Category: Business
Another Ad Served by Google™ Adsense™
Yeah, I just saw this ad on my blog. (No link, not even if by clicking on it you cost them money, and send their money to me.)
I don’t know about you, but I’d really like to wipe the f%$#ing smirks off their f%$#ing faces.
Of course, then I look at the ineffectual wimpiness “eleventy dimensional chess” coming from the White House, and I lose all interest in doing anything.
In any case, please consider this to be a formal disavowal of the ad. I do not police my ads. They are separate from editorial.
This statement also applies to the Newt Gingrich newsletter advertisement, and all suchlike.
I figure that they waste their money here, and I’ll spent the wasted money on taking Sharon* out to dinner.
*Love of my life, light of the cosmos, she who must be obeyed, my wife.
These have Epic Fail Written All Over Them
In order to deal with budget issues, Mayor Daley of Chicago is considering selling its water system to private operators, and allowing them to charge whatever they want.
So he gets the money, and succeeding generations get the revenue loss and more expensive water.
Also, the state that has so many bad ideas that it gave us both Barry Goldwater and John McCain is looking to turn over operation of their prisons to a private firm.
This one is a little different though, because private prisons have already been tried, and failed, with some of the institutions going so far as to bribe judges to send children to them for minor crimes.
This will not end well.
What the $#@! Were They Expecting?
So, Microsoft teamed up with Seth MacFarlane for a Family Guy/American Dad special, and when they saw the show, they dropped it like it was nude pictures of Joe Lieberman.
They had promised, “an upcoming television event devoted to the comedy of Seth MacFarlane, creator of Family Guy, American Dad and The Cleveland Show” that would be, “unique Windows 7-branded programming that blends seamlessly with show content”.
So far, so good, but what they also got was”
According to reports, Redmond marketeers sat in on the recording of the variety special. While Windows marketing messages were presumably seamlessly integrated into the schtick, so were jokes about deaf people, the Holocaust, feminine hygiene and incest.
While Microsoft was clearly reaching for a hip and edgy audience, they presumably meant the “check me out, I’ve got an extra shot in this latte and I’m wearing an Hawaiian shirt” kind of edgy.
I am wondering if these guys ever watched Family Guy or American Dad, because this is pretty much what he does for humor.
Or, to quote Eric Duckman:
Bunch of thin-skinned, no-humor pansies! You tell them an ice-breaker or two about women’s libbers, gays, environmentalists, several minorities, the homeless, couple of religions, anorexics, obese people, the handicapped, old farts, baldness, and people who walk real goofy because they’ve just had a vasectomy, and suddenly, they get all sensitive, like I offended one of them or something!
Newspaper Circulation Craters
What is going on is that their customers are dying off, and the next generation is just not interested in paying for bad journalism.
So newspaper circulation fell by 10.6% over the past year.
The first time that I saw footage of the protests at GW Bush’s inauguration in 2001 was in Fahrenheit 911.
The MSM was doing bizarre camera shots that were determined to hide it all, and the print media did the same.
For anyone who is at all web savvy, why read the New York Times when the Times of London, or BBC, or Guardian does a better job?
There are a number of problems, such as corporate slant in the news (GE/NBC), but the biggest problem is that newspapers are being managed by people who do not believe in newspapers, but rather by people who are little more than chop shop operators.
This is, as I have said before, you saw this in rail in the 1960s and 1970s, when the companies running railroads decided that it was a dying industry, and so cut people, cut maintenance, cut modernization, and cut infrastructure, and in so doing, they very nearly killed it off.
The news industry has become corporate owned, and acceded to the demands of Wall Street by digesting itself to generate the requisite profit margins, and now, there is very little left by way of quality product for people to want to buy.
Boeing Needs to Fix Its Fix on 787
Basically, it looks as if it will be delayed even further:
While the installation of the 787 wing fix continues, Boeing engineers have returned to the drawing board to redesign part of the reinforcement, FlightBlogger has learned.
As a result, company and industry sources say the 2009 first flight target could be in jeopardy as engineers work to redesign the fix for four remaining wing stringers.
(emphasis mine)
Ben Sandilands makes a number of trenchant observations, but I think that he misses the bigger picture, which is, as I stated in my last post, that Boeing has given itself a cost cut driven lobotomy.
