Daily Nonsense

Was it just a week ago Monday that I made reference to rats jumping off of a sinking ship when Karl Rove announced his imminent departure from the ship that is Bush? Well, joining the rush for the door is White House press secretary Tony Snow.

Tony will be joining a cast that includes counsellor Dan Bartlett, chief White House attorney Harriet Miers, budget director Rob Portman, political director Sara Taylor, deputy national security adviser JD Crouch and Meghan O’Sullivan, another deputy national security adviser who worked on Iraq.

A lot of lawyers, some national security advisors and one press secretary. The list just keeps getting longer and more amusing.

Although, I will admit that in the case of Tony, he has been battling cancer in recent months and actually may not be up to the vigorous pace of political spin that is the white house.

Following closely on the heels of an apparently successful iPhone launch Apple faces stumbling blocks on the road to world domination in other camps. On July 6 of this year Universal pulled the plug on it’s two year old contract with Apple. The Universal offerings on iTunes account for about 25% of sales. Now, NBC has decided that it is going to pull it’s catalog out of iTunes and go it alone. This is such a bad move on so many levels. The rationale cited here is that NBC wants stricter piracy controls and more money than Apple is willing to provide. HUH?

Is it just me or does one part of that just sound stupid. I can understand the desire to make more money off of the sales of ’The Office’ episodes, I mean hell, it’s America. But the notion that Apple is lax in piracy controls is just stupid. Sure, there are a couple of poor solutions to removing the DRM from your iTunes purchased songs, but nothing mainstream. I would imagine that the number of songs pirated on P2P networks have a very small number of titles that started life as an iTunes download.

I think the article by Don Reisinger over at CNet will prove to be very phophetic. NBC (and UMG) will not realize the enormous profits that they are expecting and in the end will go back to Apple on bent knee.

Some links to the articles: UPDATED

• NBC says bye to iTunes, hello to piracy and lost revenue @ CNet
• NBC Ditches Apple’s iTunes Store @ eFluxMedia
• Apple Won’t Sell NBC Shows On Online iTunes Store @ CNN
• iTunes to drop NBC shows before contract ends @ MSNBC
• Apple to NBC: ‘You can’t fire me! I quit!’ @ The Register

As some of you may know I recently got a Blackberry. I didn’t bother with the voice portion of the contract. I’m very pleased with my Verizon service, but their data plan is extremely cost prohibitive. I was able to get an unlimited data plan with AT&T for only $34.99 a month. That includes e-mail from up to 10 accounts and the Internet on the Blackberry Browser.

I have been using the Browser to read the news on my walk back and forth to work. But to be honest, that got a little depressing. I decided that I wanted to do some reading that wasn’t related to current events and the piss-poor condition of our country. I decided that an e-book was the solution.

A search of the internet resulted in two notable destinations. The first is called DailyLit. Here you can sign up to get e-books e-mailed to you daily. They have sliced up the books in their catalog into easily digested morsels and will start e-mailing you bite at a time of day specified by you.

The potions are small however and I can’t be guaranteed to have something for both my walk to work an my walk back home. So I’ve signed up for two books. The morning book is Accelerando by Charles Stross. This one seems to be a series of short stories all linked by members of the same family. This is odd because the afternoon noon book is Overclocked by Cory Doctorow. And this too is a collection of short stories. So, unbeknownst to me I signed up for two collections of short stories. Both of these are relatively new books, released under a Creative Commons license.

The second site I found is ManyBooks.net. They have a modest collection of out of print, public domain books which are available in an impressive variety of formats. The formats range from a simple text file through various flavors of PDF all the way to iPhone versions. 21 different formats by my count.

Here I downloaded a book by Norbet Davis called The Mouse in the Mountain. It is the first in a series of three books about a P.I. named Doan and his enormous canine companion, Carstairs, (don’t call him a “pet”). This one was in the neighborhood of 280k in size, a little large for the Blackberry to download each time I wanted to read some of it, so I sliced this one up into 9 bites and saved them on to my server. I can then download a chunk as needed.

I’m sure that most of you heard about the incredibly incoherent answer that Miss South Carolina gave during the recent Miss Teen USA pageant. When asked why she thought that 1/5th of Americans cannot locate America on a world map Miss South Carolina basically choked and answered:

(please note that this is an imperfect translation)

I personally believe that U.S. americans
are unable to do so because osama.

