Mobile phone companies are earning a lot of money through its added services, particularly text messaging. Text messaging is the most used mobile phone feature right after voice calls. Actually, I think text messages are more commonly used rather than voice calls.

This doesn’t mean people should send text messages wherever they are. I’ve seen people texting even while driving, what seems to be a physical impossibility is being done with impunity by a lot of people. Thankfully, more rational minds are beginning to see the dangers of texting while driving.

US Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood wants to make it illegal to text while driving and he has publicly denounced the practice with the same level of gravity as drunk driving and wearing seatbelts.

About 16 percent of deadly crashes that happened in 2008 involved a driver whose attention was distracted in one way or another. This is an 11 percent increase from figures posted in 2005.

This is the right move to make. I’ve seen motorists who text while driving and they are road hazards. They’re so dangerous on the road that I want to shove their phones down their throats.

L’Oreal is one of the top cosmetics companies in the world. The French company owns a wide range of brands — Shue Uemura, Maybelline, Lancome, Kiehl’s and Garnier. L’Oreal is a big player in the cosmetics industry so it goes without saying anything it does will be closely scrutinized. And, let’s face it, in a business as shallow as beauty, you’d think it will be easy to avoid certain pitfalls. Unfortunately, the guys at L’Oreal are too engrossed on what they consider as “beauty” that they don’t even realize these pitfalls even if it’s already staring them in the face.

Just recently, L’Oreal was found guilty of racial discrimination by the French Supreme Court. The conviction stems from the company’s policy that Garnier sales staff should be “bleu, blanc, rouge” — the colors of the French flag but also the company’s code for white French people. What were they thinking? That people won’t likely buy lipstick from a person who’s not white? It’s just stupid beyond words. How can they even think their bottomline can be affected by the ethnicity of the sale staff. I want to buy hairgel, I won’t care if the salesperson’s from Mars, okay, I probably would, but only in so much as I’d want to strike up a conversation with a person from another planet.

In this day and age, it’s quite shocking that a company as progressive as L’Oreal would still propagate discrimination. It just reeks of bad taste offensiveness. I mean, the French has been described as rude and aloof but, I don’t believe they’re racist. L’Oreal is giving the French people a bad reputation.

Come on, L’Oreal guys! I think you know that beauty is not just skin deep. Merde!

From Arizona, not that customs officials didn’t appreciate art but the find they got was truly one to behold, 90 pounds of marijuana stuffed into the frames of several paintings that was supposed to be smuggled into the US. The daring ploy to smuggle the drugs almost succeeded till a nosy dog put his nose on something within the designated art that was enough cause for further examination and viola, x-ray reveals the marijuana leaves contained within the frames, sending the man into custody wasting seemingly very good art and very good frames. Just goes to show you that the need for cash makes people do stupid things.
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The Beatles is the most successful band of all time and by all accounts the best selling band, too. I think someone made a survey or study and found out that the Fab Four made a gazillion dollars from the sales of their albums.

And now, more than thirty years after The Beatles released its last album, the Fab Four is about to rake in millions for The Beatles’ current owners of its music rights.

According to reports, Viacom — the publisher of The Beatles: Rock Band — has guaranteed payment of $10 million to the song and likeness rights-holders of the band and the payment is guaranteed to increase when it posts good sales figures.

The owner of The Beatles catalog is Sony/ATV Music Publishing, which is a joint venture between Sony and the late Michael Jackson. The two other record labels that have control over the remainder of the music are Apple Corps for Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr and EMI Music for George Harrison

According to estimates, the rights holders could stand to earn up to $40 million. One of the reasons for this big payday is because of the large amount of songs that are in the game. And this will also likely increase because of the plans by Viacom and MTV Games (who distributes the game) to release album packs every month after the game’s release.

And to add to the windfall, this month also sees the release of the remastered Beatles catalogue. This is going to be raking in money because it is the first time that The Beatles’ work has been remastered and given that new polish.

It’s amazing how a band that has been gone for decades can end up selling so much more again and earning the Fab Four boatloads of money.

