Chushingura it's not

Rico's friend Kelley forwards this review by Bryan Enk:

The trailer for 47 Ronin has been released, and it's what the film itself has been reported to be for almost the past year: a misguided, derivative, very expensive mess.
The samurai epic marks Keanu Reeves' (photo, below) first big-budget genre film in eight years, following 2003's one-two punch of The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions, and 2005's so-so graphic novel adaptation, Constantine.

While the prospect of seeing the man who was once The One starring in a fantastical adaptation of one of Japan's most famous samurai tales certainly sounds, well, interesting, anyway, 47 Ronin has unfortunately gained a reputation as a "troubled production." And one that cost a lot of money. There were rumors last fall that the film was almost $50 million over budget, though Universal— which has become even more cost-conscious following the financial disaster of last summer's Battleship— insists that it's been holding steady with its original $175 million price tag. However, even if the movie isn't technically breaking the bank, it's certainly suffering from some internal creative differences.
First-time feature director Carl Rinsch, whose claim to fame is being the unofficial protége of Alien and Blade Runner maestro Ridley Scott, was pulled from the post-production process, according to The Wrap. The final product was apparently seen through by Universal's co-chairwoman, Donna Langley, and— if the trailer is any indication— seizing control from the perhaps too-inexperienced director didn't really help matters much.
47 Ronin tells the tale of a banished half-breed named Kai (Keanu Reeves) who teams up with a group of 47 leaderless samurai (ronin), seeking vengeance against the evil warlord who killed their master, a quest that pits them against "mythic beasts, shape-shifting witchcraft and wondrous terrors". The trailer more or less gets that across, though it also showcases a film that looks to have one heck of an identity crisis— and one that might be too hopelessly derivative of several stellar and even less-than-stellar genre movies.
Here is a list of gripes, based on our first look at the film: 

1. It looks like The Matrix

In 47 Ronin, Keanu Reeves plays a software programmer, er, half-breed outcast who is freed from slavery to lead a revolution against oppressive forces. He even at one point says "If we do this, there is no coming back," which means we guess they all take the red pill. There's also at least two scenes in which Reeves and his opponent counter-circle each other, facing off like he and Agent Smith did before engaging in epic battle. "Your life belongs to us," says one of those opponents. Um, any sign of the good ship Nebuchadnezzar anywhere? 

2. It looks like Star Wars

True, a lot of epic fantastical action-adventures look and sound a lot like Star Wars. But Kai in particular has a lot of Luke Skywalker going on, especially in the early part of his hero's journey, when he perhaps was a bit too cocky and green before taking on such an enemy as Darth Vader. "I'm not afraid of you," says Kai to one of his opponents, to which she responds "You should be" (ugh) before transforming into a giant CGI snake-dragon thing. Is she going to bite off his hand and reveal that she's really his mother? 

3. It looks like The Last Samurai

The Last Samurai is that samurai movie with Tom Cruise, in case you had forgotten (and some of you probably had). Like Cruise's Nathan Algen, Reeves' Kai is a white man in Japan, an A-list (well, A-list-ish, anyway) Hollywood movie star amongst a mostly Asian cast. Cruise and Reeves even kinda-sorta have the same hair style: long and unkempt and perfect for dramatic swooshing about during fight scenes. 

4. It looks like The Magnificent Seven, er, Seven Samurai, er, The Magnificent 47 

Who's zoomin' who, here, exactly? 47 Ronin brings a fantasy element to the eighteenth century legend it's based on, as Kai joins a group of wandering ronin in their quest for revenge against marauding forces that have enslaved their lands... The Magnificent Forty-Seven, if you will. The Magnificent Seven (released in 1960) was a western about a group of ragtag gunslingers hired to protect a small town from marauding forces, which was inspired by Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai (released in 1954), the story of a group of ragtag ronin hired to protect a village from marauding forces. The circle of life! 

5. It looks like John Carter

Okay, admittedly, this writer kinda liked John Carter. But "I liked this movie" and "It's a good movie" can be two very different things. 47 Ronin looks like it could be Universal's John Carter, with lots of random CGI beasties traversing a fantastical landscape as some hero embarks on some hero's journey. And, like Disney's would-be blockbuster, it's crazy expensive, and getting it to break even at the box office might be quite the daunting task. 

6. It looks like Mortal Kombat

The CGI beasties in John Carter at least looked good. The CGI beasties in 47 Ronin look baaaaad. Really, the various creatures look like they belong in a Syfy movie, and without the sense of endearment that usually comes with anything that airs on that effortlessly likable, B-movie-celebrating network. The special effects recall the really, really awful CGI work in Paul W.S. Anderson's big-screen adaptation of Mortal Kombat, and that had the excuse of being made in 1995 (and for, like, ten bucks). 

7. It looks like Dungeons & Dragons

Yes, the 2000 version of Dungeons & Dragons had bad special effects as well, but it was more distinctive for its truly horrendous dialogue, filled with bizarre histrionics and groan-inducing cliches. In 47 Ronin, a villainous lady exclaims: "Mountains of corpses will not stand in our way!",which might remind one of Jeremy Irons': "I could use every ounce of your rage!" Oh, boy. 

8. It looks like The Man With the Iron Fists

RZA's recent martial arts film attempted to blend a mishmash of genre styles with a cool modern-day sensibility, which resulted in pretty much visual and thematic chaos. 47 Ronin looks to be attempting to bring a slick, contemporary-minded aesthetic (and "attitude") to an age-old chestnut, and the result is a film that appears to be, well, kind of uncomfortable with itself. Did Rinsch really drop the ball when it came to steering the course of this ambitious project, or is it a result of just too many cooks in the kitchen? 

9. It looks like Constantine

Sure, 47 Ronin has some similarities with that other Reeves movie, The Matrix, but there's yet another, less successful film starring the 48-year-old actor that 47 Ronin looks even more like: Constantine, which definitely had some good things going for it, but ultimately didn't quite work, perhaps because of Reeves. We buy Reeves as Neo (boy, do we ever), but something didn't ring true with his portrayal of a man who's been to hell and back. And as much as you want to like him in the role, Reeves just seems oddly out of place in 47 Ronin, even though the film is so obviously designed to be a star vehicle for him. Maybe he should just do Bill and Ted 3 and call it a day?
47 Ronin hits theaters on 25 December. Heck, even the tagline is confused: This Christmas, Seize Eternity. Huh? Uh... why?

Rico says it's contaminated from the get-go by Tom Cruise, let alone Keanu Reeves... (As if The Last Samurai wasn't bad enough, we needed another pseudo-Japanese movie?) It's not what Rico will be seeing at Xmas...

