In American political folklore, bipartisan bills are virtuous, wholesome, and god fearing. The rationale being that if both parties agree that the bill is a Good Thing, then it must be OK (or at least non-toxic).
Needless to say, both parties want their bills to gain the label of "bipartisan" and they accuse the other party of "obstructionism" if they fail to jump on board. Once the minority party has voted for a bill, they cannot campaign against it. The Obamacare bill, currently raising political blood pressure is a fine example.
The real question for the minority party is whether a majority party bill is of sufficient worth to support. The working politician firmly believes in "scratch my back and I will scratch yours." Unless the bill is really really bad, the minority party is tempted to offer "bi partisan" support, in return for a promise of earmarks, committee assignments, and support for it's pet projects.
Trouble with the "go along and get along" strategy comes at election time. The voters have great difficulty seeing much difference between the two parties, especially when they have been "bi-partisan" all the time.
So far this administration, the Republicans have been good about opposing things that smell really bad. They voted against the Porkulus, Cap and Tax, and Obamacare. They need to keep it up, any weakening will cost them in 2010.
Thursday, August 20, 2009
Lets fix Copyright Law
US Copyright law now runs for the life of the author plus 75 years. Call it a century. The publishers like it, but in actually practice it takes scads of books off the market. Most books only stay in print for 10 or 15 years. Once out of print, they are unavailable, but, still under copyright so Xeroxing a few copies is illegal. They don't enter the public domain for another 90 years or so. Keeping them on copyright earns nothing for the author, although the publishers are in favor lest old books compete with sale of new ones.
We ought to reduce copyright to the original 17 years. All the money the author gets will be gotten inside of 17 years. After that time, the big sales have been made. Plus the author ought to get off his duff and write something new. It's proper to reward authors, but 17 years of royalties is enough reward in my book.
Big plus, most music is more than 17 years old, so most downloading becomes legal. The labels haven't found new artists in the last twenty years. Don't believe me? Just hit signal seek on the car radio. Can you find a song that isn't twenty years old on the air?
Then copyright should restrict only the right to SELL copies. Making copies, giving away copies, and downloading songs isn't selling. It ought to be legal. Taping music off the air is legal, taping movies off the air is legal, why is downloading off the internet not legal?
During this summer of healthcare discontent, it's hard to focus on anything but healthcare, but we ought to broaden our horizons. The young voters see downloading as a fundamental right. The party that supports it will gain a lot of votes. It might cost them bribes/campaign contributions from the publishers and the labels, but votes and voters are more important than cash for getting re elected, the prime objective of all politicians.
We ought to reduce copyright to the original 17 years. All the money the author gets will be gotten inside of 17 years. After that time, the big sales have been made. Plus the author ought to get off his duff and write something new. It's proper to reward authors, but 17 years of royalties is enough reward in my book.
Big plus, most music is more than 17 years old, so most downloading becomes legal. The labels haven't found new artists in the last twenty years. Don't believe me? Just hit signal seek on the car radio. Can you find a song that isn't twenty years old on the air?
Then copyright should restrict only the right to SELL copies. Making copies, giving away copies, and downloading songs isn't selling. It ought to be legal. Taping music off the air is legal, taping movies off the air is legal, why is downloading off the internet not legal?
During this summer of healthcare discontent, it's hard to focus on anything but healthcare, but we ought to broaden our horizons. The young voters see downloading as a fundamental right. The party that supports it will gain a lot of votes. It might cost them bribes/campaign contributions from the publishers and the labels, but votes and voters are more important than cash for getting re elected, the prime objective of all politicians.
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
A mouse in the house
After getting the kid's old laptop to play, I needed a real mouse. The usual laptop built in thumb pad is a pain to use, and this one way getting flaky, it occasionally left clicked all by itself with unfortunate consequences, like accidental file deletion. So I grabbed the mouse off the dying desktop. No go, lap top doesn't have a mouse port to plug it into. All it has are USB ports.
