You just won the lottery!

Yahoo filed a lawsuit on May 16 against spammers who allegedly tricked consumers into thinking they won a contest sponsored by Yahoo. The major counts are under the Lanham Act, anti-spam laws as well as other state law claims. You mean that million dollar prize for which I sent Yahoo's lottery coordinator all my financial information isn't real?

Supreme Court and Govenors

The US Supreme Court decided two cases involving governors yesterday:

• Gov. George Ryan of Illinois: the Court rejected, without an opinion, his appeal of racketerring and fraud convictions.
• Gov. Bob Riley of Alabama: the Court agreed with the govenor that he could fill a county commission vacancy notwithstanding the Voting Rights Act of 1965

No More Set Top Boxes?

Sony Electronics reached an agreement with the National Cable and Telecommunications Association (representing about 82% of all cable subscribers) to develop two way cable services such as pay-per-view movies without the use of the cable boxes.

I made the paper!!!

I made Joe Kollin's column in the Sun-Sentinel!

Why We're Happy

A new study from Psychological Science suggests that conservatives are happier than liberals because conservatives are, on average, more rational. It's amazing that it took a grant from the National Science Foundation just to prove that when I've been saying that conservatives are happier and more rational for years!

E-Bay v. Craigslist

The legal dispute between the companies is whether Kijiji, eBay's classified ads site, engages in a competative activity with Craigslist, which eBay owns 24% of as a result of a purchase of stock from a former Craigslist executive. Because of the launch of Kijiji in 2007, Jim Buckmaster said, "We are no longer comfortable having eBay as a shareholder, and wish to explore options for our repurchase." After that, according to the complaint filed by eBay, Craigslist founder Craig Newmark and Buckmaster "engaged in a series of clandestine transactions designed to ensure that eBay would not be able to elect a director, and to either impose new transfer restrictions on eBay or dilute its interests, and to dilute the interest of the employee holders of company stock options."

The complaint is here.

Iron Man

Terrific movie! A must-see! One thing to look out for is Samuel Jackson's cameo appearence as Nick Fury. Did anybody catch it? I may have turned away when it came on.

Copywriting Malware?

Symantec is reporting that there is a new virus floating around. What makes it unique is that there is a EULA (end user license agreement) with it that threatens "punishment" if a user violates the terms, such as looking at the source code or resell the product. Quite funny!

Government Not Responsible for What It Says

In an option by the 2nd Circuit, the court found that then EPA chief and former NJ govenor Christine Todd Whitman not liable for giving incorrect reassurances after the 9/11 terror attacks by saying that the air near the former World Trade Centers was breathable. The court said, "But legal remedies are not always available for every instance of arguably deficient governmental performance." So, let me get this straight, we can't sue our government for screwing up anymore?

http://www.ca2.uscourts.gov:8080/isysnative/RDpcT3BpbnNcT1BOXDA2LTExNjYtY3Zfb3BuLnBkZg==/06-1166-cv_opn.pdf#xml=http://www.ca2.uscourts.gov:8080/isysquery/irl4e81/1/hilite

Subpoena Subschena

The New Jersey Supreme Court has ruled that the state constitution gives greater protection to unreasonable searches and seizures than the US Constitution and ISPs therefore do not have to disclose any information to anyone without a valid subpoena. This case is contrary to the Federal trends that found no right to privacy in internet information.

http://www.judiciary.state.nj.us/opinions/supreme/A-105-06%20State%20v%20Shirley%20Reid.pdf

Forbidden Kingdom

I went to The Forbidden Kingdom last night. I have to highly recommend it, especially if you are an afficiandado of martial arts films in that there are many references to other martial art films. For example, the character Swallow is based on Chen Pei Pei's character Golden Swallow in Da Zui Xia (a/k/a Come Drink With Me) and Swallow even says at the end "Come Drink With Me". The Monkey King is a reference to various Chinese legends, but I think Jet Li plays it as a homage to Shen Da. Jackie Chan's character, Lu Yan is not only a famous Taoist scholar, but also plays the character as an earlier reference to his breakout film Jui Kuen.

