Does anyone else see the media blackouts done by governments these days as a step closer to a Ghost in the Shell world?
The Chinese state news agency reported Monday that at least 140 people were killed and more than 800 injured when rioters clashed with the police in a regional capital in western China after days of rising tensions between members of the Uighur ethnic group and Han Chinese.
The casualty toll, if confirmed, would make this the deadliest outbreak of violence in China in many years.
The rioting broke out Sunday afternoon in a large market area of Urumqi, the capital of the vast, restive desert region of Xinjiang, and lasted for several hours before riot police officers and paramilitary or military troops locked down the Uighur quarter of the city, according to witnesses and photographs of the riot.
On June 4th 1989 the chinese government shut down pro-democracy protests being held by students at Tiananmen Square in China. Never forget what a few people tried to do for a bit of change and the lengths their government is doing to make sure everyone forgets about it.
The Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 culminating in the Tiananmen Square massacre (referred to in China as the June 4 Incident, to avoid confusion with two other Tiananmen Square protests) were a series of demonstrations in and near Tiananmen Square in Beijing in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) beginning on April 14. Led mainly by students and intellectuals, the protests occurred in a year that saw the collapse of a number of communist governments around the world.
The protests were sparked by the death of pro-market, pro-democracy and anti-corruption official, Hu Yaobang, whom protesters wanted to mourn. By the eve of Hu’s funeral, 1,000,000 people had gathered on the Tiananmen square. The protests lacked a unified cause or leadership; participants included disillusioned Communist Party members and Trotskyists as well as free market reformers, who were generally against the government’s authoritarianism and voiced calls for economic change [1][2] and democratic reform[2] within the structure of the government. The demonstrations centered on Tiananmen Square, in Beijing, but large-scale protests also occurred in cities throughout China, including Shanghai, which remained peaceful throughout the protests.
The movement lasted seven weeks, from Hu’s death on April 15 until tanks cleared Tiananmen Square on June 4. In Beijing, the resulting military response to the protesters by the PRC government left many civilians dead or severely injured. The number of deaths is not known and many different estimates exist.[3][4] There were early reports of Chinese Red Cross sources giving a figure of 2,600 deaths, but the Chinese Red Cross has denied ever doing so.[4] The official Chinese government figure is 241 dead, including soldiers, and 7,000 wounded.[3]
And how about a giant Boofuckityyah against Verizon and Comcast for their shitty capping and pricing. Unfortunately for all but a few of us this only applies to New York.
Cablevision, a cable ISP based in the New York area, claims to have taken the residential US Internet speed record by rolling out 101Mbps service across the New York area in the next two weeks. Just to sweeten the deal, Cablevision has priced the service at $99.95 per month—and won’t use explicit data caps.
Since other high-speed providers like Comcast and Verizon currently offer a maximum of 50Mbps speeds (and both charge about $140 for it, though Verizon offers a cheaper deal in Virginia and New York), the Cablevision rollout sounds like a great deal. It also shows the power of competition; while much of the country has zero or one 50Mbps option, New York will now have two.
The fact that the upgrade can be offered at far less than both Verizon and Comcast are charging, and that it can be done without the data caps Time Warner Cable said it needed in order to fund such upgrades, suggests that US Internet could be much better than it is.
The fact wasn’t lost on groups like Free Press, which have already praised Cablevision. “It does, however, beg the question why Cablevision can offer fast access with reportedly no caps or overage fees, when others claim such a plan would cause the sky to fall and an exaflood to break the Internet,” said S. Derek Turner, the group’s research director. “We hope this new announcement will put an end to the bandwidth bogeyman.”
Assuming the service works as advertised, it will certainly boost Cablevision’s image, which (among the much-loathed cable industry) is already pretty good.
The move also reminds us just how cost-effective these DOCSIS 3.0 rollouts have been. While Verizon has to lay new fiber to FiOS homes and AT&T runs fiber into the neighborhoods to power its U-verse system, cable companies have a monstrous hybrid fiber coax (HFC) pipe that requires inexpensive headend upgrades for far faster service.
Yes I was lazy and just copied it over for your convenience.
Apparently being in a wheelchair removes people from actually existing in one airport security guard’s eyes. I feel incredibly empathic for this gentleman who had to under go the ordeal. As the story goes airport security approached him as he was sitting in his wheelchair and basically told him enabled people can only attend luggage and that is what he needed. Bless the pilot who stepped in on this one.
...He looked at me, annoyed and said, “Luggage can’t be left unattended.”
