Real Life /ignore

Article = None, personal experiance.

Ever play any kind of online game, and there's that annoying prick that just won't leave you alone ? Most online games have a command to help with that. /ignore (slash ignore). Use it on him , and you can't here him anymore. Ah , the joy of peace and quiet.

Don't you wish you had such a command in real life ? Out here in the real world ?

Like when I talked to a guy I knew for years at work, and we now take the same bus home. And it turns out he's a religious fanatic and won't shut up trying to "save my soul". I ask him questions , like "If god is all knowing , all powerful , and he made us, and he made the devil, how can I have free will ? Isn't it all just a game where HE already knows the outcome even before the game began ? "

The reply was "Yes but ..." and then continue with his recruitment speach and totally ignore what I just said.

"Do you actually think about the words coming out of your mouth or are you just repeating what you heard someone else say , without thought ? "

"I'm just reveiling to you the truths that are written ..." etc etc , thanks for telling me you're just a tape recorder not capable of thinking.

Oh yes, the /ignore command ?

An mp3 player and some head phones. Crank the music up loud. I'm sure he'll get the picture soon enough. Gonna do it today. :)

(edit)
This technique is not recommended for a friend you want to keep, but this guy is proving incapable of any other topic of conversation , so for me , I think it's time he goes away and never comes back. Yes it's somewhat insulting , but then blathering away for two solid days like a tape recorder is too. What goes around comes around.

Microsoft Twiddles Fingers on Privacy, but looks good doing it

Microsoft curtails how long it stores Web searches


Microsoft Corp. said on Sunday the software maker was taking new steps to protect consumer privacy in the areas of Web search and online advertising and called on the Internet industry to support it.

... several paragraphs of meaningless blather ...

Specifically, Microsoft said it would make all Web search query data anonymous after 18 months on its "Live Search" service, unless it receives user consent to store it longer. The policy changes are retroactive and worldwide, it said.



So the cops can supena the records for a year and a half and retroactively watch every site you visit with your msn browser. Cool.


Microsoft plans to store customer search data separately from data tied to people, e-mail addresses or phone numbers and take steps to assure no unauthorized correlation of these types of data can be made. It also will permanently remove "cookie" user identification data, Web address? or other identifiers.



"unauthorized correlation" ha ha ...it's the cops people are worried about. And they are "authorized" to correlate that data. So that promise means diddly squat.


"Microsoft is going to do a more thorough scrub of customer data once it is too old," said Peter Swire, a law professor at Ohio State University who served as U.S. privacy czar in the 1990s. "Previously, the practice was to do a partial scrub."


What is this , a sales meeting ? whats the difference between " a more thorough scrub" and a "partial scrub" ? You delete one little field and get to say you did something ? Certainly you're not promising to actually erase the data , I can see that.

So. if you use the MSN browser, your email addy , your phone number , and your searches all wind up in one big basket for any cop (an authorized user) with a supenea and a superviser breathing down his neck to "solve the case .. do anything you have to! You're on permanent overtime until the case is solved, you don't get to go home ..." and bingo... bozo the clown here made too many searches on some particular gun he was thinking of buying , that gun was used in a recent murder, lets go pick up bozo and lean on him for a while until he confesses. Oops , Bozo doesn't actually have such a gun ? Well we have the murder weapon here we'll just make him say that he left it at the scene ...

Citizens Arrest

How to Make a Citizen's Arrest

You know , I used to be a security guard. And we discussed the whole citizens arrest issue up here in canada , and the canadian legal climate and so on and so forth. And you know what we were told ?

1. Don't do it.

2. Really , I'm serious here. Don't do it. Don't even think about it.

3. If you have trouble reading , and you think you're some kind of super cop , and you actually really do inflict a citizen's arrest on someone ? Call the real cops. Immediately. And turn whoever it is you just arrested over to them right away. If it's a nice sunny day , and everything is going you're way , and nothing too awful happens, you may actually avoid spending any time in jail for kidnapping.

4. Don't do it. I know. I'm being repetative here. But ... really. Seriously. I'm not fooling around here. don't do it. Let them run away . Let them "get away with it" and stand there like an idiot and say "Well , what did you want me to do ? Mug him or something ? Of course I let him run away ! " really. You stay out of jail. The security company you work for avoids huge massive law suits ... dont' do it . Let him run. I'm serious. This is sounds funny , that because it is funny , it's actually one of the most humorous punch lines of the Canadian Legal System. But it's true. Let him go. Let him run. You'll be a better man for it. You'll be a free'er man for it. You may be unemployed ( at worst , but I seriously doubt they'll fire you for this) but you wont' be in jail. And you wont' have a criminal record. And thats always a nice bonus.
Let him go. Just don't worry your head over it. Laugh with the rest of us about the silliness of the legal system , and let him go.

