Things That are Not What They Seem

"The Absence of Character

We are witness to a national trait of never accepting any culpability when it matters, and then when it does not, blaming one’s successors. Neither Richard Clark nor Michael Scheuer could find bin Laden or the 9/11 terrorists before they struck. Both blamed each other, their respective agencies, the Bush administration, and almost everyone else but themselves. Then in retirement they cashed in with books, became the darlings of the Left and provided a blueprint for others. Now Gen. Sanchez claims we can’t win and must leave—voiced in his service to election-cycle Democrats. But, of course, the insurgency took off under his tenure, even as he assured us in sworn testimony before Congress that we had enough troops, the right tactics, and things were improving under his watch. Was he not truthful then, or now, or both?"

Republicans Report Much Better Mental Health Than Others

Of course!

Being right is extremely gratifying.

Doug Morris: The world's stupidest recording exec, in easy-to-read comics format

I think this comic is going to be a classic.

"Bears with chainsaws for hands" cracks me up every time I read it (and I had to go check to make sure he didn't actually say that).

PopularityDialer Goes Offline - New York Times

"It gets weirder. When Ms. Chowdhury and Mr. Forsyth contacted the F.C.C. to get an explanation for the citation, the F.C.C. minion who responded was equally baffled. 'I don't see how a Web site falls within the jurisdiction of the F.C.C. or how it would cause T.C.P.A. violations,' went the reply. 'We would not give any advice on how to legally continue the operation of your business. That would have to come from your own attorney.'

So let me get this straight: The same F.C.C. that sent the citation has no idea why it sent the citation?"

That sort of sounds like my experience with the Feds. I had to hire someone to intervene.

How Your Creepy Ex-Co-Workers Will Kill Facebook

Keeping track of our social relationships is a serious piece of work that runs a heavy cognitive load. It's natural to seek out some neural prosthesis for assistance in this chore. My fiancee once proposed a "social scheduling" application that would watch your phone and email and IM to figure out who your pals were and give you a little alert if too much time passed without your reaching out to say hello and keep the coals of your relationship aglow. By the time you've reached your forties, chances are you're out-of-touch with more friends than you're in-touch with: Old summer-camp chums, high-school mates, ex-spouses and their families, former co-workers, college roomies, dot-com veterans... Getting all those people back into your life is a full-time job and then some.

You'd think that Facebook would be the perfect tool for handling all this. It's not. For every long-lost chum who reaches out to me on Facebook, there's a guy who beat me up on a weekly basis through the whole seventh grade but now wants to be my buddy; or the crazy person who was fun in college but is now kind of sad; or the creepy ex-co-worker who I'd cross the street to avoid but who now wants to know, "Am I your friend?" yes or no, this instant, please.

Google Immortal

This post was automatically generated.

Mark Zuckerberg: Court talk sheds light on Facebook founder fight

Verizon Wireless to Offer Open Access to Network - WSJ.com

"In a major break with industry practice, Verizon Wireless said it will allow consumers to use any compatible cellphone on its network and allow open access to the Web and third-party applications."

Do Not Read This If You Are Anti-Nuclear Energy - Freakonomics - Opinion - New York Times Blog

"In other words, even if you end up pro-nuke, you can still find something to blame on nuclear industry. (I have always found this argument shaky, especially when put forth by journalists: that the nuclear industry didn’t tell its own story well. When a besieged industry does “tell its own story well,” it is said to be manipulating the media; and when it doesn’t, it’s not the media that’s at fault, but the industry itself.)"

Google Plans Service to Store Users' Data - WSJ.com

"Google is preparing a service that would let users store on its computers essentially all of the files they might keep on their personal-computer hard drives -- such as word-processing documents, digital music, video clips and images, say people familiar with the matter. The service could let users access their files via the Internet from different computers and mobile devices when they sign on with a password, and share them online with friends. It could be released as early as a few months from now, one of the people said."

Q&A: Talking with Stephen King - TIME

HT: Google Blogscoped

I think there ought to be some serious discussion by smart people, really smart people, about whether or not proliferation of things like The Smoking Gun and TMZ and YouTube and the whole celebrity culture is healthy. We've switched from a culture that was interested in manufacturing, economics, politics — trying to play a serious part in the world — to a culture that's really entertainment-based. I mean, I know people who can tell you who won the last four seasons on American Idol and they don't know who their f------ Representatives are.

I don't know if Mr. King intended this as a criticism of Google so much as modern media culture, i.e. what is being produced as opposed to what is being hosted.

Contrast with cable TV, which provided much more in the way of educational content such as History Channel etc, while at the same time producing an explosion of mindless entertainment programming. The difference is that with cable, if times get hard, they'll keep the programming that pays the bills and jettison the intellectual stuff.

I don't see Google (or Youtube) as being in this position, unless they change significantly. They host whatever anyone wants to put out there and search for it as well. If I want news on the "DC tax scandal" I don't have to see anything else in the process of looking for it. I don't have to visit the front page of the newspapers and magazines that might carry this story. Google has given us that and the capability is not well understood by people like Mr. King.

