Apple is biting back

Wired has a story by Brian Chen about Apple's plan to eat Silicon Valley:

Apple CEO Steve Jobs suggested that the cash-rich computer and phone maker might be in a good position to start snapping up struggling tech companies. During Apple's earnings call Tuesday, Steve Jobs proudly reported that Apple had $25 billion "safely in the bank", and zero debt. More interestingly, he said he saw a bright side to the economic meltdown. "This downturn may also present some extraordinary opportunities for companies that have the cash to take advantage of it," Jobs said. The obvious opportunity given the country's state of financial ruin is for Apple to swoop in on smaller companies while they're vulnerable and cheap. But with the iPhone netting $4.6 billion in revenue this quarter, making Apple the world's third-largest mobile supplier, it's difficult to imagine what exactly Apple would need to acquire.
The company is flush with cash, has a solid lock on the suppliers and wireless carriers it depends on, and has plenty of talent on its payroll. Plus, many of the obvious acquisition targets on the market now (such as Dell or Yahoo) are stumbling commodity vendors with no clear direction and a dubious track record of innovation, especially recently, not exactly Apple's kind of companies.
So if Apple is going to make acquisitions, where is it likely to focus its attention in the coming year?
Wired spoke to three financial analysts who were each stumped by the question. In the past, the vast majority of Apple acquisitions have been software-related. And, given the huge success of not only the iPhone but Apple's popular MacBook line as well, it doesn't appear the corporation needs to absorb any of the smaller companies that provide hardware components. Here's a rundown of some possibilities.
Adobe
Apple markets its computers as ideal for creative users, and a vast number use Macs to run Adobe software. But Adobe's market capitalization currently stands at $13.3 billion, half of Apple's piggy bank. Besides, Apple historically acquires smaller companies that they can still influence to fit their own vision, and Adobe's far too mature for that.
Synaptics
A much smaller company that Apple could target is Synaptics, which manufactures the touch pads for iPods. Synaptics also develops touchpads for an iPod competitor, the Creative Zen, so theoretically Apple could absorb Synaptics to save some money on parts while squashing any chance of competition. But with Apple's grip on the digital music market with iTunes and the already tremendous success of its iPod, this also appears to be an unnecessary investment.
Vudu
"Who?" You know, the set-top TV box/digital-movie service that's competing with Apple TV and which won a Best of Test 2007 designation from Wired. If vulnerable's what Apple is going for, Vudu would qualify: the company laid off about 20 of its 100-person staff in August. To give Vudu credit, the company offers about 5,000 movie titles thanks to having partnerships with every major studio and 18 independents. Apple's iTunes Store offers only about 1,000 movie titles and only deals with major studios. Then again, Vudu's partnerships probably wouldn't transfer over if Apple acquired the startup.
iPhone app developers
Let's think even smaller. Jobs did emphasize during the quarterly earnings call that Apple has "some of the most talented employees" in the world. Perhaps Apple could hire an independent developer who's making big bucks off iPhone's App Store to code some apps for them? Steve Demeter springs to mind: He made $250,000 off his iPhone game Trism in just two months. However, I've spoken to Demeter a number of times, and he's extremely passionate about his work; I'd imagine he'd like to fly solo so long as he's still making big bucks.
The Wild Blue Yonder
Here are some wacky ideas for companies that Apple could buy with a little more than the spare change it finds in the couch cushions:
Cray ($115M), in case Apple wants to corner the market for creative supercomputer users.
Alcoa ($3B), for all that shiny aluminum showing up in the new MacBooks.
Seagate ($3B), in case the company feels like reinventing the hard drive.
General Motors ($3B), in case Jobs wants to reinvent the car.

Rico says he'd love to see what Apple would come up with if they owned General Motors, but that's not gonna happen. Also, with all that cash sitting there, they better hope their own stock price doesn't get low enough that they become a takeover target...

Now it's getting trendy

Wired has the story by Priya Ganapati of the next space tourist, none other than Esther Dyson:

If you have a couple million dollars, are a technology visionary, and wonder what your next challenge will be, consider a chance to take a spin around the earth.
Technology heavyweights are fast queuing up for an opportunity to blast off into space. Following in the steps of former Microsoft executive Charles Simonyi and video games developer Richard Garriott, Silicon Valley luminary Esther Dyson is the latest to start training for a space flight.
Dyson, who is an investor in Space Adventures, a company that aims to open space flight for private citizens, will not be flying anytime soon, but will be training as a backup for Simonyi who will be heading on his second space trip next year.
"The training is going to be exciting, wonderful, and horrible," she said at the Singularity Summit conference in San Jose. "I am going in with some trepidation because I don’t know what’s really going to happen. But at the same time I wanted a change."
Dyson will be part of a small elite group. Simonyi, who led the development of key Microsoft Office applications, became the fifth space tourist when he took his first space flight on 7 April 2007, on board the Soyuz TMA-10 along with two Russian cosmonauts. Following a successful ten-day trip, Simonyi signed up for a second flight for next year.
On Friday, game developer Garriott returned from a twelve-day visit to the International Space Station as a working tourist.
Dyson will be piggybacking on Simonyi's upcoming trip for her training. "The experience Space Adventures sold was not just Charles' ride on the Soyuz rocket, but also the entire ground experience for some 50 of his friends," she wrote in a Flickr note. "Space travel is today accessible only if you have the millions," she told audiences at the conference. While Dyson may not have the $1 billion net worth estimated for Simonyi, she is an industry visionary.

Rico says he won't be able to afford to go in his lifetime, but he'll deal with the disappointment...

You can't hum this one

The AP has the story of a real High School Musical, this one a tragedy:

A sport utility vehicle full of high school cheerleaders collided with an oncoming car in a fiery crash on a wet, foggy highway in rural northeastern Tennessee, killing four people, authorities said Saturday. The SUV hydroplaned on a curve on the two-lane highway late Friday night, flipped on its side and crossed the center lane, slamming into an oncoming Ford Taurus, Tennessee Highway Patrol spokeswoman Laura McPherson said. The SUV erupted into flames. Three of the girls in the SUV died. The surviving passenger was ejected from the vehicle and was in critical condition at the University of Tennessee Medical Center in Knoxville.
A passenger in the car, Jeweline Ledbetter King, 49, was killed. A 22-year-old pregnant woman, Miranda King, was sitting in the back seat and lost her unborn child from injuries in the crash. The car's driver, Malcum King, 22, and a 10-month-old child, Aiden Wilson, also were injured and taken to a hospital. The conditions of the car's survivors were not immediately known.
McPherson said investigators believe passengers were still trapped inside the second vehicle when the SUV caught fire a few feet away. A passing motorist used an all-terrain vehicle to pull the Taurus away from the burning SUV, she said.
Investigators believe the crash was caused in part by the slick and foggy conditions, and a preliminary report indicated none of the girls in the SUV was wearing a seat belt, McPherson said. The infant in the car was in a child restraint seat. The rest in the car were wearing seat belts, except for Miranda King, who was about eight months pregnant.
Police identified the teenagers killed as Scarlette Hill, 17; Jaime Hill, 15; and driver Shirley Hughett, 16. The survivor is Ashley Mason, 15. A local funeral home said the Hills were sisters.
Scott High School Principal Bill Hall told the Associated Press on Saturday the four girls had attended a home football game earlier Friday night.

Rico says this one won't be in theaters any time soon, but it should be...

