oh, man, that was tough on the heart! canucks win with 18 seconds left in overtime...alex burrows is a legend. that was a hell of a tight game, though. now we get to sit back and see if the canes can win another game with a sneaky shove on the goaltender. YEAH WE ALL SAW THAT!

If Andrew Orlowski (with whom I've had a long standing vigorous and enthusiastic correspondence on related topics) is reading he might be a bit surprised at my point of view on this, but I'm frankly a bit baffled by some of the reactions to the Pirate Bay trial. Yes, the legal foundation of the judgement is contested. It's possible it'll be overturned on appeal. But the ethical argument is, I think, fairly clear. This isn't some borderline case of a blog which linked to a few illicit torrents, or an unlicensed fansub page, or something. Everyone on teh intarwebs knows that TPB exists and always has existed expressly in order to facilitate infringement of copyright. That's the whole point of the site. There's something oddly admirable about its insistence on making this perfectly plain and never bothering with even the tiniest fig leaf of legitimacy, but it's still fundamentally wrong. Copyright exists for good reasons. People who write, draw, play and otherwise create stuff really ought to have the right, if they so choose, to reasonable control over the distribution of the stuff they create. (Remember that all open source and Creative Commons licenses rely on the powers granted to authors by copyright law). It's pretty hard to find people who disagree with this basic tenet, and honestly I think those who *do* are just wrong. You can argue about whether it's better in the long run to exercise this control heavy-handedly or let everyone do whatever they like with your stuff, but it should be a decision for the creator, not for a bunch of guys in Sweden with a web server. You can argue with as much passion as you like that it'd be better for you to be allowed to download some band's music for free, but if whoever rightfully owns the rights to that music doesn't agree and doesn't want to let you, it's not right to ignore them and go ahead and do it anyway. Yes, the music industry and film industry have handled the whole issue massively cack-handedly, and have indeed done many bone-headed things themselves, but the best way to protest and/or change this is not to leap to the defence of TPB, who have never done anything but help people rip off other people's stuff. As I said, the legal debate is complex and uncertain, but the ethical position is pretty stark: what TPB does is not right.

This article is hilarious. Some guy at the Wall Street Journal has decided that, never mind the tens of millions of people in the world not sure where the next meal's coming from, or the millions in the U.S. who've been forced into bankruptcy through inability to pay medical bills, or who are living on food stamps and sleeping in their cars - what we should really reserve our worry and sympathy for are those poor dears earning more than $250,000 a year who can barely afford to buy nice clothes after paying the mortgage on their second homes. Taking the biscuit is the blissfully oblivious Ellen Parnell, who says: "What I want is a reality check on what rich means". Here's a hint, Ellen: you earn more than 95% of people in the United States do, never mind well over 99% of people in the world. You're it.

Watching Rangers / Caps game 2 - just a note: although I picked the Caps to win this series, that's just who I thought would - I'd *like* the Rangers to win it. they're a good team, I like Tortorella, and they have the great Markus Naslund now. I just couldn't see 'em pulling it out on the basis of what I saw of both teams in the season and the play in the first game. if they can hang on to this one, though, with two road wins they'd definitely be favourite, sure would be nice to see them go a long way.

Lest Greg think I have no grounds to mock him tonight - may I just point out the Mighty Canucks have won exactly twice as many playoff games as the Carolina Zephyrs. And none of them has required overtime. OH YES I DID!

Spent large chunks of today and yesterday trawling through the intel, nouveau and radeon bug lists to do some triage and try and get a feel for where we are for the F11 release. Now my eyes are somewhat glazed! My current feeling is that radeon has a pretty long list, but comparatively few really critical issues - not many of them are "helpzorz i is looking at a black screen". nouveau's list is surprisingly short - I'm feeling like it's in really good shape, and Ben's just a superhero for the speed he's working (dynamic framebuffer allocation showed up this morning...dude's nuts). There are six or seven "X just don't start" bugs, though - need to keep a close eye on those and make sure they're handled somehow before release. intel's sort of somewhere in the middle - it has a middlingly long list of bugs with a real grab-bag of serious and trivial. I'm mostly worried about several fairly serious issues with the oldest chipsets, i8xx - will be keeping an eye on those as well. But in general, I think we should be able to have a pretty solid release from an X.org perspective. Now I'm off to relax, play some tennis and prepare for game 2 evening, yay.

