I am not a gamer.  I enjoy videogames, but I am far from being a hardcore gamer.  But I do understand opening night numbers.

Activision Blizzard said that Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 has sold $550 million worth in five days.

That is a little over half a billion worldwide.  That is a larger take than the first five days of ANY movie.  If this can be verified, this should be huge news.  But overall, it has been met with a collective yawn in this news cycle, where the President’s bow to the Emperor of Japan seems to be generating more heat.  While this may not represent anything other than something a lot of people have been waiting for in a year where there have been no really huge titles to go against, it is still news. 

Still, that success hasn’t come without some controversy. Several British politicians have spoken out against Modern Warfare 2, and in Russia, Activision is releasing a censored version of the game. The Russian edition leaves out a scene called “No Russian,” which allowed the user the opportunity to shoot at – or otherwise injury – innocent civilians in a Moscow airport.

But no matter. Reports are overwhelmingly positive on game play, from what I have seen on the boards.  Heck, I might even give it a shot.

Now Playing: Dire Straits - Brothers in Arms - Brothers in Arms

“I Know” is a favorite Fiona Apple song of mine.  Elvis Costello’s interpretation remains faithful but adds another layer to it.  Enjoy.

There is an interesting article in Wired online concerning current copyright laws and the deadline that the music industry is facing.  Deadline?  Yes, it seems back in the mid 70’s, congress passed the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976.  In it, it states that if an artist or author sold a copyright before 1978 (Section 304), they or their heirs can take it back 56 years later. If the artist or author sold the copyright during or after 1978 (Section 203), they can terminate that grant after 35 years. Therefore, the take-back starts, technically, in 2013.

That is, as they say, a lot of music.  It is interesting to see how a law like the copyright act happened back in 1976, because it would never happen today.  So step into the time machine, Sherman and let’s go back…

You see, back in 1976, Rock was bloated, Disco was jaded and Punk was just getting off the ground.  Nobody, besides the Rolling Stones and maybe David Bowie  and Elton John were making huge amounts of money, as the recording business was still in what I call a cowboy phase.  Besides, one can argue that back in 1976, the idea of thirty five years in the future was probably thought of as a realistic period of time for copyright, as looking backward from 1976, grandparents and Bette Midler were the only people listening to music made in the early forties.  Apparently, the record industry also thought that music was a throw away media, a mindset from the disposable 60’s.  I mean, who would have thought that KISS would still be huge today? 

As they say, times change.  You see people at a KISS concert with their children and grandchildren.  The Eagles are still popular.  There has been at least two disco revivals and expect another one in about five years.  The Ramones are venerated and still sell albums, even though the band is long gone.  This is not the thirty five years in the future that people in 1976 thought it would be. 

So what are the record companies to do?  You know they aren’t rolling over on this one.  Too much is at stake.  From the Wired article:

The record labels tried to defuse this bomb in 1999 by sneaking an amendment to the Copyright Act through the House of Representatives that would add sound recordings to the Act’s list of copyrights that were considered “works for hire,” which would make them exceptions to the grant termination clause. According to one source close to the situation, the labels told Congress that the Copyright Act already covered sound recordings as exceptions because albums of music are “compilations” — but that “just to be absolutely clear, [the labels] wanted to put it in so nobody can debate it.”

After musicians, including Carly Simon, reacted negatively, the amendment was withdrawn amid public outcry leaving record labels with precisely two options for fending off notices of termination, neither of which looks promising. The first is to continue to claim that albums are compilations, which doesn’t pass the common-sense test (compilations include songs from different artists), and probably won’t pass legal muster either…

…The second option is to re-record sound recordings in order to create new sound recording copyrights, which would reset the countdown clock at 35 years for copyright grant termination.

For example, when Omega Record Group remastered a 1991 Christmas recording, the basis of its new copyright claim was “New Matter: sound recording remixed and remastered to fully utilize the sonic potential of the compact disc medium.”  What it boils down to is that the record company can look at the artist and say you can have the originals.  The updates are ours.

Sneaky. Suddenly the reasoning behind the Beatles’ hesitancy in releasing their catalog makes sense.  It is the grail of music catalogs and Paul and Yoko want to milk it for everything it is worth. To which I say-good for them.  It is their music, not the record company’s. 

So if the world doesn’t end in 2012, expect there to be major earthquakes in the RIAA in starting in 2013.  The Eagles plan to file grant termination notices by the end of the year. 

