The new Tennessee law (PDF) that taxes "the retail sale, lease, licensing, or use of specified digital products transferred to or accessed by subscribers or consumers" takes effect in January 2009

Including Nebraska and Tennessee, there are 17 states, plus the District of Columbia, that tax digital downloads,Alabama, Arizona, Colorado, Hawaii, Idaho, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, New Jersey, New Mexico, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, and Washington...

Tax something that does not physically exist ... how ?

TN TAX : "the retail sale, lease, licensing, or use of specified digital products transferred to or accessed by subscribers or consumers"

Pickin' On Series - American Idiot (Green Day)
I’m normally first in line to criticize series like this, which tend to just take the chords to a song and play them on a different instrument (banjo, accordion, distortion guitar, whatever). For this song at least, these anonymous session musicians sound like they tried for more than a paycheck, with a harmonies, solos, etc. And, unusual for the genre, it’s not instrumental – a big plus.

http://covermesongs.blogspot.com/

Sounds good for bluegrass...

Cover Me: Pickin' On Series - American Idiot

So where were the quants?

That’s what has been running through my head as I watch some of the oldest and seemingly best-run firms on Wall Street implode because of what turned out to be really bad bets on mortgage securities.

Before I started covering the Internet in 1997, I spent 13 years covering trading and finance. I covered my share of trading disasters from junk bonds, mortgage securities and the financial blank canvas known as derivatives. And I got to know bunch of quantitative analysts (”quants”): mathematicians, computer scientists and economists who were working on Wall Street to develop the art and science of risk management.

They were developing systems that would comb through all of a firm’s positions, analyze everything that might go wrong and estimate how much it might lose on a really bad day.

We’ve had some bad days lately, and it turns out Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers and maybe some others bet far too much. Their quants didn’t save them.

I called some old timers in the risk-management world to see what went wrong.

I fully expected them to tell me that the problem was that the alarms were blaring and red lights were flashing on the risk machines and greedy Wall Street bosses ignored the warnings to keep the profits flowing.

Ultimately, the people who ran the firms must take responsibility, but it wasn’t quite that simple.

In fact, most Wall Street computer models radically underestimated the risk of the complex mortgage securities, they said. That is partly because the level of financial distress is “the equivalent of the 100-year flood,” in the words of Leslie Rahl, the president of Capital Market Risk Advisors, a consulting firm.

But she and others say there is more to it: The people who ran the financial firms chose to program their risk-management systems with overly optimistic assumptions and to feed them oversimplified data. This kept them from sounding the alarm early enough.

Top bankers couldn’t simply ignore the computer models, because after the last round of big financial losses, regulators now require them to monitor their risk positions. Indeed, if the models say a firm’s risk has increased, the firm must either reduce its bets or set aside more capital as a cushion in case things go wrong.

In other words, the computer is supposed to monitor the temperature of the party and drain the punch bowl as things get hot. And just as drunken revelers may want to put the thermostat in the freezer, Wall Street executives had lots of incentives to make sure their risk systems didn’t see much risk.

“There was a willful designing of the systems to measure the risks in a certain way that would not necessarily pick up all the right risks,” said Gregg Berman, the co-head of the risk-management group at RiskMetrics, a software company spun out of JPMorgan. “They wanted to keep their capital base as stable as possible so that the limits they imposed on their trading desks and portfolio managers would be stable.”

“There was a willful designing of the systems to measure the risks in a certain way that would not necessarily pick up all the right risks”

....

So where were the quants? How Wall Street Lied to Its Computers...

Federal authorities are ramping up an investigation of a 20-year-old college student for allegedly hacking into Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's e-mail account.

First of all WTF was she doing using web mail for government communications?

Second, these kids should be commended on bringing that and the reason for secure passwords to the for front...

FBI searches TN apartment of alleged Palin hacker

An enormous, taxpayer-financed program to buy up bad mortgages and other distressed debt is necessary to protect the savings and aspirations of millions of Americans, Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. said on Friday.
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Statement by Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr.