Juror owes an apology

The Associated Press has an article about another juror who's sorry Zimmerman got off:

The second juror to speak publicly told ABC News that she feels George Zimmerman got away with murder for fatally shooting Trayvon Martin, but that there wasn't enough evidence at trial to convict him under Florida law. Juror B29 told Robin Roberts that she favored convicting Zimmerman of second-degree murder when deliberations began by the six-member, all-women jury. "I was the juror that was going to give them a hung jury," she said. "I fought to the end." But, by the second day of deliberating, she realized there wasn't enough proof to convict the 29-year-old neighborhood watch volunteer of a crime. "George Zimmerman got away with murder, but you can't get away from God," she said. "And at the end of the day, he's going to have a lot of questions and answers he has to deal with." Zimmerman was acquitted earlier this month of second-degree murder and manslaughter charges in the 2012 slaying of the unarmed seventeen-year-old. The Miami teenager was shot and killed during a confrontation with Zimmerman in Sanford, Florida. The case spawned heated national debates about racial profiling, and the so-called Stand Your Ground self-defense laws in Florida and other states. Zimmerman was seen publicly for the first time last week when he assisted a family after their SUV flipped over on a Florida highway. Juror B29 is the second panelist to go public with what went on during deliberations earlier this month. She allowed her face to be shown and used her first name, Maddy, unlike Juror B37, who was interviewed on CNN last week with her face obscured. Four jurors, not including the one interviewed by ABC, issued a statement last week saying the opinions expressed by Juror B37 to CNN's Anderson Cooper did not represent their views. That juror said the actions of Zimmerman and Martin both led to the teenager's fatal shooting, but that Zimmerman didn't actually break the law. Juror B29 also told ABC that she didn't believe race was an issue at the trial. Though the judge so far has refused to release the names or biographical information about the jurors, B29 said she was 36 years old and Puerto Rican. Martin was black and Zimmerman identifies himself as Hispanic. Martin's parents believe Zimmerman racially profiled their son when he started following him after spotting him walking through the neighborhood where Zimmerman lived and Martin was visiting. B29 said she couldn't speak for her fellow jurors on the race issue. The other women on the jury were white. Juror B29 is a nursing assistant and mother of eight children, who recently moved to Florida from Chicago. She said she feels like she owes Martin's parents an apology. "I felt like I let a lot of people down, and I'm thinking to myself: 'Did I go the right way? Did I go the wrong way?'" she said. "As much as we were trying to find this man guilty... They give you a booklet that basically tells you the truth, and the truth is that there was nothing that we could do about it."

Rico says it's a little late, asshole...

Idiot for the day

David Chen and Javier Hernandez have an article in The New York Times about yet another asshole politician (or is that redundant?):

Anthony D. Weiner’s improbable campaign for mayor was engulfed by a new scandal involving explicit online messages, imperiling his political resurrection two years after he resigned from Congress over similar behavior.
Weiner, appearing solemn and a bit worn as he faced more than a hundred journalists at a hastily-arranged news conference, acknowledged that his habit of sending sexual images and text messages to female fans had continued for more than a year after he left Congress vowing to seek treatment and change his behavior. “It’s in our rearview mirror, but it’s not far,” he said.
The revelation collides with the narrative Weiner has offered throughout the campaign, in which he has repeatedly suggested that he has spent his time since leaving Congress rehabilitating himself and repairing his family relationships. After a late entry into the Democratic primary, he had rapidly risen in the polls, and performed strongly in fund-raising, as his relentless focus on ideas and his omnipresence helped ease the concerns of many voters.
Seeming to recognize the fragility of his public standing, he pleaded with New Yorkers to trust his assertions that he is now a changed man, despite news that his online adventures— some conducted under the pseudonym of Carlos Danger— had persisted through last summer, after the birth of his child.
Speaking amid the cramped cubicles of a vacant Chelsea office, Weiner, alternately chastened and defiant, vowed to press ahead with his campaign. His wife, Huma Abedin, stood by his side, at times smiling at him, but at times staring at the floor or at the cabinets behind her.
Publicly airing the couple’s private pain, Abedin said her decision to stay with Weiner was “not an easy choice”, and said “Anthony’s made some horrible mistakes, both before he resigned from Congress and after. We discussed all of this before Anthony decided he would run for mayor, so really what I want to say is, I love him, I have forgiven him, I believe in him,” she added. Abedin, a longtime close aide to Hillary Rodham Clinton, spoke haltingly about the ups and downs of her marriage, making it clear that reconciling with Weiner after the scandal was a long and difficult process. “It took a lot of work, and a whole lot of therapy, to get to a place where I could forgive Anthony,” she said, reading from a prepared text that she slowly unfolded at the lectern.
The news startled his aides and prompted three of his rivals in the mayoral campaign— Bill de Blasio and Sal F. Albanese, both Democrats, and John A. Catsimatidis, a Republican— to demand that he drop out. “Enough is enough,” de Blasio told reporters at a news conference on a Chelsea street corner. “His presence in this race continues to diminish the debate, and it’s time for his presence in this race to end.”
The National Organization for Women in New York City also called on Weiner to drop out, calling him “clearly and compellingly unfit for public office.”
Weiner was undeterred, saying simply: “I’m sure many of my opponents would like me to drop out of the race.” He went straight from the news conference to a forum on HIV and AIDS issues (photo), arriving late, as usual, and smiling as he was greeted with a warm round of applause. He told the audience that many voters might be turned off by the mistakes he made, but he emphasized his credentials as an outsider, saying he was the only candidate in the race who would “shake things up. I admit it: there are a lot of people who probably listen to me and say, ‘You know what, you’re not a very good messenger for these things,’ ” he said. “I don’t dispute it.” As he spoke passionately about issues like housing, gay rights and health care, distinguishing himself from his rivals by rising from his chair and gesticulating forcefully, the audience responded warmly, with shouts of “Yes, that’s right!” and “You the man!”
The turbulent day began when BuzzFeed posted an article calling attention to posts on The Dirty, a website which describes itself as a purveyor of gossip and satire, and which warns that its “postings may contain erroneous or inaccurate information”. The Dirty said that it had spoken with a woman, whom it did not name, who provided copies of her communications with a man who was apparently Weiner. The man engaged in explicit discussions of sexual acts he said he fantasized about performing with her, and sent her a picture of his penis; she told him, “Your health care rants were a huge turn-on.” The woman, 22 at the time, alleged that Weiner offered her an apartment, and proposed that he visit her.
At one point, Weiner called the woman “a walking fantasy”. But he also seemed aware that the conversations could be dangerous, and later asked the woman to “do me a solid. Could you hard delete all our chats.” In another exchange, he appeared to be in a reflective mood, and wrote, “I’m deeply flawed.”
Weiner has suggested that the essence of the posts was true, although he did not confirm any details. “While some things that have been posted today are true and some are not, there is no question that what I did was wrong,” he said in a statement before the news conference. “Some of these things happened before my resignation, some of them happened after, but the fact is that was also the time that my wife and I were working through some things in our marriage,” he added.
Nik Richie, the blogger who posted the exchanges on The Dirty, declined to be interviewed, saying in a statement, “I’m just doing my job.” Ben Smith, the editor in chief of BuzzFeed, said a reader had called his attention to the blog posts.
Even within Weiner’s inner circle, which had been shocked by his dishonesty when the original scandal erupted in 2011, there was a wave of surprise and dismay over the disclosures, according to people close to the campaign. But his advisers said Weiner had not seriously considered withdrawing from the campaign, arguing that he had previously warned the public that there might be new revelations.
“I said that other texts and photos were likely to come out and today they have,” Weiner told reporters. “I want to again say that I am very sorry to anyone who was on the receiving end of these messages and the disruption this has caused.”
The timing of the new disclosure, however, is politically perilous: it arrives just as many New Yorkers are tuning into the mayor’s race, and as rivals desperately search for ways to wound Weiner before the 10 September primary. A New York Times/Siena College poll released last week found that 59 percent of New York City’s registered voters said Weiner deserved another chance at elected office, despite his past behavior. About two-thirds of men said he deserved a second chance, compared with about half of the women.
“I hope they are willing to still continue to give me a second chance and I hope they realize that in many ways what happened today was something that frankly had happened before, but it doesn’t represent all that much that is new,” Weiner said.
Weiner rarely shrinks from question-and-answer sessions, relishing his time jousting with reporters. But he seemed wary of a prolonged interrogation. After a few minutes, he turned to his wife, thanked the press and began to turn away. Just then, a reporter lobbed a final inquiry about the latest revelations. “Why should we trust your judgment?”
Weiner kept walking, leaving the question unanswered.

