The Loris Bite

Obama Bans Fishing?

cstanton — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 15:26:00 GMT

A few days ago ESPN released an article that basically stated that Obama was planning on banning fishing. The article definitely insinuates that he's planning on banning not only industrial fishing, but recreational fishing as well.

NOAA, or the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, is planning the future of the restrictions of recreational fishing access. In late March the final report for "marine spatial planning" will be issued, with an executive order from the President to implement whatever is entailed. What's really scaring the anglers is the administration's similar agenda to the World Wildlife Fund's, which succeeded in banning hunting on spring bears in Ontario, which lead to economic difficulties among some of the residents that profited off of the season.

According to ESPN, the angling advocates that have been involved say that they are worried because of the NOAA's indifference to the potential loss of jobs and livelihood associated with recreational fishing. Anglers are scared that NOAA might be trying to completely ban fishing because they have decided to stop taking public input in the matter.

The scare is being backed by the implications of the "Recommendations for the Adoption and Implementation of an Oceans, Coasts, and Great Lakes National Policy" which was released by the NOAA task force shortly after Obama was in office. The term "overfishing" was used throughout the report and recreational fishing and its benefits were not ever mentioned. Also, just to add to the fire, some affiliates of NOAA have "revealed their anti-fishing bias by playing fast and loose with 'facts,' in attempts to ban tackle containing lead in the United States and Canada." If you ask me, that's a very biased sentence right there from the ESPN article. Maybe they just are against lead poisoning?

I personally don't think any of this is going to happen. It doesn't make sense that the President would blindly back up a plan with an executive order that would destroy thousands of jobs and take a huge culture and throw it down the drain.

Nobody really knows the truth of the matter, but what might be confusing people is that the administration has decided to back a worldwide ban on the trade of Bluefin Tuna. The Northern Bluefin Tuna has been fished for centuries, but finally the "overfishing" has taken its toll and has driven the species near to extinction. The administration has decided to back this ban because the species is going extinct, this really doesn't have anything to do with the NOAA's report or whether or not fishing will be banned.

“There is no doubt that the species is in desperate trouble. Stocks of Atlantic and Mediterranean bluefin declined by more than 70 percent between 1957 and 2007, and by more than 60 percent in the last decade alone. Stocks in the Western Atlantic, including the United States, have stabilized but at a very low level. The decline has been driven by a growing global appetite for tuna, and by the rapid mechanization of industrial fishing, chiefly purse-seining operations that allow for the capture of entire schools of tuna at once," says an article from the New York Times.

Japan is the only country that doesn't seem to adhere to anything having to do with fishing, and they're probably not ready to give up the Bluefins. The trade has nearly wiped out the tuna and jacked the prices up so high that one fish recently sold for £111,000.

The animal activist people can be really intense and in my opinion, pretty ridiculous. I remember there being all of that stir over the video of the fish dying, but I highly doubt that those are the types of people that are writing this report and managing the fishing access. I feel like the ESPN article was almost written to get people into a stir.

Now, if Obama does sign off on an executive order to do all that the report entails and they DO end up banning fishing, I'm going to feel like a huge idiot. I just know that most of the recreational fisherman that I have met, ones that make it a huge part of their lives (a couple of them have made careers out of it), aren't really all for Obama's decisions because they're from the south and well, to leave it simply, are conservative.

I really hope that the ban, if there even is a ban, is just on tuna, or maybe on certain types of large scale fishing. I eat seafood just as much as the next guy, but I don't like seeing huge nets wrapped up around dolphins or birds or anything. I definitely don't have a problem with the thought of fish dying because I'd be a hypocrite for loving tuna steak and sushi as much as I do.

Tron: Legacy

cstanton — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 18:22:00 GMT

We've waited almost 3 decades now, but it's finally happening... We get another TRON movie!

Tron Legacy is set for release in December 2010. Hopefully it will be as visually stunning to our current year as Tron, the original, was to 1982.

