Tag: You Can’t Cure Stupid

That’s a Lot of Wasted Money

Snowflakes in Hell points out that everybody’s favorite punching bag, the Violence Policy Center, is a pretty sweet gig to be in charge of. For doing no real work you can nab a six-digit salary:

On their 2008 tax return, of the approximately 890,000 dollars VPC took in, they spent 513,738 on salaries and benefits for employees, including a compensation package of 145,120 each for Sugarmann and Rand.

And they’ve done nothing besides some Google searches they claim are research. Damn that’s a fine little scam they have going there.

When a Problem Isn’t a Problem

Google’s been getting some flak for recording MAC addresses and unencrypted data from unsecured wireless access points while cruising around in their little street view cars. Several European countries have blown this completely out of proportion as have 37 states in this country.

Google has been very forthcoming with information including the fact that they were running Kismet in their vehicles. Kismet was being used to record the MAC addresses of wireless access points which were than tagged with GPS coordinates. The idea behind this is pretty simple; each access point has a unique MAC address. If you know the location of these wireless access points you can determine your location through Wi-Fi instead of having to rely on aGPS. The main advantage is you can have location based services with devices that have Wi-Fi cards but no GPS (for instance most laptops). By default Kismet saves all unencrypted data so Google obtaining this information isn’t so much nefarious as just forgetting to change the default settings.

Truth be told very little information is going to be gleamed from this data because the speed at which they were driving around put them in and out of range of most access points pretty quickly. Of course there is another thing to note here.

If you have an unsecured wireless access point and somebody is grabbing your data it’s your fault. Wireless data is broadcast out for all to hear. Treat it like yelling, if you and your significant other get into a yelling argument you can’t blame your neighbors for hearing what you two were screaming at each other. Wireless data is the same way. If your wireless signal enters my property then I have every right to eavesdrop on it. If you don’t want me to be able to do this you need to encrypt the data or shield your house well enough where your wireless signal isn’t entering my property (or in Google’s case public property where there is no expectation of privacy).

Instead of wasting time with this case I’d love to see these State Attorney’s deal with some real issues.

Cue the Sad Trombone

Remember that pay wall Rupert Murdoch is tossing up on all the “news” sites he owns? Remember all that bitching about freeloading Internet users no longer getting a free lunch? Remember how this was going to monetize the news industry and turn a profit? Well not so much. Via Dvorak Uncensored it appears as though not many people are subscribing to the London Time’s website:

After a month of forced free registrations and two weeks of a full paywall, Dan Sabbagh at Beehivecity.com says these are the numbers:

Apparently, the 15,000 paid subscriptions figure is considered “disappointing.”

That may sound like a lot but really isn’t not enough to pay for anything:

At 2 pounds a week, the average online subscriber would produce 100 pounds of revenue a year. 150,000 of them would produce 15 million pounds of revenue.

15 million pounds of revenue would be nice for a company used to living on, say, $5 million of revenue. But it wouldn’t even begin to offset the cost of the Times’ huge newsroom.

Meanwhile, what has the new paywall done to online traffic? So far, it has dropped by two-thirds. That, apparently, is actually better than expected. One editor feared it would collapse by 90%.

So what did Murdoch’s pay wall accomplish? A complete obliteration of online traffic and probably destroyed any chance of making a reason for advertisers to pay for in-site ads. Nice job dumb ass. I hope getting hit with the clue stick hurt.

It’s practically impossible to provide a free service and later turn it into a pay service. Almost everybody who has attempted to do as such has failed pretty miserably. The other thing to remember is the fact it’s very difficult to get customers to pay for a service that is provided free elsewhere (and even more difficult when those free sources are better than the pricey one).

About Time

Adobe has been receiving a ton of flack form the security community recently due to all the holes being exploited in their Reader and Flash applications. Well it appears Adobe is finally sandboxing Reader in the hopes of preventing malicious exploitation of the software.

I’m sure not many people think too much about receiving a PDF. I mean it’s a document that is read-only. Well except for the fact that PDF’s can include JavaScript which is executable by Reader because… it was bad idea gets included into the product day I guess. Hopefully Adobe gets their sandbox working correctly although I’m skeptical looking back at their previous security practices (quarterly update cycles anybody?).

