[Quote]:

The judge that BP wants to hear an estimated 200 lawsuits over the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster gets tens of thousands of dollars a year in oil royalties and is paid travel expenses to industry conferences, financial disclosure forms show.

[..]

Oil giant ConocoPhillips paid him between $50,000 and $100,000 in 2008, the last year in which records are publicly available. In a note attached to the 2008 form, Hughes said he expected the amounts to be relatively similar for 2009. He gets smaller amounts from smaller producers such as Sun Oil, Everest Oil and Wagner Oil, which pay for the right to drill oil and gas from lands he owns.

Surely there’s no conflict of interest here, right?

[Quote]:

Banks are starting to forge legal documents in foreclosure cases.

Lets start with the side of the thieves, the shysters, the bankers.

The American Banker article, dated June 17, 2010:

The backlash is intensifying against banks and mortgage servicers that try to foreclose on homes without all their ducks in a row.

Because the notes were often sold and resold during the boom years, many financial companies lost track of the documents. Now, legal officials are accusing companies of forging the documents needed to reclaim the properties.

What happens is this: during the boom years, certain practices were abandoned – like standard business practices, or common sense.

[Quote]:

The Electronic Frontier Foundation and The Onion Router (TOR) project have teamed up to release a new privacy-enhancing Firefox plugin called HTTPS Everywhere. It was inspired by Google’s new encrypted search engine, and it ensures that whenever you visit a site that accepts encrypted connections, your browser switches into encrypted mode, hiding your traffic from snoops on your local network and at your ISP. HTTPS Everywhere covers Google search, Wikipedia, Twitter, Identi.ca, Facebook, EFF, Tor, Scroogle, DuckDuckGo, Ixquick and other smaller search engines. It’s still in beta (what isn’t?) but I’ve been running it all morning with no negative side effects.

[Quote]:

I’ve noticed an odd tendency in Android device reviews. Their flaws, always major and always awe-inspiring in their insipidness, are inevitably attributed more to the device itself than to the underlying Android operating system. There’s a sense, not just from reviewers, but from fans of the device, that what Android really needs is just killer hardware.

Which is just absolute horse shit.

Android is an asshole of an operating system.

[Quote]:

BIDEN: There’s an entire way of life in jeopardy. This is just not about jobs. This is just not about whether or not the waterfowl is polluted and you can’t — this is an entire way of life that’s in jeopardy. And to sit there and say that we’re being — in effect, as I understood the statement — that he was ashamed we’re being tough on an oil company who caused the problem — I mean, I — look, I just think that it’s pretty important to the people of Louisiana all the way through Florida and even in his home state of Texas that people disassociate themselves from that.

That’s not the role — there’s no shakedown. It’s insisting on responsible conduct and a responsible response to something they caused. And I find it outrageous to suggest that if, in fact, we insisted that BP demonstrate their preparedness, to put aside billions of dollars — in this case, $20 billion — to take care of the immediate needs of people who are drowning — these guys don’t have deep pockets. The guy who runs the local marina, the guy who has one shrimping boat, the guy who has one small business — he can’t afford to lose $10,000, $12,000, $15,000, $30,000 a month. [...]

What is wrong with that? How is that a shakedown? I mean, I just — I don’t know, I find it pretty astounding, the comment.

And in the mean time, there’s this website where there are more apologies from Barton. Hit reload to get another one.

[Quote]:

On June 17, BP CEO Tony Hayward appeared on Capitol Hill to testify for the first time regarding the oil spill disaster. Unbelievably, the ranking committee member, Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX), apologized to the BP CEO, calling it a tragedy that a private corporation was being forced to pay back Gulf Coast victims.

So the new iPhone 4 pre-ordered 600,000 on the first day. Apparently people like it.

Makes you wonder how the competition is doing…

[Quote]:

I’m saving a CSV file as CSV. Which option will lead to what happening? What does ‘no’ mean? Worse, if you do press no then the dialog comes back. Very perplexing.