“We’re talking hundreds of billions” of dollars, Mr. Paulson said at a briefing in which he underscored the depth of the problem, pledged to work with Congress to address it quickly and voiced optimism that, in the end, the country would emerge from the financial chaos.

Seeking to dispel any impression that the bailout would amount to a rescue of greedy Wall Street executives by Main Street Americans, Mr. Paulson said the program “will cost Americans far less than the alternative.”

Resolving the financial problems is of paramount importance, not just for major corporations and investment banks but for people who have never set foot in the corridors of corporate and political power, Mr. Paulson said. “Their retirement savings, their home values, their ability to borrow for college” and their chance to find and keep good jobs depend on it, he said.

Mr. Paulson said Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which were recently taken under the federal government’s wing, would expand their purchases of mortgage-backed securities to help ease the problems.

He declined to lay out specifics of the unfolding recovery program, which he said he would work on through the weekend with lawmakers so that it can be acted upon next week. But he said that the program must be well-designed and “sufficiently large” to protect taxpayers “to the maximum extent possible.”

What needs to happen is the wealth of the greedy *&^%$ that let this happen needs to be stripped. This is turning into a Tax payer bailout of every dumb ass and every rich person in America.

But he said that the program must be well-designed and “sufficiently large” to protect taxpayers “to the maximum extent possible.”

Spend more money? Our, Joe taxpayer, money.

Seeking to dispel any impression that the bailout would amount to a rescue of greedy Wall Street executives by Main Street Americans, Mr. Paulson said the program “will cost Americans far less than the alternative.”

What alternative? He does not have one, that he can think of, so this is really a bail-out of people who should be in pound-you-in-the-ass prison...!!!

So lets bail out the rich folks so they can keep their monies intact and continue to f&^% us, the average Joe, over again...

I THINK NOT!

Paulson Explains Need for Plan to Buy Mortgages (Total Bull$hit IMHO)

According to the Chicago Sun-Times, LiLo wanted to promote Obama but was turned away by his camp due to her wild ways. Now daddy Michael Lohan is biting back.

"For Barack Obama to condemn my daughter for past indiscretions when he admitted to the exact same himself is indicative of what kind of president he would be," Michael Lohan told Pop Tarts via e-mail on Wednesday night.

"His visions of a positive future for this country should be representative of a positive future for people as well. It is looking beyond the difficult times and letting go of the past," Michael said. "Obviously, Obama can do this for himself and not others, when in fact a good president should have hope for all."

Michael and his famous daughter have had a rocky relationship in recent weeks, but he had nothing but nice words for his little one in his e-mail.

"Lindsay is gifted — she has a wonderful heart and she can and will affect millions of people in a very positive way. She is here to stay," he said. "Obama might have eight years, and then he will be giving lectures. Who knows, maybe Lindsay will give him a part in one of her movies."

Lindsay Lohan's Dad Slams Obama Over Reported Dis...

In one of the most dramatic days in Wall Street’s history, Merrill Lynch agreed to sell itself to Bank of America for roughly $50 billion to avert a deepening financial crisis, while another prominent securities firm, Lehman Brothers, hurtled toward liquidation after it failed to find a buyer, people briefed on the deals said.

The humbling moves, which reshape the landscape of American finance, mark the latest chapter in a tumultuous year in which once-proud financial institutions have been brought to their knees as a result of tens of billions of dollars in losses because of bad mortgage finance and real estate investments.

They culminated a weekend of frantic around-the-clock negotiations, as Wall Street bankers huddled in meetings at the behest of Bush administration officials to try to avoid a downward spiral in the markets stemming from a crisis of confidence.

“My goodness. I’ve been in the business 35 years, and these are the most extraordinary events I‘ve ever seen,” said Peter G. Peterson, co-founder of the private equity firm the Blackstone Group, who was head of Lehman in the 1970s and a secretary of commerce in the Nixon administration.

Govt says everything is ok, but who do we really believe anymore... bad days are on the way.