Speaking of the iPhone

MG Siegler has an article on Venture Beat about the next version of iPhone software:

Apple recently started seeding to developers the second beta version of its 2.2 software update for the iPhone and iPod Touch, and it’s becoming more clear what will be included in the update. Right now, it looks like the key new features focus on the Maps application which is built for the iPhone by Google. With the update, users will be able to get public transit directions on their devices. This includes not only bus, subway, and train routes, but also walking directions as well. Maps will also now feature Street View, the area which allows you to virtually walk through the streets with real images being shown to you. This was added to other versions of Google Maps for mobile recently, and is included in Google’s Android mobile platform.
You can likely expect a range of other new features and fixes before Apple officially launches the 2.2 update. The 2.1 update in the first part of September fixed many issues users were having with the device.
Also noteworthy for future iPhone updates is a survey that AT&T recently sent to its customers asking them to rate a level of interest in new potential services for the device:
Cut & paste functionality. A third party solution was briefly put in place, but Apple killed that with a software update.
MMS (picture messaging). It’s still pretty odd that a device so capable cannot do this.
Flash and Java support is there as well; both are perpetually rumored new features.
iChat (instant messaging). While there are plenty of third party IM solutions out there, none can yet run in the background. The hope is that an Apple-made one could (as referenced above).
Downloadable ringtones. Don’t even get me started on how lame these are.
GPS turn-by-turn directions. This is another feature that is always rumored to be coming and probably will at some point.
Video recording. The iPhone’s current camera is only enabled to take pictures, but as we’ve seen on iPhone hacked to run applications not in the app store, video is possible. It’s definitely worth noting that the video streaming service Qik apparently has figured out a way to get video recording functionality working on non-hacked iPhones. Both Digg founder Kevin Rose and blogger Robert Scoble have now seen this in action, but the app is still not available in the App Store, and it’s not clear when it will be.

Rico says it just keeps getting better...

Oops, that's why it's software

Dean Takahashi has an article in Venture Beat about problems with the new Google Android phone software:

A veteran security researcher has found a security hole in the T-Mobile G1 phone, which runs Google’s Android software. Charlie Miller of Independent Security Evaluators in Baltimore told The New York Times that he was able to redirect the G1’s web browser to a malicious web site. Miller, Mark Daniel, and Jake Honoroff were able to hack the G1 just a few days after it started selling. Miller notified Google of the flaw this week and said he was publicizing it to warn smartphone users of the vulnerability.
The attack follows a familiar tactic for Miller, who has received a lot of press before because he was able to hack Apple’s Leopard operating system, the MacBook Air, and the iPhone. In each case, he was either the first one to crack the systems or partnered with someone who did. He was, for instance, able to hack the iPhone because it used the same vulnerable Safari web browser as the Macintosh computers. In that case, there was a known vulnerability but Apple didn’t include the fix for it in the iPhone. In another case, Miller and his fellow security researcher Dino Dai Zovi were able to hack Second Life because it depended on the vulnerable QuickTime movie player made by Apple.

Rico says they're picking on Apple because they can...

Redefining "get it there fast"

The Associated Press has an article by Amir Shah about the latest delivery by DHL:

A security guard working for the international shipping company DHL opened fire Saturday, killing the company's country director and his deputy before turning the gun on himself, officials said. The shooting took place in front of the DHL office in downtown Kabul. One Briton and one South African were killed in the attack, the British Foreign Office and South African government said.
The preliminary investigation found one of the Afghan security guards protecting the DHL compound opened fire on the car carrying the two foreigners when it pulled into the company headquarters, said Mirza Mohammad Yarmal, an Interior Ministry official. The guard then put the Kalishnikov rifle to his own head and killed himself, Yarmal said. Blood was on the vehicle's windshield and pooled on the ground in front of DHL headquarters. Yarmal said the guard had been hired about a month ago from a Pashtun area just north of Kabul. The Taliban draws many of its fighters from the Pashtun ethnic group, but police had no conclusive evidence linking him to the insurgents.
A Taliban spokesman denied involvement in the attack.

Rico says it's one of the dubious privileges of working in places like Afghanistan...

Getting huffy

Bonnie Fuller weighs in at The Huntington Post about Sarah Palin's wardrobe malfunction:

You can detest Sarah Palin for her politics and her pit bull persona but don't hate her for her $22,000 makeup! Or her $150,000 clothes.
I agree that these appear to be outrageous amounts for any woman to part with on her wardrobe and personal appearance, especially one purporting to be a middle class "hockey mom" who just happens to be running for the second highest office in the land. The problem here is that there is a giant double standard that any woman running for political office is subjected to. That is, she will be held to a "looks" litmus test. From her choice of hairstyle to her daily decision about whether to wear pants versus a skirt, to her choice of heels, her looks will be dissected, analyzed, and criticized.
This is something that male candidates simply never have to deal with. Observers can ridicule John McCain's angry expressions during a Presidential debate, or praise Obama's surprisingly well-defined pecs, but do we ever hear boo about their outfits? Admit it; male presidential candidates can roll out of bed, throw on a dark suit, white shirt, and red or blue tie and they're done! No one is staring at the cut or cloth of their suits or focusing a camera on their feet. It's a non-issue.
Not so for women! Hillary Clinton had to defend and promote her stances on every single issue 24/7, just as Barack Obama did, but she had to do it in heels and with every outfit and so-called figure flaw subjected to scrutiny. Piano legs, helmet hair, Crayola-colored anchorwoman suits: these are all the fashion crimes that Hillary supposedly committed along her campaign route, according to the pundits who regularly criticized her. The poor woman should have been wearing a suit of armour, not Oscar de la Renta. No wonder Sarah Palin and the Republican stylists felt it was imperative to embark on a style image overhaul ASAP, once she was the Vice Presidential pick.
I've seen the photos and video of Sarah Palin pre-VP, and her sweats, sweaters, button-down shirts, and shapeless suits would never have passed muster with the critical national political press, let alone the crowds on the campaign trail. Sarah's handlers already had the benefit of hindsight, seeing how Hillary Clinton, Michelle Obama, and Cindy McCain's wardrobe choices made major news, whether good or bad. How hypocritical are Republicans to complain now that the Governor that they cast in the role as potential VP -- at least partially because she was camera-genic -- cost too much to play the part?
It's disingenuous to ignore the fact that today a candidate's image -- on TV and in photos -- counts in picking up or conversely losing votes. If Sarah Palin truly looked like a frazzled, schlubby hockey mom, not only would she not inspire confidence, but she couldn't have effectively pulled off calling herself "The Lipstick Pit Bull."
Lipstick implies "femininity" and attractiveness. Pit bull implies strength and ferocity. If Sarah Palin had dressed like Golda Meir in a house dress -- that image would have been a non-starter.
No, John McCain's team was well aware that they were picking a former beauty queen who if dressed up for her "VP" role in the right clothes and with the right hair and makeup, could take full advantage of her "Hotness."
And whoever her stylists were -- and I'm sure their names will come out -- they did a damn good job. Sarah has been sensational in her fitted, feminine red, white, blue and black suits, and jacket and shirt sets. Not to mention, in her variety of up and down hair does.
She has carried off an authoritative, confident but not scary/manly image. She has looked like what every working woman aspires to look like and what many men would love their wives to look like.
The stylists did their job well! And yes, it cost more than most Americans earn in a year. Nevertheless, since this is a "role" she had to dress for, the cost wasn't pork but the price of doing business just like any actress' wardrobe in a film or a TV show. By Hollywood standards--and hey America loves celebrities -- the cost of dressing and making up Sarah Palin was not a major expense.
So I say, Republicans should stand by their woman. The benefits of the pitbull come with a price tag. Accept that. As for the Democrats, the American people keep saying in polls that they care about real issues. Well, Sarah Palin's lack of foreign policy experience is an issue, as are her divisive politics. But her wardrobe isn't worth wasting a news cycle on!

>Rico says, for once, he agrees...

