Spontaneous Monotony

Since I’ll probably be unavailable for much of the day (due to having better things to do :P) I’ll wish you a Merry Christmas just now. You’ll notice though that I said ‘Christmas’ – not Festive Season, Winter Fest, ‘Happy Holidays’ or any other such politically correct secularist hijacking of this Christian festival. That said, I hope you’re enjoying yourself regardless of which religion you belong to. I also hope that this has actually appeared at the right time (1 minute past midnight British time, or as soon afterwards as the server can manage), since Wordpress’ post-to-future facility has always been iffy (I’m writing this at ten to five on Christmas Eve).

In a late-night session, a small group of French MPs have voted for what common sense has suggested for years now – that peer to peer file sharing should be legal provided users who want to fileshare pay a small monthly levy on top of their internet subscription to compensate copyright holders. Although only about 10% of the French Parliament was present, and the amendment faces a tough time as the French ‘culture minister’ (as in Britain and the US, this means ‘copywrong cartel lapdog’) has asked parliament to re-open the debate, and even if this doesn’t happen the amendment could still be rejected by the Senate.

See Also

• International Herald Tribune (contains some inaccuracies, but fuller report)
• P2PNet

Of course the religious right in the USA are furious about this decision, but the fact is that intelligent design/creationism is simply not science by any stretch of the word. Sure, I believe that God created the universe and allowed it to evolve independently in much the same way as He gave us free will. As deeply held as that belief may be, it is my religion, not science, and I consider calling it ‘science’ an insult – it implies that faith itself is invalid, and can only be justified if you can shoehorn it into science classrooms. This is a victory for science and religion.

See Also

• The Panda’s Thumb – Boy, they really don’t get it (anti-ID)
• Uncommon Descent – The Effect of Bias on Courtroom Decision Makers (pro-ID)

You may or may not be aware that, following the full releases of Firefox and Thunderbird the Mozilla Foundation announced that it was discontinuing the ‘Netscape Navigator’ successor the Mozilla Suite. There is now a community-led initiative to continue its development, entitled Seamonkey. The catch? It’s still an ugly piece of bloatware

I’ve upgraded to Wordpress 2.0 RC3 (from one of the earlier release candidates, can’t honestly remember whether it was RC1 or RC2), so if you notice any strangeness (unlikely) then let me know.