Global Toad News

In the news is a report of a man who committed numerous tax felonies and defrauded people of millions of dollars who walked away from his minimum security prison where he was serving a 21 month sentence.  Contrast this with the 87 month sentence that Dr. Ward Dean (Cmdr, USN, Ret) received in a medium security prison for arguing that the income tax is voluntary.  Ward Dean didn’t attempt to hide from the government, tried to talk with them and foolishly thought that the law mattered.  For his belief in the rule of law and the constitution the judge threw the book at this West Point graduate and Vietnam veteran.

And of course, the Appealate court agreed (pdf) that this man who tried to argue against what he felt was an unjust law, should be kept away from the public for as long as possible.

Meanwhile, a convicted con man, who committed crimes against normal people, tax evasion, and used numerous false identities is running around.

Is it any wonder that people think that the government is corrupt?

While I recently wrote how Canadian Internet providers were planning on reducing access to the internet.  Well I was wrong about it not being economically viable.  It appears that the tatic that is being used in the United States is to say that it’s being done to stop child pornography.  According to the Register, the Attorney General of New York is threatening to sue companies that fail to self censor whatever he has decided are hot beds of child pornography.

The whole slippery slope of child porn laws does make children safer.  When politically connected people get a slap on the wrist for possessing child porn, (here’s a person who made child porn who only got 10 months) all it shows is that the law is an excuse to slowly restrict speech.  It’s sad that people don’t seem to want to know what’s really going on.  I talk to people about the dangers of the use of child pornography laws to censor the internet, and of course they say that people who view/possess child pornography should go to jail for a long time.

Which works out well for some people.  If there is someone you don’t like, just plant some child porn on them, it’s better than planting drugs, and there is no real defense.  Basically, there is child porn, therefore they are a criminal.

Welcome to the land of the used to be free.

According to the American Free Press, the major Canadian Internet Service Providers (ISPs) are planning a new internet plan of “free” sites (limited to 100-200 sites) with all other sites being pay per click.   The reasoning for this is supposedly going to be put out in Time Magazine by writer Dylan Pattyn.

The story seems to have originated at I Power (older story here).  The People’s Voice has the same article as American Free Press by the same author.

Supposedly some ISPs will implement this model in 2010, with others following in other countries.  This model is entirely legal, as it’s the same model that cable companies use.

That said, it’s the same model that America Online had in the 1990’s.  And I don’t think it’s going to work very well.  Web TV was another failed attempt to give people a sanatized internet.  No one wants crap internet.  For all the crying about how this model will kill the internet, I think that it will just kill those companies that embrace such a stupid model.

Look at what happened when Comcast was screwing with bittorrent traffic.  In a relatively short period of time Comcast went from trying to throttle a high bandwidth usage of the network to promising to make it work better on its network.

What amazes me is that these companies appear to be run by people who can run a company into the ground and still get huge bucks.  Part of the problem is that there really isn’t any accountability for publicly traded companies.  Rather it’s about “networking” or “relationships” and how well you do lunches, fund raising and so forth, rather than the long term effect on the company.

In any case, I don’t think that people are going to buy the ala carte internet plan, anymore than they did 15 years ago when America Online was pushing it with the largest subscriber base of anyone.

But then again, you can count on people being stupid.

Recently studies have come out about how car crashes are the number one cause of death for teenagers.  Of course politicians jumped on this cause to increase the power of the state, saying that we need to limit the ability of teenagers to drive, the number of passengers, etc.

But let’s step back for a minute.  Weren’t the mandatory seat belt laws supposed to save lives? Isn’t it enough that for most of the childhood years children are in a four point restraint system?  And in any case what about the undocumented aliens who drive without any license (which they don’t want anyways)?

Of course there are always those that believe the state is the answer to making people safer.  But just as the gun bans in England have only led to more stabbings, banning teenagers from legally driving isn’t going to make them safer drivers.

