And to answer his question, no it doesn’t concern anyone because no one dares ask the question. It surprised me that ole Chris had the intestinal fortitude to ask it, frankly.

via Chris

It never ceases to amaze me the lack of knowledge you find on QVC. I do enjoy watching them sell shit and the products are usually decent (I’ve never felt cheated or burned ordering from them) but they really do need to brush up on their product knowledge a bit…

As usual, the ACLU is wrong…

A high school official made a mistake by telling a student to cover up a lesbian-themed T-shirt or face suspension, the school’s principal said Friday, a day after the ACLU demanded the school apologize to the teen.

Bethany Laccone, 17, said she was asked to cloak a logo of two interlocked female symbols while attending a hotel management class this month at I.C. Norcom High School in Portsmouth. She’s a senior at nearby Woodrow Wilson High School, where she has not faced a similar ultimatum.

In a letter sent Thursday, the American Civil Liberties Union of Virginia asked Norcom administrators to remove any mention of the incident from Laccone’s records and agree not to similarly censor other students.

ACLU leaders want administrators to clarify that students can express political views. The school’s dress code prohibits “bawdy, salacious or sexually suggestive messages.”

The ACLU gave the school until Jan. 11 to respond or possibly face further action.

Schools have a right to set their own dress code for any reason they want with any standards they want. The ACLU should stick to what it does best; smiting all references to God from the sight of impressionable people.

It won’t take long to see this proven completely:

Frontline is the best reporting on television and possibly in the world. After watching it the other night I was struck by how aggressively the show, funded by the federal government, went after the Bush administration.

[...]

Even if there is no pattern of bias this government funded entity must often report information that will portray one side of the debate as detrimental to the country (like torture approved by the president).

Our democracy benefits from open, free and well-funded investigative journalism though. A strong press is a public asset. As long as Frontline pounds on the next (hopefully Democratic) administration then I say keep funding PBS.

January of 2009… A Democrat will most likely take office…

Suddenly everything will be right with the world.

Nothing will change, but their reporting will look so much rosier…

Just wait and see.

Technorati Tags: pbs

Rush Limbaugh completely disassembles the tools at Media Morons for America. In the interest of trying to paint Limbaugh as a chicken-hawk (oh yay, we’re back to that shit again), the idiots at MMA took recent comments Limbaugh made about fake soldier Jesse MacBeth and painted them as if he was saying them about all soldiers against the continued occupation of Iraq.

Here’s how they worded it…

During the September 26 broadcast of his nationally syndicated radio show, Rush Limbaugh called service members who advocate U.S. withdrawal from Iraq “phony soldiers.” He made the comment while discussing with a caller a conversation he had with a previous caller, “Mike from Chicago,” who said he “used to be military,” and “believe[s] that we should pull out of Iraq.” Limbaugh told the second caller, whom he identified as “Mike, this one from Olympia, Washington,” that “[t]here’s a lot” that people who favor U.S. withdrawal “don’t understand” and that when asked why the United States should pull out, their only answer is, ” ‘Well, we just gotta bring the troops home.’ … ‘Save the — keeps the troops safe’ or whatever,” adding, “[I]t’s not possible, intellectually, to follow these people.” “Mike” from Olympia replied, “No, it’s not, and what’s really funny is, they never talk to real soldiers. They like to pull these soldiers that come up out of the blue and talk to the media.” Limbaugh interjected, “The phony soldiers.” The caller, who had earlier said, “I am a serving American military, in the Army,” agreed, replying, “The phony soldiers.”

On and on they go and they’ve done one hell of a job getting the talking points to John Kerry and Jim Webb who both made impassioned speeches on the Senate floor. Kerry, who if you can believe it, actually served in Vietnam (bet you didn’t know that, did you?), and is a bit miffed that someone would dare disrespect soldiers. After all, it’s not telling the truth like having actors tell about war crimes they committed in ‘nam…

The Massachusetts senator issued a public statement calling Limbaugh’s comments “disgusting” and “an insult to American troops.” Kerry continued, saying that Limbaugh succeeded in questioning the patriotism of those who have risked their lives and died for the radio host’s right to sit safely in a studio “peddling hate.”

