Happy Ides of March

Couldn't help but laugh at this card

Friday Diversion: What's the deal with Jammie Thomas?

I am embarrassed to say that I live in the state where a jury decided that Jammie Thomas should pay the RIAA $1.9 million for sharing 24 songs on the Internet.

Putting that in perspective, the jury has awarded $80,000 in damages per song.

According to wikipedia, there were 5 billion songs shared on the Internet in 2006. If we accept that the jury's verdict is fair, that means that the record companies lost out on $400 trillion dollars. $400,000,000,000,000.00. The current Gross Domestic product of the United States is about $14 trillion dollars. The gross domestic product of the world is about $60 trillion dollars.

The median household income in the United States in 2007 was about $50,000. If Jammie Thomas earnes that she would have to give all of her earnings (pre-tax) to the RIAA for the next 37.8 years. This is assuming there is no interest applied to the unpaid balance. At 3% interest, her salary will never cover the interest earned in a year.

If a typical CD costs $12 then you can purchase 158,333 CDs with this award.

Based on a sample size calculator, we can be 95% certain that at least 93.37% of the residents in Hennepin County are absolutely ridiculous.

Friday Diversion: here be chunks

Quick note: I had nothing to do with this.  I'm just reporting on it.

There is a reason why I love working at a University, and why I feel that the one I work for is the finest educational institution in the Midwest. The answer is the people. I want to share something odd I found today on campus.

I had just gone to the restroom and I was walking back along a different route than I had taken to get to the restroom. Along the way, I encountered a group of chairs in the library in an unusual place with a piece of paper on the floor between them. Here is a photo of the chairs:


As I leaned in to examine the piece of paper, the unmistakable smell of vomit struck me in the nose. Then I was able to read the piece of paper. Here is a photo:
The text reads: "Dar, here be chunks."  Notice the marks where some unidentified fluid has started to seep through the page.  From what I can surmise, someone vomited in the library.  Then, instead of cleaning it up, this person arranged chairs around the vomit to warn others not to step there.  Then this person took the time to color print a warning page in pirate speak complete with old english font and pirate logo to place on top of the vomit.  

Only in my work place.

Honestly, it's not mine!

My wife was cruising on craigslist the other night and she found a lost and found posting. I guess someone got in a fight in one of the bars in our down and dropped his black fist hair pick.


Just wanted to let you know that I was not the fighter with the black fist pick. I also just wanted an excuse to put a picture of some black fist paraphernalia up on the web site. If you've got any great pictures of black fists or items with a black fist on it, drop me a line.

Diversion: Last night was awesome

This is a security blog, so I don't want to put much of my personal life into this. However, I just have to comment on last night because it was an awesome experience for me. I went to a hockey game last night between my school and another school in their division. I have never had the pleasure of witnessing my school's hockey team win against someone in their division live. I saw it once on television, but never life. Well last night the team handed a 5 to 1 spanking to the visiting team. Even though I'm not a student, I sat in the student section and it was a blast.

The other great thing was that I finally saw a hat trick live. I've never seen one before.

Now I'm starting to get things ready for next week. I'm going to be out of town for part of the week for the IT Security Conference for K-20. No, I will not be presenting, I'm going to be there as a spectator. I went to this event a couple years ago and it was pretty good, but the agenda for last year didn't really impress me. This year looks like it will be worth while. If things are really good, I might even blog about some of the presentations.