It's Offical, We're 'Techno Fools'

This from Reuters via Yahoo News -

Complexity causes 50% of product returns: scientist
Mon Mar 6, 4:50 PM ET

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - Half of all malfunctioning products returned to stores by consumers are in full working order, but customers can't figure out how to operate the devices, a scientist said on Monday.

Product complaints and returns are often caused by poor design, but companies frequently dismiss them as "nuisance calls," Elke den Ouden found in her thesis at the Technical University of Eindhoven in the south of the Netherlands.

A wave of versatile electronics gadgets has flooded the market in recent years, ranging from MP3 players and home cinema sets to media centers and wireless audio systems, but consumers still find it hard to install and use them, she found.

The average consumer in the United States will struggle for 20 minutes to get a device working, before giving up, the study found.

Product developers, brought in to witness the struggles of average consumers, were astounded by the havoc they created.

She also gave new products to a group of managers from consumer electronics company Philips (PHG.AS), asking them to use them over the weekend. The managers returned frustrated because they could not get the devices to work properly.

Most of the flaws found their origin in the first phase of the design process: product definition, Den Ouden found.

Now, I do not feel so foolish as I stand in line for thirty-five minutes at Fry's Electronics.

The Envelope, Pleeeease ...

Dennis Prager is God's gift for the rest of us who really do not believe what George Clooney has to say when he accepts the movie industry's highest accolade. Dennis wrote this for his syndicated column and Real Clear Politics.

An American take on an acceptance speech -

(A) Speech We'd Like to Hear From an Academy Award Winner
By Dennis Prager - Copyright 2005 Creators Syndicate

Here's a speech we would like to hear from an Academy Award winner:

I thank you for this wonderful award. Receiving an Academy Award gives the recipient an almost unique opportunity to speak to hundreds of millions people around the world, so I would like take this once-in-a-lifetime moment to say this:

First, I want to thank my country, the United States of America. Every one of us here has this country to thank for enabling us to live lives of unprecedented freedom and unimaginable affluence. Too many of us forget that no other country in history has offered such opportunities to people in our profession or in any other profession, for that matter.

Second, I want to thank the men and women of the armed forces of the United States. While we bask in freedom and spend a good part of our lives going from party to party and award show to award show, tens of thousands of my fellow Americans are confronting a menace to our world as great as that fought by previous generations fighting Nazism and communism.

At the same time, I also want to apologize to these troops for my profession not having made even one motion picture about any of the heroic American fighters in Afghanistan and Iraq. This country is fighting a war, Hollywood. You may think this war is unwise, waged under mistaken, or even false, pretenses. And as an actor in Hollywood, you are overwhelmingly likely to hate this commander in chief. But even the men and women of Hollywood must recognize that America is fighting the worst people of our time, people who hurt every group Hollywood claims to care about -- minorities, women, gays -- people who engage in the sins Hollywood most professes to oppose -- intolerance and violence -- far more than anyone else on the planet.

In another era, when what many have labeled "the greatest generation" fought the German Nazis and the Japanese fascists, Hollywood made movie after movie depicting that great war and our great warriors. And Hollywood showed freedom's enemies as the cruel and vicious people they were. We have not produced one film yet depicting this war in positive terms or one depicting this generation's enemies of freedom as the cruel and vicious people they are.

In fact, the only nominated film about people who slaughter children at discos, blow up weddings, and bomb pizzerias and buses filled with men, women and children is one that attempts to show these murderers in God's name as complex human beings. Just imagine how the Academy would have reacted 60 years ago to a film depicting Nazi murderers as complex human beings. We have descended far.

We in Hollywood walk around thinking we are very important. That is why this year's nominated films for best picture are largely pictures with messages, pictures that relatively few people actually see. But although Hollywood was always concerned with politics, we have let ourselves be taken over by those for whom their message is more significant than the primary purposes of film -- to illuminate life and to entertain. Yes, entertain.

You know, entertainment is actually a noble pursuit. Life is difficult for almost every human being on earth. And if we can offer people an elevated way to divert their attention for a couple of hours from their troubled child, their marital tensions, their ill parent, their financial woes, we have rendered the world a greater service than by making another message-film against racism in America, the least racist country in the world.

