Ok. Let’s get this out of the way. Jaron Lanier, Wired coverboy of the early years for his virtual reality work (which was often more hype than reality anyway), has written a book. And it’s one of those books that helps prove Douglas Adams’ famous statement (paraphrased…) that every tech around by the time you’re born is “normal,” new technology that is invented before you’re thirty is cool and new and anything that gets invented after you’re thirty is “against the natural order of things and the beginning of the end of civilization as we know it.” It’s worth pointing out that Lanier turned 30 in 1990, just before the web came about. And, boy, does he hate the web. And the book is all about how much he really hates the web because it’s new and different and against the natural order of things and the beginning of the end of civilization as we know it. And since he’s Jaron Lanier and since he hates the internet (even though he’s published ridiculous essays making these same points that were debunked ages ago), the press is writing about him and have been for the last month or so, meaning that lots of people keep submitting stories, like the recent NY Times article all about Lanier’s hatred for the internet.
Honestly, it’s difficult to see why it’s worthwhile to waste too much time responding to arguments that were debunked ages ago, but just to run through a few of them quickly:
Lanier falsely believes in the idea of “lock-in” with technology (the claim that the VCR beat Betamax despite being worse and that QWERTY beat Dvorak despite being worse due to “lock-in”) is why the internet is so screwed up today. Except, of course the classic examples of lock-in were shown years ago to be false. The VCR beat Betamax because it was better at what people wanted (the ability to record a lot on a single tape). QWERTY is no worse than Dvorak.
Lanier pulls out Nick Carr’s tired and silly claim that people doing user-generated content are “sharecroppers.” This ignores that the whole reason they use those sites is that they get value in return. It fails to realize the non-monetary reasons why people use those sites.
Lanier thinks that the “answer” to file sharing online is to rearchitect the internet for micropayments. Again, this shows a fundamental misunderstanding of both economics and psychology. People hate micropayments and they’re incredibly inefficient from an economic standpoint. It also shrinks the market of ideas and holds back communication.
Lanier argues that the market for “creative people” is shrinking. Apparently he hasn’t read any of the recent studies that have shown that every aspect of the music business has grown — except for the business selling plastic discs.
Most amusing of all, he argues that “artificial scarcities… allow the economy to function.” He even admits that they are artificial scarcities, but still thinks they’re a good thing. Again, this seems to be a fundamental misunderstanding of economics. It’s hard to talk logically to someone who thinks that having less of a resource is somehow good for the economy.
The list goes on, but at some point it’s just not worth bothering with responding point by point. Lanier’s trying to sell a book, and it’s yet another in a long line of people who don’t like the newfangled thing the kids are using because he doesn’t understand it. The fact is, it doesn’t matter. The internet is a huge success because people actually like the way it works and they get tons of value out of it, even if it’s not the value Lanier wanted. No one’s going to change the architecture of the internet. No one’s going to suddenly figure out a way to make micropayments work where they don’t make sense. So consider this my post on Lanier’s book, and let’s just move on and ignore all the other silly news stories about it, and they’ll fade away quickly just like his book.
from corporate media, 13 January 2010: “Israel is developing an army of robotic fighting machines that offers a window onto the potential future of warfare… In 10 to 15 years, one-third of Israel’s military machines will be unmanned, predicts Giora Katz, vice president of Rafael Advanced Defense Systems Ltd., one of Israel’s leading weapons manufacturers…” more
from corporate media, 13 January 2010: “Israel is developing an army of robotic fighting machines that offers a window onto the potential future of warfare… In 10 to 15 years, one-third of Israel’s military machines will be unmanned, predicts Giora Katz, vice president of Rafael Advanced Defense Systems Ltd., one of Israel’s leading weapons manufacturers…” more
Lights, camera, Ikea hack! Romain turns the Ivar side unit into rails for the cam.
“A few days ago, I found out that the Ivar “wooden ladder” was perfect to use it as rails for my cinema dolly! I can now make some nice sequence shots with this 18€ accessory from Ikea.”
