Even CEO Hector Ruiz acknowledged the difficulties AMD is currently experiencing, apologized and pledged that 2008 would be different.

The letter was addressed to Jim Louderback, Editor-in-Chief of PC Magazine, and any of the several hundred employees who work for Ziff Davis Media.

“I apologize if you and the editorial team at Ziff Davis took offense to my post. I look forward to meeting you one day for a drink to discuss [this] the next time we’re on the same coast.”

The user happened to be Chinese journalist Shi Tao.

Tao was later sentenced to 10 years in prison for divulging state secrets.

“We made a bad mistake. I know why and how, but that simply doesn’t make it better.The intent behind our ad campaign “Multiply Computing Performance and Maximize the Power of Your Employees” was to convey the performance capabilities of our processors through a number of visual metaphors. Unfortunately, while we have used a visual of sprinters in the past appropriately, this ad of using African-American sprinters did not deliver our intended message and in fact proved to be culturally insensitive and insulting.”

Here’s a larger version of the ad.

• They experienced technical difficulties that caused inaccurate account balances
• They accidently provided inaccurate information that caused the Canada Revenue Agency to bill customers incorrectly
• They sent confidential faxes by mistake to a U.S. junkyard and a Montreal shopping-cart company
• They had one of its automatic bank machines issue Canadian Tire money instead of legal tender.

RIM blamed their outage on a software upgrade. 365 Main said their backup generators were at fault, Skype blamed a security update from Microsoft and Rackspace said all their problems could be traced back to a truck hitting a utility pole.

Three months after sending her letter, Shea got a reply from Apple’s Law Department. She was told not to send in any more suggestions.

Shea’s mom, disappointed in Apple, brought the letter to the attention of CBS5 TV.

Here’s the CBS5 report.

Heller passed the information to the Oakland Tribune, prompting the Secretary of State revoked the certification for Diebold’s touch-screen voting machines in California.

Diebold made news earlier this year after hacker Ross Kinard successfully created a key for a Diebold voting machine from a photo of a key on Diebold’s Web site.

Comcast was responding to a YouTube video showing a Comcast technician asleep on a customer’s couch.

At first there was discussion about whether or not the video was a fake, but apparently the technician really did doze off. It’s not surprising, considering he was on hold for more than an hour waiting for Comcast tech support.

According to the Associated Press, Comcast has fired the technician. Maybe they should apologize to him too?