Thursday, July 31, 2008

Rising Oil Prices Swell Profits at Exxon and Shell

Article


Exxon Mobil, the world’s largest publicly traded oil company, reported on Thursday that second-quarter income rose 14 percent, to $11.68 billion, the highest-ever for an American company.


Nice. Everyone's complaining about high gas prices at the pumps and your profit is going through the roof.


Shell’s profit rose to $11.56 billion from $8.67 billion in the period a year ago. BP reported a 28 percent increase in profit earlier this week and the Italian oil company Eni said on Thursday that profit in the second quarter rose 52 percent.


Ah , capitalism at it's finest. Price of oil goes up ? We'll tack on a little extra for ourselves and make a bad situation worse. Price of oil goes down ? Well it takes 18 months to work it's way through the system ... oh in 18 months other things came up so we never really drop the price. Ever.

Record profits again ! Gotta love it !

Monday, July 28, 2008

False Ads in movies

Article = none , personal experience.


I was watching this really great movie. It's called Live Free or Die Hard , the lastest bruce willis flick. And in it it features this hacker using this totally cool rubber keyboard. You just roll it up like a sheet of paper , put it in your pack , take it out , unroll it , plug it in and use it. And the hacker was tapping away on it at a mile a minute and it looked like the greatest thing since sliced bread !

Then I saw one at wall mart. 30$.

So I bought it. And I tried it out.

And it sucked.

And there was no way you could type with any speed, it was constantly missing key strokes the space bar didn't work properly , touch typing on it was impossible.

Thank goodness for the wall mart return policy. My wife returned it , kicked in 10$ , got herself a toaster oven she'd been saying she wanted for some time now.

What is that called ? When they place an ad inside a movie or tv show as part of the plot ? Imbedded Advertisement ? Product Placement ?

Whatever.

It sucks. It lies big time. Even worse than regular advertising. And thats going some because regular ad's have carefully crafted rules that can be easily gotten around. In show ads...hey ! it's just a show ! a piece of fiction ! We didn't promise you nothing !

It sucks. Bad.

Sunday, July 27, 2008

Charter Spies

Can Charter Broadband Customers Really Opt-Out of Spying? Maybe Not




NebuAd's appliance categorizes users and their interests, and then uses the data to customize ads on the internet. Charter says the device will not actively inject NebuAd's advertising into web sessions, but rather NebuAd will provide the profile information to third-party advertisers already paying to place their ads on major websites.


So they place a box in the ISP's server area and it monitors your surfing habits, tracking every thing you do. Why ? Advertising.

The oddity of the world. China does it to throw you in jail. America does it to spam you. Same technology.


At issue, though, is NebuAd's system for allowing customers to opt-out of the data collection. A review of the NebuAd's and Charter's statement on the opt-out system, and of NebuAd's patent on its technology, raises serious questions about whether Charter customers can really opt-out of the spying at all


You can't.

World of Warcraft did this already , following in the footsteps of many companies before it. They popped up a window saying they were collecting non personal system info and press this button if you didn't want to be monitored. Three months later that button was gone, the window never apeared, and they did as they liked to your computer and if you didn't like it don't play their game , dim witt !

I don't.


Charter's own opt-out page is careful not to claim that opted-out users won't be monitored, saying only that if a user "would like to opt-out of this process" an opt-out cookie means they "will no longer receive ads that are tailored to your web preferences, usage patterns and commercial interests."


But they'll still monitor you.


There are also lingering questions about whether NebuAds systems are as non-invasive as described. A patent application filed by the company in March 2007 describes a monitoring system that actually manipulates data packets and replaces advertisements on third-party websites with their own ads.


Ha ha ha !

Just when we were all taught you have to put up with ads in order to receive these free websites and it's an evil thing to use a browser that blocks them , now the companies themselves are going to do precisely that.


"This is a classic instance where the harm -- a user getting quietly compromised -- is not felt by the agent receiving the benefit, meaning the ISP profiting off of injected advertisements," security researcher Dan Kaminsky said via e-mail. "The last three attempts at injection -- PaxFire, BareFruit, and Network Solutions -- have been shown to push trivial vulnerabilities into the entire web."


And if you mess up , like the last three attempts already did , you infect every single one of your customers with some virus or trojen. And then tell them too bad, not our problem.

