I noticed on my last visit to Blockbuster that sufficient desperation has set in that they’ve decided to offer a NetFlix-style “unlimited rentals” plan… for $24.95 per month (limit 2 rentals at once), which strikes me as rather noncompetitive if you ask me, although I seem to remember NetFlix being significantly cheaper than it is now in the past.

Of course, the fact Blockbuster decided to raise the DVD rental fee to $4.19 hasn’t exactly ensured my continued patronage after I use up my $20 gift card.

My most recent rentals are Love Actually (some of the humor in which, I suspect, is lost on people on this side of the pond—most notably, the plight of the has-been singer trying to get the Christmas #1 is something of a riff on a British tradition of has-beens and never-wases trying to gain glory with a hit Christmas single) and Lost in Translation, the latter of which doesn’t seem to be very cooperative with my laptop for some reason (I couldn’t get Totem to play it at all under Linux, and Windows Media Player won’t let me skip past any of the promo crap on the DVD). So we’ll see if the real DVD player can cope with Lost, and then I’ll run to Blockbuster to return the DVDs.

Apparently, Dick Cheney was ahead of the curve and speaking on behalf of fans of P2P networks when he told Patrick Leahy what he thought of him:

According to this News.com article, Senator Hatch’s “INDUCE” act has been renamed the “Inducing Infringements of Copyrights Act,” but has not otherwise been changed. ”Foes of the IICA, including civil liberties groups and file-swapping network operators, are alarmed that the measure enjoys strong support from prominent politicians of both major parties. Its supporters include Patrick Leahy, D-Vt.; Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn.; Minority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D.; Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.; and Barbara Boxer, D-Calif.”

Brian J. Noggle has figured out how Celine Dion came into existence. Cloning is involved.