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found by Martin Higgins
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Daylife/Reuters Pictures used by permission
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| Privacy? Har, har, har… |
An internet privacy law is coming, Congressman Rick Boucher promised, as he steered his committee into the marshes of online behavioral advertising, deep packet inspection and location-tracking services.
Boucher, a Virginia Democrat and longtime ally of digital rights groups, now heads the House subcommittee on Communications, Technology and the Internet. He said [he] wants the committee to write a broad online privacy law this year…
But the Center for Democracy and Technology’s Leslie Harris warned the committee not to get too wrapped up with any particular technology, since the privacy threats change quickly — pointing out that current privacy laws are good in some areas — video rental records, for one — and non-existent in others…
It’s not clear how broad a law Boucher has in mind, though it’s likely to be some codification of generally accepted data-privacy practices. Those include telling people when you collect data and why, letting them choose to join in or not, using the data only for the reason you collected it, letting people see and correct the information and destroying it when its not longer needed…
The Free Press’s Ben Scott summed up what he and many consumer advocates would like to see in an overarching privacy bill.
“It needs to cover intentionality, behavior, and outcome,” Scott said. “Why do you want my information? What are you going to do with it? And what does that mean for me?”
I’ll second that.
This week the historic Union Pacific 844 was in Oakland. I grabbed a few pics. As I looked over this masterpiece of engineering I wondered if we could even make the wheels for this monster nowadays. I doubt it. The drive wheels are 80-inches in diameter and their are 8 of them.
Australian police have released an X-ray image showing the skull of a murdered Chinese immigrant shot repeatedly with a nail gun.
Police are appealing for help to solve the murder of Chen Liu, 27, whose body was found by two children last year in marshland in south Sydney. Detectives said the weapon was a gas nail gun used in construction, firing nails up to 85mm (3.3in) long.
A post-mortem examination revealed that Mr Liu was shot 34 times in the head and neck with a high-powered nail gun, police said.
The weapon has not yet been recovered. Police have appealed for information from anyone who may have been in the area at the time of Mr Chen’s death.
“In 36 years, I’ve never seen a murder of this nature,” Homicide Squad Superintendent Geoff Beresford told reporters. “It’s a particularly brutal and vicious murder and hence the reason we are seeking information from the public,” he said.
Mr Chen’s badly decomposed body was found on 1 November 2008, wrapped in plastic, wire and an electrical cord.
Obvious from this article and others that the killer(s) tried their best to keep the body from being discovered. Earlier coverage noted Chen Liu’s car was first discovered in the area after he went missing.
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I wonder if anyone will want to prosecute the app’s maker for producing child snuff porn or whatever you’d call this?
When it comes to iPhone apps, Apple has received bad press aplenty for its policy of strictly regulating the application market. From competitive browsers to “offensive” apps like a South Park app, the iPhone App Store may have millions of apps, but is still relatively closed.
However, Apple is in the unusual situation this time around for being in hot water for an app it approved. Apple approved an interesting title — Baby Shaker — on the App Store Monday. This video game, authored by Sikalosoft, looked to channel the inner English au pair in some people, making shaking a baby (as the name implies) into a videogame.
The game consisted of multiple levels. Each level had a drawing of a baby, which crying loudly. You would shake the phone until the baby stopped crying and red X’s appeared over its eyes (apparently signifying the baby’s death). The app was available from Monday to Wednesday night for $0.99.
Child advocacy groups pitched a fit, demanding Apple remove the app and stating unequivocally that killing babies was unacceptable. Apple caved in, ruling that there is no longer a place in the world for Baby Shaker. However, many are noting the curiousness that the company, which is usually so strict with offensive content (like the South Park app) would approve the app in the first place.
Thought police muscle up in Britain | The Australian
The Government is pushing ahead with legislation that will criminalise politically incorrect jokes, with a maximum punishment of up to seven years’ prison.