Yesterday, Google announced a new, and exciting, feature for those who use its Microsoft Office alternative Google Docs; free cloud storage of large, non-office file-types. Google explains, “Instead of emailing files to yourself, which is particularly difficult with large files, you can upload to Google Docs any file up to 250 MB… Combined with shared folders, you can store, organize, and collaborate on files more easily using Google Docs.” Your Docs account will have a 1GB quota, and for those of your who eat GB’s for breakfast, extra storage can be purchased at the rate of $0.25 per GB per year. The new service leverages Google’s immense cloud storage infrastructure and tempts you to voluntarily upload more of your data onto Google’s servers. It looks like this is as close to a “GDrive” as we’ll get for the time being. In Google We Trust. Right?
Following several on-track incidents during the last two seasons involving the former 250cc world champion and Bautista and Barbera, Marco Simoncelli recently stated that he has no intentions of forgetting about the quarrel he had with the two Spanish riders. All three riders will therefore continue the fight this season, only this time in the MotoGP.
"After verifying what kind of hypocrites Bautista and Barbera are, I’ve decided I won’t be speaking to them anymore," Simoncelli told… (read more)
I must say the year couldn’t have a better start musically. It began with the return of Sade with her 6th studio album due for release in February and now Angelique Kidjo is set to release her her next studio album titled “OYO’ in February 9th.
Angelique Kidjo
Kidjo is said to have returned back to her roots during the recording of “OYO“, by interpreting the music that inspired her whilst growing up in Benin, music that was instrumental in her artistic formation. The first thing one will hear at the out seat of the album is her breathtaking voice, long-sustaining the first word of “Zelie,” a song by Bella Bellow from Togo. The are various African songs that can be heard, including “Lakutshn Llanga,” a lullaby made famous by the late Mama Miriam Makeba, and the Beninese traditional son “Atcha Houn.”
Although “OYO” is primarily comprised of covers, many of the tracks reveal the prevalence of American soul and funk in the port city of Cotonou, where Kidjo grew up. She collaborated with John Legend and Diana Reeves. “OYO” is recorded and mixed by Russell Elevado and produced by Jean Hebrail.
Ethan Nadelmann is part of Change.org’s Changemakers network, comprised of leading voices for social change. Change.org asked Mr Nadelmann to respond to questions to provide context for his work and the causes he supports.
Change.org: What cause or causes would you most like to promote as a Changemaker and why?
Nothing matters to me more than ending the war on drugs and reducing our extraordinary overreliance on the criminal justice system. I want to make marijuana legal, decriminalize all drugs for personal use, and shift our drug policies to a health-based approach.
The U.S. has less than 5 percent of the world’s population, but almost 25 percent of the world’s prisoners, ranking first in the per capita incarceration of our fellow citizens. We have increased the number of people behind bars from roughly 500,000 people in 1980 to 2.3 million today – and altogether we now have over 7 million people under criminal justice supervision.
The drug war – the dominant role of the criminal justice system in dealing with certain drugs and the people who buy, sell, make, and use them – is driving this explosive increase in incarceration more than anything else. The U.S. arrests almost a million people for marijuana each year and over a half million people are behind bars tonight for a drug law violation.
The movement for drug policy reform stands in the footsteps of other movements for individual freedom and social justice – it currently stands where the gay rights movement stood in the 1970s, or where the civil rights movement stood in the 1950s, or where the women’s rights movement stood in the early part of the 20th century.
On Tuesday, Conan O’Brien said he will not carry on as host of NBC’s The Tonight Show if the struggling network moves the late night program to an after-midnight slot as part of a revamped evening line-up. So the question on the minds of fans is, Does Conan’s contract give NBC the right to bump him to 12:05 AM to make room for Jay Leno at 11:35?
