Columbia House was owned by CBS/Columbia.  It had ads in every magazine.  Its direct mail was as frequent as the most aggressive mass marketer.  The “great deal” was four records — now most of you don’t remember vinyl that well either — for just $.,99.   Such a deal.  What great folks compared with those CD sellers that are trying to bring about PIPA and SOPA.  But, actually, they were the same S.O.B.’s. The gimmick then was the negative option and contract.   Each month you got a mailing say some album would be on its way to you unless you sent the card they sent you back.   That’s about as sleazy a business plan as one can use and avoid the courts.   As technology changed it morphed to everything including good old 8-track.  It led in its own way by being one of the early sites spewing customer info.

That covers the quality marketing of the fine folks that are the RIAA.  The movie guys at the MPAA aren’t any better.   From Buzby Berkeley and Cecil B. on down, the cost were always something laugh/bemoaned in “the industry”.   If they couldn’t screw the audience… well, I’ll let our friend explain it to you:

 I am 100% opposed to SOPA and PIPA, even though I’m one of the artists they were allegedly written to protect. I’ve probably lost a few hundred dollars in my life to what the MPAA and RIAA define as piracy, and that sucks, but that doesn’t come close to how much money I’ve lost from a certain studio’s creative accounting.

So, the media emperors have again lost their clothes and humanity.  It will never end.  I mentioned publishing the other day and won’t go over their poor relations.

Part of the laws used to shut down poker crowd have been the same ones used on pirate sites and there has been plenty of heat over that without bring about more abusive laws.  That the marketplace has been in rebellion isn’t new.  The technology cost for you and I to do it with ease is more recent.  Some still can’t bring themselves to “steal” from the nice men with their hands always reaching for their pocket.  It is amazing the amount of creativity in rationalizing we can do.   But, even more amazing is the creativity that can be seen in creating another new media.

If I were to explain to you that you could steal studio content, I would probably get a nasty gram and subsequent threats of legal action.  They have backed off with the more common copyright “enforcement” of late because of the bad press about silver-haired grannies who evidently are downloading all the stuff from the latest teen heartthrob.  Ambulance chasers come in many guises.

Torrents is the technology they blame.   It is nothing more than a distributed network.  The problem isn’t that it is nefarious technology.  The problem is that the media people can’t monetize it.  But, for the one Luddite that I know is reading this, I can describe a site that uses bitTorrent — which can be downloaded here.  Why can I get away with it?   Well, there are — surprise surprise — quite legitimate uses.   Vodo is a site distributing using torrents.  It is out in front of the rush from the traditional middle men.   They have a number of indy feature films and scads of other docu-whatevers.  They lead the “cord cutter” trend that scares all the vested interests.  They are even bragging about the user financed movies that people damned by media self-interest villify.   So all you Luddites with varied threats aim at your not finding out another truth can click on the first and let it install.  Then you can click on the second and get legitimate viewing and explanations to ease the learning.

If you enjoy Pioneer One or some of the other indy stuff you downloaded via Vodo (and other similar sites), I suggest sending them a buck or two to help them eat and also come up with another decent idea that doesn’t have anything more creative than replacing Spencer Tracy or Liz Taylor in golden age stories that seldom get better because it the latest heart throb.  Vodo can help you do that too.

Isn’t it amazing what people can accomplish without needing congress or their friend telling them how to act?

ADDENDUM:

The above is quite legal.  The search function in that torrent program won’t necessarily continue that.  So don’t use that unless you can figure out some educational reason or avoid the further temptation.   And, should you want to succumb, ask a friend to explain things beyond this simple introduction.   With torrent downloads account for as much as 25% of all internet traffic, I’m just guessing that there are simple ways to avoid the MPAA/RIAA hangmen.  You believe I wouldn’t stoop to that, right….

No related posts.

Ok, with my usual attempt for confusion behind us, what do I mean — an ongoing conundrum. It means the good guys won one against the bad guys.  In this case it is the movie, recording, media mogul folks.  You know those nice folks that gave us MGM musicals and Bedtime for Bonzo.

They paid off  lobbied congress to make a mockery of copyright’s intent.   Fair use was a faint memory.  Law offices went from ambulance chasing to  suing granny for millions.    Same old same old bought and paid for to benefit mankind special interests.

Here is a little quote of the new media mogul for the media moguls (Former Senator Dodd) in the newspaper of record:

He acknowledged his side had committed a misstep by allowing Hollywood to become the face of laws that were intended to protect not just movies, but also more mundane products — for instance, home smoke alarms — that are frequently counterfeited abroad, sometimes with disastrous effects.

