There once was a little boy who had a bad temper. His Father gave him a bag of nails and told him that every time he lost his temper, he must hammer a nail into the back of the fence. The first day the boy had driven 37 nails into the fence. Over the next few weeks, as he learned to control his anger, the number of nails hammered daily gradually dwindled down. He discovered it was easier to hold his temper than to drive those nails into the fence.

Finally the day came when the boy didn't lose his temper at all. He told his father about it and the father suggested that the boy now pull out one nail for each day that he was able to hold his temper.

The days passed and the young boy was finally able to tell his father that all the nails were gone. The father took his son by the hand and led him to the fence. He said, "You have done well, my son, but look at the holes in the fence. The fence will never be the same. When you say things in anger, they leave a scar just like this one. You can put a knife in a man and draw it out. It won't matter how many times you say I'm sorry, the wound is still there. A verbal wound is as bad as a physical one."

"Friends are very rare jewels, indeed." He continuted, "They make you smile and encourage you to succeed. They lend an ear, they share words of praise and they always want to open their hearts to us."

It's National Friendship Week. Show your friends! how much you care. Send this to everyone you consider a FRIEND, even if it means sending it back to the person who sent it to you. If it comes back to you, then you'll know you have a circle of friends.

YOU ARE MY FRIEND AND I AM HONORED!

Now send this to every friend you have!! And to your family.

Please forgive me if I have ever left a hole.

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Last night, I started thinking about a moderated forum for the Mississippi Gulf Coast. A forum that was broken down into categories relating to each coastal town in Mississippi. A place where people could talk about the things driving our future after being devastated by Hurricane Katrina.

So, using the phpBB forum software, I set one up last night. It has categories for Mississippi State and Local Politics, Cultural forums, and a forum for every city, including Gulfport, Biloxi, Ocean Springs, Bay St. Louis, Pass Christian, Long Beach, D'Iberville and others.

Local employers can also post jobs, there is a classified ads forum, personals, services, night life and much more.

I hope you find the forum useful. If it proves to be popular, I will move it to it's own domain.

Click Here to Visit the MSCoast Citizens Forum

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The RIAA apparently doesn't like these new gadgets that let satellite radio subscribers record and save songs.  Oddly enough, they claim that these devices will cut into legal song downloading services.

I'm honestly getting fed up with this type of behavior from the RIAA.  When I was a kid (yes, I was one once), we recorded music on the radio to cassette tape.  That didn't keep us from buying a boat-load of albums.

At some point, they'll figure out that declining record sales are a result of a lack of musical diversity... not people "stealing" their music.

Click here to read the article over at CNN.com.

In some slightly related news, it seems that HBO is attacking Bittorent downloads of their content.  It's on TV, damnit!  Haven't they ever heard of the VCR?!?!  What's the difference?

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Well, they went and did it.  The RIAA has filed a lawsuit against a 14-year-old girl for downloading music.  In an earlier post I mentioned a case where a suit brought against the mother of the child was dismissed by the courts with prejudice.  Now, the RIAA has suceeded in bringing a lawsuit against the teenager... who was the tender age of 13 when the "crime" took place.

The main thing the RIAA seems to be going after her for is that she was "sharing" the songs she downloaded to others that were on the same P2P network.  The thing that bothers me the most is the fact that the software the girl was using to download music, probably has default settings that automatically configures the P2P software to act as a share device so others can get to the files she has downloaded.  She most likely didn't even know that the songs she downloaded were being made available to others.  She also likely didn't know how to disable the share feature even if she were aware that it was engaged.

The RIAA has no shame.  Their greed is outrageous and I hope they all burn in hell.

Click here to read the article.

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