. Or even -- heaven forbid -- find out I'm wrong. ... Not bloody likely!]

You don't "buy" software. You purchase a license to use it. ... Saying you own the software you paid for is like saying you own the car you're renting.

You can walk into a retail store and pay money for software and walk out with it, without having agreed to anything other than handing over the money. (Try doing that with a rental car sometime. You can't. They will make you sign a rental agreement prior to giving you access to the car. Try doing it with the software that my company sells: you have to sign a sales agreement prior to being given the software.)

When you walk out of the retail store to your car, that box that is in your hands belongs to you. The CD inside the box is yours. It's not any different then buying a toaster, and there still aren't any laws that say otherwise.

Ok.. there's one little catch. Copyright law says that even though you own that CD, there are some things that you are not allowed to do with your property, because someone else holds the copyright on the information.

Before you are even allowed to install the software you have to agree to their terms.

Well, that's the crux of the issue. AFAIK, the argument in favor of your position is this: if you want to run the software from your hard disk instead of running it from the distribution media, then you have to copy it. That would be copyright violation. Therefore, in order to prevent the act from being violation, you have to get permission to make a copy, and the EULA is the means of obtaining that permission.

Even if that point is conceded (and I'll fight it below), it doesn't change the fact that you own that CD, and you bought it, and it is your property in every way that a toaster is your property. There still haven't been any laws passed that change this basic principle of property, nor does it match "common sense" expectations. Try to find a law, if you don't believe me. The closest thing you'll find is copyright law, but even then, you'll see that the laws just talk about rights and restrictions, not ownership itself. I invite you to cite any real support -- any laws on the books for USA or any common law country -- for the position that, without a contract at the point of sale, ownership of the property was not transferred. If you can't find evidence to support that position, I recommend you be more sceptical. Software companies boldly asserting it, doesn't make it true.

Now, onto the installation issue: my argument is that copying the software from the distribution media to your hard disk, without any sort of permission from the copyright holder, is not copyright violation. It is fair use.

In USA, unless a particular activity is specifically exempted by copyright law, fair use is judged by these criteria:

1. the purpose and character of your use
2. the nature of the copyrighted work
3. the amount and substantiality of the portion taken, and
4. the effect of the use upon the potential market.

The purpose and character of the use: The purpose of installing the software is to be able to conveniently use it. Oftentimes these days, the software isn't even directly executable or usable, in its existing form on the distribution media. If you could run the software directly from the CD, then the copyright holder might be able to argue that you didn't need to copy the software in order to get value from it. That's often the case with cartridge games for dedicated gaming systems, for example. But it hasn't been true for a vast majority of personal computer software, since about the mid-1980s.

The effect on the market: When you copy software from distribution media to your hard disk, you are not reducing the market value of the software. This act does not cause the copyright holder to lose any other potential customers. There is no negative economic impact.

And that no negative economic impact point, goes straight to the core of copyright's purpose. Copyright exists to create a market, where one would not naturally exist (because people would share a work), in order to give creators an incentive to produce works. In USA, our constitution is quite explicit about why we allow Congress to make laws that restrict our copying rights:

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

This form of copying -- installation of software from distribution media to hard disk -- is completely compatible with the purpose of copyright law, and doesn't undermine it in any way.

You can counter-attack on the other two fair use critera and do well, since the amount of copying will usually be near 100%, and the nature of the work being copied will be quite unique and specific. But I don't think it will do any good, mainly due to the economic impact point. The fact that there isn't a downside to letting people copy software from distribution media to their hard disks, just blows away the other considerations.

Juicy targets all around
I want to pound them to the ground
Battlements sit most unmanned
I would grind them into sand

My scouts see unprotected loot
And defenders who don't give a hoot
At sight of dragons, they would run
Those who stay, would be cooked well-done

They toil like peasants, waiting for me
To come and set their gold stores free
We who attack, get the glory
Legendary assaults make great story

Sack and plunder and pillage all night
We orcs live for this delight
But in these veins, a fire burns
For I have no attack turns!

-- Aramchek the Orc