Kerry went on to note an op-ed by seven members of the U.S. Army’s 82nd Airborne Division critical to President Bush’s Iraq policy published by the New York Times August 19th. The senator made sure Limbaugh knew that two of the soldiers featured in the piece died earlier this month in Baghdad and dared the talk show host to call them ‘phony soldiers’.

The problem?

It isn’t true.

Here’s Limbaugh talking about the incident and playing the clip that started this mocktroversy:

But wait, this whole thing gets better. Rush claimed to have played the full clip with Mike from Ohio. He didn’t. Media Matters got him, right? They apparently think so, but read their post. He didn’t cut out anything related to the “phony soldiers” comment whatsoever. Not a single word.

Limbaugh correctly notes this is Michael J. Fox all over again. Surely you know who Michael J. Fox is. He’s the world’s foremost authority on stem cell research who is above all criticism because he has Parkinson’s Disease. In this case, they’re trying to paint Limbaugh as critical of all soldiers because he dared call out on the carpet a proven liar. A proven fraud. A proven fake. A proven shill for the anti-war movement.

You can make all the arguments against the war and for withdrawal and not be a fake soldier or phony soldier. However, if your name is Jesse MacBeth and you’ve admitted publicly in federal court to lying about your service record and the atrocities you saw committed in Iraq, you are a piece of shit and people have an obligation to call you one.

Limbaugh didn’t criticize John Q. Soldier. No proof of such criticisms exist even in the “unedited” version of the transcript that Media Morons posted.

The proof isn’t there because the issue doesn’t exist.

End of story.

Technorati Tags: rush limbaugh, jesse macbeth, chicken hawks, fraud, media matters for america

Another iPod killer…

That’s an interesting new design, Creative. Well done… Can’t help but think it’s somewhat familiar, though…

Oh, alright then… Carry on.

Technorati Tags: creative labs, apple

A German who persuaded doctors to give him a second penis has lost his wife after he showed her the result.

Biker Michael Gruber, 40, lost his original penis in a motorbike accident and doctors built him a second one using a mixture of skin, bone and other tissues from his own body.

The penis worked so well that he was even able to father a child with his wife Bianca, 25, and their son Etienne was born last year.

But Gruber was still not happy and asked doctors to repeat the operation and build him a better organ, to which they agreed.

However, before removing the first penis doctors said they needed to make sure the new tissue transplant was a success, and had to leave the first penis in place.

Dr Markus Kuentscher, a plastic surgeon at Berlin’s Accident Hospital, said: “We left the old one attached until the new one is properly supplied with blood.”

But when Gruber showed his wife his double penis, she went home, packed her bags and left.

From his hospital bed he said: “I’ve got two penises but no wife, but I am hoping when I get rid of one of the penises I will get her back.”

Source

Technorati Tags: penis, wife, multi, funny

Wolf Blitzer had Michael Moore on The Situation Room to talk about “Sicko,” the must-see documentary of the year as far as I’m concerned. To some extent, Moore’s flick comes off as hyperbolic and exaggerated, but there’s more than a small part of it that’s true. Of course, you’d have to watch it and not dismiss it as a Michael Moore documentary to understand that.

CNN Chief Medical Reporter Dr. Sanjay Gupta jumped all over the movie in a four minute hit piece before they even let the man speak. Here’s the interview.

Of course, after four minutes of smacking him around, Moore is informed that he can’t have all the time he needs to respond, and could give a “few headlines.”

Are you shitting me?

Moore took the time to refute the entire hit piece that preceded his interview.

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN: “(Moore says) the United States slipped to number 37 in the world’s health care systems. It’s true. … Moore brings a group of patients, including 9/11 workers, to Cuba and marvels at their free treatment and quality of care. But hold on - that WHO list puts Cuba’s health care system even lower than the United States, coming in at #39.”