Now Playing: David Bowie - Station to Station - Golden Years

Anonymity used to be a somewhat easy thing.  But the internet made that much harder for people to do.  You can trace things like IP addresses, payments, things like that.  So it is surprising that the literary world had not only an anonymous writer but blogger as well by the name of Belle de Jour.  What was even more surprising was that Belle de Jour was a call girl who wrote about her experiences.  The icing on the cake was that Belle stayed anonymous for six years, during which time the blog became a series of best-selling books as well as an internationally successful TV series.  Even her agent didn’t know her real name until this past week. 

And then, the world was let known via the Sunday Times that Belle was actually Dr Brooke Magnanti a specialist in developmental neurotoxicology and cancer epidemiology who ran out of money during the final stages of her PhD thesis and decided to become an escort to make ends meet.  From there the blog was born.  Dr Magnanti was all ready an established scientific blogger.  In fact, the style and substance of the writing was one of the things that fueled the question “Who is Belle de Jour?” and kept people guessing. 

Did the good Doctor got tired of being anonymous and decided to give it all up?  Paul Carr of TechCrunch says, maybe not:

Let’s give Belle and the Sunday Times the benefit of the doubt and assume that Magnanti really did approach them, and not the other way around. There’s no reason to doubt Magnanti’s version of events, but it’s worth remembering that the Sunday Times has a particularly grubby history when it comes to anonymous bloggers…

…Zoe Margolis opened the door of her London home at an ungodly hour of the morning to accept a flower delivery from an anonymous admirer. What she didn’t know was that the delivery man had actually been sent by the Sunday Times who had positioned a photographer across the road ready to snap her when she came to the door. Two days later she learned the horrible truth: an email arrived from the paper’s ‘acting news editor’; a scumbag called Nicholas Hellen. In the email, Hellen announced that the paper was preparing to out Zoe as the author of the anonymous sex blog ‘Girl With A One Track Mind‘, which – like Belle de Jour’s blog – had just been turned into a book.

Hellen proposed a deal: either Zoe could agree to give her story to the Times, illustrated with a photoshoot in “glamourous evening wear” taken by their resident fashion photographer – or the paper would run its own hit-job expose, written by fellow-scum-bag Anna Mikhailova and complete with the (in Hellen’s words) “not particularly flattering” paparazzi shot.

Zoe told the Times to go fuck themselves, and the rest is a painful outing, a hideously uncomfortable conversation with her parents and a week of press-camped-out-on-her-doorstep hell (stories she tells in a follow-up book to be published in March 2010)

How might a newspaper like the Times have found out something that had been kept under wraps for six years?  There is talk in the interview about an ex-boyfriend with a big mouth.  Did he contact the Times?  There is that.  Supposedly other friends new about the double life that Dr Magnanti lived.  There is also the rest of Carr’s column that goes on by saying that basically Belle was an ego-maniac who outed herself in order to take credit for everything that she had done.  But I think the answer is far more complex than that.  You see, secrets are a pain in the ass.  You have to create a separate reality around the secret in order to explain all the inconsistencies of life.  After a while, the act of keeping two separate realities in check becomes a rather tedious job.  Throw in an ex with a big mouth, the fact that it was becoming apparent that the adventures of Belle was beginning to finally play out, and the idea of saying “sod it, that was fun, but its time to move on” looks pretty good. 

So here’s to anonymity.  It can be done, but the fact is you’re the only one who can know about it.

Now Playing: Robert Palmer - Secrets - Under Suspicion

That is, according to Rupert Murdoch.  You see, a few days ago, good ‘ole Rooper-boy told the Australian press (well, SkyNews Australia) that he will remove stories from Google's search index as a way to encourage people to pay for content online.

Of course this caused a great disturbance in the blogosphere, who really didn’t seem to want to remember that the man who controls the less-than-accurate-media empire has said this before.  The Associated Press has said it (and has yet to pull the trigger).  Google was sanguine about the matter, saying in essence “Go for it”. 

So how does Rupert Murdoch plan to quit teh Google?   Making a deal with Bing?  Danny Sullivan, editor-in-chief of Search Engine Land thinks otherwise:

The reality is that the Wall Street Journal execs seem to be leading a charge against Google without really knowing where they are going or what they want. They already get lots of traffic plus get to have a paywall, thanks to First Click Free at Google. And yet, Murdoch doesn’t seem to know exactly how that operates or how Google indexes his paper. His managing editor Robert Thomson gets confused about font sizes and how Google News works. I get the impression both of them are good at talking but don’t know the actual realities of their traffic situation in relation to Google. Or they know it well but are happy to ignore it.

