The Class Action

In the Class Action filed in 2007, Plaintiff alleges that VW knowingly concealed, suppressed and omitted to disclose to consumers that Class Vehicles contained defectively designed timing belt tensioners, timing belts and/or associated parts (”timing belt system”), and that VW failed to disclose and/or misrepresented the appropriate service interval for replacement of the timing belt system in Settlement Class Vehicles. VW has denied any defect, wrongdoing or liability whatsoever and deny that this lawsuit could properly be certified as a class action for trial.

Has yours snapped yet?

Mine did. And it was a thoroughly sickening and indignant episode that occurred during an extremely heavy commute time, on a dangerous and well-traveled curve in the road, along one of the most congested streets in all of Read the rest of this entry »

Ah, the end of summer. Time to pack in all those pool parties, the outdoor barbecues, and maybe have one more fling out on the beach before –ugh—school or work starts in earnest in September. Summers are, after all, made for relaxing and not really having a worry in the world. High gas prices? Pschaw! Georgia being pelted by Russian surface-to-air-missiles? Where’s Georgia? (Or where’s Russia?) Democratic Convention starting tomorrow in Denver? Ugh. What a snoozefest. Offshore drilling as a strategy to help the energy crisis? Offshore what? Dude, let me get back to my tunes. Don’t we want to remember this time for all the cool tunes that summers are made for?

There is some truth in this. Every summer does seem to have a song that gets a lot of airplay and seems to blare out of every speaker, window sill, bodega, monster SUV, or requisite poolside. Only now we don’t really say “airplay” too much anymore, now that we are in the MP3 age. That iTunes is the most preeminent venue for consuming music and, in the parlance of the record industry, it’s the place where all the new music “drops” every Tuesday. And given that a lot of young people are home during the summer, what better time to focus on those songs that linger, those tunes that you just can’t get out of your head, no matter how hard you try. Read the rest of this entry »

Your DIEBOLD Vote Hasn’t Counted For a Decade

Are you a lucky lotto winner? I hope so.  With the recent announcement from the e-Voting champions themselves stating that their e-machines are inherently flawed and that they have been dropping votes for years, the chances of getting your vote through and making it count are as slim as they’ve ever been - but for a change, you’re now painfully aware.

The logic error is present in both types of voting machines made by the company: touchscreens and optical scan systems. These machines are used in 34 states (1,750 jurisdictions). For example, in Ohio’s March primaries, it is known that the machines temporarily lost 1,000 ballots.

The e-Voting machines “contain a critical programming error that can cause votes to be dropped while being electronically transferred from memory cards to a central tallying point”.

Clearly the most shameful element of this scandal and recent admission is that Diebold (ahem… now Premier Voting Solutions) has previously denied any malfunction or impropriety in their e-machines, and they have continued to Read the rest of this entry »

I did not get my text message –until 1:04 am PST. After a long day in which CNN and every other news organization was chomping at the bit big time wondering who Barack Obama would select as his vice-presidential running mate, we finally have word that it is Senator Joe Biden of Delaware. That bit of news came courtesy of CNN, and chief Washington correspondent John King at 12:42 am EST –a full three hours earlier–from a well-placed source. It was a bit disappointing that the news had leaked and that it didn’t go to the supporters first via SMS.  Millions of Obama supporters who signed up for this bit of news was significant because it symbolized the Obama campaign’s taking this to the people first and notifying them before anyone else.

My cellphone buzzed at this ungodly hour while I was already sleeping. I knew what it was, and I didn’t bother getting up to read the SMS. I knew who Obama had chosen, and in fact, I had just switched off the TV with a bleary-eyed Larry King with the same talking heads that he had on six hours earlier. Honestly, CNN had been apoplectic and snappy all day long, promising that “at any minute now” they would tell us who the VP pick would be. That meant that all of the newscasts featured mostly speculation, but also updates from the also-rans like Tim Keane and Evan Bayh, who sent word that Obama had called them to say they would not be the choice. How do I know all this? I had CNN on virtually all day too, thinking too that they would have the answer first, even though I tried to convince myself that my cellphone would go off first. I was wrong. I was misled. But OK, let’s get on with this. Read the rest of this entry »