People out there
in our nation
don’t have that,

And I believe that our education
like such as south africa and
such as the Iraq.

everywhere "such as".

And I believe our education
should help the US
should help the south africa
and the iraq
and the asian countries
so we can build up
our future.

Well, some people decided that she was 100% correct in her assumptions and created a site to help alleviate, such as, the map crisis here in South Africa. The link to this amazing and altruistic site is here. My favorite is the Beer Excise Tax map.

My favorite marketer, Seth Godin, re-posted a very interesting article to his blog the other day. I’ve gone back a couple of times since to review it and finally decided that it bears repeating.

Seth maintains that since things are becoming less scarce, things are becoming less valuable. Well, we all agree with that concept, right? It’s only the unique or near unique that demand the highest prices.

Seth has placed the concept of uniqueness in terms of the business world and crystallized something I’ve made reference to in other customer service posts. Business today needs to rely on not only the product, but their ability to service the customer in a way that leads to trust. Trust is key to both sides of the equation and can result not only a deeper, more meaningful business relationship but foster additional business relationships by word of mouth from satisfied customers.

The Scarcity Shortage

From four years ago:

What’s worth more: a pile of gold or a pile of salt? Throughout history, many people have chosen the salt. Gold is pretty, but you can’t live without salt, and when it was more scarce than gold, it became valuable enough to use as a currency itself. (The word "salary" is even related to the Latin for "salt.")

Today, of course, salt is close to worthless. Given the choice between a pile of salt and a pile of gold, you’d go for the gold every time, because there’s less of it around.

Scarcity, it seems, has a lot to do with value.

[Read on after the jump, it’s worth it]

Wow, can this be true? If it is, this guy is a real jerk. But, he is a Republican after all.

Blogbath Erupts Between Seattle Republican Activist Stefan Sharkansky And Waitress

So up until a few seconds ago I had no idea who "Stefan Sharkansky" is, or that Seattle had any Republicans in it, but apparently they do and you don’t want to be a waitress pissing ’em off by helping anonymously pen a partially facetious blog complaint that they let their child loudly run around the restaurant and then only tipping 10%…

After probably getting a Google Alert that someone mentioned the Republican activist online, Sharkansky unearthed the waitress’s real identity, made repeated requests for her to delete her post, conducted opposition research, dredging up all sorts of personal information about the waitress, and posted it on his blog, then sent a relative down to the restaurant to get her fired, then tried to make trouble for her at her temp job with Amazon. Only after taking down her original post and making a public apology did the Sharkanskies stop their campaign.

Thanks to the magic of Google cache, you can still read her original post here.
And Sharkansky’s post, here.

[Thanks, Consumerist]

In a move as stunning as it was welcomed, Alberto Gonzales announced his resignation from the position of the Attorney General of the United States today. There is a God and I Thank Her!

’Berto Drinks to His Success – As a Liar and a Cheat

Following increased criticism from both parties after recent appearances in front of the House Judiciary Committee and facing growing derision from an enormous number of Americans of all parties, Alberto Gonzales did the next best thing to seppuku and called GWB this morning and tendered his resignation effective September 17, 2007.

So, On September 17, 2007, Americans can look forward to a new era where the terms Liberty, Justice, Truthfulness and Honor might actually mean something. Where rainbows frame every panoramic view and unicorns prance in the streets of our cities and towns….. Well, maybe that’s a little much.

But hopefully we can look forward to having a chief law enforcement officer with a decent memory and one who hasn’t obfuscated the values that made America what she is.

More news here:

• Washington State Democrats hail Gonzales’ resignation [Seattle Times]
• PFAW on Gonzales Resignation: It’s High Time [PFAW]
• Democrats: Next attorney general should put law first [CNN]
• Bush Reacts To Gonzales Resignation [RTTNews]

• Woot – Targus Universal Notebook Dock with Video $24.99 + $5.00 S/H
• Best Buy – Compaq Presario Notebook ’ Intel® Pentium® Dual-Core T2080
• Geeks.com – Lite-On DVD Recorder with TV Tuner $65.99
• Amazon.com – Back To School Movie Sale – 24 Movies under $10

The first part of this weekend kind of went by in a hurry.

