RizWords – Daily Politics and Tech – EP57
RizWords – Daily Politics and Tech
Episode 57 – download now – subscribe now – review us on iTunes!
- A member of the TechPodcast Network @ techpodcast.com. If it’s Tech, it’s here.
- Remember, if you’re listening on the podcast recording, you can call into the show live if you tune in through TalkShoe.com at 2:30 PM EST every weekday.
- If you like the podcast (and you haven’t already given us a rating), head over and do so, and don’t forget to sign up for the discussion list.
- Other Podcast Plugs:
- TalkGirls comes on Tuesday nights. Check out the TalkGirls Podcast … it’s good times!
- Cotolo Chronicles: Frank is a good friend of the show, and an associate of the late great Wolfman Jack. Check out his podcast.
- NewsReal: Good friend to Art and I – has one of the best hours of news podcast each week.
- You Are the Guest: Bill Grady turns the microphone on the internet’s most interesting people.
- Sponsors:
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We had a heck of a time with the show today. TalkShoe burped on us, and we lost the first iteration of the show. The second attempt was much better.
It was a day of light technical stories today, but some very important political stories. In our ongoing coverage of the ‘Vonage Crap’ saga, a unique little fold emerges:
Court Says Vonage Needs To Throw Away Money Into Wasteful USF Program
The Universal Service Fund (USF) is a well-known joke. It’s a hugely wasteful program with almost no oversight. Yet, last year, the FCC decided that VoIP companies needed to pay a huge chunk of their revenue to the USF, despite the fact that doing so would actually slow progress on getting universal service. That’s because the money would go from these new, cheaper services into the bank accounts of the big incumbents who would then promise to provide universal service… without much actually happening. Vonage stood up to this decision and sued, claiming the FCC had no say in the matter, but a court has ruled against Vonage, saying that the FCC didn’t overstep its bounds. With Verizon breathing down Vonage’s neck over patents, the real irony may be that Vonage will now have to hand over money into the USF, that will go right over to Verizon and not into extending service to underserved areas.
And in news that everyone else but me thinks is important:
The Algorithm Is A Disappointment
There’s a lot of discussion today about the newly revamped Ask.com, which remains in the unenviable #4 spot in terms of search market share. Basically, the site seems to have sharpened up its interface a little bit, while incorporating things like news and images into its results page. Additionally, the site offers suggested refinement searches, so if you search for “Sopranos”, it’ll show you a link where you can get results for “Sopranos Merchandise”. All of this is fairly inoffensive, but it’s really hard to see how this is going to move the dial at all. Despite the company’s insistence that it has developed “A Truly New Way to Search”, the whole thing looks like a spin on Google’s recently announced universal search strategy, which involves incorporating more types of media into its results. The look and feel is a tad different, but so what? Even if the new Ask.com returns “better” results than Google in some instances, there’s nothing here that will actually get people to switch. Right now, the company is making a big effort to explain why the new changes are cool, but most people giving the site a try won’t have the benefit of someone explaining to them why the site is now so great. As such, they probably won’t see it themselves.
Turning to political news, power balances out and changes hands:
Wyoming Sen. Craig Thomas Dies at 74
WASHINGTON (AP) – Wyoming Sen. Craig Thomas, a three-term conservative Republican who stayed clear of the Washington limelight and political catfights, died Monday. He was 74.
The senator’s family issued a statement saying he died Monday evening at National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Md. He had been receiving chemotherapy for acute myeloid leukemia.
Just before the 2006 election, Thomas was hospitalized with pneumonia and had to cancel his last campaign stops. He nonetheless won with 70 percent of the vote, monitoring the election from his hospital bed.
Two days after the election, Thomas announced that he had just been diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia.
Gov. Dave Freudenthal, a Democrat, will appoint a successor from one of three finalists chosen by the state Republican party.
In big big news, the corruption charges finally come down on Jefferson:
U.S. congressman indicted
in bribery case
Rep. William Jefferson, D-Louisiana, was indicted Monday on federal charges of racketeering, soliciting bribes and money-laundering in a long-running bribery investigation into business deals he tried to broker in Africa.
The indictment handed up in federal court in Alexandria., Virginia, Monday is 94 pages long and lists 16 alleged violations of federal law that could keep Jefferson in prison for up to 235 years, according to a Justice Department official who has seen the document.
Among the charges listed in the indictment, said the official, are racketeering, soliciting bribes, wire fraud, money-laundering, obstruction of justice, conspiracy and violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the case.(Read the indictment [PDF])
Jefferson is accused of soliciting bribes for himself and his family, and also for bribing a Nigerian official.
