Category: Rant

I like to gripe. Probably more than is healthy. Here I contain my rants, making them easier to avoid.

Netflix sues Blockbuster over idiotic patent

One of the requirements for patents is supposed to be a non-obviousness clause.  Basically, a company is not supposed to be able to get a patent for something that is an obvious business practice.  Now to me, letting people prioritize movies they’d like to rent and not charging late fees on movie rentals and allowing customers to instead keep those rentals as long as they want seems obvious.  I said this 10+ years ago (the no late fee part).  It’s not hard to figure out that people would rather rent a movie and not have a strict timeline for when they have to return it.

Apparently, though, the US Patent Office lacks people capable of thinking.  I say this because that’s the only way I can figure that patents on prioritizing movie preferences and not charing late fees on rental movies could be granted.  Unfortunately, the patent is there, and NetFlix is using it as the basis of a lawsuit which could either close down Blockbuster’s online rental service or require Blockbuster to pay for using this incredibly obvious idea.  On the other hand, we can always hope this somehow leads to the patent getting invalidated.  But given Amazon’s success with the mind-numbingly obvious one-click ordering idea, I don’t think that will happen.

SAN FRANCISCO – Online DVD rental service Netflix Inc. on Tuesday accused Blockbuster Inc. of illegally copying its ideas in a patent infringement lawsuit challenging the video store chain’s recent Internet expansion.

The complaint, filed in U.S. District Court in San Francisco, focuses largely on the online wish lists that prioritize the DVD desires of about 5.4 million people who subscribe to either Netflix or Blockbuster’s Internet service.

Netflix also believes its patents cover perhaps its most popular feature — the option of renting a DVD for an unlimited time without incurring late fees.

[tags]Netflix, Blockbuster, Patents[/tags]

Another reason to not consume at Starbucks

My wife tries to avoid Starbucks, but she doesn’t outright boycott the chain like she does Wal-Mart.  Her reasons for both companies is the same – too big, squashes the locals.  In case that’s not enough reason for you (and honestly, I know for most that doesn’t matter), how about stupid lawsuits?  The latest I’ve heard about is in this article at The Consumerist (titled Starbucks Sues Doubleshot Espresso):

The latest in Starbucks exciting oeuvre of frivolous lawsuits against companies too small to defend themselves is a Tulsa, Oklahoma coffee shop called “DoubleShot Coffee.” Starbucks threatened to sue because the name of the shop was similar to their own Double Shot Espressos. Or anyone else’s Double Shot Espressos for that matter… that’s why the name was picked to begin with. As the owner of the shop says, “It’s a common thing you’d find in any coffee shop… It would be like Starbucks suing over the name ‘coffee’ in our name. It’s ridiculous.”

[tags]Starbucks, Stupid lawsuits[/tags]

IHOP joy (long rant)

I love IHOP. Great pancakes (and other foods), affordable meals, usually decent service. I would be much fatter than I already am if I were to eat at IHOP as often as I’d like. Given that, it’s a bit disappointing when I have a bad experience there. But when I do, you, my attractive and above-average-intellect reader (both characteristics developed by virtue of reading my work) get to share my pain.

Thursday night after work, several co-workers and I decided to go to an IHOP near the office for dinner/breakfast. We arrived around midnight, went in together, and waited just a minute for a serv-o-tron to offer to seat us. We asked for seating for 5, as that happened to be the number of people in our group, and we didn’t plan on changing seats frequently enough during the meal to need extra chairs. To our surprise, we are informed that seating 5 together will result in an automatic 15% gratuity added to our bill and we will not be allowed to split that bill when it is time to pay.

A quick thinking cow-orker suggested we be seated at two tables, with two at one table, and three at the other. At this, the delightful young lady (hint: look up sarcasm here, folks) turned to the person who would actually be serving us and said “You want to take care of them? I don’t have time for this.” And then she walked off. “Never mind,” said we, and off we went. After all, once any trouble is associated with your party, you are more likely to get the serv-o-tron special sauce added to your meal, and we each preferred to only consume/sample our own saliva that evening.

