A man by the name of Craig Cunningham is doing what a LOT of people would like to do when it comes to "sticking it to da man."  Mr. Cunningham trolls collection agencies for fun and profit.  He enjoys it when they call him, because for him, it means money in the bank.  It's well-known that collection agencies skirt the law.

Taking the law into your own hands - legally

Armed with a tape recorder, an Internet connection, and the willingness to search online to find out what his rights are, he waits for creditors to call him and say something illegal, and then he sues them.

He's not a lawyer, but he files and argues his own cases, often winning statutory awards of $3,500 or more per violation.  As a bonus, the collection agency usually drops the collection, and it's farmed out to another collection agency, where the game gets played a second time.

He's so well-known in the industry as someone it will cost you money to try to collect from that he's on two separate lists that track people who assert their civil rights when debt-collectors try to harass, lie, and otherwise work outside the legal framework to collect a debt, and that people often settle even when they don't owe the money, just to avoid the frustration and the treat of a hit to their credit rating.

There's been a leak ...

Late last year, 160 megs of data and thousands of emails were leaked from a server at east Anglia. These emails show that researchers into climate change were fudging data, pressuring journals to ignore anyone questioning their results, trying to stack the deck to avoid proper review of their work, destroying evidence ... and in general, it appears that they've been trolling the rest of the scientific community, and the general public, for more than a decade.

wikileaks.org, the site that made the emails and other data available to the public, has been ordered off-line by a California court over another set of leaks that embarrassed the rich and powerful.

That hasn't stopped other publications such as the Wall Street Journal from publishing the address of a site where you can download the 160 megs of emails and climate data as a 62 meg zip file.

A partial review of the hacked material suggests there was an effort at East Anglia, which houses an important center of global climate research, to shut out dissenters and their points of view.

In the emails, which date to 1996, researchers in the U.S. and the U.K. repeatedly take issue with climate research at odds with their own findings. In some cases, they discuss ways to rebut what they call "disinformation" using new articles in scientific journals or popular Web sites.

The emails include discussions of apparent efforts to make sure that reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a United Nations group that monitors climate science, include their own views and exclude others. In addition, emails show that climate scientists declined to make their data available to scientists whose views they disagreed with.

How does this affect you?

When you see the term IPPC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), think "Climate Summit". The question is, is the world trying to make global policy based on questionable data?

Some people are born stupid, some people have stupidity thrust on them ... and then there's this cut-and-paste job at Aviran's Place.

The article is a rip-off of  the "Windows 7 has lots of 'GodModes' story posted earlier on CNET.

 posts by trolls as commenters accusing him of stealing word-for-word from CNET, or that he claimed that CNET had stolen it from him.

5. Your Conscience Says:
January 7th, 2010 at 12:49 pm

Lazy ass thief. This article is copied word for word from news.cnet.com, as the commentator above has indicated. I hope you have a good lawyer.

6. Aviran Says:
January 7th, 2010 at 12:53 pm

Cnut copied it off me
 

What joke HASN'T been told about Tiger Woods in the closing days of 2009? That he changed his name from Tiger to Cheatah? That unlike Santa Clause he didn't stop at 3 hos?

Failure of damage control

His carefully cultivated wholesome image, which has earned him a billion dollars, is no more. Instead, we are left with reports that he was stoned on narcotics when he ran his SUV into a tree at 2:30 in the morning. For two weeks, it seemed like there was a new revelation every day. Oh wait - there was a new revelation every day. Yet another woman either denying allegations of an affair or cashing in on her 15 minutes of fame.

Tiger Woods quickly became the Bill Clinton of the Decade ... and just as quickly surpassed the ex-president, as more affairs were revealed. He could have taken note of how David Letterman handled a similar situation just a few months prior. People tend to be more forgiving when you're up-front about your failures.

The fall-out has been swift. Sponsors who wanted to be associated with Mr. Woods pulled their ads, as those ads quickly took on new meanings. Tiger using Gillette products (A Proctor and Gamble brand) to "get ready for a night out" suddenly just looked sleazy. Proctor and Gamble makes Mr. Clean - not Mr. Slimebucket.

Quit your elected job to promote a book someone else wrote so you can cash in on that book deal you got. The voters of Alaska must be underwhelmed. You betcha!

