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It is your perspective that is wrong. Microsoft did a bad thing, they got caught (by the DOJ.) After that was over with, they were still up to no good. Jackson: Nothing has changed. http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/229468_msft jackson22.html [nwsource.com] And that is why they are in front of the EU. Except, they are 19 now, and Jr got caught with his pants down! So he hits up Dad to bail him out. Why don't you grow up and open your eyes to reality. Microsoft hasn't changed. They don't just need a swat on the rear. They need to be jailed, because the teen is still acting like a five year old. And as comparing to family, I have a 19 year-old step son that acts just like Microsoft. Getting into trouble, asking his parents to bail him out. What an idiot.

You sound like a very calmed, reasoned, rational person. I can't imagine why your 19 y/o stepson acts the way he does.

It is your perspective that is wrong. Microsoft did a bad thing, they got caught (by the DOJ.) After that was over with, they were still up to no good. Jackson: Nothing has changed. http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/229468_msft jackson22.html And that is why they are in front of the EU. Except, they are 19 now, and Jr got caught with his pants down! So he hits up Dad to bail him out. Why don't you grow up and open your eyes to reality. Microsoft hasn't changed. They don't just need a swat on the rear. They need to be jailed, because the teen is still acting like a five year old. And as comparing to family, I have a 19 year-old step son that acts just like Microsoft. Getting into trouble, asking his parents to bail him out. What an idiot.

I was amused to see a story about me in a slashdot entry. Certainly I have some opinions on the Amazon blogging issue :-)

Here's my homepage (including my notes about the Seattle P-I article) and here's my blog entry about this. I'll continue revising it.

-ted (I left Amazon earlier this year)

They are both out to defeat Democracy and establish dictatorships. Remove them both, now!

It is obvious from the U.S. invasion of Iraq, and Microsoft's misdeeds with the U.S. market since the 80's and the Department of Justice. Even former Honorable Jackson said "Nothing has changed." Microsoft should have been dismantled a long time ago.

Jackson: 'Nothing changed'
http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/microsoft/archi ves/005083.html

isn't this Iranian crack down on blogs in the same realm as the US Government illegally spying on its citizens?

So by your inferred premise, this guy should be punished more severely for leaking an illegally recorded private phone conversation involving 2 US citizens, right?

Amazing how government officials get away with this BS. If any private citizen tape recorded someone else's phone conversations without the consent of the parties involved, they might be staring at jail time. Hopefully, Congress will do the right thing and remove this dangerous, power-hungry madman from power immediately.

One of the authors of the Washington Post article cited above is Rita Katz, director of the stupidly named "The Search for International Terrorist Entities (SITE), which seems to be an asinine play on SETI. The SITE website is actually very light on real original content. As I revisited it tonight, I found that they have given citation for their copy and paste of the US State Department's Patterns of Global Terrorism 2003 Report, which is the entire contents of SITE's "terrorism library". A year ago, they did not offer this bit of enlightening data. This should be enough to question the veracity of the whole story.

Katz obtained a degree from the Middle Eastern Studies program at Tel Aviv University, and is speaks Hebrew and Arabic. She emigrated to the US in 1997. She has both personal and financial issues which could bias her analysis.

• Katz is Iraqi born, and her father was tried and executed as an Israeli spy, whereupon her family emigrated to Israel.
• Katz is/was a paid consultant for the law firm, Motley-Rice, which file a 1 trillion dollar lawsuit on behalf of the 911 WTC victims.
• Katz is author of the book Terrorist Hunter (HarperCollins, 2003) in which she writes of infiltrating US-based Arab groups to investigate terrorist connections as a private investigator, and receives a plug for the book in every bio blurb that is published with her articles.

Katz got her terrorism expert start working for Stephen Emerson, who himself has credibility issues.

Katz was the anonymous source for a 60 Minutes segment that alleged a chicken farm supported terrorism, and for which both CBS and Katz were sued by Gainesville, Georgia based Mar-Jac Poultry Inc., as well as two Virginia-based muslim charity orgs, for libel.

Katz was also a principle player an an egregious example of of post-911 governmental misuse of prosecutorial powers in the case brought against a Saudi Arabian Computer Science doctoral student at the University of Idaho, Sami al-Hussayen.

