[Quote:]

A meeting of members of the European Commission and Council of Ministers will today and tomorrow discuss whether the European Union’s intellectual property laws are holding back the region’s competitiveness.

Asking the question is answering it. If thee European Union’s intellectual property laws aren’t holding us back, you’d never even asked the question in the first place.

And that’s where the good news ends:

The Commission has produced a review of the EU’s innovation policy and put it in context with other nations’ and regions’ policies. That review says that intellectual property laws in the EU could better favour business.

That’s the wrong way around. You want innovation? Rewrite the laws so they better favour the consumer – if you’re in the pockets of corporations when you write these laws, there’s not going to be any innovation. If you’d rewritten the laws ten years ago in the manner this report suggests, the mp3 format would have been outlawed.

The Commission has long campaigned for the creation of a single EU patent but has in the past failed to win the support of the European Parliament for the plan.

Of course – the new laws would really have fucked innovation, and Parliament recognized that (after lots of prodding of people in the software business, of course)

“The European patent system is costly and fragmented, discouraging innovation compared to the US and Japan. The difference in patenting costs in comparison to these countries is significant and is not being reduced. It is high time to change this situation,” it said.

Fine. SCRAP most of the laws, and you’ll see patenting costs go down significantly.

[Quote:]

I know you guys are relieved that Vista is almost officially dead. But throwing a party for Windows 7? Really? That’s like having a party to celebrate the fact that your hemorrhoid surgery was a success. I mean, yes, you’re glad the painful roid is gone. You look forward to being able to sit down without wincing. But you don’t necessarily invite all your friends over to talk about it.

[..]

The even more scary thing is I know Ballmer and his circle of sycophants are up there telling themselves that yes, this Win7 party idea is stupid, and yes, this video is awful, but hey, “at least people are talking about Windows 7, right?”

Yes. You are right.

[Quote:]

The Federal Reserve System has disclosed to the Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee Inc. that it has gold swap arrangements with foreign banks that it does not want the public to know about.

The disclosure, GATA says, contradicts denials provided by the Fed to GATA in 2001 and suggests that the Fed is indeed very much involved in the surreptitious international central bank manipulation of the gold price particularly and the currency markets generally.

[Quote:]

Turns out, though, it’s a lot more fun when you imagine these guys are helping you plan a… slightly different party.

Apple has spent what seems like 10 years trying to make PC users look dorky with their “I’m a Mac” advertisements. And along comes Microsoft and does a far better job at it.

Notice the clock on oven starts at 3:20 and ends, 6 minutes later, at 5:01. I hate to tell these folks, but after 1.5 hours, you can assume no one else is going to show up.

I can’t help thinking that, if Microsoft had come out with a well-managed, well-produced and enjoyable ad campaign that didn’t make everyone cringe, they wouldn’t currently have half the internet talking about their product launch. So perhaps this is actually brilliant…

[Quote:]

It’s become the conventional wisdom that the tortured will say anything to make the torture stop, and that “anything” need not be truthful as long as it is what the torturers want to hear. But years worth of studies in neuroscience, as well as new research, suggest that there are, in addition, fundamental aspects of neurochemistry that increase the chance that information obtained under torture will not be truthful.

Torture is more about sadistic self-indulgence and dumb insistence on a pre-formed opinion than effective intelligence-gathering and strategy; as such, it fits in perfectly with American foreign policy.

The stupid, it hurts….

[Quote:]

A huge outback dust storm – 500 km (310 mi) wide by 1,000 km (620 mi) long – swept across eastern Australia and blanketed Sydney on Wednesday, September 23rd, disrupting flights and ground transportation and forcing people indoors for shelter from the hazardous air, gale-force winds, and in some places hailstorms. Those few who ventured outside, especially at dawn, were greeted by a Martian sky, familiar landmarks blotted out by the heavy red dust blowing by. Collected here are a few photos of the worst dust storm Sydney has seen in 70 years, three of which you can click to see a before/after fade effect. (26 photos total)

10
A woman takes a photograph with the Sydney Opera House shrouded in dust behind her on September 23, 2009. (GREG WOOD/AFP/Getty Images) #

Remember the Incredible, amazing, easy! video I posted.

