MeyerBros

Peter Gutmann has done a cost analysis of Windows Vista’s “premium content protection.” A sad/scary/ridiculous/amusing overview of the tangled webs Microsoft and its content-industry buddies are trying to weave in order to perform the impossible task of “protecting” content from the same person who’s legitimately viewing it. Worth reading. Some choice items: If Vista doesn’t think your shiny new HD monitor / high-end sound card is secure enough (few HD monitors sold today have the required security features) any “premium content” sent to that device (and any other content being played on the system at the same time as “premium content”) gets intentionally fuzzied by the OS, or blacked out completely. And if a “security” problem is discovered in a previously-approved piece of hardware, Microsoft can at any time revoke the key for that piece of hardware, disabling its ability to function with Vista at all. After you bought and paid for it.

Anyway, read it. Definitely read it if you’re even thinking about buying Vista, or a computer with Vista installed. And this is good too.

We’ve all heard plenty about the federal government’s “incompetent” response to Katrina. Bush finally even (belatedly) apologized for it. But I never had a real clear sense of what “incompetent” meant. Now I do. Apparently it means “shameless cronyism.” (Ok, honestly I did already know that Mike Brown, Bush’s appointee to run FEMA, had previously held a job as the Commissioner of the International Arabian Horse Association. But this is even more reckless.)

Greg Palast reporting for Democracy Now! a couple weeks ago around the Katrina one-year anniversary. (mp3 and transcripts for the two segments here and here):

What kind of evacuation plan would leave 127,000 to sink or swim? It turns out that the Bush administration had contracted out evacuation planning to a corporation, IEM, Innovative Emergency Management. I couldn’t locate their qualifications, but I did locate their list of donations to the Republican Party. We went to Baton Rouge to talk to them.

Palast goes on to report about how the evacuation plan, which IEM was paid a half-million dollars for, is mysteriously missing. And about how the real emergency management experts at LSU had never heard of these guys until they got their fat contract. And the kicker? After people drowned in New Orleans because these guys never came up with an actual evacuation plan (very innovative, I have to admit), guess who Bush contracted with to study what went wrong? That’s right - another fat consulting contract for IEM.

More info on IEM from SourceWatch.

Walmart has been infiltrating other countries. I suppose I knew this, although it wasn’t really on my radar. What I find interesting now is that its “Formula Doesn’t Fit Every Culture”

Apparently in Germany it has lost lots of money, because of the company’s lack of cultural sensitivity. The article states:

“In Germany, Wal-Mart stopped requiring sales clerks to smile at customers — a practice that some male shoppers interpreted as flirting — and scrapped the morning Wal-Mart chant by staff members.”

One employee explained, “People found these things strange; Germans just don’t behave that way.”

And Americans do???? We enjoy morning chants and fake smiling at all customers????

Fascinating.

We also, apparently, are willing to move to another state when one store closes and we are asked to transfer to another store - unlike the Germans who were “infuriated” and quit. And unlike in Germany, Walmart doesn’t actually need to work with labor unions in the U.S.

They say they are learning more about how to work with other cultures. In reading this, I am learning (or at least wondering) more about ours.

Senator Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), lost his internet the other day because his tubes were clogged. the poor guy. read what he had to say about it and the wired internet forensics report (using “Bioforensic Unfragmenting Logistical Level Systemic Hopping Information Tracerouter, which is open source”).

the long and short of it is - you net neutrality freaks are clogging the internet tubes for the rest of us. and no one likes a clogged internet.

so i saw Syriana the other night (i should note that i watched most of the movie by myself, because aparently it wasn’t good enough to keep the attention of hannah and kelly for more than 45 minutes). i thought it was a decent movie, but way too complicated to really understand without rewinding a few times. i have to admit that i actually watched 3/4 of the movie, read the wikipedia synopsis, and then finished the movie. i had most of the plotlines and characters correct, but there were a few things i definitely would not have caught without reading the synopsis, even after watching the entire movie. perhaps the characters are a bit stereotyped (especially how all Arabs are presented as puppets of the US). oh, and it criticizes the US, which is why columnist Charles Krauthammer says “Osama bin Laden could not have scripted this film with more conviction.” well, i’d like to see him try anyway.

Eduardo Machado is a Cuban (/American) playwright with a lot to say. He gave a pretty gutsy talk a couple weeks ago that I find inspiring, challenging and moving. I am in the midst of finishing up plans for the next New World Arts season, and some of what he said hit me right in the gut.

