Today's junk mail included one from the New York Times. A one year subscription for ONLY $797.90. How can I resist this opportunity to read half truths, lies, the democratic party line, and slander for only $2.55 an issue?
Hell, I get the Wall St Journal, for only $125 a year. And the Journal is ten times the paper the Times will ever be.
The Times is hoping for revenue. Lots of hope , little revenue.
Wednesday, November 21, 2012
Argh. The Endless Campaign.
Today internet websites started running stories about 2016 presidential candidates. Don't we deserve even a one month break from the endless campaign?
Tuesday, November 20, 2012
Silence gives assent
Democrats ran anti Romney attack ads for months. They accused Romney of being a vulture capitalist who bought up companies and closed them down, throwing the employees out of work
Romney should have said something like this "At Bain we financed this successful company, that successful company, some other companies, who are employing a fantastic number of workers, full time with benefits." Romney didn't say that, or anything else. He was silent.
And voters like me begin to think the attack ads might be right. If Romney doesn't deny these really awful accusations, maybe they are true.
Rule of thumb, you have to answer attacks. Ignoring attacks doesn't make them go away. Some political "consultants" will say that denying an attack just spreads it. Not true. Lack of a denial hurts Romney, and the democratic newsies will spread it no matter what you do. So deny all attacks. ASAP.
That's not the only reason Romney lost, but it's a big one.
Dukakis could have told him about Willie Horton.
Romney should have said something like this "At Bain we financed this successful company, that successful company, some other companies, who are employing a fantastic number of workers, full time with benefits." Romney didn't say that, or anything else. He was silent.
And voters like me begin to think the attack ads might be right. If Romney doesn't deny these really awful accusations, maybe they are true.
Rule of thumb, you have to answer attacks. Ignoring attacks doesn't make them go away. Some political "consultants" will say that denying an attack just spreads it. Not true. Lack of a denial hurts Romney, and the democratic newsies will spread it no matter what you do. So deny all attacks. ASAP.
That's not the only reason Romney lost, but it's a big one.
Dukakis could have told him about Willie Horton.
Maybe Obama wants to go over the fiscal cliff?
It would give him a solid broadbased tax hike. He thinks tax hikes will solve the deficit problem. Obama is not one to believe a big tax hike will hurt anything. It will take a solid whack at military spending, and Obama doesn't like our military much. The other cuts don't hit Obama's sacred cows much, if at all. Best of all, he won't have to sit across a table from John Boehner and negotiate, without his teleprompter telling him what to say.
Monday, November 19, 2012
Feds holding hearing on Patent Trolls
And about time. In the industry you have to budget substantial money for lawyers. Any thing your company makes will draw a troll, waving some obscure patent that should never have been granted, and demanding money or he will sue. The biggest score by trolls so far is $600 million extorted at lawyer point from the Blackberry makers back in 2006.
Trolls feed armies of lawyers, a noxious life form, and raise the price of everything.
This could be fixed. Change the law to allow challenging the validity of the patent at patent infringement trials. Most of the infamous patent cases revolved around truely awful patents, ones which were well known ideas (prior art) or so obvious that anyone "skilled in the art" would immediately do things that way 'cause its the obvious way to do things. We ought to clamp down on the patent office and insist that patents not be issued unless the idea is really new, really clever, and non obvious. We should stop "business methods" patents, and software patents. It is unreasonable to have lawyers quibbling over a patent on using one click to make a purchase on a website.
Trolls feed armies of lawyers, a noxious life form, and raise the price of everything.
This could be fixed. Change the law to allow challenging the validity of the patent at patent infringement trials. Most of the infamous patent cases revolved around truely awful patents, ones which were well known ideas (prior art) or so obvious that anyone "skilled in the art" would immediately do things that way 'cause its the obvious way to do things. We ought to clamp down on the patent office and insist that patents not be issued unless the idea is really new, really clever, and non obvious. We should stop "business methods" patents, and software patents. It is unreasonable to have lawyers quibbling over a patent on using one click to make a purchase on a website.
Sunday, November 18, 2012
Trip to Boston via Manchester
Daughter Karen flew up for Thanksgiving. We picked her up at Manchester airport and 9:45 in the morning, and seeing as how Manchester is better than half way to Boston, we pressed on the to big city. I93 was still under construction south of Manchester and little progress was to be seen. The plan is to widen it to 6 lanes to handle the morning commuter rush. The state highway department has been whining about lack of money.
We did Quincy Market. Took I93 right over fancy bridge and got off underground and came up right at the entrance to a parking garage. I had looked for that exit on Google maps without success, I was pretty sure it was there, but not finding it on Google was a surprise. The garage was $35 for any stay over 80 minutes. Ouch. But we are tourists from NH now, rather than the wily locals that we used to be.
