Dvorak News Blog

Cop Threatens to Murder Motorist Over Legally Concealed Weapon

By McCullough Friday July 22, 2011

William was charged with two misdemeanor counts; one for stopping in the roadway, and another for failing to inform officers of his weapons.

From the video:
“Right now, the shit that you just pulled, I could blast you right in the mouth…I am so close to caving in you’re goddamn head…you’re just a stupid human being…People like you don’t deserve to move throughout public. Stupid idiot.” “I swear to God man this little bull crap you just pulled right now has got me so hot. You know what I should have done? I’ll tell you what I should have done. As soon as I saw your gun, I should have taken two steps back, pulled my Glock 40 and just put ten bullets in your ass and let you drop. And I wouldn’tve lost any sleep. And he would have been a nice witness as I executed you because you’re stupid.”

After the video surfaced, the Canton police announced that Harless had been put on indefinite suspension last month, and the case forwarded to Internal Affairs. Ohio gun activists are raising money for William’s defense. And the rest of us get to hope the next misunderstanding ends more amicably, rather than less.

When you look at the cops build and attitude, then you will see classic symptoms of ‘Roid Rage. This piece of garbage should be in prison, period. The threat is around 13:30.

Cracking the Sinister Car Dealership’s Secret Code

By McCullough Friday July 22, 2011

22 Comments

Hmmmm, seems unlikely. Someone check this out and get back to me.

Someone Finally Cracked One of the Zodiac Killer’s Codes

By Uncle Dave Thursday July 21, 2011

21 Comments

Don’t know who the Zodiac killer was? There was a movie about him and lots of books.

Read about how he did it here.

No Agenda Show
CIA vs MI-6

By John C Dvorak Thursday July 21, 2011

5 Comments

Executive Producer and 323 Club member: John Turek
Art By: Jesse Anderson

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Silly Sign of the Day

By Eideard Thursday July 21, 2011

18 Comments

Merton, England, officials declined to say how much it had spent on trying to protect this minute patch of green.

The council also declined to say which officer had made the decision to send a workman – or team of workmen – to hammer in the sign.

“The sign was put up to remind motorists that it is illegal to park on the footway, and is designed to deter indiscriminate parking,” a spokesman said.

Ummm – OK.

Vivek Kundra Wants To Move The Government To The Cloud

By Uncle Dave Wednesday July 20, 2011

39 Comments

Hacked, pwnd and your tax money stolen in 5, 4, 3…

The federal government plans to shut 40 percent of its computer centers over the next four years to reduce its hefty technology budget and modernize the way it uses computers to manage data and provide services to citizens.
[…]
The federal government is the largest buyer of information technology in the world, spending about $80 billion a year. The Obama administration, in plans detailed Wednesday, is taking aim at some of that by closing 800 of its sprawling collection of 2,000 data centers. The savings, analysts say, will translate into billions of dollars a year and acres of freed-up real estate.
[…]
In an interview, Vivek Kundra, chief information officer for the federal government, explained that the data center consolidation was part of a broader strategy to embrace more efficient, Internet-era computing. In particular, the government is shifting to cloud computing, in which users use online applications like e-mail remotely, over the Internet. These cloud services can be provided by the government to many agencies or by outside technology companies.

Tapping cloud computing services, Mr. Kundra said, could save the government an additional $5 billion a year, reducing the need for individual government agencies to buy their own software and hardware.

Irking the British 24/7

By John C Dvorak Wednesday July 20, 2011

64 Comments

The Magazine’s recent piece on Americanisms entering the language in the UK prompted thousands of you to e-mail examples.

Some are useful, while some seem truly unnecessary, argued Matthew Engel in the article. Here are 50 of the most e-mailed.

some examples from the article:

7. “It is what it is”. Pity us. Michael Knapp, Chicago, US

8. Dare I even mention the fanny pack? Lisa, Red Deer, Canada

9. “Touch base” – it makes me cringe no end. Chris, UK

10. Is “physicality” a real word? Curtis, US

DH Unplugged
Back from ‘Nam

By John C Dvorak Wednesday July 20, 2011

2 Comments

Here is the latest conversation I had with money manager Andrew Horowitz…. new insights for anyone who invests in anything. This week we again look closely at what appears to be a classic mixed market up and down…and what about Apple?
Click here for non-Flash version.

click ► to listen:

Right click here and select ‘Save Link As…’ to download the mp3 file.

Contribute to the future of the show here.

Crackpot Idea of the Decade

By John C Dvorak Tuesday July 19, 2011

47 Comments

Found by Kurt Feldhaus.

Cosmic Rays Affects Climate — Just Don’t Think About What That Might Mean

By Uncle Dave Tuesday July 19, 2011

32 Comments

I wonder what Al Gore would think about this.

The chief of the world’s leading physics lab at CERN in Geneva has prohibited scientists from drawing conclusions from a major experiment. The CLOUD (“Cosmics Leaving Outdoor Droplets”) experiment examines the role that energetic particles from deep space play in cloud formation. CLOUD uses CERN’s proton synchrotron to examine nucleation.

CERN Director General Rolf-Dieter Heuer told Welt Online that the scientists should refrain from drawing conclusions from the latest experiment. “I have asked the colleagues to present the results clearly, but not to interpret them,” reports veteran science editor Nigel Calder on his blog. Why?

Because, Heuer says, “That would go immediately into the highly political arena of the climate change debate. One has to make clear that cosmic radiation is only one of many parameters.”

The unusual “gagging order” could have been issued because the results of CLOUD are really, really boring, muses Calder. Or, it could be that the experiment invites a politically unacceptable hypothesis on climate.

