Looks like YouTube found a way to monetize their service after all
Web search leader Google Inc. on Monday said it agreed to acquire top video entertainment site YouTube Inc. for $1.65 billion in stock, putting a lofty new value on consumer-generated media sites.
On word: Inflation
The Dow Jones Industrial Average, adjusted for inflation, is down 17 percent from its all-time high on January 14, 2000.[1] It would need to rise another 2,378 points to set a new record, adjusted for inflation. It is only when no adjustment is made for inflation that the Dow can be said to have closed at a record high on October 3, 2006, as has been widely reported in the media.
Just sayin.
Patricia C. Dunn, the former chairwoman of Hewlett-Packard, and four other people will be named in indictments expected to be filed by California’s attorney general today in the spying case at the company, according to lawyers involved in the case.
In addition to Ms. Dunn, Attorney General Bill Lockyer intends to indict Kevin T. Hunsaker, a former senior lawyer at H.P.; Ronald L. DeLia, a Boston-area private detective; Joseph DePante, owner of Action Research Group, a Melbourne, Fla., information broker; and Bryan Wagner, a Littleton, Colo., man who is said to have obtained private phone records while working for Mr. DePante.
All of those named face four charges: using of false or fraudulent pretenses to obtain confidential information from a public utility, unauthorized access to computer data, identity theft, and conspiracy to commit each of those crimes. All of the charges are felonies.
Carly “the Hatchet” Fiorina’s coming to Hewlett Packard was the worst thing that ever happened to that company (most notably, the merger with Compaq, which was almost as bad as AOL-Time Warner). Fiorina drove a former flagship company into an amorphous, unweildy limpid and that, combined with her unethical, self-serving corruption, irretrievably sullied HP’s name (Fiorina is GOP, of course). In short: she ran that company into the ground… and got a $21 million severance package for her troubles.
Dunn was Carly’s replacement and it looks like she brought the culture of corruption with her. Unethical, amoral, and apparently illegal.
There’s an interesting parallel between the corporate illegalities and spying and the actions of the current administration (you know, the one with the “CEO” president), but I think it goes back further than just this administration. The current corruption, from WorldCom to Enron to HP can be traced to the unending GOP attempts to deregulate anything and everything associated with capitalism.
Should we be surprised? Perhaps, but only that these guys got caught.
The civil suits to follow should be quite entertaining.
Heralded Iraq Police Academy a ‘Disaster’
A $75 million project to build the largest police academy in Iraq has been so grossly mismanaged that the campus now poses health risks to recruits and might need to be partially demolished, U.S. investigators have found.
The Baghdad Police College, hailed as crucial to U.S. efforts to prepare Iraqis to take control of the country’s security, was so poorly constructed that feces and urine rained from the ceilings in student barracks. Floors heaved inches off the ground and cracked apart. Water dripped so profusely in one room that it was dubbed “the rain forest.”
“This is the most essential civil security project in the country — and it’s a failure,” said Stuart W. Bowen Jr., the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, an independent office created by Congress. “The Baghdad police academy is a disaster.”
Is another person’s gain in the world of “free trade.”
After years of raiding “redneck labs” and arresting local methamphetamine cooks, drug squads in Georgia appeared to be gaining the upper hand on the makeshift operations in 2004, when the number of busts declined sharply from a peak of more than 800 the previous year.
But the glow of success quickly faded as international drug cartels distributing a purer form of the drug known as “ice” rushed in to fill the void.
“The labs start to decline and you’re happy,” said Phil Price, special agent in charge of regional drug enforcement for the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. “But the imported meth has really hit us hard. … It’s cheaper now to buy it on the streets.”
I can feel some NAFTA love coming on right now. I need a moment here. *sniff* Tito, bring me a tissue.
You’d think that living in a banana republic, we’d get more bananas. Mmmm… fruit.
In April, Housing Secretary Alphonso Jackson told a group of real estate officials that he once canceled a government contract because the contractor was critical of President Bush. Awarding contracts based on political leanings “violates federal law.” Jackson is a “longtime Bush friend” and former neighbor in Dallas, Texas.
The Inspector General for the Department of Housing and Urban Development has conducted a detailed investigation and produced a 340-page report detailing his findings. The agency has given a copy to Jackson, but refused to release the report to the public.
I’m waiting now for the Senate judiciary committee to meet so that Lindsay Graham and Arlen Specter can craft a bill legalizing partisan rewards via federal contract. I suspect it’ll be here in about, oh, … 30 seconds.