And there are stupid laws that are enforced, for instance I had a friend who was wearing a stereo headset while driving and got  ticket for that.  Never mind that there are people driving around with speakers up so loud that my windows shake, and that most times emergency vehicles don’t even use their sirens, or even that many cars have good sound isolation, some idiots think that it is important to make sure that people with crap stereo systems can’t listen to music with headphones while driving.

People do not become safer because they give their rights over to some overseer, look at prisons where people are searched all the time, and yet people have weapons and kill each other.

Trading freedom for security hasn’t worked in the past, and it won’t work in the future.  Of course people seem to be getting dumber all the time, because they think that this time it will be different.

I find it interesting that ATT has more push to talk (walkie talkie) capable phone models than Sprint does.  Sprint might have inertia going for it, but they don’t seem to want to offer a decent Windows Mobile phone with push to talk.   For instance ATT has the Tilt, (which I have seen for as low as $125 after rebate) with lots of great features  while Sprint offers the 2005 Motorola i920 with “assisted gps”.

The i920 is a “SmartPhone” using Windows Mobile 2003, with a somewhat standard phone pad, and a flid design, while the Tilt uses the latest Windows Mobile 6.1 and has a full qwerty keyboard with a tilt screen function and lots of built in memory and supports up to 32 gig Micro SD cards.

The reason why I care about this whole thing is that I am working on a project and wanted to use Windows Mobile devices, but my market research also shows that a lot of people seem to like “Push to talk”.  Unfortunately they also think that Sprint is great because it has had push to talk for a long time (actually Nextel had it, Sprint seems to be killing it).

Groklaw has posted the order from Judge Dale Kimball in the case where SCO, which claimed to own all the code in Linux, sued Novell for Slander of Title.  Now Novell had waived a lot of things, just so it could get the case to go to trial, since SCO had filled bankruptcy just before the last trial was to start, so Novell isn’t going to get much money anyways.

The gist of the whole thing is:

After considering all of the evidence and the law as it applies to this case, the court awards Defendant and Counterclaimant Novell $2,547,817 on its Sixth, Seventh, and Eighth Claims for Unjust Enrichment, Breach of Fiduciary Duty, and Conversion.

That means SCO was a bad boy, did a bunch of things wrong, but given that they are bankruptcy court, it’s unlikely that much will happen to them.  And the claims against Linux did help SCO lawsuit supporter Microsoft, which was well insulated from blowback from this lawsuit (and the ones against IBM, Daimler-Chrysler, etc).

While other lawsuits remain pending, and SCO is still finding people who want the litigation to continue (which special protection from consquences from the Bankruptcy court, which seems all to willing to provide it), it does seem that SCO is just a nuisance (for a long time) that most people hope will just fade away.

Recently the city of San Fransisco found that one of it’s network administrators had locked everyone else out of the network.  This is one of the risks of putting all the eggs in one basket, as we put more and more trust in automated systems, we should be cognizent of the risks involved.

Unfortunately too often, it seems that many people just don’t care.  You can see the banks needing bailouts are getting larger, and the problem is going to be harder to contain, all because all the eggs really are in one basket.

We have a banking industry insider calling the shots from the treasury and the congress falling in line.  You know things are getting bad when the police are are stationed at the banks.

Frankly I don’t know why anyone would keep >100K in a bank.  The FDIC doesn’t protect that money, and when the bank fails, all you have is worthless paper.  Of course, a safe deposit box isn’t much better.

Of course you could stock up on dried food (in case the world completely ends), but if you have food and the people around you don’t, well just watch the television show Jericho to see how that goes.

In short, it doesn’t hurt to have a piece of land that is self sufficient, of course the problem is that banks are not loaning much money these days, because they have to be properly capitalized.

There was a reason for having no legal tender but gold and silver in the constitution, however that went away with the last engineered banking crisis.

Let’s see what we will lose with this one.