He weaves together thoughts about immigration, the wall being built on the Mexico border, and his own experiences as a green card-carrying immigrant. His treatment as an “outsider” by a profession (theatre) that I believe should be on the cutting edge of acceptance is appalling. This flows into his thoughts about theatre, about not trying to make audiences happy, and about bravery. He rails against rampant entitlement issues, including the “entitlement” to be trained as a theatre artist - which really just plays into making theatre more corporate-minded.
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spur of the moment michelle mentions that i need to get film footage of paris for Limonade Tous les Jours, a great little duet/play by Chuck Mee that we’re talking about for this season at New World and dad mentions that he has an old video camera that may or may not work so we get it out and play with it over footage of derek bontreger and doyle preheim at the damn in “The Town Where No One Got Off”. it worked.

so then we’re running to wal-mart because it’s the only place still open and buying miniDV tapes so i can do my thing when i realize i really really want an mp3 player for the trip and they have them fairly cheap and i could sell it on ebay later if i want to so here goes. and there went.

now i’m listening to it and it’s working fairly well. well enough for this trip.

france, here i come: OO AE DOO FROMAGE? DOE NAE MUA POO DE FROMAGE. EH LA VEH. (merci)

Michelle sent me this yesterday. New York Times seems to be covering the issue fairly well.

NYTimes.com: Why the Democratic Ethic of the World Wide Web May Be About to End.

Re:Focus has this article on Wal-Mart practices from their marketing perspective.

what’s interesting about this to me is how it relates to that company i work for which claims “ethical investing” while investing in Wal-Mart for “better returns” - i mean “Shareholder Advocacy.” (For one, i’d love to see the performance stats for “shareholder advocacy” with Wal-Mart. How are we measuring success and how do we determine when an ends-justify-the-means approach is worth it (if it ever really is)? but that’s off topic for this one…). What this shows is that the two are inseparable. Bad ethics, in the long run at least (and I think this is becoming more and more true in the information age), is bad business. brand loyalty has taken a major shift in the last 20 years - ask anyone in marketing, it’s a new game. people find out about bad business practices and they care. buzz marketing has overtaken everything, and buzz marketing thrives on emotional arguments. thank god.

i love that investment analysts had it wrong on this one. even they thought COSTCO should go evil for profits. how long will it take for investors (cough cough) to catch on? will they ever?

Halliburton/Kellogg Brown & Root gets $385 million “emergency detention centers” contract from the Dept of Homeland Security.

The contract, which is effective immediately, provides for establishing temporary detention and processing capabilities to augment existing ICE Detention and Removal Operations (DRO) Program facilities in the event of an emergency influx of immigrants into the U.S., or to support the rapid development of new programs.

Republican leaders are also thinking about repealing or modifying Posse Comitatus (the law that prevents U.S. soldiers from doing domestic law enforcement), and the deployment of National Guard troops to the Mexico border has no end date.

Alright. So I haven’t been a very reliable blogger the last week or so. I repent and I’ll reform my ways, I promise. Starting now.

So, I put up some new mini-reviews of movies I’ve seen recently - The Red Violin, Pride & Prejudice, Mission Impossible 3, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, Wag the Dog, some others. Some better, some worse.

Quality funny: the Yes Men strike again. Their MO is to build fake corporate websites, then get invited to conferences / media events as impostor representatives of a corporation. A couple years ago, the BBC interviewed them, believing them to be Dow Chemical reps, and on behalf of Dow they accepted responsibility for the Bhopal chemical disaster, which killed 15,000 and injured up to 600,000. Their stunt forced Dow to remind the world that neither Union Carbide nor its new corporate parent, Dow, have ever accepted any responsibility or lifted a finger to help the survivors.

In their newest trick, they “represented” Halliburton at an insurance industry conference on “catastrophic loss”, where they demoed Halliburton R&D’s newest project - the Survivaball, an inflatable “one-man gated community” to preserve the lives of corporate managers during future floods and natural disasters caused by global warming. In response to a serious question from the audience: “what about terrorism?” they “had to explain that, well, you know, it’s mainly — it’s got a bit of defensive capabilities, some elementary RPGs and maybe some other, you know, torpedo launchers, but basically … mainly that’s used against affluent members of the community who are trying to destroy your — you know, of the neighboring community, because those are the only people who can afford at that point to travel. You know, terrorism from the Middle East or whatever, we’re just not — that’s out of the picture at this point.”

Hey NWA, you got good actors - could they stand up in a suit in front of a bunch of insurance execs and say that with a straight face? If so, volunteer to help out the Yes Men! It’s like the Action-Comedy Co-Lab, but real life and even funnier. Elementary RPGs!

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