They cut the engineers and technicians because the finance guys thought they could, but they couldn’t.
It’s like when Boeing got their engineers (SPEEA) to strike a few years back, and they were surprised when the FAA said that they would not allow the suits to certify construction and deliver the aircraft.
Delay for Boeing, Airbus Next Gen 100 Seaters
We now have reports that both Airbus and Boeing are looking at engine upgrades to the A320 and B-737 so as to delay the introduction of new models.
When you look at where things right now, with Boeing having outsourced its knowledge to the point that the 787 and 747-8, and Airbus still behind schedule on A380 deliveries and up to its hips in getting the A350 into development,* it is far from surprising that they putting off new development.
Airbus is in a better situation here, since the 737 has had clearance with its engines ever since it went to high bypass ratio turbofans with the -300, and because Boeing seems to be incapable of finding its ass with both hands.
Boeing went all outsource everything starting in the late 1990s, while Airbus didn’t, and as a result, they seem to be lacking basic skill-sets to actually get a plane into service.
Part of this is the difference between the two cultures: In America a skilled work force is seen as a cost, rather than an asset, as it is in Europe, and part of it is European politics, which makes it much more difficult for EADS to ship jobs from Hamburg or Toulouse.
*As well as the clusterf$#@ that is the A400M military transport, but that is technically a separate division, so it’s in the footnotes.
Deep Thought
I was talking with Sharon* about her special education consulting and advocacy business today, and told her about some friends of mine who raise Morgan horses, who would front load purchases before a given year, and then end load purchases after the end of the year, so as to create a profit every 5 years or so, because otherwise the IRS would call it a hobby, and would not allow them to deduct expenses from other income.
Then I told her that this was completely different from her business.
Then I thought about it, and told her it was completely the same as her business: Both people have to shovel loads of horsesh$#, only hers comes from school administrators.
BTW, if you kid has unmet special education needs, you want to contact her, she’s a pit bull, Or maybe a Tazmanian Devil, for her clients…..
*Love of my life, light of the cosmos, she who must be obeyed, my wife.
Signs of the Apocalypse: EADS Edition
Click for full size
Dr. Peter Venkman: This aircraft is headed for a disaster of biblical proportions.
Mayor: What do you mean, “biblical”?
Dr Ray Stantz: What he means is Old Testament, Mr. Mayor, real wrath of God type stuff.
Dr. Peter Venkman: Exactly.
Dr Ray Stantz: Fire and brimstone coming down from the skies! Rivers and seas boiling!
Dr. Egon Spengler: Forty years of darkness! Earthquakes, volcanoes…
Winston Zeddemore: The dead rising from the grave!
Dr. Peter Venkman: Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together… mass hysteria!
So there you have it, actual photographic evidence of the EADS A400M military transport with actual flight worthy engines on the wing, and they are now claiming that we should expect a first flight in December.
Personally, I expect that when the aircraft hits the runway for its first flight, we will see rains of frogs, burning pitch, daffodils, and Amway salesmen.
Chinese Copy Pentagon
Only it ain’t a military installation, it’s a shopping mall near Shanghai.
So, the Chinese intend to defeat us with shopping malls….We’re Doomed.
I saw what shopping malls did to Portland, Oregon, and it wasn’t pretty.
Court Reaffirms Right of First Sale for Software
And once again, the plaintiff trying to claim that software is a license, and not a physical product is Autodesk, and the court just ruled that the software in question had been legally purchased from a legal licensee, and that the purchaser had an absolute right to then resell the software:
“The Autodesk License is a hodgepodge of terms that, standing alone, support both a transfer of ownership and a mere license,” said the ruling. “Autodesk expressly retains title to the ‘Software and accompanying materials,’ but it has no right to regain possession of the software or the ‘accompanying materials’. Licensees pay a single up-front price for the software. Autodesk can require the destruction of the software, but only as consideration in the later purchase of an upgrade.”
“The court concludes that Wise leads to the conclusion that the transfer of AutoCAD copies via the License is a transfer of ownership,” it said.
The EFF is crowing about this.
