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They's doing what now?

Well, here's another reason to not throw butts out the window.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/20 05/02/18/BAGM9BDF021.DTL

Boingboing recently had an article pointing to a Flickr Photo Set about the Bernal Heights Illegal Soapbox Derby. Lots of silly cars, and the one rule is that every car is required to have a beer holder. Usually Halloween, sometimes other weekends as well.

The Pixar/Disney story is very interesting, if only for showing the kind of attitude that Pixar has (compared with the normal Hollywood flacks): when push came to shove, Pixar made the move "their way", walking away from the Disney bosses and their "Geld". Shortly thereafter the Disney media bosses decided it really was the best thing ever, and got back on board. And they proceeded to take as much credit for the outcome as they could, of course. If you've ever worked with the publisher/media boss types, you know what they are like, and greatly appreciate the backbone that Jobs and company showed.

Here's the source of this quote:

... Disney, which was bankrolling the project, peppered the young animators with notes and suggestions. The story was too juvenile, the higher-ups said, and the characters had to be edgier. Afraid to trust themselves, Lasseter and his crew tried to follow all the directions.

It was, nearly everyone agrees, a train wreck. Disney hated the movie and the idea -- and shut it down.

"Yeah that was fun,'' jokes Pete Docter, who was nominated for Oscars for "Toy Story'' and "Monsters, Inc.'' "And it happened right around Christmas, too.''

Lasseter recalls that he "begged'' for two weeks to fix things. The animators went back, took out all of Disney's suggestions and made the movie they wanted to make in the first place.

And, naturally, when they screened the new version, Disney execs loved it...

Thanks media bosses!

It was interesting to read this article after just last night hearing a short news blurb on my local CBS affiliate about the porn industry is "embracing" the new iPod with man on the street interviews with people who don't like the idea of having the "guy sitting next to them in class looking at porn," and overarching implications that parents should be alarmed and ready to take up arms to defend their kids' innocence.

Other perspectives:
Pornographers embracing iPod
Will iPod Be Eye for Porn?
Harness iPod's dollar power -- porn on the go
How do you know Apple's new device will succeed? iPod Porn
Apple iPod delivers "iPorno" revolution

Here is a link to an article that discusses the jobs program and some of the problems that towns in Mexico are having due to loosing workers to the US.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2 005/10/27/MNGQFFEGB41.DTL

Why do you think the truth is sinister? Do you have any facts to show that the Mexican government encourages illegal immigration into the US?

To me it would seem like they would be loosing the people that are willing and able to go out and work, the workers that you would most want to keep to help build your economy.

As a matter of fact, they are.

How will we ever do without the US's vaunted, impeccable integrity running the Internet? You know, the vaunted US integrity displayed by their invasion of a sovereign country under false pretences? Or the great work they've done in helping combating racial poverty in their communities? Or the work of their high ranking politicians? Or their work in preventing the spread of fatal disease in Africa?

How can we possibly be safe without the US controlling the Internet?

In 2004, court-ordered wiretaps increased by 19%. This number doesn't even include terror-related wiretaps (which number an unheard of 1,754). It also doesn't include so-called "secret" wiretaps, allowed by Patriot.

The only groups these wiretaps hurt are the law-abiding citizens. The smart (read: dangerous) criminals have it all figured out-- Prepaid cell phones.

Pre-paid cell phones are literally disposable, one-use toys to the bad guys. You don't even need a fake ID, just cash, and not all that much at that. How can they tap your phone when you use a different phone for each call? The best they could do is tap all the pre-paid phones and listen to every conversation out there -- good luck with that! (wanna bet the NSA is big into voice recognition?)

Someone should point out that the U.S. hardly seems like a country and culture that champions free speech.

Protesters are placed in "free speech zones" (nice euphemism!) where they will not be seen on TV
http://www.cnn.com/2004/LAW/08/04/hilden.freespeec h/
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/ch ronicle/archive/2004/01/04/INGPQ40MB81.DTL

A high-school student who made a political poster got a visit from the secret service (they confiscated the poster)
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/170992_prosser 28.html

Police, FBI, and Homeland security frequently target and harrass protesters
http://rawstory.com/news/2005/ACLU_sues_Homeland_S ecurity_for_arresting_spying_on_vegans_who_protest ed_0922.html
http://www.progressive.org/mcwatch04/mc1021a04.htm l

The FBI defines peace groups as "terrorists"
http://rawstory.com/news/2005/ACLU_reveals_FBI_lab eled_peace_affirmative_action_group_terrori_0829.h tml

An Ohio paper did not print some story for fear of being jailed.
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/artic le_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000976374

The government has misrepresented and altered the conclusions of scientific panels on global warming and other issues.
http://www.wired.com/news/medtech/0,1286,62339,00. html

Officials how have an unpopular (but true) message are fired (numerous), their wives are targeted (Plame), etc.