A friend of mine recently showed me the infamous HiPhone — the China-made iPhone clone that you just have to see to believe. It may not have the newfangled technologies that Apple’s iPhone may have but the HiPhone’s manufacturer really did a good job of imitating the whole look of Apple’s Jesus Phone. It will really dupe anyone especially seen from afar.

Which brings me to the whole point of this post. We all know that China is the world hub for imitation goods. Name the fake item and most likely it was manufactured in China. I think it would even be fair assumption that the whole underground economy of the country is firmly entrenched in bogus and fake goods. But what most people fail to realize that manufacturing counterfeit goods actually have a far more significant effect than just fueling China’s underground economy and the proliferation of fakes around the world. By reverse engineering all sorts of stuff, the Chinese are actually learning what makes each quality item tick, what makes it expensive and ultimately be able to actually learn the skills to manufacture something just as good (if not better, in the most extreme circumstances). I respectfully submit that this thriving industry of fakes is going to be the real force that will make China the undisputed world economic power.

Why do I say this? Well, it’s simple. What would stop the Chinese from actually learning the secrets and taking advantage of the technology transfer that happens when a big manufacturing company transfers its operations to China? What would prevent them, for example, to learn the ropes of aircraft manufacture from established leaders like Boeing and Airbus if these are contracted to Chinese factories? I won’t be surprised if, in a decade or two, we’ll start seeing Boing 868s and AirTaxi B400s flying the friendly skies.

I was working late last night and since I was getting sleepy, I decided to turn the TV on to break the silence that was beginning to lull me to sleep. The program that caught my attention was a relatively old episode of Lockdown. For those of you who don’t know this program, it’s a series that features the notorious prisons all throughout America. You get a sobering look at the penal system, the violent prisoners that inhabit these prisons and the prison employees that try to keep things in order.

In last night’s episode, one of the inmates got imprisoned for luring a man and then beating him to death. Apparently, the prisoner, along with two other people, beat up the man in order to steal money for AIDS medicine. It was quite a chilling case, made more chilling because the inmate refuses to go out of his cell for fear that the prison is not a safe place for him. There are a lot of ironies here that are just too many to mention. But in this present economic climate, one can’t help but think about the people who do not have the support system or the capabilities to keep themselves afloat as the whole world tries to weather through the crisis. Hopefully the health system all over the world will not be affected as much because sick people really need help. And no amount of “kissing the boo-boo” will help really ill people.

That’s what people in Japan are doing, extracting gold from sewer drains that can rival the productivity of most gold mines out there. It used to be despised but the Japanese have again turned smelly gunk into gold of all materials. One of the most expensive commodities on the market, it is mined using million dollar machines in concentrations that gets you something like a few grams per ton of rock. Some of the biggest industrial mines obtain it chemically due to microscopic proportions making it quite a huge endeavor indeed. Location is the key and they have isolated areas that are near metal processing facilities that manufacture electronics and do plating jobs.
If I remember it right, they also extracted precious metals from muffler recycling plants where they dismantle old car mufflers extracting gold, silver, platinum and several other metals. Gold being a very expensive metal is priced at $900+ per ounce and since most major gold mines have exhausted resources, prices are going up and down at an hourly rate. Imagine having gold in your drains and old mufflers, now that’s an idea these people are good at. The Japanese have been known for their technology and unending need for innovation. From chopstick mounted fans to cool your noodles, to automated toilets that wash and heat your behind, they make them all.
Just wondering, if they happen to recover gold from sewers near industrial facilities, aren’t these plants dumping waste water into the drains? Naaah, they are known for their strict obedience to laws and knowing their pride in honor lessens my fears. Just what will they think of next, only they can answer that(hopefully it can extract the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to heal the planet).

Need to know that the economy is doing bad.. really bad? Well get this budding entrepreneur who found a very innovative way to sell of all things, coffee. Take a drive last year into the business district and you’ll surely see coffee shops at every street corner. Now that the recession’s here, many have closed shop or trimmed branches for they just had to. Major brands have first been beaten by unknown brands that not only taste better but cost less. Now this guy opens his coffee shop, gets a couple of servers and in comes customers in groves, he earns a lot of money but ends up in controversy. The coffee shop has this posted outside :

“Over 18 Only.” another sign says, “No cameras, No touching, CASH Only.”

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