This kind of thing typically runs in packs. One company does it , takes the heat, then quietly , very quietly , everyone starts doing it. And you lose the ability to switch providers because they're all doing it.

Remember television ? 22 minutes of show , 38 minutes of comercials ? And the commercials are loud and annoying, so you turn the volume down , and the show is quiet, so you turn the volume up , and then a commercial comes on and BLASTS your ears so you turn the volume down ...

It's coming. It's coming.

Wednesday, July 23, 2008

Bank Investors Expect Less as Losses Mount

Article

Can the bad news for banks get any worse? After the last week brought another round of woeful quarterly results...

Ok ok ok. We deliberately loaned all these people money for houses that we knew they couldn't pay back , because the government was backing those loans. Now we're gonna moan and groan and say how terrible things are for a while, and then the government will pony up the cash and we'll get paid anyways.

And the economy ? Who cares. We just look after ourselves, no one else. So we created a world wide recession ? Who gives a flying fart ? We get our money in the end. Thats all that counts.


Plunging home prices, particularly in Florida and California, have left 14 percent of the bank’s customers with zero or negative equity in their homes


The prices of the houses are plunging because they never should have been so high in the first place ! You people whine and complain but in the end you did this to yourself, and you're dragging the rest of the world along for the ride. You guys suck , did you know that ? You bankers suck worse than organized crime.

What you do should be a crime, actually.

Monday, July 14, 2008

Feds: We will search through your laptop files at the border

Article


Following in the wake of February's news that customs agents were seizing electronics and making copies of all the files on cell phones and laptop hard drives, a federal appeals court has ruled on the legality of such searches. The result: Yeah, customs can do whatever it wants to your computer when you come across the border, without a warrant, and without cause.


This article is dated april 23 , so it's already happening.

And it contains links to previous articles stating they get you to enter the user id and pass, and then simply take your lap top away and you never see it again.

And they charged one guy with child pornography because of what they found on his laptop.

And mp3 players and digital cameras also make the list for this kind of treatment.

Odd.

I seem to recall stories of not being allowed to take even magazines into russia because they might say something against the communist regime.

And hasn't america been torturing prisoners lately too ? This whole water boarding thing to make them think they're drowning ?

I thought we got rid of the russian communistic party in the 80s under Yetsin. Or did it just change locations ?

I swear we tore down that wall. I swear I saw it on television and everything ! Didn't I ? Why are they building a new one in a slightly different location ?



((View in 1986 from the wst side of graffiti art on the wall's infamous "death strip"))

Osama Obama




I have a truely wonderful idea !

Lets paint up this good christian soul, Obama , in a muslim terrorist outfit ! And his wife too ! and publish it on the front page of some major magazine everyone in the world see's ?

How dare that black ass nigger try and become prez ???

Oh , later on inside , which no one ever reads , we'll say we were just kidding.

yeah , that will work. That will work just fine.

We we're just kidding Osama ... I mean Obama. We were just kidding.

(edit) yes, for you idiots who like to take things out of context, I'm being sarcastic. I'm not really much for or against Obama , but I am desgusted with the dirty pool that seems to be standard , even considered tame , in american politics.

Sunday, July 13, 2008

Research bots leverage open-source for child-like intelligence

Article

Ok, so why are you using open source instead of proprietory stuff from companies ? Isn't that cheaper than building it yourself all the time ?


The conventional approach of using commercial robots has long caused problems for academics. They must sign limiting nondisclosure agreements to gain access to proprietary technology, and they may be prevented from going into low-level control code. Then there's the headache of discovering that a line is being discontinued. When Sony abandoned robotics in 2006, for example, many groups that had been using the company's Aibo robot as their primary research platform were left in the lurch.


So what you're saying is they lock you down so you can't share your research (a primary requirement of advancing science) milk you for every dime, and then bugger off and discontinue the robots you were depending on ?





"Tekkotsu is intended to make it easy to develop sophisticated applications on mobile robots, by providing an extensive set of well-integrated primitives for perception, navigation, manipulation and control," said project head David Touretzky, a research professor of computer science at CMU.


But now that you're going open source you can share stuff like crazy and people don't have to keep inventing the wheel over and over and over ? One person can get the movement navigation going and then everyone has that ?


