Chronicling the depravities of the State.
In the realm of things that are bound to happen Robb Allen informs us that machines with sentience and the desire to murder humans is no longer reserved just for Skynet guns but now also includes vehicles:
“Spira is in the Progressive Insurance Automotive X Prize to educate the world that the #1 cause of deaths in 15 ‐ 25 year olds is from unsafe vehicles that slaughter people.”
Quick we need to enforce strict national vehicle control laws before more people die!
This story can be labeled, “Only in America.” Five kids, California no less, were sent home on Cinco de Mayo for wearing shirts that had the American flag on them:
The five students — Daniel Galli, Austin Carvalho, Matt Dariano, Dominic Maciel and Clayton Howard — were then told they must turn their T-shirts inside-out or be sent home, though it would not be considered a suspension. Rodriguez told the students he did not want any fights to break out between Mexican-American students celebrating their heritage and those wearing American flags.
Galli told NBC Bay Area, “They said we could wear it on any other day, but today is sensitive to Mexican-Americans because it’s supposed to be their holiday so we were not allowed to wear it.”
Yup the kids weren’t allowed to display American colors in America because it might offend the students of Mexican heritage (whom are most likely American citizens and therefore shouldn’t be offended by people taking pride in their country).
Don’t get me wrong if you want to celebrate your heritage on any day by wearing the colors of your ancestor’s country by all means do it. You have that freedom because this country strongly believes in your right to free speech. But realize you are in America and therefore can not be offended by citizens celebrating their heritage of being American.
This article perfectly portrays the meaning of double speak. Apparently Obama believes the following:
“What Jefferson recognized… that in the long run, their improbable experiment — called America — wouldn’t work if its citizens were uninformed, if its citizens were apathetic, if its citizens checked out, and left democracy to those who didn’t have the best interests of all the people at heart.
“It could only work if each of us stayed informed and engaged, if we held our government accountable, if we fulfilled the obligations of citizenship.”
I actually agree with Obama on something, namely this. I think part of the problem with America today is the apathy of its citizens and their lack of being informed. If you ask most Americans who their state representatives are they won’t be able to tell you. Of course if you ask a really important question like who won American Idol they can tell you right off of the spot.
One of the best things about technology is that is provides you with a constant 24/7 stream of news and information. There is no excuse to not being in the know these days. Thankfully Obama is bringing this to light and asking everybody to embrace this technology… oh wait:
“You’re coming of age in a 24/7 media environment that bombards us with all kinds of content and exposes us to all kinds of arguments, some of which don’t always rank all that high on the truth meter,” Obama said at Hampton University, Virginia.
Like everything Obama says:
“With iPods and iPads and Xboxes and PlayStations, — none of which I know how to work — information becomes a distraction, a diversion, a form of entertainment, rather than a tool of empowerment, rather than the means of emancipation,” Obama said.
He bemoaned the fact that “some of the craziest claims can quickly claim traction,” in the clamor of certain blogs and talk radio outlets.
So being in the know and having access to information is great unless that information doesn’t jive with what he thinks. For instance it’s just crazy to believe that people could be cooking the books on global warming climate is changing OMG!!!! climate change. It’s also crazy to think that GM used government money to pay back their loan from the government.
I love how Obama is all of the sudden an expert on technology that he admits to not knowing how to use. Seriously what a smug asshole.
And for all you mothers out there here is a heart warming story from the UK via Says Uncle:
Schoolboy James Killen, 18, was held by police after next-door neighbour Jonathan London, 46, died of stab wounds.
It is believed Mr London attacked the teenager’s mother, former air stewardess Sandra Crawford, at her home in St Alban’s, Herts on Friday.
Mr Killen was arrested on suspicion of stabbing to death Mr London but later released on bail.
It is believed the teenager, a student at nearby Sandringham School, attacked Mr London after he discovered him slashing his mother.
The kid should have called the police and stood by watching his mother get slashed to death until the cops finally arrived. That way he wouldn’t be sitting in jail. See making self defense illegal is perfectly logical.
I mentioned Amazon is planning on rolling out a new firmware for the Kindle sometime back. Well Ars Technica has a good review of the firmware (lucky dogs got it early).
I have to say overall I’m excited. The categories feature is enough for me to be excited. But it appears as Amazon also implemented a decent password system. If you don’t enter your password properly it pops up a message saying if you forgot your password call Amazon and gives you a number. This leads me to ponder if you have to reset the password remotely. If so it would be a boon for times when the device gets stolen because Amazon could just refuse to reset the device if it’s reported stolen making it a paperweight. On the other hand they would need a mechanism in place to reset the password on Kindles not within range of a cellular data network.
I’m far less excited about the social networking features. Needless to say it uses a URL shortening service (which I talked about today) to post passages from your books on Facebook and Twitter. On the other hand Amazon controls the service so you can be fairly sure (although not completely) the links you see from them are legitimate.
The other feature I’m looking forward to wasn’t covered much which is the ability to zoom and pan PDF files. PDF files don’t scale well on the Kindle’s small screen and are only legible if you put the device in landscape mode. Being able to zoom in and pan will allow you to read PDFs in portrait mode on the regular small Kindle.