If you spend any significant amount of time browsing around YouTube, you’ll notice a surprising number of videos consisting of people busting a move to popular music. It can be anything from a presumably inebriated couple with a camera orientation problem dancing to Prince’s “Kiss” to a solitary college student grooving in his dorm room. Whatever the context, it’s all but certain that the dancers haven’t paid the RIAA for the rights to the song.
That has led to a recent spate of cease-and-desist notices from the music trade group directed at some users of YouTube. Despite the fact that the recordings are generally of poor quality—especially where the audio is concerned—the RIAA is moving to rid the Internet of the scourge of amateur Solid Gold dancers.
INT. – MORNING
A phone is ringing. B answers.
Hello?
SATAN
Hi, B. This is Satan. Is Kenny boy around? It’s time for him to come home.
SCENE.
Kenneth Lay, who rose from a poor preacher’s son to become a millionaire before being convicted of corporate fraud, died early Wednesday in Aspen, Colo., a family spokeswoman said.
Lay, 64, was awaiting sentencing after being found guilty of conspiracy and fraud in the Enron trial in May.
Few people have been responsible for more pain to more people in recent decades than Ken Lay. Fitting, then, that he’s a preacher’s son. Also fitting that he was one of Bush’s biggest and earliest supporters.
“Apparently, his heart simply gave out,” said Lay’s pastor, Dr. Steve Wende of Houston’s First United Methodist Church.
Obviously, this is a lie as he had no heart.
Obviously, this was a cabalesque hit, enacted by the same Clintonista hitmen who whacked Vince Foster.
If there is a Heaven, Lay is not there.
If there are souls, Lay’s was deficient.
If there is reincarnation, he will come back as a worm. Or possibly a leech, but I think that would just reinforce his cycle of lifetimes rather than break him out of his rut.
To the extent that his family and friends miss him, my condolences. To the man himself… good riddance. He was an immoral narcissist, focused on breaking whatever rules he needed to break in order to best benefit himself. He is an exemplar of what I consider to be inhuman. He enriched himself while ensuring that hard working blue collar workers now have to live with their children and have no retirement funds.
Even in dying he cheated the system by never paying for his crimes, crimes for which he never felt sorry, only caught.
And I was so looking forward to seeing him in penitentiary orange.
Update: Alternatively, it’s all a hoax (h/t to Chartoo in the comments)
I’m sorry, I must have been asleep. Our the reporters at our nation’s major media outlets really this stupid?
President Bush, urging the Senate to pass the line-item veto, on Tuesday criticized House Democrats who didn’t back the measure even though they’ve called for federal spending restraint.
The line-item veto? You mean, the line-item veto that the Supreme Court has already ruled is unconstitutional line-item veto? That one? The one that has been definitely unconstitutional since 1998?
The Busheviks believe that the current setup of the bill will pass constitutional muster. The article would have you believe that this is because any line item veto can be overruled by a simple majority in the House.
Not so much.
In short: a line-item veto is an unconstitutional grant of power to the Executive at the cost of the Legislature (and we, the People), and is a threat to our Liberty. The “new” bill is no different from the old, even down to the Congressional override. While a line-item veto may be considered a good idea, unless and until the Constitution is amended, it is not a legal one.
This is a long post, so I’ll save the analysis for after the jump. Read more…
As he gives away the majority of his fortune to a variety of charities
Warren E. Buffett, the chairman of Berkshire Hathaway Inc. and one of the world’s wealthiest men, plans to donate the bulk of his $44 billion fortune to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and four other philanthropies starting in July.
The donations, outlined in a series of letters that Mr. Buffett released yesterday and will execute today, represent a singular and historic act of charitable giving that vaults him into the top tier of industrialists and entrepreneurs like Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller Sr., Henry Ford, J. Paul Getty, W. K. Kellogg and Mr. Gates himself, all men whose fortunes have endowed some of the world’s richest private foundations.
Mr. Buffett plans to give away 85 percent of his fortune, or about $37.4 billion, all in Berkshire stock. Of that amount, he will channel the greatest share, about $31 billion, into the Gates Foundation. The Gates Foundation, dedicated to improving health and education, especially in poor nations, is already the United States’ largest grant-making foundation, with current assets of almost $30 billion. Mr. Buffett’s huge contribution may permanently solidify that philanthropy’s standing as the biggest and most influential organization of its kind. Mr. Buffett will join Mr. and Mrs. Gates as a trustee of their foundation.
His lack of egotism is remarkable. You don’t see the Carnegies or the Rockefellers doing this, do you? That not having to set up his own foundation also saves millions in administrative costs is just icing on the cake. And further proof that Buffet is a smart, goodish man.
Right on, Warren.