Author: Serkadis

Every few months we get a press release about some great device from a no-name manufacturer who promises to change the world. One example was the TXTR reader from Germany last January. Another is zzzPhone, a company selling dual-SIM Android powered smartphones from China. Neither company produced much of anything.

Era of the Silicon Valley success story – two guys making something cool in a garage and selling it – is over, at least in hardware. The costs of making consumer electronics, including cellphones and computers, on a small scale have risen so much as to be prohibitive and then the marketing costs of that same hardware is even more prohibitive. Whereas, once, two nerds in a basement could build a computer company I worry that it takes more resources than any one man or woman can muster these days to even approach something like success.

DOA

The first sad truth is that most consumer electronics cannot be made in “expensive” countries like the US or the Euro zone. During a visit to the Suunto watch factory in Finland, for example, I learned that while many of the watches are made near Helsinki a large percentage of them are made overseas and drop shipped from Asia. The company just couldn’t make anything in bulk without resorting to off-shoring. This means you either invest in an expensive small run of hardware overseas, something the Asian manufacturers do not do particularly well, or invest in a massive run of inexpensive hardware in Asia that you risk having to recycle if your company goes belly-up.

This doesn’t mean you can’t make it big anymore. Take TiVo, for example. It sprung out of obscurity a decade ago and filled a niche in the living room that has yet to be challenged by any manufacturer. Unfortunately, when someone – probably Samsung, LG, or Apple – figures out how to take over the DVR market, TiVo is toast. The same is true of Palm who, to all intents and purposes, is now a small company. The big guys are eating their lunch thanks to Android and it will take some fancy footwork to survive. The small guys are, sadly, always at the precipice of failure.

Other companies like Neuros and Slingbox simply sell a wrapper for their software. Sometimes this works but sadly it also leads to retrenchment when companies like Slacker pull out of the hardware business due to lack of interest and cost. Then there are success stories like like FyreTV [NSFW] which will do well because they focus on porn. Not everyone can focus on porn.

When in doubt, do this.

The second problem facing small CE companies is marketing. Micro-companies like Zeo and FitBit get a huge initial boost thanks to online media but then disappear once the news cycle has moved on, leaving the companies with amazing technology in the dark. This is an era of constant marketing, a situation that forces companies like Apple and Sony to put their message in front of consomers almost constantly in multiple media.

Anecdotally, I’ve seen companies receiving 8,000-10,000 pageviews with one good launch, more if its an interesting product. That initial boost translates into a percentage of good sales – those are good eyeballs, not just random traffic – but it rarely turns into repeat or continuing business.

That said, here are some of the best practices I’ve seen from small to medium CE companies who know how to do it right. This may not apply to you and yours, but it’s something to think about when you get excited about a product (Gizmondo anyone?) only to find it has crashed and burned.

1. Tell multiple stories. When you start out you have one story: Why your product is good. Prepare multiple stories for the next few years including ideas tagged to pressing issues of the month or year. Do you have a fitness gadget? Work on a story about post-holiday stress and weight gain. Have a DVR? Put yourself in the Super Bowl frenzy with blogger outreach and giveaways. That first boost is nice but if you’re a small company it’s the next four boosts that will push you through the rest of the year.

2. Price yourself competitively if not suicidally. Even if it’s suicidal, price yourself at just above the average price in your market. Aiming at rich, cosseted professionals is nice but the sharper Image model of doing business is over. Consumers want more for their money (even if they often get considerably less) so while $999 might seem like a nice number for a NAS or a piece of audio gear the consumer is more accustomed to $499.

3. Be quiet. Hide your light under a bushel. Patent your idea and don’t launch until the product is completely ready. I’ve seen too many companies splattered with the vaporware monicker because they failed to deliver on time or at all. Once you’re done, support your product forcefully and quietly. If someone has a problem, address it quickly. Send out new hardware before putting someone through tech support hell.

4. Change your trade dress regularly. This fickle market thinks anything that looks the same as it did last year is old. Why do iPods change every few months? People want to think they’re buying the new hotness, not the old and busted. If you can’t change your trade dress, change your website.

5. Slow and steady wins the race. None of the greats made it overnight and it’s harder than ever to truly make it. If you’re a small CE manufacturer, Godspeed. It’s a tough race so don’t sprint it.

For a great look at this topic, read The Song of the Powersquid, our 6-part story on the creation of a CE product.

2009Oct24: European Space Agency’s ATSR (Advanced Along Track Scanning Radiometer) World Fire Atlas uses satellite data to map fires burning across the world. “More than 50 million hectares of forest are burnt annually, and these fires have a significant impact on global atmospheric pollution, with biomass burning contributing to the global budgets of greenhouse gases, like carbon dioxide.” – European Space Agency (European Space Agency).

Reference: European Space Agency http://dup.esrin.esa.int/ionia/wfa/index.asp

Image Description: see case description. Image Location: European Space Agency http://dup.esrin.esa.int/ionia/wfa/index.asp Image Permission: This work is copyrighted and unlicensed. However, it is believed that the use of this work to illustrate the subject in question, Where no free equivalent is available or could be created that would adequately give the same information, on Interlinked Challenges, hosted on servers in the United States by Michigan State University, qualifies as fair use under United States copyright law.

The methods for keeping your data safe from prying eyes vary from user to user. Some prefer simply hiding the files from everyone else (if they don’t know where it is, they can’t peek in), but accidental finding has been known to happen, especially if the perpetrator knows how to make hidden data visible (and this is not quite rocket science), so this is not foolproof.

