Amazon Wants to Know More About You

Amazon.com is launching a new search engine that will allow them to gather information on your web browsing habits and searches, in order to more successfully sell books to you. Read about it here.

A quote from the article: "Because A9 is so closely integrated with Amazon, it could offer the Seattle company unparalleled access to customers' Web browsing and online shopping habits. Google and Yahoo have the ability to collect personal information from their users, but it pales in comparison to the storehouse of data that Amazon has on its millions of customers."

All that needs to happen now are three things:
1. Other merchants will develop similar technology.
2. Those merchants will form partnerships with ISP's.
3. Anyone who signs up with these ISP's will be forced to download the toolbar/tracking technology as part of their service agreement.

Oh, we can't wait.

Good Plan

We here at Paranoid aren't very interested in politics; our only take on the subject is summed up by this quote: The people who are the most capable at getting elected are the last people you'd want serving in the government. However, in our effort to bring you the latest news concerning Rational Paranoia, we feel it is our duty to mention this:

New Reports on U.S. Planting WMDs in Iraq

An Iraqi source close to the Basra Governor’s Office told the MNA that new information shows that a large part of the WMD, which was secretly brought to southern and western Iraq over the past month, are in containers falsely labeled as containers of the Maeresk shipping company and some consignments bearing the labels of organizations such as the Red Cross or the USAID in order to disguise them as relief shipments.

Now, we rather suspected that President Bush would pull something like this, probably leading to an announcement in September or October that WMD's had been found in Iraq. It would be a surefire way for him to boost his sagging poll ratings.

We don't care about that.

What worries us is that he is trucking deadly weapons into one of the most destabilized regions in the world. Imagine what would happen if Iraqie insurgents, or Bin Ladin's forces got ahold of some of these chemical or biological agents.