That’s also the $40 million legal question at the center of all the hoopla. If Conan’s deal says The Tonight Show will be broadcast at 11:35 PM, then NBC would be in violation of his contract by attempting to bump him. However, if there isn’t any time-slot language in his deal, Conan’s absolute refusal to take the 12:05 slot puts him in breach of his contract if he doesn’t do his show.
The Peacock has already made its stance clear, according to The New York Times: “The contract, NBC is arguing, guaranteed Mr. O’Brien would be installed as host of ‘The Tonight Show’ — and unlike many other deals for late-night stars, Mr. O’Brien’s contract contains no specific language about the time period the show would occupy, NBC executives said.”
Chris Viehbacher, CEO of Sanofi-Aventis, spoke yesterday at that big drug-industry meeting in San Francisco. He described pharma’s “lost decade” of the past 10 years — for many companies, he said, share prices fell despite double-digit earnings growth.
The familiar culprit: The patent cliff, and the looming revenue hits coming when big drugs like Plavix (which Sanofi co-markets with Bristol-Myers Squibb) face generic competition. And the familiar solution: to “move away from .. this boom-bust cycle that has really frustrated so many of us over the last 10 years.”
For Sanofi, growth of the vaccines business (which Viehbacher called “the best business you can be in”) is a key part of that diversification. The company’s recent agreement to buy Chattem will also allow it to make a big push into the U.S. over-the-counter drug business with its allergy drug Allegra. And Sanofi, which sells insulin under the Lantus brand, may also expand its diabetes business by selling services and devices, Viehbacher said.
He added that the company’s R&D holds the greatest possibility for upside surprises in the next few years — because “for the most part people have zero expectations of Sanofi-Aventis research and development,” he said. “We’ve basically cleared out a lot of bad news, and if anything comes along it should be good news.”
The final candidate of 2009! Tomorrow we reveal the contest for the Beta of the Year.
Last month’s winner, by a healthy margin, was a cuckold who asked his cheating girlfriend on a call-in radio program how he could “make her love him more”. She told him, in essence, to grow a pair, but he proved unable to escape his beta hell vortex. Congratulations to reader Patrick for submitting that vomitous entry.
December coughed up a bumper crop of holiday betas. Must be those long winter nights.
***
December 2009 BOTM Candidate #1 was submitted by reader Marko. Fittingly for the times, our featured beta is the cuckold of one of Tiger Woods’ many mistresses. What astounds about this man was how willfully blind he was when his girlfriend informed him that Tiger had given her his number. Just how little does a woman have to respect a man to decide it’s perfectly harmless to tell him a really famous billionaire jock gave her his number? She probably figured he was such a rabid fan of Mr. Woods’ talent for driving to the hole that he wouldn’t put two and two together. She was right.
Derek, 28, a golf fan who used to idolise Woods, said: “I was a massive Tiger fan. I had Tiger Woods memorabilia all over my house and even collected Tiger Woods videos.
“On the night Jamie met him for the first time, I had just bought the new Tiger Woods computer game. The following morning she told me she had met Tiger Woods and he gave her his number – and like an idiot I got really excited about it.
“I even asked her if she could call him so I could get my computer game signed.
“I knew Tiger had come on to her and asked for her number. I knew that he called her whenever he came to Las Vegas.
But she insisted that nothing was going on.”
Self-delusion is likely an evolved trait in humans, but in some people it seems to have evolved beyond the point of usefulness.
Derek said: “She told me she got called over by a bouncer who said someone important wanted to meet her in the VIP room.
“She said she did not know it was Tiger Woods until she was brought to his table. He immediately started hitting on her and telling her she was beautiful. She told me he asked for her number and gave her his.
“I was surprised because I knew he was married and I didn’t think he was that type of guy. But I trusted Jamie. We had been engaged for over a year then – having first started dating in 2002 – and were head over heels in love.”
The only thing preventing most men from being “that type of guy” is 1. lack of options and 2. violence from aggrieved parties. In modern Western society, number 1 is the primary brake on expressions of pure love. Sure, religion plays some role in curbing the basest instincts of men and women, but the old school hardcore precepts of religion are on the way out, Walmart-ized evangelical fervor notwithstanding to the contrary.
