Nevada lawmaker sees more money for state in old gift cards

AB279 would declare that unused gift card value would become abandoned property available to the state either on its expiration date or if not used after three years.

Apparently this is a sort of restructuring of a federal law that deals with expired gift cards, but it still begs the question: What right does the government have to that money? Who should pay it? Are businesses supposed to erase revenue from three years prior and just give it to the government? Are consumers supposed to just give their property to the state? By purchasing a gift card, a consumer buys future products and/or services from a business. They are then entitled to those products and/or services at their convenience. The company receives payment, knowing that they should provide said products and/or services in the future. It is just like any other item that can be purchased; the only difference is that payment and receipt of product are separate. If the consumer does not attempt to collect before some arbitrary date, it doesn’t negate their claim.

If you buy a bike and don’t use it for three years, it doesn’t all of a sudden stop being yours. A diamond necklace that sits unused in a jewelry box for three years doesn’t magically revert to the state. You don’t lose your jar of pennies just because you didn’t spend it soon enough.

This bill is just another example of governmental greed and refusal to accept fiscal responsibility. Attempting to pander to one group at the expense of another with complete disregard for their rights. Not only would it be a huge undertaking to track, some may say it amounts to outright theft. Either way, it should not become law. Find a better way to keep education funded.

Feinstein Resigns

“Feinstein abandoned MILCON as her ethical problems were surfacing in the media, and as it was becoming clear that her subcommittee left grievously wounded veterans to rot while her family was profiting from the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. It turns out that Blum [her husband] also holds large investments in companies that were selling medical equipment and supplies and real estate leases—often without the benefit of competitive bidding—to the Department of Veterans Affairs, even as the system of medical care for veterans collapsed on his wife’s watch.”

Feinstein quits committee under war-profiteer cloud

“The report also showed URS’ military construction work in 2000 was only $24 million, but the next year, when Feinstein took over as MILCON chair, military construction earned URS $185 million. Additionally, its military construction architectural and engineering revenue rose from $108,000 in 2000 to $142 million in 2001, a thousand-fold increase.

In late 2005, Blum sold 5.5 million URS shares, worth $220 million, the report said.”

This is certainly an interesting bit of info that has apparently been put to bed. With so many people crying “Halliburton!” every day, why haven’t we heard anything about Senator Feinstein?

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RIAA backs down after receiving stern letter

“The Evidence Code sections are quite clear: settlement negotiations of all kinds may not be used to prove the validity of any claim or defense. Mr. Merchant has and had no more duty to respond to attempts to “sell” him one of your clients’ boilerplate, non-negotiable $3750 settlements than he has to return cold calls from pushy life insurance salespeople. If your client (and your law firm?) are seeking probable cause shelter in a settlement negotiations house of straw (as suggested by your March 23 letter), all of you should consider the prevailing winds of the Evidence Code before making yourselves too comfortable. Straw will burn.”
-Merl Ledford III

The Recording Industry vs The People blog has called this a model letter for lawyers defending clients against the RIAA’s litigation machine.

I think it’s more than that. I think it’s the truth gaining a foothold.

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Diebold cries, sues when competitor gets contract

“Diebold says it will ask a judge to overturn the selection of AutoMARK , a Diebold business competitor, because the office of Secretary of State William F. Galvin failed to choose the best machine.”

Dear Diebold,

GROW UP.

Sincerely,
Me

RIAA between a rock and a hard place

It’s a noteworthy ruling because if the case is dismissed with prejudice, Santangelo would be considered the prevailing party and would likely be entitled to an award of attorneys’ fees, as in Capitol v. Foster. In her ruling, Judge McMahon concluded that “no conceivable interest of justice would be served by permitting this case to be dismissed without prejudice against defendant.” Instead, the defendant should have a shot at vindication via a trial or have the case dismissed with prejudice.

“This case is two years old,” wrote Judge McMahon. “There has been extensive fact discovery. After taking this discovery, either plaintiffs want to make their case that Mrs. Santangelo is guilty of contributory copyright infringement or they do not.”

It’s about time. Force the RIAA to put their money where their mouth is and stop their scare tactics. Enough is enough. The judge’s quote perfectly summarizes the point: either you have a case against them or you don’t. I’d like to see the RIAA hit with a bill for wasting two years of the courts’ time if they don’t go to trial. Dragging out a case you have no intention of actually taking to trial is a waste of everyone’s time and money. I doubt they’ll take it to trial, because they rely on threats, along with smoke and mirrors to “win” their settlements, and that probably won’t fly with a jury. If they go to trial and lose, they can kiss their fear and intimidation campaign goodbye.

It’s time for the RIAA to put up or shut up.