Oh, Snap. You see, right now, news has a relationship with Google much like Billie Holiday did with heroin.  While it is possible to quit, it won’t be easy.  It will be a long, painful process, that may not even need to happen.  Especially when it is estimated that Google brings about twenty-five percent of Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal traffic.  That kind of pain stockholders may want to think twice about before going cold turkey.

But there is an ugly truth out there that Murdoch may have sensed out that many do not see.  Twitter.  Twitter is surpassing Google as a destination for finding information on breaking and recent news of all types.  Twitter and Facebook are platforms that allow the news sources to post breaking news and gain value from their brand. Google does not.  In other words, if I trust a newspaper, TV or any  brand, I can follow it on twitter and expect the news to come to me.  The concept  of “If the news is important, it will find me” works better by the day.  If it matters to me, chances are very good its in one of the twitter feeds I follow on real time feed. Users will continue to source news through Google.  Now don’t get me wrong, Google ain’t going away any time soon.  But for Real-Time news, Google is not in the equation. 

But all of this ignores a very simple question that no one is really wanting to ask-Do you really want to pay for opinutainment Fox News?

Now Playing: Missing Persons - Spring Session M - Words

Cory Doctrow has done it again.  He went and leaked the details of the internet chapter of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, a secret copyright treaty whose text Obama's administration refused to disclose due to "national security" concerns.  It is not good.  It is very bad indeed.

Some of the more insane details include the following:

*That ISPs have to proactively police copyright on user-contributed material. This means that it will be impossible to run a service like Flickr or YouTube or Blogger, since hiring enough lawyers to ensure that the mountain of material uploaded every second isn't infringing will exceed any hope of profitability.

* That ISPs have to cut off the Internet access of accused copyright infringers or face liability. This means that your entire family could be denied to the internet -- and hence to civic participation, health information, education, communications, and their means of earning a living -- if one member is accused of copyright infringement, without access to a trial or counsel.

* That the whole world must adopt US-style "notice-and-takedown" rules that require ISPs to remove any material that is accused -- again, without evidence or trial -- of infringing copyright. This has proved a disaster in the US and other countries, where it provides an easy means of censoring material, just by accusing it of infringing copyright.

Makes me want to become a renegade HVAC repairman.

Now Playing: Metallica - Black Album - Wherever I May Roam

Oh my.  Apparently AT&T finally got tired of Verizon's claims that AT&T’s 3G coverage is, well, spotty.  AT&T took matters to federal court claiming Verizon Wireless' latest TV ads are misleading, and falsely indicate that AT&T has gaps in wireless coverage.  AT&T is seeking an emergency injunction to stop the ads. It also seeks unspecified damages, accusing Verizon of false advertising, and claims the ads harm AT&T's ability to compete. AT&T also said Verizon's ads are causing AT&T to lose "incalculable market share" and goodwill with customers.

Of course the questions concern the maps in the Verizon ads.  If you have seen the ads, Verizon’s map  of the US is almost all Verizon red.  The AT&T map, however, has a lot of white and very little AT&T Blue.  The ads concerns itself with 3G coverage only, which is quite different from regular phone and texting service.  After all, why buy an iPhone if you can’t use most of its features?  Unfortunately, some people have taken the white voids as meaning that AT&T has no coverage at all.  Then again, there appear to be a large supply of people in the US who think that Sarah Palin could run the country.   I’m guessing it’s the same bunch. 

But back to the maps in the commercials.  Gizmodo, being a site that prides itself on getting all things mobile right, compared the 3G maps for themselves.   And guess what?

The maps that Verizon chose do seem to represent the same thing—3G coverage only. Yes, AT&T lawyers, if I'm right about this, it means that had Verizon cheated, their map would have been even redder than the one in the ad. So what's say we spend more of that iPhone subscription money on fixing the network (near my house, please!) and less money on frivolous lawsuits.

Ouch.  Now, I loves me some technology and I know that AT&T’s problem has been a network that is as ancient as it is untrustworthy.  And as much as they would love to think otherwise, suing your competitors for the public’s stupidity is well, par for the course for Ernestine Tomlin’s employers.  As for improving their service?  I’m pretty sure there are some applications for that, but AT&T doesn’t want to seem to want to use them.  I guess they’re too expensive for the shareholders. 