Citizens Arrest

What Iraq Needs

Article = None , personal opinion.

So. What the heck does Iraq need to stop all this nonsense. What the heck is with all the sectarian fighting and the insurgents and all of that ? And how do we stop it ?

Police Officers.

Let me explain.

The population has lived under a religious dictatorship since the beginning of time, or a few centuries, or whatever. You apease the powers that be , then its ok to go home and beat your wife, sneak out at midnight and murder your next door neibour, rape his daughter and then slit her throat , anything you like.

Who's gonna stop you ? Nobody.

What about the police under Sadam Hussain ? Nope. They just collect bribes from people. Don't pay up , they arrest you and drag you off and maybe your family learns you've been murdered by them, maybe they don't , either way you wind up in a mass grave.

There is no "Law of the Land" , no respect for the police , and most importantly , no police actually worth respecting. Even the current american backed police are still the bribe taking corrupt evil doer's that would be thrown in jail in any western country rather than wear a uniform.

In the western nations, terrorists do not draw the ire of the army. They are handled by the police , and half the time it turns out the cops have been watching them for the last year in secret , gathering evidence , and only move now because it looks like the terrorist are going to so something.

There's what , one successful terrorist incident , in all of the western nations , every six months. Why ? Because the terrorist can't even fart without the police knowing what they had for lunch, thats why.

You need cops on the ground. Honest cops. Not the corrupt retrained Iraqi's who fill out the final exam's in their police courses correctly but still are just as corrupt as always.

It's not gonna happen without the cops , Bush my man. Just not happening.

Stupid Political Dance # 78

Support for Afghan mission dropping: poll


The poll, conducted exclusively for CanWest News Service and Global National by Ipsos Reid, showed that half of Canadians — exactly 50 per cent — said they either “strongly” or “somewhat support” the use of Canada’s troops for security and combat efforts in Afghanistan.

Almost equally planted on the other side of the debate are 45 per cent of Canadians who said they either “strongly” or “somewhat oppose” the mission in Afghanistan. The remaining five per cent said they do not have an opinion one way or the other.


Yup Yup. This is how the dance goes. Public support for the war drops. We go home.

Unfortunately , this war, they follow us home , blow up a few things in the name of imposing Shia law... we go back.

It's a stupid dance.
It's not helped by american corruption either (trying to get the oil flowing lickity quick , to america of course, right at the beginning, corruption on who wins what rebuilding contract, hospitals being built that the afghans don't know how to use even the basic plumbing so they're destroyed ... etc etc)

And it's not helped by every big business trying to get a slice of the pie by selling the government something , anything to do with it.


The truth is victory is inevitable. They can only blow up one or two buildings and damage one or two air ports in failed suicide attacks , the pool of people in the west willing to harm the west is very small, otherwise we'd be seeing a lot more than one terrorist attack every six months or so across all of the west, never mind any one particular nation.

But the truth is we have to do stupid political dance number 78.
The truth is we gotta go back home, dump all those corrupt companies and failed contracts that do nothing but move money from the government to friends of the government, and then wait for the next attack.
And then we go back. Fresh start.

Don't forget to bring anyone who ever helped us over to the west , so we at least get a reputation of not abandoning our friends. Very useful when we go back.

Money for Criminals , Diddly for the poor

Canadian aid having impact in Afghanistan: group


Widespread corruption in Afghanistan is slowing efforts to improve the quality of life for average citizens, but Canadian aid is still making a difference, according to a group monitoring the country's human rights situation.
...
Afghans have alleged that some Afghan civil servants are pocketing aid money, and are blatantly living beyond what their $200-per-month salaries would otherwise suggest.

According to the BBC, there are further allegations police officers are taking bribes from drug smugglers, to help offset their monthly pay of $70 -- a third less than what an army recruit makes.
...
But Nahzat said more aid -- not less -- should be funded directly through the Afghanistan government. Otherwise, NGOs would give much of the money to foreign consultants.
...
"Specifically, it comes about because a lot of the aid money is going towards funding private companies, and giving big pay cheques to consultants who are coming there for an odd basis, on a two-week time frame."



