Fuck You Comcast

If Viral Advertising wasn't enough, now Comcast Cable, my local cable monopoly has decided that $170 means you also get ads on your Guide Menu. Where once was five channels listed on each screen, there are now only 4 and a whole fucking ad for television we don't care about (read: football games, Smallville, ect.)



And cable operators are wondering why consumers are flocking to satellite providers.

Meanwhile, this ad wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't treated as an item on the list. There is no casual scrolling down the menu because as you do, the ad gets highlighted. This would be fine if you could channel surf with digital cable. But, unlike the analog signal, digital cable takes a few seconds to load each channel-- just like satellite tv. So in essence, using the menu is the only way to reasonably find the show you want to watch. And now Comcast thinks I should get to look at ads while I do this.

We've lodged complaints by phone and email. ecare-Union@comcast.com and 800.COMCAST, respectively. We're telling all our friends to do the same thing. This is bullshit. $170 gets you a lot of television, but it also means you should be able to channel surf in peice. So Fuck you Comcast.

Actually, We Don't Need Pennies

As the price of raw metals has risen, the copper used to make pennies actually is more valuable than the penny itself. So instead of adulterating the metal used to make Pennies, the US Mint came up with a solution only the government could figure out: banning the practice of melting the pennies back to their raw materials.

Director Ed Moy is quoted as saying "the nation needs its coinage for commerce." Actually Ed, we don't need the penny. Isn't it time evaluate the actual necessity of the penny? The rise in copper prices is a great opportunity to phase out what is essentially a worthless coin. Pennies don't buy anything. There is no penny candy. There are no penny arcade games. Even penny slots use credit cards or quarters. But pennies are heavy. They take up space, cost time to have them exchanged for dollars, and aren't even accepted at parking meters or toll booths. Its time to do away with the penny.

What Not To Do When You Lose Your Google Rank

We're a web whore. And so we take the time to google for ourselves just to be sure our own website is the top result for our name or other things associated with us. Mostly this is vanity. After all, we want to make sure people searching for "ian macallen" get sent here and not to some Scot's sword making website. Or for instance, when hack writer James Rogauskas released a book titled Office Haiku, we wanted to make sure anyone searching for the key term Office Haiku got sent to our site. [And for the record, we've been writing better Office Haiku than Rogauskas long before he released his book, but we're not bitter. Not TOO bitter, anyway].

But if for some reason James Rogauskas built a half-way decent website promoting his office haiku book, and somehow was able to knock us off the top spot, we wouldn't email him a complaint. But that's what happened to blogger Dean Hunt, who without even trying, displaced a commercial website, who apparently received a strange requset to delist his own website from Google. And of course, you wouldn't be reading about it here had Mr. Hunt not put the email online.

So not only is Dean Hunt already more popular than the other site, but now thousands of bloggers are probably making him even more popular by linking to the article he wrote about the website that is less popular then his. The lesson here is, if some guy out does you in the Google ranking, don't get pissed off and send him an email asking him to make his site suck more than yours so you get higher in the Google ranking.

Hungry, Hungry Power Grid

The New York Times is reporting that a poorly updated national grid of interstate electrical transmission lines are causing energy prices to skyrocket. The author wants us to believe that for customers east of the Rocky Mountains, the apocalypse is upon electricity users.

Indeed, the price per customer is expected to jump $40, and in some cases more as customers aren't each receiving a fair distribution of the rate increases. But this isn't a bad thing. The United States has enjoy a long period of cheap energy prices, be it gasoline for cars or electricity for homes and businesses. While cheap electricity might keep factories humming, it also reduces the incentive to conserve energy.

Cheap electricity keeps electric companies from expanding services and upgrading facilities because there is little incentive for them to invest in new plants. So then places like California endure rolling blackouts. Or New York City's power grid blows up on hot summer days.

Meanwhile, customers with cheap electricity make little effort to save energy when the price per kilowatt keeps the bill about the same no matter how much they use. But raise the price of electricity, and using energy efficient appliances and light bulbs begins to add up. For example, compact fluorescent bulbs running at twenty watts produce the same amount of luminosity as incandescent bulbs using three times as much power. But now with the price of electricity artificially low, there is little incentive for the consumer to replace cheap incandescent bulbs will more efficient but more expensive compact fluorescents.

Furthermore, most customers don't think twice about electricty leaks-- the slow sucking of power by appliances that for all purposes appear as if they are off. However, if the price of electricity increases dramatically, customers will be encouraged by their bottom line to seek out energy efficient appliances that don't waste electricty.

