Dark Rantings

You GO girl! It's about time that someone showed Congress what we "little people" have to put up with. We fought and fought back in 1988 to keep employee SSNs off of their health insurance cards. Fought some more in 1989 or so to stop Virginia from requiring our SSNs on drivers licenses. One would have hoped that perhaps the fight would have become easier, but that is not the case.

Perhaps if the decision makers had to play on the same field as we do, things would change pretty quickly. You want health insurance reform? Make Congress and the President use OUR health insurance instead of their own bloated policies. You want tax reform? Let the IRS harass Members of Congress the same way they harass the rest of us. Aviation reform? Put Congress on the "no fly" list. Privacy reform? Do exactly what BJ is doing. More power to her.

A Matter Of Public Record: "Betty (but call her BJ) Ostergren, a feisty 56-year-old from just north of Richmond, is driven to make important people angry. She puts their Social Security numbers on her Web site, or links to where they can be found.

It's not that she wants CIA Director Porter J. Goss, former secretary of state Colin L. Powell, or Florida Gov. Jeb Bush to be victims of identity theft, as were millions of Americans in the past year. Ostergren is on a crusade to scare and shame public officials into doing something about how easy it is to get sensitive personal data."

(Via Washington Post.)

Posted by mikki at 09:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Oh such a lovely illustration of "you reap what you sow." I couldn't have come up with a more apt illustration to shove down the throats of the "let's sue the college students" cabal. It's perfectly ok to have draconian protection schemes when it protects YOUR self interest, but if it protects someone else's, then it's BAD and WRONG. *snort* Yeah, Hilary.... go for it. Keep on whining and proving our points for us.

Hilary Rosen Laments Apple's DRM Strategy (Ernest Miller): "

Hilary Rosen, formerly head of the RIAA, has a most hilarious column on the new Huffington Post. I double checked the date on the post, and it isn't April Fools. Miss Rosen is complaining that she can't buy music for her iPod that doesn't come from iTunes (Steve Jobs, Let my Music Go):

I spent 17 years in the music business the last several of which were all about pushing and prodding the painful development of legitimate on-line music. Now, the music fan is on the cusp of riches in their options - free of the viruses of the pirate sites. There are lots of places you can go for great music at good deals and with a deep catalog of songs from over the last 20 or 30 years. MSN.com, Rhapsody.com, aolmusic.com, even walmart.com. There are little players to make your favorite music even more portable than ever starting at as little as 29 bucks. Most every player device works at every one of these ‘stores’ and it is pretty easy to keep all the songs, no matter where you got them, in a single folder or 'jukebox' on your computer.

Hello? This was and is an obvious consequence of your DRM-ed world, Miss Rosen. Apple is simply doing what comes natural. Having insisted on the means for exclusion being legally protected (i.e. DMCA), Apple is using those means to exclude competitors. The only reason that the other companies mentioned aren't doing the same thing is because they are struggling to gain marketshare. Were they the dominant players in the market, they would be doing the same thing as Apple.

The problem is that the iPod only works with either songs that you buy from the on-line Apple iTunes store or songs that you rip from your own CD’s.

Well, only if you ignore the many smaller companies that sell unencumbered MP3s to their customers.

But those other music sites have lots of music that you can’t get at the iTunes store.

And they haven't licensed to Apple, why? Whose fault is that? Is it Apple's? Or is it the fault of your former clients?

If you are really a geek, you can figure out how to strip the songs you might have bought from another on-line store of all identifying information so that they will go into the iPod. But then you have also degraded the sound quality. How cruel.

Cruel? Miss Rosen is one of the main people who insisted on creating the environment for this cruelty. In any case, if you know what you're doing, you don't have to lose much in the way of sound quality ... unless the systems are designed to make such stripping of information result in poor sound quality. Then, of course, you could always strip the DRM, but that would be a crime, thanks in part to Miss Rosen.

But keeping the iTunes system a proprietary technology to prevent anyone from using multiple (read Microsoft) music systems is the most anti-consumer and user unfriendly thing any god can do. Is this the same Jobs that railed for years about the Microsoft monopoly? Is taking a page out of their playbook the only way to have a successful business? If he isn’t careful Bill Gates might just Betamax him while the crowds cheer him on. Come on Steve - open it up.

Is it the only way to run a successful business? No, but it is a very good way to run one. Jobs isn't going to open up his system until it makes business sense. Unfortunately, Miss Rosen hasn't provided a single argument as to why it makes good business sense for him to do so. Is DRM anti-consumer and user unfriendly? Heck, yes. But that didn't stop Miss Rosen for lobbying on its behalf.

Why am I complaining about this? Why isn’t everyone?

Many of us have been complaining for a long, long time. Of course, our voices may have been drowned out to a certain extent by all the propaganda emanating from the RIAA that music without the encumbrances of DRM is tantamount to piracy.

