the bblog

consoles for sale, getcher hot, fresh consoles here

I'm selling my Xbox 360. You should buy it from me.

(Damn, that isn't nearly long enough to justify a blog post. Let's see... I know! Links!

"A Valentine from Archive Team"

“On December 15, 2010 the functionality to upload a video to Yahoo! Video was removed and download functionality, available through March 14, 2011, was added to users’ video profiles to allow retrieval of content. The user-generated content will be removed from Yahoo! Video on Yahoo! Video on March 15, 2011. We apologize if this causes you any inconvenience.”

So as usual Yahoo! is deleting terabytes of user-generated content and as usual they are doing it in a clunky, fucked-up manner and as usual the timeframe is arbitrary and out of nowhere and as usual Archive Team is here to clean up the fucking mess.

"TF: Eli is the straight man, so he gets 60 percent"

The sudden presence in our story of Moses and Elijah raises all sorts of questions and possibilities. The timeline in these books is hard to follow, but I believe it's some time in March -- the Event was a month ago and at the time there was basketball, but no football or baseball, so March seems a good guess -- which means Passover is coming up. That would be interesting with these two. Do you still leave an empty seat at the Seder for Elijah if Elijah himself is actually there? And what would Moses make of that tradition? He was at the very first Passover, and nobody there had ever heard of Elijah.

Pondering such questions for some reason leads me to start picturing Mel Brooks as Moishe and Jerry Stiller as Eli. That makes this section of the book much more entertaining.

"Deconstructing the CALEA hearing"

While I understand her perspective, the problem I have is that her description of criminals as "lazy" people who use technology that is "easy" similarly describes the vast majority of the general public. As such, for the FBI's plan to work, encryption technology needs to be kept out of the hands of the general public in order to similarly keep it out of the hands of lazy criminals.

"Wisconsin’s Walker Joins Government Asset Giveaway Club (and is Rahm Soon to Follow?)"

Look what happened in the notorious case (to those who follow this netherworld) of the 2008 lease of Chicago’s parking meters. Mayor Richard Daley ramrodded it through, informing the city council of the complex deal a mere two days before the vote. The city had projected revenues foregone over the 75 year life of the deal on present value basis of between $700 million and $1.1 billion for cashflows over the life of deal in the $4 billion to $5 billion range. Chicago got $1.15 billion for the arrangement. Sounds like a winner, right? Well, funny that. The selling memorandum for Morgan Stanley-led investors on the very same deal said revenues would not be $4 billion or $5 billion, but at least $11.6 billion, or more than double the top amount projected by the city. And since they’ve put through two rate increases totaling over a 40% increase already, looks they they are on the way to making that happen.

"Wells Fargo Meeting Today With Philly Homeowner Who "Foreclosed" On Them (Here's How He Did It)"

Within 20 days, the company must say they got the QWR, and they have 60 to take action on it. That action must be to either correct the problem or to respond back with why they think they’re right. They must also give a name and phone number for the borrower to contact with questions about their account.

Wells Fargo did none of these, says Patrick. So he moved on to the next step provided by RESPA: statutory damages, aka, cash money.