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HP Secretly Rendering Printer Cartridges Unusable

and Canon, Epson, Oki, Brother,... They all slowly render my printers unusable by selling me ink at $38000/gal, which slowly makes my wallet thinner and thinner until eventually I have no money left, I have to sell my home, put my wife on the street, dress my kids in rags and send them to beg at street corners, and get me a cardboard box to sleep in at night, and protect my (now useless) printer during the day...

NPR has several mentions and talks on blink. He also spoke at the Commonwealth Club

Overall, some of his discussions (for example, about the police shootings in New York or the effects on a high speed car chase on one's lack of judgement) were interesting and worthwhile to understand. But his inaccurate comments on the Getty Kouros turned me off on the work. Factual inaccuracies have a tendency to make you, um, blink. He presented it as obvoius that it was a forgery, but the tremendous amount of scholarship to date cannot confirm or deny whether it was a genuine or forged work. It's hard to trust a work's conclusions when the facts they are based on ignore the truth.

"Pu-Dunk Kansas"
I thought the story was about the state of Washington. (What was I smoking?) So I thought I would check and see how close or far from the truth was your comment. I found:

Wichita State University is home to the National Institute for Aviation Research, a major research site that includes crash test laboratories, as well as wind and water tunnels for aerodynamic testing. here,

NIAR also dedicated its new crash test lab. Tomblin says the old lab relied on the test sled hitting a brick wall. The new one has a system where the wall hits the sled. The test sled is accelerated from zero to 50 miles per hour in milliseconds.
"What this allows us to do is take advanced crashworthiness technology and put it in the aviation industry," Tomblin says. "Things like airbags, inflatable seat belts, new advanced seats that will survive crashes and use it to design cockpits for passengers and pilots to able survive crashes."
New research projects are scheduled to start in both facilities in February. here

Looks like you don't know geography or crash testing.

Actually when I ask where the Pepsi is, they generally tell me the drinks are located on isle 10. That said, IANAL, but from what I have read Trademark does not protect against what Dior did. In order for a trademark infringement, a company has to put their product into the competitors package and sell it as the competitors.

Using your example, Pepsi selling their product in Coke containers would be trademark infringement, but that is not what is happening. What is happening is that Dior is advertising their product to people who happen to be specifically looking for Louis Vuitton. They are not claiming to be Louis Vuitton, but are make themselves known that they are an alternative.

A similar case to the one in France can be found here, http://www.bizjournals.com/kansascity/stories/2005 /01/31/focus5.html

This is a great form of marketing and has been for a long time for corps with an image issue. Mr Gates has an image issue. MS has a bigger image issue. It may be out of the goodness of his heart, as many peoples' hearts turn from stone as they get older, but IIRC, these donations started shortly after consulting a firm about the image problem. Try here, here, and a more positive spin here.

When the kitchen gets too hot, major shareholders can just go private. All that's done, doesn't show up in the Fortune 500. A public corporation's dealings, especially one of any size, are so complex that there is a lot of nuance that you can never get .

As on who sat in on analyst calls in a public company, and tracked the stock price, I know there is huge gap between an understanding of the public, the market, company insiders and company employees. Due diligence is no joke, and communicating what's going on in a company is an extraordinarily difficult matter. Just publishing stuff on the web doesn't cut it. If so, nobody would have lost money in the Bubble. Raise your hand if you really know how to daytrade or read a 10Q.

Private equity firms are on the rise. Everything is not for public consumption. Given what happens to people roasted in the media, what would you rather do? Be public and open to false ridicule, or concentrate on your business?

disclaimer: i am a progressive democrat.

but, really. when it goes bad? i have yet to see an example when the cost savings to a multinational corporation justify the damage done by outsourcing work.

you'll have people point to the study that came out that says that outsourcing is good for the economy. but is it? what it really provides is a decline in the quality of jobs in america.

let's think about this. company x has $300,000 it spends on paying 100 engineers. then it discovers it can save $200,000 by sending those 100 jobs to india. so with that $200,000, it hires 200 more engineers in america! net gain of 100 jobs here, and 100 in india! everyone wins!

except, of course, that the jobs that remain here pay 1/3 of what they used to. and that doesn't even include benefits. the moral of the story is, as always: when the company and stockholders win, you better be a stockholder. because if you're an employee, you're screwed.