Potential Rams Investors Drop Limbaugh
Tell Rush it was only businessWell it appears that Dave Checketts, who is heading a group looking to buy the St. Louis Rams, has given Rush Limbaugh the old heave-ho.
I guess that they thought that hiring the nations most prominent sex-tourist/junkie/racist bigot would be bad for business.
See this Rush? 
It’s the world’s smallest guitar, and it’s playing just for you.
Saint Rush Limbaugh has Done a Miracle
Specifically, he has gotten someone who lives within 25 miles of where Memorial Stadium, home field for the Baltimore Colts, once stood, to say something nice about someone with the last name of Irsay.*
You see Jim Irsay, son of the infamous (if you have any affection at all for the Baltimore Colts) Bob Irsay, and owner of the (now) Indianapolis Colts, has come out in the strongest terms against Rush Limbaugh being a part owner of the Rams or any other NFL franchise:
“I myself couldn’t even think of voting for him,” said Irsay speaking from the NFL’s fall ownership meetings in Boston.
Asked if he’d spoken to other owners about Limbaugh’s candidacy, Irsay said, “I haven’t and I don’t think I would even go to the point of talking to Tony Dungy, Jim Caldwell, Dwight Freeney, talking to those men and seeing what their positions are. I’m very sensitive to know there are scars out there. I think as a nation we need to stop it. Our words do damage and it’s something that we don’t need. We need to get to a higher level of humanity and we have.
Good for Jim Irsay for taking the high road….I can’t f%$^ing believe that I just said that.
BTW, it looks like Limbaugh’s toxicity has killed any possibility of his taking any ownership role deal, because NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell has said that Limbaugh’s statements are “divisive”:
“I’ve said many times before, we’re all held to a high standard here,” Goodell said. Then he continued: “I would not want to see those comments coming from people who are in a responsible position in the NFL –- absolutely not.”
Put a fork in your involvement with the NFL, Rush, you won’t ever be allowed to be a broadcaster or an owner.
My earlier post on this is here.
*Bob Irsay literally moved the Colts out of town in the middle of the night in a bit of infamy called “The Move”, see here.
How Do I Stop Aflac™?
OK, so I posted my resume on CareerBuilder.com™, and it seems like every 3-4 days, I gett a call from some drone at Aflac™, I got three calls yesterday, trying to get me to sell insurance.
Let’s be clear: I don’t want to sell Insurance, Amway, or Girl Scout Cookies, I want work as a mechanical engineer.
Of course, they are all different franchises, so some new drone keeps calling, and my telling that drone not to call doesn’t stop the other folks.
Unfortunately, CareerBuilder.com™ does not have the capability of blocking specific employers, probably because jerks generate too much revenue, so my options are to make my resume private, which means that no one sees my resume, or for me to start filing FCC complaints.
When the revolution comes, it’s going to be telemarketers up against the wall.
Lamest Product Launch Ever
The Windows 7® House Parties, and their launch video.
As noted by Slashdot, “If Microsoft had been put in charge of marketing sex, the human race would have ended long ago, because no one would be caught dead doing something that uncool.”
It’s not as bad as that Tommy Seebach video, in that I think that the probability of rectal bleeding being induced is much less than his disco cover of Apache, but great googly moogly, this is lame.
On the other hand, Randall Munroe is amusing, as always”
So, I Own an Orphan
Specifically, a 1998 Saturn, because Penske backed out of the deal to acquire the badge and dealer network after he was unable to find a manufacture to take over once GM shut its Saturn plants down.
AIDS Vaccine Achieves 1/3 Protection
They have been testing an AIDS vaccine, actually a combination of 2 failed AIDS vaccines in Thailand, and it appears that it has a 32% effectiveness rate.
That may not seem like much, but typically, you start to see reductions in outbreaks once you hit this level, and this is the first vaccine that has shown any effect ever.
Of course, we can now expect the vaccine manufacturers to price it at a high enough price so that people in Thailand won’t be able to afford the vaccine.
Lessons of the 787 and GM’s Opel Division
Well, the first lesson is that airframers are running away from all composite aircraft, with Mitsubishi going from a composite wing to an aluminum one on its MRJ commuter jet, they say that this will make it easier to make changes to the wing to accommodate for things like stretched model. (See also here)
This is particularly noteworthy because Mitsubishi is already making the all composite wing for Boeing’s 787, so they are very familiar with the structural problems of the 787 (see here, here. and here)
The thing is, that their assessment on this situation is probably more valid than Boeing’s, because they understand the issues involved with composites more than Boeing does.
