March 2004

RIAA is coming after nine UofM students in their witch hunt for file swappers:

Following numerous lawsuits against Internet users suspected of file-sharing, the record industry will soon subpoena the University for the names of students allegedly sharing music illegally. In January, the Recording Industry Association of America filed suit against 532 individuals nationwide, many of them college students. The suits, called “John Doe” lawsuits, are against users identified only by their Internet protocol addresses. RIAA is subpoenaing the University for the names of the students under its network.

Its a good year to not live in the dorms. I’d be so screwed.

Found this in my Linguistics homework…

So I finished The Last Jihad last night.

I think there are a few important lessons we should all learn from the book:

• If you’re going to commit treason and aid terrorists in their plot to assassinate the president, make sure you use AOL. And don’t even think about encrypting anything. And when you delete an email, its instantly gone forever.
• Everybody uses Blackberries to communicate. And they’ve always got a perfect signal.
• And they never use capital letters. They don’t need to.
• Not even the president.
• And if you’re an evil traitor, have all your emails forwarded from AOL to your Blackberry.
• The best way to keep the Israelis and Palestinians from killing each other is to promise them lots of money.
• When the Secret Service secures a route for the presidential motorcade, they will won’t notice the FBI snipers hiding in nearby buildings.
• Everyone is really religious and prays a lot, except for the token Democrat.
• And finally, the Iraqis are fully capable of secretly constructing and hiding a nuclear armed ICBM bunker inside a hollowed out hospital in downtown Baghdad.

For the last 4 hours or so I’ve been doing something I haven’t taken the time to do for months… read a book.

My father gave me a copy of The Last Jihad, by Joel C. Rosenberg. I’m halfway through and I’ve already concluded that this is the most Republican work of fiction ever written.

After the first few pages, its already set up quite the Republican fantasy: A Republican elected by a landslide after W’s second term, strong economy, massive tax cuts, America safe from terrorism while those crazy Europeans are still getting their butts kicked…

As a book, it fits the mold of books I really enjoy reading. Techno-thriller, lots of guns, secret missions, and all that James Bond jazz.

But there have been more than a few “hey wait a second!” moments in the first half of the book. Like the fact that they seem pretty serious about the whole “nuke Iraq” plan, and a pretty unabashed endorsement of the Carnivore program. Some of them are pretty funny, while the rest of them make you want to shake your head. Theres nothing wrong with writing for a target audience, but this reads like a Bill O’Reilly fiction novel.

But hell, it must be good, since I’ve been reading it non-stop for 4 hours.