Almost two years ago, in August 2005, investigators raided Jefferson’s home in Louisiana and found $90,000 in cash stuffed into a box in his freezer
And another Republican throws his hat into the ring:
Gingrich Rips ‘Dysfunctional’ Administration
Former House speaker Newt Gingrich, who is considering a run for the Republican presidential nomination in 2008, said Sunday that President George W. Bush is leading an administration that “is not functioning.
Want to be part of the Rizzn-ite army? Indoctrination instructions here.
RizWords – Daily Politics and Tech – EP41
RizWords – Daily Politics and Tech
Episode 41 – download now – subscribe now
- A member of the TechPodcast Network @ techpodcast.com. If it’s Tech, it’s here.
- Remember, if you’re listening on the podcast recording, you can call into the show live if you tune in through TalkShoe.com at 2:30 PM EST every weekday.
- If you like the podcast (and you haven’t already given us a rating), head over and do so, and don’t forget to sign up for the discussion list.
- Other Podcast Plugs:
- TalkGirls comes on Tuesday nights. Check out the TalkGirls Podcast … it’s good times!
- Cotolo Chronicles: Frank is a good friend of the show, and an associate of the late great Wolfman Jack. Check out his podcast.
- NewsReal: Good friend to Art and I – has one of the best hours of news podcast each week.
- You Are the Guest: Bill Grady turns the microphone on the internet’s most interesting people.
- Sponsors:
- AACS – Guaranteed improved credit – http://aacsnet.com/ – Mention RizWords and get $50 off your entry to the program.
Art Lindsey, still heavily medicated yet still forging forward, returns as co-host in this One-Hour Special before the possible one week hiatus.
We get the show kicked off with Vonage Crap coverage:
Vonage gets a marketing chief
We ordinarily wouldn’t make much about a service provider’s new chief marketing officer, except the service provider in question is Vonage, which needs new marketing ideas in the same way that a wildfire needs water. Jamie Haenggi joined Vonage in November from ADT, the alarm company. There she was head of marketing and started at Vonage as something called “vice president of company life.” In her new job, she’ll be in charge of marketing, retail sales, and corporate communications.
For more information about Vonage’s new CMO:
– read this article from TMCNet
Related Articles:
Vonage gets its stay, launches astroturf site. Report
Vonage CEO steps down. Report
In more yahoo deadpool news:
Yahoo Shutting Down Auctions – Second Service To DeadPool This Month
Reuters is reporting that Yahoo Auctions will shut down in the U.S. and Canada as of June 16, and new auctions will not be accepted after June 3. Auction sites in Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan will stay live.
This is the second service closing announced this month for Yahoo – last week it was confirmed that Yahoo Photos was closing as well.
In the case of Yahoo Photos, users will be directed to Yahoo-owned Flickr as well as other third party services. The closure removed a product conflict and helps focus the company. Auctions is closing for a different reason – it just cannot get traction v. eBay and other competitors. It also shows Yahoo’s commitment to focus on key (growing and profitable) businesses as it streamlines its offerings.
In Tier Two acquisition news:
Breaking: Odeo Acquired By SonicMountain
Details are just coming out, but New York based SonicMountain, a new startup, has acquired Evan Williams’ Odeo. The announcement will come sometime tomorrow. The price is not being disclosed but is in excess of $1 million, and the deal was all cash.
Odeo was publicly put on sale last February. The company was bought back from investors late last year.
Twitter is no longer part of Odeo, so this will not be included in the acquisition. Twitter and Odeo were both wholly owned subsidiaries of Obvious Corp.
Evan Williams will be working with SonicMountain as an advisor for six months or so.
In other news of the idiots, MCI math is replaced by MPAA math:
MPAA Math: 40% Plus 70% Equals?
Ah, the MPAA and its ability to simply make up numbers continues. Last week, we noted that the MPAA was claiming that New York City was where 40% of camcorded movies came from, following earlier claims that 50% came from Canada. However, now that NYC has passed a law with tougher crimes for camcording (note this last passed just last week), apparently, the MPAA can now shift its numerical focus to Canada. Michael Geist points out that along with Warner Brothers’ pointless decision to stop promo screenings in Canada, the studio is claiming that 70% of camcorded movies now come from Canada. 70%? Considering they were unwilling to back up earlier reports claiming 30%, 40% and 50% don’
t expect them to explain the 70% number either. However, we are wondering how the movie industry adds
up the 70% coming from Canada with the 40% coming from New York City (not to mention all the camcorded movies from elsewhere) and still come up with 100%. Is there a reason that reporters never bother to ask the MPAA and its studio members to actually back up any of this stuff?