How Apple orchestrated web attack on researchers

“So what was the end result of all this? Apple continued to claim that there were no vulnerabilities in Mac OS X, but came a month later and patched its wireless drivers (presumably for vulnerabilities that didn’t actually exist). Apple patched these “nonexistent vulnerabilities” but then refused to give any credit to David Maynor and Jon Ellch. Since Apple was going to take research, not give proper attribution, and smear security researchers, the security research community responded to Apple’s behavior with the MoAB (Month of Apple Bugs) and released a flood of zero-day exploits without giving Apple any notification. The result was that Apple was forced to patch 62 vulnerabilities in just the first three months of 2007, including last week’s megapatch of 45 vulnerabilities.”

But! But! But! I thought OS X was bedrock. I thought it was jiggy-baby. I thought absolute security was one of their selling points. Maybe it’s just been smoke and mirrors all along, and the main reason they haven’t been exploited so badly is because their market share isn’t worth the effort.

It’s kinda sad, because I might have been a mac user, if Apple wasn’t such a monumentally arrogant asshat of a company. Check out the email from Apple PR in the article.

Al Gore Challenged to International TV Debate on Global Warming

“A careful study of thesubstantial corpus of peer-reviewed science reveals that Mr. Gore’s film, An Inconvenient Truth, is a foofaraw of pseudo-science, exaggerations, and errors, now being peddled to innocent schoolchildren worldwide.”
Click here to see the official challenge.

Maybe Al Gore thinks the ends justify the means, and that if he can somehow stop the natural warming of the planet, all his lies and fluff will be justified. It is staggering to think that his propaganda garbage is being touted as truth, and students are being forced to watch it in their classrooms without refutation. That sounds like brainwashing to me.

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“The new antipiracy technologies in Windows Vista are designed to protect customers and prevent the software from working correctly when it is not genuine and properly licensed. Systems utilizing these hacks will not provide the benefits of genuine Windows, nor will they work as expected.” -David Lazar, in this article, which refers to this.

Mr. Lazar, please tell me how these anti-piracy technologies protect customers. What exactly are they protected from? I thought the primary arguments against piracy was that it makes legal software more expensive to customers, but I certainly don’t see any cheap copies of vista anywhere, despite all these newfangled measures. I don’t know of a single instance of anyone being compromised solely by having a “non-genuine” copy of windows.

Sure, if you refuse to update what you deem to be illegal copies, they will be at risk, but you can’t exactly blame them for your refusal, can you? You deem their installation illegal, you refuse to let them update it, therefore they are at risk. It seems like you are putting them at risk with your anti-piracy measures, not the fact that they may or may not be running “non-genuine” software. Artificially creating a problem and then graciously solving it for hundreds of dollars is hardly worthy of trust or respect.

Microsoft is certainly entitled to whatever measures they deem necessary to remain competitive and successful. Microsoft is not entitled to lie to us and tell us they’re trying to do things in our best interests. Their bottom line trumps our best interests every day of the week and twice on Sunday, they just refuse to admit it. It may not be illegal, but it certainly doesn’t make me want to go out and buy their product.

Officers outgunned on U.S. border

Federal, state and local law-enforcement officials from Texas to California, concerned about the impact of illegally imported weapons into Mexico, say they already are outmanned and outgunned by ruthless gangs that collect millions of dollars in profits by smuggling aliens and drugs into this country.

The ship is sinking. And by ‘the ship’ I mean America. And by ’sinking’ I mean being flushed down the toilet by people who fail to recognize that if we don’t defend our borders right now, there will be nothing left to defend. If water is pouring into a boat, the first step is to plug the leak. Standing around trying to decide the best comprehensive method for dealing with the water is a waste of time; it does not address the actual problem.

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I’m tired of marketing. I’m tired of commercials. I’m tired of all the BS that gets slung around every day. Some of the worst are the ads regarding credit reports. They make it sound like knowing your credit score or *gasp!* being able to print it out will somehow save you money. I imagine their supposed exchange would go something like this:

Car Dealer: $25,000, 8%.
Buyer: But I know my credit score!
Car Dealer: In that case, $23,000 at 7%!

In reality, it would be more like this:

Car Dealer: $25,000, 8%.
Buyer: But I know my credit score!
Car Dealer: So do I, we just ran your credit. Here’s the printout. The price is $25,000, with a rate of 8%.

Seriously, what will “knowing your credit score going in” save you? How will you be able to “cut a better deal” if you know it? It’s not like they’re going to take your word for it because you walked in with a printout. And since when is printing it out a feature? If I can see it on my computer screen, I can print it out if I want to, so that’s hardly a selling point.

We’re all entitled to a free credit file disclosure every year, and you can get it for free at annualcreditreport.com. It does NOT shadily require you to sign up for some credit monitoring service that will slap you with bills if you don’t cancel immediately. I think there’s something seriously wrong when you have to dupe people into signing up for your billable service. If people won’t join your program on its own merits, maybe you should re-evaluate your business strategy.