So...when you give money to help the afghani's , it either goes to corrupt government figures, who just pocket it, or it goes to consultants who charge outragous sums because , lets face it , they're in a war zone and they could get killed so they want to be compensated.

Only a the smallest fraction actually goes to help the people in question , however.


He added that Canadians must keep faith that their tax dollars are going towards effective humanitarian projects to help average Afghans


But we should keep giving anyways, or so the article goes.

I submit that aid money is not actually going to help the poor. It's really winding up in the hands of corrupt government ministers and Muslim fanatics. We are , in fact , funding the very terrorists that are doing their darndest to thwart our mission in Afghanistan, because you have to be a good muslim to be in any kind of power there, and being a good muslim means giving money to the local mosque so it can teach people to impose muslim law everywhere and kill anyone who disagree's.

Send food. Send clothing even. Don't send money. Money makes the problem worse, not better. Money is simply taken by those with guns (the terrorists) and used to fund their operations.

How to stop Islamic attacks

60 die in weekend Pakistan attacks


Suicide bombers killed almost 60 people in three weekend attacks in Pakistan, police said yesterday, after Islamic militants called for holy war over a deadly army raid on a pro-Taliban mosque.


Ok. So , here's the deal.

We're the Islamics. And we think it's ok to kidnap anyone off the street that we consider to be immoral , and try to re-educate them on how to be a proper muslim (read that torture) , and if it doesn't work , we kill them !

The government is kind of against us kidnapping random people, and police officers, off the street , torturing and killing them, so they raided the mosque where this was happening and convinced those people to stop it. By shooting them dead. :)

The Islamics are very upset that they're not being permitted to torture and murder people any more, so , they've decided to hold a protest about this. The protest is in the form of , you got it , murdering people (the suicide bombings). They want to enforce their religious law by force if required, and it seems to be required.

And , after they're done , if they succeed, the kidnappings and tortures and murders will continue, because when Iraq , a good upstanding muslim nation , was invaded by the USA , they got lots of good video footage of mass graves all over the place. So actually agreeing to the demands of the muslim terrorists doesn't get you anything.

And how do you stop it all ?

Well.. ummm....er ... that part hasn't been mentioned yet.

You know , the roman empire declared the celts druidic religion a banned religion (due to human sacrifice) and ruthlessly surpressed it. It's a thought that keeps re-occuring everytime I think about the muslims and their convert by the sword and we'll kill you anyways attitude. I just can't make that thought go away , for some reason.

Pakistan buries Red Mosque dead

Article


In the village of Basti Abdullah in Punjab province, hundreds of people turned out for the funeral of Abdul Rashid Ghazi, the deputy leader of the mosque who the military says was killed in cross-fire.

His elder brother, Abdul Aziz, led prayers as mourners chanted God is Great and called for holy war.


Thanks for telling the pakistani authorities who to go chasing after next if problems arise in your village.


Mr Aziz, the mosque's former leader, was arrested trying to flee the mosque during the siege and attended the funeral under heavy police guard.

"I lost my brother, my students, for the enforcement of Islamic Sharia," he told mourners.


My brother and students tried to convert all these people by the sword, you see , and they resisted and so we killed them , and now my brother and students are dead. They died for the cause of killing the infidels. Apparently Infidels take exception to being murdered by us, it's really quite unacceptable of them to do that. We think they should lie down and just die quietly.

Medicine Hat girl guilty of first-degree murder

Article


A 13-year-old Alberta girl has been found guilty of murdering her parents and younger brother in a bloody attack in their Medicine Hat home.
....
Judge Scott Brooker reminded jurors that even if Steinke physically stabbed the girl's mother, her father and brother, under Canadian law, an accused can be found guilty if they intentionally help, encourage or persuade another person to commit a crime.



So ... a 12 year old girl (now 13 by the time the court trial rolls around) stabs her little brother a few times and convinces her 23 year old boyfriend (yes, she was having sex with him) to murder off the parents.

What do you do ?

On one hand , the girl cannot possibly understand the magnitude of her crimes, so guild in the traditional sense isn't happening.

On the other hand , you can't exactly put her in a foster home or a group home , not with her having a history of violence (she only encouraged the death of her parents, but she did stab her own little brother). And she's far too young to live on her own. Really , jail is her only choice. No one can care for a child that kills the care givers. She's likely to grow up to become an evil witch , and one has to wonder how many more will die now that she has "learned" that killing someone is only 6 years or so in jail.

