Day: June 17, 2003

Orrin Hatch: I Want to Destroy Computers

Here’s an excerpt from a story already making waves in which Republican doofus Orrin Hatch says he wants to allow copyright holders to destroy the computers of people who illegally download copyrighted music and other files. Hatch made the remarks during a Congressional hearing on copyright.

The hearings discussed a proposed bill that would have allowed copyright holders to legally hack the computers of people who are illegally downloading files. Randy Saaf of MediaDefender Inc. was trying to dismiss criticism of such proposals by saying that “No one is interested in destroying anyone’s computer.” At which point Hatch begged to differ,

“I’m interested,” Hatch interrupted. He said damaging someone’s computer “may be the only way you can teach somebody about copyrights.” The senator, a composer who earned $18,000 last year in song writing royalties, acknowledged Congress would have to enact an exemption for copyright owners from liability for damaging computers. He endorsed technology that would twice warn a computer user about illegal online behavior, “then destroy their computer.” “If we can find some way to do this without destroying their machines, we’d be interested in hearing about that,” Hatch said. “If that’s the only way, then I’m all for destroying their machines. If you have a few hundred thousand of those, I think people would realize” the seriousness of their actions, he said.

“There’s no excuse for anyone violating copyright laws,” Hatch said.

That’s reminiscent of Newt Gingrich’s call for the death penalty for anyone convicted of smuggling more than two ounces of marijuana into the United States. Some people are law-and-order Republicans. Gingrich and Hatch, however, are law-and-order-and-stupidity-thrown-in-for-good-measure Republicans.

Source:

Hatch Takes Aim at Illegal Downloading. Associated Press, June 17, 2003.

State of Emergency in Benton Harbor, MI

I had been planning on Wednesday to drive to Benton Harbor, which is about 40 minutes from where I live. But thanks to rioting and other problems, there, the Governor has declared a state of emergency for the area.

Yesterday some moron on a motorcycle was kille after he crashed into an abandoned house. The motorcyclist was travelling at speeds around 100 mph in residential areas and gave chase when Benton Township police tried to pull him over.

The cop chasing him finally abandoned the chase after fearing what might happen given the high speeds the motorcyclist was travelling. But according to witnesses, the motorcyclist continued at high speed, running stop signs and even cutting across lawns before crashing into the abandoned house.

A crowd gathered at the scene of the crash and set fire to a house while also pelting police with rocks and bricks. On the late night news they announced that at least three more homes are on fire and the Governor has declared a state of emergency for the city, which allows Benton Harbor police to bring in police units from across the state to maintain order.

Grammar and Spelling, Round 2

The answer to my grammar and spelling problems was here on my weblog all along! Several years ago I actually wrote about Grammar Expert Plus.

I think the cost was the why I never followed through and bought the program at that time — it is only $59.95, but I was using four or five different computers at the time for blogging, some of which I could not install the program on.

That is not as much of an issue now, so I’ve installed the program and it’s running in my system tray. Now when I finish a blog entry I just copy it to the clipboard, right click on the Grammar Expert Plus tray, and it fires up and starts spell checking and grammar checking automatically.

Very cool.

Grammar and Spelling on Weblogs

Allan Sullivan offers a few suggestions for improving the grammar and spelling on this weblog.

For the most part, though, I don’t spend too much time worrying about the spelling and grammatical errors I make here. I do go through and edit the things I write here later — though usually 6 months or more later. But almost everything I write here is done as quickly as possible and is simply a first draft.

Now if I were writing for money I’d take the time to do a second draft and look for awkward phrasing, but most of my blogging goes straight from the brain to the text entry box (sometimes without even a spell check). Some of the awkward phrases and grammatical errors Sullivan spots, for example, occur when I start a sentence and decide to change the wording slightly, but forget to alter the pronouns to match the new wording.

The Ultimate Military Dead Beat Dad Story

A few weeks ago I wrote about the problems faced by men who fall behind in their child support payments when they are called up from their reservist positions to serve in time of war. Writing at LewRockwell.Com, Carey Roberts points out the ultimate example of this sort of problem,

Take Bobby Sherrill, for example. He was working on a contract to the Kuwaiti military in 1990. When Iraq invaded Kuwait in August, they took Sherrill hostage. Four months later, he was released. When he came home to Fayetteville, NC, he expected a hero’s welcome. Instead, the child support goons arrested him for failure to pay child support during his captivity.

Frankly this is such an egregious example that I suspected it as some sort of hoax or urban legend, but a Lexis/Nexis search shows that, in fact, Sherrill was arrested the night after he returned to North Carolina for failing to pay $1,425 in child support during the months he was held prisoner by Iraqi forces.

More reason why courts need much more flexibility and the ability to use common sense in applying child support orders in the real world.

Sources:

The Deadbeat Dad’s Dilemma. Carey Roberts, LewRockwell.Com, June 10, 2003.

Child-support-law amendment comes to attention of Hill. Cheryl Wetzstein, Washington Times, April 27, 1999.

Families and the war. Dianna Thompson and Glenn Sacks, EnterStageRight.Com, November 25, 2002.

Michigan Man Released After Spending Nine Years in Jail for Rape He Did Not Commit

Kenneth Wyniemko, 52, was recently released from a Michigan prison after DNA tests exonerated him of a brutal rape for which he served more than nine years in jail.

Wyniemko was sentenced to 40 to 60 years in jail after being convicted of an extraordinarily brutal rape. A 28-year-old Clinton Township woman was raped repeatedly for three to four hours and then stole of several thousand dollars.

Although less-sophisticated tests of blood, semen and hair showed at the time that Wyniemko was not likely to be the suspect, he was convicted largely due to the testimony of the victim who made what police and a jury believed was a strong identification. In addition, when he was arrested Wyniemko had $3,000 in cash without a good explanation of where the money came from.

But new tests show that none of the blood, semen or hair samples collected at the scene of the crime matches Wyniemko’s DNA. One main lesson that has emerged from the 128 DNA exonerations of convicts nationwide is just how unreliable eyewitness testimony often is.

Macomb County Prosecutor Carl Marlinga apologized to Wyniemko for the near-decade he spent in jail for a crime he did not commit. Of course Macomb County has another problem on its hands — a brutal rapist who is possibly living in the community. Police submitted the DNA samples to a nationwide database of convicted criminals, but came up with no matches.

This case also highlights the need for laws that allow convicted criminals to use DNA tests to challenge their convictions even if their appeals have already been exhausted. Wyniemko’s case was taken up by the Thomas Cooley Law Schools’s Innocence Project after Michigan passed a law in 2001 allowing for new DNA testing in rape convictions where the identity of the assailant was not established through scientific tests.

Sources:

DNA tests exonerate man. Kim North Shine, Detroit Free Press, June 12, 2003.

Man who spent nearly a decade in prison for rape freed after DNA evidence clears him. Associated Press, June 17, 2003.

Man cleared of crime by DNA likely to be freed. Associated Press, June 12, 2003.