Turning to regular ol’ political news, Florida Democrats figure out a way to prevent vote fraud altogether… by ignoring the votes:
For Democrats, Florida Primary May Not Count
be951 writes “Democratic party leaders are seriously considering making the Florida primary ‘nonbinding’, meaning they could ignore the actual vote by Florida democrats and allow party leaders to decide how Florida’s more than 200 delegates are divided up among the candidates. ‘I think it’s much higher than 50-50 that we will make Jan. 29 a nonbinding’ election, said Jon Ausman, a veteran Democratic organizer in Tallahassee and member of the Democratic National Committee. This is in response to Florida’s move to an earlier presidential preference primary, which scrambled the primary calendar carefully worked out by the two national parties.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
In WOOOOOOGG! (WOG) news:
Surprise Arrest For Online Scientology Critic
destinyland writes “An online critic of Scientology was confronted at a routine hearing Tuesday with surprise arrest warrants and thrown into jail. Six years as a fugitive ended in February. (After picketing a Scientology complex in 2000 over the unexplained death of a woman there, he’d been arrested for ‘threatening a religion’ over a Usenet joke about ‘Tom Cruise Missiles.’) But 64-year-old Keith Henson had been out on bail, and was even scheduled to address the European Space Agency conference on Space Elevators. He’s a co-founder of the Space Colony movement, and one of the original researchers at Texas Instruments. In this interview he discusses both space-based solar energy and his war with the Scientologists — just a few days before he was arrested.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
And the breaking news of the day…
Report: Colorado HS Locked Down; Masked Men Inside
Masked men inside of a Boulder School…pray that this is merely some sort of terrible misunderstanding. None of the domestic mass murderers have worn masks which leads me to wonder if we are not seeing a terrorist attack unfolding. BOULDER, Colo. (AP) – A high school was locked down Thursday amid unconfirmed reports that two [...]
RizWords – Daily Politics and Tech – EP40
RizWords – Daily Politics and Tech
Episode 40 – download now – subscribe now
- A member of the TechPodcast Network @ techpodcast.com. If it’s Tech, it’s here.
- Remember, if you’re listening on the podcast recording, you can call into the show live if you tune in through TalkShoe.com at 2:30 PM EST every weekday.
- If you like the podcast (and you haven’t already given us a rating), head over and do so, and don’t forget to sign up for the discussion list.
- Other Podcast Plugs:
- TalkGirls comes on Tuesday nights. Check out the TalkGirls Podcast … it’s good times!
- Cotolo Chronicles: Frank is a good friend of the show, and an associate of the late great Wolfman Jack. Check out his podcast.
- NewsReal: Good friend to Art and I – has one of the best hours of news podcast each week.
- You Are the Guest: Bill Grady turns the microphone on the internet’s most interesting people.
- Sponsors:
- AACS – Guaranteed improved credit – http://aacsnet.com/ – Mention RizWords and get $50 off your entry to the program.
James Smith, DC Manager at Layered Technologies joins me today as guest co-host in Art Lindsey’s absence. Art is still out on medical leave. In other personal news, we have scheduled a c-section with my wife for Friday, and as such, I will likely put the show on hiatus starting 5/11/2007 for about a week. Stay tuned to Thursday’s show for more information on that. James brings us this news item to kick off the show:
Google is at it again – New Data Center in Pryor, OK
Yes, the Internet Giant does not sleep. Google has announced that it will build a 600 (m) million dollar data center on 800 acres at Mid-America Industrial Park in Pryor, Oklahoma.
The center will provide support for Google’s numerous Internet services and will hire about 100 people in the coming months.
Officials say employment will eventually reach about 200.
Google is planning to convert a warehouse to open next summer and later add a new building on the site.