They made a Microsoft version as well – this time from Microsoft COO Kevin Turner’s July presentation to analysts. Here it is, but first, the Apple video again:

[Quote:]

[Quote:]

A Wyoming bank sent an e-mail containing sensitive customer data to the wrong Gmail account, and now wants Google to reveal the identity of the account holder who received the data.

According to a court document in the case, in August a customer of the Rocky Mountain Bank asked a bank employee to send certain loan statements to a representative of the customer. The employee, however, inadvertently sent the e-mail to the wrong Gmail address. Additionally, the employee had attached a sensitive file to the e-mail that should not have been sent at all.

[..]

In the meantime, Rocky Mountain Bank filed a motion last week to seal the entire case until the court decides whether to force Google to reveal the recipient’s name, saying it didn’t want its customers to learn about the breach, because it would create panic and result in a surge of inquiries from customers.

It wants the information under seal until it can determine from Google whether the Gmail account in question is an active or dormant, and whether the sensitive customer information is actually at risk of being abused.

A federal judge in San Jose, California denied the bank’s request to seal on Friday.

If I were a customer of this bank, I’d move whether my name was on the list or not…

[Quote:]

A federal grand jury charged Hassan Nemazee, a New York businessman who has ties to prominent politicians, with defrauding banks of $292 million in part to benefit the Democratic Party.

Mr. Nemazee, 59 years old, used the proceeds of his scheme to donate to campaigns and political-action committees, according to an indictment made public Monday, though the amount allegedly spent on these efforts wasn’t specified. The donations helped him rise to become finance chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, among other major roles.

[..]

Mr. Nemazee allegedly used fake documents showing hundreds of millions of dollars worth of collateral to defraud three major banks since 1998, the indictment states. In August he owed $142 million to Bank of America and about $75 million to Citibank. After federal authorities confronted him about the alleged Citibank fraud before his arrest last month, he repaid the Citibank loan using loans from HSBC Bank, which he also obtained by lying about his finances, the indictment states.

Mr. Nemzaee, who has long ties to former President Bill Clinton and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, as well as other party leaders, also allegedly used illegally obtained money to donate to charities and buy a yacht and property in Italy, according to the indictment.

[Quote:]

In an infamous moment at the Values Voter Summit over the weekend, captured on video by Dave Weigel, Sen. Tom Coburn’s (R-OK) chief of staff Michael Schwartz made the case against pornography. “All pornography is homosexual pornography,” said Schwartz, quoting an ex-gay friend of his, “because all pornography turns your sexual drive inwards.”

Schwartz then explained the side benefit of this finding — that if boys know pornography will make them gay, they’ll never touch it, taking advantage of what Schwartz sees as a natural homophobia. “And if you tell an 11-year-old boy about that, do you think he’s going to want to get a copy of Playboy?” he said. “I’m pretty sure he’ll lose interest. That’s the last thing he wants!”

To the Atomic Lake video below. Read this book.

[Quote:]

The Federal Government yesterday asked the Sony Corporation to withdraw with immediate effect and tender an unreserved apology for posting an advertisement on the internet portraying Nigeria as a home of fraud where its citizens hardly do genuine business.

[..]

The Minister of Information and Communication, Prof Dora Akunyili said contrary to the insinuations being made, “Nigeria remains a major investment destination and a country where most businesses thrive in trust, good faith, competence and integrity.

According to the statement, “Nigeria also demands an unconditional apology from Sony Corporation for this deliberate negative campaign against the country’s image and reputation.