THE TRUTH:

* “But hold on?” ‘SiCKO’ clearly shows the WHO list, with the United States at number #37, and Cuba at #39. Right up on the screen in big five-foot letters. It’s even in the trailer! CNN should have its reporter see his eye doctor. The movie isn’t hiding from this fact. Just the opposite:

CNN hid the facts on Cuba

But ‘SiCKO’ has the facts right up front

* The fact that the healthcare system in an impoverished nation crippled by our decades-old blockade (including medical supplies and drugs) ranks so closely to ours is more an indictment of the American system than the Cuban system.

* Although Cuba ranks lower overall than the United States, it still has a lower infant mortality rate and longer life span. (see below)

* And unlike the United States, Cuba offers healthcare to absolutely everyone. In an independent Gallup poll conducted in Cuba, “a near unanimous 96 percent of respondents say that health care in Cuba is accessible to everyone.” (”Cubans Show Little Satisfaction with Opportunities and Individual Freedom Rare Independent Survey Finds Large Majorities Are Still Proud of Island’s Health Care and Education,” January 10, 2007.
http://www.worldpublicopinion.org/pipa/articles/brlatinamericara/
300.php?nid=&id=&pnt=300&lb=brla)

CNN: “Moore asserts that the American health care system spends $7,000 per person on health. Cuba spends $25 dollars per person. Not true. But not too far off. The United States spends $6,096 per person, versus $229 per person in Cuba.”

THE TRUTH:

* According to our own government – the Department of Health and Human Services’ National Health Expenditures Projections – the United States will spend $7,092 per capita on health in 2006 and $7,498 in 2007. (Department of Health and Human Services Center for Medicare and Medicaid Expenditures, National Health Expenditures Projections 2006-2016. http://www.cms.hhs.gov/NationalHealthExpendData/downloads/proj2006.pdf.

* As for Cuba – Dr. Gupta and CNN need to watch ‘SiCKO’ first before commenting on it. ‘SiCKO’ says Cuba spends $251 per person on health care, not $25, as Gupta reports. And the BBC reports that Cuba’s per capita health expenditure is… $251! (Keeping Cuba Healthy, BBC, Aug. 1 2006. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/newsnight/5232628.stm ) This is confirmed by the United Nations Human Development Report, 2006. Yup, Cuba spends $251 per person on health care. (http://hdr.undp.org/hdr2006/statistics/indicators/52.html). As Gupta points out, the World Health Organization does calculate Cuba’s per capita health expenditure at $229 per person. We chose to use the UN numbers, a minor difference - and $229 is a lot closer to $251 than $25.

CNN: In fact, Americans live just a little bit longer than Cubans on average.

THE TRUTH:

* Just the opposite. The 2006 United Nations Human Development Report’s human development index states the life expectancy in the United States is 77.5 years. It is 77.6 years in Cuba. (Human Development Report 2006, United Nations Development Programme, 2006 at 283. http://hdr.undp.org/hdr2006/pdfs/report/HDR06-complete.pdf)

CNN: The United States ranks highest in patient satisfaction.

THE TRUTH:

* True, but even when the WHO took patient satisfaction into account in its comprehensive review of the world’s health systems, we still came in at #37. (”World Health Organization Assesses The World’s Health Systems,” Press Release, WHO/44, June 21, 2000. http://www.who.int/inf-pr-2000/en/pr2000-44.html ).

* Patients may be satisfied in America, but not everyone gets to be a patient. 47 million are uninsured and are rarely patients - until it’s too late. In the rest of the Western world, everyone and anyone can be a patient because everyone is covered. (And don’t face exclusions for pre-existing conditions, co-pays, deductibles, and costly monthly premiums).

* It’s not that other countries are unhappy with their health care – for example, “70 to 80 percent of Canadians find their waiting times acceptable.” (”Access to health care services in Canada, Waiting times for specialized services (January to December 2005),” Statistics Canada, http://www.statcan.ca/english/freepub/82-575-XIE/82-575-XIE2006002.htm )

CNN: Americans have shorter wait times than everyone but Germans when seeking non-emergency elective procedures, like hip replacement, cataract surgery, or knee repair.