Al-Hussayen was charged with giving material support to terrorist, for doing volunteer web mastering of the site of the Islamic Assembly of North America, an organization which the government has never charged. He was also charged with 11 minor visa violations, one being that his student visa didn't allow him to work, and he had received $300 from the Islamic Assembly of North America spread out over his five years of volunteer work for it.

The jury in Idaho acquitted on all three terrorism charges, and 3 of the visa charges, but hung on the remaining 8 visa charges.

The main thrust of the material support charges stemmed from the website Al-Hussayen worked on having published 4 fatwas by 4 radical immans on it. A government expert witness blew holes in that theory when he admitted that he had published the very same speeches on his anti-terrorism website.

When Katz testified, she admitted to the same visa violations that Al-Hussayen was charge with, only she had earned real money in violation of her entry terms.

Katz's testimony ended Friday with questioning about her own visa problems when she entered the United States. Katz testified that as a new immigrant in 1997, she misunderstood work permit requirements related to her visa and was employed, in at least one job and possibly two, before she was legally authorized to work. Under cross-examination, she acknowledged that she detailed those problems in her autobiographical book, in which she expressed disgust for burdensome government re

I don't have all the answers, I just know that over-regulation and coercion is not it.

Check floating isn't the same thing as expecting delays in check cashing.

Wrong.

In 2004 a law known as "Check 21" was passed and put into action.

Please read up on what check floating is and what the law "Check 21" does.

Under new law, floating checks no longer float
New law sinks 'check floating' practice
Check Floating

Funny how Microsoft say that using the word Vista (Vista is the name of another product) in "Windows Vista" is OK, but they didn't like "Windows Defender" They quote "The name Vista is commonly used by a variety of companies in a variety of industries," she said. "We are only using the word Vista paired with our trademark Windows so the two together -- 'Windows Vista' -- form the name of our next operating system." http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstech nology/2002397450_microvista23.html Yet, Windows Defender had problems because they used the word Windows even though it was combined with the word Defender. "There is some controversy over the name "Windows Defender" with allegations that Microsoft used misinformation, or possibly intimidation, to acquire the name from a company supplying software under the same name [1]. Microsoft claims that it is protecting the term "Windows" as their trademark." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Defender

nope, that's for people in Fremont, the fun part of Seattle, where they are buying a property about a block from my house, near the Fremont Fire Circle.

pay no attention to the marketing folks, they aren't of concern.

It was on one of the Microsoft blogs today. With a news item in the business pages of the soon to be web-only Seattle PI.

Was this sour grapes for having been dissed last night?

What did you expect in this monopoly-controlled market? What does Microsoft have to do for you? Surely, you MUST be doing something wrong if the Bush Administration agrees that Microsoft should remain a monopolist. (Retired Honourable Thomas Penfield Jackson: 'Nothing changed') What did you expect partnering with a Monopolist? How about developing your own standard or adopt Sun Microsystems Open DRM standard if you need to co-exist with the RIAA and the government? Don't give Microsoft what it wants. Give it what it deserves. You do have options. Go ahead and complain to the EU, but don't think for a moment someone else will save you out of this. These are your choices available. Die, Live in Freedom, or Live under absolute rule of the dictatorship of Microsoft, your choice. It is a choice WE ALL have to make. I choose freedom. And sometimes, that means taking a risk in spite of opposition to that objective. Are you going to take a stand, or are you going to be a disgrace and just stand there and take it. Show me what you've got inside your heart... Gold or Jello?

A microsoftie named Linda Criddle had some level-headed MySpace safety advice. It was so good I couldn't add much value to it in my security newsletter for non-technical people, except to attempt a teen-compatible explanation of why posting sexy pictures is a bad idea.

Moderators, please notice cmpalmer's comment, sibling to this one, and please moderate it appropriately (meaning, up).

Obtain a groundswell of support in EUROPE for a jumbo-sized AMERICAN company?

