There isn’t anything wrong with being an appliance operator.  They provided me with an income.  I walked the path between their mind and mine to obtain whatever success I might.  That was a very specific framework.  The Internet has expanded that.  The appliance operator has more options these days than those of my day.  That is a good thing for them.  But, it has brought about new problems.

The commercial world wants appliance operator.  The problem is they want them as strictly vanilla ones.  This means denying them options.  There are simple instructions around the net on tech help sites that allow many to move a step above the bare minimum.  It is a way to stumble to success using the knowledge of other and I have taken advantage of their work too.  It is a good thing.

So, what is the problem?  Well, such capability has a cost.  That cost isn’t to the user.  That cost is to business.  If they can control options, they control cost.  It shows up in their bottom line.   That isn’t a new concept.  Every business uses goods and services to profit and that is right and to the common good.   But, our move from hunter-gathers to advancing technology makes us more and more dependent on a host of goods and services.   We depend on a free and open market to sustain our lives and comfort with the hope that it comes at a cost we can afford.   When supply:demand works, we all prosper.  But, the most profit comes from controlling markets.

Vanilla affects us all.  We aren’t the generalist that our pioneer forbear’s needed to be.  I may have knowledge in a particular area — like technology.  You run an office with skill or council kids or help provided the things that make the world what it is.  There will always be associated areas of weakness that others will  pray on.  But, together there is a collective knowledge well that should control our joint advancement.

Vanilla … on size fits all … whatever, it is a comfortable path that you have a right to wander.  The problem is that business is trying to force you onto their path.  There is that herd instinct that is still with us.

If you recall,  I got a Logitech Revue last fall.  It is an appliance.  It has really brought home the control that the media wants over our lives.

No related posts.

OK, up front I’ll admit to hating it all.  Well, who’d guess I’d be negative?   I really don’t like getting had and The Experience is not this great way to do things like most are thinking they experienced.   It is a ball and chain.

The most recent example of marketing taking control of your experience is the Amazon Fire.  The fire is:

• an android device
• made proprietary
• tied to a vendor — Amazon
• a multimedia bonanza

As they go, Amazon isn’t the worst of the worst at this.  In fact they are closer to decent than others.  They are all about economy of scale and willing to share more than the other players in the game.

First came the ether and like Genesis says, “It was without form and void.”  It was a proprietary world of phone with “plans” and abusive contracts.   Like Ma Bell before it, the business plan was angle shooting — pure and simple.  Apple cleverly implemented a similar plan and got away with it because it was a superior implementation.

Google — committed to doing no wrong — actually tried to do that.  Their original idea was their Android phone would be given away with advertising accruing to their operation.   The phones would come unlocked and you could just buy minutes or chose in the marketplace.  That should have brought more competition and greater user options.  But, even a huge entity can be foiled.  Content wasn’t in their hands.  So, the business plan move to the heavily proprietary model that makes up providing content.

I have a Logitech Revue running Google TV.   There is a lot of talk about “cutting the cord” which many are doing.  Economic necessity is the basis for that.  The content is limited and often laughable.  The media conglomerates are not willing to lose an iota of perceived control.  Nowhere is that more obvious than with such devices.  Why do I think this?

Tuesday night I missed a show I normally watch — NCIS.   Bummer, right?  But, I still can watch it. How?

• wait for reruns  (NO!)
• download as a torrent (Don’t tell anyone)
• Try to watch it on Google TV  (Fails)
• Watch it using my computer  (Ads galore unlike that torrent option)

Why can’t I watch it on Google TV with ads that would enrich CBS?   Control and relationships.  Obviously, the ads would appear like they are doing at this very moment as I watch it on my computer.  So, why not with Google TV.   This is the battle in a nutshell.   CBS revenue comes from traditional, over the air broadcasting.  That is a model that been around since I was in grade school.  But, more recently it also comes from partners.  Partners is a euphemism limiting customers while avoiding price fixing charges. You want it; you play with their ball.

Take the example I provide and spread it around.   If it were a cable channel only, you could watch if you paid for cable that had it.  Cable cutters are out.  Amazon and Netflix are out.  Google TV is out unless you can prove you can watch it on cable or just out in some locations.  A few (History is one at the moment) show their shows with ad revenue — a fair deal.

Whether it is Amazon, Google, ad nauseum in the media game.  The experience ownership is at best shared and at worst invasive.  Whether it is my Revue or my computer, the flash player has been modified to give the media company full control and the ability to profile you.