THE TRUTH:

* This isn’t the whole truth. CNN pulled out a statistic about elective procedures. Of the six countries surveyed in that study (United States, Canada, New Zealand, UK, Germany, Australia) only Canada had longer waiting times than America for sick adults waiting to schedule a doctor’s appointment for a medical problem. 81% of patients in New Zealand got a same or next-day appointment for a non-routine visit, 71% in Britain, 69% in Germany, 66% in Australia, 47% in the U.S., and 36% in Canada. (The Doc’s in, but It’ll be AWhile. Catherine Arnst, Business Week. June 22, 2007 http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/jun2007/
tc20070621_716260_page_2.htm)

* “Gerard Anderson, a Johns Hopkins health policy professor who has spent his career examining the world’s healthcare, said there are delays, but not as many as conservatives state. In Canada, the United Kingdom and France, ‘three percent of hospital discharges had delays in treatment,’ Anderson told The Miami Herald. ‘That’s a relatively small number, and they’re all elective surgeries, such as hip and knee replacement.’ (John Dorschner, “‘SiCKO’ film is set to spark debate; Reformers are gearing up for ‘Sicko,’ the first major movie to examine America’s often maligned healthcare system,” Miami Herald, June 29, 2007.)

* One way America is able to achieve decent waiting times is that it leaves 47 million people out of the health care system entirely, unlike any other Western country. When you remove 47 million people from the line, your wait should be shorter. So why is the U.S. second to last in wait times?

* And there are even more Americans who keep themselves out of the system because of cost - in the United States, 24 percent of the population did not get medical care due to cost. That number is 5 percent in Canada, and 3 percent in the UK. (Inequities in Health Care: A Five-Country Survey. Robert Blendon et al, Health Affairs. Exhibit 5. http://content.healthaffairs.org/cgi/content/full/21/3/182)

CNN: (PAUL KECKLEY-Deloitte Health Care Analyst): “The concept that care is free in France, in Canada, in Cuba - and it’s not. Those citizens pay for health services out of taxes. As a proportion of their household income, it’s a significant number … (GUPTA): It’s true that the French pay higher taxes, and so does nearly every country ahead of the United States on that list.”

THE TRUTH:

* ‘SiCKO’ never claims that health care is provided absolutely for free in other countries, without tax contributions from citizens. Former MP Tony Benn reads from the NHS founding pamphlet, which explicitly states that “this is not a charity. You are paying for it mainly as taxpayers.” ‘SiCKO’ also acknowledges that the French are “drowning in taxes.” Comparatively, many Americans are drowning in insurance premiums, deductibles, co-pays and medical debt and the resulting threat of bankruptcy – half of all bankruptcies in the United States are triggered by medical bills. (Medical Bills Make up Half of Bankruptcies. Feb. 2005, MSNBC. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6895896/)

CNN: “But even higher taxes don’t guarantee the coverage everyone wants … (KECKLEY): 15 to 20 percent of the population will purchase services outside the system of care run by the government.”

THE TRUTH:

* It’s not clear what country Keckley is referring to. In the United Kingdom, only 11.5 percent of the population has supplementary insurance, but it doesn’t take the place of NHS insurance. Nobody in France buys insurance that replaces government insurance either, although a substantial amount buys some form of complimentary insurance. ( Private health insurance and access to health care in the European Union. Spring 2004. http://www.euro.who.int/document/Obs/EuroObserver6_1.pdf)

CNN: “But no matter how much Moore fudged the facts, and he did fudge some facts…”

* This is libel. There is not a single fact that is “fudged” in the film. No one has proven a single fact in the film wrong. We expect CNN to correct their mistakes on the air and to apologize to their viewers.

Whether or not you agree with Moore, the facts that he’s accused of playing fast and loose with are presented clearly for you to read and decide for yourself. As with every single critic of this movie, I have to wonder if Gupta actually saw it and if he did saw it, if he actually paid attention. Frankly, Gupta makes claims that the movie said X or Y, but it clearly didn’t and he clearly either didn’t see it or didn’t pay attention if he did.