Encryption, on the other hand, may be a more suitable choice for some of you, because it ciphers up the data in a proprietary container, making the effort of de-scrambling the information too much, even for the most patient wrong-doer. Even if encrypting sensitive files’ weakest spot is that they can be deleted, moved or copied, this method stands among the most efficient ways to secure data.

LockFiler is a data-encryption tool designed to protect your files using the Dynamic Linkage Data Encryption System, which specifies a one-way symmetrical encryption algorithm. To put it in short, the D.L.D.E.S. concept actually applies the encryption key to create the encryption process itself rather than apply the key to encrypt data.

This may be one of the reasons the application does not come cheap. The current price is of €29, quite an amount if you think that there are free solutions on the market possessing file-encryption capabilities, as wel… (read more)

(NaturalNews) With the swine flu pandemic upon us, the FDA is warning people to beware of swine flu scams on the internet. NaturalNews is joining in the warnings today, urging people to beware of scams that cost big money but simply don’t work to prevent H1N1 swine flu.

For example, both the FDA and CDC are pushing a collection of swine flu vaccines that have never been subjected to any scientific testing to determine whether they actually work. These vaccines are, in technical terms, a “hoax.” Lacking any scientific evidence of efficacy, they are a scam that should be avoided by all health consumers.

You can learn more about the lack of efficacy for the swine flu vaccines here: http://www.naturalnews.com/027239_vaccines_flu_vaccine_.html

Besides the vaccine efficacy scam, there’s also the vaccine safety scam that people may fall for. Vaccines can contain thimerosal, a substance made with mercury, an extremely toxic heavy metal. Swine flu vaccines are also made with adjuvants such as squalene — an inflammatory chemical suspected of causing brain swelling in some patients who receive the vaccine.

None of the FDA-approved swine flu vaccines has been long-term tested for safety, and many of the substances used in the vaccine are extremely dangerous to inject into the human body.

Beware the Tamiflu counterfeit scam
Alongside the swine flu vaccine scam is another common scam being pushed by drug companies: The Tamiflu scam. Tamiflu, an anti-viral prescription drug, has already been linked to the death of children in Japan. It is well known to cause wild hallucinations in many children who take it. And yet, at the same time, its ability to actually halt swine flu infections is doubtful.

Because Tamiflu is synthesized to mimic shikimic acid found in the Chinese Medicine herb Star Anise, it is a counterfeit medicine. The real medicine is made by Mother Nature. Pharmaceutical companies pirated the molecules from nature (biopiracy) in order to manufacture their own counterfeit medicine in a lab. Beware of counterfeit medicines promoted on the internet through mainstream media stories or CDC propaganda.

There are many other examples where Big Pharma has pirated molecules from nature, then patented them to make their own counterfeit drugs. Statin drugs, for example, are counterfeits that attempt to mimic the natural lovastatin molecules found in red yeast rice.

Watch out for the idea scam
The worst scam being pushed on the internet isn’t a product, it’s an idea: The idea that only vaccines and prescription drugs can protect you from the swine flu and that nutrients like vitamin D are useless. Con artists at the FDA, CDC and drug companies are fronting this scam in order to convince consumers that only vaccines and prescription drugs work, but in reality there is a whole universe of herbal medicine, nutritional supplements, immune-boosting products and even anti-viral foods that can help protect you from influenza infections.

Garlic, for example, has potent anti-viral properties, as do many medicinal mushrooms. Herbs such as astragalus, lemon balm and oregano are highly anti-viral, and unlike vaccines, they don’t require being injected with toxic chemicals. Herbs, foods and dietary supplements are naturally more compatible with the human body because they’re made from the foods and medicines our bodies evolved with.

Beware of fake swine flu medicines such as vaccines or prescription chemicals that are manufactured in pharmaceutical laboratories. These aren’t real medicine; they’re fake, man-made medicine made with chemicals. Real medicine comes from Mother Nature in the form of living plants. NaturalNews urges consumers to avoid being fooled by drug companies into thinking that synthetic chemicals equate to “real” medicine.

This flu season, be a smart consumer. Get your flu medicines from real sources — from real plants made by nature — not from fabricated, counterfeit sources such as pharmaceutical factories. Avoid the scams and hoaxes being pushed by the FDA, the FTC, the CDC and drug companies. Don’t become a victim to the profiteering of the pharmaceutical companies that are acting like quacks to exploit the swine flu pandemic for their own profit.

If you want real medicine, buy Dr. Andrew Weil’s Immune Support formula. Or better yet, buy Super Viragon from Baseline Nutritionals (www.BaselineNutritionals.com)

(NaturalNews) Mesothelioma doesn’t have to be fatal. This rare form of lung cancer has long been feared by workers exposed to asbestos in their work environments, and much of that fear is justified: This form of cancer can be deadly. But it doesn’t always have to be.

There are natural ways to greatly extend life, even for those suffering from mesothelioma. Most are based on nutritional therapies, as you’ll see below. It may seem counterintuitive to suppose that nutrition could play a role in a disease caused by a physical substance (asbestos), but in fact, antioxidants and phytonutrients that support healthy cellular protection can play a substantial role in preventing the onset of cancer.

Below, we’ve collected research from a number of noted natural health authors who explain more about what really causes mesothelioma and how to better protect yourself against it using nutritional therapies. It’s not a huge collection of solutions, but the information you’ll find here should provide more clues for further research.

This is a unique collection of research exclusive to NaturalNews. If you use any quotes from this research, please provide proper credit to both NaturalNews and the original author of the quote.

