Rapid Fire

Various Items of Note

Stewart and the Oscars
Some of Jon Stewart's Oscar night jokes. For example:

"Normally when you see a black man or a woman president, an asteroid is about to hit the Statue of Liberty."

"Tonight we look beyond the dark days to focus on happier fare - this year's slate of Oscar-nominated psychopathic killer movies. Does this town need a hug? No Country For Old Men, Sweeney Todd,There Will Be Blood. All I can say is: thank God for teen pregnancy."

Source: The Times Online

Pesky Pakistan
So Pakistan ordered YouTube taken off the interwebs for 'blasphemy' or some such, and their ISP complied. Only they did it badly, and due to a flaw in the way the interweb works, the block propagated worldwide, resulting in Youtube getting taken offline.

On Sunday, YouTube became unreachable from most, if not all, of the Internet. No "sorry we're down" or cutesy kitten-with-screwdriver page, nothing. What happened was that packets sent to YouTube were flowing to Pakistan. Which was curious, because the Pakistan government had just instituted a ban on the popular video sharing site. What apparently happened is that Pakistan Telecom routed the address block that YouTube's servers are into a "black hole" as a simple measure to filter access to the service. However, this routing information escaped from Pakistan Telecom to its ISP PCCW in Hong Kong, which propagated the route to the rest of the world. So any packets for YouTube would end up in Pakistan Telecom's black hole instead.

Is there anything religion in government can't ruin?

Source: Ars Technica

Photos
So a guy makes his living as a photographer and posts watermarked samples online. A magazine steals his work, crops out the watermarks, and uses them as stock photos. When questioned about it, they make up a nonexistent person, forge a receipt, and claim that person sold them the photos. They can not produce the person, the original files, or any evidence of any kind.

They chose... poorly.

Source: CGStock.com

Snoops
So the energy utility in Madison has a bit of a probably with nosy jerks in their employ.

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — A landlord snooped on tenants to find out information about their finances. A woman repeatedly accessed her ex-boyfriend's account after a difficult breakup. Another obtained her child's father's address so she could serve him court papers.

All worked for Wisconsin's largest utility, where employees routinely accessed confidential information about acquaintances, local celebrities and others from its massive customer database.

Documents obtained by The Associated Press in an employment case involving Milwaukee-based WE Energies shine a light on a common practice in the utilities, telecommunications and accounting industries, privacy experts say.

Vast computer databases give curious employees the ability to look up sensitive information on people with the click of a mouse. The WE Energies database includes credit and banking information, payment histories, Social Security numbers, addresses, phone numbers, and energy usage. In some cases, it even includes income and medical information.

Experts say some companies do little to stop such abuses even though they could lead to identity theft, stalking and other privacy invasions. And companies that uncover violations can keep them quiet because in many cases it is not illegal to snoop, only to use the data for crimes.

Honestly, don't they realize how bad this makes them look? Put a stop to it. Fire the people responsible. It's not that hard.

Unless you really WANT some brutally draconian privacy laws passed, in which case, fine, make your bed. See if I care when you have to lay in it.

Source: The Associated Press

Milkshake
A discussion of the pop culture phrase 'I Drink Your Milkshake!' and its proper usage.

Source: New York Magazine

ID Thieves
So apparently an ID thief stole the identify of a seven-year old kid. They've been using it for six years for employment purposes, to duck paying taxes.

The IRS actually told the kid, or more likely his parents, that he owes 60,000 in back taxes. Apparently they're not too bright at the Revenue Service, failing to realize that, under US law, it would have been illegal for a 1 year old to be drawing such a paycheck to start with.

Yeesh. What the hell kind of background checks do these employers/IRS types run?

Source: Raw Story

They Have to Be Kidding
So it seems that the Director of National Intelligence's underlings are so happy with their performance eliminating terror from the real world using color coded charts that they're ready to move into the world of videogames.

Well, ok, to be a bit more fair, they think that you could use a social game environment to organize real world activities.

Or, you know, a chat room. Or email. Or web pages. Or pigeons with little paper messages tied to their legs.

Of course, if you really want to leave a billing trail and have all of your activities potentially monitored by the company running the game, by all means.

Source: Wired

Jack Thompson
So good old anti-videogame crusader and general nuisance Jack Thompson is in big legal trouble in Florida. It seems that the Florida Supreme Court is sick and tired of his 'frivolous and inappropriate filings' and is going ahead with a plan to essentially ban him from practicing law without another laqyer to vouch for him; sort of a set of legal training wheels.

This guy is non-stop hilarity. He actually thinks this is a good thing for him too.

Source: Daily Tech

Good Night, Ulysses
So NASA and the ESA have been operating a probe mission to study the sun's magnetic field for the last seventeen years. The probe is appropriately named Ulysses, after the Greek explorer.

WASHINGTON - The joint NASA and European Space Agency Ulysses mission to study the sun and its influence on surrounding space is likely to cease operations in the next few months. The venerable spacecraft, which has lasted more than 17 years or almost four times its expected mission lifetime, is succumbing to the harsh environment of space.

Ulysses was the first mission to survey the space environment above and below the poles of the sun. The reams of data Ulysses returned have forever changed the way scientists view our star and its effects.

