Opinion Page
History lesson today. While listening to radio, I got to hear my favorite Biblical mis-quote. A caller was talking about the Ten Commandments. During her rant about how our entire legal system is based upon the Ten Commandments, even though only TWO of the Ten are codified (with a sometimes third). But I love it when these "experts" on the Bible refer to the Seventh Commandment and talk about how it's illegal to steal. While their statement is true, it misses the point - the Seventh Commandment has NOTHING to do with property theft. Nothing. Lost in translation from Hebrew to Greek to Latin to English is that "thou shalt not steal" refers to the taking of a person, not property. I've looked it up. I've researched it. And while I'm at it, these knuckleheads need to understand something else - the Ten Commandments were NEVER given to the Christians. It was given to Moses for the Jews. And there are more than SIX HUNDRED Commandments, not ten. If you want to take a stand on the issues, learn your damn facts.
SCO has big brass nads. The same people who are suing IBM over Linux have made more holes in their arguments. First, these knuckleheads are suing IBM, who has a license to use Unix. Second, they unveiled some of their "evidence" at a trade show - they showed 30-year-old code, not the "property" that they claim to own as a part of their new "System V" release. Now they're using Samba, some open-source code that's part of the same license they're suing over. They continue to hurt their own case. I hope that every Linux code writer, user, developer, tester, etc. files suit against the SCO Group for their heavy-handed tactics as just an attempt to hurt competition. Thanks to their harassment, I will NEVER buy anything from SCO Group.
The RIAA can blow me. This week a group of small entreprenneurs filed a suit against the RIAA, the notorious lobbyists for the billionaire record companies. The RIAA used the force of government (through $45,000,000 in lobbying) to give them the authority to extort $.07 for every song played by some person who got fed up with the lousy musical selections of local radio stations. I'm guessing that the artist would get none of the royalties, since their contracts probably don't allow for internet royalties. Therefore, the record companies probably just blow their load in the wads of money they extort from poor individuals like my buddy Greg. He could be a radio station owner, playing requests from me anytime, day or night. Things the local radio stations would never play. So, as my protest this year, I've bought NOTHING from an RIAA label. They will suffer by losing business - and I am not the only one. It's not Kazaa and college students downloading music that hurts their royalties - it's their own greed.
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