Ok, so since Laptops were first created, their whole idea was to be a way someone could do work remotely or in areas where having a desktop was hard or near imposibe for one reason or another. in 2003 "November 2003 survey of Penn State University undergraduates found that freshmen were more likely to own laptops than upperclassmen. Of 1,838 respondents, 73.7 percent own a desktop, 32.2 percent own a laptop, 9.2 percent own both, and 3.4 percent own neither." http://pittsburgh.bizjournals.com/pittsburgh/stori es/2004/08/23/focus1.html
"t). Currently, one-quarter of Americans own a laptop or notebook computer (23 percent)" http://www.thegoodsteward.com/article.php3?article ID=1513
What does this tell us? it says that laptops are becoming more and more popular, and as they become more and more popular, there is a bigger drive towards creating the "ultimite laptop"
As far as i see it, Apple and IBM are the only good laptop companies. i know thats a dramatic statement, but look at it, any laptop over 6LBS is WAY TOO HEAVY to carry around. Most HP/Compaq laptops are 7 to 9 lbs. Most dells are in that same range.
what the laptop industry needs is a re-working of laptops. Sony has just released the X505 VAIO laptop, this laptop is built in the way all laptops should be built. It weighs a mear 1.73lbs WITH battery in it, and has enough power to run almost anything exept games and video editing.( But trying to play games on a laptop is just stupid anyway, small screen and no mouse or full keypad) http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&cate gory=31558&item=6736232824&rd=1&ssPageName=WDVW (sorry if i am not suposed to link to auctions, it was the only english page i could find since its a japanese laptop)
The new centrino chips are amazing, to put it simply. If you put a 2ghz Pentium M into a desktop and slap on a liquid cooling system, you can overclock it to be way more powerful then a 3.46EE or even a 3.8ghz P4. The pentium M is just years ahead of its time, and people having figured it out yet! Its kinda like black lotus for all you magic players!

Under 'investment amount' for 180 Solutions. It points here.

No, the story was also corroborated by Ben Barnes, then Republican Texas Lieutenant Governor. And others corroborated the eyewitess accounts of more recent destruction of records, like record books in trash cans. The story is plain as day, though Bush tried to bury it in avalanche after avalanche of incomplete, though announced as "final" and "thorough" documents of his service. There's lots of evidence for his favor, and not nearly enough of even the cushy service he was offered, that he apparently blew off in favor of drinking and working for a political crony of his father's.

Look, if you're so up in arms about "journalistic integrity" (though you relentlessly dispute every contrary response in every thread you post from your privileged Slashdot "author" account), why don't you post a story about the Fox station in Tampa, whose FCC license is challenged for their steady stream of rightwing lies and coverups?

The World Trade Center towers took 7 years to finish. The Apollo Project took roughly 8 years (from 1961 to 1969) to get someone on the moon. The Hoover Dam took 6 years to finish construction. Each of these (for all their majesty) were either constrained to a relative small geographic space, and a small amount of material.

Broadband has been available to the public since about 1997, and to be complete, requires running cable to every household in the USA. The only hard number I could find comparable for that was Miles of High Voltage Transmission Wire in USA, approx 160,000 miles for bulk transmission. On google, some renewable energy sites indicate that the US has over a million miles of wire for distribution networks (last mile connects). That's a lot of material to run.

The US Interstate system, designed in 1956, will be complete to the original spec in 2006, and that's only 46,000 miles.

I agree with your argument that we should never rest on our laurels, and strive to be the world leader, but let me just throw in that we can be the world leader in this field too, just give the industry a little time to get us there...

We just recently saw a report that had broadband usage at 51 percent in the US. More on google.

76 percent of all statistics are made up on the spot.

It's also interesting to see the lawsuits that Microsoft has filed:

Microsoft sues controversial system assembler

Microsoft Sues Lindows.com Over Name

Microsoft takes on teen's site MikeRoweSoft.com

Microsoft sues Lucent in old dispute

Microsoft sues Brazilian magazine, IT official for defamation

Microsoft files lawsuit against five Md. firms

Of course, since they usually either buy out the company, develop and market a competing product, they don't need to resort to lawsuits for those type of situations.

Yeah, you're right. These problems are just too difficult to overcome, so we should instead just use privately owned automobiles, a system that we know has all the kinks worked out, especially when driving home at 5:00 PM on the 101.

The likelihood of Acclaim going out of business is what?

