To Infinity…..

This is from a Coke ad in the 80′s. It ran in South America, but was pulled very quickly after release. Can you see why?

How about a closer look?

For some reason, the artist was fired after this was found.

A nine-year-old boy was forgotten in a Chicago airport waiting room Saturday for nearly eight hours after an airline representative failed to put him on a connecting flight, the Ottawa Citizen reported.

Julien Reid was headed home to Ottawa on a United flight after visiting his dad in San Francisco, a trip he makes about six times a year.

He left San Francisco at 6 a.m. and arrived at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport at 11 a.m. He was supposed to catch a connecting flight from Chicago to Ottawa at 1:50 p.m., which would have put him in Ottawa at about 4:45 p.m.

His mother, Genevieve Harte, checked online and saw that Julien’s flight was delayed until 5:35 p.m. When she arrived at the airport to pick him up, she noticed other passengers had disembarked but that her son was nowhere to be found.

Then she got a call from Julien, using his own pre-paid cell phone.

He said he was still at the Chicago airport in a “tiny, little room cramped with kids,” where they played the same video on a loop all day, the Ottawa Citizen reported. The only food he’d been given was McDonald’s, but Julian is a vegetarian. He said the other children were yelled at to “stop being kids.”

Harte, 36, asked Julien to put her on the phone with the United attendant who was watching the children. That’s when the attendant let it slip that no one had come to fetch Julien to put him on his connecting flight, she told the Ottawa Citizen.

The Library of Congress released some new exceptions to the DMCA in the US, making it now legal to jailbreak your iPhone.

Apple, understandably, are not too happy with this decision.

From Arstechnica:

The Electronic Frontier Foundation argued that jailbreaking one’s iPhone should be allowed, even though it required one to bypass some DRM and then to reuse a small bit of Apple’s copyright firmware code. Appleshowed up at the hearings to say, in numerous ways, that the idea was terrible, ridiculous, and illegal. In large part, that was because the limit on jailbreaking was needed to preserve Apple’s controlled ecosystem, which the company said was of great value to consumers.

That might be true, the Register agreed, but what did it have to do with copyright?

“Apple is not concerned that the practice of jailbreaking will displace sales of its firmware or of iPhones,” wrote the Register, explaining her thinking by running through the “four factors” of the fair use test. “Indeed, since one cannot engage in that practice unless one has acquired an iPhone, it would be difficult to make that argument. Rather, the harm that Apple fears is harm to its reputation. Apple is concerned that jailbreaking will breach the integrity of the iPhone’s ecosystem. The Register concludes that such alleged adverse effects are not in the nature of the harm that the fourth fair use factor is intended to address.”

And the Register concluded that a jailbroken phone used “fewer than 50 bytes of code out of more than 8 million bytes, or approximately 1/160,000 of the copyrighted work as a whole. Where the alleged infringement consists of the making of an unauthorized derivative work, and the only modifications are so de minimis, the fact that iPhone users are using almost the entire iPhone firmware for the purpose for which it was provided to them by Apple undermines the significance” of Apple’s argument.

The conclusion is sure to irritate Steve Jobs: “On balance, the Register concludes that when one jailbreaks a smartphone in order to make the operating system on that phone interoperable with an independently created application that has not been approved by the maker of the smartphone or the maker of its operating system, the modifications that are made purely for the purpose of such interoperability are fair uses.”

When are politicians going to get it through their heads that it doesn’t matter if they call it a tax, a fee, a levy, a surcharge or something else?

As long as they’re responsible for imposing it and it comes out of our wallets, it amounts to the same thing.

It’s either a tax, or it’s a tax in all but name.

The latest ridiculous argument by Premier Dalton McGuinty’s government is the new eco fees on thousands of consumer products — now being retooled after the Liberals snuck them in July 1 — weren’t a tax.

For heaven’s sake, who cares what they’re called?

What they mean is the government made another huge grab for our wallets.

As the Sun’s Antonella Artuso recently revealed, Ontario government ministries are being privately urged by their political masters to come up with new “fees” to pay for programs and to service Ontario’s $19-billion deficit.

Some proposals are infuriating, such as charging extra when people use government kiosks to access services.

“Kiosks are considered a premium service for which an additional amount is charged to acknowledge the cost of the service above the normal delivery standard,” ministries are advised in the document, “Other Revenue Technical Guide.”

“This may result in the total fee charged being higher than the fee to deliver the same service over the counter.”

Huh?

A citizen does the work of a civil servant by accessing a government service himself via a kiosk, and he gets charged more for doing so?

That’s ridiculous and a blatant and unfair cash grab.

