Ottawa Boy

Hitler painting fetches 32,000 euros in Slovak auction

2012-01-29T21:24:00.000-05:00

Article "The painting has been offered for sale by an unnamed family of a Slovak painter who probably met Hitler personally when he was struggling to become an artist in Vienna during the early 20th century," Darte owner Jaroslav Krajnak said earlier.
"I look at him as an artist - in 1913, when Hitler painted this picture, he didn't know what would become of him in the decades to come," he added.
The auctioning house already sold a painting by Hitler from the same family collection last year for 10,200 euros.

Read more: http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/story.html?id=6069117#ixzz1ku5jLTAW

The interesting part of this story is not the story itself. Its the comments section demanding anything to do with good old Adolf Hitler be destroyed.

I respectfully disagree with that opinion. Why ?

Hitler is an important historical figure. And you can hardly start laying down policy and rules on how to prevent another Hitler if you destroy all information on him in the first place , can you ? You need to know how he got started in life, how he was twisted , how he went from an innocent child to a mass murdering (elected ...people keep forgetting he was elected by a majority of his country men no less) Chancellor (can't call an elected official a dictator ... well you can but it isn't true. ) And you can hardly do that if you destroy all the evidence , so to speak.

I've always found Hitler a fascinating figure, though not for the reasons the average person or the neo-nazi's would expect. The reason is ... if you ever download a copy of Mein Kampf , it usually comes with an appendix with news paper clippings of that era , and explains that Hitlers opinions were actually pretty mild compared to some of the opinions that got published in those newspapers.

Contrast that with every german complaining it was all Hitlers fault after the war was lost , and he was elected by popular mandate he wasn't a dictator ... maybe Hitler wasn't as alone as they claim he was. Maybe the populous that elected him actually knew what he was up to , and approved. Not so silently approved even , if those newspaper clippings are any indication.

Just an opinion of a man who's dead and gone before I was even born. But the evidence is interesting none the less.

My Take on the Greek Economic Crisis

2012-01-28T20:43:00.001-05:00

Ok. It's actually really simple to understand.

The Greeks owe money. Far more than they are ever going to be able to pay back.

The Germans are being asked to pay the debts, or take the loss or whatever, because the germans were the most fiscally responsible, so they have the highest credit rating, and in economic terms they have the most cash because they worked hard for it.

Think about that a moment. You got a nice house and a car and everything ,and you worked hard for it. Many a long day and night. But now the neighbors want you to bail out the welfare bums down the street who spent the rent money on booze. And yes, neibhbors on booze isn't a bad analogy. People retiring way early in their life, over paid government workers , etc etc ...

So if you were the germans what would you do ? You'd tell them to go to hell.

Except you lent the guys down the street a hundred bucks. Hmm... not getting that money back.

Turns out everyone else lent those boozers a hundred bucks too, or more, so much so that some of them arn't going to be able to make the rent if they don't get paid back. So they're getting kind of desperate, meanwhile the boozer neibours are still drinking away , showing no signs of financial responsibility (ie: no one's likely to get paid back).

So whats going to happen ?

The boozie neibours are going to drink until they run out of cash.

They guy who lent them his rent money .... he's not getting it back. Him and his land lord will have words. If he's an over spending boozer , he's probably in trouble. If it was just a deal gone bad, he'll cut a deal , the land lord (probably the germans ) will take a small loss , and life will go on.

And the boozie neibours will get booted out. Look at all the trouble they caused.

Whats happening now in Europe ?

They're squabbling over who's going to take the loss. Everyone is saying "Not Me !" in new and creative ways, but guess what ? They're gonna take the loss anyways.

No taxation without representation. That means no forieners stepping in and taking everyone's money and giving them nothing. Britain tried that against america. That resulted in a rather famous tea party and a rather nasty war of liberation. Money isn't worth a war. We need to make that perfectly clear. Cut the Greeks off , but no going to war. Not for a few stupid dollars.

As a nation , one of the greatest corrective measures you have is to print more money. It devalues every dollar out there , but it gives you a wad of cash to pay off the people who lent you money. But the European Union denied themsevesl that ability ,causing this mess.

And they don't want to give it to greece now ! Greece will devalue it's dollar and pay everyone off in monopoly money.

Sadly , their choices here are bad , worse , and even worse than that. There aren't any good ones. Certain banks are going to the cleaners.

But it would be irresponsible not to fight tooth and nail against it.

And so the show goes on.

Lets Legalize Marijuana !

2012-01-22T22:02:00.001-05:00

I think we really , really should legalize pot and Marijuana . Honestly.

Why ?

Because because people have a right to do as they believe ? No ... you have no freedom if you're addicted to some drug, that has been taken away from you by the drug itself.

Because it will cut down on the violence and the crime around it ? No ... the same logic applies for legalizing all sorts of really nasty stuff that will wreck you permanently for the rest of your life.

Then why ?

Because you lose 5% of your IQ every year that you're on it.

Think of it. All those idiot's getting hooked early , by the time they're 25 they've lost 50% of their IQ ... a see of Idiocracy ...

And guys like me who don't smoke have an easy time getting a job anywhere. Even if you're of average intelligence, you have an easy time.

How far does their intelligence have to drop before they become illiterate I wonder ? Hmm... the price for someone who can actually read and write could go sky high ...

Legalize Marijuana now ! Lets start dumbing down the competition so i can get a job easier !

Lets Block the USA from our sites

2012-01-18T19:55:00.001-05:00

Don't Break The InternetTwo bills now pending in Congress—the PROTECT IP Act of 2011 (Protect IP) in the Senate and the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the House—represent the latest legislative attempts to address a serious global problem: large-scale online copyright and trademark infringement. Although the bills differ in certain respects, they share an underlying approach and an enforcement philosophy that pose grave constitutional problems and that could have potentially disastrous consequences for the stability and security of the Internet’s addressing system, for the principle of interconnectivity that has helped drive the Internet’s extraordinary growth, and for free expression.

Basically , if some prosecuter in the USA accuses you of violating USA copyright law, they want to block your site. They want you to police your site for their copyright violations , and they want to shut you down if you don't comply.

Problem 1 : USA copyright law lets you copy right anything. This sentence can be copyrighted. The phrase "I hate Obama" can be copyrighted.

Problem 2 : There's a lot of sites that are nothing but users posting comments. These sites are free of charge, but now they have to pay people to moderate the comments and try and make sure no copyright violations take place ? Under the ridiculous usa copyright laws ? This is a straight cash grab that says only the USA is allowed to operate any such site everyone else can go suck wind.

The solution ?

Preemptively block the USA from seeing your site in the first place. That way you don't build up a readership that can be taken away from you at any time , that way you don't spend effort to produce something and then the USA just waltzes in and snags it and says screw you I'm suing you and you don't have the money for a lawyer to defend yourself so I can make the weakest dumbest argument in the world and I'll win.

With legislation like that , we should cut them out of the internet , not them cut us out.

Trust me. You will not miss the 30th annual Brady Bunch Rerun Convention. 30 times is plenty , it's time to move on to more domestic content.

In that respect the USA is rather like a drug dealer. THey get you hooked on their content , and then they raise the prices sky high.

Lets not get hooked in the first place.

Gay marriage a threat to humanity's future: Pope

2012-01-16T04:30:00.000-05:00

article

Pope Benedict said Monday that gay marriage was one of several threats to the traditional family that undermined "the future of humanity itself."

The pope made some of his strongest comments against gay marriage in a new year address to the diplomatic corps accredited to the Vatican in which he touched on some economic and social issues facing the world today.

He told diplomats from nearly 180 countries that the education of children needed proper "settings" and that "pride of place goes to the family, based on the marriage of a man and a woman."

"This is not a simple social convention, but rather the fundamental cell of every society. Consequently, policies which undermine the family threaten human dignity and the future of humanity itself," he said.

Pope Benedict said Monday that being gay is bad. He knows this because there is this book that was written in 300 AD by a bunch of goat herders that lack the education of the average 8 year old in todays western society that told him so. The book contains many wild and unconfirmed tails of magical happenings that even the goat herders who wrote it and put it together could not confirm, they merely took oral stories and put them to pen and paper. (Council of Bishops 300AD)

He went on to preach doom and gloom , frequently referencing this same book, before an audience of people who's very careers and lively hoods were tied up in believing his every word or they'd have to go find a new job.

No questions were taken , and on the website where this artical was found , no opportunity was given to comment on the matter.

I have many questions. Like ,you know, human rights and freedom ? Over population ? Things like that. But no means was allowed to express them ,and no answers were provided to these common questions that are always raised on this matter.

Koyoto Accord

2011-12-05T13:25:00.000-05:00

Wiki Entry

Under the Protocol, 37 countries ("Annex I countries") commit themselves to a reduction of four greenhouse gases (GHG) (carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, sulphur hexafluoride) and two groups of gases (hydrofluorocarbons and perfluorocarbons) produced by them, and all member countries give general commitments. Annex I countries agreed to reduce their collective greenhouse gas emissions by 5.2% from the 1990 level. Emission limits do not include emissions by international aviation and shipping, but are in addition to the industrial gases, chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs, which are dealt with under the 1987 Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer.

.
.
.
The only remaining signatory not to have ratified the protocol is the United States

Top-ten emitters

What follows is a ranking of the world's top ten emitters of GHGs for 2005 (MNP, 2007).[26] The first figure is the country's or region's emissions as a percentage of the global total. The second figure is the country's/region's per-capita emissions, in units of tons of GHG per-capita:

1. China1 – 17%, 5.8
2. United States3 – 16%, 24.1
3. European Union-273 – 11%, 10.6
4. Indonesia2 – 6%, 12.9
5. India – 5%, 2.1
6. Russia3 – 5%, 14.9
7. Brazil – 4%, 10.0
8. Japan3 – 3%, 10.6
9. Canada3 – 2%, 23.2
10. Mexico – 2%, 6.4

So. Why is canada so high , at 2% world emmissions but 23.2 rating for per capita ?

Because the whole measurement is slanted. It's including cow farts (no joke !) and biomass emissions (tree's rotting in the forest). The actual contribution by industry , the only part we can control ... is pretty slim.

It's also ridiculous that they're trying to control "natural emissions" (tree's rotting) in addition to industrial ones. And agricultural ones. You want people to stop farming ? Stop eating ?

Too many contradictions.

And on top of it all , we're right beside the worlds biggest industrial polluter and they refuse to sign the agreement anyways. And the stated reason is that it would hurt their economy to enforce pollution standards (ie: you go enforce it and cripple your economies, that's good for us)

This agreement sounds seriously broken . I doubt it's even particularly scientific.

Christmas Carollers

2011-12-03T23:05:00.002-05:00

Christmas Carollers in the shopping mall. Authentic outfits.

Taken ... just because I liked it. Sorry , no political commentary today.

Passwords to avoid

2011-11-25T00:17:00.000-05:00

25 worst passwords of 2011 revealed

Top 25:

* password
* 123456
* 12345678
* qwerty
* abc123
* monkey
* 1234567
* letmein
* trustno1
* dragon
* baseball
* 111111
* iloveyou
* master
* sunshine
* ashley
* bailey
* passw0rd
* shadow
* 123123
* 654321
* superman
* qazwsx
* michael
* football

out of personal experience, I would also like to add ...

* secret
* any variation of your birthday, husbands birthday , childs, etc
* your own name
* the name of where you work
* the name of the computer you're on

The "strong" passwords have at least 1 capital , 1 lower case , 1 number, and optionally one special character.

I always tell people , pick up a random book , fairly thick. Flip to about the first third no need to be accurate and stick your finger in the middle of the page. Pick the nearest 4 letter word, flip to the two thirds mark , about , repeat for another 4 letter word. Take the last digit of the page number and stick it in between.

If anyone can guess that password, we can just give it up.

Iran leader warns US, Israel against strike

2011-11-10T08:50:00.000-05:00

Article

TEHRAN — Iran "will respond with full force" to any attack -- or even any threat of military action -- the country's supreme leader said on Thursday, after Israel warned the world must act to prevent Tehran getting nuclear weapons.

Iran "will respond with full force to any aggression or even threats in a way that will demolish the aggressors from within," Ayatollah Ali Khamenei told students at a Tehran military college, according to his official website.

Khamenei said the message was directed at Iran's enemies, "especially America and its stooges and the Zionist regime (Israel)."

Ok. So. "supreme leader" you're a dictator.

"respond with full force" is kind of the point. Your full force will be diminished by such an attack (you won't have nukes). Other than that you lost against Iraq before the Americans crushed it , no one is worried about your full force.

And you have declared America and Israel your enemies. Oh , the usual twist, you refuse to acknowledge Israel is a country , you call it the "Zionist Regime" instead, with Zionism being an insult in your culture. Lots of silly stories about Zionists kidnapping and eating babies I believe you keep telling and re-telling yourselves.

Iran, which has long denied any military thrust to its nuclear programme, responded to the report by saying it would not budge "an iota" from its atomic course and asserted its could confront any attack.

I still recall several stories where by this same Supreme Leader promised to , what was it ? Cleanse Israel from the earth with holy fire ? Yeah , it's a little too late to be claiming your nukes are peaceful after threats like that.

Conclusion ?

This is the same game the Americans have been playing for decades. Some pipsqueak dictator goes for nukes, is allowed to blow his nations entire wealth on one or two factories producing them, and then those factories are destroyed somehow. Boom, you're broke, and you have nothing to show for it.

Americans love this game. They're quite good at it.

If he had a brain in his head he'd try training up his troops and getting them more than one rifle for every three soldiers. Instead he's like a beggar trying to buy a Lamborghini on the cheap. You can't even afford to buy gas for the thing buddy.

Judge videotaped beating daughter won't be charged

2011-11-04T11:06:00.001-04:00

http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/story/2011/11/03/judge-video-charges.html

Police say a Texas judge who was secretly videotaped beating his teenage daughter seven years ago won't face charges because the statutes of limitations have passed.

Wow. So much outrage. You should read the comments , some people want to lynch this guy. Maybe we should have a look at the video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wl9y3SIPt7o

Well one thing is for certain , this guy doesn't know how to use a belt. Have you tried hitting someone with a belt while their wearing loose clothing like those track pants ? It don't make that snapping sound. It only makes that snapping sound when the belt hit's itself. You'll notice the belt is doubled over.

Wow she howls like anything, but the moment it's over , around the 7 minute mark , she just gets up and walks around as if nothing happened.

When I was a kid ,and I got a whipping , my rear was actually sore after wards. Obviously this was not the case here.

OMG. I got out the big thick belt and smacked my hand and my leg with it. You can make it snap really really loudly , but it doesn't leave a mark on me. And I was bare legged when I did it she had track pants on.

This is sad.

This guy needs lessons on how to use a belt.

Tories bring down debate-limiting ‘sledgehammer’ on gun registry

2011-10-27T13:03:00.000-04:00

Article

“We have seen a more excessive use of closure, a more excessive use of the sledgehammer,” NDP MP Peter Julian told the House as MPs debated the time-allocation motion in the Commons Thursday. He said the government is showing an “appalling level of arrogance unparalleled in Canadian parliamentary history.”

Loosely translated : You can't just pass any bill you like ! Just because you're the formally elected ruling party of Canada is no excuse ! You have to listen to us !"

Umm... that's not the song the liberals sang when they were in power, as I recall. In fact they pretty much did anything they liked and told everyone else to go fish.

Question : Is it right for the ruling, duely elected party of canada to bring in legislation that those who lost the election have decided they hate and despise ?

Survey says ... well... survey is a kind of election , right ? So we already know the answer is YES.

The globe and mail is in full force today with it's anti Conservative rhetoric. Maybe I like the conservatives, sometimes I know I sure don't , but an unrelenting mud slinger who simply makes up any lie , or cherrie picks the facts to make them say anything they like ... I have no patience for that. The Globe and Mail has made my list of slanted and biased newspapers.

Quebec denounces, Western premiers praise plan to enlarge House of Commons

2011-10-27T12:39:00.001-04:00

Article

The Harper government’s plan to enlarge the House of Commons has touched a raw nerve with Jean Charest’s Quebec government, even as Western premiers praise the idea.

With Quebec marginalized within the federal Conservative caucus, and with the Quebec government also vowing to take the Conservatives’ plans for Senate reform to the Supreme Court, the risk is increasing of French Canada becoming more estranged both from Ottawa and from provinces to its west.

Umm... you didn't vote conservative, and they got to form the government. What precisely do you expect. Besides , your share by population is 23% , and you seem to be demanding 25% , according to this artical. Thats hardly "marginalized", thats "over represented".

But the new legislation could see Quebec’s share of the total seats in the House of Commons drop below its current level of 24 per cent, which is slightly above the 23 per cent that is province’s share of the national population.
.
.
.
Veteran NDP MP Joe Comartin argued that any redistribution must ensure that Quebec receives a minimum 25 per cent of the seats in that House, its traditional share. The NDP is now the dominant party in Quebec at the federal level.

This is a fairly slanted article by the globe and mail, that doesn't seem to depend much on facts, just on people shouting I WANT I WANT I WANT ...at the top of their lungs.

If I was a cynical man , I'd examine NDP MP Joe Comartin 's demands under a microscope, noticing that he seems to be saying Quebecers are special and need to be treated as such. I'm sure that will go over well in other provinces where the NDP is trying to get elected. I'd point out that if he gets his 25% , he'll say it was because of his hard work and you should elect him. Or if he doesn't get it , he will blame the conservatives for failing to agree with him that Quebecers are so special. Better people than those in any other province, apparently. Either way , there's no upside for the conservatives, no reason why they should give him what he wants. And thus he isn't really working for the benifit of Quebec, he's just slinging mud. Oh wait ... I am a cynical man. Maybe I will say that.

Let me tell you the truth about growing the house of parliament , as the Liberals (now out of power) have lead this time honored practice.

What they do is they find some riding's with a large population and a history of consistently voting Liberal , and they cut it in half and now it has two MP's. Both of which are most likely to vote Liberal.

It's one of the many many dirty tricks the Liberals used to insure their domination. The so called natural governing party used a bag full of dirty tricks , it seems.

You can bet the Conservatives are going to balance that out by splitting up large riding's with a history of voting conservative. And you can bet is going to be left out in the cold for the next few years, another time honored liberal trick. You don't vote for them, they don't give you crud. No shipping contracts. No representation above the 23% minimum required by population, no nothing.

Quebec to fight Harper government on gun registry

2011-10-26T16:49:00.000-04:00

Article

QUEBEC — The Quebec government says it's fiercely opposed to the end of the federal long-gun registry and will fight to keep using its data.

Public Security Minister Robert Dutil says the province will do everything in its power to keep the information.

Speaking at a news conference in Quebec City, Dutil refused Wednesday to rule out legal action among his options.

Quebec had already announced months ago that it wanted to keep using some kind of long-gun registry if the Harper government killed the federal version, as expected.

But this week Ottawa made it clear that not only would it destroy the registry -- it would also destroy the data compiled over the past decade.

"We know that the federal government, in the last (Conservative) election campaign, said it would abolish the resgistry," Dutil said.

"We don't agree with that but we learned about it during the election campaign. But they never said they were going to destroy the records.

"We are formally, ferociously opposed to that."

The registry was created at a cost of more than $1 billion in the wake of Montreal's Polytechnique massacre in 1989.

Read more: http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/Canada/20111026/quebec-to-fight-harper-government-on-gun-registry-111026/#ixzz1bvHxcS6c

A billion dollars to keep a list of who's got guns and where ? And this thing started with an estimated price tag of 2 million ?

This is a Liberal Boondoggle, and they're milking it for millions that go directly to their coffers.

Much as I think the idea of a gun registry is a good idea, I don't fancy writing the Liberals a check for billions.

Shut it down , and let the provinces make other registeries if they like.

Struggling Wikileaks stops publishing classified files

2011-10-24T13:24:00.000-04:00

Article

The whistle-blowing website Wikileaks is suspending its publication of classified files.

Wikileaks said that it would focus instead on raising funds to ensure its future survival.

The announcement came after what the group called a blockade by US-based finance companies.

This followed its disclosure on the internet of hundreds of thousands of secret US government files and diplomatic cables.

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange said that since last December an "arbitrary and unlawful financial blockade" had been imposed by Bank of America, Visa, MasterCard, PayPal and Western Union.

The interesting thing about this is the american love / hate affair with "Natural Law". What is Natural Law ? It is self evident truths that need no evidence or explanation.

Unfortunately , one of the things we learn from our 10 years in Iraq and Afghanistan is that there is no such thing as Natural Law. Different cultures have different ideas of even the most basic ideas of whats right and wrong.