Natural remedies to help prevent mesothelioma
Asbestos causes cancer, particularly lung cancer and mesothelioma, a rare cancer of the membrane lining the chest or abdominal wall. Exposure to asbestos has also been shown to cause cancers of the mouth, pharynx, larynx, esophagus, stomach, intestines, rectum, and kidney. Smoking greatly increases the likelihood of lung cancer in people exposed to asbestos. One study found that asbestos-exposed smokers have ten times the death rate from lung cancer as exposed nonsmokers. Kidney cancer and gastrointestinal cancers also have been associated with asbestos.
– Staying Healthy in a Risky Environment: The New York University Medical Center Family Guide by Arthur C. Upton, M.D.

In a 1998 study done in Western Australia, 1024 blue asbestos workers known to be at high risk of diseases such as mesothelioma and lung cancer, were enrolled in a cancer prevention program using vitamin A. Half the subjects were given 30 mg per day of beta carotene and the other half 7500 mcg (25,000 IU) of retinol. The workers were followed up from the start of the study in June 1990 until May 1995. Four cases of lung cancer and three cases of mesothelioma were observed in those in the vitamin A group, and six cases of lung cancer and 12 cases of mesothelioma in the beta carotene group.
– The New Encyclopedia of Vitamins, Minerals, Supplements and Herbs by Nicola Reavley

In Louisiana, a study of lung cancer showed fruit intake to be protective, while a small study of mesothelioma suggested that vegetable and carotenoid intake lowers the risk (NCI, 1988). The National Cancer Institute also announced that it had awarded over half a million dollars to the New York Botanical Garden to undertake a worldwide search for natural plant substances that might fight cancer. At the same time, NCI has established a Cancer Nutrition Laboratory and worked out elaborate plans to study “dietary factors associated with cancer risk”.
– The Cancer Industry by Ralph W. Moss, Ph.D.

Today, nine years after his “death sentence” diagnosis, Mr. Kraus is alive with a good quality of life. He has written a book about his healing journey Surviving Mesothelioma and Other Cancers: A Patient’s Guide. He also holds free bi-monthly teleconferences so that other mesothelioma patients can speak directly to him and ask questions. Mr. Kraus is not a doctor and does not provide medical advice, but as a patient he is able to share his own insights into how he has healed and managed his mesothelioma.
– World’s Longest Living Mesothelioma Survivor

Cigarette smoke is the major cause of the common bronchogenic carcinoma of the lung, but it does not cause the less common mesothelioma of the lung. Asbestos causes both mesotheliomas and bronchogenic carcinomas. Certain aniline dyes (especially 2-naphthylamine) cause bladder cancer, but little of any other kind of cancer. A similar specificity probably also applies to cancers whose cause or causes have not yet been identified, because the incidences of the different kinds of cancer tend to vary independently.
– Diet, Nutrition and Cancer by Committee on Diet, Nutrition, and Cancer, Assembly of Life Sciences National Research Council

Even cancers that were once thought to be caused by mechanical injury (such as asbestos-caused mesothelioma) now turn out to have a free radical component. In the last decade, research on antioxidants has come to the fore as an important component of any anticancer program. Antioxidants fight cancer at every level and every stage. Along with other plant-based nutrients, they are our first and strongest defense against cancers of many kinds.
– Antioxidants Against Cancer: How to activate your bod natural healing powers with today’s most protective and immune-boosting supplements and foods by Ralph Moss, PhD

Asbestos workers have increased risk of developing an unusual form of lung cancer called mesothelioma. Smoking and secondary smoke are the main reasons lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer deaths. Radiation, charcoal steaks, too much fat in our diet, saccharin, and the many other chemicals found in herbicides and pesticides are what medical literature refers to as carcinogens, or those things that increase our risk of developing cancer.
– What Your Doctor Doesn’t Know About Nutritional Medicine May Be Killing You by Ray D. Strand

The highest frequency of mutations reported in human cancers are lung, 56%; colon, 50%; esophagus, 45%; ovary, pancreas, and skin, 44%; stomach, 41%; head and neck, 37%; bladder, 34%; prostate, 30%; and breast, endometrium, and mesothelioma, 22% (Greenblatt et al. 1994). Nearly 20% of women treated for ovarian cancer develop other tumors beyond the abdomen. A mutation in the tumor suppressor gene appears to predispose some women with ovarian cancer to distant and rapid tumor spread, according to data from the University of Iowa Health Care Study.
– Disease Prevention and Treatment by The Life Extension Editorial Staff

This is called mesothelioma. Once a rare disease, it has now become common among asbestos workers. Other kinds of cancer are also typical results of asbestos exposure. It was once thought that only asbestos workers were in danger of these diseases. It is now known, however, that people who have worked near asbestos, and even people who have lived in proximity to it, are also in danger. Since these diseases take a long time to reveal themselves, often as long as thirty years, the millions of workers exposed during and after World War II are only now beginning to show up in the cancer clinics.
– The Cancer Industry by Ralph W. Moss, Ph.D.

Burton submitted to OTA a case study of 11 patients who had been treated at his clinic for a deadly form of cancer called mesothelioma. This small study claimed that patients treated with IAT lived three to four times the national average of conventionally-treated patients. Some were in fact long-term survivors. This was important news, for mesothelioma is almost uniformly and rapidly fatal. But OTA never even commented on these findings.
– The Cancer Industry by Ralph W. Moss, Ph.D.