That is misdirection.  Isn’t The Customs Service getting plenty of heat from Prada and First Alert over enforcing very specific laws?  Are the courts turning a blind eye to all those existing laws and added regulations on the books?  Evidently.

Read the article closely.  It is a gas.  I’m not sure if it quite up to the crap spewed by Jack Valenti but he was a giant in this arena.  Poor Dodd isn’t even allowed to talk to his friends on the hill until 2013.   That seems to indicate there may be some truth to mind reading.   Or maybe action speaks louder than words.

Well, what it all really boils down to is that we won one.  That is an uncommon happening these days.  We lost when they passed a law that allows American Citizen to be held without due process as terrorists.  (Did you know that law has been passed?)  So, our win was a small one but it was a win.   Thank you, Internet.

SOPA and PIPA aren’t ever going to be dead.  They will become a new campaign with all the rhetoric about it being to our benefit.  A bit of breathing space.  Read what the former senator says and weep.  About the only bit of honesty I found was his sour grapes about the White House piling on — after the fact.

ADDENDUM:

Have you bought your Kindle or Nook yet?   Great technology.   OK, now….  Have you looked at the prices of ebooks from the major publishers?

Typewriters and pencils are out.   The books are written, edited, printed using technology.   Linotype machines are passe.  But, there are still massive presses churning through tons of costly paper to create the hard cover/soft cover world.  With ebooks that cost is gone — a substantial savings.  So why when I look at a paper back for $7.95 is the ebook also $7.95.

Couldn’t they share their windfall a bit?  Learn from the RIAA and MPAA stupidity of making your nut on the backs of your once loyal customers.  It is a new day.  You don’t own the only ball and get to make all the rules.  The sandlot is in revolt.

No related posts.

What is the new insult?  It is called SOPA.   Heard of it?   Doubtful outside Libertarian circles.  Their idea is to fly under the radar as far and long as possible.    SOPA stands for the Stop Online Piracy Act.  If it passes it will be an example of Congress avoiding responsibility by pushing off their responsibility.   Instead of foisting culpability on some idiots work more on bumping their GS rating, they are sending it to those rapacious (their term more than mine) corporations.  Honest, it turns the enforcement over to outsiders we sure as hell never voted for.

Now what they pull off really would affect me.  The last movie I saw in a theater was a Star Wars.  It wasn’t even the last one but the one with a flop eared Jar-Jar Bing.   That confirmed that most sequels start sucking at some point.  I have never bought anything that came with ear buds.  My car has a tape player and there is a 99-cent tape sticking out of it collecting dust.

My dog ain’t in this fight.  Why rant?  Because it is obscene and contravene the points made to protect us by the Constitution. Here a simple look at it.  It isn’t from some biased think tank or lobbyist but an IT site.   If you search on SOPA on Google, you can find a lot about it and about the overreaching by the recording and movie industry that is already allowed.  It isn’t likely you’ll get solid info from your 6 o’clock news at it is controlled by the six media powerhouses that want the bill passed.

I would suggest to those who buy media to stop and look to alternative sources.  It isn’t piracy; it is called civil disobedience and has been used to right wrong here and abroad.  It is time to have control revert to the populace.

It is sad when Comedy Central is the media source for honest reporting.

Related posts:

1. It is and isn’t the UIGEA

In the Federal Register of November 8, 2011, Acting Administrator of Agricultural Marketing David R. Shipman announced that the Secretary of Agriculture will appoint a Christmas Tree Promotion Board. The purpose of the Board is to run a “program of promotion, research, evaluation, and information designed to strengthen the Christmas tree industry’s position in the marketplace; maintain and expend existing markets for Christmas trees; and to carry out programs, plans, and projects designed to provide maximum benefits to the Christmas tree industry” (7 CFR 1214.46(n)). And the program of “information” is to include efforts to “enhance the image of Christmas trees and the Christmas tree industry in the United States” (7 CFR 1214.10).

First impression?  I have to feel Dave won’t get the gig.   I think it ranks with an interim manger getting the job for the last week of the season.    And, I don’t think this is an evil plot by the secret Muslim in the White House.  OK, joking here.  If the administration had been involved, it’d more likely been Biden — another Federal employee with too much time on his hands.  And, the White House axing it happen as soon as they found out what Mr. Shipman had come up with.