The BBC says the "embedded journalist" restrictions on the Iraq calls into question the credibility of Americas media
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/ 20030425/media_nm/iraq_media_bbc_dc_4

People were excluded from church for being of the wrong party.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/church_politics

Airline passengers who ask questions are targeted
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&cid=512&u=/ ap/20040317/ap_on_go_coairline_passenger_screening _3&printer=1

The US has a history of killing non-US journalists in Iraq...so many times that it's getting hard to believe it's not intentional.

People wearing anti-Bush T-shirts arrested
http://www.cnn.com/2004/US/South/08/21/heckler.fir ed.ap/index.html

Teachers Evicted From Bush Event for Wearing 'Protect Our Civil Liberties' T-Shirts.
http://www.progressive.org/mcwatch04/mc101604.htm

Someone wearing an anti-Bush T-shirt was kicked off a Southwest plane.

and so on...

Certainly, America is not as bad off as Saudi Arabia, but that's not saying much.
This is not a country we can trust to safeguard free speech on the internet.

I think Americans only u

"Perhaps we should censor classic paintings depicting naked breasts"

You are aware of Ashcroft hiding the spirit of justice?

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/ 10/17/BUGT5F8K4U1.DTL&type=tech
Article about WIFI security in the SF area.

Since Chrichton isn't a scientist I don't think we should mix his opinion piece with the work of scientists...
Here's a little light reading for perspective:
http://info-pollution.com/mc.htm
http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20050121/n ews_lz1e21benford.html
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/ch ronicle/archive/2005/02/16/EDG49BAVBT1.DTL
etc..

Other sources state that seven Samsung executives may still face criminal prosecution.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2 005/10/13/entertainment/e174541D44.DTL&feed=rss.ne ws

Kerrigan & Harding Musical Opera!!!

An image makeover, since he's considered by some to be the Darth Vader of environmental politics?

"Why in the world would you think your (cell) phone would work in your house?" he said. "The customer has come to expect so much. They want it to work in the elevator; they want it to work in the basement."

Seidenberg said it's not Verizon's responsibility to correct the misconception by giving out statistics on how often Verizon's service works inside homes or by distributing more detailed coverage maps, showing all the possible dead zones. He pointed out that there are five major wireless networks, none of which works perfectly everywhere.

Gregg Miller mortgaged his home and maxed out his credit cards to mass produce his invention -- prosthetic testicles for neutered dogs.

What started 10 years ago with an experiment on an unwitting Rottweiler named Max has turned into a thriving mail-order business. And on Thursday night Miller's efforts earned him a dubious yet strangely coveted honor: the Ig Nobel Prize for medicine.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/news/a rchive/2005/10/06/national/a165024D53.DTL&type=pri ntable

From an an article [sfgate.com] at SFGate.com last Wednesday, "Google's deal with NASA Ames will be a long-term lease of at least 60 years that would allow the company's rent payments to be plowed back into the campus for improvements, real estate sources said."

It seems odd at least for a company whose motto is "do no evil" to negotiate a deal in which the rent paid on public property is turned around to their 100% benefit rather than being used for something like offsetting other tax payer funded costs at NASA Ames.

Perhaps their motto should be "do no evil that any of our competitors wouldn't do in the same situation."

I understand the legal system adequately. You need to understand that doing the right thing trumps European legalities when lives are at stake.

Take a read of this - this happened a couple of weeks ago - a Greek airliner lost cabin pressure - everyone died:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2 005/08/16/MNGVAE8CRS1.DTL
Aviation experts puzzled by clues in Greek disaster
Crews well trained to handle cabin decompression

Or it can follow a malfunction in the pressurization equipment, although such systems have built-in redundancies to prevent such problems.

You see these "built-in redundancies" mentioned there? The new system this guy is working on won't have them.

Now he's chief engineer for the company designing that one crucial control, so he's the domain expert. If he thinks there is a problem, industry is ignoring it, and the judge is siding with them and issuing a gag order, he did the right thing by following his conscience.