Acclaim is actually doing well? You must be talking about a different Acclaim, but not the one that publishes shit title after shit title.

Because This Acclaim has financial troubles. Or were you being sarcastic?

Sorry if I misunderstood.

Wait, you must've been sarcastic, because Virgin/Vivendi/Fox may very well end up selling their software subsidaries.

I don't know anything about the state of Argonaut.

Ethanol is just a tax give away to corn growing states.

Wrong. According to this Minnesota Business Journal article:

"the total economic impact of the Minnesota ethanol industry was estimated at $588 million in 2002. In comparison, the state's ethanol subsidy for the year was $33.7 million that means the economic impact was 17 times the subsidy payment."

And remember, you're talking about ethanol as opposed to gasoline, which we get from terrorist nations, which costs over twice as much as E85 fuels (E85 sells for $0.90/gallon) and pollutes substantially more.

It takes more energy to make ethanol than you get out of it.

Wrong. Even in 1988 energy generated by the ethanol exceeded energy inputs by 16%. Nowadays that number is closer to 34%, according to a USDA study.

But about the other part... I am still using latest WA 2.x on my 90 MHz Pentium laptop vith 40 megabytes of memory and Windows 98 in it. I don't think it as bloated or dog slow.

And I just had to check:
the Winamp Browser (as it apparently was known back then; later known as Winamp Mini-browser) came with the second 2.x version, 2.10 released on 3/24/99. (http://www.sonicspot.com/winamp/history.html)
AOL bought Nullsoft a few months after this, on 4th of June 1999. (http://www.bizjournals.com/phoenix/stories/1999/0 6/07/story2.html) I know you didn't say AOL brought the stupid browser, but I really wanted to say it did not :-)

Anyway, this truly is bad news for many Windows and Winamp users around the world.

Here's one about Kerry and Heinz...

http://sanjose.bizjournals.com/sanjose/stories/200 4/04/19/editorial2.html

Nothing will change until we get out of a two party system mentality. Nothing. I don't understand why people don't see that it's just too fucking easy for a powerful group of people to buy BOTH parties, give the general population the bone every four years, and say "just be glad you have the right to vote!" When was the last presidential election where we actually had someone we really wanted to elect? 1992 :-/? 1980 :-)? 1960?

If the Internet is supposed to be this massive force of change, why can't an internet based "popular" party nominate someone through the Internet, and then everyone can vote for that person to do an end-around this fucked up two party system? You know, I can just see all the fat-assed geeks say "well, just think of the fraud from overseas voters, and blah blah blah." Well, instead of just sitting there on your big fat asses and criticize, why don't you use your supposed massive intellect and THINK of a way to do a national based internet nomination of a candidate... Our only other alternative is for everyone to choose another party such as this or this.

I also think it's time for all the Democrat and Republican Koolaid drinkers to wake up from their coma and realize these two choices are actually more alike than different. They are in agreement with military issues, immigration, and other misc. topics. So what does that leave, abortion? Great, that's leaves a whole lot for me to pick from...

Until then, don't be surprised for another round of pick the worst of the two in 2008...

Media Fusion. Was a fraud, as most on Slashdot expected. Here is what happened to the founder, thank goodness.

The firm has already been slapped with large penalties (over half a million) in the past for conflict of interest:

http://www.bizjournals.com/portland/stories/2003/0 8/11/daily8.html

That doesn't seem to have hurt their business much.

Sorry to beat a dead horse, but you had good points that I wanted to respond to, and clarify myself on.

I completely agree that ease of use is completly subjective. So I was wrong to say that Apple products have a smaller learning curve than MS products. It boils down to preference and past exposures.

I agree that MS's programming is probably not much worse than most Unix-like systems(Except BSD which seems pretty hardened to me), what I mostly meant is that security takes a back seat to everything else. Defaulting to administrator is one of them, but also things like having applications automatically run when downloaded. I know they have some of the best coders working for them, but they are probably drowned in beuracracy and not allowed to take the logical choices for implementation.

I was thinking back to the 98se and ME days when I was talking about crap software. From what I've used of 2000 and XP they seem much better, but it's taken them a LONG time.

And last, but not least, the XBOX. Regardless of how many they've sold or how well it's doing they have lost millions on it. There's an article here that talks about it some. Basically they sell there massive system at a loss to themselves and hope to make it up selling games and online services, but it hasn't went that well so far.

