Blackmoor Vituperative

The Richmond City Council is not the only cesspit of corruption in Virginia. The Virginia Senate has its share of corrupt politicians, too.

Yes, Democratic leaders in Virginia’s Senate broke the rules when they killed a bunch of gun rights bills in a specially formed subcommittee. And, no, there’s not a thing anybody can do about it.

[...]

The controversy began when Senate Majority Leader Richard Saslaw (D-Fairfax) and Courts of Justice Chairman Henry Marsh (D-Richmond) created a special subcommittee to consider several gun bills passed by the Republican-controlled House, including an attempt to repeal Virginia’s ban on buying more than one handgun a month.

[...]

Saslaw wasn’t shy about the purpose of the Courts of Justice special subcommittee, which was stacked with four Democratic senators and one moderate Republican.

[...]

Enter Bolling.

His March 12 memo, citing Rule 20 (h), says:

“Accordingly, and based on my objective interpretation of the Rules of the Senate, it is my belief that Senate subcommittees do not have the authority to take final action on any bill or resolution referred to them. The subcommittee can consider such bills and resolutions, but ultimately, the subcommittee is only empowered to make recommendations to the full Committee. The ultimate authority of taking final action on such bills and resolutions rests solely with the full committee.”

(from Lt. Gov. Bolling: Anti-gun bill panel creation broke Senate rules, The Washington Post)

It’s a shame that there isn’t some kind of law that requires politicians to obey the rules they were elected to follow. Saslaw and Marsh should be charged with a crime, in my opinion.

In this blog post on infolawgroup.com, David Navetta takes a closer look at the PCI and encryption requirements of Nevada’s Security of Personal Information law, including the interplay between the PCI and encryption requirements, the scope of the obligations, potential problems/ambiguities in the law, and the applicability of a “safe harbor” for security breaches.

Never content to twist US law into pretzels, the media robber barons also attempt to use their power to make other nation’s laws as bad as those we have here….

In accordance with US trade law, the Office of the US Trade Representative (USTR) is required to conduct an annual review of the status of foreign intellectual property laws. This review, which is referred to as Special 301, is typically used to denounce countries that have less restrictive copyright policies than the United States.

The review process is increasingly dominated by content industry lobbyists who want to subvert US trade policy and make it more favorable to their own interests. [...] One of the organizations that plays a key role in influencing the Special 301 review is the International Intellectual Property Alliance (IIPA), a powerful coalition that includes the RIAA, the MPAA, and the Business Software Alliance (BSA). The IIPA, which recently published its official recommendations to the USTR for the 2010 edition of the 301 review, has managed to achieve a whole new level of absurdity.

University of Edinburgh law lecturer Andres Guadamuz wrote a blog entry this week highlighting some particularly troubling aspects of the IIPA’s 301 recommendations. The organization has condemned Indonesia and several other countries for encouraging government adoption of open source software. According to the IIPA, official government endorsements of open source software create “trade barriers” and restrict “equitable market access” for software companies.

[...]

The Indonesian government issued a statement in 2009 informing municipal governments that they had to stop using pirated software. The statement said that government agencies must either purchase legally licensed commercial software or switch to free and open source alternatives in order to comply with copyright law. This attempt by Indonesia to promote legal software procurement processes by endorsing the viability of open source software has apparently angered the IIPA.

In its 301 recommendations for Indonesia, the IIPA demands that the government rescind its 2009 statement. According to the IIPA, Indonesia’s policy “weakens the software industry and undermines its long-term competitiveness” because open source software “encourages a mindset that does not give due consideration to the value to intellectual creations [and] fails to build respect for intellectual property rights.”

The number of ways in which the IIPA’s statements regarding open source software are egregiously misleading and dishonest are too numerous to count.

(from Big Content condemns foreign governments that endorse FOSS, Ars Technica)

“The IIPA — destroying your cultural future to line our pockets today!”

I picked up the TV series “Invasion” on DVD at Kroger, from a bargain bin. I am up to episode 5 or 6. This is a weird show.

There is clearly an alien invasion going on, but it’s not clear that the aliens are even aware that they are aliens. I had always assumed that pod people would know that they are pod people. But what if they didn’t know?

What if you were a pod person, and didn’t know it? What if you just felt… off, somehow?

I have said it before, but I will say it again: don’t take anything posted in this blog too seriously. It’s mainly a place for me to grumble harmlessly about things that are beyond my control, so that I can get it out of my system and go on with my life as the generally optimistic, upbeat person that I prefer to be.

Life is too short to be pissed off all the time.

Associate yourself with men of good quality if you esteem your own reputation; for ’tis better to be alone than in bad company.