Since the politicians are always crying that we need this law or that law to protect the children, maybe they should wear tinfoil clothes with cords running down to the ground.   Since firearms should be outlawed because some people misuse use them (though many people use them properly), if children are dying because they are outside without proper lightning protection, then the government should mandate something to remedy that, just like with seat belts.

According to an article, just last week 5 youths were killed by lightning.  Obviously something needs to be done to protect the children against this raging menace.  I think the government will probably mandate that children watch more television to prevent any further risks.  After all it’s for the children.

I occasionally read Jeff Rense’s web site, and it amazes me that the site that is supposedly one of the “top internet news sites” doesn’t have some redundancy, as it seems to be off the internet for a while (according to this post and this other post).  Some people have said that it was due to Rense’s anti Obama reports that his web site was shut down.

In any case, it seems strange that the people who supposedly want change, want to have silence from those who disagree with them.

[update]

What seems to have happened is that “TheHostPros.com”, which provides hosting for Rense, has had it’s dns servers knocked out.  Now it may be that they don’t have the DNS servers spread out (at one point I had everything on one box, of course that in the LAST century).  This has been a weak point with Rense for a while, and I used to have the IP address saved somewhere as a result, just because whenever anyone wanted to take Rense down, the DNS servers would be the first to go.

Attorney Ellen Brown has an article about the real risks that banks face with the mortgage crisis (which the banks created by hiding loans).  In her article she quotes a BBC report that states:

After previous financial disasters caused by excessive bank lending, regulators developed rules to limit how many loans a bank could have on its balance sheet.

The rules are complex, but as a rough rule of thumb, they say that for every $1 (50 pence) of shareholder capital a bank has on its balance sheet, it can also have about $10 of loans.

But, as is clear from the torrent of home loans in Stockton and across America, banks were lending far more than that 10 to 1 ratio.

Attorney Brown points out that Secretary of the Treasury Hank Paulson, is a banker and will probably go back into the banking industry after he leaves his current position, a clear case of the fox guarding the hen house.  Rather than put people into position who will enforce regulations, we have been putting into place people who are out to rob the rest of us blind.

Of course I am sure that they don’t look at it that way.  There are a thousand rationalizations for practices like California Attorney General Jerry Brown lays out in his complaint against Countrywide, for instance:

The company routinely made exceptions for loans that didn’t meet its guidelines, the suit says, and “turned a blind eye” to deceptive practices by brokers and its own loan agents despite “numerous complaints from borrowers claiming that they did not understand their loan terms.”

The problem is that it seems that Paulson and company seem willing to suck the bad debt into the Federal Reserve where they intend to hide it for at least another year or so (until the IMF releases it’s audit report of the Federal Reserve, which has never been audited before).

In short, if you think the economy is bad now, wait until after the election.

Recently there was a controversy about the Iran missile photos.  It seems that the Iranians had a misfire of a missile and so published altered pictures about the event.  The Christain Science Monitor had a nice article about it.

The truth is that many photos that we see are altered in a variety of different ways, in fact, according to this site, the picture of Lincoln that many of us have seen is a fake.

Of course there is much news that is twisted, for instance World Net Daily has an article that says:

The New York Times, in an editorial condemning the Supreme Court case, says: “Thirty-thousand Americans are killed by guns every year – on the job, walking to school, at the shopping mall. The Supreme Court on Thursday all but ensured that even more Americans will die senselessly.”

Really?

The 30,000 number includes 17,000 suicides. But a person intent on suicide finds a way – gun or no gun. In Japan, for example, more than twice as many people per capita kill themselves, yet that country bans handguns.

That’s right, most of the people who die from firearms, die from committing suicide.  Of course people like Daley will cry about the rest of us having the protection of firearms like they do, and the media will report it because the people who make up report the news live in nice houses in nice neighborhoods.

This could be one reason why so little coverage has been devoted to McCain’s economic adviser blaming us for not spending enough.  It’s probably a sentiment shared by many of the people who make their living selling the rest of us fiction.