He Gets an ‘A’ for Effort

Sometimes criminals deserve a little nod for creativity. Take Daryl Simon who was a fraudster and facing prison time. In the hopes of getting leniency in his sentencing he tried showing the court he was a good Samaritan by photoshopping himself helping people attending physical therapy.

That takes balls… and a heaping helping of stupidity. It appears his Photoshop-fu is weak as he was caught. For punishment at being bad at Photoshop he received an additional 50 months to his sentence. Still funny though.

Logic Hard

Yet another fine Letter to the Editor brought to you by the Red Star:

Guns
Car wash slaying shows how tiffs can turn lethal

Anthony Hartman, a 22-year-old Eagle Scout, is dead from a bullet allegedly fired by Jonas Grice, a 27-year-old described by his parents as a “good kid” who is “not one to go out and bully or pick on anybody.” There was apparently a small altercation at a car wash, and before other customers even realized anything had happened, a young man was dead on the floor.

This is an excellent example of why I want fewer guns in my community, as any minor tiff can become deadly when someone has easy access to a gun.

GERI L. ARMSTRONG, MINNEAPOLIS

First of all I must bring up this fact. Somebody who is 27 is not a “good kid” because you cease being a kid after you turn 18 in this country.

The author of this letter, whom is an idiot, says this situation is a reason for stronger gun control laws. On the surface this sounds logic until you stop to realize how little facts are given. The author describes the situation as a minor altercation but doesn’t even mention what the altercation was over.

But the idea of minor altercations turning in shootings was tossed out the window the second right to carry laws were passed. Now there are more guns on the streets than ever with people being able to legally carry firearms on their person. What has happened? Well violent crime has continue it’s downward trend. No I’m not saying right to carry laws are the reason for the downward trend in violent crime; I am saying an increase in the number of available guns doesn’t increase the violent crime rate.

Here in Minnesota for example we have tens of thousands of people who hold carry permits. The violent crime has been on a downward spiral which seems impossible if a higher availability of firearms causes minor altercations to escalate into shootings.

The problem is violent people are violent.

Only in Russia

So I hit up the BBC to see what’s going around in the world and I come across the best headline ever in the European section:

Scores of Russians have died in the past few weeks amid a heatwave – many drowning after drinking too much vodka.

That’s a headline I would expect on the Onion. Anyways without context that’s hilarious but with context it seems Russians are going swimming in lakes and rivers due to the heat but drowning because they’re actually too drunk to swim. Now that I think about it it’s funny even with context.

Hell I’ll Do That for Free

Random Nuclear Strikes has another post showing how incompetence of our government when it comes to money management. It seems our government paid $92.86 to destroy a single firearm. The kick in the teeth is the fact that they paid to have 1.4 million firearms destroyed.

I have a proposition for our government. Should you come across another 1.4 million guns you no longer want (or more, or less) I’m offering my services to take them off of your hand for free. That’s right instead of having to waste $92.86 dollars per gun to dispose of them you can give me the firearms at no cost to you. It’s simple, it’s easy, and best of all it’s free! I’ll also ensure the firearms I do not want find good homes (don’t worry I’ll ensure background checks are completed and everything). Yup that’s right I’m going to be green on this and recycle those arms that I do not want.

So donate today to Christopher Burg’s Home for Wayward Guns.

And This is Who My State Elected People

I haven’t said much about the Kagen hearings because there really isn’t much I can say that hasn’t been said by somebody else already. Also I know she’ll get the confirmation regardless so I’ve decided to spend my time elsewhere. But I must say this is the kind of fuck up the majority of people in this state voted for when they filled in the little circle next to Klobuchar:

How crucial is the “Twilight” phenomenon to the cultural fabric of America? Enough that one’s opinion on it is apparently worth knowing before determining whether she should sit on the highest court in the land.

During her Supreme Court confirmation hearing on Wednesday, Solicitor General Elena Kagan was jokingly asked by Sen. Amy Klobuchar, Democrat of Minnesota, for her thoughts on a particularly pressing issue.

Yes senator Klobuchar wasted her time on the floor asking about fucking Twilight instead of say… oh I don’t know something on consequence.

To everybody outside of Minnesota let me state that I’m very sorry for what a majority of my fellow Minnesotans have done. I promise the rest of us will work hard to correct this problem. Also thanks goes to Random Nuclear Strikes for my daily depression. But also another hat tip goes to him for the best response ever on the subject at hand.

