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Yes folks, Bob Dylan turned 70 on Tuesday, May 24, 2011.  Since his voice is enough to make people jump off buildings, here’s a link to seventy artists who are not Bob Dylan doing seventy covers of his songs.

The guy who had his laptop stolen – author of O’Reilly’s Complete Web Monitoring, Sean Power.  Incidentally, this should have been the thief’s first clue that he stole a laptop from the wrong guy.

The douchebag that stole it – Paolo Votano (bottom photo, guy on the far right)

Prey – the software that helped him find the perpetrator.

The blow-by-blow of how he got it back with the help of Twitter and some chick who will be forever known as “The girl in the purple sarong.”

It all starts:  A mystery client hires top PR firm Burson-Marsteller to execute a smear campaign against Google by claiming that Google’s Social Circle violates the privacy rights of Gmail users.

May 3, 2011:  John Mercurio of Burson-Marsteller tries to convince a blogger to write an op-ed piece critical of Google which Mercurio claims he can get re-printed in outlets like The Washington Post, Politico, The Huffington Post, and other “top-tier media outlets.  After turning down the opportunity with a skeptical “Who’s paying for this?”  The email exchange is made public on the internet.

May 6, 2011:  USAToday publishes an article outting former CNBC news anchor Jim Goldman and former political columnist John Mercurio as the two Burson employees behind the campaign.

May 12, 2011:  The Daily Beast uncovers and confirms that the mystery client is facebook.

 ”We take our responsibility very seriously, and I don’t think we get enough recognition for the efforts we make to ensure that there is effective worldwide regulation of a product that is harmful and that is addictive. Nevertheless, whilst it is addictive, it is not that hard to quit.”

- Louis C. Camilleri, CEO of Phillip Morris International

The best part?  He said this to a cancer nurse.

If you are wondering where education falls in the list of Texas’ state priorities, here is an abbreviated list:

1. Executing the mentally retarded
2. Formula One racing
3. Creationism
4. Finding a way to keep Mexican food while expelling Mexicans
5. Secessionist rhetoric
6. Telling Barack Obama to go fuck himself
7. Refusing federal aid

     …

     210,973.  Education

“I just talked to somebody very knowledgeable … that thinks that he’s in a villa, a nice comfortable villa in Pakistan.  Not a cave.”

Link

(By the way, Obama wasn’t elected until November, 2008.)

… it’s Sony.

Picture yourself as the head of a company.  Now picture yourself facing a class-action lawsuit.  A suit with the potential for 77 million plaintiffs.

Kristopher Johns of Birmingham, Ala., Wednesday filed a lawsuit against Sony in federal court in San Francisco, alleging negligent data security practices, privacy violations and breach of warranty.

The lawsuit, which seeks to represent all subscribers to Sony’s PlayStation Network and Qriocity service, also accuses Sony of not informing consumers quickly enough about the exposure of their personal account information and credit card data due to the breach.

In his complaint, Johns accused Sony of violating the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard by failing to implement a proper firewall and to encrypt card holder data. Sony also violated the standard by retaining card holder data, the lawsuit charged.

…

Sony disclosed the breach more than six days after it had abruptly shut down PSN.

From the Washington Post:

The dispassionate observer might think that Wednesday’s production of the birth certificate could not fail to bury forever the carefully manufactured controversy of the president’s origin. The facts are now as official as facts can possibly get: Barack Hussein Obama II was born at 7:24 p.m. on Aug. 4, 1961, on the island of Oahu in the state of Hawaii.

But it is the nature of a conspiracy theory that all information must pass through a very discerning, yet simple, filter. Information that is confirmational is accepted; that which is contradictory is rejected.

I learned an adage in my youth that has proven invaluable as I went into adulthood.  It’s the best kind of one of those colorful, folks-y kind of adages… simple enough to memorize easily, and so chock full of that great combination of poignancy, humor, and common sense that you never forget it.  The best part of the adage was that it dealt with critical thinking and the power of an individual mind to come to its own conclusion through the use of the uncorrupted power of logic.  Here it is:

If a million people do a stupid thing, it’s still a stupid thing.

Nowhere is this more apropos than the birther movement.  I think if they were provided with the home movie of Mrs. Obama lying in the stirrups with little Barack’s head crowning, they would determine that it was faked, just like the moon landing, and then demand that Neil Armstrong admit that it was all filmed at a sound stage at Area 51, right next to the hangar where the alien space ship is stored.  What really fascinates me about these people is that not that they are doing something stupid.  Lord knows I’ve made stupid mistakes in my life.  Plenty of them.  However, when presented with seemingly incontravertable proof, iron-clad opposing arguments, or even when you look back on your previous actions, you eventually come to the conclusion of “Wow.  I was a real idiot there wasn’t I?  I mean what the hell was I thinking?”  Birthers are so trapped in their own self-delusion that I doubt they will ever reach that point.

I’m thinking the chances of a best-seller are dwindling.  I’m also thinking that Harvard will soon be re-evaluating it’s Ph.D process.

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This week, RIM began shipping the 7-inch tablet. After spending a couple days with the final product, it’s clear that the PlayBook is a useless device whose development is unfinished.

Ouch.