From an article at Slashdot, I read about how new computer users in Tawain are favoring Linux over Microsoft’s products.  According to Tech-On:

Retailers and contract manufacturers in Taiwan say that novice PC users there, like students and housewives, tend to buy the Linux version of the Eee PC701, while geeks go for Windows XP. The Linux version comes with a launcher providing pre-installed applications, Web services and other features at a click.

The article goes on to say that Linux isn’t a good choice for businesses.  That’s a bunch of bull.  There are a lot of commercial software packages that are available for Linux, and Linux provides better security and user managment than Windows does.

Here is a list of what Tech Republic says are the top 10 business applications for Linux.

1. GnuCash-Free (also available for Windows)
2. KMyMoney-Free
3. MoneyDance - Commercial (cross platform)
4. AppGen MyBooks - Commercial
5. NolaPro - Free + commercial addons
6. BasicBooks - Commercial
7. Quasar Accounting -Commercial
8. Sql Ledger - Free
9. Rapid Graphing Software for Technical Analysis of Stocks and Commodities - Free
10. Crossover Office - Commercial (I would just use Open Office instead).

I can understand that people who get paid by their advertisers don’t want to say that Linux is better than their advertiser’s products, but I think it is in many ways, especially for the new user.

Strange how Microsoft blew it’s advantage in that area. I guess writing Windows to spy on the users might not have been a good business decision after all.

I don’t understand why people want to eat soy?  Just the other day a new study was reported by English researchers from Oxford and Loughborough Universities where ,according to UPI:

Researchers determined people who ate soy at least twice a day had 20 percent less memory function that those who ate it significantly less.

Yipes!  20% less!  I don’t know about you, but lossing 20% of my memory sounds like a bad thing to me.  What I don’t understand is WHY people jump on the soy bandwagon, when there are so many reasons to avoid it.  I realize that there are people who feel that humans shouldn’t eat meat, but soy is not the answer, unless you want to be a zombie.

According to Wired, Google is to turn over to Viacom the user names and ip addresses of everyone who has ever watched any videos on YouTube.

The next step is that you can get sued for having “downloaded” copyrighted material.

Just in case you think it can’t happen, here is an article I wrote about how clicking on a link can lead to prison.  There is a little more data than that on YouTube.

The good news is that most YouTube videos are stored only temporarily, so I don’t think that many people are going to be hit for viewing videos.  Those that uploaded them, that might be another story.

Remember the RIAA has it’s own SWAT, and they need to keep the fear money machine going.  After all with Starbucks closing hundreds of stores, you can bet that those cds that Starbucks sells won’t be selling as well.

It’s strange that as the fourth of July rolls around there are those who argue that this is the “Best Country in the world“, I don’t know about that.  There are some other countries that still protect their citizens, rather than criminalize them.

When I say criminalize them, I mean it.  For instance the Heroes Act of 2008 taxes people who rescind their U.S. citizenship on their goods as if they sold them.  So much for the love or leave it argument.

And really where could you go?  Unlike the United States, most countries seem to want productive people to come to their country, not dead beats who get subsidized to not work.

Another interesting thing is the whole joke of people having secure data, when the most likely place for you to have a laptop stolen is going through airport security.  It’s bad enough that they don’t let you bring your own water any more, but now they steal your laptop when you are putting your shoes on (or removing metal from your body).

Privacy just isn’t what it used to be.  After all some banks don’t even bother to encrypt your pin codes for your cash machine cards when they transmit the information or at least that is what this article from the London Times would have us believe in explaining how so many cash machines were compromised.

It’s worse with the “touchless” credit cards where you wave your card and buy things, since people can read those from quite a ways.

It used to be that we used metal with inherent value (e.g. gold and silver) as currency, but apparently that is a little too untracable for this age of perpetual war of on terror.