Plain and simple.

Kudos to Michael Moore for producing a brilliant movie (which, by the way, may have its flaws, but you should still see it because if it doesn’t make you think, there’s something wrong with you) and for making Wolf Blitzer look like he had no idea what he was talking about.

I’d really love to ask Sanjay Gupta if he actually saw the movie.

Oh, and incidentally, Gupta did kind of apologize sort of kind of, the next day:

And here’s Michael Moore on Larry King Live.

Technorati Tags: michael moore, wolf blitzer, cnn

Yeah I know… I haven’t forgotten all of you… I’ll be back…

Anyway… Have a laugh here. This is what real life would be like if real life were happening in Second Life.

via Valleywag

Technorati Tags: second life

As part of their “hey, me too!” internationalization efforts, Flickr has set off a shitstorm the likes of which we haven’t seen on the web since… Well… Since Flickr last censored someone…

In its continuing attempts to make the world safe for puppies and birthday parties, they’ve blocked citizens of Germany from seeing anything that didn’t fit into the “safe” category. In other parts of the world, you can still see it, but with a warning. With Germany, however, nothing beyond the most PG-rated stuff is allowed. In essence, Flickr has decided all of its users in Germany are children and are therefore unable to handle the content that might contain a boobie or a penis.

Flickr’s defense, as shoddy as it is, has amounted to “well, we didn’t want to violate German law.” That’s all well and good, and it’s also a load of bullshit. Numerous postings on Flickr’s official messageboards have pointed out that despite Flickr relegating nudes to the netherworld in Deutschland, you can still readily see Swastikas at will, which is also illegal in Germany.

So what gives? Well frankly, don’t ask Flickr because, as is usually they case, they’ve shot first and then shot people asking questions later. That being said, the law in question seems to be that web sites in Germany must verify that a person using the site is not a minor. Flickr, in its hyperbolic way, has claimed they don’t want to risk its employees being subjected to jail time for not following the letter of the law (source).

In reality, though, Flickr, before censoring all “non-safe” content and before even opening up in Germany, should have had that age verification system in place. Other sites in Germany are doing it; why isn’t Flickr? I’ve noticed that Flickr hasn’t even attempted to answer that question in any way. In fact, anyone who does question Flickr’s motives seems to get met with a smack in the face from some apologist who thinks the person is simply talking out their ass.

Heather Champ, the person who infamously told Flickr members that nothing done to hide members’ photos from public view up to and including account deletion can be called censorship because it’s in the terms of service.

I kid you not:

It’s the attitude of Flickr that really sucks, and frankly the attitude of its forum mods and employees in general are just as bad. I’ve watched a friend of mine, Thomas Hawk, get utterly savaged because he’s taken a strong stance against Flickr’s recent spate of censoring user photos. In fact, everything he says seems to be dismissed because he’s the CEO of Zooomr; as if what he’s saying is less true because he works for a competitor.

After thousands upon thousands of photos posted (roughly 9,000 at last look), thousands of contacts, and hundreds upon hundreds of lengthy posts in the forums on Flickr (including the unofficial clique known as Flickr Central), people have diminished his expressions of concern down to a pissing match between competitors, and he’s even had some of his forum postings deleted because of it.

Then yesterday, as I was reading some web stories about German users who were upset at Flickr’s behavior, I caught this gem from the always-ready-to-defend-Flickr striatic (nope, no capital letter there; he’s way too cool for the shift key):

here’s a question .. does anyone here think that flickr is full of evil people who enjoy the idea of preventing german adults from looking at nudes?

seriously, does anyone here believe that flickr has malicious intent?

Ummmm, no, but they’re seriously lazy and they’re seriously making their users suffer for it.

Here’s what it comes down to. They should have had age-verification software in place immediately upon launch. If they didn’t they shouldn’t have launched in countries like Germany and Singapore where such laws are in place.