Had this happened on a Sunday afternoon with the church crowd amassing and leading to a 30-60 minute wait, we could understand. Had the restaurant been busy in any way, we could possibly understand. But this was right around midnight on a Thursday. There were 5 guests at 3 tables. There were 3 visible employees, and likely more out of sight. There was almost no visible traffic outside the IHOP, so a mass of unexpected customers swarming the site was unlikely. The chances that the extra 60 seconds it would have taken to handle our orders separately causing a major back-up for the rest of the serving staff, food preparation staff, or any other staff was so miniscule I’d suggest it was actually non-existant. I’m going out on a limb here and suggesting that perhaps this delightful young lady just didn’t want our type. Of course, I’m not sure how to classify our type other than well-paid technology workers who over-tip, don’t ask for much attention during the meal, and try to not disturb others. She might have had a different idea of what we were like.

Normally, I never give additional business to a company that I feel has slighted me. When a BP station failed to compensate me for a broken gas pump that resulted in my getting charged for gas I could not actually get, I stopped getting gas at any BP. After receiving bad service from a truck-rental company when moving one time, I started to always go to a competitor when I need a truck in the future.

But I love IHOP. Shoot, I even mentioned that at the start of this article. Do I just stop going to that location (4725 Showcase Boulevard in Memphis, TN in case you are wondering) and continue going to the others where I have gotten good service? Do I maintain my standard of hatefullness and punish all IHOPs for the misdeeds of one (my typical response to bad service)? Do I pretend it never happened, and just act like 4725 Showcase Boulevard doesn’t exist? I’m not sure. I know I won’t ever go back to that site, even though I’d never had trouble there before. I just don’t know if I’ll stop going to all other IHOPs as a result.

Does it even make sense that a business would make it standard practice to not split checks? I don’t even carry money with me most days. If I can’t pay with debit/charge card, I don’t think I’d be able to eat out usually. I don’t speak out against the added gratuity, but the serv-o-tron gets slighted by automatic gratuities when I eat out, because I won’t add to the required “tip” due to the offense I take at this being foisted upon me. Maybe for 10-12 people and up this makes sense, but at 5, it just seems obnoxious.

Universal hates digital distribution (and customers)

(via The Consumerist)

I will admit to being in love with the “Company X hates blah” general title, but it just seems so many companies don’t want customers, or don’t want customers to have a good experience.  This latest is based on the news that Universal pictures is going to offer movies for download starting next month.  That doesn’t sound bad, until you look in to pricing.  The first movie available will be King Kong, for the amazing price of $35.  The same movie I can get from Amazon.com for $15 and rip to digital format myself using free tools, I can download in a Digital Restriction Mangled (DRM) format for only $35.  I can’t decide if Universal is doing this to show how much they hate consumers, to show the market how “selling downloadable movies doesn’t work,” or if the executives in charge of this just have no clue how this works.  I’m pretty sure those are the only three choices, but I’m willing to entertain other options if my readers have other thoughts. Continue reading “Universal hates digital distribution (and customers)”

Bell South hates Katrina victims

(via The Consumerist)

Well, that title may be a bit strong, but I like how it sounds.  After the Katrina disaster, the city of New Orleans instituted a free Wi-Fi service to help get businesses and individuals going again on the telecommunication side of a recovery.  Lobbyists from Bell South are working to get this service shut down because it violates a law restricting the government from competing with telecommunication companies.  Legally speaking, the company is correct, and the city is exceeding its legal allowed offering.  On the other hand, this is no way to build goodwill with customers.  Not that goodwill matters when you have a government assured monopoly.  But it still stinks.

One of the surprising acts of compassion and competency that came out of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina was that the city began providing a free WiFi service to business owners and residents whose phone service had been wiped out. The 512 kbps service allowed many business owners to begin struggling back to their feet and corporate sponsors like Yahoo and Google were in discussion to expand the service in the coming months.