Earlier in the week Brooke had found an ad promoting a comedy show at a place called Mr. Spots Chai House, a cool/weird little venue in our old neighborhood, Ballard. Brooke and I had been there a few times before, most notably for a live performance by Seeing Blind, a local group that we’ve known for years. In fact, Melissa is our Realtor. But I digress.

On the way down to Ballard we decided we wanted to have a beer at Conor Byrne and then eat dinner at Bad Albert’s, another Ballard landmark we used to enjoy on a much more frequent basis.

Where is all this going you ask? I just wanted to introduce my first mobile post with any content. Our server at Bad Albert’s used the phrase ’The horns hold up the halo.’ which Brooke and I both found to be funny and neither one of us had ever heard before. But rather than hear it and forget about it, my trusty new Blackberry came to the rescue and I speed posted the quote in mere seconds. I’m gonna love this.

p.s. If you get the chance, please do drive by the Seeing Blind site on MySpace. Listen to the music and start asking your favorite indie radio station for a little air play.

…..The horns hold up the halo.

~andra @ Bad Alberts

I think that I should have all of the bugs worked out of this process worked out. At least I hope so.

This post is being sent from my Blackberry. Now I can post whenever or where ever the mood strikes.

Earlier this month FBI Director, Robert S. Mueller III, turned over a sheaf of heavily edited documents (details of phone conversations removed to protect the less guilty I assume) to the House Judiciary committee. Included in these pages were Mr. Mueller’s notes concerning the condition of then Attorney General John Ashcroft mere minutes after ’Berto and his posse left the Intensive Care facility where Mr. Ashcroft was recovering from surgery.

The two accounts regarding the lucidity of Mr. Ashcroft are diametrically opposed. ’Berto insisted (under oath I think) that Mr. Ashcroft was "lucid" and "did most of the talking." Mr. Mueller, on the other hand, found Mr. Ashcroft to be enfeebled and barely coherent.

You might remember that GWB’s legal muscle was at the hospital attempting to get Mr. Ashcroft to reauthorize an illegal domestic spying program. ’Berto appears to have perjured himself in a fashion that left even the staunch Republicans on the committee doubting the man’s integrity. It would appear that the order of business for the Bush administration is dishonesty, misdirection and stonewalling.

Here are some additional stories from the ’net:

More Evidence of Gonzales Perjury Revealed in FBI Director’s Notes
Alberto Gonzales and the Coup Against Democracy
FBI vs. Gonzales

My brother-in-law Will (lovely man, great father, green to the gills), has documented a recent Verizon customer service issue that caused is mother Grace (lovely woman, cool mother, lives in Jersey) to cancel her newly installed Verizon DSL account due to speeds LOWER than 56kps. I didn’t make a typo there, modem-like speeds at DLS-like prices.

His Blog documents the errors on the part of Verizon and lays out a guide for Customer Service Don’t-Do-It-This-Way. Verizon is currently $79.00 in early termination fees the richer for the experience but potentially out 13 or more cell phone contracts. All of our family uses Verizon, but to be honest, in today’s market it could just as well be any other phone company. My cell phone bill averages $99.00 a month and over a year that is a nice chunk of change. Multiply that by 13….. Hmmmm, much bigger number than 79.

I’ll tease you with a paragraph or two of Will’s post and leave you with the link.

Verizon: A Case Study in Bad Customer Service

My mom moved about a month ago, and signed up with Verizon DSL in her new house. I first learned she was having problems with her Internet service when I emailed her a movie I made on JumpCut, and she wasn’t able to view it. It turns out that Verizon gave her a DSL line that had less than 56kbps speeds. Yes, that’s right – Verizon was charging her DSL prices for less than dialup speeds.

• Verizon Mistake #1: If you aren’t providing the product or service you promised, don’t charge the customer. Verizon certainly could have monitored the quality of the connection and measured the transmission rate and determined that they were never delivering on the promised broadband connectivity. Therefore, they shouldn’t have charged for it. This wasn’t merely a case of "results may vary" – Verizon agreed that the speeds were excessively slow.

After several frustrating customer service calls with Verizon trying to resolve the speed issue (including one marathon session that went on for several hours), she gave up, and decided to get a broadband cable modem instead.

More after the jump.

[Thanks, Will]

It looks like there is a law suit shaping up that is going to have the evil incarnate RIAA defending itself in court. An interesting facet of the issue is that the RIAA was the PLAINTIFF in this case. The case of Warner Music Group (WMG) versus Joan Cassin will bring into play the question of whether or not music that is in a shared directory equals an infringement of the copyright.

