« Reflections of Fidel | Home | Recent Comments | Categories | Kodak’s 1975 Model Digital Camera »
How to Say “No” to an Economic Frankenfuture
[Quote]:
Dear Big Cheeses Who Run the World,
We regret to inform that you’re fired. We’re really, truly sorry about this, but we’re going to have to let you go. It’s time for you to pursue other opportunities.
In case you haven’t noticed (and who can blame you? It’s pretty hard to see it from private jets, mega-yachts, 158th floor boardrooms, and members-only backrooms) times are pretty tough lately, and we’ve got to cut back somewhere. In fact, that we’re beginning to suspect that maybe, just maybe the entire contract between us, you, and tomorrow — the Washington Consensus, yesterday’s blueprint for building economies, communities, and societies — is fatally broken.
Reflections of Fidel
Fidel Castro is fluent in English and he takes PayPal donations.
We are truly living in the future.
Egg Factory
[Quote]:
It wasn’t simply that the operation is out of scale with the Iowa landscape. It is out of scale with any landscape, except perhaps the industrial districts of Los Angeles County. What shocked me most was the thought that this is where the logic of industrial farming gets us. Instead of people on the land, committed to the welfare of the agricultural enterprise and the resources that make it possible, there was this horror — a place where millions of chickens are crowded in tiny cages and hundreds of laborers work in dire conditions.
It takes only a little investigation to learn how bad things have been inside those buildings. The list of offenses for which the DeCosters and their farms have been fined in Iowa and Maine only begins with hiring children and illegal immigrants.
In 2000, Jack DeCoster, the operations’ founder, was named a “habitual violator” of Iowa’s environmental laws. His egg factories have been cited by OSHA for deplorable working conditions. In 2003, Mr. DeCoster paid more than $1.5 million to settle an employment discrimination suit charging that 11 women working in the Clarion plants had been subject to sexual harassment, including rape and threats of retaliation. There have been nearly 1,500 illnesses as a result of the salmonella outbreak. Every one of the billions of eggs produced this way has been tainted.
If only we could decrease government regulation and oversight so that companies like this can flourish… the economy would recover in no-time!
Quotes
Sarah Palin says the way to honor Martin Luther King Jr.’s legacy is to honor those men and women in the military who protect the United States.
I have condemned any organizer of war, regardless of his rank or nationality.
~Martin Luther King, Jr.
A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual doom.
~Martin Luther King, Jr.
Nonviolence is the answer to the crucial political and moral questions of our time: the need for man to overcome oppression and violence without resorting to oppression and violence. Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.
~Martin Luther King, Jr.
Beware That New Credit-Card Offer
[Quote]:
Amid all the junk mail pouring into your house in recent months, you might have noticed a solicitation or two for a "professional card," otherwise known as a small-business or corporate credit card.
If so, watch out. While Capital One Financial Corp.’s World MasterCard, Citigroup Inc.’s Citibank CitiBusiness/AAdvantage Mastercard and the others might look like typical plastic, they are anything but.
Professional cards aren’t covered under the Credit Card Accountability and Responsibility and Disclosure Act of 2009, or Card Act for short. Among other things, the law prohibits issuers from controversial billing practices such as hair-trigger interest rate increases, shortened payment cycles and inactivity fees—but it doesn’t apply to professional cards.
Until recently professional cards largely had been reserved for small-business owners or corporate executives. But since the Card Act was passed in March 2009, companies have been inundating ordinary consumers with applications.
Best Youtube comment ever
but first watch this,this,this,this, if you can. I couldn’t. Perhaps I’m just getting older but I find myself having this reaction to things more and more.
[Quote]:
To the entire shower of cunts that are even tangentially involved in the production of this: I pray with every fibre of my being that Zombie Walt Disney rises from his grave, tracks each one of you motherfuckers down; and using his zombie strength to overpower and pin you all to the floor, squats over your faces and plants a huge festering 44-year-old fucking zombie shit into each of your cretinous, cancerous mouths
|
|
More than 500,000 (or 5,000,000 according to Yahoo) Network Solutions parked domains actively serving malware
[Quote]:
A few days ago, in response to questions by one of our largest customers, we analyzed a widget by Network Solutions, confirmed that it was infected, and published the last blog "SMCI widget and growsmartbusiness.com by Network Solutions still serving malware."
It was actually a report that we wrote for this customer, to assure them that although other detection mechanisms aren’t flagging, that we are rightfully flagging these pages as malicious.
Soon after publishing the blog, we realized that it was the same widget that got the boingboing.com parked domain infected, which we blogged about back in May.
Yesterday I had some time to sit down and study this widget further, and discovered something critical–it’s a part of the standard domain parking page of Network Solutions.
So the default “this domain is parked” page served by Network Solutions was infected with malware.
Those of us in the business have known for a long time about the incompetence of Network Solutions, but this becomes really “funny” if you realize that Network Solutions was bought a long time ago by Verisign.
And Verisign is now owned by (drum roll please) Symantec!
You know? The, umm, anti-virus people?
