Google getting evil

 Google's Changing The Algorithm Again

Under a certain amount of pressure Google has announced that starting next week it will be changing the ranking algorithm. The aim is that those who are presenting other people’s copyrighted material will turn up lower down in the search results.

I think I might want to switch search engines. I heard DuckDuckGo is a good alternative. Annom can you write a script that takes a search term uses two search engines and displays them side by side in one browser window? :)

Also this happened when I searched for news. Coincidence? Better get my tinfoil hat.

Lets not go to Dubai...

Briton jailed for four years in Dubai after customs find cannabis weighing less than a grain of sugar under his shoe
A search by customs officials uncovered a speck of cannabis weighing just 0.003g - so small it would be invisible to the naked eye and weighing less than a grain of sugar - on the tread of one of his shoes. 

A 25-year-old Briton who was found with a similar speck in one pocket as he arrived on holiday has been awaiting sentence since November. 

One man has even been jailed for possession of three poppy seeds left over from a bread roll he ate at Heathrow Airport. Painkiller codeine is also banned.

Quite likely that there will be a speck on one of us. So unless we buy a complete new wardrobe and bags I wouldn't want to go into the country.

America can't be considered a civilized country - Part V

The School of the Americas, the CIA and the US-Condoned Cancer of Torture Continue to Spread in Latin America, Including Mexico

While the whole article is an indictment to the disgusting and evil foreign politics the US conducted and still does in Latin American one part got to me in particular, rarely do I read something that scars my psyche as bad as this excerpt:

In fact, Everardo, Harbury discovered, was kept in a body cast to keep him constrained while he was tortured for more than two years before being executed, all the time with the full knowledge and likely operational involvement of the CIA.

Such a short paragraph that elicits such terrible imagery and suffering in my mind. Though I had considered it, I had never read about this kind of torture actually being carried out. A full body cast, so zero movement for two years, while being tortured even more in unspecified but undoubtedly horrible ways. The horror, I would actually prefer rat torture over this.

See the previous installments of this series on why the US can't be considered a civilized country here.

America can't be considered a civilized country - Part IV

See parts I - III of this series here. A bit from QI on American prisons.

Jimmy Carr keeps it quite funny, but these stats are very depressing, and they don't even mention the capital punishment, which out of all the OECD countries besides Japan (vary rarely) only the USA still uses.

See also the following wikilinks Prison-Industrial-Complex, Incarceration in the United States, Global Distribution of Capital Punishment.

I would write more on the disgusting ways in which the prison industrial complex works, but I don't have the time to dig in and read all the articles for references.

Mortal Kombat returns to form

You all probably remember the awesome ultra-violence of Mortal Kombat. I hadn't yet seen some of the fatality footage of the newest Mortal Kombat. And wow, this shit is pretty gruesome.

Maybe too gruesome? :)

If you're feeling like more gore, you can see them all here.

At least 12,000 people have died this year in Mexico's drug war

Through Nov. 30, 12,456 people were killed, making 2010 the deadliest year since Mexican President Felipe Calderon began a government crackdown against traffickers in 2006, the Los Angeles Times reported. The death toll since the start of the drug war is nearly 30,200, said Mexican Attorney General Arturo Chavez. Other officials estimate the death toll at about 32,000.

Photo from Blog Del Narco which covers a lot of this.

War on Drugs... :(

Top 10 Anti-Gay Activists Caught Being Gay

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Iraq war logs: Frago 242 – a licence to torture

One of the revelations of the huge WikiLeaks document release.

America can't be considered a civilized country Part III

Another part in our series

North Carolina Crime Lab Buried Blood Evidence

Greg Taylor was wrongfully convicted of killing a prostitute in 1991 in North Carolina. Taylor proclaimed his innocence, but the evidence against him seemed insurmountable: blood from the victim found on his SUV.

The catch is that there was never any blood in the car. Taylor was convicted after crime lab technicians reported traces of blood on his SUV near the crime scene. Those same technicians buried the results of additional testing that showed there was never any blood. Taylor wrongly served 17 years in prison until being released in February.

Blood Evidence Buried in Hundreds of Cases

More...

Google is turning evil

Google Data Admission Angers European Officials

By KEVIN J. O’BRIEN

BERLIN — European privacy regulators and advocates reacted angrily Saturday to the disclosure by Google, the world’s largest search engine, that it had systematically collected private data since 2006 while compiling its Street View photo archive.

