Having spent a bit of time in the UK, I can attest that in general the programming on television is just as mindless and annoying as the US has on average.

But like the US, there are some patches of real brilliance. For example the below clip from the car focused show “Top Gear” where the crew work hard to help the City of London determine which is the best bus… by racing them.

Image via Wikipedia

I this week's Technometria podcast, Scott, Ben, and I are joined by Tyler Whitaker and Dion Almaer, who both discuss some of their recent technology activities.

Ben and Dion have recently been hired at Mozilla, where the company is working on new open web tools for developers. They talk about some of their long-term and short-term goals, including plans on ways to make it easier to deal with browser differences. In addition, Tyler discusses some of his recent internet connectivity problems and Scott talks about his recent delayed flight and how a website helped him better understand the cause of the problem, as well as quickly inform him when his flight would be arriving at the airport.

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I grew up in Illinois, and I have seen first hand the kind of strange deals that take place in order for things to get done. In fact my own dearly departed Grandfather was once arrested with several high profile political and sports figures for playing high stakes poker in a hotel room. Besides the fun of a good game with a lot of money on the table, it was a way that a hard working construction contractor (my Grandfather) could make sure that enough money got to the right places to ensure that his company had work for the coming year. Just lose a few good hands and everything works out fine!

So the kind of headlines screaming across the news this morning is no surprise to me:

Illinois Gov. Blagojevich, chief of staff, arrested

Gov. Rod Blagojevich and his chief of staff, John Harris, were arrested by FBI agents on federal corruption charges Tuesday morning.

Blagojevich and Harris were arrested simultaneously at their homes at about 6:15 a.m., according to Frank Bochte of the FBI. Both were transported to FBI headquarters in Chicago.

In one charge related to the appointment of a senator to replace Barack Obama, prosecutors allege that Blagojevich sought appointment for himseld as Secretary of Health and Human Services in the new Obama administration, or a lucrative job with a union, in exchange for appointing a union-preferred candidate.

If you know Illinois politics, you are quite aware that the selling of appointments is the status quo, the biggest question in my mind is “why did they bust Blagojevich”? It my mind, he must have caused someone a bit more trouble than what he is worth. In what might be trouble for the President-Elect, it seems his chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, is wrapped up in this according to documents on The Smoking Gun.

In related news, it seems that noted Chicago wheeler-dealer Tony Rezko’s dirt is still around. Someone in the banking business in the city has decided to turn state’s evidence and is now ready to sing about the crazy deal that Rezko rigged for then Senator Obama’s house purchase.

This could actually be trouble for the President-Elect, much more so than the far-fetched idea that he is not a US citizen. Rezko is already in up to his waist as a clearing-house for Chicago corruption, payments and graft.

Lesson to the media who did not look into this before the elections - this information was going to come out eventually. By being in the tank for Senator Obama, you are going to still have to come clean on his background. Only now the damage is going to be multiples of what it would have been in July.

Strange analog to the financial implosion we are still trying to work our way through. Once upon a time the news business was about finding and publishing facts, and from that free and informative press a better world would come. Now it’s all advocacy, and we are paying a heavy and increasing price by willfully ignoring the facts.

[Update - Ace says…]

FBI Agent in Charge of Chicago says ‘it’s a new low for Illinois‘, that’s saying something. “If it (Illinois) isn’t the most corrupt state, it’s certainly one hell of a competitor“. Says his agents were shocked and sickened by what they heard.

Image by flibblesan

One of the things I love about going to conferences is that there are usually a lot of Mac users there and that means getting the goods on what new Mac software people are using. My last trips to Defrag and IIW were good in that regard as I found out about a few new things that I'm enjoying.

The first, and probably the most useful, is Snackr. Snackr is an RSS reader that displays the most recent articles from feeds you subscribe to as a rolling ticker on the bottom, top, or side of your display. Want to focus on something? Just click the "hide" icon and it scrolls up. Click on a headline and the article appears. It's made RSS feeds an interstitial activity instead of something I have to remember to do and consequently I'm reading a lot more interesting things.