My fellow actors, we walk around feeling that we are very important. But we do so only because we confuse fame with significance. We do have more fame than any other human beings in history. Far more people have heard of any actor here tonight than of any of the discoverers of any medication saving billions of lives, of any teacher of the disabled, of any nurse tending the aged, of almost any national leader.

But the truth is that, as noble a calling as acting can be, all we do is make-believe: We portray other people, and we speak words written by other people. Everyone knows our names, but almost no one knows us. All they know are the characters we play.

Thank you again. I hope I haven't ruined your evening.

No, thank you Mr. Prager.
Photo Credit: Reuters

Big Retail And The "Blogosphere"

This from the New York Times:

Wal-Mart Enlists Bloggers in P.R. Campaign
By MICHAEL BARBARO
Published: March 7, 2006

Brian Pickrell, a blogger, recently posted a note on his Web site attacking state legislation that would force Wal-Mart Stores to spend more on employee health insurance. "All across the country, newspaper editorial boards — no great friends of business — are ripping the bills," he wrote.

It was the kind of pro-Wal-Mart comment the giant retailer might write itself. And, in fact, it did.

Several sentences in Mr. Pickrell's Jan. 20 posting — and others from different days — are identical to those written by an employee at one of Wal-Mart's public relations firms and distributed by e-mail to bloggers.

Under assault as never before, Wal-Mart is increasingly looking beyond the mainstream media and working directly with bloggers, feeding them exclusive nuggets of news, suggesting topics for postings and even inviting them to visit its corporate headquarters.
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Glenn Reynolds, the founder of Instapundit.com, one of the oldest blogs on the Web, said that even in the blogosphere, which is renowned for its lack of rules, a basic tenet applies: "If I reprint something, I say where it came from. A blog is about your voice, it seems to me, not somebody else's."

Companies of all stripes are using blogs to help shape public opinion.

Before General Electric announced a major investment in energy-efficient technology last year, company executives first met with major environmental bloggers to build support. Others have reached out to bloggers to promote a product or service, as Microsoft did with its Xbox game system and Cingular Wireless has done in the introduction of a new phone.

Read More>>

Degradation Uplifted / Then Set Right

Three 6 Mafia's Jordan Houston, left, and Paul Beauregard savor Oscars for Original Song in the film "Hustle & Flow," which stars Terrence Howard, right. Photo Credit: By Mario Anzuoni -- Reuters

During the Oscars last Sunday, one could not get through the broadcast without thinking ... What is this country and culture coming to?

Take the example of the catagory honoring the best original movie song of the year - in the Washington Post this morning, two articles appeared that contradicted each other. One titled "Picking Up the Lyric...But Missing the Beat" by Philip Kennicott, lambasted our culture for NOT GETTING IT.

Exercpts:

At dinner, say a month from now, perhaps it will be your very unhip great aunt who says it. Someone skimps her on dessert, so she looks plaintively down the table, waits for a moment of silence and then delivers the line -- "It's hard out here for a pimp."

Witness the explosion of a new hip-hop meme into "white culture." Yes, it was a memorable Oscar moment when Three 6 Mafia won the best song for their musical contribution to "Hustle & Flow." And yes, the song has a catchy tag melody. But this is a cultural brush fire. Oscar host Jon Stewart seemed to know it, and started the jokes rolling.
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Why this song? Why now? When "white" culture borrows from "black" culture, it doesn't necessarily borrow what it thinks it's borrowing. The real meaning of the song, its reference to pimps, its role within a movie documenting the often pathetic efforts at stardom of a pimp who also makes music, isn't particularly relevant. When a piece of cultural stuff makes the transition into the mainstream, it often does so on terms entirely different from what it originally meant.
--
And so "It's hard out here for a pimp" enters white culture, as so many black memes do, with a wink and a nod. Of course your great aunt sitting down the table complaining in an impeccably white way that it's not easy for a pimp isn't thinking about real pimps. She may not even know what real pimps do. But that doesn't matter. Black memes in "white culture" are vaguely scandalous, used with a wink and nod that say, "I know this is transgressive, but I'm not going to learn anything more about it."
--
Here, there. Inside, outside. The slip of the pen captures exactly how these things play out when appropriated across class and race lines. No one would ever say, and mean, "It's hard out there for a pimp," which would suggest actually sympathy for pimps, and for people out there, on the outside. But it's hard out here for a pimp, appropriated into white culture, becomes a way both to borrow the outsider's inherently cool status, while completely denying that any complaint from that place has value.
Read It All>>

In another piece in the Washington Post, titled "Oscar Winner Hits Angry Chord - 'Pimp' Song Denounced for Exploiting Negative Stereotypes" By Avis Thomas-Lester, a different and opposite point of view emerges.