Ex-UBS whistleblower hits out at ‘corrupt’ US justice
GENEVA (AFP) – Former UBS banker Bradley Birkenfeld hit out on Saturday against the “corrupt” US judiciary which sent him to jail even though he was the whistleblower who led to the US tax fraud case against the bank
“The Department of Justice’s corruption is evident today — why am I the only one in prison when I had revealed everything?” the US banker asked in a French-language interview with Swiss newspaper Le Temps.
Karl Rove-linked group plans $10 million get-out-the-vote push
The conservative group American Crossroads said today it will spend more than $10 million to turn out voters in November’s high-stakes congressional elections.
The group, which was created with help from former president George W. Bush’s ex-political adviser Karl Rove, will target voters in eight states — Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Kentucky, Missouri, Nevada, New Hampshire and Washington state. Hotly contested Senate races are underway in those states.
Cartoons
Sen. John McCain wants to allow U.S. citizens to be arrested, held indefinitely
[Quote]:
Last week, John McCain introduced a bill into the U.S. Senate which, if passed, would actually allow U.S. citizens to be arrested and detained indefinitely, all without Miranda rights or ever being charged with a crime.
The stated purpose of S. 3081 (The Enemy Belligerent Interrogation, Detention, and Prosecution Act) reads: “To provide for the interrogation and detention of enemy belligerents who commit hostile acts against the United States, to establish certain limitations on the prosecution of such belligerents for such acts, and for
other purposes.”
The bill has nine co-sponsors including Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) and Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA).
Priest blames girl, 12, for sex
[Quote]:
An Ipswich priest will spend the next three months in jail after admitting abusing a young girl.
Murray Alexander Moffat was an assistant priest at Sacred Heart Church at Booval when he sexually abused the girl from 1978 to 1980 – when she was aged between 12 and 15.
[..]
“I made a mistake – you invited me,” Moffat told his victim in the taped conversation. “I should’ve said no but I didn’t. I thought you wanted me to do that.”
[Quote]:
The church sent Moffat on a “retreat” and he had five counselling sessions with a psychiatrist before returning to work a few months later.
Stevie Ray Vaughn “Texas Flood”
I had planned on posting this yesterday, but didn’t get around to it…
|
Cartoons
Hackers accidentally give Microsoft their code
[Quote]:
When hackers crash their systems while developing viruses, the code is often sent directly to Microsoft, according to one of its senior security architects, Rocky Heckman.
When the hacker’s system crashes in Windows, as with all typical Windows crashes, Heckman said the user would be prompted to send the error details — including the malicious code — to Microsoft. The funny thing is that many say yes, according to Heckman.
"People have sent us their virus code when they’re trying to develop their virus and they keep crashing their systems," Heckman said. "It’s amazing how much stuff we get."
And I wonder how much code they get from regular developers, and what they do with it…
Heckman said there were two reasons why the top hacking methods of cross-site scripting and SQL injection had not changed in the past six years.
“One, it tells me that the bad guys go with what they know, and two, it says the developers aren’t listening,” he said.
Heckman said that developers should consider all data input by a user as harmful until proven otherwise.
Heaven & Hell
|
TIME Announces New Version Of Magazine Aimed At Adults
TIME Announces New Version Of Magazine Aimed At Adults
Howfuckedismydatabase.com
‘It’s Just a Cat’
You’ve all seen this, of course:
But have you seen this?
Army: Soldiers plotted to kill Afghan civilians
SEATTLE — Five soldiers accused of killing civilians in Afghanistan are now facing additional charges of conspiracy to commit premeditated murder — a plot that allegedly began when one soldier discussed how easy it would be to “toss a grenade” at Afghan civilians, The Seattle Times reported Wednesday.
The five soldiers were charged with murder in June for the deaths of three Afghan civilians in Kandahar Province this year. According to charging summaries newly released by the Army, additional allegations of conspiracy have since been filed against those soldiers, and seven others have been charged in connection with the conspiracy or with attempting to cover it up.
21st century enlightenment
Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Series
[Quote]:
It’s happened! The BBC officially announced an hour-long special based on Douglas Adam’s Dirk Gently mysteries. The show begins production next month and will air on BBC 4. The good news — this special will more or less be a pilot, and if it does well enough, it should be picked up for a series.
|
The management consultancy scam
[Quote]:
There are now half a million management consultants in the world, and they all grumble that they face one question wherever they go: yes, but what is it that you actually do?
[..]
David Craig gives a typical explanation of what the consultants Actually Do. After getting a degree specialising in romantic poetry, he was astonished to be hired by a prestigious management consultancy, given three weeks training, and then dropped into major corporations to tell them how to run their oil rigs, menswear stores, and factories, for tens of thousands of pounds a pop. In his brave memoir Rip Off! he explains: “We were proud of the way we used to make things up as we went along… It’s like robbing a bank but legal. We could take somebody straight off the street, teach them a few simple tricks in a couple of hours and easily charge them out to our clients for more than £7,000 per week.” It consisted, he says, of “lies, lies and even more lies.”
