The Internet is dumbing again

MegaUpload is a website for file-sharing. Most of the files on it are pirated. The FBI recently shut it down while they investigated. Not only were most of the files pirated, staff members actively encouraged it, removing specific links to files when asked to do so by content producers, but leaving the files themselves up. It's the equivalent of closing down a store's front entrance and selling things out through the back alley. Staff even posted links to pirated files themselves; the FBI has email exchanges.

A Harvard law professor argued that taking the site down discouraged innovation, and TorrentFreak, always ready to seize on the flimsiest justification, made a post about it. Then Reddit picked it up. The idea, basically, is that it prevents people from "exchangni ideas", therefore it's bad for innovation, and they could use the same rationale to shut down any file hosting site.

I'm sorry, if someone is accused of embezzling, with what basically amounts to objective, slam-dunk proof, you don't refrain from arresting them because their workplace will have to hire a temp. If a local business is accused of money-laundering, you don't let it stay open after you start arresting people. It's chain-the-doors time. One idiot was even arguing that allowing the site to stay up actually encouraged productivity. Because that's what piracy does; encourage productivity. By decreasing the chances someone will be compensated.

MU was accused of breaking the law, and doing so in a flagrant manner. Ignoring that to make broad generalizations about what it might mean is a slippery slope argument. Saying they should've left the site up for the sake of the few legit users is also wrong, just like legit customers might be inconvenienced by the money-laundering place going down. And freezing only the pirated files, or even determining which files those are, is basically impossible without manually downloading and checking them. The millions of files.

But all you have to do is wave the "freedoms oppressed" flag in front of Reddit and they charge, regardless of the fact that this is an excellent example of a corrupt company, and that Megaupload is legally so screwed they couldn't get out of this with a defense team consisting of Johnny Cochrane, Perry Mason, Ben Matlock, and Phoenix Wright.

Got up to S in my Memory House

Previously.

I wonder what happens if I go past 26 items, and have to start over?

One flaw I've noticed with the list is that if I don't have the item lined up already when I reach a given letter, I forget what I was trying to remember. For example, I got to S, thought up "Star", imagined one of those kids lights shaped like a star (like this, but yellow), thought then briefly forgot that I was trying to remember Whitney Huston's "Waiting to Exhale (Shoop Shoop)".

I suggest that whenever you add a new item, try to think of the next one in line. It works best if you can apply a specific sensory impression to the "anchor" object. For example, K is for Kilo, so I imagine a kitchen scale, the recoil of it under your hand as you press down. L, Lamp, has the resistance in the pullstring. E and J are Echo and Juliet, both women. Juliet, in particular, is the version played by Olivia Hussey (who is looking rather well-preserved these days, for 60) in the 1968 version of Romeo and Juliet we watched in English class. I prefer texture, but will cheerfully settle for the riot of color in her dress and hairpiece. Echo is memorable enough by herself.

Currently, Juliet is holding a plastic model of the Paypal logo.