Boeing’s policy of outsourcing major design and engineering decisions, along with risk, on the 787 has placed it in a situation rather similar to where GM is right now with regard to its suppliers:
Magna’s planned acquisition of Opel is proof that carmakers have lost the upper hand in the industry by outsourcing development work to suppliers and relying on them for technological knowhow, a top GM executive said.
…
“We all had the vision that the OEMs (original equipment manufacturers) should just assemble bits and pieces, do a little bit of marketing, a little bit of design and all the rest would be done by suppliers,” he said.
“That was a nice vision. It sounds very lean, but the profit making opportunity is also shifting to the ones that have the technological knowhow. That is in very many cases now the supplier industry,” the GM Europe president told the dinner.
The situation is not as straightforward with commercial aircraft, because certifying an aircraft is far more difficult than getting regulatory approval on a car, but as we can see, Mitsubishi is already on top of that process with its MRJ, and certifying a 70-100 seat aircraft is not appreciably more difficult from certifying a 400 seat aircraft.
This may be a situation where the political tensions in Airbus, which has limited them farming out technologies and design expertise, may serve them well in the future.
What’s more, unlike an auto manufacturer there is no need to build a dealer network, which is a huge hill to climb.
Boeing’s methods on the 787 may be a suicide pact for its commercial aircraft business.
Sotomayor Challenges the Idea that Corporations are People
One day, I want to have a WSJ type picture of me publishedWhen Obama nominated her, I figured that she would be a standard Democratic weasel choice, like Ruth Bader Ginsberg, in rock ribbed support of Roe v. Wade, but otherwise, not inclined to rock the boat.
Well, Jess Bravin saw some indications that she may be rather more inclined to change things than I had anticipated:
But Justice Sotomayor suggested the majority might have it all wrong — and that instead the court should reconsider the 19th century rulings that first afforded corporations the same rights flesh-and-blood people have.
Judges “created corporations as persons, gave birth to corporations as persons,” she said. “There could be an argument made that that was the court’s error to start with…[imbuing] a creature of state law with human characteristics.”
In challenging the opinion, or more accurate clerks notes, in Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad, the corporations are legal persons with constitutional rights, she is making a big statement on her position on corporate law, and it is significantly to the left of the court, and IMHO, the right position.
It could be that she feels that extending the idea of corporate civil rights to unlimited political donations crosses a line, but hopefully, it means more than that.
About Bloody Time!!!!
If you own a licensed version of MicroFlaccid’s Windows operating system, you have no doubt encountered the nagware program on Windows Genuine Advantage, which serves no purpose but to prevent unauthorized copies of the operating from being installed.
It should be noted that it also frequently locks people out with proper licenses, after they do things like replace a motherboard of a hard drive, and the installation of the upgrade is deceptive, saying that it provides system security, when what it really provides Microsoft with is revenue protection.
Well now, after discovering that the software phones home, a lawsuit has been filed against Microsoft as a purveyor of spyware:
A US lawsuit has alleged that Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA), Microsoft’s controversial anti-piracy software, is little better than spyware.
A lawsuit (which seeks class-action status) filed in Washington district court last week also cries foul over false advertising as well as allegations of privacy law violations, Electronista reports. More specifically, the suit alleges that the XP version of WGA was offered to users as a security update rather than as an anti-counterfeiting technology.
WGA phones home to Microsoft daily with IP address and other information on users. The latest lawsuit, like others against WGA before it, takes exception to this behaviour.
The case here is pretty easy to understand, so let’s look at what the program is and does, and compare it to spyware:
| What WGA Does | Is it Spyware |
| Does it install on your system without notifying you of what it does? | Yes, it calls itself a security upgrade |
| Does it contact the “mother-ship” regularly and without your approval? | Yes, it does. |
| Does the Removal of the program require extraordinary measures? | Yes, the only removal mechanism is reformat and reinstall the system |
| Does the program have interfere with the system function? Is this intentional? | Yes Yes |
Dude, you’ve got spyware!