Ok, we had a small giggle.  Outrage would be more appropriate.  We blamed the administration and they responded quickly from their press office.  Case closed, right?  Well, this wasn’t a decision that our elected offficials decided on.  It was a temp in a federal department.  Without much thought,(vote changing much to any), Acting Administrator of Agricultural Marketing David R. Shipman publishes his grand idea in the Congressional Register.  If he’d done it out of season, he might even have gotten away with it.  Ones like it pass unnoticed all the time.  We’ll until the consequences pass down the food change to the citzens who have lost jobs over such departmental fiat.

Sadly, I don’t even have to make stuff like this up.

P.S.  I wasn’t aware until now that the image of Christmas trees was in the toilet and needed help.

Related posts:

1. Made in Washington

It was probably 1964.  It was an election year and a while after I’d gotten a dream job.  More prestige than money unfortunately.

I worked through brokers and had contact with the local media on our advertising campaigns.  I got sort of buddy-buddy with the station manager of a Evansville radio station.  It was an election years so it was either 64 or 66.  Pretty sure it wasn’t 68 as I was already disillusioned by then.

The guy invited me to lunch at the one downtown restaurant that had white tablecloths.  However, we ended up in the basement and that looked like, well, a basement.  The local mover and shakers were there.  It was a fundraiser for their representative.  After a trip or two to the pay bar set up at the rear the candidate arrived.   He was one of the longest-serving members of the house.

The candidate arrived — supported on both sides.  Physically! He was a frail old man.  His speech was more of a high everybody in courtly southern style.  Short remarks and an obvious strain.  Around him hovered a constellation of aids.  Two seemed important; the others resembled what they probably were — male nurses.  The only time that the old man didn’t seem wooden would be when some other old duffer went up to the head table to shake his hand and whisper a bit. My guess now would be he was approaching mid-period Alzheimer.   Then it was just called senile.

Well, we discussed my disillusionment as we walked the short block back to the station. The station manager only had me by a couple of years but had seen what passed for Evansville’s underbelly.   It was a mostly working class town with some big industry providing factory work and unions.  Indiana is the Hoosier state. There was a constant battle for control and it occasionally got physical.  The old guard managed to prevail.

Hoosier isn’t all that defined.  Our basketball team is called that.  Outsiders use it as a substitute for hick, rube, sucker or white trash.   That is an aside.  What that area had produced was a solid political entity known as the KKK which had helped set up machine politics through the late 30′s.  The old man and his peers that were exchanging whispered greetings had a lot to whisper about.  Although a lot of that was still out in the open in those mid-60′s.

OK, that a story that isn’t far from many in these more enlightened times.  Every so often we see the result of some politician slipping his handlers or — god forbid — being candid.  That old man I described got on the train for Washington the first time as a good, ol’ boy.   He was a southern Hoosier through and through.  But his outlook changed.  He was in the big city — which it isn’t by nature or fact. As he augmented that first staff, he started the trip to being from Washington.  At the point I met him, the pretenses were gone but it appeared that no longer mattered.

Today, more folks are recognizing politics as it is being practiced as being remote.  There isn’t a lot of difference, beyond the rhetoric, between tea-party and Occupy Whatever.   It is a disillusionment such as I met decades past.  That senior year, required Government class didn’t prepare me or them for reality.  It isn’t new or surprising.   Mr. Smith goes to Washington told the same tale in 1939.

But, every so often, those do-gooder reformers show up.  They often appear from a single direction but this time it covers the compass rose.  In the process someone always shows up to surprise.  I’m searching for such folks.   Haven’t seen them yet but they do show up from the most unlikely places.   Harry Truman was an unlikely surprise — arriving from one of the most corrupt machines ever observed.

Let’s keep the faith.   And, a prayer wouldn’t be out of line.  In the meantime, it is time to give `em hell like Harry.

 ADDENDUM:

In the category of truth-justice-the American way… and not what some had hoped for in an election year.

Related posts:

1. Made in Washington

But, we’ve had our share.  Nearby Chicago had the Haymarket riots with subsequent executions in earlier and we think less civilized times.  I saw the Chicago riots during the Democratic convention in more recent times showing powers can still get annoyed to excess.

Frank Ogawa Plaza in Oakland is the latest proof that we don’t learn from past mistakes even as we criticize other for them.  Politicans don’t like to be annoyed by the citizenry. Their election or coup gives them power but doesn’t guarantee skill any at governing.  That was a concern with the founders and they quickly acknowledge that the Constitution need help and quickly came up with the Bill of Rights.  It wasn’t perfect and it has been expanded on and corrected.

