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The Star Wars Money Machine

Darth Cola writes " The Star Wars franchise has made George Lucas plenty rich. But his fortune is only a peice of a much bigger financial pie, one which Forbes.com estimates at just shy of $20 billion. They have a rundown of the Star Wars financial empire, and a market by market breakdown of where the money comes from." From the article: "It all started with a story treatment, handwritten in pencil on a few sheets of lined yellow legal paper. That's all that existed of the multibillion-dollar financial empire, now known as the Star Wars universe, when filmmaker George Lucas sat down in 1974 to write what, within three years, would be the biggest meteor to hit Hollywood since there's been a Hollywood."

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  1. Exclusive: Who Is 'PJ' Pamela Jones of Groklaw.Net by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic
    Exclusive: Who Is 'PJ' Pamela Jones of Groklaw.Net?

    Pamela Is A 61-Year-Old Jehovah's Witness Who Lives In A Shabby Genteel Garden Apartment In Hartsdale, New York

    By: Maureen O'Gara
    May 7, 2005 09:15 PM

    A few weeks ago I went looking for the elusive harridan who supposedly writes the Groklaw blog about the SCO v IBM suit.

    The now-famous opinion-shaping open source leader Pamela Jones, aka "PJ," doesn't give conventional face-to-face interviews. Never has, near as anyone knows. All communication is virtual. Only one person in the world has ever claimed to have met her - in the pressroom at LinuxWorld in Boston complete with a Pamela Jones badge - and described her as a fortyish reddish-blonde who giggled a lot.

    [Photo: May 7, 2005 12:37 PM - 304 North Central Avenue, Hartsdale, New York. The last known address of Pamela Jones, as the superintendent of the building calls it, Ms. Pam Jones.]

    Oh yeah? Wonder what cold crème she uses.

    Pamela Jones is a 61-year-old Jehovah's Witness who lives in a shabby genteel garden apartment in desperate need of an interior decorator on a heavily trafficked commercial road at 304 North Central Avenue in Hartsdale, New York. Hartsdale is in Westchester and Westchester is IBM territory.

    See, even though Groklaw treats cell phones like they were Kleenex and changes its unpublished numbers regularly, one number it left with a journalist led to this flat and - wouldn't you know it but - some calls from there had been placed to the courts in Utah and to the Canopy Group so obviously this just isn't any Pamela Jones.

    Pamela has lived in apartment 1A for 10 years at least, according to the super, who says he's watched people move in, have children, and the children marry and move away.

    Now, this isn't your usual anonymous New York apartment. It's practically a self-contained village where the super goes for the old ladies' groceries when there's snow on the ground and people know each other's business.

    [Photo: May 7, 2005 12:41 PM - 304 North Central Avenue, Hartsdale, New York. The last known address of Pamela Jones.]

    But the super didn't know much about Pamela except that she had a computer, worked at home (maybe sometimes) for a lawyer, was "paranoid" - his word - and "sensitive to smells."

    He remembered how he was cleaning paintbrushes one day and she came running down the stairs screaming "Fire."

    She was also missing and had been for weeks.

    Nobody there knew where she was.

    She had up and disappeared one day, and the super was worried about her. He said her son had dropped by and he didn't know where she was, and that some strange man that "nobody knew," as the super described him, had tried to get into her apartment while she was gone - the Medeco lock she had had installed on her door - something nobody else in the complex seemed to feel a need for - was more expensive than the door. But, as it happened, the super said, she had just sent in her rent in an envelope postmarked Connecticut.

    Like an episode out of "Where in the World is Carmen San Diego," the trail led to 10 Bittersweet Trail in Norwalk, Connecticut, 24 miles away. Sure enough, parked in the driveway was Pamela's car, just as the super had described it, a dark gray '90s Japanese number with a bunch of Jehovah Witness pamphlets tossed on the backseat.

    The woman at the house, Barbara Jones Sharnik, told a disjointed story. She didn't know Pamela, Pamela hated her, Pamela wasn't there, Pamela left her car there because it got bumped, Pamela left her car there because she left town, and so on.

    Afterwards Barbara called the cops, and then the cops called the number we left with her and the cops said that she was Pamela's mother and that Pamela was on the run and had shacked up with her mother because she had gotten "threatening mail" weeks before and that she had just gotten spooked again because "people were getting hurt around [my] stories" and had lig

  2. star wars by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    Chinese hackers

  3. peice? by Lingur · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    A peIce? What kind of ice is pe?

    1. Re:peice? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

      I before E except after P

    2. Re:peice? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Offtopic

      ...yellow.

  4. Feel good by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    City's breaking down on a camel's back.
    They just have to go 'cos they dont hold back
    So all you fill the streets it's appealing to see
    You wont get out the county, 'cos you're bad and free
    You've got a new horizon It's ephermal style.
    A melancholy town where we never smile.
    And all I wanna hear is the message beep.
    My dreams, they've got to kiss, because I dont get sleep, no..

    Windmill, Windmill for the land.
    Learn forever hand in hand
    Take it all in on your stride
    It is sticking, falling down
    Love forever love is free
    Let's turn forever you and me
    Windmill, windmill for the land
    Is everybody in?

    Laughing gas these hazmats, fast cats,
    Lining them up-a like ass cracks,
    Ladies, homies, at the track
    its my chocolate attack.
    Shit, I'm stepping in the heart of this here
    Care bear bumping in the heart of this here
    watch me as I gravitate
    hahahahahahaa.
    Yo, we gonna go ghost town,
    this motown,
    with yo sound
    you're in the place
    you gonna bite the dust
    Cant fight with us
    With yo sound
    you kill the INC.
    so dont stop, get it, get it
    until you're cheddar header.
    Yo, watch the way I navigate

    Windmill, Windmill for the land.
    Learn forever hand in hand
    Take it all in on your stride
    It is sticking, falling down
    Love forever love is free
    Let's turn forever you and me
    Windmill, windmill for the land
    Is everybody in?

    Dont stop, get it, get it
    we are your captains in it
    steady,
    watch me navigate,
    ahahahahahhaa.
    Dont stop, get it, get it
    we are your captains in it
    steady, watch me navigate

    1. Re:Feel good by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

      Kool Keith, is that you?

  5. Hilarious by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    Best troll ever!
    You Lunix faggots really got pissed about this one, didn't you?

    1. Re:Hilarious by Saeed+al-Sahaf · · Score: -1, Offtopic

      Oh YEAH! O'Gara hit a home run on this one! The Zealots are all foaming at the mouth, spitting all over everything, just amazing...

      --
      "Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
    2. Re:Hilarious by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

      Getting banned from LunixCon or LinsuxWorld or whatever is a badge of fucking honor. Wear it proudly, O'Gara

    3. Re:Hilarious by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic
      She's got her own site for those that want to continue reading her "stories". You'll have to Google for it, can't remember the URL...

      The thing about this is that PJ/Groklaw walked RIGHT INTO THIS TRAP!