Sam Flynn, the tech-savvy 27-year-old son of Kevin Flynn, looks into his father's disappearance and finds himself pulled into the same world of fierce programs and gladiatorial games where his father has been living for 25 years. Along with Kevin's loyal confidant, father and son embark on a life-and-death journey across a visually-stunning cyber universe that has become far more advanced and exceedingly dangerous. (From IMDb)

Original director and co-writer Steven Lisberger produces the new film, which is helmed by commercial director Joseph Kosinski.

TRON, the original, is a movie released in 1982 by Disney. It features some of the most stunning effects of its time, and its all together a great visual show, even nowadays.

The movie is about this former hacker that gets sucked into cyberspace to duke it out, gladiator style, with a bunch of crazy programs that are all operated by one big mean dictator program called the Master Control.

He winds up there only because he's trying to prove this one mean guy stole some video games that he made. He thinks its a good idea to do this by hacking into ENCOM's system.. ENCOM is the mean guy's company. He can't really hack the system though, so he decides that he's going to break into ENCOM and replace the Master Control with Tron, which is a security program created by his ex girlfriend's new boyfriend... huh. Anyway, Master Control decides to use this matter transmission program and suck him into cyberspace where he is able to use Tron to battle all of these minion programs, it's pretty neat.

I'm gonna have to watch Tron again before I go see Tron Legacy. Exciting news.

Tron: Legacy

Three Members Of An Identity Theft Ring That Bagged Over $3 Million Finally Charged

cstanton — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 16:59:00 GMT

An investigation that has lasted nearly four years came to a close on February 25th when three members of a sophisticated identity theft ring were charged with 78 identity theft related felonies.

Albert Jose Gonzalez, 39, of Lancaster, Josue Gustavo Albizuras, 42, of Los Angeles, and Cesar Vasquez Echeverria, 28, of Santa Clarita were the ones who were arrested at around 2 P.M. PST on 2/25 and are now facing multiple counts of conspiracy, identity theft, grand theft and computer access fraud.

The suspects are accused of installing skimmers into gas pumps that read and record the debit cards and pins that are used in them. It is completely undetectable since the skimming device is inside of the gas pump. The data is retrieved by the thieves using bluetooth technology on cell phones or laptop computers.

Search warrants were issued for the homes of the suspects and bluetooth skimming devices, credit card printers and devices used to encode them, and ridiculously expensive cars including a Ferrari and Porsche were seized.

The skimming devices were found at 12 gas stations where over 15,000 accounts were compromised, resulting in over $3 million worth of damage.

The bail for each of the inmates is set at $2 million dollars. All of the defendants pleaded not guilty and their first court date is on the 16th of March.

If the defendants are found guilty on all counts they will face up to 20 years in a state prison.

via LAtimes

Elwood Clothing Company Welcomes Dan Plunkett

cstanton — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 17:52:00 GMT

Elwood Clothing Company has a new addition to their skate team. Dan Plunkett joins the ranks and this is his new welcome video from Elwood.

via Elwood Clothing

5th Grader Suspended for Munching on Special Fruity Pebbles

cstanton — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 13:58:00 GMT

Last week in Pittsburg, 6 fifth-graders were suspended for indulging in a tasty, stoney snack of fruity pebbles. These were no ordinary fruity pebbles though, these had marijuana cooked into them, school district superintendent Barbara Wilson stated.

When the fifth-grade girl that had brought the snack to school was caught, she immediately ratted out her sister. When the sister was asked how the fifth-grader had obtained the snack, she told police that it was from a medical marijuana dispensary and must have fallen out of her purse, Lt. Brian Addington reported. The fifth-grader that brought the pebbles to school confessed that she did know that they contained marijuana in the end.

Still, no arrests have been made as it is under investigation as to whether or not the big sister had a legitimate card to purchase the marijuana treat at a dispensary.

Lt. Addington made it clear that the children did not eat much. He said that the children consumed only "minute amounts, basically pieces of the pebbles." After analysis it was confirmed that the pebbles did, in fact, contain THC, the main testable and active drug found in marijuana.

The cloud 9'd fifth-graders were turned in by a couple of their snitching classmates who decided to run and tell the principal. Probably the kids that weren't allowed to get down.

