R2D2 fingered the perp? Well, perhaps "fingered" isn't the word...

While some people question whether "forensic science" is an oxymoron, practitioners continue to use a variety of forensic tools, including DNA. The problem, however, is that criminals keep on committing crimes, which means that there are more crimes to be processed. If the systems can't keep up, a backlog occurs.

Enter Twiggy and Kilroy to save the day. Forensic Magazine links to a KCTV news story about two robots that were purchased by the Kansas Bureau of Investigation (KBI) to streamline the processing of DNA samples.

The KBI was backlogged by about 38,000 samples as of Sept. 2009, meaning some criminals were still at large....

The Legislature recently approved more funds for improvements...including the robots. The goal is to catch up on the cases by winter, and to make sure the backup doesn't happen again. So far officials said they've cut through 70 percent of the backlog.

And no, I don't expect to see robot fingerprint examiners any time soon...

The National Lampoon Takes Its Lumps

My teenage years coincided with the glory years of the National Lampoon magazine. Everything associated with the National Lampoon brand, including the movies and the stage shows, would never have existed had it not been for the magazine. Saturday Night Live itself (Lorne Michaels' version, not Howard Cosell's version) was in some respects a cross-pollination between Second City and National Lampoon. While people like John Belushi and Gilda Radner worked on both, certain SNL powers such as Michael O'Donoghue were clearly identified with the Lampoon side of things.

But John Belushi died, Eddie Murphy ascended, and Chevy Chase became...Chevy Chase. The magazine continued to chug along and got new owners, but eventually the magazine closed, and J2 Communications (previously known for the Dorf videos) was sold to Daniel Laikin and another new owner and renamed itself National Lampoon Inc.

Then things really began to get fun.

National Lampoon Inc. former Chief Executive Officer Daniel Laikin remains wealthy after being sentenced to 45 months in prison for conspiring to manipulate the stock price of the media company, a U.S. prosecutor said....

Prosecutors alleged Laikin, 48, of Carmel, Indiana, bribed individuals to make it appear there was interest in the stock. He sought to fraudulently increase National Lampoon’s share price from $2 a share to $5 a share, according to court filings.

When the scheme became public, National Lampoon’s share price lost about 80 percent of its value over three days, the government alleges. The shares last traded over the counter Sept. 1 for 17 cents.

It's enough to make an investor plunge steel needles into his eyes.

#OOW10 Five tips to follow Oracle OpenWorld 2010 on Twitter

For the first time in several years, I will not be attending Oracle OpenWorld. And even if you are attending Oracle OpenWorld, the firehose is often so wide that you don't get a good sense of everything that is going on.

If you are a Twitter user, here are five tips that will help you get the most from your OpenWorld experience.

TIP 1: FOLLOW THE OFFICIAL ORACLE ACCOUNTS. Obviously you want to follow the @oracleopenworld Twitter account, and you'll probably want to follow @oracle. But remember that Oracle OpenWorld covers a whole...um..."stack" of information, so for information specific to your interest, you might want to follow a more specific Oracle account. In my case, one of those accounts is @OracleDatabase.

TIP 2: FOLLOW (AND USE) THE OFFICIAL ORACLE OPENWORLD 2010 HASHTAG #OOW10. Hashtags are a convenient way to mark that a tweet is relevant to a specific topic. Oracle has suggested that if you're tweeting about Oracle OpenWorld 2010, use the hashtag #oow10.

To join and/or follow the conversation related to next week's Oracle OpenWorld 2010, please use the following hashtag #OOW10

So if you tweet about Oracle OpenWorld 2010, use #OOW10. And if you want to find tweets about Oracle OpenWorld 2010, go to http://twitter.com/#search?q=%23OOW10.

And you don't have to just limit it to Twitter. For example, not only have I included the #OOW10 in the title of this blog post (which ensures that when the blog post title is tweeted, the hashtag will be there), but I've also used it as a tag for the post itself (in Blogger terms, a "label"). Go ahead and use it when you upload photos to Flickr. Incorporate it into your Foursquare check-ins. Whatever gets you through the night - whoops, wrong year for that musical reference.

TIP 3: FOLLOW OTHERS WITH THE SAME INTEREST. Once you start looking at everyone who is using the #OOW10 hashtag, you'll find out that A LOT of people are tweeting about Oracle OpenWorld 2010. If their interests coincide with your own, follow them. This will give you additional information.

TIP 4: CHECK OUT THE ORACLE LISTS. Twitter allows its users to create lists that can be focused on different topics, relevant or irrelevant. And a bunch of people have set up lists that are specific to Oracle. Here are a few:

http://twitter.com/eddieawad/oracle
http://twitter.com/surachart/oracle
http://twitter.com/Radu43/oracle
http://twitter.com/fuadar/oracle
http://twitter.com/theappslab/friends-of-appslab
http://twitter.com/jpiwowar/oracletweeps

There are, of course, many others.

TIP 5: MAKE YOUR OWN LIST(S), BUT DO IT NOW. In fact, you may get the best bang for your Euro by applying this tip and ignoring most of my other tips. If you were to truly follow every account that tweeted about Oracle OpenWorld 2010, your Twitter feed would be extremely busy. So instead of doing all that, why not just create your own list, put your favorite Oracle-related Twitter users in that list, and go from there? However, if you're going to create your own list, I STRONGLY advise that you do it now, before you are overwhelmed by the Moscone madness.

