Dylan Hunter

Just got the below email, and as someone who waited 8 months for an iPhone, despite its ludicrous expense, but then was so horrified by AT&T’s below stance that I couldn’t possibly buy it, couldn’t put it any better myself. Posted in its entirety:

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At a packed San Francisco hearing today, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) defended your Fourth Amendment rights and urged the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to let our class-action lawsuit against AT&T go forward. The case demands that AT&T stop illegally assisting the National Security Agency to snoop on its customers’ telephone and Internet communications.

There’s much more at stake here than stopping the Bush Administration’s illegal spying and holding the telco giant accountable, though. The President is arguing that thin claims of “state secrets” can trump the courts’ constitutional duty to uphold the rule of law.

Without judicial review, there’s no way to protect ordinary citizens against government abuses of power. No president, now or in the future, should be allowed unfettered authority to evade the courts and trample on your freedom. As Judge Vaughn Walker wrote in rejecting the government’s claims at the lower court, “The compromise
between liberty and security remains a difficult one. But dismissing this case at the outset would sacrifice liberty for no apparent enhancement of security.”

For the past 17 years, EFF has been proud to take on the hard cases to ensure that your liberty is not sacrificed unnecessarily. Please support us in this critical case by donating to EFF at http://secure.eff.org/att. And please spread the word to your friends and family.

Join EFF today! http://secure.eff.org/att

For a News.com story from the hearing:
http://news.com.com/Appeals+court+may+let+NSA+lawsuits+proceed/2100-1028_3-6202865.html

For more about the case: http://www.eff.org/legal/cases/att

Tell Congress to stop the illegal spying: http://action.eff.org/fisa

A nice mini-list for some items from Smart Money.

In summary:

Sunday - Groceries, Hotel Rooms
Monday - Cars
Tuesday - Dinner Out, Groceries
Wednesday - Airplane Tickets, Entertainment
Thursday - Books, Clothing, Gas (before 10am)
Friday -
Saturday - Department Store Wares (evening)

To add to, for those buying stuff on eBay, auctions ending during the daytime obviously do better for the buyer than evenings, but as to days of the week, from highest buyer advantage to lowest, (reverse for seller advantage):

1) Tuesday
2) Wednesday
3) Monday, Thursday
4) Friday, Saturday
5) Sunday

(Will probably move this over to a more permanent page once I migrate this site over to a more wiki-oriented approach, but for now….)

A couple of the most recent, in reverse chronological order:

Execution - Larry Bossidy, Ram Charan
- Hung this one up partially-read several years ago, but my wife needed room in the drawer I had put it in, so since it was sitting on the floor looking at me every morning thought I’d give it another shot, (even if the cover’s color scheme is truly abhorrent! ). Seems to be a faster read and more interesting this time than I remember, (s’pose there’s a right and wrong time for all of these more practical books, and since I’m on a bit of an “It’s never going to get done if I don’t get to it” kick lately, s’pose it fits! ). Something to read during my commutes until I can make it back to the bookstore, and we’ll see if more…

Rails Recipes - Chad Fowler
- Just finished a couple of days ago, some very nice ideas/executions to keep in mind. Moving back and forth in the backpack everyday right now.

Agile Web Development with Rails, (AWDWR) - Dave Thomas, David Heinemeier Hansson
- Excellent, what more can I say! Also in the backpack.

Programming Ruby - Dave Thomas
- Very nice bridge between Why’s Poignant Guide and AWDWR, just right for what I was looking for when I first read it, and a good resource. And yep, also in the backpack, (can you tell it’s getting heavy? )

Name of the Rose - Umberto Eco
- Enjoyed again. Loved the movie, loved the book. How often do you come across a superbly-written, historically believable,educational,foreshadowing religious reform,emotionally and mentally engaging,don’t want to put it down,14th century who-done-it, (and I don’t even really like who-done-its! ).