If the case were wrapped up right away, MS would really be in difficulty. However, MS has been able to drag it out several years already and even affect the selection of judges and the decision process. It took ten years for MS' investment in Craig Smith to pay off. Neli Kroes has yet to payoffm, but there's no hurry since MS benefits from each day of delay. There's no reason yet to believe that MS can't keep the EC hopping on the end of it's leash until either the clock runs out and there are no audio or video options except WMA and WMV, or the campaign kicks in. Before MS was a political movement and ideology, it was first a lobbying firm grown from a marketing firm, so there is probably time to run what is effectively a psyops campaign using the mainstream media.

You're also already seeing the shills piping up all over the place attacking MS' competitors, trying to start a myth by implication that MS has been competing on merit rather than mostly by illegal and anti-competitive means.

Microsoft's general counsel said "Transparency is vitally important in what can be a very opaque process in Brussels. We've decided to open this up so people can understand the issues."

Also a ZDNet article, FSF berates apathy over Microsoft antitrust case , reports that the FSFE has criticised EU IT firms for not supporting the EC in its antitrust case against Microsoft.

ZDNet report that George Greve said in a blog entry that "[the] FSFE has been working on this case for many years, from the original investigation, over the 2004 decision, to the European Court case where it is now one of two [active] remaining third parties on the side of the European Commission. I only hope that more companies will help us defending their interests in this -- to this date, FSFE has received virtually no support for this case from the industry. Consequently, all the credit belongs to the free software community, including in particular the Fellows of the FSFE."

Greve also responds to the new EU complaint by ECIS applauding it, but pointing out that this may seem inconsistent as Microsoft has already reached individual settlements with ECIS members such as RealNetworks and Sun.

Also there is a good Guardian article from a few days ago which summarises and criticises recent rebuffs by MS to the EC's decision.

Also there is an entry on Tod Bishop's Microsoft Blog, Lessig advocates Microsoft , reporting that Lessig supports Microsoft's InfoCard project.

Countries act in their own best interest. It isn't the American governments job to worry about anyone but Americans except to the extents that other countries problems affect America. They have enough work to do at home.

The focus on internet search engine companies is specifically because they are making private deals with China, deals China refused to discuss with a congressional delegation when it traveled to China to ask them about it. (see some of my earlier posts.)

Search engine companies are expecially worrisome because they hold the information thats the key to national competitive advantage. More importantly, there are a large but unknown number of "nation sponsored" industrial espionage groups operating here in the United States, not only from China, but from some of the tiniest countries in the world as well. And almost all of them use Internet search engines extensively in some part of their operations, and could do a lot more if they had access to the internal records of a company like Google or Yahoo.

A few hours ago, a spammer was sentenced for stealing a 1.6 BILLION customer records from Acxiom, one of the the companies that basically controls what your background check reveals, http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/1700AP_Comp uter_Privacy.html

The search engine companies internal records are potentially a lot more dangerous than Acxioms (see some of my earlier posts for why). A lot of people are seriously concerned when foreign nationals start sniffing around them and aren't very transparent about what they are doing.

If you have beachside property, I suggest you sell while it's still structurally sound.

BTW: Canada's CBC has it's own take on the melting glaciers in Greenland.

Datbox, my email is shown in my profile. Feel free to contact me directly.

This weednesday, Frys had their $69 motherboard/processor deal. It included 3 PCI slots which is necessary to support all the tuners I planned on having in my rebuild. I purchased $38 of memory from NewEgg (went from $34 for the PQI to $38 for the Corsair). I bought my drives from Frys when they dropped to $109 with $60 in rebates for Hitachi 250's ($49 after rebate). This weekend drive is Seagate 250 PATA's for $69 after rebate -- and a gig of Corsair Value Ram for $49 after rebate. If you missed Wednesday's motherboard, the Intel version of the same board (integrated video, 3x PCI) is available in P4506 for $109.

You'll still pay "full price" for your tuners. Get a dual-tuner Hauppauge MCE500. You won't regret it. Then, add HiDef. You won't reget it either.

Here's the Frys ad online. This one's from Renton, but 99% of their ads are national. Vacuums and other household products are least likely to be on sale. Motherboards, drives, memory, networking -- almost always all national.

http://shopping.nwsource.com/ROP/ads.aspx?advid=15 0914&adid=2607297&cat=3525

At the same time, the company [Microsoft] says it doesn't want InfoCard to be the only program of its kind. The program uses non-proprietary communications standards, and Microsoft says it would like to see the people and companies behind other operating systems, such as Linux and Apple's Mac OS X, create their own programs similar to InfoCard, to make the approach more common.