“I AM attending it,” I said incredulous.
“You don’t understand, SOME BODY needs to be in possession of the luggage,” he said and I didn’t get his implication, not yet, I was still too startled.
“I am in possession of this luggage, it is MINE,” my voice is rising.
He looks at me with exaggerated patience, “SOME BODY (long pause) needs to be attending the luggage.”
I got it then, I wasn’t SOME BODY, “Are you suggesting that I can’t supervise my own luggage because I’m in a wheelchair?”...
Way to continue to make your organization look like a bunch of assholes TSA. Fucking spectacular performace.
There is a nifty NPR audio stream interviewing a city councilman from El Paso and how the Mexico drug war is spilling over the border.
El Paso, Texas ranks as one of the safest cities in the U.S. It borders Ciudad Juarez, a Mexican town that has been engulfed in ongoing drug violence. Beto O’Rourke, a city councilman for El Paso, explains the impact of Mexico’s drug war on his town.
An online poll conducted in the ‘90s set Vitaly Komar, Alex Melamid and David Soldier on a quest to create the most annoying song ever. After gathering data about people’s least favorite music and lyrical subjects, they did the unthinkable: they combined them into a single monstrosity, specifically engineered to sound unpleasant to the maximum percentage of listeners. The song is not new, but it resurfaced on Dial “M” for Musicology.
Amazingly, this “most unwanted music” contains little dissonance—that would have been too easy. For the most part, they seem to have tried to assemble these elements in a listenable way.
Komar & Melamid and David Soldier’s list of undesirable elements included holiday music, bagpipes, pipe organ, a children’s chorus and the concept of children in general (really?), Wal-Mart, cowboys, political jingoism, George Stephanopoulos, Coca Cola, bossanova synths, banjo ferocity, harp glissandos, oompah-ing tubas and much, much more. It’s actually a fascinating listen, worthwhile for the opera rapping alone. (We didn’t think that was possible either.)
I agree that the opera rapping is pretty nice, but the rest will make me go postal. If you are going to use technology for evil at least build a death ray. I’ll commission it.
“Comcast has confirmed that all residential customers will be subject to a 250 gigabyte per month data limit starting October 1. ‘This is the same system we have in place today,’ Comcast wrote in an amendment to its acceptable use policy. ‘The only difference is that we will now provide a limit by which a customer may be contacted.’ The cable provider insisted that 250 GB is “an extremely large amount of data, much more than a typical residential customer uses on a monthly basis. ... As part of our pre-existing policy, we will continue to contact the top users of our high-speed Internet service and ask them to curb their usage,’ Comcast said Thursday. ‘If a customer uses more than 250 GB and is one of the top users of our service, he or she may be contacted by Comcast to notify them of excessive use,’ according to the AUP.”
I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again, and that’s, “FUCK COMCAST”.
“Can you trust your data to the cloud? For users of an online storage service called The Linkup, formerly known as MediaMax, the answer turned out to be a resounding “no.” The Linkup shut down on Aug. 8 after losing access to as much as 45% of its customers’ data. “When we looked at some individual accounts, some people didn’t have any files, and some people had all their files,” The Linkup CeO Steve Iverson admits. None of the affected users will get their lost data back. Iverson called it a “worst-case scenario.”“
Although this isn’t the type of story that normally gets around these parts the first sentence of the article poses a very important question. How many of you would trust your data in the hands of someone else? What about your privacy rights? Its an issue with people on both sides of the fence.
In the west victorian style personal calling cards have been making a resurgence. In such a high tech world its a wonderful thing to see a low tech approach to a common problem of trading information without being bound by your business. The sad part is some people would try and list their favorite social networking profile as their primary homepage. The happy part is all the information one can include on it. Now the west just needs to embrace QR Codes.
In one of those rare cases where life mimics fiction here is a stunning example right out of J.K. Rowling’s ministerial decrees. A graduate student and a clerk were held for five days for possession of ‘research terrorist materials’ which is now against the University of Nottingham’s rules. They were held without charges ever being pressed for five days under the Terrorism Act. To make it even more asinine the graduate student in question is researching Islamic Terrorism.
In a statement issued to the university last week, Sir Colin Campbell says: “There is no ‘right’ to access and research terrorist materials. Those who do so run the risk of being investigated and prosecuted on terrorism charges. Equally, there is no ‘prohibition’ on accessing terrorist materials for the purpose of research. Those who do so are likely to be able to offer a defence to charges (although they may be held in custody for some time while the matter is investigated). This is the law and applies to all universities.”
