Sorry for not keeping my promise to follow up the original reader platform post with some debate posts in a timely manner.
Rather than open this up to a free-for-all, I’d like to start with a specific topic for which we had a pretty wide span of opinions and policy, but is perhaps more pressing even than the typical topics of argument here: trade. To summarize:
Steve advocates free trade with restrictions used as a tool to punish human rights offenders. NorthernLite feels similarly, with added emphasis on environmental enforcement, while shcb seems to favor no restrictions at all, allowing business to set its own agenda.
JAYSON wants a return to a strong American manufacturing base by cutting the agreements and incentives that drive globalization. Knarlyknight takes a less harsh stance, but additionally favors tight enforcement of safety standards for imported goods.
Here are a couple starter question for the candidates:
Steve, NorthernLite, and shcb, are you concerned that transnational corporations may be often be pursuing business strategies that optimize their profits at the expense of nation-specific interests, as typified by America’s drift toward a service/consumer economy and widening economic gap?
JAYSON and Knarlyknight, strong economic ties between nations may the be the most effective base on which to build lasting good diplomatic relations; wouldn’t a more nationalistic US economic policy further isolate the US on the world stage, and embolden competing economic unions in the EU and Asia?
I’ve been only half paying attention to the ongoing saga of the miners trapped in the Utah coal mine. Something about the “Little Boy” (or adult mine workers) “Trapped in a Well” (or a mine) storyline seems so clichéd, so tailor-made for shallow, breathless coverage by a growing crush of media, that I feel a personal duty to avoid the story, the same way I feel obligated to say “no” to any extended warranty while buying consumer electronics, just on general principle. Which is callous and insensitive, I realize; those miners and their families are going through a horrible ordeal, and any decent human, given half a chance, would (and should) feel powerful emotional sympathies. Which may just be another way of saying the same thing: in a context in which large corporations are mobilizing armies of bubbleheads and technicians and equipment to tap into my essential humanity for the purpose of selling soap (or whatever CNN is hawking during the commercial breaks from the mine coverage), cultivating my inner cynic becomes an act of justifiable (if regrettable) self defense.
I did have a moment when listening to NPR the other day when it occurred to me how the rescue effort has played out like a metaphorical version of the Iraq war: ill-equipped, ill-trained (if sincere) efforts in the early going (like the True Believer twenty-somethings who staffed the CPA in the early Iraq reconstruction effort); followed by people with some sense of what needed to be done, but without the required expertise to pull it off against a tight schedule (as when the initial rescue wells went astray and missed the miners’ presumed location); followed by repeated expensive-but-doomed efforts that amounted to too little, too late. And the whole time, we had the spectacle of those in power (generals and politicians in the case of Iraq, mine owner and Bush-appointed mining safety official in the case of the collapsed mine), posing for the cameras and apparently focused at least as much on maintaining a fiction that they bore no blame for the unfolding disaster as on actually living up to their obligations.
Sigh. And now the metaphor gets an extra layer, as we grapple with the sunk-cost fallacy: More are continuing to die as a result of the initial mistakes. Do we keep going as a tribute to the fallen? Or pull out and face the realization that they died in vain?
So last night, suddenly, after the tragic second collapse at the Utah mine, there was a dramatic shift in the TV coverage of the story. All at once, faux folksy mining boss Bob Murray, who had been everywhere, was nowhere to be found (even sending in a junior executive to handle this morning’s press conference). In his place, at long last, were actual scientists, and experts on mine safety and the workings of the Mine Safety and Health Administration. Bush mine safety czar Richard “Recess Appointment” Stickler was also absent last night, and did not appear again until this morning’s press conference.
So many questions were finally being asked. Prompting one more: What took so long? Why did it take a tragic second collapse before the Murray and Strickler PR Show was finally replaced by actual journalism?