Obviously this list doesn't include all of the wonderful people on Twitter, or all the things you can do with Twitter, and it completely ignores other avenues of #OOW10 communication (Flickr, etc.). So if you are convinced - and you probably are - that I missed a very important tip for following Oracle OpenWorld 2010 online, please add it to the comments.

You know it's Oracle OpenWorld when they get ready to close Howard Street

Yes, folks, it's that time of year again when a certain part of San Francisco turns into a sea of red, and San Francisco drivers have to look at alternate routes.

The San Francisco Appeal has all of the closures, but the one that affects the most people is the complete closure of Howard Street between Third and Fourth Streets. The closure begins at 8 p.m., Thursday, Sept. 16 and lasts through through 3 p.m., Friday, Sept. 24.

But there's a new closure that is very, very important. Mason Street will be closed between Ellis and O'Farrell beginning on 2 a.m. Saturday, September 18 and lasting until 10 a.m. Friday, September 24

Why is this closure important? Because if Mason Street weren't closed, Justin Kestelyn would get hurt very badly. Bob Rhubart explains why:

The OTN Lounge has moved from its old digs on the third floor of Moscone West to the Mason Street Tent, between the Hilton and Nikko hotels. To be more precise, the OTN Lounge hasn't moved to the Mason Street Tent, it has become the Mason Street Tent.

Occupying the entire block from Ellis to O'Farrell, the Mason Street Tent is the new home for all the swag and activities you used to find in the OTN Lounge, and much, much more.

Oracle OpenWorld attendees (unfortunately, not including me this year) - this is the only time that you'll be able to sit in the middle of Mason Street, drink beer, and get away with it.

Incidentally, regarding the "sea of red" I mentioned earlier - it was recently revealed that Mark Zuckerberg is partially color blind, and blue is the one color that he can see really well - hence the predominant blue that is used for Facebook online properties.

Does Larry Ellison have a partial color-blindness where he can only see red?

OK, maybe failure is not an option

A week ago, I posted Failure is an option - more about Bob and Lisa. This follow-up to my WinExtra Kapost about Microsoft Bob made the following assertion:

NASA, then and now, engages in extremely complex tasks, and the outcome of those tasks can sometimes be deadly - something that prompted [Gene] Kranz's famous phrase, "Failure is not an option." Kranz's words certainly ring true when addressing life and death situations, but as many within both Apple and Microsoft know, failure can be the best thing that can happen to you, since it can sometimes spur you on to great success.

So failure IS an option.

Or is it?

Rob Diana recently shared some thoughts about how to report a problem to a superior. Diana's advice, which is echoed elsewhere, suggested that one should be prepared not only to report the problem, but to present some possible solutions to the problem. But then Diana went on to cite a Dave Winer post which linked to another Dave Winer post (from early August) which included the following:

I've been hearing all this happy talk about how great it is for Google that Wave failed. The theory being that if you fail that means you took a chance, and taking chances is good therefore failing is good.

This is really convoluted and it's really wrong.

The only way to succeed in my opinion is if you cannot visualize failure.

Winer's views are heavily shaped by his experience at Living Videotext in 1986. In this 1991 interview, he described the financial difficulties that the company faced in 1986:

DW: By early '86, the Mac Plus came out and the Mac market was just incredible. The run rate on ThinkTank 512 was incredible, but the problem was that ThinkTank 512 didn't run on the Mac Plus. The machine was selling in great quantity, but we were out of money, had a head count of over 50, had support problems [with ThinkTank 512] -- we were in desperate shape. While I was out playing in PC land, Peter and Doug had produced all these neat little add-ons to ThinkTank. The question was, can we take all that stuff and put it together and come out with a new product in '86? We put everything the company had on that, financially, in terms of personnel, in terms of our morale. Guy Kawasaki showed us where the market opportunity was with that thing. In June of '86, we came out with More for the Macintosh, and we never had cash problems again.

In 2010, Winer was a little more blunt:

In 1986 my company was in very deep shit. One night I was leaving the office and I knew the next morning I was going to lay off a quarter of the company and cut the salaries of everyone else in half. Even after doing that I still didn't think we could make it. My board had told me to shut the company down and I told them to STFU.

As I locked the front door I stopped and thought, how would it work if we did fail? Would I lock the front door one last time and then walk away? I literally couldn't visualize it. As I drove home I resolved that I would never do that. Somehow we'd get through this crisis and we'd make it work.

Later, when it did work, I realized that moment, while locking the front door that night, was when the company turned around. When we went from being in crisis mode to being a winner, for one very simple reason. I tried to visualize failure, and couldn't do it.

So is Winer right and Microsoft/Apple/Google wrong? Or are Microsoft/Apple/Google right and Winer wrong?

There's one important difference between Living Videotext and, say, Microsoft Bob. Dave Winer was heavily dependent upon the success of Living Videotext. Bill Gates was not heavily dependent upon the success of Microsoft Bob. Now perhaps there were some Bobs (and Lisas) who were dependent upon the success of Microsoft Bob, but I don't know how many got fired when Microsoft Bob locked his door, and how many found new jobs with Microsoft.

Clearly there are two different approaches to new projects - an incubator in which you aim for a certain percentage of projects to succeed, or a single-project focus in which you want (or, using Winer's words, "require") the one project to succeed.

Which is better?

(empo-plaaybizz) Another "fight club" games post

I'm not a movie person or anything - I defer to Jandy Stone on all things cinematic - but I know enough to cause trouble, as I have already demonstrated via my August 17 post with a tangential reference to the "minimal rules" idea from "Fight Club." In that post, I talked about the rule-light game "Sleep is Death."

But let's take a look at another game, Foursquare, which has an established set of rules.

