Peon's Place

As submersible robots made another risky attempt to control the underwater Gulf oil gusher, the crude on the surface spread, closing in on Florida. BP’s stock plummeted and took much of the market down with it, and the federal government announced criminal and civil investigations into the spill.

After six weeks of failures to block the well or divert the oil, the latest mission involved using a set of tools akin to an oversized deli slicer and garden shears to break away the broken riser pipe so engineers can then position a cap over the well’s opening. But it’s a big gamble: Even if it succeeds, it will temporarily increase the flow of an already massive leak by 20 percent — at least 100,000 gallons more a day. That’s on top of the estimated 500,000 to 1 million gallons gushing out already.

In Florida, officials confirmed an oil sheen about nine miles from the famous white sands of Pensacola beach. Crews shored up miles of boom and prepared for the mess to make landfall as early as Wednesday. ”It’s inevitable that we will see it on the beaches,” said Keith Wilkins, deputy chief of neighborhood and community services for Escambia County.

Florida would be the fourth state hit. Crude has already been reported along barrier islands in Alabama and Mississippi, and it has impacted some 125 miles of Louisiana coastline. More federal fishing waters were closed, too, another setback for one of the region’s most important industries. More than one-third of federal waters were off-limits for fishing, along with hundreds of square miles of state waters.

Fishermen and fishing welders have received $5,000 from BP PLC, but that has was quickly vanished. ”I call that ‘Shut your mouth money,”‘ said Murray Volk, 46, of Empire, who’s been fishing for nearly 30 years. “That won’t pay the insurance on my boat and house. They say there’ll be more later, but do you think the electric company will wait for that?”

BP’s stock nose-dived on Tuesday, losing nearly 15 percent of its value on the first trading day since the previous best option — the so-called top kill — failed and was aborted at the government’s direction. It dipped steeply with Holder’s late-afternoon announcement, which also sent other energy stocks tumbling, ultimately causing the Dow Jones industrial average to tumble 112. If BP’s new effort to contain the leak fails, the procedure will have made the biggest oil spill in U.S. history even worse.

Life is measured by the rapidity of change, the succession of influences that modify the being.

George Eliot (1819-1880)

Good luck with the lawsuits! For all the people illegally downloading movies, I think you’re wasting more time and money than you’ll earn back.

Producers of Oscar-winning film “The Hurt Locker” have made good on a promise to file copyright lawsuits against people who illegally shared the movie via peer-to-peer networks.

Voltage Pictures, an independent production company, filed a copyright complaint on Monday against 5,000 John Does in federal court in Washington, D.C. According to court records, next on the company’s to-do list is to learn the names of the John and Jane Does from their Internet service providers. Attorneys for Voltage wrote in the complaint that unless the court stops the people who pirate “The Hurt Locker,” then Voltage will suffer “great and irreparable injury that cannot fully be compensated or measured in money.”

Voltage has asked the court to order anyone who downloaded the movie illegally to destroy all copies of “The Hurt Locker” on their computers and any other electronic device that they may have stored the film. As for monetary damages, the movie’s producers did not ask for a specific figure but want those found to have pilfered the movie to pay actual or statutory damages and cover the costs that went into filing the suits.

The “Hurt Locker” producers aren’t the first to kick off this new round of suits against individuals. A company calling itself the U.S. Copyright Group seems to be spearheading these efforts and has filed lawsuits on behalf of 10 other movies, including “Far Cry” and “Call of the Wild 3D.”

Click here to view one of the letters someone received for downloading “Far Cry”.

In my opinion? They drafted him, the coach let him goff off and not be serious about the game, and then they let him go. Get your money back while he’s still a Raider; take some notes from Alex Smith, mmkay?

The Oakland Raiders have filed a grievance against former quarterback JaMarcus Russell seeking repayment of $9.55 million, the team confirmed Thursday. The grievance is based on the contention by the Raiders that the contract was changed at one point during Russell’s three-year stint with the organization and that he’s not allowed to keep all of the money he had collected prior to his May 7 release. Russell, the No. 1 overall pick in the 2007 NFL draft, was guaranteed $32 million as part of a six-year contract reportedly worth $68 million.

This suit will focus on his work ethic and insubordination (not reading his play book, etc). He gained massive weight during last year’s off-season and was in terrible football shape for most of the year.

An LA woman is suing Google after accusing its mapping service of encouraging her to walk along a high speed State Route in Utah. The Salt Lake City Tribune reports that Lauren Rosenberg’s suit claims that while visiting Salt Lake City, Utah she used Google Maps via her BlackBerry for directions to to walk from 96 Daly Ave to 1710 Prospector Ave in Park City.

According to the suit the directions advised her to perambulate along Deer Valley Drive, otherwise known as State Route 224. This, according to the suit, is an area “where vehicles travel at a high rate of speed and [is] devoid of pedestrian sidewalks”. And unfortunately, one driver struck Rosenberg, “causing her to suffer severe physical, emotional, and mental injuries… and causing her to incur medical expenses in an amount exceeding $100,000″.

A quick rummage through Google Maps confirms that this is indeed the service’s advised route for foot sloggers, though on a PC it includes a warning about possible dangers. It is not clear if the warnings show up on mobile devices. The suit states: “Google undertook the duty to exercise reasonable care in providing safe directions to patrons of its Google Maps service. [But] Google failed to warn plaintiff Rosenberg of said known dangers…”

Rosenberg – who is also suing the driver – is asking to the court to award her damages in excess of $100,000. It is of course puzzling why Rosenberg did not use the evidence of her own eyes to decide Google Maps’ instructions were best ignored.