Most of the time we take it all for granted.  This is America, right?  (Actually, it is the USA as our neighbors sometimes point out.)  We are above the hoi polloi but have sympathy for their plight.  Then holier than thou comes home to roost in places like Oakland.  We have to start wondering if we are the land of the free and the home of the brave.

I not on the same page with the issues paramount in the occupy movement.  The most interesting thing I find about it is that it is against the group in power that have constantly tried to create the breed of equality they demand.  Yes, that is my view and so there is a disagreement that Voltaire might side with me on.  But he also the guy with this line:

I do not agree with what you have to say, but I’ll defend to the death your right to say it.

I agree with that while hoping to stay ambulatory.

By most accounts, the Occupy movement has been civil.   It is a young peoples movement echoing back to other protests.   I can see their concerns are troubling them.  I share many of their concerns while disagreeing on the solution.  No biggy!   Maybe will find the same page at some point.

Every generation deals with issues brought forward by those who feel abuses or disadvantaged.  MacArthur cleared the park across from the White House of war veterans with a gripe. The examples in our “free society” seem a burden when we examine history.    For all the nanny principles espoused we keep ignoring that we aren’t any different from the past and legislation hasn’t come close to solving the unsolvable.

It will work out or at least we always managed to in the past.  Hopefully we can again overcome our excesses.

Take a gander at some of the video that populate the net.  Here’s one featuring an Iraq war veteran. He is the fellow lying on the ground.  I am happy to report he’s off the critical list.  Wrong place at the wrong time can be said of him and those who were denying basic freedoms.

trav·es·ty/?travist?/

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Nice wheels.  It has a 54 MPeGe rating for the hopefully 32 miles max for the battery.  After the engine kicks in it gets about 20 MPG; or, about what my SUV gets.   Watch the ABC video; it gets worse.  Its being built in Finland and we gave them a half-billion to help create jobs.  I guess the country of production was left out.

 

Related posts:

1. A picture is worth
2. One Word can be as Graphic as a Picture

Computer programmers are like carpenters or some other craftsman. It is the use of tools to construct a useful product.  There is a very satisfying pride in the process of doing good to great work.  But, it is seldom inventive at the good for mankind level.  A plumber can’t patent a plumbing run.

Senator Patty Leahy (D-VT) has never met a Political Action Committee he didn’t like.  Whore?  That’s grounds for whores claiming defamation.  He an author of “America Invents” with a nice little stack of restrictive additions.  When we think of inventors we go high minded and stand in awe of Bell, Fulton, and the long list.  But even then patents extended into dark corners.  Watch Antiques roadshow.  How do they date cast iron toys and banks?  Patent dates.

This new bit from Washington makes it a first to file world.  If craftsmen were allowed to patent their craft, you’d live in a tent.  But, that seems to be the state of it all today.

That mechanical bank of a bear hiding his penny in a log is today’s standard in patent filing without the need for iron or molds.  Apple has patented the apps store; they even went ahead and applied for a copyright on App Store.  Their latest patent says only they should be allowed to market apps provided by third parties.  You can see the gory details.

If you want to avoid a headache, just review one paragraph:

Accordingly, the present technology provides a purchasing interface within an application that allows users to purchase a product from another source without leaving the application. The application offers a product for purchase, and a user, desiring to purchase the product can provide an input effective to cause a purchasing interface to be displayed. While the purchasing interface, or information presented therein, comes from the product source, which is different than the application source, it is presented in such a fashion that gives the impression to the user that they are purchasing the product directly from the application.

It has other equally basic ideas that it wants to call its own.  Does your purchase at Amazon differ from physical shopping beyond the obvious venue differences?  Can’t you buy a program from that lying infomercial promising to double the speed of your computer or opt to download similar from some website?  Does your town have a consignment store?

Package that and you got the Apple Apps Store.   Give similar rights to objects back in time and the inventor of the doorknob might have a toll stop for accessing your bedroom. Patents have moved to the silly stage and to restricting competition.

In the EU, Germany has just issued an injunction against a Sony tablet to Apple because it resembles the I-pad.  That taking it beyond silly.  We’re back to Space Balls and ludicrous speed.   There are were and will be product that resemble other products.  The same parts exist in computers from every manufacturer.  You can buy a Sony tablet here — even given, evidently, only America Invents.

I could give several more Apple examples but others are just as egregious.  They are dotting eyes and crossing tees to limit or cripple competition — competition for your and my business.

Now the fine Senator and friends will tell us this is all for our own good.  But, how long can that fly?  We’ve seen the UIGEA, Patriot Act, and jobs programs and patent and copyright increases promise that it was for our good.   So, take off your shoes and stand in line or bend over and pick up the soap.  Senator Leahy has your back.  Of course that what scares me and causes something to clench.

