Coyote Blog

I really like the HBO series "the Wire" about the Baltimore police force and the pursuit of various drug gangs, which I have been catching up on via DVD.  While season 2 and 3 were not quite as good as 1, they still are quite good.

In many respects, this is a very libertarian series in outlook.  A central part of the show is that government officials nearly universally do wrong and wasteful things.  However, only a few of them are overtly corrupt.  The vast majority are regular folks responding rationally to the types of incentives government employees are given and which result in really bad outcomes.

In fact, I may just be screwed up from too many years in a past life working on corporate performance metrics, but at some level the show is all about incentives.  Even within the drug gangs, there is an interesting interplay between Avon and Stringer due mainly to the fact that though they face roughly the same circumstances and inputs, one has a goal of making money while the other has a goal of reputation and street cred.  I can see now why the Freakonomics blog discusses the show so often.

Oh, and the season 3 experiment with effective drug legalization is also interesting.

Highly recommended.

1. I really like my new iPod touch as a movie player for trips.  With an add-on double-A battery for extra life, it beats the hell out of portable DVD players.  It is a decent Internet surfer over WiFi though I am still looking for something a bit larger.
2. Anyone who fetishizes Apple's design capability has never tried to sync two iPods from one computer.  It can be done, with a klugey shift-click open to iTunes that brings up a "pick library" menu, but it really blows.  Also, they obviously have not had to endure QuickTime popups 415 times a day that say "Some of your Quick Time software is out of date.  You can fix this problem by updating the the latest version."  When one clicks "Do it now," one invariably gets the error message that the servers are busy (if the system does not crash entirely.
3. The new iPod classics still suck.  I tried them again at Best Buy.  The menu is laggy as hell and very hard to make selections or browse.  It is no accident that new-in-box generation 5.5 iPods are selling for more on eBay than new generation 6 iPods with the same or more memory.

From the New York Post via Carpe Diem and TJIC:

For
seven hours a day, five days a week, hundreds of Department of
Education employees - who've been accused of wrongdoing ranging from
buying a plant for a school against the principal's wishes to
inappropriately touching a student - do absolutely no work.

The
Post has learned that the number of salaried teachers sitting idly
waiting for their cases to be heard has exploded to 757 this year -
more than twice the number just two years ago - at a cost of about $40
million a year, based on the median teacher salary.

The city pays millions more for substitute teachers and employees to replace them and to lease rubber-room space.

Meanwhile,
the 757 - paid from $42,500 to $93,400 a year - bring in lounge chairs
to recline, talk on their cellphones and watch movies on portable DVD
players, according to interviews with more than 50 employees.

Best thing I have read in a long time:

Imagine an egalitarian world in which all food is organic and local,
the air is free of industrial pollution, and vigorous physical exertion
is guaranteed. Sound idyllic?

But hold on"¦ Life expectancy is 30 at most; many children die at or
soon after birth; life is constantly lived on the edge of starvation;
there are no doctors or dentists or modern toilets. If it is
egalitarian it is because everyone is dirt poor, and there is no
industrial pollution because there are no factories. Food is organic
because there are no pesticides or high technology farming methods. As
a result, producing food means long hours of back-breaking physical
work which may end up yielding little.

There is "“ or at least was "“ such a
place. It is called the past. And few of us, it seems, recognise the
enormous benefits to humanity of escaping from it. On the contrary,
there is a pervasive culture of complaint about the perils of affluence
and a common tendency to romanticise the simple life.

Via Hit and Run.  I made a fairly similar point here when I compared California "robber baron" Mark Hopkins mid-19th century house to one a friend of mine used to own in Seattle:

One house has hot and cold running water, central air conditioning,
electricity and flush toilets.  The other does not.  One owner has a a
computer, a high speed connection to the Internet, a DVD player with a
movie collection, and several television sets.  The other has none of
these things.  One owner has a refrigerator, a vacuum cleaner, a
toaster oven, an iPod, an alarm clock that plays music in the morning,
a coffee maker, and a decent car.  The other has none of these.  One
owner has ice cubes for his lemonade, while the other has to drink his
warm in the summer time.  One owner can pick up the telephone and do
business with anyone in the world, while the other had to travel by
train and ship for days (or weeks) to conduct business in real time.

Best thing I have read in a long time:

Imagine an egalitarian world in which all food is organic and local,
the air is free of industrial pollution, and vigorous physical exertion
is guaranteed. Sound idyllic?

But hold on"¦ Life expectancy is 30 at most; many children die at or
soon after birth; life is constantly lived on the edge of starvation;
there are no doctors or dentists or modern toilets. If it is
egalitarian it is because everyone is dirt poor, and there is no
industrial pollution because there are no factories. Food is organic
because there are no pesticides or high technology farming methods. As
a result, producing food means long hours of back-breaking physical
work which may end up yielding little.

There is "“ or at least was "“ such a
place. It is called the past. And few of us, it seems, recognise the
enormous benefits to humanity of escaping from it. On the contrary,
there is a pervasive culture of complaint about the perils of affluence
and a common tendency to romanticise the simple life.