Being profiled is nothing new but has always been open to abuse.  The one we all knew about were the big three credit reporting agencies.  Good credit and buying your home they were a help.  It could be better.  You are gamed but you can game them.   But, all that info is available to a lot of people who aren’t planning to play fair.  But, compared with this new profiling, that was amateur night.  They gathered lots of info about you.  The new companies are making what those credit reporters knew into amateur night.   It is lucrative — very lucrative. They are not going to give that up without a battle.  And they are prepared to go to any extreme not to lose.

We are all, well…  pawns, fish, targets, serf, whatever — take your pick.  We can avoid it but we can control it somewhat.  It is easier to do on a computer but it is impossible with the appliance like those great smart phones and tablets.

I don’t see government helping the situation.  The cash is flowing.  The stakes are great and the new laws coming tilt things farther from our privacy.  The alternative is an old one.  Civil disobedience is a way of saying that your choice is outside the grid.   That is sad but not unusual.  Those with a degree of tech savvy can pull it off.  It will be very annoying but it is an option.  The other option is to play by their rules.  Then, you can look around the table.  Unfortunately, you won’t see the fish.  You can guess why!

ADDENDUM:

I did watch NCIS.  It used the standard player on my computer and modified it.  One of the mods was the inability to pause.  I got a phone call — pause.  The application stopped.  Start over.  I was half way through it.  To get back cost 9 commercials.  Talk about stacking the deck.  Hello torrents! And, it wasn’t my first choice.  It never was my intent.   They just made it go in that direction.

No related posts.

Their lukewarm support is shrinking.  It is obvious.  Homeland Security, the FBI, and fellow travelers are able to orchestrate moves against their strongholds park.  After Chicago, you don’t do that to any whose support is strong or growing. I visited Lincoln Park during those days and they even had a stage built which held Alan Ginsberg, Tom Hayden and friends.   Their speechifying didn’t encompass forgiving their student loans.  Today’s group is leaderless spokesperson-less. The media have moved toward finding the nutcases and interviewing them.

That said; The Bill of Rights is still getting trampled, even as they’ve become the relative that overstays.  Like all fringe platforms, they have valid points.  But the fringe also attracts the tinfoil hatters.  If you don’t control them, it end up farce.   That happens if you’re Occupy or Tea.  Unfortunately, that opens potential lies overstatements supporting the status quo.  They never pick up the sophistication of the NRA or AARP. So, they are made into caricatures and the honest messages fail to get out there.

As a member of the entitlement class, I should ignore both sides and keep promoting focus groups of my peers.  As a Medi-groupie, I see where quick fixes are possible.   I am not saying painless.  I am saying possible.  Who and how much are valid for discussion.  And that discussion could be a major help.   Social security could implement a partial needs basis.  I may need it where Warren Buffet might not.  Warren might have to pay more for his Medicare.  Congress decided to base social security on earning weighted toward final years.  Who need the largest SS check, the guy who made minimum wage leading up to retirement or the executive with a strong 401-K?  Don’t look to AARP for the straight skinny here.

The Tea Party and the Occupy Movement have lost the pulpit.  Special interest keep theirs. Politics and media take the easy route.  It takes media enlightened spokesmen to provide the sound bites to keep the valid point in the fore. They both need to regroup and promote their real talking points.

ADDENDUM:

I sent a copy of this email I received to friend, Doc.  Hey, I have a right to preach to the choir too.  The email title was Simple Logic.  Logic isn’t often a part of the discussion going on.

Minorities

We need to show more sympathy for these people.
* They travel miles in the heat.
* They risk their lives crossing a border.
* They don’t get paid enough wages.
* They do jobs that others won’t do or are afraid to do.
* They live in crowded conditions among a people who speak a different language.
* They rarely see their families, and they face adversity all day ~ every day.

I’m not talking about illegals.

I’m talking about our troops!

Doesn’t it seem strange that so many are willing to lavish all kinds of social benefits on illegals, but don’t support our troops?

Wouldn’t it be great if we took part of the $360,000,000,000 (that’s billion) we spend on illegals every year, and spend it on our returning troops — too many now  homeless or misdiagnosed.

Please pass this on; this is worth the short time it takes.

A veteran is someone who, at one point in their life, wrote a blank check made payable to The United States of America for any amount, up to and including their life.

 Suggested Reading

No related posts.

Yeah,  put Ponzi there at the end.  I went over to Wikipedia to have a look.  We have been throwing Ponzi Scheme around.  Is it?  Isn’t it?  What’s it?  So, curiosity made me wonder who’s it.  The interesting thing is that he probably stole the idea from a Brooklyn bookkeeper who took down a cool Mil at the turn of the last century.  I isn’t really a Ponzi Scheme; it is a Miller Scheme.  That lacks continental panache  It is always more fun to blame a Dago, right?