I find it interesting that Yoko Ono is arguing that the “Heart” of Imagine is “Nothing to kill or die for/ And no religion too”.  It’s not that I ambig proponent of organized religion, but I am a big believer in fair use, and, according to Groklaw, from a judge’s recent ruling against the people who wanted to shut down the movie “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed“, Ono’s expert had claimed:

In other words, Dr. Ferrara’s opinion is that the fifteen-second excerpt at issue contains the “heart” of “Imagine.”

This is similar to the insanity that AP had been promoting, that using small excerpts is somehow illegal in today’s world.  Attorneys can and do same different things about the same issues when in different forums, and because the same two bar piano tune is played throughout “Imagine” the plaintiffs argue that any use of those bars is JUST LIKE using >50% of the song.

This would be ridiculous if this didn’t happen all too often.

Remember as this discussion says, playing the radio loud enough for others to hear can be a violation of copyright law.  But don’t use headphones while driving because that is a violation of the law as well.  As the United States courts like to ape the British courts, here is an article about how the copyright police are going after the regular police in England for having the gall to play radios AT PARTIES!

The Lancashire police stations play music in the background, at office parties, and in staff gyms…

There’s a move towards a less free world, and there’s those who want to have a Campaign for Liberty, being able to have discourse without fear of being hauled away for using 5 or more words that someone else may have used in however long a copyright is in effect these days is ridiculous, and frankly a little bit frightening.

According to World Net Daily, a singer who was to sing the national anthem at the annual mayor’s state of the City address in Denver, decided that it was more appropriate to sing what is known as the Black National Anthem, “Lift Every Voice and Sing”.

It’s not that I am big fan of the use of national symbols to get past people’s rational thinking, but I do think that if an “artist” agrees to sing a certain song, that’s what they should do.

But then again, I am a person of privilege, and should do more to pay for the wrongs committed by people I never knew.

According to numerous reports, that is the result of a new Texas law.  The law requires a license if:

(a)  Unless the person holds a license as a security services
contractor, a person may not:
(1)  act as an alarm systems company, armored car
company, courier company, guard company, [or] guard dog company,
locksmith company, or private security consultant company;

…

(b)  For purposes of Subsection (a)(1), obtaining or
furnishing information includes information obtained or furnished
through the review and analysis of, and the investigation into the
content of, computer-based data not available to the public.

This law appears to apply to people who analyze data.  Any company that does data analysis of non public data in the state of Texas may be required to have a license under this new law.  According to the Daily Texan:

… the private investigator’s license is required for repair technicians to analyze their customers’ computer data.

So when the economony isn’t doing well, what does the government do?  Make it harder for people to work.

Nice to know that this is the greatest country on earth.

The Chicago Sun Times recently quoted the Mayor of Chicago, Richard Daley as saying:

“This is a very frightening decision for America. …Does this lead to everyone having a gun in our society? If they think that’s the answer, then they’re greatly mistaken. Then, why don’t we do away with the court system and go back to the Old West? You have a gun and I have a gun and we’ll settle in the streets,” Daley told reporters at Navy Pier.

“I have no problems with those hunting, gun collectors….But, how do you get a gun into your house? Does it fly in by a stork? You purchase a gun. You carry the gun in a car. You come to your home. And we’ve shown time and time again how many children have been killed in their homes by guns. Parents are away, they get the guns….The child takes the gun, runs out in the street, has an argument, comes back and shoots somebody.”

First, I want to say that children are constantly used as excuses for every sort of derpivation of rights.  Children die in all sorts of ways, and parents should take reasonable steps to ensure the safety of their children, though sometimes the government overrules that and forces children to be separated from their parents on the basis of lies. That said, Daley has had police protection for almost his entire life.  If he has the right to be protected by people who carry weapons, why should the serfs rest of us be deprived of that some ANCIENT right?

