The best advertising database in the world

It’s making the news now and really should have come as no surprise if you have been following the news. It’s a reducto ad absurdum of the Administration’s “creative” interpretation of the Constitution.

If you parse the up-to-date denials and spin, you will see they’re not denying it. The only claim is that the profiles are anonymous. Their interpretation of the law seems to be as long as its not tied to your social security number, no warrant is needed and the 4th is not violated. (There is this separation in their minds between “unreasonable search and seisure” and “probable cause” along the lines of “these are terrorists, this is war, it is not unreasonable to search these records without warrants in times of war.)

I’m not interesting in talking about the legality of that. Instead I want to think about two things: 1) Why the outrage now? 2) Even if you take the most restrictive definition of what that database does, how useful is it?

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Applying common sense to what you read

As has been mentioned many times on the blogs already, The Apple v. Apple lawsuit ended in favor of Apple Computer.

And to everyone who claimed that that Apple Corps were sure to win, I’d like to point out more of us need to do a common sense parse of the news we read.

Look, if Apple Computer actually expected to lose this lawsuit do you think they would have merged their countersuit in California (home turf) into the one in Great Britain (enemy turf)? Did you miss the part where Apple didn’t “lose” the last two lawsuits, but settled? That because they were settled, people could only deduce the implications of the settlement and nobody besides the two Apples and the judge actually could actually be qualified to make a ruling?
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Music for free (with strings)

Neil Young has introduced his new album on his website for free. The interesting thing is it forces you to listen to it in its entirety—the actual website consists of two interacting swf file and a GIF used to track stats.

Living With War

This way it won’t undercut sales of the CD or downloads when it is released on Tuesday. Pretty clever.

(The spin on this form of delivery is quite clever. From The New York Times review:

Mr. Young wants the album heard as a whole. The online streams play through from beginning to end; until the CD is ready, the downloadable copies will be available only as a bundle of the full album. “That first impression is so important,” he said. “Instead of just going to ‘Let’s Impeach the President,’ people will have to absorb the whole thing. To understand the songs, you need to understand where the whole album’s coming from. It protects my right as an artist to have the work presented the way I created it.”

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No value deal

wendys

I stopped by Wendy’s on the way back from the ski rental. I noticed the double was selling for $1 more than the single and the triple was $1 more than the double.

But they were advertising “Double the beef just add 89 cents.” So technically you save 11 cents if you order a single and “double” it. Also does that mean you get a quad for less than the price of a triple if you “double the beef” on a double, or was there some fine print I missed?

It’s strange that the menu system in fast food places requires such a large amount of financial arithmetic in order to order something. I wonder if Dave Thomas is rolling over in his grave.

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Shooting people at work

There has been a movement in Plaxo recently to make the blog “more edgy” and less bland corporate PR crap. I can only say that’s a good thing.

One little gem of that outgrowth is a wonderful entry by my co-worker Michael Rowley on photographing people at work. Actually, yesterday we had a “Haxo” day where we spend our time working on a project not related to my current work. Michael spent his Haxo Day photographing at Plaxo so in many ways this blog entry was an outgrowth of his Haxo project.

If you are curious as to Michael’s style, here is a candid he took of me:

Terry 0277

“Terry 0277” by Mnemonix
(Sony Cybershot DSC-F717) f/2.2 at 1/100 second, iso 400, 7.2mm (69mm)

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