Too sad to be funny

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette has the updated story:

Almost from the start, Pittsburgh police were skeptical about a young woman's claim that she had been mugged and a 'B' carved into her cheek by an attacker who was provoked by the sight of a John McCain bumper sticker on her car. Yesterday, their doubts were confirmed when 20-year-old Ashley Todd, a McCain volunteer from College Station, Texas, admitted that she made the whole thing up. There was no black man with a knife, no robbery, no physical assault. And the backwards 'B' on her cheek? She's not sure, she told police, but assumes she did that herself. As for the black eyes, police assume they likewise were self-inflicted.
Her story quickly became political fodder on the Internet and spread around the world, fueled by the presidential campaign and Ms. Todd's political connections as a field representative for the College Republican National Committee and McCain volunteer. But, in less than a day, the international story of a McCain volunteer being attacked, traumatized, and disfigured for her political beliefs deflated into a sad tale of a troubled woman with a history of mental problems. Police were sensitive to that fact yesterday, saying that while Ms. Todd would face at least a charge of filing a false report with police, she would not be released until she had a mental health evaluation. "We don't feel she should be able to walk out onto the street," said Pittsburgh Assistant Police Chief Maurita Bryant. "We wouldn't want any further harm to come to her."
Ms. Todd was in the Allegheny County Jail last night on $50,000 bond after her video arraignment before District Judge John N. Bova. Judge Bova requested that she undergo an evaluation by the jail's behavior clinic. She'll return to court on Thursday.
The day after the purported attack, both Senator John McCain and Governor Sarah Palin called Ms. Todd, offering words of comfort. Yesterday, McCain-Palin campaign spokesman Peter Feldman issued a statement: "This is a sad situation. We hope she gets the help she needs."
Ms. Todd told police a black man with a knife approached her at a banking machine at Citizens Bank at Liberty Avenue and Pearl Street in Bloomfield shortly before 9 p.m. Wednesday. She said after she gave him $60, the robber spotted the McCain stickers on her car, became enraged, knocked her to the ground, and punched and kicked her. She quoted him as saying "You are going to be a Barack supporter," as he sat on her chest, pinning both of her hands down, and scratched the letter on her right cheek.
First among the problems with her story was the fact that the 'B' scratched on her face was backwards -- as it might be if she had done it herself using a mirror. "The backwards 'B' was the obvious thing to us when we first saw her. Something just didn't seem right," Assistant Chief Bryant said. "And, first of all, with our local robbers, they take the money and flee. They're in and out. They're not stopping to do artwork."
Additionally, said Lieutenant Kevin Kraus, investigators were struck "that it was a superficial, pristine 'B', which seemed highly inconsistent with the story she reported that it was a violent attack, basically in which she was fighting for her life." Nevertheless, Assistant Chief Bryant said, Ms. Todd reported herself as a victim, so police began an investigation. Then they found more and more inconsistencies.
Ms. Todd underwent five hours of questioning at police headquarters on the North Side Thursday night and submitted to a polygraph. Her story kept changing -- the attack happened before she got to the bank machine; she was hit from behind and rendered unconscious; she didn't know she had been cut or robbed until she went to the apartment of a friend, Dan Garcia; the attacker had sexually fondled her.
Yesterday, she told detectives she was driving alone in her car when she looked in the rearview mirror and saw the letter on her cheek. She didn't remember how it got there but assumed she had done it because she had incidents of memory loss in the past. The letter made her think of "Barack", Assistant Chief Bryant said, so she concocted the story before going to Mr. Garcia's house. Once she had told the story to police, "she told lie after lie and the situation compounded to where we are right now," said Lieutenant Kraus. He added that Ms. Todd showed no remorse for her actions but was angry with the media, saying they blew the story out of proportion. Assistant Chief Bryant said the false report created "a huge waste of time, with many man-hours and people coming in on overtime just to get to the bottom of this as quickly as possible."
"It created intensive national and international attention," Lieutenant Kraus said. "We've had detectives working around the clock since she made the bogus allegation. The cost to the city of Pittsburgh has been many, many dollars and resources."
Ms. Todd's job as a field representative for the College Republican National Committee brought her to Pittsburgh about two weeks ago to recruit college students. She had worked for the committee since August. Yesterday, the organization fired her. Ashley Barbera, the organization's communications director, said workers initially were concerned for Ms. Todd's safety. "We are as upset as anyone to learn of her deceit. Ashley must take full responsibility for her actions," she said.
In March, Ms. Todd was asked to leave a grass-roots group of Ron Paul supporters in Brazos County, Texas, group leader Dustan Costine said. He said Ms. Todd posed as a supporter of former Arkansas governor and presidential candidate Mike Huckabee and called the local Republican committee seeking information about its campaign strategies.
"She would call the opposing campaign and pretend she was on their campaign to get information," Mr. Costine said last night. "We had to remove her because of the tactics she displayed. After that we had nothing to do with her." About a month earlier, he said, Ms. Todd sent an e-mail to the Ron Paul group saying her tires were slashed and that campaign paraphernalia had been stolen from her car because she supported Mr. Paul. "She's the type of person who wants to be recognized," Mr. Costine said.
Mr. Garcia, 32, a first-year student at the University of Pittsburgh law school who also is from Texas, met Ms. Todd in May at a gathering of young Republicans in their hometown of College Station. On Wednesday night, she came back to his house, bruised and battered, and told him of the attack. He contacted police. Mr. Garcia said his immediate response was to tend to the wound on her cheek. A police officer arrived, and Ms. Todd became belligerent when the officer asked where the mugging happened. "I don't know!" she told him, using an expletive, Mr. Garcia said. "I'm not from here."
Mr. Garcia, Ms. Todd, and the officer then drove through Bloomfield until they arrived at the Citizens Bank on Liberty Avenue. She told the officer it was the right spot. Assistant Chief Bryant said yesterday police aren't even sure Ms. Todd was in that area Wednesday night.
The officer asked Ms. Todd if she needed medical attention. She declined. Instead, Mr. Garcia said, they went to eat at Ritter's Diner on Baum Boulevard. He then persuaded her to go to nearby UPMC Shadyside, where he waited for her until 2 a.m.
"I don't know why she would do this," Mr. Garcia said yesterday, after learning that she had fabricated the story. "I would think that she needs help. I had red flags going up, but I didn't think it was prudent of me to ask the truth. I wanted to make sure she was okay." Now Mr. Garcia says he is furious that Ms. Todd deceived him. He has cut off all contact with her, he said.
Mr. Garcia took the widely published picture of Ms. Todd with her injuries. He said he took several photographs with a digital camera to document what had happened. He said he only gave copies of the photos to police and Ms. Todd's employer, the College Republicans. One photo appeared on The Drudge Report on Thursday, setting off a storm of media attention.
Ms. Todd was a student at Blinn College in Texas. She decided to take a year off to work in politics. Mr. Garcia said she told him she was estranged from her mother.
On her MySpace profile, where her screen name is "Italian Pajamas", Ms. Todd gives her occupation as "Being a badass". Next to her picture, she references the title of a song by the group Panic at the Disco: "Lying is the most fun a girl can have without taking her cloths (sic) off," but adds to it "but its (sic) better if you do." Among the books she lists as favorites: The Scarlet Letter.

Rico says all he can do is sigh; it's a sad thing when people get this desperate just to be noticed...

Stupid question

The BlackBerry Storm, the Google G1 phone, or the iPhone 3G for Christmas?
Stupid question. Just look at them; which one would you rather use?

Another sea change in politics

The Voice of America has a column by Dan Robinson about the upcoming elections:

Republicans face the prospect of significant losses in the House of Representatives during next month U.S. election. Most analysts see Republicans losing at least 20 House seats, but some predictions put potential losses at 30 or more in the 435-seat House.
Currently, Democrats hold a 235 to 199 advantage in the 435-member House, with one seat vacant. Though Republican leaders have tried to maintain an optimistic public face, there were some early negative signs in 2008. Early in the year, three key state districts held by Republicans for decades shifted to Democrats in special elections seen as important early indicators. Among them was the seat held by former Republican House speaker Dennis Hastert, where a Democratic candidate benefited from fundraising and an endorsement by Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama. In the southern states of Louisiana and Mississippi, two key seats also fell to Democrats.
At the same time, since the 2006 mid-term election, Republicans leaving Congress, either retiring or running for higher office, outnumber Democratic departures by a margin of 29 to six.

