World of Suck

I'm a little bit slow. Sometimes it takes me a long time to really understand things. So I'm asking for a bit of help here. I'm fairly sure u235 already covered this topic, but it's come up again, so I'm taking a swing at it.

There is a virus out there call papillomavirus. It's an STD. If you catch it, it can cause cervical cancer and genital warts. In fact, it's responsible for 70% of all cases of cervical cancer. Cervical cancer has about a 40% fatality rate. So, I think we can safely label it a bad thing.

However, there is a YAY moment here. Scientists, being smart people, created a vaccine. Prevents the spread of this virus. Fewer infections, fewer illness, less cancer. It's an easy to follow train of thought. And the world rejoiced. A handful of states made it required for girls aged 11 or 12. Parents have the ability to opt out if needed (say if your religion has rules against modern medicine or you just don't want your child to get the damn thing). So all was good.

I admit, I'm hesitant about throwing this injection out there and forcing it on a large part of our population when the scientists involved don't know how often booster shots may be required, but in general, it's a good thing, so YAY!

Naturally, there are some people that are against this vaccine. First off, how the fuck can you be anti-vaccine? It that like pro-virus? What the fuck people? That aside, they object. They say that by preventing kids from the risk of an STD, you encourage children to have premarital sex.

My brain hurls itself against my skull at that concept. It wants the bad idea to go away. OK, first off, it's only one STD. You can still point at AIDS that FUCKING KILLS YOU. Preventing this shouldn't put a dent in your ability to terrify your child about sex. Especially given the horrible sex-ed classes many schools in this country have. How can you reasonably justify the idea that vaccinating children against a disease encourages them to have sex? They're not safe from all of them!! And even if they were no risk of infection, you can still discourage them by discussing the problems with teen pregnancy and the emotional baggage associated with sexual relationships.

Honestly, what is the precedent here? What if they found something that would eradicate every known STD in the world with a single injection? Would you forbid your child from getting it because you want the risk to scare them into keeping their pants zipped? Wouldn't a realistic discussion about sex accomplish this with education instead of fear mongering? Teach your children to think and you won't have to make them afraid of sex in order to stop them from having it.

Crazification in action!!

It's not often I say this. I agree with Steve Jobs. The Apple Führer recently spoke out against the music industry. Sorta. Specifically he targeted the Digital Rights (restrictions) Management requirements that the RIAA has forced onto Apple's iTunes store.

In a article posted on Apple's web site, he makes a couple of good points. Ones that the rest of the internet world has made time and again. Hopefully, he has a little more weight to throw around.

He forecasts three possible futures for digital music. The first is what we have now: online music can only be played on the purchasers mp3 players, but pirated and homemade music can play on any of them. The second is Apple licensing it's FairPlay DRM to competitors so they can interoperate between players, giving users more options. The downside is that it increases the exposure of the DRM as more people have access to the encryption process. The third option is to get rid of DRM entirely because it just doesn't work.

He advocates the third option. He claims that of the 22 billion songs sold last year, the record companies sold 20 billion of them on DRM-free CD. The remaining 2 billion songs were sold online with some for of DRM. As long as that model is true, piracy is not even slowed down by attempts to restrict music with annoying DRM exclusivity.

Think about it. It takes about a minute to find, purchase and download a song from iTunes. Give or take. It takes about the same time to do the same on a peer to peer network. Call it 10 minutes to grab a full album off bit torrent or p2p. The difference is that once you get music from iTunes, you have to spend additional time altering the file to get the music into an mp3 or AAC format to use anywhere you want. The pirated version came that way. Sure, it's unethical, but it's true. How much is that time worth to you? If you've got the right player, nothing. If you don't, maybe it's worth more than $.99? Justification of course, but foolish record companies (I know, I repeat myself there) need to consider that many of the pirates out there follow that exact line of thought when it comes to online sales.

DRM is bad. Has always been bad. Will always be bad. And it hurts your sales more than it protects them. I could understand it if it worked. But it doesn't. The proof is the fact that p2p networks still have every song you could ever want after years of DRM sales. They have to come from somewhere, right? But I know the RIAA doesn't like to be introspective and notice the flaws in their thought process. Their itty bitty brains might explode if they ever caught on to the fact that anyone with a linux box and a MP3 ripper can buy a CD and offer it up to the world, eh? Can't even install illegal rootkits that way, can ya Sony?

Your model sucks. You need to rethink it. And given how low the world opinion is of your organization, you might want to consider Mr Job's proposal here. I think he's right. And if you had a brain, you would too.

Recently three men with hoods went into a IHop and tasered a bunch of people and stole from the cash register and customers. They wound up shoot an guy that wouldn't stand by as they pistol whipped his son for protecting his granddaughter. Fast forward three days later . . . My mother and I pull into the parking lot of a neighborhood hardware store. I see a guy walking in with a hooded sweatshirt that covers his face that has a skeleton (the hood is a skull). Needless to say, my mother was not too inclined to go in. We waited until he left the store, not knowing if he and his buddy were going to hold the place up.

Considering the robbery, the guy was lucky the store clerk wasn't trigger happy! WTF do some people think!