There is hardly anything in the programming world that deserves a patent.  It is the electronic version of creating an assembly line.  It is certainly deserving of trade secret status.  That’s how Coke prospers.  But, they can’t use that to eliminate Pepsi in the process.

Excuse me, I’m off to the patent office to patent clothes.  Ignore the fig leaf folks, I want to be “First to File” in Senator Leahy’s brave new world.

 Want another great example of Stupid?

How about one more?

Related posts:

1. Patently False
2. I am Stupid

I wasn’t expecting to hear from Michelle Obama.  Any reader here can easily guess why.  It was soliciting me to send a donation to the Obama campaign.  The check boxes weren’t for sums that modest.  I recall that in the last campaign, there was much talk about online, small donations funding the campaign and giving power back to the people.  We’ll that is what the soundbites were saying, anyway.

Those who have promoted the president’s rise and election did a hell of a job.  It may have even seemed too good to be true.  Current disillusionment makes that eminently discussable.  Was sending me an email from the first lady a wise move given the declining popularity of her spouse?  Possibly.

First ladies usually get a pass or mystic.  We want to like them.  We’ve had some great ones and a few duds.   One was even reputed to have taken over the office due to her husband’s illness.

Mrs. Obama has been a disappointment to me.  I wanted to like her.  I admired what her parents had accomplished. They admirably provided their children with a lot. I believe I really tried to like her.  Sadly, I found her overbearing.  That might be view as sexist in some quarter but that is what I saw.

She has come across as a very rigid personality.  She’d make a better preacher than helpmate.  That can be pulled off with the right outlook.  Eleanore Roosevelt certainly had some of those attributes.  Mrs. R. might have had more right seeing the world from a similar elitist view.  Instead she embraced common people and principles.   The result was far more productive.

I don’t see Mrs. Obama as one of the premier first ladies.  She seems as divisive as her spouse.  I think the mailing a mistake but the consultants probably recognized a demographic she could attract.  But, the stamp was wasted on me.

ADDENDUM:

The head of the Dallas Federal Reserve made a speech the other day.  Good speech.  But, I’ll quote a sign his brother saw that adds a timely perspective.

“Theory is when you understand everything, but nothing works.”

“Practice is when everything works, but nobody understands why.”

“At this station, theory and practice are united, so nothing works and nobody understands why.”

I like that a lot.  That’s really sad.

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I love Google.  I got an email; it was sad about a casket with a flag but it also inspired..  I can forward it to you if you like.  It started with a quote attributed to Jefferson.  I went Googling and found it was really Gerald Ford’s line.  Well there was something similar from another but Ford phrased it better.

A government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take from you everything you have.

• Presidential address to a joint session of Congress (12 August 1974)
• Ford has also been quoted as having made a similar statement many years earlier, as a representative to the US Congress: “If the government is big enough to give you everything you want, it is big enough to take away everything you have.“

That’s from Wikipedia and it also mentions another fellow who made a similar statement in the 30′s that sent me off looking at The Mercury and another thread of interest.

Google is a great tool but one to watch.  It keeps track of you.  The result is that it first shows you the thing it thinks would interest you.  That is pretty much the opposite of what it should do.  What it is doing is bias.  There is enough of that.

I like Gerald Ford.  He seemed to show my Midwestern bias.  I like his wife too — warts and all they are good people.   There are more quotes I find fulfilling and a look at his Nixon pardon which took a lot of strength and facing the unpopular reality of the time.

You certainly don’t expect such candor (read the Wiki) in the modern era.  It stands in stark contrast to the times and presidency.  IMO, anyway.

Co-opting is a real danger.  To make it worse, it is awfully easy to pull off.  It is easiest when somebody’s remark coincides with our view.  Yet Ford, a career politician, lays it on the line in many quotes that speak not to a gentler time but certainly a more honest one.

Use snoopes.com, google.com or other reference sites when I or someone tells you something.  It is so damn easy.  No getting in the car; driving to the library; paging through the reference section.  I know I’d have embarrassed myself less using the Internet for more than spouting.

ADDENDUM:

Filtering is the term Google uses for selecting what you will see.  It seem a plus.  They look for the things they think will interest you the most.  Danger, Will Robinson!  That means you aren’t likely to find something that might change your mind,  That isn’t as good as finding  something that can make you better informed.

We are filters without any help from Google. It keeps us comfortable.  Recliners are for comfort but induce a vegetative state.

No related posts.