As you darkly imply, he may have sacrified his career because of his troublemaker status. Worthwhile price to pay to follow your conscience.

this is not a dupe, the article you linked to was about google VPN access. there were clues that google would be creating an sf wifi network, but this article confirms it. (google has actually submitted a bid to the city.) here's a link to the sf chronicle's article: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2 005/10/01/MNGG9F16KG1.DTL

I think you're confusing Libertarianism with Anarchism (if that can even truly be an -ism.) Anarchism may point you away from rules in general, but Libertarianism is about a minimum set of rules. Most specifically, harming other people and/or their property is still very much against the rules, and very much still punishable.

(To those who might miss out -- check out "Nolan charts" and the two-axis model for political thought. There's an example on my site, if you're lazy. There are authoritarians and libertarians in both directions. The Libertarian party -tends- toward being freedom-loving in both directions. Other parties vary greatly.)

The problem with "imposing lots of rules on everybody, but at least the majority agreed to them" is that it goes counter to the very principles of our nation -- namely, that laws exist to protect minorities. Only doing what majorities like is mob rule -- which isn't very different from what we had thousands of years ago, or for that matter very recently, with posses and lynchings.

Why did we go to so much trouble to separate church and state? Was it because the atheists were the majority? Heck no. Why did we go to so much trouble to to protect free speech? Was it because the powerful with an interest in controlling the media were the minority voice, and the people as a majority wanted to speak freely? No! People -still- support obscenity laws; back then, they had a lot more topics they felt you shouldn't be talking about. It took a lot of convincing at the time to show representatives from the colonies that they all had differences -- and that leaving each other alone, rather than trying to find and impose a majority rule (whatever the majority) -had- to be the only solution for getting along. We get along best when we impose fewer rules on each other, not more.

The USA is an experiment. It was intended as such. It was noble, and it was radical, it was revolutionary. It was also not intended to be permanent. The founders had just finished a revolution; many saw no reason why another should not occur. They meant for us to move forward, but we stagnated.

Libertarians may believe in conservation (the ecological kind) -- because resources know no boundaries. You can't expect to pollute and not harm other people; you're harming others and/or their property, so it's a problem. Some even fail to believe in owning land, because it's not the fruit of labor; they see it as an inheritance of all mankind, something to be shared. (That's only 'some', however.)
They may also believe in socialist-seeming welfare systems, but they'll most likely be voluntary. Those who band together voluntarily, and give up their resources for the common good, receive the benefits. Those who don't, don't.
They are, however, very likely to believe in the right to gay marriage (it's just a contract, and we shouldn't have a say in what contracts you can form), the use of drugs of any sort and for any (personal) reason, the possession of weapons (it's the use thereof that causes problems, not the possession); they'll allow prostitution and gambling. Heck, they'll allow polygamy. What they will not do is allow rapes, murders, thefts, muggings, kidnappings, and the breaking of contracts (marriage vows or otherwise). Man-on-dog and man-on-child sex, contrary to the belief of some (Santorum), are not automatically allowed simply because gay marriage and polygamy are allowed -- you still need consent; a dog cannot communicate it, a child is not ready to provide it.

As to people who don't agree, and want more restrictions? I'm all in favor of them keeping to themselves. That's what independence is for. But -some- people just can't let others go. How many rebellions have we put down or helped to put down? (Serenity's universe is a parallel to the US Civil War -- on that subject, I think it was wrong to prevent the South from leaving, but it was right to want to free the slaves. Maybe we could have had it both ways. It can be a tough call, deciding when to intervene in the matters of others.)

I think this is where I insert the comment about life immitating bbspot or somesuch?
I can't remember where I saw the link for this originally, but here it is.

cheers, morgan

My thoughts exactly. Besides the supercomputing stuff, I can hardly see any relation between Google's and NASA's mission.

There's a very important piece of information in the article:

"The agreement would allow the company to design and develop a campus for whatever needs it envisions.

Google has been hoping to expand for at least a year, combing the Bay Area for suitable sites, including downtown San Francisco and San Jose."

I guess they took the hint from George Lucas

It seems odd at least for a company whose motto is "do no evil" to negotiate a deal in which the rent paid on public property is turned around to their 100% benefit rather than being used for something like offsetting other tax payer funded costs at NASA Ames.

Perhaps their motto should be "do no evil that any of our competitors wouldn't do in the same situation."

In fact, geeks make better lovers.

See:
http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/317296p-271 224c.html
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/ch ronicle/archive/2005/05/08/LVGFJCI2A71.DTL
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/lifestyle/26662_sexy geek.shtml

If they refuse to take it back for cash, get an exchange for the same CD..then another, then another.

