Category: Business

This is Our Future Dystopia

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Larry Magid, of Siliconvalley.com, had a dystopian vision a couple of weeks ago, September 26 to be specific.

Two things happened that day:

  • Verizon refused to allow the National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL) to send out alerts to people who had requested them, because the content was deemed to be, “controversial or unsavory”. (They later reversed themselves)
  • Pudding Media demonstrated an ad supported VOIP system, where voice recognition is used to provide ads that are appropriate to the conversation’s context.

His vision, and one that I also fear, is one where the wireless carriers, using voice recognition, choose to allow only those communications that they choose over their networks.

When it comes to the two events of Sept. 26, I worry about the misuse of technology similar to what Pudding Media is using. Not only would it be easy to provide transcripts of our calls to authorities, but all calls could be parsed in real time. Say the wrong thing and your call could be interrupted or you could get an immediate visit from some guys with guns in a big sport-utility vehicle.

Such a scenario would not be in the interest of phone companies, and it certainly wouldn’t be tolerated by civil-liberties minded Americans. But based on what I’ve seen since 9/11, I have no doubt some in government and the private sector would love to see this happen.

The mere thought of it is creepy.

It’s more than creepy. It is very, very likely. It’s like some vision of George Orwell or William Gibson, and it’s closer than most of us would like to think.

Even more than its use to arrest dissenters, is its use by folks like Bush and His Evil Minions&trade to blackmail political opponents. It’s Karl Rove’s wet dream, and it’s Verizon’s wet dream too, because they can use the tech to become the advertising conduit for everything.

If property rights for private operators trump civil rights for people, we are already 90% of the way there.

I’d scream, but I have laryngitis (really…chest cold).

Topps Meat Closes its Doors Because of Recall

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The massive recall of ground beef has forced Topps Meat to shut down.

To quote my 2nd favorite movie of all time, John Carpenter’s remake of The Thing,

Garry: The generator’s gone.
MacReady: Any way we can we fix it?
Garry: It’s “gone”, MacReady.

They aren’t shutting their doors to reopen later after a cleanup, they have just shut down completely. They will be liquidating.

In some ways, the regulations that the Bush administration has been systematically dismantrling protect both the companies and the consumers out there. Had a more aggressive FDA or Agriculture Department caught this sooner, Topps would probably still be around.

Business Decides that Batsh%$ Insane Leaders are Bad for Business

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This is the jist of this article, from the Wall Street Journal, of all places.

“More striking,” Pew concluded, was the change in party identification since 2002. Five years ago, the population was evenly divided — 43% for each party. This year, Democrats had a 50% to 35% advantage.

What you have left in the Republican party are dead enders, bigots, and Religious nuts waiting for the apocalypse.

These folks are not good markets to sell to.

Apple iPhone: Sue Different

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It’s about Apple “bricking” iPhones that have been modified.

There are some problems for Apple:

  • This is clearly deliberately malicious code.
  • They have bricked some unmodified iPhones as a result.
  • They have worked as a corporation to do this, which means that they are likely covered by the RICO statutes.

That being said, I don’t want an iPhone. I want a phone that works first as a phone, these hard to talk on square bricks as PDAs don’t cut it for me.

If I want a PDA phone (maybe when it gets cheap enough on EBay), I’ll get something like the Samsung SPH-I500.

It’s marginally larger than any clamshell phone, and it has a Graffiti™ pad right above the real phone buttons.

It’s not in production any more.

Take This for What You Will

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We invited a couple over for dinner tonight. The husband could not make it. He works for a sheet metal contractor (HVAC ducting, etc.), and he got an emergency call to fix something at the White House. That’s all I know.

I’m just hoping that this isn’t something like an runup to an attack on Iran in the next few days, and they are doing emergency testing on a chem/bio filtration or something.

It’s probably a broken air conditioner.

Sallie Mae Deal Going Balls Up

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Sallie Mae, the former GSE and current student loan powerhouse, had a deal to go private, and it’s now in jeopardy.

There are two reasons, the difficulty in obtaining capital in the past few months, and the fact that Congress has reigned in some of the absurdly high fees in the guaranteed student loan business.