He worked to a simple model, which is common in the industry. He had to watch how a workforce behaved for a week – and then tell the company’s bosses, every time, that they had 30 percent too many staff and only his consultancy could figure out who should be culled. If he calculated they actually had the right amount of staff, he was told by his bosses not to be so ridiculous and do his sums again: where was the money for them in a properly-staffed company? The company had to be POPed – People Off Payroll.
Of course, this advice was often disastrous. His company was sent into a chain of 500 menswear shops. They advised them to cut staff by (surprise!) 30 per cent, and to replace most full-time staff with part-timers. The result? The full-time employees had been highly motivated, because they wanted a career in the company; the part-timers only wanted a little extra cash. So motivation levels in the company collapsed, and with it the standard of service. The company was bankrupt within a few years.
[..]
Corporations and governments are receptive to the idea that the quickest, easiest way to save money is to fire workers. But Cascio has shown that, most of the time, the costs outweigh the gains. Obviously, you have immediately to find large amounts of redundancy and severance pay. But the costs don’t stop there. Your workforce becomes very nervous – and a nervous workforce is dramatically less productive and less innovative. The best people leave. The service to the customer deteriorates – so they abandon you even more.
The facts backing this up are striking. The OECD has studied developed economies over a 20-year period, and it found labour productivity growth was much higher in the countries where it is hardest to fire people. The better you treat a workforce, the better they work.
|
The World’s Biggest Drum Machine
Bush Campaign Chief and Former RNC Chair Ken Mehlman: I’m Gay
[Quote]:
Ken Mehlman, President Bush’s campaign manager in 2004 and a former chairman of the Republican National Committee, has told family and associates that he is gay.
Mehlman arrived at this conclusion about his identity fairly recently, he said in an interview. He agreed to answer a reporter’s questions, he said, because, now in private life, he wants to become an advocate for gay marriage and anticipated that questions would arise about his participation in a late-September fundraiser for the American Foundation for Equal Rights (AFER), the group that supported the legal challenge to California’s ballot initiative against gay marriage, Proposition 8.
"It’s taken me 43 years to get comfortable with this part of my life," said Mehlman, now an executive vice-president with the New York City-based private equity firm, KKR. "Everybody has their own path to travel, their own journey, and for me, over the past few months, I’ve told my family, friends, former colleagues, and current colleagues, and they’ve been wonderful and supportive. The process has been something that’s made me a happier and better person. It’s something I wish I had done years ago."
Yeah, I think we all wish that. But I guess it counts as progress that a prominent Republican outs himself without having been arrested in a men’s bathroom for snorting cocaine out of a male prostitute’s rectum.
|
Spongebob Classics
[Quote]:
The cast of "Spongebob Squarepants" lend their voices to classics from Hollywood’s Golden Age of Internet lip-dubbing.
Twitter / Dalai Lama
[Quote]:
There must be a way of promoting human values without involving religion, based on common sense, experience and recent scientific findings.
The Government’s New Right to Track Your Every Move With GPS
[Quote]:
Government agents can sneak onto your property in the middle of the night, put a GPS device on the bottom of your car and keep track of everywhere you go. This doesn’t violate your Fourth Amendment rights, because you do not have any reasonable expectation of privacy in your own driveway – and no reasonable expectation that the government isn’t tracking your movements.That is the bizarre – and scary – rule that now applies in California and eight other Western states. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which covers this vast jurisdiction, recently decided the government can monitor you in this way virtually anytime it wants – with no need for a search warrant.
|
How Snooki Got Her Gucci: The Dirt on Purses
[Quote]:
Remember how Snooki, drunk or sober, was never seen without that Coach bag dangling from the crook of her arm? Snooki and her Coach were as synonymous as The Situation and his six-pack. But then the winds of change started blowing on Jersey Shore. Every photograph of Guido-huntin’ Snooki showed her toting a new designer purse. Why the sudden disloyalty? Was she trading up? Was she vomiting into her purses and then randomly replacing them? The answer is much more intriguing.
Allegedly, the anxious folks at these various luxury houses are all aggressively gifting our gal Snookums with free bags. No surprise, right? But here’s the shocker: They are not sending her their own bags. They are sending her each other’s bags! Competitors’ bags!
Call it what you will — "preemptive product placement"? "unbranding"? — either way, it’s brilliant, and it makes total sense. As much as one might adore Miss Snickerdoodle, her ability to inspire dress-alikes among her fans is questionable. The bottom line? Nobody in fashion wants to co-brand with Snooki.
|
Now you, too, can quit like JetBlue guy: The SlipQuit™
[Quote]:
« Older Entries Newer Entries »
1. Do not confuse those who send men and women into combat with those that execute the mission.
2. The US spends more than three times as much on social security and welfare as we do on the military.
3. Who thinks they can argue that Napoleon, Hitler, and Horihito would have been stopped without the force of arms? Or perhaps the American Revolution should have been “fought” only with speeches and termed “The day the colonies were a triffle miffed.”
Well, I was only addressing the fact that Sarah Palin was knowingly lying, so I fail to see why you need to attack social security and welfare or people who promote nonviolence.
Perhaps I may offer you another glass of cool-aid?