Now Playing: The Main Ingredient - The Main Ingredient - The All-Time Greatest Hits - Everybody Plays the Fool

There is a storage facility being built in Utah.  Now, as data centers go this one is impressive.  Why?  Well, first of all, consider the source.  The NSA, otherwise known as Big Brother to some or the people who keep us safe to others is behind it all.  Second, the facility will house and analyze all forms of electronic communication that goes on in this country. 

If you think that’s a lot, you are correct.  The word we are thinking of here is a Yottabyte.  How big is that?  The people at Cruchgear puts it rather succinctly:

There are a thousand gigabytes in a terabyte, a thousand terabytes in a petabyte, a thousand petabytes in an exabyte, a thousand exabytes in a zettabyte, and a thousand zettabytes in a yottabyte. In other words, a yottabyte is 1,000,000,000,000,000GB.

Now that figure, is of course just one estimate from the Pentagon.  The more realistic number at the moment is a few hundred petabytes.  But really, how long ago did the term terabyte seem huge?  A few hundred petabytes in about ten years will seem rather small in comparison.  So credit the Pentagon for thinking a few years down the road. 

The other point to this is just how will all this information be stored.  Face it, the amount of power to keep hundred of thousands of disks spinning would keep Hoover Dam busy.  So storage media is of prime importance, as well as finding all that power.  But this is the government, and they are sinking a couple of billion dollars to start this puppy up.  Small change for sure, but they are still obstacle that will need to be solved before we all start adjusting out tin-foil hats. 

Now Playing: King Crimson - In the Court of the Crimson King - 21st Century Schizoid Man

Sometimes, that stupid little voice inside me says “Are you sure its safe?  Really sure?”  Call me paranoid, a modern day Luddite, whatever.  The voice will not be silenced.

And then I read things like this, from a letter abstract from the site nature nanotechnology:

Carbon nanotubes are shaped like fibres and can stimulate inflammation at the surface of the peritoneum when injected into the abdominal cavity of mice2, raising concerns that inhaled nanotubes may cause pleural fibrosis and/or mesothelioma.

The study showed the immune response and fibrosis disappeared within three months of exposure. However, this study used only a single exposure to the nanotubes.

Ruh-Roh.  In other words, carbon nanotubes may act like asbestos fibers.  More study is of course needed, but suddenly the voice jumps up and screams “I told You!  Anything that small can be mistaken by the body for something else!”  It is completely unknown at this point whether inhaled carbon nanotubes will prove to be carcinogenic in the lungs or in the pleural lining.  But, I’ll wait.  And watch. 

Now Playing: Joe Jackson - Night and Day – Cancer

Oh, it is On.  If you haven’t been keeping up with the headlines, when last we left the bizarre love triangle between ATT, Google and Apple, Apple had basically thrown Google’s clothes out on the street at ATT’s prompting.  Then the FCC decided that maybe some investigation into all this might help all this out.  Round one went to Google, who looked totally innocent, while AT&T looked like, well, what we’ve always expected them to look like; an archaic phone company that is credited with the invention of busy signals, dropped calls and poor customer service.  And completely out of their element. 

And that, as they say, is when the fight really started.

In September, Ma Bell asked the Federal Communications Commission to investigate Google Voice on the grounds that it was preventing consumers from calling certain numbers, which AT&T argues violates the principles of net neutrality.  Google, of course, didn’t agree with such a portrayal of Google Voice and argued that since it’s not a traditional phone service, it shouldn’t be treated as such. The company instead referred to Google Voice as an Internet application.

On October 9, the FCC decided, what the hell, and investigate Google Voice, especially after congressional members asked it to do so.  Google replied saying that it’s blocking Google Voice calls to rural areas because they’re directed to free conference call lines and sex hotlines engaged in the dubious practice of so-called traffic pumping

Today, in response, AT&T brought out Nuns.  That’s right, a convent of Benedictine Nuns who apparently can’t receive, or make, Google Voice calls, either. 

Oh snap!

But sideshow aside, the FCC is soon going to find themselves in uncharted territory.  They are opening a can of worms concerning traffic pumping and that will take them beyond Google Voice into the practices of other VoIP providers, such as Speakeasy and MagicJack.  So be it.  They need to.  But really though, it rings hollow for AT&T to get all preachy about Net Neutrality when dealing with Google, given the past few months.  As someone pointed out, the Internet is the Internet and the phone system is the phone system.  While the two work together at points, they are indeed different legal animals-at least for now.  And therefore, the idea of AT&T whining about Net Neutrality while talking about the phone system is nothing but a bait and switch, or worse yet, a naked power grab that has everything to do about controlling the debate over Net Neutrality.  Remember, Net Neutrality is something the telcos does not want to see happen.  Google does.  Control the debate-control future rules.  Discredit the main prophet of Net Neutrality in the process and there’s the bonus point. 

