NY-23

Go Hoffman!

On a different subject, I saw a few minutes of 60 minutes after the football game. They were doing a story on pirated movies. Some guy was being tried for filming a move in the theater. He had taken a small video camera with him, sat in the back row, and made his own copy of the movie. It's a crime, no dispute. At the trial, movie pirate brought his family. The prosecutor (or whoever the person they were interviewing was) said that when the movie pirate was illegally filming the movie, his family was with him. The interviewer was shocked, SHOCKED, SHOCKED that this low-down dirty criminal would take his family to . . . watch a movie. The "outrage" was, I guess, aimed at taking his family while committing a crime. But, really? It's not like he was robbing a bank. He was watching a movie, holding a camera. Separately, those activities scream "family time." But, this reporter was just SHOCKED at his blatent disregard for . . . something.

I started flipping back to the movie pirating story when I got bored with the rerun of Next Iron Chef. The next piece I saw was about the bit torrent system of file sharing. Reporter lady explained it well enough - large file broken into small pieces, pieces transmitted back and forth. Then, the "expert" explained that the software would collect the pieces and reassemble them into a full watchable movie. Reporter lady was amzed that such technology exists. You mean we have things called . . . com-put-ers . . . which can perform a task that's quite often the first game an infant is given? What a technological marvel!

The Bells! THE BELLS!!!