April has been banished. One of the most vain, needy, self-centered contestants of any BB season was tossed out in a 6-0 vote. It wasn’t hard to achieve. She had simply revolted too many people and yet could not understand why –in her chat with sex partner/showmance partner Ollie—anyone would not like her enough to boot off. That’s how deep April was. The bleach blonde finance manager (at a car dealership) from Arizona who came on strong at the beginning, who formed alliances, then ruined them, then isolated herself altogether, really had no allies by the end. Perhaps she had Michelle’s sympathy, if not vote, and that’s only because she was the only woman left who spoke to her. April tried to get Dan’s vote and even hinted she’d give him money she won weeks ago, but Dan deftly exposed the fact that someone offered him money (it could have been Jerry, the other person on the block) for his vote. In the end he didn’t use the POV and created a little excitement in the run up to last night’s unanimous vote. For the third week now, Dan becomes the unlikely wild card vote.  Other developments this week: Read the rest of this entry »

The Scenario

So you went a little nuts on your MySpace profile - you posted your age, your interests, some of your funniest home movies and the secret spots you like to frequent on Saturday following your morning dog walk. It felt freeing and liberating to tout your spot in this world and advertise your status to your online “friends”.

And it exploded from there: you started posting in public forums without hesitating to include your full, given name (so you can get credit for your impassioned responses), then proceeded to open numerous accounts on the Facebooks, Friendsters, LinkedIns and Meebos of the world. You even dropped your digits at one point on Craigslist, where they remain cached to this day on Yahoo!. There’s no question about it: you’re now officially “out there”.

But as your friends began to accumulate and as your forum posts became popular (and distributed), your online presence began to balloon to uncontrollable (and uncomfortable) proportions. Personal commentary, asides and intimate information usually reserved for loved ones was now on public display - an inadvertent consequence of your own making.

And with the recent advent of employers checking potential job candidates online before making their hiring decisions, it might be wise for the current job-seeker to Read the rest of this entry »

Three years almost to this week, while Hurricane Katrina ripped through New Orleans, Condoleezza Rice was shopping for designer shoes in Manhattan. She was on vacation, though as a high security official she surely received updates about disasters like the horrendous floods that took place in Louisiana. She still attended the Broadway play that night, “Spam-a-lot”.

Ten days ago, the Bush White House watched helplessly as Russian tanks rolled into central Georgia in what has now been called the most serious showdown with Moscow since the end of the Cold War. By all accounts, the attack on Georgian troops inside their territory along the borders of South Ossetia and Abkhazia was savage and brutal. But it wasn’t a surprise. These borders have been disputed since the dissolution of the Soviet Union. The once-familiar saber rattling finally roared one bloody afternoon. Not only did the US help hasten this event, but it completely failed in dealing with it in the days that followed. Diplomatic disaster of the first order? No –that’s much too kind. Read the rest of this entry »

Want to perform a Google search without Google results?  Apparently someone does.

And that someone would be Finnish blogger Timo Paloheimo, who has created, ahem, “Google minus Google“.

The site
has
emerged as
a reactionary responseThe site has emerged as a reactionary response to a recent article written by NYT’s Miguel Helft.  Helft’s piece detailed the enormous presence of Google domains in search engine results (Knol, Blogger, and YouTube) and the potential for the company to achieve “Media Company” standing on the web, primarily as a result of Google’s reach and search engine prowess.

As it stands, when you perform a Google search on the web, inevitably you’ll find (mixed in with other results) YouTube videos, Blogger blogs and other Google-owned enterprises that may or may not capture your next click.

Clicks equal visits; visits equal potential advertising revenue through…clicks.

Timo could have no more of this.

And it didn’t take much time for his site to catch on: Read the rest of this entry »

The Telegraph has disclosed that the British government is pushing ahead with plans for a national road-pricing scheme, including testing “spy in the sky” technology.