Or does it?

If you're a Foursquare user, take a moment and think to yourself exactly what the rules of Foursquare are.

Take a moment. I'll wait.



OK, now read this description from an About Foursquare post.

If you’ve spent much time on foursquare at all, you’ve no doubt noticed that some users play the game a little, well, differently than everyone else. You’ve probably also noticed the vast majority of those users are from Indonesia.

Judging by their foursquare histories, they appear to trot all over the globe, unlocking a badge in Los Angeles one minute and another in London the next. Without some sort of teleportation device, it would be impossible to travel as quickly as they do. Yet, with some digital trickery, they’re able to unlock new badges within minutes of them first becoming active.

This has inspired a lot of "cheater" accusations, as evidenced in this thread. In response to a request that the mobile Foursquare website be banned (in other words, requiring you to use a GPS-enabled smartphone to use Foursquare), one person replied:

Some ppl don't have bb's or iPhones (like me) & need the mobile website. But I still agree with you that the cheating needs to be curbed. WHY CHEAT? It's stupid & immature & it's not like 4sq gives you actual prizes & stuff for badges. It's suppose to be fun.

But About Foursquare claims that's exactly what the Indonesians are doing - having fun.

So what if a user has unlocked almost every badge without leaving their couch in Indonesia? Someone who looks at the game a different way doesn’t affect the way I play the game at all....

In conversations with some of these “cheaters,” (who will not be named) it’s become clear to me that they simply view foursquare differently than most Americans. To them, the badges are a puzzle to solve, similar to a crossword or jigsaw puzzle. In many ways the cryptic clues given by foursquare do make badges difficult to solve.

They tell me their fascination began because mayorships soon became boring and there were few badges that were naturally unlockable in Indonesia, so they thought it would be fun to try unlocking some of the badges that were tied to US venues.

When considering whether Foursquare should ban the Indonesians, or ban the dumb-phone people like me, or ban people who use their smartphones to check into nearby sites that they don't actually visit, we need to keep one thing in mind. The people who are checking into Foursquare locations are NOT Foursquare's customers.

Let me repeat that (I've been listening to too much Jim Rome, I guess) - Foursquare's customer base is NOT the people using their iPhones or Android Phones or netbooks to check into Foursquare locations.

Foursquare's customer base is the locations themselves. And are the locations harmed by Indonesian visitors? According to About Foursquare, they are not:

For businesses who sponsor the badges, there’s no harm in having more users unlock them, if anything the branding value increases as those badges get posted to Twitter and Facebook, whether they were unlocked honestly or not.

Now there is a scenario in which the so-called cheaters could have an effect on the so-called honest players. Let's say that I'm trying to earn a mayorship at the northwest Ontario, California Starbucks. Now let's say that, instead of the mayorship being held by an employee of a nearby business, it's instead held by someone in Jakarta. Now obviously the person in Jakarta is never going to come to Mountain and 6th to claim any prize - but at the same time, I am denied the prize.

Think through this. If I want to earn whatever prize that Starbucks has to offer, then I have to check in more times than the person in Jakarta.

Remembering that the Starbucks, and not the Foursquare player, is Foursquare's customer, this sounds like a win-win for Foursquare, no?

Is the renaming of high fructose corn syrup REALLY designed to eliminate confusion?

I've previously written about high fructose corn syrup, but there's a new story...um...brewing about it. After reading this FriendFeed share by William Harryman, I decided to visit the Corn Refiners Association website to get their side of the story. While there, I found this press release:

CORN REFINERS PETITION FDA FOR USE OF “CORN SUGAR” AS ALTERNATE NAME FOR HIGH FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP
ELIMINATING CONSUMER CONFUSION IS THE GOAL

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
September 14, 2010

CONTACT: David Knowles
202-331-1634
dknowles@corn.org

Fact Sheet | Press Release | Commercials | CornSugar.com

Washington, DC – In an effort to help clarify the labeling of food products for consumers, the Corn Refiners Association (CRA) today petitioned the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to allow manufacturers the option of using ‘corn sugar’ as an alternative name for high fructose corn syrup.

“Consumers need to know what is in their foods and where their foods come from and we want to be clear with them,” said CRA president Audrae Erickson. “The term ‘corn sugar’ succinctly and accurately describes what this natural ingredient is and where it comes from – corn.”

Contrary to widespread consumer belief, high fructose corn syrup – a safe and affordable natural sweetener found in many popular products on grocery shelves – is not high in fructose when compared with other commonly used nutritive sweeteners, including table sugar, honey and fruit juice concentrates. Like table sugar, it is roughly half glucose and half fructose and is metabolized by the body in the same way as regular table sugar. In fact, the high fructose corn syrup that is used in many foods, such as baked goods, is lower in fructose than table sugar.

But independent research demonstrates that the current labeling is confusing to American consumers.

For example, independent research indicated that despite the fact that high fructose corn syrup and table sugar contain approximately the same amount of fructose, nearly 58 percent of respondents believed high fructose corn syrup has more fructose than other table sugar.

Corn sugar – or high fructose corn syrup – has been used for more than 40 years to enhance flavors in foods and beverages and maintain freshness.

A continuing series of inexact scientific reports and inaccurate media accounts about high fructose corn syrup and matters of health and nutrition have also increased consumer uncertainty.

Yet, the facts are straightforward. For example, in a December 2008 report, the American Dietetic Association confirmed that high fructose corn syrup is “nutritionally equivalent to sucrose (table sugar)” and that the sweeteners contain the same number of calories per gram. The ADA found that “once absorbed into the bloodstream, the two sweeteners are indistinguishable.”

