It’s about damn time celebrities are held to the same standard as us “normal” people. I get sick and tired of hearing so and so got off on a technicality, a mis-trial, or some other lame excuse just so it doesn’t turn into a media feeding ground.

Paris Hilton breaks down

PARIS Hilton wailed after a judge sentenced her to 45 days in jail for driving with a suspended license, and claimed it had all been a misunderstanding.

A misunderstanding? You’ve got to be kidding me.

Hilton showed up 20 minutes late for the 1.30pm hearing, powdering her nose on the way in. On the way out, she donned dark sunglasses to hide her tear-streaked eyes and runny makeup.

She held a 1:30 hearing up for 20 minutes probably because she wanted to sleep in an extra 2 hours. Would a judge normally have held a hearing up for “driving with a suspended license” for me? Probably not.

Her publicist, Elliot Mintz, tried to take the fall, testifying he told Hilton it was OK to drive after 30 days for “work-related” purposes. He claimed he was misinformed.

That’s the other thing that got me. Why would any judge have suspended a driving license for a celebrity and let them still drive for “work-related” purposes? She has how many body guards and limo drivers at her disposal?

And here’s the line that almost brought tears to my eyes:

Assistant City Attorney Dan Jeffries argued: “We are asking that she be held to the same standard as everyone else who goes through this system.”

Finally! Good job Dan!

Related Link’age
What Paris Can Expect Behind Bars
Paris Hilton Going to Jail for 45 Days
Jail Sentence “Like an Oscar” for Paris, says Celeb Expert

Here’s another one of my rants.

How in the hell is a “virtual rape” possible. It’s a game for God’s sake!

Virtual Rape Is Traumatic, but Is It a Crime?

Last month, two Belgian publications reported that the Brussels police have begun an investigation into a citizen’s allegations of rape — in Second Life.

I am half convinced that the tantalizingly brief story, printed in De Morgen and Het Laatste Nieuws, is a hoax or an April Fool’s joke.

Yet it has prompted several threads of discussion, from a legal analysis to four pages of commentary at the Second Citizen forums.

Unfortunately, rape in virtual spaces is not unheard of. And I’m not talking about the “consensual” rape built into some games (although if you’re interested in that debate, GameGrene has a good conversation about it).

While Regina is sure it’s an April Fool’s joke, I’m sure it’ll eventually have to have intervention from some country’s government as Second Life starts to engulf more people into its virtual world. Think about it… Why are people even talking about it? It seems to be an issue already. Just browse through the comments on the story’s comment thread. People really have a problem with this. Now don’t get me wrong. I despise rapists, but online rape? Give me a break! ALT+F4 people! Even then, if you’re a member of a community where “rape” is a “feature” of the game programing then you’re asking for it. I know, I know. What we’re really talking about is rape by text and verbal sexual manipulation than visual confrontation. Traumatic? heh. Maybe to a 5 year old.

In the online world rape is impossible. Sexual harassment is a better word for it but there’s a better god in an online world. One that will talk back to you using email and ban the violator with a swift of the wrist. He normally goes by the name of Admin.

Article via: digg

Being an avid motorcycle rider myself I was pretty disgusted after reading this. I seriously hope the guy on the R6 wasn’t hurt too bad. As for the guy driving the van… hopefully a Harley rider in jail shows him a little jail-time love. A-hole!

Man drives 20 blocks with R6 in grill

My wife and I were driving home last night, after spending the weekend on Lopez Island with some friends. After getting off the freeway, we were approaching the light at 175th and Meridian, when I see a guy on a motorcycle coming down the hill (eastbound on 175th) with a fullsize van barrelling down behind him. Before I could even think about what was about to happen, it happened. The van went right through him and sent the motorcylist off the bike and rolling to the ground.

The van continues right down without even braking the hill without losing momentum and takes a left (northbound) onto Meridian Ave. I look up the hill and see the rider getup and run out of the street, with a dozen cars stopped around him. “Holy fucking shit” - My wife and I cannot really believe what we are seeing. Seeing that the guy was apparently okay (not dead, at least) and that there were several people around, I take off after the van. My wife immediately gets on the phone with 911.

After 20 blocks and one red light, the guy finally pulls over . . . R6 still planted in grill.

Here’s a link to more pics. And here’s an ongoing discussion.

Looks like Carlos was rather pissed during a call-up from our local radio station San Diego 91X when another comic, Ari Shaffir, calls in. Ari confronts him on past jokes he ripped him on. This is the same guy who was brought up on stage by Joe Rogan to confront Mencia not too long ago. I’m not a big Mencia fan but some of his, or stolen from others, material is pretty funny. If he steals it he should at least man up and admit it. That’s just my personal opinion. Anywho, here’s the 91X call up.

And here’s the Carlos Mencia vs. Joe Rogan bit. After watching this you might think twice about Menstealia if you’re a fan…

There’s always someone out there trying to make an easy buck by twisting U.S. law to “steal” from someone else’s earnings. Here’s a case that pisses me off. Internetarchive.org is being sued by Suzanna Shell (I’m not going to give them any traffic by linking to her site so just do a Google search for her name and it’s the first one that pops up: Profane Justice) spidering and indexing (archiving) her site. You might think, “Dammit, not another search engine being sued for doing something that violates copyright law.” Well, not really. This one is a little different. That’s why the media is eating this one up.