The scheme dealt with IRC’s.  I don’t know if they still have them.  They are coupons issued by post offices around the world — International Reply Coupons.  It was supposed to enable you get you a letter back from the other end.  I used them as a Ham operator to get cards back from contacts.  It isn’t a popular item then or now.  Ponzi said he could buy them cheap and get them refunded.  Pretty weak idea but it still gets his name up in lights.

I did it after reviewing a Daniel Negreanu interview.

I mentioned him the other day and the reference I made was flawed as the video proves.  He’s accurate in his remarks.  That trumps a lot of us.

That brings me to another one drawn in from the periphery — Tom Dwan.  He impressed me more than his loose cannon table persona.  Interesting remark was that he’d gone busto just days before the shutdown.  Not Busto-busto but for the moment busto.  I ended up liking the kid.

So, lets waste our day with one more video.  It our friend fossilman.  Greg need to get on the first ladies program but I think her attack on the fast food joints really doesn’t cover Greg’s state.  He give a lawyer’s view mostly.  But his remarks about Ferguson that somewhat lowers my anger in that direction.  It too easy to aim hate toward those you don’t know.  Greg acts like a true friend might toward him.

Link Monkey [off]

I think the three interviews add some color and some insight.  That’s about the most we’ll see unless the trial makes Court TV.

If the glove doesn’t fit, you must acquit.

ADDENDUM:

So, who is the scumbag?  Well, take a look at the recent release from the Alderney Gaming Control Commission.  They’ve moved to the head of my list.

Related posts:

1. Strange but True

I think Rafe Furst might have been in that delusional group.   He is a success story by almost any set of standards.  Bright, timely skill-set, unique opportunities combined to make him young and wealthy.  He went on to be respected as a part of the new era business community.  In his party hearty days he ran with the Tilt Boys who were Peck’s bad boys for early TV poker times.   Their antics were solely for their amusement but clever gets you noticed.

Their success was deserved.  The times contributed but so did they.  But, time marches and you may start believing the press.  You are promoted to the elite intelligentsia that can do no wrong.  Banana peels start to populate the walk.   It is unfortunate but reality checks often follow.

Rafe’s not so mea — not so culpa

It is kinda sad to read.  It looks like thing are moving to the right side of the bell curve for him. You can read it and may see it in a more complimentary light than almost all those commenting.  There are some sad stories in the comments and a whole lot of military grade adjectives.   I even left a comment.

No related posts.

PokerNews sent me to a site I wasn’t following.  It is a so-so affiliate-slash-ads site designed for betters more than poker players.  They interviewed T. J. and it goes:

Full Tilt Poker never intended to pay its client base according to long time poker pro T.J. Cloutier.

“From what I understand, Full Tilt never had any intention of repaying these people,” Cloutier told Covers.com. “This whole thing is ridiculous.”

When an article starts with a misquote, expectations are low.  The author doesn’t disappoint. Without the current frenzy, it is forgettable.  PokerNews referenced it only based on the misquote of  T.J. who was smart enough to qualify his remark and make it meaningless.

Too bad he didn’t maintain his superior standards with:

From what I’ve heard, they mixed players’ money with their own profits. They used it for marketing and other things, and they were giving people like Phil Ivey unlimited credit lines without getting the money for it, which is all illegal as hell.

Lines of credit are extended to whales by entities trading and required to work in an at least quasi-legal fashion.  In the earliest days online, a site went belly up (Dutch Boyd’s PokerSpot) for mixing funds and walked away free.  Casinos write off bad lines of credit and it is a deduction allowed.

The article is on a site trying to be a Judas goat for sheepdom.  Those aren’t high standards and they meet expectations.  Without the ongoing furor around FT, it is a really bad article/interview.

Poker really needs to find a new, hot topic.  Like the 6 o’clock proves again and again, drama trumps facts.

ADDENDUM:

The same PokerNews article gave us:

Poker doesn’t lend itself to duplicate play.  There was a site just after the UIGEA that tried to pull it off.  I was paid to blog at the time and went there to support our affiliate marketing.   It was boring and it wasn’t really poker.  The reason for that is our ongoing dilemma that is proven when we argue hand histories ad nauseum.   Poker provides too many ways to skin the cat. Dumb one moment is genius the next.

As this guy can explain,  different skill sets allow for different options.

No related posts.

This is right in my wheelhouse — getting to act holier than thou without any required certification.  Well, I’ve got my Alderney GC license but you know what those are worth.