Imagine:  having to think about some chilling, omniscient force in the sky tracking (and calculating costs of) your journey to pick up a six pack of Heineken from your market of choice.  Then, imagine having to consider such big-brother monitoring in an environment where you’re already paying some of the highest taxes on the planet, living amongst thousands of always-on CCTV cameras, and being sent letters of disapproval if you use bandwitdth-hogging applications on your own PC.

It’s true:  British motorists already pay some of the highest taxes in the world and with government finances under severe pressure, the “pay-as-you-drive” scheme could provide a Read the rest of this entry »

NBC probably doesn’t look forward to this week. After posting boffo ratings for its coverage, there is evidence that this has been very much related to the eighth wonder that is Michael Phelps. Phelps last night won his eighth gold medal at the Beijing Olympics, as the US team defeated the Australians in the 400 medley relay.

NBC has
certainly
milked each
and every Phelps winNBC has certainly milked each and every Phelps win, and it’s worth following his every move as he made it to the Water Cube, iPod in his ears, or putting a microphone in front of him to ask him (ugh) what “was going through his head”, etc., as he picked up yet another medal. NBC has stayed very close to Phelps’s Mom and his older sisters too, even dispatching analyst Cris Collinsworth to sit next to her at the swim events and dedicating a camera and microphone to record Mama Phelps’s every utterance. She has become almost the super media star that her son has, posing for photos with mega luminaries such as Kobe Bryant, Jason Kidd and Lebron James, all NBA stars and members of the US Olympic basketball team. Phelpsmania is everywhere.

Now with the swim events over, NBC’s ratings are almost certain to drop. As we here in the US of A cope with Phelps phever and deal with withdrawal, here is a list of suggestions we’d submit to NBC to improve its coverage in this, the second and final week of the Beijing games: Read the rest of this entry »

Michelle was HOH last week, and her first order of business was to “win this” for Jessie. She wanted to avenge his ouster the week before by going after Libra and Keesha, both of whom she blamed for this. Their heads were quickly put on the block. Picking Libra was too easy. She has proved to be the ultimate whiner and screamer, having others (like Keesha) do her dirty work, complain when she doesn’t do well in physical challenges, and, just be generally miserable and bossy. Even on the evening that Jessie got voted out, she got into a nasty yelling match with former ally, April, who gracefully called her, among other things, a scallywag and ‘ho -this was seconded by her cipher/nightly fornicator Ollie.

Libra certainly has done a lot to merit all the resentment. The problem is that Read the rest of this entry »

Apple’s iPhone, and other subsequent touch-screen clones, have been hogging much of the high-end smartphone spotlight ever since the iPhone’s initial launch - and even more so after the recent media-hyped iPhone 3G release. And with little to no response from Nokia (by way of a competing piece of hardware), it would appear our Finnish friends have been hiding in the wings while the show goes on.

[Note: At the time of this writing, two new Nokia smartphones are set to be announced this coming Monday (August 18th): the N79 and N85 - both phones being touted as possibilities by the mobile community.

In late 2007, information regarding Nokia’s ongoing touchscreen development emerged from the horse’s mouth in the form of a marketing video shown at a London Expo. Later, filed patent information (and images) demonstrating a “Haptikos Tactile Touchscreen” leaked its way onto many websites virtually confirming Nokia’s intentions to develop not only a touchscreen device, but one that would sort of “touch” you back.

And if that wasn’t enough of a smoking gun, Nokia has $trategically placed a mystery touchscreen device (Nokia Tube?) in the hands of our universally loved, James Bond-esque vigilante superhero in the recent blockbuster, “Dark Knight”.

But while the ordinary citizens of Gotham wait for Nokia’s next jaw-dropper to emerge, third-party application development continues to flourish for our current (and much loved) N and E series Symbian S60 devices.

Below is a “Top 10″ (alphabetical) list of some of the Read the rest of this entry »

Urban legend or real creature lurking out there somewhere, ready to attack and maim little kids? The other day we brought you the phenomenon of the vampire cats. We now have, possibly, a vampire dog, or something that resembles one.