It’s also the exact opposite of how the system should work, in that it should be cheaper to use a kiosk.

Resorting to ever-expanding and ever-increasing fees and levies also puts the lie to government claims about “holding the line” on taxes.

New eco fees, higher hydro bills, a “harmonized” sales tax, higher charges for accessing government services, it all amounts to the same thing — making taxpayers poorer.

It’s not just at Queen’s Park.

Toronto’s 4% annual property tax hike becomes a meaningless figure to taxpayers when they’re simultaneously being hit with a 9% hike in their water bills, a surcharge on garbage collection, TTC fare hikes, new vehicle licensing fees, land-transfer taxes and ever-increasing charges for everything from on-street parking permits to recreation.

There’s only one pocket for these costs to be paid out of.

Yes, we have to pay for government services, but who’s keeping track of the big picture, which is not just about taxes and tax hikes, but the size of the total hit being imposed by governments on the public?

Obviously, no one, and that’s not only bad for taxpayers, it’s an example of irresponsible government.

Politicians who think they’ve solved a revenue problem by calling it something other than a tax, are politicians who need to be sent packing by the voters.

Fast.

My new favourite Bounty Hunter:

I have no love for Bill O’Reilly. He comes across as a major douche-nozzle most of the time.

Well, after spouting off as he does, in response to another news show, he gets told.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

From Christina Blizzard, Toronto Sun:

I’m not generally a conspiracy theorist.

Today, though, from my vantage point high atop a grassy knoll, I can sagely conclude there was a Machiavellian connection between two recent stories.

First, the government puts out speculation they’re about to sell off public assets: LCBO, casinos, nuclear plants — all were on the table.

Or not.

Two weeks ago, Finance Minister Dwight Duncan let it be known the asset sale was a non-starter.

Selling off the crown jewels is not something you’d do lightly. It seems impossible to me that word could leak out that the government was about to do so if there wasn’t a well developed plan to do so.

The idea fizzled.

Then Duncan announced a pay freeze for civil servants.

That’s when the antennae on the tinfoil in my hat start to receive odd messages.

Were the two stories linked? First, threaten to privatize all those cushy civil service jobs.

Then, when you’ve got public sector workers in an uproar, tell them no, no. It was all a mistake. You keep your jobs.

We just want you to take a two year pay freeze.

Frankly, you wonder what took Duncan so long.

The economic downturn hit in 2008.

Having steadfastly denied there was any need to get public sector salaries under control, Duncan finally announced in his March budget he was seeking a freeze.

The salaries of non-unionized civil service employees were immediately zapped, as was the pay of MPPs, cabinet ministers and the premier.

Then again, they’d been on a feeding frenzy in the public trough. Having hiked their own pay almost 40% in three years, the Liberals are now freezing it at a base salary around $116,000. And most MPPs make more than that if they’re parliamentary assistants or chair committees.

Some freeze, huh?

Naturally, public sector unions are up in arms.

While the rest of us roll our eyes and wonder what planet they’re on — and what messages they’re getting through their tinfoil hats — they’re whining.

At least Duncan isn’t doing what Bob Rae did when he imposed his hard-lined social contract.

Rae, a socialist at the time, opened up public sector collective agreements in order to impose his so-called “Rae days” — unpaid days off to get control of the public purse.

Duncan’s timing is interesting. Two major public sector union contracts — with teachers and with the Ontario Public Service Employees Union — don’t expire until after next year’s election. Those are aggressive unions, so expect fireworks.

Just not yet.

Duncan’s made a good start. There’s precious little sympathy for public sector unions.

They look like dinosaurs at the tar pit.

The more whine and thrash around and wallow in self-pity, the more they’re engulfed by anger from private sector workers who pay their salaries, pay their lavish pensions, and who’ve borne all the pain so far.

If he really wants to save money, Duncan should look at the big earners.

Scan the out-of-control Sunshine List of people making more than $100,000 on the public payroll.

Everyone making more than $120,000 a year should get an immediate 10% pay rollback — and then a freeze.

Private sector workers have been in the big freeze for years.

They’ve lost jobs, lost pay, lost pensions.

A two-year freeze is a small sacrifice for job security in the public sector.

They can suck it up — or government can sell off their jobs to the private sector.

From Christina Blizzard, Toronto Sun:

Governments have been known to botch things.

And sometimes they make giant flip-flops.

But when they botch a flip-flop, you know they’re in trouble.

Having spent the past 21 days blaming Stewardship Ontario (SO), blaming retailers — even blaming the Tories — Environment Minister John Gerretsen finally took the rap for the eco fee fiasco.

