So I found this interesting today. I was the 'victim' credit card fraud recently. Same crappy story, got a call from the bank "Sir did you spend $400 at Tommy Hilfiger yesterday?". Well, other than the fact that I wouldn't be caught dead buying that overpriced crap no I didn't make that purchase. "That's what we thought sir, did you make these other purchases at insert-expensive-label-shop-here?" Nope, wouldn't shop there either. "Thank you sir, your new card is on it's way. Thank you for being a customer."

So on to the interesting part, everyone complains that they always get the prompt "To continue in spanish press 1." Today I called to activate my platinum plus card (which is apparently not as cool as a plumb card - I've got to move to fruit) and I was greeted with the first option being "If you are calling to activate your platinum plus card and would like to continue in English press 1."

I'm not sure if I should be offended or not? Are they assuming that I am English speaking or are they one organization that has their shit together and knows that I have a preference for English? I love to practice my Spanish, but managing my financial transactions I still like to do in my native tongue. Is there any way that a company can offer a language preference without being offensive or do we all just need to get over it and get on with our lives?

Copyright Enforcement or Why Are My Tax Dollars Protecting Sony's Profits?

This springs from a discussion on a mailing list I belong to. While it was off topic for that mailing list it did catch my eye and make me want to spend more time pondering it. The question posed was around copyright violations being a criminal or civil offense.

As it can, the discussion wound down to my pessimistic opinion that law enforcement prosecutes large scale copyright violation for two reasons.
1. We gotta make it look good for everybody else, we can't really complain that other countries don't protect our copyrights when we don't protect our copyrights.
2. The tax base isn't supported by the sale of pirate works. Law enforcement is protecting their income by maintaining a status quo with the pirates.