Americans love Natural Law, because it has no real definition , it's whatever they like. And they hate natural law, especially when it comes to wikileaks, because despite half the population of the western world disagreeing with them, they want this guy dead.

In other words, They follow Natural Law only when they feel like it, and toss it to the winds when they don't like it.

It is sad to see a democratic nation toss it's own principles to the wind the first time they get in the way. Sad sad sad.

Rest in Peace, Julian Assange. Like most great men who do great things, you will most likely pay the ultimate price for your heroics.

And it will dissuade no one from following in your footsteps.

ELECTRONIC ARTS PRIVACY POLICY

2011-09-29T16:49:00.000-04:00

Article

One of my main amusements in life is to read contractual and privacy policies just to see how badly they are screwing you over.

Electronic Arts is producing a game called Star Wars The Old Republic, Due out Dec 20 of this year. And this is their privacy policy.

I warn you, this is bad.

When you use EA online and mobile products and services or you play our games on your PC or game system, we may collect certain non-personal demographic information including gender, zip code, information about your computer, hardware, software, platform, game system, media, mobile device, including device IDs, incident data, Internet Protocol (IP) address, network Media Access Control (MAC) address and connection. We also collect other non-personal information such as username, user ID or persona, feature usage, game play statistics, scores and achievements, user rankings and click paths as well as other data that you may provide in surveys, via your account preferences and online profiles such as friends lists or purchases, for instance. We may also receive either non-personal or public information from third parties in connection with market and demographic studies and/or data that we use to supplement personal information provided directly by you.

The MAC address (Media Access Control Address) is unique to your computer. So , they're listing personal information as non personal to begin with. And the list of items "includes" (ie: they may invent more) all the big ones they use to sell to advertisers to make a buck off of you.

We and third parties may also use tracking pixels, which allow us to advertise more efficiently by excluding our current users from certain promotional messages or identifying the source of a new installation.

Thanks for admitting up front you're making any advertising buck you can off of us.

EA’s websites, online or mobile products or services may employ third party ad serving technologies that use cookies, clear GIFs, web beacons, tracking pixels or other technologies to collect information as a result of ad serving through our products or services as well as to help track. Some third-party dynamic in-game advertisement serving technology enable advertising to be temporarily uploaded into your web browser or mobile device and replaced while you are online

Remember how you now have to pay for your bandwidth , and if you go over a certain amount they charge you extra ?

Yeah. EA reserves the right to rack up your bandwidth all they want for advertising purposes. They deliver ads and you pay to receive them. And we're talking multi-megabyte flash animations , not just little side notes here. Full video and all. Nice.

EA uses your information to fulfill your specific requests, purchase orders and to send you purchase confirmation and other account-related information. In addition, the personal information you provide will allow us to send you messages about things including new products, features, enhancements, special offers, upgrade opportunities, contests and events of interest. You may also later opt out of certain of these communications.

Translation : We mercilessly spam you for all we're worth to try and make a buck off of you.

Otherwise, EA uses personal and non-personal information, both individually and combined together, to better understand the behavior and preferences of our customers, to troubleshoot technical problems, to serve static and dynamic advertising, to enforce our Terms of Service, to ensure proper functioning of our products and services as well as to help improve them. In addition, we combine non-personal information with personal information, such as an email address, to administer loyalty programs, tailor our offerings, web pages or game play experience to you.

Targetted advertising. Catch you when you're weak , get you to buy something that's utter junk because they know you're into , say , star wars memorabelia. So they sell you a cool doll, or map , or book , and it's junk and falls apart a weak after you get it , and sorry no refunds thanks for the cash.

By playing an EA game through a social network or other third party platform or service or by connecting to such a third party network, platform or service via one of our products and/or services, you are authorizing EA to collect, store, and use in accordance with this Privacy Policy any and all information that you agreed the social network or other third party platform could provide to EA through the social network/third party platform Application Programming Interface (API) based on your settings on the third party social network or platform. Your agreement takes place when you connect with the third party network, platform or service via our products and/or services, and/or when you connect with, “accept” or “allow” (or similar terms) one of our applications through a social network, or other third party platform or service.
.
.
.
EA will never share your personal information with third parties without your consent.

I love this combination. I see it everywhere.

They will never share your personal information without your consent. But by the way , by playing the game / using their product ? You consent to them doing this.

It goes on , and on , and on. But in the end the message of these terms is crystal clear.

They take whatever info they can. They use it however they like (usually to make a buck in advertising) and if you don't like it , get off the internet entirely because everyone else has the same terms and conditions.

Next time tells you "it's all spelled out in our terms and conditions" , you don't have to read them. You just have to remember "We do what we like and screw you buddy". It's much shorter and just as accurate.

Microsoft's Secure Boot Gambit

2011-09-28T17:06:00.000-04:00

Article

1. Windows Secure Boot

Red Hat Engineer Matthew Garrett sounded the alarm bell this past week about Microsoft's plans for Windows 8. The upcoming Windows operating system will use the Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) secure boot protocol in an effort to make Windows 8 more secure.

UEFI secure boot will require Windows 8 certified hardware vendors to digitally sign their hardware with keys to ensure that only signed applications can boot. That's a move Garret warned could severely impact the Linux ecosystem. Linux users might not be able to install or boot Linux on hardware that has been Windows 8 certified.

For the lay man , what does this mean ?

It means that if you want to run Windows 8 or higher on your computer, your computer must be built to run windows only , no other operating system will be permitted.

For most users, this really seems pretty harmless. Most users don't even know what an operating system is , let alone that there are many kinds, not just windows. But there is a hidden cost to this decision , that will hit them in the pocket book.

For technicians who know what they're doing , it means you will no longer be able to take a second hand machine and load it up with Linux. It will be locked to windows only. This is obviously intended to kill the Linux operating system , which is currently competing with Windows in many fields (databases, word processers etc) .

The part where you're locking out the competition is the part I was talking about for hidden costs. Now they can raise the prices and there's not much you can do because they have a monopoly.

However, I believe this will fail on several counts.

First you are enforcing a monopoly. You're not permitting people to put whatever operating system or software they like on their property. Thats not going to survive. Whatever copyright law that exists that enforces that is going to get altered after storm of public outcry.

That would be like saying you can only buy gas for your car at a special gas station , and no where else. And by the way the prices at the special gas station are triple that of anywhere else. Just because they can.

Second , you can't sue someone without actually being harmed by them. If I break the encryption on your hardware and put linux on my computer , I already paid for windows long long ago , you havn't been harmed by this action, you cannot sue.

This runs into problems with recent copy right legislation whereby breaking any digital lock , no matter how weak , is a crime. But I can see and end run around it (you broke the lock on your own door ? Who cares ? )

Again , a public outcry and you can bet any copy right legislation is going to be altered to allow you to do whatever you like with property you bought and paid for.

Third, microsoft already has one failed operating system. Vista. Flew like a lead brick. People wanted nothing to do with it, they wanted their XP machines, they just left it to die. People didn't want the new operating system and the limits it imposed under any circumstances. Sales dropped through the floor, and microsoft , starved for cash , had to relent.

They are risking the same fate with Windows 8 .

There is an upside to all of this.

More and more people are hearing the word Linux, and asking a few questions here and there. At least they know it exists now , instead of the strange attitude that all computers are windows computers.

An attitude they will lose when the price skyrockets.

Abbas asks UN for Palestinian 'freedom'

2011-09-23T17:42:00.001-04:00

Article

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has formally asked the United Nations to recognize Palestinians as a full member state, telling the General Assembly in New York on Friday that no one "with a shred of conscience" would reject the bid.

So , I got two questions to ask. Maybe three. Who is this guy ? How did he get elected , and arn't there a lot of terrorists over in Palistine ? Was it a real election or did the terrorists point guns at everyone and tell them vote for me or i shoot you !

Palestine (Arabic: فلسطين‎ Filastin/Filasṭīn/Falasṭīn/Filisṭīn),^[3]^[2]^[i] officially declared as the State of Palestine^[1] is a state that was proclaimed in exile in Algiers on 15 November 1988, when the Palestine Liberation Organization's (PLO) National Council (PNC) adopted the unilateral Palestinian Declaration of Independence. At the time of the 1988 declaration, the PLO did not exercise control over any territory,^[4] and much of its claimed territory remains under Israeli occupation.^[5]^[6] It claims the Palestinian territories^[1] and has designated Jerusalem as the capital of Palestine,^[ii]^[2]^[3] despite Israeli control.

- wikipedia State of Palistine

So , a terrorist organization known as the Palistine Liberation Organization , with much blood on its hands, decided to declare a nation. Most of which was already part of some other nation (Jerusalem is part of Israel)

I can see why the Israeli's are upset already .

Ok. How valid is this "president's" election ?

Mahmoud Abbas (Arabic: مَحْمُود عَبَّاس‎, Maḥmūd ʿAbbās; born 26 March 1935), also known by the kunya Abu Mazen (Arabic: أَبُو مَازِن‎, Åbú Mázɩn), has been the Chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) since 11 November 2004 and became President of the Palestinian National Authority on 15 January 2005 on the Fatah (فتح Fataḥ) ticket.
Elected to serve until 9 January 2009, he unilaterally extended his term for another year and continues in office even after that second deadline expired

So we still don't know how valid those elections were, but we know his term of office is over. And he decided on his own to retain the title (being leader of a terrorist organization has it's perks) long after the term, extening it a few times and then not even bothering to extend it anymore , just self declaring himself some kind of president for life.

Speaking of elections. If some guy who's the leader of a terrorist organization and has been killing Israeli's for years suddenly declares him self president and holds elections ... who gets to vote ? You think all the Israeli's he's been killing will vote for him ? You think he'll even give them the right to vote ? And how's he setting up voting booths when the cops will arrest him and his people on sight as terrorists ?

Obviously his election is entirely farcical.

In other words, a terrorist has declared himself president over some chunk of land he doesn't even have custody over , has zero mandate from any electorate over, and demands the UN recognize this.

Last time I checked, we shoot terrorists. We don't help them steal land from an ally and set up shop.

Cops promise more info after boy stunned by Taser

2011-09-16T21:40:00.000-04:00

Article

PRINCE GEORGE, B.C. — The outside police force that cleared RCMP officers who used a Taser on an 11-year-old boy is promising to release more information about what happened.

So how big is this 11 year old child ? Precisely how big is the biggest 11 year old child you have ever seen ? Do you honestly think some cop couldn't smack down an 11 year old child no matter how enraged the kid may be ?

West Vancouver police concluded the officers acted reasonably and didn't break the law when they stunned a boy outside a care home in Prince George, B.C., in April.

Vancouver RCMP ? The same guys that tasered to death some polish guy at the air port and then were cleared of all hint of wrong doing ?

The more I hear about the antics of the Vancouver RCMP , the more I am convinced they are trying to give us all a message. And that message is ...

How to play online games on Rogers / Bell

2011-09-16T21:10:00.005-04:00

CRTC tells Rogers to stop slowing down the speed of online games

OTTAWA — Canada's telecommunications regulator on Friday gave Rogers Communications Inc., mere days to come up with a plan to solve a problem that could be unfairly slowing down the speed of online games.
In a letter to the telecom giant, the Canadian Radio-television Telecommunications Commission said the company's own traffic management policy states that online games, such as World of Warcraft, should not be throttled or slowed down, and would only be affected if Rogers misclassifies the games and other peer-to-peer applications were running at the same time.

"We are currently getting reports from our members that Shaw customers are also affected by misclassification. The CRTC has also been aware for quite some time that Bell Sympatico members have also experienced similar problems," said Koblovsky.

So , how do you play your online games on these networks that are outright hostile to the activity. Oh they claim they want your business, they claim they're fixing it, but they want you to wait while they do this. And they want you to keep paying your monthly bill while they're fixing it , and you're getting poor service.

The solution ? Switch providers. There are many many small local DSL internet providers that don't enact any kind of throttling of any sort.

And, as an online gamer , I have to wonder. What use is Rogers if I can't play my favorite games on it ? What else to I use it for ? Surfing the net ? I can do that anywhere. You two Bell Sympatico.

These two networks have suddenly stopped providing services that I need. At any price. It's no longer a matter of how much they charge. It's a matter of you aint getting it no matter what. .

Time to switch.

Edit : Oh and seriously , stay away from Rogers. What is this nonsense that if you have bell , you can watch any TV show you like online, but if you have Rogers, you can't watch any rogers provided tv shows, because their internet and their television businesses would be competing with each other ? Thanks for telling me to stay the heck far away from rogers internet. 'Preciate that.

I do it for me

2011-09-14T19:41:00.003-04:00

United States in last-ditch effort to set up Israeli-Palestinian peace talks

2011-09-14T19:11:00.000-04:00

ArticleThe United States, Europe and the Middle East quartet are engaged in a last-ditch effort to set up a fresh round of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks in an attempt to head off a major diplomatic embarrassment over the looming Palestinian request for recognition of statehood at the UN.

It will fail. It will fail for two reasons. One : Because they've been talking peace since 1948 , and not much has changed. and two :

Pretty picture. White woman . Unveiled. Very american. (Senator Hillary Clinton)

You sent a white woman with obvious western values to a place where woman are practically slaves .

The USA isn't making a serious effort at anything here. It's just a few politico's getting their pics in the news for a good but hopless cause, knowing they won't suffer for failure since everyone before them has failed as well.

Waste of our time.

Euro court rejects Inuit bid to challenge seal ban

2011-09-14T18:35:00.000-04:00

Article

The European General Court, in a judgment released Wednesday, rejected a bid by Canada's largest Inuit organization to challenge the European Union's year-old trade ban on seal products.

Since when did permission to hunt seals to fulfill your tribes personal needs get transformed into permission to hunt the seals to extinction so you can sell the pelts to people on the other side of the world ?

Come on folks. You've either joined the modern age or you're living in igloo's with the eskimo's, but you can't have it both ways. If you're running a huge business, you're not native, you're not Inuit anything. You're a modern business man in a technological world.

And that means you gotta look at larger pictures, like not pissing off your customers, and like fending off the competition.

A good start would be some spy cams in the american cattle industry and show the world precisely what goes on in their slaughter houses. You thing beating baby seals to death is bad (they don't do that anymore , by the way, not in decades) wait until you get a load of that.

Quit ticking off your customers.
manage your herd so it doesn't get exterminated five years from now.
Rap on the competition a bit about their bad habits.

Understanding The Middle East

2011-08-22T12:36:00.000-04:00

Two killed in Gaza after rocket hits Israel's Beersheba

The Israeli military has killed two Palestinians in Gaza Strip, one in an air strike and another as he approached the border fence, officials said.

Air force jets struck four sites in Gaza after Palestinians fired a rocket into the Israeli city of Beersheba.

Palestinian officials said one militant was killed and four people wounded, including a five-year-old boy.

Also on Tuesday, Israeli soldiers shot dead a Palestinian man who entered a designated no-go zone along the border.

Palestinian sources said medics had retrieved the body of an 18-year-old civilian with multiple gunshots to the head and upper body.

An Israeli military spokesman said troops opened fire after the man had approached the buffer zone where militants frequently plant explosive devices.

So why are these people fighting ?

The answer is simple. Unpleasant , but simple. I really don't know why no one puts this in print but I guess I will.

Before the 1950's , before the invention of birth control , the world had a serious population control problem. A problem they had been living with for literally centuries. And how did they solve this problem , you may ask ?

They held summer wars.

They went to war with their neibours, and they pared off the population that way. And so the english and french had a hundred year war. And great britain drafted people off the street into their navy...yep. They deliberately went to war and killed each others young population off.

As Napolean once said , after witnessing a particularly brave charge by british troops into the teeth of french cannons "It was a beautiful thing that I saw. But it was not war. "

The middle east , locked into a religion that forbids birth control, already has a solution in hand for paring off their population. A solution they have used for centuries , and that works well , and that they see no need of changing.

Summer wars.

There will be no peace in the middle east. Not until they accept the pill or some other form of birth control. There's too many people and not enough food , and the rest is mere details.

Who hates who ? Who betrayed who ? Who shot first ? Not important. Not part of the equation.

Too many people , not enough food. Thats the problem.

North Korea seizes South's Mount Kumgang resort assets

2011-08-22T12:24:00.000-04:00

Article

North Korea says it is seizing assets at a tourist site jointly operated with South Korea.

It has given South Koreans 72 hours to leave the resort at Mount Kumgang, which lies just inside North Korea.

The resort used to be a symbol of co-operation between the two Koreas and a key source of hard currency for Pyongyang.

But joint operations were suspended in 2008 after a South Korean tourist was shot dead by a North Korean soldier
.
.
.
North Korea has been threatening action over Mt Kumgang for months, warning Seoul to restart the lucrative tours or lose its assets.
.
.
.
It blamed the move on the South Korean government, saying it had ignored efforts to settle the issue through negotiations.

Sometimes , when you read a news article, you have to wonder whats going on in the head of certain people. They seem to have a wildly different point of view on human rights , for example.

You have a tourist resort, and you shoot one of the tourists. Of course the rest are going to leave and spread the word. What did you expect ?

Apparently , the North Korean Government expected them to come back and ignore the shooting. Apparently , they expected the south to herd them like chattel , into dangerous situations , and they simply don't understand why that isn't possible in a democracy.

It would seem the North literally doesn't care about the lives of ordinary humans. It sounds so trite and trivial , like a bad fairy tale. Like a plot line in a TV show thats been so over used you find it boring at not credible anymore.

But apparently , in the real world , the dictators of the planet arn't bored or finished with that plot line yet. It's still a favorite among them.

The Increadable Journey to Ubuntu 10.04 LTS

2011-08-21T08:12:00.001-04:00

So , I have this lap top (Gateway model NCL20 , 4gig ram , 2x 1.3 GHz cpu's, 285g hard drive)

And I watch movies on it (mp4 files) sometimes at work late at night when things are quiet. And those movies stutter, and I mean a lot. And it's really annoying.

So I think to myself. This lap top has Windows 7 on it. The latest operating system from microsoft. And look at all the special effects. It's got to be a beast on the computer. If I were to put Linux on it , say Ubuntu 10.04 LTS (LTS = Long Term Stable ... they promise to keep supporting it for 3 years ) I could at least turn off stuff and it wouldn't stutter as much.

Now , before I go trashing my lap top , I did a couple of things first. One was to make sure I could find the windows back up disks I made. I aint toasting the thing if I can't put it back.

the second was a rather impromptu case study. What could I run on Ubuntu that wouldn't run on Windows ? What could I run on Windows that wouldn't .

In this case, my high priority applicatinos were games. Yeah I know , why games ? the answer is I'm a computer Tech. I get computers running. And now that we have a couple of computers running what are you going to do with them ? Yep. Play games. Someone else would load up accounting , or office stuff, but me ... my job is finished when you press the off / on switch and the thing turns on , so games it is.

and what games was I running on my lap top ?

Not a dang thing. The thing's graphics card didn't support very much at all. I just played video's when I was bored and listenned to music, and I already knew Ubuntu would do that.

And what could I run on Ubuntu ? There was a ton of free software that would cost hundreds of dollars , or more, to buy for windows. video Editing (just got a new video cam ..price is less than 100$ ) music editing (ok... gonna have to brush up on the guitar playing and the keayboard again ) all sorts of stuff .

Advantage : Ubuntu. At least for my lap top. For my desk top, Advantage : Windows. I'd lose my games and I aint doing that.

So I download the iso (disk image) for ubuntu 11.04 , which is in beta , and stick it in the disk drive, and reboot, select the dvd to be the boot device .... and nothing. Black screen. Give it 10 minutes. Not a dang thing.

Take the disk out , reboot , and up comes windows.

Ok, no damage done yet. Check windows ... figures. The lap top uses a 64 bit operating system and I'd tried to install a 32 bit operating system. *sigh*

The next day ... with the 64 bit version of 11.04 ... try it again !

Nothing. black screen.

Ok, there's an option to install ubuntu as an application , try that.

Permission denied.

I restrained the urge to throttle my computer.

So I have this old copy of ubuntu 9 kicking around , and I try that. And it installs and works beautifully. Wow.

except that ubuntu 9 is not supported, so it won't patch , it won't install additional programs , and by the way it doesn't recongize the network card so you can't get online.

Wonderful.

So I slip the windows seven restore disk in and away we go.

Restore failed. Didn't recognize the way the disk formatted.

