It would be disingenuous of me to say I hate lawyers; I'm married to one after all. But shit like this, involving a class-action suit against Creative Labs over the advertised capacity of their MP3 players, convinces me that some lawyers deserve to be shot in the face:

According to the settlement agreement, the lead plaintiffs, who filed their federal lawsuit in California, alleged that Creative had misled consumers by exaggerating the capacity of its MP3 players. The fraud allegation hinged mainly on two different definitions of gigabyte. According to the decimal definition (the only one I knew until today), a gigabyte is 1 billion (10⁹) bytes. According to the binary definition, a gigabyte is 1,073,741,824 (2³⁰) bytes. While Creative used the decimal definition in its advertising, the settlement says, "certain computer operating systems report hard drive capacity using a binary definition." On those systems, a 20GB Creative Zen player would register as only 18.6GB or so, about 7 percent less than advertised.

Now it's true that hard drives use the decimal definition for a gigabyte when advertising their capacities. However, it's not "certain computer operating systems" that report hard drive capacity using the binary definition; it's all computer operating systems. Computer data is stored in binary format, so it can't report capacity in gigabytes using any other definition.

The rank stupidity of all this is that, whether you divide a hard drive's capacity by 1,000,000,000 or 1,037,741,824, it's still the same number of bytes. Only the divisor has changed. So Creative didn't exaggerate the capacity of their players at all; they simply failed to account for the fact that computers use the binary definition of a gigabyte. 20GB decimal = ~18.6GB binary. There's nothing misleading about this, except to consumers who are ignorant of how computers and data storage work. And I don't think Creative has an obligation to educate them; it just has to be truthful.

But in the hands of skilled trial lawyers, this inconsequential difference can be represented to a judge (who quite likely is also technologically ignorant) as a case of deceptive advertising, even fraud, and instead of wasting enormous time and money on defending themselves from this nonsense, Creative opted for a settlement. So if you own a Zen or other Creative MP3 player, you're entitled to buy a 1GB MP3 player at half-price, or 20% off any item ordered from Creative's online store.

For striking this courageous blow for consumers, the lawyers pocket $900,000. If it makes you feel better, in binary that would only be $878.9K.

Update: As ilcylic demonstrates in a comment below, an OS (Linux in this case) can report hard drive capacity in decimal format if it so chooses.  But given that volatile memory storage will always be reported in binary, I'm not sure that resolves the confusion issue.

He's just preparing for the coming hyperinflation:

A man has been accused of attempting to pass a $360 billion check, which he claims was given to him by his girlfriend’s mother to start a record business, Fort Worth police said.

Charles Ray Fuller, 21, of Crowley, was arrested on April 22 on an accusation of forgery, police said.

Police responded to a report of a man attempting to pass the check about 4 p.m. that day at the Chase bank in the 8600 block of South Hulen Street, Fort Worth police Lt. Paul Henderson said.

The personal check was not made out to Mr. Fuller and when the bank contacted the check owner, the woman said she did not write a check for $360 billion.

Mr. Fuller was also accused of unlawful carrying of a weapon and possession of marijuana, Lt. Henderson said. He may also face a theft charge in Crowley.

Lt. Henderson said he did not know if Mr. Fuller and his girlfriend were still together.

If I were the DA, I'd drop the charge.  Any guy this stupid isn't long for the world anyway.

[cross-posted from libertarianism]

The Libertarian Party is calling for more cooperation between Federal, state and local law enforcement to battle the scourge of child pornography:

"FBI Chief Robert Mueller was correct when he said we are losing the war on child pornography," says Libertarian Party Executive Director Shane Cory, referring to comments made by the head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation on Wednesday before a House Judiciary Committee meeting. "We have an obligation to protect children from sexual exploitation and abuse, and we can do this by increasing communication between state and federal agencies to help combat this repulsive industry. While privacy rights should always be respected in the pursuit of child pornographers, more needs to be done to track down and prosecute the twisted individuals who exploit innocent children."

Mueller called for "integration" between police agencies and increasing FBI resources to work on child pornography cases, which the LP press release mentions without comment, except to suggest that those resources could be freed up by not prosecuting victimless crimes.