Rico says you can't be chastened and defiant at the same time; he's going with not-ndastened...

Portnoy's complaint

Julie Creswell has an article in The New York Times about big business:

It is a quiet American fortune, a $25 billion empire stretching from Boston to Honolulu that is rarely noticed outside tight business circles. But now the private world of Barry Portnoy, the anti-Trump of American real estate, is being dragged into an uncomfortable spotlight in a drawn-out legal battle for part of his empire.
Portnoy, 67, oversees a wildly lucrative business from unassuming offices in Newton, Massachusetts, west of downtown Boston. In an industry known for big money and bigger egos, he cuts a decidedly unglamorous figure. Portnoy runs his empire on a shoestring and, by most accounts, is far more interested in making money than spending it. For a time, he commuted to work in a Subaru, according to several former employees, and he keeps a low profile even at events like the annual company clambake in the parking lot.
His son and business partner, Adam Portnoy, lives a bit larger. Adam Portnoy’s wife, Elika, was a runner-up in a Miss Bulgaria beauty contest. Said to be an expert marksman, she played a belly dancer in the 2012 Christian Slater thriller Assassin’s Bullet. Adam Portnoy owns a 43-foot yacht called the Mutressa, a Bulgarian term that loosely translates as “gangster’s mistress”. The couple met while working at the World Bank.
What unites father and son, the former employees say, is an abiding love for a hard-nosed deal. In their Newton offices hangs a painting of Wild West bank robbers wearing ill-fitting business suits. It is titled “The Fort Worth Five aka The Board of Directors.”
For years, some investors have grumbled that the Portnoys have enriched themselves at investors’ expense, a claim the Portnoys have dismissed as nonsense. But now some serious financial players are vying for a multibillion-dollar piece of their kingdom, in a legal battle over an obscure real estate investment trust called CommonWealth REIT. On one side are the Portnoys, who have long blurred the lines between their public companies and their private fiefs. On the other is a cohort of New York City money men, among them a protégé of Carl C. Icahn, the quintessential Wall Street gadfly, and associates of Stephen Ross, the Manhattan real estate magnate. Both sides are hurling an accusation often heard when money collides with money: each accuses the other of baldfaced greed.
Whatever the outcome, the imbroglio has trained attention on a web of trusts and partnerships that the Portnoys have long used to pull many millions from CommonWealth and other public entities that own city towers and suburban office complexes across the nation. Last year, their private management company collected nearly two hundred million dollars in various fees and expenses from those businesses. The Portnoy camp says that the dissidents are essentially trying to steal CommonWealth and that courts have repeatedly sided with the Portnoys. In late June, the Portnoys and the rest of the board were voted out, but the Portnoys contend that the vote was invalid and was swayed by their opponents’ hedge fund friends. Starting this week, the dispute will go before an industry arbitration panel.
A crucial issue is the Portnoys’ management arrangement with the funds they oversee. Essentially, they make money through numerous fees they charge no matter how CommonWealth’s share price performs in the stock market, leading one research firm, Green Street Advisors, to brand the Portnoy funds “uninvestible”.
Over the last decade, CommonWealth has returned about 45 percent. That performance might sound great, but it lagged the broad stock market and an index of other real estate investment trusts during that period. Real estate investment trusts (REITs), a popular investment strategy, pay no corporate income tax as long as they distribute ninety percent of their profits as dividends to investors.
Adam Portnoy, 43, staunchly defends the Portnoy way. He says the family has rewarded investors over the years and points out that CommonWealth found ready buyers for new shares that it sold this spring. “If we hadn’t, how would we be able to raise money so readily?” Portnoy said in a telephone interview. “Why are shareholders investing in our companies?”
Barry Portnoy got into real estate in 1986. While a lawyer at the Boston firm of Sullivan & Worcester, he established a real estate investment trust that was initially involved in health care centers.
Former employees, including several who worked closely with the Portnoys, say Barry Portnoy spends long hours poring over numbers, and they characterize him as demanding boss who can be unforgiving at regular Tuesday night strategy meetings. When Adam Portnoy joined the family firm in 2003, after starting an Internet service provider that eventually merged with another service provider, father and son continued to expand their reach into hotels, retirement homes and buildings leased to the government.
As they built their empire, small, dissident investors argued that some of their acquisitions appeared to benefit the Portnoys more than the shareholders. But now bigger, more powerful adversaries have arrived.
Jeff T. Blau, the chief executive of Related Companies, the real estate giant founded by Ross, is one of the New Yorkers now battling the Portnoys. “Maybe if we had known they’d go to such extremes to thwart the will of shareholders, we would have thought twice about doing this,” Blau said during an interview in his office, overlooking Columbus Circle in Midtown Manhattan. The activist role against the Portnoys has pushed Related into new and uncomfortable territory.
Blau and Keith Meister, a former top lieutenant of Icahn who now runs his own hedge fund, invested heavily in CommonWealth earlier this year. The two said they believed the stock was undervalued, contending that, with some improvements, the buildings could draw higher rents. In late February, Related and Meister’s firm, Corvex Capital, disclosed that they together controlled nearly ten percent of CommonWealth. The Portnoys promptly began a vigorous defense.
Eventually the dissidents sought support from heavyweight investors like Richard Perry, a prominent New York City hedge fund manager. They also started making multiple offers to buy CommonWealth at above-market prices, but the fund’s trustees decided against a sale, calling the offers “illusory”, unfinanced, and an attempt to “seize control”. “There was no offer,” Adam Portnoy said. “They wrote on a piece of paper that they might, on a very conditional basis, maybe they would pay a certain price. That’s not an offer.”
Blau shakes his head at that statement. “It’s in writing, and we sent it to the board,” Blau said.
In late June, Corvex and Related announced that seventy percent of CommonWealth shareholders had voted to remove the entire board. The Portnoys said that the vote did not follow rules and that it was influenced by a group of shareholders— hedge fund pals of Corvex and Related— who have since sold their stake. It now falls to an arbitration panel to decide. “In all of my experience, I’ve never seen a management team react with such disregard for corporate value and such personal self-interest as a motivation,” said Meister of Corvex.
But the Portnoys say they are on the side of everyday shareholders. “Everything we’ve always done has been in the best interest of shareholders,” Adam Portnoy said. “When we come in to work every day, our focus is on the common shareholders and executing on the business plan. And it’s starting to work. But it needs a little more time to come to fruition.”

