‘Chalk up another new-found power to the Motion Picture Association of America: the ability to force someone to change operating systems. Scott McCausland, who pleaded guilty last September in 2006 to the crime of uploading Star Wars: Episode III to the site Elitetorrents.com, was charged with “conspiracy to commit copyright infringement” and “criminal copyright infringement” by the FBI. This charge carried a maximum sentence of five years in prison, a fine of $250,000, and three years of supervised release. He wound up serving five months in prison and is now on probation. The probation, however, has now taken a strange turn into forced platform advocacy.
“I had a meeting with my probation officer today and he told me that he has to install monitoring software onto my PC. No big deal to me; that is part of my sentence,” he wrote on his Lost and Alone blog. “However, their software doesn’t support GNU/Linux (Which is what I use). So, he told me that if I want to use a computer, I would have to use an OS that the software can be installed on.” The monitoring software in question is only available for Microsoft Windows. Neither Linux nor a Macintosh running OS X would be an acceptable platform.’
‘The Americans were getting close. It was early in the winter of 2004-05, and Osama bin Laden and his entourage were holed up in a mountain hideaway along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. Suddenly, a sentry, posted several kilometers away, spotted a patrol of U.S. soldiers who seemed to be heading straight for bin Laden’s redoubt. The sentry radioed an alert, and word quickly passed among the Qaeda leader’s 40-odd bodyguards to prepare to remove “the Sheik,” as bin Laden is known to his followers, to a fallback position. As Sheik Said, a senior Egyptian Qaeda operative, later told the story, the anxiety level was so high that the bodyguards were close to using the code word to kill bin Laden and commit suicide. According to Said, bin Laden had decreed that he would never be captured. “If there’s a 99 percent risk of the Sheik’s being captured, he told his men that they should all die and martyr him as well,” Said told Omar Farooqi, a Taliban liaison officer to Al Qaeda who spoke to a NEWSWEEK reporter in Afghanistan.’
‘The China Daily is reporting that a bull elephant from Xishuangbanna in southern Yunnan has recovered from a serious heroin addiction it picked up as a victim of illegal elephant trading. The elephant, nicknamed “Big Brother”, was fed heroin-laced bananas in order to make it easier to control him and his herd, which they led westward to Dehong, near China’s border with Myanmar.
According to the article, Big Brother developed a strong need for heroin after a few weeks of being drugged and would drool and twitch if not given regular doses. When the elephant smugglers arrived in Dehong they were arrested by the Dehong Forest Police. The China Daily explains what happened when the police tried to get Big Brother home:
“While driving the herd back to Xishuangbanna, Big Brother started drooling and bellowing and even tried to run away. The police were surprised to learn from one of the traders that it was suffering from withdrawal symptoms and could pose a danger to people, if not fed drugs immediately…’
‘US Representative Benjamin Sinclair (R-Ohio) has a plan to reduce skull fucking levels in America by 5 to 7%’
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‘A Burning Man participant was found dead this morning, hanging from the inside of a two-story high tent, according to Mark Pirtle, special agent in charge for the Bureau of Land Management.
The apparent suicide would be the festival’s first in its 21 year history, Pirtle said.
Pershing County coroners are investigating the scene and preparing to remove the body. Pirtle said the man was hanging for two hours before anyone in the large tent thought to bring him down. “His friends thought he was doing an art piece,” Pirtle said.’
‘A Minneapolis man was attacked with 2-by-4s and grapefruit-size rocks early Sunday after he told a group of eight to 10 people to turn down their music, police said.
The 28-year-old man returned to a duplex in south Minneapolis about 1:35 a.m. and found the group in the backyard drinking and listening to music, according to a police report. A 45-year-old woman and 13-year-old girl were with the man.
The man asked the group to turn down its music. The suspects then knocked him to the ground, kicked him, beat him with 2-by-4s and struck him about five times with landscape rocks, the report said.
When the woman tried to protect the man, one suspect threw a can of beer in her face. The 13-year-old was thrown to the ground by another suspect as she tried to flee.’
‘The Meng brothers felt pretty good about their chances of making it out of the collapsed coal mine, until the sound of digging from outside stopped.
