Tag: galactically-stupid

Less than a penny’s worth

A recent UPI story details the case of Mark Guard, charged with stealing electricity in London. The taxpayers will have to pay over £5,000 (US$8,200) for the two separate hearings before the case was dropped.

Mark was filming a documentary about crime and the homeless. During the filming squatters entered a vacant building, setting off a motion sensor. Not surprisingly, the squatters didn’t want to stick around. Mark does the responsible thing and turns off the alarm to avoid disturbing the rest of the neighborhood. To do that, he had to turn on the power. When the London police arrived, he was arrested for theft of a ridiculously small amount of electricity (£0.00003 worth, which I’m not even going to bother converting into US$). Even though Mark offered to pay for it, the electric company felt it wasn’t worth the bother.

And yet, somehow, pursuing criminal charges was. Indeed, no good deed goes unpunished. I can see this happening here in the US as well. Every taxpayer in London should be outraged at such an irresponsible use of their money.

Maybe Mark can make a movie about his ordeal to show the citizens of London just how silly the whole thing really was.

Absolutely shocking iPhone privacy holes

Following on the heels of the Writing for the City Brights blog, Yobie Benjamin pens a very damning attack against the iPhone from a privacy advocate standpoint. His article is an easy read even for those relatively unfamiliar with concepts such as cookies.

The single most horrifying thing I have yet to read about Apple or the iPhone, however, is summed up by this quote from the article:

I know what these tracking tools can enable iPhone developers and it’s pretty powerful and devious. If you’re privacy advocate, it’s bad. It’s really very bad.

Why is it bad?

For the most part, if you like your privacy – there is no opt-out feature unless you have a jailbroken/unlocked (more later on this) iPhone.

Combine this with the fact that jailbreaking is something Apple really doesn’t want you to do (from their point of view, the iPhone still technically belongs to them in a way because of the OS on it, another reason to condemn the use of the misleading and loaded term “intellectual property”), and all of a sudden, Apple doesn’t look a whole lot better than many other large corporations when it comes to concern for the privacy of their customers.

Yobie goes on to give a specific example using TwitterFon in which the iPhone’s UDID (serial number) is sent no less than three times to three different places. And unless one is willing to roll the dice and jailbreak one’s iPhone, there is no way to opt-out of this.

There is no “privacy” menu on a standard iPhone; this is something added by those who made the jailbreaking programs. The single most responsible thing Apple can do to regain some of my respect–and the respect of just about anyone with any significant concerns about their privacy–is add this option to the stock iPhone OS.

I’d like to think Apple hasn’t grown too big to give a damn. Especially in light of the fact Apple charges a premium for their hardware and software, I think Apple should be held to a higher standard than most similar companies. Not surprisingly, I think they have fallen far short of it.

Sock(-puppet)ing it to Apple’s iPhone App Store

Sometimes Apple is not to blame for everything, though I would like to think there is a way they can put a sock in this problem.

Gagan Biyani writing for MobileCrunch reports on the latest problem to hit Apple’s iPhone App Store: completely fake reviews planted there by PR firms.

Reverb Communications is a PR firm retained by some of the companies which sell iPhone applications in the App Store. The firm touts “first party” and “personal” relationships with Apple. Those claims, of course, are spun so much, most of us mere mortals that don’t work in PR risk nausea from the resulting dizziness embodied therein. Because what Reverb actually means is that they have a bunch of fake identities that can log into the App Store and post fake reviews. Yeah, that’s not exactly what comes to mind when I hear of “first party” and “personal” relationships.

How did we finally find out that Reverb lacks scruples and decency? Through an anonymous developer referred to in the article as only “Developer Y” (assumably because “Publisher X” had just been used in the preceding paragraph). From a document sent from Reverb to Developer Y (quoted in the original article):

Reverb employs a small team of interns who are focused on managing online message boards, writing influential game reviews, and keeping a gauge on the online communities. Reverb uses the interns as a sounding board to understand the new mediums where consumers are learning about products, hearing about hot new games and listen to the thoughts of our targeted audience. Reverb will use these interns on Developer Y products to post game reviews (written by Reverb staff members) ensuring the majority of the reviews will have the key messaging and talking points developed by the Reverb PR/marketing team.

