Tuesday, February 26, 2008
- I suppose no one should be shocked that the state that calls “Music City” its capital would end having clashes between music fans and copyright owners. Now, a state bill seeks to get state-funded universities to do some of the dirty work. From ArsTechnica:
A new bill proposed in the Tennessee state senate aims to reduce copyright infringement at universities by forcing the schools to become antipiracy enforcers. If passed, the bill would require universities that receive funding from the state to analyze all traffic passing through their networks in order to track down and stop infringing activity. Under the proposed bill, universities could lose state funding if they refuse to implement network analysis systems or if they receive ten or more infringement complaints from content owners during a single year.
Given much of a higher-learnings tainted record of on-campus law enforcement, I frankly don’t trust them to handle it from either side of the copyright issue. However, playing CSI - IT isn’t the universities job and we shouldn’t be putting the schools’ funding at risk to make them play along. [1 # ]
- I can’t classify this as one of the greatest jobs in history, because the chance of getting killed is way too high. However, if you’re looking to read a story on some real bad-ass action heros, check out the current issue of Wired Magazine and their story on how Titan Salvage rescued a cargo ship full of Mazda cars.
They’re a motley mix: American, British, Swedish, Panamanian. Each has a specialty — deep-sea diving, computer modeling, underwater welding, big-engine repair. And then there’s Habib, the guy who regularly helicopters onto the deck of a sinking ship, greets whatever crew is left, and takes command of the stricken vessel. He’s been at sea since he was 18, and now, at 51, his tanned face, square jaw, and don’t-even-try-bullshitting-me stare convey a world-weary air of command. He holds an unlimited master’s license, which means he’s one of the select few who are qualified to pilot ships of any size, anywhere in the world.
Should Hollywood attempt to portray these guys, at least get Tommy Lee Jones to play Habib. And kids, stay in school. You’re going to need to learn some math to be a bad-ass like Rich Habib. [1 # ]
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