Category: Interesting Reads

Mad bombers each get sentenced to 40,000 years in prison

Think back to 2004.  There was a nasty set of explosions in Madrid, Spain which resulted in nearly 200 dead and 2,000 injured.  The explosions occurred just days before an election, and are attributed with the very high turnout and electoral win of socialists in that election.  After much court time and much mulling over the facts by the judge, penalties have been handed out for some of the agents responsible for the attacks.

A Spanish court has convicted three of the eight men accused of playing a central role in the 2004 Madrid train bombings and sentenced each of them to almost 40,000 years in prison.

But then there’s the downside.  Sure, a 40,000 year sentence sounds appropriate, but Spanish law puts a teeny little dent in that:

Despite the sentences, under Spanish law nobody can stay in prison for more than 40 years.

So in the end, these thugs/low-life scum will only serve 40 years and then get 39,960 years probation.  On the other hand, hopefully other Spanish inmates will treat them with the same respect and TLC as our own American inmates would if they were imprisoned here.

Congress-critters sucking on the wangs of the recording industry execs again

In a move that is claimed to be for performers’ benefits, our Congress-critters have brought to the floors of each of the houses of Congress bills aimed at requiring radio stations to pay music performers who appear live on the stations. Rather than looking at live time on the air as a benefit for the performers, these new bills present such time as a performance for which the artists should be paid. While I agree that this is a performance of sorts, what has happened in the past was artists could get free advertising and promotion by appearing on the air of radio broadcasts. If this bill goes through, radio stations will be penalized for giving artists a chance to get free air time.

Yesterday, Rep. Berman and Sen. Patrick Leahy (D. – Vt.) offered to the floors of their respective houses legislation that would effectively codify the rectification of what Berman has literally characterized as evil: a very slight addition to US law that would enable the Copyright Royalties Board to determine royalties to be paid to a performers’ rights organization, by stations earning more than $1.25 million in annual gross revenue per year.

Stations earning less than that amount would pay a $5,000 annual fee. Public radio stations would pay $1,000 per year, apparently even if they don’t have a contemporary music format. Sen. Orrin Hatch (R – Utah) and Rep. Darrell Issa (R – Calif.) are co-sponsors.

Ahhhh, Orrin Hatch. Here is a critter who apparently never saw a right that couldn’t be wronged with proper legislation. And the clear indication that this bill isn’t truly for the benefit of artists and performers but rather an attempt to shore up the ever-more flaccid recording industry is the note that even stations not playing contemporary music formats will have to pay this. If you are on the air and earn above the cut-off floor of $1.25 million annually, you pay a set fee. Never have a live artist in the station to perform on the air? Pay $5,000 please. Have someone new every morning? Pay $5,000 please.

So, as has happened so many times in the past, some music industry lobbyists walked in House and Senate offices, pulled out their shrinking schlongs, and offered some critters money to suck them off. Happy for funds, the critters did so, and fully satiated they now are working on laws to make sure money keeps flowing to industry execs who will keep paying critters to suck them.

I’m not the only one to see this as a full-on negative move for radio, by the way. A spokesperson for the Free Radio Alliance noted:

“This bill, which was so long in the making, is drafted around exemptions and discounts, and the result is bad public policy,” Rought wrote. “Any fee — regardless of whether it’s discounted, tiered or reduced — will only serve as a foot in the door for the record labels to establish precedent for higher fees down the road. With copyright fees, history is pretty clear: Rates will only continue to go up. If passed, this could threaten the survival of local radio stations, would reduce the quality of their programming and would almost certainly reduce diversity in radio. This flies directly in the face of the goals that Congress and the FCC have set for our airwaves.”

Much like states implementing sales tax, low initial rates are in to make this look palatable and not so dangerous. Once the rates are in and people get used to them, expect them to get jacked up. These bills are set to punish radio stations for providing artists an on-air venue, and are put out at a low enough introduction level to not cause to many complaints. We will have fewer on-air opportunities for artists if these become law, and the prices will go up significantly once the recording industry execs and Congress-critters get the ball rolling.

On the floor of the House yesterday, Rep. Berman responded to that criticism by remarking the legislation would only apply to terrestrial radio. “The bill repeals the current broadcaster exemption,” he said, “but it does not apply to bars, restaurants and other venues, or expand copyright protection in any other way.”

