Stephen Harper's farewell speech ... what he doesn't say

 

 

"We believe that hard working Canadians should keep more of their money"
 
...and the more people you have DOING that work for you, the more of THAT money you should keep!

"Because we believe that the government should manage the people's money the way that they would manage their own"

...with reckless spending,  inaccurate records,  frivolous pursuits and forgotten promises

"Because friends, in a dangerous world, Canada must - without apology - advance our values, defend
our interests and stand by our friends"
 
We have to continue bribing the US so that they will like us.  Several more billion dollars should do the trick.

"We have Championed those values all of our public lives" 
 
We use buzz words like 'Championed' because most of our supporters are senile and can't remember
specifically how we fucked over the country.

"In the past 9 years I've had the incredible honor to serve as your Prime Minister"
 
...but not so much honorable as it was hilarious.  Here I stand giving you the full fist with this
bullshit speech that you are all eating up and most of you haven't even paid attention to the news.  The Auto dialers... the Gerrymandering...Mike Duffy...the poison pills...stacking the house and the cabinet...and that's just the tip.

 

"We put everything on the table.  We gave everything we had to give and we don't regret anything"
 We lied.  We cheated.  We Stole.  We Prioritized US corporations over the health of the people and the environment.  It was hard to put what we did on the table but we perched up there and squatted and squeezed as best we could...Now Justin has to clean up that mess.  We're BUSH'D.

"Friends...how could we?  We remain citizens of the best country on earth"
 
Thanks for your support you senile bastards.  We fucked over the country and the democratic process but at least we're not behind bars.

Windows 10 sucks hard - The 'Free Upgrade' is really 'Free Beta Testing' for Microsoft

"Hey!  Get your free upgrade!  Windows 10 is free!  Just click here and reserve your free copy!"
 
There is nothing "Free" about doing beta-testing for a half finished operating system / Surveillance tool for a multibillion dollar corporation like Microsoft.  This is a scam.  I could launch into my usual rant but this time I think I should itemize my issues.

1)  The blue screen of death happens ALL THE FUCKING TIME.  I think I might have had it once or twice on the Windows 7 64 Home Pro mostly due to viruses.  I've owned a PC in one form or another since '92.  Yeah...I know DOS.  I've had Windows 3.1, 95, 98, 98ME, 2000, XP, Vista and Win 7 64 Home Pro.  I have had more 'blue screens of death' on 10 in several months than I have had in 23 YEARS with ALL THOSE OTHER OPERATING SYSTEMS COMBINED!!!
 
2)  This is a minor point for some but for me it just pisses me right off.  Windows has had the card game 'Solitaire' forever.  I think it was on 3.1!  Simple coding and mindless entertainment.  I generally load it up when I've set my computer on some large task and I could use some mild / low resource entertainment that won't disturb that task.  Well, Microsoft in their infinite greed has decided to 'Bundle' Solitaire with a group game package that will cost you a certain amount per month.  'pay-to-play' for fucking Solitaire!!!  I won't do it.  $3 something a month.  I don't care if it is a penny a month...I won't pay for a game that could be programmed by one person from scratch in a day on a TS 1000...that they gave away for free in all previous versions of Windows.

3)  NOTHING IS PRIVATE!!!  Check out the privacy settings.  Microsoft has given itself rights to look at everything you own on your computer with Windows 10.  Your picture, your voice, the commands you give...what types of commands you are giving...your personal files, your pictures, data EVERYTHING!  They say it is to perfect the final product...but they don't exactly have my trust after slipping the whole "Beta-Test" Roofy into my OS.  Sure...it's in the fine print...but nobody reads that shit.  This trend toward underhandedness from otherwise reputable corporations is very disturbing.  If you are dead sure you want your "Free" copy of Windows 10, for the love of God do not select "Express Installation".  And I'll give you a "Free" roll of toilet paper if you clean my bathroom daily for a year...because that is exactly how badly they have fucked their own user base.