"Modularity and reusability are required to enable the technological evolution of autonomous robots," von Stryk said. "In the long run, this is only possible with open software and hardware modules that enable an unlimited number of researchers and developers to share their particular contributions."


Let me rephrase that for you.

Big business can't do research. They lock down and copyright everything, share nothing, and monetize, monetize, monetize every tiny little thing to the point where you can't fart without having to pay someone a buck.

The interesting thing about this statement is that it's made by a scientist in the field , trying to get something done. And he's tried it one way , and it didn't work. And he's tried it another way , and the other way did work.

The iPhone came out july 11th. It doesn't look much different than the old iPhone. It has a gps navigation chip in it that the old one didn't have, but those already existed. It has a touch screen , my playstation double screen has a touch screen. It runs apple only software and is locked down to a fair thee well.

I have an old lap top. It runs windows 3.1
It has word processors with spell checkers , and spread sheets and everything. Any business task you do today , it was doing fifteen years ago with far more limited technology.

My computer plays nifty games that wont run on older computers. And thats all it does.

I do believe that scientist guy is right. Big business can't innovate. All it can do , is lock down , copyright , and monetize monetize monetize. And then leave you in the lurch just when you start to depend on it.

I just got all the junk stripped out of xp and got it up and running just the way I like it. No longer supported , upgrade to Vista. Too bad if your system won't run it buy another system. Don't care that it's full of bugs , xp not supported anymore !

Bill gates is not the only one in town playing that game , it seems.

Saturday, July 12, 2008

Teachers think kids should be thrown in jail !

Cyberbullying should be criminal offence: teachers


Both teachers and students have been targets on the internet, through e-mail, blogs, social networking sites and chat rooms — and the trend is now serious enough that it's an occupational health and safety issue, according to the federation.



I hate my math teacher ! I really do ! He piled so much homework on me ! I know...I'll sign him up for a dozen or so gay online magazines !

Oops...why are the police chasing me down and arresting me ?


"A lot of people get on the electronic medium and think that they can send whatever e-mails they want and they're anonymous. The reality is we need to take responsibility and care for each other. We all have to treat each other with respect," she said.


"I hate you I hate you I'm coming down there to beat you up !"
Teacher looks at signature, recognizes it as a small child half his size and a quarter his weight. Hmm.....

I have a beautiful idea.
Don't give out your email address to your students. If they don't hand in assignments on time ...too bad ! Let them phone like everyone else does.

Canadian open source community upset over proposed copyright law

Article


There are two controversial abuses that impact software authors. Those include TPMs that apply to hardware where the keys are held by [someone] other than the owner of the hardware, and TPMs applied to digital content that can only be unlocked by specific brands of locked-down software and devices. Before any other rights of a software author can be protected, we need to know that our potential customers are allowed to make their own software choices. Both of these abuses of TPMs revoke the ability of our customers to make their own independent software choices."


Hey ! That program I just sold you ? It only runs under windows, no one else !

Hey , that DVD I sold you from Walt Disney ? You have to have a walt disney player to play it , no one elses ! And the one from Colombia studios ? Needs a Colombia studio's player !

pay pay pay !

Oh you don't like windows ? TOO BAD ! We won 80% of the market ! Sign an EXLUSIVE deal to let your stuff run on our computers (and NO ONE ELSES) or we sabatage you and it doesn't run on windows at all !

Yeah ! My name is Bill Gates and I LOOOOOVE this new copy right legislation. All of my competition is about to go belly up , it will be sooooo easy to bankrupt them all !!!!

Welcome to a microsoft world.

Your prices just tripled. Cough it up sucker.

Tuesday, July 08, 2008

Thugs with badges

Men allege racism in fight with off-duty officers


...when an off-duty officer in a van allegedly called them "niggers."

...the van's doors then slid open, and out came a dozen off-duty officers.


I used to love cop movies. Lethal weapon was my favorite series. Gotta love Mel Gibson chasing down all those bad guys.


...he and members of the race relations committee have viewed a video of the incident three times, and that he found some evidence that confirms the account given by Fells.


But it seems we have a new tv show to watch now. Called "Live TV" , or perhaps "Cell Phone TV" or more accurately "Thugs with badges caught on tape , live and in color !"

