Category: Stupid

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“Lawful access” — coming very soon to a computer near you

Public Security Minister Vic Toews is planning to introduce his so-called “lawful access” bill to the House of Commons later today. So, how does it measure up?

According to Ottawa U Law professor Michael Geist, it’s going to create a panopticon society where online privacy essentially no longer exists and is replaced with a sort of Big Brother. Which is pretty funny when you consider that the Tories are also about to introduce their bill to scrap the long gun registry and proactively delete any and all data therein. Apparently guns don’t kill people, but the freedom to go about one’s own business does… that pretty much tells you what you need to know about Stephen Harper and his cronies.

And then there’s the issue of cost, which is entirely offloaded onto the ISPs themselves, who will now have to keep a record of everything you do online — well, everything you do online taking the direct route via your ISP, making it trivial to circumvent — for 90 days. I rather pity the ISPs who are going to be stuck storing all that data at their own expense. You can be certain that they’ll be glad to pass the savings onto you, of course.

So what’s the justification for this garbage? Mr. Toews, never one to shy away from stooping to scrape the bottom of the barrel, claims that either you are with him or you are siding with “the child pornographers”. Never mind that there have been a number of child porn busts recently which have not required any of the new police state powers Mr. Toews insists are absolutely crucial to fight that crime. Personally I’ve always thought that it was illegal, but apparently by senile old Vic’s reckoning it was impossible to fight this crime before! Of course it wasn’t. Mr. Toews is just pulling his Maud Flanders act, and it sells out very well out West, where evidently people ignorant or mad enough to vote for the insane old codger think “internet” is a kind of potato blight.

But why should we let Vic the impaler set the terms? I say, unless you are against this so-called “lawful access” bill, you are siding with the fascists. I guess the Conservative Party has yet another self-renaming in the works.

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An open letter to a Montreal cyclist

To the Chinese man on a bike who nearly plowed into my car this morning: what the fuck is wrong with you?

Seriously, I was waiting at a red light for at least 30 second with my turn indicator on. Meanwhile you were riding next to the sidewalk, hidden from my view by a number of large roadworks cones. You did not stop. You did not slow down. In fact if it weren’t for the fact that I, yes I, was paying attention to my blind spot when I turned in, you would have been seriously hurt. Especially since you weren’t wearing a helmet. I suspect that’s because you don’t have much to protect up there.

And then you had the balls to yell at me, you dumbass inbred motherfucker. I flipped you the bird and honked my horn at you because frankly I did not feel it would have been appropriate for me to turn off my engine, get out of my car, and give you the shit-kicking that you absolutely and definitely deserved. I was in the middle of the road and had a job to get to, you stupid cunt.

Watch where the fuck you’re going you moron. I hope you burn a red light and get hit by a semi or a bus. Why that choice of vehicle? Because either of those can run you over and not be overly damaged or cause another accident as a result. You are a fucking menace to everyone on the road and the sooner you are forced off it the better off this city will be.

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May 22nd 2011

So, how’s that rapture thing working out for everybody? I wish people didn’t have this impression that you need silly beliefs to live. You don’t.

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The CBSA: fast asleep on your parcels

For a few weeks now I’ve been noticing that some packages of stuff I ordered just weren’t coming in. In particular I have a bunch of dealextreme orders for cheap Chinese stuff which I needed to make a couple of youtube videos poking fun at, well, cheap Chinese stuff you can get on dealextreme so I was becoming very curious as to what was going on there. After a while the CBSA emerged as a clear culprit for what was happening there.

Well, I’ve just received one of the packages I’ve been waiting for, and indeed I was right — overseas parcels are being unreasonably delayed because someone at the Canadian border is just sitting on this stuff. The order was for a few t-shirts from a place in Pennsylvania. Now I’ve driven there, PA is about 10 hours away, and I’ve just received this package on March 18th.

When did the package ship? February 24th. Over 3 weeks to cover a distance that wouldn’t even take half a day to drive. When did this shit become acceptable?

And then, in the time-honored CBSA spirit of adding insult to injury, I got charged a $5 “handling fee” for some dweeb to intercept my package and let it gently age for a full 2 weeks before the damn thing was even looked at. So to recap, not only am I hugely inconvenienced by this nonsense, I’m also being charged for the privilege of having been inconvenienced. A bit like a mafiosi who beats you up and then charges you “protection money”.

It just seems to me that since the CBSA is (by all evidence) unable to discharge its duties in a reasonable time frame it at the very least should drop that so-called “handling fee”. Either that or shape the fuck up, hire some more fucking personnel and get those fucking packages moving at a reasonable rate, which they’re nowhere close to doing now. At this point I have stuff which is nearly a month late. This is more than an inconvenience, this is a serious impediment to commerce.

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Stalwart defenders of liberty

Given the events transpiring in Egypt one may be tempted to think that Americans are united behind the Egyptian people’s desire for freedom and democracy — after all Americans can’t stop shouting slogans about liberty. But the truth of the matter is, that Hosni Mubarak has a sizeable and influential fan club in the United States and particularly in the Republican party.

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Something fans of irony can appreciate

After spending the last couple of weeks twisting foreign and corporate arms (successfully) to take down Julian Assange, the United States takes a break in order to celebrate “World Press Freedom Day”. Clearly the US State Department would be unable to detect irony even if “irony” was a baseball bat that was used to repeatedly smash the limbs and skulls of whistleblowers.

Clearly this is double-plus-ungood. Really, Americans, do you think anyone’s taking you seriously on that one?

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A word of advice

I’m not a fraud specialist, nor do I want to encourage people to defraud authorities, but if you’re going to pretend you’re pregnant so as to get state benefits you really should stop claiming after 9 months. A pregnancy that lasts more than 3 years becomes suspect at some point.

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Today I learned…

…that on Fark, a civil discussion with no graphic language of the infamous Goatse picture can get you suspended for “graphic text content”. I had no idea the boards were monitored by the mutaween.

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The worth of a man

So, let’s say that, hypothetically, you’re an oil executive getting paid so much you practically crap money already, and under your watch the world has seen the biggest environmental disaster in US history and one which is set to cost your company over $30 billion. A non-exec would be fired and SOL; but this is an executive we’re talking about. For BP’s Tony Hayward, that situation has meant getting a full year’s pay (a million quid) and a 10 million pound pension. I’m in the wrong business, clearly.

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Shockingly, would-be terrorists aren’t the sharpest knives in the drawer

Months after warning of violence against South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone for their depiction of Islam prophet Mohammed, Abu Tallah Al-Amrikee (né Zachary Adam Chesser of New York, a.k.a. “Revolution Muslim”) was arrested trying to board a plane that was due to take him to Uganda (via a bunch of other places) so that he could then join Somali terror aficionados al-Shabaab. Chesser added a touch of genuine class to the attempt by taking his newborn son with him “so he would look less suspicious”.

So, how did the Feds get onto him? Basically they developed an interest in his blog postings and Youtube activities, then put Chesser/Al-Amrikee under tighter surveillance, which led them to uncover the not-exactly-brilliant-in-the-first-place plot. His plan for entering Somalia from Kenya involved bribing border guards with a $20 bill — so essentially the Feds saved the moron from getting kidnapped and held for ransom.