Dipshit Jack StrawThe House of Lords tried to insert a free-speech amendment, but Justice Secretary Jack Straw knocked it out. It was Straw who previously called for a redefinition of Englishness and suggested the “global baggage of empire” was linked to soccer violence by “racist and xenophobic white males”. He claimed the English “propensity for violence” was used to subjugate Ireland, Scotland and Wales, and that the English as a race were “potentially very aggressive”.
In the past 10 years I have collected reports of many instances of draconian punishments, including the arrest and criminal prosecution of children, for thought-crimes and offences against political correctness.
Countryside Restoration Trust chairman and columnist Robin Page said at a rally against the Government’s anti-hunting laws in Gloucestershire in 2002: “If you are a black vegetarian Muslim asylum-seeking one-legged lesbian lorry driver, I want the same rights as you.” Page was arrested, and after four months he received a letter saying no charges would be pressed, but that: “If further evidence comes to our attention whereby your involvement is implicated, we will seek to initiate proceedings.” It took him five years to clear his name.
Comments Off on GeoCities Goes Kaput
- Apple App store ships 1 billion apps so far.
- Yahoo to close GeoCities.
- Facebook approves new TOS.
- T-Mobile sells million G1 phones.
- Pentagon says data breach wasn’t that bad.
- MSFT quarterly falls!
- Intel’s top 10 predictions for the decade.
- This show brought to you by squarespace.com, code word TECH.
Right click here and select ‘Save Link As…’ to download the mp3 file.
Pakistan scrambles to repel Taliban advance – The Independent In more under-reported news, the Taliban is in the process of taking over Pakistan and gaining control of its nuclear arsenal. This is a follow-up on this morning’s report cited here.
This needs to be followed closely.
This needs to be followed closely.
The Taliban has seized control of an area just 60 miles from the Pakistani capital Islamabad, provoking fears that militants are attempting to spread their insurgency – and with it their extreme brand of Islam – across the country.
Pakistani forces came under fire yesterday as they attempted to wrest back control of the strategically important district of Buner. The seizure by militants of the district in recent days underlines the strength of the insurgency and its ability to advance from the neighboring Swat Valley which the Taliban controls, into the heart of Pakistan. Two policemen and a soldier were gunned down as six platoons of the Frontier Constabulary, a paramilitary force, were despatched to Buner to attempt to secure government buildings and bridges.
As this is posted check the front page of the NYT and Wash Post. There is nothing! THUS nobody except the Europeans are covering it. Hopefully they will catch up to this important story soon.
 “Hey! Watch that hand buddy!!”
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A 400-YEAR-OLD cat is the last thing you would expect to find when renovating your home.
But that is exactly what builders came across in the bathroom of an Ugborough cottage. Local legend has it that the mummified moggy was placed in the walls of the house near Plymouth to ward off witches four centuries ago and owner Richard Parson said it had done a good job so far. “I am of the opinion that it works as, since we have lived in the village, we have seen sight nor sound of any witches,” he said.
The new family pet has caused quite a stir in the village with neighbours telling tales of superstition and witchcraft.
“We moved in 18 months ago and were told by neighbours about the cat, which was found when there was building work done in the 1980s,” said Mr Parson, company director of funeral business Walter C Parson.
“We were also told about a child’s booty, left in the house because it was once used as a cobblers and was supposed to bring luck. The exact location of the cat was a secret until it was unearthed.” And despite spending 400 years cooped up in a wall, the cat is in recognisable shape and still has all its claws and teeth. “It is quite scary looking and is a lot bigger than a normal domestic cat,” said Mr Parson.
Admitting that his first thought was to throw the ancient animal in the bin, the 42-year-old has since been persuaded to keep it and re-bury it in the house. “My neighbours said I couldn’t throw it away so we plan to put it back on completion of the building work. “But my wife is not all that keen on it, saying she will have bad dreams.
He’s not dead, he’s just pining!
