In defence of boffins. Cool. Scientists are very cool people indeed. Give me the mad ramblings of Heinz Wolff over David Beckham or Katie Price any day.

On Xingtone and the bizarre twisted minds of record companies 

Record companies are worried about Xingtone - a piece of software which allows you to take music you have, possibly, already bought and transfer it on to your mobile phone as a ringtone because they would rather charge you for the music you already own. While I deplore the idea of mobile phone ringtones, I deplore record companies attempts to infringe copyright law's right to fair use even more. Presumably, the writs will start flowing when they find out a twelve year old girl has used her own intuition and skill to programme her phone with a Britney Spears melody. Does this mean the Old Motorola I have kicking around somewhere might have 'infringing uses'?

There's only one way of remedying this... order lots of copies of the EUCD and the new EUIPED (that's the law that lets someone who thinks you might have infringed their copyright to nick your computer for thirty days... yes, it's as insane as it sounds) laws in dead tree format, defecate on them and send them to our MEP's in protest. Why? Well, it'll be a laugh. And it'll be about as effective as sending them a letter. (via plasticbag)