Welcome to our future. Better not whistle ‘hey jude’, sing in the shower, etc.
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A 73-year-old bar manager who illegally performed copyrighted tunes by the Beatles and other artists on the harmonica was arrested Thursday on suspicion of violating the Copyright Law, police said.

Arrested was Masami Toyoda, of Tokyo’s Nerima-ku. He has reportedly admitted to the allegations against him.

Investigators accuse Toyoda of illegally performing 33 songs such as the Beatles’ songs “Here, There and Everywhere” and “Yesterday,” whose copyrights are managed by the Japanese Society for Rights of Authors, Composers and Publishers. He allegedly performed the songs on the harmonica with a female pianist at the bar he operated between August and September this year.

Officials said the society sought a provisional injunction against Toyoda in 2001 because he had repeatedly performed copyrighted songs in the past without permission, and the Tokyo District Court granted the injunction.

The society filed a criminal complaint against him in September this year because he later kept playing copyrighted songs. (Mainichi)

http://mdn.mainichi-msn.co.jp/national/news/20061109p2a00m0na018000c.html

Yes I vowed on this website four years ago in January never ever to shop at Giant again.  This is after their PeaPod Grocery Delivery Service left $150 worth of groceries on my door step during an ATTENDED delivery stop.  I think Evil Bastard is still Deaf from my Angry Angry Panda screaming moment. 

Well, at 9pm ET Saturday I went to the grocery store.  I had no milk or bread.  The essentials for breakfast.  I had maybe 17 items in the cart.  There was no one in the store.  No one in either of the two open lines.  So I pulled into the first line I reached not paying attention to the signs.  It was the No Candy, No Tabloids Aisle.  It was also the 15 items and less line.  MAY I REPEAT THE STORE WAS EMPTY AND NO ONE WAS IN LINE OR IN EITHER CHECKOUT???  “Miss, I can’t check you out.”  I had half way emptied my cart.  He’s pointing to the 15 and less sign.  “I don’t go through lines with either tabloids or candy.”  And I made him check me out.   And I asked for stamps making it 18 items in the 15 or less line.  No one checked out or was in line the entire time I was there. 

(or, A Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer)

I just took a look at categories and realized that nothing with a book topic had been published since 12/05. That’s pretty disappointing, especially with evil_bastard as a contributing writer.

My last fun book was Neal Stephenson’s The Diamond Age.
————
“The primary protagonist in the story is Nell, a street urchin who illicitly receives a copy of an interactive book (with the quaint title Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer; a Propaedeutic Enchiridion in which is told the tale of Princess Nell and her various friends, kin, associates, &c.[1]) originally intended for an aristocrat child in a neo-Victorian tribe. The story follows Nell (and, to a lesser degree, two other girls who receive similar books) as she uses the primer to overcome both her lack of education and her deficient parenting.

The Diamond Age is characterized by two intersecting, almost equally developed story lines: Nell’s education through her independent work with the primer, and the social downfall of engineer and designer of the Primer, John Percival Hackworth. The text includes fully narrated educational tales from the primer, set apart through different (sans-serif) typeface, that map Nell’s individual experience (e.g. her four toy friends) onto archetypal folk tales stored in the primer’s database. Although The Diamond Age explores the role of technology in child development, its deeper and darker themes also probe the relative values and shortcomings in communication between cultures.”
- Wikipedia

Yes, it’s probably a name of a band, but under this story’s context - it’s the final and only successful cat/plant discouragement system after a year of trial and error/failure.

So, I have this sort of palm-like plant thing that I adopted when a company office was closing down. It’s supposed to look like this.

It’s been the favorite meal of the cat every since it came into the house. Now it looks like this.

(more…)

A stinger is a home-made immersion device for using electricity to heat water. It is considered contraband, often as “dangerous” contraband.

It is made by connecting metal plates to each wire of an electrical cord (usually from radio or TV), and keeping them separated by an insulator. They can be purchased for about $5, or made from scavenged parts.

Typically, the plates are made from the blades of disposable razors*(1), and as such should be used to heat a double boiler, or risk consuming toxic metals.

(1) Used disposable razors must be exchanged for new ones. Often, they are visually inspected to ensure the blade is still present. To obtain blades for making stingers or just general cutting, carefully use the thick end tine of a plastic comb to pry the topmost plastic cover from the razor. Remove blade and cut an equal sized section of chrome from a magazine photo of a car, and use it to replace the blade. Re-assemble razor with the new chrome-colored paper blade.

For all those without access to a unix system
——————–

Silence is Defeat
public access unix systems for free speech, established 2000

Currently, a free shell account with us offers:

50MB storage space, http access(http://silenceisdefeat.org/~username), ssh, sftp,
imap-ssl mail, pop3-ssl mail. Instant messaging clients for IRC, AIM, MSN, ICQ,
Yahoo!, Gadu-Gadu, Jabber, and Lily. P2P BitTorrent clients! Optional trainable
server-side spam detection is also included. We also have a few vhosts for fans of IRC.

http://silenceisdefeat.org/

For those playing along at home, it is time for my bi-yearly complaint that whoever thought up this fall back/spring forward time change thingy doesn’t have little kids.. blah blah blah

My over tired, stressed, weekend working mother of two kids under three friend came up with the best idea.  Stop flipping the time.  Cut the difference.  Flip somewhere a half an hr and leave it there forever. 

Mr. Politician if do that and a host of other things you may get The Mommies of the Block’s vote.

I have commented in the past about well know actors doing the voices in kids cartoons.  One Saturday morning I was watching cartoons with Q and Four, and I hear the voice of House.  Hugh Laurie does the voice of Stewart Little’s dad.  Do you know how hard it is for me to watch Stewart Little now? 

The new Disney show Handy Manny has Wilmer Valderrama from “That ’70s Show” as Manny.  Maybe Fred Savage told him how much he liked be Oswald the Octupus.  I’m still waiting for one of the Dawson Creek kids to get a gig as a voice.