The RCMP at the Vancouver airport stun gunning that old guy to death is only the tip of the iceberg, it seems. Now we have RCMP officers in Halifax, the other end of the country , running in packs while off duty, beating on helpless civilians. And then arresting them.

I used to love all those old cop shows where the police officer was the hero. Now I'm beginning to wonder if I was living in a dream world, and modern technology has caught up with these hooligans in blue and reveiling some kind of unpleasant truth that no one really wants to deal with.

If you can't trust a cop , who can you trust ?

Monday, July 07, 2008

How to Calculate How Much Money You Need to Retire


Article



Or More Properly , for our USA readers ...

HOW TO CALCULATE HOW MUCH MONEY THE US HEALTH SYSTEM WILL STIFF YOU FOR BEFORE LEAVING YOU ON THE HOSPITAL FLOOR WAITING FOR YOU TO DIE



Step 1 : Read the above quoted article and follow it to save up a huge wad of cash over thirty or forty working years.

Step 2 : Look at the pretty picture of the guy laying on the hamock drinking some kind of alchoholic beverage and try not to notice that he can't possibly be more than 20.

((Insert Microsoft Rant Here : Step 3 : Try not to notice THAT THEY DEMANDED YOU USE MS EXCEL, MENTIONING IT BY NAME AND EVERYTHING, instead of simply asking you to use a spread sheet program of some sort, to do various calculations.))

Step 3 : Grow Old, and get sick. Which all old people do.

Step 4 : Discover the wonders the the phrases "Life Time Limit of Benefits Payed Out" and "Type One Uninsurable" that are secretly hidden away in your health insurance policy.

Step 5 : Hand over all your cash to the american health system.

Step 6 : Run out of cash, while listening to them prattle on about how its too expensive to save your life so you got to die now ...I mean I mean ... how health care is so expensive , and you're really using up more than you're fair share arn't you ? You should feel really guilty about the burden you're placing on society.

Next , we will study how to retire with comfort and security and peace of mind, oddly subtitled ...

IMMIGRATE TO SOME SOCIALIST COUNTRY WITH FREE HEALTH CARE FOR ALL BEFORE IT'S TOO LATE !!!



America. The land of the young. Land of the beautiful.

Because we let all the old buggers die off real quick.

Open Source : An Open View Point

Article = None , Personal Opinion.

So, what is my opinion on open source ? On Good Olde Bill Gates making a buck on his operating system , and then these yahoo software writers coming along and mucking it all up by giving away an operating system, and word processors, and games , for free ? And their inferior "free" offering is pretty much immune to virii and other security violations while windows seems to attract them like flies, and bill gates vehemently refuses to fix the whole problem (active - x components) because thats how he makes his operating system do things other more responsible operating systems refuse to do , and thus can turn a profit because he can do stuff they can't do.

And catch virii like there's no tommorow.

Let me rephrase that.

My sister "gave" me a rather old and ancient lap top (she was supposed to give me my PDA back , not a cast off lap top that won't run anything but windows 3.1, but thats another issue entirely) and it works beautifully. On windows 3.1. And it has spreadsheets and power point like programs and and word processors and everything you could imagine.

So when was windows 3.1 again ? 1992 ? 16 years ago.

wow. So...what can my winxp machine do that windows 3.1 can't do ?

Hmmm... it plays some really nifty games. And ...

And ...

and ...

I'm thinking. Give me a moment. Don't rush me , ok ?

And ...

And ...

Hmmm... let me rephrase that. Windows 95, win98, winme , winxp ... so what did I get again for paying for windows four more times that windows 3.1 couldn't do ?

Hmmm....

Ok. Back to This open source business. Why do I think they should give the operating system away for free instead of making us pay for it over and over and over again ? And paying a mint for security software that doesn't do much except tell you you're operating system has been heavily damaged by that virus, reinstall ! Lose everything ! Start over ! ((I could have figured out I need to reinstall on my own without paying you 60$ thanks just the same)).

Because I believe in copyrights.

Because I believe that sooner or later, copyrights expire. And you get the work for free after that. Because I believe that making cherry flavoured tylonal is not sufficient reason to extend the copyright on tylonal another 17 years. I'll be happy to extend your copyright on the cherry flavoring but I want the basic formula from 17 years ago made free for all. Thats the way it works, thats the deal you cut with all those foriegn governments it's too late to change it now. You had your time to be soul supplier and turn a buck on your work. Time to poney up the stuff for free for everyone, as you agreed to.