No need for me to recap or pontificate.  Its all been done.  We won’t stop elaborating but it really is done.

Frost’s The Road not Taken ends:

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
two roads diverged in a wood, and I –
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

It isn’t about Frost; it is about a friend that went to war.  I don’t know that outcome. I did channel surf a bit of PBS during commercials last night that talked about a platoon home from Iraq and the mayhem that followed them home.  A shrink told one of the guys, “You aren’t insane.  You are having sane responses to the insane situation you were in.”

People get into situations.  They may or may not be of their making and may or may not end up sane.  They’re very definitive moments.   We don’t see the real outcome until we can look back.   For some, what seemed sane moments before can be destructive with something as he simple as an amendment to a complaint. Then is when the sanity test occurs and becomes ongoing.

There are a lot of losers and the list will always grow.  Most of us are lucky; it isn’t as bad as it could have been.  Others receive the knowledge that greed is not always good but can be life changing and they will never walk or be the same.  Sad business.

No related posts.

There were 40 of us living together.  Based on various statistics that may be questionable, it is very likely there was a gay guy or two in that group.   I doubt it a problem had I known the guy’s private interests.  That is assuming he could maintain the Puritanical standards we all maintained in the head.  You don’t stare and you don’t play grab ass.  A few guys were quite shy and used things off hours but most didn’t think much about it and weren’t worried if they dropped their soap.

Guys really don’t discuss sex well.  Barroom exceptions usually lead to embarrassment. Polite company is a term bantied about.  Even with all the required f-bombs, it was a fact enforced by one eye brow individuals with a couple of rockers to make the point.  They didn’t care what you did on your own time.  Just don’t make them a liar when they need to report all present or accounted for. And, if you wanted advice on sexual proclivities, you’d get “Not my problem, Airmen.”

For all its macho image, the military is a very intimate space.  Guys in Afghanistan would pay extra for the amenities of an open- bay, stateside barracks.  Using a bit of side show lyrics: we talk alike, we walk alike, we even act alike.  And, in olive DRAB.  Peas in a pod makes first shirts almost happy.

Military cohesiveness is an ongoing battle.  We may be herd animals but in the military it goes beyond that.  That causes a lot of strange pressures.   I saw guys lose it for reasons that seem less than insignificant. There is pressure in the line environment like few other places.

Today is the day you can be gay and military.  Yesterday, it was “Don’t ask; don’t tell.”  Both were politically based.  They are stupid.  Yes, both.  The military knows how to manage people.  It isn’t as politically correct as today’s sensitivities demand.  Demands are something the military can handle.  They can do it with their own form of prejudice.  It was even used as an alternative to sentencing for eons and often with great results.

It is a sad day.   Not just because a wrong was righted — although there is certainly some of that.  It is about Congress interfering with the chain of command.  That isn’t the way it was set up.   The military isn’t about talking point and focus groups.  It isn’t a democracy but defends one.  And, it long ago figured out how to do that with the diverse tools at hand.

Getting your orders is being FIGMO.  You can probably figure that out starting with the standard military adjective.  FIGMO isn’t conducive to superior results. It is a cop out.

No related posts.

“While software patents are still legal, it appears that the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, sometimes known as the nation’s ‘patent court’ has just made a decision that will make it much easier to reject software patents for being mere ‘mental processes’” rather than an actual invention. This could allow the Patent Office and the courts to reject many software patents.” –slashdot.com

Computers don’t really do much.  All they do is math and some of the ways they do that doesn’t compute based on our learning the multiplication tables in third grade.  But, they do cobble together such ability — actually in a rather elegant way.  They also do a form of math that humans see as a background task — Boolean math.  That allows yes and no based branching. Compared to the human mind it is a primitive structure that can bog down without good programming practices.

Programmers had an undeserved mystic in accomplishing tasks with this bit of silicon.   Something simple like going from point to point efficiently is something that an individual can learn and use in somewhat similar situations.  He may need a pencil and paper or a $9.95 calculator to get it exact.  Humans adapt even when it takes time to get it right.  We are known as tool users and are good at selecting and using a variety of them. Computers are literal and don’t connect the dots well.  They have very defined tools and don’t grow tool skills so much as use the ones they have faster and faster. Programmers connect the dots and do it over and over.  It is a lot more interesting to do than I’m making it sound.   We talk about solutions to this and refer to the example above as The Salesman’s  Dilemma and we can argue on how it is best done and the best language to use ad nauseam.

If you’ve bothered to follow this, you’ll see that a bit of fancy math and a bit more than fingers and toes solves the type of programs that computers are good at.  Good at is really fast at.  Good at is because of programmers using the basic knowledge available to resolve issues in the correct way.  That doesn’t solve anything beyond the need that generated the job.   Yes, a lot of it is our reinventing the wheel time and again using some skills coupled to common sense.

