Category: Wall of Fame Assholes

Creation of a Police State Through Zero Tolerance

Pop quiz time everybody. What do you do when a 12 year-old girl draws some doodles on a desk?

a. Make her clean the graffiti off of the desk.
b. Give her detention after school.
c. Call the police and have her arrested.

If you answer ‘c’ to the above question you are qualified to be the principal at the Junior High School in Forest Hills, New York. That’s right a 12 year-old girl wrote, “I love my friends Abby and Faith. Lex was here 2/1/10 :)” on her desk with a marker. Shortly after the police were called and the girl was handcuffed and arrested.

This is another grand example of how zero tolerance policies work. You establish that there will be no tolerance for graffiti and if somebody doodles on a desk you call the police. Time and time again we are reminded that laws enforced without consideration of context does nothing more than create a police state where people expect to be arrested the second they do something that isn’t approved.

For an example outside of schools let’s say there is a zero tolerance policy put into place that states killing another human being is illegal. Of course this sounds OK on paper under you realize since no consideration is made for the event somebody who was legally defending themselves would be charged for murder. The linked story has a list of other abuses of zero tolerance as well as police involvement in things that should be handled by school administrators.

What’s Mine is Mine and What’s Your’s is Mine To

File this article under further proof digital “rights” management means you don’t own your content. Apparently Sony, Ubisoft, and EA have decided to do everything they can to thwart you from buying used games without them getting a cut.

There is a list of games in the article that will not allow you to access certain parts of the games unless you register it online. If you purchased a used game that has been previously registered then you have to pay the publishers $20.00 to get a new registration code.

This kind of practice is really sickening. What the three mentioned publishers are really saying is that you don’t actually own your content and have no rights to use it as you see fit. But what’s really fucked up is this quote:

Piracy continues to be an issue of concern for the PSP platform, but the launch of the PSPgo and the ability to access the PlayStation Store directly from PSP-3000 were significant steps towards fighting piracy and getting consumers to download digital games legally.

Buying a used game isn’t piracy anymore than buying a used CD. The fact that somebody actually implied it here is simply retarded. Digital “rights” management is a scan through and through. I’m hoping gamers out there are smart enough to simply refuse to buy these titles. These kinds of practices need to be discouraged.

It’s funny to me how we treat digital media different than physical media. Let’s use the stereotypical car example for this. Let’s say you purchased a new Government Motors (Not that I’m picking on anybody) car. Government Motors decides you need to register your car in order to unlock the radio and heater. This registration is uniquely tied to your person so when you see it another person can’t use the radio or heater until they reregister it with Government Motors. In order for the a new owner to register it Government Motors will require a $5,000 fee.

That sounds pretty stupid doesn’t it?

Big Brother is Watching

A tip of the old hat goes to Dvorak Uncensored for this story. A federal class action lawsuit is bring brought forth against the Lower Merion School District. The school district issued laptops to each child with an integrated web camera which the school was able to remotely turn on and spy with. From the article:

Michael Robbins thereafter verified, through Ms. Matsko, that the school district in fact has the ability to remotely activate the webcam contained in a student’s personal laptop computer issued by the school district at any time it chose and to view and capture whatever images were in front of the webcam, all without the knowledge, permission or authorization of any persons then and there using the laptop computer.

Additionally, by virtue of the fact that the webcam can be remotely activated at any time by the school district, the webcam will capture anything happening in the room in which the laptop computer is located, regardless of whether the student is sitting at the computer and using it.

Scary stuff. Several question arise from this. First what was the purpose of being able to remotely enable the web cameras? Was it to spy on the children to ensure they weren’t doing anything wrong? Was is because there are perverts in the school district who get their jollys off of underage kids on camera? The implications of this could be rather astounding.

This also further proves a motto in the security industry, trust no one.

The Definition of Dumb Ass

Wow some people just don’t learn do they? Dip shit Peter Bethune of Sea Sheppard decided that the best way to avenge the loss of his organizations precious vessel was to board a Japanese whaling ship:

He had said he wanted to arrest the ship’s captain, Hiroyuki Komiya, for attempted murder, following a crash between the Shonan Maru 2 and Sea Shepherd’s Ady Gil speedboat in January.

The gods of irony did shine down upon thee though as the Japanese crew, not being complete dip shits, caught the guy and are holding him. Right now the Japanese government is decided whether to file criminal charges against the left-wing extremist terrorist individual. The best part is if he’s charged he get’s a ticket to Japan for trial. Just to clarify by ticket I mean free boat ride.

Boy is He Strict

I’m just going to pull quotes from this story:

The violent confrontation unfolded after Mr Iavecchio, who was armed, asked the men to leave the bowling alley because they were smoking cigarettes in a vestibule. The security guard escorted the men outside, where the ensuing fight and shooting were captured on CCTV.

According to investigating police, words were exchanged and a fight ensued before two gunshots were discharged, striking both friends. The incident happened at 1.50am.

The lesson here? Don’t smoke in New York bowling allies. Of course expect the Violence Policy Center to add this one to their list:

Both victims were treated at the nearby Elmhurst hospital for their injuries. Mr Iavecchio was armed with a .380 calibre pistol, which he was licensed to carry. The two Irishmen are being charged with menacing.

