Expand your brain. Check out this info on meteor imacts over at Chaos Manor
Tell the Copyright Office to take a hike
But do be a tad more polite about it…
Rich, over at The English Guy, cites a Nikolaos S. Karastathis (NSK Blog) post about the plan the Copyright Office has to implement a copyright pre-registration site that will ONLY work with Internet Exploder.
Nikolaos links to the specific notification by the Copyright Office and suggests writing a letter (the Copyright Office won’t accept emails on this). Below is the letter I’m sending. They require five copies to be sent. May I humbly suggest sending eight? Five to the Copyright office and CCs to your congresscritters (representative and senators)? Oh, and do note the CCs on the copies sent to the Copyright Office…
🙂
Oh, and spread the word, eh? Locking a fedgov website down for ONE company’s product smacks of something a tad fishy. Maybe the Justice Department should look into the monopoly aspects. *LOL*
Office of the General Counsel
U.S. Copyright Office
Copyright GC/ I&R
P.O. Box 70400
Southwest Station
Washington, DC 20024-0400
Dear Reader:
At this Web address: http://www.copyright.gov/fedreg/2005/70fr44878.html I just read that the Copyright Office is planning to implement copyright preregistration via the web ONLY for those using Internet Explorer web browser.
Are you sure that’s wise? Internet Explorer is the least standards-compliant major web browser. It is also historically the least secure—in fact, Homeland Security has recommended people switch!— most “attacked†by malicious users and is available for use ONLY by Windows users. In fact,
“… market dominance is not the only reason for the Microsoft browser’s disproportionate share of attacks. Art Manion, Internet security analyst for US-CERT, the operational arm of the National Cyber Security Division at the Department of Homeland Security, says IE’s unique features increase its online vulnerability.†[PC World Magazine online, “Is It Time to Ditch IE?†October 2004)
Anyone who is competent can build a secure website that does not require the use of proprietary, non-standards-compliant software such as Internet Explorer. Standards-compliant (W3C-compliant) browsers abound, and standards-compliant websites can be read and interacted with by users of all popular web browsers, including Internet Explorer.
I urge you to maintain openess at the Copyright Office and eschew the use of unsafe, proprietary, non-standards-compliant software such as Internet Explorer as your benchmark.
Sincerely
Conspiracy of dunces, part X
Slip-slidin’ into my point. Just hold on…
I ran across the following statement in the comments section of another blog. I’m excerpting it here and removing it from the context of the discussion there for illustrative purposes only.
“Conservative blogs may counter the liberal MSM propaganda machine with facts and reason, but all you’re doing is preaching to the quire [sic].”
Now, this is more than just irritating; it’s an example of a lack of literacy. That’s “choir” not “quire”. quire: “24 uniform sheets of paper; a section of printed leaves in proper sequence after folding; gathering.” “Preaching to the choir” is the equivalent of attempting to convert those who are among the most faithful, the choir, in a church.
It could help “counter the liberal MSM propaganda machine” if the facts and reason presented are literate. Of course, in a society where reading is mostly limited to a different “echo chamber” filled with semi- and sub-literates produced by prisons for kids (AKA “public schools”), a characterization that sometimes fits the blogosphere as easily as it does the “MSM,” literate argumentation may well not be enough.
Now, is the material presented in what the writer above calls the MSM any more literate? No. The self-appointed media elite are almost uniformly subliterate manufactured morons who are unmoored from the history, literature and culture of 2,000+ years of Western Civilization. I say “manufactured morons,” because most of them have some basic native intelligence but are crippled by stupid schooling and a dishonest viewpoint that refuses to address its own preconceptual biases.
Here’s a simple set of filters to apply to any argument:
1.) Is it linguistically sub-literate?
2.) Does it rely on fallacies of reasoning?
3.) Does it ignore or twist history?
4.) Does it ignore or twist contemporary facts?
If any of the above applies, simply pass on by. There is simply too much informed and reasonable argumentation available to waste time arguing with people who refuse to reason. And people who refuse to spend the time and effort to learn how to argue honestly will waste your time daily if you let them.
(Interestingly, “quire” was once also spelled “choir” but “choir”—”a company of singers, esp. an organized group employed in church service”— in the sense of the phrase where “quire” is misused above has never been spelled “quire”.)
Nitpicking? Perhaps, but it illustrates a common problem: people with seriously hampered cultural referents and no desire to reason or argue their case from fact using fair and sensible rhetoric.*
Jeff Goldstein, speaking about the Cindy Sheehan circus, makes much the same point:
“…I long ago realized that these folks have traded in honest evaluation for an ends-justifies-the-means political worldview—one in which emotional talismans like Cindy Sheehan are used (in this case, voluntarily and actively) in lieu of argument to ward off the evils of Bush’s America.”