*sigh*. I had a copy of XP at home, I could install that , let it reformat the disk , and then kill the install before it even finished, but I hadn't quite given up on Ubuntu yet.

Ubuntu 9 worked. so that meant ubuntu 11 beta was REALLY beta, as in buggy as all heck and probably the source of all my problems. And looking on the ubuntu web page I see that the last stable version , the one with all the bugs worked out , is 10.04 LTS .

Down load the iso. download a special program that will install the iso on a memory stick (it's about 700 megabytes by the way, and it wipes any data on the memory stick ) and now I have a bootable memory stick.

Install that. Finally , the thing actually shows me more than a blank screen. I see it install , the network card works, it's a beautiful thing.

Now for the final part. The thing that started this journey.

I read on the ubuntu forums that the wind data stick I had would be automatically recognized and installed by 10.04 , even though it was normally a windows only device. Cool , I thought. (Huawei E181 Data Stick, proprietory to wind mobile)

Tried it out. Kicked it , tried a few things.

Finally. If you already are connected to the internet (through the regular network card) and stick the data stick in , It will search the internet automatically and find drivers , and the thing is up and running right away.

Except it has the wrong settings.

apn = broadband.windmobile.ca
pin = 0000
And leave any other fields blank.

And it works like a charm. And I'm online and everything.

And my movies still stutter.

Probably the dang cheap graphics card, the Intel one built into the motherboard. *sigh*. but I like Ubuntu , I like being immune to virii and stupid tool bars trying to auto install themselves , and every piece of mal ware in the world deciding your computer is their personal property. It's gotten so bad they now install stuff for firefox as well as internet explorer.

Well... my journey is done, and this old lap top is working once more.

Though no better than before.

Dang movies still stutter.

How Startrek should have ended

2011-08-14T04:33:00.004-04:00

http://youtu.be/WbJ-y6BWfUc

I cracked up laughjing at the ending

And the starwars one. http://youtu.be/zzoeEdW-EDQ

Riots in Democracy

2011-08-13T22:35:00.000-04:00

England riots: Weekend opening for riot courts

Courts in London and Manchester have opened over the weekend as the number of people charged for riot-related offences reaches more than 1,000.

Riddle me this , if you can.

Why do people riot in a democracy ? They have the vote, they have the right to peaceful assembly, these rights are protected , why the rioting ? And I'm not talking My Team Lost The Hockey Finals lets go riot for 4 hrs and then sneak out when everyone's sobre. Booze fueled sports fans are not the kind of riot we're looking at here. We're looking at stuff going on for over a week now.

The answer is ... wait for it...

They don't live in a democracy.

Think about it. Why are british sports fans banned so frequently from their "football" games (soccer to the rest of us) when they go international ? Because they riot. Why do they riot ? Because they live in a system where a dead end minimum wage job is all they can hope for. They are Peasants to the royalty, and no matter what trappings of democracy the country picks up, peasants they remain.

Alan Moore in his movie the Mindscape of Alan Moore talked extensively about his background growing up in england and the sense of absolute hopelessness , how one principle sent a letter around to all the schools and next thing you know he couldn't get a job anywhere decent, and he spent years in horrible jobs before he became a comic book artist and writer. He'd actually been a good student , but the school he'd gone to had been inferior and when he transfere3d to a real school he sank like a stone, unprepared for the higher standards.

why would anyone put their kids in a school designed to cripple them educationally ?

And now I see newspaper articles calling the rioters thugs and saying they should all be locked up , they're evil , etc etc etc.

You're going to lock up a large portion of the electorate ? In a democracy ?

Yeah. Um...hate to tell you this , that doesn't happen in a real democracy. That only happens in banana republics that make pretentions of democracy while oppressing their "electorate" in the most brutal fashion possible.

I think Jolly Olde England is back sliding into a Kingdom , and abandonning the few democratic ways it's picked up in the past century or two.

Off with the heads of those ruddy peasants ! We've had just about enough out of this lot !

USA Shed debt

2011-07-30T08:27:00.000-04:00

U.S. debt vote highlights bitter divide

Now let me see if I understand the situation here.

Everyone and the dog bought up usa debt , and they're holding various treasury bonds that have a specific number of usa dollars on them. Say , 100$ bonds , as an example.

so , the USA decides it's spending too much money. More than it has. And it tries to cut back , but the two political houses fight and that doesn't happen, so they print more money.

And when they print more money , the value of the US dollar goes down.

so the 100$ treasurey bond you bought , is suddenly worth only 90% of what it was yesterday , even though it is still worth 100$ , those dollars are now smaller dollars so to speak.

And where did the 10% go ? The value that the bonds lost ?

Why , it's in the USA. The new money they printed has that 10%.

So , by printing more money , they have effectively "Shed" debt. Not payed it off, just dropped it in the trash like last weeks refuse.

And everyone in the world is holding those bonds , or at least their nations are.

so by printing more money, the USA has effectively reached into every bank account in the world and taken a little bit out, without bothering to ask anyone for permission. Because part of the value of *YOUR* currency is based on how many assets your nation has, and holding us debt is considered an asset. An asset that just shrank when the usa printed more money.

Welcome to world economics . Lesson 1: It's great to be the bench mark currency of the entire world.

Lets Start A Crusade Against Idiots

2011-07-28T16:38:00.000-04:00

Norway attacks boost political parties' membership

All of Norway's main parties say they have seen a jump in membership since Norwegian Anders Behring Breivik killed 76 people last Friday in a bombing and shooting attack he saw as a "crusade" against Islam and multiculturalism.

He got 76 people ? And most of them I'm willing to bet are white caucasians ,not muslims , and he's on an anti-islam crusade ? Way to go , bozo. Shooting your own people because you're mad at someone else. (he shot up the Labour party for it's Treason, so he wasn't aiming specifically at middle eastern immigrants he shot anyone in the compound on the assumption they belonged to the labour party)

For Tunisian-born Norwegian Izzeddine al-Saweih, 57, change will not come soon enough.

"There has to be a debate on the right principles, an open debate, and Muslims must take part," he shouted at an outdoor gathering of Labor Party politicians in Oslo Thursday.

"The media writes a lot negative things about us, big and small. They put us under suspicion, and now we don't know our identity, despite us belonging to this land and its laws. Why?"

Could it be because you are part of a religion that has people shouting from the highest rafters that they want to kill all Infidels everywhere in the whole world ? I believe their exact words are "First the Saturday people, then the Sunday" (Saturday people = Jews, Sunday people = Christians)

(from the Quaran )
Fight against them until idolatry is no more and Allah's religion reigns supreme. (different translation: ) Fight them until there is no persecution and the religion is God's entirely. - Sura 2:193 and 8:39

Fighting is obligatory for you, much as you dislike it. - 2:216
(different translation: ) Prescribed for you is fighting, though it is hateful to you.

..... martyrs.... Enter heaven - Surah 3:140-43

You seriously need to disassociate yourself from these people if you want to avoid getting painted as just like them. The Catholic Church didn't get far with "Silent Consent" either.

You know what ? We need to start a crusade against idiots. Anders Behring Breivik is an obvious candidate , shooting up his own people because he disagrees with their policies. Hello ? Democracy ? Anyone ever hear about that thing ? People are allowed to hold different opinions than you , it's not supposed to be a death penalty.

As for Izzeddine al-Saweih, sorry buddy , but your religion openly has verses in it's holy book stating you got to go to war with the non believers whether you like it or not , and you're openly saying you believe in this religion. You're an idiot for thinking there are no consequences for that action.

And to all the other anti-muslim crazies out there , I have news for you. Not everyone in the world is a fanatic. If you read even the christian bible you'll see some rather outrages stuff (stoning people for working on the sabbath comes to mind ... so the cops can't stop a mugging on sundays? Sundays are a muggers delight ? I don't think so !)

Most people just want to get along with their lives with out any unnecessary drama , and they sign up for a religion just to avoid trouble , not because they actually believe. The world census states that there are several billion Muslims in this world, but really ? Are there ? How many signed up because someone held a gun to their head, or told them only Muslims are allowed to work at this job , or denied them services or payment until they converted ?

I think you're going to find that population wise, the number of true believing muslims is as few as the number of true believing christians.

And that means no going on a shooting spree. You want to beat this Islam threat thing, democracy and fair treatment of the population is the way to go. And thats what democracies are good for. And thats why Idiots like Izzeddine al-Saweih , despite his religious beliefs, should be treated fairly. Because odds are he's not interested in shooting anyone , he's just trying to hold down a job and feed his family. And such people are a benifit to most any society.

Cloud Computing

2011-07-28T13:25:00.000-04:00

Microsoft: Cloud need only be open surface, not open source

Microsoft is more open — at least on the surface — and that’s all that matters in the cloud era, one company exec maintains.
At Oscon 2011, Gianugo Rabellino, Senior Director for Open Source Communities at Microsoft, said as long as the APIs, protocols and standards for the cloud are open, that is, open surface, customers don’t care about the underlying platform.

Being a huge computer nerd, and former computer programmer before all the programming jobs left town for china or other dollar a day countries, I have my opinions on Cloud Computing.

It's worthless.

Where to begin. What is Cloud Computing ?

Cloud Computing is a marketing term to take a very old idea , shine it up , and make it new and exciting. The idea itself is that all your data and computation goes on in some unspecified server on the other side of the world so you don't have to have big computers on site.

The problems are two fold.

First, you're no longer in charge of your data. It's now under the laws of some foriegn country that has a vested interest in letting it's home countries violate your privacy on a regular basis (Yes, I'm talking about the united states).

Second, computers are dirt cheap. So is storage space.

At christmas this past year I went and I bought a two tera byte (thats two THOUSAND gigabytes) drive that just plugs into my usb port on my computer. No special drivers or anything it just looks like a really REALLY big usb memory stick. It was about 120$ . Brand new.

I have a new lap top. Nothing special , it was 600$ brand new.

These prices may cause problems for a private individual , but we're talking shoe string budget for a start up business. A lap top and a back up drive and a desk in your basement and you're on your way here , no cloud computing required.

What exactly are you saving on , precisely , anyways ? Where's the benifit for you for going cloud ?

You can get free copies of office products ? Ever hear of open source ? They give away a copy of "Open Office" free these days. Word processer, spread sheet , the works. You wanna pay microsoft huge sums of money or you want the same thing for free ?

At most you'll need one computer with microsoft office on it for translation purposes for those die hard customers that demand you have everything they have (I've been on that treadmill before ...they upgrade, they scream at you for incompetence because you didn't upgrade ... then you wind up spending a fortune upgrading to get something that does no more than what you already had ... all so you can read stupid internal memo's ...bleh !)

Tech support ! They do your tech support for you !

Not these days. Every worker in your office still needs a desk and a computer , right ? You still got a lot of computers on site and they aint doing tech support for that. You're still hireing techies out of college or university or whatever to keep the place running. Exact numbers vary depending on whether people are just running word processers or doing something strange and weird on their computers. (I saw one place where there was one desk with a dozen computers and monitors, and one guy running the show ... lot of tech support needed for that one station ... lot of tech support)

Cloud computer is the old client server architecture and it died long ago for a very good reason. The price of computers dropped through the floor. It died, and it should stay dead.

Understanding the Honesty and Integridy of the Police Organizations

2011-07-16T18:43:00.001-04:00

Stain From Tabloids Rubs Off on a Cozy Scotland Yard

LONDON — For nearly four years they lay piled in a Scotland Yard evidence room, six overstuffed plastic bags gathering dust and little else.

Yeah , it's too much effort to actually look at evidence.

Inside was a treasure-trove of evidence: 11,000 pages of handwritten notes listing nearly 4,000 celebrities, politicians, sports stars, police officials and crime victims whose phones may have been hacked by The News of the World, a now defunct British tabloid newspaper.

Defunct this very week , as the owner shut it down and tried to run and hide in an act of damage control.

During that same time, senior Scotland Yard officials assured Parliament, judges, lawyers, potential hacking victims, the news media and the public that there was no evidence of widespread hacking by the tabloid. They steadfastly maintained that their original inquiry, which led to the conviction of one reporter and one private investigator, had put an end to what they called an isolated incident.

"They steadfastly maintained..." has anyone ever dealt with the military ? Ever spent a summer in the militia ? One of the things the officers learn is leadership , which means speaking confidently to lead your troops and inspire them. Civilians , by the way , call this "lying through your teeth" .

It has been my experience most police organizations are built on military grounds. The problem is , unlike the military , when you lie to a private you can tell him to shut his mouth or he'll be horribly punished. When you lie to a civilian ... he generally makes a big stink about it.

These police have the wrong training , plain and simple. They're an organization tasked with finding the truth , and trained to lie.

After the past week, that assertion has been reduced to tatters, torn apart by a spectacular avalanche of contradictory evidence, admissions by News International executives that hacking was more widespread, and a reversal by police officials who now admit to mishandling the case.

Yep. Thats what generally happens.

why is this relevant ? Because police officers receive more or less the same training all across western society. And certain jail block video cams in ottawa , along with a dead polish guy at the vancouver air port , are giving impressive proof that it seems to be the same problem everywhere.

Assistant Commissioner John Yates of the Metropolitan Police Service publicly acknowledged that he had not actually gone through the evidence. “I’m not going to go down and look at bin bags,” Mr. Yates said, using the British term for trash bags.

After saying you were doing every thing possible you are now desgusted at the suggestion that you might have to do your job and go through some evidence, likening the process to rooting through the trash.

If you don't want to do your job , why are you still employed at it ?

At best, former Scotland Yard senior officers acknowledged in interviews, the police have been lazy, incompetent and too cozy with the people they should have regarded as suspects. At worst, they said, some officers might be guilty of crimes themselves.

“It’s embarrassing, and it’s tragic,” said a retired Scotland Yard veteran. “This has badly damaged the reputation of a really good investigative organization. And there is a major crisis now in the leadership of the Yard.”

There we go with that "leadership" term again. He means military leader ship , which civilians call "lying through your teeth". And he's suggesting that they return to their roots and show more leadership.

ha ha ha. It's so funny it's sad.

The testimony and evidence that emerged last week, as well as interviews with current and former officials, indicate that the police agency and News International, the British subsidiary of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation and the publisher of The News of the World, became so intertwined that they wound up sharing the goal of containing the investigation.

The police got cooped by the business men. Who weild substantial political power in the form of donations made to politicians. And the politico's , of course, yank the polices chains and get them to cooperate ... fascinating how the political angle of all of this gets ignored. Or are the British Bobbies that easy to bribe ?

Scotland Yard’s new inquiry, dubbed Operation Weeting, has led to the arrests of a total of nine reporters and editors, with more expected. And the police have opened another inquiry into allegations that some officers were paid for confidential information by reporters at The News of the World and elsewhere.

Apparently they are. I'm impressed by the display of "Leadership" these people are displaying.

The Metropolitan Police itself is now the subject of a judicial inquiry into what went wrong with their initial case, as well as into the ties between the department’s top officers and executives and reporters for News International.

I'll tell you what went wrong. They were trained to be soldiers , who routinely lie to their troops , tasked with the job of finding truth , and then set loose among a civilian population where getting caught lying isn't something you can bury with a few threats.

Wrong training. Wrong structure. Wrong organization.

It was not until last autumn that the police were forced to confront their own mistakes. By then, they were facing an escalating stream of requests by people who suspected that their phones might have been hacked. Two dozen people had also brought civil cases against News International, and that compelled the police to release information from Mr. Mulcaire’s files.

And this is the crux of the matter. Only when they couldn't hide it any more, only when it became blindingly obvious that their lies were no longer being believed, did the police decide to come clean.

Make no mistake about this. They don't believe they did anything wrong , leadership wise. They fully beleive that lying their behinds off is part of their job, and they are completely ruthless about it. And they have no intention of stopping.

The western nations have deliberately trained up and created a set of organizations that are trained to lie , and trained to fight, and then set them loose among the civilians they are supposed to protect.

This is the nature of all police forces, and indeed any organization with military training , any organization that uses the word "leadership" in a military fashion.

And when you understand this , then you will understand the Honesty and Integrity of all police organizations.

In the same fashion as a polish imigrant in the vancouver airport did.

In the same fashion as a woman in ottawa who was falsely accused of public drunkenness (they never found the bottle) thrown in the cell block , and then sexually assaulted in front of the cameras. Not by a single rogue officer, but by a gang of them that honestly believed it was their right to do this , they don't believe they did anything wrong.

This is their Honor, and their legacy.

Obama, lawmakers press ahead for elusive debt deal

2011-07-16T18:04:00.000-04:00

article

(Reuters) - President Barack Obama and congressional leaders pressed ahead with private talks on deficit reduction on Saturday, seeking an as-yet-elusive way to lift the debt ceiling and avoid a U.S. default next month.

Ah , good old America, my most favorite country that I've never set foot in. Only in America do you elect a leader , and then black mail him with bankrupting the country so that he has to do what the opposition wants.

I'm sorry , was it Obama who got elected ? , or the republics that want to cut social spending but the people of privilege lose nothing ?

Anyways, ignoring the internal politics, it is obvious the Americans will not be able to get a hold of their current ballooning economic crisis , and they will in a little while be de-listed as the bench mark currency that the world pegs it's other currencies against.

Time to batten down the hatches and start investing in things people have to have no matter what. Shoes, grocery stores, people always have to eat , right ? Even in hard times ? Yeah. Time to attach yourself to some industry that isn't going to sink.

Bell Canada pays $10M over misleading ads

2011-06-28T20:52:00.001-04:00

Article

In one example provided by the Bureau, Bell's website advertised a bundle for home phone, internet and TV services starting as low as $69.90 per month. The lowest possible price, after the mandatory fees, was $80.27, or 15 per cent higher.

Customers purchasing any of the services individually were also faced with the same misleading information, as additional fees were excluded from those advertised prices as well, the bureau said.

I found out all about extra fee's on Rogers as well. Did you know if your balance doesn't reach zero for a few months they tack on an extra 25$ a month ? I thought I was paying my bill off and then some, but because of this extra fee I was actually slipping farther and farther behind...

Bell wouldn't turn off the internet , so I had to buy a stupid 7$ / month internet fee for a connection that was totally worthless and not actually useable. If you had a data phone you were forced to take a data plan you could't turn it off.

Their cheap phone broke , and I still had to pay the monthly fee for four months while they took three tries to repair it.

They cut a hundred bucks off the price of the phone. In exchagne for making me sign a three year contract.

Yeah ... I've dealt with Bell before. And Rogers.

Never again.

edit : forgot to mention the oldest trickin the book used by both bell and rogers. You have 30 days to change your mind and cancel their services without being bound by their contracts. But it's usually closer to 60 days before you receive the first bill and find out about the extra charges that cannot be avoided.

Plus they make you stand in line to sigh up and shove a six page contract thats all fine print and demand you sign immediately while there's 10 people behind you impatiently waiting ...

How do these people get repeat business ? I can understand you were tricked the first time , but why do people go back ?

EA must die! Several reasons why EA is bad for gamers and the art of gaming.

2011-06-24T12:53:00.000-04:00

One of the most amusing things you can do with a blog is find some artical that you totally disagree with , and tear it apart paragraph by paragraph. The blog in question where the artical was posted won't let you post on them , of course, but still , you can do it on your own and then just drop links everywhere.

http://www.gamespot.com/users/Lucavix/show_blog_entry.php?topic_id=m-100-25672615

Have you ever heard of the series Dungeon Keeper? Dungeon Keeper was a Bullfrog Studio's creation that was a cult hit in 1995-97. In 1999 Dungeon Keeper 2 made the game entirely 3D, and it still looks acceptably good by today's standards. The game was known for it's wickedly dark humor, it's interesting cast of creatures and heroes, it's humorous parodies, and it's dark yet fun atmosphere.

I played dungeon Keeper. Even in it's heyday it was a mediocre at best game. The reversal of playing the dungeon full of evil monsters instead of the hero's trying to fight their way in was interesting at first , but it didn't translate well into a game. And you can only slap chickens so many times before you become bored of it.

Dungeon Keeper 2 ended with a teaser for Dungeon Keeper 3, but Dungeon Keeper 3 was canceled. Because EA had limited sales of Dungeon Keeper 2 after their hostile acquisition of Bullfrog Studios, Dungeon Keeper 2 never generated enough revenue and most people obtained it through piracy. Dungeon Keeper 3 was considered too risky, and it was literally cancelled to free up the studio and funding for Harry Potter - Quidditch. This is but one reason EA is bad for the industry, but oh there are more. So many more.

I'm not following your logic. The game lost money , they stopped producing the series. Thats not "bad for the industry" , thats good. People vote with their pocket books, and they voted that game out.

