Random News Stories

[Salty]

What, did you think you would get to keep the NICE THING?

Or is the quiet swoop of the Murdoch media monster adding yet another outlet for crazy bile that sucks?

Personally, the largest knock for me here is that the sold anything at all to Murdoch. They can't make any excuses regarding ignorance and this was a perfect chance to make a very large, public point. Increasing market value way beyond $70 million. Unless the cash is augmented by the promise of favours and airtime. FOX smells something they can sell to the Occupy crowd is what this boils down to.

Basic rule of investment - Look for 3X cash back from what you put in. Disney paid £2.5 billion for star wars. That means they WILL milk it for £7.5 billion. Minimum. That's a lot of plastic figurines to sell to impressionable kids.

Fox just paid 70 million. That means they're looking for 210 million. That's a lot of plastic viewpoints to push to impressionable kids. The rot has already set in as they've not run a story on this themselves yet from what I can see.

Behold, Media, How I hate thee.

[Junkenstein]

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/08/16/texas-deputy-sues-woman-for-mental-anguish-after-he-kills-her-son-in-law/

A Texas deputy has filed a lawsuit against a woman for past and future "mental anguish" after he was called to her house last year on a 911 call and forced to kill her son-in-law, who was allegedly behaving irrationally after using drugs.

According to the Houston Chronicle, Harris County Deputy Brady Pullen is demanding that Camina Figueroa pay him $200,000 because she did not "adequately warn" dispatchers that Kemal Yazar "posed a violent threat to others" when she called 911 to say that he was acting crazy after several days of using bath salts.

The lawsuit notes that "defendant [Figueroa] decided to evacuate the children for safety reasons" before calling police.

Pullen claimed that he was violently attacked by Yazar as soon as he went through the door. The deputy said he was bitten and his nose was broken. Officers used their Tasers on Yazar, and then fired multiple shots with their service weapons, killing him.

However, Corina Padilla, who witnessed the incident, said that her brother-in-law never touched the officers and was backing away with his hands up when they shot him.

"At no moment did Kemal assault the officer," she insisted. "An unarmed man, a family guy, father and husband of three girls was killed. He had no criminal record. He was self-employed in import-export of very expensive rugs from Turkey and Persia."

Results of this lawsuit could cause great fun.

[Reginald Ret]

Dystopian science fiction is used as a template for reality again:

THE HAGUE, 11/05/13 - The Dutch police are to have an Unmanned Aerial Services (UAS) unit, Justice Minister Ivo Opstelten has said in a letter to parliament. According to the centre-left D66 opposition party, the Netherlands will be the first country with such a unit, and the privacy of citizens is at risk.

Last year, the police operated 81 flights over the Netherlands with drones, unmanned mini-planes equipped with day and night cameras. The present flights are only the start of the use of drones in the Netherlands, says Opstelten. "In the future, an increase in the number of flights with unmanned planes is expected."

The special police unit being set up specifically to steer the unmanned planes in the air is "a world first," according to Schouw.

http://www.nisnews.nl/aam.html

[Junkenstein]

Previously mentioned, still fucking stupid:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-23777143

Convicted criminals in the West Midlands are being paid to work in call centres inside their prisons.

Inmates at HMP Oakwood, near Wolverhampton, and Drake Hall, in Staffordshire, carry out market research for insurance companies.

The Centre for Crime Prevention said the project was "incredibly naive".

But the Ministry of Justice said it was a pilot scheme which may be rolled out further if it is successful, and added the prisoners have risk assessments.

Emphasis mine. Practically every monitored activity in the UK has a risk assessment. Their stated purpose is to recognise and provide control measures for the risk in question. The reason for this is mainly so you can sack whoever signed the risk assessment when something goes wrong. I hope who-ever wrote that one is looking for a new job, they'll need one within 3 months.

A statement from G4S, which runs HMP Oakwood prison, said: "The call centre at HMP Oakwood is one of many partnerships we run with businesses, and enables prisoners to work towards apprenticeships and industry-recognised qualifications.