James and I strive to point out the flaws in this study, and how popup marketing is different from spyware marketing:
Traffic Fraud Inflates Video Site Popularity
Dotnaught writes “A new study by spyware researcher Ben Edelman finds that spyware-driven traffic inflation is common, particularly at video sites. The study identifies Bolt.com, GrindTV.com, Broadcaster.com, Away.com, RooTV.com, and Diet.com as the beneficiaries of spyware-driven traffic. ‘Our measurement systems are inaccurate for the amount of trust we’d like to put into them,’ Edelman said. ‘So that’s the puzzle: How do you build an advertising economy when the number can’t be trusted?’”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Outerspace and inter-planetary colonization has begun!:
Earth Bacteria May Hitch A Ride To The Stars
An anonymous reader writes “Space.com has an article on how old rocket stages are carrying bacteria from Earth to interstellar space. For example, four upper rocket stages were used to boost deep space probes Voyager 1, Voyager 2, Pioneer 10 and New Horizons. The spacecraft were sterilized, but the rocket stages were not, and they now carry the bacteria of the engineers who handled them. If the rocket stages hit a habitable planet, and the bacteria survive the journey, they would be able to reproduce and colonize the planet … not that there’s a high liklihood of that. ‘In 40,000 years, this wayward 185-pound (84 kilogram) lump of metal will pass by the star AC+79 3888 at a distance of 1.64 light-years. … Given the sheer expanse of time that lies ahead of the four discarded rockets, at least one is likely to eventually encounter a planet. But even if that planet’s environment is conducive to life, the long dormant bacteria will not just gently plop into some exotic ocean. No soft landing can be expected.’”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
My son, Jacob Li Hopkins, is already ranked number 2 in Google:
Google A Curse To Those With Common Names
or people with embarrassing incidents in their past, Google can be a nightmare, as it’s become the closest thing there is to an individual’s “permanent record”. But people whose pasts are fairly clean can have the opposite problem: their Google permanent record gets lost among everyone else who shares their name. This is particularly hard on the John Smiths of the world, who have to compete with thousands of others to receive a prominent listing on the search engine. This also effects people who change their name due to marriage, as a lifetime of electronic references aren’t attached to their new name. Parents have even begun using Google before they name their baby, to make sure that the name they choose doesn’t have too much online competition. If that practice were to become more widespread, it may force the Freakonomics guys to revisit their theories on baby naming, and the idea that parents intentionally latch onto popular names associated with elite classes. Instead, the moment a name starts to get even remotely popular (or crowded), parents will start searching for something new.
Of course it’s irrational. We all know, there is no spoon:
EFF Files Suit Against ‘Paranormalist’ Uri Geller
Via The EFF.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF)
filed suit Tuesday against Uri Geller — the “paranormalist” famous for seemingly bending spoons with his mind — on behalf of a YouTube critic who was silenced by Geller’s baseless copyright claims.
EFF’s client, Brian Sapient, belongs to a group called the “Rational Response Squad,” which is dedicated to debunking what it calls irrational beliefs. As part of their mission, Sapient and others post videos to YouTube that they say demonstrate this irrationality. One of the videos that Sapient uploaded came from a NOVA program called “Secrets of the Psychics,” which challenges the performance techniques of Geller.
More here.
Good for Vonage?
AT&T Dumps VOIP Customers
Proudrooster writes “In the past two weeks AT&T has sent out disconnect letters to VOIP customers in big rude red letters, stating that VOIP service will be suspended in 30 days and permanently disconnected in 60 days. They cited E911 service as the reason. (It is peculiar that AT&T is unable overcome an E911 technical hurdle, since SBC/AT&T is also the local landline company in many areas where VOIP cancellation notices are being received.) Many AT&T VOIP customers have found that they are unable to transfer their phone numbers to a new provider. Further, AT&T is unwilling to set up a forwarding message directing callers to a new phone number for those who are unable to transfer their old numbers. In effect, AT&T has told many long-term VOIP subscribers: ‘We are turning off your phone in 30 days, goodbye.’”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Like we said, you screwed up Obama. Now begins your backpedaling!:
Followup to the Obama Story from the UK Telegraph
Unlike at the 2004 election, each major candidate has an online presence on MySpace, YouTube or Facebook. Mr Obama, 45, has offered freshness and youthful appeal, and is often said to relate to the young better than his rivals.
But bloggers reacted negatively to his team’s move, saying they had betrayed the free-wheeling spirit of the internet.
Daily Kos, a leading grassroots blog for Democrat activists, said alienating “your biggest supporters is generally not a wise thing to do”.
Another blogger wrote on Atrios: “I really don’t understand the tendency to treat volunteers as disposable.”
Mr Obama’s advisors, issuing an explanation online, said: “We’re going to try new things and sometimes it’s going to work and sometimes it’s not going to work.”
James and I expound a bit more on the topic Derrick and I broached yesterday:
Leahy, Others Speak Out Against New ID Standards
Ellen Nakashima writes in The Washington Post:
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), citing concerns about Americans’ privacy, signaled yesterday that he will push to repeal a provision of a 2005 law aimed at creating new government standards for driver’s licenses.
Leahy, who has co-sponsored bipartisan legislation to repeal the provision, spoke out as the debate intensified over the Real ID Act, which requires states to create new tamper-proof driver’s licenses in line with rules recently issued by the Department of Homeland Security. States must begin to comply by May 2008 but can request more time. After 2013, people whose IDs do not meet those standards will not be allowed to board planes or enter federal buildings.
A similar Democrat-backed bill to repeal the provision is pending in the House. At least seven states have passed laws or resolutions opposing implementation of Real ID. Fourteen states have legislation pending. By yesterday, the DHS had received more than 12,000 public comments in response to the rules.
