Billy the Martian

Here’s a good reason to start using Jabber.

This looks like a dumb move on AOL’s part. They’re big enough that they’ll get away with it, I s’pose, but I can’t see it being okay long-term. What if they tried the same thing with email? Google caught heat for a much less invasive plan for gmail.

Guess this is the result of letting the lawyers drive the company. Someone should take the steering wheel back from Legal over there.

(via Slashdot)

First off, check this out from Michelle Malkin

My first reaction to this story is that the nutjob reporter, Giuliana Sgrena, sure has an inflated opinion of herself if she thinks she’s worthy of being assassinated. Apparently, some folks are mailing Instapundit and telling him that the Eason Jordan story must have been true, since Sgrena’s hysteria confirms it.

But you know, now the story includes the rumor that the Italians paid somewhere between $1 million and $6 million for her release, with other speculations that up to $13 million was paid.

I’m not sure if she was definitely ransomed off. I’m pretty sure that I’ve read that her own version of the story includes the fact that she was released after a ransom was paid.

And you know what? If that’s the case, she deserved everything she claims happened, including the obviously untrue claims like being shot at by a tank. She deserves worse, in fact.

If you pay ransoms, you’re funding the next kidnapping and creating a market. Future kidnapping victims have every right to hate your guts. Funding these scumbags is abominable.

(I’m the only person I know, other than author Donald Hamilton, who advocated shooting down hijacked aircraft in order to kill off the market for nutjobs who steal planes at gunpoint. And that was a decade before 9/11. I must be a crank.)