Falling into wrong hands

September 2008. American economy is exploding. Banks are begging for billions of American money.

April 2009. Goldman Sachs of Wall Street is announcing it is making money! Can repay loans! Just kidding about bankruptcy!

How is possible?

Is secret of Wall Street which is called “high-speed trading.” New York Times is describing here, but in brief, is way to execute trade of financial instrument in tiny fraction of second using computer. By executing such trade, billions of dollars U.S. are made. (Is like scheme in famous movie of Russian hacker who is stealing fraction of ruble from many bank accounts.)

Ordinary investor is not having access to such trade. Such software codes are secrets, developed by talented programmers of Russia, for American firms such as Goldman Sachs.

Now America is striking back by arresting talented programmers of Russia who are writing such codes. Latest case is Sergey Aleynikov, who is being arrested for crime of leaving Goldman Sachs. (Example of American freedom?) Mr. Aleynikov is being prosecuted with claim of having such codes which could be used to “unfairly manipulate” price of stock.

I am certain firms of American Wall Street are never “unfairly manipulating” anything!

American prosecutor is claiming such codes to make billions must not fall into “wrong hands.” Whose hands are these, I am wondering? Russian hands? Hands which are creating such codes?

Time to wake up, Americans. Is not talented Russian programmers who should be put in jails.

I Make Joke

“Put in Jails” – is joke in English?

The Boston Globe loves it:

Installing Snow Leopard is supposed to be a breeze, but it wasn’t for me. The software informed me that I must first repartition my hard drive, which means deleting all files and programs. This shouldn’t happen on a Mac unless the drive has been repartitioned after purchase – exactly what had happened to the test machine. So the problem wasn’t Apple’s fault.

That’s right, fucker. It’s not our fault. It’s yours. Thanks for admitting your mistake. Apology accepted.

With Snow Leopard safely aboard, it was time to hunt for significant improvements. I almost needed a bloodhound; Snow Leopard’s most appealing tweaks are nonobvious, but delightful once you find them.

Okay. Deep breath. We’re not crazy about the language here. One problem is the word “tweaks” — we explicitly instructed reviewers not to use that word, and to refer instead to “massive improvements” and/or “radically compelling, dazzling new features.” We’re also not crazy about the word “nonobvious,” and had given reviewers a list of adjectives that we preferred, such as “subtle,” “profound,” and “deeply meaningful.”

Globe man also mentions that the upgrade broke some of his software — another thing we explicitly instructed reviewers not to mention. So the guy went rogue on us. But he at least uses our talking point about how this two-year project has delivered loads of huge, substantial changes and that these changes are, indeed, actually there, but you just can’t see them. As Globe man concludes:

Snow Leopard is a major overhaul of the Mac’s software architecture, with a dash of eye candy thrown in.

Yes indeed. A major overhaul. We could not have said it better ourselves. Well, we could. We did, in fact. But anyway.

In case you missed this one — some food for thought.

See here. Sorry, Ruby.

I know this happens whenever we put out one of our cryptic, super-secret invitations announcing a mysterious event, but this time the coverage is driving me nuts. Why can’t you fucking assholes just wait until Wednesday and we’ll tell you what we’re announcing? Why fill page after page with ridiculous, stupid, pointless speculation? Jesus! Rolling Stone says maybe the Beatles are finally coming to iTunes, or maybe not. Well, that fucking settles it, doesn’t it? Clears things right up. They even try to parse the invitation and wonder why we would use the phrase “It’s only rock & roll,” which comes from the Stones, if we’re going to announce the Beatles stuff:

“It’s Only Rock n’ Roll” is either being used to put the Beatles rumors to rest, or as a red herring to get people off the Fab Four scent. Or it’s maybe just a catchy slogan that doesn’t need over-analyzing.

Yes, or maybe you hacks all have way too much free time on your hands, and you should go back to wondering what Miley Cyrus is gonna do next, or what went on during the last hours of DJ OxyContin’s life [ed.-- is that a real person?] or how that elderly man is doing since his fall from a stage during a rock concert. Seriously, you dickwads. Leave it alone.

Gmail goes splat. The Web goes into convulsions. We had nothing to do with this, I swear. But I have to tell you, we’re loving it. I just called Eric and left him a message, saying, Hey, dude, maybe you should call your big boyfriend Obama and see if his friends at the FCC can help you out of this one. Bitch.

I don’t know how I missed this, but that’s what Jon Fortt of Fortune magazine says here, in an article where he apologizes to Microsoft — apologizes! – and says, hey, it turns out Apple is way worse than you guys. Money quote:

We’ve been living the Silicon Valley version of Animal Farm all along. Like Napoleon the pig in the classic story, Apple promised us beautiful technology that would set us free to express and innovate. Apple’s technology is gorgeous all right. But as Apple gets more power, a funny thing is happening on the farm. Innovation and expression on Apple’s iPhone platform are beginning to suffer, even as Apple insists that its restrictions are for our own good. And as we gaze out at the titans of the tech landscape, it’s getting difficult to tell which are the humans and which are the pigs.

My translation: Dear Mr. Ballmer, We’re all trying to get the big “get” of the fall season, which will be the big Microsoft cover story that tells how you struggled through years of failure but now you’re back, with Bing and Win7 and great ads and blah blah blah — and yes, to get that story, I’m willing to grovel a bit. Well, maybe even more than a bit. Heck, I’ll even take a few shots at Apple, because I know you go for that kind of thing. Right?

Hooboy. And then little miss sunshine herself, Sarah Lacy, takes a break from admiring herself in a mirror while listening tapes of herself talking to pen this nasty vitriolic screed about the “tyranny of of the Mac fan boy,” which she thinks might be waning. God these hacks crack me up. Well, folks, the Borg suck-up watch begins. Trust me, it’s gonna get ugly.

You can see the original here.

It was some regional marketing guy from Germany, giving a presentation at the mothership. His boss came back later and said, Look, I know you hate that word, but some dictionaries actually include it now and in fact it’s actually included as a word in the dictionary widget on our computers. I told him I don’t care what the fucking widget says, that word bugs the shit out of me. I’m not some super freak about grammar, but honestly, people, I do have limits. My other pet peeve is “between you and I.” I can’t tell you how many frigtards I’ve fired for using that one, or variations of it — basically any combination that involves using “I” as the object of a preposition. God! It makes me friggin nuts! Now everyone is terrified to talk around me and every once in a while some poor bastard gets halfway into a sentence and then can’t remember which one is the right one and ends up saying something like, “between you and, um … between the two of us.” Sometimes I fuck with these people and say, You sure you don’t mean between the two of we? Half of them can’t tell if I’m serious and they start wondering of “the two of we” is maybe the grammatically correct version and then they just sit there with eyes filled with terror and the tiny gears spinning in their tiny brains, figuring now they’re fired. Which they are. God I love my job. I really, really do. I mean, look at that guy, with his greasy hair and his porno beard. Wouldn’t you love to fire him? Of course you would.