And because I don't believe in predatory marketing practices.

I believe telling companies that if you put some other word processor on your computer (Word Perfect comes to mind) instead of Microsoft word we're not gonna let you put windows on it and so your business will go down the tubes and you'll go bankrupt.

Yes, I believe thats an evil thing.

I believe that when I run internet explorer , every time I sneeze my computer picks up a virus. But after two years of running alternatives (opera , and later fire fox) it hasn't caught a virus or "tool bar" even a single time, and Bill Gates moves mountains to make sure word of such things is properly smeared and no one beleives me when i mention it ... something is wrong there.

I believe thats an evil thing too.

I believe that when I worked as a programmer, and our main client upgraded their word processer to the latest microsoft office, and these ignorant users called us fools and insulted us because we didn't. So we were forced to not only upgrade to the new word processor, but a new operating system as well because it wouldn't run on the old one, and after all this time and effort and labor... not much had changed. We had no new abilities or features. And the printers didn't work on the new operating systems. But we had no choice or we'd lose the contract because we looked bad to these technological idiots that hired us for our expertise and then proceeded to totally ignore us.

I believe that also to be an evil thing.

I believe I bought a java compiler from Microsoft.

But I was wrong. I did not. I bought a J / J++ compiler. Which I thought was java. It looked like Java. It acted like Java. it seemed to understand the java programming language. And so (I thought) I could write code that would run properly on both the internet explorer , and on Netscape , the cheif competitor, with no problems.

But netscape was never able to properly run the code. It always came so close, and then messed up. Ran perfectly on Internet explorer. Guess netscape needs to get their act together , right ?

A year later I found out Micro$oft was getting sued for deliberately sabataging applications so that they would only run on IE and not run on netscape. A non standard java interperter that would weed out errors deliberately induced by their own compilers so they could happily sabatage anyone trying to make stuff that runs on both platforms.

Thats 150$ out of my pocket I got robbed of by good old Bill Gates, by the way.

I believe that if proprietory companies screw people over , lie cheat and steal without any restraint or moral scruples on the matter , well, you will pay the piper sooner or later. No one likes it much when you take money from their pocket and give them nothing in return. No one likes buying a product that you seem to promise faithfully will do what they want to do , and then be told SUCKER ! YOU DIDN'T READ THE FINE PRINT ! WE RIPPED YOU GOOD AND WE LOVE IT NOW THAT YOU'RE CRYING IN YOUR BEER AND YOUR MONEYS GONE AND WE'RE LAUGHING LAUGHING LAUGHING ALL THE WAY TO THE BANK !!!!

Yeah. No one much likes that.

Lets give open source a try for a while , shall we ?

Just for a change of pace , if nothing else.

Fire Them All !

Microsoft Is Open to Yahoo Deal if Board Is Replaced



SAN FRANCISCO — In yet another reversal in its five-month-old pursuit of Yahoo, Microsoft said Monday that it might be interested in negotiating a deal with Yahoo, including an outright acquisition, as long as that company replaces its board of directors.


yep. Very american. I see this all the time at work when Americans call me up , and I refuse to give them some insanely expensive doo dad for free. You wont help me screw over your own company ? I'M GONNA GET YOU FIRED ! YOU WILL BE SO FIRED YOU WONT' EVEN KNOW WHAT HAPPENED TO YOU ! DO YOU GET ME ? YOU ARE TOAST ! YOU ARE ... well , you get the idea.

I suppose you can't blame old Micro$oft from giving it a whirl. Yahoo wont let us buy their core business at a low price ? and leave all the rest of the yahoo stuff that loses money behind , they just want the search engine that turns a profit and nothing else ? And they want it cheap ? YOU'RE FIRED ! YOU'RE ALL FIRED ! EVERY LAST ONE OF YOU !

The sad thing is stock prices of yahoo jumped when Micro$oft made this announcement , so it might actually work. Which makes me wonder how much yahoo shares will be worth when yahoo ceases to exist.

Only in America you say ? Pitiful.