Hey Folks,

If you’re seeing this, you’re noticing that it looks a tad different than it has, (probably a good thing, not so sure about that funky brown anymore! ). Am in the process of finally upgrading to WP 2.x, (most notably, to see how it does against that comment spam! ) there’ll definitely be more changes to come, so please bear with me - thanks!

——

BTW - if you’re doing this as well, and are concurrently changing the directory where your blog is located, there’s a good chance that the new “enable referers” thing will bork your blog. See the post I put up on the Wordpress website for the solution. .

Whoops, didn’t realize this was only behind a login, which I _really, really_ hate - if you want to require registration to post, fine, but requiring it to just view is bogus - also doesn’t get you the kind of organic search traffic you should be looking for, and doesn’t assist the recognition, etc. of the posters, who were good enough to contribute their time and energy, and deserve as broad credit as you can provide for their contributions, at least), so the full text is below:

If you’re trying to move the directory of your blog as part of your upgrade, (i.e. from http://www.mywebsite.com/blog to http://www.mywebsite.com) you’re going to find that you’re still in deep doo-doo after you follow the install directions, (i.e. you’ll notice there’s no theme at all on your blog now, just the raw text, and if you open up your error logs, you’ll see that it’s still trying to access mywebsite.com/blog/… rather than mywebsite.com/…).If you can get through to your admin logon, you’ll see that it also keeps popping /blog/ as part of the URL, and if you try to modify it directly in the address bar, you’ll get the “enable referers” thing again and again. You’ll read the docs, make sure all the settings are correct, (they will be). You’ll clear all your cookies, etc., still no joy.The cause is simple, in the database behind WP, it’s still reading that your blog should be at mywebsite.com/blog, and until it finds everything there, thanks to the referer thingus, it appears to not let you change it.

Simple solution, (presuming you have access to phpMyAdmin through your webhost). And warning - you’re inside your WP database, so if you’re not comfortable mucking around in your db, either get a friend to help, or only do the following, (it’s actually pretty safe, just don’t futz with anything else! ). Access phpMyAdmin for your database, click on the wp_options table in the left pane, and then click “browse.” The first item you’ll see is “siteurl,” which is still set to the old path. Click on the pencil, (”Edit”) remove the /blog from the option_value box, (can also remove from the option_description if you want - not necessary, but what the heck).

At the bottom of the page, you should see two option boxes separated by the words “and then.” They should be set to “Save” and “Go back to previous page,” respectively, (if not, set them to these values). Click on the Go button, and reload your blog, which you now should see in the default theme, (big blue box in the middle). Then close out the window you were in phpMyAdmin with, stop cursing, and enjoy your new WP 2.0 blog!

Archaeologists have discovered an intact, ancient Egyptian tomb in the Valley of the Kings, the first since King Tutankhamun’s was found in 1922.

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So there’s finally a name for it, (other than “adult ADD” or “creeping schizophrenia”) - “frazzing”

“Think of all the digital gadgets we use to keep in touch — from cell phones and BlackBerrys to computers. When they summon us they all demand we stop, switch gears and respond — anytime, anywhere.

“Frazzing,” short for frantic multitasking, is the name given to the toll this mental channel switching takes on our productivity. The term was coined by Massachusetts psychiatrist Edward Hallowell, and the phenomenon it describes is costing us.”

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Now this definitely is exciting - helping impoverished kids, and thus, impoverished nations, to help themselves in ways we take for granted with our own kids everyday. See? All truly great things start out with one simple thought that everyone else thinks is insane / stupid / foolish. “A $100 laptop?” Come on. “Man landing on the Moon.” A fool’s errand. “Ensuring that every car can travel @ 60 mph at any time of day.” Utter madness. Hey, DOT - hear that last one?!

“….[One Laptop per Child] Chairman Nicholas Negroponte said, ‘Any previous doubt that a very-low-cost laptop could be made for education in the developing world has just gone away.’ Quanta has agreed to devote significant engineering resources from the Quanta Research Institute (QRI) in Q1 and Q2, 2006, with a target of bringing the product to market in Q4….”