The approach "essentially adds an identity layer to the Internet," said Microsoft's Turner, calling such a layer sorely needed in today's online world.

"satellite data and ground stations show slight cooling over the last 20 years."

Not really - that slight cooling you refer to has been shown to be due to satellite drift.
Due to that drift, satellites cahnged their measurement point from a location where it was around 12 o'clock in the solar day to a point where it was 12 o'clock - thus on average a cooler time in the day.

"Records have been created by merging data from nine different MSUs, each with peculiarities (e.g., time drift of the spacecraft relative to the local solar time) that must be calculated and removed because they can have substantial impacts on the resulting trend [11] [12]." from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satellite_temperature _measurements

"Measuring long-term temperature trends from satellite data is tricky because satellites over time drift a bit in their orbit. This means that the time of day when a particular satellite is measuring temperature in a specific location can change by several hours over the course of a few years." from http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/ 2002439279_warm13.html

Lawyers, apparently.

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/259038_msft campus10.html

It's perfect for MSN's iLoo..

On the contrary, I've asked for references to scientific works, but all you've provided are references to non-technical work.

How convenient; in other words, there is no need to investigate the information I provided because it conflicts with your pre-determined outcome of what you believe science should prove in the future.

The scientific basis for that work seems hard to discern, to the point where I question its existence.

Doesn't this statement contradict your previous statement? If you refuse to investigate how can you possibly have an opinion about something you have never studied?

You appear to have a strong faith in things that are at odds with the evidence in the world around us, and your explanation for this discrepancy is a supernatural one, based on faith.

What evidence, unproven scientific theories that throw away data in order to prove there is a possibility they might be right without actually proving their theory?

Here is a quote from http://www.fredheeren.com/boston.htmpaleontologist Jun-Yuan Chen:

The debate over Haikouella casts Western scientists in the unlikely role of defending themselves against charges of ideological blindness from scientists in communist China. Chinese officials argue that the theory of evolution is so politically charged in the West that researchers are reluctant to admit shortcomings for fear of giving comfort to those who believe in a biblical creation.

"Evolution is facing an extremely harsh challenge," declared the Communist Party's Guang Ming Daily last December in describing the fossils in southern China. "In the beginning, Darwinian evolution was a scientific theory .... In fact, evolution eventually changed into a religion."

Here are some more links that talk about data "Neo-Darwinian" believers don't want to discuss:

http://www.icr.org/index.php?module=news&action=vi ew&ID=51Dinosaurs, Grasses, and Darwinism

http://www.icr.org/index.php?module=articles&actio n=view&ID=2033The Devastating Issue of Dinosaur Tissue

http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn6874La rge mammals once dined on dinosaurs

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/248836_dino 18.htmlDinosaur poop shows grass is older than it seems

You can write me off as some kind of crackpot; though, the mounting evidence keeps rolling in. Why is there an abundance of C14 in everything from diamonds, coal and dinosaur fossils? The list gets very large very quickly, though as I have been saying all along:

There is a principle which is a bar against all information,which is proof
against all argument, and which cannot fail to keep man in everlasting
ignorance.
That principle is condemnation before investigation.
--Edmund Spencer

If you don't believe me, well look at this article. They got their information from these guys.

Oprah ran lies about Hurricane Katrina on her show and she never retracted them. She allowed Mayor Ray Nagin on September 5th claim that "They're murdering people in there (the Superdome)." Louisiana National Guard and State health department officials said no one had been murdered inside the stadium. So what's worse? A book about an addict that was spiced up or a public official using Oprah's airwaves to promote false news to a nation that public policy might have been based off?

Because Google won't be using Windows Media.

Seems like old news to me... haven't they been trying to compete with iTunes with their video store? And doing a pretty bad job [Seattle PI] so far.

A more interesting question for me is, why would someone make up such an obvious pack of lies and for what reason?

I am not sure, maybe you can ask the guys who wrote such glowing reviews of 'Doom'

Well, in the interesting thign is, in HTML, you can name links anything you want, even things totally unrelated to page's content.

Like, for example, you just did.