If I use a peer-to-peer file sharing program that allows me to share files stored in a folder on my computer am I in violation of the applicable copyright laws if I place an MP3 music file in that folder? I own both a book and a copier am I in violation of copyright laws? It’s kind of the same issue at stake here. Where does copyright violation start? Will the RIAA try to argue that OWNING MP3s is a violation of copyright law? I think not. Nor will they try to argue that the original rip of my CD into MP3s is a violation of copyright law (although that is actually how they would like to interpret the law!).

Since this case argues that Joan Cassin was illegally distributing copyrighted material by the virtue of it’s location on her hard disk drive, a finding in her favor could end up being a boon for everyone. With one loss in court regarding the foundation of the RIAAs legal arguments we might just see a day when music and musicians shake off the shackles of the RIAA imposed tyranny.

RIAA law strategy may be undercut

The case of Warner v Cassin will challenge the basic premise of the Recording Industry Association of America’s lawsuits against users of P2P systems – that the existence of copyrighted music in a user’s share folder is equivalent to infringing activity, Ars Technica notes. The case is scheduled for conference Sept. 14, the Recording Industry v. People blog notes. This is the second case to challenge the RIAA’s fundamental theory. A case not yet decided, Elektra v Barker, also centered on the issue. In Cassin, the RIAA responded to a motion to dismiss by citing section 106 of the copyright law, which states: “The owner of the copyright … has the exclusive rights to … (3) distribute copies or phonorecords of the copyrighted work to the public by sale or other transfer of ownership, or by rental, lease, or lending.” The RIAA asserts that having a file in your LimeWire public folder is the same as distributing it. The defendants argue that the RIAA must show actual infringement – that is, actual distribution, not just the potential for distribution. Ars notes:

First, the RIAA’s complaints do not allege any actual acts of infringement, which the Copyright Act says must take place in order for a case for infringement to be made. The only downloading that the RIAA can actually prove occurred was done by its authorized agent, MediaSentry. Since the RIAA cannot demonstrate that someone other than MediaSentry downloaded the file-or that the defendant ever illegally downloaded any of the tracks in the shared folder-it therefore cannot show that infringement actually took place. Looking at it from another angle, there are no allegations that the defendants actually engaged in a specific act of distribution at any point in time-which is why the RIAA’s boilerplate complaints refer to “ongoing” and “continuous” infringement.

The stakes are big. If the Barker or Cassin courts find against the RIAA, it becomes much more difficult for the group to assert infringement claims.

The labels would have to show actual evidence that someone downloaded a file from a targeted P2P user instead of just offering a few screenshots and a report from MediaSentry along with a boilerplate complaint.

What is meant by the concept of "acceptable loss"? Airlines, auto makers, etc. use this term to justify profit against human injury or death. The Department of Defense has a whole different definition based on military strategic or tactical objectives rather than monetary profit

Erin Burnett, on the other hand, seems to think there is some kind of formula we can apply to deadly Chinese imports, Walmart pricing, and our children and come up with an ’Acceptable Loss’.

Sucks Too Much Lead Paint?

I’m sorry Erin, but the reality here is that with that type of thinking I’m getting the impression that you’ve been sucking on Polly Pocket dolls for quite some time now.

Look, there is no formula that we can apply to this issue. There is no acceptable loss. Not one single child should be sacrificed to keep our "greatest friend" happy.

I think the only acceptable loss we should suffer from this story is Erin Burnett herself. I’m calling for a ban of CNBC (Seattle Comcast Channel 46) as well as the CNBC.com website.

I am a part-time VoIP user here at home. When I found out that Vonage had free service to land lines in Italy, most notably the island of Sardinia, I signed up without thinking twice. With my three children still living there with their mother I figured it would be cheaper in the long run to use a non-traditional service like Vonage to keep in contact with them.

So far I’ve been right about that. One of my last traditional phone bills was $220.00. That was during a time when I was helping my oldest daughter understand the requirements to go to college here in America. My most expensive Vonage bill to date has been ~$32.00, and that was the high one I incurred when I tried (unsuccessfully) to call my mother on a cruise ship in the Arctic Circle.