After being pressed by European officials about the kind of data the company compiled in creating the archive — and what it did with that information — Google acknowledged on Friday that it had collected snippets of private data around the world. In a blog post on its Web site, the company said information had been recorded as it was sent over unencrypted residential wireless networks as Google’s Street View cars with mounted recording equipment passed by.

The data collection, which Google said was inadvertent and the result of a programming error, took place in all the countries where Street View has been catalogued, including the United States and parts of Europe. Google apologized and said it had not used the information, which it plans to delete in conjunction with regulators.

But in Germany, Google’s collection of the data — which the company said could include the Web sites viewed by individuals or the content of their e-mail — is a violation of privacy law, said Ilse Aigner, the German minister for food, agriculture and consumer protection. In a statement Saturday, her ministry demanded a full accounting.

.....

But in its review, Mr. Oberbeck said the company learned that its data collection performed by roving Street View vehicles was much more extensive, including a record of sites viewed by the user and potentially the contents of messages if users did not secure their WLANS with a password.

Despite its internal efforts to address the situation, Google may face an uphill battle in Germany overcoming skepticism about its intentions. So far, thousands of Germans have signed up to have their properties excluded from Google’s Street View archives.

If Google’s software makes a mistake, it could be costly for the company. Till Steffen, the justice senator for the city-state of Hamburg, where Google’s German headquarters is located, said Google’s latest disclosure raised questions about its intent to follow local laws.

....

America can't be considered a civilized country

Sure the US is a developed and rich(for now) country, but it's only very few people who are rich. However, America is not a civilized country. I'll give two recent exhibits out of a very deep pool of uncivilized conduct.

And this recent article:

Sonoma County CA separates elderly gay couple and sells all of their worldly possessions Clay and his partner of 20 years, Harold, lived in California. Clay and Harold made diligent efforts to protect their legal rights, and had their legal paperwork in place--wills, powers of attorney, and medical directives, all naming each other. Harold was 88 years old and in frail medical condition, but still living at home with Clay, 77, who was in good health. One evening, Harold fell down the front steps of their home and was taken to the hospital. Based on their medical directives alone, Clay should have been consulted in Harold's care from the first moment. Tragically, county and health care workers instead refused to allow Clay to see elderly_man.jpgHarold in the hospital. The county then ultimately went one step further by isolating the couple from each other, placing the men in separate nursing homes. Full story...

The Killdozer

Marvin Heemeyer of Granby, Colorado was a profoundly frustrated muffler repair man. In the late 1990s–after years of protests, petitions, and town meetings–it became obvious to the 52-year-old that he was entwined in a gross miscarriage of justice. His business was ruined by some shady zoning changes, and Heemeyer contended that mayor and city council were corrupt. Even as he was forced to give up his legal fight and sell his land, he hatched one last plan to secretly retool his muffler shop to serve a single malevolent purpose: to construct a machine that would allow him to exact his revenge upon those who had wronged him. Full Story @ DamnInteresting

History without a muchtache

Car Drives into Dutch Queen's Day Parade 2009

Not sure if it was intentional yet, but it certainly looks that way. Dutch article...

Shocking video at RTL4. More videos. It now appears that seven people, including the driver, have died and 11 are wounded. The act was intentional. Really shocking and gruesome images.

How to tell if your cat is plotting to kill you

The Irony! The Irony!

8 Years of Bush Fail

Almost time for a new president. Time to look back.

Most Offensive Page on the Internet?

I was linked to an entry on Encyclopedia Dramatica when somebody talked about being offended in a forum. *WARNING* this is very offensive, and extremely disgusting and shocking *WARNING* really, you DON'T want to see this Here it is, the entry on Offended.

Naga Jolokia Pepper

The Naga Jolokia Pepper (also known as Bhut Jolokia, Ghost Chili, Ghost Pepper, Naga Morich) is the hottest pepper in the world. Maybe something Douche would like to try.

At first he only eats a little bit:

This is where it ranks on the Scoville scale.

The Most Viewed YouTube Video :(

embedding disabled, so here's a link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQ25-glGRzI 112,607,207 views at the moment, what a sad world we live in.