Dear Government of Nigeria,

We at Sony apologize for our insensitive portrayal of your country as a hive of scam artists. We have the utmost respect for the great country of Nigeria and its people. In recompense, we would like to give you $1,000,000 as our way of saying sorry. All we will need from you is a number for a checking account in which to deposit the funds and a processing fee of $5000 (this will be added to the deposit of $1,000,000 to reimburse you.) Once again, we humbly apologize.

Yours,

President of Sony

[Quote:]

Setu Bandha Sarvangasana
This position calms the brain and heals tired legs.

Marjayasana
Position stimulates the midirift area and the spinal comumn.

Halasana
Excellent for back pain and insomnia.

(more yoga positions at the link)

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When American Express asked a sampling of 2,032 people late last month what they would do if they found $500, the answers were like a pitcher of ice water in the face of retailers. Survey respondents were offered a list of possible spending choices that included splurging at a restaurant, going on a shopping spree and taking a trip.

But a mere 10% or fewer marked one of those items. Most went down the list and checked off paying regular bills, reducing credit card debt or simply saving the money.

“What we see consumers doing is exhibiting a level of discipline that we didn’t know,” said Gail Wasserman, a spokeswoman for American Express, which like other card companies has reinforced the reduced- spending trend by issuing fewer cards and slashing credit lines to lower their own risks.

[..]

“This year will be worse than last year,” said the chairman of Davidowitz & Associates Inc., a national retail consulting and investment banking firm. He rattled off a list of retailers, including Target Corp., Home Depot Inc. and Limited Brands Inc. “They’re all down,” he said.

It’s even worse for the high-end segment, he said, which is particularly worrisome because the wealthy account for the bulk of the saving and spending in America.

“We’re closing 2,000 jewelry stores this year. . . . Luxury is getting killed,” Davidowitz said.

“how dare these people not fork over all their money plus money plus money they don’t have to us so we can make ourselves richer!”

[Quote:]

The reason is, Apple is not really a company — it’s a cult. Imagine what it might be like if the Church of Scientology went into the consumer electronics business, and you’d have a pretty good idea of how we operate.

Neurosonics Audiomedical Labs Inc. from Chris Cairns on Vimeo.

[Quote:]

A star 40 times more massive than our sun is blowing a giant bubble of material into space. In this colorful picture, the Hubble Telescope captured a glimpse of the expanding bubble, dubbed the Bubble Nebula (NGC 7635). The beefy star [lower center] is embedded in the bright blue bubble. The stellar powerhouse is so hot that it is quickly shedding material into space. The dense gas surrounding the star is shaping the castoff material into a bubble. The bubble’s surface is not smooth like a soap bubble’s. Its rippled appearance is due to encounters with gases of different thickness. The nebula is 6 light-years wide and is expanding at 4 million miles per hour (7 million kilometers per hour). The nebula is 7,100 light-years from Earth in the constellation Cassiopeia.

Image Credit: NASA, Donald Walter (South Carolina State University), Paul Scowen and Brian Moore (Arizona State University)

[Quote:]

Members of the press were dismayed to find out that they were banned from Bill O’Reilly’s speech at the Values Voter Summit tonight. The Washington Independent’s Dave Weigel snapped a picture of the sign letting them know that they couldn’t get in:

Ironically, O’Reilly was receiving a “Media Courage Award.”

[Quote:]

With the White House zeroing in on the insurance-industry practice of discriminating against clients based on pre-existing conditions, administration allies are calling attention to how broadly insurers interpret the term to maximize profits.

It turns out that in eight states, plus the District of Columbia, getting beaten up by your spouse is a pre-existing condition.

Under the cold logic of the insurance industry, it makes perfect sense: If you are in a marriage with someone who has beaten you in the past, you’re more likely to get beaten again than the average person and are therefore more expensive to insure.

In human terms, it’s a second punishment for a victim of domestic violence.

[Quote:]

Former schoolteacher Deborah Parish (we’re unsure on the spelling, since we got her name from the video), wanted to impress upon the agency that you can teach kids to get sexy without taking their clothes off, a proposition for which the fact that she had gone all her 56 years without “technically” having sex somehow serves as evidence. But before she could testify about all her gratifying fully clothed sexual experiences, the agency’s members informed her that they were taking testimony on alcohol awareness—the sex ed stuff, when her virginal status would have been relevant, had all happened the day before. Read the agenda, virgin!

