Just call me foamy

Does any of this say anything important?

As in foaming at the mouth. I stopped by Lowe's this afternoon to pick up some cement for plastic pipes. They had a couple of dozen different kinds. I was tired and my back hurt, but I was able to pick out a couple that are for ABS (as opposed to PVC), but trying to read the fine print on the back of the can was impossible without my reading glasses, which I left in the car, and I ain't walking a half mile back out to the car to get my reading glasses just so I can read a bunch of legalese. There are probably a couple of words in there that are important, but you'll never find them, buried as they are in all the legal bullshit. Curses upon the morons that foisted this shit on us. Screw it, I bought both of them. We'll sort it out tomorrow.

More Trolls

Patent Trolls this time. The Patent Prospector pontificates on human nature:

No system is perfect; after all, we're filthy earth monkeys with abstract thinking capacities, but the moral fiber of rattlesnakes.

And then he smears the name of one of America's most famous heroes:

The world's most prolific patent troll was Thomas Edison, who never made products, but snagged 1,093 patents, and whose cantankerousness befits his title of "King of the Patent Trolls". For example, at a time when America's electrical system was in the process of being decided, Edison invented the electric chair to discredit alternating current as dangerous. AC electricity was being promoted by rival George Westinghouse, while Edison was pushing DC. Westinghouse won that battle, and thanks to that, America's prisons have had the ready facility to fry prisoners in Edison's hot seat.

Mix patents, contentious patent holders, lawyers and money, and things are just naturally going to get ugly. Note that nobody ever fights about patents for things that aren't making someone a lot of money.

3M v. 3M

I got a notice in the mail today from UBS (stock broker):

IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
blah, blah, blah

INSULATORS AND ASBESTOS WORKERS ... on Behalf of 3M COMPANY,

Plaintiff,

v.

(A list of 14 people's names)

Defendants,

and

3M COMPANY, a Delaware Corporation,)

Nominal Defendent.

Well, isn't that special? 3M is suing 3M. (begin sarcasm) I'm so glad (end sarcasm). Why are they telling me? Because at one time, under the auspices of my retirement fund, I must have owned some 3M stock. I may still. I don't know. I look at the annual results, and, well, this year they were pretty terrible, but that's another kettle of fish. Let's get back to this important message.

It was only one sheet of paper, printed on both sides, so for a legal document it was pretty short. Near as I can make out the plaintiff (the 3M pension Fund) was objecting to the way executive bonuses were being calculated. Something about taxes. The suit is being dismissed with prejudice (meaning they can't refile the same suit), but the defendents will pay the plaintiff's lawyers $600,000. Well, good, the guys in suits will get enough to cover their green fees for the coming year. Oops, sorry, more sarcasm slipping in.

I am almost tempted to look into this a little more, but it would probably just make me angry, and what could I do about it? I think I'll be better off if I just go fix myself a nice cup of tea and not worry about the guys in suits. What a waste of paper.

You can see all the gory details here (heaven help you)(the url was in the notice):

http://www.3m.com/investor/derivative/settlement

Not Shoplifting

My wife found one of those theft prevention tags on a new shirt she bought for one of the boys. We were not about to drive 15 miles back to the store just to have them remove this stupid tag, at least not if we could help it. I tried Google, but it didn't really have any good tips.

I finally decided a screwdriver and a hammer would do the trick, and they did. It took three hands. My wife held the device on edge, I held the screwdriver against the seam and applied the hammer. A couple of sharp whacks and it split open. Still had to pry it apart.

Then it was just a matter of pushing the little metal clip to the side, and presto, out came the big ugly tack! I'm including photos to assist anyone else faced with this dilemma, because it seems stores are not really interested in reducing shop lifting, they are only interested in making life more difficult for their customers.

Update December 2016 replaced missing images.

Digital Recordings

I was poking around the internet the other day and I came across a video that promised to be worth watching, so I thought I would download it. Well, it won't download. I need iTunes (!?!?), so I download and install iTunes, and now I can download and watch the video. It all went smoothly enough, though it was I don't know how many megabytes. I do all this and the video turns out to some lawyer giving a lecture. I watched it for a few minutes before I gave up and turned it off. So it was basically a pointless exercise, but I learned that you can set up high quality videos to be downloaded for free using iTunes. Did not know that.

Of course my computer has slowed down. It seems to get a little slower every time I install a new software package. If I click on "All Programs" on the Start Menu, it opens a window that covers the entire screen. I have been installing programs ever since I got this computer and it has only been this year that I noticed it slowing down. I hardly ever remove programs, mostly because the remove procedure usually doesn't work, or even worse, it screws something up, and I still have plenty of disk space.

Then I was watching a YouTube video of Concrete Blond and I noticed that the audio seemed to be lacking, so I thought I would play the copy of the track I had loaded on my computer. No go. Seems VLC won't play wma files.

I used to use Windows Media Player to play music on my computer, but at some point it started giving me trouble. I tried upgrading, but that didn't work too well either. So I switched to VLC. But now I find that all the CD tracks that I copied to my hard disk using Windows Media Player are stored as wma files, and VLC won't touch them. Something about DRM.

So I try Windows Media Player again. This time it installs and runs. Probably because I finally installed SP2 a month or so ago. First thing it does though is puts up a screen of options and the one option that is already checked is the "automatically get license" from somewhere on the internet. Screw you Microsoft, I don't need you jackholes checking up on me. Uncheck that box (as if that will protect me).

So now I can play all my wma files again. I think I'm moving to Linux.

This whole DRM (Digital Rights Management) thing is screwed up beyond belief. Bands are doing more concert tours because they make more money from concerts than they do from records. Bands are releasing recordings over the internet because they make so little from the record companies it's not worth dealing with them. iTunes has a pretty good idea. The media companies would make more money if they would just make it cheap and easy to download their recordings. Most people are not trying to screw them over. A dollar for a tune is cheap and easy. They don't want to be hassled by all this DRM crap.

Now if there is someone who is making large numbers of copies and selling them, well go ahead and prosecute them, but don't make everyone else party to your miserly ways.

Update December 2016 replaced missing picture.