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An amusing mini-romp through some of those legal jewels embedded deep within the standard EULA. I liked Claria’s - to paraphrase: “I’m a scumbag, and am going to send back all kinds of nasty stuff, and you have no right to know what kind of stuff I’m going to send back, nor do you have the right to do anything about it…”

Funny stuff, especially for an app that no one, but no one, actually would _choose_ to install on their own, unbundled, un-”quietly mixed into the fine print of an installer,” un-ActiveX installed, etc., etc.

Too bad, too, from what I know, they’ve developed some pretty neat user profiling technology that could be used to make lots of folks very happy if applied to Search, eComm, etc., (i.e. similar technology is used to determine which result an SE should actually display to you, as opposed to your neighbor, to try to figure out what you mean when you pop in those 2 nigh-unto random words) - instead, it’s used to piss people off.

A search engine based on was the topic of my big Business Plan while at Babson, and still have not just great faith, but believe in the import of, as Search continues to mature - i.e. there’s not nearly enough being done to modify non-ad-related content to pay attention to what _I_ actually want - and yes, Local does get a bit further toward this, so it’ll be what I, and several million other people in MA might find relevant, but, guess what, for many items, I’m going to be a lot closer to folks in NJ, where I grew up, on others, closer to folks in NH or ME, where I vacation, on others closer to folks in Alaska, where someday I still hope to go, or folks who travel to the Himalayas, etc., etc.

I know _very_ well how tough it is to make these kinds of associations, as well as to update, determine when to re-assess which component groups we belong in, etc., but that doesn’t mean that it’s not an extremely important problem to work on, not just for the business opportunity, (though there is plenty of that) but for the good of us all. And yes, we’ll have to work through / around some the FUD that’s been inspired by the Scumbags, but we’ll get there - especially in societies that pride themselves on the value of the individual, to have Search reaching for anything less will always leave the prize unclaimed, and the opportunity to be surpassed, self-evident.

Just wanted to relay a superb story about a job very well done by Amazon. A couple of weeks ago, in an attempt to let me get more of my thoughts out,* poked around a bit, saw some great reviews on the most recent version of Dragon’s /ScanSoft’s / Nuance’s Naturally Speaking, and, after seeing the Preferred version on Amazon for $120 after rebate, (really wanted the Pro version, but come on, $600+ - did they hire somebody from MS to do their pricing?) plopped down the credit card and *phoosh*, 5 days later had my hands on a bright new copy of Dragon. Installed,** and was off to the races.

Inside the box was the rebate form, which said that this wasn’t a periodic rebate to try to push product toward the end of the year / in prep for the next version launching next summer, as I thought, but was really just an upgrade rebate, so applicable to, at most, maybe 1 in 10 of the folks who might see. Short version, after complaining to Amazon about how misleading I thought this was, (and yes, it apparently is shown similarly on CompUSA and several others, so it’s not an Amazon-only thing) without an ounce of complaint, etc., their customer support rep decided to take the hit for the $50 schuyster from ScanSoft even when I hadn’t asked them to, and in so doing, cemented themselves as an excellent example of the kind of business practices we all should have, (listening to their customers, empowering their workers to make the calls, and going above and beyond what’s being asked, knowing that the long-term value of the customer relationship is worth _much_ more than a single point-in-time issue, so make it go away - they’re not all the way up there with L.L. Bean - they’d have to offer to take back any book after you’d read it for years and years, no questions asked to get there, or at least have switched the way that it’s listed on their site for everyone else, (i.e. it’s still included here as part of the standard price - but, for me, I’m very happy, and they deserve a solid “Atta Boy!”

Snippets from the text of the incredibly short (again, right on target) email exchange is below:

——————

<snip>

Thank you for writing to us at Amazon.com.

First, I would like to convey to you my sincere apologies for any inconvenience you may have experienced with your order.

