So, the big news of the day – deserving or not – is that OJ is going to jail. No, not for the murder of Nicole and Ron 14 years ago, but this time for a robbery conviction in Las Vegas on last Friday.

The LA Times reported:

Reporting from Los Angeles and Las Vegas — Brushing aside a tearful apology from O.J. Simpson, a Las Vegas judge today sentenced the former football star to at least nine years in prison for the kidnapping and robbery last year of two sports memorabilia dealers in a casino hotel room.

Under the sentence handed down by Clark County District Court Judge Jackie Glass, Simpson would be eligible for parole in 2017. The maximum time he could serve is 33 years.

The sentence came after an emotional address in which Simpson sought to justify his conduct at the Palace Station Hotel & Casino. His eyes red and his voice wavering, the NFL Hall of Famer said he went to the down-market hotel in an effort to recover family heirlooms, including his slain ex-wife’s wedding ring, to pass down to his children.

“In no way did I mean to hurt anybody, to steal anything from anybody,” Simpson said. “I just wanted my personal things.”

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I just got this press release e-mailed to me from the City of Frisco, TX (my home town). I have not edited a single word of the release, you’re seeing it as I got it.

This has to be the funniest thing I’ve ever seen a city put out. I love the commentary at the very end of the announcement:

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The following information is distributed from the City of Frisco’s News and Information service.
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FRISCO POLICE OFFICER CHASES AFTER HIS OWN STOLEN TRUCK

(October 28, 2008)On Saturday, October 25, 2008, at approximately 10:44 p.m., Frisco Police Officer Jerry Varner was directing traffic at the intersection of Main Street and Coleman Street for Edgefest II when he observed a maroon short bed Chevrolet pickup truck approaching the intersection. Officer Varner thought the truck resembled his own truck and as the vehicle came closer to him, he realized it was his truck. The truck was being driven by a male subject that Varner did not give permission to take the truck.

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Ok. So, a good executive can be worth a lot of money to a company. I don’t have anything against a nice pay package, all things considered. But it is literally criminal for an Executive to receive a huge payout when they deliver negative results for a company. In my opinion, Exec pay should be merit based. If the exec delivers outstanding shareholder value, a big paycheck should ensue.

So, how then about these execs? Just 72 hours before the company filed for bankrupcy, Lehman awarded the top 5 executives $100 million. Yep. You heard that right. They drove the company into the ground and got rich off of doing it.
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Yeah. That’s how they get you, isn’t it? The spammers… they suck you in with these headlines like “Free Porn!”, “Free Viagra”, “Free Men’s Enhancements” and more. They litter our inboxes with this crap and put banner ads in places they don’t even belong. Well, I’m pleased to tell you that one of the biggest spammers in the universe was shut down yesterday.

The iEEE Spectrum most accurately reported:

The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) was able to persuade a federal court in Chicago to freeze the assets and order the shut down of HerbalKing, reputed to be one of the largest spam e-mailers, for violating the Can-Spam Act of 2003, the New York Times reports this week.

The Times story reported that SpamHaus, a nonprofit antispam research group, estimated that HerbalKing was responsible for sending out one-third of all spam at one point, which included everything from replica watches to (naturally) herbal pills.

The FTC said that HerbalKing was able to send out billions of spam e-mails through the use of botnets. One botnet was made up of 35,000 computers and was able to send 10 billion e-mail messages a day.

The story quotes a senior technology consultant at Sophos, a spam-fighting security firm as saying, “It wouldn’t be a surprise if people don’t notice any difference in their in-box tomorrow morning.”

But the Times of London wrote a much spicier version… even if they did get the facts off a bit:
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Well, here’s something you don’t see every day…

A sick but very wealthy man was caught lying about purchasing a kidney for a transplant, and then sentenced to one day in prison. Why the short sentence? Well, he wasn’t allowed to have the organ, and heck… he’s gonna die anyway!

But this brings up a serious question. Why the hell shouldn’t he be allowed to buy a spare organ from someone willing to sell one to him?
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As a follow up to my previous post about Enzyte being fined $500 million…

Smiling Bob isn’t so happy now that the CEO of the company that makes and sells Enzyte is going to the slammer for 25 years. Not only was Steve Warshak convicted of defrauding customers, his 75 year old mother (who has cancer) was convicted and sentenced to 2 years as well!

