Tag: Superdickery

Senate Traitors Extend PATROIT Act

Yeah it’s official. OK it was official before but now it’s REALLY official. The senate is made up by a bunch of traitors. The senate today voted to extend the expiring provisions of the civil liberties violation known as the PATRIOT Act. This pisses me right the fuck off.

I’m very open about saying everybody who voted in favor of the original PATRIOT Act should have been brought up on charges of treason and dealt with accordingly. The law shits all over civil liberties in this country and undoes the Bill of Rights in its entirety. But here is the icing on the cake:

With the law facing a sunset date of Feb. 28, the Senate opted to vote for the extension of three crucial provisions of the act rather than opening debate on a revised bipartisan plan passed by the Judiciary Committee in October that would have imposed stricter privacy safeguards.

That’s right they didn’t even open debates on this. Nope they just passed and said fuck the American people.

To top that all of the current administration is still blaming Bush for everything. If they want to keep playing that card maybe they should show how they’re different and repeal of the of the God damned shit that got passed under his administration.

Bastards.

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.

Bad Ass

Another article I found via The Firearm Blog. This story is about a man’s man who is obviously a bad ass and a good father:

“I shot him in the nuts with bird-shot because he was beating my daughter,” Kelly said.

That line alone allows me to overlook the fact the man was using a Taurus Judge. Seriously that one sentence extrudes bad ass. Anyways the daughter isn’t happy but you know what? I’m giving the father the benefit of the doubt since I wouldn’t react well to somebody beating my daughter (If I had one).

If It Works Ban It

The United Nations in all their stupidity glory decided cluster munitions needed to be banned. But here are the best parts:

The treaty is binding only on countries that have signed and ratified it.

Wait for it:

Some of the biggest stockpilers – including the US, Russia, China and Israel – are not among the signatories.

So this treaty will only be enforced by nations that have signed it. The big three military powers, being intelligent people, decided to not sign it and can continue using cluster munitions. Why would they not sign it? Probably because they don’t want to get rid of devices that actually work.

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.

It Appears As Though You Haven’t Thought Your Clever Plan Through

Here is a story implementing a really bad idea via Dvorak Uncensored. It appears as though police officers are going to stage break ins. Yes police officers are going to break into the homes of citizens to raise awareness of burglaries. I see all sorts of bad things coming from this. See people don’t take kindly to strange people breaking into their homes in the middle of the night. Often when a person encounters the stranger they decided to perforate that individuals with gun fire… oh wait this is happening in England. Yeah never mind, capital idea there Bobby.

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.