With no food or water, they were forced to eat coal and drink their own urine from discarded bottles. When they were too exhausted to try to dig themselves out, they slept huddled together in the cold and dark.
Meng Xianchen and Meng Xianyou finally clawed their way to the surface after nearly six days underground – a rare tale of survival in China’s coal mines, the world’s deadliest, where an average of 13 workers are killed every day.
The two even managed to crack jokes about their wives remarrying once they were dead after they emerged Friday from the illegal mine – which had no oxygen, ventilation or emergency exits – in Beijing’s Fangshan district.’
‘Let’s get this action goin’, baby.’
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‘The good news for this mystery blonde is that the digital camera she mislaid on holiday has been found.
The bad news is that the revealing pictures of herself stored on its memory card have been posted on the internet.
And since then she has attracted over 23,000 admirers, all professing their desperation to track her down so that she can get back her lost property. [..]
The Facebook group description reads: “We are trying to track down the lovely lass in these photos so she can be reunited with her lost digital camera. She certainly knows how to use it!’
Update: Also the NSW pictures and her MySpace page.
‘Forget everything you know about reducing fractions — it turns out you can just cancel individual digits: [..]’
‘A helicopter with a pilot and a single passenger was flying around above Seattle when a malfunction disabled all of the aircraft’s navigation and communications equipment. Due to the darkness and haze, the pilot could not determine the helicopter’s position and course to get back to the airport.
The pilot saw a tall building with lights on and flew toward it, the pilot had the passenger draw a handwritten sign reading “WHERE AM I?” and hold it up for the building’s occupants to see.
People in the building quickly responded to the aircraft, drew a large sign, and held it in a building window. Their sign said “YOU ARE IN A HELICOPTER.”‘
‘A man who was impaled by a metal post said he was walking on his own the day after it was removed from his body.
James Graham, a truck driver, was seriously injured on Aug. 16 when a 10-foot pole went through the driver’s side door and into his body after he crashed his 18-wheeler into a chain-link fence.
Graham said he remembered the crash, but doesn’t remember the pole going through his body.
“I didn’t even know I was stuck until a bypasser got up on the truck and said, ‘Oh man, you’ve been stabbed with a pole,”‘ Graham said. “I was like, ‘What?'”‘
‘Actor Owen Wilson was taken to a hospital in Santa Monica, Calif., Sunday, reportedly after attempting suicide.
Wilson was transported to St. John’s Hospital. Citing sources, The National Enquirer and Star magazine said the star of “Wedding Crashers” and “Starsky & Hutch” had cut his left wrist and taken an undetermined amount of pills.
He was found by a family member who called for help.
Santa Monica police confirmed only that the actor had been taken to a hospital, TMZ.com reported.’
‘Rockets can help power robotic arms, which could help lead to “better, stronger, faster” bionic limbs, research now reveals.
A new prototype rocket-powered mechanical arm can lift about 20 to 25 pounds—three to four times more than current commercial prosthetic arms—and can do so three to four times faster.
“Our design does not have superhuman strength or capability, but it is closer in terms of function and power to a human arm than any previous prosthetic device that is self-powered and weighs about the same as a natural arm,” said researcher Michael Goldfarb, a roboticist at Vanderbilt University in Nashville.
“It has about 10 times as much power as other [robotic] arms,” Goldfarb said.’
‘Lose a game of chess to a computer, and you could bruise your ego. Lose an arm-wrestling match to a Japanese arcade machine, and you could break your arm.
Distributor Atlus said Tuesday it will remove all 150 Arm Spirit arm wrestling machines from Japanese arcades after three players broke their arms grappling with the machine’s mechanized appendage.
“The machine isn’t that strong, much less so than a muscular man. Even women should be able to beat it,” said Atlus spokeswoman Ayano Sakiyama, calling the recall “a precaution.”
“We think that maybe some players get overexcited and twist their arms in an unnatural way,” she said. The company was investigating the incidents and checking the machines for any signs of malfunction.’
‘Vermont’s clothing-optional capital is stripping off its temporary ban on public nudity.
A month after passing the temporary ban, the Brattleboro Selectboard voted 3-2 on Tuesday to reject a proposed ordinance that would have made it permanent. When the emergency temporary ordinance expires next month, public nudity will no longer be illegal.
