today is monday. not my favorite day of the week by any means. however, a necessary evil so i will just have to let it go. besides, if there were no monday than i would have to be less than enthusiastic about tuesday so what can you do. anyway, to the point, as it were. couple things happening in the world at large and in my world as well.

first, those sneaky mpaa dudes are still trying to ram the broadcast flag down our throats with a last ditch effort to attach it to a senate appropriations bill due for a vote this week. if you live in one of the states that has a representative on the house appropriations committee, give your congress person a call, email or fax and tell them you oppose the broadcast flag. or, live with the government in your computer and other electronic devices forever.

as a public service, here is the list of congress people who make up the house appropriations committee, courtesy of the folks over at boing boing. or, go to the eff site for helpful links to get to the right person.

in other news, kodak is going to stop making black and white photo paper. i know, i know, two or three people are really bummed out right now. i haven’t been in a darkroom in about three years but when i was, it smelled bad and i had a headache for about a day afterward. as i can do all the same stuff, and much more, on my mac at home, where it actually smells pretty good, there really isn’t any reason to go back to a darkroom. still, its a little sad. end of an era and all that.

and last week, Mastercard announced that up to 40,000,000 credit card numbers may have been compromised by one of their processing companies. today, the New York Times (registration, along with first born child, required) is reporting that the company in question, CardSystems Solutions, should not have been handling that data to begin with. John M. Perry, CEO of the processor in question, claims the data was merely being kept for “research purposes”.

priceless.

The number of compromised Master Card accounts has been revised downward to about 68,000, with another 132,000 possibly compromised accounts belonging to Visa, American Express, and other companies.

well, i feel better now. how about you?

and, no word on my sick g5 yet from the guys at melrose mac in burbank on olive ave. (and on melrose as well, one would assume). i hope they know what they are doing. i’ll let you know what the diagnosis is and what the cure is when i know. that way, others can benefit from my suffering.