Going down in it.

Media companies cripple good ideas at the get-go. For example, take Amazon's Unbox service. Here, you can download television shows and movies for a price. Unfortunately, the price goes beyond the dollars you dish out for it.

First, the DRM is ultra-restrictive. You can't burn it to a DVD, put it on a portable player, or even switch it to another computer you own. So, the system you download it on is the system in which the movie must always reside. This could become problematic when updating to another operating system or replacing hard drives. Both would cause you to have to repurchase the movie.

Second, the DRM is always in contact with headquarters. Yep. It constantly communicates back and forth, even if you try to disable the pesky sucker through MSConfig.

Unbox is going to fail miserably.

Don't die.

Dominion over the lesser mortals is all a demon wants.

So, I think I'm going to stick with the theme thing. I'm going to do the "indie" thing. The definition of "indie rock" is pretty vague at best, but it seems to be all the rage these days to call yourself indie.

Anyways, the list:

Bright Eyes - He caught my attention with "When the President Talks to God" but its during his somewhat anfry "Lover" where he truly shines. My roommate complains he sounds like a goat, but she thinks Britney Spears is a goddess.

The Brianjones Town Massacre - I'm pretty sure these guys have been on an earlier list (I'm too lazy to check), but I love these guys. "Keep music evil" is their mantra, and its a good philosphy to live by. The last time I checked, you can download almost their entire catalog of music for free on their website. No money needed.

The Blackheart Procession - Once getting ahold of their album "Spell," I listened to the thing once a day for an entire week. This is a pretty mean feat. I get bored pretty darn quickly these days.

Sonic Youth - This band has been together for ages, and have avoided the pull of fame and fortune for most of those years. But do not overlook them for this--they'll rock the cheese out of you.

Say Hi to Your Mom - Yes, it was their name which enticed me to grab their album. It is, however, the song "She Just Happens to Date the Prince of Darkness" which kept me listening.

Don't die.

Cassettes are best served over venison with a bit of salt.

Final Fantasy XII is almost here. As such, a few more details about the game have been released.

First: the voice acting is supposed to be pretty terrible. No biggy. Almost every video game in existence has pretty bad voice acting.

Second: the gambit system. Supposedly, this is where you can "program" each one of your characters to automatically do what it is that they do. And it works pretty swell. Unfortunately, this takes the control from the player almost completely. The demo on Dragon Quest VIII let you see a glimpse of this, but it is supposed to be much more powerful now. Luckily, for those who want to control their characters, you can play the game using a classic "wait" mode. Which is what I'll probably do.

Don't die.

Crazy frog legs leap over dragons on the celtic frost.

Fred Phelps is funny. Almost as funny as Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. Really. He is. You can check out the idiot in action for yourself if you want.

Fred, if you don't know, is one of Kansas's most backward citizens who always states: God hates fags. He's brilliant. Really. I don't kid about these things. Nor do I mock him.

Don't die.

When in doubt, hide underneath a rock.

So, to argue for the surveillance of American citizens, this is what Anthony Coppilino said: "Suppose for example the president obtains intelligence that a nuclear bomb was planted ... right there in Washington, and the only way he was going to find out whether that was going to happen was to grab the person and interrogate him. Would that be in his constitutional authority? I would say so."

Unfortunately for this particular lawyer, he fails to spot that his argument in no way addresses the surveillance of American citizens. In fact, it steps around it. The question is not what the President does with the information, but the way in which he obtains it.

In the laywer's example, no courtroom would deny the President his authority to pick up the suspected bomber. They would approve surveillance on him and his contacts as well. However, the issue is the blanket surveillance on all American citizens who are suspected of nothing, and have no reason to be suspected of anything. This tactic is a failure on two fronts:
1. Too many false positives. The FBI/NSA wastes too much time on too little intelligence.
2. Too much abuse of the power. Once, spying created the Watergate scandal. It kept Martin Luther King, Jr. under constant surveillance. Political activists who spoke out against the current administration were wiretapped.

The surveillance needs to end completely. All spying done against American citizens needs to find itself before the courts, and verified independently from the executive branch of goverment.

Don't die.