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From BoingBoing, here’s a Google document that explains the global economic meltdown – with stick figures. Mortgage holders of the world unite! You have nothing to fear but exotic derivatives.

From Blorge and Engadget: the iTunes Store has passed Best Buy to become the number two music retailer in the USA. Wal-Mart is still number one.

Apple says 50 million customers have bought over 4 billion songs, with 20 million sold on Christmas day alone.

From the AP and Consumerist: Enzyte is history.

On 21 September 2006, I reported on the US government’s investigation of Berkeley Premium Nutraceuticals, the company that markets and sells Enzyte. The company’s advertisements featured a man named Smiling Bob, who lived a “better life” because of Enzyte. The advertisements included fake endorsements from medical doctors, and fake statistics from customer satisfaction surveys.

No one was satisfied

Enzyte was advertised as a natural male enhancement treatment. The Enzyte pills were little more than a placebo. The company made its money through credit card fraud, along with a steadfast refusal to process returns and cancellations from millions of customers.

It’s just the kind of business model that made the US Departments of Justice, Commerce and Health take notice.

Founder Steve Warshak, his mother, and others now face fines and jail time for their roles in the scam, as well as obstructing the investigation. This editorial in the Cincinnati Enquirer hails the ruling, and pleads for Smiling Bob’s demise.

Over a 100 years ago, Americans had another name for fake medications like Enzyte: patent medicine. See Wikipedia, QuackMedicine.com and the US National Library of Medicine for more information on this topic.