The kid that brought the pebbles to school was suspended indefinitely until the police are finished with the investigation. The other children that partook in the munchies were suspended only for a day for not telling their teachers.

All of the childrens' vital signs were completely normal, as would be expected. They were released to their parents by the school that day.

The Principal of the Stoneman school, which hilariously is where this happened, decided to send home a letter telling the parents to teach their kids to report things that they find dangerous. I don't know if that really applies here....

Lt. Addington also added that adults should be more responsible with "dangerous substances" around children.

I personally don't think it's a great thing for fifth-graders to be getting high, and definitely not at school. I still wouldn't ever consider marijuana a dangerous substance though. I hope that this case gets resolved as smoothly as possible and that the kid gets to stay in school and that his sister doesn't end up getting arrested.

via InsideBayArea

Google Acquires Picnik

cstanton — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 20:49:00 GMT

Mammoth Internet company Google has recently aquired Picnik.com, a website that allows you to import, edit, and store images online.

"Until recently, you had to edit your photos using client software on your computer," Brian Axe, a Google product management director, said yesterday.

"Today, we're excited to announce that Google has acquired Picnik, one of the first sites to bring photo editing to the cloud."

The feature that really makes Picnik stand out is allowing it to connect to your social media accounts and import your photos directly from there. This is great for me, since I really don't have hardly any of my photos on my hard drive since Facebook makes it so easy to keep up with them.

With this new addition, what is one supposed to do with Picasa? Picasa is Google's photo storage and sharing website. With the account to Picasa comes free basic photo editing software. The software basically allows you to do the same kinds of things as Picnik. Crop, red eye correction, color balancing, the basic stuff. Picnik offers "premium features" for about $2/month. What would happen with those premium features? Would Google make you pay for the premium features or would they open it up?

The integration seems a little unclear to me. Currently, Yahoo! Mail allows users to edit photos with Picnik's software. Google will probably want to have this feature as well, but will they really keep allowing Yahoo! to use the features that they just purchased?

Hopefully we will see soon!

via DailyTelegraph

Short Film: Walk Signal Man Takes A Walk Through Tokyo

cstanton — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 16:21:00 GMT

A short film directed by Johnathan Bensimon features a walk signal man taking a nice little stroll through the streets of Tokyo.

The video is a compilation of over 1,000 individual digital stills. The illuminated suit was made with a whole lot of high voltage LED lights with a translucent nylon cover to make it appear as if it were glowing.

Tokyo/Glow via TokyoMango

8.8 Magnitude Earthquake in Chile

cstanton — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 15:25:00 GMT

Photo by Jose Luis Saavedra

The Big Picture of Boston.com is featuring a photo gallery that shows the true devastation and chaos caused by the 8.8 magnitude earthquake that hit on Saturday, Feb. 27th.

Here is a list of ways that you can help, brought to you by the Huffington Post.

The earthquake was definitely one of the most devastating in history, leaving over 700 dead and 2 million misplaced. Hopefully the misplaced are found soon and the death toll doesn't get too high.

The biggest earthquake ever recorded happened in Chile as well. In 1960 the Great Chilean Earthquake measured a 9.5 on the Richter scale and left over 6,000 dead.

Gorillaz Leak Superfast Jellyfish From New Album

cstanton — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 22:55:00 GMT

The Gorillaz long awaited new album Plastic Beach is set to come out on March 6th, but Damon Albarn has already leaked one of the tracks on YouTube.

Superfast Jellyfish is another song with a really catchy good-mood chorus with De La Soul rapping the verse, much like Feel Good, Inc. from the Demon Days Album that was released in 2005. Gruff Rhys from the band Super Furry Animals sings the chorus.

Check it out!

Tokyo Sky Tree Goes Up

cstanton — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 18:32:00 GMT

Tokyo has been growing very quickly and the construction of new skyscrapers has been posing a problem for the NHK broadcasting company because their 333 meter high Tokyo Tower just isn't tall enough to give complete broadcasting coverage.

Their solution has been set to build a tower nearly twice the high of the Tokyo Tower. The Tokyo Sky Tree was started back in 2008 and the foundation was finally set in April of 2009 to start building it up towards the sky. The monster skyscraper, when completed, will be 634.00 m (2,080 ft) tall and will be the tallest artificial structure in Japan, and the second tallest artificial structure in the world, next to the Burj Khalifa in Dubai.