So, yes: child abuse, particularly sexual abuse, is evil and those who engage in it can hang in the courtyard by their genitals for all I care.  But what the hell is the LP thinking here?  They're not even pretending to support the Constitution, let alone limited government, with this view.  The LP is justifying not only the existence of a national police force (which is not authorized by the Constitution), but by implying support for "integrating" police agencies, they're calling for even more Federal intrusion into areas that should by law be the states' domain.

There's only one reason for such an ill-considered and frankly unlibertarian stance from the LP, and it's to further marginalize the radical core of the party.  It started with the gutting of the party platform in 2006 and it continues through attacks on Mary Ruwart, an LP candidate for President and a more radical libertarian than the current leaders of the LP are comfortable with.

Even party founder David Nolan expressed his outrage in a comment:

I am appalled at the national HQ staff putting out a press release that implicitly disowns one of our candidates over such a relatively minor issue. First, because that’s not a proper role for paid staffers to assume, and second because several other candidates have taken overtly anti-Libertarian stances on a number of issues, and none of them have been shot at by the national staff for doing so. This whole fiasco just reeks of cronyism and witch-hunting. Our presidential nominee will be chosen by the delegates to the national convention in Denver, and attempts by the LNC or (especially) the office staff at LPHQ to subvert that process are despicable.

Once again, the New LP demonstrates its willingness to sell out its own principles, and even one of its most dedicated party members, in a futile effort to gain some mainstream political credibility.  It's just pathetic.  If you truly care about the libertarian movement then stop supporting these clowns.

Oh, for the fuckin' love of . . .



Much as I dislike the police, I'm not sure a tasing or seven isn't justified for Public Displays of Felonious Stupidity.  As usual, I blame our stellar education system.

No, this is nothing to worry about:

Corn prices jumped to a record $6 a bushel Thursday, driven up by an expected supply shortfall that will only add to Americans' growing grocery bill and further squeeze struggling ethanol producers.

Corn prices have shot up nearly 30 percent this year amid dwindling stockpiles and surging demand for the grain used to feed livestock and make alternative fuels including ethanol. Prices are poised to go even higher after the U.S. government this week predicted that American farmers -- the world's biggest corn producers -- will plant sharply less of the crop in 2008 compared to last year.

The cost of damn near everything we eat, particularly meat and dairy, is affected by this.  Pizza prices have gone up, and merchants are offering fewer coupon deals—because their costs have soared due to rising energy prices and less wheat being planted in favor of corn.

Even more carbon is released into the air as Brazilian farmers clear-cut huge swaths of Amazonian rain forest to grow more crops, not to feed people, but to put in our gas tanks.  You don't have to be a member of Al Gore's climate-change church to realize that getting rid of the few natural carbon sinks left on the planet isn't a very wise idea.

The ripple effects will be felt most in developing countries, which are unable to feed their own people as less grain is available for export.  Already tortilla prices in Mexico have skyrockted, and riots have erupted there and in Africa over rising food prices.

The U. S. lost nearly a quarter-million jobs in the first quarter of 2008.  Some of those newly-unemployed people likely won't find work any time soon.  Some of them may go on public assistance, like food stamps.  What will they do when they find that even a $5 stamp won't buy a gallon of milk?

But go ahead.  Keep putting that E85 in your flex-fuel Silverado.  Feel good about keeping our air clean and reducing our dependence on psychotic Muslims for oil.  Keep electing the same whores to Congress, who shovel billions into Archer Daniel Midland's coffers in return for a few pieces of political silver.  Feel confident that we've stamped out hunger here: it must be so if we can turn foodstuffs into gasoline!

This is nothing to worry about.

From Nick Gillespie on Hit & Run, in reference to Congressional proposals to regulate college textbooks:

We can stipulate that college textbooks cost too much, that publishers are sons of bitches who don't care a goddamn stitch about learnin', that colleges and universities are subsidy-sucking sinkholes that don't give a rat's ass about anything other than jacking tuition, that most college students are useless sacks of shit who should be remanded to coal mines where they might actually add something to society...and this is still a total waste of time for Congress.

You'd think a bill prohibiting restaurants from serving fat people would have to be a joke, but it isn't:

Any food establishment to which this section applies shall not be allowed to serve food to any person who is obese, based on criteria prescribed by the State Department of Health after consultation with the Mississippi Council on Obesity Prevention and Management established under Section 41-101-1 or its successor. The State Department of Health shall prepare written materials that describe and explain the criteria for determining whether a person is obese, and shall provide those materials to all food establishments to which this section applies. A food establishment shall be entitled to rely on the criteria for obesity in those written materials when determining whether or not it is allowed to serve food to any person.