Asbestos exposure can cause a variety of illnesses, including lung cancer, asbestosis, and mesothelioma, a type of tumor. Cancers of the larynx, oral cavity, kidney, and colon are sometimes attributed to asbestos as well. Only qualified contractors should do asbestos removal. One household item that can cause a lot of problems is carpeting. Some of the chemicals commonly used in carpeting have been shown to have an adverse effect on health. One suspect chemical is 4-phenylcyclohexene (4-PC), a by-product of the production of styrene-butadiene.
– Prescription for Nutritional Healing, 4th Edition: A Practical A-to-Z Reference to Drug-Free Remedies Using Vitamins, Minerals, Herbs and Food Supplements by Phyllis A. Balch, CNC

Ironically, humans exposed to fine particle zeolites in their lungs may develop a form of cancer called mesothelioma. [Journal National Cancer Institute 98: 414-17, 2006] Zeolites have metal chelating, toxin-removing, even oxygen-removing properties, which means they will act to reduce oxidation of tissues when taken internally. Zeolites have been tested in animals and have performed favorably without toxicity to reduce the number and size of tumors.
– You Don’t Have to be Afraid of Cancer Anymore by Bill Sardi

In 2004, Tom was diagnosed with a rare cancer, called mesothelioma, which is most often associated with exposure to asbestos, and from which virtually no one survives. He was told by his doctors that he had only a few months to live. While going about his work of raising marine phytoplankton to feed the shellfish, as an experiment, Tom began consuming half a teaspoon of the concentrated microalgae each day along with a drink of water. Within a few weeks he astounded his doctors with his recovery. A subsequent biopsy examination found no malignancy evident in his body.
– Conscious Health: A Complete Guide to Wellness Through Natural Means by Ron Garner

Of pivotal importance is the question of whether the companies concerned knew about the hazards of asbestos products prior to the 1964 report by Selikoff on the high incidence of lung cancer, mesothelioma, and asbestosis in insulation workers, when they claimed they were first made aware of this, and what use if any they then made of this information. The primary defense in such cases is that there was no medical or scientific information on risks from asbestos-containing products prior to 1964.
– The Politics of Cancer Revisited by Samuel S. Epstein, M.D.

Other ailments include the respiratory disease asbestosis and mesothelioma. There also is a 300 to 400 percent increase in gastrointestinal cancer due to the fact that those who inhale the fibers also swallow them. The situation is all the more tragic in light of the fact that the asbestos industry has been aware of the deadliness of their product since the 1930s and has done nothing about it. Finally, in the late 1960s, the U.S. government began regulating the asbestos industry.
– 20 Years of Censored News by Carl Jensen

Even today epidemiologists are being hired by brake manufacturers to convince the courts that the data collected on asbestos from brakes and mesothelioma point to no causal connection. Look again at how Evarts Graham chided the skeptics on the hazards of tobacco smoking in his Lancet commentary. For agents that can cause cancer two decades after exposures begin, is it fair to insist that we must have proof that such harm has happened in many groups?
– The Secret History of the War on Cancer by Devra Davis

Asbestosis, a chronic lung disease; and mesothelioma, an often fatal form of cancer. Asbestos diseases can result from very brief exposures and even exposure to other people who have been exposed (who may have asbestos fibers in their hair or clothing), and may take up to forty years to appear. The EPA announced in 1972 that there is no safe level of asbestos exposure, as any exposure to the fibers involves some health risk.
– Nontoxic, Natural and Earthwise by Debra Lynn Dadd

The world-famous Harvard geologist Stephen Jay Gould says that marijuana helped to save his life when he came down with a rare kind of cancer, abdominal mesothelioma. “When I started intravenous chemotherapy, absolutely nothing in the available arsenal of antiemetics worked at all. I was miserable, and came to dread the frequent treatments with an almost perverse intensity. I had heard that marijuana often worked well against nausea. I was reluctant to try it, because I have never smoked any substance habitually (and didn’t even know how to inhale).
– Reclaiming Our Health: Exploding the Medical Myth and Embracing the True Source of Healing by John Robbins

(NaturalNews) From a sitting position, how far can you reach past your toes? Especially if you are middle-aged or older, the answer could indicate how flexible you are — and also how flexible your arteries are. However, if you are stiff and can’t reach too far, don’t despair. New research suggests stretching exercises that increase flexibility could prevent or reverse stiffening of arteries.

In a study entitled “Poor trunk flexibility is associated with arterial stiffening”, just published in the October edition of the American Journal of Physiology, researchers found that how well people age 40 and older performed on a sit-and-reach-past-their-toes test was an accurate way to assess the flexibility of their arteries. So, because arterial stiffness often precedes cardiovascular disease, this simple, non-drug, non-invasive test could become a quick measure of a person’s risk for early death from heart attack or stroke.

“Our findings have potentially important clinical implications because trunk flexibility can be easily evaluated,” scientist Kenta Yamamoto of the University of North Texas and the National Institute of Health and Nutrition in Japan said in a statement to the media. “This simple test might help to prevent age-related arterial stiffening.”

Healthy blood vessels are elastic and that flexibility helps to moderate blood pressure. But as we age, arterial stiffness often increases, upping the risk for cardiovascular disease. In previous studies, scientists have documented that physical fitness can delay age-related arterial stiffness, although exactly how that happens in the body is not understood. Because people who exercise and are fit are usually more flexible than those who are out of shape, the researchers hypothesized that a flexible body could be a quick way to check for arterial flexibility.

To test this idea, the scientists investigated 526 healthy, non-smoking adults between the ages of 20 and 83 who had a body mass index (BMI) of less than 30. Then the research subjects were divided into three age groups: the young (20 to 39 years old), middle-aged (40 to 59 years old) and the elder (60 to 83 years old).

The research participants were asked to perform a sit-and-reach test by sitting on the floor with their backs against the wall and legs straight. The volunteers bent at the waist and slowly stretched, reaching their arms forward. Depending on how far they could reach, the research subjects’ flexibility was rated by the scientists. The research team also recorded the participants’ blood pressure and measured how long the pulse took to travel between the arm and the ankle and between the neck and the leg. Other measurements were collected from some of the research subjects, too, including their cardiorespiratory fitness, endurance and muscle strength.