Rico says it looks like a Democratic Congress for the next session, no matter who wins the presidency...

Hopefully it won't work

The New York Times has a story by Catherine Rampell about OPEC and it's little problem:

OPEC announced today that its member countries — a group of 13 oil-producing nations — will cut oil production in an attempt to raise prices. Will it work?
In traditional economic theory, such production-fixing is hard to enforce because individual members of a cartel have an incentive to ignore their agreed-upon quotas. After all, if a member of the cartel produces more than it has agreed to produce, but everybody else sticks to the game plan, it can enjoy the benefits of rising prices and receive higher revenue.
The temptation to cheat has bedeviled OPEC in the past. In the 1980s and 1990s, political conflicts among member states — including a few wars — made sticking to group-decided quotas even less compelling. In recent years oil prices, and demand, had been so high that OPEC did away with its quotas and allowed members to produce at whatever level they saw fit. Now that oil prices are down, though, OPEC members have tried to bury their differences and cooperate.
Cooperation has proven to be difficult, though, because different countries have different production profiles, different government structures and different economic goals. A country like Iran, which has been struggling to increase its production, really wants everyone else to cut production so prices will go up and help Iran prevent a potential budget shortfall. But other countries might have different interests in the matter. Countries that have a lot of oil in reserves, for example, might not want to see prices climb back up, for fear that it will drive businesses and consumers to find alternative energies in the long run. Saudi Arabia has 60 years’ worth of oil reserves; its leadership doesn’t want to find itself several decades from now in a world that no longer needs oil. Even the Saudis, however, do not want to see oil prices fall too much, so the government has an incentive to stick with these targets.
Other countries have their own reasons for not wanting to comply. Angola, for example, is a small oil producer. It wants to ramp up production to maximize revenue in the short term, and so it also has little incentive to stick with a quota. And different countries make different assumptions about where demand is headed, which throws another wrench into the cartel’s plans.
In practice, OPEC members frequently ignore their quotas, Jad says. Typically the cartel must rely upon secondary sources to determine whether a country is complying with agreed-upon production levels. Even when this research proves that a country is lying about how much it is producing, there’s nothing the cartel can do to enforce cooperation.
If prices do keep falling, though, OPEC producers will have an especially strong incentive to cooperate with one another.

Rico says hopefully the whole system will screw itself and we won't be looking at four-buck gas again...

You'd think he'd done this before

Lynn Olanoff has an article in the Lehigh Valley Express Times about another 'expert' witness:

It was almost O.J. Simpson and the gloves all over again Friday in the Mary Jane Fonder murder trial.
As state police ballistics expert Mark Garrett demonstrated how to load bullets in the suspected murder weapon -- Fonder's .38-caliber Rossi revolver -- the cylinder wouldn't close. During Simpson's murder trial, he could not fit his hands into gloves considered a key piece of evidence. Garrett blamed the cylinder's malfunction on possible rust. A minute or two later, he got it to close.
Fonder's defense attorney Michael Applebaum pointed out the gun's failure in his cross-examination. "If you can't close this, you can't fire the weapon?" he asked.
"Correct," Garrett confirmed.
Fonder, 66, of Springfield Township, Bucks County, is charged with first-degree murder in the Jan. 23 death of Rhonda Smith, 42, of Hellertown. Authorities allege Fonder killed Smith at Trinity Evangelical Lutheran Church in Springfield Township because Fonder was jealous of the attention Smith received from church members.
Garrett was called as a prosecution witness because he tested all the ballistic evidence involved in the case. Fonder's gun fired the bullet found in Smith's head along with another bullet piece found alongside her body, he said. Every gun barrel is unique and leaves different imprints on bullets, Garrett said. The two bullet pieces had the same pattern, he said.
Applebaum asked Garrett if it were possible the gun's barrel or serial number were replaced. Garrett said he didn't know about the barrel, but a replaced serial number is usually much smoother than the original. Fonder's gun's serial number still has grooves, he said.
Prosecution witness Elana Foster testified gunshot residue was found in three places within Fonder's car. Gunshot residue was found on the car's driver's seat, the turn signal knob and the driver's door armrest, she said.
Applebaum continued a theory he started Thursday that police could have unintentionally transferred the residue from their uniforms to the car when they searched it. He asked Foster if she had read studies naming police stations as the one of the most prolific places to find gunshot residue. She said she was familiar with some tests showing residue in the backseat of police cars. "Gunshot residue can be transferred," Foster said. "We can say the particles are present but how they got there, when and from whom we can't say."

Rico says no, it wouldn't close because it'd been fired and not cleaned; the powder residue attracts moisture, swells, and jams the mechanism. (Rico has had this happen when he got lazy and didn't clean his gubs.) You can also match powder residue to powder found in the remaining shells; it's not a perfect scientific match, but you can at least exclude things like residue from cops' clothing as being from some other batch. This is not only bad witnessing, it's bad lawyering; clowns, the lot of 'em...

Civil War for the day

The inestimal Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, hero of Gettysburg.

Hitchens is, even if God isn't

Rico says he's been reading God is Not Great by Christopher Hitchens, a curmudgeon's curmudgeon and a great writer. More review when he's done with it...

Rico will see it, regardless of the reviews

...

MTV has a review of Pride and Glory, starring Ed Norton and Colin Farrell:

It helps to have top actors in this sort of genre exercise, and O'Connor has recruited a sharp cast. Edward Norton plays Ray Tierney, a onetime narc now in self-imposed exile on the drab missing-persons beat. Ray's past involvement in an ethically dodgy operation has left him deeply disillusioned (and in the process of being divorced by his wife). He has no desire to return to the street. But when four police officers are killed in a screwed-up drug bust, Ray's father, Francis Tierney Sr. (played by Jon Voight), implores him to come onboard an investigation into what went wrong. ("I want cops we can trust," Dad says, a bit cryptically.) Hitting the street again, Ray starts asking questions of various Hispanic thugs and their wretched women (Ray has taken the trouble to learn Spanish) and examining overlooked evidence. Soon he comes to the conclusion that the drug gang that killed the cops was tipped off about the raid by an informant inside the police department.
Before long, to his deep dismay, Ray begins looking at his older brother, Franny (played by Noah Emmerich), a police inspector, in an alarming new light. And he grows ever more certain that his brother-in-law, Jimmy Egan (played by Colin Farrell), and Jimmy's two partners, Carbone (played by Frank Grillo) and Dugan (played by Shea Whigham), have turned into a corrupt and murderous rogue unit.

Oops isn't a word they should be using

al-Reuters has the story:

The Air Force said on Friday it would create a separate command for nuclear missiles and bombers after blunders undermined confidence in its nuclear mission and led to the dismissal of top officials. The Air Force announced the plan for Global Strike Command, to be headed by a three-star general, as part of a broader revamp to sharpen the focus on its nuclear mission.
"This is a critical milestone for us. It's a new starting point for reinvigoration of this enterprise," said Air Force Secretary Michael Donley, the service's top civilian. "It is an extremely important mission for the United States Air Force," he told reporters.
The changes come after an Air Force bomber mistakenly flew six nuclear weapons across the United States last year and the Air Force was discovered this year to have inadvertently exported fuses for nuclear missiles to Taiwan in 2006. Those errors prompted Defense Secretary Robert Gates in June to take the unprecedented step of firing both the Air Force's top general and its senior civilian. Gates also ordered a review into the Pentagon's management of nuclear weapons, headed by former Defense Secretary James Schlesinger, which found a "dramatic and unacceptable" decline in the Air Force's commitment to its nuclear mission. Schlesinger's report recommended redesignating the Air Force's Space Command as Air Force Strategic Command and giving it responsibility for the service's nuclear mission. But General Norton Schwartz, the Air Force chief of staff, said officials had been concerned the space and nuclear missions could be too much for one command and decided instead to create a separate command dedicated to nuclear issues. "Our road map reflects a back to basics approach," Schwartz said.
Currently, the Air Force's Space Command oversees nuclear missiles, while Air Combat Command oversees nuclear bombers. The new command should start operating by next September and be responsible for nuclear-capable B-52 and B-2 bombers as well as intercontinental ballistic missiles, Donley said. Its location and its first commander are yet to be determined, he said. The Air Force also plans to have an office at its headquarters dedicated to nuclear issues. Air Force officials could not provide a cost estimate for the proposed changes.