If you grew up as a wide-eyed kid in a Spanish-speaking household in the US or Latin America, you surely know what the Chupacabra is. This is what your parents told you to scare the bejeezus out of you. You don’t want to go to bed like I told you? Don’t want to eat your veggies? Look out, the Chupacabra is coming to get you in the middle of the night.

For those unfamiliar with what I’m talking about, surely you have heard of urban legends or myths out there. Like Bigfoot. Like the Loch Ness Monster. Societies feel the need to create these ideas as a diversion, as a way to provide constructs of fear. On a practical level, the fact that people choose to spread these beliefs does not suggest they actually trust them. It is in the very dispersion of these fears that someone –usually, a snotty-nosed kid who doesn’t know better—will get so scared that he will instantly change his behavior. We spin these tales, adding a little detail here and there, and they get passed on to future generations of trembling toddlers who misbehave or get out of control.

The Chupacabra, which literally translates as “goat sucker”, does not have the long history of Bigfoot or Loch Ness; it’s a thoroughly modern and Latin creation. First reports of its sightings –if, in fact, you believe it to be true—date back to 1990, and there have been reports of people seeing it in places such as Puerto Rico, Chile and the US Southwest. There has been no real agreement as to what species the Chupacabra is. Farmers have
taken
pictures of
unclassifiable dog-like creatures
that attack livestockFarmers have taken pictures of unclassifiable dog-like creatures that attack livestock, but some of these have been found to be coyotes. Others believe the Chupacabra is a reptile-like being, about 4 feet tall with gray scaly skin. And it hops. You can clearly see how these legends can get spun a bit awry. A hopping reptile? A mangy coyote? What is it exactly and why can’t anyone provide real up-close proof that this thing really exists?

Well leave it to none other than the news authorities at CNN to provide this footage of what they call the Chupacabra. In it you can see this odd-looking coyote-like animal running. It certainly looks Read the rest of this entry »

Now that the new California law has passed banning “hands-on” cellphone use in automobiles, people may just be anxiously clamoring for something else to do with their newly freed hand (ok, stop it).

The folks over at Maplin (the electronics specialists) believe they have the answer: a portable, 12V, in-car microwave! Finally, your meals can now be “on the move” with this small, somewhat-modern black box that will sit inconspicuously on your passenger-seat floor mat.

In no time you’ll be heating up your poppyseed muffin, or drinking piping hot lattes in the comfort of your Read the rest of this entry »

Michael Phelps has won yet another gold medal. He broke another world record. He and his team, by a virtual millisecond, pounced on the nasty French who had vowed to “smash” the Americans, and made away with the gold. Triumph. All American gold medalists on the dais with the national anthem blaring.

Cut to a half world away where a different kind of smashing was taking place. In Georgia –not the US state, for the geographically-impaired— a former Soviet republic a fierce air, ground and sea war was being waged at the hands of a fierce and angry bear, the Russians. Hey, wait, isn’t the purpose behind the Olympics to avoid armed conflict between nations? Let’s take our battles on to the soccer or track field, and all that. Well, that longstanding belief didn’t seem to faze Moscow. Nor Georgia, for that matter, because while all the hoopla in Beijing was getting underway last weekend, it was being pummeled mercilessly in what may be considered the opening salvo in the Second Cold War.

According to the latest developments, the 5-day conflict appears to have ended, with the typical uncertainty that surrounds these kinds of skirmishes. A diplomatic team composed of French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner and EU officials have been in Georgia since last weekend and then in Moscow to try to bring about a diplomatic solution as soon as possible. Overnight, French President Nicolas Sarkozy made an emergency visit to Moscow to personally persuade Russian leaders to have a ceasefire and end what has been an attack that has killed probably 2000 people already –although even that figure is almost impossible to confirm. This morning, Moscow announced a Read the rest of this entry »

The ratings for Friday’s opening ceremonies at the Beijing Olympics set a record for NBC, capturing a 37.3 Nielsen rating, and watched by an estimated 35 million Americans. Those are huge numbers, and in the words of some analysts, the numbers were “American Idol” level. And why wouldn’t they be? NBC’s oppressive hype virtually ensured that we would rush to our TVs and basically surrender our evenings to the massive spectacle, with all of those commercials and promos for the fall TV season (“Follow what happens to Jim and Pam on September 25!”). In fact, we were probably the only country in the world that did not watch the opening ceremony live.