I've suggested this before, but others have warned that somebody who tries the strategy of returning multiple copies of the same defective title might get the customer branded as a "demon customer" and kickbanned from the store.

Actually, the average savings rate is now around zero, though whether that is a good or bad thing is left up to the armchair economists to apply their personal belief system to the numbers.

Bullshit. Here is the full interview. The man is a superstitious hypocritical asswipe, end of story.

Also, a great article on this from the Washington Post (via the San Francisco Chronicle, no registration req'd).

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/20 05/09/21/MNGRSER4141.DTL&type=printable

some choice quotes:

"I guess this means we've won the war on terror," said one exasperated FBI agent, speaking on condition of anonymity because poking fun at headquarters is not regarded as career-enhancing. "We must not need any more resources for espionage."

Among friends and trusted colleagues, an experienced national security analyst said, "it's a running joke for us."

A few of the printable samples:

"Things I Don't Want On My Resume, Volume Four."

"I already gave at home."

"Honestly, most of the guys would have to recuse themselves."

There was a recent article on the same topic in SF chronicle.

One of the compelling argument was "If the Chinese custom is to make children work or to kill women, you wouldn't do it," said Julien Pain, head of the Internet Freedom Desk at Reporters Without Borders.

I wonder where should the line be drawn.

While some of the people jailed are probably USA funded propagandists, I think that the majority of them are real journalists. Did you read Sean Penn's diary of his trip to Iran? I doubt that Penn is working for the Bush adminstration to spread bad stuff about Iran. His diary seems to be a "call it how he sees it" diary of an American in Iran. He saw tons of heavy-handed government practices towards journalists. It is real.

I personally know Iranians, and they too admit that the government locks up people for saying bad stuff about the theocracy. Not all of my Iranian friends want regime change (only the Bahai wants regime change), but they aren't delusional like you. There are real problems in Iran and especially its theocracy.

Yes the USA has and most likely continues to interfere in Iranian society, but you are batshiat crazy if you think that all of the jailed journalists are working for the USA. That is the same reasoning used by Bush supporters who claim that anybody that speaks against the Bush adminstration supports Osama bin Laden.

This

message is to every musician speaking out against file sharing:
get your facts straight, and stop regurgitating everything the major label tells you.
Anyone still clinging to the cage-format for music is either a middleman or lazy. Squidnecks

You major label suckers make me laugh
Do you really think your label would come out and say, "Hey we cut your paycheck in half because you've got to help pay for the 250 billion copies we give away. Have they mentioned when they cut new releases by 25% sales dropped 4.1% and they blamed it on P2P? Have they mentioned that they responded to that drop by raising the cost of your CD $1 every year? Does that seem like a good business move to you? Or does that smell like fear?
Ask yourself what kind of business would cut research and development first? I'll tell you: the business that's about to make it's bed up in a mother fuckin hearse.
While Hilary Rosen and the RIAA are trying to convince you that free listeners are a bad thing, those same five labels that pay them are charging you $500,000 to buy you spins
While you're negotiating whether or not the latest Napster pays you 1/3 of a cent per download, Comcast and AOL are turning the information highway into a toll road.
you know the end is near when Britney Spears is calling it a moral issue
they've positioned you right between their wallets and your fans
they can't really expect to turn the tide with a few pathetic lawsuits
So you gotta ask yourself how does one stop a flood? You build a damn.
IT'S THE ISPs, IT'S THE ISPs!
Comcast will have every last consumer on their knees
starting with 5.3 million subscribers to cable access high speed
they own the wires, so they can discriminate with bandwidth and queuing fees
guaranteed monopoly by the FCC so

We're standing on the verge of an artistic cleansing of biblical proportions I say bring it
when the wickedness of big business is great in the earth
and it will even try to sell the waters that it's drowning in
marching two rappers
two rockers
two composers
two programmers
onto a pirate ship
in a free-market flood
until businessmen are businessmen
and art is art again. Rock

this is not an issue of children not recognizing value in art
this is an issue of children recognizing value-less art
getting artists paid doesn't even play a part
The truth is
for the first time since it's creat

Hurricanes? Try http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2 005/09/02/national/w142153D44.DTL or a similar story where he admits the faults in his administration in responding. Wars? I don't think I need to give a link, W had at least a little to do with a war or two in recent history. I don't know what you're referring to with the drugs, however. No one makes that claim. Gore's loss? Well, yeah, that would be largely because of W. W's fault that the rest of the world hates us? http://www.twf.org/News/Y2002/1109-Poll.html isn't scientific, but it shows some attitude about this in lieu of a scientific European poll that I can't currently find. The main point, however, is that it was said the US and China are similar in one particular aspect. All of your later sarcastic comments are invalid by that same virtue, although you apparently knew that the author only meant it in that one respect. Adherence to treaties, or lack thereof, does not mean that the US has re-education camps. No one is saying that the United States and China are "practically the same country".