If you’re a web designer/webmaster in any way, shape, form, or fashion then you should already know that external links linking to your site is naturally a good thing. You want search engines to scour your site, index it, cache it, and finally offer it in it’s results to their users. Search engines have always leaned on the Fair use doctrine in U.S. Copyright Law to index public sites on the internet. There is even a way to opt out if you wish. It’s a simple process that involves adding a robots.txt file to the root directory of your site. Here’s an example of mine. As you can see I allow anything and everything to index and cache whatever they want. All legit or main stream search engine spiders follow the rules written to a site’s robots.txt file. If you don’t want a certain page or the whole site indexed then it’s easily changed by updating that file. Seems simple right?

Well, in this case Suzanna Shell is suing (actually has already sued) the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine for conversion, civil theft, breach of contract, and violations of the Racketeering Influence and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) and the Colorado Organized Crime Control Act (COCCA). Seems legit at the moment IF Internet Archive actually did any of the above and IF Internet Archive didn’t remove her site upon request. December 2005 Suzanna sent a request to Internet Archive to remove her site and they complied. Right after that she went back and filed the lawsuit with the above complaints. She sued for $100,000 for unauthorized copying of her site. Upon reading this here I immediately googled her site and searched for the robots.txt file. Guess what I found? … nada. Over a year later (and I’m pretty sure she has been sent an email telling her of her faults) she still doesn’t have the simple text file posted. So either she’s an idiot who doesn’t understand yet or she’s playing the ignorant game and hoping she can use the law to cash in with a quick hundred thousand at least.

If you’ve visited her site you’ll first notice that it should be in the top 40 ugliest sites list. A 5 year old could have drafted a better site in Notepad than she in Dreamweaver. Okay, off of her atrocious site design. That’s too obvious. Let me point a few things out. This one for instance which is under the “Problems” page:

If you are having problems viewing this web site - it may be because we were forced to disable the copy, save and print functions on these web site pages. We had to do this because our adversaries (like CPS and hostile GALs) would copy and/or print these pages to submit to the courts for use against parents in their dependency cases. This is a blatant violation of state and Federal constitutionally protected rights (freedom of association, freedom to acquire useful knowledge, freedom of the press, right to petition the government for redress of grievances, etc.) of the parents and the children as well as copyright infringement against the owner of the web site. This conduct only reinforces our assertion that the child savers will lie, cheat and steal in their effort to protect children who don’t need protecting.

Forced to disable copy, save, and printing functions? Heh… Let me be the 1st to tell you that there isn’t any true way to disable copy, save, and printing functions on any web page. Your ignorance is quite hilarious. What really gets me is the reason why. “because our adversaries … would copy and/or print these pages to submit to the courts for use against parents in their dependency cases…. blah, blah, blah.” You put public information out in the “public” and don’t want anyone to use it for the wrong reasons. That should be self explanatory. If you don’t want someone to use it for the wrong reasons then password protect it or don’t publish it. It’s that simple.

Here is why this idiotic lawsuit is important. If for some insane reason she wins then search engine spiders will have to not only look for a robots.txt file but also the site’s copyright page which is impossible for the billions of web pages that are currently live. We haven’t come close to perfecting natural language search to automate reading a site’s content and determining the meaning of a phrase. So the only true way to not infringe on copyright law is to contact each and every single webmaster out there and request for indexing permission of their sites. Again… impossible. This is why we have the robots.txt file and the opt out agreement. It’s funny that Suzanna probably uses Google search and the Google Cache on a regular basis but either doesn’t realize it, is a hypocrit, or trying to cheat to make that extra buck.

My final opinion: I hope she fails miserably and has to pay for all court costs.

Update 1: Not sure if this is her but here’s a link to the lunatic: Google Image Result

This whole article is quite scary. $1.1 Billion to put a satellite/telescope into space dedicated to asteroid hunting. Seems like a small price to pay for potentially saving millions of lives or the world. And why is the U.S. the only ones putting money into this. Shouldn’t this be an international effort? NASA should just open up and accept donations for specific projects. I wouldn’t mind putting a couple hundred or more dollars into this to secure my well being and everyone around me. As I said earlier… a small price to pay.

NASA can’t pay for killer asteroid hunt - MSNBC

This part of the article is really scary.

These are asteroids that are bigger than 460 feet in diameter — slightly smaller than the Superdome in New Orleans. They are a threat even if they don’t hit Earth because if they explode while close enough — an event caused by heating in both the rock and the atmosphere — the devastation from the shockwaves is still immense. The explosion alone could have with the power of 100 million tons of dynamite, enough to devastate an entire state, such as Maryland, they said.

The agency is already tracking bigger objects, at least 3,300 feet in diameter, that could wipe out most life on Earth, much like what is theorized to have happened to dinosaurs 65 million years ago. But even that search, which has spotted 769 asteroids and comets — none of which is on course to hit Earth — is behind schedule. It’s supposed to be complete by the end of next year.

A good little read for anyone who is tired of MySpace or hasn’t ever been fond of it… like me.

10 Reasons I Didn’t Start a MySpace Account

10. People got hurt as a direct or indirect result of the site.
9. Most of the shitty backgrounds users choose
8. The phrase “Social Networking” makes me want to punch someone in the face.
7. Shitty Music
6. Too Much Bullshit
5. I Don’t Care What Johnny Football Star is Doing (or professing to be doing) Now
4. I’m Not Interested in Online Dating
3. Each Page Takes Too Long to Load
2. Empty Communication
1. After Carefully Considering the Word “MySpace,” and Thinking About What the Site Really Is and What It’s Used For, It’s Evident That It’s Nothing More than an Unsafe Website that is Tailored for Self-Fulfillment, Exhibitionism, Opportunists, and People Who Can’t Let Go of the Past

I have an account but for only those retarded friends of mine who can’t seem to figure out how to use email or IM. MySpace should seriously die though or another Social Networking site needs to become a competitor. What do all of you think?