Via Hit and Run.  I made a fairly similar point here when I compared California "robber baron" Mark Hopkins mid-19th century house to one a friend of mine used to own in Seattle:

One house has hot and cold running water, central air conditioning,
electricity and flush toilets.  The other does not.  One owner has a a
computer, a high speed connection to the Internet, a DVD player with a
movie collection, and several television sets.  The other has none of
these things.  One owner has a refrigerator, a vacuum cleaner, a
toaster oven, an iPod, an alarm clock that plays music in the morning,
a coffee maker, and a decent car.  The other has none of these.  One
owner has ice cubes for his lemonade, while the other has to drink his
warm in the summer time.  One owner can pick up the telephone and do
business with anyone in the world, while the other had to travel by
train and ship for days (or weeks) to conduct business in real time.

It seems like there is a taxpayer analogy in here somewhere.

H/T:  Maggies Farm

By the way, if you have not seen it, the BBC Series Planet Earth is just amazing.  I am watching it in High Def via my LG Blu-ray/HD-DVD combo player and it is awesome.

One of the really bad ideas that drive some of the worst government actions is the notion that wealth is somehow fixed, and that by implication all wealth is acquired at someone else's expense.  I am working on my annual tax-day post on the zero sum fallacy, but in the mean time here is a brief quiz.

The quiz consists of matching a description to the owners of these two houses:

One house has hot and cold running water, central air conditioning, electricity and flush toilets.  The other does not.  One owner has a a computer, a high speed connection to the Internet, a DVD player with a movie collection, and several television sets.  The other has none of these things.  One owner has a refrigerator, a vacuum cleaner, a toaster oven, an iPod, an alarm clock that plays music in the morning, a coffee maker, and a decent car.  The other has none of these.  One owner has ice cubes for his lemonade, while the other has to drink his warm in the summer time.  One owner can pick up the telephone and do business with anyone in the world, while the other had to travel by train and ship for days (or weeks) to conduct business in real time.

I think most of you have guessed by now that the homeowner with all the wonderful products of wealth, from cars to stereo systems, lives on the right (the former home of a friend of mine in the Seattle area).  The home on the left was owned by Mark Hopkins, railroad millionaire and one of the most powerful men of his age in California.  Hopkins had a mansion with zillions of rooms and servants to cook and clean for him, but he never saw a movie, never listened to music except when it was live, never crossed the country in less than a week.  And while he could afford numerous servants around the house, Hopkins (like his business associates) tended to work 6 and 7 day weeks of 70 hours or more, in part due to the total lack of business productivity tools (telephone, computer, air travel, etc.) we take for granted.  Hopkins likely never read after dark by any light other than a flame.

If Mark Hopkins or any of his family contracted cancer, TB, polio, heart disease, or even appendicitis, they would probably die.  All the rage today is to moan about people's access to health care, but Hopkins had less access to health care than the poorest resident of East St. Louis.  Hopkins died at 64, an old man in an era where the average life span was in the early forties.  He saw at least one of his children die young, as most others of his age did.  In fact, Stanford University owes its founding to the early death (at 15) of the son of Leland Stanford, Hopkin's business partner and neighbor.  The richest men of his age had more than a ten times greater chance of seeing at least one of their kids die young than the poorest person in the US does today.

Hopkin's mansion pictured above was eventually consumed in the fires of 1906, in large part because San Francisco's infrastructure and emergency services were more backwards than those of many third world nations today.

Here is a man, Mark Hopkins, who was one of the richest and most envied men of his day.  He owned a mansion that would dwarf many hotels I have stayed in.  He had servants at his beck and call.  And I would not even consider trading lives or houses with him.  What we sometimes forget is that we are all infinitely more wealthy than even the richest of the "robber barons" of the 19th century.  We have longer lives, more leisure time, and more stuff to do in that time.   Not only is the sum of wealth not static, but it is expanding so fast that we can't even measure it.  Charts like those here measure the explosion of income, but still fall short in measuring things like leisure, life expectancy, and the explosion of possibilities we are all able to comprehend and grasp.

More, coming soon...

Update:  An example of why this topic is always timely:

Paul Krugman foresees an increasing left-leaning electorate. The cause?

The main force driving this shift to the left is probably rising

income inequality. According to Pew, there has recently been a sharp

increase in the percentage of Americans who agree with the statement

that "the rich get richer while the poor get poorer."

Russel Roberts goes on to tear into this red meat.  Read it all.

I am thrilled to have Hawaii 5-0 on DVD.  I remembered it as my favorite TV crime drama ever, and so far, it is holding up very well.  A couple of other observations:

• Whether you like the show or not, I think it is nearly indisputable that Hawaii 5-0 has the best intro of any TV series ever made.  Mission: Impossible is pretty good, but I never liked the practice of having scenes from the days show in the intro.
• I am watching show 4 or so of the first season, and they have Ricardo Montalban playing a Japanese man.  Never has a Caucasian looked less like a Japanese man since Sean Connery when he was supposed to have been surgically altered to be Japanese in You Only Live Twice.  [check out Montalban's linked videography - in the last 60's and 70's he was on nearly every TV show I can remember]

A Judge has ruled that the Kaleidescape movie server (basically a big box that rips and stores DVDs on hard disk) did not violate its licensing agreement with the DVD-CCA:

Kaleidescape argued, first and foremost, that nothing in the DVD-CCA
licensing agreement prohibits the development of products that allow
users to copy their DVDs.