Overall, the scientists discovered that trunk flexibility was the best predictor of artery stiffness among those who were middle-aged and older but not among the younger participants. In the middle-aged and older groups, the systolic blood pressure (the top number of a blood pressure measurement that indicates the pressure as the heart contracts) was higher in those with poor flexibility than in the people with good flexibility.

Why is arterial flexibility related to the flexibility of the body in middle-aged and older people? The scientists say that remains unclear but one possibility is that stretching exercises like yoga and Pilates may put into motion physiological reactions that slow down age-related stiffening of the arteries. Moreover, they cited additional recent research that found middle-aged and older adults who began a regular stretching exercise program significantly improved the flexibility of the carotid arteries in their necks.

“Together with our results, these findings suggest a possibility that improving flexibility induced by the stretching exercise may be capable of modifying age-related arterial stiffening in middle-aged and older adults,” Dr. Yamamoto said in the press statement. “We believe that flexibility exercise, such as stretching, yoga and Pilates, should be integrated as a new recommendation into the known cardiovascular benefits of regular exercise.”

For more information:
http://www.the-aps.org/press/releases/09/41.htm

(NaturalNews) According to the CDC, swine flu infections have already peaked, and the pandemic is on its way out. Peak infection time was the middle of October, where one in five U.S. children experienced the flu, says the CDC. Out of nearly 14,000 suspected flu cases tested during the week ending on October 10, 2009, 99.6% of those were influenza A, and the vast majority of those were confirmed as H1N1 swine flu infections. (http://www.cdc.gov/flu/weekly/)

Even though the H1N1 pandemic appears to have peaked out, U.S. President Barack Obama has now declared a national emergency over swine flu infections. The reasoning behind such a declaration? According to the White House, it’s designed to “allow hospitals to better handle the surge in patients” by allowing them to bypass certain federal laws.

Emergency powers trump the Bill of Rights
That’s the public explanation for this, but the real agenda behind this declaration may be far more sinister. Declaring a national emergency immediately gives federal authorities dangerous new powers that can now be enforced at gunpoint, including:

• The power to force mandatory swine flu vaccinations on the entire population.

• The power to arrest, quarantine or “involuntarily transport” anyone who refuses a swine flu vaccination.

• The power to quarantine an entire city and halt all travel in or out of that city.

• The power to enter any home or office without a search warrant and order the destruction of any belongings or structures deemed to be a threat to public health.

• The effective nullification of the Bill of Rights. Your right to due process, to being safe from government search and seizure, and to remain silent to avoid self-incrimination are all null and void under a Presidential declaration of a national emergency.

None of this means that federal agents are going to march door to door arresting people at gunpoint if they refuse the vaccine, but they could if they wanted to. Your rights as an American are no longer recognized under this national emergency declaration.

What emergency?
The declaration of this national emergency seems suspicious from the start. Where’s the emergency? The number of people killed by swine flu in the United States is far smaller than the number of people killed each year from seasonal flu, according to CDC statistics. People obviously aren’t dropping dead by the millions from H1N1 influenza. Most people are just getting mild flu symptoms and a few days later they’re fine.

So where’s the emergency?

The only emergency I can see is the emergency fabricated by Big Pharma to sell more vaccines. By declaring a national emergency over the H1N1 pandemic, Obama is playing right into their hands.

I find the timing of all this curious. Two days ago, New York gave up on its efforts to require mandatory vaccinations of health care workers. This was designed to defuse a large number of planned protests from health freedom-conscious people who don’t want government-mandated chemicals pumped into their veins.

The planned protests in New York would have fueled yet more resistance among health care workers across the country, and had it been allowed to continue, it could have resulted in a huge nationwide backlash against swine flu vaccines. By backing off the vaccine mandate and blaming it on a vaccine shortage (http://www.naturalnews.com/027313_New_York_health_care.html), and then having Obama declare a national emergency, our state and national leaders have halted the protests and put in place a pro-vaccine Big Brother mandate that can be enforced at gunpoint.

Big Pharma must be pleased with all this. With these emergency powers in place, all that’s necessary to force vaccinations upon the entire population is a larger supply of the vaccines — and that’s coming in November.

 With the holidays fast approaching and the recession still ongoing, we here at QJ.NET decided to do another round of bargain hunting at Amazon…

Viral videos are, well, everywhere these days. You hire a media company, they come up with a clever idea, upload it, and hope that it gets tagged on YouTube. Which is exactly what Vodaphone NZ did.

Of course, Vodaphone isn’t here in the US, but internet video in universal, and this is pretty damn cool. So sit back, turn up the speakers, click play, and see what happens when some very clever people get 1000 cellphones together in one place and decide to make a viral video.

Here’s the making of video too, it’s definitely worth a viewing:

[via Mashable]

Mamiya announced two new DSLR cameras today, the DM22 and DM28. Pushing the megapixel wall again, DM22 is 22 megapixel, and the DM28 is, you guessed it, a 28 megapixel. Both cameras use the stock Mamiya lenses so if you are already a Mamiya shooter, you’re set.

Don’t expect to get this level of megapixel madness for cheap. The DM22 has an estimated street price of $9995, and the DM28 will sell for $14,990. This is one of those cases where it’s the only camera for the job, and you need one, no other camera will do.

For all the details, hit up Mamiya’s site.