I have no doubt the piracy issue could be fixed (most games require you to log on and registure before you can play them , thus getting rid of piracy and explaining why mmo's are so popular) but if the game was losing money , no one really wanted it anyways. I know I don't miss it.

Westwood Studios, responsible for such games as Command and Conquer: Renegade (believe it or not that game did very well online) fell into EA's clutches with it's ambitious Space MMO Earth and Beyond. Having the server power to host such a game, EA used Earth and Beyond to ensnare Westwood Studios. EA then moved on to lock Westwood out of making decisions effecting the game, and slowly destroyed it. All plans for PvP introduction, extended career paths, and so on were canceled, and then EA moved to cancel the game and abolish Westwood Studios. Earth and Beyond players had their accounts deleted, and critics often allege that the entire purpose of EA's acquisition of Earth and Beyond was to eliminate Westwood Studios as competition. But wait, trust me, there's much much more.

A nice conspiracy theory. Maybe even a few hints of truth. But Command and Conquer was a StarCraft rip off from the get go , and inferior in every respect (I've played both). The only thing that game ever did for me was convince me to go back to starcraft.

Played that horrible World of Warcraft clone Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning yet? It didn't start off the horrible unoriginal mess it is, it was initially an incredibly ambitious project and a full PvP experience that was supposed to cut out grinding all together. Electronic Arts thought the project was too ambitious, and forced Mythic Entertainment to go a different rout, copying World of Warcraft. EA then began cutting funding and putting increased pressure on Mythic Entertainment, eventually forcing Mythic to release Warhammer Online unfinished, with several playable classes removed. EA then moved to sell back the cut and unfinished content in an expansion pack. But wait, there's more.

Except that the "full pvp" experience generally alienates 90% of your paying customers , as they found out the hard way when Ultima Online first came out. After which you're desperately trying to salvage something by making an imitation game ... yeah it needed to die. Full pvp games have been tried, and have died for good and proper reasons.

Played the Sims lately? How about The Sims 2? Did you find it suspicious that after fleecing you on expansion packs for the Sims, they reset it all with the Sims 2 and began the cycle again? Now they're doing it with The Sims 3, which is actually a good game (that one out of ten EA games worth playing) but they're already going expansion crazy. This time with Micro Transactions but rest assured a full fledged Expansion pack in already in the works and will also come with a swath of "Pay to Access" content. Unfortunately for EA this financial model encourages piracy, and many gamers including legitimate customers who actually purchased The Sims 3 have already downloaded all of the Pay to Access content via third party sites.

Everyone is experimenting with pay to play (except TOR) in various forms.
And having seen wow with half the guild members at max level , maybe resetting it all when starting a new game is the way to go. Certainly the lower levels wouldn't be so completely empty any more.

And the phrase "financial model encourages piracy" is just blaming the rape victem for getting raped. It's a complete non starter. Pay these people to make games, or they will stop making them. It's just that simple.

Moral Outrage is not the only reason Spore is the most pirated and boycotted game ...

Due to moral outrage ,you will now commit immoral acts , like theft. Oh thats a good argument.

Moral Outrage is not the only reason Spore is the most pirated and boycotted game of all time though. With Spore EA decided to introduce invasive DRM policies, that limited Spore to three installations. This punishes legit gamers but it doesn't punish Pirates, who never have to suffer the effects of DRM. With no warning, EA also slips SecuROM onto people's computers, and while this doesn't cause problems most of the time it is known to make CD/DvD Drives, particularly writable drives, to stop reading properly. In fact, it's known to disable drives all together sometimes, though this is rare. My only experience with SecuROM causing me problems was when I tried to play the old game Age of Wonders: Shadow Magic. For some reason SecuROM seemed convinced I was using a virtual mount even after I had installed the game, and I was forced to download the version of the 1.3 patch that disabled the need for a CD check. Others have reported similar issues with other games, but the problem isn't so much with SecuROM, it's that EA installs SecuROM without warning or permission, which brings up a whole lot of legal issues. Since SecuROM has been stripped from most pirated copies of Spore, it also encourages Piracy. But wait, there's more.

This I will grant you. Loading up my computer with buggy software to crash it is now stepping into the territory of the virus writer. I don't care what you put in your end user agreement, I want that piece of crap off my computer and I don't want your games under any circumstances.

That being said, there must be a dozen different ways of securing a program from piracy , in this internet age, without having to load anything even remotely like malware on your computer. MMO's do it all the time. And new games typically are written with some kind of link to the internet so you have to have an account so you can't steal it. Think pokemon, essentially a single player game , but if you want to trade pokemon with other players ...

EA bought up exclusive rights to the NFL, no other gaming company can make an NFL game now. Without competition, EA released the same game over and over again with very minor alterations, often quite literally keeping all the same gameplay bugs with each season. Most gamers aren't football fans, I know, but this is an example of what EA does to the industry. It monopolized the NFL license and has since driven it into the ground.

A better explanation would be they bought up the rights to a game no one wants to play. Lets face it. Gamers want to kill dragons ,not toss around a pig skin. And most people who do like foot ball would rather watch reruns of the game and drink beer than fiddle with a joy stick. Or better yet, go play flag foot ball. Who really plays sports games anyways ? The used game shelves are full of them , meaning whoever actually buys one dumps it fairly quickly . How about the game flopped because it had no market ?

I'm not saying EA is a saint.
But I'm not saying it's a monster either.
EA is a business. It makes games. And if you want those games, they have to stay in business. And that means you have to pay up. This crap about "I'm committing piracy because I'm morally outraged .." is crap of the worst sort. Don't buy their games is your option. Maybe even protest their games. But don't steal them. That's you making up excuses for your crimes. That isn't moral anything.

It's just crap.

The Real G20 Criminals

2011-06-23T18:29:00.001-04:00

Toronto police and their partner police forces during the G20 summit were sometimes overwhelmed and caught flat-footed by the "scope and intensity" of the "sustained, serious, and widespread criminality and public disorder" they faced, an internal force after-action review admits.

Postmedia News obtained an advance copy of the 70-page document, which was posted late Thursday afternoon on the police website.

The report, written by unidentified senior Toronto officers and civilians who reviewed extensive video footage and police files, paints a terrifying, almost minute-by-minute portrait of the modern mob in full throttle.

"Last June, we saw levels of violence we had never seen before in Toronto," Bill Blair, the city's police chief, says in a brief forward. "This report takes a hard look at what happened. Many things we did very well.

"Some things we did not."

Read more: http://www.canada.com/news/Police+overwhelmed+intensity+violence+Report/4995817/story.html#ixzz1Q8lP5s6d

Ok. So , what were these people rioting against ? Communists ? Dictators ? Who ? Who is this nefarious G20 that has incurred so much anger ?

http://www.g20.org/about_what_is_g20.aspx

The Group of Twenty (G-20) Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors was established in 1999 to bring together systemically important industrialized and developing economies to discuss key issues in the global economy. The inaugural meeting of the G-20 took place in Berlin, on December 15-16, 1999, hosted by German and Canadian finance ministers.

So the g20 are a bunch of elected ministors of democratic governments. And you are protesting against them ... why ?

You don't have a why. I have seen the reports on the way up to the summit , and after. Some organization for the poor wants money. Two idiots who think they're terrorists bombed a bank machine (bank machine , banker , finance minister ...you're destroying private property to protest a governments actions, and you don't even say which actions) in ottawa before the summit.

This riot had nothing to do with banking. It has to do with people trying to steal the stage for their own causes. Any stage. And these things always turn violent.

I give a little blame to Harper for deciding to hold an event with a history of violence in the down town core of any major city. I love the conservatives, but that was a real bone head move.

I give a little more blame to the police for acting under trying circumstances. It seems when the stress is on , we get to see their true colors, and that color is pretty ugly looking, and someone needs to start thinking about fixing that problem up before comments about Canada's police state stop being an exaggeration and start being truthful. Forbidding them to confiscate cameras and recorders would be a good beginning.

But mostly I blame the wacked out anarchists who live to start a riot over anything. The idiots who showed up to protest ...what ? Bankers are evil ? Do you have any specifics ? Or did you just sort of hear that somewhere and decided it sounded good ? Do you even know what you are protesting ? No. You're just stealing someone elses spot light for your own needs.

I blamed the wacko's for this fiasco. Couple of other groups helped , and should be taught not to help, but mostly , I blame the wacko's. Those are the real G20 criminals.

Anti- Islam Lawmaker Aquitted

2011-06-23T18:10:00.000-04:00

Dutch far-right member of parliament Geert Wilders was acquitted of all charges in his hate speech trial in Amsterdam. Judges found the populist politician’s comments against Islam may be offensive to many, but that they fall within the scope of protected free speech.

Wasnt there a captured training manual from the terrorists that said they were to assassinate any politicians that are against their cause ?

And they already killed that cartoonist.

While I do not agree with Wilders crude style and certainly not all that he says, I cannot help but think he's about to get "taken out".

Which will only make a martyr out of him.

An Anti-Islamic Martyr.

And so the world goes on in it's insanity...

iPhones spy on their users

2011-04-25T22:00:00.000-04:00

Phone Data Used to Fill Digital Map

SAN FRANCISCO — You may not know it, but if you carry a smartphone in your pocket, you are probably doing unpaid work for Apple or Google — and helping them eventually aim more advertising directly at you.

As those two companies battle for dominance in mobile computing, they have increasingly been using their customers’ phones as sensors to collect data about nearby cell towers and Wi-Fi hot spots.

A program that you dont want doing stuff to help someone else , running on your equipment , is considered mal-ware. (virus or trojen) and should be removed.

So when exactly did Apple gain the right to put mal-ware on the devices it's selling to you ?

Google and Apple use this data to improve the accuracy of everything on the phone that uses location. That includes maps and navigation services, but also advertising aimed at people in a particular spot — a potentially huge business that is just getting off the ground. In fact, the information has become so valuable that the companies have been willing to push the envelope on privacy to collect it.

Loosely translated : We can make money at this , so to heck with the customers were actually selling equipment to.

The use of this data by the companies has been under scrutiny since last week, when two technology researchers reported that a file stored on many iPhones and iPads keeps track of all the locations visited by a user. The file is unencrypted and is copied to people’s personal computers when they sync their devices.

Ever get the feeling you're being watched ? Do you mind that the next time the super attendant changes the light bulb in your bathroom he puts in one that tracks everyone's movement in there ? Really , it only uses a little extra electricity but it's worth so much money to people with certain ... tastes....

Ok, maybe a tasteless comparison , some would say. But certain things are indisputable. Advertising works. Otherwise they wouldn't be spending so much money on it. And Advertising makes you buy stuff you really shouldn't buy , so you can consider it a hostile activity.

And helping to construct an advertising system that's going to be aimed directly at you , using your equipment , and not telling you about it ... thats hostile. We have enough junk mail in our in boxes (and in our real mail boxes) We don't need to add to the load we need to subtract from it.

But they have decided there's money to be made , so they're gonna sneak this in and hope no one notices.

Just like a virus writer does.

And for exactly the same reasons too.

News or Propaganda ?

2011-04-17T14:41:00.000-04:00

Liberal health care ads may be working

Liberal attack ads warning that the Conservatives harbour a secret agenda to cut health care funding appear to be having their intended affect.

A new poll that looks at how Canadians view the leadership abilities of those running for prime minister suggests that voters’ assessments of Stephen Harper have dropped since the Liberals went negative in their television advertising this weekend.

The survey of 400 voters conducted Saturday for Nanos Research, indicates that the Conservative Leader’s numbers on the leadership index score fell to 91.6 from 105.4.

In the globe and mail they ran a "news" article. And I question the news part significantly. The article basically picked a poll of 400 voters (a thousand is considered the requirement for reasonably accuracy) and trumpeted the results as if it were indisputable and inevitable victory for the Liberals.

What they should have done is lamented that dirty tricks like spinning baseless conspiracy theories have no place in an election.

What they should have done was point out the sample size of the poll was too small.

what they should have done was at least point out the poll is considered accurate to + or minus X % 19 times out of 20 , but they skipped that.

What they did was trumpet it as an inevitable victory for the Liberals , and made no attempt to paint the Conservatives as anything but villians secretly trying to destroy canada.

The Globe and Mail is not a neutril bystander. They have quite obviously picked a side.

And that is the true tragedy here.

This newspaper isn't selling us news anymore. It's now preaching and propagandizing to us , and expecting us to pay for it.

Draft motion says Tories in contempt of Parliament

2011-03-18T00:05:00.000-04:00

Draft motion says Tories in contempt of Parliament

Opposition MPs on a Commons committee have declared the Harper government in contempt of Parliament in a historic draft motion.

Wow, he sounds like a really nasty guy. What did he do ?

...Insert 4 paragraphs discussing strategy and tactics about politicians maneuvering to back stab each other...

Umm...ok. So what did he do ? Or are you just going to make really nasty accusations and then suddenly move on to something else ?

The opposition motion specifies the government's refusal to produce full cost estimates for its crime legislation and corporate tax cuts, impeding the work of Parliament. The motion is a directive to committee staff, who will produce the formal document Monday.

So ... you don't like their estimate, which is just a guess, you like your own better. Which is still just a guess.

Liberal finance critic Scott Brison said the ministers were misleading the committee.

"He left out many of the costs of these bills," Brison said Thursday, saying the ministers left out of many of costs associated with the crime bills.

The new documents set the price tag at $631 million for 18 crime bills, but the opposition said they weren't buying that figure.

Hey I remember this. You think they're low balling the costs because their crime bills will , you know,keep criminals in jail longer. Which is where the real cost comes from. And you don't like that , you don't think criminals should stay in jail a little longer.

The government said a bill for stiffer penalties for prisoners will cost $2-billion over five years, but Parliamentary Budget Officer Kevin Page said the sentencing will cost more than double that, at $5 billion.

Yep. Stiffer penalties. More time in jail. More cost to the government.

This ... is like an analysis of a biased newspaper supporting a corrupt government. Everything about this news article paints the conservatives as evil doer's , but locking criminals up for longer periods is hardly an evil deed.

It's a sad , sad day when a newspaper becomes a propaganda tool for a political party. Really. CTV should be ashamed of themselves.

And it's a worse day when a political party can't read the prevailing winds. This is a manufactured issue you're squawking about. keeping people in jail longer is evil ? It is becoming increasingly obvious the liberals will tell any lie, make any distortion , in a quest to try and get elected.

They do not proffer any policies of their own , and they crap on other policies that are arguably good policies. And even policies that were their own , if someone else takes it over (the F35's for example) , then they start to crap on it too.

The whole "that guy is crap , we listen to you , but no , we probably woldnt do anythign differently , in fact we have a long history of not doing anything differently " , it's getting tiresome.

CTV is no longer a real news site it seems. Too bad.

Bell and Internet Band width

2011-02-09T10:56:00.001-05:00

I saw the basic plans for bell , $21.95 to 52.95$ , and I wondered how much band width , how many gigabytes per month do you get ?

And this neat chat window popped up, so I thought I'd ask.

A chat representative will be with you in about 0

minute(s). Thank you for waiting.

Chat representative Jennifer has joined the session and

is ready to help. To start, please provide your name and

home phone number.

Jennifer: Hello, thanks for visiting bell.ca. How can I

help you today?

You: how many gigabytes data are in your internet plans ?

your web site doesn't say

Jennifer: Sure, I can help you with that.

Jennifer: May I please know which services you currently

have with Bell?

You: none

Jennifer: Welcome to Bell family.

Jennifer: Have you checked the service availability for

your area.

You: I'm in ottawa , I"m sure it's available. Postal code

is xxxxxx if it matters

Jennifer: May I please have your complete address to

check the internet services available in your area?

You: 999 xxxxxx ottawa ont xxxxxx

Jennifer: Would you mind holding while I look that

information up for you?

You: k

Jennifer: May I please know you apartment number.

You: I don't want any junk mail

Jennifer: I am sorry there are lot of number showing in

our website so I am asking it just to check the exact

available service.

You: you are suggesting the guy in one apartment gets a

deal and the guy in the next does not ? ... put in 101

Jennifer: I have great news for you. Bell high-speed

Internet is available in your area.

You: since my next door neibour has it , I already knew.

How many gigabytes for "essential plus"

Jennifer: Let me send the details for "Essential Plus".

Jennifer: Essential Plus offers high-speed Internet with

a download speed of up to 2 Mbps. The bandwidth allotted

per month is 2 GB. The service also includes email

anti-virus, spam filtering, pop-up blocking and basic

parental controls for $21.95/month for the first 12

months, only in a bundle, plus a $3.95 modem rental.

You: and fibre 25 ?

Jennifer: Fibe 25 Internet is our new next-generation

fibre optic network. You'll receive download speeds of up

to 25 Mbps and uploads of up to 7 Mbps - the fastest on

the market. This service includes a bandwidth of 75 GB,

Bell Internet Security Advanced and a wireless home

networking N series modem for $52.95/month for the first

12 months, only in a bundle with a $6.95 modem rental.

Couple of interesting things.

Bell sells internet access to third party ISP's for $4.25 for 40 gigabytes.

They're selling you 2 gigabytes for 20$ (plus tax and a lot of add ons..notice that "in a bundle only" stuff ? )

And you wonder why people are outraged ?

Second, they definately wanted my full mailing address. I lied about the apartment number , so some poor smuck in 101 is going to be getting a ton of advertising from them.

Third. It was a simple inquirey , she obviously had the answer waiting to be copied and pasted , but she refused. She wanted to know everything and the dog about me , drag it out and make it last a long time, get marketting information to either tie to the account I don't have or start a new file on me (my apologies to every one living in apartment 101 in every aparetment building in canada) .

Just unbelievably annoying.

Fourth : Why didn't they put the bandwidth limits on the web page ? If you're not technically savy , you wouldn't even know such a thing existed. Thats like advertising a new TV and saying 20$ , instead of 20$ + lots of fee's if you actually turn it on and use it, lots and lots of fees actually. It's technically true , but out right misleading. They basically lied without lying.

I gotta ask

Do you really want to get into any kind of relationship with someone who doesn't hesitate to misrepresent themselves like this ?

Scroll up and look at her quotes again. They all end in "...for the first twelve months" , you're signing up for a multi-year contract if you go with these guys.

Take a look at their online service agreement.

Terms and Conditions

10. Changes; Amendments. To the extent permitted by applicable law, Your Service Provider may modify the Service, this Service Agreement, including any other document that forms part thereof, at any time and from time to time, with or without your consent or authorization, including but not limited to modification or amendment of Service Fees or modification, amendment or termination of any Service feature.

They reserve the right to change their mind anytime they like, and your authorization is not required, thanks for playing. Raise the rates, get into a dispute , anything they like. this is Bells automatic "Bell Wins , You Lose" button.

Do you really want to get into a multi-year contract with these guys ?

Oh ...rogers is just as bad.

:)

All this fuss... and they're selling 40 gigs to other companies for $4.25 a pop. Why can't they sell it to me for that ? I'd be happy to pay a year in advance so there won't be any collection issues.

The Second Video Generation

2011-01-22T13:00:00.000-05:00

Judy Garland (June 10, 1922 – June 22, 1969) was an American actress and singer. Through a career that spanned 45 of her 47 years, Garland attained international stardom as an actress in musical and dramatic roles,...

It's an odd feeling. You look up this song you like, and you find out some girl sang it , and you've known that name all your life , you think.

Then you check the dates, and realized she died of old age while you were still in diapers.

It does things to your head when you start to realize...

You can look back in time, via this computer , this internet , this youtube site (who knows what it will be called next year) and see how people lived their lives long ago , see their entire lives from birth to death.

Oh they could do that a century ago with books. Except 90% of the population couldn't read and write.

Now. Bored . Nothing better to do , a single question comes to your mind.

How far back in time does this dang thing go ?

We are the second video generation. Looking back at the first , who lived their entire lives , and died of old age , in front of the camera. We are the first generation that has something to look back upon and observer their body language, the cloths they wore , what they thought was moral and right.

And we can't argue with them , we cannot debate, because their time is over , they are gone, they are not listenning.

We can only observe , and wonder.

New Liberal ads attack Harper over jets, tax cuts

2011-01-21T20:46:00.000-05:00

New Liberal ads attack Harper over jets, tax cuts

After complaining bitterly about the conservatives using tax payer funds to make attack ads (which the liberals did all the time ) the liberals come out swinging with their own ads.

Since liberals get a certain amount per voter because they used to be in power, doesn't this mean that even if they paid for it out of their own fund s, it's still canadian tax payer dollars ?