On the specific question she raises about the media, I think it’s just the latest in a long line of examples of how entertainment and business values are displacing journalistic ethics. Bloggers are gradually assuming the role of journalists. Which I realize is problematic in various ways, but it’s also just the reality of the situation.
A bill aimed at cracking down on businesses that engage in “pretexting” (or, to be less precious about it, lying) in pursuit of personal information has become the target of a lobbying effort by the music and movie industries, which say they need to be able to lie in order to fight piracy: Recording, movie industries lobby for permission to deceive.
Interesting scuttlebutt lately regarding whether telephone companies have or haven’t been handing over customer calling data en masse to the government. I like Joshua Marshall’s take: TPM reader DV has an interesting and good point…
For all the shilly-shallying, Verizon does appear to come right out and deny they gave any customer records to the NSA.
So what gives?
I think I’ve got the answer: they’re lying.
No, I don’t have any inside information to confirm that claim. But common sense is a marvelous thing.
One of the strongest arguments in favor of this interpretation, at least for me, is the coy language the Bush administration has been using. At this point, how gullible would we have to be to give them the benefit of the doubt on a matter like this?
I don’t want to like this, since it’s pretty much on a par with the scantily-clad-woman-on-the-mechanical-bull Carl’s Jr. ad. But it does have a certain… punch. Anyway, the not-really-very-safe-for-work (depending on where you work) Napster striptease commercial: Get the whole thing.
While all of us at Best Buy were thrilled to be part of the recent launch of Microsoft’s Xbox 360 video game system – one of the most anticipated events in the history of electronic gaming – the launch did not go as we had hoped. We sold out of Xbox 360s nationwide in less than two hours, and most of our stores did an outstanding job of serving our gaming customers. I’d like to thank the majority of our employees, who provided a terrific experience for customers at the launch date. However, our promotional activities in certain cases failed to follow company guidelines. As a result, some of our valued gaming customers had an experience in our stores that was inconsistent with what you’ve come to expect from us, as a leader in the consumer electronics industry.
Specifically, customers in some Best Buy stores were told that they were required to buy additional Xbox accessories or services if they wanted one of the sought-after Xbox 360 consoles, even though we advertised the Xbox 360 console alone. I want to be very clear that Best Buy does not condone pressuring customers to purchase items they may not want or that may not fit their lifestyle. In fact, these behaviors are in direct conflict with our desire to serve customers’ needs better than anyone else, and our values of honesty and integrity.
More on Best Buy’s values of honesty and integrity from Hiro/Aaron’s Best Buy receipt check page (and the links diverging therefrom).
At this point I thanked him and informed him that I would be writing an article about my experience with his company. It was at this point that he went ballistic. He first told me that if I did this that he would not cancel my order but just never fill it. If I cancelled it he said he’d charge me a 15% restocking fee. When I told him that that would be unethical he went nuts. He accused me of trying to “extort” him and said that he was going to have two local police officers come over and arrest me. He then went on to say that as a “professional photographer” I should have known better than to try and buy a camera this way and that he was an attorney and would sue me if I wrote an article about my experience.
He told me that I had no idea who I was dealing with and that as he had my work contact info that he was going to call both my immediate supervisor and the CEO of my company and tell them that I was trying to extort him.
Due to irregularities in the 2004 election traced to touch screen terminals, North Carolina has taken the very reasonable precaution of requiring vendors of electronic voting gizmos to place all of the source code in escrow. Diebold has objected to the possibility of criminal sanctions if they fail to comply, and argued for an exemption before Wake County Superior Court Judge Narley Cashwell. The judge declined to issue an exemption, and Diebold has concluded that it has no choice but withdraw from the state.
The company’s explanation is that their machines contain Microsoft software, which they have no right to make available to state election officials.
Sounds like a good reason for other states to follow suit, and require voting machine vendors to escrow their code. If we don’t have access to the voting machines’ code, then we don’t have democracy. We just don’t.