Sir Colin issued the statement to advise staff to note “additional points” that have emerged since the arrest in May of a Nottingham masters student and a clerk on suspicion of possessing extremist material.
The student, Rizwaan Sabir, who is studying Islamic terrorism, said he had downloaded a copy of an al-Qaeda training manual for use in his MA dissertation and PhD application and had forwarded it to the administrator, Hicham Yezza, for printing. After six days in detention, neither was charged.
Thanks to a new bill in congress one small paragraph would allow distance education colleges and universities to install spy cameras into student’s homes. Of course none of our representatives are objecting to it. Think of the future when almost all education is done from home. George Orwell must be rolling over in his grave.
Tucked away in a 1,200-page bill now in Congress is a small paragraph that could lead distance-education institutions to require spy cameras in their students’ homes…
...The paragraph is actually about clamping down on cheating. It says that an institution that offers an online program must prove that an enrolled student is the same person who does the work…
...But some college officials are wary of the technologies, noting that they are run by third-party vendors that may not safeguard students’ privacy. Among the information the vendors collect are students’ fingerprints, and possibly even images from inside their homes.
“This is taking a step into a student’s private life,” said Rhonda M. Epper, co-executive director of Colorado Community Colleges Online. “I don’t know if we want to extend our presence that far.”...
Its good to know that I’m not the only person in the world who would rather the summer games could take place somewhere else.
HOTELS in Beijing are slashing prices for next month’s Olympics after the expected windfall of visitors failed to materialize, hotels and travel industry executives said yesterday.
Fan Runjun, of travel Website Ctrip.com, said many two to four-star hotels had reduced prices by 10 to 20 percent compared to May and June and some had slashed rates by as much as 30 percent.
The usual pre-Olympic festive atmosphere host cities experience has not yet hit Beijing. In June, the number of visitors to the capital declined by 19.9 percent from a year earlier, according to the Beijing Tourism Authority.
Average room prices in three-star hotels are now down to 400 yuan (US$60) a night from 700 yuan in previous months. Four-star hotels have dropped prices to about 800 yuan a night from 1,500 yuan.
Dozens of partygoers at an outdoor rave near Moscow have been partially blinded after a laser light show burned their retinas, say Russian health officials.
Moscow city health department officials say that 12 cases of laser blindness were recorded at the Central Ophthalmological Clinic in the city. The daily newspaper Kommersant reports that another 17 victims have registered at another hospital in the centre of the capital.
Ravers at the Aquamarine Open Air Festival in Kirzhach, 80 kilometres northeast of Moscow, began seeking medical help days after the show, complaining of eye and vision problems.
“They all have retinal burns, scarring is visible on them. Loss of vision in individual cases is as high as 80%, and regaining it is already impossible,” Kommersant quoted a treating ophthalmologist as saying.
The Sayama Forest was the inspiration for Totoro. The bad news is that it is under thread for development.The good news is that over 200 of the top international artists from print to animation are donating artwork for the cause. You, too, can help by donating. Besides, the site contains a wonderful gallery of works that have already been donated.
Using Bone Conduction technology exhibits can ditch that old tape recorder and headphones in a damn cool way.
People just need to rest their elbows on the railing and cup their ears to be transported back to the night of the terrible air raid on 13th February 1945, using technology called “touched echo”. While leaning on to the balustrade the sound of airplanes and explosions is transmitted from the swinging balustrade through their arm directly into into the inner ear (bone conduction).
The sound is not audible to the people who are not touching the rail.
Officials in Rome, IT are planning on reviving the Circus Maximus with chariot races. Ben Hurrrrrrrr!
“The races will last for three days, starting from October 17, 2009… Chariot racers from around the world are expected to compete,” Franco Calo, one of the promoters, said.
He said the races would be held at the Circus Maximus, an ancient chariot racing venue which is now a park.
Chariot racers are, understandably, far and few between, and anyone hoping to participate will have to take lessons before heading for the starting line.
“The White House lost a case in the Supreme Court about the need for the EPA to regulate greenhouse gases. So the EPA made new rule. And now the NYTimes reports that the White House did not want to get these new rules from the EPA about greenhouse gases. So they did not open the email.”
George Carlin kicks the bucket at 71. He pushed the envelope in ways that other comedians were too afraid to. Lets have a moment to regard this situation in the only way to give good memory.
Japanese company Genepax presents its eco-friendly car that runs on nothing but water.