The federal Liberals lashed out Friday with two new attack ads that take aim at Prime Minister Stephen Harper over the sole-sourced purchase of F-35 stealth fighter jets and planned corporate tax cuts.

They are a direct response to an ad campaign launched earlier this week by the Conservatives.

The election campaign-style television ads focus on two issues certain to be key planks in the Liberals' campaign when an election is called.

So your two key planks are....

1... WE thought the F35's were a great idea when it was our idea, but now that someone else is doing it we hate it.

And ...

2... giving money to corperations is bad. Unless we do it. Because we do it all the time, corperate donations are what made us the party we are today ...until those donations were declared illegal that is.

These are your issues ?

Help me out here. Are you trying to win the next election ? Or are you deliberately throwing it ?

Ottawa Police Create video protesting how they're being treated.

2010-12-28T18:27:00.000-05:00

After it became public that they arrested a certain Stacy Bonds, for public drunkenness, because she apparently had a bottle of alcholol in her hands, which mysteriously vanished , and was never entered into evidence or found, and after the case was tossed because they got caught on video kneeing her in the back stripping her topless , and otherwise acting like a bunch of hoodlems mugging a victem instead of proper police officers ...

The ottawa police have been distributing this particular video among themselves as a response.

Note how the "charges" against the criminal are trumped up to the most atrocious things imaginable ? The fact that this is in response to a woman who was innocent (charges dropped this time and no previous charges) is probably the most aggravating thing of all.

When people just open their mouths and let fly the lies ... it serves them right they get caught.

This is what we are fighting for

2010-12-28T14:29:00.001-05:00

Soldiers stay cool after Canadian convoy shot at following fender-bender

The ANA crew refused the paperwork and demanded instead a cash payment on the spot, they said. The Canadians refused, walked away and drove off.

Not giving up, the ANA soldiers drove ahead, set up a roadblock and stopped the heavily armed and armoured convoy again. When the Canadians refused the demand for instant payment a second time, shots were fired first in the air and then at their vehicle.

In a statement issued Tuesday, Canada’s Task Force Kandahar confirmed there were no injuries and that the Canadians did not shoot back.

ANA is Afghanistan National Army.

Basically , they had a fender bender with some canadian troops. And then tried (twice) to shake the canadians down for cash. Even pointing guns at them and shooting their vehicals up.

So this is what we are fighting for in Afghanistan ? This is what we are building ? A whole army unit that openly shakes down anyone they feel like , and feel outraged that their right to do so has been violated ? They feel they deserve to shake down anyone ?

We should stick to simple 6 day wars. Go in. Shoot everything. Tear the place up. Leave.

because this nation building stuff. It's just not working.

Tool Time Winner

2010-12-24T19:25:00.000-05:00

An interesting news article that covers the matter rather nicely I think.

Julian Assange is being accused of being a terrorist , and wiki leaks a terrorist organization , but who did they kill ? Who did they demand die ? Who are they shouting "this guy must die ! Somebody go kill him here's his home address !!!"

Umm...nobody. They don't do that.

This would be why they're subtly hinting that congressman Peter King is a tool.

Worse. By speaking out and demanding this guy be assassinated , illegally if necessarily ( not in this video , I'm still looking for that one) then the USA is now the one agitating for someone to die , or commiting acts of terrorism if they run off and used their own internal staff to assassinate this guy.

Terrorism , you know , as in killing people so as to frighten other people into obeying you ? That kind of terrorism? Yep. That shoe fits really well on certain US Congressmen , and not so well on Julian Assange.

I hope these peoples tempers cool and this blows over, because lets face it. If the rule of law is tossed away , suddenly everyone in the world is a target for these idiots.

And that includes you and me , brother.

Stephen Harper brings new definition to the term 'Prime Ministerial'

2010-12-10T07:19:00.001-05:00

you will not believe it until you see it.

Somebody doesn't spend all their time in front of the tele , this much is obvious.

Thanks for the Terrorism

2010-12-10T05:00:00.001-05:00

Teen accused of hacking WikiLeaks pay sites

There is a certain inevitability in world events. Certain patterns that keep being repeated , certain people in authority with no sense of history , doomed to repeat the course , so to speak , only all of us will suffer because of their ignorance.

When the romans decided to make christianity illegal , they did not destroy it, they merely drove it underground where it could not be seen or dealt with. And they spread like wild fire, and eventually rose up and took over the western world for a few centuries.

When a group of scholars challenged the dictators of the day (yeah , the very same christians, who also had a problem with learning even their own history) and were all imprisoned or punished horribly , it did not wipe them out. It drove them underground, and turned them into a violent group who , technically I suppose now rule the world (atheism vs theology)

There are many examples where people were either just minding their own business or were merely pointing out that the authorities of the day were doing things they weren't supposed to be doing.

And the government surpressed them.

And they got driven underground. But their cause was popular.

And so they became violent. They fit the modern definition of todays terrorists.

Mr. Assange , god bless you , for you are about to be Martyr'd for your cause.

Mr. Barak Obama. Thanks a heap. You just brought a bunch of new age terrorists upon us. Only this time they're not ignorant goat herders on the other side of the world. They're high tech home grown westerners. And they're lack of religion isn't going to lessen their zeal.

Mark my words. This movement has legs, and we're all going to regret the decision to surpress it.

Wikileaks fiasco

2010-12-09T23:04:00.000-05:00

Article

This whole Wikileaks fiasco, the one where some secret government documents got released to the general public, has been going on a while , and I suppose I should make a few comments on it, since it has to do with computers and all.

First point : what exactly was released ?

I see a few unkind comments made by low level flunkies .

We saw a grainy video of a guy carrying what sure looks like a big rifle to me , but the narrerator claims other wise, and then he and the other gun men (whom the narrorator does not dispute have guns) get all shot up by americans.

We see our (former )cheif of intelligence wants to turn canada into a police state to make his job easier , demonstrating he's forgotten that he's supposed to be protecting democracy ,not eradicating it. Perhaps this is why he's now "former" ?

A lot of people figured they knew what North Korea was going to do next. And then got caught with their pants down when North Korea decided to do something different.

There's nothing in these leaks. Nothing important, just bureaucrats covering their behinds and trying not to have their mistakes come to light |real or imagined mistakes).

And for this they are tracking the head of Wikileaks down , charging him with sexual assault and rape (with a prostitute, while they were doing it ...apparently she changed her mind half way throgh .. classic he said she said no witnesses present case) . And donating money to wikileaks has been shut down. Not declared officially illegal , but Visa and Master Card and Pay Pal suddenly decided not to process such transactions.

It is fascinating how undemocratic our democratic nations can act. I was reading an article on china about some chinese citizens getting a nobel peace prize for thwarting the government, and the terrble things the chinese were doing to him, and I kept thinking ,we're doing the exact same stuff to this guy. We're really not much different.

Which indicates maybe this Wikileaks guy is on to something. The Witch Hunt being engaged in itself affirms the very things the western democracies are trying to deny.

The second fascinating thing is the reaction to this. Private citizens are now rebelling against their "democratic" overlords by way of a volintairy program they run on their computers to form a bot net to attack the instruments of the governments. (Visa, master card, etc , who refuse to take payements.

And the news articles focus heavily on the sexual charges against this guy, but no one is biting, no one is fooled. All they're doing is identifying themselves , telling us who's a cats paw for the government and who isn't.

A new form of rebellion has arisen. In nations that formally enjoyed immunity to rebellion , because they were for the people, by the people, as the americans say. Except that that principle has been tossed aside.

And now we have a live example of why democracies were created in the first place. And what happens when they cease to function as democracies. And the controls they had on their populations slip and fall to the side, leaving nothing but an angry mob behind.

They put their hands on a live wire , these politicians, when they spent centuries preaching freedom of speach and then suddenly tossed it away. And now they will get their hands burned for doing that.

SIU to examine new Ottawa cellblock video

2010-12-09T22:36:00.000-05:00

Article

The existence of the new cellblock videos was announced by Ottawa police Tuesday, after two other videos released publicly showed people being kneed or kicked at the Elgin Street cellblock.

One video from 2008 shows Stacy Bonds, a 27-year-old woman with no criminal history, being kneed and strip-searched in September 2008 after being arrested on Rideau Street for public intoxication. The charge was stayed by Justice Richard Lajoie of the Ontario Court of Justice in a verbal ruling Oct. 27.

We have a problem. Our police are out of control and are randomly mugging anyone who annoys them. And this isn't a stray incident. Two more vidoe's ? They've been doing this for a while and it's only now coming to light.

What does it take to charge a cop with a criminal offence ? They kill people with Tasers , firing five or more times when their taser manual says twice is the limit. They arrest and strip search random people picked up off the street.

My friend Wireless Toaster doesn't much like cops, never has.

I'm beginning to see why.

And our new mayor isn't helping matters. It's like he likes things the way they are.

"This is something that's happened and we're dealing with it," said Coun. Bob Monette (Orleans), who sits on the board.

"If the membership is concerned about it, they should be bringing it up to the attention of the board."

Which doesn't meet until dec 20th.

Stall , stall stall. Maybe it will all blow over if you give it enough time.

Police Harassment The Wireless Toaster Way

2010-12-09T22:18:00.000-05:00

So me and Wireless Toaster went In Drinking , in not out , meaning that we got some beer, we stayed home, and we cranked up skype and in the comfort of our own homes we got stinking drunk together.

Which is likely to replace going out to a bar , since it's a heck of a lot cheaper , far more comfortable, no line up for a filthy bathroom, etc etc etc ... but thats another topic for later on.

So wireless toaster is having problems with his wife, and he went to this rather unsavory motel (he's tracking down his wife, he things she has ... not so kind habits..it's a long story lets not get into it) and while he's there he see's these rather nasty looking individuals go into the motel ,have an admittedly heated conversationw with the clerk , and leaves.

And he got pictures.

And so he reports it to the police. And they never get back to him.

Wireless toaster is a technology freak , I have to mention. His current fetish is phones and phone systems. And he's a certified (computer) network engineer. A very technical person. And he had a nice computer network at home before he and his wife had problems and he had to leave, and now has a pretty awsome phone switchboard system where he lives.

Which is important to this story. because it records phone calls , incoming and out going.

And we're drinking , and he's talking about this , and he emails me three recordings for me to listen to. So , drinking back the beer, I give them a listen.

In the first recording he manages to track down the police officer that he talked to at the motel. A police officer who refused to give him his name, it should be noticed. As for the problem at the motel , it reveils nothing, but I found it fascinating that even if a cop refuses to give you his name and badge number , you can call the police station up and get it anyways. In this day and age of video's being released of cops doing nasty not very police like things, this is a fairly important point I think.

In the second recording the cop calls back , and of course, you can't give out information to a total stranger about a case thats under investigation . Even if the case is closed it's a violation of privacy to discuss it with a stranger. But Wireless toaster wants to get his say in , and the cop kept cutting him off and pointing this out... not much was accomplished.

I mentioned the phone system right ?

It seems that when you block your number when phoneing someone, it's just a courtesy that the receiving phone pays attention to that. Wireless's phone system wasn't programmed to be courteous , and ignored the signil indicating the number was blocked and gave him the number anyways.

Interesting that a blocked number could be over ridden and gotten anyways. Thats a second piece if information I found fascinating in our little drinking session.

He ran the number through google. He didn't get the cops personal details , of course, thats a serious violation of privacy. But he did get the name of the phone provider. It was a Fido Phone. Indicating that the cop had actually called on his private cell phone rather than his office phone.

Well...my wind phone has unlimited minutes, I've used it for work all the time. So I don't think there's much wrong with that , to be honest.

Third phone call recording was Wireless calling back.

Try to imagine, you called someone , you blocked the number ... and he calls you back on the phone who's number he's not supposed to have. And he goes on and on about this case . And the cop lies and says it's not his personal phone it's his work phone (yeah right) And to never call him on it. (ha ha ...don't call me at work ? To discuss work ? But it's ok to call me on this *OTHER* work number ? Thats your private phone buddy)

And Wireless went back to going on and on about having pictures and he want's to turn them in and help solve that case...

And so I learned a third thing that session. It's possible to harrass a police officer in such a way that he cannot do anything about it.

all and all a very productive evening I think. Which was contrary to what I wanted to actually do , but ok, this worked too.

I can still imagine the expression of horror that cop probably had on his face when Wireless called back on that guys personal phone. "I swear I blocked the number ! Honest I did !" It makes me laugh.

Ottawa police attack and strip search innocent woman

2010-12-02T10:43:00.001-05:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qFq66qIWajo

So these are the police I have to deal with in my city ?

I want them fired. All of them.

But I know they'll get off scott free without even a slap on a wrist.

Mayor Watson , are you going to do something about this ? Or are these thugs going to continue with their thuggary unabated ?

Duckies House of Quackery

2010-11-20T02:19:00.002-05:00

Ont. man dies after MS vein opening

An Ontario man with multiple sclerosis died of complications after a controversial treatment in Costa Rica to open up his neck veins, CBC News has learned.

Mahir Mostic, 35, of St. Catharines died on Oct. 19, one day after doctors in the Central American country tried to dissolve a blood-clot complication.

Skip all that. Down to the comments.

meowiekitty wrote:Posted 2010/11/19
at 1:27 PM ET

If I had fast developing MS, I'd try experimental procedures to increase my quality of life (it wasn't meant to cure him). I'd try experimental procedures for anything, and I'd probably try heroin too. What difference does it make if I'm going to die soon anyway?

This disease is terrible, especially the fast moving kind. I don't think people live much longer than 5 years after they are diagnosed.

Science can't move forward if we don't try new procedures. At one time, we thought the cure for STDs was mercury. We also used to bleed people to cure them!

This man was very brave to try something new and controversial, and he did so knowing that there is a high degree of risk.

Meowkittie you're In luck !

We at Doctor Duck's House of Quackery have created a new cure for MS ! It involves stuffing cotton balls into the ears of the patients while praying to the secret VooDoo spirit of MS Cures who's name we are sworn never to reviel !

So have your 10 000$ ready and come on down ! Our Voodoo doctors only have limited beds available so hurry to get yours !

Remember ! You're dying of a horrible incurable disease so its time to try anything ! Does it really matter I got my degree off the back of a cracker jack box ?

You have nothing to lose but the contents of your wallets !

Remember Doctor Ducks motto ! "I'm not a duck , just a Quack !"

PS: Medical degree's in Quackery for sale cheap , exams optional , inquire within.

Return of the Wireless Toaster

2010-11-11T20:45:00.000-05:00

My friend the paranoid schizophrenic called the other day, said he had some time off work next week if I wanted to have a coffee with him.

Hmm...time off work.

Last time I checked he didn't have a job , and swore up and down he'd never work again.

You know ... an unstable paranoid schizophrenic holding down a job ... umm... unstable people generally don't do that. They'd rather be out on the street freezing to death.

hmmm.....

Well ok ... I suppose I can risk a cup of coffee on the off chance he's cured, or maybe never was paranoid , or whatever weirdness might have happened.

So I meet up with him.

He actually went back to work some number of months ago. He didn't want to , he swore up and down he never would, but they made him , so he went. And he fired that lawyer who was leeching all his money and giving him nothing for it.

Hmm....paranoid schizophrenics wouldn't return to work , wouldn't deal with these issues, would just ignore them actually. That would be the "Schizophrenic" part of disease, the innability to deal with reality. Apparently being paranoid is ok , maybe even normal , it's only when it interfere's with your ability to deal with reality that the psychologists get all interested in it.

Hmm...he's still got his car. In fact, he tells me , the lease ran out on it and he bought it. Hmm... I would have bet long odds he would have lost it long ago.

Ok. Time for the big test. "Do you still think I work for a government agency thats out to kill you ? "

"I never said that ! You're paraphrasing ! Thats not what I meant ..." yadda yadda yadda...

Well..ok. Good enough for me. You don't throw a 20+ year friendship away if you really don't have to , they're kind of hard to replace , and it looks like I don't have to. So hey !

Welcome back , Wireless Toaster.

Khadr confirms he was al-Qaeda member, prepares for sentencing

2010-10-26T12:01:00.000-04:00

Article

Canadian Omar Khadr, the self-confessed al-Qaeda murderer and terrorist, was back in the war crimes courtroom today for the sentencing phase of his trial.

In a long stipulation of facts, Mr. Khadr confirmed that he was an al-Qaeda member, wanted to kill Jews and Americans, and that the “happiest moment of his life” was when he built and planted roadside bombs aimed at killing Americans and other unbelievers then deployed in Afghanistan.

I do not like self confessions. They stink of rubber hoses and cigarette burns and beating the accused with out mercy until he'll confess to anything. And Eight years in prison , it's pretty obvious thats what happened.

But ...

He has no good reason to be on the other side of the world, in a terrorist training camp, learning how to build road side bombs. Put aside the accusations of him throwing a grenade and killing someone , put aside the "military trial" which is little more than a kangaroo court that puts to shame the very notion of justice.

Omar Khadr had no business being on that side of the world , let alone in that terrorist camp.

And so I have no sympathy for him at all.

I do have sympathy for what has befallen our justice system if this kind of nonsense is considered perfectly legal. That I am deeply concerned with. But Omar Khadr can rot in hell for all I care.

Lighting the Fire and then running.

2010-10-21T09:25:00.000-04:00

Col. Russell Williams: Should the videos and photos be destroyed?

This story is now closed to commenting.

The end is new for news media when they pull stunts like this. They ask for your opinion , let you vote and everything , and then you see the story is closed for commenting and there are Zero comments , the story was never open for comments.

Why ?

Because it's too much work. Because they want the popularity of running a story thats in the public interest but they don't want to deal with the ten thousand comments such an interesting story will generate.

In other words, they don't want to be a newspaper, and they hate user comments, and anytime it looks like it's going to generate too many they cut you off at the knees.

My opinion was no , don't destroy the photos, lock it up in some archive for forensic experts and psychologists to look at and learn from.

But it seems no one at CBC wants to hear that.

Moms' guilty pleas tossed after pathologist errors

2010-10-20T16:42:00.000-04:00

article

The Ontario Court of Appeal has ordered new trials for two women who originally pleaded guilty after now disgraced forensic pathologist Dr. Charles Smith testified they had asphyxiated their babies.
A judicial inquiry into Dr. Charles Smith's work found the pathologist's testimony was responsible, in part, for several people being wrongfully convicted of killing children and being sentenced to prison.A judicial inquiry into Dr. Charles Smith's work found the pathologist's testimony was responsible, in part, for several people being wrongfully convicted of killing children and being sentenced to prison. (Canadian Press)

Smith's testimony has since been found to be responsible for a number of wrongful convictions.

On Wednesday, the Appeal Court set aside guilty pleas from the women, one of whom was convicted of manslaughter and the other of infanticide.

Welcome to the wonderful world of the canadian courts. These women were forced to confess in order to avoid jail , of a crime they didn't actually commit. What happened to our great lie detectors ? What happened to that crack team of RCMP specialists who can beat a confession out of anyone ?

It seems they realy can beat a confession out of anyone.

Even those who are completely innocent.

Islam Passes Judgement on Harper's Foreign policy

2010-10-14T02:10:00.000-04:00

Siddiqui: World passes judgment on Harper’s foreign policy
(Article in the toronto star web site) 14/10/2010

Canada’s failure to get elected to the Security Council has been described as “a shocking development,” “a disaster,” “a diplomatic fiasco,” “a colossal failure” and “a dark day for Canada” that brought us “humiliation” and “shame on the world stage.”

Those are apt descriptions of this development — the first time in the 64-year history of the United Nations that Canada has failed to win a council seat, unlike in our six earlier bids. Our next bid cannot be for another 10 years.

The Harperites are reacting with their usual dishonest double-talk.

It’s no big deal not to have won a seat in a dysfunctional organization, they say. If so, why did we run?

So ok , you've got a big "I hate harper" sign on your t-shirt

It’s not just his pro-Israeli stance that made Canada a pariah at the UN. He:

Ok, this editorial is written by an anti-semite. And his name is obviously Islamic in nature. "Haroon Siddiqui" (actually it's an Indian name , but he authored a book called "Being Muslim" so ... yeah . )

Or, it is the fault of the Europeans. They must have voted as a bloc. What else can explain the win by Portugal, not even a member of the G20, let alone the G8, and an economic basket case to boot? But Europe has less than 30 votes, whereas Arab and Muslim nations have 57 and Africa 51 votes, the two blocs with good reasons to oppose us.