But still the point AT&T makes has some merit – it seems unfair for Google Voice to act as a layer on top of the telcos that shunts the expensive calls to the underlying telcos, and does the free ones themselves.  But like many things in this world, it may be legal, even though it may not be right.  It will prove interesting just what the ruling turns out to be.

Now Playing: Blondie - Parallel Lines - Hanging on the Telephone

From the start, I have been leery of “The Cloud”.  There have been major questions concerning what happens to my data should my cloud company goes tits-up.  There are plenty of security questions.  And then there are the questions about backups.

Or in the case of Microsoft/Danger, the lack, thereof. 

You see, according to Endgaget, owners of the T-Mobile Sidekick were having problems this week with the basic tasks-text message going awry, missing address books, you name it.  T-Mobile's now reporting that personal data stored on Sidekicks has "almost certainly has been lost as a result of a server failure at Microsoft/Danger." They're still looking for a way to recover it, but they're not giving users a lot of hope.  In addition, the server is still on the Fritz.  It’s been almost a week.  In addition, T-Mobile is warning customers to not restart, power down or let their handhelds lose power, as the Sidekick itself only caches the information and powering down can turn your unit into a brick.

Nice, eh? So the problem?  According to Hiptop3.com, apparently Microsoft was upgrading their SAN (Storage Area Network aka the thing that stores all your data), and the effort failed horribly. 

Microsoft had contracted with Hitachi to come in and do the SAN upgrade.  And noone knows yet if whether MS had expected Hitachi to make a backup before the upgrade and it wasn’t done, or if it was because of the amount of data that would be required, or if MS didn’t have time to do it, or if someone had actually been conned into thinking that everything would have gone so seamlessly that there was no need for it, or if they simply forgot .   Yeah, “I forgot to make a backup.  My bad.”  Famous last words.  But why there was no backup made before the upgrade is not the point.  The point is there was no backup at all. 

“But,” you may interject, “This is Microsoft - they have to have a backup plan, I mean, that’s taught Day 1 in any database class.   Have a backup.  When you do anything major to the system – have a backup.  If you think you may sneeze – have a backup.  Especially when you are doing an upgrade to you storage area network.”  At this point, no one knows why there was no working backup procedure in place.  And there was obviously no procedure in place because if there was, THERE WOULD BE A FREAKING BACKUP AVAILABLE!  How this happens in today’s day and age is beyond belief. Hundreds of thousands of customers that generate millions of dollars in revenue means you back their stuff up, in triplicate. You test these backups regularly like clockwork, and you move a copy off site that doesn’t get touched except in case of an emergency (i.e. right now). This is not a place where you make a cut in the budget because a breakdown has never happened.  The head of the mobile division (and person in charge of what’s left of Danger) is Roz Ho, who has been at Microsoft for 18 years. You would think she’d know something about how to run a business division.  Hopefully she’ll be able to fill out an unemployment form.  Because that’s what she should be doing Monday morning.  She, and every single DBA who had anything to do with this.  I know that if it were me, I would have been out on my butt about ten minutes after something like this, no questions asked. 

The fact that T-Mobile and/or Microsoft Danger don’t have a redundant backup is simply inexcusable, especially given the fact that the Sidekick is totally reliant on the cloud because it doesn’t store its data locally.  That’s right.  All your data lives in the cloud.  Isn’t that a great idea?  Negligence does not even begin to describe this.  There are people whose entire business was just eliminated.  Why didn’t the users do a backup?  Oh but many did.  You see, T-Mobile had a wonderful backup service that allowed you to effortlessly do just that.  And that information is… guess where?  It rhymes with “down the toilet”.  And trust me, the lawyers will be contacting ever single Sidekick owner in five, four, three, two…

Now Playing: Alice In Chains - Unplugged - No Excuses

When you talk about rock, David Bowie is a name that will come up as much as Bach will come up when talking about classical music; the fact is you can’t get around him. 

Another thing: I really like his later stuff, meaning post Tin Machine.  While not as popular, his later albums have shown a mature musician and performer well in touch with his limitations, yet still attempting to push them.  One such work was his collaboration with Brian Eno, Outside.  While panned by most, there are songs that easily stand up or surpass his early works.  And so with that, and one day after NASA threw an object at the moon, I give you a live version of my second-favorite song on the album, Hallo Spaceboy, with special guest Foo Fighters.   Enjoy.