Indeed, that's exactly what Judge Leslie C. Nichols ruled today in
the non-jury trial at the Downtown Superior Court of Santa Clara in San
Jose, Calif. There was no breach of contract.

That seems to be good news for those of us who like the server concept and would like to make copies of our DVDs for our own (fair) use.  However, the judge seems to have sidestepped the copyright and fair use issues, such that this ruling probably will turn out to be pretty narrow and not constitute a useful precedent.

Because of this ruling, the Judge did not have to get into copyright
issues, so the Kaleidescape ruling has no copyright implications. It is
not a statement on the legality of ripping DVDs.

There was the possibility that copyright issues could have come into
play. The DVD-CCA submitted to the Court a particular document, the
"CSS General Specifications," that it asserted was part of the
licensing agreement.

The CSS General Specifications document includes wording about
thwarting the "unauthorized copying" of DVD's. The issue of what
constitutes an unauthorized copy could have come up, but Judge Nichols
ruled that the document in fact is not part of the DVD-CCA licensing
agreement.

I have no tolerance for watching TV series on the network's schedule.  If a series gets good reviews, I will watch it on DVD (e.g. Serenity, Deadwood, Rome, Sopranos, Alias, Wonderfalls, etc).  In this same vain, I watched the first season of 24 straight through and really enjoyed it.  The second season was OK but weaker and less believable (even a hard-core libertarian paranoiac like myself had trouble buying the cabinet coup).  Plus I got about the same feeling when the Kim Bauer character was on-screen as I did when there was Anakin-Padme dialog in the last Star Wars movie.

So I am a third of the way through season 3 and I am having trouble really getting into it -- maybe the threat is not immediate enough at the mid-point.  Should I stick it out?  Is there anything out there left worth seeing?  Is there anything interesting in seasons 4 or 5 that bring back what made the first season great?

Short version: avoid Vista.  Longer version:  I wrote previously about Vista writing a new chapter in fair use: 

Because, having killed fair use for multiple copies, believe it or
not, the media companies are attempting to kill fair use even for the
original media by the original buyer!  I know this sounds crazy, but in
Windows Vista, media companies are given the opportunity to, in
software, study your system, and if they feel that your system is not
secure enough, they can downgrade the quality of the media you
purchased or simply refuse to have it play.  In other words, you may
buy an HD DVD and find that the media refuses to play on your system,
not because you tried to copy it, but because it feels like your system
*might* be too open.  The burden of proof is effect on the user to prove to the media companies that their system is piracy-proof before the media they paid for will play...

Back to the book
analogy, it's as if the book will not open and let itself be read unless
you can prove to the publisher that you are keeping the book in a
locked room so no one else will ever read it.  And it is Microsoft who
has enabled this, by providing the the tools to do so in their
operating system.  Remember the fallout from Sony putting spyware, err copy protection, in their CD's -- turns out that that event was just a dress rehearsal for Windows Vista.

Via Instapundit, Bruce Schneier concurs:

Windows Vista includes an array of "features" that you don't want.
These features will make your computer less reliable and less secure.
They'll make your computer less stable and run slower. They will cause
technical support problems. They may even require you to upgrade some
of your peripheral hardware and existing software. And these features
won't do anything useful. In fact, they're working against you. They're
digital rights management (DRM) features built into Vista at the behest
of the entertainment industry.

And you don't get to refuse them.

The details are pretty geeky, but basically

Microsoft

has reworked a lot of the core operating system to add copy protection
technology for new media formats like HD-DVD and Blu-ray disks. Certain
high-quality output paths--audio and video--are reserved for protected
peripheral devices. Sometimes output quality is artificially degraded;
sometimes output is prevented entirely. And Vista continuously spends
CPU time monitoring itself, trying to figure out if you're doing
something that it thinks you shouldn't. If it does, it limits
functionality and in extreme cases restarts just the video subsystem.
We still don't know the exact details of all this, and how far-reaching
it is, but it doesn't look good....

Unfortunately, we users are caught in the crossfire. We are not only
stuck with DRM systems that interfere with our legitimate fair-use
rights for the content we buy, we're stuck with DRM systems that
interfere with all of our computer use--even the uses that have nothing
to do with copyright....

In the meantime, the only advice I can offer you is to not upgrade
to Vista.

We have about 50 computers in the company and I have banned everyone from upgrading to Vista.  I have studied Vista and there is nothing there that helps my business, and a lot that hurts it (e.g. higher initial price and much higher system requirements.)  If we upgraded, we might have to replace half our old ink jet printers just because the manufacturers are really unlikely to write Vista drivers for them.  We have 4 Dell's in the closet with XP loaded.  After those are used up, I will build all the future computers myself.  I have several OEM copies of XP on the shelf (less than 1/2 price of the Vista retail upgrade) and I will buy more if it looks like they are going to stop selling it.  I would switch everyone to Linux, except most of my employees are not very computer savvy and its just too hard to get them all trained.  I will probably only buy Vista for one box, which is my gaming machine at home, and even that is at least a year away before anyone has a killer DirectX 10 game I have to have.