Match.com, a unit of IAC/Interactive Corp. (IACI.O: Quote, Profile, Research), is accused in a federal lawsuit of goading members into renewing their subscriptions through bogus romantic e-mails sent out by company employees. In some instances, the suit contends, people on the Match payroll even went on sham dates with subscribers as a marketing ploy.
[snip]
The company said it does not comment on pending litigation. But Match spokeswoman Kristin Kelly said the company “absolutely does not” employ people to go on dates with subscribers or to send members misleading e-mails professing romantic interest. The company has about 15 million members worldwide and 250 employees, she sa
You may recall ymatt and my disagreement about whether the story of someone dumping a few hundred thousand superballs off a San Francisco rooftop to film a commercial was real, or a clever Photoshop hoax (see Pictures don’t lie. Except when they do.)
Well, I think the evidence at this point strongly supports “real.” The commercial (which turns out to be for a new Sony LCD television) is available for viewing online, along with making-of footage: Sony BRAVIA - The advert.
This is pretty fun. Warning: Makes no sense without audio. And with audio, pretty much not safe for work, or for children who don’t know the seven words you’re not allowed to say on (American broadcast) television. Anyway, as hosted at big-boys.com: Language barrier.
Dick Cheney likes to point out that he has “gotten rid of all my financial interests” in Halliburton. Damn. Where can I get some of those nonexistent financial interests? As summarized by the Carpetbagger Report (Cheney’s lucrative Halliburton ties), a report from the office of Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) points out the following:
Vice President Cheney’s Halliburton stock options have increased in value 3,281 percent in one year. The stock options, which were worth $241,498 one year ago are now valued at $8,165,489.07.
Update: Per Craig’s helpful update in the comments, FactCheck.org has a nice page dating to the last presidential campaign that gives a truer version of what’s really going on: Kerry ad falsely accuses Cheney on Halliburton.
The gist of this seems to be that Cheney made a binding legal agreement when he became Veep that hires a law firm to exercise his Halliburton (among others) stock options when the time seems right to maximize the resulting profits, deduct fees for the attorneys and taxes owed, and then donate whatever is left over according to the following (as quoted from the Factcheck.org piece):
The agreement specifies that 40% will go to the University of Wyoming (Cheney’s home state), 40% will go to George Washington University’s medical faculty to be used for tax-exempt charitable purposes, and 20% will go to Capital Partners for Education, a charity that provides financial aid for low-income students in Washington, DC to attend private and religious schools.
Most of the griping by Sen. Lautenberg over the years apparently has been about how this arrangement (along with other aspects of Cheney’s financial dealings with Halliburton, like the payment of deferred compensation from when he was the company’s CEO), constitutes a continuing “financial interest” that must be disclosed in official government reporting — but Cheney apparently is doing that.
The PDF of Cheney’s Halliburton-options agreement refers to Schedule A, which is where the options in question are supposed to be listed, but Schedule A is not actually included in the PDF. Instead there’s a placeholder-type page that describes the options generally, and refers one to Cheney’s annual financial disclosure statements, which it says includes the specifics. So I guess it’s conceivable that Cheney might be sneakily concealing some of the options for himself, or something, while claiming to have assigned them all to charity, but if that were the case I’m reasonably certain that people like Sen. Lautenberg would be screaming about it. Since they’re not, I think it’s pretty clear that he’s not doing that, and that the charitable assignment of the options is what it purports to be.
So, my bad. And thanks to Craig for setting me straight. Cheney’s profit from the Halliburton options is not in the form of direct compensation, as I (and the piece I linked to) implied. Instead, he gets to make an $8 million donation to his alma mater, a med school, and a scholarship fund, and (maybe) take a nice tax break for the charitable donation (though Craig says he’s seen something about Cheney having chosen not to take the tax break). I’d be interested in hearing more on that point if anyone has details; given that Cheney is currently estimated to be worth between $30 million and $100 million, largely due to his compensation while at Halliburton, I could see where some tax breaks would be very helpful.
