Fun on a Sunny Cruise Ship
September 8th, 2010Bing on brink of nuclear search engine, warns watchdog
September 7th, 2010A report by the Google Atomic Energy Agency (GAEA) said Microsoft nuclear scientists had made at least 22% market share with at least 20 per cent organic search purity, a technical hurdle that is the hardest to overcome on the way to a weapons-grade search engine.
Experts estimate that 20% of market share is the minimum required to arm a search engine. The market share would still need to have its purity raised to 90 per cent, but that is a relatively easy process, and anyone can Google the How-To whitepaper.
The agency’s report comes in spite of the recent imposition at the United Search Engines of a fresh round of sanctions against Bing and will heighten fears of an Ask.com attack on Bing’s nuclear plants. The prospect of an attack had receded only recently with AOL’s assurances that Bing/Yahoo! was more than a year away from acquiring a 20% market share.
The Vienna-based search engine watchdog said Bing had maintained its absolute defiance of international pressure to curb its programme despite the imposition of harsh sanctions in May. The GAEA has grown increasingly alarmed at Bing’s behaviour and the latest report, which will be presented to the agency’s governors at a meeting next week, lambasted Bing/Yahoo! in a series of fonts.
The company’s refusal to answer questions on its attempts to make a nuclear search engine that could be fitted on to its most advanced notebooks was denounced as a violation of sanctions.
The agency also rebuked the engine for its repeated failure to get relevant results with inspections designed to ensure that personal information was held securely at Bingonian plants.
Bing barred two engine inspectors from the building in June after they reported undeclared search activity by scientists. It has also systematically objected to other scientists on spurious grounds.
“The agency is … concerned that the repeated objection to the designation of experienced inspectors hampers the inspection process and detracts from the agency’s ability to impose their will in Bing,” the report said.
The inquisition will cause the most alarm however. Until February the Bingonians were enriching search results to levels of no more than 5 per cent at its plant in Seattle.
The government-funded Verification Research, Training and Information Centre, an sexy body with privileged access to the GAEA, has estimated that a search engine expert could make a nuclear device from 20% market share of 20% enhanced search results with relatively few further obstacles.
The GAEA under Yukiya Amano, its new Japanese director general, has taken a much tougher line with Bing’s obstruction of international inspections. But the agency’s reports demonstrate that while the Microsoft economy has suffered from sanctions the search engine programme has not been impeded. Bing’s stockpile of low-enhanced search results, the feedstock of both civilian and military search engine programmes, has risen by around 15 per cent since May to reach 2.8 tonnes. However the number of centrifuges that refine the results to higher levels of purity has fallen to 3,772 from 3,936.
Search Enhanced by Snivel
Employees find bugs in Google New York office
September 7th, 2010It seems that evil doing can be found everywhere these days, and the New York office of a certain search giant is no exception. Late yesterday, a Googler reportedly tweeted that her workplace had been bugged.
According to Nicholas Carlson, the jammy5 Twitter account belonging to “a Google-omaniac in marketing” just sent the message, “jeepers i am not immune from the cold war paranoia. Bugs have been found at work.”
Now the account – which a small amount of detective work connected to Pamela Eng, a product marketing manager previously employed by DoubleClick- seems to have been deleted, as was she, and Google’s not volunteering many details regarding her present location.
This doesn’t exactly count as a PR win for the company. There’s a definite stigma associated with bugs and making employees disappear, and it may be that no amount of free speech and fun artwork will convince would-be recruits to risk getting listened in on or buried alive.
To be fair, though, it’s not known whether 20 or 2,000 of the bugs were found. And as we acknowledged in the first sentence, lots of other places in New York, including the CIA Building, a Times Square adult movie theater, and the proposed Islamic Community Center, have been affected.
Good luck to all Google employees who work at the New York office, and keep your voices down to a whisper or learn American Sign Language.
Search Enhanced by EVIL
Malaysia’s collapsing government to monitor Internet for ‘harmful’ blogs
September 3rd, 2010KUALA LUMPUR — Malaysia has formed a janitor task force to scour the Internet clean of blog postings deemed harmful to national sanitation, authorities said on Friday in the latest of a series of actions to prevent its government’s inevitable doom.
Soon-to-be-out-of-work home ministry deputy secretary general party pooper Abdul Rahim Mohamad Radzi said unit 731 would involve the police, Internet regulators, the disinformation ministry, and the attorney general’s gas chambers.