Back in the stone age (say, about 20 years ago) we used to have this quaint concept for media we purchased called "fair use."  I won't get into the legal definitions, but it meant in practice that if I had a book, I could read it at home, or I could take it into work and read it there.  In college, I would read novels in the back of boring lectures, and soon hit on the tactic of xeroxing 20-30 pages of my book and putting the copies in a folder to disguise what I was doing.  Fortunately, fair use let me do so without penalty.  Sometimes a friend would read an article in a magazine he thought was cool, and he would xerox a copy of the article (a sample of the magazine, so to speak) and share it with me.

Increasingly, in the digital age, none of the behaviors are allowed anymore.  For years I used to install my copy of turbo tax on both my home and office computers, and carry my tax file back and forth on a floppy to work on it.  Then, a couple of years ago, Turbo Tax installed a form of rights management that required that I buy a second copy of the same software for my own personal use for my office.  In effect, I could no longer carry my novel to work -- I had to buy a second copy if I wanted to read it at the office.  The same situation has prevailed with digital music files - increasingly recording companies are taking the position that if you want a digital file on both your iPod and your home system, you need to buy two copies.  And the sampling and sharing we used to do all the time with magazine and newspaper articles are not longer permitted for digital media.

Having firmly established the principle that multiple uses by the same individual of the same digital media should require multiple purchases, where do we go next?  Well, I think that we will look back on the release of Windows Vista as the next great milestone in killing fair use.  Microsoft may have left out nearly every product enhancement they originally promised for Vista, particularly the revamped file system, and tried to hide the fact with some pretty desktop eye candy, but they found plenty of time to add numerous DRM and copy protection schemes to the OS. 

Because, having killed fair use for multiple copies, believe it or not, the media companies are attempting to kill fair use even for the original media by the original buyer!  I know this sounds crazy, but in Windows Vista, media companies are given the opportunity to, in software, study your system, and if they feel that your system is not secure enough, they can downgrade the quality of the media you purchased or simply refuse to have it play.  In other words, you may buy an HD DVD and find that the media refuses to play on your system, not because you tried to copy it, but because it feels like your system *might* be too open.  The burden of proof is effect on the user to prove to the media companies that their system is piracy-proof before the media they paid for will play (emphasis added). 

PVP [a new Vista DRM component] eliminates these security gaps, enabling a series of DRM measures that keep
a high-resolution content stream encrypted, and in theory completely protected,
from its source media all the way to the display used to watch it. If the system
detects a high-resolution output path on a user's PC (i.e., a system capable of
moving high-res content all the way to a user's display), it will check to make
sure that every component that touches a protected content stream adheres to the
specification. If it finds a noncompliant device, it can downgrade the content
stream to deliver a lower-quality picture -- or it can even refuse to play the
content at all, depending on the rights holder's preferences.

So you see the next step.  First, they prevented fair use of copies.  Now, they are going to prevent fair use of the original.  Back to the book analogy, its as if the book will not open and let itself be read unless you can prove to the publisher that you are keeping the book in a locked room so no one else will ever read it.  And it is Microsoft who has enabled this, by providing the the tools to do so in their operating system.  Remember the fallout from Sony putting spyware, err copy protection, in their CD's -- turns out that that event was just a dress rehearsal for Windows Vista.

As Rosoff's statement implies, many of Vista's DRM technologies exist not
because Microsoft wanted them there; rather, they were developed at the behest
of movie studios, record labels and other high-powered intellectual property
owners.

"Microsoft was dealing here with a group of companies that simply don't trust
the hardware [industry]," Rosoff said. "They wanted more control and more
security than they had in the past" -- and if Microsoft failed to accommodate
them, "they were prepared to walk away from Vista" by withholding support for
next-generation DVD formats and other high-value content.

Microsoft's official position is that Vista's DRM capabilities serve users by
providing access to high-quality content that rights holders would otherwise
serve only at degraded quality levels, if they chose to serve them at all. "In
order to achieve that content flow, appropriate content-protection measures must
be in place that create incentives for content owners while providing consumers
the experiences they want and have grown to expect,"

Nope, no arrogance here.

Matt Rosoff, lead analyst at research firm Directions On Microsoft, asserts that
this process does not bode well for new content formats such as Blu-ray and
HD-DVD, neither of which are likely to survive their association with DRM
technology. "I could not be more skeptical about the viability of the DRM
included with Vista, from either a technical or a business standpoint," Rosoff
stated. "It's so consumer-unfriendly that I think it's bound to fail -- and when
it fails, it will sink whatever new formats content owners are trying to
impose."

More links on Vista DRM issues here

Update:  OpenOffice 2.1 is out.  We love OpenOffice at our company.  We stopped buying MS Office a couple of years ago and have been thrilled with the decision.  The version 1 release was weak but since version 2.0 it has been a very strong offering.  It is nice to see Sun getting its Microsoft hatred out in a more productive manner than suing them all over the place.

Hollywood seems to treat digital media like DVD as the greatest threat to their existence ever crafted.  But it appears to me that DVD may have saved 24.

