February 14 - Ballantines Day, Nikita Khrushchev and HDDVDDRM

Happy Valentines Day. And, for you folks who think that's silly, Happy Ballantine's Day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballantine%27s_Day

Laws and techniques that are supposed to curb the dishonest but only wind up hurting the honest really get my britches in a twist. In yet another it-was-only -matter-of-time blow against copy-protection, HDDVD (and BluRay) copy protection was reported cracked, today. It seems like the RIAA and MPAA are tilting at windmills. Every time they come up with a copy protection scheme someone breaks the scheme. The damage done to us, the consumers is that even after this is accomplished we still have very restricted access to our media because the investment to implement the crack is high and still, potentially, illegal even if our use would not be. For the people that wish to steal music and movies and distribute them, the investment is ridiculously low. Without license, the RIAA and MPAA have taken away our fair-use rights by making the actions needed to exercise them illegal.

In other news, acronyms and initialisms declared illegal :-)

The 20th congress of the Communist Party in the U.S.S.R. began on this day in 1956. This event was marked by an event that had significance for two reasons. Proving yet again that there is no honor among thieves, the event was Nikita Sergeyevich Khruschev denouncing Joseph Stalin as a criminal and describing his crimes. While controversial at the time, this marked the beginning of a return to the governing principles of Lenin and the rise of Krushchev to eventually be Premier of the U.S.S.R. Krushchev is probably most popularly famous for his outbursts in the U.N. In particular, the image of him removing a shoe and banging it on a conference table while yelling is indelibly etched into the memory of those that were aware of such things during the cold war. He is also famous for the quote "We will bury you" in a reference he made to capitalism. For those that want a little picture of the man before he was the leader of the then second most powerful country in the world, "Enemy at the Gates" is another movie that is worth a few hours of your life. In that movie, Bob Hoskins plays Khrushchev when he was a military leader and one of Stalin's henchmen during the siege of Leningrad in W.W. II.

Finally, in a savory bit of irony, the U.S. House of representative canceled it's hearing on Global Warming today due to an Ice storm.