Tag: You Can’t Cure Stupid

Stop Me if You’ve Heard this One Before

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has public comments open on a petition submitted by some jackasses Center for Biological Diversity. The petition is to ban all lead ammunition from the United States under the Toxic Substance Control Act, which had a specific exemption for ammunition contained within it.

A lot of people are jumping onto the fact that the EPA is the bad guy here. They very well could be but from what I’ve gathered they are required to hold public comments on any petitions they receive. I could be in error on this but that’s what I’ve determined from what little research I’ve put into this so far.

The good thing is comments are being taken and you can submit your input here. We have until October 31st to submit comments so let’s inform the EPA why this petition is a bad idea wrapped in a worse idea.

You have to give the anti-gunners credit for one thing, they’re relentless. Now that the right to bear arms has been incorporated they are going after ammunition. If they can’t get the ammunition they’ll probably go after springs because somebody could poke their eye out with one. Oh and they happened to be used in firearms.

I Can’t Tell You How Many Times I’ve Wanted to Do This

Just read the first paragraph of this article:

A Salt Lake City mortgage company employee allegedly got drunk, opened fired on his firm’s computer server with a .45-caliber automatic, and then told police someone had stolen his gun and caused the damage.

Minus the getting drunk and accusing somebody stole my gun this paragraph really describes one of my dreams, shooting a server. Of course I wouldn’t lie about what happened unlike this drunkard mentioned in the story:

A probable cause statement alleges that Campbell told police he had been “mugged, assaulted with his own firearm and drugged” by a mystery assailant.

Yeah because that’s certainly a believable story. Pro tip here, if you’re going to make up a story in an attempt to lie to the police make it a believable one. Better yet don’t have a gun one you while you’re drunk.

Technology Doesn’t Cause Stupidity

People cause stupidity. Apparently thanks to GPS, cell phones, and other such gadgets people have been acting dumber when venturing into national parks. This is a cause of concern for the National Park Service but also a slight irritation to Charles Darwin’s ghost who has to deal with all this stupidity:

The national parks’ history is full of examples of misguided visitors petting bears, putting children on buffaloes for photos and dipping into geysers despite signs warning of scalding temperatures.

But today, as an ever more wired and interconnected public visits the parks in rising numbers — July was a record month for visitors at Yellowstone — rangers say that technology often figures into such mishaps.

People with cell phones call rangers from mountaintops to request refreshments or a guide; in Jackson Hole, Wyo., one lost hiker even asked for hot chocolate.

I have a solution for this little issue. If anybody uses their cell phone to call a park ranger in the hopes of getting a beverage delivered to them I say the rangers oblige by launching a barrage of artillery onto the caller’s location. Of course this will require buying artillery for the park rangers but I’m willing to donate money to a good cause.

“Because of having that electronic device, people have an expectation that they can do something stupid and be rescued,” said Jackie Skaggs, spokeswoman for Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming.

“Every once in a while we get a call from someone who has gone to the top of a peak, the weather has turned and they are confused about how to get down and they want someone to personally escort them,” Skaggs said. “The answer is that you are up there for the night.”

Damn right make them sit it out. Stupidity is meaningless without lessons being learned and people generally don’t learn when they get bailed out. Of course the rangers aren’t be Luddites:

The service acknowledges that the new technologies have benefits as well. They can and do save lives when calls come from people who really are in trouble.

Technology is a tool and like any tool can be used to enhance good and bad. Many people use it stupidly and end up driving into a lake because their GPS told them to. These people should be removed from the gene pool as soon as possible so I feel even in the hands of the stupid a GPS is ultimately being used for good.

Remember Those Big Powerful Lobbyists

In the last post I mentioned one of the biggest arguments presented at last night’s event was the only way to stop lobbyists was to allow the government to regulate net neutrality. Guess what? The RIAA, one of the largest lobbyist holders in Washington, is jockeying to make net neutrality laws include filtering and the ability to spy on customer. Who called that one? That’s right I did.