"All the prisoners are carefully security checked and interviewed before working in the centre, calls are made remotely by computer, and every conversation is closely monitored by supervisors. No information from the calls is stored and there is no way any personal information can be used for any criminal purposes."

Is there a "cold calling" apprenticeship? If there is that must be one of the most depressing things ever devised. A qualification in how to phone people. That'll make you totally employable outside prison.

Also - Every conversation closely monitored by supervisors. This implies for each monkey making calls you have another monkey listening to the calls they make. So you've got 2 people involved in cold calling one person. Only one of them isnt' calling. Just listening. This sounds totally profitable. Or they spot-check random calls. Meaning it's largely unmonitored.

The layers of stupidity just keep stacking up the more you pull at the logistics. The only way this makes sense is if you're inflicting this on habitual criminals that you expect to re-offend. Even then, it's not that sane.

[P3nT4gR4m]

No information from the calls is stored

That'll be a first 

[Cain]

No information from the calls is stored

That'll be a first 

The information from the calls is most certainly not stored in the head of the prisoner, to pass onto any friends who happen to be outside the system and looking for juicy break-in targets.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

We've been doing that here for decades, by "closely monitored" they mean that the supervisor could listen in but probably isn't. Also by "pay" they mean the company pays CCA for virtually free labor, and CCA pays the prisoners 32 cents an hour.

[P3nT4gR4m]

No information from the calls is stored

That'll be a first 

The information from the calls is most certainly not stored in the head of the prisoner, to pass onto any friends who happen to be outside the system and looking for juicy break-in targets.

Unless the prisoner happens to, y'know, ask. It's market research for insurance companies, too. Talk about fucking perfect. "Do you have an alarm system?", "Do you own any pets?", "Do you leave home for days at a time?", "If there was a fire what's the approximate value of your home and contents?"

[The Good Reverend Roger]

http://www.fdic.gov/bank/individual/failed/banklist.html

Jump, you bastards.  Right out the fucking window.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

http://www.fdic.gov/bank/individual/failed/banklist.html

Jump, you bastards.  Right out the fucking window.

I wish  those dinky banks had stuck around and the "too big to fail" bullshit had been allowed to fail, instead.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

http://www.fdic.gov/bank/individual/failed/banklist.html

Jump, you bastards.  Right out the fucking window.

I wish  those dinky banks had stuck around and the "too big to fail" bullshit had been allowed to fail, instead.

Thing is, who owns those dinky banks?

They're dumping grounds for bad debts.  They were never intended to survive.

First one on the list, Sunrise Bank of Arizona.

http://banktracker.msnbc.msn.com/banks/arizona/phoenix/sunrise-bank-of-arizona/

Look at WHEN their problems started (on the graph).  AFTER the meltdown.  This was a dump for toxic mortgages.  The too big to fail fuckers (Fidelity, in this case) wind up with a very nice troubled asset ratio, and the FDIC puts the dump into receivership, and guess who makes good on the deposits?

Oh, yeah, that would be you and I.

Notice, however, that debts OWED to the bank have transferred to Fidelity.  They will now be sold to another sucker (or to whomever Fidelity can strongarm).

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Also, if you look down, their real estate holdings were LOOTED in the last 15 months.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Ohhhh sweet merciful fuck.  Those manky bastards.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Ohhhh sweet merciful fuck.  Those manky bastards.

Like the late great Orton Neslo said, they own the ball AND the ballpark.

So there's three options:

1.  Lose.
2.  Find a different game.
3.  Drive around the parking lot while RWHN struts on the pitcher's mound.

Was that last line necessary?  I'll leave that to the philosophers.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Ohhhh sweet merciful fuck.  Those manky bastards.

Like the late great Orton Neslo said, they own the ball AND the ballpark.

So there's three options:

1.  Lose.
2.  Find a different game.
3.  Drive around the parking lot while RWHN struts on the pitcher's mound.

Was that last line necessary?  I'll leave that to the philosophers.