Badvertising: Stop the 5 Biggest Threats to Online Privacy | Fast Company

Submitted by: Snidley

Not only a discussion of the threats, but some good solutions for them. I added ‘Better Privacy’ to Firefox and was amazed at how many flash cookies I had on my computer.

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Short Memory

Bin Laden is more than a punchline in a turban or a insane terrorist who produced the biggest horrorshow in history. He has goals.

Our failure to understand the lessons learned by the Soviets in Afghanistan may doom us to repeat them. The complexity of the situation, along with our missteps, mean we need to take a broader appraisal of the region and our alliances. – by Peter Mehit

Consumers have trouble finding falling prices|money.cnn.com

The government says consumers are paying less for their everyday needs compared to a year ago. But if it feels like your dollar is not going as far as it used to, you’re not alone.

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Somali sea gangs lure investors at pirate lair | Reuters

THE INVISIBLE HAND OF THE MARKET MOVES UPON THE WATERS…

This is a classic example of why capitalism will never go away. It’s efficient and it rewards initiative. A pirate leader, what you might call a ‘vulture capitalist’, describes the market:

“The shares are open to all and everybody can take part, whether personally at sea or on land by providing cash, weapons or useful materials … we’ve made piracy a community activity.”

And just like any capital market, shareholders wait breathlessly for returns:

Piracy investor Sahra Ibrahim, a 22-year-old divorcee, was lined up with others waiting for her cut of a ransom pay-out after one of the gangs freed a Spanish tuna fishing vessel.

“I am waiting for my share after I contributed a rocket-propelled grenade for the operation,” she said, adding that she got the weapon from her ex-husband in alimony.

“I am really happy and lucky. I have made $75,000 in only 38 days since I joined the ‘company’.”

Two questions: I wonder what Adam Smith would think? And, when is Merrill Lynch going to start offering pirate funds?

Avast, Read the Article Here.

Design Crisis » The Lichtenstein Look

Warning: Some may require Dramamine before reading this article. This is a cafeteria, by the way. Imagine keeping your food down in this environment.

You have got to see these photos. NOTICE: May cause vertigo..

Bunning Statement on Bernanke: ‘You Are the Definition of a Moral Hazard’ | Real Time Economics – WSJ

Senator Jim Bunning smokes Ben Bernanke:

Instead of taking that money and lending to consumers and cleaning up their balance sheets, the banks started to pocket record profits and pay out billions of dollars in bonuses. Because you bowed to pressure from the banks and refused to resolve them or force them to clean up their balance sheets and clean out the management, you have created zombie banks that are only enriching their traders and executives.

…you put the printing presses into overdrive to fund the government’s spending and hand out cheap money to your masters on Wall Street, which they use to rake in record profits while ordinary Americans and small businesses can’t even get loans for their everyday needs.

Read This NOW!

A more complete, yet less satisfying description of the hearing can be read here.

Where’s my flying car?|money.cnn.com

Since the 1930s, more than 30 patents have been filed for flying car designs, documenting the dreams of dozens of aviation entrepreneurs enthralled by Jetsonian ideals of zooming around dodging traffic in tiny, efficient personal aircrafts.

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To Sell or Not to Sell: Silicon Valley Acquisitions Market Heats Up | Fast Company

Yet the history of small Internet companies being snapped up by large ones isn’t pretty. Just in the past few months, eBay has had to unload both StumbleUpon (the Web recommendations engine it bought in 2007 for $75 million) as well as the Internet-phone service Skype (purchased in 2005 for $3.1 billion), each for a loss. Yahoo is looking to rid itself of several properties, including Zimbra, the email company it snapped up in 2007 for $350 million. FeedBurner, Jaiku, and Dodgeball are only a few of the startups languishing in obscurity under the Googleplex.

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Stimulus News Digest #10 – November 2009 | California Office of the Small Business Advocate

The Office of the Small Business Advocate has this news:

Judge blasts bad bank, erases 525G debt | NYPOST.com

The lucky winner!

The government has been backing up to the back doors of these institutions, unloading truckloads of cash. Many have used the funds to purchase other banks or shore up their balance sheets; few have passed any relief to their customers.  The backlash against them has primarily been debt repudiation (bankruptcy and foreclosure) and now, debt cancellation.

Spinner excoriated OneWest for repeatedly refusing to work out a deal, for misleading him about the dollar amounts at stake in the case, and for its treatment of the couple over months of hearings.

OneWest’s conduct was “inequitable, unconscionable, vexatious and opprobrious,” Spinner wrote.

He canceled the debt because the bank “must be appropriately sanctioned so as to deter it from imposing further mortifying abuse against [the couple].”

The bank is involved in a similar case in California, where it’s trying to foreclose on an 89-year-old woman, despite two court orders telling it to stop.

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