It’s all about tolerance, one board member said.
”We in this country are going down a slippery slope these days,” said Dora Bouboulis, noting a national newspaper recently published an article about the emergency ordinance under the headline ”Tolerant town gets intolerant.”’
‘The urethra, unlike other orifices, is strictly designed for one-way activity. There’s no negotiating that – it’s the way things are. I’m not ashamed to admit that at one point in my life I’ve had the infamous STD test which involves the doctor sticking a Q-Tip into your urethra. I learned two very important things from that test: One – I don’t have chlamydia. Two – inserting an object into your peehole HURTS LIKE A MOTHERFUCK. It does. It really hurts. Things aren’t supposed to be in there, and your body has a rather dramatic way of telling you that. But such things are small obstacles to those determined to find new ways of pleasuring themselves – you see, for a growing number of people, inserting objects into the urethra is all kinds of fun.
In the darkest corners of the internet, you’ll find guys sticking all sorts of objects into their pee tubes. For example…’
‘In what critics call a dangerous power grab, the Monsanto Company is seeking wide-ranging control over swine reproduction methods in the form of patents which, if granted, would give the corporation economic rights over any offspring produced using those techniques.Documents obtained by Christoph Then, a Germany-based researcher for Greenpeace, show Monsanto’s attempts to secure broad intellectual property protection for swine herds. [..]
Monsanto spokesperson Chris Horner said that the company merely wants protection for its selective breeding processes, including the means to identify specific genes in pigs and use of a specialized insemination device. [..]
But Then, who has been studying patents for a decade, said that there is really nothing new to the breeding processes of which Monsanto is seeking to claim exclusive ownership; rather, the patents attempt to privatize farming techniques already in existence for centuries.
“There’s no invention in this,” he said. “It’s just normal pig breeding.”‘
‘Researchers have figured out how to give an entire community a drug test using just a teaspoon of wastewater from a city’s sewer plant.
The test wouldn’t be used to finger any single person as a drug user. But it would help federal law enforcement and other agencies track the spread of dangerous drugs, like methamphetamines, across the country.
Oregon State University scientists tested 10 unnamed American cities for remnants of drugs, both legal and illegal, from wastewater streams. They were able to show that they could get a good snapshot of what people are taking. [..]
She said that one fairly affluent community scored low for illicit drugs except for cocaine. Cocaine and ecstasy tended to peak on weekends and drop on weekdays, she said, while methamphetamine and prescription drugs were steady throughout the week.’
‘An Arizona woman has been charged with attempted murder after allegedly stabbing her estranged husband in the chest during sex, MyFOXPhoenix.com reports.
Falon Gonzales, 23, was released on $100,000 bond after being booked Tuesday night, according to the report. Her husband, Juan Carlos Gonzales, 26, was listed in serious condition at a local hospital.
He fled to neighbor Tony Ballard’s home on West Stanford Avenue in Gilbert, Ariz., after the attack, MyFOXPhoenix.com reports.
“I’ve never had a naked man run to my house bleeding, you know what I mean?” Ballard told MyFOXPhoenix.com.
Ballard told MyFOXPhoenix.com that the couple was in the middle of sex when the alleged attack occurred.
“She was on top and she reached out of a bag and pulled a knife out of a bag and drove it into his chest,” Ballard said of the incident.’
‘Aggravated assault charges have been filed against a church deacon and University of Oklahoma Sooners fan after officials say he grabbed a University of Texas fan between the legs during a scuffle in an Oklahoma bar.
A couple of months before the annual Red River Shootout between the Sooners and Longhorns, words were exchanged at Henry Hudson’s Pub between Allen Beckett, 53, and Brian Thomas. Witnesses said it was because Thomas was wearing a UT T-shirt.
Neither Thomas or Beckett chose to comment, but the police report described what happened to the victim, including graphic details about his injuries that included a torn scrotal sack with partially exposed testicles.
Beckett’s attorney, Billy Bock, said his client’s actions were in self-defense.’
‘”Chutzpah” is a Yiddish word meaning “unbelievable gall or audacity”. An example of it would be the story of the kid who murders both of his parents, then throws himself on the mercy of the court on the grounds that he’s an orphan.