Or, considering the other flubs, the jokes, the President Sarkozy prank phone call ... maybe they're just relieved that she's finally "Going Rogue" elsewhere.

What should have been Palin's "Come-to-Jesus moment"

If there was ever a time when Palin should have experienced a "revelation" that she was not qualified for office, it was the Katie Couric interviews. Classic lines such as "I can see Russia from my back porch" provided plenty of material tailor-made for Saturday Night Live.

But back to books. Who can forget Sarah Palin's "deer-caught-in-the-headlights" stumble when she couldn't name one thing she's read, not even a magazine ...

http://Slashdot.org for Troll site of the year

Not for lack of editing, crappy stories or Idle

No, but for taking a working functional site and borking it with js.  

I'm nominating the news media for adopting a formulaic approach to selecting attention whores, while distracting the public from the real issues of the day.

It's not hard to become an attention whore, but it requires prep work.  Start your whoring by matching the profile of other common attention whores. Note that the closer you are to the ends of the bell curves, the better your chances of being noticed.

Key attributes include personal wealth -- be rich or be poor. (Accepting government subsidies are a plus, either way.) Appearance is also important. Either look attractive, or look like you've been evicted from more than one trailer park. An image consultant can help you with the former, a Mary Kay consultant can help you with the latter. Physical deformities are a plus.

2009 - the year of the global financial meltdown. When you think "Financial Trolls of 2009", names like Goldman-Sachs, Ben Bernanke, or Timothy Geithner are topmost. Or the Fed. Or the various bail-out recipients, such as AIG. Or the ratings firms that enabled the whole mess and still haven't been called to account, such as credit ratings agency Moody's.

Certainly I can't be serious about lowering Warren Buffett, the "Oracle of Omaha", to the same level as these people and organizations?  Or can I?
 

Remember all those headlines about 152 dead in Mexico from the H1N1 flu virus, how it was highly contagious and also very deadly?

The same day that the World Health organization sent out a level 5 alert, the confirmed death toll in Mexico dropped from 152 down to 7.

Ultimately, only those 7 were confirmed as being caused by the swine flu.  The other 145 were later attributed to other causes.

So what happened?  News media looking for ratings, politicians wanting to look like they were in charge, big pharma looking for profits, and a public too willing to let themselves be led by the nose all contributed to the bogus Great Flu Panic of 2009.

The Vatican (Benedict XVI),  has been claiming copyright to stuff written by the pope for several years, but now they've gone beyond well beyond regular copyright law.
 

Just before Christmas, the Vatican tried to claim

"that the Catholic church alone has the right to ensure the respect due to the Successors of Peter, and therefore, to protect the figure and personal identity of the Pope from the unauthorized use of his name and/or the papal coat of arms for ends and activities which have little or nothing to do with the Catholic Church."

There are a few problems with this ...

In a normal year, the Tech Troll of the Year would go to someone like Darl McBride of SCO or Steve ("the chair-man) Ballmer of Microsoft, or even Steve Jobs of Apple.

Last year was not a normal year. Google is flexing its' muscles, moving aggressively into cell phones and netbooks - and into your life in a very intrusive fashion.

Mr. Schmidt has gone on record saying:

"'If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place."

The "Troll of the Year" award for 2009 in the political category goes to United States president Barak Obama.

Elected on a platform of "Change you can believe in", "Borat" Obama certainly has been for change - but disillusioned voters think it would be more accurate to say "Change you can't believe in."

The list of failures in the past year is extensive and growing. Here are just 20 of the ways Obama has trolled, both at home and abroad.

The award for Troll of the Day for December 15th 2009 goes to Google for its' Google Nexus smaprtphone. By not releasing details, Google is generating a lot of speculation - both about the device, and about Google's intentions. The official announcement had a paucity of details.

Google vs the rest of the cell-phone industry

With this phone now "out there" (more or less), and all the buzz its generating - including rumours that Google will sell the "googlephone" directly to consumers - other smartphone manufacturers using the google-backed android smart-phone operating system may be having some second thoughts.

They must be wondering just how much of the information they shared with Google will come back to bite them, especially since T-Mobile has said they will be selling this phone.

This will also be adding more fuel to the fire over Google's long-term plans for the cell phone spectrum licenses that they purchased. Wireless carriers such as AT&T and Verizon might be wondering if this is another step towards Google some day offering an all-in-one bundle of Google-phone and Google-wireless directly to consumers.