As for the issue of trust, as Reagan so memorably put it, “Trust but verify.” (Commie pinkos and women, more in common than you’d imagine.) I’m no cynic. I bet that Derek and Jamie were head over heels in love when she had her fortuitous encounter with Woods. But, you know, a better deal has a way of putting the vice to virtue.
My favorite quote is the last:
Derek, who is now engaged to another woman, said: “I think Tiger is a great competitor on the golf course, but away from it he is a horrible person.
“He should have more respect for himself and his family. I am certainly not a fan of his any more.”
Now that’s alpha. Tear down that life-sized poster of Tiger Woods, Mister Derek!
What saves this guy from the pit of omegatude is his (putatively) wise decision to cut Jamie out of his life and start fresh with a new woman. Or maybe Jamie dumped him after Derek refused to get cross with her for her philandering? The mind reels at the excruciating possibilities.
On a related note, reader Cannon’s Canon wrote:
derek schmidt definitely got played, but really though, what was his alpha move? i don’t think the party line of amused mastery is gonna cut it against a billionaire athlete that she knows you already jock. the only thing i can think of is deleting the number from her phone yourself with a strongarm move, then initiating two hours of domineering jackhammer sex, perhaps in an unconventional room to drill it into her memory. enough to knock her out of commission for a day or so, numbing those gina tingles. this may also have to become standard fare for a while.
so how do you AMOG tiger woods? start playing fight night instead??
Good points. When the AMOG is light years above you in status, and is in fact someone you practically worship, amused mastery won’t save you. A cocky smirk is not going to keep, let’s say, George Clooney, were he so inclined, from seducing and bedding your loyal girl. My advice for handling this presumably rare scenario, given that you want to run some game on the girl to see if you can turn it around, is to hit her up with a straight shot of the truth:
“Tiger Woods gave you his number last night? Unless proven otherwise, you are a cheater. Here’s the deal. You delete his number and change your phone number so he can never contact you again, or I leave. Before you make your deicsion, let me remind you that should you choose Woods, he will fuck you a few more times then tire of you as he moves onto another concubine in his rotation of regulars. He will never marry you. He will never make you a princess. You will never be more than a whore in his parade of whores. I, on the other hand, once gone am gone for good. I’ll give you fifteen mintues alone to make your deicsion.”
But really, phone number exchange with a celebrity should be instant grounds for dumping a chick. Even if she didn’t cheat with him (unlikely), visions of his celebuface will be dancing in her head every time you two make love.
A husband whose wife tried to kill him by slitting his throat after plying him with a sex drug said today he still loved her and wanted her freed from prison.
Peter Hale, 43, spoke out after seeing his wife, Joanne, sentenced to six years’ jail after being found guilty of attempted murder.
Hale, 39, was having an ‘affair’ with a married man when she gave Peter a sex drug called ‘Horny Goat Weed’ and lured him to woodland in Bristol. There she cut his throat and stabbed him in the chest before running off.
There is so much wrong with this article. Check out this quote:
Mr Hale was present in court today and was thanked by the judge for supporting his wife.
Maybe I’m missing some important legal precedent here, but why is the judge thanking Hale for “supporting” his deranged, fugly, homicidal whoring wife? Shouldn’t the judge be admonishing Hale to sack up and stop giving aid and comfort to someone who tried to kill him? To go find himself a better woman instead of white knighting like a chump for a waste of flesh? To stop loving someone who so obviously despises him? I guess I’m just not that enlightened in the emanations and penumbras of society’s progressive jurisprudence.
Or maybe there are too many milquetoast manginas in the legal profession.
After the case, Mr Hale said: ‘I hope that she is out as soon as possible. My evidence was very confused and I hope that we have grounds for an appeal. I still love her very much.
‘I am pleased with the comments of the judge and the sentence is probably the best we could have hoped for.’