The President restates his commitment to small business as key to economic recovery — from the Recovery Act to Financial Stability to Health Reform — and pledges more to come.

download .mp3 |download .mp4 (125 MB) | read the transcript

Reader Brad sent in a fascinating post from a little while back by Steve Streeting, a software developer who created an open source 3D rendering engine called OGRE. In the post, Streeting describes his evolving view on open source licenses. He basically points out that that open source licensing — the kind that forces anyone who uses the code to open up and contribute back their code — is actually creating an unnecessary restriction on developers as well, and it often doesn’t make sense to have such restrictions. It’s really quite a fascinating post, that brings up a number of issues I hadn’t really thought about too much. For example, he points out that the restrictions aren’t very helpful for code, because the best code contributions are from those who are contributing code willingly anyway — so the restrictions are meaningless for them. Separately, he points out that the restrictions on licenses, such as the LGPL, simply are too complex and too restrictive for some developers, and the end result is fewer developers, which is the last thing you should want:

It was at this point that I realised that my previous opinions about permissive licenses not providing enough safeguards against exploitation for an open source project were off-base. In practice, open source projects don’t really need protection, because their best contributors are going to be there regardless (yes, I realise the GPL provides more protection to end users who want to get at the source code, that’s not what I’m considering here). ‘Freeloaders’ — people who use or modify the open source project for their own ends but give no code or community contribution back — are always going to exist; even under the GPL it’s easy to freeload, if you make your money from hosting services for example, and thus license choice has little impact on the scale (if not the nature) of the freeloading. Besides the annoyance of ‘that guy took my work and made some money out of it’ — which you have to accept as an inevitable outcome of going open source, so stick to making proprietary software if that bugs you — freeloaders have little negative effect on an open source project, and actually their use can contribute positively to [publicity for the project]. The key is to recognise that in practice you can really just ignore freeloaders, and instead concentrate on maximising the positive contributors in your community.

So, if we acknowledge that the people whose contributions we actually want are those who contribute voluntarily, regardless of license, we quickly come to the conclusion that all that really matters is the size of the community. It’s a fair assumption that for a given project there is a relatively stable percentage of users who will choose to contribute back (the percentage itself varies per project, but is fairly stable per project in my experience), therefore the easiest way to increase your contributors is to just increase your user base. Forget about trying to coerce people into being ‘good’ members of the community, just trust that the percentage will be there and will track your overall numbers.

One way in which to attract more users is to make the licensing simpler and more easier to understand. Programmers hate legalese, and a simple, clear license is bound to be more attractive than our LGPL (with static link exclusion), plus OUL option. It’s for this reason that from OGRE 1.7 we’re switching to the MIT License.

I find this fascinating on a number of different levels. The argument he’s making — within the open source world — pretty much mirrors the arguments we make to copyright maximalists: that focusing so much on “freeloaders” is pointless, they’re going to exist. Instead, focus on building your overall community, adding value, and setting up a model that works for those people. It’s amazing to think that the excess restrictions in some open source licenses creates something of a parallel world, with parallel issues.

Once again, it all seems to come down to the same thing: restricting what others do is rarely a good strategy. Let people do what they want, and focus on providing the most value for the largest community that wants to be a part of what you’re doing.

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Doug Lichtman’s latest “IP Colloquium” podcast is on the question of whether or not “content can survive online.” Specifically, it’s a discussion about “online content business models.” Oddly, though, rather than having business model experts, it’s a conversation with four lawyers, starting with Doug, and including Brad Smith, General Counsel, Microsoft; Scott Martin, Executive Vice President, Intellectual Property, Paramount Pictures; and Dan Cooper, Vice President, Legal & Business Affairs, MySpace. Lichtman starts it off, oddly, by stating — as if fact — that talking about business models online is depressing because there’s just not much in the way of business models online for content. I think that’s damning things a bit early in the process — something that comes up again later.

While I realize that the podcast is a legal podcast, it still strikes me as odd to bring together four lawyers to have them discuss business models, when their expertise is not in business at all, but in the law.

The podcast starts out with a discussion on the Google Book search and settlement, but oddly no one even seems to give any credit to the fair use question. But, again, since these are lawyers we’re talking about, there really isn’t much of a discussion on business models around Google Book Search, but on legal questions — including a hope that Congress steps in to solve it. Amusingly, Microsoft’s Smith early on suggests that it’s a question Congress could solve “if the industry got behind it; if copyright holders got behind it.” Striking, huh? He basically admits how copyright law works in this country. It’s not about what’s best for the overall society or economy. It’s not about the politicians fixing things where they see a problem. It’s not about consumers. It’ll happen if the industry gets behind it. Welcome to the way things work in DC. The rest of this part of the discussion is interesting — and it’s one (rare) case where I mostly agree with Lichtman, that as a resource, Google’s Book search is incredibly useful, and we should figure out some way for it to happen.

From there, the discussion moves on to other business models, and quickly seems to head off in directions that I don’t think are accurate from a business model standpoint. It starts off with two premises set forth by Lichtman, each of which I think is suspect. First, he claims that piracy is a problem because “you can’t compete with free.” Frankly, I’m sick of this argument because it makes no sense economically or from a business standpoint. Economically, saying that you “can’t compete with free” is the same thing as saying you can’t compete — period. It assumes, falsely, that the only way to compete is on price, but the history of the economy shows that’s not true. You compete on price or you compete on benefits, and competing on price is often a losing battle anyway. Saying “you can’t compete with free” just means you only know how to compete on price. If that’s the case, you shouldn’t be in business.

And, to make that point clear, tons of companies compete on benefits, and allow other companies to offer lower priced offerings. The popular example, of course, is “water,” whereby it’s free (or near free) to drink out of the tap, but the bottled water business is a multi-billion dollar business. Why? It tries to compete on other factors — such as convenience, quality or safety (though, there are arguments that many of these benefits are perceived rather than real). But it’s true in just about any other business as well. In the automobile business, a BMW costs more than an entry level Ford, and that’s because BMW is seen to have a lot more scarce value. Ford could “copy” BMW, but BMW has its reputation and some amount of prestige that Ford simply can’t copy.

