Oh boy. Now, P2P networks aren't just bad for business... they're a "national security threat."
I realize that those in Congress are not as tech savvy as some people, and this type of thing was bound to crop up eventually. Anything that starts out as a mild annoyance, turns into a huge frustration and begins a large debate about intellectual property, and ends up having the RIAA and MPAA up in arms can't be a good thing. Therefore, it will eventually make its way onto the floor of the House and Senate. It already has previous to this... but now the tech illiteracy in Congress is really beginning to show, because they've deemed it highly dangerous to national security. It's because some congressman or government official might be dumb enough to put sensitive documents into his sharing folder... Why a congressman would be on a P2P network and why he would be dumb enough not to put sensitive documents in their proper places is beyond me... but the incompetence of Congress has been shown many times in the past, so it halfway doesn't surprise me.
I'd just like, one of these times, for Congress to discuss something that at least one of them knows anything about. They discuss education which they only vaguely know about. They discuss technology which they all think they know about, but they don't. They discuss a myriad other things which they are supposed to know, but they don't. Why not bring in a technology expert next time to explain how P2P really works? Why not leave education policy to the educators? Why not leave foreign policy to the people who actually know about other countries?
Bah. I wouldn't live here if it wasn't America.
A man was questioned by the FBI and passively threatened by them because of his love of reading.
He just happened to be reading a print-out of a left-wing article on the modern media entitled "Weapons of Mass Stupidity." He was reading it in a coffee shop as he waited in line, and some lady thought this looked suspicious, so she called the FBI. Yes, who would be READING a PIECE OF PAPER?? No one does that anymore... looks suspicious. Oh, and it says something about weapons on it, too... I better call someone.
You can read the article and find out what the FBI agents said to him, though it's pretty funny. The main point is, though, that when someone finds a man reading a piece of paper in line to be suspicious... what the heck has this world come to? I'd like to just pass it off as a one time thing, but I hear these types of stories too often to do that.
Calm down, folks! Be more afraid of the shifty-eyed man who's handling something in his pocket, not the guy with his nose buried in an angering liberal slanted news article!
Apparently, neither do many major publishers these days.
It seems that a disgruntled writer, frustrated that he couldn't get published, wanted to test the limits of the system. He decided to take some good old fashioned Jane Austen, change the names of the chapters, the book, and the characters, and submit it to 18 major publishers. Only one of them even realized it was a plagiarized Austen book. The rest thought it was good, but rejected it. They must not realize that women these days still crave those mushy old-timey love stories.
One publisher even reprinted Pride and Prejudice recently. How sad. It just goes to show that publishers are bad judges of good literature, as well as badly versed in famously good literature. And I was thinking of writing a novel... better work hard...