4) Backward Compatibility for Games - If you shut everything else down, the newest version of DirectX works pretty good for the newest games.  When I first got Windows 10...certain older games worked just fine.  Somehow...through the "Updating Procedures" these old games simply ceased to work.  I didn't actually change anything...they just didn't function.  Not only did they simple not work but the error code was not available ANYWHERE on the PC.

5) The Encroachment of Automation - Remember those days when you had to turn off auto updating because it didn't matter what you happened to be doing at the time...Windows said "Fuck you and all you have been doing...I'm shutting down and updating".  Then you would put off updating and Windows would nag at you in the form of stealing cycles from the CPU.  Well all that
is behind you because Windows 10 said "Fuck you...I will update when I update...I'll try not to shutdown while you are doing something but while I am updating (and I will never actually tell you when I am doing this) you may experience a crash doing 2 things at once and lose all your work anyway.  It seems to me that a friendly way of doing things would be to let the user know what is going on.  Now, with all of our personal information dangling out there in the cyber wind, it's nice to know what the copious amount of programs running in the background on Windows 10 are actually doing.  The robot telling me to "Don't worry your pretty little head about it" isn't comforting.

6) Perhaps the dumbest thing about Windows 10 is that if you have a crash, calling up the Task Manager does not bring it to the front.  You are literally staring at a crashed application while a perfectly functional Task manager sits both on the bar and behind the crashed screen for you NOT to get to.  This is like breaking down under an overpass on a highway and calling a tow truck...and the tow truck pulls over ON the overpass and the driver completely doesn't understand why you aren't there.  So you need to do a full restart like it's a hardware level crash...like we did with DOS.  With such stupid mistakes in programming I really wonder why so many people are hesitant about giving Microsoft all our personal information.  Even the realization of THAT did not occur to these idiots of overconfidence in academia!!!
 
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Bill and Ted's Excellent Corporate Windows 10 Strategy :

Satya: "So boys...what is your marketing strategy for Windows 10"

Ted "Well...uh...we give it away for free"

Satya "...uh..."

Bill "I think what Ted is trying to say is that we give the Beta Version away but we won't tell them it's the Beta version...then they'll be like 'DUDE! No WAY!"

Ted "...and we'll be like WAY!"

Bill " ... and then we'll be like 'Not only that but you have been chosen to help us make it' "

Ted "...and they'll say "fuck yeah!  you guys are the BEST!  I mean like I'm designing history"

Bill "...and then we'll tell them about our plans to make them part of the collective consciousness in the sharing of all their files and stuff"

Ted "...and they will be like 'Whoa...I was just thinking of upgrading my OS not establishing a level of spiritual Nirvana...you guys are like Deities or something"

Ted "...Yeah...we even thought of name for the voice activation.  We call it 'Bill's Mom' "

Bill "Not cool, Ted."

Ted "...just kidding...we are calling her 'Cortana' Like the bodacious babe from the Halo series"

Bill "Oh man...I hate to be the one who has to process those voice requests"

Ted "Yeah...we even made Solitaire profitable!"

Satya "Really?  That game could have been written on a computer made up of Christmas lights and wire...how the heck did you boys do that?"

Bill "We bundled it up with a bunch of games no one wants and called it 'Pay to Play'"

Ted "It only costs like 3 something a month which is like (counting on his fingers........Counting ....
Counting....)

Satya "10 cents a day"

Bill "Whoa...Dude! That's why you are in the big chair!"

Ted "But for us...per year that's like (counting on fingers...counting...counting)

Satya "36 dollars a year"

Bill "Oh Man! you are like some mathemagician or something"

Satya "What about the issue of a class action lawsuit?"

Ted "We've thought this through...we put it in the Eula on OCT 18 that by using our product they give up rights to a lawsuit"

Satya "But...that's not ethical"

Bill "(lowered voice) Dude...it's for their own good.  When they calm down they'll see how excellent we are!"

Bill and Ted "EXCELLENT!"  (playing air guitar)

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Summary:  Windows 10 is fucking awful.  Satya Narayana Nadella should be bitch slapped for his tactics on this.  Windows needs adequate competition. 