The car has an energy generator that extracts hydrogen from water that is poured into the car’s tank. The generator then releases electrons that produce electric power to run the car. Genepax, the company that invented the technology, aims to collaborate with Japanese manufacturers to mass produce it.
Anyone who has been backpacking knows the fear of getting lost. Luckily two wonderful ladies were found after being in the middle of “we have no idea where the fuck we are” for FIVE days.
Lost for five days in Denali National Park, a Gaylord, Minn., woman and her friend were ferried to safety after a surprising cell-phone call.
Searchers had scoured hundreds of square miles of Alaska wilderness for a young Minnesotan backpacker and her friend for five days and found not a trace.
Then, on Wednesday morning, a cell phone rang.
Eight hours later, Abby Flantz, 25, of Gaylord, Minn., and Erica Nelson, 23, of Las Vegas were safely back at park headquarters, hungry but unhurt, hugging emotional family members, thanking their rescuers and looking forward to a shower, a hearty meal and, Nelson said, “maybe a beer.”
In this case technology saved them. With a GPS device they wouldn’t have been in the situation in the first place, but where is the fun in that. Now that we have ‘tech’ camping all it’s doing is making people dependent on those devices we rely on. All I can say is one has to walk before they can run. That is especially true when it comes to learning backcountry survival.
Thanks to the global economy and virtual office space the lingo we hear around business meetings and thrown into email is, like everything else, becoming homogenized. This does have a benefit to where we can all complain about those ‘phrases we love to hate’.
5. “My favourite which I hear from the managers at the bank I work for is let’s touch base about that offline. I think it means have a private chat but I am still not sure.”
Gemma, Wolverhampton, England
32. “My least favourite business-speak term is not enough bandwidth. When an employee used this term to refuse an additional assignment, I realised I was completely ‘out of the loop’.”
April, Berkeley, US
38. “I have taken to playing buzzword bingo when in meetings. It certainly makes it more entertaining when I am feeding it back (or should that be cascading) at work.”
Ian Everett, Bolton
I’m in agreement that ‘talking about it offline’ is my least favorite of the 50.
It yet another shining example of why science rocks scientists have announced that they’ve taken significant strides in curing a formed of skin cancer, melanoma. This was accomplished by taking cancer-fighting cells, cloning them about five billion times, and then injecting those cells back into the patients body! Wow.
Scientists claim they have cured advanced skin cancer for the first time using the patient’s own cells cloned outside the body.
The 52-year-old man involved was free of melanoma two years after treatment.
Advertising for sex safety in bars and pubs is as age old as the contraception business itself. Image polishing off a pint in your favorite pub as any fine gentleman or lady would only to see that the bottom of your glass has been sold off to the highest bidder..
Now I love how creative advertisers can be when it comes to proper product placement in the right locations. I do agree with the original blogger who posted about this though that maybe the prank may be on them with it being a real condom. Checking the bottom of the glass is always a good call.
With this out in the wild we’ll be seeing more advertising in this fashion. Hell, people should be checking for falsie and chic glasses in this day of the cheapest business model winner… which is now our newest contest! Submit what you think is the skimpiest business and why (pictures would be grand) or prizes to be discussed at a later time! Gotta flesh out that idea… yes I’m writing this a bit hung over. It helps I tell ya.
Reports are stating that download day for Firefox 3 was successful with over 8 million downloads. They’re still pouring over the data before passing it off to Guinness, but it’s looking like they’ve made the record books. This is good since they’ve already found a major flaw in Firefox 3 that they’re keeping secret. Expect an update soon for that bug fix!
Of course companies wouldn’t want congress to make net neutrality law. They’d love to keep it as FCC regulation!
“Executives from AT&T and Verizon Communications said Tuesday that it’s important for the Federal Communications Commission to take action against Comcast for slowing down some peer-to-peer traffic to prove that legislation is not necessary when it comes to Net neutrality.
Comcast, the largest cable provider in the U.S., has been under fire for months after it was discovered the company had been slowing down peer-to-peer traffic on its network. The company claimed it had singled out peer-to-peer, file-sharing traffic, because it was eating up an inordinate amount of bandwidth, which caused degradation across the rest of its customers.
Consumer groups were incensed by the tactic, and the blogosphere filled with criticism. And as a result the FCC has been examining whether Comcast violated any of the agency’s Net neutrality principles. A hearing was held earlier this year, and the FCC is expected to make a ruling on the matter sometime this summer.”