USB was supposed to replace the keyboard port, the mouse port, the speaker& mike ports, and the printer port thus saving five electrical connectors on the back of the laptop. One trouble with this plan. USB doesn't work until Windows boots all the way up. If for some reason Windows croaks, your keyboard is dead, making it impossible to boot from a recovery disk, program the BIOS, run diagonostics, and in general try to fix the problem. Lesson learned. Don't buy a desktop that lacks a real keyboard port.
Anyhow, the old standard mouse won't plug into USB, I needed a USB mouse. So ho off to Staples (the only vaguely electronicky place up here) to buy a mouse. Staples had a regular house house with a dozen different mice. I settled for the cheapest $15 mouse from Logitech. I passed on the fancier wireless mice costing as much as $99. Plugged in the new rodent and lo and behold, it works. Windows carries the code to work USB mice as well as standard mice, and Logitech had followed the standards closely enough for it's mouse to work with Microsoft's software.
Next step, read the instructions, printed in English French Spanish and Lower Slobbovian. The instructions promised a mouse powered orgy if only I would download Logitech's mouse driver package. Being somewhat stupid, I Firefoxed out to the Logitech website and looked for the driver. Logitech has been making mice for many years, and the download page offered pictures of about 100 different mice. Just pictures, no part numbers. On the internet all mice look alike. I began to doubt the wisdom of proceeding when I found out the driver (Setpoint 4.72) was a 52 megabyte file. That's bloatware supreme for a mouse driver.
Doubt rose higher as the install took a good 15 minutes. After the install finished the laptop slowed down. A lot. Bad sign. Plus, all that Setpoint 4.72 offered was to switch the left and right mouse buttons, not something anyone in their right mind wants to do. So, bring up "install and remove programs" and try to remove the mouse driver. All that did was cause failure messages saying the driver could not be removed until Windows had been rebooted. Arrgh.
At least, the reboot worked, I was able to blow Setpoint 4.72 into the big bit bucket in the sky.
That's the last mouse driver I'm ever gonna download.
USB was supposed to replace the keyboard port, the mouse port, the speaker& mike ports, and the printer port thus saving five electrical connectors on the back of the laptop. One trouble with this plan. USB doesn't work until Windows boots all the way up. If for some reason Windows croaks, your keyboard is dead, making it impossible to boot from a recovery disk, program the BIOS, run diagonostics, and in general try to fix the problem. Lesson learned. Don't buy a desktop that lacks a real keyboard port.
Anyhow, the old standard mouse won't plug into USB, I needed a USB mouse. So ho off to Staples (the only vaguely electronicky place up here) to buy a mouse. Staples had a regular house house with a dozen different mice. I settled for the cheapest $15 mouse from Logitech. I passed on the fancier wireless mice costing as much as $99. Plugged in the new rodent and lo and behold, it works. Windows carries the code to work USB mice as well as standard mice, and Logitech had followed the standards closely enough for it's mouse to work with Microsoft's software.
Next step, read the instructions, printed in English French Spanish and Lower Slobbovian. The instructions promised a mouse powered orgy if only I would download Logitech's mouse driver package. Being somewhat stupid, I Firefoxed out to the Logitech website and looked for the driver. Logitech has been making mice for many years, and the download page offered pictures of about 100 different mice. Just pictures, no part numbers. On the internet all mice look alike. I began to doubt the wisdom of proceeding when I found out the driver (Setpoint 4.72) was a 52 megabyte file. That's bloatware supreme for a mouse driver.
Doubt rose higher as the install took a good 15 minutes. After the install finished the laptop slowed down. A lot. Bad sign. Plus, all that Setpoint 4.72 offered was to switch the left and right mouse buttons, not something anyone in their right mind wants to do. So, bring up "install and remove programs" and try to remove the mouse driver. All that did was cause failure messages saying the driver could not be removed until Windows had been rebooted. Arrgh.
At least, the reboot worked, I was able to blow Setpoint 4.72 into the big bit bucket in the sky.
That's the last mouse driver I'm ever gonna download.
Monday, August 17, 2009
Promoting the bean counter
Today's Wall St Journal has a piece entitled "Move over, CEO: The Time is Right for the Chief Financial Officer to be a Co-Leader". Written by Philip Tulimera and Moshe Banai, both professors of management.