The fact is that the GSLs are handled better and cheaper by the government than by for-profits, and hopefully this market will move increasingly in that directions.

What Ezra Said (on Ads)

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Mr Klein, that is.

Is All Publicity Good Publicity?

The viciously RightWing Center For Union Facts is currently advertising on my sidebar. As always, I don’t screen my advertisers for opinion because I don’t endorse any of them. But though I’m happy to take the Center’s cash, it’s worth pointing out that they’re a business front group that exists for no purpose save to smear and attack workers trying to organize for better wages, benefits, and treatment. Pretty loathsome folks. More on them here

His policy is the same as mine.

Then again, he actually has enough readers that advertisers specifically want to be on his site.

That being said, if you see an ad you find objectionable, email me. I won’t pull the ad, but I may ridicule it.

GE Transportation Systems is Testing Ground for Executives

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It appears that GE wants to give their executives a bit of hands on experience with manufacturing, so they send them to GE Transportation Systems in Erie, Pa.

I find it interesting because I worked there for two years. It was interesting work, I got paid to watch them smack two locomotives together at about 3 mph (Uncle Fester, eat your heart out), but Erie sucks wet farts from dead pigeons.

When I was there, Jack Welch was doing his level best to kill the place, because he personally hated the local head of the union, Jimmy Nelson, and now it’s the hot place for corporate climbers.

Then again, Bob Nardelli, of Home Depot infamy was head of GETS for a while.

I was lead engineer on the blower cab for the AC6000, among other things.

Apple Threatens iPhone Users

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Apple is now claiming that iPhones that have been hacked to be usable with non AT&T phone services may shut down when the push out their next software update.

“This has nothing to do with proactively disabling a phone that is unlocked or hacked,” Phil Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of worldwide product marketing, said in an interview. “It’s unfortunate that some of these programs have caused damage to the iPhone software, but Apple cannot be responsible for … those consequences.”

Bull. Apple is threatening its users for what they do to their phones, and just as with the iPods, it’s setting out to break the phones, and the hacks.

Pirate Bay Files Criminal Complaint Against Media Companies

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The leaked emails from MediaDefender, the Frank Nitti to the RIAA and MPAA’s Capone, have revealed a systematic program of hacking and computer vandalism, and Pirate Bay has filed criminal complaints against Swedish subsidiaries of music and movie studios.

For all their talk of law and order, the media distributors have demonstrated a fairly clear “the law for thee and not for me” attitude.

Schadenfreude, Silicon Valley Rat Bastard Edition

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SCO has filed bankruptcy.

Now that they have lost their bogus Unix claims, and owe back royalties, they are running to the bankruptcy court. I just hope that the court looks into the ties between SCO and Microflaccid™, because it’s clear that they were induced by Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer, and their Evil Minions™ to do this in order to sow fear, uncertainty, and doubt (FUD) about Linux.

Victory for Free Speech and IP Common Sense

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The 10th circuit court of appeals overruled the dismissal of the case Golan v. Gonzalez in the context of works previously in the public domain.

The background is as follows, following the Sonny Bono copyright extension act, the Supreme court ruled that it’s pretty much the exclusive purview of Congress what a “limited time” is under that clause of the Constitution.

However, it also ruled that there could be a 1st amendment challenge if there were an action taken that “altered the traditional contours of copyright protection.”

The Uruguay Round Agreements Act (URAA) brought US intellectual property law in line with that of other countries. In so doing, it removed a number of works from the public domain, and placed them back under copyright, where people who had previously used them found that they had to pay (frequently exorbitant) license fees.

Lawrence Lessig Lessig argued that putting public domain works back under copyright was unprecedented in US law, and hence it significantly altered the “traditional contours of copyright protection”, and overruled the dismissal, remanding the case to the lower court.

This, along with Kahle v. Gonzalez, which argues that the change from opt-in copyright to opt out-copyright alters the “traditional contours of copyright protection”.

My guess is that the current Supreme Court will rule for the rich pigs, but there are a number of people who have reevaluated the role of IP in our society following the Crackberry case.