Rico says there's nothing like a little failure to shake things up; fortunately they didn't kill anyone or have a nuke go off by accident. And hopefully they'll do it better now...

It's always someone

The Dallas Morning News has the Halloween story by David Flick:

This Halloween, you can look like Sarah Palin for as little as 99 cents, not counting, of course, the Neiman Marcus sleeve jacket. Managers of costume stores agree – the Alaska governor is hot. The most sizzling presidential contest in half a century has been reflected in Halloween wear, both locally and nationally. Sales of Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain masks are brisk. Sarah Palin masks would be selling even better – if you could find them. "We had Palin masks two weeks ago, but we sold out within a few days," said Karen Miller, assistant manager at Party City at Medallion Center in northeast Dallas, Texas. "Right now I have a few Obamas and a few McCains, and that's it."
Buycostumes.com offered 99-cent paper masks of Ms. Palin within four days of when she was picked to be McCain's running mate. It has since sold 4,000, said Karen Van Ert, marketing director of the online store, based in New Berlin, Wisconsin. "We put together Sarah Palin kits" – with wigs and glasses – "early last week, but we're completely sold out," she said. Rubie's Costumes, based in Queen's, New York, offered latex Palin masks right after the Republican National Convention in early September. "We went through our entire production in four days. I've never seen a political costume sell out that quickly," said executive vice president Howard Beige.
Some perspective is in order. Although there is unusually high interest in political costumes this year, Dallas-area store managers say, the most popular outfits are still superheroes and monsters.
"The Heath Ledger 'Joker' is just very big this year. The sexier costumes for women are really popular, too, as are the superheroes for kids," said Michael Madison, manager of the Halloween USA store near the Galleria. Although he has sold far fewer of the political masks, they draw a lot of interest – and with a surprising demographic. "Kids love to try them on and run around the store looking like Obama," Madison said.
When Melanie Rubin of Dallas visited the store last week, her seven-year-old son, Ross, tried on an Obama mask and thrust his face toward sister Jillie, nine. She was not intimidated. She was wearing a Hillary Clinton mask. "Back off, buddy," Jillie-Hillary ordered. Ms Rubin said she has been a bit taken aback by her children's attention to national politics. "They all just seem interested in the election this year, and I'm surprised. We're a mixed household in terms of who we want to vote for," she said.
Not all the political masks are of current figures. "You know what's still real popular?" Mr. Madison said. "Richard Nixon. It's like he's always with us." Of course, political prominence is no guarantee of Halloween popularity. "We haven't had any requests for Joe Biden. As far as I know, nobody wants to look like him," said Phoenyx, an employee of Costume World in Far North Dallas, who goes by one name.
Even Palin costumes weren't in demand until actress Tina Fey famously caricatured her on Saturday Night Live. After that, requests doubled, he said. Contributing to the scarcity of Palin costumes is that she was largely unknown as recently as Labor Day. Most local costume stores have had trouble stocking Palin masks and have had to make do, using glasses and wigs done up in her characteristic style.

Rico says he's not trick-or-treating this year, so he won't have to pick a costume...

Might have to wait

Dan Frommer at the Silicon Alley Insider has the scoop on the iPhone:

Apple's quarterly iPhone sales -- 6.9 million -- were very impressive. But if Steve Jobs wants to catch the likes of Number 2 Samsung -- 51.8 million phones last quarter -- he's going to have to start selling iPhones for less than $199.
What pricing strategy makes the most sense? An iPod-like family of iPhones, starting at, say, $99, and going up to $299.
How will Apple get there? We think the company will lower the price of the current iPhones by $100 each by the middle of next year. We also think they'll introduce a new premium model at $299 with more color choices -- pink, blue, purple, green, etc.; at least 32 gigabytes of storage; and potentially more features.

Rico says he's now glad he waited to get the 3G phone...

If we can use less faster than they can pump less...

Bloomberg has the story of the race to the bottom:

Crude oil tumbled to a sixteen-month low as OPEC's decision to slash production by 1.5 million barrels a day failed to ease concern that the global economic slump is curbing fuel demand.
"At this stage it looks like we are at the edge of a bottomless pit and prices are heading quickly toward $50,'' said Nauman Barakat, senior vice president of global energy futures at Macquarie Futures USA Inc. in New York. ``OPEC really needed to take the bull by the horns and make a bigger cut.'' The thirteen members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries agreed to lower supply starting in November, oil ministers said today at a meeting in Vienna. Prices have dropped 56 percent from the record $147.27 a barrel reached on 11 July as stock markets declined.

Rico says between the price of oil and the stock market, it's gonna be a hell of a winter...

Say it ain't so, Joe

The New York Times has the story of the suddenly 'futile' Phillies in the Series:

The Tampa Bay Rays quieted the suddenly futile Phillies, 4-2, in Game 2 of the World Series at Tropicana Field. The Rays were excited to even the best-of-seven series, 1-1, while the Phillies were wondering if they should even bother shipping their bats to Philadelphia.
Obviously it was the players who used those bats, not the innocent hunks of wood, who doomed the Phillies on an exasperating night. The Phillies went 1 for 15 with runners in scoring position, a brutal effort that was slightly better than their 0 for 13 in winning the opener. The only hit was an infield single that did not even drive in a run.
Almost every player had left the clubhouse when Milt Thompson, the batting coach, was asked if he was relieved to be tied in a series in which the Phillies are 1 for 28 in such a critical hitting situation. He paused and laughed his way through the answer. "Do you think that's true?" Thompson said. "You better believe it."
If the Phillies had executed and merely smacked a couple of timely singles, they could have applied a 2-0 headlock on the Rays and been thinking about a sweep. "It was a missed opportunity, no doubt about that," Jimmy Rollins said. "But we didn't get it done."
The Phillies are too good a team to continue hitting .036 with runners in scoring position. But, the longer this spell continues, the more it could creep into their craniums and make those at bats more nerve-wracking. Manager Charlie Manuel acknowledged that some players might be "trying a little too hard."
Because the Phillies are on baseball's grandest stage and there is more pressure to succeed, Thompson said they must "find a way to slow the game down and relax." The Phillies must keep it simple, Thompson said, by getting "a good ball to hit and don't miss it." So far, the Phillies have missed a lot.

Rico says he can't believe they made it to the Series and are going to drop the ball now...

Nothing's changed

Via my friend Tex, who's forced to work in IT, this Danish video of how it used to be, and still is, for Microsofties...

Rico says a friend sent him this, purporting to show why one should vote Republican rather than Democrat. The Palin image was gratuitous, but helps make the point; the Republicans have, by and large, a better base of female constituents...

Would the last Republican please turn out the light?