Well, no longer. Telecommunication lobbyists from Bell South have put the lean on New Orleans, demanding that the free service be outlawed. Apparently, it violates a law that prevents the public sector from competing with the telecommunication sector. By law, then, cities can provide no more than a 128 kbps service to citizens.

Again – legally, Bell South wins.  Morally, meh, it stinks.  Why don’t these massive companies do more to help people insetad of screwing consumers whenever given the chance?  Oh, that’s right – they don’t have to.  The monopolies never do.

[tags]New Orleans, Free Wi-Fi[/tags]

Can facts be patented?

(via The Consumerist)
I did not know this.  Apparently Metabolite has a patent on the fact “The level of an amino acid called homocysteine is measured in a patient’s blood or urine and, if elevated, it can be correlated with a deficiency of folic acid, or B12.”  And there is a lawsuit against the company Laboratory Testing Company for violating this patent.  Also, supposedly I’ve broken the law by quoting that fact.
The Supreme Court has to decide the following question:

if a doctor looks at a patient’s test results and even thinks that sentence, has he broken the law?

I don’t have much faith in our courts to make a good decision here, but we’ll see.

[tags]Patents, Metabolite[/tags]

Judge makes nonsense decision, supreme court won’t reconsider

(via BoingBoing)

The obscenity section of the Communications Decency Act (hereafter CDA) bans publishing “obscene” material on the net. Unfortunately, according to this wonderfully moronic act, “obscene” is determined by “local standards” in the courts. That means someone hosting porn in California can be sued by someone living in Puritinicaville, FL (actual name – Ave Maria, FL) for hosting obscene material. For those that haven’t heard of this Internet thing, it turns out it is world wide. But any potentially obscene material hosted online and originating in the US now gets judged by the most conservative , puritanical communities rather than by the site of origin or at a nationally set guidance level. Any material online is obscene if any community declares it obscene.

Furthermore, the Supreme Court has declined to overturn this decision by lower courts. The site where I first saw this story, BoingBoing, has links to a social network style site named SuicideGirls (not safe for work). Under the CDA, a lot of what shows up on SuicideGirls would be considered obscene to some people. Now, thanks to the CDA and the Supreme Court’s unwillingness to overturn the lower courts’ decisions, a site like SuicideGirls could go off the air so to speak. Or at least outside the country.

I’m not suggesting that anyone, anywhere on the Internet should be able to post anything they want. But restricting all content to the most prudish members of our society might be worse than letting the most depraved determine what is acceptable. If we as a nation are going to put limits on Internet content, it needs to be restricted according to some defined national levels. As bad as our government is about determining things like this, I still think those at the federal level could do a better job setting a baseline standard than we will do letting any community decide.

Of course, better yet is getting rid of the CDA, but that’s not likely to happen in the heavily conservative court we now have.

[tags]CDA, Communications Decency Act[/tags]

Further proof that next-gen optical formats are horrid

(via CDFreaks)

In case you had any thoughts about buying a Blu-Ray or HD-DVD player as soon as the first such devices hit the street, please reconsider.  The first generation of these new hi-definition formats will not be fully functional:

As HD-DVD and Blu-ray are getting ready for their launch under the interim license agreement for AACS copy protection, all the first round of players launched under this agreement will not offer any managed copy support, regardless of what interfaces the player may have and no firmware updates will be made available to offer such support either.  Basically, all players released under the interim license will function as basic players.

“But Randy,” you may say, “I don’t plan on copying next-gen optical media.  Why would I care if managed copy support is not available?”

Well, for one, leaving out this feature means the devices are not specification-level complete.  I personally have no use for hardware that is released before a spec is complete and functionally buildable.  Furthermore, once the spec is finalized, these first-gen devices won’t be upgradeable.  If anything changes in the spec that requires certain managed copy support features to be present, you’ll have a high-end paperweight which will be unable to play the media it was purchased to play.

