Green Beatles

Roy Zimmerman ponders the eternal question: “What if the Beatles had been Irish?”

Va Tech

Most of the world is rightly horrified at the senseless killing of over 30 students on the Virginia Tech campus. My heart and my prayers go out to the families of those who have lost loved ones in this criminal tragedy. But while we are offering condolences, let us also remember that this is a CRIMINAL tragedy. Apparently, a Va Tech student was jilted by his girlfriend and went off. He didn’t have automatic weapons. He had a couple of 9mm pistols. He used them to commit several illegal acts, including murder. No additional or different laws would have prevented this tragedy. The Va Tech administration might have been able to slow down the shooter’s progress by doing something other than sending out an email a few hours after the shooting started, though. Criminals, by definition, break laws. Outlawing guns or actions don’t work when a person is determined to break the law. And the courts have ruled that police departments have no duty to protect folks. Great combination, especially when an institution rules that they will not allow anyone on their property to protect themselves.

Sony Breaks Sony

It’s not enough that their batteries could roach your laptops (or your sensitive bits) while bursting into flames. It’s not enough that Sony uses a fancy copy protection scheme on their DVD’s that takes a little extra effort to break. Now, Sony has upped the ante. Sony has rolled out a new copy protection scheme that is so sophisticated that it even causes new movies to crash on brand new players, including Sony players! Sony admits that it is the new copy protection that is causing the problem but doesn’t intend to change the copy protection. They go on to say that a firmware upgrade will address these problems on Sony players. But no release date on the firmware has been set and nothing has been said about other brands that are crippled by Sony’s action.

FWIW, a pass through the free version of DVDFab decrypter strips out all of the copy protection silliness, including those pesky Sony movies that will not rip with other software titles. Just for those of you at home keeping score: Go out and by a new Sony movie such as “Stranger Than Fiction”. Put the new movie in your new Sony DVP-CX995V DVD player. It will crap out. Take DVD out of player. Put DVD in PC equipped with a DVD Burner and DVDFab decrypter. Strip out the copy protection and any other useless crap that you do not care to sit through. Burn customized DVD. Watch the movie that you paid for on the equipment that you paid for.