Yes, the Mississippi legislators who introduced the bill are dead serious, and their rationale is simple: fat people incur higher medical costs, and they're concerned about the impact on government programs such as Medicare.

I'm a broken record on this subject, but I'll say it again: if you want to socialize the costs of health care, don't complain when the government starts regulating behavior which impacts those costs.  You fucking asked for it.

Random Friday linkage:

• Warren Meyer on why the labor market is largely immune to the minimum wage:
  
  

  Correcting for higher state minimum wages, but also adjusting for illegal immigrants (who are a special case with super-low bargaining power) and factoring in salaried workers (who by law to be salaried have to be making much more than minimum wage) one still finds that less than 2% or less make minimum wage, about half of whom are under 25.

  
  And here's another post (from Cafe Hayek) which suggests that the number actually earning minimum wage could be as low at 0.5% when tipped wage earners are taken into account.
  
• Some people just never learn, and now German researchers have discovered genetic proof.
  
• Freakin' cool: a working model of a V-12 engine made from paper.
  
• Praise Allah and pass on the left: Saudi Arabia is set to lift the ban on women drivers.
  
• Tightening emissions and fuel-economy standards prompt Chrysler to kill its legendary Hemi engines.
  
• More problems solved in Zimbabwe: the central bank issues a $10,000,000 note to battle hyperinflation.  Now you just need $5,000,000 more to buy a hamburger (about $6 US at black-market exchange rates).
  
• Novels composed on mobile phones and read by other mobile subscribers top Japan's bestseller lists when published on dead trees.

Geek nostalgia of the day:

10 Worst PC Keyboards of All Time

There are some doozies on this list, but most discouraging is that Commodore made the list three times.  And I'm not even sure the C64 belongs here.  True, it did not have a well-designed keyboard, but it was certainly usable by a touch-typist, which can't be said for any other entrant on the list.  The C64's biggest problem was a lack of localization: it followed the European norms at the time for symbol placement, which forced me into hunt-and-peck mode while learning the layout (the double-quote was a shifted 2, for example, and the = key was right next to the Return key, which might have made a weird kind of sense when programming but was really annoying when trying to write a paper).  Of course, when I got an IBM-based PC later, I had to re-learn the standard U. S. keyboard layout.

But some of the other keyboards on this list are beyond dreadful.  My favorites are the Mattel Aquarius, which had the awesome feature of placing a Reset button right next to the 1 key; and the all-time bad-keyboard champ, the IBM PCjr.  The only advantage of its wireless keyboard was that you could throw it across the room without damaging any wires.

If this doesn't inspire people to rise up against ethanol subsidies, I don't know what will:

OK, I was mad at the waste of tax dollars for ethanol programs that do nothing for the environment or to reduce net fossil fuel consumption. I was mad that a technology that in no way reduces CO2 production but does introduce radical new land-use-related environmental problems could be sold as an environmental panacea, rather than the corporate welfare it truly is. I was mad we have decided it is more important to subsidize corn farmers than to continue to provide the world's poor with cheap food. And I was flabbergasted that Congress could call for production of more corn-based ethanol than is physically possible with our entire corn crop.

But I really am mad now that ethanol subsidies are making craft beers rarer and more expensive to make.

So if you won't fight for your food supply or for the Amazon rain forest, maybe you'll fight for your microbrews.  We can only tolerate so much!

Total dipshit tries to take out street light, kills two people instead.

I don't know; maybe my fellow anarchists will disagree with me.  But if you're in the city and are not either A) at a shooting range or B) defending yourself against an aggressor, you don't fire your fucking gun.  Period.

This idiot needs to go away for a long, long time.

I still have a lot of respect for Ron Paul relative to other candidates for President, but this ad is horrible:



More over at Antiwar.com.

Now that Tom Tancredo is out of the race, does Paul feel inclined to pick up his "close the borders" torch and run with it?  This is typical politics at play: pandering to voters' irrational fears of the Brown Menace.

I agree with Justin Raimondo; this ad is disgraceful and not in keeping with the positive "revolution" vibes Paul's campaign has nurtured thus far.  I fervently hope he considers pulling this ad.

