This story of a couple who shined a green laser into the cockpit of a police helicopter is interesting. According to the article, they were just having fun flashing them into the sky like giant light-sabers (which sounds pretty fun to me). Unfortunately, it hit the cockpit of the helicopter which must have diffused and spread the light (or else this couple has some killer aim to be able to hit the retina of a helicopter pilot at 500 feet).

Sounds just like a CSI Miami episode I saw.

And apparenlty, I'm not the only one who's noticed this connection.

(H/T to Slashdot for the link)

According to a recent case, you have no right to privacy when having your computer repaired.

Granted, this was a case of child pornography and I think in the case of certain types of crimes, it doesn't matter how the evidence was obtained, it should be admissable. Of course, I believe any evidence should be admissable as long as there are significant consequences for doing a search and seizure where nothing turns up.

(H/T to Slashdot for the link)

Even though the chair of the FTC has clear financial interests in the merger of Google and Doubleclick AND she was on the board deciding if the deal could go through AND she refused to recluse herself, the merger has been approved and there's no sign of any accountability on the way.

But it wasn't a unanimous decision. The Register tells of at least one dissenting member of the FTC who sees vast privacy implications in the future. No kidding.

Add Deborah Platt-Majores to the list of "Enemies of American Freedom" right up there with Bush and his people.

Well good.

Let's hear it for the bloggers!

Well good.

(H/T to Slashdot for the link)

I should make a song. I'll call it "Duh" and repeat the word "duh" over and over. Then I'll send it to all the state election boards who have been using e-voting.

Here's an excerpt from Ars Technica's writeup of this startling revelation:

To put it in every-day terms, the tools needed to compromise an accurate vote count could be as simple as tampering with the paper audit trail connector or using a magnet and a personal digital assistant," Brunner said in a statement. Note that Brenner here is describing machines that have been in use in Ohio since before the 2004 presidential election. This isn't some glimpse of how bad things might be in November 2008. It's a look at how bad they've been all along.

*sigh*

Deborah Platt-Majores, who I think of an incompetent failure due to her work on the Presidentially decreed ID Theft Taskforce has shown herself to more on the dishonest rather than the incompetent side.

Though she has a clear conflict of interest in the upcoming Google/Doubleclick merger evaluation (her husband works for the lawfirm that represents them), she has refused to recluse herself while at the same time, evidence of the law firms involvement with Doubleclick has been "mysteriously disappearing" from their website.

But, of course, no matter how obviously wrong this is, nothing will be done about it because of the legacy of non-accountability set by Bush. Thanks Bush! You've really been an inspiration to all the greedy, self-serving a-holes who'd sell out all the little people for a little more power and money.

If you believe that life exists out there, it's easy to see why programs like SETI have been created to try and gather evidence. Now there's an effort called "Active SETI" that's no longer content to wait for signs of life, it's broadcasting signals directly to other stars that are likely to contain similar lifeforms to us.

The problem is, there are some who believe that doing so puts us all in danger. Without knowing who or what is out there, what their capabilities are, and what their intentions are, we could be inviting our own destruction.

Rather than sound paranoid, this is very sound advice. If you drugged and blindfolded and were then released somewhere that sounded like a city, would the first thing you did be to yell, "hey, hey! I'm over here! HELLLLLOOOOO!!!"

You could be in any part of any city in the world. This is a stupid action to take.

Students who expected impartial advice from financial aid offices on campus were getting the shaft. Now that they've been caught, loan companies have promised to stop bribing schools.

In a colossally stupid move, Best Buy triggers the Streisand Effect by issuing a take-down notice to a blogger who wrote about something they didn't like.

It turns out that this group called Improve Anywhere did a funny prank where they got about 80 people to dress in khakis and blue shirts and had them all enter a Best Buy and stand around. I heard about the prank last year sometime (and I saw the video).

Now they are selling joke t-shirts based on their famous stunt and Best Buy (not surprisingly) doesn't like it. Whether they have a real claim or not, I don't know (or care), but they've issued a take-down notice to the guys over at the Laughing Squid. Who's that? Well, the Laughing Squid is a blog, not unlike many other blogs online and the key issue here is that Best Buy is trying to surpress the blogger's right to cover information by saying that he's "promoting" the shirts.

Here's one for you Best Buy, I'm covering all his articles, and the original story, plus I'm promoting blogging! Oh horrors. I wonder what they'll do now.