Another tool I discovered was Tweetdeck. I've been a longtime (if anything associated with Twitter can be termed "longtime") Twitterific user, but Tweetdeck seduced me with it's ability to create panels for Twitter searches. I wanted to follow all the tweets about IIW and Tweetdeck allowed me an easy way to do that. Along the way I got hooked on it's built-in URL shortening panel. I went back to Twitterific and missed that, so I went back. Some people complain that Tweetdeck is too heavyweight and it can be. I run it in single pane mode a lot when I'm on a single monitor.

I like Delicios, but frequently fail to bookmark things. I don't know why, but Pukka has helped. A little scriplet in the browser bar pushes data to Pukka and it does the rest of the work after I enter tags. I know, the bookmark page will do all of this, but it disrupts my browser flow. And I like the sound Pukka makes.

The last app (actually a service) that I discovered was Dropbox. Yeah maybe I'm the last to the block on this. Dropbox's integration with OS X is what sold me (it also works in Windows and Linux). I get a folder that I just put things in and they get synced to the cloud. Right-clicking on them gives me the public URL I can send out to people in email or Twitter for sharing.

That's all it takes: four new apps and I'm a happy camper.

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“Because Secretary Paulson had struggled in previous attempts to explain what the big banks and brokerage houses had done to the U.S. economy, his staff prepared a visual aid that told the story in clear and graphic terms.”

Winner of Dave Barry’s caption contest for the above photo.  ..bruce w..

As expected the US Supreme court has declined to further entertain the “Donofrio v. Wells” case, which sought to have the court better define the portion of Article 1 of the US Constitution that defines the requirement for the President to be a “Natural Born Citizen”.

From Legal Line News:

Although Donofrio concedes Obama was born in Hawaii, he contends that Obama is a British citizen because to his father’s British citizenship. For the case to have been placed on the high court’s docket, four of the nine justices had to agree to hear the case. The Donofrio case was just one of a handful of lawsuit challenging Obama’s citizenship.

Sadly for the US, I am guessing this one won’t go away. President-Elect Obama has placed tight seals over a large section of his past, and that presents a puzzle that some will find irresistible. Even if he only serves one term, 4 years is an eternity with persistent, motivated researchers working at internet speed, sifting for that “smoking gun” they all think they might find. For the people who won’t let it go, there is the notion that they could be the next internet blog breakthrough like what burned down Dan Rather and CBS News.

Already there is news that a handful of lawyers intend to begin contesting every executive order or law he signs on the basis that he is not legitimately able to hold the office.

I am personally worried that those highly motivated folks may find what they want to find, and that it would cause incalculable damage to this country. The best thing for everything would be for the President-Elect to simply release these records and shut them all down.

My dad, John  A. Webster, was a seaman aboard the USS San Francisco (CA-38) at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. Fortunately, the San Francisco was docked some distance from Battleship Row (look down to the lower right corner) and so was not subjected to the heavy bombing that damaged or sank so many other ships :

Dad said that the San Francisco’s guns had been dismantled for cleaning and repairs, and so the sailors on board were reduced to using rifles and sidearms to shoot at the Japanese planes.

It was my visit to the USS Arizona memorial in 1975 that led me to realize how many hundreds and hundreds of young men like my father died in those few hours — and how easily our own family could never have been.

Randy Barnett over at the Volokh Conspiracy has a wonderful and extensive remembrance of Pearl Harbor, including quite a few photos and video clips.  ..bruce w..

This remains my favorite Christmas movie (yes, even over “A Christmas Story”). It is a musical version of Dicken’s “A Christmas Carol”, starring Albert Finney in the title role. I am not alone in my praise for this movie; note that of the 406(!) customer reviews for it at Amazon, 366 (90%) give it 5 stars and another 21 give it 4 stars.

“Scrooge” didn’t do all that well when it was released theatrically in 1970. Movie critics didn’t like it, feeling that it was somehow silly in the light of the earlier ‘classic’ versions of “A Christmas Carol” (in particular the 1951 Alastair Sim version). For years after that, if “Scrooge” showed up at all, it was in a chopped-up, pan-and-scan version on TV; I can remember my own profound disappointment when I first saw it on TV. The VHS release wasn’t much better — while not chopped up, it was still pan-and-scan, losing much of the outstanding cinematography and choreography.

