SOS Marketing, LLC.

Is the FDA insane or just stupid? Barely a month after the U.S. Department of Justice sued Forest Labs, maker of blockbuster and potentially suicide-inducing antidepressant Lexapro, for illegally marketing the drug for children when it wasn’t approved for use in children, the idiots at the FDA approved this highly dangerous drug for use in…you guessed it….children.

Hopefully, doctors won’t be stupid enough to prescribe it to children in the newly approved 12-to-17-year-old population, or to kids even younger. But we can’t count on that – especially considering that the DOJ suit alleges that the Big Pharma firm essentially bribed doctors to prescribe the drug to kids.

And it’s not like the danger of death isn’t widely known. On the Forest Labs own Lexapro website, you’ll find this very clear warning:
Antidepressants increased the risk compared to placebo of suicidal thinking and behavior (suicidality) in children, adolescents, and young adults in short-term studies of major depressive disorder (MDD) and other psychiatric disorders.

Bottom line: If your child is depressed, Lexapro could send them over the edge to suicide. If your doctor recommends this dangerous drug for your child, walk out of his office and find a new doctor immediately.

Is Obama making things safer? Did you see the recent post on CNN.com where Cheney is saying that Obama’s policies are actually making American’s less safe and more likely to invite terrorist attacks? The post is here: Cheney Interview

I do find it interesting that within less than 6 months in office, Obama will have actually created more of a deficit that the entire term of the Bush administration… Think about it, the deficit is said to be about 1 Trillion plus dollars when the Bush administration left. While the stimulus packages are going to amount to well over 1 Trillion dollars… and those Stimulus packages really weren’t about any kind of stimulation to the economy. It has just left the US in a worse jam than we were already in…

The bubble was sure to pop sometime, so why not let the markets take their course and let the irresponsible parties suffer… it might be hard for a while, but not nearly as bad as it will be…

As to the other parts of the article dealing with security.. it’s all a facade anyway… we’re aren’t any safer because of any policies… how stupid do they think we are? Do you honestly believe any of the things we have done have really made us any safer. Now I don’t think are response to the attacks was as harsh as it should have been… We did prosecute a war on Iraq, that while needed, because Saddam was an evil man, that needed to be stopped… it was surely done improperly and not like the Generals that knew what should be done, advised doing.

With Guatanamo Bay… well, the CIA should be following the rules set by the Army interrogation manual… We have a moral obligation to do it and as I myself have been through some advanced resistance training, I can tell you that information received through torture is usually unreliable and there are far better ways to get information. When I was in training, I used to wish the interrogator would beat me or do something stupid like that. Not that I like pain nor do I want to die, but it is far easier to deal with physical pain, than it is with mental or emotional pain or with someone that is too nice and acts like they want to be your friend.

I have a business partner that was very good at his job in the Army, which was an interrogator… he knows what works and what doesn’t. He even says, that there are things you do that are pretty extreme, but you can get into a suspects head without some of the severe treatments we have heard about. The whole situation was blown out of proportion though… it should have never cause or been part of the media frenzy that it was.

But truth be told, I don’t trust the CIA and they often do way more than is necessary to do a job, that most of the time, they aren’t very good at… That is an agency that I don’t have much respect for…

As to the Eavesdropping… well, that has been going on for a long time… but to think that we are stomping on our own Constitution in the name of security, that sickens me. It also angers me… the Patriot Act I and II were both a bunch of BS… they are not good for America. Yes, our legal system needs some work… but our Constitution is the most important governing document we have and it shouldn’t be stomped on every time we turn around.

Is terrorism really a military deal? Yes it is more military than it is a law enforcement and it should be treated as such. But when are we going to take care of our own problems at home? When are we going to not give so many people a reason to hate us…? The oath of every person that enters the military is to protect this country against enemies both foreign and domestic… We need to clean up or own streets. We should be declaring war on gangs and organized crime… This should be a priority. A strong America is a safe America… lets show the rest of the world that our system works and that our Constitution means something to us. Let’s provide hope…

Then and only then can we help anyone else… and not be hypocrites. Then when those who harbor terrorists and those that actually do attack this country and our people, we make the response swift and unproportional… By unproportional I mean, we use the full and unrestricted force of our military to reign down on those that attack us, we obliterate them with no mercy. We make it so that no other country will ever want to harbor a single terrorist ever again. We make it so that it is unsafe for anyone to terrorize us or anyone else… so they won’t attack us, out of that fear and no one else will protect them if they do.

If we are a moral country with ethics and we respect our own Constitution, then others will respect us and want to join us… because they will want that too…

I probably could go on and on, but I’ll save it for another post or perhaps another blog…

I think there is a lot of misinformation regarding what Cloud Computing is and the risks that are involved.  No matter what you do, there are risks of some kind, that’s the nature of business and life.  But let’s be clear, cloud computing is anything that is not localized to a specific single machine.  When you bank, PayPal, anything on a server (whether in your home, office or on the web) your email server is even a form of cloud computing when you get right down to it.

But what risks are there when you don’t put it in ‘the cloud’?  Fire, theft, viruses, hacking into your computer that is ‘Online’ 24 hours a day through a broadband connection and basic simple data loss or corruption due to mechanical or software failures.   Do you back your data up every day?  Do you store it in more than one location?  Are all the username and passwords to your computer and network secure?  Then your data is no more secure locally than it is in the so called cloud!

Also, it is correct that many free services have TOS’s in place that allow them to use your data… well when it is being shared extensively to the public or to multiple users that have no real affiliation with each other, then there is no expectation of privacy. Those rules can  also change whenever, especially if the TOS say’s they can or that your data doesn’t really belong to you any more.  Do you read every TOS?  You should.

Using something like Google Apps, does not mean you don’t have protections. Not only do they offer a free service, they have a paid service now too, that is designed for businesses and large institutions.  It utilizes SSL (if you choose to or it can be forced to always use it), it has multiple back ups done regularly and it’s accessible anywhere.

Furthermore, a federal subpoena can be served to get your data, from anywhere, not just from another company.  A warrant isn’t always necassary.  Besides, the question here is always are we talking personal use or business?

As an individual you may have to do more to ensure your data is safe and backed up, but overall you are more protected in your home, because as an individual you have more rights.  As to financial data… do you bank online? Then why would they need your computer records.  Think about what you might keep at home on your computer or in a paper file, that is not already available at some company somewhere.

As a business, the rules change and whether it’s in the cloud or not, isn’t really relevant.  A lawsuit or any other reason that the government or a lawsuit might have agains’t you can warrant a subpoena to produce records, whether in the cloud or not.  Warrant’s aren’t needed.

So, is your data really more secure locally?  Probably not.  Is the cloud more secure?  Perhaps, it reduces many risks, while maintaining others and making a few just more important to understand.

Here’s a recent report by the World Privacy Organization that does bring up some concerns, perhaps not all that I agree with, but they are something to think about.