(From George Washington’s Rules of Civility)

George Washington’s Rules of Civility is pretty cool, in a Victorian sort of way.

It’s 06:00 Sunday morning. I have been laying awake for an hour.

I had a job interview Friday at one of the more prestigious companies in Richmond. It doesn’t matter which one. Toward the end of the interview, they mentioned the section on my resume toward the end, where I state:

I will consent to pre- or post-employment drug testing only if I am or will be directly responsible for the lives of others, or if I must obtain and maintain a security clearance from the Unites States federal government.

The interviewer said that a humiliating invasion of my personal privacy (i.e., “drug testing”) was a requirement for the position, and that I wouldn’t be offered the position unless I consented to it. Note that I hadn’t actually been offered the job, but if I were offered the position, consenting to this debasement would be a condition of my employment.

I really want that job. I still do. It would be a great opportunity for me, with a great company, doing exactly what I want to do. I grudgingly said that I would consent, if offered the job.

I have hated myself ever since saying it. If I am offered the job, and if I consent to this pre-employment rape just to get a paycheck, I will hate the company and every moment I work there.

“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated…”

Has this phrase become meaningless? If it doesn’t apply to your most intimate of medical information, then what good is it?

I am going to start lobbying the General Assembly, to ask them to create an Employee Medical Privacy Act. The legitimate business interests of an employer do not extend to the private medical information of their employees and prospective employees. This grotesque and despicable invasion of Virginians’ privacy has gone too far. The practice has become so commonplace that only action by the General Assembly can protect us from it. If they won’t protect us from this vile and humiliating practice, then they need to be voted out of office and replaced with people who will.

In the meantime, I am going to contact that employer on Monday, and tell them that although I would love to have that job, that I will not and will never submit to being humiliated and debased as a condition of employment. If more of us stood up and said this, this despicable practice would end. But because most of use aren’t standing up against this obscene invasion of our most intimate private matters, it won’t stop until the government of Virginia puts a stop to it.

Frankly, I do not expect that to happen. But someone has to try, and I don’t see anyone else trying, so I guess I will have to be the one to start.

It appears that the Digital Rights Mafia and the media robber barons have successfully done in Britain what they failed to do in the USA in 2003 — bullied the broadcasters into allowing the robber barons to control not only the content, but the devices used to play that content.

In my latest Guardian column, “Why did Ofcom back down over DRM at the BBC?” I look at how lamentably credulous both the BBC and its UK regulator, Ofcom, have been in accepting US media’ giants threats to boycott the Beeb if it doesn’t add digital rights management to its broadcasts. The BBC is publicly funded, and it is supposed to be acting in the public interest: but crippling British TV sets in response for demands from offshore media barons is no way to do this — and the threats the studios have made are wildly improbable. When the content companies lost their bid to add DRM to American TV, they made exactly the same threats, and then promptly caved and went on allowing their material to be broadcast without any technical restrictions.

How they rattled their sabers and promised a boycott of HD that would destroy America’s chances for an analogue switchoff. For example, the MPAA’s CTO, Fritz Attaway, said that “high-value content will migrate away” from telly without DRM.

Viacom added: “[i]f a broadcast flag is not implemented and enforced by Summer 2003, Viacom’s CBS Television Network will not provide any programming in high definition for the 2003-2004 television season.”

One by one, the big entertainment companies – and sporting giants like the baseball and American football leagues – promised that without the Broadcast Flag, they would take their balls and go home.

So what happened? Did they make good on their threats? Did they go to their shareholders and explain that the reason they weren’t broadcasting anything this year is because the government wouldn’t let them control TVs?

No. They broadcast. They continue to broadcast today, with no DRM.

They were full of it. They did not make good on their threats. They didn’t boycott.

They caved.

Why did Ofcom back down over DRM at the BBC?

(From New column: Why is Ofcom ready to allow BBC DRM?, Cory Doctorow’s craphound.com

What the hell has happened to the once-great Britain? They gave us the foundations of our society — the rights of free men to bear arms, the rights of a jury to decide not only if a law was broken, but whether that law should be enforced at all, and the basic right of the governed to expect their government to treat them justly… all of this is due to our country’s British origins.

I have to say, I am a little disappointed with what’s become of them.

Religious conservatives argue the Founding Fathers intended the United States to be a Judeo-Christian country. But President Obama is right when he says it isn’t.

(From America is not a Christian nation, Salon)

I am no great fan of President Obama (nor was I of President Bush). But when someone is right, they are right.

OpenOffice.org 3.2 is now available, with a handful of new features and improved ODF compatibility.

If you haven’t migrated from MS Office to OpenOffice… what are you waiting for? Hello? It’s 2010!