"Faces of burning man" series.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2005/ 08/28/burningfaces.DTL&hw=burning+man&sn=002&sc=89 7

THere is a tremendous amount of diversity at B.M.: Naked hippies on drugs with lots of money, naked hippies on drugs with less money, naked hippies on drugs in the visual arts professions, naked hippies on drugs who are attorneys, naked hippies on drugs who come from other countries, naked hippies on drugs from San Francisco . . .

Most computer users are not qualified administrators, in fact many of them are borderline computer illiterate. This isn't to say these people are dumb, they're just not very computer savvy. Such users tend to be able to use software they've been trained on or are familiar with but aren't likely to know exactly how it works. They click an icon, type in some values, and things happen. They don't need to know or care that the app is just a VB SOAP client talking to a web service via SSL hosted on the company's server farm. The guy down the hall in accounting needs to know how to do stuff in Excel, not how to write Excel.

That being said, these people aren't necessarily qualified to administer their own equipment. Some might have a bit of technical prowess but a majority of normal users are just that. So why are they put in charge of managing their own equipment and why are they able to take company information and property with them to get stolen or dropped down a flight of stairs? If they've got light communication needs how about Blackberries or Treos or some other connected devices. Quite a bit can be done through secured web interfaces or through web services with lightweight front ends. A little bit of well designed caching and users would be hard pressed to notice the company's database didn't exist on their little handheld device.

This approach isn't going to solve everyone's problems but it works for some in two major ways. The first is any single field employee can't take the sum of a company's data with them somewhere to have it hijacked by either action or omission. They're also not terribly likely to plug into an office machine and infect the whole network with some new Windows worm. A lost PDA might mean the company is out a few hundred dollars worth of equipment and maybe some confidential documents. A PDA that runs only application/web service front end software is really only out the value of the lost hardware.

If you've got responsible users you can probably trust them with full fledged laptops. For those that are almost more trouble than they're worth, give them cool gadgets they can work on but do limited amounts of damage with. This is of course in addition to better network security in and out of the office. If you've giving even advanced users a laptop to take home let them only take with them the data they absolutely need to get their job done. You don't want a laptop with 98,000 personal records on it stolen or something.

Check out http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/ 09/16/BAGSGEO6CE1.DTLthe more informative article from the above post...

The computer was actually sold for $1,195.50 -- *not* $1,159. Bail was set at $20,000.

$20,000 - $1,195 = $18,805

"The whole transaction only took about one minute," Alburati said in a statement to police. "She seemed suspicious, because she sold me an expensive laptop for such a low price. If the laptop was stolen, I did not know about it. I just took her word for it."

He hasn't been convicted as yet, just charged, which is pretty common. His defense will consist of trying to prove that he had no idea it was stolen and did, in fact, buy it in good faith.

It's not looking too good for him, though. A little more info on this guy's reasoning can be found here as well.

San Francisco Chronicle

However, said Froshling is SCUM. To buy a $2000+ laptop ($2500, but how old?) (X40 IBM) laptop for $300? He KNEW it was stolen. He's being nothing more than a fence with an EBay account. And he'll get off with just a misdemenor. SCUM!

The (unratified) global-warming pact required the United States to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions to 7 percent below 1990 levels by 2012. Yet, according to the Energy Information Administration, greenhouse emissions grew by 3.1 percent in 2000 alone; when Clinton left office, emissions were 14 percent higher than 1990 levels.

The latest figures from the Energy Information Administration are for 2002; they show that under the Bush administration, greenhouse gas emissions are lower -- they're 11.5 percent higher than 1990 levels. I won't credit Bush for the reduction, because the post-Sept. 11 economy was the big factor here, as the Sierra Club's Dan Becker pointed out. But if Bush truly were Satan on the environment, pollution numbers should have gone up, not down.

It sounded even funnier back when Intel sued a yoga group for using 'Yoga Inside'.