In the finalised AACS specification, a minimum level of managed copy support will be mandatory.  Despite early concerns about Blu-ray’s additional copy protection layers – BD Plus and ROM Mark, these should not directly affect the format’s ability to handle managed copy.  Users who are interested in equipment supporting managed copy are advised to wait until the time comes when the AACS spec is finalised and players start supporting this.

Sure, I’m probably over-reacting.  But media companies don’t care about consumers.  If there was concern for consumers, the Sony rootkit fiasco never would have happened.  Don’t let these companies sell you something that isn’t complete.  Don’t give your money up for equipment based on unfinished specifications unless the hardware you buy is guaranteed upgradeable to final specifications.  Don’t let the companies get away with screwing early adopters just to get hardware out by an announced deadline.  Demand finished products, especially when the device is supposedly better than what you have now.  Wait for final specifications before you put down your money.

[tags]HD-DVD, Blu-Ray, consumer abuse[/tags]

Verbatim launches undersized flash drives in goofy cases, claims people want less

(via CDFreaks)

CHARLOTTE, NC (March 21, 2006) – Verbatim® Corporation, the worldwide leader in CD and DVD media, announced today an exciting new storage solution, the Verbatim16MB FlashDisc™. The innovative FlashDisc is not only a brand new product, it forms the basis for an entirely new flash-based media category. Developed by M-Systems, the Verbatim FlashDisc will be available in April. With an MSRP of only $19.99 for a 3-pack, the new media is set to revolutionize the way consumers, students and office workers exchange photos, music and other digital data files.

Now read that and pay attention. Verbatim wants you to buy 3 USB flash drives with 16 Meg each. You will be expected to pay $20 for them. To some, that might not seem bad. To me, it’s just crazy. But the press release has more of an explanation for the drives:

Verbatim’s FlashDisc is ideal for users who simply want a low-cost way to transport modest-capacity digital files from one computer to another or to share files on a disc that doesn’t necessarily have to be returned. Students can keep multiple FlashDiscs for each class subject and can access the information any time, anywhere. People of all ages can use FlashDiscs to distribute photos or favorite songs to friends and family. Businesses can share data and presentations with colleagues.

In other words, you are expected to swap these USB drives to share data. You should feel like they are inexpensive enough that you won’t care about getting the drive back. And naturally, you’ll buy many 3 packs so you have enough spares to do that. Now for the next kink in what’s wrong with this silly idea, check out what these drives look like.

verbatim-dumbflash.jpg

Now, imagine carrying around half a dozen of these. These drives have a swing-open/click-shut cover for the USB interface, and a big, ugly ring-like plastic cover over the rest of them. Presumably, this is to make us think of these as small discs, instead of overpriced USB drives. But it also makes them big, and not easy to carry around.

I’m constantly amazed at what sells well and what doesn’t. I could be way out of line here, and these might be the next hot thing. But I assure you, I’m not paying $7 for 16 Meg of USB key storage only to give the drive to someone else and not worry about whether or not I get it back. That’s just not sensible.

Be sure to read the entire press release at CDFreaks if you are interested.  And feel free to tell me if I’m way off-base here on how these will sell.  Maybe everyone else in the world sees sufficient value in these for them to survive, and I’ll be proven wrong once again.

[tags]Verbatim, Dumb consumer devices, USB key[/tags]

Unenforceable “Child Internet Safety” bill proposed – likely to go nowhere

(via BoingBoing)

Here’s what happens when people who don’t understand the Internet write laws pertaining to the Internet.

Senators Mark Pryor (D-AR), and Max Baucus, (D-MT) have proposed a bill that would require all commercial websites with material “harmful to minors” (in other words, sexually explicit content) to move to a .xxx domain within 6 months of this bill becoming law — or face civil penalties. Under the terms of the proposed law, the US Commerce Department secretary would be required to develop a domain name for adult sites (presumably .xxx) with ICANN.

