What the hell?

glumbert - The Magic Trick You'll Never Figure Out

If you had one lecture to give before you died...

What would it be?

Set some time aside for this one, runtime: one hour, 44 minutes.

The Pirate Bay fights back!

TPB files charges against media companies

Thanks to the email-leakage from MediaDefender-Defenders we now have proof of the things we've been suspecting for a long time; the big record and movie labels are paying professional hackers, saboteurs and ddosers to destroy our trackers.

While browsing through the email we identified the companies that are also active in Sweden and we have tonight reported these incidents to the police. The charges are infrastructural sabotage, denial of service attacks, hacking and spamming, all of these on a commercial level.

The companies that are being reported are the following:

* Twentieth Century Fox, Sweden AB
* Emi Music Sweden AB
* Universal Music Group Sweden AB
* Universal Pictures Nordic AB
* Paramount Home Entertainment (Sweden) AB
* Atari Nordic AB
* Activision Nordic Filial Till Activision (Uk) Ltd
* Ubisoft Sweden AB
* Sony Bmg Music Entertainment (Sweden) AB
* Sony Pictures Home Entertainment Nordic AB

SOURCE: THE PIRATE BAY BLOG

Well done TPB! After being conned by big media with CD & DVDs, I really hope TPB takes a big bite of out the collective asses of Big Media. When the disc medium first came out, they were tagged with lofty promises to explain their tag. They were supposed to last forever and they cost more to make. Now we've find, thought the experience of time, that they DON'T last forever and are in fact cheaper to make.

The Internet in 1999 as seen in 1967

Wow, this is uncanny to say the least. As someone of the one of message boards put it: "That is amazing… It’s a lot more accurate than the Back to the Future movies. LOL."

Wanna see what $87,000,000,000.00 looks like?

On top right of TFTH, there a little counter that estimates how much money has been spent on the Iraqi war, courtesy of costofwar.com. At the time of writing, it currently sits at $453,005,095,656. As mere mortals, can we even begin to conceptualise what that kind of money would look like? How much room one would need to store it? I came across this today. It shows what $87,000,000,000.00 would like and then what $315 Billion would look like.

Make sure you read the very bottom...

Quoting... Darrell A. Foley

It's not that I'm itching to get married... I just don't want to be too old to enjoy my first divorce.
- Darrell A. Foley

Quoting... Thomas H. Huxley

Irrationally held truths may be more harmful than reasoned errors.
- Thomas H. Huxley

How Spiderman 3 should have ended.

There's a great site out there called How It Should Have Ended. The long and the short of it is that they create their own version of how they feel films should have ended. This is their latest instalment. Enjoy.



If you have time to kill, check out their site. A couple of my favourites are Lord of the Rings and Superman

FOX censors Sally Field, but this isn't about that.

By now most of you have heard that Sally Field was censored by FOX, and if you haven't... you have now.

Here's the video...


This is my first video upload, hope it works... if it doesn't here's transcript of the bit I'm referring to.

This is was broadcast

“Surely this [award] belongs to all the mothers of the world. May they be seen, may their work be valued and raised. Especially to the mothers who stand with an open heart and wait. Wait for their children to come home from danger, from harm’s way, and from war. I am proud to be one of those women. If mothers ruled the world, there would be no….“

And this is how it was meant to end.

“…god-damned wars in the first place.”

While most I do abhor the fact that she was censored, it was by FOX, and right now there isn't much they can do to shock me. In fact, let's put it this way, if she wasn't censored, I would have been shocked.

The part I draw issue with is:

If mothers ruled the world, there would be no….“ “…god-damned wars in the first place.”

First, I truly sick of hearing this kind of hyperbole. Talk like this is not only divisive but flies in the face of the true feminist movement. I mean are women looking for equality of superiority?

Second, well for the second part, I'll bet Bill Maher address what she said... This is from Bill Maher's HBO Special "Victory Begins at Home"

Fight for Kisses

I see why road rage exists.

So Darrell and I were booting about the city on Saturday... actually, let me rephrase... So Darrell and I were moving about the city painfully slowly on Saturday. He was driving, while I was riding "shotgun" and I was the one getting my knickers in a twist. By the end of the day I was mother effing this and c sucker that. On more than one occasion I had to mentally slow myself down, find my Chi, and centre it.

Al has already discussed the Toronto Transit Commission's mismanagement here with a lively discussion ensuing. The people I have an issue with are whoever the hell plans roads and highways in and out of the city.