More here.
RizWords – Daily Politics and Tech – EP38
RizWords – Daily Politics and Tech
Episode 38 – download now – subscribe now
Special guest co-host Bill Grady of You are the Guest joins me today.
- A member of the TechPodcast Network @ techpodcast.com. If it’s Tech, it’s here.
- Remember, if you’re listening on the podcast recording, you can call into the show live if you tune in through TalkShoe.com at 2:30 PM EST every weekday.
- If you like the podcast (and you haven’t already given us a rating), head over and do so, and don’t forget to sign up for the discussion list.
- Other Podcast Plugs:
- TalkGirls comes on Tuesday nights. Check out the TalkGirls Podcast … it’s good times!
- Cotolo Chronicles: Frank is a good friend of the show, and an associate of the late great Wolfman Jack. Check out his podcast.
- NewsReal: Good friend to Art and I – has one of the best hours of news podcast each week.
- You Are the Guest: Bill Grady turns the microphone on the internet’s most interesting people.
- Sponsors:
- AACS – Guaranteed improved credit – http://aacsnet.com/ – Mention RizWords and get $50 off your entry to the program.
Back in my BlipMedia days, we did a quote for the Pentagon that was in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. Needless to say, they’re not taking our bid, opting into the good ol’ boy’s network @ 18 mil, instead:
Pentagon phone system to go VoIP
A major renovation to the Pentagon has taken a VoIP twist. The Department of Defense has awarded General Dynamics an $18.4 million contract to design and deploy a VoIP phone system as part of what’s called the Wedge 2-5 stage of the Pentagon’s modernization program. The 4 million square-foot project is intended to modernize building systems, increase security and upgrade technology in the world’s largest office building. The VoIP contract is meant to provide a building-wide multimedia phone system integrating voice, video and data communications-in both secure and non-secure channels. VoIP not secure? One hopes there will be an unclassified White Paper someday about how the Pentagon made IP telephony more secure than some thought possible.
For more about the Pentagon’s coming VoIP phone system:
– read this FCW.com article
In other VoIP news, it’s a Vonage article that doesn’t talk about Verizon. Of course, that doesn’t mean we won’t talk about it on the show… 
Has Comcast passed Vonage?
Has Comcast replaced Vonage as the Number 1 VoIP carrier? Some back-of-the-envelope figuring by Network World thinks it might have happened. Comcast ended the first quarter of this year with 2.4 million VoIP customers–nearly 1.9 million more than it had a year ago and roughly 10 percent of the number of cable customers it serves. Vonage, in the fourth quarter of 2006, reported 2.2 million customers. And given its legal problems, financial drain and marketing distractions, it seems unlikely that Vonage’s growth would keep pace with Comcast’s explosive gains. We should know Vonage’s numbers pretty soon, but bragging rights may well have passed to Comcast.
For more about Comcast’s market penetration:
- read this Network World article
In one of the more interesting news from inside the beltway, recently – it’s politics AND sex!
DC Escort Services Becomes Latest Scandal
Randall Tobias, Director of US Foreign Assistance and US Agency for International Development Administrator, became the first political casualty this week in a slow cooking scandal over a Washington DC escort service. Tobias abruptly resigned after ABC News contacted him about employing the services. Tobias maintains that he only recieved massages, but that doesn’t really matter at this point. His political career is over, and if thousands of pages of phone records provided by Deborah Jeane Palfrey, the services’ proprietor, pan out, more will follow. In the meantime, news organisactions posessing the list are undecided as to what their next step will be — now that they have outed the lists’s only republican.
Palfrey was indicted on federal racketeering charges in February for allegedly running a $300-an-hour call-girl ring that dates back 13 years. “20/20″ will be airing a segment on the scandal this week, allowing Palfrey, who has a checkered legal past, to say the least, another opportunity to mug before the cameras. Following a pattern that fits almost every sex scandal that unfolds in the Swamp, Palfrey is portraying herself to be the victim, putting the spotlight instead of the political class who took advantage of the services she provided.