“The bottom line is, Stewardship Ontario could have done a better job rolling out the changes and we, the Ministry of the Environment, the government and I, as minister, could have done a better job of helping them communicate those changes, and I take full responsibility for that,” Gerretsen told reporters at a crow-eating session Tuesday.

The government will ditch the eco fee plan and review the mess over the next 90 days.

So will the fee really end? Or will it simply be buried?

Manufacturers can embed the eco fee into their cost, so a retailer can simply mark up the price — and the hard-pressed customer will cough up and be none the wiser.

The current plan fell apart Monday when Canadian Tire announced it would stop charging eco fees. One suspects they were getting so much blow-back from irate customers at the cash register they had no choice.

SO is made up of retail and manufacturing industry reps and the eco fees went to it.

Gerretsen was supposed to clarify the fees. Instead, he made them more confusing.

You’re not paying eco fees for the next 90 days, right? Wrong. The government is picking up the estimated $4-5 million tab. So all taxpayers are on the hook through their income taxes. And the manufacturers will get a break.

What a boondoggle!

Can the retailers who were including the eco fee in the sticker price continue to charge the same amount, Gerretsen was asked?

“We don’t control what retailers charge for their product,” Gerretsen said.

I’ll take that as a yes.

When is an eco fee not an eco fee? When it’s hidden in the sticker price.

This plan has no transparency, no consistency and no logic.

There are about 9,000 products which must be taken to a so-called Orange Drop recycling depot.

We already recycle some of those items through the Blue Box, which we already pay for out of our municipal taxes.

Those items are taken to a transfer station, sorted and recycled.

Under the new program, consumers become the sorters. You will have to figure out which 9,000 items go to the Orange Drop and which ones go into the Blue Box.

Gerretsen’s staff sent out a lengthy e-mail clarifying what goes Blue and what goes Orange.

“An empty bleach bottle can go in your Blue Box, but if you have left over bleach that can’t be used up, that should be taken to an Orange Drop location so it can be handled properly where it won’t impact our landfills or waterways,” the e-mail explained.

Hold on. I have extra bleach. I want to dispose of it safely. How can I drive it to the Orange Drop centre if the container is in the Blue Box?

What am I supposed to do? Cup it in my hands?

And isn’t the problem with products such as detergent and bleach not so much the left over stuff, but what goes down the drain and into the sewers after you’ve used it?

New Democrat Peter Tabuns put it best.

“Can you spell fiasco?” he asked.

Try: E-C-O F-E-E.

The McGuinty government is set to scrap its recently imposed eco fees on thousands of consumer products in the wake of consumer anger and retailer irritation.

Environment Minister John Gerretsen is expected to announce today that the Liberals will eliminate the environmental fees on thousands of potentially hazardous products — less than three weeks after retailers were required by Stewardship Ontario to start charging customers on new products from fluorescent bulbs to fire extinguishers.

The government retreat followed an earlier announcement Monday by Canadian Tire, one of Canada’s largest retailers, that it would no longer impose eco fees on its customers. Denouncing the new fees as “botched” and “confusing,” Canadian Tire president Mike Arnett said the company would have nothing to do with the fees until government and industry figure out a system that “makes sense for everyone.”

“Stewardship Ontario did not do a good job in preparing Ontarians for these new fees,” Arnett said in a bluntly worded statement.

“They did not properly communicate why the fees exist or the importance of safely recycling these hazardous products.”

Within hours of the Canadian Tire announcements there were several news reports — all citing “government sources” — indicating the provincial government was beating a hasty retreat on the eco fee issue.

On July 1 — the same day the Harmonized Sales Tax came into effect — Stewardship Ontario, a government-created but industry-led and funded agency charged with overseeing and paying for the recycling of ordinary and toxic waste, imposed an updated version of its hazardous products recycling program, effectively requiring retailers and manufacturers to pay eco-fees on thousands of new products besides those already on the list. Some retailers, including Canadian Tire, attempted to pass the fees on to consumers.

Ontario consumers, surprised at the sudden imposition of the fees, weren’t buying it and reacted angrily. They blamed the McGuinty government. Last week, for example, 300 people denounced the new eco fees as yet another tax imposition with a demonstration outside Premier Dalton McGuinty’s constituency office in Ottawa.

Retailers weren’t pleased either. Canadian Tire was forced to apologize last week to customers for wrongly charging eco fees higher than those authorized. However, Canadian Tire executives decided they weren’t going to take it anymore, and on Monday the company said it would not charge the new eco fees until, in Arnett’s words, “a better system can be developed with Stewardship Ontario and the Government of Ontario.”

