Sony breaks copyright law

The company known collectively as Sony (its a multinational conglomerate) may not be happy soon. It depends upon whether KDE (K Desktop Environment) and the Oxygen theme creators decide to sue Sony for breaking copyright law. Based off of the original source, it is also in the UEFI firmware that Sony has on (new) laptops.

Sony, by the way, is the company that put rootkits on their music CD's which would then install themselves on the vict... customer's computer. This was supposed to prevent piracy, which is against the law, by maliciously installing software on their customer's computers which is also against the law.

Leave the Boy Scouts of America alone

BBC links to a poll which says that 55% of US voters want the BSA to end its ban on homosexual leaders.
The BSA is only answerable to US voters in the sense that its adult leaders and parents of scouts are US voters. It is answerable to its members and no one else. President Obama may be its honorary president, but he has no power to change the BSA's policy.
In fact, those with the power to change the policy have decided to delay rather than decide.

The BSA, gay leaders, and Obama

I admit to having a little grudge against our current president, in addition to opposing his policies. That the grudge and the opposition are completely unconnected. The opposition comes from the fact that I disagree completely with his policies - he isn't the problem (that prize goes to Congress), but he sure as heck doesn't do anything to alleviate the problem, and in fact, is an enabler for the worst excesses of Congress. The grudge comes from his actions concerning the Boy Scouts of America - a private organization that I hold dear to my heart, having earned the rank of Eagle Scout. Every four years, the BSA holds a National Scout Jamboree. The sitting President has always attended the Jamboree. Except for one. President Obama chose instead to show up on the View - a daily television show, and sent a recording to the Jamboree. Since I was a participant, I was more than a little pissed off.

Now the BSA is currently thinking of bowing to political pressure and revoking its blanket ban on gay leaders and scouts. Obama has come out in support of them revoking the ban. The BSA, no matter how much influence it has, is a private organization. Elected officials should only get involved with private organization when they're committing crimes - and the BSA as a whole does not commit crimes, and it ousts those of its members who do commit crimes.

UN Arms Trade Treaty: Keeping Weapons...

In the hands of oppressive governments and out of the hands of those who might oppose them. Fox News has an article about the possibility of Obama using the Arms Trade Treaty to fight for gun control here in the US.
I don't doubt that many wish the US would ratify the treaty, but given the makeup of the current Senate the best (from their viewpoint) that is likely to happen is that the US will become a signatory. Even though the US often follows treaties to which it is a signatory (a point brought up in the article) it is only obligated for follow treaties if 2/3 of the Senate choose to ratify it.
The treaty is a joke, a sham. If it does anything at all, it will be to strengthen despotic regimes and weaken any resistance to such. We must remember that this is the same UN which has in the past placed China and Cuba on their Human Rights Council, and which currently contains several members which Freedom House rates as "not free", such as Angola, Qatar, and Congo (not sure which one, but it doesn't really matter).
Given who they place on their Human Rights Council, no one should expect anything good to come of any treaty that comes from the UN.

Read the entire article - it has good points from multiple individuals about the whole issue.

Union movement suffering?

From Fox News:

Unions suffer steep decline in membership

Lost jobs, right to work laws, a weak economy, all are reasons why. The Unions however fail to recognize that perhaps they're part of the reason why the jobs are being lost:

But unions also saw losses in the private sector, even as the economy expanded modestly. That rate fell of membership fell from 6.9 percent to 6.6 percent, a troubling sign for the future of organized labor, as job growth has generally taken place at nonunion firms. 

.....

"Our still-struggling economy, weak laws and political as well as ideological assaults have taken a toll on union membership, and in the process have also imperiled economic security and good, middle class jobs," said AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka.

Hostess closed down because of the unions, resulting in a multitude of lost jobs, and, as the article notes, most job growth has taken place in nonunion firms.
This might not be the death knell of unions, but its obvious that the union movement isn't completely healthy either.

The UN: About as useful as...

t*ts on a boar hog.
Another example of the UN's remarkable incompetence from Fox News. As if I needed another reason to hold them in contempt. And yet we continue to throw good money after bad supporting them.

Check it out:

UN’s $5.7B anti-poverty agency doesn’t do much to reduce poverty, according to its own assessment

People Eating Tasty Animals (Specifically Horses)

PETA is unhappy. Their attempts to stop the horse slaughtering industry in the US have met with failure. This is in part because when the slaughter was put to a stop, the horses were simply transported across the border, and then slaughtered. So now, the slaughter of horses for food is back.Congress is currently working on legislation to stop the slaughter, and prevent the simple expedient of transporting the horses across the border for slaughter.
All this raises a question: Do PETA and Congress want the smuggling of illegal horse meat to become a problem?

I wonder what horse meat tastes like...


Source: Fox News: Horse Slaughtering Resumes In US as Legislation Languishes in Congress