I enjoyed this item in which Carl Bialik of Gelf Magazine traces over-the-top quotes from movie reviews to their actual in-context sources: Blurb Racket 6/24/05.
The Girl in the Café (HBO)
Oregonian: “An endearing romantic comedy.”
Actual line: “This new offering from HBO Films is at its heart a bit of political propaganda wrapped into an endearing romantic comedy that starts losing its laughs when it gets to Reykjavik and decides its teachable moment has arrived.”
As someone who lives in coastal California, owns his home, and recently refinanced it to build an addition, I confess to being concerned at the talk of a housing bubble about to burst. Given that I’m also someone who bought into the tech stock bubble almost precisely at its peak makes me wonder if I’m about to learn the same painful lesson over again.
From Design Observer’s Michael Bierut, a dead-on essay on the use of glib-unconcern-for-the-facts-based handwaving in selling design ideas to clients: On (design) bullshit.
Early in my life as a designer, I acquired a reputation as a good bullshitter. I remember a group assignment in design school where the roles were divided up. The team leader suggested that one student make the models, another take the photographs, and, finally, “Michael here will handle the bullshitting.” This meant that I would do talking at the final critique, which I did, and well. I think I mastered this facility early because I was always insecure about my intuitive skills, not to mention my then-questionable personal magnetism. Before I could commit to a design decision, I needed to have an intellectual rationale worked out in my mind. I discovered in short order that most clients seemed grateful for the rationale as well. It put aside arguments about taste; it helped them make the leap of faith that any design decision requires; it made the design understandable to wider audiences. If pressed, however, I’d still have to admit that even my most beautifully wrought, bulletproof rationales still fit Harry Frankfurt’s definition of bullshit.
I’m sticking this in the ‘business lies’ topic because I can’t think of anything better for it. But anyone who wants to suggest a suitable new topic to contain it is welcome to do so.
The cosmetics market is thought to be worth more than £15 billion worldwide. In a ruthlessly competitive market, pseudoscientific claims have become common. The Estée Lauder cream, which costs £28 for a 200ml tube, was heavily criticised yesterday for suggesting that it might help to reduce the fatty tissue that dimples women’s thighs. The serum was advertised with the promise “True Performance. Visible results. Your body will prove it.”
The text of the advertisement read: “This multi-action serum with our exclusive thermogenic complex and potent Asian herbals melts away the fatty look of cellulite. Refirms and tightens to help keep that dimpled look from coming back.”
It claimed that 83 per cent of women who used the product had seen a reduction in the appearance of their cellulite, though a footnote added: “Based on a 46-person test over a four-week period.” Estée Lauder argued that it was a cosmetic treatment that reduced the appearance of cellulite and that women would realise it would not treat cellulite itself. But the ASA found that consumers were likely to understand “anti-cellulite” and “reduction in the appearance of cellulite” to mean the serum directly worked on cellulite and that it was more than a moisturiser. It ruled that the advertisement was misleading because the advertisers had not proven the efficicacy of the serum on cellulite, nor that it reduced its dimpling.
Estée Lauder refused to accept the ruling and said it had provided a dossier of evidence which it believed fully demonstrated the efficacy of the serum.
I continue to boggle at the wrangling back and forth over whether the media has a bias to the left or right. We’re all seeing the same thing: they’re getting lazy. The media organism is leaving behind the competetive wild of searching out the news at the source and is turning itself in to less dangerous captivity, with regular feedings of partisan talking points and corporate messaging.
I try to avoid linking to slashdot items, but this Paul Graham article points out how PR firms feed the media outlets convenient “facts” that get out their customers’ messages. Especially creepy is the example of handing a hard, but easily mis-usable, fact to a media outlet, then using it as proof to make a point in a later spoon-fed article.
This is the same tendency we’re seeing in the political arena. It’s a lot easier to cover the red vs. blue board game than the real issues, people, and events of the day. Guys, stop hurting America.