Of course, there are no innocents in this tawdry saga. Even if no laws were broken, the lack of moral rectitude in our nation’s capital should trouble all of us. Founder John Adams may have said it best: “WE have no government aremd with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitutional as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”
Nice try, I’ll pass on that one, though:
Verizon Says It Has A First Amendment Right To Illegally Give Your Call Records To The Government
The nation’s biggest telcos are working hard to make the lawsuits against them for passing customer call records and other info to the government as part of its program of warrantless wi
retaps disappear. AT&T’s argument that it was just following government orders didn’t wash with a judge, and now Verizon is claiming that its passing of information to the government is protected by the First Amendment. Yes, you read that correctly: it says the Electronic Communications Privacy Act is unconstitutional, and the information it passed to the government — in apparent violation of it, and to comply with the sort of warrantless surveillance the ECPA was designed to prevent — is constitutionally protected free speech. This seems tenuous at best, but it fits with Verizon’s MO. The company always tries to whitewash its customer data leaks by filing lawsuits and trying to shift the blame onto pretexters and information brokers, and making the problem appear to be solely these people’s activities, rather than its own inability to protect customer data. Likewise in this case, it contends that it’s done nothing wrong, and that the ECPA makes the mistake of trying to prevent free speech, rather than putting restrictions on the government’s ability to ask for the information. Of course, those restrictions exist (in the form of having to get a warrant), but didn’t really work so well here. Verizon’s complicity seems pretty obvious and its free-speech claims look like little more than a hail-mary attempt to shirk liability for disclosing the customer information. That may not be necessary, though, if the Bush administration’s attempts to get Congress to pass a law giving the telcos immunity from these sorts of lawsuits are successful.
Lay off the movies, bozos:
Canadian Coins Not Nano-Tech Espionage Devices
Necrotica writes “An odd-looking Canadian coin with a bright red flower was the culprit behind the U.S. Defence Department’s false espionage warning earlier this year. The odd-looking — but harmless — “poppy coin” was so unfamiliar to suspicious U.S. Army contractors traveling in Canada that they filed confidential espionage accounts about them. The worried contractors described the coins as “anomalous” and “filled with something man-made that looked like nano-technology,” according to once-classified U.S. government reports and e-mails obtained by the AP.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
For some reason, we’ve been following (and rooting for) Sarkozy’s quest for French Presidency. Bill weighs in heavy on this issue:
Sarkozy Takes French Presidency
‘Conservative candidate Nicolas Sarkozy has won the hotly-contested French presidential election
‘The final count gave Mr Sarkozy 53.06%, compared with 46.94% for socialist Segolene Royal, with turnout at 85%.
‘Mr Sarkozy, 52, the son of a Hungarian immigrant, takes over from the 74-year-old Jacques Chirac.
‘Riot police have fired tear gas at a small group of demonstrators who were protesting in central Paris against Mr Sarkozy’s victory.’
From CATO on the same topic:
It spoke volumes that Sarkozy was the only French presidential candidate to visit the United States. On a highly publicized trip to Washington, he was photographed with President Bush. He also gave a strongly pro-American speech. Sarkozy told his audience that, “Friendship is respect, understanding, affection but not submission … I ask our American friends to let us be free, free to be their friends.”
In response, former Socialist Prime Minister Laurent Fabius proclaimed that Sarkozy was seeking to replace British Prime Minister Tony Blair as Bush’s “poodle.” A Royal aide labeled Sarkozy “an American neoconservative with a French passport,” a criticism that stuck to him for the campaign’s duration.
First, the Bush administration has belatedly concluded that a very public transatlantic dispute has damaged American interests. The White House is now committed to playing nicely with Chirac’s successor.
Second, there will be a new American president within 21 months. Circumstance will force the next president, Republican or Democrat, to present a more pragmatic American face to the world.
The White House’s next inhabitant will occupy an office diminished in stature by his or her predecessor’s diplomatic failures. President Sarkozy will quietly offer to help his ally pick up the pieces.
Any excuse to say the words ‘Nappy Headed Hos’:
Don Imus to sue CBS for full contract
More than three weeks after CBS Radio and MSNBC unceremoniously dropped his highly-rated morning talk show, “Imus in the Morning”, Don Imus is preparing for a legal battle with his former employers.
This from my blog post earlier, brought up some good end of show discussion with Bill and I:
MSNBC’s Republican Debate
RizWords – Daily Politics and Tech – EP36
RizWords – Daily Politics and Tech
Episode 36 – download now – subscribe now – iTunes subscribe
- A member of the TechPodcast Network @ techpodcast.com. If it’s Tech, it’s here.
- Remember, if you’re listening on the podcast recording, you can call into the show live if you tune in through TalkShoe.com at 2:30 PM EST every weekday.
- If you like the podcast (and you haven’t already given us a rating), head over and do so, and don’t forget to sign up for the discussion list.
- Other Podcast Plugs:
- TalkGirls comes on Tuesday nights. Check out the TalkGirls Podcast … it’s good times!
- Cotolo Chronicles: Frank is a good friend of the show, and an associate of the late great Wolfman Jack. Check out his podcast.
- NewsReal: Good friend to Art and I – has one of the best hours of news podcast each week.
