The Severed Cortex

With the rash of people about to find themselves in foreclosure, the government is preparing ideas on bailout programs for them including rate freezes and the like. While I do believe that some people were taken advantage of, my guess is that most people signed these mortgage agreements because of greed. They wanted the house and they were willing to do whatever it takes to get into it, consequences be damned. So, for those of us that understand risk and understand the concept of living within your means we get nothing. Not even a pat on the back for doing things the right way. Bullshit. I wish there were a way to distinguish between those who were victims of bad luck and those who disregarded the risks, and those in the latter category should have to suck it. You took a risk and you lost. You do not need a Range Rover, or a 52 inch HDTV, or a Burberry golf glove. If you have more money than god, feel free to buy these things, but if you're buying because you're trying to impress your neighbors/friends/the Jones', you deserve to lose everything and you should have to live in a van down by the river. I should not be expected to bail your sorry ass out.

Do we really need an autopsy to figure out what killed Christian Brando? C'mon, we all know what killed him.

I'm concerned that since her family has taken over her affairs and kicked out all the people tangentially living in and around Britney, my guess of February 17th in the death pool has been irreparably damaged and will now not happen. Chances are she'll be in a Residential Treatment facility at that time, which does not preclude that she will die on said date, but it seems to make it less likely since she'll be supervised. Why can't the normal course of events take place I ask you?

Microsoft is buying Yahoo for $46 billion, or at least coming to some sort of nefarious partnership in order to try to overtake Google. For what? Does Google make money outside of ad revenue? As an example, we looked at buying one of Google's network search appliances last year and after toying a bit we realized that we could do just as well or better with SQL Server's Full Text Indexing capability, a tool we already had in-house. In addition, we figured out how to hack the Google Desktop Engine, an insidious tool given away by Google to idiots who don't know how to organize their own data, so that we can call a 'desktop' machine from a network location. It was a suprisingly simple thing to do and by doing so we made Google search appliances obsolete. Hmmm, let's see. Buy from Google at $50K+ or build a free one that Google is unknowingly giving away?
Look, I know nothing about the larger things at play in the tech arena and I'm not going to pretend I do, but I do know that you'll never be able to get people to switch from Google to Yahoo or any other search engine. Google is now ingrained in our society. Have you ever heard someone say, "I don't know the answer, but I bet you could Yahoo it, or Lycos it, or Ask Jeeves it"? No, you haven't. Everyone says, "I bet I can Google it". That will never change and Google will make money from ad revenue. They may also get people to buy into their myriad of nifty little programs, but eventually the true value of Google will fall back to reality because their attempts to expand outside the search market aren't all that great. Sure they make great tools, but no one wants to pay for them.

The Patriots spied on the Rams. Coincidental that this information comes out on the eve of another Patriots Super Bowl? Probably. Usually in these types of things there is no 'rule' that says you can't tape someone's walk through the day before the game, but it is an unwritten rule in the spirit of fair play. As if I needed another reason to hate something from the Boston area.