I’ve had Microsoft on the brain lately. First, I recently read David Boies’ Courting Justice, part of which details the Clinton Justice Department’s successful (though ultimately pyrrhic, given the Bush team’s having essentially walked away from sanctions) antitrust action against the company.
And then there’s my current ongoing job hunt, which has me looking at (among other things) a project manager position with a company that develops web applications in a Windows environment. (And where the person who interviewed me yesterday casually mentioned that a googling of my name had led him to — eep! — lies.com. Heh.)
It’s been a while since I’ve pointed to a good, juicy business lie. So here’s a nice one: From Making Light: Common fraud. It exposes the corporate underpinnings of the allegedly “grassroots” organization Common Good, an advocacy group looking to promote the idea that we desperately need to expand the legal rights of corporations and curtail those of individuals if we are to preserve our way of life.
Never doubt that it’s worth their while to lie to you. When you’re talking about really big corporations and really big money, it’s worth their while to lie to you very, very elaborately.
Viral marketing is something I’ve heard of before, usually in the context of neat little sponsored online games, or more recently in the form of things like I Love Bees, an alternate-reality game made as a promotion to the forthcoming Xbox game, Halo2 (which I know jbc will be waiting in line for). The idea is to make something that people naturally forward around to each other, usually with email subject lines like “this is 2 kewl!!!”.
But this little gem really brought it home for me. The inimitable somethingawful.com, unending source of subversive online humor, recently posted hank-makes-it-flat.com as their “awful link of the day”, an honor reserved for the worst of teen fan pages, goth poetry blogs, and shameless fetishist webrings. And it falls right into that mold: a guy obsessed with flattening shit. But check the registration information for the domain name and you’ll find it belongs to Digital Oxygen Inc. which specializes in various forms of online marketing including creation and seeding of viral marketing campaigns. This probably explains why Hank makes it a point to mention in a few places on his page how cool (and flat!) his new Motorola RAZR cellphone is.
Score one for Motorola — somethingawful just got played. To quote now-dead web comic Leisuretown:
“All that cutesy-clever uNdERgrOuNd-type bullshit you’re into? Fun stuff that nobody knows about? Stuff that’s ’sacred’ to you? We stuck it there.”
(Apparently this kind of thing is actually called stealth marketing, which is kinda more disturbing even.)
From Matthew Baldwin of the Morning News comes this fun collection of little-known facts from various lines of work: Tricks of the trade.
One example to tease you:
Balloon-Twister
When you’re twisting balloons for children, never tell them what you’re making. The majority of the finished products–despite your best attempts–almost always look like a dog, a blastula, or something vaguely phallic. If you identify what you’re actually attempting to make, the children will respond to your finished product with, “That doesn’t look like a [insert animal name]…” But if you make the animals and then ask, “What does it look like to you?” the child’s imagination will take over, turning the blue, four-legged balloon into Blue from Blue’s Clues, the blastula into a Pokemon, and the phallic object into an elephant. You’ll also get bonus points because you were so cool for making exactly what they wanted.
From the Independent: Moose, public-spirited graffiti artist, cleans up. Apparently the “Yorkshire graffiti artist known universally as Moose” (well, for certain values of the term “universally”) is in trouble for applying cleaning solvents to a template of corporate clients’ logos, thereby creating “reverse grafitti” against dirty backdrops.
I started this site partly to showcase glaring examples of high-profile falsehood. But paradoxically, I also wanted to showcase high-profile truth-speaking, a phenomenon that in its own way can be even more glaring (and is certainly a good deal rarer). Anyway, a fine example of the latter is on display here: From Fed chairman Alan Greenspan, via the Price of Loyalty, a sober, hard-hitting indictment of the dishonest way CEOs have inflated their corporations’ apparent worth, at the expense of long-term viability: Greenspan memo: What’s wrong with corporate America.