The court heard that Hale, who has been in custody for 239 days, had made two attempts on her life since being arrested.
Mr Hale had written numerous letters to the court in which he repeated that the incident was not his wife’s fault and that he was willing to forgive her.
He also said his life without her was terrible and he was still deeply in love with her.
“My evidence was very confused”? It’s worse than I thought. So not only does he continue to love his would-be killer, he is working hard to reduce her sentence so that he can sooner leap into her flabby arms to deliver a comforting hug of forgiveness. I can almost hear his words now, as he struggles to allay her guilt for slitting his throat: “No really, honeybunny, I understand you were under a lot of stress. I wasn’t keeping up my end of the chores, or taking you out on romantic dinners. But that’s all going to change now. And let me just add how beautiful it is the way the moonlight sparkles in your pig-like eyes.”
A number of letters from friends handed to the court said Hale was ‘a kind and caring person who would do anything for anyone’.
There’s your problem right there, buddy.
***
December 2009 BOTM Candidate #3 was submitted by reader Hitbids. Remember my early post about envisioning all your communications with a girl on a giant Jumbotron screen for mass public viewing? The idea is a simple one. If your words of love would elicit cringes from a studio audience, you are probably doing it wrong. If, on the other hand, you would not be embarrassed by a public viewing of your emails or phone convos or text messages with a girl you are trying to bed, you can be assured she is getting turned on. Well, this candidate failed the Jumbotron test spectacularly. It’s long so I won’t quote it here (I can’t seem to copy/paste from that site anyhow), but you can read the whole thing over here. Quaff an antacid before diving in. It’s a text exchange between a recently dumped man and the ex with whom he’s trying to reinitiate sex. I liked the part when he texted her a random message about the weather forecast. Maybe you ladies are unaware, but when a man texts completely random shit about stuff you know he can’t possibly care about, he’s just worming his way onto your attention radar for eventual sex.
Here’s my favorite line from the dude:
Have you felt the need of getting intimate again? Im at that stage where I feel I can do almost anything! I can be between your legs for as long as you want.
How about 50 years? Because, you know, he’s the kind of guy who won’t have anything else going on.
The chick does not go without blame. She strings him along when she could have simply not responded to any of his attempts at contact. Women like to cry victim in these situations, but the truth is that a lot of them love the attention and power tripping they can get from toying with a needy beta. They’re simultaneously repulsed and addicted to the clumsy pursuits of the sex starved man. Regardless of her complicity, he should know better than to feed her ego, so he earns a spot at the BOTM table.
Also note the girl says she gets turned off by emoticons, something I have admonished against as well.
So despite the tumbling prices for trophy apartments, a striking triplex penthouse apartment in a clock tower overlooking the Brooklyn Bridge and New York Harbor has gone on the market for $25 million, more than double the highest price known to have been paid for a home in Brooklyn.
The main floor of the sleek modern apartment is dominated by four working clocks housed in four 14-foot-high round windows, which provide nearly unobstructed views (except for the clock faces) out to the four points of the compass.
The penthouse sits atop one of the tallest buildings in Dumbo, the cobblestoned neighborhood that in the 1980s sprang to life in a former industrial area between the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges.
Okay, that may be getting ahead of ourselves a little…
Guardian.co.uk says it’s sold 68,979 copies of its premium iPhone app since launching in December.
At £2.39 a pop in the UK (and $3.99 in U.S.), that’s £164.859 in income over the month, or, at that rate, £1.97 million (about $3.2 million) a year.
But this is before Apple’s 30 percent commission comes off, and ignores currency differences and any future pattern changes – up or down – that may result as the installed base grows and as Guardian.co.uk considers whether to go to other platforms like Android.
There’s plenty of reason to think the monthly rate will increase. Guardian News & Media has only just expanded the app outside of the UK, U.S. and Ireland, in to “most European countries”, Australia and Canada. It launched during the Christmas quiet period and there’s a good-sized appetite for the publisher’s “liberal” news in America.