In Frantic Day, Wall Street Banks Teeter

Two months ago, President Bush won congressional approval to immunize the nation's telecommunications companies from lawsuits accusing them of helping Bush funnel Americans' electronic communications to the National Security Agency without warrants -- all in the name of national security following the Sept. 11 terror attacks.

But the telecoms, facing 36 lawsuits commingled as one in a San Francisco federal court, still haven't been granted immunity in the lawsuits alleging they breached their customers' Fourth Amendment right to privacy. On Friday, however, Justice Department special counsel Anthony Coppolino said the government would comply with the immunity bill's procedural hurdles by Sept. 19 to seek blanket immunity on behalf of the companies.

Just keep on giving it away!

Justice Department Moving to Immunize Snooping Telcos

e Virginia Supreme Court declared the state's anti-spam law unconstitutional Friday and reversed the conviction of a man once considered one of the world's most prolific spammers.
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The court unanimously agreed with Jeremy Jaynes' argument that the law violates the free-speech protections of the First Amendment because it does not just restrict commercial e-mails. Most other states also have anti-spam laws, and there is a federal CAN-SPAM Act as well.

The Virginia law "is unconstitutionally overbroad on its face because it prohibits the anonymous transmission of all unsolicited bulk e-mails, including those containing political, religious or other speech protected by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution," Justice G. Steven Agee wrote.

In 2004, Jaynes became the first person in the country to be convicted of a felony for sending unsolicited bulk e-mail. Authorities claimed Jaynes sent up to 10 million e-mails a day from his home in Raleigh, N.C. He was sentenced to nine years in prison.

Jaynes was charged in Virginia because the e-mails went through an AOL server there.

The state Supreme Court last February affirmed Jaynes' conviction on several grounds but later agreed, without explanation, to reconsider the First Amendment issue. Jaynes was allowed to argue that the law unconstitutionally infringed on political and religious speech even though all his spam was commercial.

Jaynes' attorney, Thomas Wolf, has said sending commercial spam would still be illegal under the federal CAN-SPAM Act even if Virginia's law is invalidated. However, he said the federal law would not apply to Jaynes because it was adopted after he sent the e-mails that were the basis for the state charges.

"unsolicited bulk e-mails" Someone needs to see if he would like his inbox full of junk... Moronic stuff like this has no place on the internet... The judge never sees spam due to really expensive hard/software to block it...

hmmm

Va. court strikes down anti-spam law

I still can’t believe that technology has progressed so fast for devices such as cell phones being capable of handling email in a jiffy - something I would have laughed at 10 years ago. Peek is one of the later innovations, offering an e-mail only mobile device that was specially designed to let you manage your e-mail no matter where you are.

Peek is a super thin and stylish device that lets you take your email with you and stay connected. With Peek service you get unlimited email for a flat, low monthly rate. Totally easy. Sound interesting? Peek will be available this fall in stores nationwide.

This $99 device targets folk who don’t want to fork out hundreds more for a smartphone just because they want to access their e-mail on-the-go. It is available from Target and takes less than 5 minutes to set up, and best of all is, you don’t have to call a carrier and go through a web of human operators. It will cost you a flat monthly fee without having to worry about separate voice/data plans, hidden fees or surcharges. Compatible e-mail providers include Yahoo!, Hotmail, Gmail, AOL and majority of the other internet providers.

Peek's Specifications:
* OS - Peekux
* CPU - CPU is an embedded 104Mhz ARM7 that is part of the Texas Instrument Locosto chipset
* Bands - US Triband GPRS (800, 1800, and 1900 Mhz)
* Data - GPRS (Packet Data standard in GSM)
* Memory - 8MB of user memory (which is a lot of email!)
* Display - 2.5 inches (320 x 240 pixels (QVGA), 65k colors)
* Dimensions - 4.0 x 2.7 x 0.4 in (102 x 68 x 10mm)
* Weight - 3.8 ounces (109 gm)
* Battery Life - 4-5 days under typical usage

If this is lunux based I wonder what parts of GPL are being violated?
But still cheap and could be a cool hacking platform...

Peek - Simply email