Also not understood by Mr. King (who after all is wealthy as a results of our entertainment oriented culture) is that parents who don't take an active part in their children's development are going to raise imbeciles (functionally, regardless of their IQ). Unfortunately in that regard the damage is done, and even if we were to reverse course now (doubtful) it would take 20 years or more to see the difference.

We've made our bed and now have to sleep in it. Google can hardly be blamed.

Coding error to blame for DHS award to Chenega

"An agency of the Homeland Security Department improperly awarded a 10-year, $475 million sole-source contract in 2003 to the Alaskan Native firm Chenega Technology Services Corp., according to a new report from the department’s inspector general."

Doesn't exactly sound like thy have any plans to correct the error either. Typical. Your money at "work".

Of course it could be worse. Yes it could. No member of the DC government was involved in spotting the millions of tax dollars embezzled there, it was a lowly private bank teller who thought something seemed fishy. Maybe one day voters will wake up too. You think?

http://www.examiner.com/a-1035187~D_C__tax_officials_accused_of_embezzling_up_to__16_million.html

http://www.washingtontimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071123/METRO/111230069/1001

A $160,000 Bentley, a $26,000 designer handbag, more than 40 fake government tax-refund checks averaging a staggering $388,000 apiece and $1.4 million in Neiman Marcus luxury items. These are some of the gaudier details of the $20 million tax scam inside the D.C. Office of Tax and Revenue.

Apple: Zune outselling iPod on Amazon

When you've nailed the analysis, I can't think of any reason not to brag about it (quoting myself):

I imagine it has a lot to do with Apple not allowing retailers of their products to compete with one another on price.

If I'm going to buy an Apple product online I might as well buy it from Apple where it can often have it monogrammed and gift wrapped for free. If you could get them significantly cheaper at Amazon I'm sure they would be selling more of them.

Add to that the fact (I think) that you can ONLY buy a Zune from retailers, not directly from Microsoft:

http://www.zune.net/en-us/products/wheretobuy.htm

and I really don't think there is any validity to this comparison.

I do think though that Apple's lead in this area will die a slow death unless they do something new to differentiate themselves. At the volume the innards for these things are being cranked out by whatever godforsaken country they are coming from, there is just no way for any US "maker" to claim a leadership position.

They are positioning themselves as a general purpose upscale consumer electronic company (some might call this painting themselves into a corner).

Keep an eye out for the iBeam (a small white radar detector that once you're stopped will actually try and talk the officer out of giving you a ticket), the iContact, a knobless no-moving-parts stereo entertainment center that you control by staring at various parts of it and the iCUP for which no product details have been, uh, leaked.

Thompson to DHS: Give small biz a chance

Quick fix #587:

"Small businesses are more flexible than large contractors and can react more quickly to change, said Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) at a Nov. 15 breakfast hosted by Crowell and Moring."

Quick fix #1: Get rid of federal managers who fail to acheive their goals (or any goals). The rest will take care of itself.

I wonder if they'll ever try it?

Server Too Busy, Laptops Broken, No Light at End of Tunnel

Server Too Busy: "Server Error in '/' Application. Server Too Busy Description: An unhandled exception occurred during the execution of the current web request. Please review the stack trace for more information about the error and where it originated in the code. Exception Details: System.Web.HttpException: Server Too Busy Source Error: An unhandled exception was generated during the execution of the current web request. Information regarding the origin and location of the exception can be identified using the exception stack trace below. Stack Trace: [HttpException (0x80004005): Server Too Busy] System.Web.HttpRuntime.RejectRequestInternal(HttpWorkerRequest wr) 148 Version Information: Microsoft .NET Framework Version:1.1.4322.2407; ASP.NET Version:1.1.4322.2407"

You DON'T always get what you pay for.

When in doubt:

Buy TWO of them!

#6: Way to turn this into an Apple ad.

Man: My Apple computer is so unreliable I had to buy two of them!

Other Man: That's nothing. My Windows Computer is so unreliable I had to buy THREE of them! Uphill!!

Or something.

If we were talking step ladders or x-ray machines, there would be companies out of business, and executives in the un-employment line. Only a career in modern high-tech can make selling cigarettes seem a noble way to make a living.

More news of updates that don't fix anything.

"boot from sleep mode" is an oxymoron.

If you had a computer fast enough to make possible actually booting Windows in a few seconds it would go to work for you while you lay around and watch videos all day.

There will never be such a thing. Microsoft's job is to make systems that are progressively slower so that you need to buy more hardware.

Intel's job is to make hardware that is progressively more complex so that you need to buy more software.

Whether they have a written or verbal agreement or just communicate with nods and winks across the card table doesn't matter. They'll play the winning strategy as long as consumers are dumb enough to keep falling for it.

Don't any of you ever get it?