Reading the news this morning, hit a story about Hillary Clinton offering a day with Bill as a prize in a draw to raise money to pay off her campaign debt. Couldn't help thinking...I'm betting one of the jokes on Letterman tonight will be some variation on "but if you read the small print, that offer's only open to men".

Well, since this blog has become a bit of a clearing-house for Poulsbo (GMA 500) graphics issues, I thought I'd post a quick update to what I know is happening. The main thing is this: a few places (including here) have mentioned that Greg Kroah-Hartman has been doing some Poulsbo-related work, including proposing several patches to LKML a few months back (before retreating to re-organize). I mailed Greg to see what's happening, and he's planning to move forward with trying to get a working basic 2D driver over the next month or two. However, there's one important thing to note in this context: Greg isn't doing this in any official capacity. He's not working with or representing Intel on this - he's in the same situation as the rest of us, he has a Poulsbo-based system and he just wants the damn graphics to work. He's doing whatever he can in his spare time. So rock on Greg, and nobody take their frustration out on him, because he's not being paid for it. So yes, Greg's efforts are separate from whatever Intel's doing. Which is...something. All I've been able to get out of anyone at Intel, or anyone who's talked to anyone at Intel, is that they're working on it. So, well, yeah, Intel's 'working on it', whatever that may turn out to mean. No roadmap, no dates, no exact information on exactly what it is they plan to deliver - just, they're working on it. Okay, you can get back to twiddling your thumbs impatiently now!

Those of you with long memories for AdamW-related trivia may remember that, when Firefox 3 first came out, I hated it with a passion, mainly because of the Awesomebar. These days, though, I rather like it - they made it fast enough that the "click one entry, get another" bug doesn't really happen often enough to be annoying, and it is pretty useful. However! It still has its little foibles. The one I noticed today: if I type just 'pl', Planet GNOME shows up top of the list, Planet Fedora is second. If I then add an a, so it's 'pla', they switch over - Planet Fedora's at the top, Planet GNOME is second. How's that make sense, then?!

So I'm posting this in the Red Hat category despite it having nothing at all to do with Fedora because you guys all need more hockey in your lives. And also to rub it in Greg's face. I'll hook you up with a link to the Canucks team store later, Greg! Canucks win 2-1 in the first game of the first round, and that was one of the best one-goal wins all season. What I liked: absolutely top-class defensive commitment and execution, the entire set of defenders just put on a clinic tonight. They were outstanding from start to finish. Great offensive pressure from the third and fourth lines. The Sedins - aggressive and threatening all the way through. Mats Sundin playing smart and tactical and creating a few chances. And Luongo, of course. What I didn't like: too many penalties, too many pucks played in front of our own net, and Sundin not playing hard enough. Pretty small list, really. Just a great, great game that really shows why we have a chance to go far this year. One other thing I like - obviously it's too late for Don Cherry and he's gone to bed. No Cherry on the Vancouver HNIC coverage - thank Christ for that. The man's a twit. Greg's Canes were juuuuuust squeaked out 4-1 by New Jersey, with a slim slim margin of 39 shots to 19. Close one there, Greg! Tough luck. In case anyone cares, I pick the Penguins to beat the Flyers pretty easily (5 or 6 games), Red Wings to roll over the Blue Jackets, Caps to beat the Rangers in 6 or 7 - yeah, New York won tonight, but not in a way to inspire much confidence - I have to pick the Blackhawks to beat the Flames because as every Vancouver kid knows, FLAMERS SUCK, and I really have no frickin' clue between the Sharks and the Ducks, but it'll be a fun series to watch. And to go out on a limb for one series - Habs will beat the Bruins. You heard it here first, oh yeah. (That and the Habs are my second team, great team and incredible fan base). Game on!