I understand your concern over the rebate which is only available to a small subset of the population.

Customer satisfaction is my priority. In an effort to compensate for the rebate I have requested a refund of $50.

This refund should be issued to your credit card within the next 2 to 3 business days. We will send you another e-mail to let you know when it has been completed. You may also view refunds by
clicking the “Your Account” link at the top of our web site, then clicking “Go!” next to “open and recently shipped orders.” Completed refunds appear at the bottom of an individual order’s summary page.

In addition to our large selection, one of the benefits we’d like to offer our customers is convenience, and I realise that we have not met that standard in this case. I hope that you will give us another opportunity to prove the quality of our service to you in the future.

I hope this solution is satisfactory. Once again I apologize for such an inconvenience.

Thank you for shopping at Amazon.com.

<snip>

Best regards,

Rupal Mehta
Amazon.com Customer Service
http://www.amazon.com

<snip>
>
> COMMENTS: Just wanted to send along a note as to how disappointed I
> was by your inclusion of ScanSoft’s upgrade rebate, which is only available
> to a small subset of the population, rather than being available to all, as
> part of the mainline price displayed for this item. When I purchased this
> product, I was expecting to eventually pay $120 for it, which is probably
> the most this was worth to me.
>
> From a legal perspective, I’m sure you guys are more than covered, but
> from a customer loyalty perspective, I think it misleading to include these
> kind of heavily restricted rebates as part of what you suggest is the true
> cost of the item, (is the equivalent of listing the MS Office full edition
> for the price of the upgrade one - it’s just not the same).
>
> In the past, I have had nothing but good things to say about my
> experiences with you guys, and not going to make a huge issue about this
> one, (i.e. I’m just going to suck it up as having been beaten out of $50)
> but wanted to let you know that by including this rebate in the
> regularly-suggested price, I’m afraid this feeling of having been
> schystered out of $50 I just wasn’t planning on having to spend really
> leaves a bad taste in my mouth in doing business with you, (and I’m sure
> I’m not alone in this of the people who purchased this) and next time, I’m
> going to have to think twice as to how comfortable I’m going to be in
> purchasing from you, (and yes, I could certainly do while reading the
> legalisms of this, that and the other, but you know what, I just want to
> buy something from someone that I feel comfortable isn’t going to make me
> waste my time jerking around with legalisms - there is a strong value to me
> of buying from folks who do “what’s right,” not just “what’s legal.”
> Thanks, Dylan

<snip>

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* Am sure I’m not alone in losing _so_ much that I once knew / experienced, for the simple reason that, quite frankly, typing is a pain in the butt and inefficient - talking is _much_ better, but can’t afford to have a perma-secretary transcribing my every thought!

** And to hopefully save others even the $120, honestly, even after several hours of reading training docs, it still only works sufficiently to be a curiousity, not as a real interface - come on, Folks, I know voice recognition is hard, but for even recognition of a single individual to be as hit-and-miss as this is after all that time blathering Dilbert and 3001: The Final Odyssey, (or whatever) there’s _no way_ that “Beta” shouldn’t be stamped all over that thing, (I don’t care if it’s Version 8, it’s just not good enough to call itself a finished product). Also, as relates specifically to this issue, I know there are some ridiculous shelving fees being charged at the SKU level by retailers, but sorry, an Upgrade-only price, (which is really what this turned out to be) is a different product, different SKU, not a rebate!

For all of us who’ve had to deal with the Chinese Government in relation to content on the Internet and the freedom of information when considering expanding into China, an excellent reminder of the face on our calls when we accede…

Will let the eloquence of the writer speak for itself.