This is why I don’t want government involved with the Internet in any way, shape, or form. Any company large enough can buy them and get whatever the Hell they want passed into law. At least with the ISPs in control (which I’ve mentioned is still going to fuck us over) I have the option of not paying for their service. An additional benefit is any deals groups such as the RIAA want to make will have to be done with each ISP separately. Did I mention that these deals won’t be law and thus ISPs will be free to not make those deals? Oh I didn’t? Well I did now.

One Mighty Circle Jerk

Last night I made a major error in judgment. I attended the Save the Internet rally. In my defense I attended it not because I thought I’d agree with what was being presented (that went out the door the second I heard Al Franken was going to be speaking) but because I thought it would be a good forum for debate. My error in judgment was forgetting to fact that “progressive” liberals don’t like debate and thus do everything they can to squash it.

My dumbass detector went off the second I entered the room. I arrived late but two of my friends were there early and happened to save me a seat. The first thing my friend told me upon my sitting down was “this is a liberal’s wet dream.” That’s one Hell of a comment as this friend is a self-professed communist (not a socialist or democrat but he is an honest-to-goodness communist). When a self-professed communist says an event is a liberal circle jerk you know you’re going to lose braincells just by being there.

One of the constant things being parroted by the speakers was the fact telecommunications companies have a powerful lobby in Washington. This was being brought up as a danger because the lobbies would use their might to coerce government into allowing major ISPs to filter and throttle Internet access as they see fit. I may not be the sharpest knife in the drawer (as evident by me going to this event) but I still can’t figure out the “logic” they were using. In essence the speakers were saying the only way to prevent powerful lobbyists from using government to ruin our Internet was to… make government regulate our Internet. Wow my brain hurts just from remembering that.

That wasn’t all. After some time they brought out a Latino woman to speak. Unlike most “progressive” liberals I’m not obsessed with the race of another person, it’s irrelevant to me so I didn’t realize this would be significant. Shortly into her speech she bring up a statistic saying only a low percentage (she had an actual number that I’ve forgotten) of Latinos in this country have Internet connectivity and the FCC must do something to correct this. What does the percentage of people connected to the Internet have to do with net neutrality? Your guess is as good as mine really. Frankly I think they wanted to play the race card so badly that they were willing to bring somebody on stage to make an entirely different argument just to bring race into the game. Democrats playing the race card always confuses me since traditionally it’s been the Republican Party (whom I hate equally) that’s supported civil rights for minorities. Hell the slaves were freed by a republican. Either way they love the race card and play it whenever possible.

I’m not sure at exactly what time it was but during the speeches Al Franken excused himself from the event. He made a mention that some of his family members were in town so he wanted to go see them. According to his Wikipedia page (I know not an authoritative source, I don’t care) he resides in Minneapolis so it would seem likely his family would be in town. I’m not going to knock the guy because it could very well be they were family members from out of town but either way he ducked out before any dissent (in other words the public) could speak. That’s usually his method of operating so I wasn’t surprised.

Alas the night moved forward. A panel of speakers were brought out whom simply parroted the ongoing theme of the night. This was more bullshit that really added nothing. Finally came the point where people were able to speak. I didn’t realize this but the only way you were allowed to speak was to sign up and receive a number. One of my friends had a number which he gave to me (apparently I’m more entertaining since I don’t care if I piss off an entire auditorium of people). Before anybody was allowed to speak ground rules were being set which was fine by me. Let me rephrase that it was fine by me until one of the ground rules established was not being able to ask anybody on stage questions. This is why “progressive” liberal events piss me off, they don’t want debates they want obedience. Their motto should be “shut up slave.”

The number I had was 53 and each speaker was allowed up to two minutes to speak. This meant in a worst case scenario I’d have to wait 106 minutes before I could go up and make a statement. Two thing occurred to me at this point; what I was planning on doing was asking the FCC chairman a question and probably wasn’t going to have the chance to speak anyways. Only people with numbers one through 40 were asked to come up which is generally a good way of saying everybody else isn’t going to get time. My group and I stayed there for a short while to see what the statements were going to be and left once we realized that everybody was going to use their entire two minutes.