You can't have it both ways Miss Rosen. If you want DRM, someone is going to have to control that DRM. And if you don't think they won't use that control to their ultimate advantage, you obviously didn't learn anything from your association with the music industry.

"

(Via Copyfight.)

Posted by mikki at 11:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

And why? None of the 9/11 terrorists had fake IDs. None of the Iraqui terrorists are using fake IDs. What's the point here except to gain more control over law abiding citizens?

Americans face stricter ID checks: "From driver's licenses, to passports, to plane tickets, the US is tightening ID requirements in the name of security."

(Via Christian Science Monitor: All Stories.)

Posted by mikki at 11:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

So, imagine you've been on a medication for a number of years, and you change jobs. Your new insurance company decides that your medication is "experimental" and therefore they will not pay for it. Now imagine the medications costs between one and two THOUSAND dollars per month!

Blue Cross/Blue Shield's Anthem plan has decided that my husband's medication is "experimental" even though it is approved for Rheumatoid Arthritis. Since it isn't specifically approved for Psoriatic Arthritis, it is therefore "experimental" and they won't pay, DESPITE the fact that the only drug approved for Psoriatic Arthritis gave him fibromyalgia and his doctor says he can't use it any longer.

Psoriatic arthritis is a degenerative and nasty disease that eats the bones of victims. Without the medication, his condition will deteriorate and he will lose functionality. He goes to one of the best arthritis doctors in the country, but will Blue Cross listen? Of COURSE not. They don't want to have to pay, despite the fact that my husband's employer pays them significant amounts of money for their insurance.

If you are an employer who is making a decision on health insurance for your employees, or have a choice in your coverage, think VERY HARD before choosing Blue Cross/Blue Shield. If there's any possibility that you will get a catastrophic disease whose only workable treatment happens to be classified by BC/BS to be "experimental" then you can likely forget that treatment, regardless of what it does to your life.

We have appealed the decision, taken it to peer review, and the claim is still denied. Are we having fun yet?

Posted by mikki at 03:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Time for us to put our money where our mouths are. Time to boycott the entire Walgreens chain. Online, offline, whatever, just don't shop there. Any corporation that would place lives at risk by allowing pharmacists who are NOT medical doctors, to decide what medications are appropriate based solely on what they believe their invisible friend tells them, should not receive our money.

This is not a christians vs. others, or a choice vs. anti choice, or even a women's rights issue. This is instead a medical rights and a human rights issue. In a world where we already watch our doctors medical advice questioned and countermanded by insurance companies, now we go through a second gauntlet, while HOPING our pharmacist is professional enough to fill legally and medically valid prescriptions.

The result of these "ad hoc" decisions based on the misplaced morality of certain pharmacists is not limited to women's health. Nothing in these Walgreens guidelines says that if a pharmacist decides that she doesn't have to dispense Viagra if she considers impotency to be a punishment from God. How about AIDS drugs? Anabuse for alcoholics? Herpes medications? Where does it end?

It is time to show these companies and these pharmacists that they cannot substitute vague personal ides of what others may and may not do, for doing their jobs, i.e filling valid prescriptions written by state licensed medical doctors. It's time to end this HERE.

Walgreens Allows Pharmacists To Not Dispense Drugs They Object To: "A WISN 12 News investigation has discovered that a Milwaukee-area pharmacist has refused to fill prescriptions for women citing religious reasons. A Milwaukee mother of six walked into a north side"

(Via Witchvox - RSS Feed - News from the Nest.)

Posted by mikki at 03:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The military is an important aspect of American life, and unfortunately necessary in a world that has still not figured out how to "just get along." So long as we have individuals who risk their lives and limbs in the service of their country, we, as a nation, should be willing to make certain sacrifices for them in return. Examples of these include maintaining adequate funding for military families to have proper health care, ensuring jobs are held for those who have been called to duty, and generally supporting the people and the job they do for us.

Unfortunately, it seems that at least one branch of the US Government refuses to make life just that little bit easier for those who want to support individuals in the military. The United States Postal Service states on its website that they do not support their Internet "Click and Ship" service to military addresses.

While it might be easy to say that this is not really a big deal since you can just march on down to the post office, wait in line for however long it might take, fill out the paperwork and ship the package, that isn't really the point. The point is that our government take that little bit of an extra step (in this case, providing scanners to post offices) so that we can more easily ship to our fighting men and women around the world, not to mention assist our disabled veterans to send packages and messages to their comrades by themselves, without having to ask someone to go to the post office for them.

It may be just a "little thing" to some, but to a business owner who wishes to fulfill orders made by members of the military, it means leaving work to stand in line. To a new mother it means packing up the baby and then standing in line and hoping he doesn't start crying. To the disabled it means having to ask someone else to go to the post office for them. All of these things CAN be done, but shouldn't our government try to make things LESS difficult to keep up the morale of the troops?

And before you say "use UPS or Fedex" they are prohibited from delivering to military addresses. The monopoly belongs to the USPS. Good try though :-)

Posted by mikki at 11:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)