"I remember when we got those first pictures of Ulysses floating out of the space shuttle Discovery's payload bay back in October of 1990 and thinking we had a great five years ahead of us," said Ed Massey, Ulysses project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. "I never dared think that we would be receiving invaluable science data on a near continuous basis for more than 17 years. Ulysses has set the bar on solar science data collection quite high."

Science findings and discoveries from the mission were numerous and unprecedented. Examples include taking the first direct measurements of interstellar dust particles and interstellar helium atoms in the solar system and the discovery that the magnetic field leaving the sun is balanced across latitudes.

...

Since its Jupiter flyby in 1992, Ulysses has been in a six-year orbit around the sun. Its long path through space carries it out to Jupiter's orbit and back. The farther it ventures from the sun, the colder the spacecraft becomes. If it drops to 2 degrees Celsius (36 degrees Fahrenheit), the spacecraft's hydrazine fuel will freeze. This has not been a problem in the past because Ulysses carries heaters to maintain a workable onboard temperature.

The spacecraft is powered by the decay of a radioactive isotope. Over its 17-plus years, the power has been steadily dropping. The spacecraft no longer can run all of its communications, heating and scientific equipment simultaneously. "We expect certain parts of the spacecraft to reach 2 degrees Celsius pretty soon," said Richard Marsden, ESA project scientist and mission manager. This temperature drop will block the fuel pipes, making the spacecraft impossible to maneuver.

We'll see you around, little probe. Thanks for the hard work.

Source: NASA

P.S. Normally I'd make some sort of diatribe here against the luddites who don't want to use any probes in space that run off of radioactive decay, which would limit our scientific exploration to the inner solar system and so forth. Those people are complete morons, and Ulysses shows why; but this is not the place to mock their slope-foreheaded ignorance.

I'll save that for the next time.

Big Ideas, Little Foresight
So it seems that Haiti's deforestation problem is growing even worse, and may be completely beyond the point of no return.

GRAND COLLINE, Haiti (AP) - Far from the spreading slums of the Haitian capital, past barren dirt mountains and hillsides stripped to a chalky white core, two woodcutters bring down a towering oak tree in one of the few forested valleys left in the Caribbean country.

Fanel Cantave, 36, says he has little choice but to make his living in a way that is causing environmental disaster in Haiti. And these days, he and his 15-year-old son, Phillipe, must travel ever farther from their village to find trees to cut.

"There is no other way to get money," the father said, pushing his saw through splintering wood that will earn him as much as $12.50, depending on how many planks it produces.

Such raw economics explain the disappearance of Haiti's forests, a process that has led to erosion that has reduced scarce farm land and left the island vulnerable to deadly flooding.

Ahh, but surely the United States could intervene with a half-baked plan to save the natives from themselves, right?

U.N. experts say just 2 to 4 percent of forest cover remains in Haiti, down from 7 to 9 percent in 1981. And despite millions invested in reforestation, such efforts have mostly failed because of economic pressures and political turmoil.

For example, the U.S. Agency for International Development embarked on an ambitious $22.8 million project in the 1980s to plant some 30 million trees that could provide income for peasants. But the project focused on trees that can be made into charcoal for cooking, and nearly all were eventually cut down.

Oops. The Quiet Americans strike again.

Meanwhile, smaller groups try to hold back the ocean with buckets, but that's not working either.

Compared to the USAID's failed plan, smaller programs have had more luck by focusing on fruit trees, which farmers are more likely to preserve to sell the fruit. And smaller organizations are able to work with individual farmers and tailor planting to the needs of specific areas.

"People aren't excited about, 'Hey let's go plant trees.' They're excited about, 'How can I feed my family? How can I make ends meet?'" said Scott Sabin, executive director of Floresta.

But many who are dedicated to restoring Haiti's forests have grown pessimistic. Despite small successes, prospects are grim for implementing such programs on a grand scale.

"Everything has been studied and all the solutions are already known," said Mousson Finnigan, the head of the Organization for the Rehabilitation of the Environment. "But when it comes to implementation, it becomes a place where everybody's fighting for the money. They're not fighting for results."

So in the end, the tragedy of the commons plays out on a grand scale.

"In Haiti we destroy instead of produce," acknowledges LeClaire Bocage, 38, who sells 110-pound sacks for $6.25. "They're going to tell the poor to stop cutting down trees. But what will we do to make a living?"

Never fear, though, Haiti! We have another plan for you to help us out, err, help yourselves.

It may be too late to restore Haiti's lost forests, said John Horton, an environmental specialist who has overseen Haiti projects for the Washington-based Inter-American Development Bank. He suggested planting crops that can stabilize the soil and be sold or used for bio-fuels. Others promote raising money through carbon credits from overseas firms emitting greenhouse gases elsewhere.

"They need cash crops, they need food, they need energy immediately," Horton said.

Yes, grow biofuels instead of food! Or plant trees to soak up our carbon (which other people will just burn down again).

Sigh. Man... I just... Yeah.

Source: My Way News

What to Do With Pesky Heathens
From the Skeptic's Annotated Bible:

2:8 Ask of me, and I shall give thee the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession.
2:9 Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron; thou shalt dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel.

That'll teach those heathens! Slavery and death!

Err, wait a second. That's not good...

Source: The Skeptic's Annotated Bible