Posted by seniorgeek | 0 Comments
MPAA & RIAA war against the US Citizen
The big media giants and the large financial backed political legal staff have gone overboard now. Please take the time to read the whole article. The following is just some of the highlights by Cory Doctorow.
“Digital Economy Act: This means war,” explains how the latest round of dirty tricks from the entertainment industry — perverting British law, proposing an American police state, building an oppressive global treaty behind closed doors — changes the game. We’re no longer merely arguing about the future of control over culture: now it’s about the fundamentals of a just and free society:”
Read the rest of his article.
Posted by seniorgeek | 0 Comments
Pultizer winner iPhone app banned
The Apple gestapo banned a great Pulitzer prize winning cartoon application because of its political nature. It makes fun of politicians. Gee it should shame the politicians for their poor performance and like of financial responsibility. Oh well, the Apple gestapo says it’s might change it mind according to the latest article posted here
Posted by seniorgeek | 0 Comments
Where we get our oil
I just finished reading some interesting data showing what countries we import oil from and how much we get from each country. In January of 2010 we increased our imports from Venezuela and decreased our imports from Canada, Mexico, and Nigeria. I wonder why this change especially and why are we getting ANY oil from Venezuela at all?
Check out the chart at the following web site.
Posted by seniorgeek | 0 Comments
Student sued for Facebook post
A student at the Western Michigan University is being sued for posting a statement on Facebook that criticized a towing company for illegally towing his car. The towing company is suing him for $750,00 in damages for slander, defamation of character, and lost income.
This towing company has had many complaints filed to the area Better Business Bureau for illegal towing. A case where doing the right thing would have made the towing company money and now all this hopefully puts this company out of business.
The complete article from the local TV station is here along with a video.
Posted by seniorgeek | 0 Comments
Airlines at their best – NOT
The following is a quote from a handicapped persons blog.
“The attendant standing in the front section of economy was a blonde woman probably in her late 40s-50s and I called her over to explain that I needed her assistance because I wasn’t capable of lifting my luggage due to my disability. To my surprise, the attendant rejected my request while excusing it by saying: “If I helped everyone do that all day then MY back would be killing me by the end of the day!” I asked her how I was supposed to get my luggage stowed and her answer was: “You’ll just have to wait for someone from your row to come back here and ask them to give you a hand.” When I asked what would happen if no one would, her response to me was: “Well, normally a passenger is around to overhear something like this and they’ll offer to help with it on their own. You’ll just have to ask someone when they get back here.” Then she turned back around and went up to the front seats where she waited to “assist” other passengers.
“I was completely flabbergasted, but with no other option, I sat down to wait and pulled my carry-on suitcase as close as I could to try to get it out of the way of the aisle. As I’m sure you’re aware, however, your aisles are considerably narrow and even my best efforts left half of even my small carry-on suitcase in the aisle. What’s more, rather than help me, most of the passengers simply knocked into my suitcase and shoved past me on the way to their own seats. Every time they hit the suitcase, it in turn hit me and jarred my back more and more with each strike.”
She complained and got this response:
“I won’t apologize for her actions and I’m not sorry for what happened to you. It’s not in our contract to assist passengers with their luggage and we reserve the right to refuse assistance to anyone. If that’s what you need, then perhaps in the future, you should make other travel arrangements.”
You can read the whole account from her blog here.
If there was some other way to travel to get great distances within a short time….
Posted by seniorgeek | 0 Comments
Comcast VS Mr. Kuhlman – Comcast looses
After many visits by Comcast repairmen who tried to get his cable connection functional but couldn’t, he canceled his service. Little did he know that Comcast filed a negative credit report. He did not find this out until he went to refinance his house. He asked Comcast to fix his credit report and they refused, so he contacted an investigative news reporter for help. The reply the reporter got follows:
“We have researched his issues and based on our records the case is without merit.”
Mr. Kuhlman took Comcast to small claims court and the judge reviewed his case and awarded Mr. Kuhlman $5000 for reimbursement of the extra money he paid on the refinance because of the bad credit report issued by Comcast, $80 interest and $7 for the court cost. Therefore Mr. Kuhlman received a check from Comcast for $5087.
