Corridor 9

I had been planning on going camping today for the last week, up until yesterday evening. I thought that the weather was going to be hot and dry, but when I woke up this morning and looked at the Weather Channel, I noticed that there was a good chance of thunderstorms and rain all evening.

Because I had put off one of my reports for BGT, I was forced to finish it this morning to make the due date. This left me ill prepared to pack and head out this evening. I missed a perfectly good gear testing session because of my procrastination!

Fortunately enough for me I found some useful information regarding backcountry camping in the Pennyrile Forest State Resort Park. Now all I have to do is set aside a definite date for backpacking and head out. Maybe I’ll get to take Abby next week.

I am by no means a conspiracy theorist or anything, but I found something quite interesting. I watched a video called Loose Change that talks about some of the ideas floating around about 9/11. It’s a pretty good movie in all, and definitely makes you think. Watch it for entertainment or for information, but either way, watch it and make up your own mind on who is behind 9/11.

I’ve included 2 links. The first is to a video file I’m hosting which is fairly large. The second link is to a google video page. The quality is much worse than the video I have, but it will stream down and you won’t have to download the entire video if you don’t want.

Loose Change Download (694 MB)
Loose Change Video Stream from GoogleVideo

I emailed Matt Austin a while back looking for information on the new Madisonville antenna for Way-FM. He informed me that it had indeed been installed and should be fully functional now. I have noticed a dramatic improvement in signal quality here lately. For some reason the signal doesn’t quite reach the north-east side of town all that well, but I think this is due to it’s geographical location. If I’m correct, the antenna is placed on the south, or south-west side of town near the Brentwood area. This would explain the signal degradation that I have experienced close to home. It’s my hopes that the transmitter will undergo a power upgrade to reach more of Hopkins County in the near future.

For Who?

The DMCA already makes it illegal to copy a DVD due to the fact that you must reverse engineer or crack the copy protection scheme. This goes a long way from the old days where you were able to make a copy of a CD to play so your original wouldn’t get scratched or damaged in any way.

Now we have the Intellectual Property Protection Act will make it a illegal to own anti-copyprotection software. Even if it was purchased prior to the act being put into effect. It will make it illegal to even research how copy protection acts and/or how to disable it. The act will also make the owning of this software a FELONY!

Get this! It will permit wiretaps and investigations of copyright crimes against those suspected. WIRETAPS?!?!?! This isn’t terroristic actions people… this is someone making a copy of a DVD! Even if you OWN a dvd legally and want to make a use copy, you are breaking the law.

This act allows for the creation of a new copyright unit inside the FBI with a new $20 million dollar budget.

Whats the kicker you say?!?! It amends current copyright protection laws to allow for criminal enforcement EVEN IF THE MATERIAL ISN”T COPYRIGHTED! So, lets say I draw a little picture of a koala here on my desk… and I happen to see something that resembles that koala being used by someone else. I can SUE them, even though I didn’t copyright the material?!?

Penalties you ask: 10 years in a federal lockup for simply copying something. 10 years if you like my drawing and make a xerox to hang on your wall. 10 years for doing a college paper on copyright protection and copyright protection schemes.

Something to think about: Current laws make it illegal for me to take a cd we own and put it on my IPOD. I already paid for it, but the recording industry wants me to buy a copy for every device I wish to play it on. LUDICROUS!

The IStockPhoto thing didn’t go over well at all. Unfortunately, it seems that all my pictures are saved at half compression so the filesize won’t be so big. This is not acceptable to IStockPhoto, so none of the photo’s I already have are going to be accepted.

I think I’m going to try and sell some of my pictures on IStockPhoto.com. In talking to Paige during the grand canyon trip, she’s making around $300 / month just taking pictures and selling them online. Seeing as how I have a number of pictures that are all digital now, I thought it would be good idea to try and make a bit of money from them. I know I probably won’t make as much as some people since I’m not out taking photo’s every day, but any money is better than none. In addition, it might get me noticed.