What a load of crap. It’s got to start somewhere, and making big companies like Clear Channel pay first is just a way to get things going. Expect more and more music outlets to get bent over and dry-raped if this goes through.

Sold! Magna Carta goes for well under my estimate

If you were here last week, you might have seen my mention of the impending auction of one of the 17 known copies of the Magna Carta.  Well, it looks like the auction is over, and my estimate was clearly far above the final bid.

A 710-year-old copy of the declaration of human rights known as the Magna Carta — the version that became part of English law — was auctioned Tuesday for $21.3 million, a Sotheby’s spokeswoman said.

Had I realized it would go for such a bargain-basement price, I probably would have flown to New York and put in a bid for it.  You might not be able to put a price on freedom, but you can certainly put a price on the documentation which helped set up the modern understanding of freedom.

Biggest tech disappointments of 2007

PC World has a fine write-up on the top 15 big tech disappointments of the year. Included are things like the Zune (which I recently criticized here, and didn’t even cover all the problems it has), Amazon’s unbox (for sucktastic video which you have very little convenience or access to), and the newer, more suckitude version of Microsoft’s Office suite (which I planned to gripe about, but lacked sufficient energy after fighting the interface for 30 minutes to do 5 minutes of work).

#5. The Great, The Bad, The Ugly: Apple iPhone
Yes, we know. Sliced bread only wishes it were as great as the iPhone. And aside from minor flaws like a tiny touch keyboard and lack of Flash support, the phone itself is pretty terrific. But AT&T’s broadband service? Definitely second-rate. And if you want to switch to a more reliable or faster carrier, you have to take your chances with the hackers.

The $600 price tag–which soon dropped by $200 and then was followed by a $100 quasi-rebate–didn’t help. “I think the biggest debacle of 2007 is the iPhone pricing bait and switch,” says Peggy Watt, a PC World contributing editor and professor of journalism at Western Washington University. “People do expect tech prices to drop, but not as quickly as the iPhone did. Apple’s response was pretty lame, too; a partial credit that couldn’t be used for a lot of popular items (such as iTunes).”

Yet still it sells like discount “Any-area-Annie” dolls at a fetishist convention.

Overall, the list is well-built, and I really can agree with most of the list.  There are 1 or 2 things I thought would make the list that didn’t, and 1 or 2 that I was surprised to see on the list because I wasn’t sure the really were that disappointing.  In the end, though, this is really a good guide to what should have been better this year for those following the tech world.

Hot wife makes lesbian pics for hubby’s birthday. He calls for divorce

You’re 50 years old. You’re married to a woman half your age who is a self-described bi-sexual. She looks like this:

For your birthday, she poses in some lesbian pictures which she gives you as a birthday gift. Is the appropriate response:

  1. fap repeatedly
  2. request another photo-shoot, with you in attendance this time
  3. both 1.) and 2.)
  4. whine and ask for a divorce

Pesonally, I’m going for option 1.) for sure, and 3.) if I can get the O.K. However, if instead you are a former Brady star, the real response is 4.) with the inclusion of complaints that the photos are a manifestation of your worst fears and that they creep you out. Since we are not, however, former (nor current nor future) Brady stars, we’ll celebrate this event with another picture of Ms. Curry along with mention that she has since repeated the momentous photo-shoot with another gal-pal for an upcoming issue of Playboy magazine. (via Fark)

[tags]Hot lesbian action, Adrianne Curry, Lesbian, Happy Birthday[/tags]

More on The Golden Compass and godlessness

While reading my science blogs today (note: my ever decreasing time since getting a real job means this leisure-time activity is becoming less available for me), I found this story about the godlessness of The Golden Compass and how unnecessary such redundant godless-message reinforcements are.

Slimy Sal Cordova thinks that being sodomized by horses is concomitant with “Darwinism”, and Joe Blundo claims The Golden Compass is superfluous as a recruiting tool for atheists because we have the video game Grand Theft Auto, some stupid sitcom called Two and a Half Men, slasher movies, Girls Gone Wild videos

More in the full article, and bonus goodness in the comments. I’m not an atheist, but I am an evolutionist, and leaning more toward theistic agnosticism as I age. I also feel a growing need to see the movie, just to find out how bad this message really is (and for the record, I’m going in assuming all the haters are blowing it way out of proportion).