Fortune is out with its annual Dumbest Moments in Business, and predictably, China leads the way:

During 2007, the Year of the Pig, Mattel is forced to recall almost 20 million items made in China because of lead paint on toy cars and tiny magnets that could be deadly if swallowed. Lead paint problems are also found in 844,000 Chinese-made Barbie accessories and toys with the Sesame Street brand.

Pet food makers recall more than 60 million cans of food laced with tainted melamine in wheat gluten from China. A huge underground distribution network for steroids, human growth hormones, and other bodybuilding drugs is traced to 37 companies in China. Chinese-made lunch boxes, given away by the California Department of Public Health to promote healthy eating habits among children, are found to contain lead.

Nike recalls 235,000 football helmets because the Chinese-made chin cup has a defective strap and has caused at least two concussions and a broken nose. Ethylene glycol is found in Chinese-made toothpaste. The government of China executes the former head of its State Food and Drug Administration.

Rough year for bureaucrats!  Not that I'm particularly torn up about it.

Some other less-than-shining moments in the business world that may have escaped your attention:

• Japanese toilet manufacturer stages massive recall after three of its high-tech toilets catch fire.


• Disneyland plans to revamp "It's a Small World" ride to accommodate heftier passengers after boats start getting stuck under the load; fatties are asked to leave the ride and given coupons . . . for free food.


• The YOUniverse Funk Fone, for little aspiring G-string divas everywhere.


• An episode of Handy Manny on the Disney Channel is replaced by hard-core porn for Comcast customers in New Jersey.


• The European Union promotes its arts patronage by releasing a mash-up of sex scenes from movies it has funded, under the banner "Let's Come Together".


• " . . . a number of prominent [BlackBerry] addicts . . . admit to experiencing phantom incoming-message vibrations even when not wearing their devices."

You can view the full list here.

This is what happens when you allow government to take over health care:

In a move he says is necessary to trim the city’s waistline, the decidedly slim mayor of San Francisco, Gavin Newsom, has proposed charging big stores a fee when they sell sugar-sweet soda.

The proposal, which was reported by The San Francisco Chronicle on Monday, would put an as yet-to-be-defined surcharge on all drinks with high-fructose corn syrup, which puts the sweet pop in most nondiet sodas and many other food products. The syrup also puts on the pounds, something city officials say strains the health care system.

And he's right.  If I had to pay for someone else's health care, I'm taking a vested interest in that person's health, if for no other reason than to protect my wallet.  Any foods or activities which threaten a person's health (and thus my finances) are absolutely fair game for scrutiny.  Just wait 'til these geniuses come up with an obesity tax.  Hey, at least it would be progressive.

I starred so many Autoblog entries in Google Reader today that I decided to roll them up here:

UPS is optimizing its "Package Flow" route-mapping software to minimize left turns, which could save it millions of dollars in fuel costs every year by reducing the amount of time trucks sit waiting to make left-hand turns.  (Hopefully they reverse the parameters for their UK and Japanese operations!)

Knight Rider is returning to the tube, and KITT has been reborn . . . as a Ford Mustang Shelby GT500KR.

. . . which most likely will not have these tires installed as standard equipment.  Yes, they actually give off a lavender scent after they're warmed up.  These would be a good for a joke at the drag strip one time, I think.  "W00t!  11.5 ET and he smelled lovely in second gear, didn't he?"

If you paid more than $100,000 for a sports car, wouldn't you want a transmission that, you know, works?  Apparently Tesla doesn't think so; they're having such difficulty building a gearbox that can withstand the full-on torque of an electric motor that they're considering shipping Roadsters with transmissions that they know will fail within a few thousand miles.  The idea of course is that they would be replaced once the beefed-up transmission is ready.  That will be a great source of comfort to the first Tesla owner stranded in the mountains when his car pukes it cogs onto the road.

I don't buy the argument that we must always respect other cultures, particularly if said culture finds it acceptable to put someone to death for the naming of a teddy bear.

But having known this, I would not dream of setting foot in a place with such cultural attitudes.  The British teacher involved in this unfortunate incident should have known this, too.  It's always wise to consider your options carefully when dealing with irrational people, particularly when some of them are in charge of your host country's government.

I think I'm done with LJ, now.