Ok, so we helped invade afghanistan and lost 57 votes ..thats a good reason to lose. Hardly the "disaster" you claim it to be. Figure the aftrican votes were split among 5 other contenders (or more) and defeat is inevitable for anyone who has to face an election who went to afghan or iraq.

• Diverted Canadian funds from the United Nations Relief and Works Agency to the Palestinian Authority, to boost Mahmoud Abbas against rival Hamas.

Oh dear. we supported a standing government working towards peace instead of some islamic terrorists who's only agenda is to kill all the jews in the world and you're mad at Harper for it.

Left Omar Khadr to rot in Guantanamo Bay, while defending the policy of indefinite detention as well as the American military’s kangaroo courts.

Caught red handed in a terrorist camp , and you want to bring him home and set him free.

It seems that the Toronto Star has become the Voice of Islam and the lastest Israeli Basher in this country. Kind of odd, but what they hey , newspapers have been sinking fast ever since the internet came out , I suppose it's only a matter of time before the wacko nut cases take them over as they enter their death throws.

You need more than slanted numbers and "If they love jews they must be bad" to convince most canadians, mister "Being Muslim". Because this crud only flies in the middle east , it has no place here.

Legalized Prostitution

2010-10-02T23:59:00.000-04:00

Article = none , personal opinion

(Some references to a commentary appearing in page 13 Ottawa Sun Oct 1 2010 by Brian Lilley)

So, prostitution is in the news again. A Judge has struck down the laws against it. Laws that were only against communicating or such for purposes of prostitution , the actual act of prostitution is not illegal in this country. And people are all up in arms about how can this be legal here ?

Well... first , when you're crafting a law, you have to make sure it doesn't come and bite you in the rear end , or you'll be forced to strike down your own creation. That's probably why prostitution itself is still legal , there wasn't any way to make it illegal without someone taking a hit somewhere from an over broad law.

And I'm looking at an Ottawa Sun article , a commentary , that goes on and on about how prostitution is "wrong" , and the only reasoning I can see is that he wouldn't want his daughter to do it.

There's a lot of reasons , lot of good arguments, why prostitution should be legalized. And there's a lot of good arguments why it should not be. But "I think it's wrong" isn't on either of those lists. Sorry buddy. Nor is "I wouldn't want my daughter to do it"

Much as I might agree with the sentiment , this is how bad laws are made. The kind that come back to haunt you and leave you saying "I didn't mean for that to happen !" and then you wind up voting to strike it down anyways and the whole thing becomes a decade of trouble and wasted effort.

Reviewing his other points we see ...

Netherland and Germany are cited as places of legal prostitution , that still have illegal prostitution , sex workers imported for the task are mentioned.

And so do we ! Yes, I have met a girl at a strip joint who reported she was here from another country and was doing this to send money home to her family. So, I personally know it's happening in Canada. Your argument implies by legalizing prostitution we will cause this to happen here, guess what ? It already is.

Our Wag also argues that while the court hesitates to inject any sort of morality into sexual matters , he thinks they should , arguing "morality underpins our legal system" and points to theft as being immoral.

Umm.... no. Imposing your morality on everyone else was discarded long ago. I don't know why you're bringing it up.

The Judge has decided the laws are bringing harm to the prostitutes by way of driving them underground where they become victems of organized crime , pimps, beatings, and murder because they dare not go to the police

This is the classic case of a law backfiring and doing the exact opposite of what was intended, and I believe she was right to strike it down. The purpose of the law was to protect people, not put them in harms way. It failed that purpose, get rid of it.

My Personal Opinion...

Whether it's legal or not , whether you like it or not , prostitution is going to happen. You have two choices only. Protect the prostitutes, or abandon them to the wolves, that's about it. And our current laws that have been struck down abandon them to the wolves.

Those are your choices, which will you choose ? I choose not to abandon anyone to the wolves.

Clash of the Titans @ 2010

2010-09-19T04:56:00.000-04:00

Wings away Pegasus !

Sorry , but it was difficult not to start singing that annoying hercules song. Hero's name was Perseus though in this movie. And yes, like hercules , he was a half son of Zeus

Star was Sam WORTHINGDON, i Think.

Remember that annoying terinator movie where the hero was a deathrow inmate that go ressurecd and turned into a temintor ? Yeah , that guy. And it's the same personality her. He smiles once in a while , but you swear you're looking at that same terminator guy transplanted into this movie. I swear the guy is like arnold swartznegger in his early day he can only play one roll.

ok. So . Mankind, symbolized by one single anient greek city, no longer worships the gods and starts tearing down their temples. Since the gods need mans worship to survive , they cant have this , so man and gods go to war, with lots and lots of really cool modern special effects on the side of the gods , who are highly hamstrung by the fact that the more men they kill the weaker they become.

Philisophically , as an aspiring writer, I find the whole situation fascinating. How do you go to war with someone you don't want to hurt ? And the whole waring philosophies of man trying to do things their own way and forget about the gods, vs the gods trying to keep their worshippers, it's a theme the modern world is struggling with in real life, making this several thousand year old myth a lot more relevant than you would expect.

In the end, big battles, awesome special effects, and an interesting philosophy debate to think about long after the movie ends.

Oh yes, the good guys win in the end. But considering how old this tale is , you probably already figured that out.

Data Stick - Wind

2010-09-19T04:39:00.000-04:00

Bought myself a Data Stick from Wind.

what the heck is a data stick , you ask ?

You stick it in the usb slot of your lap top computer (or regular computer) and ...well , it's not quite a cell phone call , but it is using the cell phone network to connect to the internet. And it has a phone number and everything , but don't call me on that number, cause there's no handset , no way to answer, no way to even hear it ring.

World of Warcraft hates it.

The first time I tried out the game on it , well it is a different provider , and they are paranoid with all the account theft going around in that online game. They locked me out and sent me a nasty email to reset my password because of suspicious activity.

But it's all good now.

100$ for the stick
45$ for "unlmited" data.
By unlimited they mean 5 gigs a month and they slow you down if you go over it, but you never actually incur extra charges above the 45$ / month.

And the best part of all ?

No contract.

If you're feeling poor , you shut it down for a month or two , and then when you're feeling rich you start it up again.

It's not for everyone. Not everyone is in a position where internet on the go will do them any good or do them much use. But if you are one of those people , it sure as heck beats the 3 year contract nonsense bell and rogers will demand of you.

House MD

2010-08-17T06:40:00.001-04:00

House Video's at Megavideo

Kind of got into the House TV series, which is an interesting thing in itself since I don't watch TV. Found a site on the net.

House is a drama about a doctor named Gregory House, some staff , and the patients they treat. I suppose I could go on and on about the stuff other people covered, or I could just put a link in HERE and let you read it when you get around to it.

One of the most interesting things about House, from the perspective of an aspiring writer , is the way the series is organized. You have to understand that the most successful shows have always been about people. Be it the latest star trek episode, or star wars , or House. The Gizmo's in start trek really should overshadow the people. In real life they would. One need only look at any modern western army and what do you see ? Tanks, stealth bombers, rifles with a ridiculously long range that should be called sniper rifles, but every rifle is that long range so they don't bother, night goggles... the toys make the war in the real world.

But in Star trek , it's all about the charactars interacting. In star wars, the force and the light sabres are really nice toys , but the one thing The Force did was balance out the toys and bring people to the front again.

House is the same way.

Lets face it. House is a total Ass. But he's a well crafted total ass. His urge to solve puzzles , manipulate people , and see how they work becomes the perfect vehical for doing , you guessed it , charactar studies. And of course it's no good to study boring people , so every one of the main charactars in that show has their own little secrets for him to slowly pick apart. Even better, the episodes are not stand alone works. They all build on each other (makeing it different from most TV series) and reference previous things the charactars have done.

And of course the major point of the medical setting is to bring in a constant string of new charactars to be picked apart and analyzed. The patients. They're all deep charactars with their own little secrets to be picked apart as well.

Other shows have tried to do this. Star Trek goes to different worlds for example, thats their endless stream of new charactars to study. But doing up a whole world every episode .. it's too broad a stroke. They're biting off more than they can chew , and it shows. Really they should have circled the same three or four planets and plumbed the depths of charactars from a very few races rather than make totally new races every single episode. That was just too much squeezed into each show, and it showed.

Babylon 5 did well, with it's station bringing in diplomants and wanderers so there was always new blood to be examined there. But again , no one was really doing the examining. You just happened to notice they were doing weird things.

Another thing that should be mentioned are the long term plots The ones that go across ten or so episodes. A new hospital owner hates house , and over ten episodes trys to fire house or get him to quit . House ticks off a cop , who makes Houses life miserable and trys to get him thrown in jail for another dozen or so episodes. The slow work up of houses insanity , trip to a mental institute, and the aftermath which is in fact still ongoing as late as the end of season 6.

Some people call it formulistic writing. But I call it a vehical. You have a relatively stable situation ( a hospital) and a steady stream of new events (in this case patients) to provide fresh blood , fresh infusions of material , so the audience doesn't grow bored.

If I was to try and write an ongoing story or novel (which by the way I am) I would make a check list of things to do in that novel.

Steady stream of new charactars
Someone to examine those new charactars
Detailed charactars , with secrets , for the main cast
Really deep main charactar , with a lot of secrets to be dribbled out a little at a time.
Always have a love interest going somewhere
Always have some secret activity going on
Long term plots ! (A given if you're writing a novel..not so much on a TV series )

And of course, you would have to first think about a framework , often called a formula , to fit all this in. Either they all stay in one place and the people come to them (hospital , space station ala babylon 5 / Deep space 9) , or a group of them go wandering and are always encountering new people (Xena Warriar Princess, David Eddings Belgariad, Original Star Trek hopping on their ship and always exploring )

Just my thoughts on the matter.

Sony 2HD diskettes 10 Pack - worthless

2010-08-08T21:49:00.000-04:00

gotta reinstall winxp on an older machine, got a back up disk but it's not bootable. So I go down to the hardware store and buy a pack of diskets.

Computer can't read the disks.

Cant format them.

Insists there's no disk in the drive.

I give up after 4 disks of this nonsense.

These guys are pirates, their product flatly doesn't work.

Ware Thee The Robots

2010-07-10T12:12:00.000-04:00

New robotic system allows medical diagnoses in remote Labrador community

NAIN, N.L. - A new robotic system has been installed at a health clinic in the remote Labrador community of Nain allowing for medical care without the need to travel.

The Remote Presence Robotic System uses a secure Internet connection to help doctors do assessments and diagnose patients in real time from another location.

Medical data, such as ultrasound images, can be transmitted through the robot and medical personnel can lead resuscitation, discuss treatment plans and interact with patients and the local health team.

So how long until some guy in india is running a robot to mop the floors, tend cash , flip your McDogfood's burger ?

How long before 100% of all jobs can be exported to other countries ? Because I mean , once you start outsourcing manual labor , its all over. Now no one will be able to hold a job in any proffession without threat of it heading overseas.

We need laws to prevent this stuff. At the very least , the job must stay in the country . Because shipping it all to the Philipines will be the end of us.

Inquiry findings hurt Taser's business, company to say

2010-07-04T17:03:00.000-04:00

Article

VANCOUVER — A British Columbia public inquiry's conclusion that a jolt from a Taser can be lethal wasn't based on all of the evidence and has hurt the manufacturer's business around the world, the company will argue in court this week.

This is like watching the tobacco companies try and sue every doctor who claims smoking is unhealthy.

But Taser International argues Braidwood didn't take into account all of the information the company provided, and that it wasn't given an opportunity to respond before the report was released.

Tasers "Response" was to spam anyone who asks with thousands and thousands of pages of utter rubbish and then demand you read every last word of it. And if you actualy did they would produce thousands more. Effecitvely they were trying to give themselves the ability to stall forever , and the judge called time on them.

The Arizona-based company says the report has forced it to travel the world to defend its products, and the findings prompted law enforcement officials in Africa to scrap a contract worth "tens of millions of dollars."

Yep. Finding out your "stun gun" is killing people is likely bad for business.

He also questioned some of the studies and statistics provided by Taser, saying their methodology and results were insufficient to conclude, as the company does, that the weapons cannot affect the heart.

Thats legalese for "you just made those studies up out of thin air" , by the way , in case you missed that.

Initially, Taser's petition also accused the commission's lead lawyer and its medical adviser of bias, but a judge later forced the company to drop those complaints, calling them "an abuse of process."

translation : You're suing everyone in sight as a terror tactic.

The company has faced dozens of wrongful death lawsuits and sends legal demands to media outlets that suggest Tasers are responsible for anyone's death.
.
.
.
Last year, Taser International sent out a news release boasting it had successfully won its 100th dismissal of a liability lawsuit.

That one hundred people sued you because someone died from your safe weapon is not something to brag about.

I was wrong. You guys arn't like the tobacco companies. You're new and improved, more vicious , more lethal version of that pattern.

Some politicians under foreign influence: CSIS

2010-06-23T00:32:00.000-04:00

Some politicians under foreign influence: CSIS
Last Updated: Tuesday, June 22, 2010 | 10:28 PM ET Comments398Recommend214
CBC News
Richard Fadden, the director of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, is interviewed by the CBC's Peter Mansbridge.Richard Fadden, the director of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, is interviewed by the CBC's Peter Mansbridge. (CBC)

Canada's spy agency suspects cabinet ministers in two provinces are under the control of foreign governments, CBC News has learned.

Several members of B.C. municipal governments are also under suspicion, Richard Fadden, the director of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, told CBC News in an exclusive interview.

"We're in fact a bit worried in a couple of provinces that we have an indication that there's some political figures who have developed quite an attachment to foreign countries," Fadden said.

At least five countries are surreptitiously recruiting future political prospects in universities, with China acting the most aggressively, he said. But Middle East countries are also involved.

"A number of countries take the view that if they can develop influence with people relatively early in their careers, they'll follow them through," Fadden said. "Before you know it a country is providing them with money, there's some sort of covert guidance."

Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/politics/story/2010/06/22/spying-csis.html#ixzz0reCQrHsb

--- ---- ---

In the vastness of the internet, some news articles have a habit of mysteriously vanishing , never to be seen again. So I'm just going to clip this one and hang onto it , if you don't mind too much. It's down played here, but it's a pretty outragous accusation. If it wasn't CSIS making these accusations, I would probably ignore it as part of the tin foil hat crowd , but since it isn't ...

Why I love my Wind Phone

2010-06-23T00:06:00.000-04:00

Article = none, personal experience

Make and model : Huawei U1250 vs Samsung m610

The Samsung phone , which I got from Bell 3 years ago and just termiated , has the ability to take pictures, play music, and of course , make phone calls. This is common to both phones.

Price

The Samsung cost 325$ (full price) or 100$ and a 3 year contract. The Huawei was the cheapest lowest bottom of the line Wind had and cost me 70$ + tax , no contract. (Wind has no contracts)

Play Music
The Samsung has an annoying "universal" jack on the side that will accept the power cable for recharging , the data cable for loading up tunes from your computer ,and the head phone for playing music. The jack broke within the first 2 months, and took them 4 months of trial and error to eventually fix. During which I had to pay bell their monthly fee despite not having my phone. They pointed to the distributer (wirelesswave) and said it was their problem.

After which , I had to be careful to use the jack only for power because thanks to their four month delay I was now out of warrenty and it would cost me a fortune to fix it a second time. Barring spending 120$ for a blue tooth head set that could play music , my music phone suddenly no longer played music. I bought a cheap40$ mp3 player and 20$ ear plugs and counted myself lucky.

The Huawei has a standard jack on the top , the kind on your stereo , your mp3 player, any random electronic device. I was able to take my store bought earplugs and plug them in and they worked just fine. I was also able to take the 1 gig memory chip from the old Samsung and put it in the Huawei and it even read the songs that were on it.

The jack for connecting to the computer was the standard "small" usb cable , and it came with such a cable (I now have 3 identical such cables, they all work , so I know it's some kind of standard) and it automaticaly installed (under WinXP) and I was able to delete the old tunes and put in new ones with little fuss.

No Connection

The Bell phone (Samsung) would try to connect when I was in a dead zone , like the hospital, and it was totally useless without such a connection. It wouldn't tell you the time of day , play music , nothing. Basically if Bell cut you off your phone died.

The Wind phone (Huawei) after I phoned up wasn't active for the first hour. During which it would happily play tunes from the memory card and tell me the (admittedly wrong) time. So if I cancel my Wind account , my phones mp3 abilites are unaffected.

Internet

Bell refuses to block the internet. No way , no how , no helping you sabatage the settings so it won't actually connect , and you buy the 7$ / month internet plan (which is useless on the phone) or it's 50$ / megabyte. And if you're near the end of contract and ask to remove the internet feature because you're going to just pull the battery and dump the thing ? They tack on 11 months to your contract if you change any features. So don't bother.

Wind happily blocked the internet from their end. No charge.

Texting

Both wind and Bell blocked texting from their phones. Bell tried to do a sales job on you , but in the end if you insisted they would block it anyways.

I attribute this more to one of our previous prime ministers getting hot and bothered under the collar and saying nasties about texting to all phone providers , than I do to the policies of any particular company.

Monthly Charges
Bell wanted 30$ / month for voice 400 minutes, +7$ / month for internet that was totally useless that they basically extorted from me under threat of 50$ /megabyte data charges if I didn't put that feature on, and 11 month contract renewal if I tried to take it off.

Wind wants 35$ / month unlimited voice. There's a deal for half off before the end of june , but I'm not really counting breif specials since both companies have them. Paid in advance and if I get into trouble they'll just shut the phone off during the periods I can't afford it, rather than racking up the charges.

Contract
Bell demandes a three year contract , and buried way deep in it is a clause that says they can change their mind any time they like and you are stuck with it. You don't get to say "thats not what I signed up for !". This comes into importance when they try to save you from leaving and going off to some other company by promising you outragous things. I worked in a call center and I had such calls all the time. The "Save" department never left any notes about such deals , and so the customer was generally stuck in another 3 year contract with no real savings or bonus at all.

(Rogers has a similar contract clause, by the way)

Wind has no contracts.

Conclusion :

Wind Mobile wins hands down . Why ? Policy. They don't try and gouge you every time you turn around. Bell does. Monthly prices are similar (Bell lowered them drastically to come close to wind) but the aggrivation factor makes all the difference in the world.

Harper says Air India inquiry report a 'damning indictment'

2010-06-17T17:09:00.001-04:00

article

Prime Minister Stephen Harper, right, talks Malcolm Edwards, Shipra Rana and Monique Castonguay, members of the Air India Victims Families Association, in his office on Parliament Hill Thursday following the release of the final inquiry report on the 1985 terrorist attack. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick

Four years and 200 witnesses later, Justice John Major concludes a long-sought federal inquiry into the 1985 terrorist attack with a massive report that finds systemic failures and errors by Canada’s police and intelligence agencies...

Thank you for stalling this matter for TWENTY FIVE YEARS so that we can see that the guys in charge of our police long long ago were incompetant twerps but it's too late to do anything about it because they're all retired and some of them have even died of old age by now.

The usefulness of a 25 year old inquiry cannot be understated, because there is no understatement that can describe "less than useless" or "total and complete waste of time".

The Canadian government appreciates you letting them jerk you around for decades and generally doing nothing about this.

Thank you and good night.

Torn Memories of Nanjing

2010-06-08T13:11:00.000-04:00

Japanese vets admit on film to Nanjing atrocities

Activist Tamaki Matsuoka is challenging Japanese perceptions of the country's war record with a new documentary on the atrocities known as the Rape of Nanking.

Her film, Torn Memories of Nanjing, combines the memories of Japanese war veterans with accounts by Chinese survivors of the massacres of 1937-38, after Japan captured the former capital city of Nanking.

About 1950 a funny thing was invented. It was called The Pill , and it was a reliable form of birth control.

This had a significant impact on world history. Why ? Because before The Pill the only way to pare off the population and make sure they don't explode beyond their food supply and kill everyone , was to go to war with your neibour and get all your young men (and theirs) killed off.

It became a bit of a sport , european nations actually held "summer wars" on a schedule and everything. Regular paring off of the population was good for the nation.

Whenever I hear about the atrocities and evil things done in world war 2 and before , I can't help but think. We were a different race then. War was actually the only path to racial survival. It wasn't very nice, but it was a fact of life. Death was a fact of life.

But not anymore.

The varying atrocities of world war two and before are not on the germans hands or on the japanese hands. The blood is on all our hands. All nations did it. The only way to be a nation was to do it.