Intel forces yoga group to fight for its name

Not one person has been locked up because of his or her name. Now, if you so happen to have the same name of a know terrorist, or have been linked to a terrorist organization, you will be denied entry to the US.

Nope. You will be arrested, and sent to an allied nation to be tortured.

It would require some very complicated computer models

Actually, at it's basic level, it's really mostly a volume calculation. Just integrate over the landscape and you can tell how much additional water it can take, then factor in the influx. I believe the models that they use are more complex to accurately calculate the influx and uneven water levels at different points, but the result is that a single square mile of restoration equals a reduced surge of one foot.

In short, yes, the models already exist.

and then broke

Do you not know the meaning of "just", as in "The levee didn't just break"?

[I just read a story in the past 2 months about European drug makers outsourcing R&D to the US - not because of costs, but to get at better talent.]
And what makes you think no one will look at those India Institute of Technology graduates? What makes you think the US is the only source of better talent?

We are seeing a drop in the number of American students enrolling in the sciences because they don't think a degree in those fields can pay their rent and bills. Where, then, is the talent coming from?

[The next "big boom" is probably Biotech. The US is also a HUGE exporter of services. If the US outlawed the import/export of services (so software jobs would stop going to China/India), the US would be the loser. Any idea the amount of engineering, research, civil design, and international legal work is outsourced to the US? What about R&D? As examples, do you know that both Japan's giant NTT and France Telecom run R&D labs in the US?]

Biotech, you say?
Funny, how I was just reading about how biotech is being offshored to India.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/775 563.cms
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/ a/2004/04/18/MNGBM672L01.DTL&type=printable

And I bet you more engineering work is offshored from the US to elsewhere, than vice versa.

There's a reason why the US runs a trade deficit with the entire world. We're net importing goods and net exporting jobs.

Now exactly what services are we exporting, and how many jobs does that entail? Do you have any hard numbers to back this up?

Now I've shown you documentation about biotech being offshored. I would prefer you afford me the courtesy of backing up your claims with some hard evidence.

I can't believe that Apple managed to design, prototype, test, mass produce, market and ship the iPod in 9 months. They did. This article talks about how Apple hired Tony Fadell in early 2001 to begin development of the iPod. They worked with PortalPlayer on the hardware, and developed the software in conjunction with Pixo, Inc. According to this article, Pixo didn't even get the call from Apple until late spring 2001. It was a rushed product because they were so behind in that market, but it turned out to be one of the most successful things they ever did.

Suggestions for next steps:

1. Contact the California Dept Financial Institutions and tell them one of their licensees is committing financial embezzlement and racketeering under the guise of operating under their granted license
2. Contact the Santa Clara Country District Attorney's office and tell them a Santa Clara Country corporation is committing embezzlement and racketeering with charitable donations for Katrina victims.
3. Contact SF Bay Area news media (SJ Mercury News, SF Chronicle/Examiner, KRON 4 TV, KTVU 2 TV, KPIX 5 TV, KGO 7 TV) and tell them a Santa Clara Country corporation is committing embezzlement and racketeering with charitable donations for Katrina victims. Send E-mail and call them - hearing the story from multiple channels adds credibility.
4. Collect documentation of previous malfeasance (e.g. PalPay Sucks!) and broadcast it as widely as possible. That especially includes personal networks: make it a point to tell 5 friends and 5 strangers about PayPal's unacceptable behavior in the next 24 hours. Ask those you tell to investigate the truth themselves and tell 10 people they know also. Lather. Rinse. Repeat as necessary.

This ongoing and repeated abuse must stop now!

Yeah if the animals regenerate it will make it harder for PETA to kill them.

I've seen a few programs on the telly that show treatments for certain mental disorders that involve removing segments of the brain. That's the only reference I could dig out with a quick Google, but I'm sure there are others.

"as stated elsewhere most BT users won't break your knees, crush your nuts in a vise or bust a cap in your ass if you go after them."

And neither will the warez groups and the Chinese DVD factory owners and the guys with the contacts at the studio who get the screeners. There's a HUGE reading comprehension issue here, folks -- you're reading "organized crime" and I guess you're thinking of the Italian-American mafia or something. You're smarter than that. You should understand that "organized crime" means just that: more than one person working in cooperation. RTFA if you'd like to learn more. I can't believe this post was modded "insightful."

Regardless of this, the feds bust warez groups, bootleg DVD operations and other organized piracy schemes

Here's an example, and another one, and another one, and another one.

It took me all of like two minutes with Google to find these.