There are far too few arteries flowing in and out of Toronto for a city this size on the average day, however, when there is an event in the city such as the recently completed Toronto International Film Festival or the Home Show, the city grinds to standstill!

It is not as though these are Hailey's comet type events that happen every once in a while. No! These are yearly occurrences. The same can be said when there's a Leaf, Raptors, Jays (well, maybe not the Jays), Argos or Toronto FC game in town. The down town core is gridlocked! Getting on or off the Gardiner anywhere between Bathurst and Yonge is enough of an ordeal to throw a Zen master into a fit of rage. One can only imagine what the city would have become had we been awarded the 2008 Summer Olympic Games.

One of the primary motives for the IOC not granting the City of Toronto the much coveted games was our poor infra-structure. To put it another way, according to the IOC (not that their credibility isn't unblemished), the Toronto road system is worse than the Beijing's pitiful human rights record.

I will concede that not all the traffic problems are the fault of the road network. A fair bit of blame should fall squarely on the some of the drivers in the city.

Making a green light is NOT as important as making it across the intersection.
Switching lanes just to get a car's length ahead is not work inconveniencing three other vehicles.
Indicator (signal) lights do serve a purpose - please use them accordingly.
Sightseeing at the expense of everyone behind you is RUDE

You know, I remember the good ol' days when they made you take a test to get a driver's license. Whatever happened to them? Maybe I'm just getting old...

Quoting... Ronald Reagan

The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, 'I'm from the government and I'm here to help.'
- Ronald Reagan

Quoting... Bertrand Russell

If a man is offered a fact which goes against his instincts, he will scrutinize it closely, and unless the evidence is overwhelming, he will refuse to believe it. If, on the other hand, he is offered something which affords a reason for acting in accordance to his instincts, he will accept it even on the slightest evidence. The origin of myths is explained in this way.
-Bertrand Russell

Is it 1984 yet?

Senate blocks mandatory ID implants in employees

Tackling a dilemma right out of a science fiction novel, the state Senate passed legislation Thursday that would bar employers from requiring workers to have identification devices implanted under their skin.

State Sen. Joe Simitian (D-Palo Alto) proposed the measure after at least one company began marketing radio frequency identification devices for use in humans.

The devices, as small as a grain of rice, can be used by employers to identify workers. A scanner passing over a body part implanted with one can instantly identify the person.

"RFID is a minor miracle, with all sorts of good uses," Simitian said. "But we shouldn't condone forced 'tagging' of humans. It's the ultimate invasion of privacy."

Simitian said he fears that the devices could be compromised by persons with unauthorized scanners, facilitating identity theft and improper tracking and surveillance.

The bill has been approved by the state Assembly and now goes to the governor.

Nine senators opposed the measure, including Bob Margett (R-Arcadia), who said it is premature to legislate technology that has not yet proved to be a problem. "It sounded like it was a solution looking for a problem," Margett said. "It didn't seem like it was necessary."

One company, VeriChip, has been licensed by the Food and Drug Administration to sell implanted identification devices, and about 2,000 people have had them implanted, Simitian said. A representative of the firm did not return calls seeking comment Thursday.

Source: LA Times (Complete Article)

Wow! I had to re-read this article twice and check the domain name just to make sure that this wasn't a farce of some sort.

I do not know what's worse, the fact there is a company out there that mandates its employees to be outfitted with these RFID tags or that the Senate had to block such legislation.

What in the world were the 2000 employees of VeriChip thinking when they acquiesced to this Orwellian tagging system. This is grossly irresponsible of the VeriChip employees. By allowing themselves to be tagged like cattle, they set a very dangerous precedent for other corporations to follow suit, that is to say nothing of the fact that something like this is obviously invasive regardless of how small it is.

Media-opoly

This is supposedly a skit that aired only once on NBC, presumably during SNL, and was never seen again.

You know... I just don't trust anyone any more, and I probably won't believe anything that anyone has to say...

Olbermann's Special Comment - Sept 4, 07

You know, after all detritus this administration has put the world through, I keep asking myself how much more can we take? Surely, we have reached the end of our tether? Evidently we have not.

I am flabbergasted beyond believe. This is the sort of stuff that incites civil unrest and sometimes even revolutions. Since the dawn of democracy (what ever the hell that means these days), when has a populace ever been this marginalised without consequence?