The past belongs in a history book. Interesting read, but the current generation wasn't even born when those events occured. And we certainly didn't live under the shadow of the choices those people faced, and the rather nasty reality they had to deal with every day of their lives.

Don't spit on the guys grave until you walk a mile in his shoes. That's all I'm saying.

Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/arts/film/story/2010/03/31/nanjing-documentary.html?ref=rss&loomia_si=t0:a16:g4:r2:c0:b0#ixzz0qHYMjVCg

New credit cards pose security problem

2010-06-03T13:13:00.001-04:00

Article

Most newly issued credit cards pose major fraud and privacy concerns because of how they're designed to be scanned through the air, some cyber-security experts warn.

"Contactless" MasterCards and Visa cards have been available in Canada for several years, but they've only recently reached the bulk of consumers as the country's biggest banks adopt them.

The credit cards have an embedded computer chip called a radio frequency identification, or RFID, tag. When waved near a payment terminal in a store, the chip supplies the card's number and expiry date through radio waves, avoiding the need to swipe or insert the card or have a cashier handle it.

'It's not encrypted, which is not what we were expecting.'—IT security expert Pablos Holman

And that's the first problem, U.S. cyber-security expert Pablos Holman says.

Anyone can buy an RFID credit card reader online, where second-hand units sometimes sell for under $10, and start scanning cards in public — without cardholders knowing.

WHAT ????

You mean some turkey can just bump into me on a crowded bus with a back pack with a scanner hidden inside , scan my credit card, and next thing I know the dang thing has been racked up ?

One of the comments to the article suggests tin foil in the wallet.

Since you're not supposed to put tinfoil in the microwave because it messes the thing up , and microwave cooks by "micrwoaves" (radio waves) , seems a reasonable precaution.

quick ! Where's the tin foil !

No , not for my head ! For my wallet !

Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2010/05/31/f-rfid-credit-cards-security-concerns.html#socialcomments#ixzz0poLQk9zQ

Google dumps Windows. But can the rest of us?

2010-06-03T11:43:00.001-04:00

Article

According to the Financial Times, Google is in the midst of replacing all of its Windows-based desktop PCs with ones that run Mac or Linux, citing security concerns since the company was a target of a hack originating in China back in January of 2010.

This may be something of a shock to everyone, but Google has never really been completely reliant on the Windows platform, so this is a pretty easy “fix” for the company.

Now why wouldn't you be using windows ?

Oh yes ! You're in competition with them (microsoft) ! ha ha ha !!

Or their search engine business.

So ..they have an operating business, a search engine business, a database business, a compiler business, a game business...umm..exactly what , when it comes to computers , do they not have ?

Hmm...

You know , I think that non windows platforms are going to be come really popular shortly , since you now have to get off of windows in order not to compete with microsoft, but simply to stay in business.

The capitalists realize the evil of monopolies. This is born by their actions. Monopolies are what you impose on someone else, not what you suffer.

:)

You Have just won .. "Click"

2010-06-02T12:52:00.000-04:00

Ontario man bilked of $150,000 in email scam

Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2009/01/14/email-scam.html?ref=rss&loomia_si=t0:a16:g4:r5:c0:b0#ixzz0piOzRctQ

A southern Ontario man says he now owes his friends and family $150,000 after international email scam artists bilked him of the funds by convincing him he was about to inherit a fortune.

Let me educate you on proper protocal when receiving corospondance from total strangers.

"You have just one ..." Click ! Hang up the phone.

"Dear Mr Uttawa Bud , I have found your Blug a Fascinating Read but I wood like to interest you in an issue of sum concearn to me. My Uncle who lives in Somalia has inherited a fotune but needs to move it out of the country quickly before ... " Delete !

Ring Ring ? "Mr Ottawa Boy ? My name is Joyce , please stand by while I transfer you to Marlene " Click ! (Joyce is a computer doing cold calls..the tip off is she doesn't let you get a word in edgewise so you usually don't catch on she's a recording..usually is good enough for a telemarketter)

Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2009/01/14/email-scam.html?ref=rss&loomia_si=t0:a16:g4:r5:c0:b0#ixzz0piOpWviE

Your conference is now my conference

2010-06-01T19:34:00.000-04:00

Stronach aims to put girls, women on G20 agenda

A group of young women from G20 countries will meet in Toronto later this month, with the intent of putting the concerns of girls and women squarely in the spotlight.

A young group of woman have decided to crash a conference of bankers and financial leaders in order to make a publicity stunts o they can have ... what .. votes for women ? They already that. Treat all women in the world by western standards ? Umm..not gonna work. Most dictators would rather shoot them.

but the point is ... why are you bothering a bevy of bankers for this balderdash ?

I have decided I'm starting a new political party. It will be the Free Beer on Friday Political Party. And I"m going to raise awareness of it by bashing some conference or another. OH here's one... Plumbers Technical Standards Association ...thats a good one. Lets crash the plumbers conference so we can advertise a politicial party !

Dumb dumb dumb.

Even worse. The Plumbers won't be holding their conference in town anymore. It draws too much radical attention. In fact no one will hold a conference in this berg anyomre because hey , if you're gonna crash teir party , you're gonna crash anyones, right ?

Bad Propaganda

2010-06-01T19:17:00.000-04:00

Witnesses cast doubt on Israel's convoy raid account

"Personally I saw two-and-a-half wooden batons that were used... There was really nothing else. We never saw any knives.

"This was an attack in international waters on a peaceful mission... This was a clear act of piracy," he added.
.
.
.
The pictures, from Arabic TV, showed the campaigners in a jubilant mood. One said she was determined either to get to Gaza or to die a martyr.

You know what I hate worse than propaganda ?

Bad propaganda. Propaganda where people obviously believe they just have to go down this recipie and then they're golden, and no one will challenge them.

Propaganda like , say organizing a peaceful outing to bring food to the Gaza Strip , and starting all this peace and goodness with a rousing round of chanting "DEATH TO MY ENEMIES" and swearing you'll get there or die.

Propaganda like saying there's no weapons on these peaceful ships, just really big sticks. And oh yeah , the "unarmed" passengers , with a history of suicide bombing , rushed some armed guards in the vain hope that they'd all get shot up and it would make a nice embarrasing international incident.

Except the invaders were armed with paintball guns. Painful .. but for 680 people 9 casualties is pretty low.

And hten of course you get to accuse the invaders of being pirates, despte the fact that you started this whole "peaceful protest" with a bunch of chants about how you were going to kill them.

Yep. You managed to hit every point on the peaceful protest list.

And a few extra that make you look like a donkeys behind.

I have no sympathies for protesters that want to kill people. I really don't care how "peaceful" they think they are , they still want people dead, they aint peaceful.

Failure to understand the phrase "Peace Movement"

2010-05-30T11:35:00.001-04:00

Gaza aid flotilla 'leaves Cyprus'

The Palestinian territory has been under an Israeli and Egyptian economic blockade for almost three years, with only limited humanitarian aid allowed.

The activists, from the Free Gaza Movement, want to break the blockade.

Israel imposed the measures after the Islamist movement Hamas took power in Gaza.

Hamas has fired thousands of rockets into Israel over the past decade.
.
.
.
For days, human rights activists aboard the flotilla of ships have been saying they are due in Gaza soon, but they are now running days late.

In the 60's , as I'm sure everyone knows, there were these peace protest. People didn't want war anymore. They wanted you to stop shooting at each other , stop fighting, etc etc. And they organized protests. They had sleep ins. They had love ins. they invented non-violent protests. This was where Green Peace was born.

In the new century, a new form of war has broken out.

Some people have noticed the tactics that the war protesters used in the sixties , and decided that must work on the western nations, so instead of bullets , they'll use non violent protest.

But they're not interested in stopping war. They've taken sides, and the definately want one side to win , and the other side to drop dead. Peace is just a tactic, world domination of Islam is their end goal. So all western non islamic nations will now be subject to "peaceful protests" until they all drop dead and die.

OH thats not what they say , that would be too violent. What they say is "they should go someplace else". Trouble is they want the whole dang planet , so there really isn't any "some place else" when you're out to take it all.

And the whole peace and harmony and love they neibour and brother hood of man thing ? Only if you're a muslim. Only if you're THEIR variety of muslim. And there's a bunch. And they fight each other constantly. With bullets and riots and using unarmed civilians as armies in wave attacks. And it's pretty obvious by their actions they don't give a dang about the welfare or lives of their true believers.

umm...yeah. Failed to understand the concept of "Peace Movement".

These people don't want peace. They want to conquer it all. Bullets didn't work , they'll try something else.

But peace is not what they're interested in.

And living under their system would incurr a breif hellish life and a nasty death.

I'll pass thanks.

Sink that flotilla. Those guys are soldiers , not civilians.

Privacy : Why do I care ?

2010-05-27T14:05:00.000-04:00

Facebook changes are 'not enough,' say groups

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) says that "more is needed" from Facebook to address privacy criticisms.

In a blog post, the civil liberties group praised Facebook for a "great first step" towards giving members of the site more control over their data.

However, it warned members against choosing the site's recommended privacy control setting.

So. Why do I care about privacy ? Why am I running a blog under an anonymous name instead of my real name ? Why the hassel ?

The truth is , I didn't care about privacy. No one cared.

Until I went to work one day , and my employer asked me if I played guitar, if I was in a band. Yes I played guitar , no I'm not in a band or thinking of starting one , why do you ask ?

He did a search on google. Some guy with the same name as me was starting a rock and roll band and he was worried I was going to leave him.

I went to a job interview at a personel agency. They asked for my Facebook page. I said I didn't have one. They demanded it , insisted, threatenned not to hire me if they found out I was lying to them.

And by the way , why don't you have a facebook page ?

It's too big a violation of my privacy. I'll get spammed by half the world. And can I have my resume back ? I don't want to work for you.

I used to post on the old usernet news groups. You always had to be careful not to leave an email address, because automatic programs sifted through all the usergroups looking for anything that even looked like an email address and put you on a mailing list to try and sell you viagra and gawd only knows what else.

I got drunk one time, and I stumbled across the email address of Sadam Hussain (dictator of Iraq at the time, he's been deposed by the americans since then). Did I send him hate mail ? No , I signed him up for every homosexual porn site I could find.

Why do I care about privacy ?

I didn't, until a hotmail email address got spammed out of existance. And hten hotmail actually shut it down because there was too much traffic but for 30$ / month they'd be happy to reactivate it.

I didn't, until people started calling my cell phone , from the USA , to sell me junk. On my dime.

I didn't, until a job interview gone wrong where they demanded my facebook page so they could check up on me.

I didn't , until I started looking for a job, and whenever I answered the phone, it wasn't for a job interview, it was a telemarketer trying to sell me stuff, and they had my name.

Now, I care.

Schizophrenic Windsor man gets life for murder

2010-05-26T09:36:00.000-04:00

Article

Assistant Crown attorney Gary Nikota said the sentence was appropriate, since the beating of Kearley was not the first time Downs displayed violence.

"Five months before, he engaged in a vicious attack on a mother and a young child for no apparent reason," said Nikota.

So your first incident was when you , for schizophrenic reasons, decided to beat on some random woman and her kid passing by ? Because God told you to ?

Let me guess. before that you were completely non violent, never did a thing in your life , right ?

It's sad to watch people walk down this path. Especially when one of them is known to you. It's like watching one of those dumb zombie movies where your best friend is slowly turned into some kind of monster and then comes chasing after you trying to kill you.

I hate when that happens.

US cartoonist apologises over Facebook Muhammad row

2010-05-21T08:55:00.000-04:00

Article

A cartoonist whose work inspired an internet campaign inviting people to draw images of the Prophet Muhammad has apologised for her role in the row.

Writing on her blog, Molly Norris said her satirical cartoon was "hijacked" and that the campaign was "offensive to Muslims".

The problem is that as is the case many times, her first instinct was the correct one. The religion of Islam is attempting to tell the entire world how they can live their lives, and attempt to control all commentary on Islam, and this is not acceptable.

I'm sorry if you don't like the things we say and think about your religion, but shooting people who say bad things doesn't help. It only makes it worse. Your religion, in fact any religion , isn't protected over here. People have a right to comment on these things and decide they don't much like them , or think they're silly or foolish or what not.

And running around saying "You have insulted our religion , you must die" is like a politician running around saying "I take insult to that , kill all those people."

Islam is a dominant religion , it is a political force. And it has entered the field of politics and that's life. It gets rotten tomatoes thrown at it just like every other politician , that's the price of power. That's what you have to put up with when you seek to rule any large group of people.

Deciding there can be no criticism allowed of a political force, be it a person or a religion , that is the real intolerance. That is what is truly unacceptable.

And that's why this whole cartoon thing is a flash point. You're stifling criticism of a ruling power.

Gnumeric Disapointment

2010-05-20T19:30:00.000-04:00

Yeah, now they tell me I'm diabetic. And they gave me this thing to stab my finger with and take readings and I'm supposed to write down those readings and everything.

Hmm....a spread sheet can do that job easy.

So I got my free copy of Gnumeric, which |I recommend to all my friends, and I have to tell you , I've never really used it before. Oh I did quick demo's and tried one or two things, but I never actually used the dang thing on a daily basis to actually perform work.

So I stab myself, and I take readings, and I put them in the spreadsheet.

And a bunch of readings suddenly go missing.

Maybe I made a mistake. Enter the latest readings , save adn close , open , and make sure they're there. Perfect.

next day their gone.

Amn I losing my mind ?

There was one very high reading it stuck in my mind. It's gone.

Gnumeric ... doesn't work. All that effort. All that enthusasm I got a free spreadsheet I don't have to pay a few hundred dollars etc etc etc....

Dang thing just doesn't work. Your "saved" data has a habit of simply evaporating.

I hate crud like that.

Kick 'em to the curb

2010-05-12T11:33:00.000-04:00

In Greek Debt Crisis, Some See Parallels to U.S.

What an interesting news article. They are seriously proposing that it's too expensive to treat sick people. What are you going to do with them ? Kick them to the curb like you're doing right now ?

Every other nation in the world can afford health care, why can't you ?

And yeah , Greek has a debt crisis, but Cuba doesn't , and it's got a great health care system doesn't it ? Ditto Canada.

It is interesting that such articles receive serious consideration in the american news media.

But when I talk with people online, in online games, I get a very different response from joe average down in america.

The Stream of Life

2010-05-09T18:43:00.003-04:00

Ever just lie in the grass, when you were a kid , and just look up at the clouds, and think "That one looks like a rabbit" , or "that one looks like a face" ?

Of course we all know, there's no rabbit in the clouds. It's your mind playing tricks on you, trying constantly to organize everything around it into meaningful patterns. And it's funny when you set that automatic part of your mind onto something that has no pattern , that is totally random ... like clouds ... what does that cloud look like ?

Life is like that too. A stream of events. People interacting , talking , fighting , misunderstanding. Throw in government agencies and over eager bureaucrats that will actively lie to you (just met one the other day when I was applying for retraining) , and life might as well just be a random stream of events.

Like looking for rabbits in the clouds.

And it's a fun game to see what kind of patterns emerge from trying to impose order and meaning onto something that has neither. The most bizzare things pop out and you cannot help but laugh at them.

Until one day you realize that you may understand it's all a game your mind is playing on you , but not everyone around you does.

That would be when your friend, who's been a little off , a little too deep into the conspiracy theories for years, runs into a stream of bad luck. And then one day blythly informs you that you are a secret agent of some sort working for the goverment to interfere in his marriage.

Wow...what a pretty bunny rabbit you found. That is totally bizzare, and yes , it's perfectly defensible, the string of events could be interperted to mean that, with just a little imagination.

Except for the part where the mystery government agency has neglected to send me any paychecks.

And you realize he doesn't think it's all a game , or doesn't realize (or accept) it's just your mind playing tricks on you . It's a random stream of events, your mind is going to produce random results. It means nothing, there is no order to be deduced. There is no pattern there no matter what you see.

I wonder sometimes , if we're all doomed to go crazy. To see patterns where there are none , and come to believe in some vast conspiracy where powerful government agencies and other groups are for unspeciied reasons concearned with the comings and goings of unimportant no bodies such as ourselves.

The only pattern I see is randomness. Or perhaps a complexity so vast it is beyond prediction by anyone and thus is close enough to randomness that you might as well just call it that.

And I think it's a cool game to let your mind chew on this randomness and see what outragous results you can come out with. But other people are doing the same thing ... and they're not playing a game.

They seem to think it's for real.

Goodbye Rich Dude. I know why you do what you do , but you've locked the keys inside of you , and there's no way for anyone to let you out back into the sunshine. All we can do is not be there when you decide to take the next step and "defend" yourself against phantom attackers by becoming violent. As it seems is the fate of most people who wear your shoes.

Goodbye.

Paranoid schizophrenia

Positive symptoms
Positive symptoms are symptoms that indicate the presence of unusual thoughts and perceptions that often involve a loss of contact with reality. Delusions and hallucinations are considered positive symptoms of paranoid schizophrenia.

* Delusions. In paranoid schizophrenia, delusions are often focused on the perception that you're being singled out for harm. Your brain misinterprets experiences and you hold on to these false beliefs despite evidence to the contrary. For instance, you may believe that the government is monitoring every move you make or that a co-worker is poisoning your lunch. You may also have delusions of grandeur — the belief that you can fly, that you're famous or that you have a relationship with a famous person, for example. Delusions can result in aggression or violence if you believe you must act in self-defense against those who want to harm you.

Goodbye Old Friend

2010-05-09T18:13:00.000-04:00

Article = none, personal experiance.

I have a friend. Lets call him rich dude. He isn't much better educated or anything , he didn't inherit anything from his parents. But he made it. He got the nice job, the shiny car , the string of girl friends. And he got it with no help from anyone else.

I've always admired him for that.

Today I had to leave him.

Apparently , according to him , I"m a government agent of some agency or another , and this agency has stooped way down to interfere between him and his wife and their divorce. And he's been acting a little off for years. I'm pretty well convinced he's lost it , and his next step will be to kidnap me and try and beat a confession out of me.

He had it all , and he got it himself. But he was always ... a little off. He was always a conspiracy theory nut. When the store down the street from his home burned down , he decided organized crime meant it as a warning to him personally. Umm..sorry , if organized crime wants to give you a warning it will be your sister or your mother they put a hit on , not the store down the street.

But dont tell him that. He won't listen.

And don't get him started on the subject of government experiments and feeding LSD to test subjects, which apparently he was one of. Don't even go down that road.

Him and his father fought , for years , over a house. He lost it all , and went deeply in debt. Then his marriage went bad, and his job as well. He went from having it all to losing it all.

And it's all a big conspiracy to him , nothing you say will convince him otherwise.

This goes on for years.

Today he announced he was convinced I was a government agent acting on his wifes behalf to ... to do what ? I have no idea. He has no money, and no one will listen to him, but don't tell him that. To listen to him he's got dirt on everyone.

There's no way to argue with a paranoid, no argument you can present , no proof that you're not part of some vast conspiracy against him.

I bought him lunch , and then I took a taxi home.

I'm hoping I don't have to get a restraining order. He's now dangerous to be around. And I got a wife of my own to protect.

Anger at Belgian face veil ban

2010-04-30T22:50:00.000-04:00

link

Muslims, academics and human rights groups have hit out at a looming public ban in Belgium on the full face veil, following a decision in the country's parliament to make the wearing of the article of clothing illegal.

This is a fascinating article in Al Jareera (English version) , a middle eastern newspaper. The subject matter itself, the pro's and con's of a face veil , are not the fascinating part thought.

The fascinating part is that the article is heavily biased. There is no stock at all given to the notion that veils are a means of enslaving women (the reason why Belgium is doing this in the first place) and a great deal of stock about human rights and freedoms.

It is interesting to see them "take a walk on the wild side" in this manner, totally supporting the Islamic point of view and not mentioning at all any counter view.

I suppose this is the fault of western media , since they also have disposed of the whole notion of balanced reporting (at least hear in Canada) so if the middle easterner's are using them as an example ...sheesh !

aid Belgium "now joins Iran and Saudi Arabia in that exclusive but unenviable rare club of countries to impose a dress code in the public domain".

You forgot Canada. (Complete Nudity is forbidden in public)

Think that might be the USA as well.

World Polled , dictators still hate USA, think democracy sucks

2010-04-18T19:58:00.000-04:00

World warming to US under Obama, BBC poll suggests

Nearly 30,000 people in 28 countries were interviewed for the poll, between November 2009 and February 2010.

