Quit Facebook Day fails, corruption in Mexican politics and hockey-themed ice cream flavors

- Color me stunned, but Quit Facebook Day turned out to be a colossal failure. You may know the instigators of this unofficial holiday better as the disenchanted losers who have become so bitter about the privacy problems of a free social media site that they set up a Web site and designated May 31 as the date when they would delete their Facebook accounts, likely to join the pedophiles and 11-year-olds on MySpace or the tools on Friendster. But for some odd reason, the cause just never generated that much momentum and according to the home page for the Quit Facebook Day group, a paltry 34,000 users vowed to "quit Facebook." It’s worth noting that promising to quit and actually following through are two very different things. I guarantee you that of those 34,000, a large chunk simply forgot and went about their normal Memorial Day weekend plans. And by the way, solid choice of date there, Quit Facebook Day founders - Memorial Day. A day this country has set aside to honor its fallen war heroes of generations past and present. Nothing like attempting to hijack that day for your own silly cause and oh yeah, most people have more important things to worry about on that day beyond the status of their Facebook account. So needless to say that I’m not stunned to hear that the event was a flop, because in addition to those who forgot about it, there was undoubtedly people who got angry, signed the petition and then changed their mind. This is not to say that Facebook’s privacy problems are over, because they most definitely are not. Anyone who doesn’t vigilantly guard their personal information on the site and exercise extreme caution in what they put out there on Facebook remains incredibly naïve and reckless. However, a lot of those who use the site are teenagers or old people who just aren’t that clued in to these issues and how they could be affected. A 13-year-old dude looking to upload pics of his visit to Six Flags and post a funny YouTube clip on his buddy’s wall isn’t going to give a second thought to how much of his personal information Facebook is sharing with third parties. Even if the site’s privacy protections and controls continue to lag behind and unnecessarily and dishonestly pass along users’ personal data to third parties, most users are simply too hooked on Facebook to give it up for any reason……….

- Hockey fans, the NHL season will soon be ending (but ready to resume in about three weeks for training camp, I believe) and perhaps that reality has you a little bit glum. Not seeing Patrick Kane putting one into the back of the net or Chris Pronger coming onto the ice for a line change could be causing you a lot of stress and you might wonder how you’ll be able to drown your no-hockey sorrows once the season ends some time next week. For you, I present Caramel Hat Trick, a hockey-inspired flavor of ice cream from Ben & Jerry's . The exact flavor mix of Carmel Hat Trick will be revealed later this week at a press conference in Toronto, with NHL stars Jason Spezza of the Ottawa Senators, Steven Stamkos of the Tampa Bay Lightning, John Tavares of the New York Islanders and Luke Schenn of the Toronto Maple Leafs all in attendance to help launch the flavor. It has been rumored that there will be some sort of charity effort tied to Carmel Hat Trick, possibly something to raise money for one of the charitable organizations the NHL itself is involved with. Oh, and I’m sure that Spezza, Tavares, Stamkos and Schenn are all pumped to be attending a press conference to introduce a new flavor of ice cream as opposed to being on the ice for the Stanley Cup finals. But bitter NHLers on hand for the occasion or not, it should be quite a scene in Toronto and for hockey fans still trying to decide how to properly drown their sorrows after their team fell short of winning a championship this season, Carmel Hat Trick just might be the answer…………

- Bad news for you, criminal suspects. In the future, you will be forced to audibly invoke your right to remain silent in order to keep that right. I know, it’s the ultimate Catch-22, that in order to keep your right to silence you must first speak out, but the Supreme Court ruled that way in a hotly contested 5-4 vote on Tuesday. The court heard a case involving the murder conviction of a man who did not verbally assert his right to remain silent during his police interrogation and ended up indirectly confessing to the crime of which he was accused. The high court upheld his conviction, finding that a suspect must explicitly tell officers he or she is asserting that right, known as Miranda rights. Miranda rights are one of the best-known parts of the criminal process and any mediocre police drama on teleivison will feature suspects invoking their constitutional "right to remain silent" and the "right to talk to a lawyer before answering any questions." Officers read those rights to suspects when they are arrested and in recent years, the conservative court has generally been supportive when police challenges to Miranda rights have been raised. "A suspect who has received and understood the Miranda warnings, and has not invoked his Miranda rights, waives the right to remain silent by making an uncoerced statement to police," said Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing for the majority. The specific case before the court was that of Van Chester Thompkins, who was convicted of a January 10, 2000, murder outside a shopping mall in Southfield, Michigan. Thompkins fled the scene and was ultimately arrested a year later in Ohio. Local police there put him through a three-hour interrogation, with Thompkins at first forced to read aloud part of a copy of "constitutional rights" derived from the original Miranda case that went before the Supreme Court in 1966. Among the five rights read to or by Thompkins were the warnings that "anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law," and "the right to decide at any time before or during questioning to use your right to remain silent." After being read his rights, Thompkins refused to sign the required form. Additionally, there was uncertainty about whether he verbally confirmed he understood his rights. Although he mostly sat silently during questioning, he later implicated himself after police asked if he believed in God. When Thompkins replied "Yes," and turned away, court documents have officers following up by asking, "Do you pray to God to forgive you for shooting that boy down?" asking about victim Samuel Morris. He reportedly responded in the affirmative, but later refused to make a written confession. At trial, he was convicted of first-degree murder and other offenses. The case made its way up through the court system and ultimately, the high court sided with the police's version of the events. "Thompkins did not say that he wanted to remain silent or that he did not want to talk to police," Kennedy concluded. "Had he made either of these simple, unambiguous statements, he would have invoked his 'right to cut off questioning.' Here he did neither, so he did not invoke his right to remain silent." Joining Kennedy in the majority were Chief Justice John Roberts, along with Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito. On the opposing side were justices John Paul Stevens, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor, who called the court's ruling a "major retreat" from protections against self-incrimination guaranteed by the original Miranda ruling. The ruling overturned a decision by a federal appeals court in Cincinnati that Thompkins’ confession should be thrown out. So just to be clear, criminal suspects, if you intend to remain silent when questioned by police after your arrest, you first need to break your silence in order to declare that intent…………