One thing I find interesting about this is the way the problem of dishonest CEOs gaming the accounting system is mirrored by the problem of dishonest politicians gaming the electorate (though here, sadly, Greenspan seems to have a harder time staying honest; see this recent item from Paul Krugman, for example: Greenspan dabbles in bait-switch).
Anyway, fellow shareholders in the American dream, arise! It’s time for a hostile takeover.
Somewhat interesting story, made more interesting (well, for me) by the fact that I have personally had to grapple with the moral issue raised: Amazon glitch unmasks war of reviewers. An excerpt:
John Rechy, author of the best-selling 1963 novel “City of Night” and winner of the PEN-USA West lifetime achievement award, is one of several prominent authors who have apparently pseudonymously written themselves five-star reviews, Amazon’s highest rating. Mr. Rechy, who laughed about it when approached, sees it as a means to survival when online stars mean sales.
“That anybody is allowed to come in and anonymously trash a book to me is absurd,” said Mr. Rechy, who, having been caught, freely admitted to praising his new book, “The Life and Adventures of Lyle Clemens,” on Amazon under the signature “a reader from Chicago.” “How to strike back? Just go in and rebut every single one of them.”
This link brought to you courtesy of an author whose own book’s Amazon page contains only legitimate reviews, as far as he’s aware.
From frequent link-suggester Steve D. comes word of this interesting-sounding documentary: The Corporation. The basic concept is that when analyzed by the same criteria used to evaluate real humans’ mental health, corporate ‘persons’ turn out to be indistinguishable from raving psychopaths.
John Gruber at Daring Fireball has an excellent screed on something all of us, even the non-Borg-afflicted, are suffering from these days: Good times. His basic argument, which certainly matches my own experience, is that Microsoft products are the standard in the business world mainly because they are so poorly engineered that they require large, status-conferring staffs to maintain them.
Digital artist Greg Apodaca gives a dramatic example of the little Photoshop manipulations that go into creating high-quality cheesecake: Greg’s digital archive.
Eric Schlosser, author of Fast Food Nation, has a new book out: Reefer Madness: Sex, Drugs and Cheap Labor in the American Black Market. He looks at the free-market side of the marijuana, sex, and undocumented-worker stories, pointing out some interesting facts along the way. Like, marijuana has now passed corn as the US’s leading cash crop, and the black-market business in drugs, pr0n, and illegal labor now constitutes nearly 10% of the US GDP. Schlosser’s conclusion is that as a country we’re deeply screwed up, with high-profile public morality masking a depraved underbelly.
I’m a sucker for sites like www.re-code.com. Not because I particularly want to go to the trouble of printing out bogus barcodes and then surreptitiously slapping them on similar but higher-priced items at the local Vons, but because I love it when a site takes pains to adopt a tone and appearance that leads you to believe it’s something that it isn’t. Or is it?
My favorite part about re-code.com is the way they scrupulously avoid the use of the word theft to describe the activity they are allegedly enabling. Instead, they couch the descriptions in the language of responsible consumerism. Like this:
Re-Code.com is built on two unique concepts known as Preshopping and Postshopping. Preshopping refers to visiting the Re-code.com website first finding a store in your area with prices that you want to pay. Many of our codes are from generic items which could easily be used to re-code brand name items. At stores which rely heavily on the barcode for your bill total, printed bar code stickers from this site could be used to relabel and re-code expensive products with cheaper prices. Rather than our competitors that allow you to compare apples to apples, we allow you the consumer to relabel dvd’s with apple prices. You compare products based on packaging material and price. Postshopping is what makes Re-code.com a consumer’s community. After purchasing items at their actual prices, we ask you to return to Re-code.com to upload information about the product including price and UPC number of legitimit purchases. Through Preshopping and Postshopping, you can help yourself and other’s pay the prices you determine for the products you want!
Gee, thanks, Re-code.com!