Despite what Daley says about the “wild west” just because people have firearms doesn’t mean that they go around shooting things.  Switzerland requires that it’s citizens have automatic weapons in their homes, and yet it has a low crime rate.  No, what Daley really seems to think is that the people of Chicago are some sort of sub human species that may resemble humans, but are not worthy of the same rights as real people.

This position of Daley’s is shown throughout the history of the right to keep and bear arms.  There are certain classes of sub citizens that are considered to not have the full rights of the peerage (that is Daley’s select group), similar to other historically deprived groups as the Supreme Court of the United States recently said:

William  Blackstone,  for  example,  wrote  that  Catholics  convicted  of  not  attending service  in  the Church  of  England  suffered  certain  penalties,  one  of  which  was  that  they  were  not  permitted  to “keep arms in their houses.”  4 Commentaries on the Laws of  England  55  (1769)  (hereinafter  Blackstone);  see  also  1 W.  &  M.,  c.  15,  §4,  in  3  Eng.  Stat.  at  Large  422  (1689) (“[N]o  Papist  . . .  shall  or  may  have  or  keep  in  his  House . . .  any  Arms . . . ”);

Yes, there is precedant to deprive certain groups of people of the rights that true citizens have, and Daley apparently believes that most of the people in Chicago are sub citizens, not entitled to the full rights of citzenship.

In fact the Supreme Court decision in District of Columbia et al. v Heller has a footnote that says (in part)

(“Free Negros, Mulattos, or Indians, and Owners of Slaves, seated at Frontier Plantations,  may  obtain  Licence  from  a  Justice  of  Peace,  for  keeping Arms, &c.”);  J. Ayliffe, A New Pandect of Roman Civil Law 195 (1734)

Since the Supreme Court has ruled that the right to keep and bear arms is of a similar nature as of the right to speak freely and assemble, it’s perhaps not surprising that Chicago also has rules that greatly regulate those.  For instance did you know that Chicago has public sculpture that is allegedly copyrighted?

As the New Surbanist writes:

The Reader recounts the experience of photojournalist Warren Wimmer’s attempts to photograph Anish Kapoor’s sculpture, Cloud Gate (more commonly known as “the Bean”). When Wimmer set up his tripod and camera to shoot the sculpture, security guards stopped him, demanding that they show him a permit. Wimmer protested, replying that it’s absurd that one needs to pay for a permit to photograph public art in a city-owned park.

Chicago, it’s a nice place to visit, but don’t mention the constitution when you are there.

The Associated Press (frequently cited as AP) has a new policy of threatening to sue people for using as little as 5 words from an Associated Press article.  At least that is what BoingBoing claims.

I find it amazing that some attorneys have a such a weird view of what people are allowed to do, well not really as 4 out of 9 supreme court judges had to write over 100 pages to explain why the constitution doesn’t mean what it says.

As BoingBoing says:

Welcome to a world in which you won’t be able to effectively criticize the press, because you’ll be required to pay to quote as few as five words from what they publish.

Welcome to a world in which you won’t own any of your technology or your music or your books, because ensuring that someone makes their profit margins will justify depriving you of the even the most basic, commonsensical rights in your personal, hand-level household goods.

Seems like a good summary of where the lawyers and their stooges in congress are trying to take us to.

The EU constitution that was ressurrected as a treaty was written to be deliberately confusing.  According to the London Telegraph the author,Giscard d’Estaing,  (apparently there is one person that is considered the author of this abomination) says:

“What was done in the [Lisbon] Treaty, and deliberately, was to mix everything up. If you look for the passages on institutions, they’re in different places, on different pages,” he said.

Mr. d’Estaing further says that it shouldn’t matter what individual nations want, once they joined the EU, they no longer have the right to claim that they are soveriegn countries.

Sounds familar, and of course this was the argument that was made by Euro Skeptics before the EU got it’s current powers.  This is also the same argument that was made by the anti-federalists against the United States consitution.

Looks like people keep getting fooled the same way, again and again.