NBC’s desire to aggressively package all the proceedings into a prime-time slot ensured that we would be (literally) a captive audience. If you were in Canada, however, you would have been awake at 4:30 am –as many did—to watch it all on CBC, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. Not the US. We had to deal with 13-hour “delay”.

And, yes, it was a spectacle of lights, fireworks, music and of course, the parade of nations. Everything was perfectly rehearsed and executed with perfect precision: this was China’s moment to shine. As everyone marched with their flags in front of the crowds and an estimated 80 world leaders (including three generations of Bushes), it was a bit hard not to get Read the rest of this entry »

Ok, so no reservations yet - but that day may not be too far off…

It was however announced today that a team of UC Berkeley scientists are a step closer to developing cloaking devices that could render people and objects invisible.

A group of researchers have successfully demonstrated, for the first time, that they can now cloak 3D objects (as opposed to previous successes in cloaking only thin, two-dimensional objects) using engineered materials that redirect light.

We can see objects because they scatter the light that Read the rest of this entry »

This has to be one of the oddest and most haunting things I’ve heard this summer –and it’s not necessarily something you’d play outside at a barbecue.

Remember the 1984 chestnut “Footloose” –the movie and its soundtrack? Kevin Bacon moves to right-wing, uptight town where dancing and rock and roll music are outlawed by a morally-correct minister (John Lithgow), and then bags his doe-eyed daughter (Lori Singer), all of which culminates in a rousing dance number, indeed a metaphor back then for freedom and, uh, breaking the rules. 24 years ago indeed, and it made a star out of Bacon and was a so-so film. Need a refresher from the movie itself? Come on, you know you want it (video below).

Of course, this being the 80s, all those musical films had their own soundtrack. “Footloose” contained a lot of singles, among them the title track by Kenny Loggins (he who would make a career out of schlocky soundtrack tunes). Also, you can’t forget the bombastic wonder that was Bonnie Tyler and her “Holding Out For a Hero”, “Almost Paradise”, a duet with the girl from Heart and the lead singer from Loverboy, the enormous pop hit “Let’s Hear it for the Boy” by Deniece Williams (you remember the scene in the movie, come on!) or even the kinda silly Read the rest of this entry »

Vampire Cats

Have you ever witnessed a vampire cat? Hardly discernible from the standard tabby mix (other than the extremely sharp teeth), vampire cats are a special and rare breed indeed — known mostly throughout the scientific community by their Latin-derived nomenclature: Vampirus Felinus.

These blood-sucking felines are found mostly in the outer regions of Nishinomiya Japan, on Mount Kabutoyama, a monadnock of an extinct volcano thath was last estimated to erupt about 1,200 years ago. This mountain is in the Kabutoyama Forest Park.

Not only do vampire cats typically keep a nocturnal life cycle, but they supplement their daily diet of cat food with the blood of their brethren felines. Odd as this may seem, vampire cats have managed to Read the rest of this entry »

John Edwards’ announcement of a sexual affair with a campaign staffer on Friday is a whopper on a few levels. The former Senator from North Carolina, running mate of John Kerry in 2004, and more recently, populist Democratic candidate for President, deemed Friday to be a good day to bury this story amid all the Beijing Olympics hoopla. The hope, perhaps: get the story out quickly, make a brief “official” statement and hope few will notice. Yet this story is all the more significant for what it says about the betrayal of Edwards’ family and supporters while at the same time raising questions about how the mainstream media dropped the ball entirely.

The story is sordid, but not unfamiliar. A dapper, handsome politician finds carnal comfort with a younger woman and Read the rest of this entry »