At the end of the day, the cost of producing goods might go up if electricity prices rise. But America builds ideas, not things. Customers, particularly those with low or fixed incomes, might see the rise in electric prices hurting thier pocket books. Yet the average customer can make very small changes in their lifestyles-- compact flourescent bulbs, energy efficient appliances, and ensuring power sapping devices are turned off-- that add up to huge savings when millions of people across the country begin making the switch. Everyone agrees that energy conservation is a good idea, but no one agrees they should be the ones to do the conserving. Highery energy prices will help people make the decision they know they should be making anyway.

In The Real World, There's A Budget Crisis

Our better half, once again at the mercy of Rutgers Beaurcractic system, received a message from President McCormick on branding at Rutgers. Indeed, Rutgers now has a new typeface for official looking documents. And new letterhead. And probably, new business cards and all sorts of other crap that had the "old" Rutgers labels on it.

"Research confirms that a clear and consistent identity helps build and maintain reputation." Indeed, Rutgers, this is true. But the only thing consistent about the identity of Rutgers University is the constant ass fucking the administration hands out to students while pissing away money designing colorful logos to replace a logo that "is more than two decades old."

Meanwhile, the libraries are closing early during exam periods "because of the budget crisis." Class size is growing, dormitories are overcrowded, parking is, as always in short supply. These are problems endemic of every Rutgers Campus. And these are fundamental issues far more important than letterhead. Or a Logo. Or Business cards.

Do As I Say, Not As I Do

Lately there has been a whole lot of buzz surrounding "user" created content. Barely a day goes by the mainstream media, fascinated by their own shortcomings, fails to mention YouTube, the video file sharing service. But there is also Wikipedia, the encyclopedia written by the people. There is xTube and PornoTube-- you guessed it, adult versions of YouTube. There is even a cable television channel dedicated to user content owned partly by none other than Al Gore.

While Wikipedia is a non-profit organization, most of these sites are run as for profit ventures, and profit they do. YouTube sold for a billion and a half dollars. That's a lot of money for a site that mostly features teenage girls dancing and lip syncing to Jessica Simpson or the guy who shares your cubicle performing an air guitar solo to Aerosmith. The fact that so many of these amateur videos use professional musicians' music has lead the recording industry-- massive media companies-- to assume they either deserve the revenue generated by sites like YouTube or similar knockoffs or threaten to file suits against teenages for video taping their dance parties.

But apparently, media companies have every expectation to copy user content without compensation.

CNN.com a few months back launched i-Report, , a little user outreach program where users send in pictures or video clips that CNN might than use online. Or on TV. Or some future technology not yet invented. Its all there in the "Terms of Service" agreement:

"you hereby grant to CNN and its affiliates a non-exclusive, perpetual, worldwide license to edit, telecast, rerun, reproduce, use, syndicate, license, print, sublicense, distribute and otherwise exhibit the materials you submit, or any portion thereof, as incorporated in any of their programming or the promotion thereof, in any manner and in any medium or forum, whether now known or hereafter devised, without payment to you or any third party."

Interesting how they work that bit in there.

So while Time Warner, the parent company of CNN supports the Recording Industry Association's war on grainy, YouTube dance videos, CNN is hoping those same suckers send their own grainy photographs for use by CNN without compensation. We're left wondering: if a user submits a video to i-Report that contains music froma Time Warner artist and CNN airs that video, will Time Warner sue itself for payment?

As if that wasn't bad enough, Yahoo and Reuters are apparently turning everyone in the world into a potential reporter.

"Users will not be paid for images displayed on the Yahoo and Reuters sites."

Sure, this isn't so different from Flickr, the photo sharing site that users already flock to. Except on Flickr, users control their own content, adding and removing photos as they wish. But the new service will use editors to select photos and run them alongside news stories-- this actually sounds like Yahoo and Rueters are trying to undercut professional photographer fees.

Further adding to this point is the followup:

"people whose photos or videos are selected for distribution to Reuters clients will receive a payment. Mr. Ahearn said the company had not yet figured out how to structure those payments. The basic payment may be relatively small, but he said Reuters was likely to pay more to people offering exclusive rights to images of major events."

Indeed those payments will be 'relatively' small-- relative to what professionals would earn for the same picture's usage. Amatuers without an agent or photo agency backing them will not receive the best price for their photographs or video content, while at the same time flooding the content market with images and photographs.

While media companies might think user content is a great way to generate interest in their websites and a cheaper alternative to generating content, they ultimately are hurting themselves. First, they are making a trade off of quality for quantity. With tons of content out there at a low quality, big old meida companies lose their hegemonic control over content. Second, by using user content for little or no payment, media companies are essentially telling consumers that digital content has no value-- in essence, endorsing the free distribution of digital content. And what is music or movie piracy if not free distribution of digital content. Its easy for media companies to say "do as I say, not as I do," but considering the "piracy" war needs to win the hearts and minds of consumers as much as anything, big media is only hurting themselves.