Rico says he, of course, was intrigued by the address... (And isn't a 'Miss Bulgaria beauty contest' a contradiction in terms?) But it's hard to feel sorry for people with that much money...

Apple for the day

Brian Chen has an article in The New York Times about Apple and its stock:

The news was not particularly good for Apple: revenue was flat, profit was lower, and even the sales of iPads were down. Investors did not seem to mind, at least in the short term, sending the company’s shares about four percent higher in after-hours trading. Strong iPhone sales helped beat the expectations of Wall Street.
But Apple’s earnings report highlighted some of the challenges the company faces as it continues to expand overseas. The company sells plenty of devices in the United States, but sales have lagged in some larger overseas markets, which are crucial for its future growth.
China has been especially problematic for the company. Overall sales of Apple devices in China fell doue percent compared with the same quarter last year. And, in Hong Kong, Apple’s sales were down about twenty percent — a trend that Timothy D. Cook (photo), the company’s chief executive, found puzzling.
“Hong Kong is an international shopping haven,” Cook said on the company’s earnings call in response to an analyst’s questions about Apple’s performance in China. “We saw some dramatic downturn there. It’s not totally clear exactly why that occurred.”
Gaining a foothold in foreign markets is becoming increasingly vital for Apple. Its growth has slowed in the most recent quarters, as its devices have largely saturated the United States and some top markets in Europe.
The tepid growth has led many investors to clamor for a new blockbuster product to restart growth and give Apple’s sagging stock a much-needed lift. But no such product has been announced. For several quarters now, Cook has suggested that the company has plenty of new products in the pipeline, and that some could reach the public this fall or next year. The company could decide to introduce a cheaper iPhone to spur growth in China and other foreign markets, or even a so-called smartwatch that would compete in a brand-new market of wearable computers. Those ideas have long been discussed and considered at the company.
“Competition is heating up,” said Laurence Isaac Balter, chief market strategist at Oracle Investment Research, which has clients that own Apple shares. “They need to come up with some game-changers pretty soon.”
The third quarter is typically a slow time for Apple. That is because the company traditionally introduces a new iPhone model in the fall, so in the summer many consumers are waiting for the next model to be released.
But sales of iPhones were strong. The company sold over thirty million iPhones, up from 26 million in the same period a year ago. It was the most Apple had ever sold in a third quarter.
Those sales helped generate a net income in the third quarter of $6.9 billion, or $7.47 a share. But that was down from $8.8 billion in the same quarter a year earlier. The company said revenue was roughly flat at $35.3 billion, from $35 billion a year ago.
The net income beat the expectations of Wall Street analysts. They had expected $7.32 a share and revenue of $35 billion, according to a survey by Thomson Reuters.
Analysts closely watch Apple’s gross profit margins. For the third quarter, Apple’s gross margin was 36.9 percent, down from 42.8 percent a year ago. In April, Apple warned that its gross margin would continue to fall in the fiscal third quarter to 36 to 37 percent.
Strong sales of Apple’s cheaper iPads and older iPhones are putting the squeeze on the margins. Apple did not disclose how many of each phone or tablet model it sold, but it said that, while its iPhone 5 was the best seller, sales of the previous generations, the iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S, were also strong. Late last year, Apple added the cheaper iPad Mini to its lineup. Even with the Mini, however, Apple’s iPad sales were a disappointment, coming in at 14.6 million for the quarter, missing analyst estimates for 16.7 million. Mac sales were also down slightly, at 3.8 million, from 4 million a year ago.
Investors concerned about Apple’s growth have punished the company’s stock. The stock price has fallen by roughly forty percent from its peak of $705.07 in September. Shares closed at $418.99 on Tuesday, down 1.7 percent, before gaining ground in after-hours trading.
Apple may face a challenge in China, but the tech industry’s other two giants, Microsoft and Google, have their struggles, too. Microsoft posted a profit of almost five billion dollars for the quarter, missing expectations of analysts, thanks in part to disappointing sales of its Surface tablet and an industrywide decline in sales of personal computers. Google also posted a profit, of $3.23 billion, but still missed analysts’ expectations as its desktop search business continued to slow and ad prices shrank.
Cook told investors to stay optimistic about Apple in China. About half a million people there are creating apps for iOS, Apple’s mobile software system for iPhones and iPads, he said. Sales of the iPad in greater China were up eight percent and up 37 percent in mainland China, he said. “Over the arc of time, China is a huge opportunity for Apple,” Cook said, “so I don’t get discouraged over a ninety-day kind of cycle with economic factors.”

Rico says he remembers buying Apple shares at fifteen bucks apiece, so this 'downturn' is hardly the catastrophe they make it out to be...

The good part, for the Russians at least

Andrew Kramer has an article in The New York Times about the good part of global warming:

The polar ice cap is melting and, if executives at the Russian energy company Novatek feel guilty about profiting from that, they do not let it be known in public. From the windswept shores of the Arctic Ocean, where Novatek owns enormous natural gas deposits, a stretch of thousands of miles of ice-free water leads to China. The company intends to ship the gas directly there. “If we don’t sell them the fuel, somebody else will,” Mikhail Lozovoi, a spokesman for Novatek, said last month with a shrug.
Novatek, in partnership with the French energy company Total and the China National Petroleum Corporation, is building a twenty billion dollar liquefied natural gas plant on the central Arctic coast of Russia. It is one of the first major energy projects to take advantage of the summer thawing of the Arctic caused by global warming.
The plant, called Yamal LNG, would send gas to Asia along the sea lanes known as the Northeast Passage, which opened for regular international shipping only four years ago.
Whatever blame for the grim environmental consequences of global warming elsewhere in the world that might be placed on the petroleum industry, in the Far North, companies like Novatek and Total, Exxon Mobil of the United States, and Statoil of Norway, stand to make profit. “It’s a reality of what is available today, and commercially it is a route that cuts cost,” Emily Stromquist, a global energy analyst at the Eurasia Group, said in a telephone interview.
Because of easing ice conditions and new hull designs, the tankers will not even require nuclear-powered icebreakers to lead the way— as is the practice now— except through the most northerly straits.
Novatek’s alternative was extending the natural gas pipeline that goes to Europe over hundreds of miles of tundra, at great cost. While shipping the gas from the field on the Yamal Peninsula, one of the long, misshapen fingers of land that extend north of the Urals in Russia, remains expensive, it is relatively cheap to drill and produce from these rich fields, making the overall project competitive.
In addition to making it easier to ship to Asia, the receding ice cap has opened more of the sea floor to exploration. This has upended the traditional business model of using pipelines to Europe. Thawing has proceeded more slowly in the Arctic above Alaska, Canada, and Greenland, but one day what is happening in Russia could happen there.
Still, the Arctic waters are particularly perilous for drilling, because of the extreme cold. Tongues of ice that descend from the polar cap for hundreds of miles obstruct shipping and threaten rigs. After a rig ran aground last year, Shell canceled drilling this summer in the Chukchi Sea off Alaska.
This is not the first Arctic venture to benefit from newly-cleared sea lanes. The decision to open the Arctic Ocean to drilling passed Russia’s Parliament in 2008 as an amendment to a law on subsoil resources. Exxon and Rosneft, the Russian state oil company, are already in a joint venture to drill in the Kara Sea, and last month they agreed to expand to seven new exploration blocks in the Arctic. Fourteen wells are planned. With these ventures, Exxon has placed itself in the vanguard of oil companies exploring commercial opportunities in the newly ice-free waters.
In Russia, the mining company Norilsk can now ship its nickel and copper across the Arctic Ocean without chartering icebreakers, saving millions of rubles for shareholders.
Norway is also drilling deep in Arctic waters, but has less territory to explore. Tschudi, a Norwegian shipping company, has bought and revived an idled iron ore mine in the north of Norway to ship ore to China via the northern route.
In northwest Alaska, the Red Dog lead and zinc mine moves its ore through the Bering Strait, which is less often clogged with packed ice than in past decades.
What is new in the Novatek project is an oil industry business plan that relies explicitly on the Northeast Passage. Though Russian ships have moved goods along the country’s sprawling Arctic coastline for more than a century, and the route was opened to international shipping in 1991, it became apparent only recently that climate change would make the trip profitable.
The German shipping company Beluga made the first international commercial transit in 2009. The first transshipment with fuel, a cargo of gas condensate bound for China, crossed in 2010. By last summer, just three years after the first passage, fifty ships crossed above Russia, including eight tankers chartered by Novatek to test the route.
Novatek has said it needs bank guarantees for sixteen billion dollars in project financing, while it and its partners will finance the rest. To secure these loans, the company needs a change in Russian law lifting Gazprom’s monopoly for exports.
President Vladimir V. Putin, in a speech at an economic conference on 21 June, said the law would change before this year was out, signaling that Yamal LNG had full Kremlin backing.
If Russia can ship large volumes of gas to Asia, it could send ripples through the Asian markets, and put a damper on plans to build liquefied natural gas export terminals in the Gulf of Mexico. The United States and Russia are the world’s two leading gas producers.
Novatek has been experimenting with commercial models to complement the new shipping route. To fulfill contracts in the winter, when the northern route is more hazardous, the company can ship gas west over northern Russia, then around Europe, through the Suez Canal, and onward to Asia.
It has also negotiated with Qatar, a major Middle Eastern natural gas exporter, for a swap arrangement to save tanker fuel and time: Qatar would fulfill Novatek’s Asian contracts during the winter, while Novatek, in exchange, would fill Qatar’s contracts to European customers during those months.
The company intends to open the Arctic plant by 2016. It has already asked for bids for two ice-hardened tankers, which should be able to navigate the sea lanes toward China seven months a year, and the routes to the west year round.
It says it has mastered building in the Far North where, counterintuitively, Russians labor mainly through the cold polar night in winter, when the tundra is more accessible to heavy equipment.
The company, Lozovoi said, is keeping an eye on climate studies of the Arctic. He said that because of engineering tolerances built into the ship designs, “even if the climate turns toward cooling, and the ice thickens, we will make money.”

Rico says a ruble here, a ruble there, it all adds up...

A half-zillion dollar idea

Rico says it is a great product, and he uses it regularly. But the recent comment that "the guy who invented that made millions" is only about half correct, as Rico has to return just about every other one when it gets a hole in it and leaks... (And pisses him off.)

History for the day

On 25 July 1956, the Italian liner Andrea Doria collided with the Swedish ship Stockholm off Nantucket, Massachusetts, claiming the lives of 51 people.

Record year for Hollywood profits

Idiot for the day

Mark Molloy has an article in the UK Metro about a drunken idiot:

Now that’s what you call an expensive bar tab.
A caretaker employed to safeguard $100,000 worth of vintage whiskey is being prosecuted after apparently deciding to drink it all instead. John Saunders, 62, is to stand trial, accused of downing more than fifty bottles of the expensive booze over a twelve-month period. He was entrusted to protect the hundred-year-old precious cargo while living as a tenant at a historic Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania inn, a preliminary hearing heard last week.
Owner Patricia Hill found the liquor, hidden during prohibition, when she bought the historic manor, WTAE reports. However, she made a shocking discovery in March of 2013, when she found all the bottles had been emptied. After a seven-month police investigation, the landlord brought charges against her former tenant, whose DNA was found all over the bottles.
‘There were four cases, 52 bottles, manufactured by an old distillery here in the Township that went out of business many years ago,’ explained police chief Barry Pritts. ‘The family that owned the estate, somebody hid it under a flight of stairs and enclosed the staircase, and the estate went through several families. The lady that owns it now was doing a remodeling project and the people who were doing the work found them.’
Saunders, who denies drinking the alcohol, said that the ‘whiskey probably evaporated and, being that old, it was probably no good’.
Hill had been planning to donate the bottles to a museum.

Rico says yeah, it was so no good he drank it all...

150th Gettysburg self-congratulations

Rico says he is proud to have been a reenactor at the 150th:

The 150th Gettysburg Anniversary National Civil War Reenactment is now just a memory, but what a fabulous memory it is! There were approximately eleven thousand reenactors, one hundred forty cannons, four hundred horses, and sixty thousand spectators over the four days. There were seventy cannons per side for Pickett's Charge, possibly the most ever on the field. The Wheatfield engagement on Friday and Pickett's Charge on Sunday can only be described as spectacular. The Gettysburg Anniversary Committee, the military command staff, and the living history staff were well aware that the excitement and expectations of the reenactors, visitors, and the community was very high for this special event. As a matter of fact, over the top could be a more apt description. That fact became even more obvious every day and every hour as we talked to visitors and reenactors from across the country and around the world; and they expressed what the event meant to them. In the end it meant a lot of different things, to a lot of different people. Personally listening to all those reasons was revealing, satisfying and emotional. If you missed this event, you missed one of the best reenactments ever!
It is with not one ounce of exaggeration that the positive comments, accolades and job well done remarks are coming in bunches from reenactors, visitors, and the Gettysburg community for the 150th Gettysburg National Reenactment. As reenactors were leaving the site on Sunday, after being soaked and then stuck for some time in typical post-large-event traffic, time after time they rolled down their window and said to the staff "great event, job well done, thank you, we will be back." As visitors stood in line, drenched in the pouring down rain after Pickett's Charge on Sunday, waiting to load shuttle buses, they had nothing but positive comments, attitudes and observations regarding the scenarios and event organization. Community leaders and residents have nothing but good things to say about this event, organization and execution. General Gesuero echoes that sentiment in his commander's post by saying: "With an unprecedented level of cooperation on all levels, this event was an outstanding success. The feedback we have had has been overwhelmingly positive and it continues to flood in. General Baldwin also accurately comments in his post that "the 150th Gettysburg National Reenactment will be remembered as the pinnacle of 150th events."
We must tell you, as a community organization that has worked tirelessly for eighteen years to do these events responsibly, those comments and remarks are very gratifying given the significance, anticipation, and dynamics for this event.
With all the aforementioned compliments, there was one compliment that was especially noteworthy and appreciated. At the officers soirée Saturday evening at the historic Entwistle homestead, ANV General Jake Jennette reflected on the week, and made the following observation: in his 37 years of reenacting, this was the best event he had ever attended, including the numerous events he had personally organized or helped organize. He also commented that GAC listened to the reenactment community and followed through with every single thing they promised. That is high praise indeed! Thank you, General Jennette! Also very worthy of notice and recognition was General Ron Palase leading his troops and defending the wall during Pickett's Charge for the last time. Well done and thank you, General Palese, for your eighteen years of friendship and support!! We would also like to thank General Baldwin and General Gesuero and all their staffs, as well as our own GAC staff, living history coordinator Kirk Davis, as well as the Redding and Entwistle families, for their tireless efforts in the past year to help make this reenactment one to remember for a life-time for reenactors, visitors, and the community. When you have a chance, give Generals Baldwin, Gesuero and coordinator Kirk Davis a pat on the back and personal thank you for their supreme effort in making this a great event!