Real companies manufacture and sell products. Success of the company depends upon economical and high quality manufacturing, effective advertising and sales, and brilliant engineering that produces new products. The head of a real company ought to have experience in all four key activities.
Chief Financial Officers are staff, who keep the books and borrow money. They may know Excel spreadsheets backward and forward, and may be buddy-buddy with the banker, but they are totally ignorant of the key operations, manufacturing, advertising, sales, and engineering. No way should a bean counter (aka CFO) be in a position to call the shots or veto the decisions of the CEO. He just doesn't know enough about the real operations of the company.
Successful companies are run by CEO's who have a clear vision of the company's business and its customers. They make the key decisions about where company resources are invested. They make the projections of return on investment and weight the risks involved in each move. The bean counter only knows the costs, he has no idea of the potential return from the move, or the risk of the move failing.
GM and Chrysler had internally promoted bean counters as CEO's. Ford had a real executive from Boeing. Look who went bankrupt and who didn't.
Leave corporate management in the hands of the CEO.
Real companies manufacture and sell products. Success of the company depends upon economical and high quality manufacturing, effective advertising and sales, and brilliant engineering that produces new products. The head of a real company ought to have experience in all four key activities.
Chief Financial Officers are staff, who keep the books and borrow money. They may know Excel spreadsheets backward and forward, and may be buddy-buddy with the banker, but they are totally ignorant of the key operations, manufacturing, advertising, sales, and engineering. No way should a bean counter (aka CFO) be in a position to call the shots or veto the decisions of the CEO. He just doesn't know enough about the real operations of the company.
Successful companies are run by CEO's who have a clear vision of the company's business and its customers. They make the key decisions about where company resources are invested. They make the projections of return on investment and weight the risks involved in each move. The bean counter only knows the costs, he has no idea of the potential return from the move, or the risk of the move failing.
GM and Chrysler had internally promoted bean counters as CEO's. Ford had a real executive from Boeing. Look who went bankrupt and who didn't.
Leave corporate management in the hands of the CEO.
Sunday, August 16, 2009
Meet the Press dodges the health care issue
Just finished watching it. They had Senator Tom Coburn, Tom Daschle, Dick Armey and a new face to me, newsie Rachel Maddox (sp?). David Gregory, the moderator, started off talking about the horrible violence of the town hall meetings and blaming it on the vast right wing conspiracy. They showed a clip of Arlen Spector coping with a voter. And still pix of Obama posters with toothbrush mustaches. Everybody nodded and tut tutted.
Strange, the U tube videos of town halls show a lot of voters with an attitude, and video cameras, and tough questions, but no violence. The newsies are calling tough questions and harsh words violence. About what you'd expect from journalism majors. In the real world, violence means wounding, killing, and burning. As kids we used to say "Sticks and stones will break my bones but words will never hurt me." The newsies probably never went out on the playground as kids.
At least the Republicans brought up tort reform, and interstate sale of health insurance. The democrats were against both ideas and after a statement from both sides the discussion moved on.
Strange, the U tube videos of town halls show a lot of voters with an attitude, and video cameras, and tough questions, but no violence. The newsies are calling tough questions and harsh words violence. About what you'd expect from journalism majors. In the real world, violence means wounding, killing, and burning. As kids we used to say "Sticks and stones will break my bones but words will never hurt me." The newsies probably never went out on the playground as kids.
At least the Republicans brought up tort reform, and interstate sale of health insurance. The democrats were against both ideas and after a statement from both sides the discussion moved on.
How to charge an electric car
Been reading here and there on the net about the great blackout that will happen when a zillion electric cars are plugged in to recharge.
Not to worry. The electric grid sees a great fluctuation in power demand, with, as you might expect, a drop of 30% or so in the early AM. Between midnight and 6 AM there is plenty of reserve electricity that could charge a zillion electric car batteries. It would be trivial to have the car's microprocessor[s] start the charging at midnight and monitor it so the battery doesn't overcharge.
If the electric company would offer an incentive, like say twelve cents a kilowatt hour instead of the sixteen I usually pay, I'd hit the "economy charge" button in the car as I plugged it in. Even better, the car ought to default to "economy charge" and require you to press a "Hang the expense, Charge it NOW" button should you need the car sooner than tomorrow morning.