Here is a time lapse video of the Construction from March of 2009 up until February 21st, 2010

Real Rick Rollers Are Never Gonna Give It Up, Never Gonna Let You Down

cstanton — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 16:55:00 GMT

One of the worst attempts at content control was made when YouTube removed Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up" for copyright infringement.

It is unclear when exactly they had removed the video, but the Neowin blog discovered it in the wee hours of this morning (Wednesday, 2/24).
The hilarious 80's music video became popular again when video pranksters started using it in the middle of other videos that people actually want to watch.

The video had gotten over 30 MILLION hits and according to cnet news, one of the co-authors of the song was complaining about how he hadn't made a cent off of the video's renewed popularity.

All in all I think it's just a terribly futile attempt at content control and I'm fairly confident that the jerks just set us all up for a new wave of Rick Roll videos. I mean, real Rick Rollers know the game and they're gonna play it. Don't tell me you're too blind to see.

Prankster Olympics!

cstanton — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 05:46:00 GMT

I've watched a lot of prank videos, and it seems like different parts of the world have their own style because I guess different cultures find different things funny. The one thing that we can all appreciate though is a good laugh at someone else's expense!

These are some great pranks from all different parts of the world (I've tried to order them from mild to hardcore):
BRAZIL:

AMERICA:

GERMANY:

ITALY:

JAPAN:

I hope that you enjoy, I say that the Gold Medal goes to Japan!

Futuristic Misa Digital Guitar

cstanton — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 04:34:00 GMT

The future is coming. Electronic music is picking up speed and the instruments are following right along.

The Misa Digital Guitar is not only awesome looking, but allows the user to control each note with the press and drag of a finger. The creator of the Misa Digital Guitar wants to make sure that it is known that it is in no way to be compared to its acoustic or even electric relatives, as he says that "Those are different instruments, for different art forms, for different music."

The creator's thinking when making the guitar stressed that in digital music, every aspect of the sound must be controllable while being performed. With the Misa Digital Guitar, the effects are controlled with the same hand that creates the sound. Moving you fingertips across the 8.5" LCD screen allows the user to control all of the synthesizer parameters. The left hand roams across the 144 keys on the guitar-like neck to determine which notes are played. Each of the 24 frets is 6 keys across, emulating a normal guitar's neck.

The Misa Digital Guitar is clearly not like any other guitar. It runs on a 500MHz AMD Geode CPU and runs Gentoo Linux. The Linux firmware code is open source, allowing users to modify it. That opens up a lot of options for the programmers out there.

It will be available in black and white, and the price isn't available yet, but should be soon.

Older "Epic Beard Man" Beats Up Younger Thug On Bus

cstanton — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 18:03:00 GMT

A 67 year old Vietnam Veteran named Thomas "Slick" Bruso, or Epic Beard Man, and a younger thuggy looking guy got into an argument on an Oakland transit bus that resulted in "Viet Nam Tom" delivering a brutal ass kicking.

According to Bruso, the argument started over the younger man overhearing him talking to his friend about a pair of Stacy Adams shoes that he was going to get his "boy" to shine. He says that he used the term "boy" to refer to his friend, not as a racial slur. The younger man took a lot of offense thinking that Bruso was being a racist, and threatened him multiple times. After a minute of word slinging, the black man walks up to Bruso and hits him with a really weak left. Bruso sprung to his feet and unloaded on the assailant's face.

The video was reportedly shot on Feb. 16th by a passenger that was friends with the guy that got beat up.

During the second video, which explains the bus brawl, Bruso loses a lot of his credibility. He claims that the man showed him a knife, that the police informed him that he was a murderer out on parole, and that the girl stole his bag that was on the bus. None of that nonsense is true! The guy is clearly awake after the fight, and the video definitely doesn't show her stealing his bag.
Digging deeper into Bruso's past, you find that he is, in fact, pretty nuts. He managed to get himself tased at an Oakland A's game in August 2009 and that was caught on video as well.