But it gets even better. Reverb actually works with Apple, having done at least one TV commercial for them. Further, at least one of Reverb’s referrals actually came from an Apple employee.

Reverb’s official statement when confronted with this? Hang on tight, because the Tilt-a-Whirl is starting up again. Doug Kennedy wrote back to MobileCrunch in essence fingering a “disgruntled former employee who is violating his confidentiality agreement.”

I’m pretty sure confidentiality agreements don’t cover illegal activity, and what Reverb is doing here at least borders on fraud. At the very least it’s patently devoid of any scruples, honesty, and ethics. And PR firms and the people that work for them wonder why they are sometimes viewed as less trustworthy.

Shame on Reverb. If you work in PR, please don’t do what they did. The world, and the reputation of your profession, will be much better off.

Mean, thoughtless, and tasteless: PETA crosses the line

Momlogic.com reports on what may well be the single biggest lapse in good judgment ever to come out of the infamous “animal rights” organization PETA: a billboard with an obviously overweight woman in a swimsuit (depicted from behind, neck to small of back) and the tagline “Save the Whales. Lose the Blubber: Go Vegetarian. PETA.”

I can’t believe even PETA would stoop this low. This is flagrantly sexist; I don’t know how CBS Outdoor (formerly Viacom) allowed this to go up, or who PETA bribed to get this out there in this medium. That alone costs PETA much of the credibility they might have otherwise had.

PETA assumes plenty of facts about the majority of cases of obesity that have simply not been proven. There are many cases of obesity out there that changes in diet alone will not solve. I, personally, believe exercise plays a far greater role in losing weight than diet. I dismissed the Atkins diet as the fad that it is (was?).

As some evidence of this, people may think it ludicrous that professional sports franchises gave such high allowances for meals on road games–the NFL’s allowances from 2007 were $17, $25, and $43 for breakfast, lunch, and dinner respectively, probably a bit higher in 2009 due to inflation. Few consider the possibility that the activity levels of many professional athletes actually justify $17 for breakfast, etc. Yet that is probably the reason for the meal allowances being as high as they are! (In the particular case of the NFL, weight is actually an advantage for some positions and so players would need to maintain their weight, specifically eating enough to lose as little as possible. I wouldn’t exactly expect baseball, basketball, soccer, or hockey players to eat like birds, however.)

Until there is hard evidence that a vegetarian or vegan diet alone will result in weight loss with no other changes in lifestyle, the responsible thing to do is for PETA to remove their billboard. Of course, this is the same PETA that has no problem with splashing red paint on fur coats just to advance their ridiculous extremist view. So I’m not sure PETA will ever do the responsible thing. I retain my optimism, however.

Twitter and Facebook banned at some college sporting events

I can’t believe I’m reading this, much less blogging about it.

The St. Petersburg Times recently reported on the Southeast Conference (SEC) issuing an edict to its twelve member schools, further limiting the amount of audio, video, and real-time blogging allowed at practices, games, and news conferences.

The truly disturbing part, is that according to this same edict, fans are now barred from updating social networking sites from the stands. This includes updating Twitter or Facebook, posting pictures to Flickr, or uploading videos to YouTube, and (I would assume) live blogging during a game.

This policy is not just galactically stupid, it’s an enforcement nightmare and has untold masses of sports fans in an uproar.

This quote is about as direct and to-the-point as one can get:

“I would guess,” said Mike Masnick, the editor of the respected blog techdirt, “that they’re realizing that anyone can be a reporter or a broadcaster these days.

A.J. Liebling’s famous quote, which I’ve used here before, “Freedom of the press is limited to those who own one,” is about to become about as quaint as the printing presses of his era.

Information wants to be free. Technology has advanced to the point where video cameras can be combined with a device that’s nominally a telephone. This policy, even if nominally a success, will still reflect very badly on the SEC as an inept attempt at censorship, doomed to failure in the long term.

(Note: I now also see the quote attributed to H.L. Mencken. I’m not sure which attribution is actually correct. If anyone knows for sure drop me a line using the comment form.)