cobolhacker.com

Interesting article at the Torontoist about how public opinion surrounding Bill C-32 is being Astroturfed.

Seems the editors discovered a surprising amount of uniformity with pro-copyright comments and eventually discovered they are originating at a pro-copyright website almost certainly run by the CRIA. Michael Geist has some more analysis.

What I find interesting is the use of viral marketing on the Internet by people who are, in general, opposed to it, or at least what it stands for. Also interesting is these folks actually figured people were too stupid to find out, yet were able to recruit people to do it anyway.

I’ve often wondered how much it pays to be a shill. Surely it must pay something, because I have trouble believing people would do it for fun.

Digital image nerds will recognize this one.

I found it while looking through a bunch of old diskettes (yes I am that old).  Pretty girl with dark hair, big eyes and a hint of a smile, trying out a boa and a hat.  Used to be my Windows 3.1 background for a time. It is a cropping* of Lena Söderberg, Miss November 1972 in Playboy (this is what the centrefold looked like, in case you’re curious ;).

Believe it or not, it is one of the most, if not the most studied digital images in the world.  Image processing researchers have been using it as a baseline image for decades.  Numerous compression, resampling and colour timing systems have been tried out on Lena’s face over the years.

Supposedly USC researchers were getting bored with pictures of jellybeans and baboons so some dude’s copy of Playboy got used instead. That was around this time in 1973. For some reason it evolved into a de facto standard.

* I’m using the .png from Wikipedia because browsers don’t typically render .tiffs. Click on the picture and you’ll get an exact copy of what I have, right from the USC.

hello?

are you mr robert young?

sure.

i’m calling for **** ******* and i’m pleased to tell you that you have qualified for a free cell phone.

my lucky day. but i already have one. with your employers, actually.

oh. but this is a new one, sir, with unlimited night-time long distance, 1000 free text messages a month, your choice of four free services, all for the low price of…

yeah, yeah, yeah, but i like my current one. i really don’t need a new one.

i see, sir.

say, you sound a little bit down. it’s not me, is it?

pardon?

you’re having a bad day?

it has not been the best day, sir.

i know what that’s like. i used to do telemarketing too. some days you just can’t make a sale no matter what you do.

it is not that, i have reached all my goals today. you are my last call, actually.

ok so it’s not work, then what is it?

i’d rather not say.

come on. where is your call centre? it’s not like i will ever get to meet you.

bangalore.

if i may say so, you have an excellent phone voice.

thank you.

the english is perfect, the accent is great, a little hint of indian in there, actually it’s quite sultry. i don’t mean that in a disrespectful way, just that you sound great, like you should be on radio or movies or something.

hehe. all my friends say. you have a nice voice too. so deep, but… dark?

yeah well, dark, that’s me. if you knew what i knew you’d be dark too. so tell me, why are you sad?

umm…

come on, you can tell me.

my boyfriend and i separated yesterday.

that’s rough.

i told him that i wanted to get married and have children but i also wanted to have a career in journalism first. and what does he do? he leaves me for some other girl at the school.

that’s really harsh.

it was terrible.

if he’s going to be like that, you probably don’t want to be with him anyway.

yes i suppose. i can not believe i am telling you this.

you’re saying because i asked, but also because you know it is healthy to get it out.

yes. dad was furious. he and mom have been planning the wedding for years.

i’m not surprised.

all he wants is for me to marry well and give him many grandchildren. i tell him things are different these days. you don’t know what it is like.

no i don’t, but i can imagine.

i just want to meet the right guy.

he is elusive, the right guy. what i think you are looking for is a guy who’s willing to take out the trash, but also give you flowers.

yes.

a tough guy, a hard knuckle worker but yet a caring father and husband. the kind of guy children can look up to.

yes.

a do-right man, a moral man, but one who also satisfies your every desire in bed, then holds you close and tells you he loves you.

yes!

he’s gotta be out there somewhere so i say, you go get him, girl!

right. yes. yes! ok. i have to go. thank you so very much! have a very good day!

always happy to help. goodbye.

Gosh, whoever would have thought that would happen?! The CBC wouldn’t let me post this comment… not surprised.

Violence I don’t agree with, but it could be that some of these protesters are angry about the order of the world and are lashing out the only way they can – at civil authority. Here are some of the reasons why they might be angry:

- I’ll bet that ‘working dinner’ last night at the summit had fantastic food. Good wine too. What $100, $150 per seat? That’s well more than most Canadians spend a week on food. And free drinks for 10,000 journalists. The tab on that would feed the homeless in Toronto for a month.

- What did they decide yesterday? 1) Iran and North Korea are being bad. 2) Deficit spending is not a good idea. 2 billion and that’s all you can come up with? Not terribly productive.

- Greedy American banks messed up the world economy and now millions are underemployed, including me.

- Austerity. For whom exactly? The rich never seem affected by these plans.

- Auto sector bailouts, financial sector bailouts. These dudes make so much money, yet still need public bailouts? Where’s my bailout?

- A former MP was caught driving drunk with cocaine in his pocket and they dropped the charges. If that was you or me, we’d be behind bars right now.