The really idiotic part was that the class action lawsuite was dismissed because "the class had suffered no damages." One law firm's reaction was the potential value of this ruling as a defense for future privacy theft instances.

Trials of this technology were abandoned in the UK in 1998/1999 (I seem to recall), due to the problem of street lights acting as transmitters, causing significant interference with emergency services transmissions.

There have been lots of trials since 1998 when Edwin Blair invested in Luke Stewart's Media Fusion LLC. All of them failed, but actually for reasons much more fascinating than what you wrote about. Please read the Dallas Business Journal article from March, Media Fusion founders named in suit by Jeff Bounds:

During the height of the technology boom, William "Luke" Stewart had a vision for what seemed like the ultimate breakthrough for the power industry. And many people believed him.

The self-proclaimed "powerline communications guru" [even lying that he had been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize] claimed to have developed a system for delivering high-speed Internet access over electrical wires, that would circumvent the telecom network. The network is encumbered by the so-called "last mile" problem of getting data quickly through copper telephone wires built to handle phone calls.

[...] With Dallas entrepreneur Edwin Blair, Stewart in 1998 formed what would become Dallas-based Media Fusion L.L.C. to commercialize the idea. Despite rampant skepticism in the scientific community, they landed some $16 million in financing with backers like retired Navy Rear Admiral James Carey, Democratic Party chairman Terence McAuliffe and former Rep. Robert Livingston, R-La.

[...] Today, the dream has collapsed. The company has shut down, though some people believe attempts may be made to revive it. And Blair and Stewart are under federal criminal indictment in South Carolina.

Please read the entire article and more importantly my other comment to this story where I include much more details about the whole BPL scam. Very interesting read.

"Luke Stewart -- self-proclaimed national treasure -- carries on. Chances are, we haven't heard the last of him, because Stewart sold his vision best to the one person who will never pull the plug: himself. Once you become a man with a Big Idea, the mundane details of the scientific method can never match the thrill of changing the world with a sweep of your hand."

Anyone knows what happened to Luke Stewart since then?

Trials of this technology were abandoned in the UK in 1998/1999 (I seem to recall), due to the problem of street lights acting as transmitters, causing significant interference with emergency services transmissions.

There have been lots of trials since 1998 when Edwin Blair invested in Luke Stewart's Media Fusion LLC. All of them failed, but actually for reasons much more fascinating than what you wrote about. Please read the Dallas Business Journal article from March, Media Fusion founders named in suit by Jeff Bounds:

During the height of the technology boom, William "Luke" Stewart had a vision for what seemed like the ultimate breakthrough for the power industry. And many people believed him.

The self-proclaimed "powerline communications guru" [even lying that he had been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize] claimed to have developed a system for delivering high-speed Internet access over electrical wires, that would circumvent the telecom network. The network is encumbered by the so-called "last mile" problem of getting data quickly through copper telephone wires built to handle phone calls.

[...] With Dallas entrepreneur Edwin Blair, Stewart in 1998 formed what would become Dallas-based Media Fusion L.L.C. to commercialize the idea. Despite rampant skepticism in the scientific community, they landed some $16 million in financing with backers like retired Navy Rear Admiral James Carey, Democratic Party chairman Terence McAuliffe and former Rep. Robert Livingston, R-La.

[...] Today, the dream has collapsed. The company has shut down, though some people believe attempts may be made to revive it. And Blair and Stewart are under federal criminal indictment in South Carolina.

Please read the entire article and more importantly my other comment to this story where I include much more details about the whole BPL scam. Very interesting read.

"Luke Stewart -- self-proclaimed national treasure -- carries on. Chances are, we haven't heard the last of him, because Stewart sold his vision best to the one person who will never pull the plug: himself. Once you become a man with a Big Idea, the mundane details of the scientific method can never match the thrill of changing the world with a sweep of your hand."

Anyone knows what happened to Luke Stewart since then?

Your point 4 is, in fact false, and your point 3) is strange.

Regarding point 3), a list of people interested in buying Iraqi oil is sort of a "duh". I mean, you know the US was already buying almost half of the oil sold by Iraq through the oil for food program, right?