Arnett said the rollout for the new fees was “poorly handled by all involved.” The provincial agency responsibly for recycling — Waste Diversion Ontario, which oversees Stewardship Ontario — set up a “very complicated” fee system for “materials” instead of “products,” which, according to Arnett, meant that two similar bands of cleaning products could have two different eco fees depending on slight differences in their ingredients.

Even more confusing was how retailers were left to interpret the fees as they saw fit, Arnett said. That meant “five different retailers may charge five different eco-fees for the same product — all depending on how they interpret the very complicated fee structure.” In Canadian Tire’s case, the new eco fees affected some 8,700 products.

Arnett also acknowledged Canadian Tire “did not do a good job of implementing the fees.” That failing, however, was largely due to the “complex” nature of the fees. “Although we quickly fixed any incorrect fees, we still have customers every day asking us why two nearly identical products have different fees.”

The eco-fee system was set up in 2008 to have manufacturers and retailers collect monies to fund a government recycling program for diverting hazardous and toxic materials away from garbage dumps. Stewardship Ontario collects the eco fees from businesses that make and sell these kinds of products. The companies, in turn, decide which fees they pass on to consumers.

The problem in this case — and what particularly angered consumers and frustrated retailers — is that there was no public notice eco fees would be imposed on thousands more products — everything from household cleaners, paint and aerosols to fire extinguishers, fluorescent bulbs and even fish bowls.

For its part, Stewardship Ontario, implicitly acknowledged the fee rollout wasn’t handled well when it announced late Monday — also after Canadian Tire’s decision — that it would proceed with “a plan to increase the accuracy, transparency and consistency of eco fees at point of sale.”

With the approval of its oversight body, Waste Diversion Ontario, Stewardship Ontario said it will require companies that make or import products to provide product-related eco-fee information allowing the agency to create a searchable data base on its website that consumers can check regarding hazardous products.

“We have heard from consumers loud and clear,” said Gemma Zecchini, Stewardship Ontario’s chief executive officer. “In retrospect, consumers clearly were looking for information on how eco fees work, and we will initiate efforts to help them understand that.”

Not surprisingly, the eco-fee issue was politicized. “This is yet another Dalton McGuinty tax grab,” said provincial Tory leader Tim Hudak. NDP leader Andrew Horwath said. “The McGuinty government dropped the ball.”

Canadian Tire, meanwhile, expressed concern about banning eco fees. “We are concerned in the face of this botched roll-out of July 1st fees that the most politically-expedient and short-term solution is to ‘ban fees for consumers,’” Arnett said. “That would be the wrong move.”

Consumers should be able to make informed choices about what they buy, including information regarding how much it costs to recycle the product, the Canadian Tire president said. If consumers are paying recycling fees up front, as they now do on many products, they should know and understand what they are paying for. “They should never had to pay for hidden fees — deliberate or otherwise.”

Really? You need to take up 3 spots for your GM SUV?

Douchebag!

A former bus driver has sued the Capital Area Rural Transportation System, charging that the nine-county transit service discriminated against him based on his religion when he was fired for refusing to drive a woman to a Planned Parenthood clinic in January.

Edwin Graning, who was hired as a driver on April 1, 2009, was “concerned that he might be transporting a client to undergo an abortion” when he was assigned to transport two women to Planned Parenthood, according to his lawsuit, filed this week in U.S. District Court in Austin.

Graning is seeking re-instatement, back pay and undisclosed damages for pain, suffering and emotion distress. He is represented by lawyers from the American Center for Law & Justice, founded by evangelical Christian leader Pat Robertson.

An official with the Capital Area Rural Transportation System said this morning that someone would return a request for comment later.

The system offers bus service on fixed routes and through requested pickup for residents in the non-urban areas of Travis and Williamson counties and in all of Bastrop, Burnet, Blanco, Caldwell, Fayette, Hays and Lee counties.

After he was dispatched to take the women, whose location was not included in the lawsuit, to Planned Parenthood in January, Graning called his supervisor “and told her that, in good conscience, he could not take someone to have an abortion,” his lawsuit said.

Graning, a Kyle resident, is “an ordained Christian minister who is opposed to abortion,” the lawsuit said.

His supervisor, who is not named, responded by saying “Then you are resigning,” the suit said.

Graning denied he was resigning and was later told to drive his bus back to the yard and he was fired, the lawsuit said.

Grab a timer, or your watch, and then stop reading for the next two-and-a-half minutes.

Concentrate, instead, on the seconds ticking away.

It will seem like an eternity.

And that’s the point.

According to court testimony, that is how long it took for Calgary mother Aset Magomadova, a Chechen refugee and devout Muslim, to choke every breath out of her troublesome 14-year-old daughter, Aminat.