As Americans grapple with an “obesity epidemic,” well-renowned nutritionists question whether sweetener confusion could lead consumers to make misinformed decisions about sugars in their diets.

“The last thing we want is for Americans to think that avoiding high fructose corn syrup is the answer,” said Registered Dietitian Carolyn O’Neil. “All added sugars should be consumed in moderation – corn sugar, table sugar, honey and fruit juice concentrates. These sugars contain an equal number of calories that must be burned off– or the body will convert them to fat.”

“We hope that the FDA will act positively on our petition in the interest of consumer clarity,” said Erickson.

###

The Corn Refiners Association (CRA) is the national trade association representing the corn refining (wet milling) industry of the United States. CRA and its predecessors have served this important segment of American agribusiness since 1931. Corn refiners manufacture sweeteners, ethanol, starch, bioproducts, corn oil, and feed products from corn components such as starch, oil, protein and fiber.

I love the press release, and especially the fact that it merely states that the manufacturers want the option of using an alternative name.

Well, I don't use the phrase "Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim," and I don't use the phrase "LA/Ontario International Airport." And I'm not planning on using the phrase "corn sugar."

Privacy issues that Mark Zuckerberg would never dream about

A lot of people in the tech world speak of privacy in terms of what Facebook, Google, Microsoft, or your friendly neighborhood Internet Service Provider could potentially do to you. However, in most cases, the people at Facebook et al aren't armed and don't have jail cells that they can use to detain you.

Let's insert the necessary disclosure - I work for a company that supplies equipment and software to law enforcement agencies. Now that I've clarified this, I'll present (without comment) another type of privacy issue that has been getting play for the past few months.

What information are you required to provide when you cross an international border?

More to the point - what information are you required to provide when you cross an international border into your own country?

Now answers to the latter question vary widely, and include some responses such as "If you don't have anything to hide, then why not respond?" or "It's best to be as cooperative as possible with the law enforcement personnel."

Paul Karl Lukacs has a different view. Back on April 24, he wrote a post that began as follows:

I was detained last night by federal authorities at San Francisco International Airport for refusing to answer questions about why I had travelled outside the United States.

The end result is that, after waiting for about half an hour and refusing to answer further questions, I was released – because U.S. citizens who have produced proof of citizenship and a written customs declaration are not obligated to answer questions.

After refusing to answer questions such as "Why were you in China?", Lukacs was subject to secondary questioning before being released. You can read the full story here.

This post received a lot of attention from Boing Boing, the Consumerist, and other sources, which led Lukacs to write a follow-up post in which he explained his rationale. In addition to citing various sources which justified a U.S. citizen's right to re-enter the United States, Lukacs cited some practical reasons for refusing to answer questions.

CBP officers are law enforcement (pictured), who can detain you, arrest you and testify against you in criminal court. You place yourself in jeopardy every time you speak to them about anything....

If a federal officer claims you lied to him, you can be arrested and charged with the crime of making false statements. You do not have to make the statements under oath (which would be the different charge of perjury).

This statute – which is referred to as Section 1001...is the reason why Martha Stewart has a Bureau of Prisons number.

Lukacs then poses the question: "What about telling the truth?"

If, in the course of your conversation, you mis-remember something or speak inarticulately, you can now be arrested. Innocent mistake? Prove it in court after being jailed, charged, tried and paying for a lawyer.

I'll stop there, and (as previously noted) without further comment.

But let's carry this back to the tech world, where people can't detain you, but they can sell any information that you give them. What would a Lukacs-like view of the world mean when you were signing up for the latest and greatest service...or connecting to the latest and greatest service via an existing service?

Even Apple won't sue over this one

I've been reading Clients from Hell for the past few weeks, and ran across this good one about a mockup design layout. The Clients from Hell entry reads, in part:

Client: “....I’ve seen this text in Apple’s word processor, are you copying Apple?”

Me: “It’s Lorem Ipsum, standard dummy text used in mockups.”

Of course, you can be sure that some lawyer somewhere is going to unearth the "Lorem Ipsum" patent and sue EVERYBODY.

The Curious Urinal Explains Why Pia Beathe Pedersen REALLY Quit

After recounting the story of Pia Beathe Pederson's dramatic on-air radio resignation, the Curious Urinal provides information not available from any other source (in other words, T.C.U. made it up):

Pia Beathe Pedersen accused her employers at the radio station of putting too much pressure on the staff. She went on, saying, "I mean, seriously, the station plays too damn much Justin Bieber! No one can stand that kind of pressure!"

A dissenting view on Microsoft's playfulness - dare I say double standard?

As I previously noted, both Steven Hodson and I have written posts which discussed, in part, the celebration of the Microsoft employees who released the new version of Windows Mobile. A fun little story, right? Not the prevailing view elsewhere.

Jeff LaMarche, after stating that he hopes that this new version of Windows Mobile will succeed, explains why he was bothered by the goings-on.

Who throws a victory party before the race has even started? Hell, who even throws themselves a parade??

LaMarche links to a Wil Shipley tweet:

I’m all for Microsoft’s people celebrating successes! Throwing *yourself* a parade is just gauche, tho. And reeks of corporate.

I just have to wonder. If Microsoft is being criticized about holding a big celebration surrounding a product release, does this same "hold your nose" attitude apply to other companies? Subsitute words like "Zune" into this description and see if you gag - whoops, I mean, go gaga.

9:34 am: John, Kara and Adam are here waiting for the doors to open at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts for the start of the event.