And regarding point 4) you need to show that Cheney A) was making "mad cash" from i) "salary" and ii) "stock options". I suspect you'll have a hard time because B) Halliburton stock is actually down since Cheney took office, and C) Cheney sold all his stock and options during the 2000 campaign just so critics wouldn't carp on it. Foolish guy, eh? It didn't stop people like you from either lying or being uninformed, did it?

I'll be charitable though and proactively admit Cheney *is* getting money from Halliburton. In fact, he's continues to receive annual payments of "deferred compensation" of about $150,000 per year through 2005. This may offend your income-disparity sensibilities but I submit that it's not that unusual for a CEO of a Fortune 200 company. And you still haven't shown how the swings in Halliburton stock would affect that or otherwise get him "mad cash". I'm sure it's his evil buddies all cashing in, isn't it?

If you want a more accurate picture, I'd suggest putting together more than 4 dots next time. It's more than "1. X 2. Y. 3. ??? 4. Profit" you agree, right? And I'm not even a conservative!

--LP (who listens to both right-wing talk radio and Air America and that Liberals are so stupid when it comes to Halliburton... see this old post on this topic for supporting evidence)

Three patents once registered to Lowell minicomputer-maker Wang Laboratories could cost Sun Microsystems Inc. $1 billion, following a jury verdict Friday afternoon in Rochester, N.Y.

Jurors ruled that Sun's Java web software infringes the patents, which were acquired by Eastman Kodak Co. in 1997, first reported Friday afternoon in the Rochester Business Journal. The same jury will assign damages, with Kodak asking for $1 billion.

No more PA-Risc.
No more Alpha.
No more Itanium Workstations
No more open source (except for lip service)
No more Bluestone software (based on open source.
No more HPUX.
No altavista when they bought CPQ.
No more Vision
No more Hewlett Packard name
No more Walter Hewlett or Packard involved.

Seems to me that last one triggered when it all started falling apart.

Hewlett and Packard built one of the greatest companies in the history of Silicon Valley; and Carly managed to tank the thing in a couple years trying to pretend she can be a Michael Dell commodity-vendor.

I wish they'd just change the name to Carly&Co to stop trashing the inintials of two of the greatest heros of silicon valley.

If you want to save the thing, people should really bring back Walter Hewlett to the board and make him Chairman. At least he understood what his father's company stood for.

No more PA-Risc.
No more Alpha.
No more Itanium Workstations
No more open source (except for lip service)
No more Bluestone software (based on open source.
No more HPUX.
No altavista when they bought CPQ.
No more Vision NO more Hewlett Packard name
No more Hewlett or Packard involved.

Seems to me that last one triggered when it all started falling apart.

Hewlett and Packard built one of the greatest companies in the history of Silicon Valley; and Carly managed to tank the thing in a couple years trying to pretend she can be a Michael Dell commodity-vendor.

I wish they'd just change the name to Carly&co to stop trashing the inintials of two of the greatest hheros of silicon valley.

There is one respect in which Austin is going wireless: Verizon is offering citywide wireless coverage for Austin. However, this wireless access is neither fast nor free; the proposed price is $80 a month, and the speed is 300-500 kbits/sec down, 50 kbps/sec up. Therefore, this is yet another case of an individual business offering a sort of wireless access, but they claim to cover an entire city, and they charge.

I suspect that Carly got the job during the height of the Dot Com boom largely because the HP Board of Directors were jealous of the successes of the Dot Com companies that, at the time, were overvaluated by factors of hundreds to thousands.

Here was HP, a real technology company that had produced real hardware for generations, and these gimmicky newcomer Web sites (essentially just a bunch of pages with hyperlinks), founded by gangly 20 year olds, were worth billions of dollars. HP's board probably thought, "We have to get in on this action, even though it completely defies logic."

Back in the Dot-Con boom, a lot of companies soared in the market place using "romantic" press releases about their companies' histories. Some of these histories were fakes, or overly simplified tall-tales, but who cared about journalistic integrity in the days of Henry Blodgett (a financial "analyst" who rated highly the companies that his employer was taking IPO) and day traders? To get a sense of the era and the attitudes of the day, look at the Real Video segment reported by Paul Solman in February of 1999 on the PBS news program, "The News Hour with Jim Lehrer" at http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/cyberspace/jan-june 99/internet_2-4.html. In other words,

1. Create a "cool" story, which...
2. Attracts the press and media (always looking for good stories so that people will buy their rags or watch their financial "news" shows; more eyeballs means more advertising revenue), which...
3. writes exciting stories that capture the imagination of day traders and other amateur investors, causing them to invest (gamble) in the stock, which...
4. Causes the value of the stock to skyrocket, which...
5. Makes people want it more, which...
6. Goto 2. (Repeat infinitely until the world runs out of money. Or people wise up.)

