So what's the RIAA got

[Big Noise ]
So what's the RIAA got its frilly knickers in a twist for? They're seriously worried that millions of people with taste will want to pirate the tired old shit they've been peddling for the last five years??

Oh yeah, I so want an illegal copy of Britney's new album. Dude, I wouldn't want a copy of that shitsweat if it was the last fuckin' album on the planet. Hey, hands up who wants a bootleg of a 12 year old hick squeaking about how she's not yet a woman! (Britney, you're not even fucking human. You're navel fluff grown in a lab.) "Aw man, you mean I don't have to pay fifteen quid for this?!" "Yep, straight up, have this one on me!"

"Hit me baby, one more time..." Shit, just the once, Brit? I guess it sounds a bit catchier than "Pound me repeatedly with a nailed baseball bat until the blood sprays across the faces of the pubescent brats so wired on Pepsi they'd jig around to a road drill."

Jeez, and they refer to this as their "intellectual property", right? The only time intellect came into contact with that teen jizz queen's record was when the Phillipino shift worker at the pressing plant put the CD insert in the case. I could make more intelligent noises with a bad case of wind.

"Hey son, don't copy our intee-lech-tual property, y'hear? It's wrong. It's bad for you."
"Gee, OK mister."
"Look, just t'make sure, we'd better spend billions developing a secure protection technology for these CDs, in case you have a sudden brain aneurysm and try to copy them."

Well sure, go ahead. You're wasting your money though. But hey, you're the experts at that, right. After all, you signed the little jizz queen in the first place and spent all that money marketing her. Dude, I could wipe my ass on this fifty spot and contribute more to mankind.

"Hey Jim, how could we best invest some money in nurturing talent?"
"Well, we could listen to these demo tapes and maybe find the next Hendrix."
"Hey fuck it, let's demand another album from Coldplay! Let's get Aerosmith back in the studio! And make sure the product is copy-protected!"

Aw heck, you mean I can't copy that either? Well sheeeit. Guess I'll go listen to the washer instead. Hey y'know, this machine sounds better! Has anyone signed it to a five album deal yet? Jeez, we'd better strictly enforce the copyright on this spin cycle, otherwise every file trading service on the net will have a recording! Man, they'll be deleting their Coldplay MP3s to make space for it.

Hello

[Big Deal ]
, reader number eight!!

...Why are we bothering?

Warchalk us into the Blogosphere!

[Big Deal ]
SOAP our RSS pipe and put your access point over the portal, baby! Watch as we commoditize the info-commons with XML-parsed transforms! Why-fi when you can metafilter your streaming Vorbis peers via XML-RPC?! Yeah baby, yeah!

Honestly, it beats us how some people earn a living. What is this job where you get paid to sit around at home blogging bulletins from your bedroom and putting your browser history online? Or is it a European grant? Either way, can we have a cut?

(Y'know, we were all set to take the piss out of Mr. H. and leave it at that, but then he goes and writes something so sensible that we kinda feel he's just like us and want to buy the dude a drink. But we don't do that for Londoners, so tough.)

Los Angeles

[Big Deal ]
, a city built, as everyone knows, by the Jefferson Starship out of "rock 'n' roll". Afterwards, there was a Latin American recital, broadcast live on radio, by Mr. Marconi.

BB finds it hard to

[Big Words ]
BB finds it hard to take seriously the words of a man who lacks the wit to carry an umbrella in Manchester when it's raining. So it was extremely chucklesome to watch Charles Allen, Chairman of the Commonwealth Subcommittee (Ponchos and Condoms) or something, getting piss-wet through while making his speech at the closing ceremony of the Games. As he praised Manchester to the skies, the skies of Manchester continued to piss down on him and his sleek, slicked Armani suit ever harder.

This is just hilarious

[Big Job ]
This is just hilarious, the apotheosis of breathless, clueless and brainless Internet journalism. That it comes from the Grauniad is a little saddening, but we guess they have to employ someone to fill the pages of their little supplement.

Apparently:

"The last time hackers declared war against government, massive denial of service attacks were launched against the White House website, which had to close down for a day. The FBI website also had to shut down for several hours as defences were rebuilt."

Think of the web sites, won't somebody think of the web sites?! My ghod, the unbelievably studly and awesome power that these crazed hackers wield! Why on earth does the USA keep boasting about its military superiority when they have this 3l33t underground who can stop entire web sites working?! I mean, advanced missiles are all very well for taking out enemy bus stations and the odd foreign embassy, but those hacker dudes could dismantle the entire western economy in just 24 ... decades! Quail at their terrifying abilities:

"It then automatically uninstalls any firewall around that computer or network, replacing it with malicious code that completely wipes the hard disk."

My ghod, none of our home pages are safe!!

BB is equally astounded that a national broadsheet could run with this donkey crap. Here's the story in a nutshell: FBI makes typically cackhanded bureaucratic attempts to catch a few script kiddies; socially inadequate misfits flex puny muscles and say "Oh yeah?! We're so hard and mean! Watch me break Yahoo! MOOOM, THE MAN'S TAKING MY PC AWAY!!"

We can just imagine writer Steve Bell (the cartoonist? shurely not) doing that Tommy Vance dramatic advert voice to himself as he typed the last words: "...when hackers decide to act, they can hit out - and they can hit out hard."If we're talking "hacks", Steve, you definitely da man.