The page says, and I quote, 'dozens of lawmakers said they will donate any Abramoff-related contributions'. 'Related', as is being spun by the Republicans, means 'given by someone who paid Abramoff money'. not 'contributions from Abramoff'

And there are plenty of people who thnk this is, indeed, stupid and a few who got accused when the people making the donatation hasn't even hired Abramoff yet. But I guess the second anyone gave Abramoff a single dime, all those contributions they normally did magically became tainted somehow. (Like I said, the various donors have a hell of a libel case if they want to follow it up.)

But, as you apparently don't understand that, here you go. Where Deborah Howell explicitly says, duh, that Abramoff didn't give any money to Democrats.

However, she's still repeating the lie that he 'directed' his clients to do so, despite her complete inability to actually cite how she would know this, or why their donations in relation to Democrats dropped from the pervious year, while their donations to Republicans rose.

But you don't need stats, you can disprove that claim by simple logic. What Abramoff 'directed' his clients to do would logically be known by two people at the start of this, Abramoff and his clients. The investigation into Abramoff hasn't turned up anything suggesting this, and they certainly haven't admitted it. (No, the PR move of returning the money is not relevant here.)

So...um...how does everyone 'know' this little fact about what was going through everyone's minds when they wrote out the campaign contribution check? Because the Republicans made it up.

I think I've demostrated the campaign contributions didn't pass through Abramoff, and if you want to assert that Abramoff 'directed' donations, feel free to come up with some evidence of that, and not by citing papers that repeat GOP talking points, but actual facts.

This is hardly surprising behaviour from these triggerhappy people.

Wasn't there some other D&D related lawsuit too?

Apple sold fewer computers in FY2005 than FY2000. In the same periods Dell more than doubled. Apple stock value has nothing to do with computers but everything to do with the iPod. So, why compare it with Dell?
And Michael Dell is not the only CEO making stupid remarks about other companies. How about Steve Jobs comment about Microsoft going out of business?

Can't they just get a classified warrant?

There's a good explanation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court here, as well as more information on George W. illegally bypassing said court here.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/APWires/headlines /D8F0QFU86.html

I don't doubt this story is accurate, but AP has had some pretty sensational blunders recently, so important to provide correct attribution and know how it was sourced.

Speaking of that, I'd love to know who originated this sound of freedom story ... and shake their hand ... priceless!

But eMagin executives say they expect people to get used to the appearance, in the same way that Bluetooth headsets are no longer uncommon.

It's a neat idea, but this particular model will never catch on as the EyeBud has the unfortunate effect of making the wearer looking like a Borg from Star Trek (and not 7 of 9, either!). While the iPod is a great device, the main reason that it was practically sold-out in stores and online this Christmas is its sleek look, small size, and stylish marketing campaign. In general, that's when all techy devices catch on in the general population, from home PC's to laptops to cell phones -- when they're small enough and attractive enough that the user doesn's look like a geek. Well, that and the price tag; nobody's going to pay $600 to look like the biggest dork on the block.

Bring the price down under $200, and streamline the design so that it looks like an extension of a bluetooth headset or maybe a pair of mirrored Oakley look-alikes. Sure, that'll probably take a couple of years. But only then will it be worth marketing this device as "the next big thing".

here

If you don't want to login to NYT, heres my "Top Ten List of New Cool Crap for 2005":

1. Curious Georges new free Wiretap program
2. Birdflu v.2.0
3. Boxing Day sans Tsunami
4. European CIA Jail System
5. Removal of Marti Gras from your travel ideas
6. A (great) Daily Show spinoff
7. The spread of Scientology
8. Marines shooting at and killing escaping hostages
9. Adoption Press Release Kits
10. Stem Cell Magicians

http://www.studentsfororwell.org/

of course, the secret service actually comes to the door of many kids...

here are 3 diff examples:
http://www.progressive.org/mag_mc100405
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/170992_prosser 28.html
http://www.warblogging.com/archives/000379.php
http://shockandblog.com/blog/modules.php?name=News &file=article&sid=16
http://shockandblog.com/blog/modules.php?name=News &file=article&sid=18

Let me guess. Everything bad that is happening is made up. All of it. They are all partisan attacks to make George Bush look bad. We are actually living in the freest paradise on the planet and nothing bad happens here. ...

http://www.studentsfororwell.org/

of course, the secret service actually comes to the door of many kids...

here are 3 diff examples:
http://www.progressive.org/mag_mc100405
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/170992_prosser 28.html
http://www.warblogging.com/archives/000379.php
http://shockandblog.com/blog/modules.php?name=News &file=article&sid=16
http://shockandblog.com/blog/modules.php?name=News &file=article&sid=18

Let me guess. Everything bad that is happening is made up. All of it. They are all partisan attacks to make George Bush look bad. We are actually living in the freest paradise on the planet and nothing bad happens here.

