Bonum Certa Men Certa

Links 26/8/2011: Official 20th Anniversary of Linux, Blankfein (Goldman Sachs CEO) Allegedly Might Face Prison



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Contents





GNU/Linux



Free Software/Open Source



Leftovers



  • Hardware



  • Security



  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

    • General Electric's Jim Cramer Heads to Midwest to Cheerlead for Fracking
      Today, CNBC's Mad Money with Jim Cramer's "Invest in America" series will take the show to a seemingly unlikely locale. The crew will head to a place many would consider the middle of nowhere -- the state of North Dakota.


    • Plain Talk: Gore deplores BS skewing climate debate
      It has been nearly two years now since Wendell Potter, the former public relations expert for two of the nation’s largest health insurers, wrote the book “Deadly Spin,” exposing the misleading advertising campaigns and dirty tricks that insurance companies have used to try to scuttle meaningful health care reform.

      In the book Potter, who is now a senior fellow at the Madison-based Center for Media and Democracy, revealed that the health insurance industry has been using many of the same tactics and, indeed, some of the same people who successfully fought off tobacco regulation for decades. Tobacco interests used doctors and other medical “experts” to discredit the research that found tobacco causes cancer and numerous other diseases in not just smokers, but people around them.






  • Finance

    • Cameron and Osborne did the Swiss tax deal to support tax evasion - there's no other explanation
      The UK – Swiss tax deal does not meet with my approval, as some will have noticed. The deal is outlined here. My objections are littered through the blogs preceding this one. But let’s stand back for a moment and consider why the UK have done this deal – uniquely (because it seems unlikely that the supposedly similar German one will get parliamentary approval and so will not happen).


    • Under Fire, Goldman Sachs CEO Hires Top-Notch Attorney
      Goldman Sachs’ shares nosedived nearly 5% after it confirmed that its chief executive, Lloyd Blankfein, has hired Reid Weingarten, a high-profile Washington, D.C., defense attorney to defend the embattled executive in connection with the Department of Justice’s inquiry into Blankfein and other firm officials.

      The Justice probe is looking into findings in a report by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations which alleges Goldman Sachs (GS) executives misled Congress and investors about its mortgage-backed securities deals.


    • Could Blankfein Face Prison?
      The Goldman Sachs CEO didn’t get a big-time criminal-defense lawyer because he’s worried about an SEC wrist slap—there’s a real possibility of doing time, says former Goldman managing director Nomi Prins.


    • Job Creation and America's Future
      Right at the beginning the report hits us in the face with a few statistics highlighted in big text that succinctly capture the job picture in 2011: US jobs have declined by 7 million since December 2007; 20% of men are not working today, up from 7% in 1970; there has been a 23% drop in new business creation since 2007; the jobless recovery is projected to last 60 months; 10% of Americans move annually, down from 20% in 1985.


    • Revealed: Former Goldman Sachs VP Turned Issa Staffer Supervised Scheduling Of Elizabeth Warren Incident (Think Progress)
      Last week, ThinkProgress revealed that Chairman Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) hired Peter Haller, a former Goldman Sachs vice president, as one of his top aides. Haller, who adopted his mother's maiden name in 2008 and had escaped public scrutiny until now, coordinated an Oversight Committee letter to regulators demanding that they justify new Dodd-Frank rules impacting investment banks like his old employer, Goldman Sachs. After publication of our story, the Project on Government Oversight discovered more of Haller's Oversight Committee letters, again on issues directly related to Goldman Sachs.




  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • Plastic Bag Manufacturers Edit California Textbooks
      The American Chemistry Council (ACC), a lobbying group representing plastic bag manufacturers, successfully convinced the California Department of Education to rewrite its environmental textbooks and teachers' guides to include positive statements about plastic grocery bags.


    • Profit Motive Underlies Outbreak of Immigration Bills
      July 29 marked the one-year anniversary of Arizona's controversial immigration law, a year that has seen similar anti-immigrant bills emerge across the country. Thanks to the release of over 800 pieces of "model legislation" by the Center for Media and Democracy, we can now pinpoint the source of the outbreak to the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a bill factory for legislation that benefits the bottom line of its corporate members. While it has been reported that more immigrants behind bars means more income for ALEC member Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), less discussed has been how immigrant detention benefits commercial bail-bond agencies, an industry represented in ALEC through the American Bail Coalition.






Recent Techrights' Posts

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Kyndryl is done. Stick a fork in it.
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If we're honest/true to ourselves, we need to recognise history for what it is, not what some corporations (like GAFAM) want it to be
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In the next few part we'll deal with the impact on Free software, including the GNU Project
 
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If only more platforms did the same, plenty of energy would be spared, "old" machines would be totally suitable (even with 20 tabs open), as we'd focus on substance, not bells and whistles
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Solicitors in UK warned not to act as ‘hired guns’ to silence critics of super-rich
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Major Setback for IBM in the Courtroom, the Demolition of IBM is Proving Costly
Kyndryl is a sign of how IBM ("mother ship") is run and where IBM is heading
Links 14/05/2026: Willful Ignorance and Mass Layoffs at Microsoft
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What the science says
European Patent Office (EPO) President, Mr. Campinos, Ignoring Its Staff While Protecting His Friends
the President is covering up cocaine use while ignoring his own workers
Slop Cannot Replace Everybody (the Story of Perl and Universities)
Quantity where abundance exists is without merit; quality is what people opt for as they have limited time and patience
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Where is Waggener Edstrom/Frank Shaw now?
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Will this year's festivities be Krishna's last?
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Next up it is LinkedIn
IBM is in a Freefall, When Will IBM's CEO Fall on His Sword?
Since he controls the Board, is anyone in a position to fire him?
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It says "as much as 30%," but they also hire and it's clear what demography is targeted
Verified Accounts of Microsoft Offering 'Retirement' (Layoffs) to People in Their 40s, Over Two Decades Earlier Than Retirement Age
It's not even about performance, it's about age (or "cost" as well as location; they cheapen the labour)
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