From the second season onward, there has been intense pressure on the makers of 24 to convert from their popular serialized format (all 24 episodes are one story arc) to a more usual format where each episode stands on its own.  While prior shows like Alias and X-files have had running story arcs, their individual episodes stood on their own much better than do episodes of 24.  What that means is that 24 does not syndicate well at all, cutting off a very lucrative revenue stream. 

But what makes 24 difficult to syndicate makes it a very popular DVD offering.  In fact, if you look on Amazon, all five seasons are among the top 20-30 sellers in the DVD category.  Incredibly, a DVD of the first four episodes of the new season, which were televised about a week ago(!), is ranked #16.  My guess is that DVD sales do not fully make up for lost syndication revenue (I have no idea of the exact numbers) but these sales must have made it easier to continue down this innovative path.

I was thrilled to see that two of my top 5 most wanted DVD releases are finally coming out - by March 6 according to Amazon.

• Hawaii 5-0:  The greatest TV crime drama ever. 
• Captain Horatio Hornblower:  I know that the current generation doesn't think there was ever a good adventure movie that did not involved Industrial Light and Magic, but this Gregory Peck movie is an absolute classic.

I was a little worried that both had the identical release date.  I am hoping that this is not just the default date in the Amazon system when the release date is uncertain. 

Glenn Reynolds had a post on TV series that are coming soon to DVD, and some that other bloggers would like to see.  My vote for most conspicuously missing DVD would be Hawaii 5-0  (Don't be confused by the knock-off on sale on the internet, there is no official release).  I know everyone has their opinion, but I think this was the all-around be TV crime drama ever.  Period.  Aloha.

Incredibly, there are still depths to be plumbed in bringing TV shows to the big screen, as apparently Knight Rider may soon be made into a movie.  Shows I would have expected to be made into movies before Knight Rider include:

• 6-million dollar man
• A-team
• Hawaii 5-0

And by the way, what kind of world do we live in where I can't buy old Hawaii 5-0 reruns on DVD?

Hat Tip:  Reason's Hit and Run, with a nostalgic look at past efforts to discern KITT's sexual orientation.

In a previous post, I discussed decision anchoring in judged events.  This week I have a simpler question:  Whose idea was it to give out CD-ROM's this time instead of regular medals?

Is this some kind of weird prelude to a Microsoft takeover of the games?  Or maybe these are just remaindered "Glitter" DVD's.  By the way, this picture does not do her justice, but Tanith Belbin is pretty hot.  She came in third in ESPN's page 2 hottest female athlete survey.  Better pictures here.

Today, the town of Sedona, Arizona joined the ranks of government organizations trying to make business incrementally more difficult.  I operate campgrounds in the Sedona area, and as such I have already registered my business there with:

• The federal government for social security and medicare taxes
• The federal government for employee payroll withholding
• The federal government for income taxes
• The federal government for federal unemployment insurance
• The State of Arizona secretary of state and corporation commission
• The State of Arizona department for unemployment insurance
• The State of Arizona department of revenue for sales taxes
• The State of Arizona department of revenue (second time) for corporate income taxes
• The State of Arizona department of liquor, for liquor license
• Coconino County tax collector, for property taxes
• Coconino County health department, for health inspection and certificate

I am sure this list is incomplete, but you get the idea.  I know for a fact that the town already has access to my business information, because they have access to the state department of revenue sales tax database that has all the data they want.  However, I guess so they can feel important -- they want to make sure I have THEIR approval to exist and conduct private transactions with the public as well.  Here is the only rational offered in their letter:

To those businesses operating in the City limits of Sedona:

Help Create Our Economic Future

To Create a viable economic future for Sedona, it is important to know what types of businesses currently exist within the community.  As of January 31, 2006, in order to create a database, all businesses operating in Sedona, or headquartered elsewhere and doing business in Sedona, will need to apply for a business registration.

First, we businesses are already creating Sedona's economic future, and this notion that a couple of people in a small town city clerks office can do anything to add to productivity and economic growth is the worst form of governmental hubris.  Second, though filling out a couple of pages may seem  too small to complain about, we operate in over 200 locations.  Thank God that most of them are in unincorporated area, or we would be filling out hundreds or thousands of pages a year just to help some city clerks with their "database". 

Third, it is interesting to note that Sedona is starting is campaign for their economic future by making doing business there harder.  Sedona reminds me a lot of Boulder, Colorado, where I used to live.  In Boulder, this kind of data request would be the harbinger of some massive new regulation program.  My best guess is that this will be the case in Sedona as well -- this database will be used to justify new regulations and taxes, not less.

I ran corporate planning staff groups at several large corporations.  Every time my staff guys had a new analysis they wanted to do, they often wanted to send out a new requirement to all of our operations managers to report some new data they needed for their project.  As their manager, I tried to be ruthless in defending our operating people, pushing back on my staff guys to find any other way to get the data they need, or to justify strongly the need to ask our folks to report yet another bit of data.  In most cases, the analysis did not justify the work or the data could be acquired some other way, a way that required more work of my staff guys but a lot less from the operating guys who really mattered.  This requests smacks of the exact same thing, except without the adult supervision to push back on their endless data requests.  (Other example here).

This all made me think of this, maybe because my mind works in strange ways. 

The Senate has introduced the "Digital Content Protection Act of 2006,"
a bill that will create "Broadcast Flags" for all digital radio and
television, leading to FCC oversight of all new digital media
technologies from iPods and PSPs to TVs and DVD recorders.