That’s chutzpah. So is this: multimedia giant Viacom is claiming that I have violated their copyright by posting on YouTube a segment from it’s VH1 show Web Junk 2.0… which VH1 produced – without permission – from a video that I had originally created.
Viacom used my video without permission on their commercial television show, and now says that I am infringing on THEIR copyright for showing the clip of the work that Viacom made in violation of my own copyright!
The clip in question was pulled by YouTube earlier this morning, at Viacom’s insistence.’
‘This bong threat was legitimate.
The FBI has confirmed that a suspicious package that idled one of the largest ferries in the Washington state fleet for about an hour Wednesday morning was actually a water-pipe typically used for smoking marijuana.
“Someone found a bong,” said David Gomez, FBI assistant special agent in charge. [..]
State Patrol Sgt. Craig H. Johnson would only say the device was a “nonhazardous, nonexplosive item,” adding investigators carried it off the ferry for further examination.
No arrests were made and no identified individuals were being sought, but “we’d like to find the person who left it there,” Johnson said.’
‘Einstein’s predicted warping of space-time has been discovered around neutron stars, the most dense observable matter in the universe.
The warping shows up as smeared lines of iron gas whipping around the stars, University of Michigan and NASA astronomers say. The finding also indicates a size limit for the celestial objects.
The same distortions have been spotted around black holes and even around Earth, so while the finding may not be a surprise, it is significant for answering basic questions of physics, said study team member Sudip Bhattacharyya of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. and the University of Maryland, College Park.’
‘A man who shows snakes and other reptiles at schools, festivals and libraries says a boy who told the man he hated snakes stomped and killed the man’s 10-foot-long python.
Scott Braunstein said he was showing Popcorn, a nonpoisonous albino Burmese python, Sunday at the St. Bernadette Festival near Cincinnati.
“The next thing I know … the kid raises his leg and stomps down on the snake’s head,” Braunstein said. “The snake started convulsing.”
Braunstein said he saw a man grab the child and say, “This is why I don’t take you anywhere,” before disappearing.’
‘Hordes of people flocked to a Queenstown ATM this week after the machine started doubling their money.
Police said a concerned taxi driver alerted them to the problem on Tuesday night after the driver saw queues of up to 20 people lining up at the Kiwbank ATM.
“There were queues of 15 to 20 people at any one time for a good six hours from about 10pm until 4am,” the taxi driver said.
“It was a backpacker bonanza.”
A KiwiBank spokesman Bruce Thompson said a contactor had incorrectly stacked the ATM with $20 notes in the $10 box and vice versa.’
She doesn’t seem happy to learn her son is an atheist. :)
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‘My senior year of college opened with the customary research projects, grad school applications, and the like. But that all changed two months ago. Some of you may have heard rumors of some bizarre accident that I was involved in. Here is the truth, unabridged, for those who actually want to know.
In the second week of school, the society of physics students held a roughly annual welcome back party. As tradition dictates, we made our own ice cream with liquid nitrogen, 77� Kelvin, as a refrigerant and aerator. We spilled a little liquid nitrogen onto a table and watched the tiny little drops dance around. Someone asked, “Why does it do that?” That may have been the point of no return.’
‘A British artist spoke tonight after an outcry over his portrait of US President George Bush made from porn magazines.
Jonathan Yeo, 36, defended his work of art in which he cut up more than 100 top-shelf publications to create.
He decided to do it after curators at the Bush Library in America backed out of a commission for him to do a proper portrait.
A spokesman for Republicans Abroad International attacked the artwork.
He said: “This will cause outrage in America. Some people will think it’s funny — but personally I think it is a cheap stunt.”‘
‘The last thing Andrea Fernandez recalls before being drugged is holding her newborn baby on a Bogota city bus.
Police found her three days later, muttering to herself and wandering topless along the median strip of a busy highway. Her face was badly beaten and her son was gone.
Fernandez is just one of hundreds of victims every month who, according to Colombian hospitals, are temporarily turned into zombies by a home-grown drug called scopolamine which has been embraced by thieves and rapists. [..]
The use of scopolamine by criminals appears to be confined to Colombia, at least for now, and it’s not clear why the drug is such a rampant problem in Colombia. [..]’