Enlightenment with regard to Racism, Prejudism and plain old ignorance

Racism:  The prejudgement that all of a certain race possess similar characteristics.  The fact is that many people of the same race possess similar characteristics.  The politically correct term for this is: "Cultural Similarities".  The big no-no is that you can't assume that any particular person of that nationality WILL possess those characteristics.

You can't rib on any nationality for cultural similarities except for white Anglo-Saxon types.  Why? 
Because white people must share this common crime perpetrated by the ignorant amongst us.  In the midst of this witch-hunt against racism there is this perfect storm of irony and ignorance.  Why should I be guilty for something someone else did?  Because I'm white?  To decide my guilt based on crimes of members of my race is the worst kind of ignorance.  I mean this is Nazi-to-the-Jewish ignorant.

Regardless:  "people are associating me...without really knowing me...that I'm like that ...and it's wrong"  ...and you're damn right it is wrong.  It is prejudging.  It is ignorant. 

Prejudgement:  There is an anecdote about this.  In the old days, gay people were persecuted for what was considered an abnormal sexual preference.  They were thought to be perverts, deviants and mentally ill.  I don't have issue with gay people.   I've met a lot of gay people and some of them I don't like and some of them I like and respect very much.  But there has been much rallying for support in the communities and there are those who are militantly opposed to the old stereotypes.
That's great and all...but I know two people in this community WHO ARE complete perverts.   Yet if litigation happens there is this mighty force that will defend these perverts saying that they are the victim of "Homophobic Intolerance"...and an ocean of idiot supporters will wash away their crimes with their cries of injustice. 

The young people are saying all the older generation have been brought up watching racist cartoons.  That's true but the old cartoons made stereotypes and fun of everyone.  Germans, English, French, Cajun, Japanese, Chinese, African, Cowboys, mobsters and when they couldn't find it on Earth...they made fun of Martians.   Everyone was made to look a little more dumb in cartoons.   I remember wanting to be one of the magpies in Dumbo because they seemed to be quick witted and in-the-know.
Now it's "Racism".   

All this screaming about Racism and Stereotypes and I've never met a young person who hasn't played Nintendo.

Hey ya its ah me! And ah Me! Your ah Racist Stereotypes from your youth ah!

I will talk to anyone of any race like they are my brother ... to start.  As one goes through life, there are certain survival techniques that are, in fact, racist.  IE.  If you have been mugged by 5 Andromedans then you will likely not walk down an empty street with an Andromedan on it.  IE. If the Venusian Trader rented you an apartment that had no heat in the winter, cranked up the rent every year to the max despite doing shit around there...then you would likely be wary about renting from a Venusian Trader again. 

This leads me to my larger point: Prejudism - to Pre Judge Someone.

Whenever you go 'I know his kind' with out actually really knowing that person, you are pre-judging.  In the world today, people are afraid.  Despite the war against Racism turning into basically a witch-hunt, no one is really addressing the larger issue.  People are more segregated into their own groups more than ever before willing to judge on very VERY limited information.  People have some of their most intimate conversations from the safety of their computers, tablets and iphones.  We have become socially inept at physical language yet, despite this, twice as likely to buy what we read from others.  A society so antisocial that it becomes replete with the tactics of the insecure.  IE. We end up with 'Minefield' conversations where the petty take issue with what they shouldn't be so quick to judge.   We end up not celebrating unique people but being afraid of them...yet most of the evil people have only the best of sheep's clothing.

Who champions this cause?

We do it individually...and even inside ourselves.  Ignorance is responsible for all of it.  Racism, Gay Bashing, Bullying...and anywhere someone is being an asshole to someone else for no better reason than to make themselves feel better.  Shit heads are everywhere and in all nationalities and races.  So this is more of an individual thing being as there are no "Uniforms" ...but this is really where the strength is needed.

One last thing to consider.

Those who are quick to judge do so because they are afraid.  They might even be willing to fight but that is only because their fear is that deep and their insecurity is that strong.  Knowing this will help you gain perspective.  Those who are quick to judge have this reason to be afraid from whatever filters happen to be in their head.  Maintain a sense of fairness and compassion ... not only to others but to yourself as well.  The truth is your compass. 

The Problem with the BC Provincial Legal System