In the 18 months that I’ve had Vonage I honestly couldn’t be happier with the service. I’ve gone as far as taking my Vonage interface on vacation with me so that I could call my children while away and wish them a Merry Christmas. There have been one or two times that the echo has caused me to hang up and try again. But with no additional fee for the reconnect, no harm no foul. And since I rarely call during the week, I don’t even know if the service has ever really been interrupted.

But we sure do know that Skype went down this weekend, don’t we? From Thursday of last week until Sunday many (if not all) of the 220 million Skype customers were without service. On Thursday Skype started planned maintenance on their servers (Microsoft security updates by all accounts) and that in conjunction with what Skype claims was an unusually high number of people all trying to log in at once caused an ongoing interruption between the login servers ands client PCs.

The unusually high number of people trying to log in at once was caused by…Oh, you guessed it. A Microsoft security patch. Skype has cleverly laid the burden of guilt on Microsoft’s porch and has identified a potential problem that could affect other companies ability to do business.

But wait……. But why has this issue only ever manifested itself with Skype? I’m just a little bit surprised by this excuse. It’s not like software updates are uncommon, especially in the Sir Patch-A-Lot world of Bill Gates and his product offerings.

If the estimated 6 million active users tried to log on to the servers exactly simultaneously there should have been OS or network safeguards in place to handle the load. I would have though that some nice 408 or 503 errors would have allowed some people the opportunity to log on while holding some of the users at bay for the milliseconds needed to process the login queue. Hopefully Skype has identified some areas where they can improve upon their software and allow for better service to their customers.

But a note to the business customers: If you use Skype as your sole method of telephony you really might want to rethink that strategy. You owe it to yourselves and your stakeholders to have a backup method of communication in place should your primary fail. I have nothing against using VoIP as the primary, but you really should have a couple of POTS lines coming into your business as well.

Karl Rove jumped off the sinking Bush garbage scow days before the deadline imposed by the misguided captain of that vessel. Someone has finally asked the all important question. Where will Rove go now that his job is done? My bet is he’ll be showing up on one of the Republican campaigns as chief strategist in the very, very near future.

Voice of America has some insight as well.

As Karl Rove Resigns, Democrats Wonder Where He Might Resurface

The news that Karl Rove will leave his job at the end of the month has the political world debating why and what effect it will have.

President Bush and his closest political adviser announced the resignation on Monday. The president called his deputy chief of staff a "dear friend" and thanked him for his service to the country.

The two men have known each other since the nineteen seventies. George W. Bush was elected governor of Texas in nineteen ninety-four and later re-elected by a bigger majority. Karl Rove led both campaigns.

He was influential in bringing widespread change in Texas politics. The state went from traditionally Democratic to governed by Republicans.

Karl Rove and George Bush went national with the presidential election of two thousand. Mister Bush campaigned as a "compassionate conservative" on issues like education, crime and family values. He won after the Supreme Court stopped a recount of disputed votes in Florida. The election was one of the closest in American history.

After that, Karl Rove worked state by state and issue by issue to expand the president’s base of support. He worked with groups that traditionally vote Democratic such as Hispanics, women, and Catholics. He especially sought to build the conservative Christian base.

President Bush went on to re-election victory in two thousand four. In his acceptance speech he thanked Karl Rove and gave him a new nickname, "the Architect." Some call him "Bush’s Brain."

From raising money to shaping political debate in America, and attacking opponents, Karl Rove made his mark. His hopes included a Republican majority in Congress that would last a generation.

Yet he leaves a weakened administration with less than a year and a half in office. Last November, Democrats retook both houses of Congress. Now, the continuing Iraq war raises their hopes to win the White House next year.

The war has brought down the president’s approval ratings. But, as Karl Rove pointed out Monday, ratings for the Democratic-controlled Congress are even lower. And, he said, they got there a lot quicker.

Mister Rove says he is leaving to spend more time with his family. He also says he will write a book as the president has urged him to do.

Many Democratic leaders are happy to see Karl Rove go. But others worry that he could hurt their party more from outside the White House than inside.

Democrats in Congress could still call him to give evidence in their investigation into the dismissal of several federal prosecutors. Accusations of political misuse of federal agencies could also follow him.

Karl Rove says he expects the Democrats to keep coming after him. He compared it to Herman Melville’s novel about the endless hunt by a sea captain for the great white whale that bit off his leg. Karl Rove says he is Moby-Dick and a few members of Congress are trying to act like Captain Ahab.

[Thanks, VOA]