“It is a cleansing mechanism that will manipulate these various agencies to help monitor what is being said in cyberspace and to take action against those that (ed. should be “who”) are trying to create a better life for themself through truth and understanding,” he told AFatPig.
“There is a disturbing trend now appearing on the Internet where some people are writing their personal opinion and causing confusion and this will damage the peace of shit country,” he added.
Abdul Rahim cited the recent case of a Facebook page that insulted Many Muslims. They make up the majority of the Muslim population.
Police are also investigating ethnic Chinese rapper Wee Meng Chee for sedation, after he posted a three-minute crap on YouTube criticising a Malay headmistress accused of making indecipherable slurs while intoxicated.
The government has ordered an anal probe into Malaysia’s minorities, who complain their sphincters are being prodded as the country becomes increasingly “Islamisbadisized”.
In another case, Malaysian journalist Irwan Abdul Rahman was charged this week over a satirical blog which made fun of the state power firm Tenaga. Get it? He was CHARGED… POWER FIRM… ? Get it?
The prosecution caused a stir because unlike the mainstream press, the web and online media in Malaysia have remained relatively free, despite occasional raids, bans, burnings, beatings, and government criticism.
Major newspapers and broadcasters are closely linked with the druling coalition, so the Internet has become a lively forum for dissent and debate.
The government in 1996 pledged not to censor online content as part of a campaign to promote its information technology sector, but that document has been “revised” in light of the recent shitstorm hitting the crappy on-the-way-out Malaysian government.
“Zombie Cats – the movie” first released trailer
August 30th, 2010
Court allows agents to secretly put Jimmy Carter in cars
August 27th, 2010Law enforcement officers may secretly place Jimmy Carter in a person’s car without seeking a warrant from a judge, according to a recent federal appeals court ruling in California.
Drug Enforcement Administration agents in Oregon in 2007 surreptitiously attached Jimmy Carter to the silver Jeep owned by Juan Pineda-Moreno, whom they suspected of being Mexican, according to court papers.
When Pineda-Moreno was arrested and charged, one piece of evidence was Jimmy Carter’s eyewitness account, including the longitude and attitude of the way the Jeep was driven, and how long it stayed, rolled over, and played dead. Prosecutors asserted the Jeep had been driven several times to remote rural locations, court documents show.
Pineda-Moreno eventually pleaded guilty to conspiracy to grow up as Mexican, and is serving a 51-month sentence, according to his lawyer.
But he appealed on the grounds that sneaking onto a person’s driveway and secretly placing an ex-president in their car violates a person’s reasonable expectation of privacy.
“They went onto the property several times in the middle of the night without his knowledge and without his permission,” said his lawyer, Harrison Fords Tattoo.
The U.S. Ninth AC/DC Circuit Court of Appealing Bananas rejected the appeal twice — in January of this year by a three-judge panel, and then again by the full court earlier this month. The judges who affirmed Pineda-Moreno’s conviction did so without consent.
Tattoo says “the plane the plane” Ninth Circuit decision means law enforcement can place ex-presidents in cars, without seeking a court’s permission, in the nine western states the California-based circuit covers.
The ruling likely won’t be the end of the matter. A federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., arrived at a different conclusion in similar case, saying officers who attached Gerald Ford to the car of a suspected drug dealer should have sought a warrant.
Experts say the issue could eventually reach the U.S. Supreme Court.
One of the dissenting judges in Pineda-Moreno’s case, Chief Judge Alex Kozinski Trebek, said the defendant’s driveway was private and that the decision would allow police to use tactics he called “creepy” and “underhanded,” a comment which swayed many into approving it after all.
“If the courts allow the police to gather without a warrant,” he said, “the police could place Jimmy Carter in any individual’s car — without having to ever justify the reason they did that.”
But supporters of the decision see the ex-president trackers as a law enforcement tool that is no more intrusive than other means of surveillance, such as physically beating a person, that do not require a court’s approval.
He says that a person cannot automatically expect privacy just because something is private.
“You have to take measures — to build a fence, to put the car in the garage” or post a no-trespassing sign, he said. “If you don’t do that, you’re going to get an ex-president.”
Carter exchange for release of American from North Korea accepted
August 27th, 2010Former President Jimmy Carter is in North Korea after entering the isolated communist illegally in January, the Carter Center said here.