A little bit of news for those planning on going to New York.  Well, those planning on being arrested, that is.  According to a story in the NY Daily News, a recent internal memo instructed NYPD officers to remove your cell phone's battery "to avoid leakage" and jot down your IMEI number.  For those of you who do not know, the IMEI number is registered with the service provider whenever a call is made.  in other words, it lets the phone company know that you are you.  That number would then be placed into an internal database which would allow them to match phones used by a suspect to past, present, and future crimes.

There’s only one small problem with this “wonderful” crime fighting idea.  Well, besides someone writing the wrong numbers down and some poor fool named Archebald Buttle gets arrested later for having the phone that was supposed to belong to Archebald "Harry" Tuttle, well known renegade air conditioning specialist.  Well, and then there’s the problem that this will create a black market for untraceable cell phones (ooh, I bet the Russian mob is going to love that one).  Oh yeah, there is that slight problem that all Chinese-made cell phones sold in India have the same number and some overseas cells are embedded with fake numbers.  But, no those are merely points that no one will think about until the lawyers start to sue the city for false imprisonment.

The small problem I’m talking about is a warrant is needed to obtain information such as calls made or numbers in an address book.  By taking the “cautionary” step of removing a possibly leaking battery, and writing down the IMEI number, basically the police circumvent that messy warrant nonsense.  Still, civil libertarians are alarmed, as they should be.  The cell phone information joins another database of more than 20 million 911 callers that the NYPD has been building.  It has paid off.  Yes in the last five years, the police can publicly point to one case involving a 911 call; detectives solved a burglary pattern after the suspect left a slip of paper with his cell number on it at a crime scene.

One whole case in the city of New York over the last five years that the department can point to and say “See all this has paid off, the same way a number on a cocktail napkin can help find a suspect in a rape case, that is, if Dick Wolf had written the script.” 

Unfortunately, there is no script and no tidy endings here. 

Now Playing: LCD Soundsystem - Sound of Silver - New York, I Love You But You're Bringing Me Down

The time has come to face the facts.  I realized this a couple of weekends ago watching CNN.  Specifically, the conversation was about the job market and finding that “dream job” that everyone talks about but very few apparently have.  And so the conversation boiled down to that old standby, the resume.  And I came to the conclusion, that much like Anna Wintour at Vogue every now and then proclaims that Brown is the new Black,  I was ready to proclaim the heresy of heresies. The resume is dead.

You read it hear, folks.  The resume is dead.  Gone.  Not ever to return.  Not even a “long live the resume”.  Finished. Ka-put, dahling.

Why, you may ask?  Let’s looks at this in the cold light of day, shall we?  If you look at all the “tips” you hear about writing the “perfect” resume, you’ll drive yourself over the cliff.  The perfect resume is one page long, covers everything you ever did in twelve point type, has every keyword a recruiter will ever use and never, never looks too crowded or too sparse.  In addition if you are changing professions, a functional resume is great as long as it is in chronological order.  You also need to let any future employer know what you have done, but since your work responsibilities always fit underneath that job title perfectly, mentioning what your responsibilities actually were is redundant and therefore should not be included.  You need to list your accomplishments, but do so in a way that does not look like you’re bragging.  And it really doesn’t matter anyway, because all those resumes that are handed out at job fairs and the like are basically thrown into the round file, once they make it back.  Well, that is if someone even accepts them.  “You’ll need to visit our website” is the latest catchphrase that basically means “Keep that piece of paper out of my face”.  And what does that website ask you to do?  Put your resume in their format.  So there you are, rewriting you resume yet again. 

I think I had come to this realization some time ago, when a recruiter basically took my resume and asked , where are the keywords?  To which I replied, the systems I have used are at the top of the page.  “No, no.” he said, “You need to list keywords for every single job you have on the resume, even if it seems redundant.  Hiring managers are only looking at keywords these days.”

I wanted to tell him that any hiring manager that makes decisions based on single words should be riding that “special bus” to work, but decided against it.  Because after some research, he was right.  There is an interesting white paper (pdf format)from The Sierra Group, entitled ”The Traditional Resume is Dead: The Technology Behind Recruiting”.  In four pages, they point out that recruiting has become an assembly line process for most employers, and that the practice of resume blasting has increased the load of resumes greatly for companies.  The result?  You are never going to stand out no matter how good your resume is.  Remember, Human Resource Managers are more interested in finding the best candidate or candidates, not just those who meet some minimum standard of a screening process.