Muslim Fired For Objecting To Tax Money To Teach That All Muslims Are Terrorists

By Uncle Dave Tuesday July 19, 2011

23 Comments

Ohio Homeland Security fired its Muslim liaison officer because he objected to its use of tax dollars to create programs “asserting that all Central Ohio Muslims and Arabs were terrorists or terrorism sympathizers … [and] included a picture of plaintiff as an example of a terrorist sympathizer,” the man says in Federal Court.

Omar Alomari was born in Jordan in 1950 and immigrated to the United States in 1978. He is Muslim and speaks seven languages, he says in his discrimination complaint against the Ohio Department of Public Safety, and three top officials or former officials. He was hired on a contract basis in November 2005 as its “multicultural relations officer,” Alomari says.
[…]
Alomari says letters and phone calls attacked a pamphlet he had written, called “Culture Guide to Arabic and Islamic Cultures,” “including one caller comparing the guide to Nazi propaganda and another caller questioning when a guide about Christianity would be produced.”
[…]
[He complained to his boss] to no avail, apparently. He says that when the Columbus Police Academy conducted three days of “anti-terrorist training” in early 2010, “the presenters attacked plaintiff and OHS, labeling plaintiff as a terrorist sympathizer. The presenters accused plaintiff of being a ‘suspect,’ alleged that plaintiff used his position within OHS to ‘connect with terrorists,’ and promised to ‘keep digging’ into plaintiff’s background to ‘expose’ him as a terrorist or terrorism sympathizer.”

American Topper at 275 MPH

By John C Dvorak Tuesday July 19, 2011

48 Comments

Shelby SuperCars (SSC) is an American manufacturer of supercars founded in 1998 by Jerod Shelby. The company is known for the Ultimate Aero TT; equipped with a twin turbocharged V8 which produces 1,287bhp (960kW) this car beat the Bugatti Veyron as the world’s most powerful production car. On September 13, 2007 the Ultimate Aero was clocked at 414km/h (257mph), resulting in the title of fastest production car in the world. This record has been reclaimed by the Bugatti Veyron Super Sport.

SSC has developed a new car which should take the title once more.

It’s called the Tuatara, a foppish pronunciation of Twitter. Who knows why? :)

“The Only Wildlife Most People See Today are Rats and Pigeons”

By Eideard Tuesday July 19, 2011

32 Comments

Sir David with schoolchildren aiding the Big Butterfly Count

City-dwellers are now so “divorced from nature” the only wild animals they are likely to see is a rat or a pigeon, according to Sir David Attenborough. The veteran presenter, who has introduced viewers to some of the most spectacular wildlife in the world through his television programmes, said most people are unlikely to see animals in the wild.

“Worldwide we are estranged from nature,” he said. “Over half of the world’s population is now urbanised which means that more than one person in two is to some degree cut off from the natural world. There will be some people who do not see a wild creature from one day to the next – unless it is a rat or a pigeon – and they aren’t wild…”

The natural world is around us all the time in our houses and gardens. And it is not just a question of standing back and looking at it in a passive way it is about getting involved in an active way and that transforms your attitude.”

Sir David urged people to take part in the Big Butterfly Count, which asks people to count butterflies in their local park, woodland or even the garden for 15 minutes over the next couple of weeks. He said the scheme, now in its second year, is the perfect opportunity for even “townies” to reconnect with nature…

“If my heart is not going to be lifted by a butterfly because they’ve gone my life is going to be much the poorer.”

I recall being at a high school football game in the Texas Oil Patch at twilight. As the powerful lights clattered on to illuminate the contest, insects gathered in clouds around the brightness. I expected next to see swifts and other birds knifing through the schools of flying bugs – but none appeared.

I asked my friend, a True Local – “where are the birds?” He replied, “They’re dead and gone. The hydrocarbons in the air, the fields, every puddle on the ground in the oilfields has killed them”

He said, “Breathe deeply. We call that the smell of money.”

The Plan?

By Uncle Dave Tuesday July 19, 2011

79 Comments

Politics as usual instead of, you know… what’s the word… Oh yeah. Governing.

Why Are So Many Buying iPads?

By Uncle Dave Monday July 18, 2011

65 Comments

I recently got my brother’s old iPad when he upgraded to the iPad 2. As someone who’s built my own computers for 35 years, used Windows (at home and work), Mac and things earlier, used to be a programmer who knows how to tinker with it all, there are times I just want to get things done which is why I love the iPad, and the Mac for that matter.

Ever since the first Mac rolled off the assembly line, Apple’s philosophy has been to tailor the user experience to the everyman. Whether it was Apple’s unique take on the desktop interface or the popular introduction of the mouse, Apple went out of its way to make the personal computer approachable to a general audience.

Of course, part of this tailoring involves hiding or disguising almost everything that makes a computer a computer. System files are concealed. Command-line terminals are buried in a Utilities folder. The guts are all tucked out of sight. In a pre-Internet era when people bought computers to understand them, or as a means to a specific end, the pretty metaphors of Apple’s OS were often seen as an unwelcome and unnecessary illusion.
[…]
Today, the iPad succeeds for exactly the same reasons that early Macs were criticized. It is an exceptionally disguised computer. The formula works now because we have changed.

The audience for computers now is the audience for the Internet, the audience for e-mail, the audience for…being a modern human being. To make a computer for this new audience, you can’t presume that people have the patience or capacity to understand a printer driver or a kernel exception. The number of people concerned about not having root access to their iPads pales in comparison with the number of people who would freak out if Angry Birds suddenly disappeared.

Like it or not, the iPad is arguably the most popular personal computer ever made. And as much as I’d like to credit our nation’s educational efforts in computer literacy and ’80s grade schools filled with computers running Oregon Trail, the reality is that the iPad is the first computer that successfully stoops to our level. Apple’s people could explain it to us, but instead they call it “magic,” and we’re seemingly OK with that.