The first, second, and third speakers took half their time rattling of their credentials (at least it seemed like half their time). After they rattled off why they felt themselves to be so great they would make a statement about how the Internet can’t survive without the government regulating it. Needless to say we left after the third speaker opened her mouth, there was just no point in being there.

After that we went and grabbed a couple of beers hoping to numb the brain damage caused by being there. Seriously I’ve never seen such a circle jerk in my life.

A Fool and His Money

You know what they say, a fool and his money are quickly departed. Take this example for instance. It’s an application that alerts you when there are lightening lightning strikes in your area and it only costs $5.99!

Of course the article also brings up the fact a whole 58 people are killed (on average) every year by lightening lightning. The population of the United States is 307,006,550 according to Google meaning .0000188921051% of the population of the United States are killed each year (on average) by lightening lightning.

With a risk that tiny who the Hell is going to buy a shitty $5.99 app?

EDIT 2010-08-18 22:02: Proof reading is important just remember that. And no matter how many times you use the closely spelled but completely incorrect word it doesn’t make it right. Thanks for pointing it out Linoge.

Damn State Preemption

Since the state of Minnesota has preemption over firearms laws the Moorhead is unable to ban the real thing. So what’s are a bunch of whiny anti-gunners to do? Try to ban replicas of course!

By whiny anti-gunners I mean the Moorhead police:

Police chief Dave Ebinger told the city council it’s hard to tell whether the gun is a real firearm or not and that officers are forced to treat the replicas as though they are real.

Sorry that doesn’t add up in this state. So long as a person has a valid carry permit they can openly carry a firearm. Therefore the question for police isn’t whether or that firearm being carried by John Doe is real, but whether or not Mr. Doe has a valid carry permit (which sadly matters in this state). Ultimately none of it matters unless the gun or replica in question is being used to threaten or harm another person. When things get to that point it matters now if the gun is fake or real if the person being threatened believes it to be real (as they then have justification to defend themselves).

More Stupid Laws

Representative Edward J. Markey has brought forth the 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act. It was just passed by the House and is on its way to the Senate.

The bill, apparently, is an attempt to force technology companies to make web sites and devices accessible to the blind. Of course it’s a rather long bill to simply accomplish that so I’m guessing there are some other hidden surprises are buried in that bill.

I have a problem with this type of legislation (if that surprises you I’m guessing this is your first time visiting my site, welcome). Back in college I had a professor who was Hell bent of forcing all her students to create accessible web sites (she was the instructor for a couple web development classes). Sure that’s fine and all until you realize one major problem, you handicap your capabilities by doing this.

This site you’re reading right now is mostly text. I post very few images or other media here. Even with something as simple as text this site probably isn’t accessible to any screen reader on the planet. Why is that? Because I use WordPress. WordPress, like almost every other content management system on the planet, throws a lot of extra junk into a website. Need proof? Look at the source code of the page you’re viewing right now.

Screen readers also can’t interface with well when a page uses scripting, which almost all pages do (as I know because I use NoScript to block most of it). Scripting is needed for a lot of things including active content (think Google Maps). You just can’t get around it when you’re making dynamic web pages (OK you can but it’s a development nightmare and requires all active work be done server side thus requires far more hardware to run the same site). And that’s just web pages.

Devices are a whole different world. I’ve mentioned the whining over Amazon’s Kindle not being accessible (which they fixed when it was brought to their attention I might add). In the case of the Kindle that is a device that can be made accessible pretty easily because it only works with text. Tell me how can you make a touch-screen based phone such as the Evo 4G, iPhone, or Palm Pre accessible to a blind person? There isn’t technology available at an affordable price that can create a braille touch screen. Combine that with the fact that since there are no physical controls on many new phones there is no way to “feel” your way around the interface even if it reads everything to you. Amazon did prove if it’s practical to make a device accessible to disabled individuals it will be done. Otherwise it can’t be done because our world is regulated by reality which most politicians don’t understand.