More Apple for the day

The Associated Press has a squib about Apple:

Apple’s latest quarterly report confirms the iPhone maker’s growth has stalled along with its pace of innovation.
The results announced recently mark the second straight quarter that Apple Inc.’s earnings have fallen from the previous year, after a decade of steadily rising profits. The company earned $6.9 billion, or $7.47 per share, in its fiscal third quarter, a 22 percent drop from $8.8 billion, or $9.32 per share.
Despite the erosion, Apple fared slightly better than analysts had anticipated. That helped lift Apple’s stock by $22.01, or more than five percent, to $441 in extended trading after the financial results came out. The shares remain down by more than 35 percent since the latest model of the iPhone came out ten months ago.
Apple’s revenue for the three months ending 29 June barely budged from last year. That’s the smallest revenue increase since the Cupertino, California company unleashed a mobile computing revolution with the iPhone’s debut six years ago.
Apple hasn’t released another breakthrough product since the iPad came out three years ago, raising concerns the company has lost its touch since the death in October of 2011 of founder Steve Jobs.
The earnings topped the average estimate of $7.31 per share among analysts surveyed by FactSet. Revenue totaled $35.3 billion versus $35 billion a year ago. Analysts had projected that revenue would be unchanged from a year ago.
As usual, Apple was propelled by its iPhone sales. The company sold 31.2 million units in the quarter, a twenty percent increase from the same time year ago. But many people were evidently buying the earlier generations of the smartphone, which cost less than the latest model and generate smaller profit margins for the company. iPhones sold for an average of $581 in the past quarter, down from an average of $608 a year ago.
The same phenomenon squeezed Apple’s profits with the iPad. To make matters worse, the company sold fourteen percent fewer tablets: 14.6 million in the past quarter, compared with seventeen million a year ago.

Rico says it's a problem we should all have...

New Google tablets?

Time has an AP article about Google:

Google is expected to unveil the next generation of its Nexus tablets soon, in its latest challenge to Apple’s market-leading iPad and Amazon’s Kindle Fire.
The new devices are likely to be the main attraction at a San Francisco event being hosted by Google Inc. executive Sundar Pichai, who oversees the company’s Android and Chrome operating systems. The Nexus line of tablets that came out a year ago all run on the Android software that also powers hundreds of millions of smartphones.
Google hasn’t revealed the reason for tne event, but pictures of what’s purported to be the upgraded versions of the Nexus tablet have been posted on the Internet during the past few days, fueling speculation that Google is poised to release the new devices.
The current versions of the Nexus tablets feature seven-inch and ten-inch displays, and are set up to encourage users to buy music, video, and applications from Google’s Play store.
Since its introduction last summer, the seven-inch model has proven particular popular among consumers looking for a less expensive alternative to Apple’s iPad. A Nexus 7 with sixteen gigabytes of storage, sells for $199, the same price as a Kindle Fire HD with a seven-inch display. That compares to $499 for an iPad with a 10-inch screen and the same amount of storage. Google sell a Nexus with a 10-inch display and the same amount of storage for $399.
The popularity of the less expensive and smaller Nexus and Kindle Fire tablets is one of the main reasons that Apple released the iPad Mini with an eight-inch screen last year. Apple sells its smaller tablet for $329.

Rico says that Nexus 6 will always be a Blade Runner term...

Apple for the day

Sam Gustin has a Time article about the Apple 'juggernaut':

It’s been nearly two years since Steve Jobs died.
Since then, Apple has been challenged by Congress over controversial labor practices at its sprawling contract factories in China and dubious tax maneuvers designed to stash cash overseas. At home, Apple has waged an all-out proxy-war against arch-rival Google, which has developed the world’s leading smart phone operating system, called Android. Since the iPad was released in 2010, there have been few new major consumer product breakthroughs from Apple.
Meanwhile, South Korean tech giant Samsung has started to chip away at Apple’s dominance in the high-end smartphone market, thanks to its reliance on Google’s Android mobile operating system. Since last summer, Apple’s share price has declined by thirty percent, as investors and consumers alike have waited for the company to introduce another breakthrough product. Consumers are wondering if the company’s ability to radically innovate died along with its longtime leader, the late, revered Steve Jobs.
One year ago, I asked if Apple was starting to lose its shine. I was beset by Apple fanboys who thought I was nuts. One later, Apple shares have fallen by thirty percent, wiping out billions in shareholder value. And we’re still waiting for Apple’s next breakthrough product. What if Apple, the greatest US business success story of the past decade, has finally lost its mojo?
If Apple is a company in decline, well, we should all be so virile in our dotage. The Cupertino, California–based tech juggernaut recently reported that it sold a mind-boggling thirty million iPhones last quarter, handily beating Wall Street expectations. The strong iPhone results sent Apple shares up five percent in after-hours trading, and provided a strong demonstration of the company’s ongoing tech market mastery.
“Apple had a very solid quarter,” said Scott Kessler, head of technology research at S&P Capital IQ. That’s an understatement. The sheer volume of Apple’s business is staggering. “We are especially proud of our record June quarter iPhone sales of over thirty million and the strong growth in revenue from iTunes, software, and services,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. The company also sold 14.6 million iPads, but that figure fell short of Wall Street expectations, in part because consumers are waiting for a new Apple tablet device to be announced.
“The iPhone number should provide some comfort to investors who were worried about smartphone demand. That’s one of the reasons the stock is up,” Shannon Cross of Cross Research told Reuters. Over the past three months, Apple earned a profit of $6.9 billion on revenue of $35.3 billion. For the next quarter, Apple predicted revenue of $34 billion to $37 billion, somewhat below Wall Street’s average estimate of $37 billion, but generally within range.
On the post-earnings conference call with analysts, Apple executives didn’t provide many details about new products, in keeping with their custom. The tech world has been rife with speculation that Apple will release a new television-connected device, or possibly a wearable computing gadget to compete with Google Glass, supposedly by the holiday season. Apple shareholders and consumers alike have been waiting to see what the Silicon Valley icon does next. “We are on track to have a very busy fall,” Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer told Wall Street analysts.
In the meantime, Apple’s cheerleaders are playing a waiting game. “It’s not been a particularly pleasant couple of months,” says Kessler, whose firm has been bullish on Apple stock over the past year. Apple’s stock swoon has wiped out tens of billions of dollars in shareholder value. Kessler says Apple is changing from a high-growth company to a more mature “steady-Eddie” type firm. In one of the more reliable parts of the business, Apple generated four billion dollars from its iTunes music and media system in the past quarter.
But high-growth or steady-Eddie, the undeniable fact remains that Apple is a monster of American business. The company sold approximately forty million high-priced gadgets over the past three months. Think about that. Apple’s CEO Tim Cook, a cool operational wizard, has been streamlining the company’s business to ensure that iPhones and iPads don’t sit in warehouses waiting to be sold. Apple is sitting on nearly $150 billion in cash and short-term securities.
Earlier this year, Apple lost the title of world’s largest firm by market capitalization, a distinction that once again belongs to energy giant ExxonMobil. Pundits will probably continue to say Apple has lost its mojo because the company hasn’t released a new breakthrough device since Jobs died. But, by Apple’s standards, losing your mojo means making seven billion dollars in profit on $35 billion in sales. In three months. Not bad.