Now, the old hag will never do any time because she’ll kick the bucket before the appeals are up, but I just love her quote:

“I have grandchildren,” she said. “The time I have left, I’d like to spend with them. I don’t think it’s fair to take me away from them.”

Well guess what lady… the people who you and your offspring were defrauding think it is fair for you to be separated from those rug rats. In fact, it’s probably better for them that they don’t have exposure to “grandma”.
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Well, looks like it only took about 3.5 weeks to bump the number of Spam responses up over 200,000.

So, I hit the 100,000 mark on May 7, the 175,000 mark on August 7, and the 200,000 mark on September 2. It looks like I’m averaging about 25,000 Spam comments per month, or over 800 spam comments per day!!! To put this in perspective, I currently have just over 9,000 legitimate, approved comments on the blog.

At the current rate we should wrap up 2008 with over 300,000 and then in 2009 we should see the 700,000 mark. Of course, I would assume that the numbers will increase, and if they do there could be well over 1,000,000 spam comments on this blog by the end of 2009.

I can’t wait until the first time some geeky Webmaster tracks down a spammer and murders him just for spamming. I will contribute to his defense fund. Furthermore, I’ll vote for any presidential candidate who promises to make Spamming a capital offense punishable by death (or at least time in a federal prison.).

Thanks to Automattic for Akismet, without which I would probably have quit blogging.

I’ve written several times about Taser abuse, but this one takes the cake. I mean seriously, this cannot be explained.

An unarmed 16 year old boy laying on the ground, below a 30 foot overpass, with a broken back and a broken foot muttering incoherently is tasered 19 times by police in Missouri. Their excuse:

“He refused to comply with the officers and so the officers had to deploy their Tasers in order to subdue him. He is making incoherent statements; he’s also making statements such as, ‘Shoot cops, kill cops,’ things like that. So there was cause for concern to the officers,” said Ozark Police Capt. Thomas Rousset.

So, let’s imagine how this went down shall we?

Boy with broken back: Lays on ground, immobile.
Cop: Get up.
Boy with broken back: mumble, mumble
Cop: Get up or I’ll Tase you.
Boy with broken back: You’re a cop, please don’t shoot me or I’ll probably die.
Cop: Did you say something about killing cops? Well, here’s a little something for ya…
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Here is more evidence that police officers become lazy and trigger happy as soon as you put a Taser on their belt.

Some kid gets all pissed off at work, and is ranting and raving at his boss. Which is undoubtedly wrong. So, I suppose they called the cops. When the officer, who from the video looks to be a LOT bigger than the kid, shows up what does he do? Shoots him with a Taser right in the chest from 4 feet away – then proceeds to shock him until he’s dead.

I mean seriously, 37 seconds? That means, you can’t breath, swallow, think, or control your muscles for over half a minute. In the film, Dr. Joe Koons from UNCC’s Department of Criminal Justice comments:

“I wouldn’t want to be tased for 37 seconds, I can assure you of that. It’s a lengthy period of time.”

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You know those really, really annoying “male enhancement” commercials that have been running for so long that you wonder how the heck they haven’t been yanked off the air by now? Well, it seems that the company, and the CEO, behind them is being bent over by the courts.

The parent company of Enzyte has been been found guilty, and the CEO faces up to 20 years in prison.

Judge Spiegel maintained that Warshak and other chief executives engaged in fraud, money laundering and deceptively promoted bogus claims about the product’s effectiveness. The fraud was so widespread that it “tainted almost every dollar the company earned during its most profitable years” so federal prosecutors believe the company should have to give up almost all of its revenue.

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Please God, don’t ever let me get this drunk.

It’s not bad enough that this guy obviously got arrested for drunk driving, now he’s going to owe the city for a bunch of sheet rock, plus he’s going to be needing a whole lot of aspirin in the morning.

Oh. And his ass has been imortalized on the Internet for all time. Brilliant.
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This is actually pretty amazing, if it isn’t staged (and it doesn’t look like it is). For those of you who are unaware, in Google Maps you now have the option in many cities to check out a Street View of the map you’re looking at, which will allow you to see whatever you would see if you were standing in that position.

The way they accomplish this is by having a specially fitted fleet of cars that have 360 degree cameras driving all over the place taking pictures. Once in a while they capture something really interesting. This is one of those times.
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