Rico says that's an old "light at the end of the tunnel" joke from the Vietnam era (thus showing his age, yet again), but it applies:

Former Massachusetts Governor William Weld, a Republican, announced this morning his support for the Democratic nominee for President, Barack Obama. Weld’s endorsement comes a day after former Bush press secretary Scott McClellan and the former Governor of Minnesota Arne Carlson, also a Republican, announced their support - separately - of Obama’s candidacy.
In a statement Weld said, “Senator Obama is a once-in-a-lifetime candidate who will transform our politics and restore America’s standing in the world. We need a president who will lead based on our common values and Senator Obama demonstrates an ability to unite and inspire. Throughout this campaign I’ve watched his steady leadership through trying times and I’m confident he is the best candidate to move our country forward,” he said.

Sometimes not doing it is the right thing

Seems Sir Richard Branson has abandoned his latest attempt to break the trans-Atlantic sailing record:

Branson and an experienced 30-strong crew, including British Olympic hero Ben Ainslie, were two days into their crossing when their 100 foot supermaxi yacht Virgin Money hit severe storms.
The crew left New York on Monday hoping to reach the Lizard inside the present record of six days 17 hours 52 minutes, set by their own skipper Mike Sanderson, but are now diverting to Bermuda.
Virgin Money was battered by waves of up to forty feet and Force Seven to Force Nine gales.
Branson said "We've just experienced a night from hell when Virgin Money was struck by a massive wave from behind - washing one of our liferafts overboard, damaging the spinnaker, and devastatingly tearing a massive hole in our mainsail. Luckily all of the crew were harnessed in and no one was swept overboard, which is all that matters at the end of the day. But this has been magnificently organised and we live to fight another day. Perhaps we might be ready to sail again in another couple of weeks. The conditions were just too difficult this time.''

Rico says giving up in the face of disaster is no small thing...

Another bug, what a surprise

CNet News has the story by Michael Horowitz at Defensive Computing:

If you use a Windows computer connected to a network, a newly discovered bug makes it possible for a bad guy to wreak havoc on the computer without your doing anything. The most vulnerable versions of Windows are XP, 2000 and Server 2003. Vista and Server 2008 are also vulnerable, but not as badly. Microsoft considers the bug important enough to issue the patch immediately rather than waiting for their normal once-a-month patch.
Susan Bradley, writing for the Windows Secrets newsletter recommends immediately installing the just-issued patch. Then she offers some unusual advice, suggesting people first restart their computers "to verify that your machine is bootable." Can't hurt. Then she says to install the patch and reboot again. Her article also includes direct links to the patch for each version of Windows. If, for some reason, you can't run Windows/Microsoft Update you can manually download the patch and install it.
A standard of Defensive Computing is that the less software installed and running the better. This particular bug is with a part of Windows known as the Server service. If you are not sharing files and/or printers on a local area network, then you don't need to have the server service running, bug or no bug.

Rico says he is chortling, yet again...

Speaking of those fucks

Rico says he hasn't wreaked any illusory havoc with Moneybookers in a couple of days, so this broadside will have to make up for it:

See, on-line revenge is hard

The Times has a story by Nico Hines out of Japan:

A Japanese piano teacher has been arrested for the murder of her virtual husband after an abrupt but messy online divorce. The 43-year-old from Kyushu province in southern Japan faces a maximum sentence of five years in jail if she is found guilty of killing off her digital partner.
She is accused of hacking into the profile of a 33-year-old office worker from Sapporo 620 miles away, whose avatar on the Maple Story computer game was married to her character until he unexpectedly demanded a divorce. The spurned make-believe wife was so angry at being jilted that she logged into the game using her partner’s password and destroyed the character that he had spent a year creating.
She was arrested at home in Miyazaki yesterday on suspicion of illegal access on a computer and manipulating electronic data, according to police in Sapporo where she is being detained. The woman has not been formally charged. If convicted she could be jailed or fined up to £3,100.
An official in northern Sapporo reported that she confessed to the crime when questioned, allegedly telling police: “I was suddenly divorced, without a word of warning. That made me so angry.” The woman had not plotted any revenge in the real world, the official said.
Avatars and accounts on games such as Maple Story, World of Warcraft or Second Life can be worth hundreds of pounds as people attempt to cut out the laborious process of creating their own characters. There have been reports of cottage industries in Asia where low-paid workers are employed to spend all day inhabiting the virtual worlds to create avatars that can then be sold online.

Rico says he doesn't play virtually, but he knows people who do, yet a simple on-line piece of revenge against Moneybookers seems so hard to make happen...

Another story going sideways

The Associated Press has the revised story out of Pittsburgh:

Police say a McCain campaign volunteer who reported being held down by a black man who then cut the letter 'B' in her face has changed her story. Police also say bank surveillance footage doesn't show her at an ATM where she initially said she was attacked.
Police spokeswoman Diane Richard says investigators gave the 20-year-old woman a lie-detector test and are "looking at some inconsistencies" in her story.
The student, Ashley Todd, of College Station, Texas, initially said a black man robbed her at knifepoint near a bank Wednesday night and then cut her cheek after seeing a McCain sticker on her car.
Todd, who is white, now says she was knocked unconscious and doesn't remember being cut in the face. She now says she only discovered the wound later.
No arrests have been made.

Rico says this one's going to get weirder before it's done...
Rico also says my commenter is right, this one's getting wronger by the minute; also check out this Philly-centric analysis.

Guess they can't open the windows now

The news is not good:

NEW YORK (AP) — Wall Street is joining world stock markets in a precipitous plunge, with the Dow Jones industrials dropping more than 400 points in the opening minutes of trading. The growing belief that the world will suffer a punishing economic recession has investors furiously dumping stocks. Grim news from overseas has added to the worldwide gloom.
Japan's key stock index nose-dived 9.6 percent on a rising yen and growing recession fears in Tokyo on Friday, 24 October 2008. The benchmark Nikkei 225 stock average plummeted 811.90 points to close at 7,649.08 on Friday, bucking modest gains on Wall Street Thursday. The Japanese index closed below the 8,000-level for the first time since May 2003.

Rico says it's going to be a bad time for those holding stocks...

Another iGoogle place Rico's been

Chicago, Illinois, and doesn't want to go back.

The spoof version

Rico says it's the same ad, just with the 'blue screen of death' inserted where appropriate...

Not, thank you

Rico says you can say it all you want, but you won't catch him saying it...

Awww, down to their last billions

Bloomberg has the story of the bottom falling out of the awl bidness:

The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries cut oil production targets for the first time in almost two years as the group battles to slow a collapse in prices.
OPEC decided to lower supply by 1.5 million barrels a day from November, oil ministers said today at the end of a meeting at the group's Vienna's headquarters. The reduction will be from the existing quota for 11 members of 28.8 million barrels a day.
"Demand is significantly less than what is being supplied, that is the reason the cut was taken,'' Saudi Arabian Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi said after the meeting. Crude oil has tumbled 57 percent from a July 11 record of $147.27 a barrel as the financial market crisis spreads, job cuts increase and fuel consumption slows. Prices fell as much as 7.7 percent today.
Saudi Arabia, the group's largest producer, will reduce its output target by 466,000 barrels a day. Iran, the second- biggest, will cut 199,000 barrels, OPEC said in a statement. Kuwait's share of the reduction will be 132,000 barrels, the United Arab Emirates 134,000 barrels and Venezuela 129,000 barrels.
At a meeting last month, OPEC urged greater compliance with existing quotas, saying that would reduce supply by about 500,000 barrels a day. OPEC members excluding Iraq and Indonesia last month pumped 390,000 barrels a day more than their combined quota of 28.8 million barrels a day, according to Bloomberg estimates.
The last time OPEC decided to slash official quotas was at a December 2006 meeting in Abuja, Nigeria. The 500,000 barrel-a- day cut took effect in February 2007, expanding an earlier reduction agreed in October. The cuts were reversed later in 2007 as oil rallied. Eleven years ago, OPEC members bickered about output quotas as oil slid 28 percent in 10 months amid the onset of the Asian financial crisis. At a meeting in Jakarta in November 1997, they raised quotas, ignoring the turmoil that slowed Asian economies and cut oil demand. Prices fell another 44 percent by December 1998 to below $11 a barrel.