Under the DCPA proposal, digital media technologies would be
restricted to using technologies that had been certified by the FCC as
being not unduly disruptive to entertainment industry business-models.

Beyond my irritation at this whole broadcast-flag-FCC-power-grab raising its head again, it made me think about people's reaction to regulation.  In general, when people actually run into government regulation face to face, they hate it.  That's why with this broadcast flag issue you tend to see a lot of people who generally profess to be comfortable with big government suddenly freaking out, perhaps because this is the first time, beyond the drivers license office or trying to mail a package at Christmas, they every run into the true face of government.  Most corporations today are pretty good at sheltering customers and employees from the mind-numbing regulation they face. 

To all you guys who are fed up with the FCC, let me assure you as a small business owner:  The Department of Labor, Federal Trade Commission, Social Security Administration, Department of Commerce, and every state, county, and city agency you can think of is at least as overreaching and destructive.

The government:  Not to know it is to love it.

Update:  In the past, I have had a field day laughing at left-of-center groups who scream privacy rights at every occasion but support all the intrusion above.  Most recently, I have taken on NOW and the ACLU over this issue.

Up until the last month, I have been very happy with Amazon Prime, the service where you pay $80(?) for a year of free 2-day delivery.  I am sure I have ordered more stuff from Amazon because of it, and I know I order it faster because I don't wait weeks with things in the shopping cart to group shipments.   

However, in the last month, I have had not one but two orders show up in 7-8 days instead of two.  The first was a Batman Begins DVD, pre-ordered to ship on its release date (which it apparently did).  It was shipped USPS, so there was obviously no hope that it would arrive in 2 days.  The second was a new Nikon D50, which was back-ordered for about a week.

I never really got an explanation for the DVD shipment (maybe they don't apply Amazon Prime to pre-orders?), but I did get some explanation for the Nikon D50.  After writing Amazon, asking them why my item shipped UPS Ground with a 7-8 day delivery time instead of 2-day, which I had paid for with Amazon Prime and was listed as the shipment method on the order page, I got this response  (greetings, apologies, etc. omitted):

After your order leaves our fulfillment center, we may use any
appropriate ground or air shipping service necessary to ensure that
your order is delivered within one or two days, depending on the
delivery option you selected.  These delivery options do not
directly correspond to any carrier-branded shipping services.

I have researched the order in question, and it appears your package
will arrive on time.

We understand that customers who select Two-Day or One-Day delivery
want to receive their orders faster, and we will only use an
alternative shipping method when we know your order will arrive by
the estimated delivery date. 

This is obviously not very clear, but here is what I infer:  When the item was back-ordered, they gave me an updated delivery date range, something like "estimated delivery Nov 2-10".  What I infer from this email is that once they give you an estimated delivery date range, they feel like their obligation to ship 2-day is voided.  The only obligation they now feel they have is to hit that date range.  So, despite the fact that my camera shipped on Nov 2 and I paid for 2-day shipping, they feel they are meeting their obligations if it gets to me by Nov 10, the back end of their estimated range.

The conclusion is not to feel sorry for me that I have to wait to play with my new toy, but that this may be the first sign of a program that is being gutted under profit pressure.  When lawyers looking for loopholes take over the customer service and fulfillment department, things can go downhill pretty quickly.  Note that the "est. delivery date" dodge really gives them carte blanche to get out of the 2-day obligation any time they want, since they set the estimates. 

As a note, I tried to confirm my interpretation with Amazon and have been unsuccessful.  In the tradition of making itself one of the hardest companies in America to actually contact, one can't reply to their customer service email so I can't get an easy confirmation or clarification.  I actually got and called their customer service phone number, which you will never find on their site (write this down:  1-800-201-7575).  The person on the other end of the line was useless, not understanding that I wanted a clarification of the Amazon Prime rules rather than some resolution of a particular order.  She couldn't access the emails I had sent to customer service or had received from them, and didn't seem to understand Amazon Prime rules, so she was no help.  The only funny part was that as I kept trying to clarify what I wanted from her, she kept upping the gift certificate amount she offered me as compensation, despite the fact that I kept saying "I don't want money I want to know what the rules are".  I think I ended up with $20 without even wanting it.

Which makes me wonder why I can't reply to Amazon's customer service emails.  I don't have a problem getting customer support via email rather than the phone, but to make this work I really need to keep working through to resolution with the same person, and the Amazon process makes this impossible.

As a libertarian, I am generally quite content to have Congress go on a 364 day a year vacation.  Maybe they can get together once a year and declare a national asparagus day or a national DVD rental day or whatever.

However, I will say that the debate about rules for military prisoner interrogations and detentions at Gitmo have caused me to make an exception to my general Lassaiz Faire approach.  One of the reasons we struggle with these issues is that, because we are facing the relatively new situation of having our military battle with non-uniformed insurgents not associated with any particular government or military force, the rules to be applied are fuzzy or non-existent.  Without rules, the administration has been making up its own, which activists of various stripes have been challenging in court.