But for five years now, it’s been out on DVD in an uncut widescreen version. The movie itself has held up very well. The score and libretto are outstanding; a few of the movie’s songs have crept into the mainstream over the years (I heard the Mormon Tabernacle Choir sing one on their weekly broadcast earlier this year). As mentioned above, the choreography is outstanding as well, as are the cinematography and art direction.

The real key, though, is Albert Finney in the title role. The director cast a young man (Finney was only in his early 30s when this was filmed) as Scrooge, figuring that it was easier to make a young man look old than to make an old man look young. Furthermore, the old Scooge is not played as a stern if elegant patrician; he’s played quite literally as a dirty moneygrubber, with a permanent hunch to his back. His Scrooge is not someone you would want to cross or meet in a dark alley.

The movie shows a bit more of Scrooge’s young life (via the Ghost of Christmas Past), giving a better sense of Scrooge’s descent from a tall, handsome, modest young man to the bent-over miser he becomes. It also adds a scene of Scrooge in Hell (as part of the visit of the Ghost of Christmas Future) that is quite humorous and at the same time chilling (so to speak). And there are a few changes in the final sequence of events as well, but they represent a payoff from things set up early on.

At its core, though, “Scrooge” fully delivers on Dickens’ original message of regret, repentance, and redemption, and it does so in a powerful fashion. I recommend it without reservation.  ..bruce w..

…”After determining the Big-12 championship game participants the BCS computers were put to work on other major contests and today the BCS declared Germany to be the winner of World War II.”

The article continues:

Questioned about the #4 ranking of the United States the BCS commissioner stated “The US only had two major victories– Japan and Germany . The computer models, unlike humans, aren’t influenced by head-to-head contests–they consider each contest to be only a single, equally-weighted event.”

German Chancellor Adolph Hitler said “Yes, we lost to the US ; but we defeated #2 ranked France in only 6 weeks.” Herr Hitler has been criticized for seeking dramatic victories to earn ’style points’ to enhance Germany ’s rankings. Hitler protested “Our contest with Poland was in doubt until the final day and the conditions in Norway were incredibly challenging and demanded the application of additional forces.”

Heh. Hat tip to Rand Simberg at Transterrestrial Musings.  ..bruce w..

The Oakland Raiders came to San Diego this past Thursday to play the Chargers. Raider fans are, of course, noted for being a bit…ah…intense, and (according to my sister Deirdre), the local newspaper gave appropriate warning to San Diego fans and citizens. Then the local TV station broadcasting the game ran the following ad after the coaches’ interviews :

Heh.  Hat tip to Deirdre. ..bruce w..

…to the ridiculous. Orin Kerr, over at the Volokh Conspiracy, is attempting to find (and I quote) “the single cheesiest Lawrence Welk clip on YouTube.” Here’s his current nominee:

Let’s see:  ridiculous outfits — check. Ridiculous dance moves — check. A bland orchestra rendition of a Captain & Tennille song that manages to remove whatever spark and syncopation existed in the original — check. Wisconsin would be proud. (Bonus video: the Captain & Tennille in an interview from 2007. She’s still a fine-looking woman, given that she’s pushing 70.)

UPDATE: the outfits and dance moves kept reminding me of something, and I finally realized what — one of my all-time favorite commercials (and I don’t even drink coffee):

Heh. Now try to get that song out of your head for the rest of the day. ..bruce w..

On December 3, 2008, Logitech (my employer) announced that it had shipped its billionth mouse. While I didn’t contribute much to that as an employee (I work in a non-mouse division), I have helped as a consumer: I think I personally own four Logitech mice.

As part of the company internal celebration, there was a video contest with fairly liberal rules: One minute in length or less, something to do with mice.

Here is my prize-winning entry:

Watch the Video

 

 

Word is that tomorrow, the US Supreme Court will discuss in private a suit brought by Leo Donofrio, that asks a very interesting and possibly explosive question.

