Slow down a little, genius: I am merely gifted.

Jun 03

Disapproving bird disapproves.

Ta much, dear Edosan!

… While we’ve been extremely impressed by the strides some of these companies have made since last year, there’s plenty of room for improvement. We’re hopeful that next year we’ll see more protections for users from location services providers like Loopt and Foursquare, since location information is so sensitive and increasingly sought by the government. In addition, Amazon is entrusted with huge quantities of information as part of its cloud computing services and retail operations, yet does not produce annual transparency reports, publish a law enforcement guide, or promise to inform users when their data is sought by the government. We were pleased that Comcast and Yahoo! stood up for user privacy in courts, but neither company has hit any of the other criteria for earning recognition in our other categories. AT&T, Microsoft, and Apple are members of the Digital Due Process coalition, but don’t observe any of the other best practices we’re measuring. And this year, as last, Verizon and MySpace earned no stars in our report. The overall poor showing of AT&T, Verizon and Comcast, who provide Internet connectivity to so many people, is especially troubling. …

(via Who Has Your Back? | Electronic Frontier Foundation)

Jun 02

Western banks 'reaping billions from Colombian cocaine trade' | World news | The Observer -

…”The whole system operated by authorities in the consuming nations is based around going after the small guy, the weakest link in the chain, and never the big business or financial systems where the big money is.”

The work, by the two economists at University of the Andes in Bogotá, is part of an initiative by the Colombian government to overhaul global drugs policy and focus on money laundering by the big banks in America and Europe, as well as social prevention of drug taking and consideration of options for de-criminalising some or all drugs.

The economists surveyed an entire range of economic, social and political facets of the drug wars that have ravaged Colombia. The conflict has now shifted, with deadly consequences, to Mexico and it is feared will spread imminently to central America. But the most shocking conclusion relates to what the authors call “the microeconomics of cocaine production” in their country.

Gaviria and Mejía estimate that the lowest possible street value (at $100 per gram, about £65) of “net cocaine, after interdiction” produced in Colombia during the year studied (2008) amounts to $300bn. But of that only $7.8bn remained in the country.

“It is a minuscule proportion of GDP,” said Mejía, “which can impact disastrously on society and political life, but not on the Colombian economy. The economy for Colombian cocaine is outside Colombia.”

Mejía told the Observer: “The way I try to put it is this: prohibition is a transfer of the cost of the drug problem from the consuming to the producing countries.”

“If countries like Colombia benefitted economically from the drug trade, there would be a certain sense in it all,” said Gaviria. “Instead, we have paid the highest price for someone else’s profits – Colombia until recently, and now Mexico.

“I put it to Americans like this – suppose all cocaine consumption in the US disappeared and went to Canada. Would Americans be happy to see the homicide rates in Seattle skyrocket in order to prevent the cocaine and the money going to Canada? That way they start to understand for a moment the cost to Colombia and Mexico.” …

Jun 01

… You’ve had a very long marriage. What’s the secret?

Don’t make decisions lightly and, when you do, know it’s the correct one. Be committed forever … and when you row, make it great. After you’ve gone through the angry bit, take the argument into the realms of the absurd. Then the humour comes back and you know you’re back on the right path. …

(via 76 minutes with … John Lydon | Culture | The Guardian)