Google paid $1.65bil for this?

In the absolutely least surprising news item of the day, Google was sued for $1 billion by Viacom over copyright infringement occurring on recently acquired YouTube. All I can say is...no shit. I love YouTube, but copyright infringement is what it's best at. Sure, YouTube does what it can to remove copyrighted materials, but that is usually done only at the copyright holder's request. Of course lawsuits were coming.

So Google paid $1.65bil for the right to be a party to a whole bunch of lawsuits from big media companies that are eager to fight infringement since we've all been stealing from them for the past decade. It didn't make sense to me at the time, and it still makes no sense. Now, they paid it in stock, so it was no cash off their balance sheet. What it did do was dilute their owners, though admittedly not by all that much.

When companies start spending their stock instead of cash, they are telling me that they think their stock is over-valued. So here's your stock tip of the day, sell Google. Obviously, these lawsuits won't be bringing Google down, but its management seems to be telling us that we're overpaying right now.

Case of the Monday's

On Sunday the ever eager Drudge Report reported on a Youtube.com video that showed Big Rudy Guiliani avidly attesting to pro-abortion funding in the late 80s. The clip, dug up by a gopher looking for some good dirt then aired on all major stations the following day. This sort of bad publicity is exactly what is going to kill decent candidates this election. Rudy's people's inability to find this video and control his press(releasing it on his own terms with good spin or burning the damn thing) may be the start of a trend of bad pub. Rudy has Republicans questioning his policies on specific issues like gays, abortion, and guns. However, his fundraising (numbers to be released at the end of the first quarter,March 31) may show to be enough to brush off these kidney shots from the spirits of bad press, and even dodge many other knockout blows. But hats off the guy(gal) that found the video............good digging for dirt.

In other news, a Swiss man accused of insulting the nation's monarchy by spray-painting over several portraits of the revered Thai king pleaded guilty today and faces a maximum 75-year prison sentence. The vandalism coincided with Bhumibol's (The Thai King) 79th birthday, which was celebrated across Thailand with fireworks and prayers on their own version of our "President's Day." The king is the world's longest serving monarch. On a side note, the plaintiff did say he was pretty drunk and regrets doing it......Man .......to bad that doesn't actually work !!
It makes me think about how they treat the leaders of their country over in Thailand. They are giving a guy some serious time in prison for bad mouthing their leader. On the other hand, the reporter who found the Rudy speech in which he was tarnishing his current campaign for Presidency and didn't even know it, will likely be praised and continue to do what he does for a living........gossip.

Rudy has problems ahead of him not limiting to bad press; he also has been married a few times. He also cleaned up our Nation's largest city, NYC, amidst the nastiest odds against him, the ugliest press against him, and a radical fundamentalist group(Osama) against his city. He took a shattered and star-struck band of un-united urbanites and transformed them both, the city and its people, into a respectable model of urban success.

i go to spring break for the STDs

As spring break rapidly rolls upon the college students across the country causing them to vanish south of the Mason-Dixon line for some must needed relaxation after midterms, don't expect federal funding to provide free condoms as you leave your respective Floridian/Texan/Mexican (Yes I know Mexico wouldn't get federal funding...blah blah blah.....but it helps with the allegory of 3 am hook-ups) disco techs with your sweaty and hammered drunk not-so-significant other. Why, you ask??? Because all of the federal funding apportioned for young adult sex issues like this is already spoken for in the form of low-quality, expensive, and ineffective abstinence-only programs. Understandably, free condom handouts in the middle of the night amidst the thumping of Darude's latest single is not the adequate resolution to the continuing spread of HIV-AIDS, with young females especially at risk (Washington Post 2-24-07), Congress must halt seven years of federal funding for programs that use overly simplistic and biased abstinence-only tactics.
I feel I have a special insight on this issue, coming from both educational backgrounds:1. Catholic Schooling K-8 promoting abstinence and 2. Public High Schooling providing vast education on sex, pregnancy, and STDs. Taking both into consideration when making a sex related decision would obviously be ideal, however, our friends alcohol and lust seem to take over at the most inopportune moments(stumbling around the bar at last call.)
Arguably, the majority of bad decisions to not use condoms or have relations with a not-so-suitable partner come when alcohol(Watkins) relations have taken over the mind, i mean, Jager really was NOT needed...............But.......no matter how many tailcocks I have had throughout the course of a drunken marathon, certain pictures of certain things from a certain health/sex-ed class seem to take over my imaginative side of my brain. I don't need to include details here, we have all seen the pictures that make you a little queasy, at the same time making you a little smarter the next time a decision comes around, hoping you had the proper education. Abstinence-only programs refute opinions revolving around full-disclosure believers that wish to put the decision into the hands of the kid, the educated kid, not the the dumbfounded "what the hell is that" kid. Without prior knowledge of things like herpes, pregnancy, and HIV-AIDS teenagers won't be making the correct decision based on all relevant facts. Wait, that sounds familiar, oh yeah, that's how the law works:you make a decision based on all relevant facts, not the ones that shelter our kids and keep them closer to adolescence longer than necessary. No kid has to be in the dark about this Congress, so stop paying for it to happen