- Sponsors:
- AACS – Guaranteed improved credit – http://aacsnet.com/ – Mention RizWords and get $50 off your entry to the program.
We had a lot of news to cover today, and no co-host to slow me down. Make sure you tune in to Monday’s show, when I’ll be accompanied by Bill Grady of You Are the Guest Podcast. But now… the news! This from our ongoing coverage of the Vonage Crap….:
1. Vonage asks for a new trial
Last issue, I alluded to an upcoming Supreme Court case that might have an impact on the Vonage/Verizon appeal. Sure enough, the court on Monday handed down a ruling in KSR vs. Teleflex, finding that the combination of two commonly known elements into something obvious is not patentable. Vonage has seized on the ruling, asking an appellate court to throw out the verdict against it and order a new trial. Verizon, of course, is opposed. Vonage is already appealing its loss at trial; the appellate court has set a June 25 hearing on that appeal. Vonage wants the appeal to be put on hold pending the results of the new trial. If it loses that second trial, Vonage wants the existing appeals process to resume. Even though Vonage was convicted of infringing three patents, the courts are letting the company operate pretty much as normal while the appeals are being heard. If this gets any more complicated, they’ll have to hand out copies of Dickens’ Bleak House with the appellate briefs.
For more about the Supreme Court, Vonage, Verizon, and the rest of it:
– read this from Internet News
- check out this DailyTechRag report
I tried out Joost this morning. I wasn’t incredibly impressed. I’ll give it a fairer shake later this weekend and talk about it again on Monday. Meanwhile, Joost should be available for everyone. Want an invite? Anyone present at Friday’s TalkCast will get one!.
Joost (almost) Launches
Updated: It won’t be for another few days before anyone can join Joost, but the company has officially announced that it is launching commercially. Starting today, existing beta testers can now invite anyone to join Joost. Beta testers visit the “Invite Friends”
In “should-this-really-be-criminal” news:
Student Arrested for Writing Essay
mcgrew writes “The Chicago Tribune reports that an eighteen year old straight-A High School student was arrested for writing an essay that ‘disturbed’ his teacher. Even though no threats were made to a specific person, 18 year-old Allen Lee’s English teacher convened a panel to discuss the work. As a result of that discussion, the police were called in. ‘The youth’s father said his son was not suspended or expelled but was forced to attend classes elsewhere for now. Today, Cary-Grove students rallied behind the arrested teen by organizing a petition drive to let him back in their school. They posted on walls quotes from the English teacher in which she had encouraged students to express their emotions through writing.’”
No one is really talking about this story, which is amazing considering this is probably the second largest e-currency provider for the American markets:
e-gold® Founder Denies Criminal Charges
In an interview with Kim Zetter of the Wired Blog Network, E-Gold owner Dr. Douglas Jackson stated this morning that the Federal indictments announced by the US Department of Justice last Friday are a “farce”.
Associated Content first released the news of the indictments on Saturday in this news story.
Dr. Jackson, E-Gold, and the other owners were charged with:
1. conspiracy to launder monetary instruments,
2. conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money transmitting business,
3. operating an unlicensed money transmitting business under federal law,
4. money transmission without a license under D.C. law.
According to Jackson, E-Gold is one of the good guys in this crime-fighting saga and its ensuing fiasco. Not only did they cooperate with law enforcement officials regarding suspicious E-Gold accounts, but they also developed software which effectively tracks criminals trying to launder money through E-Gold, and prevents use of the E-Gold system to aid and abet their criminal activities. They were waging their own war against the very things they have been accused of aiding: terrorism, child exploitation, and more.