[Quote:]

Exactly as one would expect, the prime beneficiaries of all of that pillaging continue to grow.  The banks that almost brought the world economy to collapse but then received massive public largesse because they were “too big to fail” are now bigger than ever; as The Washington Post delicately put it:  ”The crisis may be turning out very well for many of the behemoths that dominate U.S. finance.”  Everything involving the government turns out well for these “behemoths” because they own and control the U.S. Government.

As previously documented, Goldman Sachs itself has a virtual lock on the top Treasury positions no matter which party is in power.  The vaunted bipartisan “Baucus plan” was literally written by a Baucus aide who just left her position as Vice President of Wellpoint to write the health care reform plan for the Senate — a revelation which barely caused a ripple.  And the Supreme Court is on the verge of striking down the few limits on corporate involvement in our politics, a ruling which may (or may not be) constitutionally defensible but which will flood American politics with so much corporate money that it will give new meaning to the term “oligarchy.”

So with this massive pillaging of America’s economic security and the control of American government by its richest and most powerful factions growing by the day, to whom is America’s intense economic anxiety being directed?  To a non-profit group that devotes itself to providing minute benefits to people who live under America’s poverty line, and which is so powerless in Washington that virtually the entire U.S. Senate just voted to cut off its funding at the first sign of real controversy — could anyone imagine that happening to a key player in the banking or defense industry? 

[Quote:]

The FHA has effectively replaced sub-prime lenders who went bust. They’re under pressure to prop-up housing prices, and are insuring heaps of risky loans in an effort to do so. Their guidelines are slipping and loan-volumes are skyrocketing. Delinquencies are skyrocketing too, reaching 14.4% in the 2nd quarter of 2009, according to the NYT (borrowers at least one payment late).

Even more shocking is this number: In 2009 FHA has insured 23% of all new mortgages. That’s up from 2% in 2006 (source: LAT). That spells big trouble down the road.

[..]

This Ditech.com screenshot (taken 9/18/09) advertises loose FHA Loan policies. They highlight “easier qualifying guidelines on FHA loans” and “flexibile credit and income guidelines“.

It looks straight out of a Countrywide commercial circa 2003, but I assure you I took it yesterday. Hard to believe we’re using these tactics again already. Can we at least get a little break between bubbles? “Easier Qualifying Guidelines”? Seriously?

[Quote:]

Referring to an incident in which a white student was beaten by black students on a bus, Limbaugh said: “I think the guy’s wrong. I think not only it was racism, it was justifiable racism. I mean, that’s the lesson we’re being taught here today. Kid shouldn’t have been on the bus anyway. We need segregated buses — it was invading space and stuff. This is Obama’s America.”

[..]

“Police initially said the beating of the white student by two black students appeared to be racially motivated,” the Associated Press wrote. “But police on Tuesday backed away from that.”

That didn’t stop Limbaugh from making his comments Wednesday.

“In Obama’s America, the white kids now get beat up with the black kids cheering, ‘Yay, right on, right on, right on, right on,” Limbaugh also said. “I wonder if Obama’s going to come to come to the defense of the assailants the way he did his friend Skip Gates up there at Harvard.”

[Quote:]

STUDENTS can have Windows 7 irritate the shit out of them for a reduced fee of £30, Microsoft has announced.

The offer is a massive reduction on the standard £80 price tag, but with the same range of state-of-the-art features specifically designed to send you hurtling towards the very brink of violent insanity.

[..]

A Microsoft spokesman said: “This is a great opportunity for young people to claw at their skulls and scream ‘no, no, no, I do not want to load any more fucking updates, you utterly horrifying box full of evil’ while trying to arrange cups of coffees and study sessions with their new college pals.”