As for the 23 year old man , they need to throw the book at him. Triple murder, statutory rape , the works. What the heck was he doing with a 12 year old in the first place ?

Sony PlayStation to sell user data to advertisers

Article


The company has agreed to let Nielsen track the behavior of PlayStation gamers to let advertisers better understand gamers’ demographics, how much time they spend on a given game, and how closely they pay attention to the product placement. Sony and Nielsen aren’t being totally clear yet on how they’re going to acquire the information, but it could be a combination of self-reported data and stats gleaned directly from the consoles themselves somehow.


First came one line ads.

Then whole pictures stuck on the sides.

Now we have flash movies. Have you ever gone to CNN.COM and tried to read an article ? Two paragraphs of text squeezed between pictures on the left, flash movies on the top and right. If it goes to three you have to scroll down past a picture at the bottom to see that third paragraph.

This is how it progressed on the internet.

Now I will bet you will see the same thing on games. Ever play matrix online ? toothpaste and bubble gum ads all over the place, and they are SLOW to load, and they slow down your connection which is a pain while you're trying to fight or explore. And of course, there's no way to turn them off. :)

Cable TV is the same. You pay for your television. And you pay a monthly fee for the television as well , 100$ isn't too far out of line for a full spread of channels. But it's the old 22-minute hour thing again , with only 22 minutes of show and 48 minutes of commercials. On a service you pay for. But everyone does this , they complain, thats the way the business works ?

I Hate your business. I don't watch TV anymore. And any game that gets overloaded with advertising I'm not playing either. I'm not PAYING for you to try and sell me toothpaste, you do that on your own hook.

Willing to die for the cause

Red Mosque standoff continues in Pakistan's capital


"We will not surrender. We will be martyred, but we will not surrender," Abdul Rashid Ghazi, the mosque's senior cleric, told local GEO TV.


Really, you're willing to die for your cause ? Impressive.

Umm...what cause was that again ?

Oh yes, everyone should convert to your religion or you will kill them. This is the cause you are willing to die for.

Hmmmm.....I can help you with that.

Someone wanna hand me a gun ? I'm gonna shoot this bugger ! Want's to kill me if I don't join his religion indeed ! Where's the gun ? I'll help him die for his cause !

Who took that pic ?

Dust storm affecting Mars rovers


This is such a wonderful picture of the mars rover, on mars , in all the sand in everything , it's really a beautiful thing.

Ummm... who took this pic ?

Yes, I know there are two mars rovers, but they're on opposite sides of the planet. So , really , I gotta ask. Who's holding the camera ?

The Face of Islam

I've been looking for something to sum up Islam and all the problems that we face because of it. I think I've found it.

(this guy is one of the failed suicide bombers in Britain..really failed, he's still alive and now called simply Dr. Death)


Blasts at radical Pakistan mosque


There have been two large explosions in the buildings of a rebellious mosque in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, which is being besieged by security forces.
....
Students have kidnapped police officers and people they accuse of involvement in "immoral" acts such as prostitution.
...
The clerics have been campaigning for Islamic Sharia law in Islamabad.


And that pretty much sums it all up. some Iman Cleric teaching students to hate. And they go off and start kidnapping people and demanding everyone follow their religion or they will kill them.

This is the face if Islam , the source buildings being blown up and air planes being crashed, wars being waged to counter it , entire nation states up in arms. A bunch of Imans stating "Join our religion , or die. "

It's not a pretty face.
Don't much care for It I think.

You could try calling me ... I suppose ...

Do not call list won't thwart pesky pollsters
Polling companies among the exemptions for new national registry

Did you know canada is trying to make a national do not call list, but it has a ton of exceptions as to who IS allowed to call you anyways ? And more exceptions being added by the day as businesses line up to bribe the government on this. (No proof of that, but if you're not allowed to do telephone sales most businesses are sunk so ... )

My wife and I , we don't worry about such things. We have this bizarre modern invention , it's called an answering machine. The beauty is that we don't answer the phone , we sit there near the answering machine , wait for the person on the other line to start talking after our pre-recorded message. If it's a sales man , we pick up the phone and hit the power button twice. This picks up and then immediately hangs up. :)

It's a strangely satisfying sensation really. We generally look at each other after thats' happened and laugh our heads off.