GNM is content enough to have press-released the figure on Wednesday. In it, digital director Emily Bell, who thinks charging for Guardian.co.uk online news is a “a stupid idea”, declares herself “thrilled”.
No wonder – GNM annual losses grew 40 percent to £36.8 million in 2008/09 and the company has been going through hundreds of redundancies.
But it won’t last forever (the installed base may plateau at some point) and isn’t enough to arrest the decline by itself.
Note – other news apps are available. Over 300,000 downloaded Telegraph.co.uk’s free, ad-supported iPhone app between its February 2009 launch and December 2009 – the company says it’s recouped 10 times it development costs.
Disclosure: Our publisher ContentNext is a wholly owned subsidiary of Guardian News & Media.
Just after Hugo Chavez devalued the Venezuelan currency by 20%, he declared that companies weren’t allowed to raise their prices. Yet this would be an economic impossibility for any business. No business is sustainable if its profit margins are negative.
As a result of this reality, it appears food retailers were caught in the mix trying to raise prices, and taken over.
Albuquerque Express: Government inspectors in Venezuela have closed many shops this week after the owners were accused of trying to manipulate last week’s currency devaluation.
A group of supermarkets and other businesses across Venezuela have quickly been taken over by the tax inspectors for allegedly speculating and changing the price of products.
Superstores belonging to the Exito supermarket chain were the first to be acquired by the government.
Given the Venezuelan government’s track record for running companies, expect food shortages ahead. Really. Just look at the energy industry for cues. Oil-rich Venezuela has been forced to impose rolling black outs on itself.
By devaluing its currency while simultaneously preventing commensurate price increases for food, Venezuela has created huge disincentives for production. While Venezuela’s energy shortages are pretty sad already, food shortages would be plain scary. Venezuela continues to read like an Ayn Rand novel.
Tom Donahue, remember him? He’s the controversial President of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, whose opposition to cap-and-trade lead to a mass exodus of key and powerful members, including Pacific Gas and Electric and Exelon.
Donahue is stubborn. In a speech yesterday, outlining the Chamber’s 2010 political strategy, he said that the various renewable energy legislation making their way through the Senate would actually eliminate jobs.
Donahue said:
We’ll also support strong climate change policy, both domestic legislation and a global agreement. But the bill passed by the House last year would tie economic activity in knots and eliminate jobs from one end of the country to another.
Watch:
Media Matters for America, a progressive media watchdog in Washington, could not let these latest claim pass without a rebuttal.
And so in an effective fact check, Media Matters — citing a recent study from the University of California Berkeley — found that pollution reduction and energy efficiency legislation will actually create up to 1.9 million jobs and would add $111 billion to the U.S. Gross Domestic Product. It also notes that every state will gain jobs from investment in clean energy technologies.
To make a long story short a friend of a buddy of mine was out with us for dinner the other night and chit chatting found out he his diabetic, seen him take a shot before he ate. However he ate like an animal ( wings, nachos,cheese fries… The whole 9 yards ).
After eating ( about an hour ) I watched him take his BG reading and then pull out his insulin pen again and give himself another injection.
I asked him what he was on and what his routine is.. He said that he gives himself the standard dose before eating and then depending what he "decides" to eat and how much he gives an additional dose after eating to make up for the intake.
I asked if this was healthy and he said yes he has done it for years, that going on insulin was the best thing for him. "My insurance covers the meds and this way i can eat what i want when i want and not have to worry about it. Get off the pills if you can" is what he said to me.
Google is announcing that it has opened up registrations for the 2010 Google I/O developers conference. It is the third time Google will hold the conference aimed mostly at more technical subjects and it has used it to make some pretty big announcements in the past. Developers wanting to get in on the cheap have until April 16 to claim their… (read more)
Once arrived at the Madonna di Campiglio ski resort in northern Italy for the annual Wrooom event, Ferrari’s team principal Stefano Domenicali was immediately pulled aside by the media for a series of questions regarding his team’s plans for the future.