And what is Congress doing?  Most of Congress has spent its time shouting out support or criticism (as the case may be) of the administration, and arguing about which judges should be selected to make sure that the administrations rules are or are not struck down.   I could have sworn that Congress has the primary responsibility for creating rules for these situations, to be enforced and interpreted by the Administration and courts.  Why is it, when there are no clear rules, Congress is the only branch of the government doing nothing?

Isn't it about time that Congress stop shouting encouragement or criticism from the shore and actually wade in with some legislation on these issues?  While I certainly have never been one to accept the Gitmo torture hysteria, its certainly a reasonable role for Congress to set standards for treatment of the type of non-military prisoners we are collecting.  For example, while the rules of Habeus Corpus for such a detainee are not necessarily the same as for a prisoner in the US, there certainly need to be some rules beyond the Administration's current ridiculous position that amounts to "we can hold them at our pleasure for as long as we want".

Update:  OK, I am obviously not keeping up.  I just got emailed a couple of links to some action on this front.  Reason has this:

A handful of Republican senators would like to determine:

(i) What is the definition of an "enemy combatant" who may be
detained by the military outside the ordinary civil justice system?; (ii) What
procedural rules should be employed by military tribunals?; and (iii) Which
interrogation techniques should be authorized, and which
prohibited?

Since these are questions the Supreme Court declined
to answer in its rulings on prisoner detention, it's nice to see that other
branch of government assuming a slightly less supine position--almost as if the
Constitution established it as a counterweight against the executive and the
judiciary.

Apparently the Bush administration, which could not manage to find the veto pen when the huge expansion of the already bankrupt Medicare system was in front of them, is announcing itself ready to veto anything:

that would restrict the President's authority to
protect Americans effectively from terrorist attack and bring terrorists to
justice, the President's senior advisers would recommend that he veto the bill.

Marty Lederman has much more analysis here.  His observation:

Heaven forbid Congress should have the nerve to actually exercise its
authorities under Article I, section 8, clauses 10, 11 and 14 of the
Constitution"”which empower Congress to define and punish Offences against the
Law of Nations, to make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water, and to make
Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces. For to do
so will invariably hamper the Executive's ability to keep the Nation safe from
terror.

Isn't this just a tad too much arrogation of power, even for this President?

Via Ernest Miller:

Civil and consumer rights groups have won in the Broadcast Flag case!...

...For those who are unfamiliar with the Broadcast Flag, it was ... it was a regulation promulgated by the FCC
at the request of Hollywood that would have required all HDTV receivers
to incorporate certain copy controls. Starting this July, all HDTV
receivers sold in the US would be required to enforce restrictions on
copying HDTV broadcasts that were tagged with the "Broadcast Flag."
Although you might be able to record HDTV shows, you wouldn't be able
to make additional copies for personal use (such as watching in another
room) without a lot of hassle, if it was possible at all, not to
mention taking a copy to watch at a friend's house. The ramifications
of this authority grab by the FCC were enormous, since it would have,
among other things, essentially given them the power to control
significant aspects of the design of anything capable of using HDTV
signals, i.e., modern PCs.

Good.  Now, will someone address letting me copy DVD's to play on a handheld, hard-disk based device like this one.

I wrote before of the cost that licensing imposes on the economy.  I love Milton Friedman's take on licensing and certification:

The justification offered is always the same: to protect the consumer. However, the reason
is demonstrated by observing who lobbies at the state legislature for
the imposition or strengthening of licensure. The lobbyists are
invariably representatives of the occupation in question rather than of
the customers. True enough, plumbers presumably know better than anyone
else what their customers need to be protected against. However, it is
hard to regard altruistic concern for their customers as the primary
motive behind their determined efforts to get legal power to decide who
may be a plumber.

Now, from Ohio (and via Cafe Hayek) comes this attempt to regulate auctioneers:

Besides costing $200 and posting a $50,000 bond,
the license requires a one-year apprenticeship to a licensed auctioneer, acting
as a bid-caller in 12 auctions, attending an approved auction school, passing a
written and oral exam. Failure to get a license could result in the seller being
fined up to $1,000 and jailed for a maximum of 90 days.

Keep Friedman's quote in mind.  Note that under this system, auctioneers have an automatic veto over new competition, since all potential competitors must find an existing auctioneer to take them on as an apprentice.  Imagine the consumer electronics business - "I'm sorry, you can't make or sell any DVD players until Sony or Toshiba have agreed to take you on as an intern for a year".  Yeah, I bet we'd see a lot of new electronics firms in that system - not.

It gets better, though.  The law is written in a way that it applies to Ohio residents trying to sell on eBay:

Here's the response offered by state Senator Larry
Mumper, author of the legislation: "It certainly will not apply to the casual
seller on eBay, but might apply to anyone who sells a lot," he said. "If someone buys and sells on eBay on a
regular basis as a type of business, then there is a need for
regulation."

This is the kind of regulation mentality that is killing us.  eBay has a great rating system, and while the system sometimes trips for small sellers (since they can just start a new account) but big volume competitors ruthlessly protect their reputation on eBay because it is so visible.

I know that flat screen Plasma and LCD TV's are very popular right now, especially as prices are falling.  They provide a good platform for viewing HDTV and widescreen DVDs.  As a longtime fan of widescreen, even before DVD's and HDTV, I understand the attraction well (and yes, you could get widescreen format movies on VHS and Laserdisc, but it was a pain in the butt and DVD is great).

