From Slashdot: Scientists Learn To Fabricate DNA Evidence. This article covers two techniques that can now be used to falsify a crime scene with planted DNA.
On the one hand, this was probably inevitable. There’s very little man can understand but not control. On the other hand, this is truly a shame, as DNA evidence has been used frequently in the past few years to free wrongly-accued long-term inmates who were convicted before DNA tests were common.
I read an article this week on Charles Baker entering the race for Governor against Deval Patrick here in MA. Whatever. But the fun part is that he’s running on a platform of not raising taxes, and trying to repeal the recent increase in the state sales tax. I know most people think we pay too much in taxes for what we get, and that it’s not fairly spread out, and not fairly apportioned, and an unfathomable amount of it is wasted on graft, corruption, and pet projects. Of course everyone’s idea of what those froms and tos should be is different, so it is by definition impossible to please everyone, but that’s not my point. Nor is it who is the better candidate.
My point is that if you have a government rife with waste and misappropriation, you cannot get it to “do the right thing” (even if everyone agreed on what that is) simply by reducing taxes, any more than you could make an overweight person healthy by simply reducing their calorie count. There has to be effort put into uncovering and fixing the waste and corruption, or the vital services will be the first to suffer. A politician that takes money is not going to suddenly become moralistic because there’s less money coming in. Just like the overweight person must start with lifestyle changes like more exercise and sleep, a government cleanup must start with eliminating the waste and removing those responsible for the corruption.
Of course, that’s the hard way. But the right way that leads to lasting success often is. Silver bullets are for dreamers and werewolves. So don’t listen to the quick fix people. You can’t reduce taxes without coordinated attacks on misspent money and other ways of saving money in a sustainable way. Other “simple solutions”, like the flat tax, are very regressive and have other problems (I’m willing to do a whole post on that if the comments go that way). No, this one will take actual thought and finger-pointing. The sheep need to open up their eyes and become critical thinkers and informed voters.
Yeah, that’ll happen.
| Joseph Carnevale, a Raleigh, NC artist, was recently arrested for his art. Well, to be precise, he got arrested because he made his art out of stolen traffic barrels. Illegal, yes, but so fracking cool! So cool, in fact, that the construction company was willing to forgive him and not press charges, but the police didn’t have the same appreciation for the arts that they did.
He’res MSNBC’s take on it. This post at Sub5Zero has more pictures. |
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From Slashdot: DJ Danger Mouse Releases Blank CD-R To Spite EMI.
DJ Danger Mouse famously fought with EMI over his Beatles/Jay-Z mashup, ‘The Grey Album,’ and now seems to be battling with the label again. Rather than release his latest album and face legal issues with EMI, Techdirt is reporting that Danger Mouse will be selling a blank CD-R along with lots of artwork, and buyers will be responsible for finding the music themselves (yes, it’s findable on the internet) and burning the CD.
I find it fascinating how many of our largest staple industries are screwing themselves over by not keeping up with the times. The music, auto, banking, telecommunications, and power industries are all in deep kimchee because the world changed around them (their supply, demand, competition, regulations, ecology), and they just stood there and said “This is the way my father did it, and the way my father’s father did it…” Their advisers tell them to cleanse their blood with leaches and stay out of the night air.
From Slashdot: This article tells of how a search warrant was granted simply because this student was running some alternate operating system they didn’t understand. They suspected an email was sent from his computer which defamed a fellow student. But instead of handling it as a disciplinary matter, they’re getting all Brazil on his a**.
“The Boston College Campus Police have seized the electronics of a computer science student for allegedly sending an email outing another student. The probable cause? The search warrant application states that he is ‘a computer science major’ and he uses ‘two different operating systems for hiding his illegal activity. One is the regular B.C. operating system and the other is a black screen with white font which he uses prompt commands on.’ The EFF is currently representing him.”
I saw a report on this on the news, which said they took every electronic device he owns, including is ipod (an infamous hacking tool, donchaknow.), his computer, and his cell phone. He’s a Computer Sicence major, so he now has no way of completing his schoolwork. And he lost his job at the computer lab.
This is a great combination of “Fear of the unknown” and “Shoot first, ask questions later”. Book burning at its finest. If I were him, I would sue the school for the entire year’s tuition which will now go to waste, missed salary from his job at the lab, the replacement costs for all they took, and a big dollop for mental anguish from having his name dirtied with no evidence.
OK, so you know I like to play word games. I’m actually writing about a family, the Borings. Of course, if they really lived up to their name, I wouldn’t be writing about them, would I?
Apparently, they’re very private people. They live in a secluded house on a private road in Pittsburgh. Along comes the Google Maps Street View team, running their 360° cameras, up the road they (allegedly) don’t know is a private road, and shoot video of the road and the house. The Boring family finds out, freaks out, and gets their lawyers out. They sue Google for tresspassing, invasion of privacy, and a few other serious-sounding charges. The court eventually threw out the case, essentially because (1) they platintiff simply didn’t make a strong enough case for compensation, and (2) Google actually has a system in place to request images of a person’s house be removed from their website, but they chose to sue instead of use it (Google did remove the content when asked nicely).
I strongly believe people need a mechanism like law suits to fight injustice, but this is a prime example of why the system doesn’t work better. It’s clogged up with cases like this. You can read more about this case here.
Musak is delcaring bankruptcy. My favorite comment on that site is
The real question is how did they get in debt to the tune of $100 to $500 million and still only have $50,000 in assets? What did they spend it all on? I have a hard time believing the Muzak head honchos know how to party hard enough to burn that much money.
I kinda agree. I don’t see in that artice (or this one on thestreet.com) where all the money went. The only thing I can think of is changed to the copyright laws making them pay artists (or someone else in that food chain) more money. According to this article, they’re not down yet. They’re still going to function as normal during the process.
Compliments of Oddie, “A blog on the oddities of our world”, I bring you this post.
You will never see a more wretched hive of scum and villainy. Enjoy.
The short version: An anti-piracy group in Lithuania that was threatening to sue all the BitTorrent websites for millions of dollars, changed their name, but forgot to buy the new matching domain name, and wackyness ensued when one of the larger BitTorrent sites in Lithuania bought the domain name. A $20 mistake they’ll never make again 
This article from TorrentFreak covers all the gorey details. The best part is, there have been several cases in Lithuania of people buying domain names matching the names of large organizations who failed to do so, and in every single case where the organization tried to sue to get control of it, they lost. As it should be.
How can a company that is totally focused on issues around the internet be so internet non-savvy? Whether you think BitTorrents are good or bad, you gotta feel good about that aspect of the story/