To summarize:
- A photographer took these photos of a BP oil refinery while standing on the grass median of a public road. (With very few exceptions, it’s perfectly legal to take pictures of anything visible from a public place, even if the subject is privately owned.)
- BP’s security noticed, called the city police, and followed him by car to a gas station.
- The police forcefully detained, harassed, and threatened him for more than 20 minutes for something that is not a crime and that they did not witness.
- The police disclosed all of his personal information, including his Social Security number, to a BP security guard.
- The police effectively forced him to reveal the photos he had taken and continued to detain, harass, and threaten him even after an officer had evaluated them and decided that they were not a threat to Homeland “Security”.
- He was further detained, harassed, and threatened by a Homeland Security agent who arrived at the scene and forced him to reveal the publication he was working for.
There’s a good chance that a crime was committed there, but not by the photographer.
Is there any doubt who’s running our country?
According to data from a recent study by Commtouch (Internet Threats Trend Report) published in April 2010 and referring to the first quarter of the year, every day we send about 221 billion email messages, of which 183 billion are classified as spam (85% of the total traffic globally).
United States lead the ranking of the “spamming” countries with 38 billion emails per day followed by India (13.7 billion), Russia (9.8), Vietnam (9.7) and Korea (7.6).
How much does all this junk mail cost the environment in terms of CO2 emissions?
Studies have estimated that each email message generates about 0.3 grams of CO2. Multiplying this value by the number of spam messages sent daily worldwide what we get is that every day around 54.900 tons of C02 are released into the environment: a number that translates into around 21 million tons of CO2 every year.
Just a curiosity, for the sake of comparison: the volcano eruption in April 2010 released into the air around 150,000 tons of CO2 every day.
via Woorkup
I get my best coding done at 1 & 2 in the morning. This is really not conducive to normal life. Arrrrgh.
Same here. Don’t worry about it, we’re not alone ;)
Same here, lets built a chain of sleepless programmers. :D
The club of sleepless programmers, I’m in!