Why The Middle East Will Fall

Article = Personal Opinion, no references

I like my MP3 player. Why ? Because it drowns out the background noise in my mind. Noise that comes from my mind constantly chugging away and nibbling at the most minor , insignificant things. Like me noticing every cop and armored truck guard in ottawa seems to be wearing a cell phone. Why ? Officially issued equipment ? Doubtful, if the cell phone towers go down they're toast. More like permitted personal equipment. A free back up the public doesn't have to pay for , hurray !

What significance does this have ? None. None at all. Who cares ? But it's an example of the stuff rattling around in my head , making noise, and occasionally presenting me with the results, whether I want those results or not. Or even believe them, sometimes I don't.

So ... Middle east, terrorism, why will it fail ?

Fact One : Our illustrious prime minister Cretien , and Trudeau before him , if you look up their biologies, came from large families. 18 for Cretien , and a similar number for Trudeau. Hmmm... two people , 20 or so kids... the population up until the 1950's before birth control was expanding pretty rapidly. Thats like a ten to one factor every generation. An order of magnitude. Thats a riduculous amount, no nation can survive that level of growth for very long, the whole planet will be quickly burried if something isn't done.

Fact Two : It's been reported in the news several times, just in passing , about these little wars in the middle east who's primary purpose isn't to beat the enemey but to pair off your own population.

Well ... I can understand that. If you want to maintain a stable population and people are having 20 kids per couple , you gotta kill off 90% of those kids right ? And it looks really bad to kill of 90% of your own people , so ... we'll get someone else to do it for us ! Yes..what a great idea. We'll pick a war with our neibours and we'll fight it stupidly and get a lot of people killed. And our neibours, who have exactly the same population problem we have , will go along with the gag and we'll kill off their excess population as well. It will work great.

This explains lots of historical things I saw in history class or read about. Didn't Napoleon once witness a calvary charge through a mass of rifleman , all the way up to his guns, and there they just stood around and looked stupid for a bit and then rode back home ? And comment "It was a beautiful thing it was. But it was not war." Nope , it was the brits controlling their own population. Centuries before birth control was invented.

fact three : The religion of Islam has been frequently remarked to be old fashion and ancient. Remarks like "it is an interesting thing to speak to a man from the sixteenth century" make the papers every now and then.

Conclusion ?

The middle east is fighting the wrong war. They're looking for a prop to lean on to kill off their 90% of the unwanted population without them taking the blame for it, not really looking to conquer the world.

How else can you explain them killing off what in reality is a very tiny number of enemey civilians , interfering in no way at all with your enemies ability to retaliate upon your own population , and calling it a victory ?

Let me rephrase that.

They cannot win this war, because they're not trying to win this war.

They're fighting to lose.

And it's working.

The things that rattle around in my head sometimes.

Friday, July 04, 2008

No more Hell from Bell

Artilce = none, personal expeiance of a friend

((WARNING : A friend of mine wrote this , not me. ))
I was using Home Phone and Internet from Bell and Cable TV and Wireless from Rogers.

I wanted to save some money by bundling with one or the other service provider.

After a lengthy analysis, I chose Rogers for all my services.
Rogers offered my their tier 2 package from myhomeadvantage for $129.00 + tax per month saving me about $50 per month overall.

After notifying Bell of my desire to cancel, I was transferred to the retentions department which gave me a big guilt trip about how Bell "gave people a phone".
My response was that I had already signed my contract with Rogers. The retentions CSR was NOT IMPRESSED!

A Bell tech came to my house just hours later to "fix" problems I had been complaining about for months. The day after Rogers came by to install my new phone and internet service, Bell installed a dry loop for my internet connection that I wanted cancelled and could no longer access not that I would want to as I now had Robgers higher speed internet. Oh, and my speed with bell was 2.4Mpbs at best from the 5Mbps they promisd. With Rogers I now have 7Mbps.

A couple days later Bell took an additional payment from my account even though they did not have authority to direct debit my account. I immediately called Bell and screamed FRAUD and they immediatley mailed me a refund.

My final bill from Bell for 7 days of service is $80 dollars whereas a full month of service costs me $120. The extra expense is listed as various disconnection charges.
Where do they get off charging disconnection charges? Seems to me that these final insulting charges will just make certain I never sign up with Bell again!