9:54 am: Packed house today as these events often are. Seated in the theater, we’re treated to another variation on the Jobsian playlist: The Beatles, Clapton, etc.

9:58 am: A first “take your seats” warning. There’s a piano stage right, presumably for today’s musical guest. Long shot speculation in the audience that it may be Lady Gaga who was reportedly spotted on the Apple campus about 2 weeks ago.

10:00 am: Jobs takes the stage at 10 AM sharp to enthusiastic applause.

Remember how holding a parade for yourself is undignified? How about parading between all of your stores?

10:01 am: And with that, we’re off. First a quick retail update. Jobs discusses Apple’s new stores in Paris and China, notes that the latter with its massive glass cylinder is a monument to glass engineering.

10:03 am: On to London. Another slick store in Covent Garden, Apple’s 300th. Jobs notes that Apple now has stores in 10 countries and will soon add an 11th — Spain. “We’re seeing 1 million visitors to our stores on some days, several days a month.”

And while people in Washington are doing dance moves, people in California are talking about - themselves:


Apple Unveils New iPods, iTunes Social Network, Video Rentals

by John Paczkowski
Posted on September 1, 2010 at 9:28 AM PT

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Steve Jobs held court this morning at Apple’s traditional September music event, unveiling goodies like a refreshed lineup of iPods; Ping, a new social network built into iTunes 10; and an updated Apple TV, with support for TV and movie rentals. Also announced was iOS 4.1, with a multiplayer Game Center, High Dynamic Range photos and HD video uploads over Wi-Fi.

The complete liveblog coverage:

9:34 am: John, Kara and Adam are here waiting for the doors to open at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts for the start of the event.

9:54 am: Packed house today as these events often are. Seated in the theater, we’re treated to another variation on the Jobsian playlist: The Beatles, Clapton, etc.

9:58 am: A first “take your seats” warning. There’s a piano stage right, presumably for today’s musical guest. Long shot speculation in the audience that it may be Lady Gaga who was reportedly spotted on the Apple campus about 2 weeks ago.

10:00 am: Jobs takes the stage at 10 AM sharp to enthusiastic applause.

10:00 am: Job recognizes his “partner in crime” who’s in the audience today: Steve Wozniak.

10:01 am: And with that, we’re off. First a quick retail update. Jobs discusses Apple’s new stores in Paris and China, notes that the latter with its massive glass cylinder is a monument to glass engineering.

10:03 am: On to London. Another slick store in Covent Garden, Apple’s 300th. Jobs notes that Apple now has stores in 10 countries and will soon add an 11th — Spain. “We’re seeing 1 million visitors to our stores on some days, several days a month.”

10:04 am: “Our stores are bringing a lot of new users into the Mac family,” says Jobs, noting that about half of Mac purchases are made by first-time Mac buyers.

10:05 am: Moving on now to iOS devices. Apple’s shipped 120 million iOS devices since the first iPhone launched, says Jobs, adding that Apple is activating 230,000 iOS devices a day. “People throw out a lot of numbers about how many devices they’re activating per day,” he says. “We are doing 230,000 activations a day. …We think some of our friends are counting upgrades in their numbers … and we think we are ahead of everyone — if we were counting upgrades, our number would be WAY higher.”

10:06 am: “200 apps are downloaded from the App Store every second … we’ve got over 250,000 apps in the store and over 25,000 of them are iPad apps,” says Jobs. “Today we’re introducing iOS 4.1.”

And so on, and so on, and so on.

Now let's talk about all of the celebrities that showed up at Microsoft's event to further demean it. Oh, there weren't any. Around 11:10 am, Chris Martin from ColdPlay showed up. OK, I will give Martin points for joking around (or is this demeaning too?).

11:21 am: After a few songs, Martin pauses: “I’m not sure what to do … is Steve around to tell me what to do next …We’re moving on now to Coldplay 2.6 … this one has a lot a features, multiple chords that our competitors aren’t yet aware of …. it’s in the chord of ‘i minor’”

Now I have no problem with Steve Jobs and his friends going on and on about how wonderful Apple is. And I have no problem with Larry Ellison and his friends going on and on about how wonderful Oracle is - well, I have a personal problem with the Psychedelic Furs, but other than that I'm OK.

So what's the harm in Microsoft throwing itself a party?

Bigger fish are harder to acquire, and Hewlett Packard is finding more fish food

Remember my worthless speculation about who, other than Oracle, might want to try to acquire Hewlett Packard?

Well, it's a truism that if you have to avoid getting acquired by a bigger company, then you should get bigger yourself. And guess what HP is doing? The New York Times:

The computer maker Hewlett-Packard said Monday that it would buy ArcSight, a maker of security software, for about $1.5 billion as it continues its recent buying spree....

The ArcSight deal comes only two weeks after H.P. defeated Dell in a heated bidding war for 3Par, a data storage company. H.P. ultimately agreed to pay about $2 billion for 3Par, well above the $1.15 billion Dell initially offered for the company.

More here.

Now perhaps adding a billion here or a couple of billion there won't necessarily make Hewlett Packard harder for someone to acquire, but if HP continues to execute this strategy as much as...oh, as much as Oracle does...then HP increases its chances of staying independent.

Now of course things can go the other way, and a company may choose to make itself smaller - something that my former employer Motorola is in the process of doing right now, and something that one of my current company's competitors may be doing (not that I have anything to contribute on the matter, for obvious reasons - my current employer is a unit of Safran). The business world is filled with these rounds of consolidation and divestment, proceeding in an endless cycle.

