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In Which I Fix My Girlfriend’s Grandparents’ WiFi and Am Hailed as a Conquering Hero (McSweeney’s)
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The people did beseech the warrior to aid them. They were a simple people, capable only of rewarding him with gratitude and a larger-than-normal serving of Jell-O salad. The warrior considered the possible battles before him. While others may have shirked the duties, forcing the good people of Ferndale Street to prostrate themselves before the tyrants of Comcast, Linksys, and Geek Squad, the warrior could not chill his heart to these depths. He accepted the quest and strode bravely across the beige shag carpet of the living room.
Sarah Ferguson will not be extradited to Turkey
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There is no prospect of Sarah Ferguson, the Duchess of York, being extradited to Turkey to face criminal charges over her undercover reporting for a TV documentary on Turkish orphanages, a British interior ministry source said on Friday.
Turkey sought Ferguson’s extradition after a Turkish court accused her of “breaking the law in acquiring footage and violating the privacy of five children” while making the documentary in 2008, Turkey’s Anatolian news agency said.
The charges carry a maximum jail term of 22 years six months.
[..]
A ministry source said there was no question of the Duchess being extradited to Turkey. “It has to be an offence in both the countries’ laws. It’s not an offense in U.K. law, so the duchess won’t be extradited,” the source told Reuters.
Obviously, this won’t be a problem in the case of Richard O’Dwyer, who is being extradited to the US for copyright infringement for posting links – not an offense in the UK.
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Newt
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Snarky tweets
Newt Gingrich [was] asked what he’d have done with Terry Schiavo. Well, duh! He would have divorced her!
Romney paid the Mormon Church 15% of his income. Paid America only 13.9%. There are no LDS leaders living in poverty. Any questions?
Mitt Romney’s tax rate = 13.9%. Obama = 26%. That a Kenyan Muslim Socialist loves America twice as much as Romney? Priceless!
Love this guy.
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Metric Jesus
I think most people will stick with the Imperial system, where you get twelve Disciples to one Jesus.
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Health care
Why was MegaUpload really shut down?
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In December of 2011, just weeks before the takedown, Digital Music News reported on something new that the creators of #Megaupload were about to unroll. Something that would rock the music industry to its core. (http://goo.gl/A7wUZ)
I present to you… MegaBox. MegaBox was going to be an alternative music store that was entirely cloud-based and offered artists a better money-making opportunity than they would get with any record label.
“UMG knows that we are going to compete with them via our own music venture called Megabox.com, a site that will soon allow artists to sell their creations directly to consumers while allowing artists to keep 90 percent of earnings,” MegaUpload founder Kim ‘Dotcom’ Schmitz told Torrentfreak
Not only did they plan on allowing artists to keep 90% of their earnings on songs that they sold, they wanted to pay them for songs they let users download for free.
“We have a solution called the Megakey that will allow artists to earn income from users who download music for free,” Dotcom outlined. “Yes that’s right, we will pay artists even for free downloads. The Megakey business model has been tested with over a million users and it works.”
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Ruling could force Americans to decrypt laptops
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American citizens can be ordered to decrypt their PGP-scrambled hard drives for police to peruse for incriminating files, a federal judge in Colorado ruled today in what could become a precedent-setting case.
Judge Robert Blackburn ordered a Peyton, Colo. woman to decrypt the hard drive of a Toshiba laptop computer no later than February 21 — or face the consequences, presumably including contempt of court.
So much for the 5th.
Any worthwhile amendments left?
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Lessig on Obama
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Any liberal (or sane moderate for that matter) would be crazy to say that we’re not better off today than we would have been had Obama not been elected. Of course we are. But that fact doesn’t negate the (still ignored by Sullivan et al.) criticism of the President: That he baited us with the reform rhetoric, and then switched to the administration promised by H. Clinton.
^ This.
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Two lessons from the Megaupload seizure – Glenn Greenwald
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But just as the celebrations began over the saving of Internet Freedom, something else happened: the U.S. Justice Department not only indicted the owners of one of the world’s largest websites, the file-sharing site Megaupload, but also seized and shut down that site, and also seized or froze millions of dollars of its assets — all based on the unproved accusations, set forth in an indictment, that the site deliberately aided copyright infringement.
In other words, many SOPA opponents were confused and even shocked when they learned that the very power they feared the most in that bill — the power of the U.S. Government to seize and shut down websites based solely on accusations, with no trial — is a power the U.S. Government already possesses
Has anyone other than Glenn Greenwald made any fuss about this? I don’t see any blackouts on the Wikipedia or Google sites…
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Irish journalist humiliates EuroBank technocrat who won’t stop ducking hard questions
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In this video from a European Central Bank press-conference in Ireland, journalist Vincent Browne demands that the ECB representative explain why the ECB required the Irish people to bail out a bank’s uninsured creditors. The bureaucrat mouths bland reassurances, then asserts (despite all appearances to the contrary) that the question has been resolved. Browne doesn’t let up. It’s quite a stirring spectacle.