Quincy was full of pedestrians, not too full, and on a fine sunny Saturday. The central food court is as good as ever and all the storefronts are rented out and doing business. No boarded up shop windows. The Big Dig is fully dug and the rusty old central artery is gone, and Boston now has a beautiful green park running right thru downtown and the financial district. It ought to be nice, it cost taxpayers plenty.
Shopping is OK, but most of the shops are clothing stores, less than interesting to the male of the species. No book stores, no gadget stores. They did have a Newbury Comics store at which we found a new model Tarzan comic. Cover art shows Tarzan, in his customary garb (loincloth) but with a Thompson sub machine gun tucked under his arm. This is revolutionary for Tarzan. Tarzan never used firearms. He specialized in lying on a tree branch, waiting for Numa the lion to pass beneath, at which point Tarzan would drop onto the lion's back and stab it to death with his long hunting knife, inherited from his long dead father. Needless to say we bought it.
We did Quincy Market. Took I93 right over fancy bridge and got off underground and came up right at the entrance to a parking garage. I had looked for that exit on Google maps without success, I was pretty sure it was there, but not finding it on Google was a surprise. The garage was $35 for any stay over 80 minutes. Ouch. But we are tourists from NH now, rather than the wily locals that we used to be.
Quincy was full of pedestrians, not too full, and on a fine sunny Saturday. The central food court is as good as ever and all the storefronts are rented out and doing business. No boarded up shop windows. The Big Dig is fully dug and the rusty old central artery is gone, and Boston now has a beautiful green park running right thru downtown and the financial district. It ought to be nice, it cost taxpayers plenty.
Shopping is OK, but most of the shops are clothing stores, less than interesting to the male of the species. No book stores, no gadget stores. They did have a Newbury Comics store at which we found a new model Tarzan comic. Cover art shows Tarzan, in his customary garb (loincloth) but with a Thompson sub machine gun tucked under his arm. This is revolutionary for Tarzan. Tarzan never used firearms. He specialized in lying on a tree branch, waiting for Numa the lion to pass beneath, at which point Tarzan would drop onto the lion's back and stab it to death with his long hunting knife, inherited from his long dead father. Needless to say we bought it.
Friday, November 16, 2012
Technology marches on.
My nice Panasonic DVD player croaked the other day. It had been getting fussy, and rejecting certain disks as unplayble, but it would play some. Finally died by announcing that all my disks were unplayable. It ran well for seven years, longer than a big Samsung TV (which died after four years) and a Mitsubishi VHS player (5 years). They don't make consumer electronics the way the used to. I remember a couple of Sony TVs that ran for 20 years, Radio Shack stereo receivers running for 30.
And you cannot fix consumer electronics anymore. The chips are all surface mount which requires an artist to change, with pins spaced so close you cannot get a scope probe on them. When the TV, and later the Mitsubishi VHS died, I did some calling around, looking for anyone who might try fixing them. No luck. I didn't even bother looking for someone to fix the DVD player.
So down to Walmart. They had Sony, Magnevox, Lucky Goldstar and Samsung. The DVD versions were all cheap ($35) , about a third of what I paid for the dear departed Panasonic. They all had Blue Ray versions for double that, but since I don't own any Blue Ray discs, I didn't care.
Bought the Magnevox. It was much smaller than the old Panasonic, and it has digital output, HDMI they call it. One thick cable with funny 8 pin connecters (not included with the player) and bingo, the digital bits coming off the disc get shipped right to the digital TV, skipping the analog-to-digital conversion in the DVD player and the inverse analog-to-digital conversion in the TV. My day job used to be care and feeding, design and sales of AtoD and DtoA converter, and believe me, there are a zillion ways a converter can mess up the signal.
Anyhow, the direct digital connection gives even nicer video. DVD video has always been good, but the HDMI connection made it even better, crisp, clean, fine textures visible.
And you cannot fix consumer electronics anymore. The chips are all surface mount which requires an artist to change, with pins spaced so close you cannot get a scope probe on them. When the TV, and later the Mitsubishi VHS died, I did some calling around, looking for anyone who might try fixing them. No luck. I didn't even bother looking for someone to fix the DVD player.
So down to Walmart. They had Sony, Magnevox, Lucky Goldstar and Samsung. The DVD versions were all cheap ($35) , about a third of what I paid for the dear departed Panasonic. They all had Blue Ray versions for double that, but since I don't own any Blue Ray discs, I didn't care.
Bought the Magnevox. It was much smaller than the old Panasonic, and it has digital output, HDMI they call it. One thick cable with funny 8 pin connecters (not included with the player) and bingo, the digital bits coming off the disc get shipped right to the digital TV, skipping the analog-to-digital conversion in the DVD player and the inverse analog-to-digital conversion in the TV. My day job used to be care and feeding, design and sales of AtoD and DtoA converter, and believe me, there are a zillion ways a converter can mess up the signal.
Anyhow, the direct digital connection gives even nicer video. DVD video has always been good, but the HDMI connection made it even better, crisp, clean, fine textures visible.
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