rupert murdoch developing super-laser, holding planet ransom for $900 trillion

ok, not really. but you gotta give the guy credit. he's the closest thing we have to a bond villain. i've seen enough stuff floating around the intertubes (not including myspace) today to start actually becoming scared of him.

four months after murdoch took over the wall street journal, the managing editor is resigning.

"Reporters and other editors say that while Mr. Brauchli agreed with some of the changes made in recent months, it was clear that many of them were dictated from above, and that he questioned the shift toward general-interest news."

this move, according to the article, is meant to position wsj as a direct competitor to the new york times. apparently he's not a fan of their librul bullshit - reports on wmd, torture in iraq, and other facets of reality aren't good for his infotainment empire's ratings. to top it off, just in case bastardizing the wsj is not enough to get his propagandist bullshit heard in every corner of the five boroughs, he's also looking to buy newsday (source: newsday. go fig.), and owns two local networks.

so that all sounds like some regular 21st-century evil consolidated media type stuff, right? well it gets slightly creepier. apparently the dude hires black hat hackers to hack the dish network (according to the dish network). the hacker says this was only to reverse engineer some hardware - still kinda fucked, but not bond-level creepy. tell me then, old man murdoch: why was his first payment "$20,000 in cash hidden in electronic devices mailed from Canada"?

you would have attracted much less attention paying him with a lifetime supply of mountain dew and 100 myspace whores of his choice. after all, you run that $600 million diarrhea puddle of a website. you could totally make them disappear, you evil fuck.