Excerpts:

When Christine Smith heard the song "It's Hard Out Here for a Pimp" announced as the Oscar winner for best original song on Sunday night's telecast, she almost fell off the sofa in her Arlington living room.

Deborah Veney Robinson of Silver Spring had pretty much the same reaction. So did Juaquin Jessup of Northwest Washington.

"It was just like during the time when all the blaxploitation films were coming out with African Americans being portrayed as pimps and hos and gangsters," said Jessup, 51.

"It was another example of how they pick the worst aspects of black life and reward that. There are more important things in our culture that need focus more than the hardships of a pimp," he said. "The only place many people see our culture is through movies and on television, and at the same time, this country is experiencing an influx of people coming over here from all over the world, and the only thing they see of black America through the media is . . . pimps and gangsters and all of that. It's always some low-down brother or some welfare mother.

"Particularly offensive to Robinson, 36, was the performance by hip-hop group Three 6 Mafia, featuring men dressed as pimps and women in the hot pants and rabbit furs of streetwalkers. "I have no problem with movies and songs being gritty," she said, "but I have a problem with something that falls just short of a minstrel show."
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Erika Scott, 17, a Largo High School eleventh-grader, said she was a little shocked. "Growing up where I live, you see, all the time, people who are wanna-be pimps and aspire to be pimps," she said. "Knowing that there is a song that tells the world about what goes on with people like that was surprising, and I was surprised that it won. It made me wonder what the world has come to."
Read It All>>

Notice, it is a 17 year old eleventh-grader in the second article who probably had the best reaction to this whole issue.

Well, It's hard out here for a pimp but it is even harder out here for Hollywood to honor what is the best in our culture.

The biggest reason why this song won the Oscar is because the Academy only placed three songs in the catagory to be voted on. It comes down to creating an environment where bad is good and good is bad ... and that pretty much sums up one big reason why moviegoing is down and Muslim hatred for some of the freedoms and culture we enjoy is up.

Top Ten Green-Power Retail Operations

Companies are recognized by the EPA for their purchase of "Green" generated power to operate the stores. The following is a list of the top ten retail operations and the percentage of green-power they use.

Rankings reflect megawatt-hours and percent of total usage. Green Power Usage:

1. Whole Foods Market, 463,128 100%
2. Starbucks, 150,000, 20%
3. Safeway Inc., 87,000, 2%
4. Staples, 49,457, 10%
5. FedEx Kinko’s, 40,600, 15%
6. HEB Grocery Company/Austin Region Operations, 27,600, 26%
7. Liz Claiborne, Inc./NJ Corporate Headquarters, 25,000, 100%
8. prAna, 16,500, 100%
9. Lowe’s Home Centers in NC, NM, SC, TN, TX, 16,473, 4%
10. Shaw’s Supermarkets in Rhode Island, 2,000, 6%

Combined, these leaders’ purchases amount to almost 878,000 megawatt-hours (MWh) annually, which is equivalent to the power required by more than 82,000 homes every year.

Read It All>>
ht-FMI dailyLead

Human Rights Trumps Terrorism

Animal rights extremist receive convictions due to their disruptive approach of disagreement.
ht-Machelle Malkin

AP story goes on to say -

A jury returned its (guilty) verdict against Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty and six of its members on Thursday after three days of deliberations.

The government charged that SHAC waged a five-year campaign against Huntingdon Life Sciences, posting on its Web site information about the lab's employees and those who do business with Huntingdon. The information included their home phone numbers, addresses and where their children attended school. Many of those people saw their homes vandalized, and they and their families received threatening e-mails, faxes and phone calls.
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The defendants were not accused of directly making threats or carrying out vandalism. Instead, they were charged with animal enterprise terrorism, stalking and other offenses.

