X10's been around forever...but the notion of covertly filming women with thier "tiny..wireless" cameras is getting kind of old. Sure, their ads don't overtly suggest such a use, but what with all the key-hole-ish images of women, it sure looks like some hidden camera tomfoolery as seen on 20/20 or the like.

FuckedCompany.com: FundsXpress HFSC
More ratfinkin' scoop...

I worked there too. He quit so that they would not lay off more developers. They accepted his resignation AND laid off more developers. Got that tidbit directly from a source in the meeting where he resigned.

Seondly, 54 people is 20% of the company, not 10. The number is likely higher because they do not include the contract workers in the count since they were never employees.

Sadly, I was one of the 54. By the time this post was made on 5-2, they were already done with the layoffs. They cleared almost everyone out on 5-1 in the morning before noon.

Coté Surveys Nevada: am I peeing in this fote?

(Sure, masturbation humor is juvenile, but it's kind of fun. And it is, after all, content -Ed.)

FuckedCompany.com: FundsXpress HFSC

I interviewed there once. The first thing their CIO [sic] tells me is "I used to kill people for a living". He goes on to explain his past as a Marine Corp Sharpshooter, he prints off a copy of his five page resume to show me how he fought drug dealers in Columbia, etc. He was a real psycho. I said thanks but no thanks.

Unnamable, The (1988)

Meanwhile on the haunted house front, a couple of students decide to do the studenty thing and make out on a cold, dirty floor which proves that although Miskatonic is the most dangerous university in America there are at least some fringe benefits to enrolling.

A Little gonzo from Plastic | US Loses Seat On UN Human Rights Commission

Well, according to Chick tracts - the world leader in Christian evangelist telephone booth and high school library tagging (not to mention Satan's favorite asswipe) - the U.N. is merely a tool for the Beast to establish his one-world-government. From there we'll all have to put a scan on our forehead and right hand or else the stormtroopers will come with a portable guillotine and well... you know, instant ticket to heaven really.

So yeah, being that Chick tracts map to Bush's content interests and reading comprehension level, we can expect that he will do everything in his power to keep the U.N. down.

Actually, we really don't need the outside world anymore. We have our own energy cartel within the US to jack up prices and create recessions all on their own. International news coverage is rhetorical anyway.

FOUR MORE YEARS!!!

Siempre Ahora Mismo con Mos Def:

Tomorrow may never come
For you or me
Life is not promised
Tomorrow may never show up
For you and me
This life is not promised

I ain't no perfect man
I'm trying to do, the best that I can,
With what it is I have
I ain't no perfect man
I'm trying to do, the best that I can,
With what it is I have

Put my heart and soul into this song
I hope you feel me
From where I am, to wherever you are
I mean that sincerely
Tomorrow may never come
For and me
Life is not promised
Tomorrow may never appear
You better hold this very moment very close to you
Very close to you
So close to you, So- close to you
Don't be affraid, to let it shine

Cote' says: I've been thinking about wearing t-shirt again.
Cote' says: They just seem so fun.
Cote' says: What do you think of that?
Cote' says: It's been about....hmmmm....6 years since I seriously wore t-shirts (other the occasional laid back look).
Kim says: Wearing t-shirts?
Kim says: I'm confused
Cote' says: You know, instead of button up shirts all the time.
Kim says: Oh! Real t-shirts
Kim says: Ummm, I don't personally like t-shirts, but I'm sure it would be nice for you
Cote' says: Yeah...I don't like 'em either....but...I mean, they seem like so much fun.
Cote' says: But, nah...I can't stoop to that...it's tempting, but Just Not Right.

From the Coté is Obssesed With FundsXpress Dept., more "news" on Tuesday's cannings:

Net Banking Services Firm FundsXpress Lays Off 54 Workers

AUSTIN, Texas. -- FundsXpress.com, which provides Internet banking and financial services, laid off 54 employees Tuesday to secure its plan to reach a cash-flow positive position by year's end, according to a company spokesperson. About 170 employees will remain with the company, the spokesperson said, adding that employees affected by the layoffs received severance packages. She said that the layoffs affected all divisions of the company. Founded in 1997, FundsXpress has raised over $40 million in funding from investors including Cendant, E.M. Warburg Pincus, J.P. Morgan Chase Capital Partners, and Texas Growth Fund.

Oy! Those Crazy Neighbors!

Playboy founder Hugh Hefner has decided to invite the neighbors over more often to meet the bunnies in the hopes they will quit complaining. Neighbors of Hefner, shown with some of his friends at the Playboy Mansion April 26, 2001, have been complaining to authorities about the seemingly endless round of parties at the mansion, counting 22 big parties over a three-month period last year.