Basically anyone can now flag anything you post publicly as "explicit adult content" or even "offensive" if they find it objectionable.  I don't see any safeguards in place to prevent this from being misused, other than trusting the "Abuse Prevention Team" to exercise reasonable judgment when reviewing the flagged content.  And we all saw how reasonable their judgment was when they nuked a number of fan-fiction journals and communities earlier this year.

I need at least both hands to count the number of people on my f-list who have posted material on their journals that someone, somewhere, might consider offensive.  I'm sure I've posted something that has pissed somebody off at some point.  If you post anything more than your grocery list (who knows, somebody might be offended by the brand of cereal you buy, so maybe even that's not safe), you expose yourself to scrutiny by the LJ overlords.

I'm not putting up with this bullshit anymore.  LJ and SixApart continue to flail about in their crusade to keep the interwebs safe for the chillun.  They fail, again, and now that their failures have the potential to affect me directly, it's time for me to stop supporting them.  It's not like I post much these days, anyway.

Now for something truly flag-worthy:

Photo tour of Creationism museum

Velociraptors and penguins and toucans, oh my!!

The scariest parts: the exhibits are actually well done, and the place is packed.  Which is why I probably shouldn't hold out much hope for humanity.

Damn.  I was positively giddy when I saw the headline on Slashdot:

Man Hacks 911 System, Sends SWAT on Bogus Raid

Now HERE'S a revolutionary! I thought.  But I was disappointed after reading the story:

Officers apprehended and cuffed the resident and his wife, identified as Stacy B. It was moments later they learned the call was false, said Lt. Mike McHenry of the South County Investigations Bureau.

“The danger is significant,” said Lt. Don Barnes, chief of police services for Lake Forest. “That (situation) played out OK, although it scared the victims significantly.”

Ellis is expected to appear in an Orange County courtroom Monday to face charges of computer access and fraud, false imprisonment by violence, falsely reporting a crime and assault with an assault weapon by proxy.

No!  Bad haX0r!  No Halo for you!

Don't send the freakin' SWAT team after innocent people!  Send them to an abandoned warehouse, or an empty lot, or somewhere in the middle of the desert.  If he'd done this, sending SWAT on wild goose chases that prevent them from terrorizing other people, I'd call the kid a hero.  But deploying them to an occupied house isn't much different from pointing a loaded gun at people yourself (which explains the interesting "assault with an assault weapon by proxy" charge against the kid).

“It’s not a prank,” Emami said. “People’s lives were in danger.”

Given SWAT's propensity for shooting people, I'd have to say he's right.

If you think the government is the only entity capable of bureaucratic fuckwittery, here's your reality check:

Just hours after Oklahoma football recruit Herman Mitchell was shot to death Friday in Houston, Adam Fineberg started raising money for Mitchell's family.

But after raising $4,500, enough to cover almost half the cost of Mitchell's funeral, Fineberg stopped. An OU compliance officer told him his actions would constitute an NCAA rules violation against the Sooners.

Now, Mitchell's mother likely will never receive that money.

That money is considered illegal financial assistance under NCAA rules because Mitchell's brother is a sophomore fullback at Westfield High School in Spring, Texas, and because Fineberg is an OU fan who attends Sooner football games and solicited donations through an OU fan Web site.

Because the Rules Must Be Enforced.  Fuck the NCAA.  The patina of respectability wore off of big-time college football long ago anyway.  Division 1 football exists to make a shitload of money for schools, all the while attempting to uphold the nobility of the "student-athlete" by preventing poor inner city kids from making a buck or two to help out their families.  What a farce.  What galling hypocrisy.

Fuck the NCAA, and fuck OU for lacking the balls to ignore a stupid rule and do what's right.

No, I'm not talking about the body spray that supposedly makes you irresistible to hot women.  This is the game of tag, played on playgrounds the world over . . . except the playground at Discovery Canyon Campus school in Colorado Springs:

An elementary school has banned tag on its playground after some children complained they were harassed or chased against their will.

"It causes a lot of conflict on the playground," said Cindy Fesgen, assistant principal of the Discovery Canyon Campus school.

Running games are still allowed as long as students don't chase each other, she said.

Fesgen said two parents complained to her about the ban but most parents and children didn't object.

In 2005, two elementary schools in the nearby Falcon School District did away with tag and similar games in favor of alternatives with less physical contact. School officials said the move encouraged more students to play games and helped reduce playground squabbles.

So they're not even the first to implement this ban.  Un-freaking-believable.  The sissification of America's youth continues apace.