[tags]Godlessness, The Golden Compass, Sodomy, Evolution, Evilution, Atheism[/tags]

Idiocy in toys

While catching up on Andrew’s blog (who, thankfully, is done moving and able to update more regularly again), I read this delightful critique of a new Fischer-Price line of dinosaur toys. You can check out his full write-up (and I recommend you do), but I’m going to snag a few lines from it to use here, because I enjoyed it so much.

Gods, where to start. How about with the little man who comes with Razor™ the T-Rex. That’s right — there’s a caveman-like guy who comes with the toy, complete with saddle and… and… clubs. But not any ordinary clubs. One is a skull and backbone of some undefined creature and the other is a lobster.

Yes, caveman guy uses a lobster as a weapon.

I think my son plays a game of imagination in which dinosaurs and cavemen co-exist, but a) he knows that dinosaurs and people are actually from different time periods and b) he never involved the lobster-as-club genre of play in to it. Personally, I suggest Fischer-Price commit fully to their things-aren’t-like-this-but-we-make-shit-up toy building style and give the cavemen frikkin’ sharks with frikkin’ lasers on their frikkin’ heads (speaking of which, I’m long past due a good laser article – I’ll work on that in the coming week). And ninjas. A caveman using a ninja as a club would be awesome, don’t you think?

On the back of the box are pictures of the other toys in the set: the Predators (T-Rex, allosaurus, anklosaurus, etc.) and the “Ecovores” (brontosaurus, triceratops, etc.).

Yup. The herbiivores are now ecovores. This is probably an Al Gore and Sheryl Crow approved renaming. It’s all the fault of those damned meat-eaters that the planet overheated, if I’m to buy in to the implied message there. I just wonder where the omnivores fit in – they want to eat the herbivores, but also fight global warming and genocide. Man, what’s a poor “I-eat-everything-but-am-plushie-and-lovable” dinosaur to do? Other than run for President.

Andrews comments are far more interesting than mine, and the full article is humorous and sad at the same time. So get to Andrew’s site and read about the spiffing up of dinosaur history.

[tags]Andrew, Kantor, Ecovores, Dinosaurs[/tags]

Government entity ratings

Just in case you’d forgotten how much our leaders suck:

I’ve seen breakdowns of the Congressional numbers by satisfaction with the damn liberals and satisfaction with the damn conservatives that are interesting reads, but clearly overall Congress-Critters and Executive-person are pitiful.

[tags]Polling, Approval ratings, President, Congress, Our leaders suck[/tags]

Airport security still sucks and the rules continue to be idiotic

Recently, my wife went on a trip and chose the old standard air-travel for getting where she was going. On the way to her destination, she had to throw away her yogurt she had brought to eat while waiting for the plane. On her way home, she had to throw away her 8-ounce toothpaste that she didn’t realize she’d left in her carry-on bag. Now I understand that she screwed up in both cases because it’s well known by now to any traveler that these things cannot be taken through security.

However, the rules are still idiotic and worthless, and we can do so much better with security by spending money on things that actually help – things like, oh, I don’t know, training screeners better so they don’t miss nearly 100% of all explosives taken through security by people trying to get prohibited items through security.

Government investigators smuggled liquid explosives and detonators past airport security, exposing a dangerous hole in the nation’s ability to keep these forbidden items off of airplanes, according to a report made public Wednesday.

. . .

On March 23, a TSA screener would not let one investigator through a checkpoint with a small, unlabeled bottle of shampoo, even though it was a legitimate carry-on item. But the same investigator was able to bring through a liquid component of bomb that would start a fire.

Thank goodness that investigator wouldn’t be able to terrorize the plane with clean hair and bubbles. That’s a much greater concern than liquid fire. The TSA hand-waves away the problem by emphasizing the multi-layer approach to security in airports and air travel.

“While people think about us in terms of the checkpoints and they see us as the checkpoints, there’s a lot more layers of security,” she [spokeswoman Ellen Howe] said. In addition to the checkpoints, the TSA uses different technologies and has officials who check the validity of documents and observe people’s behaviors throughout the airport. “Just because somebody gets through one layer doesn’t mean they’re going to get through all of the layers.”