Lost Pages Force U.S. House to Yank Budget Bill

Set to ram through a budget that would lay the groundwork for most of President Bush's proposed tax cuts, chagrined Republicans in the House of Representatives instead yanked the measure in the wee hours on Friday when they learned two pages of it were missing.

...

The measure also is scheduled for a final vote on Tuesday in the Senate, where Democrats and two moderate Republicans forced Bush to scale back his $1.6 trillion tax cuts to pick up votes needed to pass the measure in the chamber that is split 50-50 between Republicans and Democrats.

...

The tax plan calls for $100 billion in quick cuts or refunds over this year and next to boost the economy, followed by $1.25 trillion in phased-in cuts through 2011.

Re: Apple Open Source BS
From: Jean-Pierre Louis

That apple story is the biggest bunch of BS. Apple uses BSD and Mach for the basis of the operating system, all the enhancements and bug fixes where reported back as well as open sourcing Darwin which is the enhanced BSD and Mach foundation. No they haven't opened sourced their own code(QuickTime etc), they are after all a corporation and try to make money.

China Says 'Weak' Bush Threatens World Peace - China warned President Bush (news - web sites) on Thursday that plans for a missile defense shield were a threat to world peace and accused him of being weak and yearning for media attention.

Open source's black hole

There have been rumblings from various corners to get Apple to allow the open source community to support TrueType and QuickTime, but so far the only answer has been silence. This matches my own experience with Apple's PR department. Bill Evans, Apple's media contact on the company's open source initiatives, replied to my initial contact with "I will see if we are available for comment." After I sent my questions, asking about Apple's willingness to give back to the open source community by at least allowing support for its proprietary file formats, Evans replied that the company had no position. While he was certainly polite about it, the official silence was nonetheless unsettling.

I can't say I'm surprised. Apple has always been a company of closed software and closed hardware. It was one of the few companies to have been boycotted by the Free Software Foundation. It may be impossible to clue the company in to the advantages of working with the open source community rather than against it.

...

No one outside the world of Mac advocates actually buys into the myth that exploiting Mach represents a change in Apple's closed corporate attitude. Apple simply found a source of cheap high-quality systems software that it could make its own without needing to give back so much as a bug fix, let alone useful software projects. Apple's approach guarantees that it won't attract as many open source programmers as it would like to advance its causes, such as porting Darwin to Intel CPUs. And the company's distaste for the GPL means that Apple likely won't port most open source GUI applications, as they are based on the GPL- and LGPL-based KDE and GNOME libraries. Such ports may not even be legal, depending on the combinations of licenses involved.

FuckedCompany.com: FundsXpress.com...

FundsXpress.com will be laying off 54 people. This particular fucked company has been around since '97 and still hasn't made a dime. The company's latest strategy is to stop subsidizing candy in the employee vending machine. Apparently it was announced today that employees will have to start paying the full 75 cents for their afternoon Snickers fix.

Google Defies Dotcom Downturn

And while many big Web sites use RAID arrays or Storage Area Networks (SANs) to store data, Google simply uses massive amounts of conventional disk storage because it is faster, Felton said.

Many of Google's storage devices are outfitted with 80GB hard drives from Maxtor. They have a single controller per hard drive and two hard drives per PC. In some cases, the company uses PCs that are twice as big, with four controllers, four hard drives, two processors and twice the RAM of the smaller units.

"If we wrap more CPU and RAM around four hard drives, we get more efficiency than if we use two hard drives to a PC," he said. In most PCs, two hard drives share an integrated drive electronics (IDE) controller. Google, however, gives each hard drive its own, which increases throughput.

Over at the funky (?) site, AustinBuzz.com, there's a profile of the place I work, Liaison. FX is listed there, but there's no link. What is this AustinBuzz? Just PR crap?

show and tell galleries

Here you'll find a big mix of the kinds of music and album cover art that haunt my local crusty-ass thrift shops. More than half of 'em were actually purchased in thrift shops. Some are from as far back as 1950 and some as recent as 1980.

It's 3:30PM in the Hill Country, so you know what that means! Image time:

FundsXpress Layoffs

Finally, I found a scrap of news about the FX layoffs.

Last week Click-Here told you about an Austin company prospering by helping small banks go online. Yesterday that company took dozens of workers "off-line. FundsXpress released 54 of its 300 employees. The company says it's actually growing from 200 to 500 customers in 6 months and eliminating positions will move it from red to black by the end of the year.

Well...it's good to see that ShowYourTitsAtSpringBreak.com is available...I guess...

HFSC: Toas Consulting

You could say we crack under pressure. No matter what headache your employees are causing, Taos' fired staff of highly trained UNIX/NT admins can replace them. We provide quick pink slips for specific internal employees, or partner with your company on huge layoff projects. And with a pool of literally hundreds of out-of-work technical specialists, you can be sure we'll find the right employees to fire. So let us do the hard stuff. We live for it.