Thus, Cisco Systems fabricated the story about its founders, Len Bosack and Sandra Lerner; according to the company history, Bosack and Lerner, who were married (how romantic!), wanted to find a way to communicate with each other across disparate networks so they could synchronize the feeding of their domestic cats (how cute!), and voila!, invented the routing technology that became Cisco. In fact, the technology had been started years earlier as part of a funded project before Bosack had arrived from the University of Pennsylvania -- but in the Dot Con boom, reality (and mundane histories) didn't mean anything. (See http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit19981210. html)

Likewise, EBay's humble beginnings were also faked, as detailed in Adam Cohen's book "The Perfect Store: Inside EBay" . According to EBay's websites, Pierre Omidyar wanted to sell his fiancée's Pez candy-dispensers, and voila! created the auction web site to solve his problem. The geek and the fiancée(how romantic!), the selling of Pez candy-dispensers (how cute!). Cohen reveals that the story was completely phony, concocted by a PR person, but it helped to encourage press editors to run stories and press releases about EBay.

Even billionaire Larry Ellison recognized the value of the press in warping the logic of the financial world. He hired a CNET journalist , Gina Smith, to become CEO of his New Internet Computer Company (NIC) (http://sanfrancisco.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/ stories/2003/04/21/story7.html?page=1). Who in their right mind would hire a journalist to become CEO of a technology company. NIC would tank after the Dot Con bubble collapsed. But it seemed logical during the era, didn't it? Who better than a journalist would be the master baite

Between 2000-2003, employees annual premiums for family coverage increased 48.9%. There's a lovely graph here of what this looks like.

This year, in 2004, it went down. Just kidding, it went up another 11%.

Individual health care coverage is $3,695 per year on average. $9,950 for family coverage.

Over the last three years, family premiums have increased by more than $3,512 and prescription drug prices have grown four times faster than inflation.

For a good solution, see here.

Enjoy your "tax cut"!

http://www.zogby.com/search/ReadNews.dbm?ID=259 Gore up 5.4%

http://www.zogby.com/search/ReadNews.dbm?ID=276 Gore now up 7%

http://www.gsm.ucdavis.edu/visitors_center/news/ha gerty_predicts_gore_win.htm UC Davis "statistical analysis" predicts Gore win

http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2000/11/6 /184917.shtml Zogby predicts Gore win (Nov. 6, 2000)

http://www.bizjournals.com/milwaukee/stories/2000/ 11/06/daily19.html Online (yeah, I know) Harris poll predicts Gore win

http://www.apsanet.org/PS/march01/lewisbeck.cfm Gore post-mortem off by almost 7%

It's not that hard to dig this stuff up.

I quoted from the article you referenced, BTW - I didn't think that was too hard to follow.

Perhaps my initial post was overstated (as are yours, BTW, even moreso) - but again, more precisely, all that *I* had heard from the news was (generally speaking) larger margins for Gore, and it turned into a statistical dead heat - and similar errors in the many other issues at hand during previous elections. My links "prove" that you are a liar (or dishonest) by your logic....even with your subsequent artificial constraint about weighting later polls more heavily, and focussing exclusively on the popular vote for the president.

Are you being dishonest now, because I dug up evidence to the contrary? Hmmm....

Obviously, the polls are often off by more than their statistical margin of error. Sometimes significantly so. Perhaps I was factoring in more local, and other national issues - I did not constrain my observation to national polls of the presidential popular vote. Even still, it is easy to dig up plenty of polls that support that.

I have no intent to deceive, and I am also not a Bush supporter.

The article in the summary seems to have been /.ed so here is another article I found.

You can't break the law and then bitch about how the law is wrong. Its questionable if chalk advertisements are legal, companies typically pay permits for that medium. After IBM and NBC outraged people by spray painting messages around town, I think advertisers are treading lightly. If chalk advertising was clearly legal you'd probably see "eat at mcdonalds" all over your city.