Yet, despite that eternity of continuous strangulation, Alberta Justice Sal LoVecchio ruled on Thursday that Magomadova did not intend to kill the girl and therefore deserved no time in jail — eschewing Crown prosecutor Mac Vomberg’s legit proposal that 12 years in prison would better reflect justice.

Excuse us?

Back in October, after rejecting Magomadova’s line that she killed her daughter in self defence after she came at her with a knife that coincidentally had none of the child’s fingerprints on it, LoVecchio nonetheless gave her a kiss with a conviction for manslaughter, not second-degree murder.

That was outrageous enough.

But this is beyond belief.

Court was told the child was out of control, she failed to show up in court for assaulting a teacher, she was into drugs, and she was promiscuous.

We don’t care if young Aminat was working her way through the high school yearbook.

It gives no mother the right to take her child’s life.

“At first blush, this may sound like a get-out-of-jail free card,” said Justice LoVecchio. “It is not.”

If it’s not, then what in the hell is it?

Certainly not punishment.

The Crown has already appealed the manslaughter conviction, and will undoubtedly also take this incredibly obscene sentence to the Alberta Court of Appeal.

It would be insane not to do so.

Aset Magomadova had a rough life back in Chechnya, no question about it.

She lost a husband and part of her leg to Russian invaders.

She has a son with a rare and terminal form of muscular dystrophy.

But it does not give her a licence to kill.

Or a get-out-jail free card.

Try doing backflips over them!

While not technically a CEO, Microsoft chief operating officer Kevin Turner is not immune to a certain amount of executive level foot-in-mouth. Speaking at Microsoft’s Worldwide Partner Conference in DC and chatting up his company’s upcoming slate of Windows Phones, he couldn’t help a little iPhone bashing: “It looks like the iPhone 4 might be their Vista, and I’m okay with that.” Should we point out to Kevin that attempting to criticize your competition by comparing it to your own flagship products is usually counterproductive, or leave him to figure it out on his own during some early morning magnificent moustache contemplation session?

Unlike Jon Stewart or Stephen Colbert, Daniel Tosh is far from being a household name, and his show has received little publicity, but his Tosh.0 on Comedy Central Wednesday nights has, after six episodes of its second season, exceeded Stewart’s and Colbert’s ratings, the Hollywood Reporter observed on its website Monday. Last Wednesday the show, which airs at 10 30 p.m., attracted 2.4 million viewers. “It’s a show that came in under the radar and it’s a truly word-of-mouth kind of show,” Kent Alterman, head of original programing on the cable network, told the Reporter . What makes the popularity of the show even more surprising is that it’s aimed at young people who spend a lot of their time searching for entertainment on their computer screens, game boxes and mobile devices.

Found this the other day:

That’s right, in a No Parking Fire Route.

But, they are so special, right?

Only one voice role?

Slacker!!

Click to enbiggen:

Actor DAVID TENNANT’s bank balance took a hit when he gave up DOCTOR WHO for a Shakespeare role – the decision cost him $1.6 million (£1 million), according to new figures.

The Brit’s fortune plummeted from $4 million (£2.5 million) to $2.4 million (£1.5 million) in the first nine months after he gave up his title role in the cult sci-fi series after four years as the Time Lord.

Profits for the star’s Sandyboy firm, into which he channels his earnings, also fell by $800,000 (£500,000), according to accounts filed at the official U.K. government register of companies.

Tennant filmed his last four episodes as the Time Lord in January 2009 and followed up his Doctor Who stint with a lead role in a Royal Shakespeare Company’s production of Hamlet.

David Prowse, the actor who famously played Darth Vader (not the voice) in the original Star Warstrilogy has just posted on his site that he’s been banned from the big Lucas Film Star Wars Celebration V (C5) in Orlando.

“It is with regret that I have been informed by my friends at C2 Ventures, Ben and Phillip, that I am not to be invited to C5 this year or any other Lucas Film associated events. After enquiring, the only thing I have been told is that I have ‘burnt too many bridges between Lucas Film and myself’ – no other reason given…I have also been advised by the promoter of Paris Manga in September that LFL (Lucas Film Limited) have requested no photo opportunities with the 501 Squadron, even though I am commander in chief of the 501″

It’s possible this stems from complaints he made to Slashfilm last year that he isn’t getting any residual checks because, according to LucasFilms, the films “never made a profit.”

If so, this is criminal. The guy’s 76-years-old. He has massive arthritis problems. He’s had hip replacement surgery and can’t move one of his arms. His main source of income is that he was one of the actors in the most successful movie franchise in history. Emperer Lucas, send the guy a couple checks or, at least, let him do some photo-ops.