I know I am hardly the first blogger to deal with this situation, but wanted to send along a nice, positive “may you roast upon a firey spit” to our friends working with Online Poker and Phentermine, (there, you got your one mention, and no, you’re not getting the links). Now piss off, (and yes, I know perfectly well that not only is there not a chance in hell that these folks are actually listening, but even less of a chance of them actually heeding me, but sometimes a good “shaking your fist at the sky” is important, nonetheless - keeps you strong on why you don’t want to engage in these kinds of business practices when confronted with folks who keep pushing to swim deeper and deeper toward the darkness! )

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For those of you who don’t know what comment spam is, there are some seriously scummy companies - they used to work with porn, where they used to try game my index on ATW.com* all the time - but apparently have found online gaming and prescriptions at least as profitable - out there who build bots to find blogs, and then submit random, utterly unrelated crap as comments to those blogs, which include their links, trying first and foremost to build up their Google PageRank** numbers, as well as hoping to get the maybe one in ten thousand folks who might actually click on to find out what this random non-sequitor is all about to actually engage.

For those blogs / forums that are unmoderated, these links go up, and if Google / Yahoo, etc., haven’t yet detected their most recent bit of random crap, (i.e. they change IP’s, emails, text, doorway pages, etc. all the time, and am sure have gotten smart enough to ensure that the true IP’s are entirely masked, and the ones they submit are sufficiently randomized so as to make it more difficult to connect) for at least a point in time, they get to profit from the connectivity calculations to boost their ranks within the algorithmic portion of these search engines, thereby attracting more extremely cheap leads, (though Teoma, in using their more “segmented only to the query” version of connectivity should at least isolate these idiots to fighting back and forth to only their own sewers).

Is forever the anti-spam / porn / spyware economic problem - there is much more profit for the companies doing this than there is for the companies trying to resist, (where usually doing a better job in dealing with is only a cost***). And so long as this remains the case, (which’ll be nigh unto forever) we’ll have to deal with, and lose the economic value of the time spent in all of us dealing with, (i.e. how much cash could we all generate in the same amount of time it takes us to moderate our blogs / forums to make these things go away and go away and go away…. And yes, I know WordPress 1.5+ has some method of decreasing comment spam, but afraid I haven’t yet been able to get my webhost to upgrade me beyond 1.0.x even after repeated requests - and yes, this indeed may turn out to be enough of an issue for me to move webhosts - or, via the extreme power of inertia - it may not! )
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* Have I told you how much it hurts my heart every time I have to type the link to ATW anymore? What’s there is nothing more than a tired shell - my Old Girl, as a distinct entity, with its own advantages and disadvantages is long since gone, (though at least adding nicely to Yahoo). It’s as sad as when Disney bought Go.com, gutted it, refused to do any work to keep it up, refused to sell it, (I tried! ) and killed it through neglect, (and that wasn’t nearly as interesting a search engine) as happened with:

AV, (I almost never used, but I’m sure I’m far from alone in missing them having their full boolean advanced search - some things are important just to _be_ - as something in the World - even if only 4 people on the planet actually use - this is one of them), as happened with

Hotbot, as happened with

Northern Light, (one of my old personal favorites on the relevance front - from a business model perspective, were clearly always one of the weirdest), as happened with

….,

but as will unfortunately never happen with MSN even though looking at the mistakes that they continue to make that all of us already went through and solved years ago, it probably should, (but MS has to remain MS, and do it their own way - their focus has always been on how things can be best for them, rather than how they can be best for the consumer, and luckily, they have more than enough cash to continue to totally not care, and there are more than enough people whose most important market trait is inertia).

** And yes, I’m well-aware that Google doesn’t actually use PageRank, the algorithm, anymore. Am referring to the PageRank _concept_ - i.e. weighted link popularity to approximate concepts of authority, which I’m sure they’ll always use in one way or another, (if only to keep a tight, well-understood PR message). And if you’re _seriously_ picking these kind of nits, am sure there are plenty of other folks who would be much better foils for random, senseless and otherwise unproductive argument, (i.e. I never understood the point of debating, either).