That’s why the judge in this case did something right.  Companies that are constantly involved in patent disputes are working with ideas that may predate our use of fire.  Somebody just bothered to getting around to writing it down and dropping it by the patent office.  The defense has long been prior art.  The judge above as figured out what we do as programmers isn’t as grand as we try to make it out at our salary review.

Most of what we do is simple human concept reduced to miniscule basics.  And, having done it, there are another dozen ways to do that and make it look either unique or the same — depending on what some lawyer wants.  If the ruling stands, it will bring about greater innovation and prevent companies from punishing the marketplace using the shaky ideas they done little more than send to an office in Washington.  This is important because the limited advantage that patents offered in the past now approach infinite in duration.

ADDENDUM:

Apple is suing Google over patents for features in the smart phones they both need to provide.   Apple still owns the market but the Android Phone is making inroads.  Apple has been good at eliminating competition through innovation or what passes for innovation.  Doing something consistently better isn’t always innovative.  But, silicon valley plays the patent game and they are looking to stifle competition through patent suits.  Google’s 16+billion purchase of Motorola’s phone business was lauded because it gave them a patent library they could use against Apple.  It is the reason the financial community isn’t pointing and snickering over the deal.

16+B could have done a lot of interesting thing and might have if software patents hadn’t become the god of limiting competition.

Think about that smart phone on your hip.  Is it really doing creative things or is it modifying the same tools that we’ve mucked with on a PC or our snazzy GPS.  It just moved those old idea to a new platform in ways that make us happier with what it provides.  It isn’t so much innovation as access to new/neat data that the app then present for viewing/selection/whatever.

*****

I mentioned Alexis de Tocqueville.  His is a bit hard to read and stilted.  But, he was an observant man in viewing our culture shortly after our founding and see what the future might hold.   Here is a collection of his saying that might have been made yesterday.

One of his scariest ones:

“A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations has been 200 years.”

Related posts:

1. Patently Stupid

Laws are supposed to protect equally.  But, equal is seen each time from an individual perspective.  And, laws today are promulgated by far more entities than the just our elected officials.  My example for today is about inequity coupled to ongoing stupidity affecting the individual’s quest, desires, whatever.

Personally it came to the fore as part of my purchase of that Logitech Revue that couples me to viewing shows. on the Internet.  That is disruptive to the traditional model and so various entities make rulings on how that affect the populace.

Fox has met the problem by delaying broadcast two weeks.  This just started.  It follows the failure guidance exhibited in Prohibition.  And, it demonstrates turning their good customer away from them even further.  A popular show there is Master Chef and its download via the file sharing vehicle of torrent downloading roughly tripled.

The Fox solution echoed the solutions of the MPAA with just the outcome the Volstead Act went on to predict.  Sadly, Fox isn’t alone in providing artificial solutions.  Using my Logitech revue demonstrates equal and greater stupidity.

ABC is happy to let me watch their programs with a bit of ad revenue thrown their way when I do it on my PC.  Those same shows are denied me on the same TV screen when I use the Revue.   Evidently, that is a disruptive technology to their view.

Hulu airs many shows  which they pay some network for.  There free viewing portion airs advertisements which rewards them.  Many shows, evidently can’t have their acquisition costs covered and so are limited to their payed viewing option.  The free site is their acquisition model.  You guessed it those using a smart TV to access it are locked out.

Over on Turner is a show that caught my eye.  It is called Rizzoli and Isles.  I came across a blurb about it and thought I might enjoy it.  Turner lets you view two, recent eepisodes from the catelog.  But, that’s like opening a book and starting at the middle.  My account on Netflix makes many catalogs available but that one would require an added payment.  There are choices available and the likely ones don’t do anything for Turner.  The most likely outcome lowers my respect for their products and for the law.

The other day I wrote about Stanton Optical in glowing terms.  They respected customers and also figured out how to function and profit in a disruptive market segment.  Optical houses have lost the original business models twice — local opticians offices and then strip mall operators that maintained high gross margins.  The Internet again was one of the disruptive sources to the latter model with much lower profit operations becoming available.  Stanton figured out how to work around the disruption and thrive.  Stanton’s model stays remarkably close to their competition but gives the customer greater options resulting in a broader customer base.  That’s having one’s cake and eating it too.

Why can’t the entertainment industry find a model that doesn’t seek success by oppression?  Why do they do everything possible to turn the law abiding toward another path?

No related posts.