Does that mean that Timothy Vernor couldn't BUY AutoCAD either?

As long as we're talking about court cases...

All Points Blog links to a Reuters article about a recent court decision by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Software manufactured by Autodesk Inc (ADSK.O) cannot be resold on eBay Inc's (EBAY.O) online auction network by a man who bought a copy at a garage sale, a federal appeals court has ruled.

More here, but not much more. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (again), who obviously has views on this matter, provided this summary:

In a triumph of legal formalism over reality, the Court held that the copyright’s first sale doctrine – the law that allows you to resell books and that protects libraries and archives from claims of copyright infringement – doesn’t apply to software (and possibly DVDs, CDs and other “licensed” content) as long as the vendor saddles the transfer with enough restrictions to transform what the buyer may think is sale into a mere license.

And I'm sure that someone has already noted somewhere that even books might not have these protections if you buy them for display on a Kindle or a similar device.

But I'm wondering something. Let's assume that this case makes it all the way up to the Supreme Court and they side with the 9th Circuit, and with Autodesk. Does this give Timothy Vernor the right to find the original garage sale people and sue THEM, arguing that they shouldn't have charged him for AutoCAD because they didn't have the right to sell it?

Sarah Palin, Barack Obama, and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act

If you believe some people, Sarah Palin and Barack Obama are complete polar opposites, with one intent on destroying society as we know it and the other protecting us from the threat levied by the first one.

But according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, they have one thing in common, at least as far as Facebook is concerned. The EFF links to Facebook's Statement of Rights and Responsibilities, which (as of August 25) included this provision (sub-item 8 under item 4):

You will not share your password, (or in the case of developers, your secret key), let anyone else access your account, or do anything else that might jeopardize the security of your account.

Now as far as Facebook is concerned, this not only applies to real people (such as a Palin or Obama staffer), but also bots. And as far as Facebook is concerned, that's a violation of Federal law:

But violating a website's terms of use is a big deal, according to Facebook. In fact, Facebook says it's a federal crime.

In Facebook v. Power Ventures, Facebook has sued a service that lets social network users view all their information from various social networking sites on one page. Like the way Sarah Palin's ghostwriter accesses Sarah's account, Power's service uses your password to access your account, with your permission. Facebook claims that this violates its terms of use, and any act that violates its terms of use is a violation of computer intrusion laws such as the federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, which prohibits intentionally accessing certain computers without authorization or in excess of authorization. Violations of this law are punishable by both civil and criminal penalties.

And a Harvard law web site speculates that Facebook may claim that it has to prevent Power Ventures from accessing its data. Why? To protect our privacy.

[U]sers are very concerned about their privacy and Facebook has faced vocal criticism in the past whenever it instituted policies that users felt were threatening (e.g. Facebook Beacon). It would be even more difficult for Facebook to protect its users’ privacy if the data was shared with third-parties.

Quite literally, a tangled web - kinda like when John Fogerty was sued for writing songs that sound like John Fogerty songs.

¿Cómo se dice "vast wasteland" en español?

James Joyner of Outside the Beltway linked to a Tyler Cowen post on education. The post includes the following:

If I think of the Mexican village where I have done field work, the education sector "works" as follows. No one in the village is capable of teaching writing, reading, and arithmetic. A paid outsider is supposed to man the school, but very often that person never appears, even though he continues to be paid. Children do have enough leisure time to take in schooling, when it is available. I am told that most of the teachers are bad, when they do appear. You can get your children (somewhat) educated by leaving the village altogether, and of course some people do this. In the last ten years, satellite television suddenly has become the major educator in the village, helping the villagers learn Spanish (Nahuatl is the indigenous language), history, world affairs, some science from nature shows...

Oh, and they learn one other thing:

...and telenovela customs.

Heaven help us.

Then again, what do U.S. kids learn from Survivor and American Idol?

My personal problem with Twitter's retweets - let's give Dana Franks proper credit for the Pia Beathe Pedersen story

As Twitter aficionados know, Twitter went its own way when it created its official Twitter retweet capability. In essence, if you retweet something, you don't really create something in your own Twitter feed - you effectively link to the item in the originating Twitter feed. While there are certainly pros to this approach, there are also cons.

My Pia Beathe Pedersen post was inspired by a retweet from Dana Franks. However, when I linked to the retweet, I didn't link to an item in Franks' feed, but to an item in the CBS News Twitter feed. All right and fine, since CBS News created the content, but I may not have heard of it if Dana Franks hadn't found it first.

What if someone were to read my post and think to him/herself, "Self, that Dana Franks finds really good stuff! I ought to follow her!"

Well, this esteemed blogger neglected to provide any way to do so.

So if you want to follow Dana Franks on Twitter, her name is @ariedana. Here's her bio:

# Bio A Brit at heart, a Southerner by birth and a Midwesterner by location. Day job is in TV news. Tweets about TV (when I remember) at @danadoestv.

Be sure to visit her Posterous blog, which was where I found the IKEA "herding cats" video that I mentioned in my "play at work" post.

Now I wonder - was Pia Beathe Pedersen an anomaly, or will her willingness to speak out about NRK cause the other temporaries and staffers at NRK to start running around like crazed cats?

Pia Beathe Pedersen - what is Norwegian for "overworked"?

Dana Franks, who works in the broadcasting industry in the United States, retweeted something from CBS News:

Norway Newsreader Quits in Live Radio Broadcast, Refusing to Read Day's News Because "Nothing Important Has Happened"

The link in the tweet went to an Associated Press article (so much for quoting it) about Pia Beathe Pedersen, who worked for Norwegian broadcaster NRK for 18 months until she decided not to read the news during a two-minute news segment, but instead complained about the pressure placed on staff. She resigned, stating that she wanted to be able to "breathe."