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Poor Chris Dodd
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The former senator and now CEO of the MPAA can’t catch a break: “You’ve got an opponent who has the capacity to reach millions of people with a click of a mouse and there’s no fact-checker.” Must be terribly hard to represent the largest media empires in the world, who collectively own all the major newspapers, TV stations, radio stations, billboards, record labels and studios. How will they ever get their side of the story out?
SOPA, Internet regulation, and the economics of piracy
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As a rough analogy, since antipiracy crusaders are fond of equating filesharing with shoplifting: suppose the CEO of Wal-Mart came to Congress demanding a $50 million program to deploy FBI agents to frisk suspicious-looking teens in towns near Wal-Marts. A lawmaker might, without for one instant doubting that shoplifiting is a bad thing, question whether this is really the optimal use of federal law enforcement resources. The CEO indignantly points out that shoplifting kills one million adorable towheaded orphans each year. The proof is right here in this study by the Wal-Mart Institute for Anti-Shoplifting Studies. The study sources this dramatic claim to a newspaper article, which quotes the CEO of Wal-Mart asserting (on the basis of private data you can’t see) that shoplifting kills hundreds of orphans annually. And as a footnote explains, it seemed prudent to round up to a million. I wish this were just a joke, but as readers of my previous post will recognize, that’s literally about the level of evidence we’re dealing with here.In short, piracy is certainly one problem in a world filled with problems. But politicians and journalists seem to have been persuaded to take it largely on faith that it’s a uniquely dire and pressing problem that demands dramatic remedies with little time for deliberation. On the data available so far, though, reports of the death of the industry seem much exaggerated.
U.S. economy unlikely to fully recover: Carney
Canada needs to look beyond its southern neighbour for markets because the United States economy is unlikely to ever fully recover, Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney said Sunday.
In an interview with CTV’s Question Period, Carney said that it is vital for Canada to look for new trading partners in the Asia-Pacific region and elsewhere to prevent the economy from being dragged down by the U.S.
That’s banker-speak for “Sorry boys, it’s been fun but we got a better offer. See you around.”
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Do Drones Undermine Democracy? – NYTimes.com
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There is not a single new manned combat aircraft under research and development at any major Western aerospace company, and the Air Force is training more operators of unmanned aerial systems than fighter and bomber pilots combined. In 2011, unmanned systems carried out strikes from Afghanistan to Yemen. The most notable of these continuing operations is the not-so-covert war in Pakistan, where the United States has carried out more than 300 drone strikes since 2004. Yet this operation has never been debated in Congress; more than seven years after it began, there has not even been a single vote for or against it. This campaign is not carried out by the Air Force; it is being conducted by the C.I.A. This shift affects everything from the strategy that guides it to the individuals who oversee it civilian political appointees and the lawyers who advise them civilians rather than military officers . It also affects how we and our politicians view such operations. President Obama’s decision to send a small, brave Navy Seal team into Pakistan for 40 minutes was described by one of his advisers as “the gutsiest call of any president in recent history.” Yet few even talk about the decision to carry out more than 300 drone strikes in the very same country. I do not condemn these strikes; I support most of them. What troubles me, though, is how a new technology is short-circuiting the decision-making process for what used to be the most important choice a democracy could make. Something that would have previously been viewed as a war is simply not being treated like a war.
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So rong Harry Potter!
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Nokia ringtone
Cartoons
Apple, America and a Squeezed Middle Class – NYTimes.com
This article is about Apple and iPhone manufacturing, but it explains in general why people say “nothing is made in America anymore”. I’m quoting more extensively than we usually do, but I think it’s worth it. What that means, of course, is that I think you should read the whole article.
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Apple executives say that going overseas, at this point, is their only option. One former executive described how the company relied upon a Chinese factory to revamp iPhone manufacturing just weeks before the device was due on shelves. Apple had redesigned the iPhone’s screen at the last minute, forcing an assembly line overhaul. New screens began arriving at the plant near midnight.
A foreman immediately roused 8,000 workers inside the company’s dormitories, according to the executive. Each employee was given a biscuit and a cup of tea, guided to a workstation and within half an hour started a 12-hour shift fitting glass screens into beveled frames. Within 96 hours, the plant was producing over 10,000 iPhones a day.
“The speed and flexibility is breathtaking,” the executive said. “There’s no American plant that can match that.”
(…)
“We sell iPhones in over a hundred countries,” a current Apple executive said. “We don’t have an obligation to solve America’s problems. Our only obligation is making the best product possible.”
(…)
In part, Asia was attractive because the semiskilled workers there were cheaper. But that wasn’t driving Apple. For technology companies, the cost of labor is minimal compared with the expense of buying parts and managing supply chains that bring together components and services from hundreds of companies.
For Mr. Cook, the focus on Asia “came down to two things,” said one former high-ranking Apple executive. Factories in Asia “can scale up and down faster” and “Asian supply chains have surpassed what’s in the U.S.” The result is that “we can’t compete at this point,” the executive said.