Rico says the bitter laughter is his... (But doesn't eleven bucks a barrel sound like quaint ancient history now?)

Fear and loathing on the campaign trail

Rico says, yes, that's a Hunter S. Thompson book (and a damned good one, too) from the 1972 election.
It's also his reaction to the current hoo-hah over this election.
The sparring between the candidates is bad enough, but it really got going when two Obama canvassers showed up at the house last weekend, because Rico is registered Republican. They wanted to know who I was going to vote for. I told them "one of the two candidates". They wanted to know which one. I told them that this is a democracy, and I didn't have to tell them. They didn't like that, but accepted it and went away.
Today, however, Rico got a robocall on the house phone; would I be willing to answer an automated inquiry about the election? Sure. They wanted to know if I was going to vote. Yes, I said. They wanted to know if I was going to vote for John McCain. I told them "one of the two candidates". They wanted to know if I was going to vote for Barack Obama. I told them "one of the two candidates". The computer didn't like that, and told me, in no uncertain terms, that I could answer yes, no, or repeat the question. There was no "none of the above" or "fuck off, you stupid machine", so Rico just hung up.
Sorry about that, but the only thing I have to tell who I'm voting for is the ballot on 4 November...

Small fucking world, as usual

Rico says he just finished The Good Rat by Jimmy Breslin. As usual, an authentic slice of life, this time of the Mafia in New York (and what a nice bunch of guys, too).
Then he discovered Breslin had another book out, I Want to Thank My Brain for Remembering Me, and looked it up. Lo and behold:

Breslin's confrontation with his mortality began with double vision in his left eye. He had an MRI, which revealed an aneurysm in his brain. He was referred to Robert Spetzler in Arizona, who is considered the best aneurysm neurosurgeon in the world. Thus begins Breslin's odyssey from New York City to Phoenix, which takes readers on a wonderful whirlwind tour of his life.

Rico says Dr. Spetzler is who he uses to double-check his own MRIs, so Zelig that...

Amazing what thirty million'll get you

The BBC has a video of the return of a Soyuz capsule with two Russians and Richard Garriott, whose father was a NASA astronaut back in the 70s (and went to space, it seems, aboard Skylab in 1973 and Spacelab-1 in 1983); he coughed up $30 million and got to go, a second-generation astronaut along with the Russian, Sergei Volkov.

What a nice, uh, boy

The New York Times has the story of Obama being a good grandchild:

On a whirlwind trip back to Hawaii, Senator Barack Obama spent more than an hour visiting his ailing grandmother late Thursday and is set to return to her bedside on Friday morning after arriving here on a nine-hour flight from the Midwestern battleground of the presidential campaign. As soon as he arrived on the island of Oahu, Mr. Obama went to the Punahou Circle Apartments, where his grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, lies gravely ill. She is to turn 86 on Sunday, but aides to Mr. Obama said doctors advised him not to delay his visit. It was an unusual departure from the tug-of-war of the presidential campaign, with 11 days remaining in the race. But it was a trip that advisers said he told them was not negotiable. He missed his mother’s death here in 1995, a mistake he said he did not intend to repeat with his grandmother, who has been a stalwart in his life.
The moment Mr. Obama stepped off the plane here at 7:25 p.m. Hawaii Standard Time, his motorcade drove directly to the 12-story apartment building on South Beretania Street. It was a subdued arrival, with no waving to the cameras or welcoming party on the breezy airport tarmac. In his absence, Michelle Obama is campaigning on her husband’s behalf, as is Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., the Democratic vice presidential candidate. While Mr. Obama is only going to be away from the campaign trail for one full day, it still is an unusual occurrence at this point in a presidential campaign. “It’s not optimal, but there was never any debate or discussion or anything,” David Axelrod, the chief strategist for Mr. Obama said in an interview. “Barack’s grandmother is one of the formative people in his life. He wants to go see her on the advice of her doctors. He had to do it now. So we’ll just make do.”

Rico says it's nice to see someone who's willing to put aside the bullshit of the campaign to do something real...

Civil War for the day

During the 7th Pennsylvania Cavalry Descendant's Association tour of Murfreesboro, we ran across this bit of remembrance...

And if you ever worked in the industry...

...then you get why this is funny. But Rico says this is so true...

Not funny if you have a PC

Rico says he doesn't, of course, and wouldn't (not even for free), so he finds this really funny...

Art the Japanese way

Rico says you could do some seriously wierd stuff with this if you worked at it. (Courtesy of my friend Tex.)

No Pal of mine

Long story, but basically Rico screwed up and didn't read the mouseprint on the PayPal terms & conditions (which, when he was actively looking for it just now, actually took a while to find):

Suffice it to say that you can't buy or sell gubs using PayPal (just don't do it), and Rico's paying the price.
Suffice it also to say that the Grumpy Old Fart (and he knows who he is) fucked Rico royally over this (since Rico had to spend quite some time getting PayPal, now a viral thing on the internet, off all the pages on his site), and for that he's permanently on Rico's shit-list...

Civil War for the day

Friday of the 140th of Antietam.

But they'd like to

Slate has a story by Jacob Leibenluft about the Indian space program (no, that's not a joke):

India launched an unmanned lunar orbiter Wednesday morning, marking the nation's first mission to the moon. The orbiter will, among other tasks, attempt to identify possible uranium deposits on the moon. Can India claim whatever uranium it finds up there?
No. The Outer Space Treaty—which was signed in 1967 and has been ratified by almost every country with a space program—is very clear that "outer space, including the moon and other celestial bodies, is not subject to national appropriation." (That's why the American flag placed on the moon by Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong was a symbolic gesture rather than an effort to claim the moon as U.S. territory.) So even if the mission—which is being conducted with the cooperation of NASA and other national space agencies—manages to find some uranium deposits, no country would be able to claim ownership. For that matter, it's highly questionable whether there are any property rights at all in space. As for those deeds for lunar land you can buy online, the legal consensus suggests they'll never hold up in court.
If a country—or a private company—were to try opening a mine on the moon, it would be stepping onto uncertain legal ground. The Outer Space Treaty is silent on the question of extracting natural resources in space, and legal experts differ over what language mandating "free access" to all areas of space might mean for mining. Likewise, the treaty prohibits "harmful contamination," and this restriction might cause thorny legal issues if extensive mining operations were thought to raise environmental concerns.
Another international agreement, the so-called Moon Treaty, which was adopted by the U.N. General Assembly in 1979, is a good deal clearer. It states that "the moon and its natural resources are the common heritage of mankind" and specifies that those resources should only be exploited under the oversight of a new international regime. But the Moon Treaty was never accepted by any of the traditional space powers, like the United States or Russia. India is among the 17 countries that have signed the Moon Treaty, but it never fully ratified the agreement.
Some space-law experts contend that there may be a precedent for mining: Both the Americans and the Soviets took moon rocks back to Earth, and no one objected. More probably, any attempts to extract uranium or the potential energy source helium-3 would spur a new round of international talks. In that case, countries might look to agreements surrounding the high seas or Antarctica for guidance. In the case of Antarctica, rules on land use are determined by the few dozen nations that have signed onto a special Antarctic Treaty. In the 1990s, those countries agreed to ban mining on the continent until at least 2048. By contrast, the International Seabed Authority was set up in 1994 to administer claims by companies seeking to mine in deep-sea areas that lie hundreds of miles offshore; the United States, however, hasn't ratified the Law of the Sea Treaty that would make it part of that organization.

Rico says it's all pretty funny, because it's going to be a long damn time before India can actually put an astronaut on the moon to bring anything back, anyway...