They lessen the impact somewhat with the following disclaimer, which appears at the bottom of every page. But it’s still fun.
* We in no way endorse the theft of products or services. Re-code.com was created as satire. We intend only to make aware the prevelance of barcodes and begin a critical discussion about what their pervasiveness means. This is not a product designed to be used in any malicious or illegal manner. Any such use is strictly prohibited. You should not use any of the barcodes available from this site for any illegal activity. They are here for your amusement only.
Link courtesy of Daypop.
Update: And now, just that fast, it’s down, replaced by a copy of the nastygram sent to them by the lawyers for WalMart, or somesuch. Oh, well.
Later update: Oh, hey. The site is still there; you just have to click on the nastygram, and then click through a disclaimer, to get there. Cool. Dumb on their part, but still cool.
Here’s another of one of those stories that bugs me because of the way it reduces the prospect of our invading another country and raining bombs onto the heads of its civilian population into just another business challenge. From Business 2.0: Marketing During Wartime. The article itself isn’t all that annoying; it’s just the idea behind it that bothers me.
Funny story, courtesy of AP, courtesy of Yahoo, courtesy of Janus, about how Fox News ran a CNN video feed, uncredited, showing the space shuttle Columbia breaking up. Gotta love those boys at Fox. Nice journalistic ethics there, guys. Goes well with all that right-wing lunatic raving that makes up your “news coverage.”
Seeking to shield itself from the negative public image it has garnered by profiting from the hacking, wheezing deaths of millions, cigarette giant Philip Morris changed its name yesterday. The new name, “Altria,” was chosen to convey the healthful, noble pursuit of the highest ideals possible, or, in other words, the exact opposite of what the company actually does. A new logo was also chosen, and appropriately, the firm went with a fuzzy, pixellated square reminiscent of nothing so much as the obscuring technology used in courtroom TV to conceal the identity of testifying criminals. Cool.
So it seems that some folks are a bit irritated with the Miller brewing company over their recent ad depicting two women in their underwear brawling over why they like Lite beer from Miller. I’m just curious to see if these are the same women that sit glued in front of all the Bachelor shows every week where 20 women chase after the same man.
As originally covered by lies.com back in May of 2002, Nike was slapped down by the California Supreme Court for claiming that falsehoods the company told about the sweatshops it runs in the Third World were Constitutionally protected free speech, rather than advertising, which would be subject to truth-in-advertising laws. Now the U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear Nike’s appeal of that decision. What do you think: Could the current U.S. Supreme Court rule that businesses have a Constitutionally protected right to lie to consumers? Oh, yeah. You betcha.
The relentless encroachment of corporate intellectual property rights hit a snag Monday when a New York judge ruled that Mattel cannot block a British woman from selling “Dungeon Barbie” on a web site that specializes in adult paraphernalia, because the use clearly is intended as parody. Nice.
Ho hum; another day, another revelation of crippling security flaws in Internet Explorer. This particular story is fun because of the back and forth it contains between the consultants who discovered the problem, and the MSFT flack who calls them irresponsible for telling people about it. “The most effective way to ensure the safety of the greatest number of Microsoft customers is to discuss security vulnerabilities only after users can be offered remediation,” says Microsoft spokesperson Rick Miller. Actually, I’d think the most effective way to ensure those users’ safety would be for them to switch to OS X or Linux.
As part of its ongoing mission to remake itself as a leader in “trustworthy computing,” Microsoft has removed yet another mock testimonial from its web site; in this one a 12-year-old gushes about how Encarta helped him write a report on A Tale of Two Cities. See the Register for a funny review and an archived screenshot.
I guess I need to get my head in the trough on this one, even though it’s done and over and has been slashdotted and everything. But it’s a big lie, and deserves some coverage in the liars’ journal of record. So, head on over to Daring Fireball, and read John Gruber’s take on Microsoft’s strange decision to run a made-up version of the Apple Switch ads.