Rico says that there's another word you don't hear much these days: juggernaut... But if you look at seven billion dollars in profit, that'd be a respectable sales figure for almost any other company.

Rico wonders...

...is it supposed to look like Obama?

History for the day

During a visit to the then-Soviet Union, Vice President Richard M. Nixon got into a discussion at a US trade exhibition with Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev that was dubbed the ''kitchen debate''.

Scam for the day

Sent from my iPhone

Mark Seymour

215.866.6184

mseymour@proofmark.com

Begin forwarded message:

From: MRS MARIA BONGI NTULI <ggg-xxx@o2.pl>
Date: July 24, 2013, 5:51:13 EDT
To: undisclosed-recipients:;
Subject:       HELLO  MY DEAR

No surprise there

Brian X. McCrone has a short article at Philly.com about the post-Hurricane Sandy birth rate:

How would one describe New Jersey shore residents' sex lives? Stronger than the storm. An analysis by the Asbury Park Press found that births at shore-area hospitals this month— nine months after Hurricane Sandy struck the coast— showed a significant increase year-over-year that doesn't surprise some experts in post-storm fertility. (Yes, there are professionals that study that.) Monmouth Medical Center in Long Branch, New Jersey has experienced a 35-percent jump in births this month compared to July 2012 and nearby Jersey Shore and Ocean medical centers have seen twenty-percent increases, the APP found. An economics professor at Brigham Young University, Richard W. Evans, who has studied the effects of big storms on fertility, told the newspaper he isn't surprised at the finding, and even noted that the post-Sandy birth rate may be even higher than other storms he has studied. "If your lights go out and your electricity goes out, but you can stay in your house, fertility increases," Evans said, but he added that it doesn't apply as easily to those displaced by devastating storms: "If you are running for your life or being evacuated or flooded out, you are not making babies." A 2010 paper he co-authored with three other professors titled The Fertility Effect of Catastrophe: U.S. Hurricane Births found just that: for those who received low-level warnings of the threat of an impending storm, fertility increases. But those who were told to leave their homes because of deadly threats coming, the opposite effect on fertility occurs. "For every 24 hours of extra tropical storm or hurricane watch, you had a two percent increase in births nine months later," Evans and his colleagues found. As the APP's analysis found, the jump in New Jersey residents' fertility rate is proving much stronger than that.

Rico says fuck that, unless they're all getting named Sandy...

By George...

Philly.com has an article about the boy-who-would-be-King:

Rico says that, at first, he could only find references to the Prince of Cambridge, not an actual name for the boy, but Google, as ever, came to the rescue with an article from the Metro in the UK:

The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge have announced their newborn son is to be called George Alexander Louis. He will be officially known as His Royal Highness Prince George of Cambridge, a spokesman for the couple announced. The Prince of Cambridge, who is the third in line to the throne, was born at St Mary’s Hospital in west London on Monday.
Kensington Palace said, in a short statement: ‘The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge are delighted to announce that they have named their son George Alexander Louis. The baby will be known as His Royal Highness Prince George of Cambridge.’
The name George is synonymous with British kings. Six King Georges have worn the crown throughout history including George I, the first Hanoverian King of Great Britain in 1714.
The last British king to be named George was George VI, Queen Elizabeth’s father and the newly-named Prince George’s great-great-grandfather. His first name was actually Albert, and he was known to his family as Bertie, but he selected George, his fourth name, to use as sovereign.
There has only been one other Prince of Cambridge, and he was also called George.

Television review for the day

Rico says that, in spite of the deity reference, he's watching the premiere of God, Guns, & Automobiles, a new History Channel series set in a small town in Missouri, which could be used to scare off illegal immigrants and vacationing Europeans...

History for the day

On 23 July 1914, Austria-Hungary issued an ultimatum to Serbia following the killing of Archduke Francis Ferdinand by a Serb assassin; the dispute led to World War One.

Rico says look how well that turned out for everyone...

Trayvon for the day

Rico says his friend Kema forwards this:

I am a 56-year-old white man, whose father came from eastern European immigrants and whose mother came from the Confederate families of Virginia. I am married to an African-American woman. I have a mixed-race son of seventeen years, who I fear for every day.
On the day Trayvon Martin was murdered, my view of myself as a father was forever altered. This case, and the subsequent verdict, have underscored for me that this country has not yet moved beyond the racism used to justify the abhorrent institution of slavery.  It is more insidious now, being hidden in code language and insinuation, rather than explicit statement. Although I can never fully appreciate the experiences and fears of a black man, I now know the fear in the heart of every black father.
My goal is to keep the conversation about race going, with my son and anyone willing to have an open mind and heart; to make clear not all white men harbor these beliefs; that likely most of us wish to have fairness and justice to be independent of the color of one’s skin. I will write and talk about this to whoever will listen.
I will work as hard as I can to move against the NRA (who is mysteriously silent on this case), because it is my firm belief that this frightened little man, without his concealed gun, would never have escalated his actions to the point of confronting this teenager, much less shooting him dead.
I will work to see that Stand Your Ground initiatives fail wherever I can, because Trayvon Martin wasn’t afforded his right to stand his ground after being stalked and harassed by a strange adult; that Stand Your Ground is a license to kill: an instrument of oppression.
I fear for my country if we white men cannot overcome our silly fear of the future, one where a stacked deck doesn’t give us an unfair advantage. We are Americans, goddammit, we don’t fear the future. I will not fear the future. I will embrace it.
This is my pledge.

Rico says he doesn't agree with the guy's views, but will defend his right to express them...

Microsoft in crisis

Matthew Yglesias has a Slate article about Microsoft:

It's been an awfully long time since Microsoft's been sexy or gotten a ton of buzz, so it's easy to overlook how well it's done in practice. Well, that is, until last week when suddenly all the doubts about the firm that have simmered for years seemed to be striking. Here's a long view of Microsoft's stock:
The long road up, the bubble of the late 1990s, and then a remarkable stability built on solid, consistent, high Windows/Office-driven profits and steady dividends.
But last week:

That's all about their fourth quarter earnings report, where both revenues and profits came in billions of dollars below Wall Street expectations. Even more disturbing, the company acknowledged nine hundred million dollars of inventory write downs based on Surface RT machines. That's when a company acknowledges, for accounting purposes, that they aren't actually going to be able to sell products they've already built, so the inventory doesn't have the value they originally attributed to it anymore. That matters not just because of the nine hundred million, but because of what it says about the company's ability to escape the steady decline of the traditional PC form factor, especially as ultra-cheap Chromebooks start attacking the low end of the shrinking market.
The interesting thing about this is that, for all Microsoft's problems, it's still a big and enormously profitable company. Its Windows/Office operation is shrinking but lucrative, and its enterprise business doesn't seem to have enormous growth potential but it is, again, quite lucrative. ValueAct, an activist investment management firm based in San Francisco, has been buying up shares and clamoring for a seat on the board as well as a change in strategic direction. Over the weekend, Reuters broke the news that Microsoft is entering serious negotiations over the board seat. But a board seat is rarely just a board seat. Back in April, ValueAct's Jeffrey Ubben explained that his vision was for Microsoft to forget about consumer products and focus on cloud computing, while demanding board seats sure seems like a vote of no confidence in the current management team.
It's a fascinating drama and a striking outbreak of weakness for a firm that less than fifteen years ago was widely regarded as an abusive monopoly.