To read the reporters account of the incident click here
Posted by seniorgeek | 0 Comments
Air Marshalls – useful?
US Congressmen John Duncan from Tennessee has and interesting post on his blog about the US Air Marshals.
He says that the taxpayers spend $200 Million for each arrest made by an Air Marshal. I feel that this is just a little high on the cost/reward scenario. He also goes on to say that “Since 9/11, more than three dozen Federal air marshals have been charged with crimes, and hundreds more have been accused of misconduct.”
This seems to me that we should be doing something, like just eliminating the service. It is just costing us too much.
Professor Ian Lustick of the University of Pennsylvania wrote last year about the money feeding frenzy of the war on terror. He also wrote, “For the country as a whole, however, it has become maelstrom of waste.” And there is no agency for which those words are more applicable than the Federal Air Marshal Service.”
Read Congressmen Duncan’s post here.
Posted by seniorgeek | 0 Comments
Net Neutrality?
What is Net Neutrality? If you don’t know, now is the time to learn what it is an why it is very important.
Net Neutrality as defined by Wikipedia is “a principle proposed for user access networks participating in the Internet that advocates no restrictions on content, sites, or platforms, on the kinds of equipment that may be attached, and on the modes of communication allowed, as well as communication that is not unreasonably degraded by other traffic.”
Basically this means that the Internet should not be restricted as to types of web sites, software used to display data, not be restricted from the use of any type of protocol (traffic), and not throttled or restricted based on data types (streaming media).
Recently Comcast was restricting peoples Internet speed based the type of data (bit torrent) people were sending. The FCC told Comcast they could not do that and Comcast sued the FCC and won. This was a huge blow to the FCC on their power to regulate. Since then the FCC has asked congress for more guidance and authority. (Stacy Higginbotham explains this in great detail here)
So what does this mean to you and me? The following is an example of what can and will happen if Net Neutrality is not maintained. I am never around when the TV shows are on that I want to watch so I try to remember to record them for later watching but usually forget. Therefore I go to hulu.com and watch the TV show I missed. Since I have a high speed Internet connection, I can watch the show in HD over the Internet. If I were a Comcast customer, they could decide that I was using too much bandwidth and throttle my connection so I could not watch it in HD or possibly not at all. Hulu.com is in direct competition to Comcast since Comcast streams video content also.
(Jim Louderback has a more detailed explanation of the consequences of not maintaining Net Neutrality)
Please join myself and others to help the FCC keep Net Neutrality in force by signing this partition.
For a little entertainment watch the following video:
youtube video “home taping is killing music”
Posted by seniorgeek | 0 Comments
USA Worst – US Copyright Group
Excuse me while I quote Cory Doctorow from his blog.
“The number of Americans targeted by entertainment industry lawsuits nearly doubled this month, as the the US Copyright Group (“an ad hoc coalition of independent film producers and with the encouragement of the Independent Film & Television Alliance”) brought suit against 20,000 BitTorrent users. 30,000 more lawsuits are pending, bringing the total number of US entertainment industry lawsuit defendants up to 80,000 (when you include the 30,000 victims of the RIAA).”
It seems to me that they enjoy picking on the average citizen because we don’t have deep pockets to fight them in court. Why can’t they learn from other industries and innovate. I want to find out what producers are in the US Copyright Group so I make sure I do not view, rent, or support them in any way.
Keep up the good work Cory and keep us posted on the shenanigans.
Click here to read his complete post.
Posted by seniorgeek | 0 Comments
Our friends the TSA – What next?
The Transportation Security Administration is looking at (or most likely will) installing devices in airports that detect cell phones, laptops, PDA’s, and other electronic devices. The aim is to track how long people are stuck in security lines or so says the TSA. “This technology will produce valuable data that can be used in a variety of ways,” Lauren Gaches, a TSA spokeswoman said. All this and more from an article in the USA Today.
Now, what variety of ways do you think the TSA will use the information? Now what could go wrong with this picture? Since the TSA has such a great reputation of keeping things private, and always doing the ‘right’ thing, I am sure you will trust this new information collected to held in the strictest confidence.