So, with all these barriers to the traditional resume, how do you break through?  The answer to that question is what nabs you the dream job, or at least the job du jour.  One thing is certain. The old ways of job searching are long gone.  Just like Brown is the new Black.  At least for this season. 

Now Playing: The Dandy Warhols - Welcome to the Monkey House - I Am a Scientist

Ah yes, the unicorn called Net Neutrality.  Plenty has been written about it, people have spoke about it, and the moment someone starts to do something about it…

Yeah, you know what happens.

Now for those of you who do not know what it is I’m writing about, Net Neutrality is based on a simple thoughts.  From Wikipedia:

A neutral broadband network is one that is free of restrictions on content, sites, or platforms, or on the kinds of equipment that may be attached, and on the modes of communication allowed, as well as one where communication is not unreasonably degraded by other communication streams.

That’s a mouthful, so let me break it down.  Let’s say I’m a user of Time Warner’s Roadrunner cable system.  I want to communicate with someone who uses a Comcast system.  Net neutrality says we should be able to communicate, play games, pass home videos back and forth without having to worry that Comcast will slow down or even block my access because I’m using Time Warner or vice versa.  This would also apply to me wanting to visit certain websites that may hold views that Time Warner opposes (hello freedom of speech issues).

Now of course, there are some who say that the telecommunications companies would never do such a thing, while we have watched telcoms intentionally slow down peer to peer transmissions (Comcast), while others have instituted a cell-phone style billing system of overages, free-to-telecom "value added" services, and anti-competitive tying (known as "bundling") and pay by the gigabyte service.  All in the name of transmission “quality”

So onto this stage comes the current FCC chairman, Julius Genachowski giving a speech in which he outlined the FCC's plan to enforce Net neutrality.

From Genachowski’s speech: "Broadband providers cannot discriminate against particular Internet content or applications, nor can they disfavor an Internet service just because it competes with a similar service offered by that broadband provider. The Internet must continue to allow users to decide what content and applications succeed."  That bit seems to have been directed at Apple and ATT.

And within twenty four hours, six Republican senators  introduced an amendment that would block the Federal Communications Commission from implementing its recently announced Net Neutrality policy.  A response within twenty four hours, from Republican Senators, no less.  As my Grandmother was fond of saying “must have touched a nerve.”  

It would seem almost farcical, but it is reality.  After all, ATT is based in Kay Bailey Hutchison’s home state of Texas.  Did I mention she’s running for governor as well?  Co-sponsors are Sen. Sam Brownback (R-KS), Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) Sen. John Ensign (R-NV), Sen. John Thune (R-SD) and Sen. David Vitter (R-LA).  All one can say is that they haven’t met a Democratic action they didn’t hate, so it really is no surprise that they would sign on because it is all politics for these show ponies.  The part of Genachowski's plan that ISPs are most opposed to, according to PCWorld , is that it would apply to mobile carriers as well -- cell phones, Blackberries and the like. Bandwidth for wireless is not infinite, and some carriers have argued that they need to shape some traffic on their networks in order to make sure there is space available for everyone.

But by the way things look, the only shape the telcos want to see are the shape of dollar bills.  So pull up a seat, and get ready to Tweet because this is going to be a fight.  Oh yeah, and you might want to make sure your voice is heard like a wingnut at a town hall healthcare meeting. 

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Facebook has been developing a “Facebook Lite” for a little while now and after some testing, it looks like it is ready for prime time- at least in the US and India. 

Well of course I tried it out.  Now, mind you, Facebook Lite was developed for those area where an internet connection can be difficult to find.  So, as a result, what you get is the bare bones - no applications, no games, just the basics.  It was a snap to add the page in through the TechCrunch link (above) and all I can say is – not bad.  It is faster than the regular Facebook page, due to the fact that there are no applications (can I hear an A-MEN?!").  There are currently no groups, which is a bit of a downer, but overall I can see using it when I just want to touch base and not spend all night on it. 

So why India?  According to the TechCrunch article:

India is one of the countries that was originally being targeted by Facebook Lite, and it was the first test space it launched in several months ago. India also represents an area where Facebook is growing very fast.

It is also an area where, contrary to popular opinion, the internet connections are not the best in the world.  Not as bad as South Africa, but certainly not Japan or Finland.  

Final thoughts: No Mafia Wars.  No Farmville, No name generators or tests.  Simple web-fu back end.  No beheadings.  Joe-Rob says, check it out. 