Now Amazon just needs to hurry up and release the Kindle Development Kit so I can start writing applications for the bloody device (yes I have ideas for applications for me Kindle).
Why do I hate the idea of a police state? Because they will kill your fucking dogs. <a href="“>Every Day, No Days Off links to a video for a SWAT team raid where they bust down the door, storm in, and shoot the man’s dogs one of which was in it’s still in it’s fucking cage! Oh and what offense required such a forceful and zealous response? Possession of weed. Here’s the video:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RbwSwvUaRqc]
If that doesn’t infuriate you I don’t know what will. Oh and in the end the police charged the parents with endangering their children. It seems to me the SWAT team did a better job of that than the parents.
This is one of those things that I laughed at, then rolled my eyes, and then realized it may be a good idea. Most Apple users are finicky people who have an almost religious love for Apple devices. Everything Apple makes it supposed to be great while everything else is complete and utter shit. One problem for these people is finding a mate in a world rules most by Windows is very difficult. Sure the first date goes well but then the Apple fan finds out the prospective mate uses Windows. Shortly after the Apple fan finds him or herself single again. Well good news there’s now a dating site for Apple users.
Maybe this will keep the Apple zealots rounded up in one place.
One rule I have here is any comments containing a link that uses a URL shortening service gets removed, no questions asked. I do this because as Bruce Shcneier shows us those shortened URLs are a huge security risk. Cory Doctorow recently got screwed by a phishing attack via a good old URL shortened link:
I opened up my phone fired up my freshly reinstalled Twitter client and saw that I had a direct message from an old friend in Seattle, someone I know through fandom. The message read “Is this you????” and was followed by one of those ubiquitous shortened URLs that consist of a domain and a short code, like this: http://owl.ly/iuefuew.
Never click on a URL from a URL shortening service. You have no idea where they will lead you or what the page they link to will contain.
Via Dvorak Uncensored we have this gem:
MAY 6–A Transportation Security Administration screener is facing an assault rap after he allegedly beat a co-worker who joked about the size of the man’s genitalia after he walked through a security scanner. The May 4 confrontation involved Rolando Negrin, 44, and other TSA employees who had previously taken part in a training session at Miami International Airport, according to the below Miami-Dade Police Department reports. Negrin, pictured in the mug shot at right, and his co-workers had been training with new “whole body image” machines–the controversial kind that provide very revealing images of a traveler–when Negrin walked through the scanner.
But remember those TSA agents aren’t going to make such remarks about you just each other. Your privacy is perfectly safe.
I mentioned some time ago about a situation occurring where a school was caught spying on students via webcams built into laptops that were issued to students. Well apparently there is nothing to see here:
An “independent” investigation into the Lower Merion School District laptop scandal has concluded that there’s no evidence that students were being spied on. This is despite the existence of 58,000 photos surreptitiously taken of students on or around their computers and e-mails between district IT people commenting on the entertainment value of the photos. The 72-page report (PDF) from law firm Ballard Spahr claims, however, that most of the photos were not seen by anyone and that the district merely failed to implement proper record-keeping procedures.
Yeah obviously there was no spying. Sure they had 58,000 pictures of kids doing who-knows-what but most of the pictures weren’t actually seen by anybody, scouts promise. After all I’m sure the Ballard Spahr law firm has evidence proving none of the pictures were viewed:
Ballard Spahr admits that there is no way to determine how often the images were viewed, but says it found no evidence that the IT staff had viewed any of the images. Additionally, it says there was no evidence that district administrators knew how TheftTrack worked or even understood that large numbers of images were being collected in the first place.
Oops I guess not. Oh wait there was evidence… of the pictures being viewed:
This, of course, is the problem: because there was very little record-keeping going on and no official policies, there are few ways to know who knew what and when. However, claiming that there’s no evidence whatsoever that IT staff saw the images seems disingenuous, considering the fact that e-mail records were dug up last month that showed at least two IT administrators chatting about the photos. One staffer that has since been put on leave, Carol Cafiero, described the pictures as “a little [Lower Merion School District] soap opera,” while another staffer responded, “I know. I love it!”
Yes the school gave all the students laptops, installed spyware (in the most literal sense) on the machines, but didn’t really document it nor put any polices in place of when the cameras were to be used. That’s doesn’t scream trying to cover your tracks because you knew what you were doing was going to land you in very hot water.
But the fact of the matter is the school went to great lengths to ensure an outside party chose an independent entity to carry out the investigation so no possibility of bias could have entered into the equation:
One detail of note is that Ballard Spahr was hired by the Lower Merion School District itself to carry out the investigation, casting doubts on the true “independent” nature of the report.
Fuck me. I’m still hoping that school district gets sued right into oblivion.
I know quite a few parents who don’t want their kids having a laptop with a webcam because pedophiles may be able to access the camera without anybody’s knowledge and watching everything going on. I usually write such concerns off as over-the-top paranoia but I guess when the school is providing the laptops you should be worried about such things (the cameras being activated remotely without anybody’s knowledge, well and possibly the pedophiles doing it depending on the truth reason for installing that spyware).
My ultimate question here is who requested the installation of the spyware? Did the IT people do it without asking the school administrators or did the school administrators ask the IT people to do it? This will ultimately show the guilty party.