There ya go. Heather, Derek & Stewart… There’s your simple solution. That’s how you do things the right way. Sure you can’t go back and put the genie back in the bottle, but the backlash you’re getting now is due completely to your own laziness and arrogance. Laziness in not getting a solution together and arrogance in thinking that no one in Germany would care.

Last week, I did something I never thought I’d do. I deleted my Flickr account. My friendship with Thomas probably has something to do with it; I’m not going to lie. I want to see them succeed beyond anything Flickr ever dreamed of. I want to see Zooomr become the photo sharing site that people go to when they’re done looking at all the crap that the Yahoo! Photos people who got shunted over to Flickr bring with them. I don’t want family friendly filters on my photo sharing. I don’t take those photos, mind you, but I have no problem with people who do. See, I’m an adult, and I can handle a nipple or two. Hell, I know a lot of kids that can handle them just fine also, so can we stop acting like a nipple or a penis is going to cause the world to stop spinning already?

Flickr needs to do a few things before, in my opinion, it’ll be back in the good graces of anyone who isn’t already an ardent drinker of the red liquid.

1. Stop censoring users without warning. Period. This policy is shady, arbitrary, and unevenly applied. Often users find out through other users, then contact Flickr’s “staff” only to find out that it’s a “mistake.” Enough mistakes. Get it right, or stop it.

2. If you want to follow local laws, fine, but your community comes first. I can’t over-emphasize how obvious such a simple thing really needs to be. Flickr isn’t there because Stewart, Heather, and Derek work their asses off. Flickr is there because thousands upon thousands of people built it from the ground up by supplying (for no cost to Flickr) Flickr with excellent content, enthusiasm, and writing. If something you want to do hurts the community, don’t do it. Period. And if Yahoo! wants to institute a bad policy that you have no control over, stop being cowards and come out and say it. Stand up for the people who put you where you are, dammit.

3. Remove the subjective bullshit from the rules. If you want to follow local laws, follow all of them or follow none of them. Don’t censor nudes in Germany because of the law but leave Nazi symbols visible because that’s clearly a violation of the law. If you don’t understand the laws, don’t launch until you do.

4. Censorship, whether done because it’s in the Terms of Service, a court order, or a law, is censorship. The act is what counts, not the motivation. Once you understand that, see rule #1 for how to proceed.

5. Finally, communicate better with the community. Warn people what’s going to happen. Let them know well in advance. Make it easy to understand. Lay your position out there. I’m not saying you have to debate every bit of corporate strategy, but don’t leave people to guess what the policies are. In the time Zooomr was launching Mark III, Thomas and Kristopher spent days on UStream.tv updating us on what was going on, where they were, and what problems they were running into. In the time Flickr was taking to become more obscure and secretive, Zooomr was moving in the exact opposite direction and becoming more open and transparent. Take their lead.

Flickr has suffered a massive bunch of blows in the last few weeks. First, it was Thomas Hawk’s Twitter picture. Then there was the Rebekka incident. Then Violet Blue. Now the Germans. How many more “mistakes” of the same nature are we going to allow from the same company before we realize that “mistake” is only a valid excuse when used sparingly and not regularly?

“We’re all getting really uncomfortable that the words ‘flickr’ and ‘censorship’ are being jammed together with increasing frequency because that is so far from the direction we’re trying to move in,” Heather Champ, Flickr’s community manager, wrote in a note posted Thursday evening on the photo service’s blog.

Fine Heather.

Prove it.

Technorati Tags: flickr, zooomr, censorship

Equally cute story here.

Technorati Tags: cat, kitten, cute, puppy, chihuaha, sprinkle, bindi

James Randi debunks James Hydrick and his Shaolin “powers”… Worth every second, I promise you…

Technorati Tags: james randi, james hydrick

Heh… I love talking about myself in the third person…

Vincent Ferrari uploaded his famous AOL cancellation call on June 13th, 2006. A screenshot from AOL’s internal database shows that 10 days later AOL revised its policy for what reps should do if a customer says they’re recording the phone call.

This is a revision of their previous policy, shown in the second screenshot, mandating hanging up on customers who said they were recording the call.