Anyone who’s in business recognizes that you don’t just compete on price. So why is it that so many seem to assume that the only way to compete in the content market is on price?

Lichtman’s second premise is that online business models don’t work. He says that Hulu hasn’t been a success because it doesn’t make as much as TV, and that if Hulu displaces TV we “won’t have the money to pay for” expensive TV show production. He claims that even if Hulu is really successful, it’ll never make enough money to pay for the production of a show like Battlestar Galactica. First off, huh? How does he know that? If Hulu is successful, it absolutely could pay for such production. Already, we’re seeing that some of the online ad rates are higher than TV ad rates. Hulu’s barely been around for two years at this point. I’d be willing to bet that Hulu’s revenue today greatly exceeds the revenue of television two years after it was invented. Give it time, Doug!

He then jumps on Redbox — sarcastically saying “we’re renting movies at a dollar per day?” Suggesting that this will never sustain the development of movies. Really? I always find it amusing when people insist that problems in the DVD market will mean the death of Hollywood. It really was just 25 years ago that Hollywood insisted that the VCR would kill the industry (Boston Strangler, anyone?). Now they finally get their “original” wish, and find that putting movies on recordable media is going away, and it’s the worst thing in the world?

Either way, the economic fallacy that Doug seems to be relying on here is twofold. First, he assumes that early business model experiments are set in place and no further innovation will occur that allows them to flourish. He assumes that the markets won’t grow, and some of these experiments won’t click and get much bigger. Second, he seems to assume that the old revenue numbers for these industries need to be sustained. He doesn’t consider that the old revenue numbers may have been a result of monopoly rents, limited competition or technological limits. Markets change all the time, and usually what comes out in the end is much better (subjective, I know, but I’m a believer that the world is a better place today than it was 25 years ago — and that it will be even better 25 years from now).

But, of course, no one challenges him on this. Scott Martin at Paramount, of course, worries quite a bit about piracy of movies. While he admits (finally!) that he’s just the lawyer, rather than the business guy, he discusses it in the terms of adding more windows to movie releases, rather than any discussion of adding more value to the product, or giving people reasons to buy beyond just the content. Then Martin repeats the myth that you can’t compete with free, but leads in with a different myth — claiming that the “copyleft” people say that piracy would go away if they just priced their movies better. That’s a strawman argument. Perhaps someone out there made that argument, but it’s hardly common. Then he says that “the idea that if we charged $2 a download instead of $10 a download, we’d get rid of piracy is a myth.” Sure, it’s a myth, but no one said that. You can’t get rid of piracy. No one thinks you can get rid of piracy. No one suggested anything you do would “get rid of piracy.” What many of us are suggesting is that you can build business models where that piracy isn’t a problem. Even the people suggesting you just charge $2 instead of $10 aren’t saying it would “get rid of piracy,” but that at $2, enough people would pay for it that it would increase profits beyond what the $10 DRM’d version gets you.

Anyway, the discussion goes on from there, including a discussion of the DMCA that again doesn’t make much sense to me, but the business/economic analysis throughout doesn’t strike me as accurate at all. It’s still an interesting discussion, but frustrating because I wish there were at least someone on the panel who would challenge a lot of the “accepted wisdom,” put forth by everyone, that doesn’t seem to be accurate. Brad Smith, at one point, does point out that this is all a “revenue” problem, and does a pretty good job describing the revenue problem… but then falls into the trap of saying the law needs to “fix the piracy problem” because without that, business models can’t be built up.

The last analysis I’ll talk about that is again faulty from an economics standpoint again comes from Scott Martin at Paramount, where he tries to defend the importance of DRM, noting that if he flies into JFK he has various price options on transportation: he can buy a car, rent a car, take a cab or take a train. So there are price differentials. He says that without DRM, content is like saying his only option is to buy a car. That is, if he had DRM, they could offer different “rental options” for content, with “one day pricing or one week pricing.” But that’s totally wrong again. There’s a reason for the differential pricing in the transportation options: it’s related to the marginal cost of each option and the competitiveness of the market. That’s what sets the prices. But with content, the marginal costs are zero, so what he’s doing is trying to set up an artificial barrier to pretend the markets are the same.

While I like listening to these discussions, I just find the economic fallacies frustrating.

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With all the talk about the nook lately, you might have forgotten that this is ending up as being the year of the e-book reader. Just to remind you, pricing leaked today on the IREX DR 800SG reader.

Now please remember that Best Buy’s system has been known to have incorrect pricing, and this might be the case with the IREX. For their sake I hope that is the case here, because pricing yourself above the Kindle DX and the nook is pretty much suicide at this point. So, $499. Gonna rush right out and buy that anybody?

[via Engadget]

Karl Bode, over at Broadband Reports, wrote up a great article a little while back about why Google Voice was more disruptive than anyone (especially the telcos) were willing to give it credit for being. The key underlying point: voice is just a form of data. Once you realize that, you realize that no one needs to be tied to any telco’s own dialing system. Your mobile phone service provider really could just be a dumb pipe.

For years, I’ve always felt that the calls for “triple play” or “quadruple play” was incredibly misleading. All of the different “plays” (voice, video, data) were actually all just data. And when things are all just data, and its on an open network, then anyone can provide the services on top of that data. The telcos recognize this, somewhat — which is why they’ve tried to block out others from offering certain telco services (it’s why Google Voice was blocked on the iPhone), but it could be really game changing. Imagine if you could just buy a mobile phone that had no calling plan at all — but it was all in the software? You could even use different dialers (with different numbers?) depending on what made the most sense or was cheapest.

