Barnson.org

John Ashcroft called P2P file-sharing “stealing”, and then he went out and got himself a federal posse that kicked the doors down of some unsuspecting “stealers”. It looks like Ashcroft also had the press standing by. I guess all this “stealing” is going to land some of us in jail?

I’ll wait for comments before I add my opinion.

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Attorney General John Ashcroft, Assistant Attorney General Christopher A. Wray, and U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Kenneth L. Wainstein today announced the first federal enforcement action taken against criminal copyright piracy on peer-to-peer networks. Early this morning, federal agents executed six search warrants at five residences and one Internet service provider in Texas, New York, and Wisconsin, as part of an investigation into the illegal distribution of copyrighted movies, software, games, and music over peer-to-peer networks. Agents seized computers, software, and computer-related equipment in the searches.

“Today’s actions send an important message to those who steal over the Internet. When online thieves illegally distribute copyrighted programs and products, they put the livelihoods of millions of hard-working Americans at risk and damage our economy,” said Attorney General John Ashcroft. “The execution of today’s warrants disrupted an extensive peer-to-peer network suspected of enabling users to traffic illegally in music, films, software and published works. The Department of Justice is committed to enforcing intellectual property laws, and we will pursue those who steal copyrighted materials even when they try to hide behind the false anonymity of peer-to-peer networks.”

“Today’s enforcement action is the latest step in our ongoing effort to combat piracy occurring on the Internet,” said Christopher A. Wray, Assistant Attorney General for the Criminal Division. “This is the first federal law enforcement action against criminal copyright infringement using peer-to-peer networks and shows that we are committed to combating piracy, regardless of the medium used to commit these illegal acts.”

“Today we are sending a clear message that federal law enforcement takes piracy seriously,” said U.S. Attorney Kenneth L. Wainstein. “It is illegal to trade in copyright-protected materials on the Internet. This is theft, plain and simple. If you are engaged in this behavior, you are on notice that you are not as anonymous as you may think.”

The search warrants executed today are the result of Operation Digital Gridlock, a joint investigation conducted by the FBI, the Office of the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, and the Justice Department’s Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section. This operation targeted illegal file sharing of copyrighted materials over five Direct Connect peer-to-peer networks that belonged to a group known as The Underground Network. According to search warrant affidavits unsealed today, these networks required users to share a minimum of one to 100 gigabytes of computer files with other users on the network. Upon becoming a member of one of these peer-to-peer networks, each user could then download shared files from the hard drives of all other members on the network. Theft through the illegal reproduction and distribution of movies, software, games, and music is estimated to cost U.S. industries $19 billion worldwide each year.

All,

Last week, my wife, my son, & I went to the Outer Banks of N.C. for vacation. 6 hours from home, so the ride sucks, but the area is awesome!

Got there on Saturday, driving through the tail end of Charlie. Charlie was the hurricane, which is nothing but a deep low pressure system. Low pressure is important to this story.

So Sunday night/Monday morn at 2:00 AM, my wife tells me, “Go get your sister, my water just broke.” A few notes about this statement:

1) My sister is an OB/GYN nurse practitioner, that’s why we were getting here 2) My wife was only 33 1/2 weeks along, which is a tad bit early 3) We were 6 hours away from home, which is a LONG way once the membranes have ruptured

So we saddle up and head to the hospital at the Outer Banks. We get in there only to find our they don’t have the facilities to handle preemies, so they’re shipping us to Norfolk.

And hour and a half later, via Ambulance, we’re in Norfolk General Hospital. And then, at 10:12 AM on 8/16, little Gabriel Michael was born.

When your baby is full term, it’s still a long, long wait from when he’s born until you hear that first cry. When your baby’s early, which means his lungs are probably still immature, and it takes 30 seconds before you hear that cry, it a freakin lifetime.

But he did fine, he weighed 5lbs 7 oz and was 17 3/4 inches long. He’s due to be discharged on Wednesday, so the wonderful Norfolk stay will FINALLY be over and he’ll be home.

I am so curious to see how the 2-year-old handles him.

But that’s the story of the bestest sea-shell you could bring home from the beach!!!

My $.02 (1 cent per kid now) Weed

P.S. Justin, Alien Resurrection was HORRIBLE. Winona Ryder in that film is like putting Keanu Reeves in Tim Robbins’ role in Shawshank. A fish out of water. She needs to be in deep, philosophical chick flicks.

EDIT by matthew: fixed formatting.

When was the most important moment of your life?

It coule be a day, a week, a decision.. but we all have these moments that if they had gone a different way, our lives would be irrevocably changed.

For instance, I almost didn’t go to Young Life camp in 1991 up at lake Saranac, but I did. While there, I met my future wife, became a Christian, and the day I came back I stayed at Sam’s house and he introduced me to why Star Trek The Next generation was so good (he had taped the one where Yar’s daughter comes back and showed me).

had I not gone to camp, I probably would not be here talking about religion, my wife, or Star Trek.

I might have been able to predict the Christian thing, I was going to a Young Life camp. But how could I have known I’d meet my wife there? Yet, I almost didn’t go because I didn’t want to apologize to my mom during an argument.

There are 3 or 4 other 1 minute to 48 hour timeframes in my life that drastically changed the final results of my life that I know about. What about you?

