Month: April 2003

Instant Message From the RIAA

/ joeygibson

This is a really funny and sad story all at the same time. Funny because the RIAA surprised 200k thieves on the Grokster and Kazaa file stealing – er, sorry – sharing networks with an instant message telling them that they were stealing music and could face legal action. I think that’s extremely funny. The sad part is the reaction that so many people are having to it. One quote from the story is

“Way to go, RIAA. Sue and threaten the public, your customers. I think I’ll go and download[…]”

Yeah. Customers. Generally, customers pay for products and don’t steal them. But that’s a point that gets lost on a lot of folks. The responses on /. are predictably asinine…

Wisdom From Unexpected Places

/ joeygibson

Last night I spent about three hours playing Rollercoaster Tycoon with my 4.5 year old son, Thomas. You can see a graphic of the theme park we built here (158KB). We were having a great time building coasters, and burger stands and whatnot but then I hit a snag. I was having a hard time closing the loop on a coaster to get the track to end back at the station. I was getting frustrated with it when suddenly Thomas puts his hand on my shoulder and says

Don’t get frusterated, Daddy. Just think about it.

Needless to say I got tickled at that and all frustration left me. Within a few more minutes we had completed the coaster and were ready to test it. I looked at him and said “You’re very wise, Thomas. Did you know that?” To which he responded “Hmmm… I never noticed before.”