Well what's the real complaint, that he was held without a reason or that he was arrested for chalking the sidewalks? Did the cops give him a reason, later on, when they weren't in front of cameras? If not, I agree that's fascist. When asked, "Do you have any fear of being arrested during the Republican Convention?" JK responded: "I think anybody planning an act of civil disobedience has to accept the risk of getting arrested ... There is a chance I could be arrested. Am I criminally defacing property? I don't think so." I think he knew what he was doing was legally questionable.

I work in advertising, so I know chalk art is questionably legal. I guess that's my point. Read for yourself:

Chalk art is one form of guerrilla marketing, an in-your-face, direct-to-the-people kind of advertising. Guerrilla marketing in public spaces can be tricky and even illegal, as Nike and Microsoft found out separately last fall when they took heat from New York City officials for slapping promotional decals on sidewalks and buildings. "I guess we haven't addressed that during any meeting I've attended," says Heather Freeman, who does public relations for Red Sage (www.redsage.com). The chalk art is just supposed to be "fun and friendly." It's unclear whether the city agrees. The District typically requires permits for any disruption of a public space, including an event or activity that might hinder foot traffic or the movement of the disabled on a sidewalk. Permit requests go to the city's Department of Transportation, and permits are issued by its Department of Consumer & Regulatory Affairs.

Personally, I think it's bullshit if they are enforcing it to different degrees, like letting pro-lifers put messages everywhere but not letting the bike guy get the word out. He obviously wasn't keeping the shit low-profile by talking to the media.

But then nobody will ever learn to tell Wyoming & Colorado apart.

An internal short in the batteries made by LG Chem Ltd., of South Korea, can cause the battery cells to overheat, posing a fire hazard to consumers.

Can you please explain to me how this benefits me? BTW, thats a great privacy agreement. No where does it state they won't sell your personal information. IE: Name,address,phone.

Then you won't mind if we cut Oil subsidies or Stadium Subsidies.\

??? You seem to be arguing with some other post, yet you quoted mine. I don't understand where you get these ideas, because you didn't get them from me. Perhaps you are just frustrated. Well, I hope your day gets better.

Read the articles my friend, you decide!

Article 1
Article 2

At the time, Disney had individualized the stores as much as possible (within a given template), so each store would have unique front window displays and different character figures scattered throughout the stores. He had a large photo album with photos of all the different stores he had been in, documenting the differences.

Of course, this was before The Disney Stores started to...

• suck, by changing their merchandise mix from adults/kids clothing/housewares/art to strictly kids merch with the occasional adult sweatshirt thrown in
• suck, by being implanted in every single mall across the country, instead of isolating to a single storefront in the larger, more touristy-oriented cities making a trip to a Disney Store less of a special thrill and something routine
• suck, by diluting the brand that The Disney Store had achieved by failing to stock merchandise that folks couldn't also get at their local J.C.Sears-Mart.

I can't speak to Seattle's market, but in Austin Starbucks isn't exactly the venue of choice for most people--the local coffeeshops are greatly favored here. Coffee's better, wifi is free (austin has one of the highest per capita free hotspot ratios in the country) and most of them serve booze as well. :)

In a city that's as big on local business as austin is, I find it hard to believe they're trying to cater to the "NPR" market.

Actually the CEO of Best Buy Refused his last bonus offering and had it dispersed among lower ranking employees

http://www.bizjournals.com/twincities/stories/2004 /05/17/daily12.html

Beware ignorance.

In case anyone is extra curious here, Luke Stewart and his "Media Fusion" idea have gone belly up since then; http://www.bizjournals.com/dallas/stories/2004/03/ 22/story5.html Company is defunct, and he is under federal indictment for money laundering and wire fraud. Still swears his idea will work though :-P

This is a great article. (But Score:0? Moderators are obviously on crack again.) Please let me quote few relevant fragments. Media Fusion founders named in suit by Jeff Bounds from the March 19 2004 print edition of the Dallas Business Journal:

During the height of the technology boom, William Luke Stewart had a vision for what seemed like the ultimate breakthrough for the power industry. And many people believed him.

The self-proclaimed powerline communications guru claimed to have developed a system for delivering high-speed Internet access over electrical wires, that would circumvent the telecom network. The network is encumbered by the so-called last mile problem of getting data quickly through copper telephone wires built to handle phone calls.

With consumers and businesses demanding access to high-speed data services, and with the last-mile problem making it difficult for phone companies to deliver, Media Fusion's technology promised a fast and easy solution that could potentially enable utility companies to dominate the Internet-access market.

