Monthly Archives: July 2009

Buy Music. Seller Deletes It. Tough Luck.

Last week I commented on the debacle that Amazon.com created by reaching into Kindle devices and deleting George Orwell’s Animal Farm and 1984. Read that story again, here, and check out the update in comments.

Bad as that was, and Amazon’s CEO Jeff Bezos has acknowledged it was a mistake, here’s something worse: The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), who watch out for the “best interests” of that business and have spent the last few years terrorizing people who . . . <ahem>, share music, have now weighed in with the opinion that if you buy music on-line, legitimately, and it’s protected by Digital Rights Management (DRM) software, you shouldn’t expect that the computers controlling your rights should stay up and running.

Meaning that what you buy becomes worthless.

Wow.

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New Rules, New World . . . It’s ALL about Change

Sometimes, I can just point to someone else’s work, step back, and tell you how great it is.

This is almost one of those times. Check out this article in Wired.

Aside from my concern with the author’s statement that you should leave your WiFi connection open to the public, pretty much everything here makes sense. And seriously, in a Blog about Change, this article is fun, on-message, and . . . well, just great!

So if I send you all to that article, add a comment or three, and step back, have I changed your life? If you weren’t gonna see it otherwise, you bet.

Lives changed . . . movin’ on . . .

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Use Twitter, Get Sued for Libel

It’s my Twitter Page. I can say anything I like in 140 characters.

And then get sued for it.

Did you hear the one about the girl who hated her landlord, claimed on Twitter that her apartment was full of mold, and got sued by the landlord?

Heads up, folks. Off-the cuff remarks can get you in a lot more trouble now that anyone can see them.

The landlord’s response will probably hurt them a lot more than the remarks would have had they simply been ignored, by the way. And I’m not siding with the girl; I don’t know what the real story was at her “moldy home”. But for you, dear reader, the point is more important: don’t think the things you say or do online are private. AT ALL.

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Teens: “Twitter Isn’t Safe”

Who’d have thought? Teenagers, the invincible superheroes who also happen to lead us through all new things . . . aren’t using Twitter.

Anecdotally, I can tell you that one of my three sons thinks Twitter is pretty cool, and uses it to tell anyone who’s listening what’s he’s up to. Usually, the information strikes me as not of use to anyone except a friend who might be waiting for him to arrive somewhere.

Or a bad guy. Which is the point.

A couple of weeks ago, 15-year-old Matthew Robson, interning for the summer at Morgan Stanley (good luck wrapping your head around that one, by the way) wrote a report on the way teenagers use social media and other technology. Bloomberg got hold of it, and here is their encapsulation.

The short of this? Kids A) Don’t really think anyone is reading their tweets, and B) Think it’s creepy to throw all their personal information out there for anyone to read.

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Texting Causes Car Crashes

No kidding, REALLY?

We have a little side project here at Answer Guy Central: It’s found at this link, and while not very interesting to look at, the idea behind I Hate Texting is pretty much self-explanatory. And we have some social engineering stuff in mind; stay tuned for that.

Today, The New York Times published an article outlining just how dangerous texting is when people driving trucks do it. Presumable the findings apply to cars, motercycles, and whatever other form of transportation you favor as well . . . I’ve had people walk into me because they were texting at the time, for example, and seen people walk in front of cars because they were looking down and working their thumbs instead of following the simple rules our parents laid out for us before we were ever allowed to cross a street.

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What the Recording Industry Teaches Us About Change

I have a friend who’s spent his entire career in the music business. Up until a few years ago, he headed A&R (the part of the company that finds new talent) for Atlantic Records, who were, and if the recording industry still “exists” in any meaningful format still are a big label.

Well, it doesn’t.

I’ve known this for quite a while. The old school media companies have been fighting it for over a decade. There have been hundreds if not thousands of articles written on the subject, and the short point is that the businesses these folks are in have changed. The Internet has hastened the change and record labels, television networks, and newspapers are in full and fast decline.

There’s a fascinating article this week in The New York Times. It tells in pretty simple language what’s changed and why, specific to the recording industry. The lessons apply across the board to all media.