Really , I don't understand what all the fuss is about.

Fleece More Sheep !

Quebec to legalize Texas hold 'em


Casinos in Quebec hope the province's plan to legalize Texas hold 'em poker will bring in a full house.
...
Schellenberg said Quebec's ban on Texas hold 'em in casinos is one of the reasons why the Lac Leamy Casino saw its profits plunge $8 million last year.


We're not fleecing enough sheep ! These people are getting bored of the slot machines and just handing their cash over to us and want to actually be entertained while we fleece them !


"The Texas hold 'em poker is usually popular among young adults," said Loto-Quebec spokesman Jean-Pierre Roy, "so we expect it to bring customers that may not otherwise go to casinos."


Hook 'em when they're young ! Thats the ticket ! Bring the little ones in too ! Maybe we can offer free babysitting while the parents are blowing a wad at the tables ?


Gagnon, who works at the Jellinek Centre, said he is concerned that attracting more people to casinos will increase the risk that those people will develop gambling problems.


Not our problem ! We just sheer these sheep , we don't pay for the coats they now need to buy afterwards because they have no wool left on them ! Go annoy someone else about that.

And so Open Air Transport draws to a close

2 Canadian boys with same name land on no-fly list


Two boys named Alistair Butt, one from Saskatchewan and one from Ontario, were stopped while trying to board flights last week because their name matches a name that appears on a no-fly list.
...

Transport Canada won't confirm if the boys are on a United States no-fly list, an airline no-fly list or Canada's new no-fly list, which went into effect on June 18.

...
The list is not available to the public, which means those on it will only find out when they try to travel.


We had a good run. What was it, 80 years from the first plane being invented to now ? But it's over. Airplanes now cover the entire world. And that , unfortunately means , that if anyone in the entire world decides to take a wack at their enemey , putting somone on a plane and sending them over to hijack the plane (with a carpet knife or some other sharp object that would normally pass security ) is just a cheap and efficient means if you don't care about the hijacker surviving.

I just did a search on sax.flightcentre.ca , and they charge 1900$Cnd and report it takes 12 hours to go from Ottawa to Beirut.

No fly lists by other countries deciding who they're going to let in is just the beginning. Soon it will be white lists of only specific people allowed to fly , only couriers for example. The days of getting the family together and getting on the plane are probably over , as this one family found out the hard way.

From the terrorist point of view it's just a wonderful thing. The airplane is a hundred million dollar investment by your enemy, and it probably has upwards of 200 victems on it , even if you miss your primary target you're still guarenteed a good fall out of dead bodies.

The Airlines , of course, are up the creek without a paddle. They're now saddled with a hundred million dollar plane that if they're too free in selling tickets , they lose the plane. Oh they try to shift it all onto others, the government , insurence , etc , and then sell tickets like crazy , but a hundred mil a pop is too heavy a load for anyone , any goverment , to float. Especially over and over again. And thats just the financial aspect , never mind the bodies falling out of the sky.

International flights are now toast, aside from a few privately chartered planes run by companies for internal use only. I suspect a new industry of smaller planes that only fly inside one country and don't cross any borders will rise out of this, but the days of hopping on a plane to the other side of the world are pretty much drawing to a close. One or two more hijackings and that's pretty much going to put the final nail in that coffin.

Memo to Gordon Brown Part II

British police arrest two more in foiled attacks


On Saturday, two men tried to ram their burning Jeep Cherokee into the main terminal building of Scotland's Glasgow Airport.
...
Another witness Richard Grey said police "wrestled him (the man on fire) to the ground -- the fire was burning through his clothes -- and finally put him out with a fire extinguisher."


Dear Gordon,
To continue , we at Al Queda are super incompetant in the matter of british car bombings. Notice I skipped the word Suicide ? That would be because neither of the two dunces , excuse me , I mean martyrs , actually died in the attack. Oh , one tried to kill himself by playing with those molitof cocktails , but his heart just wasn't in the right place and you were able to save him.
Plus the fact that we forgot that the door we were driving the truck through had big metal posts dug into the floor to prevent that very thing, so the truck never got more than a nose inside and didn't actually hurt anyone but our not yet martyred Martyrs .
Do us a favor and kill them will you ? That way we can claim they went to Islamic heaven just for trying it and thus convince more and more idiotic morons to join our side and try again.

Sincerely ,
Al-Queda wanna be's