And that’s actually damn good to know and comforting. But our money needs pumped into the less visible security measures. Currently, to get through with contraband a determined attacker needs training on not sticking out more than anything else. That alone will make passing through screening nearly guaranteed, yet so much money is going into screening efforts that have repeatedly been proven ineffective (I’ve covered some, but by no means all, such issues in the past, and won’t link them again here).

Here, I’ll throw in a freebie for would-be attackers. If you want to carry in prohibited liquids, buy yourself a beer belly flask to transport your explosives or drinks. As it is right now, screeners are miserable at catching illicit items which someone is trying to take on, but nearly perfect in catching harmless things like the drinks people are consuming as they walk through the screening checkpoints (hint: if they are actively drinking it, it is either harmless to the flight or they already have ingested what they need to use to bring the flight down).

From the screeners link just above, here is what Bruce Schneier has to say.

When I travel in Europe, I never have to take my laptop out of its case or my shoes off my feet. Those governments have had far more experience with terrorism than the U.S. government, and they know when passenger screening has reached the point of diminishing returns. (They also implemented checked-baggage security measures decades before the United States did — again recognizing the real threat.)

And if I were investing in security, I would invest in intelligence and investigation. The best time to combat terrorism is before the terrorist tries to get on an airplane. The best countermeasures have value regardless of the nature of the terrorist plot or the particular terrorist target.

In some ways, if we’re relying on airport screeners to prevent terrorism, it’s already too late. After all, we can’t keep weapons out of prisons. How can we ever hope to keep them out of airports?

Far more insightful and accurate than all the words I’ve thrown out arguing against the money-drain our government has in place now.

EDIT: Accidentally left out part of the Schneier quote.

[tags]Airport stupidity, Air travel, Getting explosives on planes[/tags]

Evel estate still owes millions to Saltman

With Evel Knieval’s body barely cooled to ground temperature, we now get news that Sally Saltman, the writer Evel beat with a baseball bat roughly 30 years ago, is trying to collect money owed him.  Saltman sued Knieval after Evel broke his arm with a baseball bat in retaliation for a book Evel thought was unflattering.  He won $12.5 million but (for reasons I haven’t found yet) never collected.  He figures that with interest, the Knieval estate now owes him roughly $100 million.

But we should also note the incident that led to the decline of Knievel’s career: In 1977, Knievel attacked a man who had written an unflattering book about him, swinging a baseball bat at his head and shattering the man’s arm, which he used to protect himself.

Knievel spent six months in jail, and and his reputation never completely recovered. The victim, Shelly Saltman, sued and won $12.75 million in damages.

Sounds like he is due the money.  The timing just makes him sound like a real prick, doesn’t it?

[tags]Evel, Knieval, Lawsuit[/tags]

North Korea does not play around with rule breakers

I’m all for the tough-on-crime stance.  I feel we in America are too soft on many criminals.  A company my mother used to work for had an employee killed while on travel to China by someone who broke in to his hotel room with intent to steal stuff.  When the criminal was caught, he was executed the day after his trial where he was found guilty.  Swift, direct, and sure to cut down on repeat offenses.

All that said, I think the North Korean version of “justice” might be a little beyond acceptable.

A North Korean factory boss accused of making international phone calls was executed by a firing squad in front of 150,000 people, it emerged today.

. . .

The factory chief’s death last month came as executions in the communist dictatorship began increasing after a seven-year decline in the number of people publicly killed.

Of course, this is the country where the leader has changed the “educational” system to indicate that everything useful was invented by previous dictator, the so-called “Great Leader” who is also revered as deific.

This execution was carried out because the person supposedly installed equipment which allowed him to make phone calls outside of North Korea, but North Koreans are prohibited from communicating outside the country.  Except, of course, the current leader, who considers him an internet expert (note: I don’t think hours of pr0n surfing every day qualify one to be an internet expert – otherwise I would be a highly skilled, high-level internet expert).

And the execution alone clearly was not enough loss of life, as more people died as they left the stadium in which the execution took place:

And six people were also crushed to death and 34 others injured in an apparent stampede as they left after the execution, it was claimed.

That is just so sad.  I feel sorry for the citizens of the country, really.

[tags]North Korea, execution, Human rights’ abuse[/tags]