[Quote:]

Meanwhile late on Tuesday one of Germany’s most senior Catholic bishops Walter Mixa told daily Augsburger Allgemeine Zeitung that the sexual revolution was at fault for abuse by priests.

“The so-called sexual revolution, in which some especially progressive moral critics supported the legalisation of sexual contact between adults and children, is certainly not innocent,” he said, adding that the media was also at fault.

So when it’s convenient to you, you simply claim to be moral followers instead of moral leaders? Fuck off.

[Quote:]

Let’s recap their amazing charge: Last week, the news broke that America’s five largest health insurance companies (United Health, Wellpoint, Aetna, Humana and Cigna) had scored record profits in 2009, totaling $12.2 billion. This was a stunning 56 percent hike over the previous year, a drive made all the more impressive by the fact that these gains came during the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression.

As American families struggled financially last year, Team Insurance was able to boot 2.7 million more people out of their private health plans, leaving those folks in the corporate dust. In an even slicker, hidden-ball play, three of the five giants cut the proportion of premiums they spent on their customers’ medical care, shifting those premium dollars into corporate salaries, profits and administrative overhead. Even Wall Street’s Barons had to shake their heads in disbelief and marvel at the audacity of that play.

[Quote:]

The body established to pay authors for the use of their copyright last year spent more on its own staff — including more than $350,000 for a chief executive — than it paid authors and artists directly.

The Copyright Agency Limited was formed in 1989 to raise money from institutions using copyrighted works, such as newspaper articles, photographs and book excerpts, to reward the creators of these works.

But the collection agency last year paid $9.4 million in salaries, compared with a $9.1m direct allocation for authors and artists.

I suggest disbanding this gang.

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As the seventh round of secret negotiations on the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) concluded last month in Guadalajara, Mexico, the radio silence on the negotiations was near-total. Like the Kremlinologists of the Soviet Union, we’re left trying to interpret the clues that leaked out from beneath the closed door.

Here’s what we know: The idea that major copyright treaties should be negotiated in secret is losing traction around the world. Legislators from all the ACTA negotiating countries are demanding that this process be opened up to the press, activist groups, and the public.

In response, trade reps are making the bizarre claim that none of the treaty language will result in major changes to their countries’ laws, only the other countries will have to change. (Since all these countries have irreconcilably different copyright systems, someone is lying. My money is on all of them.)

Finally, we have some idea of how ACTA’s masters view public participation: During the bland “public meeting” held before the negotiations got underway, an activist was thrown out for tweeting an account of the assurances being mouthed by those on the podium. As she was led away, she was booed by the lobbyists who are able to participate in the treaty from which mere citizens are excluded.

These legislators calling for publication are fucking cowards – if you’re a legislator, and you have a copy of the draft treaty, publish it. What’s the worst they can do? Exclude the country you represent from the treaty? That would be a great outcome!

[Quote:]

This original flyer, one of about 5,000 distributed in downtown Dallas a day or two prior to the Kennedy assassination, was the creation of Robert Surrey, an associate of Major General Edwin Walker, Retired. Unknown persons placed these anti-Kennedy handbills on car windshields and tucked inside racks of the two Dallas daily newspapers.

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A sun dog is a prismatic bright spot in the sky caused by sun shining through ice crystals. The Atlas V rocket exceeded the speed of sound in this layer of ice crystals, making the shock wave visible from the ground. The announcer can be heard in the video saying, “The vehicle is now supersonic.”

[Quote:]

Dear Potential iPad Competitors,

[..]

Several of you have announced you’re going to create products that you call tablet computers. I think we’re immediately heading off down the wrong path here, at least if your intention is to compete with iPad and grab a decent chunk of the market. A big part of the reason for all the excitement about the iPad is that, similar to the Nintendo Wii in the videogames industry, it appeals to segments of the market which have not traditionally been targeted. Segments which are nevertheless ready and willing, as with Wii, to buy devices in their hundreds of thousands.

It’s difficult to get our heads around the fact that these non-technologically-savvy users can suddenly constitute a core market for a device, yet that’s the case here. Nintendo saw it, and Apple sees it too. It’s an uncomfortable realisation since these people are so unfamiliar to people like you, as hardware manufacturers, and me as a software engineer. This discomfort leads to a kind of understandable blindness, and more importantly can make us leave money on the table. The relative sales and demand figures for Wii vs PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 over the last several Christmases are indicative of that.

When competing with iPad, you have to realise that, to your new core market, tablets are not computers. There’s no such thing (to your customer) as a “tablet computer”; the very name reduces the likelihood they’ll buy it. The potential of the tablet is that it’s not even seen as a computing device. This is an incredible opportunity to expand into a new market, if you’ll only commit to that mindset.

[..]

There’s been a lot of press about the limitations of the iPad, and you’re probably both frightened and overjoyed by it. Frightened because you don’t want those complaints to be levelled at your product, and overjoyed because you feel that if you overcome those limitations then you’ll have a strong comparative marketing campaign and a shot at the market.

Be very careful. For the most part, those oft-mentioned “limitations” are limitations for a computer. Yes, a computer without multitasking and Flash support and expandable storage and a built-in camera would indeed be relatively undesirable, and vulnerable to competition. But you have to remember that limitations aren’t portable between product categories.

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The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) – a high-profile public advocacy group – has filed a complaint with the US Federal Trade Commission over Google Buzz, the Tweetbook-esque “social networking” service that Mountain View bolted onto Gmail early last week.

In its complaint, EPIC says that the new service violated user expectations, diminished user privacy, and contradicted Google’s privacy policy. The group even questions whether Buzz violated federal wiretap law. The US Electronic Communications Privacy Act prevents operators of “electronic communication” services from disclosing certain subscriber information without consent – including “addressing” information – and the privacy watchdog believes this “may” apply to Buzz.

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Google has fixed a Web flaw that gave hackers a way to take control of Google Buzz accounts.

The flaw was patched late Tuesday, just hours after being disclosed on a Web-hacking blog run by Robert Hansen, CEO of SecTheory.

The bug lay in the m.google.com domain used by Google Buzz for mobile, and could have been exploited by hackers to manipulate other people’s Google Buzz accounts. This type of flaw, known as a cross-site scripting error, is common, but it can have nasty consequences on widely used sites such as Google. In addition to taking control of Buzz accounts, scammers could have leveraged the flaw to create hard-to-detect phishing pages that used the Google.com Web domain.