News of the weird:

Bear guzzles 36 beers, passes out at campground.

The funniest part of it to me was this:

It turns out the bear was a bit of a beer sophisticate. He tried a mass-market Busch beer, but switched to Rainier Beer, a local ale, and stuck with it for his drinking binge.
Wildlife agents chased the bear away, but it returned the next day, said Broxson.
They set a trap using as bait some doughnuts, honey and two cans of Rainier Beer. It worked, and the bear was captured for relocation.

So what’s weirder than a beer-swilling bear with a taste for the local specialty in a can?

(Yes, I know I dangled a participle.)

Hey all I just got my grade from my last class. I aced the class…4.0 on a 4.0 scale, perfect even :):):):):) The class was interviewing and investigation techniques

End excitement curt

IMPORTANT NOTE:Apparently, nobody here knows how to get into “baby modeling”, and despite our Google first-page ranking on the subject, we still don’t. If one of us becomes an expert on the topic, we’ll update this page. In the meantime, I’ve disabled the ability to leave new comments due to the sheer volume of questions I’m deleting daily. –webmaster

Hi kids, its me again. Angelina’s mom said the strangest thing to me the other day, she said what do you think about having our baby be a model?

I was like uh…so I have done some research and am still not sure. Any advice from all you parents out there would be appreciated.

One week ago yesterday, Matt and I were discussing the delay of starting his new job. With possibly two weeks of no work, we decided it was high time to get the yard work done. While money and time never meet we decided not to worry about the money aspect of it and use our time wisely and just get it done.

Initially I just wanted to get the front yard done this past week and worry about the back another time. In the middle of the week Matt decided we might as well do the whole thing since we’re putting forth so much effort. Holy Cow, he pulled it off.

My focus was on a couple garden beds and a flag stone path. I also picked out a large rock to put at the base of the driveway for the kids to climb on. Matt finished the sprinkler system, including many repairs and connecting it to the main water line. He also had to till the whole lot and level it in a hurry since sod was on it’s way.

Besides all that Matt recovered the front yard from the mess of mud and stuff before our big ice cream social yesterday. Truly amazing. I wasn’t so sure we could pull it off. It’s amazing what a man will do for the woman he loves!!!!

The exciting thing is our house doesn’t look like white trash anymore, and our yard even stands out from our many neighbors. I still have one more garden bed to finish, but wow, what a difference.

Thank you Matt! I love you.

I talked with my mother in law last night (well, ex MIL but she will always be my MIL). Anyway, it seems that they have a ton of things planned for mine and Genna’s arrival in 11 days.

Shirley <The x-MIL> is sooo excited.

I am glad that she can’t wait to see us. It has been almost 4 years I think. My daughter is 6, almost 7 and I believe the last time we were there was in April of 2000. So it has been awhile. I am not thrilled with the fly aspect. I will probably be white-knuckled the whole way and will kiss the ground upon arrival. I have a tons of things for Genna to play with on the airplane.

I hope they have a good movie at least!

EDIT by matthew: fixed formatting, tpyos, info.

Boy oh boy do I love movie franchises. Everyone who knows me knows that Star trek, Star Wars, Freddy, Alien, and Bond movies are Big Macs to me. they are comfortable, fillng, bad for me, but I know what to expect.

Sometimes, a movie exceeds expectations.. First Contact, Empire, new nightmare, Aliens, Goldeneye.. and sometimes, a franchise seems to fall flat.. (Arguably) Jedi, Insurrection, Freddy’s Dead, Alien 3, Die Another Day.

Last night i saw Alien vs. predator, and while this is not a review for that film, let me say that in the first half, my wife fell asleep and I checked my watch 5 times. In the second half, I laughed, the audience cheered, and my wife.. well she WAS sleepy.

Why can’t I say I hate this film? Well, I had a feeling and so I checked reviews, adn sure enough, NOBODY seemed to like it. As a franchise fan, I went to see it, and the reason I enjoyed it was it gave me a taste of my Big Mac Movie, even though I never really got the whole meal like I did with, say, Freddy Vs. Jason.

Unfortunately, excluding FvJ, all my faves are seeming troubled. Episode 2, Nemesis, AVP, and Die Another Day all left me happy for getting to see more of the stuff I liked, but nowhere near as happy as previous cinematic Meals had done.

With Star Wars Episode 3: Revenge of the Sith coming out next summer, I hope for a final good helping of McFun, but I fear I may have to be happy with the Happy Meal version, where I’ve enjoyed the taste, but it was missing the special sauce I remember from Empire.

Lucily, all the francises will probably give me at least one more helping, and maybe.. just maybe.. they can reclaim their former glory.. or at least a side of fries.

I occasionally run across excellent quotes that I simply have to share:

If you want to trick a pointy-haired boss into letting you write software in Lisp, you could try telling him it’s XML. -Paul Graham, “Revenge of the Nerds” (a LISP advocacy piece if I’ve ever seen one, that also slams my favorite language, Python, in this case for very good reason)

Almost makes me want to take up LISP…

Oh, and for those few of us into learning about the latest and greatest operating system, here’s another advocacy piece that, I think, is as good a marker as any for the beginning of the end of the Redmond Revolution. When Wal-Mart carries it, prices it cheaper than the alternatives, and is having trouble keeping it in stock due to demand, you know something’s going right.