FCC on Net Neutrality

Net Neutrality is the idea that no traffic should be discriminated against on the internet. Yet companies, like Comcast, do divert some file sharing and uploading traffic, at least to off-peak hours, in the hope that it won't overload their systems, apparantly in violation of Net Neutrality ideas. I certainly hope the FCC realizes the only way the internet will work is with the free market Net Neutrality and not have Big Brother telling what files can do what at what times.

EA / Take-Two Watch

EA extended the deadline for proxies yet again. It looks like only 8% of shareholders have tendered their stock to EA, and the stock is now trading above the tender price.

This market

I don't understand this market at all. I do have to agree with Mike Holland's comments this morning on CNBC that this market is a lot like it was 15 to 20 years ago that when a company announced layoffs, the stock went up proportionate to the number of people fired whereas today companies go up depending on how much debt they write off.

Global Warming, Yet Again

Again Al Gore has another competitor: science. Scientists at MIT this week unveiled another model of hurricane formation that demonstrated how global warming has absolutely no link on hurricane formation. Part of it is from research in 2007 that showed fewer hurricanes that global warming models predicted.

Super Ruling

Superman now belongs, once again, in part, to the heirs of Jerome Seigel, one of the original creators of Superman. A California federal judge ruled that the heirs' copyright termination notice sent in 1999 was valid and that DC Comics/Time Warner had to account for profits from Superman post-1999. Provided this survives the requisite appeal, this could put in jeapordy the next two Superman films - the Bryan Singer sequel to Superman Returns as well as the Justice League of America franchise - and all the animated series and comic books. Jerome Schuster's estate can launch a similar lawsuit in 2013. The two estates previously once a similar case for the Superboy character, but have failed to prove that Superboy happens to be the same Clark Kent in the TV show Smallville (the case is currently still in dispute). The Superman copyright expires in 2033, unless Congress extends the life of a copyright once again.

Movie Review: 21

21 is a good movie that is loosely based on the book Bringing Down the House by Ben Mezrich. Kevin Spacey does a normally good interpretation of his character, a mathematics professor at MIT who happens to also be one of the top blackjack players in the world, who despite retirement leads a team of card counting students to Vegas. Lawrence Fishburne does an outstanding job as the hotel security agent that brings down the team. Unfortunately for me the team wasn't believable, nor any of the other students featured in the film, but it is worth seeing just to compare with the specials that come on either the History or Discovery Channels (or some channel like that) every so often.

I was thinking . . .

I had some medical news this week, and it got me thinking.

Doctors:The number of physicians in the U.S. is 700,000.Accidental deaths caused by Physicians per year are 120,000.Accidental deaths per physician is 0.171.

Statistics courtesy of U.S. Dept of Health Human Services.

Now think about this:

Guns:The number of gun owners in the U.S. is 80,000,000. Yes, that’s 80 million.The number of accidental gun deaths per year, all age groups, is 1,500.The number of accidental deaths per gun owner is .000188.

Statistics courtesy of FBI.

So, statistically, doctors are approximately 9,000 times more dangerous than gun owners.Remember, “Guns don’t kill people, doctors do.”FACT: NOT EVERYONE HAS A GUN, BUT ALMOST EVERYONE HAS AT LEAST ONE DOCTOR.Please alert your friends to this alarming threat. We must ban doctors before this gets completely out of hand!!!!!

One more thing on Cung Le

I do have to take exception to several commentators last night saying that they thought Cung Le's kicking style was "unorthodox". Excuse me? That's classic Tae Kwon Do right there, hardly unorthodox. To all the critics who say Tae Kwon Do is too sporty and can't win in mixed martial arts, I say nay nay. Just take a look at Cung Le's decisive win over one of the legends in mixed martial arts history.

Panthers

Yuck! Yuck! I was at the game last night. The Panthers simply didn't play with any heart. So many times during power plays the Panthers had opportunities to shots on goal, but nothing. They just sat their with the puck. Let's hope that their late season run this year will continue next year.

Cung Le Wins!