The bottom line is people with disabilities have special needs. I’m sorry to say but these people need devices that are specially made for them. It’s a fact of life that when a minority of people exist that have needs different than the large majority not every device can be crafted around that minority. Doing so would slow our technological progress to a crawl or make everything so bloody expensive nobody could afford them. Just imagine how expensive automobiles would be today if they had to be accessible to the blind. Yes it would have to drive itself which would require a ton of on board sensors, computers, and other pricey equipment. Needless to say it’s not practical by any means so the blind simply aren’t allowed to drive.

You can call me an insensitive asshole for stating this but that doesn’t make it any less true. I simply am a big enough asshole that I don’t care what people think of me and thus am willing to state the blatantly obvious.

The RIAA and Logic, It’s Like the Brady Campaign and Logic

Apparently the RIAA is lobbying for the mandatory inclusion of FM receivers in all mobile devices. I can’t for the life of me follow whatever passes for logic with these people. How can you justify making a law to mandate the inclusion of FM receivers in mobile devices? Seriously what’s your justification? Please tell me because I my head hurts just trying to figured it out.

Is it to get people to listen to the radio? That probably isn’t going to work and I’ll tell you why. My Evo 4G has an integrated FM receiver (it wasn’t mandated by law but HTC figured if they’re going to throw in the kitchen sink then why not an FM receiver). I assume it works because everything else on the device does but I’ve not actually tried it. In fact I haven’t listened to an FM radio station since… shortly after I graduated high school I believe. That’s about the time I discovered FM transmitters that plug into iPods.

Now with my Evo I have an amazing data connection with Pandora and Last.fm. If I want to listen to a radio station I just punch up one of those two streaming services and listen to a station that doesn’t have advertisements and plays music I like (or at least attempts to). I pair that up with my Motorola T505 which connects to my Evo via Bluetooth and transmits the music I’m playing over a selected FM band. This means while I’m driving around I have my Pandora or Last.fm radio station playing music over my FM radio. Oh and it doubles as a hands free calling device to boot.

Sorry RIAA you’re business model is dead and buried. You can’t salvage it at this point and frankly nobody likes listening to the radio anymore because they play more ads than content. After all you can lobby for a law which forces every mobile device to have an included FM receiver but you can’t force anybody to utilize it.

There Ought to be a Law

Another anti-gunner who seems to lack the basic ability to comprehend logic. This article is mostly a hit piece on how guns are used to kill people and although not outright said a plea to ban them. Of course he points out a few shootings that somehow would be avoided if guns were illegal. Of course other laws were already broken in these shootings so I fail to understand how making more laws would have prevented them. Let’s take a look shall we?

13 are killed and 30 wounded at Ft. Hood, Texas, when an Army psychiatrist goes on a rampage.

Carrying a firearm on a military base is illegal. Homicide is illegal.

Three police officers in Pittsburgh are gunned down by a man who was upset about losing his job and convinced that the Obama administration was about to ban guns.

Discharging firearms within city limits is illegal. Homicide is illegal.

13 are killed at an immigrant community center in Binghamton when a Vietnamese immigrant goes on a shooting spree.

Discharging firearms within city limits is illegal. Homicide is illegal.

A former student opens fire at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, killing five students and wounding 18 more.

Carrying a firearm in the state of Illinois is illegal. Discharging firearms within city limits is illegal. Homicide is illegal.

A rifleman in Omaha starts shooting at a mall, killing eight and then killing himself.

Discharging a firearm within city limits is illegal. Homicide is illegal.

A student at Virginia Tech shoots 32 people dead before taking his own life.

Carrying a firearm on Virginia Tech campus is illegal. Homicide is illegal.

So if we append another law, “owning firearms is illegal” to these lists all of these criminals acts wouldn’t have happened? That’s your argument? No wonder we’re winning! Oh and as a parting piece:

The odd, ironic thing is that I have never once heard of a crazed “liberal” forcefully taking the guns away from anyone. Never even once. Instead, irresponsible, dangerous people who should not have guns do have guns and they keep right on using them to kill other people.

Yeah a forceful gun confiscation in the United States has never happened… oh wait. Sorry I seem to have deflated your argument, super sorry about that.