Ripped from the Headlines....

A "small" number of backup tapes with records detailing the financial information of government employees were lost in shipment to a backup center, Bank of America said on Friday.

The tapes contained information on the customers and accounts of the U.S. government's SmartPay charge card program, which has more than 2.1 million members and annual transactions totaling more than $21 billion, according to the General Services Administration. Reports have pegged the number of cards affected at 1.2 million.

"Federal law enforcement officials were immediately engaged when the tapes were discovered missing, and subsequently conducted a thorough investigation into the matter, working closely with Bank of America," the bank said in a statement. "The investigation to date has found no evidence to suggest the tapes or their content have been accessed or misused, and the tapes are now presumed lost."

Lost? Lost??

Lost is what happens to your car keys, lost is what happens to your pet, lost is what happens to a $1 dollar bill...lost is not what happens to 2.1 million members personal financial data from one of the largest banks in the world. Lost?

Here we go again....

"The City of Chicago recently completed a $475 million park/civic center known as Millennium Park. One of the central features is a sculpture officially called Cloud Gate and unofficially called "The Bean". The Bean is a giant, 3 story, 110-ton hunk of highly reflective steel.

Photographers taking pictures of the sculpture have been charged money by the city.

The park district is claiming that pictures of the park violate the designers' and artists' copyrights. Quoth Karen Ryan, the press director for the park's project,

"The copyrights for the enhancements in Millennium Park are owned by the artist who created them. As such, anyone reproducing the works, especially for commercial purposes, needs the permission of that artist."

At this rate, "true" artists will stop producing their works for the public...just another case of the patent laws getting out of control!

Do We Really Need This???

Gays will soon savour special kind of Queer Beer.

Three entrepreneurs from Sweden founded a company to manufacture beer especially for those of unconventional sexual orientation. 32-year-old Michael Hatmaker was the one to come up with the idea in the first place. He, along with his friends plans to produce special gay-beer under a trademark of "Queer Beer". According to Michael, the idea appeared rather absurd to him at first. Nonetheless, after discussing future perspectives, his friends agreed to get involved in the business.

It is noteworthy that one of Michael's business partners is gay himself. In fact, promotion would not be possible without his expertise. The three entrepreneurs claim that their main intention is to treat the topic of homosexual life style with a bit of humor.

They hope that the beverage will help gays and lesbians to feel more relaxed ad forget about concealing their sexual preferences.

Pull That Ad!!!!

Ford is yanking a planned Super Bowl ad that depicts a clergyman tempted by a new pickup truck after some victims of clergy sex abuse complained it made light of their trauma.

With that in mind, I’m asking McDonald’s to stop its “I’m lovin’ it” campaign because it makes light of the fact that some people love eating so much they’ve become obese.

I’m also asking Verizon to pull it’s “Can you hear me now?” campaign because it makes light of the fact that some people suffer from hearing loss.

I’m also asking America’s milk producers to pull the “Got Milk?” campaign because it makes light of the fact that some people are lactose intolerant.

And I’m also asking anybody who uses the phrase “these prices are insane!” to cease and desiste because the phrase makes light of the plight of the mentally ill.

Some people need to get a life and ... I guess I can't say that because it makes fun of the dead!

The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth...

Carnivore we hardly knew ye.

Turns out that the FBI quietly stopped using the controversial network surveillance hardware in 2002, preferring unnamed commercial products instead.

The Patriot Act allows the FBI to snoop on Internet traffic without a warrant, but according to documents obtained by the Electronic Privacy Information Center under the Freedom of Information Act, the agency only used its Carnivore-like capabilities three times in 2002 and six times in 2003.

Wow! really believe that! 9 uses in 2 years? I might belive that they DIDN'T use it for 9 minutes in the last 2 years due to maintenance, but that's about as far as I'm going to go.

Let me get this straight, the goverment has software that lets it monitor every piece of traffic on the internet, anonymously, and they don't use it?

yeah right sure

Oh, and by the way, Langly is not monitoring and recording the airwaves and cell phone frequencies either!