When scoundrels use dishonest means to affect those whose crippled mental and moral capacities are unable to see through—or seeing through, unable or unwilling to reject—their dishonesty to achieve their ends, what does this say of their ends? (Yes, I am speaking of politicians darned near universally, Mass Media Podpeople, Loony Left Moonbats and their cohorts in crime among such as the ACLU.)
*rhetoric: here used as “the art of making persuasive speeches; oratory; the art of influencing the thought and conduct of an audience.” It’s sad that the art of well-reasoned persuasive speech and writing is no longer thought of as rhetoric, since so many have come to use it to refer to the opposite, instead: overly-emotional bombast. *sigh* Indeed, that now seems to be the preferred definitions in some dictionaries, unlike the two-volume set I grew up with (and still have), in which persuasive, reasoned discourse was the preferred definition. Pejoration of terminology has, in this case at least, followed a pejoration of thought and practice.
(pejoration: depreciation; a lessening in worth, quality; semantic change in a word to a lower, less approved, or less respectable meaning)
Another one of those quiz thingies
I found this at Soliloquy… one writer’s thoughts. Hmmm… Nancy and I both tested the same on this lil quiz.
You’re Most Like The Season Winter…You’re often depicted as the cold, distant season. But you’re incredibly intelligent, mature and Independant. You have an air of power around you—and that can sometimes scare people off. You’re complex, and get hurt easily—so you rarely let people in if you can help it. You can be somewhat of a loner, but just as easily you could be the leader of many. You Tend to be negative, and hard to relate to, but you give off a relaxed image despite being insecure—and secretly many people long to be like you, not knowing how deep the Winter season really is.Well done… You’re the most inspirational of seasons 🙂
?? Which Season Are You ??
brought to you by Quizilla
Interesting. Oh, yeh, I did sub in a different winter pic for the one the lil quiz thingie had. Pop on over to Nancy’s and I think you can see why. Not me at all, at all.
🙂
Where’s the Beef
Check my sidebar: has John F. Kerry really released his records, yet? I didn’t think so…
Same story, umpteenth verse. Ya hoped it’d get better, but it only got worse.
Are we living in a Loony Tunes world or what? I feel like Pete Puma in “Rabbit’s Kin“. Ya know the schtick: “three or four lumps of sugar?”—”Nah, sugar gives me a headache.” Jean Fraud sKerry’s promised this and promised that and always fails to do as promised—usually by parsing plain English in so tortured a way as to “unpromise” what he’s said he’ll do.
I feel like Pete Puma. Jean Fraud sKerry’s saccharine sourpus gives me a headache. “No! No! I don’t wanna drink the KoolAid!!!”
*sigh*
Just give it up, John. Accept the fact that the legend that you are in your own mind is the legend of a loser. Just let those records go.
See Cao’s Blog for more, including this statement by Cao:
“Some of us still expect our elected officials and representatives to behave like civilized people with a moral compass. In other words, I still expect people to look at me and tell me something that’s the truth and not a lie. Do we as a nation have that strong of a deficit of decency that we’re becoming a nation of liars and it’s acceptable to lie?”
A serious question indeed.
Consider joining these bloggers in the Free Kerry’s 180 Blogburst. See Cao’s Blog for joining in.
Aaron’s cc
And Rightly So!
Atlas Shrugs
Balance Sheet
Cao’s Blog
Cathouse Chat
Christmas Ghost
Civil Issues
Conservative Friends
doubleplusgood infotainment
Doughnut Holes
Euphoric Reality
Flight Pundit
Fundamentally Right
Furry Press
GM’s Corner
Gribbit’s Word
House Of Wheels
i-imagery.com
Infinite Universe
International House of Conservatism
Jackson’s Junction
Jay Howard Smith
Kender’s Musings
Lifetrek
Moonbattery.com
My Vast Rightwing Conspiracy
NIF
PBSWatcher
Pirate’s Cove
Pooklekufr: The Kafir Constitutionalist
Power and Control
Private Radio
Progressive Conservatism
Ravings Of A Mad Tech
Reasoned Audacity
Republican Vet
Right in Philly
Rottweiler Puppy
Shades of Gray
Something…and Half of Something
Stop the ACLU
Tall Glass of Milk
The Babaganoosh
The Creative Conservative
The Dark Citadel
The Paragraph Farmer
The Pulpit Pounder
The Sunnyeside Of Life
Think About It
third world county
TMH’s Bacon Bits
Uncle Jack
Villainous Company
Web-Nuts
What Attitude Problem?
Where’s Your Brain?
Word Park Blog