This is a story that KenRadio has been talking about for a few days. I worked for 5Tribe Marketing as a consulting for more than a year, so I’m more than familiar with these numbers, and have been for a while:
>Newspaper circulation continues to fall
Newspaper circulation continued to decline nationwide but many individual publications and a trade group countered with figures showing that the papers’ audiences were growing online. Weekday circulation at 745 daily newspapers dropped 2.1% to 45.9 million, and Sunday circulation at 601 newspapers fell 3.1% to 48.1 million, according to the Newspaper Assn. of America. The figures compared the six-month period that ended March 31 with the same period a year earlier. The trade association sought to counter those figures by re- releasing recent research that showed use of newspaper websites increased 5.3%, to 59 million people, in the first quarter of 2007 compared with the same period a year ago. Newspaper owners are so intent on including the broader view of their total audience that they have helped persuade the organization that tracks newspaper performance — the Audit Bureau of Circulations — to incorporate online usage into its figures next year. The Los Angeles Times was like many of its big-city counterparts in continuing to experience circulation losses. The newspaper’s daily circulation fell to an average of 815,723, a 4.2% decline, compared with the same period a year earlier. Its Sunday circulation dropped 4.7% to 1,173,000. The Times attributed much of the decline to the continued scaling back of programs that distributed free papers in schools and at hotels. Executives at the paper said they were encouraged that “individually paid” daily circulation — papers delivered at homes and sold at newsstands — increased fractionally to 779,256. The Times hit its print circulation highs in 1991, with more than 1.2 million copies of the paper sold each weekday and nearly 1.6 million on Sundays. The use of latimes.com increased 15%, to 65 million page views, in January over the year before. “Even as we are rapidly growing our online audience, it’s clear that great print journalism still plays a big part in the 24/7 multimedia world our advertisers, readers and users want,” Times Publisher David D. Hiller said in a statement. Other papers in Southern California suffered even sharper losses. Daily circulation of the San Diego Union-Tribune slumped 6.6% to 296,000. The Orange County Register fell 5.1% to 285,000, the Riverside Press-Enterprise was off 6.7% to 173,000 and the San Fernando Valley-based Daily News dropped 7.3% to 146,000. One of the biggest declines in the region was experienced by the Santa Barbara News-Press, where owner Wendy McCaw and some of her employees have been feuding. They have accused her of meddling in news decisions. News-Press circulation during the week dropped 9.5% to 38,000.
These are amazing statistics… look for similar numbers in America soon:
45% of Europeans watch TV online
A new study from Motorola has found that an amazing 45% of Europeans now watch television online. — The survey covering the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy and Spain found that the French lead Europe in terms of online television consumption …
The sociological backlash against positive Google press continues:
Google’s Evil NDA
An anonymous reader writes “Google’s motto is “Don’t Be Evil” — but they sure have an evil non-disclosure agreement! In order to be considered for employment there, you must sign an agreement that forbids you to ‘mention or imply the name of Google’ in public ever again. Further, you can’t tell anyone you interviewed there, or what they offered you, and you possibly sign away your rights to reverse-engineer any of Google’s code, ever. And this NDA never expires. Luckily, someone has posted excerpts from the NDA before he signed it and had to say silent forever.” At the bottom of the posting are links to a few other comments on the Web about Google’s NDA, including a ValleyWag post that reproduces it in its entirety.
One word: Proxies.
Pandora To Shut Out Non-U.S. Users Thursday Evening
If you live outside of the U.S. and enjoy listening to customized radio stations on Pandora, brace yourself for some bad news. The site will be shutting you out starting Thursday evening. Registered users who access the service from outside the U.S. received a warning email yesterday letting them know that this will be happening.
Pandora operates under Section 114 of the DMCA, which gives them a clear process for paying rights holders in the U.S. There is no international equivalent of the DMCA, and so to operate legally in other countries, Pandora must sign deals with rights holders directly. That means separate deals with labels and publishers for each song, an extremely difficult and time consuming task.
Pandora has always made it clear on the site that it is for U.S. users only, and requires a U.S. zip code for registration. That didn’t stop many international users from registering anyway, using “90210″ or another famous zip code to get access to the service. Now, with IP-based filtering, users will be forced to go through proxy servers or other complicated mechanisms for getting to the music.
I spoke with CTO Tom Conrad this evening about the change. He says Pandora has been working on international rights deals for nearly two years now, and they hope to have enough deals done in the UK and Canada to launch in those countries soon. Other markets will take longer, he says.
The email sent to users is below.
This isn’t the only bad news recently for Pandora. Along with other Internet radio companies, they have also been fighting the RIAA over revisions to the fee structure they must pay for playing music online. The rates they pay are significantly more than satellite providers pay, and terrestrial radio stations pay nothing to play music. Two very brave congressmen, Representatives Jay Inslee (D-WA) and Donald Manzullo (R-IL), have proposed legislation that would require Internet radio startups to pay no more than satellite providers, which should allow many Internet radio startups to stay in business. Read more about the legislation on the Pandora blog and SaveNetRadio.
We’ve covered Pandora since their launch in
the summer of 2005. Our coverage is here.
In “0wn3d” news:
Internet2 Knocked Out By Homeless Man?
The original purpose of the internet was supposed to be a network that the government could continue to use even after a nuclear attack. The whole point is that it’s supposed to figure out ways to route around damage. However, when it came to Internet2, apparently designers didn’t pay as much attention to that kind of stability. The news today is that a homeless man in Boston tossed a cigarette on a mattress, setting off a two-alarm fire that happened to knock out the Internet2 connection between New York and Boston. It’s true that Internet2 is supposed to be experimenting with different methods of building network infrastructure, but you would think that redundancy would have been considered a feature worth keeping.