AOL saw this story was blowing up and figured that people might try to duplicate Vincent’s call. Rather than telling them to buzz off, which could’ve created another infamous bad customer service call, AOL told its reps to “continue to provide the outstanding customer service all our members deserve and expect.” Clever, very clever.

Here’s why I find this amusing. Despite their uncomfortableness with recording calls, there isn’t crap they can do about it.

Why?

Because of the words they speak at the beginning of every single call: This call may be recorded for quality assurance purposes.

That’s right folks. Once they tell you the call is being recorded, you do not have to inform them of anything, end of story. Obviously, you may want to check with a lawyer to be sure, but that’s the way it is. Don’t take my word for it and then come back to me if you get sued by some tools. Instead of improving the customer experience, AOL just makes it harder to protect yourself when you get your own John on the phone.

That’s why no one gives two craps about AOL any more.

via Consumerist

Technorati Tags: aol, consumerist, recording, vincent ferrari

Instead of dealing with mounting unresolved complaints, Kodak simply resigns from the BBB.

That’s the way to do business!

[The BBB] said Kodak has long refused to accept or respond to consumer complaints submitted by the Upstate New York Better Business Bureau, prompting expulsion proceedings in December by the council’s board.

“Every member of the BBB system is required to make a good-faith effort to resolve consumer complaints filed with the Better Business Bureau,” said Steve Cole, the council’s chief executive. “To do otherwise is to abdicate their commitment to helping advance trust in the consumer marketplace, the key focus of the BBB.”

Kodak was advised it could contest the termination but chose instead to resign its national membership in early March. The photography company allowed its membership in the Buffalo-based branch to lapse about five years ago.

“We ultimately decided to resign our membership because we were extremely unhappy with the customer service we received from the local office of the BBB,” Kodak said in a statement, describing the branch’s Web site postings about the company as “consistently inaccurate.”

“The presence of a third-party organization between Kodak and our customers is bureaucratic and unproductive,” it added. “In fact, Kodak’s customer service and customer privacy teams concluded that 99 percent of all complaints forwarded by the BBB had already been handled directly with the customer.

“Our commitment to our customers is unwavering. That will not change. What has changed is that, for us, the BBB’s customer complaint process has become redundant.”

Now that takes a pair of stones. Seriously.

I guess if things were going better with their reputation, that third-party organization in between them and their customers would’ve been a selling point, but as long as they’re getting hammered, it’s a nuisance that should be extricated.

Nice one, Kodak. There’s a reason nobody buys your stuff anymore. If you need it explained, just look inward.

Forbes Magazine via Consumerist

Technorati Tags: kodak, bbb

Good on him. I’m particularly glad that the assbag he dumped the ashes on was wearing yellow. Double good.

If anyone can translate the french for me, I’d be grateful… I was able to understand a few words here and there (at one point he said that the streets aren’t a toilet) but I’d love to know what they were talking about after “the incident.”

via Fark

Technorati Tags: cigarette, inconsiderate, animal

…The guy who’s choking the other guy, or the dude filming it who did nothing…

via SubwayBlogger

One of my wife’s favorite language pet peeves demonstrated twice in the same sentence:

NEVER ENTER YOUR PIN NUMBER AT AN ATM MACHINE. YOU MIGHT GET THE HIV VIRUS.

via Wizbang

Technorati Tags: grammar

Heh… Something tells me this isn’t the last we’ll be hearing about this (click to embiggen if needed):

You heard it here, folks (and on Kotaku, and on Dvorak)…

Technorati Tags: sony, ps3, sony ps3, jack tretton

Uh oh…

Technorati Tags: abc, news, marc brown, funny as hell

Only they could come up with an idea like this:

Introducing Gawker’s New York City Subway Smell Map. Created from reports sent in by Gawker readers, the map displays particular smells — horrific and sublime — encountered throughout New York’s subway stations. Mouse over any station to see the station name, subway lines, and types of smells to be found there. Click on any station for a popup with actual reader smell reports.

Check it out here.

True.

So true…

via Techspace

Technorati Tags: gawker, subway, stench