I thought this was rather sad while also being brutally true

An era has passed

Some of the people buying this DLC are not people who bought the game in a new shrink-wrapped box. That could be seen as a dark cloud, a mass of gamers who play a game without contributing a penny to EA. But around that cloud Riccitiello identified a silver lining: "There's a sizable pirate market and a sizable second sale market and we want to try to generate revenue in that marketplace," he said, pointing to DLC as a way to do it.

Translation: "we can't grow organically anymore using our existing model. Time to tap into the 'next' market."

HAHAHA!

Thanks to a recent ruling (PDF) by the US Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, corporations now have a right to 'personal privacy,'

Not only is this disturbing, but it's interesting to see this moving in the opposite direction as personal privacy. At some point, there's going to be a collision.

Corporations Now Have a Right To "Personal Privacy"

And boy, does it ever. How so? It abstracts the functionality of native iPhone and Android development through a Javascript API. So instead of using Objective-C or Java to create your app, you create the functionality with Javascript (including your favorite JS libraries like YUI or jQuery) and lay it out with CSS. In other words, if you’re comfortable developing a dynamic web page, you are 90% of the way there — you are about a day away from launching your first iPhone or Android app.

I can't wait to get Acidus' reaction to this.

The doors to mobile app development just got blown wide open | Purple Raincloud

it was a system that created the illusion of stability while simultaneously creating the conditions for an inevitable and dramatic collapse.

[shudder]

Why capitalism fails - The Boston Globe

The Obama administration has unveiled a government 'app store' designed to push the federal bureaucracy into the era of cloud computing. The change means some federal employees will begin using services like YouTube, Gmail and WordPress, which store data on private internet servers instead of on those paid for with public money.

Is this not another case for creating infrastructure in the public trust? Not only should you have last mile copper and fiber loops that are publicly owned, but why not a cloud infrastructure? Considering the amount of data that publicly funded projects currently (and exponentially will in the future) use, does this not make sense? I mean, we have public television and radio infrastructure. Roads. Water. Gas and other energy sources. Why not data and information sources? Isn't this like a library? Here is where I think leaning on the private sector is not a good idea, as we've seen with IP infrastructure.

Slashdot Politics Story | US Government Sets Up Online 'App Store'

More people might buy the product with feature X. Should you build feature X?

Not necessarily. A startup’s cash-on-hand is shrinking every day. You want to add the features that will do the most to stop your losses. You don’t execute every random idea without prioritizing it.

Not just a startup. ANY business. Weighing ideas and prioritizing them is the hardest work you'll do.

Steve Jobs does customer development: No new features - Venture Hacks

Despite all the money going directly to the big banks, despite all the government guarantees and loans and special tax breaks, despite the shot-gun weddings and bank mergers, despite the willingness of the Treasury and the Fed to do almost whatever the banks have asked, the reality is that credit is not flowing.

Why? Because the underlying problem isn’t a liquidity problem. As I’ve noted elsewhere, the problem is that lenders and investors don’t trust they’ll get their money back because no one trusts that the numbers that purport to value securities are anything but wishful thinking. The trouble, in a nutshell, is that the financial entrepreneurship of recent years — the derivatives, credit default swaps, collateralized debt instruments, and so on — has undermined all notion of true value.

Many of these fancy instruments became popular over recent years precisely because they circumvented financial regulations, especially rules on banks’ capital adequacy. Big banks created all these off-balance-sheet vehicles because they allowed the big banks to carry less capital.

Guest Post: The Economy Will Not Recover Until Trust is Restored « naked capitalism

The ACLU has sued the US Customs and Border Protection agency under the Freedom of Information Act, aiming to obtain records on the agency's policy of searching laptops at the border. Under the policy, the CBP can search through financial records, photos, and Web site histories, and retain that information for unspecified periods of time. The ACLU is arguing that the information is necessary to understand whether the CBP may be violating the Fourth Amendment, which protects against unreasonable and unwarranted searches. The agency has so far not responded to requests for comment.

Bout time.

Slashdot Your Rights Online Story | ACLU Sues For Records On Border Laptop Searches

WSMV-TV in Nashville reported that Coffee County expects to collect $100,000 in fines as a result of crimes committed at the four-day Bonnaroo music festival. According to the report, more than 250 people were fined during the June festival — some up to $20,000.

Welcome to Bonnaroo: Now Pay Up. Echoing a disturbing trend in the municipal money machine.

Record fines from Bonnaroo