an explanation:

[url=http://www.ipaction.org/campaigns/ipod/]Last week, the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation held a hearing on the "Broadcast Flag" and "Audio Flag," a set of proposals by the MPAA and RIAA that would stifle innovation by giving content holders a virtual veto over new technologies and existing user rights.

But Senator Stevens, the 82-year old committee chairman from Alaska, surprised the audience by announcing that his daughter had bought him an iPod, and suddenly Stevens had a much greater understanding of the many ways innovative technology can create choice for consumers. Content industry representatives at the hearing found themselves answering much tougher questions than they typically receive.

That's why we think all Senators ought to join Stevens' esteemed company as iPod owners. Rather than wait for every Senator's daughter, we're taking matters into our own hands and buying a video iPod for the campaigns of Senators who work on legislation affecting technology. Plus, we're going to pre-load each one with examples of the cultural richness made possible by sharing and collaboration - public domain content, Creative Commons content, and audio messages about the importance of balanced copyright policy. It will be engraved with the words "listen to the people." And it will arrive at each Senator's campaign office with a letter of explanation and a list of all the people who helped pay for it.

Help us supply more Senators with their own iPods for their campaigns. Each Video iPod costs $324.42, and you can buy a whole iPod or chip in a portion of the cost. We'll take care of the rest.[/url]

Why don't we have "Buy the poor artist in high school an ipod" fund? Seriously. I can't afford one, I want one. I need it for college.
Send me money stupid harlots.

Good idea, bad execution.

I would think that it would be these people's jobs to be on the up and up on such technologies if they work on legislation.

How about we not re-elect such people if they cannot comprehend or keep up. Baby feeding them is just a waste of money.

So what you meant was, "bad idea"?

I understand the desired result, but those fucking money-wasters are not getting any more of my money than they're already getting, damit!

They should buy me an iPod instead.

get a job. I was a poor high school student, but now i'm a poor highschool graduate (school just finished about 3 months ago) with an iPod.

get a job? i have a job, and i still can't afford it. i don't know how they pay you over there but i get shit wages with no pay raise at this stupid grocery store where i work.
i'm seriously thinking about going back to the nursing home where i used to work.

get your little boyfriend to buy you one.

and yeah, the nursing home sounds like a better idea.

It'll never fly, but it actually is an idea that would likely work. My wife's company's policy administrator was about to inflict an Ipod ban at work early last year after reading a bunch of BS stories about the "danger" of Ipods in the workplace - you know, how they can be used to steal information or inflict viruses upon a company's network. Yeah, sure, they can technically be used for that, but being realistic, there's a number of ways that either of these diabolical feats can be carried out that do not involved Ipods - none of which were being banned (flash drives, etc.) My wife and a bunch of others at the company tried to get her to understand that it takes a bit more than just wanting to use an Ipod for these purposes, and that they were still leaving themselves wide-open for problems. She wouldn't hear it - she didn't get that you can't just rub an Ipod against a computer and inflict a virus upon it, or just wish files onto the Ipod. So she ignored pleas to just ban Ipod cables or to just lock out the USB ports on the computers. . . . Until her husband and daughter got Ipods, at which time she finally saw the light. Not a word has been said about the ban since then.