(H/T to The Consumerist for the link)

Ok, so there's a bunch out there already, but they don't give you the code, they want you to point your browser to their code. I don't want to do that. So here's my own counter that you can freely use and modify. Please keep the link back to this site though (or at least credit me somewhere nearby). Enjoy

And here's the code to run it:

<script>
then = new Date();
then.setFullYear(2009)
then.setMonth(1);
then.setDate(20);
then.setHours(12);
then.setMinutes(0);
then.setSeconds(0);

function printDate(aDate)
{
	toReturn  = aDate.toLocaleString();
	return toReturn;
}

function countIt()
{
	now = new Date();

	document.getElementById("then").innerHTML = printDate(then);
	document.getElementById("now").innerHTML = printDate(now);
	document.getElementById("counter").innerHTML = Math.round(((then-now)/1000))+" seconds and counting...";
}

</script>

<div style='width:350px; border:2px solid black; background:white; padding:10px; font-align:justify;' >
Since Congress is too gutless to Impeach the Bush, here's how much longer we have to suffer under his rule.
<hr/>
<div style='font-family:arial; font-size:12pt'>

<table>
<tr><td>Target:</td><td id=then align=center></td></tr>
<tr><td>Now:</td><td id=now align=center></td></tr>

</table>
</div>
<hr/>
<div id=counter style="width:100%; text-align:center"></div>
<div style='font-size:8pt;width:100%; text-align:center'>

<a href="http://www.jeremyduffy.com/top-issues/president-george-w-bush/">About Bush</a> |
<a href="http://www.jeremyduffy.com/bush-countdown-clock/">Get this counter</a>
</div>

</div>

<script>
setInterval("countIt();",1000);
</script>


syntax highlighted by Code2HTML, v. 0.9.1

From the, we're so stupid, we don't need competition to put us out of business, department comes a story of a new Western Digital Hard drive that has DRM built in. It's an external hard drive which is advertised as making it easy to store and share your files, as long as those files aren't music or movies.

Don't buy these. If you did buy them, return them.

My poor wife went to a website that I directed her to to buy something for me for Christmas. It turns out that website is a front where they take your money and give no product. If we had known about ResellerRatings.com, we'd have saved ourselves the hassle, but now we have to cancel the order and possibly get a new credit card issued.

Well, you can bet we'll be checking a site's rating before purchasing directly through a non-major site again.

Anyway, I'm ticked and I'm going to do everything I can to make life miserable for this slimeball. First I'm going to dispute the charges with my credit card and ask if they have any means of prosecution/persecution. Second, I'm going to try and get his hosting, domain name, and merchant accounts canceled (with no domain name, no hosting for his site, and no merchant account to take credit cards, I'm guessing it will be harder to scam people in the future). And, if I can, I'm going to see what agency is responsible for this kind of fraud and see what they can do about it.

I'll post updates here if I manage to get any of this accomplished.

A study recently reported that Youtube contains many videos that contradict mainstream science, but get better ratings than the ones that are scientifically correct. We all love a conspiracy, but try to remember not to believe everything you see on the Internet.

(H/T to Slashdot for the link)

Embarassed that they got caught, Facebook is now offering a worthless Opt-out policy that will help only the users who know about the problem and manage to find out about the policy and then take the trouble to do it.

Over 10 Million e-mails were deleted during historically important time periods (also periods where corruption and incompetence have been alleged). How convenient that they're "missing".

Either way, count another law broken by the Bush administration.

(H/T to Digg.com for the link)

So Bush wants to leave a legacy? Here it is.

So the Department of Justice, in an attempt to prove once-and-for-all, that they hate us all, has argued that the over $200,000 award in the Thomas versus Capitol case is not unconstitutionally excessive. Excuse my French, but bull shit! What crime did this lady commit? She shared a few music files? Oh woe is us! Oh poor, poor Capitol! They lost so much money to this lady and her dastardly ring of thievery.

What we didn't realize is that she's actually the head of an international crime syndicate who's sole purpose is to lower the profit margins of Capitol records. Using her ability to speak 14 foreign languages, natural charisma, slight psychic power, and the ability to perfectly mimic a harmless American Citizen, she developed a web of deceit and criminal activity whereby she coerced otherwise upstanding people to perform acts of supreme depravity (like downloading or sharing music).

Thank you, thank you, Capitol Records, for taking a stand against Jammie Thomas, who is surely evil incarnate come to Earth to destroy us all.

As a parent, or even not as a parent, it's a good idea to know when certain symbols have meaning. Imagine buying a piece of jewelry for a friend and then discovering that it's a known pedophile's symbol for boy lovers.

Theoretically, this supposed FBI report describes symbols used by the pedophile community. I don't know if it's true or not, so if you have informatino about it, please share it in comments.

(H/T to Digg.com for the link)

To make a phishing e-mail seem more legitimate, scammers are now using common language from banks such as:

Please remember that we will never ask for personal account information via email or web pages.

This gets you to lower your guard. Instead of having a web address to click on, they set up a phone number for you to call. If you call the number a savvy scammer will get you to provide as much information as they can get.

Don't fall for this stuff. If you ever recieve something that sounds like there's a problem with your accounts or credit cards, go to their website directly or call their regular phone number. Never depend on links, phone numbers, or any other information sent to you in an e-mail.