Mike Caulfield, Huntingdon's general manager, said the verdict was “a victory for democracy, research and patients.” “The government and this jury have sent a strong message to those who would ignore the democratic process and resort to criminal activity to advance their political views,” Caulfield said in a statement.
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SHAC President Pamelyn Ferdin said the jury was fooled by the government's case and the judge's order to remove victims' names and home addresses from its Web site reeked of fascism.

“This is a scary path for all Americans,” said Ferdin, a former child star who was the voice of Lucy in the “Peanuts” movies and played Felix Unger's daughter Edna on TV's “The Odd Couple.”
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Many of the targets of the harassment testified that they started looking over their shoulders when walking or driving, changed their phone numbers or even moved. Some kept their children from playing outdoors, and several bought guns.

Sally Dillenback broke into tears as she recounted an anonymous e-mail that threatened to cut open her son and fill him with poison “the way Huntingdon does with the animals.”

Marian Harlos testified she got late-night calls in which someone asked: “Are you scared? Do you think the puppies should be scared?”

She said masked protesters parked down the street from her house, videotaping her comings and goings. They barged into her office, screaming and tossing leaflets, and others ruined the rear door with glue and animal stickers, she said.

And now, in a move of international solidarity, this from the TIMES in the UK -

New York is next target of animal rights group
By Nicola Woolcock and Patrick Foster

ANIMAL rights activists targeting Oxford University are taking their campaign to America, where extremists were last week convicted of inciting terrorism.

Protesters will single out clubs and restaurants hosting reunion events arranged by the Oxford Alumni Association of New York. It is the first time that Speak, a group opposed to the construction of a £20 million research facility at the university, has taken its protest abroad.
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Last week the American branch of Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (Shac), which aims to close down Huntingdon Life Sciences (HLS) in Cambridgeshire, was convicted, along with six of its members, of inciting violence and harassment against the staff and families of HLS and their clients. Now Speak is mobilising support in the US. On its website, it encourages activists to contact venues in New York to persuade them to cancel bookings for alumni dinners next month. It says: “Let’s not forget: the reason these events take place is in order to raise money for the university. Some of this money will then undoubtedly find its way to those who are torturing and abusing animals.”

A Speak spokesman said: “We’re pretty confident our friends in New York will come to our assistance. There will be a number of people at various venues, educating them about exactly what goes on in vivisection laboratories.”

Work on the Oxford laboratory was suspended for 16 months after the previous contractors pulled out after threats from extremists. It resumed in December last year, amid high security. Speak has since adopted new tactics, including targeting groups with only tenuous connections to the university.

Let us all hope, after they cross the pond, they cross the line while acting out and get arrested. I prefer the recent activities and approach to disagreement taken by PETA posted earlier here at MAXINE.

Tamiflu Breakthrough

A man holds out two star anise seeds, the main ingredient in Tamifly, in the township of Gulong, China's southern Guangxi region, November 18, 2005. A team of Japanese researchers has developed a new way of producing the anti-flu drug Tamiflu that does not rely on natural ingredients and may help ensure more stable supplies, the head of the team said. REUTERS/John Ruwitch

Hopeful News ...

Japanese researchers find new way to make Tamiflu
Thu Mar 2, 2:15 AM ET

TOKYO (Reuters) - A team of Japanese researchers has developed a new way of producing the anti-flu drug Tamiflu that does not rely on natural ingredients and may help ensure more stable supplies, the head of the team said.

More Here>>

Just In Time For Tonight's Oscars

Report or Opinion Whitepaper?
Who really knows but those who write the "report" and those who write about the "report" ... it is just curious that the source and the timing of the exposure of the sources unscientific or unstatistical opinion could be suspect.

This from AP via Yahoo News-

Report: Gay Prevention Programs Harm Teens
By LAURA WIDES-MUNOZ, Associated Press Writer Sat Mar 4, 2:17 AM ET

MIAMI - A national gay and lesbian group is accusing several religious organizations of harming homosexual teens by offering parents what they say are bogus therapies to keep children from becoming gay.

