The fourth of July has pretty much become “grill and get drunk day,” but hey at least the fireworks promise to be somewhat entertaining.

Typing this on my iPod Touch in the WordPress app while sitting in Hudson River Park with my girlfriend napping on my lap. Yay for free wifi.

Does the MPAA and RIAA not see that these laws and measures are completely ineffective? Let’s take a quick look at The Pirate Bay, one of the web’s foremost torrent sites. On May 31, 2006, authorities raided their servers and caused TPB to go online for a whopping three days. Still unhappy, the MPAA and RIAA sued the founders of TPB and found them guilty. After the founders appealed their verdict, the record companies sued TPB’s ISP, and forced them to disconnect TPB. However as of today, TPB is still up-and-running, and all of the torrent trackers are working.

What does all that prove? It proves that piracy cannot be stopped, no matter how hard the companies try. Even if the record companies can get TPB shut down for good, what’s to say another torrent site won’t replace it?

Instead of trying to kill off piracy (which is no less of a challenge than turning Haiti into the next NYC), the record companies should instead try to appeal to consumers by lowering their prices or making their products more conveniently accessible online. Look at iTunes, how did it become so successful even though it requires consumers to pay? It made the whole process way more convenient than illegally downloading. And it charges reasonable prices, unlike record companies. Broke teenagers don’t exactly have the money to buy ten-dollar CD’s or $700 programs (yes I’m looking at you, Adobe). If Adobe Photoshop was a more reasonable price, like $50, then I’d consider buying it, but at $700-$1000 for it I didn’t even entertain the thought of purchasing it before I navigated to thepiratebay.org in my browser.

And technically speaking, we’re not even “stealing.” Stealing implies taking property away from the rightful owner of it. File-sharing is sharing, the owner still keeps the original CD or file. Have we not been raised with the idea that sharing is a good thing? 

I was feeling bored so I was typing in “Obama is a moron,” but before I was able to finish, these helpful suggestions popped up. Just goes to show, if you want to see how people really think, just Google it! 

Obama’s president, whoop-dee-doo. Now what?

Nothing.

So he managed to become the first black president, good for him. But has he done anything he promised to do? Nope. Healthcare remains unchanged (although I hope he doesn’t change it, I don’t like the idea of universal healthcare), the situation in Afghanistan is worse, and the economy is still sucking big time.

To add insult to injury, Obama recently received the Nobel Peace Prize… for doing nothing at all. The US is fighting two wars and they give him a peace prize. Makes one wonder how much money he gave the judges.

Oh yeah, and he tried to have the 2016 Olympics in Chicago. That’s nice, but isn’t unemployment at 9.8% right now? I think the Olympics are the least of our worries.

George Bush was no better, but at least everybody could openly criticize him. Now if you’re white and you criticize Obama, the race card always gets played. Example:

Me: ‘Man, Obama is a terrible president…’
Nearest minority: ‘Racist!‘

And just in case you’re wondering, I’m not affiliated with either party. Neither has done anything good for the country.

Eventually, a deal was worked out, where a Chinese company would host the WoW servers, but that wasn’t the end of it. No, the all-powerful honorable chairman felt it necessary to censor a fantasy game. Apparently, the authorities felt bones were too graphic and scary for the good Chinese public. The occasional blood splatters were replaced with oily black splatters. What’s funny is that WoW isn’t even realistic- it’s a fantasy game. I mean have you ever heard of a level 72 mage attacking a school? Also, WoW is a T-rated game, meaning the target audience clearly does not consist of small children. Heck, here in the US there are E-rated games with bones and violence.

It’s just another example of how the Chinese authorities make life worse for the people living there. What’s worse is that the people have absolutely no say whatsoever in their government. Why they call it “The People’s Republic of China” is still beyond me. The internet is also censored quite harshly in China, with the Golden Shield project. Things like democracy, freedom, rights, etc. are censored from all search results, and many popular sites like Wikipedia are blocked completely. Most likely because if the public read about other countries, they’d be like “We live in a shithole… time to move out!”

However I do give them credit for making 90% of everything we use these days. 

You can vote here, my blog is under the “Best Clean & Minimalist” category. 

On the subject of politics, Obama won the right to own and use a Blackberry-esque smartphone. Here’s what it’s going to look like:

Obama's New Phone

It’s the Humvee of smartphones, and is estimated to cost around $3000, give or take a few hundred. It’s manufactured by General Dynamics, the same company that made the F-16.

“The team members, who were used to working on Mac systems, found computers with very old versions of Windows installed and in fact not enough computers for use. Laptops were also assigned to only a few people.”

With Obama’s new reign, the whitehouse.gov website has been completely redone. I have to say, it’s looking pretty good. Hopefully, all the other icky government websites will get a makeover. Out with the old, in with the new.

On the topic of new websites, the new design has arrived. It’s completely borked in IE, but it looks good in other standards-compliant browsers. And now (for real this time) back to working on 3Cogs.