Here is the interview of the guy that got beat up, it starts at 5:20, and he definitely isn't a murderer.

I am sort of leaning towards thinking that Epic Beard Man is actually just crazy. He may have actually meant what he said in a racist way. I really don't know. He definitely isn't a hero. Just an old badass man that isn't scared of anybody.

What Can Someone Do With My Social Security Number?

cstanton — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 14:52:00 GMT

Most people are pretty careful with their SSN because they know that if the wrong person gets it, all kinds of bad things can happen. What kind of bad things?

The most common form of identity theft, since all that is required is a social security number, is credit identity theft. This is when a thief gets a hold of one's social security number and applies for credit cards and loans in one's name.

All it really takes for a person to open a credit card in another name is another person's social security information. They can fill out applications online, or if they're really committed they can dig through your mail for pre-approved credit offers and fill out someone's information with a different address. Since the bill is going to a different address, it may take months before the calls from unpaid creditors come in and alert the person of the issue. Then the battle is with the credit card company, and they're not usually very lenient with things like that. The struggle can take a lot of time and may never even be resolved.

An easy way to find out if there are bogus credit accounts in your name is to get a credit report. I got a free credit report at freecreditreport.com, which is NOT free if you don't cancel within the trial period. Everything appeared to be normal at first, and the I saw a 4th credit card account with Chase which I had no recollection of opening. The account had my middle initial wrong, but I was surprised to find that the address was correct. The account balance was zero so I wasn't and am not very worried, as all I had to do was give Chase a call and cancel the account. I am lucky.

Another really awful thing that someone can do with just your social security is obtain employment. This can cause huge issues with the IRS. Imagine if you worked hard all year and expected to get a return at tax time. Instead you got nothing, and were told that your return was kept in order to pay income taxes on another claimed income... that you didn't ever claim. Illegal immigrants often have trouble finding employment without social security numbers, so sometimes identity theft comes in handy. Also, people that work as private contractors and do not have their income taxes taken out of their paychecks benefit by working under someone else's social security number.

The first question that springs to mind is "How is that even possible? Wouldn't the checks be in the person's name that matched the SSN? Isn't it required that you have an ID?" A lot of these manipulative thieves get their employers to cash the checks for them. The bank that issues the check will usually cash it without an ID too. If the thief is in possession of your wallet, then they very well may have your ID, in which case most tellers don't even care if it matches. Worse comes to worst for the thief and they have to pay a visit to a local sleazy liquor store that cashes checks for a fee.

Medical identity theft is a growing crime as well. All that is required to access someone's health insurance is knowledge of their provider, their date of birth and their social security number. Knowledge of their provider can be found by looking through their mail, or with a little patience and a few calls to popular insurance providers like Aetna, AIG, Blue Cross Blue Shield, Humana, State Farm, etc. Some colleges provide health insurance plans through certain companies, FSU does Aetna so if I were to steal a college student's SSN I could probably get their health insurance too, in which case it would be possible to get prescriptions and treatments in their name. This can be one of the most costly forms of identity theft and one of the most difficult to detect. Lets be honest, who goes over their health insurance claims if they haven't been to the doctor?

Lifelock is a great way to protect yourself from identity theft. Lifelock takes several measures to make sure that its members' identity stays safe. Lifelock members are notified any time that their identity is used to apply for credit and other services. Members are notified whenever any change of address is requested for their info. Also, Lifelock helps to remove its members from pre-approved credit card lists so that the risk of having a pre-approved credit card application stolen is cut. On top of the preventative measures, if Lifelock somehow screws up and doesn't provide you with information that could have prevented an attack on your identity and it actually does happen, they will pay up to 1 million dollars to help you get it straightened out!

The new Lifelock Command Center is the upgraded form of service that they offer. With that, one can see whether or not their info is showing up with any payday loans, if sex offenders are fraudulently using their address, if any filesharing networks or websites are selling their information, and whether or not any court dates are associated with their names and dates of birth.

Keep your identity safe. Make sure that you don't have any valuable mail laying around and make sure that you keep your social security card somewhere safe in your house, not in your wallet.