Quick quiz: a) who said this, b) when did s/he say it, and c) to what machine did it refer?

"Nothing of value is free. It is very easy, Mr. Chairman, to convince people that it is in their best interest to give away somebody else's property for nothing, but even the most guileless among us know that this is a cave of illusion where commonsense is lured and then quietly strangled. That is what it is all about. Now, these machines are advertised for one purpose in life. Their only single mission, their primary mission is to copy coyrighted material that belongs to other people."

Give up? a) Jack Valenti of the Motion Picture Association of America, in testimony before the House Judiciary Committee. b) 1982. c) The VCR.

Notice any similarites to the arguments the MPAA and others are using against technologies like P2P, and products like TiVo? Sure you do.

Another great quote from Valenti 20 years ago:

"I say to you that the VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone."

Thank God that we listented to Jack Valenti back then, banned the VCR, and saved the entertainment industry. Otherwise…

Seriously, though, Valenti was wrong then, and he and his allies are wrong now. Movie studios eventually embraced home video, and now that accounts for a huge percentage of their profits. They took "piracy" and turned it into a new business model, and now they are richer than ever. If the studios and nets are unable to find a way to make a buck from digital technologies, they will die, and deservedly so. Valenti appears unable to learn from experience; let's hope the industry as a whole is smarter than that.

I just noticed a huge spike in requests for port 1433 in my firewall log. Turns out there is a new worm out there targeting MS SQLserver. Won't these worms smarten up and check the OS before they hammer a server? In case anyone is wondering, I'm running Linux, you morons!

Reuters: Real Men Prefer Grilling with Ozzy's Wife, Homer. President Bush came in third.

Paul Graham: Revenge of the Nerds. "The disadvantage of believing that all programming languages are equivalent is that it's not true. But the advantage is that it makes your life a lot simpler. And I think that's the main reason the idea is so widespread. It is a comfortable idea." Word. Oh, and Perl is the best language :)

CNN: Governor's daughter, 15, gets hardship license. "Gov. Rick Perry's 15-year-old daughter has been granted a hardship driver's license after her mother indicated the first family faces 'unusual economic hardship.'" Astounding. I'm now patiently waiting for Texas Republicans to call for an independent counsel or just begin impeachment proceedings.

A new note: Worst Flight Ever! Or, Why You Should Never Fly Delta Airlines Again.

Howard Fineman: "I Sniff Some Politics". Same pattern, different issue. We need to know what the White House knew pre-911, but I'm not holding my breath for them to come clean. Says Fineman: "…a habit of disclosure isn't in the Bush genetic makeup. The son of a CIA chief, Bush has always preferred to operate with secrecy and surprise. Cheney sees Congress and the media as annoyances — at best. This view was reinforced by the advent of war. More than ever they tend to think that the public has a right to know only what the top guns think is worth telling them."

Another great horoscope from The Onion: "The wonder is not how well the bear dances, but that it can dance at all. Still, the bear dances a hell of a lot better than you do."

Maureen Dowd: Photo Op-Portunism.

While this link could well put me on CyberNanny's banned list, check out the Irritating Fish.

I'm spending more and more time working with Linux these days; my laptop is now in Linux mode more often than in Windows mode. My desktop of choice right now is KDE, and I'm liking it. I'm also a fan of tabs: Mozilla's tabbed browsing feature is sweet, and I just love having multiple Konsoles running in the same window.

Courtesy of MeFi, the next in the long line of Hot-or-Not concept sites: What's Better?. So far, Buffy seems to have the highest rating (no surprise there, I guess, given the audience, but I did have a hard time picking her over Spinal Tap).

I've had a good week golfing. Last Sunday I played the Blue Course at Hains Point in DC (par 72), and shot an 84 — my best round by 5 strokes. Today I played the 9-hole White Course (par 34 — no par 5s), and shot a 39. Granted, Hains Point is an easy course — flat and wide open — but all this just primes me for tomorrow when I play I "real" course in MD. Wish me luck!