Blackmoor Vituperative

Hello FairTax supporters,

I’m writing today in order to share with you an example of another reason why the current system is unacceptable and must be replaced by the FairTax. In just the last couple of weeks newspapers, television shows, and radio shows have all highlighted the growing tension between the American public and the Internal Revenue code.

Tension spilled over when the IRS tried to sneak through a new rule which allowed the IRS to allow others to sell your personal and private information which they force you to disclose under penalty of law. One more reason why we should pass the FairTax today! To read more details on this story click here: http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/business/14147002.htm.

IRS horror stories, possible privacy violations, budget deficits, trade issues, and more issues like these abound in the news. There is no better time than now to have a friend join us with no obligation here http://db.fairtaxvolunteer.org/esubscribe.php or for you to write a quick letter to the editor on the benefits of the FairTax. I urge you to write a letter today. Just send an e-mail to letters@fairtax.org with your city and state and we will get back to you with the contact information for the local papers in your area and some bullet points on the benefits of the FairTax.

Thank you for all that you do,

Leo Linbeck
Chairman/CEO
Americans For Fair Taxation

Here’s an example of why I keep reading the Hero Games forums, even though I am no longer posting to it. I learn about nifty things like this, a live map of Hero System players:

Herophiles United

Google, will you never cease to amaze?

No, not the Jet Li movie.

I’m not an artist, but I like to draw. I spent the last couple of weeks working on this drawing of “Black Mask“, the WestGuard cruiser. I drew it in Inkscape, a great free (open source) SVG drawing program.

Like all of the gaming material I create these days, the image and the original file are released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license. If you create gaming material, you should seriously consider releasing it all under this license.

I watch a lot of movies. I love movies. Good movies, bad movies… as long as they aren’t dull movies. I recently re-watched The Specials. I had forgotten just how funny this movie is. The Specials are the 6th or 7th most powerful group of superheroes on Earth. This movie is a day in the life of The Specials where they deal with the everyday trials of just being who they are, on the eve of the release of their new line of action figures (the Oscar of superheroes). If you liked Office Space and Clerks, you’ll love this movie.

Unlike most — make that practically all — superhero movies, the dialog in The Specials is brilliant. The same writer (James Gunn) is behind the soon-to-be released Slither, so I will definitely be checking that out.

Speaking of movies, I recently joined the William Shatner DVD Club. I have high hopes for this (ever the optimist, I). The first movie Bill sent, Ginger Snaps, came with a free bonus: Wolves Of Wall Street. I’ve not watched Ginger Snaps yet, but I watched Wolves Of Wall Street earlier today. Wow, was that bad. Bad dialog, extraordinarily repetitive dialog, and a whole lot of padding (mostly scenes of the main character walking around in a kicky beret, alternated with shots of the Wall Street street sign and the Flatiron Building). Whoo-wee, what a stinker.

A how-to guide on home book binding:

Fun and Easy How to Guide to Binding Your Own Paperback Books At Home…FAST

Gorilla Glue. Hmm….

Physicists have built the world’s thinnest gold necklaces, at just one atom wide. […]

Paul Snijders and Sven Rogge from the Kavli Institute of Nanoscience at the Delft University of Technology, in Delft, Holland, and Hanno Weitering from the University of Tennessee build the single-atom wires by evaporating a puff of gold atoms onto a silicon substrate which has first been cleared of impurities by baking it at 1200 degrees Kelvin. The crystalline surface was cut to form staircase corrugations. Left to themselves, the atoms then self-assemble into wires (aligned along the corrugations) of up to 150 atoms each (see figure at Physics News Graphics).

(from the American Institute Of Physics, Atom Wires)

CompUSA.com has the Microsoft USB Fingerprint Reader for Windows for $35 – $25 rebate = $10, with free shipping on $150 orders. Gummi bears and Microsoft Mark Of The Beast (TM) sold separately.

Finally, after making us wait for four years, Warner Bros. is releasing the first seasons of Justice League and Batman Beyond on DVD. It’s about damned time. Of course, Batman: The Animated Series, the cartoon that single-handedly resurrected the whole genre of superhero cartoons, has been out for a good long while. I don’t know why WB dragged their feet for so long getting full seasons of Justice League and Batman Beyond on DVD.

This isn’t exactly a scoop, but hey, I’ve been busy.

Some have recently argued that corporate executives face increased risk of criminal liability under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX) if their companies develop and distribute code licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL). The argument, as it has been made, raises significant concerns about SOX compliance, but it fails to clarify the scope and context of these points. We have reviewed these issues and, as discussed more fully below, there is in fact no special risk for developing GPL’d code under SOX. Under most circumstances, the risk posed to a company by SOX is not affected by whether they use GPL’d or any other type of software. Arguments to the contrary are pure anti-GPL FUD.

(from Software Freedom Law Center, Sarbanes-Oxley and the GPL: No Special Risk)

I’m not sure what Wasabi thought they were accomplishing by publishing their scare-tactics white paper, but anyone familiar with SarbOx and familiar with the terms of the GPL (and really, it isn’t hard to be one of those people, all it takes is some time to read up on them) can see that they’re blowing smoke. Shame on them.

VCOM Fix-It Utilities 6 Professional is free after rebate at Amazon.com. This a great utility suite at a fantastic price. I highly recommend it.