Rico says that people should remember that the company (or so a vicious Apple-employee rumor had it) that the company was named after Bill Gates' private parts... And is that Steve Ballmer (photo) doing his best Hitler impression? (Nah, wrong arm.) But, oddly enough, Apple's stock keeps going up...

More Apple for the day

Harry McCracken has a Time article about scum-of-the-earth hackers hitting Apple:

Last week, Apple’s developer site— the place it uses to provide information and downloads to folks who write software for OS X and iOS— went down. As I write, it’s still offline— an uncommonly long time for an unplanned outage, especially given that developers are working with beta versions of the company’s operating systems, both of which are due to ship this fall.
But now Apple has finally offered a (brief) explanation of what’s up. (See message above.) The company says that an intruder tried to break into the site. It’s not sure whether the person in question got at any names, e-mail addresses, or mailing addresses, but it says that unspecified “sensitive personal information” was encrypted. The Loop’s Jim Dalrymple says that the information of normal, non-developer customers— that is, all of us with iTunes accounts— was not at risk.
Apple also reports that it’s working around the clock to secure the site and the information it contains and hopes to be up and running “soon.” And it apologizes for the inconvenience. Some people are already grumbling on Twitter about the time it took for Apple to disclose the breach; others are defending the delay. But it’s hard to come to any conclusions about how swiftly the company moved, as long as we don’t know just when it figured out what had happened. Even though it’s the world’s most famously closed-mouthed tech company, I hope it releases more facts about the break-in once it’s bolstered its defenses.
Marco Arment has a comment on a TechCrunch story from someone who claims to have found a bug which allowed him to access information on Apple developers:

He says he notified Apple of his discovery shortly before the company shut down the developer site, and he includes a video, with jazzy music, showing off what he found. The person in question says he's a security researcher rather than a hacker, but he also seems to say he broke into Apple's system. If you, like me, don't consider "hacker" to be an inherently negative job description, he sure sounds like a hacker to me, assuming his claims are true.

Rico says that we should bring back thumbscrews for some people. (Yeah, and go medieval on their ass....)

Don't wanna

Ben Bajarin has a Time article about not switching:

Many prominent tech writers get lots of attention by writing about how they’re switching from the iPhone to Android. I know several of these individuals and speak with other writers frequently, and so I thought an interesting angle to explore would be the reasons why I’m not switching to Android.
To lay the groundwork for my points you need to understand that I have in my possession all the flagship Android, Windows Phone, and BlackBerry devices. I’ve tried and tested them all, using them as my primary phones for a period of time in order to form an opinion. I’m aware of the fact that this is a luxury not all have. Still, my conclusion is that they aren’t for me.
I wrote last year in a column that our technology picks are simply matters of personal preference. Because someone chooses Android and another chooses the iPhone isn’t a big deal, and it’s certainly not something worth arguing about. The fact that I’m not switching to Android or any other platform isn’t a big deal. That said, there is an interesting dimension to this conversation worth talking about.
The reason I can make the claim that I’m not switching to Android or Windows or BlackBerry is because I’m a mature smartphone user. I was one of the earliest adopters of the devices, so I’ve been using smartphones as long as anyone. Whether you consider the Kyocera 6035 or the Handspring Treo the first true smartphone, I’ve used them all since they hit the market. If you want to get technical about it, I even had exposure to the IBM Simon, which for many is the first smartphone.
Because I’ve been using smartphones for so long, I’ve had the luxury of being able to fully define my likes and dislikes. More salient to this consumer-psychology point, I know why I like certain things and dislike others. This helps me very quickly filter out potential choices when it comes to smartphones.
What we need to recognize about today’s smartphone market is that, although smartphones have high penetration in developed markets, we don’t have high penetration of mature smartphone owners. Many hundreds of millions of consumers are on their first or second smartphone; these customers have not yet had sufficient years of exposure to these devices for their preferences to coalesce. It makes sense, then, that we still see evidence in the market today of a certain percentage of people trying out different platforms in order to identify what they like and don’t like.
This explains why we see writers saying they’re switching from iPhone to Android, and even writers saying they’re switching back to the iPhone after living with an Android device. If we understand the dynamics of how a market matures, none of this should surprise us. Just because a prominent blogger writes that he’s switching from the iPhone to Android (or vice versa) hardly spells doom for Apple.
Analysts, pundits, Wall Street folk, and the like will look at slight variances in market share and claim that a platform is more dynamic than static, causing them to make incorrect assumptions about the health of a particular platform or company. Some will read into a small market-share dip and deem that said company is doomed, when in reality we’re simply seeing consumer experimentation causing fluctuation. This is a natural evolution in the maturation process of any given technology market. When we understand this, cooler heads can prevail.
The big question isn’t whether consumers will experiment with different smartphone platforms— a certain percentage always will— but rather which smartphone platform will consumers eventually commit to. Over the next decade, as we see this play out at a global level, we’ll have a much clearer idea of which platforms can stand the test of time.
Let’s address the point: as I continually try to make clear, technology choices are highly personal. Things that matter to me may not matter to you, and thus we may appreciate different things for different reasons. But for me, my choice to stick with the iPhone has everything to do with how productive I can be with iOS while mobile. Whenever I use an Android phone as my primary phone (or a Windows Phone, or the BlackBerry devices), I feel a profound drop in my productivity. This does not mean that I can’t be productive on other platforms, but that I am most productive while mobile with iOS. Whether that’s e-mail, project collaboration, document and tasks synchronization, key apps I use for work and personal things, collaboration on tasks or calendar with family, and a host of other functions, I am the most productive and effective in work and personal matters with iOS.
I have nothing against other platforms, and many alternatives to the iPhone have things I appreciate. But those things haven’t been worth the trade-offs.
That said, I’m all for market experimentation. I’ve had friends and family tell me they wanted to try a new smartphone just to see how they’d like it compared with whatever they currently own. To help them narrow the search, I’ll assess the key features they’re interested in, then make a recommendation.
Experimentation within any market is key to that market’s maturity as well as the evolution of the hardware, software and services promising solutions to these customers. We don’t all drive the same make and model cars, and, likewise, we’ll never all use the same smartphone platform. This is good for consumers and healthy for the market. We need to learn how not to overreact to this sort of necessary experimentation, which occurs naturally as consumers learn what they want and don’t want from new and evolving technology.

Rico says he may be an immature user, but you couldn't get his iPhone away from him with a gub...