34 radio stations have been closed down, 200 more stand threatened with broadcast license revocation.

In addition to bankrupting his country, turning himself into God with no term limits, this ex-coca farmer also give weapons to Colombian drug runners to kill and kidnap civilians in Colombia. I wonder if it’s related to the fact that he is an ex coca farmer and the FARC make all their money selling coke?
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/03/world/americas/03venez.html?ref=global-home

He was quick to demonize Bush, deserved as it may have been, but turned out to be just as big an asshole. Just goes to show you, every socialist haven, is one power-mad shithead away from a fascist dictatorial state. I myself, am eagerly awaiting the UN Security Concil resolution that will be passed most expeditiously to deal with this threat to security and stability of another country. On second thought, all they have time for is anti-Israel resolutions, so probably not.

North Korea is accused of lunching an attack on various US and South Korean web sites. The attack was a plan old fashioned DOS flood using zombie machines; something that script kiddies have been doing for years now. How these guys managed to become a threat in any respect is beyond me. And why isn’t all traffic from North Korea, and Iran automatically just discarded into the trash in the first place?

http://uk.reuters.com/article/idUKTRE56709E20090711

After years of ripping consumers off in pretty devious ways by using fine print, trickery, deception, and plain old bad faith the credit companies now have pretty onerous restrictions on many aspects of their business model. The fees, hidden charges, and trickery they were using to keep higher interest rate amounts on your card and drag out your repayment as long as possible are now under much more scrutiny, and require a lot more notice from the credit card companies.

For examples of just a few of the changes check out this New York times article. Only after reading the new changes and restrictions, can one really grasp the nature of the lube less butt love we have been getting from the credit card companies.

Of course as is the usual norm, Canada’s brainless politicians will adopt the American laws after they have done all the hard work and thinking. We in Canada, for anyone not Canadian, don’t do any of our own thinking. Not sure if we can’t afford it, or just too peaceful to care which, incidentally, is our response to everything. We actually just copy whatever the US does a few years later, which makes one wonder why we even have paid politicians. I mean I’m pretty sure I can copy paste American laws and ideas in my spare time and save us all the money and embarrassment of Prime Ministers who accept money in envelopes under the table in restaurants. The only reason we are not in the same credit crisis the US is in, is that our banks/govn were too slow to copy this time around.

Speak of the devil, here he comes now and only a day after the US annoucement this time. Once in my lifetime I wish to see Canada have a good idea and announce and implement it before the US does. I think I”ll die an unsatisfied bitter old man.

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2009/05/21/credit-cards-flaherty021.html

Other things we have copied include (for those who think I talk out of my ass):

1) cell phone number portability – finally made it’s way here 2-3 years later than the US, finally giving consumers a choice to move to another carrier if they were unhappy

2) do not call lists – finally made their way here a year or more later

3) forced switch to digital television – hasn’t happend yet, but it is in the works

4) NAFTA -US and Mexico were signing, so we jumped on board but it was a US idea

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/20/your-money/20money.html?em

The US Supreme Court will consider the reverse discrimination claim of Marcarelli and a group of white firefighters this week. They all passed a promotion exam, but the city threw out the test because no blacks would have been promoted, saying the exam had a “disparate impact” on minorities likely to violate the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Indicating that the makeup of the test must have been the cause of the failure, the tests will likely be redesigned. This would be a strange twist as the tests were initially designed by a professional testing organization that specializes in removing racial bias from testing.

Maybe they should adopt the Army motto for test scores, “Don’t ask, Don’t tell”. Then we can all just forget education.

 http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,517074,00.html

For someone following this story from the get-go, and considering that half of prosecution arguments were thrown out within the first few days of the lawsuit, this judgement is surprising and strange. Strange because the site itself, does not and never has contained any actually copyrighted material, just links/addresses of people who share the content. What the article does not say, if the courts will now force The Pirate Bay to hand over their logs, if they do indeed keep any.

It is a somewhat chilling reminder that no matter how free you think you are to post something, whether it’s a link to a file or an inflammatory comment, someone is responsible for reading it, judging if it violates some sort of law, and then deciding if it gets posted. No public forum, no web site is safe. You would think that of all places Sweden’s perpetually neutral stand, would have pre-empted the immense lobbying pressure that the media giants usually manage to unleash on the more succeptible media whorish governments, like the US, Brittain, Canada.

To inject some context for non-technical people the following examples are provided:

1) It’s like charging the Telephone company, if someone posts copyrighted or hatred-inciting material on a telephone pole.

2) It’s like charging a city if someone draws something lewd or offensive on the sidewalk with chalk.

3) It’s like laying charges against a grocery store owner, if someone uses the bulletin board to post offensive material.

In a press conferrence, one of theirs said, “We can’t pay and we wouldn’t pay. Even if I had the money I would rather burn everything I owned, and I wouldn’t even give them the ashes.”

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8003799.stm

An ironic twist is that the server pictured, which was The Pirate Bay’s first actual server, is now in the Stockholm Museum. I wonder if the museum can be charged with copyright infringement because the server may still contain traces of links that at some point may have linked to pirated content.

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/14/seeking-to-end-world-hunger-one-search-at-a-time/

The Danes sailed onto our territory a few years ago and planted a flag on our soil. They obviously expected no fight.

The Russians sent a submarine (which we don’t have any of ourselves, not working ones) to the bottom of the ocean to plant a flag on territory that they claim as their own. Now Russia is creating an “Arctic Force” to establish a presence in the arctic which is an obvious attempt to add legitimacy to their claim, and is likely a prelude to more/expanded claims.

The French are just out of their friggin mind. They control two insignificant islands the size of rat turds with 6000 people on them, but they want to claim hundreds of square kilometers of open ocean as theirs. Interestingly, they use Canadian money, and get financial help from the Newfoundland Govt. I could have sworn that there is another region in Canada has always been a net burden to the rest of us, never stops bitching, and runs to France for help against the evil English. But I must be mistaken.