- Chalk up another party that is sick and tired of the constant problems, foibles and faults of Microsoft's Windows operating system: Web giant Google. Google has seen enough of Windows and suspended internal use of the OS due to security concerns related to the attack on its network late last year. Google CEO Eric Schmidt prefers to go with his company’s own Chrome OS is more secure than Windows, which might seem self-serving until you realize that it is Windows we’re talking about here. It’s not as if Schmidt is ordering employees to stop using Apple’s OS in favor of some hack system he and a buddy cooked up while tinkering with computer programs in their basement over the weekend. By having employees to move away from Windows machines, the CEO is actually making a brilliant decision regardless of which OS he has them switch to. With the change, new Google employees will no longer be able to request Windows PCs, and will be given the choice of Mac or Linux systems. In the past, new Google employees have been offered their choice of work operating system, but no longer. Last year’s attack on Windows and Internet Explorer 6 resulted in the theft of Google intellectual property, believed to be source code. Tech companies don’t take kindly to that sort of thing and with an already rocky relationship between Microsoft and Google before the attack, it ended up being the final push toward what may have been an inevitable outcome. Google’s engineering-centric business culture is already slanted in favor of other operating systems, but a need to test the company’s products across a range of systems meant that having Windows around was partially helpful in some small sense. Going forward, any Google employee wishing to continue using Windows machines, will need to obtain get special permission. Later this year, employees will also be “steered” toward Chrome OS systems, Eric Schmidt told CIOs attending a Google seminar on cloud computing in April. While obviously benefitting its own business self-interests, Google will also make the move because it believes the browser-based operating system will be "inherently more secure" than alternative operating systems. Of course, anything is more secure when compared to Windows-based systems…………

- Maybe I’m way off base here, but isn’t a guy like Gregorio Sanchez the absolute perfect man to be mayor of a city like Cancun? People go to Cancun for fun in the sun, drinking, drugs and partying, right? So who better to rule over the city than a man who (allegedly) has drug trafficking ties? Sanchez was hit with drug trafficking charges Tuesday, forcing him to end his campaign for governor. With Mexico’s upcoming state elections on the horizon, Sanchez’s indictment on charges of organized crime and money laundering a week after he was arrested in the country’s most important tourist resort is certainly a game changer. A federal judge handed down the indictment after prosecutors claimed he protected two of Mexico's most brutal drug gangs and lived beyond his means. Worse still, the formal charges bar Sanchez from participating in politics, ending his run for governor of the coastal state of Quintana Roo. No one can remember another Mexican election candidate ever being charged with drug ties in the middle of a campaign, which is in and of itself amazing in a drug-riddled nation like Mexico. Sanchez’s party rushed to his defense, claiming the allegations are politically motivated. The fact that the charges came just one month before the July 4 elections in 10 Mexican states would seem to bolster those claims. However, my primary beef here is that Sanchez seems to be the perfect embodiment of what people come to Mexico for on vacation, right? If you want a white-bread, family-friendly vacation, you go to Disney World or Disney Land, right? Now, Sanchez may be a little better suited to be mayor of Tijuana than Cancun, but let’s not split hairs here. Still a month out from the elections, all 10 states involved in the process have already been besieged by attacks and threats against candidates and this is an unnecessary addition to those troubles. To those who fret that Mexico's powerful drug cartels are increasingly infiltrating politics through bribes and intimidation, I say this: You’re probably right. That doesn’t mean I automatically accept these allegations against the esteemed Mayor Sanchez. Prosecutors have submitted to Judge Carlos Elorzatestimony and documents indicating that Sanchez was using illegally obtained funds and had ties to the Beltran Leyva and Zetas cartels, but I need to see this evidence for myself. Also, I’m willing to give Sanchez's Democratic Revolutionary Party the opportunity to prove its claim that the mayor has a real estate business that explains his wealth. Let’s not be hasty indicting and convicting people, Mexico. This is a mayor who was made for the city he presides (or presided) over and it’s a shame to see you cast him aside so willingly……….