Chronicling the depravities of the State.
It seems another oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico went belly up. This explosion ended better than the Deepwater Horizon as all 13 crew members survived and it seems the rig wasn’t producing anything so the risk of oil escaping into the gulf are low.
These things are having the best of luck are they?
So we had a crazy person take hostages at the headquarters for the Discovery Channel which ended in him getting blown up and everybody else thankfully uninjured. The left is calling this man a right-wing extremist and the right are calling him a left-wing extremist. I have to agree with Robb Allen and stick with simply calling the man plain all crazy:
Sometimes, crazy is just crazy. It’s a cheap and easy ‘point for your team’ to be able to point out that someone on the other side is a few fries short of a Happy Meal, but it’s not necessarily true. Sure, this Darwin Award Winner espoused radical views that find a better home on the left, but to insist that the left ‘claim him as one of their own’ makes as much sense as saying those on the right are equally responsible for McVeigh.
Some people are just off their rocker and it’s a non-partisan issue. The guy just happened to focus his crazy into eco-centric lunacy instead of revenge for Waco.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has a nice write up on the recent copy-right troll factory known as Righthaven. They’ve been going around suing everybody they can find who’s used any text from any story in a news article they own the copyright to. The main problem is Righthaven is doing several things different than other copyright holders. The two things I have the biggest issues with are the following:
Righthaven lawsuits are demanding that courts freeze and transfer the defendants’ domain names. Imagine if a single copyright infringement on Huffingtonpost.com or Redstate.com could result in forfeiture of the entire domain. Effectively asking for control of all of a website’s existing and future content — instead of only targeting the allegedly infringing material — is an overreaching remedy for a single copyright infringement not validated by copyright law or any legal precedent. This also indicates that the attorneys are willing to make overreaching claims in order to scare defendants into a fast settlement.
Righthaven goes straight for litigation. Righthaven isn’t sending cease and desist letters or DMCA takedown notices that would allow the targeted bloggers or website operators to remove or amend only the news articles owned by Righthaven. Instead, Righthaven starts with a full-fledged lawsuit in federal court with no warning. It’s sue first and ask questions later, which smacks of a strategy designed to churn up legal costs and intimidate defendants into paying up immediately, rather than a strategy aimed at remedying specific copyright infringements.
Yeah screw the whole idea of being nice and first requesting any infringing material be taken down. Going straight to a lawsuit is obviously the best idea out there. Seriously they are total douche bags.
A totally awesome man whom I was fortunate enough to have as a grandfather passed away.
Here’s to you Arnie!
When you test new loads and the gun doesn’t make a bang sound or there is no recoil comparable to factory ammunition stop what you’re doing immediately. If you don’t you may stack up four squibs in one gun. For the record that’s very bad. The owner of that revolver is lucky Darwin missed him.
What screams mall ninja more than a suppressed .44 magnum Desert Eagle with an attached EOTech optic? Not fucking much.
You know the new Apple TV that allows you to rent TV show episodes for $0.99? Well Amazon allows you to buy TV show episodes for $0.99.
Competition is good.
Another crazy save the planet crusader bites the dust. This crazy fellow decided to walk into the headquarters for the Discovery Channel with metal cylinder strapped to his chest and a handgun. After entering the building he decided to take hostages and made some demands:
A man called James Lee of San Diego, California, was arrested outside Discovery’s headquarters in 2008 after throwing thousands of dollars into the air in protest against the network, according to The Gazette, a local newspaper.
Where was I when he did this? Shit I’d have taken that money. Oh yeah his demands sorry:
Mr Lee said he threw the money because Discovery’s programming had little to do with saving the planet.
He reportedly was also the author of the website savetheplanetprotest.com, where he demanded that the Discovery Channel broadcast programmes that would help “to save the planet”.
Well Mr. Insano met the Washington D.C. hostage negotiation team whom promptly shot the dumbass dead. Case closed.
My new Kindle 3 arrived last night and I must say it’s pretty sweet.
First thing to note about the new Kindle is the size, it’s notably smaller than the previous model. The screen itself remains the same size but the overall device size is smaller and the device is lighter. Of course to accomplish this shrinkage they removed the dedicated number keys on the keyboard and put them into the symbol menu which I’m not too wild about. The backside is no longer metal but a rubberized plastic making it easier to grip but at the cost of feeling slightly chintzier.
The new E Ink Pearl screen is fantastic. The improved contrast is noticeable the second you see the screen. On previous generation Kindles the background was kind of a very light gray. The new Pearl screen’s background is almost white making the text a little easier to read. Additionally the refresh rate of the screen is faster than the Kindle 2 by a notable amount.
Having both Wi-Fi and 3G connectivity is a plus for those outside of 3G coverage. I hooked mine up to my Wi-Fi access point to test it and it works perfectly fine. With that said I’ll probably just continue using the 3G network because it’s always there and has always worked well for me. Still it’s a nice feature and if you don’t spend a lot of time in areas with 3G Amazon does offer a Wi-Fi only version.
I also like the new color. I’ve never been a big fan of white devices. It’s not that I hate white devices I just don’t like how they look as much. When I purchase a device I want it to be blacker than the blackest black times infinity. Well the new Kindle is graphite which is close enough to black for me to give it the head nod.
Ultimately I only have on real complaint, collections don’t sync. One of the best features of the last Kindle firmware update was the ability to put books into collections. This greatly cleans up the book selection screen which without collections ends up being something like seven or eight pages long for me. With collections I have two pages worth of stuff to dig through. Sadly when I redownloaded my books they did not go into the collections I placed them in on my Kindle 2 meaning I had to manually re-add them all to their proper collections. Really that’s a slight annoyance but it’s something I’d like to see changed in the future.
Overall I think it’s a great device and a good upgrade. Is it work upgrading to if you already have a Kindle 2? Probably not. All the new features are evolutionary instead of revolutionary meaning you probably aren’t going to notice a heck of a lot of difference. If you’re happy with your Kindle 2 you can comfortably remain on it as there are no new features that will blow you away. The improved screen is very nice through and with the upgrade if you plan on selling your current Kindle (I don’t think the improved screen itself is worth $189.00).
So why did I upgrade? Because I’m a device whore that’s why. I saw something new and shiny which meant I had to have it.
Well it appears the open-carry ban and long-gun registration bills were finally killed and buried in California. Good work California gun owners at working to keep what little rights you have remaining.
I was really curious though how that state was planning on paying for a long-gun registry when they don’t have any money. That would have made for some interesting logistics.