(…)
It is hard to estimate how much more it would cost to build iPhones in the United States. However, various academics and manufacturing analysts estimate that because labor is such a small part of technology manufacturing, paying American wages would add up to $65 to each iPhone’s expense. Since Apple’s profits are often hundreds of dollars per phone, building domestically, in theory, would still give the company a healthy reward.
But such calculations are, in many respects, meaningless because building the iPhone in the United States would demand much more than hiring Americans — it would require transforming the national and global economies. Apple executives believe there simply aren’t enough American workers with the skills the company needs or factories with sufficient speed and flexibility.
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Family Values
Using daughters from your first wife to convince everyone that your second wife is lying about your third wife.
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In Soviet Russia, audience plays you!
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During a visit to Moscow in the 80′s, Dave Brubeck met the faculty and students in Moscow Conservatory. While he was improvising on a “Ei, uhnem”, a Russian folk song, a young man downstage stood up to play Stéphane Grappelli-style violin jazz with him. .
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Never underestimate 1500 horse power turbine engines
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Why isn’t Dodd in jail?
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Okay. But why doesn’t that NYT news story have the word “Dodd” in it? This story the NYT put up last night had “Dodd” in it. Have you noticed the role of the former Senator in the SOPA fight? He’s kind of a lobbyist (for the movie industry), except that he can’t actually be a lobbyist, because it’s illegal for a former Senator to lobby Congress in his first 2 years out of office.
Hired as the consummate Washington insider to carry the film industry’s banner on crucial issues like piracy, Mr. Dodd ended up being more coach than player.
He’s more of a coach, less of a player, because it’s illegal to be a player — if in this ridiculous sports metaphor, a “player” is a lobbyist — so he’s less of a player.
Former BP boss earns £12m from Iraqi oil venture
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Former BP boss, Tony Hayward will pocket more than £12m in a first tranche of payouts less than a year after he set up his own company and then bet on Kurdistan being the next big province for the oil industry.
But remember: all those soldiers and civilians died in Iraq because we had to disarm those WMD’s.
And spread democracy.
And regime change.
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Rule #1
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Investment Firm Y Combinator Goes on Offensive Against Hollywood
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Y Combinator, an early stage investment company, announced on its Web site that it planned to finance start-up companies that would go after Hollywood and the movie industry.Referring to Hollywood, Y Combinator wrote: ”The people who run it are so mean and so politically connected that they could do a lot of damage to civil liberties and the world economy on the way down. It would therefore be a good thing if competitors hastened their demise.”
The blog post, which was titled “Kill Hollywood,” also offered advice to start-ups and entrepreneurs who wanted to help to hasten its demise. Suggestions included developing start-ups that created new ways to produce and distribute shows, and games that were similar to traditional shows but were more interactive.
The ability to recreate an entire movie is insignificant next to the potential of the Force.
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Back in 09′, Star Wars Uncut (previously) asked people to recreate 15 second chunks of Star Wars: A New Hope however they wanted, using live action, animation, text adventure screens, SCUMM interfaces, costumed pets, and more. Now they’ve been edited together to recreate the entire movie as a homemade, constantly shifting media experiment. (Vimeo link)
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SOPA Is Dead: Smith Pulls Bill
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Lamar Smith, the chief sponsor of SOPA, said on Friday that he is pulling the bill “until there is wider agreement on a solution.”
“I have heard from the critics and I take seriously their concerns regarding proposed legislation to address the problem of online piracy,” Smith (R-Texas) said. “It is clear that we need to revisit the approach on how best to address the problem of foreign thieves that steal and sell American inventions and products.”
Yes, because only american thieves, like MPAA and RIAA, are allowed to steal and sell American inventions and products.
Anyway, let me translate: “we will try again once people have forgotten these silly protests”
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Students’ math scores jumped 20% with iPad textbooks, publisher says
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On the heels of Apple’s e-textbook announcement in New York City this week, publisher Houghton Mifflin Harcourt announced the results of its “HMC Fuse: Algebra I” pilot program at Ameila Earhart Middle School in California’s Riverside Unified School District. The Algebra I digital textbook is touted as the world’s first full-curriculum algebra application developed exclusively for Apple’s iPad.
In its test run, the “HMH Fuse” application helped more than 78 percent of students score “Proficient” or “Advanced” on the spring 2011 California Standards Test. That was significantly higher than the 59 percent of peers who used traditional textbooks.
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Goldman Sachs Bonus Day Is a ‘Bloodbath,’ But Not Literally
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DealBook called the occasion traditionally “tense,” as employees “are called one by one into a managing partner’s glass-walled office, where they are informed of their bonus numbers, as well as any stock awards or deferred cash payments they will get.” Afterward, “employees return to their desks, where some celebrate, others sulk and still others trade gossip via the firm’s internal instant-messaging system.”
Luckily for us, a few also reach out to reporters. A trader told Carney, “One girl was actually crying, I think.” Another said, “My number was so low I thought I was fired.
Must be nice to work somewhere where you think you’re getting fired because you received a bonus.
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Copyright will soon be extended to works of 6000+ years old (and any derivatives, including satire), sold to the highest bidder on the planet, and the unknown originator will have his posterior sued off.