If you are looking at a plasma TV for your main viewing or home theater room, I would like to encourage you to look at front projection before you make a purchase.  No, I don't have any financial interest in the technology, and no, it is not right for everyone.  For some applications, though, front projection can offer a dramatically better movie experience than plasma for the same money.  Why?  Two words:  110" Diagonal  (OK, thats sort of more than two words when you say it rather than write it, but you get the idea).

A projection system can be almost as big as you have space for.  You have never, never experienced the Superbowl until you have seen it on a 95" wide widescreen in HDTV.  If you get one, do not tell the neighbors unless you want them in your house every Sunday.  We almost never go to theaters any more - we have a great experience in our own house.  I have practically paid for this installation just from birthday party savings, as my kids now prefer to have movie parties at home. 

The installation in the picture above is my 95" wide 16x9 screen, and I took the photo so you could also see the projector hanging on the ceiling (the photo overemphasises the projector - it is actually not so prominent).  The screen is actually a special acoustically perforated kind, and the speakers are behind it (this is more expensive and hides the speakers but is not at all required).

OK, there are some downsides to this installation, which is why you do not see them everywhere:

• The wiring is tougher, since the projector usually is a long way from your video equipment - I had to get an electrician to run some wires for me
• The room has to be dark -- either with few windows or, in my case, with blackout shades on all the windows -- to be able to watch during the day.  If you look carefully in the picture above you can see the shade above the windows.
• They are harder to find -- Best Buy type stores do not sell these systems
• They are different esthetically than you are used to.  They take up less space than a big box rear-projection, but more space than a plasma. Yes, you can put in mechanisms to roll up the screen into the ceiling or even pull the projector up out of site when not being used, but these add a lot to the cost.
• Good systems are not at all cheap, and cost about as much as a good plasma - about $4000 for the projector and $1000 for the screen.  Really good systems go for crazy amounts of money - as much as $60,000 and more.  Don't be scared off - there are many good inexpensive projectors made today.

We have loved this system and have gotten more prolonged enjoyment out of it than anything else in our house.  It is not for everyone, and I don't expect everyone to choose to do the same thing I did, but I do think it is worth your time to take a peak at one when you are out shopping for that plasma TV.

We were watching the old Gene Wilder version of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory on DVD the other day.  This movie choice was made by the kids in anticipation of the new Johnny Depp version coming soon (since Pirates of the Caribbean, my kids are huge Johnny Depp fans).

I guess I really never paid much attention,  but Charlie's Grandpa Joe (played by Jack Albertson) is a real schmuck.  This little boy and his mother slave away for pitiful wages all day to support their four grandparents who are infirm and stuck in bed.  Grandpa Joe has laid in that bed for years, maybe decades, and never once tried to get out and help his family.  But, given the chance to go on a special trip to the Chocolate Factory with Charlie, Joe soon bounces out of bed and dances around the room.  Where was this energy when the family needed a wage-earner?

I don't know if this was intentional or not.  My guess is that this might not have been intentional - the early 1970's were the height of welfare sensibilities, and it would probably have been unlikely that Hollywood would try to include any messages about a slacker dad who failed to support his family.

Update:  By the way, in response to one of the comments, I am mostly just having fun with this.  I love Willie Wonka and am not so much of a Scrooge to turn on the movie because of an issue like this - heck, if I only enjoyed movies I was in complete ideological agreement with, I would have a very small movie collection. 

But, I do beg to differ with the commenter who said that Grandpa Joe provided the best adult supervision of all the parents.   This is actually not true, at least in the factory itself.  When each child pursued their fatal screw-up, in most cases their parents were trying to stop them, however lamely:  Augustus's mom says to stop drinking from the river, etc.  Charlie's Grandpa Joe actually was the one parent (or I guess guardian) who took an active role in encouraging their child into breaking their host's rules (i.e. drinking the fizzy lifting drink). 

I sit here thinking - jeez, am I really arguing about this?  I feel silly, but it does beat arguing about 30-year-old events in the military service of presidential candidates.

Given the recent fascination with the upcoming Howard Hughes biopic, as well as any number of other articles on his life (this article covers some of the more eccentric parts left out of the movie)  I remembered my favorite Hughes story. 

Howard Hughes loved watching movies at night.  Now, this won't seem too odd to most of us, since many people, myself included, have spent a few late nights watching an old movie on cable or on the DVD player.  However, Hughes had a problem.  He liked to watch movies of his choosing in his own room on top of the Desert Inn in Las Vegas before anyone had dreamed up HBO or the VCR. 

Hughes was not daunted by this small problem.  This is the man that bought the Desert Inn when they threatened to evict him.  So, Hughes bought a local TV station.  Each week, the TV station would publish its weekly schedule, including the movies it planned to show each evening;  however, it seldom followed this schedule, because each evening Howard Hughes would call his station and tell them what movie he wanted to see, and that would be what they broadcast.  So, in a sense, Howard Hughes invented pay per view TV, though his version was kind of expensive.  Also, the TV station apparently got a lot of complaints for never showing the movie listed in the TV guide.