Week 5
...the award goes to..... for previous and/or other winners, Weekly Spin Archives

----Senator Orrin Hatch----
Hello, you are violating copyright laws, your computer will self destruct in 3 seconds.....

So have you heard Utah Senator Orrin Hatch's latest brilliant idea? You see he feels that the only way to teach all those who illegally swap music, software, and any other copyrighted material is to err.... well like he said, "I'm all for destroying their machines..." Talk about asinine ideas.... But perhaps he just has a guilty conscience because HE HIMSELF is stealing copyrighted material on his own freaking website! Yup, his personal website is largely made up of a JavaScript menu system developed by the Software Company Milonic, which, as the owner of the company confirms, is "an unlicensed copy,". Well gee, I guess that means Sen. Hatch is violating his own proposed law in which case, **POOF** bye bye Sen. Hatch's computer.

This was all discovered by Laurence Simon of Houston, Texas, whose wonderful detective work brought to everyone's attention, including both Milonic and Senator Hatch, the Senators software theft. I suggest taking a look at Mr. Simons account of what happened, I found it thoroughly amusing. Now of course after this was brought to light, the Senator scrambled to, um, fix the situation..... Here is the Senator's website BEFORE Mr. Simon contacted Milonic, and here is the Senator's website NOW .... Of course it looks the same, but if you view the source, you'll notice that the

Milonic DHTML Website Navigation Menu Written by Andy Woolley - Copyright 2003 (c) Milonic Solutions Limited. All Rights Reserved Please visit http://www.milonic.co.uk/ for more information
Although this software may have been freely downloaded, you must obtain a license before using it in any production environment The free use of this menu is only available to Non-Profit, Educational & Personal Web Sites who have obtained a license to use
Free, Commercial and Corporate Licenses are available from our website at http://www.milonic.co.uk/menu/supportcontracts.php You also need to include a link back to http://www.milonic.co.uk/ if you use the free license
All Copyright notices MUST remain in place at ALL times If you cannot comply with all of the above requirements, please contact us to arrange a license waiver
License Details:
Type: Professional
Number: 188909

in the coding for the site, doesn't appear until after the 'discovery'.....

Now let's set aside the Hatch software pirating for a moment, as I would like to point out one of the many problems that such a computer destroying law would bring about: If such a technology actually existed (one that could remotely destroy a persons computer) then it would occur to me that if put in the wrong hands, this technology could be used to destroy ANYONE'S machine...I mean viruses would be nothing, why infect someone's computer when you can destroy it.... And the icing on the cake would be that the technology to do this would no doubt, be a pirated version.... I suppose the first order of business would be to destroy the Government's main computer that would be running the 'destroy' program.....and then gee....I wonder whose computer would be the next stop... pardon the sloppy photoshop job on my part, it was taking me way to long

~~~Just a nice little extra...the wonderful posters at Slashdot made this amusing discovery... Take a look at these menus from Sen. Hatch's website:

THEN NOW

So do ya notice something missing from the 'NOW' picture? Well, in case you didn't notice...the answer is the menu item that says, "Explore Utah" which is missing from the 'NOW' version...So you figure, 'So What'? 'Who Cares'? Well, let's just say that there was an 'issue' with an image on that page.... thanks to GOOGLE and their cache, you can see why the page is probably undergoing a review right now..... MyUtahSearch.com?. The page itself is fine, but the "MYUTAHSEARCH.com" links to a page that I would say is probably NSFW (Not Safe For Work).

WIRED's account Wired News Sen. Hatch article

Web Morons Well....the name pretty much tells you all.....Sen. Hatch = Moronic

Slashdot The home of the 'porn/hatch link' finder as well as many other posts and discussions

Laurence Simon In case you didn't catch the link above, here is the guy who made the discovery, and he has included e-mails he sent...very amusing.


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