Apple Corp.

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Apple music files can now be purchased without DRM, but it seems that they hide information in the file with your name and account information.

Now the question becomes, what do they do with the information? Ars Technica theorizes that this might be a new form of identifying file sharers since the file itself will blab who the original owner was.

Food and Drug Administration (FDA)

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When the former head of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration was caught violating the law, he was charged with two misdemeanors. When the former director of China's State Food and Drug Administration (SFDA) was convicted on corruption charges, he was sentenced to death.

I don't know. I'm thinking that the Chinese version makes the next guy a little more responsible…

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A new service from Google is taking their maps program down to the actual street level. You can browse around the streets of locations they've mapped like in a 3-d virtual game (though it's just pictures so not as smooth as an actual game… yet). What happens when they combine it with Fotowoosh?

The implications of this are currently unknown. For one, I suppose it gives you the opportunity to browse around a location before you actually go there so you can plan your trip better. Or if I was a terrorist, it makes it really easy to pick targets and become familiar with the neighborhood before the actual event. Another possibility is making game modifications like this one. Nothing like being able to wander around in Counterstrike blowing people away on your very own virtual street!

Don't get me wrong, it's neat technology and certainly better than live cameras. People and license plate numbers are all obscured at least. Then again, maybe not.

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I stumbled on this article today that really amused me. It's fantastically well written and biting on both Gonzales and the Bush administration, but it's very short. Here are some of the highlights:

The ultimate humiliation has now been inflicted on Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, the nation's demonstrably incompetent and intellectually corrupt chief law enforcement officer. Virtually all major Latino activist groups that vigorously supported his appointment have now declared their support of Gonzales null and void. ... This mass disaffection of Hispanics simply adds to the growing realization in Congress and the public that Gonzales is unfit ethically and intellectually to fulfill the oath of attorney general to be the people's lawyer, not the in-house mouthpiece for President Bush and his constitutionally dubious conduct.

And most importantly:

Nothing, absolutely nothing—not even the war—is more critical to the preservation of American government than restoring respect for law and for returning the Department of Justice to those with a profound regard for the Constitution. So too does the nation need legal professionals who understand the rights of citizens and who have the character to repudiate wrongdoing—even in the White House.

DHL

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Apparently, the DHS has only charged 12 cases of terrorism out of 814,000 cases it's brought.

TRAC reported more than 85 percent of the charges involved more common immigration violations such as not having a valid immigrant visa, overstaying a student visa or entering the United States without an inspection.

Phone Scams

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Be warned. No matter how nice, not matter how much they already know, no matter how much they try to upset you, don't give out information over the phone.

The scammer – who sounds young and American – calls a military spouse and identifies herself as a representative from the Red Cross. The caller says that the spouse's husband, who is not identified by name, was hurt while on duty in Iraq and was med-evacuated to a hospital in Germany.

Gas

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For a friend, we aren't being price gouged says at least one consumer group:

In a past life we were asked to prove that local gas stations were price gouging New York City residents. We knew this to be false, and found the proof we needed in a meticulously researched report from the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations.

And more importantly:

Despite popular misconceptions, price gouging almost never occurs as prices rise. Instead, price gouging occurs when dealers keep prices artificially high in order to gain a little extra profit or recoup costs, even though the DTW price has declined.

Which means that a fairly good sign that you're not being gouged is when the prices are going up.

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The Consumerist has a large list of "executive service" contact information.

Executive customer service is a firewall team that keeps your complaints from disturbing busy executives golf games. Very often, they do this by actually solving your problems, possessing superhuman powers to command all parts of the company to action, from billing to technical.

If the company you need isn't on the list, they have a method for finding the executive customer service contact information for just about anyone as well.

Keeping media open when it needs to be

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A lot of the newsletters I subscribe to and groups that I follow are making more noise about this. The main point, from Defective by Design's e-newsletter:

The Department of Justice has drafted this outrageous legislative proposal that threatens ordinary Americans with jail time and the sort of property forfeiture penalties applied in drug busts for P2P users, mixtape makers, and mash-up artists. The law would stiffen penalties for "attempted infringement", basically removing the requirement that the government or Big Media companies actually prove that infringement occurred. The IPPA would also authorize massive wiretapping to investigate copyright infringement by individuals. The government has plenty of tools to investigate and prosecute large scale criminal enterprises engaging in bootlegging, the IPPA will target every citizen.

The main point here is that it makes copyright infringement a criminal offense and that it only has to be attempted! Think of all the people who've already been served with lawsuits (many who were clearly innocent). Now imagine that they no longer have to prove infringement, only attempted infringement. This makes their case far easier to fight. But now it's a crime so the punishment would be stiffer as well.

Social Networking Sites

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Ars Technica reports on a proposed law in NC that will require parents to sign up for social networking sites (like MySpace) and become age verified before their kids would be allowed to sign up.

This is probably the best way I've heard of to prevent under-age kids from signing up and had the added benefit that the parents will have to know that their kids are using the sites. That way, parents are held accountable too.