This is Retarded

No seriously it is. There is a web site dedicated to stopping people from using the word retarded. Retarded is a legitimate medical term for Christ’s sake. This is no different than deterring the use of the word idiot, moron, or stupid. All of those words are legitimate medical terms referring to an improperly developed mind and are used in derogatory manners.

Trying to stop the use of terms in place of flowery hippie phrases is one of by biggest pet peeves. It’s akin to saying a child isn’t poor, they’re at risk at hope. I’m sorry (OK I’m not) to be blatant about this but no matter what word you create to replace retarded it’s eventually going to be used in a derogatory manner because people like to insult each other. The best thing you can do is ignore it and eventually people will move on to another word.

These campaigns are stupid. I personally pledge to keep using the word retarded as well as every other word I use to insult things.

Blame the Victim

You know this whole blame the victim mentality goes beyond annoying. A “study” was just released that attempts to explain why some kids get bullied:

Kids who get bullied and snubbed by peers may be more likely to have problems in other parts of their lives, past studies have shown. And now researchers have found at least three factors in a child’s behavior that can lead to social rejection.

The factors involve a child’s inability to pick up on and respond to nonverbal cues from their pals.

So the study is saying the reason some kids get beat up is because those kids don’t pick up on nonverbal cues from their “pals.” So it’s obviously the victim’s fault that they are victims. That makes sense. Let me paraphrase another potential situation here:

Women who get rapped by peers may be more likely to have problems in other parts of their lives, past studies have shown. And now researchers have found at least three factors in a women’s behavior that can lead to being raped.

The factors involve a woman’s inability to pick up on and respond to nonverbal cues from men.

That’s only logical of course. Please note that last bit was sarcasm in the highest degree. Cripes!

Another Great Idea Ruined By Litigation

I’m sure many of you have heard about several colleges doing pilot programs with the Amazon Kindle. The idea is to allow students to have all their heavy text books on a single device. Well the National Federation of the Blind and the American Council of the Blind decided they would have none of that and took a great big dump all over the the project. Why? Because the devices are not completely accessible to the blind.

In an agreement (At gun point) the Ministry Department of Justice barred the use of electronic readers until they are completely usable by the blind.

In other news another technological achievement will be banned in from use in universities due to inaccessibility to the blind. Although the technology has been in use for some time the two organizations in support of the blind have found that the devices were not accessible to those unable to see. They are working on brining a lawsuit against every university in the United States to bar the use of so called “text books” from use until such a time they are made accessible to the blind.

Now That’s Just Funny

Two days ago I posted some stuff about a violent anti-gunner. Well I’ve learned some new things courtesy of Gun Nuts Media. First the violent coward was Rob Russell who ran for a seat in the House of Representatives. He lost, for reasons obvious to those who read what he stated.

Well the guys at Gun Nuts Media also found his blog. But it’s gone now; deleted by the author. I’m guessing it was due to people posting on his blog informing him that it’s not a good idea to make threats of violence against individuals, even if it’s on the Internet. I’m glad to see Mr. Russell listened to that advice and shut down his blog before he made any further threats that could land him in legal water.

I also want to mention that anybody who has be threatened by Mr. Russell should contact the authorities. After all you don’t want to wait for him to show up at your home and “punch your fucking face in.”

Update 2010-01-13 16:33: Walls of the City has screen captures and links to Google caches of the offending material. The post also helpfully lists the laws violated by Mr. Russell. The fact that the Internet is forever is proven once again. Reasoned discourse at its finest.

I Don’t Get This

OK I hang around a lot of different gun communities and hear a lot of different things. There is one particular community where a handful of members take every opportunity to bash the NRA. That’s fine, the NRA makes a lot of stupid mistakes. But it’s the reasons they bash them that I find rather idiotic.

It seems these people’s only argument is that the NRA is some front end for Republican neo-conservatives. Of course they always say GOP implying that all Republicans are neo-conservatives but I can point to quite a few good Republicans such as Ron Paul (Yes stereotypical example for a libertarian to pick but I don’t care, it’s my site and I can do what I want).

Anyways the recent argument stems from the fact the NRA wants to grab 10 minutes of Gura’s time in the McDonald vs. Chicago case. Gura, for those of you who don’t know, is the lawyer on our side. Now I have reservations about this as well because Gura has proven himself a very competent and able lawyer. The NRA is mostly not happy with how Gura is going after the case and want to add another spin on it. I’m not going to get further into details because, as usual, Sebastian over at Snowflakes in Hell has already create amazing posts related to that.

What I’m complaining about is the argument of a certain individual. He is saying the NRA is trying to grab this time because they want to ensure Gura’s argument isn’t the reason for this case to be won. Why? Because, being GOP shills, they want to ensure one specific right isn’t given further power, marriage. Yes that’s right. Apparently the NRA doesn’t want the case to be decided upon by Gura’s case because it would somehow also allow gays to marry.

Doesn’t get much dumber than that ladies and gentlemen. As you’ll note I’ve left out the community and names. This is because I don’t want to negatively impact that particular community as it’s usually pretty good.

Of course that begs the question why write a long post on my blog ranting about it? Because it’s my site and I get to post what I want.