With Dallas entrepreneur Edwin Blair, Stewart in 1998 formed what would become Dallas-based Media Fusion L.L.C. to commercialize the idea. Despite rampant skepticism in the scientific community, they landed some $16 million in financing with backers like retired Navy Rear Admiral James Carey, Democratic Party chairman Terence McAuliffe and former Rep. Robert Livingston, R-La.

Stewart even testified before a House committee on connecting rural America to cyberspace.

Today, the dream has collapsed. The company has shut down, though some people believe attempts may be made to revive it. And Blair and Stewart are under federal criminal indictment in South Carolina.

Each is charged with one count of wire fraud and money laundering in the alleged defrauding of a utility there, Scana Corp., to lend $1 million to Media Fusion for research-and-development efforts, according to records and interviews.

Prosecutors allege the pair made numerous false statements in securing the loan from Scana, including that Stewart had been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize.

A group of about eight individuals who invested a total of $80,000 in Media Fusion recently convinced a Texas appeals court to force McAuliffe and Livingston, who both live out of state, to face a civil suit here. The two men, who are among multiple defendants in the suit, have 30 days to appeal the March 3 judgment to the Texas Supreme Court.

Regardless of what happens on the appeals front, the battle has forced the shareholders to spend time and money on the question of whether McAuliffe and Livingston should face trial here rather than on discovery, or a pre-trial information exchange, on the claims they are making in their suit.

Bruce W. Bowman Jr., a partner with Dallas-based Godwin Gruber L.L.P., represents the plaintiffs. He says that if the appellate court decision isn't overturned, discovery should be completed in six months and a trial could begin as early as next spring.

There have been limited settlement discussions, though no deal is pending, he adds.

Bowman's clients, who formed an organization called Hagerty Partners Partnership to invest in Media Fusion, claim that Blair and Stewart used calculated and deceitful use of publicity to promote the wealth potential of their company and to land investors, most prominently in a December 1999 article in D magazine.

Records say the article contained a number

Non-profit as in reaally non profit? Or non-profit as in United Wayyyyy non-profit?

"The grand jury at the federal level has had a troubled history. Required by the Constitution as a check on judicial and prosecutorial abuse, it has often been used as a tool of abuse against political dissidents. Most grand juries are mere "rubber stamps" for prosecutors, but others become "runaway" grand juries, taking the lead in investigations of official corruption and abuse."

"And unlike a search warrant situation, where the agent has to obtain permission and authority from a judge to seize records or property after demonstrating probable cause to believe an offense has been committed, in the case of a grand jury subpoena the discretion of the prosecutor is virtually unfettered."

MOTION TO DISMISS INDICTMENT, OR IN THE ALTERNATIVE, FOR ADDITIONAL DISCOVERY OF GRAND JURY PROCEEDINGS, DUE TO ABUSE OF GRAND JURY PROCESS

You see, there's this thing called Google... National Semi sells unit to AMD.

It's a minor point, but they've actually changed their name to "just" SBC, since they no longer cover just the Southwest.

This is like America On-Line becoming "just" AOL to make it more international, and Kentucky Fried Chicken becoming "just" KFC to de-emphasize the fried part (or, if you are inclined to believe such things, because what they serve is not really chicken. :))

For a while, they kept regional names whenever they bought out a phone company, but they've dropped those too now. So when they bought Pacific Bell, they kept it as "SBC Pacific Bell." Now it's all just "SBC." This will be familiar to anyone who paid attention when they changed PacBell Park in San Francisco to SBC Park.

Work on another aircraft, the L-29 jet trainer, to convert it to a RPV started in November 1995 and continued until at least 2000. The L-29, although smaller and less capable than the MiG, could still be used to deliver CBW agent in quantities that would pose a significant threat to neighbouring countries.

I've got an eCard with Whoopi Goldberg's picture on it... how can that have become worthless?

I'll see your Whoopi eCard and raise you an authentic GroceryWorks.com "Punch-A-Bunch" magnet. It's a business-card sized magnet / punch card. No idea what you got when you accumulated 10 punches, though it has a picture of a $100 bill in the 10-spot. I'm also unsure how they were planning to punch a hole in the thing -- it's at least a half-millimeter thick.

I'll put it on eBay one of these days. Another artifact of the dot-com bust.