Dr. B and fatty Mcfat fat kids

Dr B says:::::::::::::>
A proposed boycott of Girl Scout cookies (because they're supposedly jumping down Americans' throats and killing them with obesity) -- nutty (the boycott idea, not the cookies). But, charges of child abuse against a parent who lets a child become morbidly obese -- not nutty, right-on in my opinion. In addition to all of the long-term physical consequences (Diabetes, heart disease, etc.), there are profound short- and long-term negative psychological and emotional consequences of childhood obesity. If adults want to blow themselves up with food to the point of explosion, I'm not really worried about it -- don't want to pay for it, but not worried about it. But kids are not competent to make that decision for themselves and should not be allowed to do so. Just as we don't allow parents to harm children by under-feeding them, we shouldn't allow parents to harm children by over-feeding them. Don't get me wrong here -- I don't want the government second-guessing the nutritional decisions made by every parent in the U.S.A. or some kind of government-sanctioned "weigh ins" of every kid in the U.S.A. -- but I would like to see mandated reporting (by teachers, school nurses, healthcare providers, etc.) to child protective services when a child is morbidly, grossly obese. One last thing, and this applies to both childhood and adult obesity -- I don't buy the "medical condition" excuse. We all took high school chemistry, and we learned that matter never gets created or destroyed; it just changes form. That means there's no way for 100 lbs. of fat to end up as part of a person's body unless 100 lbs. of food entered that body first. So, even if a person has a "medical condition" that prevents the person from knowing when he or she has had enough to eat, weight gain still can be controlled through the regulation of food intake and physical activity (and if a physician wants to add medication to that mix, I'm fine with it). Nobody has to be fat, especially not kids.

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Randomness

In closing of a blurry weekend, here are a few random items:

1) I wish soccer was as exciting over here as it is in other parts of the world. This YouTube clip makes me want to watch more of the sport (it also leaves me disappointed that nobody in the NFL, like Michael Irvin, has tried this after a TD)...



2) Aren't there better ways to see your wife naked, especially if she's a stripper?

Different Standards

Why is it that when Obama comes out and says that lives in Iraq were wasted he is scorned by members of the American press and public, but when war veteran and American hero John McCain says exactly the same thing the headline remains that John McCain announced his candidacy for president. If any member of the blue were to have claimed the lives were wasted as Mr McCain did that would have been the story and it was when Obama did. For some reason there is a double standard, it is time to us as Americans to hold all candidates to the same standards. We are letting McCain distance himself to from the president with out holding him to the same standards the rest of the field is held to. I guess last night brought back the Straight Talk Express, and did he really need to announce his candidacy for president, i think i began the day McCain endorsed W and that worked well, didn't it?

The worst person in the world

Yeah i know i stole the title from a former sports center anchor who spends his days on the news, but what the heck this man is really the worst person in the world. Congrats Mike Nifong, you are truly the worst person in the world. You jeopardized the future of three young men who acted as college student do. Understand this, i am not excusing the semi-irresponsible behavior by these individuals, but in American society where we say that we believe in Innocent until proven guilty we did not show it in this case. The second the story broke the country slammed the Duke team for "out of control." Duke did a hell of a job too, cancelled the teams seasons really show support of your falsely accused student athletes. Now ask your selves the news directors of America, what are your college aged students doing on campus? I will contend that they have probably attended several parties that involved under aged drinking, i contend that they have probably been to a party where someone said or did something offensive to a member of the opposite sex, i will even contend that most college aged American males have been to a party where strippers danced for them and most of them have even received a lap dance from the entertainment. Are these good things that occur in our society, that is for people much smarter than me to figure out. These actions are not is criminal. Mike Nifong went on a witch hunt and the prey where the men of the Duke lacrosse team. These guys who where abused by Nifong will have to live with the baggage of that night for the rest of their lives, and therefore Nifong should be saddled with the baggage of his actions involving this case. First, when the men falsely accused go on a job interview the person across the desk will be thinking about the stripper party; chances are that the every time these men go to interview or meet new people in general they will be labeled for the actions of one night. . One night where the three accused men went to a party. A party like the ones many of us attend from time to time. Mike Nifong has branded a scarlet letter across the chests of these men. Second, men who use others to achieve there own ends are not men they are boys, and Mike Nifonf is truly a boy. He snatched freedom from these three men. He took their freedom to keep his job. He placed confidence in the story of a women who changed her story more times than we have seen anna nicole mug lately. He even let this women id the men who abused her, the line consisted of the team and only member of the team, not a lawyer but don't you need to put people in the lineup that are not suspects, otherwise we give accusers pick of the liter. Hopefully next time something happens at a party that you are attending the accuser doesn't pick you. Because the women who had enough dna in her vag to start sperm bank might say you were the one who rapped her. You don't even have to be at the party when she says it happens, you can have photo of yourself at an ATM when the event supposedly took place and you are still arrested.Third, college males beware, this case makes it okay to hunt you down like the withes of Salem. The great part is that people will never side with the accused they will put your face on TV and treat you as if you are guilty, the protesters on campus will picket you and call you names, and this is Innocent until proven guilty these days.