In a report released Thursday in Miami Beach, the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force Policy Institute questioned whether the therapies are ethical or effective and said state and federal authorities should provide greater oversight when these programs are aimed at youth.
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"Many of these programs are crossing the line as to what is approved under freedom of expression," Foreman said in an interview with reporters. "This deserves attention. It deserves to be regulated."

Read It All>>

Again, the report, and the article about the report, do nothing to substantiate the claim made by the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force Policy Institute.

If this is OPINION ... then label it as opinion as opposed to someone issuing a "Report". Please do not insult us with agenda, let alone a timed agenda.

And The Winner Is...?

Tonight's Oscars? - It's All About Clinton!

Syriana?, Brokeback Mountain?, Munich?

This read from Ann Althouse -

In other words, Spielberg is totally bullshitting. It's not about Bush, it's about Clinton.

Read It All>>

HELP! STOP THE "TOLL ROAD"

I was watching one of the morning chat shows on TV this morning. A segment about how cable companies and phone companies were devising ways to charge for the type of files one downloads from the net caught my interest.

A couple of examples might be ... If I choose to be online to "game", I would be charged additionally for the time I spend "in the game" or I pay for a movie from an online resource and the cable company charges me for the time this type of file takes to download via broadband.

Basically, these companies wanted to profit from the type of choices of content one wanted to transfer from the net to there own computer - thus creating a type of TOLL ROAD on the internet access based on the type of file one wanted in addition to any charges (if any) paid to the resource of the content - IN ADDITION to the monthly base service charge for the type of internet access service one already is paying (monthly access charges for broadband through the cable or phoneline).

On the segment, an interview with someone with an interest to stop this commercial "piling on" or usury directed viewers to a website set up to keep the web as free as it is today - Center For Digital Democracy.

The mission statement reads as follows:

The broadband revolution--much like the radio, television, cable, and online revolutions of the recent past--provides yet another opportunity to make our media system more democratic, more diverse, and more participatory. It is incumbent upon community activists and leaders, recognizing the power of broadband, to become more actively involved in the design and deployment of the new high-speed networks that will bring video, data, and telephone services to our homes and businesses.

In an effort to realize the full potential of broadband, the Center for Digital Democracy is launching a new project designed to stimulate citizen participation in the broadband revolution at the local level. CDD's DigitalDestiny Campaign will assist communities in coming to terms with the rapidly evolving telecommunications landscape, bringing new multimedia resources to the masses. Our task now is to ensure that broadband serves citizenship as well as salesmanship, culture as well as commerce. By working together at the local level, we have the opportunity to shape our digital destiny.

Join the Campaign!

The concept of "An Army Of Davids"

needs to be applied to this issue. I am all for free enterprise but to pay a monthly access fee, then pay for content files, AND THEN pay again to the monthly access provider for the type of file I randomly choose to download to my files from the web is a bit much.

Join the Campaign!

What Say You?
ht: The Weekend TODAY Show

-- Grinding "Meathead" --

From LA Weekly - Bill Bradley’s NEW WEST NOTES -

Update: Another Democratic Leader Moves On The Reiner Situation

Assembly Majority Leader Dario Frommer, a Los Angeles area Democrat who was also a high-ranking aide to then Governor Gray Davis, has formally joined forces with state Senator Dave Cox, the Sacramento area Republican, in requesting a state investigation of the Rob Reiner-led California Children and Families Commission. This as a result of a letter to the Joint Legislative Audit Committee dated February 24th and recently uncovered. The committee meets on March 8th. During that meeting, as committee chair Nicole Parra, an ally of Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez, told me on Wednesday, the committee is expected to authorize an investigation of the Reiner commission by the state auditor.

This now has all the earmarks of a Democratic legislative leadership issue, with bipartisan support coming initially from Republicans. With one of the big three gubernatorial candidates, state Controller Steve Westly, speaking out as well, one wonders where is his Democratic rival Phil Angelides? And of course, where is the man who could move more decisively than any other, Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger?

Meanwhile, Rob is remaining very, very quiet - especially since the WSJ Opinion Piece. Watch, as the "handle" turns.