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"You know I don't think I'm going to let you stay in the film business"

For those of you too young to remember, there was a band called The Clash.  The Clash was the punk group of my generation.  They, along with the Ramones, are what made the genre a genre worth listening too.  Unfortunately, the band broke up over artistic differences in the early 80’s, but Mick Jones went on to form a group called Big Audio Dynamite.  B.A.D. released the album “This is Big Audio Dynamite in 1985.  The song E=MC2 was the third track on the album, and the major hit off of the album.   

So what is so special about this song?  The track is considered to be the first song to make use of highly defined sampling technologies.  The song makes use not only of audio samples from a number of films directed by Nicolas Roeg, such as Performance and Insignificance, but makes numerous meta-allusions to them.  The video was unusual as well, as it also made use of video sampling, using clips from The Man who Fell to Earth and Don’t Look Now.  This was also something that no other band had tried at the time. All in all, a ground breaking song and video.  Enjoy.

So what have we learned from the Apple love fest in San Francisco?

1. Steve Jobs likes ice cream
2. Steve Jobs is back, baby, yeah!
3. The iTunes store is now officially “Beautiful”, even as it bloats its way to 88MB.
4. Speaking of big, the iPod Touch is now at 64GB and faster as well, but no camera.
5. The iPod Nano got a camera, but I’m too old to see images that small. 
6. The Beatles are still no where to be found, even though we did find out there was a “faux”-ko Ono saying they would be.

In other words, nothing we didn’t all ready know weeks in advance, although it was good to see Mr. Jobs looking spry.  No surprises, nothing spectacular, just the blast off of the next gen for Apple. 

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I love Bob Dylan.  The man is more than an icon: he is a gifted writer and the voice for a generation, and soon…the voice on your GPS?

According to spinner.com, Dylan has announced that he is in talks with two car manufacturers to be the voice of their in-car GPS.  Which makes me wonder what that would sound like.

“I don’t know how many more roads you’ll be traveling down, but you need to make a right.”

“You’re gonna have to serve somebody, at the next left”

But even though this could turn out for some to be a great thing, the fact is, Dylan is not the first.  There are voices available for your GPS, better known as Navtones, which features Mr. T, Kim Cattrall, Dennis Hopper, Burt Reynolds, Gary Busey (that one just scares me for some reason), just to name a few.  Plus, hold onto you steering wheel, the voice of KITT coming soon!

Coming next – The voice of that backseat driver you want to throw from the car.

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Harry Truman was before my time.  But my dad could talk about him for hours on end.  And in a way, I could see what my dad liked about him.  His no-nonsense, say what you mean attitude may seem brusque to some, but for my dad, and by extension, me, it is just right.  Even the old “The buck stops here.” message I like.  It implies responsibility first and fore mostly.  If you have a product and something in your product is wrong, then it is ultimately your responsibility to make it right, whether you made the imperfect part or not.  The part is in your product. 

I’m thinking that Steve Jobs and Harry Truman may not have gotten along well.  And I’m really hoping I’m wrong. 

It seems that there are a small rash of exploding iPhones in Europe.  Granted, eight phones is not a huge number, but I stopped for a minute when I read  the response from The Great and Powerful Apple.  From T3.com:

“They said, in a statement: "To date, there are no confirmed battery overheating incidents for iPhone 3GS and the number of reports we are investigating is in the single digits,"

"The iPhones with broken glass that we have analysed to date show that in all cases the glass cracked due to an external force that was applied to the iPhone."”

Uh-huh.  External force.  Mind telling the rest of us what that means?  Does it mean if I touch the screen, is that an example of “external Force”, or do I have to whack it real hard a couple of times?  Let’s say I have my messenger bag and I place my iPhone in there with the other things in my life (wallet, keys, backup tapes from work, sunglasses, papers) and these objects bounce around in the bag?  Does that qualify? Or is it a long and constant pressure from say, having it in my jacket pocket and riding really crowded subway trains?  Come on, unless you can tell me how much pressure for how long constitutes “external force”, you might as be saying “F.U. people, you broke it, you buy it.” 

Yeah, I’m being harsh.  While the number of incidents are in the single digits, the fact is, that number has happened in a relatively short span of time.  I’m sure that Apple is really looking at the situation from more than just a standard legal denial angle.  And I’m also sure that if more iPhones mysteriously decide to turn into an IED, then Apple will take the lead in finding out what the heck is going on.    Because this is more than just a legal point.  This is a responsibility point.  This is where we see where the buck really stops.

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