Oh, and how does a fake story illustrate real abuses? wtf?

How about the fact that prior to 2001 the FISA court "modified" only 2 warrants, where after 2001 it has been 179? Now, if you're the Prez, and you have the choice between letting these cases drop or exercising executive authority (that may, contrary to popular opinion, be perfectly legal) to find terrorists in-country? Even if you come down on the side of sticking w/ FISA, at least admit that it's not exactly a no-brainer to do so when you've been shut down by them so many times.

And since I know not many /.ers read conservative news sources, a recent editorial in The Weekly Standard included this....

On Monday, December 19, General Michael Hayden, former director of the National Security Agency and now deputy director of national intelligence, briefed journalists. The back--and--forth included this exchange:

Reporter: Have you identified armed enemy combatants, through this program, in the United States?

Gen. Hayden: This program has been successful in detecting and preventing attacks inside the United States.

Reporter: General Hayden, I know you're not going to talk about specifics about that, and you say it's been successful. But would it have been as successful-can you unequivocally say that something has been stopped or there was an imminent attack or you got information through this that you could not have gotten through going to the court?

Gen. Hayden: I can say unequivocally, all right, that we have got information through this program that would not otherwise have been available.

Two talk show hosts were ruled to have provided "in-kind" political contributions by supporting a gas-tax repeal.

More here.

Free-speech has been repealed by John McCain and the courts.

Boeing (Renton) complete final assembly of a 737 in about 12 days on a production line that is constantly in motion. The line spits out in the order of 25 new aircraft a month.

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/223741_air1 1.html

Only three countries - Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates - recognize the Taliban as the legitimate government in Kabul.

They also donate to local charities in the Pacific Northwest, these don't get as much publicity as the big AIDS donations, or software which have large dollar amounts but they make news here in the Pacific Northwest quite often.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/20 02657023_gates01m.html

http://www.gatesfoundation.org/StoryGallery

Ya know, Microsoft was widely favored to win a major deal for a chunk of AOL when TimeWarner was deciding who to make "man of the year"...

I'm surprised none of you slashdotters caught that coinkydink.

Even though Billy lost, he at least has this PR plum as a consolation prize.

Problem is there are hardly any spoils to go around for the winner of this little competition. Billions put into research and development for these two formats and I find it highly unlikely either will take off. Like everyone has already said, hardly anyone has a HDTV to take advantage of them, these are expensive devices, and people are not going to be willing to re-buy the old movies and TV shows they just bought on standard DVD just to view them at what most of them would probably call a 10% increase in picture quality. I mean look at this article from two years ago about regular DVD's: "TV shows old and new send DVD sales soaring" http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/tv/137267_tvondvd.ht ml "Now new and old television shows are being released at such a blistering pace that the genre is becoming the fastest-growing segment of the booming home video industry." Do you really think that "blistering pace" of sales would occur again for a new format so soon after DVD? Like I said people just bought this stuff for crying out loud and now these corporations want them to buy it all over again?

Here in Washington state, it's still perfectly legal to have sex with horses, but draw Bush's head on a pike, and the secret service will show up.

It's already been done.

It takes 1.4 million complaints to get action over the DNC list then I would say the DNC list is somewhat of a failure.

I'm going to guess that CNN jammed together some facts - this article makes some guesses at the number of people on the list that were called, saying "in the thousands". Certainly not in the millions. And of course it's doubtful many of the people called bothered to file a complaint, which is why the FTC just arbitrarily assessed a penalty of the maximum penalty per call per day.

The article implies that the entire program has received 1.4 million complaints overall, which seems reasonable.