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Daylife/AP Photo used by permission
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| Students sort brick from the rubble of their destroyed school |
Nuclear-armed Pakistan is becoming a “mortal threat” to the world, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
“Pakistan poses a mortal threat to the security and safety of our country and the world,” Clinton said. “And I want to take this occasion … state unequivocally that not only do the Pakistani government officials, but the Pakistani people and the Pakistani diaspora…need to speak out forcefully against a policy that is ceding more and more territory to the insurgents…”
Taliban militants Tuesday took over the northwestern Pakistan district of Buner, just 60 miles from the capital of Islamabad. Militants were patrolling its streets with no signs of government law enforcement personnel, Pakistan’s English-language newspaper Dawn reported. The move came after the Taliban last week imposed Shariah, or strict Islamic law, in the neighboring Swat Valley as part of a peace agreement with the government.
“(We) cannot underscore the seriousness of the existential threat posed to the state of Pakistan by the continuing advances now within hours of Islamabad that are being made by a loosely confederated group of terrorists and others who are seeking the overthrow of the Pakistani state,” Clinton said.
What do you think Pakistan should do to counter the Taliban threat?
Fayetteville, N.C. — Police said they are looking for a pregnant woman who tried to rob a Fayetteville bank at gunpoint but left empty-handed after answering her cell phone.
Fayetteville police spokeswoman Teresa Chance said the woman had a handgun and demanded money when she entered Carter Bank & Trust, 123 Rowan St., at 9:43 a.m. Tuesday.
The woman got distracted when her cell phone rang and began talking to the caller, police said. She then left the bank without taking any money. No one was hurt.
The suspect is described as a pregnant, light-skinned, black woman, in her late 20s to early 30s. She was wearing a knee-length dark-colored skirt and a multicolored scarf on her head.
Unbelievable.
 Braxton and friend |
Call it the stimulus package from God.
Manhattan’s Riverside Church – one of the country’s most illustrious religious institutions – is paying its new senior pastor, the Rev. Brad Braxton, more than $600,000 in annual compensation.
That’s twice what Braxton’s predecessor, James Forbes, one of the country’s best-known preachers, was getting after running Riverside for more than 18 years. It amounts to almost 10 times what William Sloane Coffin, the legendary anti-Vietnam War clergyman, was paid in his last year as senior minister at Riverside in 1987.
Braxton was selected in a vote of the congregation last fall and is to be officially installed Sunday.
A group of church dissidents claims the members were never told about the lavish package. Those dissidents filed suit in Manhattan Supreme Court last week to stop Braxton’s installation, revealing a growing divide among the church’s 1,500 members.
The Wall Street-like package, the dissidents say, is outrageous for a man of the cloth – especially when you consider Riverside’s long history of advocating social justice.
I guess it doesn’t matter much which hustle you choose, nowadays? They all pay better than working for a living.
Here’s O’Reilly trying to get military experts to agree with him.
Here are two from Shepard Smith who is violently opposed.
Which country needs/wants the largest condoms?Did you know there’s a new female condom?
Here’s a response to the Catholic Church’s view on their use.
And here is a view that supports the Pope.
But the Vatican doesn’t like the response it’s gotten.
Afterdawn.com – 21 April 2009:
Finnish book rental service Bookabooka is being threatened by national copyright lobby organization TTVK for running a service the lobby group calls “Pirate Bay for textbooks”.
Bookabooka doesn’t host any e-books on its site, but instead allows students to rent their textbooks to their peers. Renting is conducted via traditional “snailmail” (i.e. postal service) and it is mandatory that the textbooks are originals (not xeroxed copies). Bookabooka acts only as an intermediate, connecting the students together and doesn’t handle the shipping or returns of the textbooks.
Despite these “small” differences between TPB and Bookabooka, The Finnish book publishers’ association (Suomen Kustannusyhdistys) is convinced that Bookabooka is breaking the copyright legislation and threatening their business. Annual school textbook sales in Finland were worth more than €100M in year 2007.
TTVK demands (PDF, in Finnish) that the service must be shut down by Friday this week or they’ll sue the company. Bookabooka’s founders have already stated that they wont respond to the threats, but instead will keep the service running.
This is worthy of the Onion, but unfortunately it’s true.
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