*** Even for the anti-spyware guys, who do get comped specifically to fight, they get comped to remove stuff, and if that means wiping out a whole mess of false positives, who cares? They don’t get paid to work hard on parsing the nice ones from the nasties, they get paid to make things go away, plain and simple, with the specific exception of never tagging Google or Yahoo since the bad PR would kill them, regardless of the practices of their apps - i.e. did you know that if you have the PageRank button active on your Google toolbar, (which is the default condition) that they’re watching literally every single site that you, your husband, your wife, your children, go to, (though I suppose if your child is an early-pubescent, it might be a good thing to scare him a bit about people watching what he’s watching! )? Did you know further that both Google and Yahoo update their toolbars to do whatever they’ve chosen to do without your knowledge or consent? This stuff certainly scares the bejesus out of me!

Just a quick word as I just donated to Matt Mullenweg for his / his team’s great work on Wordpress, (i.e. the blog software that I’m using here). As someone who has and continues to work with folks in the Open Source community, if you enjoy the results of the (truly tremendous!) hours of work that these folks put in, send them an email of gratitude, or better yet, a small donation, even if only a pittance, (I sent Matt $10) just to say how much you appreciate all of their efforts. It really means a lot to many of these guys, and to keep high-quality product rolling off the presses to let you do what you otherwise wouldn’t / couldn’t without having to separately budget for some ludicrous mismatch between cost and value, (MS Office for home use comes quickly to mind here) it should mean a lot to you, too. So - Pay them, will you!

Well, thanks to our friends at Google, a whole slew of the postings that I used to do on Usenet, (predominantly before getting married - the wife’s not too crazy about me spending personal time on the computer anymore! ) are still out there, (including 4 ancient ones from ‘92, when I was a senior @ Lafayette, and well before The Web - with an email addy of HD22%LAFAYACS.bitnet@LAFIBM.LAFAYETTE.EDU - how’s that for a mouthful - too bad they didn’t have anything from further back, but hey).

As part of the project I mentioned below to create a data store of insights / reusable info for myself and others, (as well as since way too few folks even know what Usenet is! ) I’m bringing them up on the website in an area I’ve decided to name, (for now, at least) “The Stepstool,” (Stepstool - “leg up” - get it? alliteration, repetitive letters, strong tie-in to pre-conceived ideas, even if slightly pushing the character limit, etc., etc. - hey, all I have to do is make the background red to elicit excitement, and I’ve got a winner branding campaign! - hey, if you can’t laugh at yourself, what’s the point! ).

This first set is predominantly focused on Excel and Business Modeling, as I used to spend a good bit of time trying to help folks out on comp.apps.spreadsheets, (and a few others) as I’m both a _huge_ believer in the value of extremely strong modeling skills for many career directions, (especially for the Marketing / Biz Dev / M&A / VC crowd) as well as the concept that the only stupid question is the one not asked. Note: it’s not pretty by any stretch yet, (not that that’s any different from any of the rest of my site! ) but as I’ve learned again and again over the years - content first, pretty later.

Well, finally getting down to doing a bit of blogging. For now, this is primarily for my own use as an adjunct to the space between my ears, which, though still operating fairly nicely for analysis, synthesis, etc. has definitely been showing a decreased capacity to retain some of the best bits of new, (and sometimes old) insights. So I decided it was finally time to start creating a virtual knowledge base of what I’ve found useful / important, so that when the time comes, I can hop back here, refresh my head and then move forward with the best insights that I’ve come across. And if others can take advantage of the efforts and experiences that I’ve had to build on as they tackle even greater problems - fabulous!

Warning - as you’ll no doubt find out over time, (and as my wife will very strongly attest) my mind does tend to be a fairly chaotic place, (which can be truly marvelous or darned inconvenient, depending on the day! ) so don’t be surprised if you see numerous radical hops in trains of thought, random tangents intermixed on equal footing with salient logic, and quite more than a few “what the heck is he talking about?”’s. Hey, nobody ever said running 4-6 continually concurrent trains of thought was easy!