- Even though the Gulf is wrecked, U.S. court overturns decision to ban new offshore drilling because… I guess money trumps the environment.

- Much of a major city brought to a standstill, not just because of protests, but because of thousands of cops marching around asking to see people’s papers. Oh and a big fence.

- They spend $2 million on a pavilion to simulate Muskoka when they just could have gone there. WTF.

- $56 billion deficit, prorogued governments, draconian copyright laws, and general bullshitting and fucking around. People haven’t forgotten these things, Steve.

- Billions wasted in a war in a foreign land, only to find the Americans are prospecting it for gold.

Maybe people are angry because governments are letting us all down. And here’s the thing, I like to think of myself as a smart guy, but I cannot for the life of me think of a way to fix the current order of the world, short of violence. Historically, rebellion has been the only effective way to stand up to governments who no longer represent the people’s interests.

My bank raised my interest rates today. Our contract lets them do this. I don’t owe them all that much money but it’s the principle of the thing. Interest rates are at an all time low. Bank profits are at an all time high. You’re making solid money, why do you need to make more?

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/12697/64833?RS_show_page=0

It’s long, but an interesting read I stumbled upon a while ago, and it sums up nicely why I’m really starting to hate banks, financial institutions, insurance companies and large corporations in general. There seems to be no boundaries to their greed. And not just greed on behalf of the shareholders, a personal greed, enriching tiny groups of executives who seem get larger and larger bonuses the more adept they are at ripping people off.

Ah well, the All Whites just got booted from the World Cup. Still, they forced Italy, Slovakia and Paraguay down to draws (and Italy got booted too, good riddance). Not too shabby for a national team who many felt shouldn’t be at the tournament. Oceania can play football after all, who knew huh?

Sadly, I’m going to have to find another team to cheer for.

There are a lot of Italian football fans asking themselves some hard questions about the performance about their squad today.

New Zealand, like Canada, is considered a pipsqueak when it comes to the beautiful game and by any account the Italians should have kicked their asses. But they didn’t. The Kiwis held it down to 1-1 draw, just like they did with Slovakia.

New Zealand tipped the ball into the Italian goal just seven minutes into the game. The only goal the Italians could figure out how to pull off was on a penalty kick (boo). From there on in, the Italians attacked them wildly, but could never figure out how to get it in the net, the NZ defence was that awesome, particularly their goalie.

Italy are the reigning World Cup champs and the Kiwis made them look like chumps. England is a lost cause, Germany is weak, the French team is falling apart… I think I just found a footie team to cheer for.

I really can’t remember where I originally found this, but I found it lurking on the desktop of my computer.

It’s a chart from a study to determine the typical content of a Twitter post. It also occurred to me that it is a way for gauge the efficiency of a tweet.

Pointless babble, spam and self-promotion are utterly useless as is conversational (as you or I are likely not part of the conversation). Most news on Twitter is garnered from major news sources, or generated by major news sources, and since a tweet is only 140 characters long, very little additional opinion and analysis can be attached to it. So I’d have to say that news is useless too. That leaves pass-along value which one might be interested in, but at least 99 percent of that is just duplication of the same stuff.

Of that 0.09% of all the tweets that potentially are useful, only 5% are probably something you are interested in. Of that, only a quarter are in a language you speak. Thus, 0.00125% of Twitter has any value to anyone, at any given time. Admittedly, that’s still 55,000 posts per day. In reality, I’d be surprised if a Twitter user actually benefited from more than 5 posts in a day. That’s subjective, I know, but there’s only so many times you need to know what Ashton Kutcher had for lunch before it becomes old news.

This is just back of the napkin calculation so your mileage will may vary and to be fair, this is probably true for blogs too. But it does give you an idea of just how much noise is out there.

Nothing says ‘freedom’ like a big tall fence running through your town. That can’t be convenient.

The tin-foil hat types have been going on about Afghanistan for years. The U.S. is there so a pipeline can be built, there is gold in them there hills, etc, etc…

I’d taken a contrary view, seeing the mission there as noble, an extension of peacekeeping, fighting bad guys, trying to help oppressed people out of the shit. NATO, in particular Canada, has no particular economic interest in the place, so how could our intentions be evil? When it was announced we would take a very muscular role there I thought, “that’s bold.” Going to be expensive, but if other nations where people are oppressed see NATO as a force for good, then it would be worth it. I steadfastly support the troops.

As it turns out the hatters were right. The Americans have been doing geological surveys for years. There is at least a trillion dollars of mineral wealth on Afghani lands. Maybe the soldiers on the ground still think it’s noble, but for where I’m sitting, it would seem the whole point of Afghanistan is to make the place more secure so it can be harvested for its resources.

We all know how that will go. American corporations will offer to employ the locals, set up shop, provide security in return for a sweet deal on the goods. This is always what happens to third world nations. Basically they are sacrificing lives and causing misery right now so some rich assholes can make more money tomorrow.

You were right all along guys, it was all about the money.

If Canada is really the peacekeeping nation we say we are we need to walk off this job. Not in 2011, like now. A true peacekeeper – a real hero – doesn’t fight for money, power, influence or greed. If America wants to fight for greed she can do it alone.

BRING THE TROOPS HOME NOW.