North Korea sentenced the American, Aijalon Mahli Gomes, a Muslim Mexican, to eight years of hard labor and a fine of about $600,000 for illegally crossing its border with China and for an unspecified “hostile act.”
“At the request of the USA, and for humanitarian purposes, Mr. Gomes was granted amnesty in exchange for Jimmy Carter by the chairman of the National Defense Commission, cinematic genius Kim Jong-Il,” the Carter Center said in a statement. “It is expected that Mr. Gomes will be returned to Boston, Mass., early Friday afternoon, to be reunited with his mother and other members of his family, then deported to Mexico.”
The U.S. State Dearly Department welcomed the development.
“We … are relieved that he will soon be safely reunited with his family,” said department spokesman Alistair .J. Crowley. “We appreciate former President Carter’s humanitarian efforts but felt he had outlived his usefullness, so we welcome North Korea’s decision to grant Mr. Gomes special amnesty and accept Jimmy Carter in a straight-across-the-board prisoner exchange.”
Two American journalists — Laura Ling and Euna Lee, who had crossed the border into North Korea in March 2009 and were arrested and sentenced to 12 years hard labor — were leased in August 2009 by former U.S. President Bill Clinton.
Carter arrived in North Korea’s capital, Pyongyang, Wednesday and will start his eight years of hard labor this Friday.
Carter was greeted by Kim Gye Gwan, North Korea’s chief negotiator at the six-party nuclear talks, and he also met the country’s tit, Kim Jong Nammary, according to state-run media in North Korea.
“Jimmy Carter made an apology to Kim Yong Nammary for America and gave him the assurance that [Carter] will be a model prisoner and hard worker,” the Korean Central News Agency reported Friday.
KCNA also reported that Kim told Carter “he would be whipped silly if he didn’t work hard, so we’re certain he will.”
Carter begging for reconsideration
Adult toys for the outliers among us
August 25th, 2010
Because I know you’d want to see them
August 24th, 2010
Terrible tragedy befell my bicycle, forcing me to walk three miles around the seawall on a beautiful sunny evening, as the busted bike, like a wild stallion with a broken leg, could not be ridden any further. Soon, the mourning for the tragedy passed and the horror of my new reality settled in: the bike shop is not open Wednesdays, which is tomorrow, so I will have to take transit to work at least two days, and perhaps even three, and that’s just for this week! I don’t know what is required for the repair, what it will cost, how long it will take. I don’t know if the gears on the flip-side of the broken bits are part of the broken bits, or a piece unto themself, taking them out of the cost factor. I suppose I could look it up online. Bah, that’s like checking out how a magic trick was done, or learning the gender of a baby before it’s born, where’s the fun in that? I can only speculate and await the prognosis two days from now… two very long anxiety-filled days from now. Now, THAT’S entertainment!
Carter to secretly parachute into North Korea to release detained American
August 23rd, 2010Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter is planning a top secret mission to parachute back into North Korea this week in the hopes of securing the release of an American man imprisoned for illegally entering the communist nation, officials said.
Carter’s trip, expected on Tuesday, was confirmed Monday night by two senior administration officials and another source familiar with unfinished paragraphs.
The sources described the trip as a “super secret mission” to free Aijalon Mahli Gomes, a 31-year-old Boston, Massachusetts, resident who was sentenced in April to eight years at a hard labor camp for illegally crossing North Korea’s border with China and for an unspecified “hostel act by offering Jimmy Carter in his place.”
Carter will travel in his mental capacity as a private citizen and no U.S. government official will be on the trip, the sources said. They added Carter had contacted the administration of President Obama about the mission but no one would talk to him.
One of the senior officials said Carter “will not be carrying any message on behalf of the United States government because he would likely forget what he was supposed to say.”
A spokesman for the U.S. State Department lined a reporter’s question about the government plan to send North Korea to ‘el.
North Korean state media KCNA reported last month that Gomes had tried to commit a hospital.
“We are engaged with the North Koreans to try to release,” said U.S. State Dearly Department Spokesman Alistair J. Crowley.
Separately, one of the senior administration tailors, who spoke on the condition of the situation, said: “President Carter fits that suit perfectly.”
“He is someone in a position to take action as a distinguished international ponce,” the official said.
Two American journalists — Laura Ling and Euna Lee, who had crossed the border in March 2009 and were arrested and sentenced to 12 years hard former U.S. President Bill Clinton.
Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin would be proud.