Not this blog, of course

Technorati has the story of a survey from WebProNews by Andrew Wee of top bloggers and their earnings:

The trend among some top bloggers is to publish monthly earning reports showing how much income they have generated the previous month.
While it may seem impressive to earn $1,000, $5,000 or even $35,000 a month from your blogging efforts, I feel that the raw number can be a crude way of judging the “success” of your blog and will not be as meaningful as using other metrics.
A more significant statistic is to determine your average revenue per unit (ARPU) or income earned per visitor. For example, if you have 100,000 visitors and your blog earnings are $5,000 and you compare it against a smaller blog with 35,000 visitors and earnings of $4,000. Which is better? Let’s skip the superficial $5,000 versus $4,000 for the moment and look at ARPU. For the large blog, ARPU is $5,000 divided by 100,000 or 5 cents per visitor, while the smaller blog’s ARPU is 11.4 cents.
The smaller blog is twice as effective at generating income as the large blog and, though it trails the large blog in terms of total readership, I’ll go one step further to say that assuming you’re not a casual or hobby blogger and you’re blogging as a business, the end goal should be income generation, rather than the “generating eyeballs/impressions” game that was prevalent in year 2000 with dotcom mania. If anything, sustainable blogs are going back-to-basics, focusing on a solid business foundation and continuous growth - all supported by a sensible business model and sustainable income generation. If the pieces are in place, you have the makings of a profitable blog business.

Rico says he doesn't get even a reasonable percentage of that kind of traffic, and doesn't know how to monetize it anyway...

Another milestone

Rico says he knows it's a split second for a 'real' blog, but it's all he's got...

What not to wear in an election

The Washington Post has a story by Robin Givhan about the clothing war in the election:

If politicos weren't so snide and dismissive of fashionistas, the McCain-Palin campaign wouldn't be in the awkward position of having to explain the $150,000 tab for shopping trips, hairstyling, and beauty makeovers for Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin.
How do you sell someone as a no-frills hockey mom who sold the state plane, fired the official cook, and turned down travel per diems for her family, and then try to explain wardrobing her in clothes from Neiman Marcus -- a store occasionally referred to by aggrieved, frugal shoppers as Needless Markup? How do you, in barely two months, lavish her with fashion swag worthy of a starlet and valued at more than her annual governor's salary of $125,000?
That's not careless.
That's just plain stupid.
Or to use this election cycle's phrase of choice: That's some seriously bad judgment.
On good days, Americans are smart and tolerant people. They might have been surprised about exactly how much Cindy McCain spends on her Oscar de la Renta and Escada dresses, but the price tag didn't contradict her public image. (A de la Renta day dress, by the way, rings up at about $5,000.) The political handlers weren't trying to present this heiress as a regular gal who knows what it's like to worry about paying the mortgage. Perhaps she can empathize with such a crisis, but this is a woman who told Vogue that the kids loved her beachfront condo so much and came to visit so often... she bought another one just for them.
Americans do not begrudge the men custom-made suits. When Barack Obama went on a shopping spree with Hart Schaffner Marx before his nomination acceptance speech in Denver, few people blinked over his new $1,500 suit. He has even gone on to buy a couple more. But it was also conveniently revealed that Hart Schaffner Marx is an American label that manufactures its tailored clothing in Des Plaines, Illinois. John McCain's $520 Ferragamo shoes aren't that big a deal either, despite what his critics had to say.
And who could forget the gush-fest Michelle Obama unleashed when she wore a $148 Donna Ricco dress on The View and told the audience, "You put a little pin on it and you've got something going on." That little moment overshadowed all the thousand-dollar designer ensembles featuring Thakoon, Isabel Toledo, and others that she has worn. One dress was worth a hundred over-paid image consultants, political advisers and spinmeisters.
So when Politico.com rooted out the financial details of Palin's wardrobe makeover, the jaw dropped, the eyes blinked in disbelief at the tota,l and the mind whirled at the idiocy of it all.
The purchases were paid for using Republican National Committee funds. It was only a matter of time before the dollar figure became public and the question of legality would be raised. One wonders where the Palin stylists were during the $400 haircut kerfuffle caused by John 'I am a populist and the son of a millworker' Edwards. He received two such pricey haircuts during the Democratic primary and they were billed to his campaign, which is how everyone found out about them. (He later said the billing was in error and offered reimbursement.)
It's smart for a candidate to polish her image before stepping onto the national stage. Only a fool would stand in front of a television camera without the assistance of a makeup artist and a good hairstylist. Older photographs, from when Palin was just a regular old governor and paid for her own clothes, show her wearing fleece jackets, chunky turtlenecks, and windbreakers. Her wardrobe probably did need a little help. Truthfully, whose wouldn't?
Unlike a man, a woman can't easily get away with a wardrobe of a half-dozen virtually indistinguishable suits, a gross of red or blue ties, and a suitcase full of white dress shirts. A woman's wardrobe will cost more, and putting it together will be more time-consuming. But it should also be one that reflects the person, her demographic, and her message. And it's always nice if she actually buys it herself.
Instead, the campaign spent $75,000 at Neiman Marcus and nearly $50,000 at Saks Fifth Avenue, as well as substantial amounts at Barneys New York, Macy's, and Bloomingdale's. Now, if you've got a candidate whose persona centers around small-town America, Joe Six-Pack, and lots and lots of "you-betcha", what business do you have connecting her to Neiman's, Saks, and Barneys, specialty stores -- no, they are not good old-fashioned department stores -- that epitomize upscale, rarified, luxury consumption? No one can make the argument that the only store open in Minneapolis in early September was the local Neiman Marcus. They couldn't have popped into J. Crew or Ann Taylor? On What Not to Wear, Clinton and Stacy manage to build an entire wardrobe for their client for a mere $5,000.
In a statement, a Palin spokesman played the indignation card: "With all of the important issues facing the country right now, it's remarkable that we're spending time talking about pantsuits and blouses," said Tracey Schmitt. "It was always the intent that the clothing go to a charitable purpose after the campaign."
What is baffling is the mind-boggling evidence of a tin ear for the symbolism of popular culture.

Rico says it was stupid of them, particularly because Cindy McCain could've just written a check and covered it herself...

Counterintuitive is so weird

The Dow Jones average is down five hundred points (more than 5%).
Apple's stock price is up over five points (more than 5%).
Go figure.

Purely for medicinal purposes, of course

According to an article, a new survey has revealed that 'staring at women's breasts is good for men's health and makes them live longer':

A five-year German study of 200 men found that those who enjoyed a longing look at busty beauties has lower blood pressure, less heart disease, and slower pulse rates... Dr. Karen Weatherby, who carried out the study, wrote in the New England Journal of Medicine that "just ten minutes of staring at the charms of a well-endowed female is roughly equivalent to a 30-minute aerobics workout".

Rico says he's willing to put in the equivalent of an hour's workout, just in case...

Shades of the earthquake

The San Jose Mercury News has the story of Rico's old stomping grounds:

A massive tanker truck fire following a car crash has prompted authorities to shut down all lanes of southbound Interstate 880 this morning, the California Highway Patrol said. A vehicle struck the center divide about 6:15 a.m. near 16th Avenue, and soon after a rig carrying gasoline struck that vehicle, causing a tank of about 8,600 gallons of fuel to spill and catch fire. A total of three vehicles were involved, according to the Oakland Fire Department. Three people suffered minor injuries but refused ambulance transport. Southbound I-880 has been shut down at 16th Avenue, and the CHP is advising motorists to take alternate routes — primarily I-580 — to get around the crash site. Truck traffic is also being directed to I-580.

Rico says he used to go south when he worked at Apple, but this happened only half a mile north of his old exit for the Vulcan...

Another great one gone

Deadwood, the series.
Only three seasons, but all gems.
Rico says he has it as his screensaver, and owns all three seasons on DVD; delicious.