What does it mean to be a “Natural Born Citizen”?

This is of crucial importance, because the US Constitution clearly states that in order to run for President, the candidate must be a Natural Born Citizen. Mr. Donofrio’s case against the New Jersey Secretary of State argues that none of the candidates were validated by the Secretary’s office as “Natural Born Citizens”, and therefore it is unknown if any of the candidates on the 2008 Presidential ballot were eligible to run.

This is a crucial constitutional issue that has never been aired out before (as far as I know) - what does it take to meet this qualification to be elected as President? Who has the power to make that determination? Congress does not, neither does the Electoral College. I don’t think the current President is empowered to do so either. This seems to be a case where there is a constitutional authority missing, and the Donofrio case clearly points it out.

Should the court take this case up it could have far reaching effects on immigration, military service and elected office. In fact, this might even impact me, as my father was a citizen of the UK when I was born.

Secondary to this whole issue of constitutional law is the question about the President Elect’s eligibility to hold the office. This is a potentially explosive question that would cause chaotic disruptions in America’s social harmony, but is a very interesting question indeed.

President Elect Obama has gone to great lengths to sequester large sections of his personal history, from his college records to his medical records to his birth certificate. While in the past that would not have raised much concern, in the information age people seem to expect to know or have access to such things. I personally think that Senator Obama should be able to keep his medical and birth records private, I think his college records should be open.

Meanwhile some people are getting very excited about a conspiracy to hide information about the President Elect, and are likely letting their imaginations go a bit far. But if you contrast the public will to ignore this withholding of information to President Bush’s Air National Guard service, it seems that a much different standard is being applied this time around.

Clearly the constitutional question is the important one here, but Mr. Obama could put all of the conspiracy theorists in their place by simply directing the State of Hawaii to post his actual birth certificate on the web.

Live Search has recently released some great new features that I want to highlight. The first is from the Webmaster center, which is the team I was hired on.

With the new Webmaster Tools, you can now see which pages on your site are infected with malware (aka drive-by downloads). The links are clearly highlighted and disabled so that you won’t accidentally click on them.

Not only that, but you can also see what pages that your site links to are infected with malware. This is great if your site allows any user-generated content and it’s possible that some link spam has made it on.

In addition to these improvements in Webmaster Tools, the general Live Search engine is using the same malware detection to notify users of bad pages in the general search results. To see this, click on the link as if to visit it and you’ll get a pop-up instead.

If you run your own site, get signed up in Webmaster Tools and make sure you’re not contributing to the malware problem. If you do find that your site has malware on it, once you’ve removed it you can request that your site be reanalyzed.

For more info, check out these other blogs and articles:

• Live Search Webmaster Center Fall Update [Webmaster Center blog]
• Webmaster tools now sniffing for malware [Live Search blog]
• Microsoft’s Live launches malware detection service for webmasters [ZDNet blogs] (though the author incorrectly assumes that Live Search itself doesn’t offer this feature)
• Link to search results for articles about this

No tag for this post.

This ReadWriteWeb story reports that barcode scanning applications on devices like the iPhone and the G1 are causing a stir among offline retailers.

I've seen such an app on the G1, but don't remember what it's called. On the iPhone there are apps like Checkout and Snappr. The big announcement today was that Amazon is releasing their own app called "Amazon Remembers" that's supposed to work from a picture of the product--not just a barcode.

The story on ReadWriteWeb reports:

Although consumers may be catching on to this barcode-scanning trend, some stores are still in the dark. For example, a Target store in Michigan recently requested a shopper to stop scanning merchandise, saying it went against store policy. The customer reported the event to the application's makers, Big in Japan, whose app Shop Savvy is a popular download for Android handsets.

Big in Japan called the Target store in question and spoke to the manager, who indicated that she was not aware of the policy. We also contacted Target's corporate headquarters to confirm Target's policy, or lack thereof, but we first had to explain the application to the company representative. They had never heard of such a thing before! (As it turns out, Target has no policy whatsoever on barcode scanning their merchandise.)