For starters, the bill is very vague on what would fall under the “harmful to minors” category. The site from which I pulled this story, BoingBoing, gets censored by some Internet filtering software. Would the fact that BoingBoing has a link to Suicide Girls (a guaranteed not-safe-for-work site) cause BoingBoing to get moved to this adult sites domain? Who decides what is “harmful to minors” anyway?  BoingBoing is damn useful to me as a techie news site (among the other things posted there).  But sometimes, things intended for adults get posted there, as well.  So that means the site should be moved to a domain that I would almost assuredly be unavailable to me any place that has filtering?  Great.
And if that doesn’t seem like a big deal to you, then consider how many sites on the Internet are not in the US. This law would have no impact on those sites at all. How would whatever agency has to enforce this piece of garbage make http://www.ILikeSmallFurryRodents.com/ move to this new domain, when ILSFR.com is based in Lithuania?

Going beyond those problems, what about the whole idea of free speech in the US, anyway?  This bill isn’t targetting just things like kiddie-porn.  This bill would even hit legal stuff, that currently is protected as free speech.  You may not like it, but that doesn’t make it illegal.

As suggested by others who have read about this bill, why not make a domain that is specifically built for hosting child-friendly sites?  Even make an agency which is responsible for reviewing sites before granting approval.  Then, instead of forcing so many sites to move because someone, somewhere might feel something posted on those sites could potentially be harmful to minors, just give the option to kid-friendly sites to move to this new domain.  When parents want to let their kids on to the Internet, give them a specialized browser that can only access the kid-friendly domain.

Blocking adult content by segregating it to a specific domain is a certain setup for failure.  Every time someone posts a new site, they can put whatever they want.  To keep this bad law functioning, every day new sites would have to be monitored and squirreled off to the adults only domain.  And it still wouldn’t touch sites hosted outside the US.  By giving an option to host kid-friendly content on a different domain, it makes verifying appropriateness easier and makes building the whole kid-friendly ‘net better.  But law-makers don’t seem capable of much logical thought, so something smart like this is unlikely to happen.

Blind must pass driver’s education in Chicago

Here is an excellent case of rules taking precedence over common sense.  In Chicago, apparently, no one on the educating side thought about fixing the problem with requiring the educated to pass driver’s ed, even if they are blind or sight impaired.

Most high school students eagerly await the day they pass driver’s education class. But 16-year-old Mayra Ramirez is indifferent about it.  Ramirez is blind, yet she and dozens of other visually impaired sophomores in Chicago schools are required to pass a written rules-of-the-road exam in order to graduate — a rule they say takes time away from subjects they might actually use.

Not everyone is oblivious to the problem:

“It defies logic to require blind students to take this course,” Meta Minton, spokeswoman for the state Board of Education, told the Chicago Tribune in a Friday story.

And here’s someone showing the typical bureaucratic response (that would be lay blame on the suffering party):

“I can’t explain why up to this point no one has raised the issue and suggested a better way for visually impaired students to opt out of driver’s ed,” said Chicago schools spokesman Michael Vaughn.

In other words, it’s not *our* fault these people have to do this – they haven’t asked out of it.  Never mind that it doesn’t make any sense. 

[tags]Driver’s ed, bureaucracy[/tags]

RIAA kills WKRP on DVD hopes

This is old news, but I just read this tonight.  Apparently, the high cost of licensing music for TV shows is making the release of WKRP on DVD unlikely.  I wonder why so many people feel the RIAA as an organization is just a big greed monster?

For many TV shows, costs to license the original music for DVD are prohibitively high, so rights owners replace the music with cheaper tunes, much to the irritation of avid fans. And some shows, like WKRP, which is full of music, will probably never make it to DVD because of high licensing costs.

[tags]WKRP, RIAA, greed, DVD[/tags]