We keep hearing at the beginning of every year that "this is the year of linux on the desktop", and every year by Christmas we've found that we've only got another lump of coal to show for it.

linux on the desktop - why it can't happen

Humans are funny beasts. They're always doing things that are against their self-interest, such as over-eating, smoking, not getting enough exercise, staying in abusive relationships, sticking with one particular brand ... and oftentimes, the reason is simple inertia. "Yes, I know I should do 'X' ... but ..."

social inertia

Social inertia is a term that applies the concept of inertia to psychology and sociology. It is used to describe the resistance to change presented by societies or social groups, usually due to habit. An example of social inertia can be noticed in United States inconformity with the SI standard units

It is often observed in politics, when people consistently vote for one candidate or party out of habit, regardless of whether or not they actually would benefit from that vote.

People resist change unless suitably motivated, and right now, the de facto desktop is Microsoft Windows, with Apple OSX coming in a distant second. Linux is barely a blip on their radar.

update #1 added Bern Convention, #2 added new articles about his petition

Background: MySQL is an open-source database used by millions. Originally developed by closely-held Swedish company MySQL AB, it was sold to Sun Microsystems Inc in January 2008. Sun is now in the process of being acquired Oracle Corporation. The deal is still awaiting European regulatory approval.

Not happy with selling MySQL AB to Sun for a cool billion, Monty Widenius is now trolling regulators, the media, and anyone who will listen in his efforts to get back control of "his" database (without having to give back the money).

update: Widenius caught lying yet again

Peter Watts: Dumb-ass Canuck

updated 1x

There's quite a fuss being made over how Canadian Sci-Fi writer Peter Watts was arrested and beaten by US border guards while leaving the United States.

Turns out he was practically begging for it.

I'm not some American complaining about dumb Canadians - I'm a Canadian who has visited the US several times since 9/11, including once when they were on high alert - extra personnel at each booth, running everyone's documentation through their system, popping trunks. That day, the driver of the car behind me, who was supposed to be following me, took a wrong turn and ended up surrounded by agents with guns. It happens. When it does, the rules are simple: "You're a visitor, they have guns, it doesn't hurt to be polite."

What should you get a geek for Christmas?
Vote:Best Christmas Gift for a Geek

When everyone's a geek, no-one's a geek.

During most of the computer revolution, everyone understood what a "geek" was. Some guy (it was almost always a guy) with a pocket protector, taped glasses, bad skin, no social life, and an eclectic collection of some of the latest and the most obsolete electronic gadgets. A generation of nerds sought refuge from the rest of society by "playing with computers", writing code, running bulletin board systems, bragging about their computer hardware, and debating why their frobulated thing-a-ma-jiggy from Initech was the best yet.

As the high-tech revolution gained speed, the number of geeks multiplied. "Geek chic" finally entered the lexicon. Suddenly, geeks were no longer just nerds with a technical bent.

They began to find their voice. Geeks talked about having Asperger's Syndrome or ADHD and how, for many, it was an integral "part of their geekiness", often taking a none-to-subtle pride in how it made them superior geeks. Being socially maladjusted was almost something to be proud of.

Still, for most of the population, a "geek" was still "a person engrossed in his area of interest at the cost of social skills, personal hygiene and status." Nerdy, but tolerated, because it was handy to have a geek on tap when your computer crashed. But like many social phenomena, things quickly changed when the penetration of computing devices into general society reached a tipping point.

Troll: To jerk someone's chain.

We're "trolled" all the time in real life, by our bosses, our significant other, salesmen in ugly sports jackets trying to sell us a used car or funeral plot, advertisers who try to make us rush into a bad buying decision with "LIMITED TIME BUY NOW!" offers , politicians, lawyers, Nigerian "princes" ... all yanking our chains, trying to get us off-balance so we do what they want.

It's only after we've either been suckered in or walked away that we come up with the "bon mot" - the right word - and think "Why couldn't I think of saying that THEN?

Trolling the Internet - in the sense of encouraging a vigorous, wide-ranging and freewheeling debate - is actually good for your mental health, as well as giving you some practice in dealing with all the people trying to con you. There are 4 steps to being a successful troll.