The same customer also noted they had visited Sam's Club, where they demonstrated the application to a store employee who seemed "confounded that such technology even existed," wrote the user.

From Stores Clueless About Mobile Barcode Scanning Applications? - ReadWriteWeb
Referenced Wed Dec 03 2008 15:07:57 GMT-0700 (MST)

Trying to fight instant price match is like trying to hold back the Mississippi. Retailers aren't going to be able to support artificially high prices based on information asymmetry anymore. I don't have an answer for them. But telling people they can't use their phone inside the store isn't going to cut it.

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The CTO Breakfast for November and December will be on Friday December 5, at 8am in the Novell Cafeteria (Building H, Provo Campus). If you are interested in technology and especially it's use in building high-tech products, then you're invited--you don't have to be a CTO, just have aspirations!

Here are the scheduled dates for future breakfasts:

• Jan 30, 2009 (Friday)
• Feb 26, 2009 (Thursday)
• Mar 27, 2009 (Friday)

There's a Google Calendar with dates for the CTO breakfast that you can subscribe to if you like.

If you'd like to be reminded by email, just sign up for the (low volume) mailing list here:

I'll see you on Friday!

Tags: cto breakfast utah events

Accuweather delivers the bad news:

In the AccuWeather.com Winter Forecast released in early October, Chief Long-range Forecaster Joe Bastardi said the overall colder and snowier winter will be off to a cold start in December, which could be the roughest winter month for much of the nation.

Calling the winter of 2008-2009 one of the harshest in many years, Bastardi said, “It may be a shock to some when compared with the above-average temperatures of last year in the East. It will put some ‘brrrrrr’ in the saddle of folks who have not had to deal with such things for a while.”

Personally, I blame Bush.  ..bruce w..

When I started up VZAccess Manager (the software that connects my V640 3G modem to the cloud) today, it showed me how many megabytes I'd used and when it would be reset:

Apparently at Verizon the years have 13 months.

Tags: verizon dates calendar+math bugs

Image via Wikipedia

Windows Vista (oops, can I still call it that?) has "Windows Genuine Advantage" and so when it's moved to new hardware have having been installed somewhere else, it needs to be "reactivated."

Parallels Desktop was recently updated to version 4.0. This apparently involved some changes to the virtualized hardware presented to the OS since machines created with older versions of Parallels have to be upgraded.

You can see where this is going. The conversion process "fails" with a message that something has to be done manually. When you get into the machine, Vista is asking to reactivated. Here's the kicker. The reactivation process wants to use the network. But you haven't installed the drivers for the virtualized hardware yet, so it isn't available.

You've got a Catch-22. To reactivate you need the network, but you can't install the drivers until you reactivate. What to do?

Microsoft thought of this scenario. There are folks (2 somewhere in Iowa) who don't have Internet connections. So Microsoft provides an automated phone activation system. It works like this:

After you enter in your product activation key, and click "phone activation" you see this screen:

Call the number and the automated system asks you to read or type in the numbers from each of the 9 groups--54 numbers. Then the system reads back 56 numbers to you, which you type in the boxes in 9 groups. Click next and if you didn't make any mistakes, you're done. Vista comes up, birds sing, and the sun shines. Well, Vista comes up anyway.

So, the advantage clearly wasn't to me since WGA cost me 30 minutes of my life. Sigh.

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There are some events that just defy the mashup engine:

Men’s magazine loses 130,000 inflatable breasts

A men’s magazine has lost a shipment of 130,000 inflatable breasts en route to Australia. The breasts, worth £100,000, were planned to be a free gift in Ralph magazine - but vanished before arriving at their destination. A spokeswoman said the container left docks in Beijing two weeks ago but turned up empty in Sydney this week.

The magazine has put out an alert to shipping authorities but the breasts need to turn up in the next 48 hours to make the January issue. Ralph editor Santi Pintado urged anyone with information to contact the magazine, saying: “Unless Somali pirates have stolen them it’s difficult to explain where they are.

“If anyone finds any washed up on a beach, please let us know. We want our boobs back.”

The Maritime Safety Authority said it had no information on any lost consignment.