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Kindle Censorship in 1984 . . . Err . . . 2009

I usually write about change here. Today, I’m writing about how ‘change’ and ‘staying the same’ have become . . . indistinguishable.

Last week, people who use Amazon’s wildly popular Kindle eBook readers, and who happen to have bought George Orwell’s 1984 or Animal Farm got an incredibly rude surprise. The books were gone.

The irony is delicious. Nothing remotely OK about Amazon deleting the content off your Kindle, but the fact that it was Orwell  . . . just amazing. Now let’s move on to the big question: What’s UP?

I see two big questions:

  1. What does this mean technically?
  2. Why are they taking my stuff!!??!!

The second question is easy: Amazon discovered that the company that had made the books available didn’t have the right to do so, and they (correctly) pulled the plug on the books. By “correctly”,  I mean that they needed to discontinue sales.

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Government, Obscenity, and Business

I’ve been around long enough to witness a lot of change. Not quite long enough to have seen the Supreme Court Case in 1959 that made so many thing that were up until then classified as “obscene” all of a sudden, like magic, legal, but close, and certainly long enough to see Hustler Magazine and Larry Flynt forever change the face of the subject in otherwise conservative Cincinnati, Ohio.

Yesterday was the 50th anniversary of that 1959 Supreme Court Case. The lines between obscenity and art were forver blurred that day, when a very smart attorney named Charles Rembar argued—and won—an argument that a work that might otherwise be classified as obscene would be rendered something else if it also “presented material of redeeming social importance”. It was a brilliant argument, primarily because it played against an earlier Supreme Court decision in a way that all but cornered the Court into eating their own words. For a longer version of this , look at this link to a story in the New York Times.

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Barack Obama, Health Care Reform, Business, and Lies

Who thinks they understand Barack Obama’s Health Care Reform initiative?

Guess again.

It doesn’t take much thought to see that President Barack Obama is trying to change the way health care works in the U.S. And with full disclosure that I’m a fan and a supporter, I feel compelled to state that the great man has yet to put forth a “plan”. That’s not the point of this post.

The point is that today Republican National Committee Chairman Steele has accused President Obama of having a plan that “is socialism”, which is just the beginning of my problem with his words (and by the way, at the end of the day, whenever that is, there sure will be some socialistic traits to whatever “plan” emerges).

The big problem is this: for all the rhetoric being tossed around about how Barack Obama’s Health Care Reform Plan has one problem or another, what I don’t see anyone doing is offering—or even attempting to offer—viable alternatives.

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LinkedIn Recommendations . . . Yes or No ?

So I’m reading the thoughts of Jeremiah Owyang, of Forrester Research.

The question comes up: Are LinkedIn Recommendations worth anything?

Jeremiah says “no”, pretty much, but then softened his stance when he responded to my post here.

What do you think? Is the World Wide Web a Way Wacky Wilderness that’s made us all something less than recommendation-worthy?

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The Browser is the Operating System . . . NOT!

My old buddy David Strom opened up a can of worms on his Facebook page today. So I took a bite:

What’s with all the discussion on Browsers being Operating Systems?

Here’s my two cents:

The assertion that a browser ‘is’ an operating system is ridiculous. The OS one runs IN a browser under the debate-of-late model sits on top of another (the !) operating system.

OTOH: When Google releases their OS and it becomes ‘the’ operating system in whatever computers it ends up installed on, replacing Windows/Symbian/MacOS/Linux/whatever, then the conversation becomes real . . . and exactly the one Microsoft has fought the department of Justice over for 15 years now; at that point, there will be/can be no separating the browser from the OS.

Get ready for THAT antitrust debate!

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Virtual VIP Newsletter, July 2009

Virtual VIP Tips
July 2009

PC-VIP Inc./ Virtual VIP
Business and Computer Care for Those with Better Things To Do
New York City . . . and Your Desktop!

Welcome to the July 2009 issue of Virtual VIP Tips. We say “hi” this way about once a month, and I want to say that I’m always here if you need help, too. Read on, and have a great day!

Also (Exciting News; drum roll, please): We’ve re-launched our Web site Answerguy Central. Please take a look, and let me know what you think!

Thanks,

Jeff Yablon
President & CEO

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