Needless to say, most of those questions focused on Michael Schumacher’s return to Formula One with another team and how his own drivers – Fernando Alonso and Felipe Massa – will cope with the task of racing against him. However, since Alonso … (read more)
from noborders london, updated 18 January 2010: “No borders, no nations! A day out of control in London, Saturday 23rd January 2010. 2pm St. Pancras International -> 4.30pm Piccadilly Circus. While the migration regime is fortifying itself and setting up rings of defence around European wealth, inner control is tightening to keep public order, at a time where the nation state already seems to be a dead corpse. On Saturday 23rd January 2010 there will be two demonstrations in London…” more
Four Detroit area residents were indicted on charges of wire fraud and interstate transportation of money taken by fraud, announced United States Attorney Barbara L. McQuade.
McQuade was joined in the announcement by Special Agent in Charge Andrew G. Arena, Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Charged in the 14-count indictment, which was unsealed this week, were MELVIN A. JOHNSON, 49, of Lathrup Village; CURTISS JOHNSON, 46, of Novi; BRADY MUSE, JR, 48, of Novi; and LANITA J. GATEWOOD, 53, of Detroit.
The indictment charges that from November 2004 through February 2006, these individuals knowingly participated in a scheme to defraud mortgage lenders.
The loan applications were completed or supervised by Melvin Johnson or Curtiss Johnson at CHALLENGE MORTGAGE’s branch office in Southfield, Michigan, where Melvin was the branch manager and Curtiss a loan officer.
Challenge Mortgage was a mortgage broker based in Florida.
The indictment alleges that the loan applications were materially false or fraudulent and that when the mortgage loans closed, Melvin Johnson and Curtiss Johnson benefitted financially through checks made payable to Challenge Mortgage and other businesses with which Melvin Johnson was associated, such as JEM Marketing Realty, JEM Processing, and First United Realty.
The indictment also alleges that the fraudulent information provided in the loans documents included false employers, overstated income, fictitious bank accounts, stolen identities, and information obtained from forged deeds, and that as a part of the scheme, Brady Muse created counterfeit documents to support the fraudulent loan packages assembled by Melvin Johnson and Curtiss Johnson.
It also alleges that Lanita Gatewood allowed property she did not own to be titled in her name, and that she distributed the proceeds of the fraud to other participants in the scheme.
The defendants are charged with multiple counts of wire fraud and interstate transportation of money taken by fraud. Each count of wire fraud carries a maximum penalty of 20 years’ imprisonment and a $250,000 fine.
Each count of interstate transportation of money taken by fraud carries a maximum penalty of 10 years’ imprisonment and a $250,000 fine. The defendants could also be ordered to pay restitution to the mortgage lenders.
An indictment is only a charge and is not evidence of guilt. A defendant is entitled to a fair trial in which it will be the government’s burden to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.
The case was investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Following several on-track incidents during the last two seasons involving the former 250cc world champion and Bautista and Barbera, Marco Simoncelli recently stated that he has no intentions of forgetting about the quarrel he had with the two Spanish riders. All three riders will therefore continue the fight this season, only this time in the MotoGP.
Ethan Nadelmann is part of Change.org’s 
Chris Viehbacher, CEO of Sanofi-Aventis, 
Google is announcing that it has opened up registrations for the 2010 Google I/O developers conference. It is the third time Google will hold the conference aimed mostly at more technical subjects and it has used it to make some pretty big announcements in the past. Developers wanting to get in on the cheap have until April 16 to claim their… (
Once arrived at the Madonna di Campiglio ski resort in northern Italy for the annual Wrooom event, Ferrari’s team principal Stefano Domenicali was immediately pulled aside by the media for a series of questions regarding his team’s plans for the future.
Four Detroit area residents were indicted on charges of wire fraud and interstate transportation of money taken by fraud, announced United States Attorney Barbara L. McQuade.