Terminally Incoherent

I just wanted to thank the folks at NBC Dateline for all the LULZ:

Kinda reminds me of that whole Internet Haet Machine failure produced by Fox. And here I thought that “investigative journalism” means that one has to objectively investigate the story. But there is nothing objective about what this woman did - and she was not investigating anything.

She went to Defcon with preconceived notions of what it was, and aimed to capture specific footage of people confessing to committing crimes, and undercover federal agents being outed by the crowd. This indicates a complete lack of understanding of why people go to conferences like Defcon.

Let me put it this way - if you own a large spamming botnet, and run a successful pishing operation, a credit card fraud, an identity theft racket, or if you are breaking into systems for profit, then Defcon is the last place you want to be. Who goes to Defcon then? Security researchers, sysadmins, government security specialists and geeks who have active research interest in security field. Those who go there to learn how to h4x are most likely some poor misguided script kiddies that would get bored by all the talks and happily incriminate themselves into crimes they never committed on the Dateline hidden cam.

Dateline NBC probably had the segment written long before they even sent that girl to the conference: “Hackers gather at an underground conference Las Vegas to learn how to break the law using technology. See the shocking footage of the secret computer criminal meeting, only on NBC Dateline.” Sigh… It’s kinda like trying to catch rapists at a pr0n convention, or murderers at a NRA gun show.

The worst part is that shit like that riles up the technologically-illiterate masses of voting citizens, who then push their representatives to create more anti-circumvention legislation. And, seriously - more laws that make security research illegal is the last thing we need.

Thanks to Travis for bringing this story to my attention.

It seems that Keanu Reeves might be playing John Osterman, aka Dr. Manhattan in the upcoming movie based on the cult graphic novel The Watchmen. Somehow, I really don’t see it:

Personally, I think that playing a super-intelligent, all powerful being is a bit out of Keanu’s league. He pretty much has three modes of operation: a surprised surfer dude mode, a stoned surfer dude mode and pissed off, drunk surfer dude mode. This might have worked ok for The Matrix but since it was original work, we just have to buy into the fact that Bill of the Bill and Ted fame is humankind’s virtual messiah.

Constantine was not all that bad either, but then again I never read the comic so I can’t tell you if he really accurately portrayed the original. But John Osterman - the living god? Seems a bit of a stretch.

Then again, if you read the comic you will probably notice that Dr. Manhattan mostly just blankly stares into empty spaces - which is something Keanu can do really well. Hell, it’s one of the few acting techniques he actually excells at. Can there be a method to this madness then?

The first person who tries to tie Virginia Tech shooting to violent video games, movies or music is a despicable publicity whore. Anyone willing to exploit this tragedy for media face time, or use it to support their agenda to censor media content is a pathetic excuse for a human being. Every time something like this happens, all these disgusting slimy turds crawl out of the woodwork and demand media face time to preach to us about the evils of this or that.

If I hear even a pip out of Jack Thompson about this, I will personally roundhouse kick him in the nuts. Seriously!

Sorry, had to get that off my chest.

I would like to congratulate RIAA on winning the 2007’s Worst Company in America Award.

They have managed to beat Halliburton which is an incredible accomplishment right there. I wonder if they will finally get the message…

Oh wait… I forgot. They don’t care. It’s not like they are selling anything to us so being hated doesn’t diminish their profit margins at all. To really hurt RIAA we need to channel that hatred towards the actual recording studios that they represent and stop buying their shit.

As long as we continue hating RIAA but giving money to it’s members, it’s going to be business as usual for them. So I guess they really deserve some congratulations. Perhaps this was not intentional, but RIAA became something symbolic. It became the embodiment of all that is wrong with the music industry - something to be hated.

So the member companies used it as a scrape goat that can be used as a shield and distraction, and ultimately sacrificed on the altar of crushingly bad PR. In the meantime they can continue flying below the radar.

I dare you to name at lest 3 RIAA members without looking them up. If you can do it, I applaud you. If not, then you are in the same boat as most of the people who voted in the consumerist poll. These member companies are who is pulling the strings and organizing the lawsuits. RIAA is simply the public entity that takes the public beatings on their behalf.

They are the ones who should be receiving this award. Not the abstract entity that is RIAA.

I was under impression that almost everyone in the world knew the international radiation symbol:

After all its been only featured in hundreds of movies, books, children’s cartoons, video games and taught to millions of children in schools during the cold war era. To miss this symbol and it’s significance, you either have to be really, really dumb or be completely disconnected from the cultural aftermath of the cold war era.

But apparently countless numbers of people ignore the dreaded trefoil symbol, and remove themselves from the human gene pool. I call this natural selection - these people are obviously unfit to breed if they fail to recognize this symbol. Especially since it is rarely posted without a big “DANGER! RADIATION!” note attached next to it.

However it seems that IAEA and ISO figured that this was a problem, and so they designed a new symbol, which is so literal that even an inbred, retard with a full frontal lobotomy could figure it out:

Even if you are one of those religious nuts and you don’t believe in radiation and other science stuff, it still kinda works. With the trefoil looking like an eye in the sky, shooting down arrows, and the Jolly Eoger symbol it can be interpreted as: “God will smite you” or “you will be chased by sky pirates”. Either way, it clearly motivates you to stay away.

It is perhaps the dumbest thing I saw in years, but I guess this is what it takes to keep people from drinking heavy water these days. If this is not an indication that we are getting dumber as a species, I don’t know what is. Idiocracy, here we come.