Fifteen of the countries have been surveyed every year since 2005, allowing long-term trends to be discerned.

what exactly do we mean polled ? And was there a state sponsored official with a gun escorting the state sponsored translater while this poll was being conducted, to insure that the respondant didn't accidently give the wrong answer ?

methodology section reports phone or face to face, by their "partners" in each country (in other words, in despotic regimes the state sponsored minder did all the work and no polster even bothered to show up)

So all the honest democracies gave their governments the middle finger and answered honestly , and all the despotic states gave their citizens the business end of a rifle and told them what they would be answering , assuming they didn't just take the poll out of their hands and fill it out themselves.

Yes...good methology.

Excuse me while I flush this down the toilet with all the other worthless advertising I receive every day.

N.S. newspaper ordered to identify online web posters

2010-04-16T10:45:00.002-04:00

Read more: http://www.calgaryherald.com/news/newspaper+ordered+identify+online+posters/2911779/story.html#ixzz0lH4c7gYS

HALIFAX — A Nova Scotia court has ordered a Halifax newspaper to release information about several people who posted anonymous online comments on a story about alleged racism in the city's fire department.

Michelle Awad, lawyer for Bill Mosher, the fire chief, and deputy chief Stephen Thurber, said the posters made defamatory comments about the two on the website of the weekly newspaper, The Coast, and they want to file a defamation suit against them.

"They're looking to secure a remedy for the damage they believe has been done," Awad said.

The judge ruled The Coast must release whatever details it has about the authors of the comments.

So. If you post any opinions online, you can be sued for them. Even anonymous sites, these lawyers have now decided to shut down freedom of speech.

Some of the people who post , they probably deserve it , I've seen a lot of outright lies and slander posted on the cbc news site for example. But still... everyone knows you take that chance in the comments section, and you get to refute it.

Now some lawyers want to get in on the act and start suing people left right and center.

This aint good.

30% Discount

2010-04-15T14:00:00.000-04:00

I used to work in a call center.

We got a lot of strange calls. Apparently save team offered these guys 30% discount if they'd stay.

And they left no notes.

Sorry buddy you're obviously lying to me , but I'm not allowed to say that. And you're in a new contract you're sticking around for a couple of years or paying the early termination fee. Wait for him to quit yelling and either demand a supervisor or end the call.

Because I know , we don't do stuff like that.

I was surfing , doing a google search. pop up from my provider rogers. you're over 75% of you montly quota.

Phone them up. I was on unlimited internet. Then they changed that to 60 gigs. Then they changed that to 30 gigs. Then 25. At the same time my usage went from 5 gigs to 20 gigs to 40 gigs. And I'm not doing anything illegal , copying dvd's , nothing like that. Just normal perfectly legitimate usage.

And I call them up. And I get told I'm a bad boy I'm using too much data because I'm on an older plan I was automatically moved to a new one (so much for long term loyalty...take note how they claim they value you , but then try to sheer you like a sheep in the next breath)

And I wind up in retention. And they offer me a 30% discount.

And i'm thinking , you got a clause in your contract that says you can change your mind any time you like. And there's nothing I can do about it I gotta ride out the whole 3 years even if you decide to turn off the taps and give me nothing.

And I'm thinking ...why does 30% sound so familiar ?

Oh yes, I was on the other end of this conversation a few times. It didn't work out so well for the customer.

The scumminess of Rogers

2010-04-05T13:03:00.001-04:00

Phoned rogers to cancel my internet.

Offered me a higher plan at a 30% discount.

Umm... 30% off 60$ a month is still more than primus costs. Plus I'm being billed 10$ / month as a penalty for not having television.

I think they're scummy because they only make such offers when you're calling them up to quit. What about making such offers in the normal course of business instead of ripping people off by charging them 2.50$ / gigabyte overage fee's when they're not paying attention ? Thats like charging extra because we can get away with it , and then when you catch us , we'll stop but we don't give any back. I feel robbed.

I don't like dealing with people who commit robbery.

Plus various other charges that the government doesn't charge that rogers does, so primus isn't going to charge that.

Apparently their "save attempt" was to hope I can't add up a couple of numbers.

Unlmited vs 25 gig / month limit ... technically the same price in the best possible case, assuming they don't exercise their right to change their mind and rewrite the contract any time they like in any way they like.

Bye Rogers.

While I was ending the call with Rogers the line beeped and I picked it up. Primus...wanted info so they could run the credit check.

Oops...I still might not get Primus ???

This could get interesting ...

gEt out the rogers bill ... where is that 10$ fee for not having TV ? Umm... it's not broken down. Just a flat 35$ / month fee plus tax for internet.

Well ... they still kill me on bandwith even if they dropped the 10$ fee for tv a long time ago.

Goodbye Rogers. Hello Primus

2010-04-04T12:44:00.000-04:00

Article = None , personal Experience

I started out ten years ago working in rogers tech support. Internet was about 30$ / month and it was unlimited bandwith, about 1 megabyte download speed , all that I needed.

They advertise that you really need 5 or 10 meg download for games.

Unless your a game manufacturer , in which case you normally advertise that a 56k modem will work for normal play. :)

Interesting contrast there.

Then this whole kerfluffle about people downloading entire DVD's and overloading the network came along.

Then they lowered my limit to 60 gigabytes a month. No biggy , I was only using 5 gig at the time.

Then they lowered my limit to 30 gig's a month. But I never incurred any overage how bad could it be ?

Then they lowered my limit to 25 gigs a month. And they intercepted my google page (read that "hacked into my data stream to show results google would not approve of and probably had no idea of" to pop up a really nasty message saying I had reached 75% of my monthly quota.

Phone rogers. My monthly quota was no 25 gigabytes a month. And I had used 20 gigs in about 14 days.

Every application on my computer , it seemed was using more and more bandwidth , but rogers was giving you less and less. And now the two had met in the center.

"You're on a grandfathered plan. You have to upgrade to a new one. " And sign a three year contract. If you fart , rogers considers you to have signed a three year contract. See my blog entry about the bell non contract contract where they can change anything they like and you cna't do nothing about it , rogers has the same thing , needless to say I'm not signing a three year contract with these idiots.

My wifes old phone provider , Primus has internet , and she reports they're a real business ,they won't just take your money and run as she suspects some company I never heard of before might do. (looked them up on the internet ..I won't mention their name since I know nothing about them they might even be perfectly legitimate).

35$ a month. No contract. 30 days notice to cancel. Unlimited bandwidth. About 5 megabit download speed (I was using 1.5 megabyte from rogers).

Heck , even if they lower the bandwidth to 200 gigs eventually , I'm only using 40 gig a month right now.

Signed up immediately. They didn't even want my credit card number they'll bill me later. They're fed ex-ing the modem. 4-7 days.

When I get it working , I'm cancelling rogers.

Rogers wants 35$ / month for 25 gig bandwidth and they tack on a 10$ penalty because I don't actually have a TV with them. And they want a three year contract you sign every time you fart.

I am so out of there.

Ow my eye !

2010-03-29T19:58:00.000-04:00

Article = none , personal experience.

So , I already mentioned I failed a GTT (Glucose Tolerance Test) and it's pretty certain I'm a diabetic now (type two).

So they sent me off to the eye doctor to see what kind of harm diabetes had done to my eyes. And I waited for a while , and I saw, a technician I guess. Some guy you see before you see the doctor.

And he did an eye test. And then he had to "measure" my eye.

Which involves putting in eye drops , which I hate , and then he takes this little hand probe thingy and very gently touches your eye with it.

Which of course, is the part where I freak out. Ow my eye ! I can't stand having anything in my eye or touching my eye. It doesn't hurt , he was very gentle, but he had to try a few times. When the probe was coming closer and closer I literally could not make myself stay still. It was awful.

And then I saw the doctor , and she did it again , in both eyes. Repetition didn't improve my reaction , I actually yelled as if in pain. More unpleasant surprise, there wasn't any pain , I just hated the very idea of anything touching my eye.

In Philosophy , there is a belief that you do not deal with the world. You deal with a projection onto your awareness, that your senses draw for you. Your eyes, your ears , etc etc. When I got poked in the eye, this suddenly became crystal clear that I was looking at some kind of natural movie screen and not actually experiancing the real world.

How is that you ask ?

Ever see those blooper reels in DVD's about making the particular movie your watching ? And sometimes someone bumps into the camera ,and it all flexes and the whole view gets distorted for just a moment , and you instantly say "He touched the Camera" ?

Yeah. They touched the camera. Only I wasn't watching any movie. And I wasn't wearing glasses. And the whole world went DING ! and got all distorted for just a second.

PS: She said I have cataracts , but they're not serious to operate on , she wants to see me in a year.

Vancouver Police At it Again

2010-03-24T22:16:00.001-04:00

Yet another example of Police Brutality in Vancouver BC , Canada.

At least this time they left the Tasers behind and no one died.

Rise of the Robots

2010-03-15T21:36:00.000-04:00

Article = none, personal opinion.

Lost my job a while back (well they announced it , still got a month left before they kick me to the curb). It got outsourced to the Philipines. The dollar a day guys , as I call them.

I phone tech support for my Dell Computer. I get India.

I talk to a guy at work , ask him how long he's been here. Tells me he's worked four call centers the last year. Why you quit so many jobs ? He didn't . They all outsourced to pakistan. Or china. Or in the case of the one we work at at the moment, the philipines.

Dollar a day guys taking over everything.

So I'm thinking maybe retraining, what is it I can retrain in that they cannot outsource to these dollar a day guys ?

I remember an old news article on the internet. It was very very hard to get doctors to move to small towns, so their solution was to build robots that the doctors could run by remote control. Nice color monitors, remote controled hands.. get a doctor on the line to sit in the control booth , great idea.

Now I'm thinking ... they outsourced all the brainy stuff. Book keeping , computer programming , even computer repair. When these robots get going ... they're going to outsource the manual labor to.

We're gonna have dollar a day guys running a robot cleaning shopping centers and stuff. No need for high end artificial intellgence when you can hire a philipino for a dollar a day to sit in a booth on the other side of the world and do it.

so what does that leave for us ?

Does it leave anything for us , any job we can do to earn a living ?

Because you aint selling me your stereo and your nice computer if I can't hold down a job. Or if I only make a dollar a day.

Booksellers take on Ottawa over Amazon's distribution plans

2010-03-09T12:34:00.000-05:00

Article

Canada's booksellers are urging Ottawa to block Amazon.com from building a distribution network in Canada, raising the stakes in a showdown over government restrictions on foreign control of the cultural industry.

Thats nice. Why do I care ?

“A few years ago I was disadvantaged from having a partner. That's not to say I didn't succeed. I, as a competitor, was in a position to be able to invest for a long time – losing money – to get to where I got. Many people would not have had the deep pockets that I had and, as a result, may not have succeeded without ... a U.S. or a foreign partner.”

This is why I care. "Deep Pockets" is the relevant term.

Americans come in , open up shop , lose money for a couple of years to put the competition out of business , and then they own the place. Time to raise prices. Their pockets are deeper than any canadian ones because they come from a country ten times our size. And they don't hesitate to use that size advantage.

So unless you all want to be working minimum wage jobs for americans , this kind of thing needs to be stopped. And not just for books. But for everything.

Raising the minimum wage can only do so much. It looks like maybe one of those so called "trade wars" is the way to go , where we stop buying american and they stop buying canadian ...hmm..didn't they already stop buying canadian a long time ago ?

So what have we got to lose ?

Yahoo Issues Takedown Notice for Spying Price List

2010-03-04T09:47:00.000-05:00

Yahoo Issues Takedown Notice for Spying Price List

Yahoo isn’t happy that a detailed menu of the spying services it provides law enforcement agencies has leaked onto the web.

Shortly after Threat Level reported this week that Yahoo had blocked the FOIA release of its law enforcement and intelligence price list, someone provided a copy of the company’s spying guide to the whistleblower site Cryptome.

The 17-page guide describes Yahoo’s data retention policies and the surveillance capabilities it can provide law enforcement, with a pricing list for these services. Cryptome also published lawful data-interception guides for Cox Communications, SBC, Cingular, Nextel, GTE and other telecoms and service providers.

Yep. You have no privacy online anymore. You really shouldn't be writing emails that have much more info in them than "meet you at the coffee shop as usual".

Only question is , now that it's open to the police, how long before your private emails are open to the spammers ?

So long and thanks for the Cash

2010-02-03T01:27:00.000-05:00

A.I.G. Plan for $100 Million Bonus Payout Draws Fire

The American International Group has agreed to cut employee bonuses by $20 million and will distribute about $100 million on Wednesday, according to people with knowledge of the negotiations.

.
.
.

A.I.G. first promised the retention bonuses to keep people working at its financial products unit, which traded in the derivatives that imploded in September 2008, leading to the biggest government bailout in history.

Ok. So. You dumped the world economy down the toilet. And you're walking way with millions. Do you have anything to say on your way to your early retirement party ? Other than "So long SUCKERS ! GAWD I CANNOT BELIEVE HOW STUPID YOU PEOPLE ARE !!!"

No ?

I didn't think so.

The American banker. Fail so badly you take the whole world down into a depression. And you still collect millions.

The Bell Non-Contract Contract

2010-01-30T17:16:00.000-05:00

Not being too happy with Rogers since they pulled that stunt with cancelling everyones unlimited texting and charging them, and then telling them they're still under contract, I thought I'd see if Bell was any better.

Bell Online Service Agreement

Changes; Amendments. To the extent permitted by applicable law, Your Service Provider may modify the Service, this Service Agreement, including any other document that forms part thereof, at any time and from time to time, with or without your consent or authorization, including but not limited to modification or amendment of Service Fees or modification, amendment or termination of any Service feature. Your Service Provider will notify you of any material amendment to this Service Agreement or of any material change to the Service in advance by posting notice of such change at www.bell.ca/agreements, by sending you notice via email to your Bell Internet parent email address or to another email address provided by you to Your Service Provider (in which case it is your responsibility to ensure that such email address remains current at all times) or by using any other notice method that will likely come to your attention. You agree to go to www.bell.ca/agreements periodically and to review this Service Agreement to be aware of such modifications. Nothing in this Service Agreement shall be construed as obligating you to accept receipt of the Service after any change is made to the Service or this Service Agreement; however, to the extent permitted by applicable law, your sole remedy in the event that you do not wish to accept such change shall be cancellation of the Service (and termination of this Service Agreement) including the payment of any discounted or deferred Service Fees (as set out in Section 3) or other charges that may apply.

'Nother words. We can change our minds about anything we offer you , and your sole recourse is to cancel and pay up all cancellation fees.

Which is another way of saying "Nope...we're no different than rogers. We do as we please and you need to bend over and take it up the (ahem) you silly fool you dared to sign a contract with us now you gonna pay and pay and pay ..."

There seems to be a lot of non-contract contracts going on here. We are bound to pay , they are bound to do not a dang thing at all.

I aint signing. Not anything. Not ever.

The American Oligarchy

2010-01-23T12:27:00.000-05:00

24 States’ Laws Open to Attack After Campaign Finance Ruling

A day after the United States Supreme Court ruled that the federal government may not ban political spending by corporations or unions in candidate elections, officials across the country were rushing to cope with the fallout, as laws in 24 states were directly or indirectly called into question by the ruling.

Thus is born the American Oligarchy , or rule of the few. If you are a corperation, like Taser Corp , and your stun weapon is actualy killing people, you may now legally bribe politicians into going to bat for you , or create massive attack ad campaigns at election time to punish those who hurt your bottom line. (Which they have already threatenned).

Big business now rules the roost there, even more so than before. You can expect consumers to get the shaft on a frequent basis for everything. You can expect laws to be changed to become more lienient towards the indiscretions of large corperations. You can then expect those laws to be completely gutted in the name of profit. You thought the USA was a big polluter before ? You aint seen nothing yet.

In a society ruled by profit, you can now expect the USA to go to war for reasons of profit alone.

The whole world just got a little less safe.

Deactivate Facebook

2009-12-23T12:30:00.001-05:00

Went to my old facebook account to get rid of it.

You cannot delete it. You can only deactivate it. And it specifically states people can still send messages to your account , look at photo's etc etc.

In my case there's nothing on facebook but a few rants about what a horrible violation of privacy it is. But other people who may have posted something... there's no removing it ..

(edit)
Delete Facebook

A google search turned this up. It doesn't show if you search facebook or look for an option , but google found it.

It seems facebook doesnt' want to get rid of those embaraassing photo's of you getting drunk and piddling on the cop car just before they arrested you. Isn't that just so irritating ?

Turn over Facebook history, judge orders

2009-12-23T12:25:00.000-05:00

Article

Rosemary Carter is fighting Herbert Connors for damages after the two were involved in a collision in the northern New Brunswick community five years ago.

"Incidentally, it must not be forgotten that this legal action was commenced by the plaintiff and in launching it she has implicitly accepted certain intrusions into what otherwise might be private information, the disclosure of which would ordinarily be left to her own personal judgment."

So , you got into a car accident, you're sueing the guy who hit you , his lawyer demands you turn over your face book account, and it's legal.

Nice. Feel like sueing someone ? Hope you don't have a face book account. Feel like looking for a job ? Collecting insurance , anything at all almost with any large organization ? They want to look at your face book account.

Give me six sentences from an innocent man and I will hang him , as the Riechlieu quote goes. Give them your face book account and it wont stop there.

Assumed Sale Technique

2009-12-18T12:47:00.000-05:00

Toronto telemarketing firm fined $15M for scam

DataCom telemarketers succeeded in the scam by using an "assumed sale" technique. They implied that the business had ordered a directory listing in the past and it had been authorized by someone in the company. Telemarketers would then use aggressive collection tactics to ensure payment. The targeted firms were usually duped out of $200 to $500.

This is actually how most collection agencies work.

You get in trouble with some company , usually because they're ripping you off, and they don't argue with you. They just send you to the collection agency. Now the collection agencie has no records to check anyones story so they just assume you're guilty as charged, and demand payment.

The really sleezy one is when my wife went through bankruptcy , and the collection agencies ignored that and still harrassed her about it and demanded payments.

And when she refused ? They sold her debt to another collection agency and it started all over again. Around and around and around.

Mom takes on Rogers policy

2009-12-16T02:28:00.000-05:00

Mom takes on Rogers policy

A Coquitlam mother of three text-happy teenagers is angry with her cellphone provider for altering their contract, but Rogers Wireless said the customer was given advance warning that some terms of their agreement would change.
.
.
.
"It’s wrong for Rogers to be able to change anything they want,” she said. “I want them to honour our original deal. I have no control over who texts my children.”

A spokesperson for Rogers said they notified customers in June 2009 that their contracts would be changing.

Edward Bukszar, a Simon Fraser University business professor, said the move is legal but risky for Rogers.

“You always risk alienating customers when you change things like this regardless of the strategy they put behind it,” Bukszar said. “Customers feel distanced from a company they’re expected to be loyal to.”

Welcome to the wonderful world of the Non-Contract Contract.

That would be the part where you're stuck with a two year contract and they can change the terms any time they like and there's nothing you can do about it. Giving notice that they're about to rip you off doesn't help if you don't get the opportunity to cancel , etc etc.

The day of signing contracts is over, if you ask me. Since you're bound by them and the other party is not , and you gotta know this has legs and is going to spread, there is no point to it. It's now become another form of advertising. Reel them in with a great deal then hit them hard with a fee hike afterwards.

I will sign nothing with Rogers anymore. Or bell, but thats another matter.

Rights groups Think Taliban just peachy, continue to Bash Westerners

2009-11-24T12:28:00.000-05:00

Rights groups add to call for Afghan torture inquiry

OTTAWA – Canada has put at risk every Afghan prisoner it has transferred over the past eight years, the head of Amnesty International said today.

What about the all the people the Taliban were busy murdering , do they count for anything ?

At that time, prisoners were being handed over to U.S. forces in Afghanistan, despite the likelihood of further transfers on to Guantanamo Bay in addition to the "strong risk of torture and ill-treatment" at U.S. detention centres in Afghanistan, Amnesty states.

What about the Taliban throwing acid on school girls faces because they dared to attend school ? What about how they continue to this day to terrorize and close schools, murdering teachers and students alike ?

"We highlighted that given the prevalence and systematic nature of torture in Afghan prisons, such transfers were prohibited under international law," the open letter states.

Why is it Amnesty International only goes after western nations , never anyone else ? If I was a betting man , I'd say "follow the money" , who's benifiting this ? And that puts Amnesty in the pocket of every third world dictatorship on the planet.

Why don't you go after them for a change ?

The deafening silence of your response is answer enough , I think.