Not a lot of detail, and initially the only other article that I could find was from the New York Daily News, who compared her to former JetBlue flight attendant Steven Slater.

But then I found something written by Pedersen herself. Let me share an excerpt from a letter that she wrote:

«Etter å ha gått på en lang kronglete sti, i ulendt terreng, i hele mitt yrkesaktive liv, var det en drøm å få slippe inn i NRK som journalist. Etter flere år som gründer var en stor og trygg arbeidsgiver med faste forhold og lønn på konto hver måned rent gull for meg.

Luckily, Google Translate handles Norwegian. Here's how it translated the first paragraph:

"After going on a long winding path, in rugged terrain, in my professional life, it was a dream to be let into the NRK as a journalist. After several years as an entrepreneur was a great and safe employer with a permanent relationship and salary account every month of pure gold to me.

Her initial exuberance was short-lived however (language warning).

There is an unhealthy culture, an attitude to the employees who are sick. And as you might have to come outside to see;

- You should be fucking grateful that you are allowed to work in NRK.

She then says that she could write a book about her experiences - overwork, antiquated systems, noise, lack of information about how NRK is doing. But this one hit home for me:

The leadership that refuses to listen, and removes the cubicles because they have decided that it should be open landscapes.

I know that some techies love the open tables, but I have problems thinking even in cubicles. If I were at an open table, I'd upgrade my headphones to Bose headphones.

And this little tidbit was interesting:

Some job description, I have never seen. I do not know if I've done a good or a bad job, I know not what they expected of me, if I have adhered to the requirements of the undefined set.

If true, this is troubling. As much as some of us ridicule performance reviews, at least you (presumably) get guidelines regarding what your performance standards should be. What if you're being measured and you don't know the measurements?

So Pedersen chose to leave her position, which seemed impressive to outsiders, to resume her time in a "twisting path." But hopefully she'll be happier.

[11 SEP 4:45 PM PDT - ALLOW ME TO GIVE CREDIT WHERE CREDIT IS DUE. SORRY, DANA.]

Play at work - why people work at Microsoft and IKEA

There are companies, and there are companies.

I have worked at several different firms during my career, ranging from the U.S. Department of the Interior to a small technology company. Even my current company has been in several different configurations - a private firm, a publicly-traded (NASDAQ) firm, a part of Motorola, and a part of Safran.

But even my experiences don't cover the wide range of different companies that are out there...or the different company cultures that are out there.

I would not be able to function in a highly formal and serious firm. There are people that work at such places, love them, and thrive on them, but such a place is not for me. I need barbecues in the parking lot, Halloween costume parties, and the like. But some companies go beyond that.

Steven Hodson alerted me to a little story out of Microsoft headquarters. Microsoft is getting ready to release a new version of its mobile operating system, and the employees wanted to have a little fun. So they staged a funeral procession for the iPhone and the Blackberry. Oh, and they did a little dance.



But tech firms don't have a corner on the whimsy market. Dana Franks alerted me to a "herding cats" episode that took place inside an Ikea store. Yes, 100 cats were let loose inside an Ikea one night. But this was not a prank on Ikea; the company sponsored the danged thing, and released a video of it.



OK, now I'm going to lay down a challenge to any company (Oracle, are you listening?). I want to see 100 cats doing the "Thriller" dance.

Division 2 men's hockey? The Internet's got that.

Last night, I was questioning whether the Internet was big enough.

Yes, I know that the Internet is awfully big, but sometimes I have the expectation that I should be able to find ANYTHING on the Internet.

Hotel in a small town outside of the booming metropolis of Wangen bei Olten, Switzerland? Found it.

Track listing for an album by my former neighbor's former band? Found it.

Information on left-handed smoke shifters? I found a video.

But sports coverage? Forget it.

OK, it wasn't like I was looking for Redskins-Cowboys pre-game coverage. My need was a little more esoteric.

When people think of Boise State, they think of the university's football team. Well, Boise State also has a men's hockey team, and a family friend (Jeremiah Padilla) is on the team. Their first game was Friday night against BYU, so I thought that I'd try to find some online coverage during the game.

Because I have been pre-programmed to do so, I immediately went to ESPN's web site and dug deep until I found its college hockey coverage. However, NCAA hockey does not cover all college hockey, which means that ESPN has no coverage of either Boise State or BYU.

It turns out that these schools are members of the American Collegiate Hockey Association (ACHA), and that the BYU at Boise State game was listed on its website. However, the website did not offer any coverage during the game, and even now (almost 12 hours later) it hasn't posted any game results.

So I turned to Twitter, figuring that someone was sitting at the game and tweeting it. The best thing that I found, however, was a tweet from @SeanParker7 that was ABOUT the Boise State men's hockey team...and that was tweeted on September 3.

Eventually, someone from the team commented on Facebook that they had JUST signed a contract with Fast Hockey. The contract hadn't been signed in time to allow online broadcasting of the games against BYU (the two teams play again tonight), but they hope to broadcast future games.

So, who is Fast Hockey?

FASTHockey (http://www.fasthockey.com) is the premier online destination to see live streaming video of amateur ice hockey games from across North America. The feature rich platform is frequented by scouts, recruiters, coaches, players, parents, and fans from around the world. Hockey fans can not only see live and archived games, but also build robust profiles, research and track teams, get updates on recent scores & news, and monitor college commitments.