The telcos hate thinking of themselves as dumb pipes, but there’s something to be said for focusing on the pipes and making them as strong as possible, while letting everyone else innovate at the service level, and just selling good data plans. The more others innovate, the more valuable those data connections become.

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Paul Alan Levy writes in to let us know about how a New Jersey School Board is trying to get around the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, which limits what information the government can get about online speakers, in order to find out the identity of some anonymous commenters on a series of newspaper stories about teachers in the district using questionable diploma mills to get “degrees” and qualify for higher salaries.

I contacted Marc Zitomer, the School Board’s lawyer, to get his explanation for the subpoena.

His explanation was that the Board, as a body corporate, has the authority to file suit against members of the public who defame or threaten its staff.  I rather doubt that a school board could file suit for defamatory words that are not “of and concerning” the school board – the of and concerning requirement, after all, is a constitutional requirement under New York Times v. Sullivan.  Moreover, Zitomer conceded that he could not identify any cases in New Jersey where a school board had filed such an action on behalf of its staff.  When I pressed him on these issues, Zitomer claimed that an additional reason for the subpoena was that the Board could take disciplinary action against any of the bloggers who were members of its staff.  But even assuming that the criticism is a proper basis for discipline consistent with the First Amendment, the Board cannot compel the identification of bloggers on that theory without putting forward an evidentiary basis for believing that the bloggers are employees.  It remains to be seen whether Zitomer will be able to do that.

Board member William Bruno has been quoted as justifying its subpoena on the theory that “If they have nothing to hide, what’s the problem?”

You always know there’s something bad going on when someone busts out the “nothing to hide” line. But, once again, this seems like attempts by thin-skinned officials who can’t take the heat trying to expose anonymous commenters as an intimidation technique.

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Citing “officials who disclosed details on condition of anonymity,” The Associated Press reports that “health care legislation taking shape in the House carries a price tag of at least $1 trillion over a decade, significantly higher than the target President Barack Obama has set … Democrats have touted an unreleased Congressional Budget Office estimate of $871 billion in recent days, a total that numerous officials acknowledge understates the bill’s true cost by $150 billion or more. That figure excludes several items designed to improve benefits for Medicare and Medicaid recipients and providers, as well as public health programs and more, they added.” 

“Obama also said he would not sign a bill that raised deficits, and the CBO estimates the emerging House bill meets that objective. Officials said the measure would reduce deficits by at least $50 billion over 10 years and perhaps as much as $120 billion” (Espo, 10/23). 

The Associated Press in a separate story:  “Democratic leaders in Congress scrambled Friday to round up votes for allowing the government to sell health insurance in competition with private industry as they struggled to finalize a health care bill that meets President Barack Obama’s goals.” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid spent Friday “calling and talking with wavering Democrats to test support for different versions of the plan.”

“A similar process was under way in the House, where Speaker Nancy Pelosi was scratching for votes in favor of her preferred version of the so-called public option” (Werner, 10/23).

Roll Call: Pelosi’s remarks came as her staff pushed back on Friday reports that she has decided to ditch a public insurance option pegged to Medicare rates — the approach preferred by liberals — after a three-day whip effort revealed it lacks the necessary support” (Newmyer, 10/23).

The Wall Street Journal: “Ms. Pelosi said there is ‘no philosophical difference’ between the robust public option and other versions. She said it is less important now for the House to include a strong public option, than it was several weeks ago when it looked like a Senate health bill might omit the public option all together. ‘The atmosphere has changed. When we were dealing with the idea that the Senate had nothing, it was really important, again, to go in with the most muscle for the middle class with a robust public option,’ Ms. Pelosi said at the news conference. ‘This is about the endgame now,’ she said” (Vaughan and Yoest, 10/23).

Politico: “The ‘atmosphere’ she’s referring to is that in the Senate, where Majority Leader Harry Reid seems to be giving some ground on a public option – which was long thought to be dead in the Upper Chamber. Now that the Senate is giving optional government-sponsored coverage a serious look, Pelosi seems to be open to their suggestions … ‘There’s no philosophical difference between a robust public option and negotiated rates. It’s just a difference in money,’ (she said). …  Pelosi, who had just emerged from a difficult closed-door caucus meeting with her rank-and-file, rarely shows her cards in public. So these concessions are noteworthy (O’Connor, 10/23).

Bloomberg reports on the various public option approaches that are getting attention. “Senate Democrats are leaning toward including a government-run insurance plan in U.S. health-care legislation, and House leaders signaled there may be room for compromise on the issue, one of the most divisive in Congress.”

In order to keep Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, the only Republican so far to support health overhaul legislation, and “pacify” some Democrats, “lawmakers are weighing whether to embrace [Snowe’s] idea of only triggering a public option if insurance rates aren’t low enough. Another possibility is to start with a public option that would pay higher rates than Medicare and allow states to opt out. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi today said she doesn’t see ‘much problem with that.’ Pelosi also said at a press conference today that “At the end of the day, we will have a public option in our legislation,” Pelosi said (Jensen and Rowley, 10/23).

On a lighter note, CBS News reports from the health insurers meeting in Washington: “Insurance industry pollster Bill McInturff was giving a speech Friday when he was interrupted at first with cheers of praise from people who seemingly belonged at the conference, given their business attire. The cheers turned into a song about the ‘public option,’ or government-run health insurance, performed to the tune of ‘Tomorrow’ from the musical Annie. The singers, who were eventually escorted out of the conference, belonged to a group that calls itself Billionaires for Wealthcare” (Condon, 10/23).