I just wanted to congradulate Cung Le on his impressive victory over Ken Shamrock last night to win the EliteXC middleweight division belt and was the first person to win by interround stoppage due to doctor's orders under modern MMA rules. Le snapped Shamrock's arm in two during the third round with a roundhouse kick.

I do have to take issue with a MMAWeekly.com who gave the first round to Shamrock. I think Shamrock took the most damage and Le exhibited better control and dominance over the round.

One other thing about Le. I am a huge fan of his, but last night showed a major weekness in that he didn't demonstrate any knockout power against Shamrock. Every major kick and punch landed, but other than a couple of cuts and bruises, Shamrock was taking the damage pretty well.

Braviax / Win Reanimator / Cru629

There's a nasty virus that just passed through to America, and there's a lot of bad website information out there on how to remove it.

First, you know you got it when you get it. It installs a little application which puts a red circle with a white X in it in your sytem tray and periodically pops up a balloon telling you that your computer is infected and it's going to download a solution and would you please click here. Well, it downloads something, but not anything that could be called a solution. It downloads more spyware, trojans, malware, crapware, etc.

If you try to fix it, none of the major antivirus antispyware software will fix it really. You're going to have to do it manually.

A lot of websites advised taking out some of the programs, but none of them seem to work correctly. After about a week of tinkering, I came up with a method that worked for me.

• Disconnect your computer from the internet. That way it can't reinstall itself.
• Reboot your computer in safe mode with command prompt. That's when you keep pressing F8 at the start up screen until you get back to the old DOS like screen.
• Go to the Windows directory on your C drive. Delete braviax.* and cru629.*
• Next, go to the \systems32 subdirectory and do the same.
• Next, go to the \dllcache and \drivers directories and delete the beep.sys file. Unfortunately, you won't hear a beep anymore on startup unless you save it from another computer and reinstall it on this one.
• Last, go into regedit and do a search for the braviax and cru629 programs. Just delete the named registery edits for the two programs.

Congradulations! You should now be clear of the virus.

My Take on the Democrats So Far

If you know me, you'd be surpised that I haven't commented that much on the election so far, particularly the two Ajaxes doing battle on the fields of Homer, with musical accompanyment by Offenbach. Anyway, here's my take so far:

Barak Obama: Great orator and very inspirational. But to what end? My concern first and foremost is his policies and lack of experience ("I'll concede any point to any dictator."). Let's not forget his two major scandels in that he got caught waffling on health care reform (he one breath he said he was for socialized medicine, in the next against it), and now with the race debate it's getting interesting. Not only does his pastor at the church he never attends (but exposes his children to) because he's off playing paintball (let's hope his military policy doesn't include supplying paintball guns to everyone) preach a Marxist version of black liberation theology, many of his campaign supporters and inner circle members espouse similar beliefs.

Hillary Clinton: Oh where can I begin? Let's start with the latest with her gaffe how she misremembered getting shot at on the Tarmac in Bosnia, insulting the armed forces because they would never allow a First Lady to land in those conditions, although some Presidents would not only allow but cause to happen the Secretary of Commerce to do that if the Secretary of Commerce has blackmail information on the President. Where are her tax documents that showed how much Bill really made on his book? How about her schedule that shows she was more influential in pardongate than she let on, with several campain contributions coming her way immediately thereafter? The list goes on and on.

Anyway, it's still early and possibly there might be some scandle to break about McCain, although he was quite vetted by everyone in 2000 and through the primaries.

Take Two on Electronic Arts

The other big take-over battle to watch is Electronic Arts $2 billion hostile takeover of Take Two - the company that publishes Grand Theft Auto. Take Two just adopted a poison pill that dilutes the stock if a new shareholder gets 20% or if an old one gets another 2%. Ahhh, this reminds me so much of the 80s. If either side needs a good lawyer, well, I think I can definately help you two.

Kudos to Wasserman Schultz

Despite many criticisms of her refusal to help support democratic candidates to unseat the Cuban-American delegation out of Dade County, she's steadfastly has stood on the sidelines.