Our company operates and evolves in accordance with our core values: Community, Connections, and Content. As the most comprehensive destination on the Web, FASTHockey delivers high value content to a diverse audience. We have revolutionized the way players, coaches, scouts, parents, and fans think about how hockey and technology come together.

Starry-eyed futurists, and even some people who are grounded in reality, may note that services such as Fast Hockey are the future of sports coverage. There are definitely tiers in sports, with the National Football League and National Basketball Association at the very top of the pyramid (in the U.S.), and sports such as cricket and Division 2 men's hockey way, way down toward the bottom. (OK, native American junior high football is lower.) Over-the-air television providers certainly can't provide all of this, and even cable and satellite providers can't provide all of this. Some sports are going to be forced to offer their coverage on the Internet, just because no other outlet is available. And as this happens, some of the premier sports may end up complaining that because of money, their coverage is ONLY available on television and radio.

P.S. As long as we're talking about NCAA and ACHA, this comment, found in a Penn State thread, explains why some teams are in the ACHA and not in the NCAA.

There are three obstacles to becoming a varsity team: 1) an appropriate rink, 2) money, and 3) Title IX.

The current rink does not have the amenities (locker rooms, etc.) and seating to support an NCAA DI team. The money needed is not what you think. With only 18 scholarships (NCAA maximum) their cost is nowhere near $1.5M but the total cost to run a nationally competitive program is substantial. In my opinion a men's team could break even with operating costs if they had a reasonable size area. My basis forthis is that PSU students are from hockey-rich areas (Pittsburgh, Philly, NJ with NHL teams, Harrisburg/Hershey, Wilkes Barre/Scranton, Philly, Johnstown with minor league hockey) and would support an NCAA program. The final item is Title IX, gender equity. This would require Penn State to add a new women's NCAA team. There is no team they could add, including a women's hockey team (it is currently a team sport) that would not lose money. So, the picture is complicated for upgrading hockey.

How does Rackspace define hate speech? And should we be worried?

There are times when we praise companies for doing cool things. But if we take a moment to think about them, we may want to withhold our praise.

I think it's fair to say that as of today, not a lot of people like Terry Jones. Sure, he was great when he played the organ nude on old Monty Python TV clips, but by the time he became a pastor in Gainesville, Florida and decided to burn the Koran, most people decided that he was not so great.

Including Rackspace, their (now former) web site host.

An Internet hosting company based in San Antonio is no longer supporting the website for the Dove World Outreach Center in Gainesville, Florida....

Rackspace spokesman Dan Goodgame says the company acted on a complaint that the church was publishing hate speech on its site.

Read the rest here, including Jones' complaint that his First Amendment rights were being violated. Unfortunately, Jones is misreading the First Amendment, which applies to the government, not private companies. Rackspace is not obligated to host sites that say Islam is of the devil, any more than the Dove World Outreach Center is obligated to publish tracts saying that the Bible kills people.

However, there's another issue here. While any private company is free, within some limits, to set any "terms of use" policy, often those terms of use policies are extraordinarily broad and vague. While it's hard to come up with a precise definition of a term such as "hate speech," it's very easy to categorize just about anything as "hate speech" if you feel like it. As an example, take a look at Rackspace's Acceptable Use Policy (although this issue is NOT confined to Rackspace):

Offensive Content

You may not publish, transmit or store on or via Rackspace's network and equipment any content or links to any content that Rackspace reasonably believes:

* Constitutes, depicts, fosters, promotes or relates in any manner to child pornography, bestiality, or non-consensual sex acts;
* is excessively violent, incites violence, threatens violence, or contains harassing content or hate speech;
* is unfair or deceptive under the consumer protection laws of any jurisdiction, including chain letters and pyramid schemes;
* is defamatory or violates a person's privacy;
* creates a risk to a person's safety or health, creates a risk to public safety or health, compromises national security, or interferes with a investigation by law enforcement;
* improperly exposes trade secrets or other confidential or proprietary information of another person;
* is intended to assist others in defeating technical copyright protections;
* infringes on another person's copyright, trade or service mark, patent, or other property right;
* promotes illegal drugs, violates export control laws, relates to illegal gambling, or illegal arms trafficking;
* is otherwise illegal or solicits conduct that is illegal under laws applicable to you or to Rackspace; or
* is otherwise malicious, fraudulent, or may result in retaliation against Rackspace by offended viewers or recipients, or is intended to harass or threaten.

Content "published or transmitted" via Rackspace's network or equipment includes Web content, email, bulletin board postings, chat, tweets, and any other type of posting or transmission that relies on the Internet.

For the moment, assume a U.S.-based content provider. (Things can get really sticky if you go overseas, as everyone knows.) While some of the provisions are fairly clear, some are murky. Presumably a case can be made that Terry Jones' actions incited violence or included hate speech. But if Terry Jones incited violence, can't an equal claim be made that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. incited violence? Are paparazzi permanently banned from Rackspace because they violate someone's privacy? Are fast food outlets banned from Rackspace because they create a risk to a person's health? Is NORML banned from Rackspace because they support illegal drugs?

If you are going to apply a ban on Terry Jones, then isn't Rackspace morally, if not legally, obligated to deny services to all others who violate its Acceptable Use Policy?

Again, this is not exclusive to Rackspace. Most if not all service providers have similarly vague policies that allow the service to pull the plug on content providers. See Nicole Ferraro's comments on Facebook and Terry Jones; inasmuch as her post is entitled "Facebook: Hoster of Hatred, Again," I think we know where she stands on the issue.

So, what is the solution?