Arguing with the Anti-Gunners

That’s that this post is about. Although I do realize arguing things on the Internet is ultimately pointless I do sometimes partake in it. There are two main reasons I argue with anti-gunners online; to keep my kills of debating fresh and because I love watching them break down into personal insults after devastating their arguments. The last one is a guilty pleasure of mine to say the least. But some of these arguments are worth a little analysis so I figured I’d post a couple of the recent threads I participated in on reddit.

The first argument I’ll post up is one I had with a person going by the handle APeacefulWarrior. To save you some brain damage I’ll sum things up. APeacefulWarrior was stating that “idiot gun nuts” are getting what they deserve for listening to the NRA and stockpiling weaponry for a potential gun ban that could never be.

Well I tried pointing out the fact that the NRA never said Obama was going to use the UN to take our guns but instead tried to explain the implications of the Small Arms Treaty. Likewise I posted a link to Obama’s campaign website that stated the Obamessiah was in favor of repealing the Tiahrt Amendment (including a link that actually described what the amendment was) and reinstating the “assault weapons” ban (as well as explained what the ban really was). I also decided to point out the fact that the “gun show loophole” mentioned was responsible for less than 1% of crime guns. Yes I included links to sources of information on all of those subjects.

Like most anti-gunners eventually APeacefulWarrior broke down into personal insults and not once posted any links citing anything he was claiming. Generally in a debate if one side provides citations for their arguments it’s expected the other side will as well. Of course when you have no real facts to back up your arguments that very difficult and it ultimately what causes the anti-gunners to lose.

Another example of anti-gunner argument failures is a long running thread I had with a user going by the handle malevolentjelly. He tried making the argument that stricter gun control laws lowers the number of guns available to criminals and hence lower the crime rate. It’s important to note he is stating there is a correlation between the number of guns available to civilians and the amount of gun crime in a country.

Again I made several posts with citations to backup my claims. Anti-gunners facing facts often like to perform a little trick called moving the goal posts. They claim your information is invalid and irrelevant since it comes from obviously biased sources (while they source studies from people like the Violence Policy Center as neutral but this individual couldn’t even be bothered to do that). For instance take the following:

What research? Everything your cited is coming from biased sources. How about citing the FBI or the UN?

I laughed pretty hard when he said the UN is an unbiased source but alas I decided to oblige him by posting a link to the FBI United Crime Report for 2008 and a link to the number of FBI NICS checks performed. The number of NICS checks performed is the only method I know of to estimate the number of firearms sold in the country. According to the United Crime Report violent crime has been on a downward trend while the number of gun sales have been constantly increasing. This would of course destroy the argument that more available guns increases violent crime rates which was the correlation he was using. What was his response? Well it was golden:

Just wishing for those two datapoints to be connected does not make it so. Correlation does not equate causation. A systemic analysis state to state of crime would probably show no correlation to gun ownership. In fact, it’s probably largely unrelated. I would suppose that it makes more difference in the nature of crimes committed, not the rate.

This is why arguing with anti-gunners is so much fun. Given enough time they will invalidate their own argument. Of course anybody reading this knows I don’t believe correlation proves causality. But if you can show a correlation that doesn’t fit you can defeat an argument based on correlation.

It was at this point the threat devolved into personal attacks and became irrelevant. But my favorite closing argument from him was the following:

I don’t feel like walking you through criminology 101, it’s not worth the effort to cite for someone who links to webpages devoted to armed citizenry. You keep your eyes out for flying saucers and the gubberment. I’ll just keep deadly weapons out of my household and you get to be safer when the redcoats invade.

Yup apparently it’s not worth citing all this information on criminology that he knows to be fact. And all the sources I posted were biased including those FBI links I tossed up upon request for information from the FBI. Good old moving the goal posts.

Arguing with anti-gunners is completely pointless I admit but it does keep me in a good state of mind and sometimes I learn of new arguments they’re trying to make. But I posted these two threads for your analysis so you can watch a typical argument where one side has factual information to provide and the other side has emotional arguments.

Godwin’s Law states, “As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1.” I’m going to go ahead and create a law for arguing with anti-gunners. As a debate with an anti-gunners grows longer, the probability of the anti-gunners using personal attacks and invalidating their own argument approaches one.