Power companies could install electric meters with built in clocks that would record "off peak" (midnight to 6 AM) electricity use separately from the "peak" (daytime) use. You get a discount on off peak use. In fact, doing so might be a good idea. If I got a discount on juice after midnight, I might take the trouble to run the clothes dryer after midnight. Right now I don't bother, 'cause there is nothing in it for me.
Not to worry. The electric grid sees a great fluctuation in power demand, with, as you might expect, a drop of 30% or so in the early AM. Between midnight and 6 AM there is plenty of reserve electricity that could charge a zillion electric car batteries. It would be trivial to have the car's microprocessor[s] start the charging at midnight and monitor it so the battery doesn't overcharge.
If the electric company would offer an incentive, like say twelve cents a kilowatt hour instead of the sixteen I usually pay, I'd hit the "economy charge" button in the car as I plugged it in. Even better, the car ought to default to "economy charge" and require you to press a "Hang the expense, Charge it NOW" button should you need the car sooner than tomorrow morning.
Power companies could install electric meters with built in clocks that would record "off peak" (midnight to 6 AM) electricity use separately from the "peak" (daytime) use. You get a discount on off peak use. In fact, doing so might be a good idea. If I got a discount on juice after midnight, I might take the trouble to run the clothes dryer after midnight. Right now I don't bother, 'cause there is nothing in it for me.
Friday, August 14, 2009
Who is smoking what?
From the Wall St Journal editorial page:
"As a political strategist, Big Pharma lobbyist Billy Tauzin is starting to look less like Dr. Faustus and more like Jack, trading away his industry for magic beans.
Last week Mr. Tauzin ostentatiously blabbed to the media that his industry's deal to help fund ObamaCare with $80 billion in prescription drug discounts was really protection money. In particular he bragged that he had secured promises from the White House that President Obama would fend off Congressional Democrats who want to "negotiate" drug prices, which in practice means price controls. "
First off, Billy Tauzin is smoking something if he thinks ObamaCare won't insist on lower drug prices, like CanadaCare does in Canada. Once the US has one big healthcare bureaucracy doing all the contracting, the bureaucrats will demand lower prices, and since they will be the only game in town, the drug companies will have no choice. Why the suits running the drug companies haven't figured this out I'll never know. I guess the drug companies are all run by myopic bean counters.
Second off, Obama is smoking something if he thinks a drug company offer of price discounts means anything. "List" prices for drugs are about 20 times the "street" price. Walmart fills my prescriptions for $48 for a three months supply. Medicare Advantage tells me the same drugs have an average sales price of $1023. Translation, a "discount" off a sky high and wholly fictitious "list" price doesn't mean a thing.
Anyhow Big Pharma is still planning to spend $150 million in advertising supporting ObamaCare. Talk about a death wish.
"As a political strategist, Big Pharma lobbyist Billy Tauzin is starting to look less like Dr. Faustus and more like Jack, trading away his industry for magic beans.
Last week Mr. Tauzin ostentatiously blabbed to the media that his industry's deal to help fund ObamaCare with $80 billion in prescription drug discounts was really protection money. In particular he bragged that he had secured promises from the White House that President Obama would fend off Congressional Democrats who want to "negotiate" drug prices, which in practice means price controls. "
First off, Billy Tauzin is smoking something if he thinks ObamaCare won't insist on lower drug prices, like CanadaCare does in Canada. Once the US has one big healthcare bureaucracy doing all the contracting, the bureaucrats will demand lower prices, and since they will be the only game in town, the drug companies will have no choice. Why the suits running the drug companies haven't figured this out I'll never know. I guess the drug companies are all run by myopic bean counters.
Second off, Obama is smoking something if he thinks a drug company offer of price discounts means anything. "List" prices for drugs are about 20 times the "street" price. Walmart fills my prescriptions for $48 for a three months supply. Medicare Advantage tells me the same drugs have an average sales price of $1023. Translation, a "discount" off a sky high and wholly fictitious "list" price doesn't mean a thing.
Anyhow Big Pharma is still planning to spend $150 million in advertising supporting ObamaCare. Talk about a death wish.
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