Current Affairs

Rep. Michele Bachmann: Not the Brightest Bulb in the Sign

March 3, 2011 By Steve Borsch Leave a Comment

Congresswoman Michele Bachmann, in a continuation of her tirades against the “nanny state” and “government takeover” of seemingly everything, reintroduced her Light Bulb Freedom of Choice Act which essentially demands proof of compact fluorescent light bulb safety (due to the mercury it contains) and the carbon emissions purported to be reduced if incandescent bulbs begin their current governmental mandated phase-out in January of 2012.

Even though her amended bill seems to include a focus on “the people” vs. her usual focus on business, I have my doubts but can’t figure out what her real motivation is in trying to kill this 2012 mandate. In part her bill states that proof is needed that compact fluorescent bulbs, “…will not pose any health risks, including risks associated with mercury containment in certain light bulbs, to consumers or the general public, including health risks with respect to hospitals, schools, day care centers, mental health facilities, and nursing homes.” Really? I highly doubt Bachmann cares at all about “consumers and the general public” since she’s not showing ANY leanings in that direction during her Congressional tenure.

I’m still trying to figure out who wins here. Is she in the pocket of “big light bulb”? Not likely. Is it just low-hanging fruit to get the non-thinking masses riled up? Probably. But even that isn’t clear and I highly doubt she’s just being her usual short-sighted, screamingly goofy on any anti-Obama issue so other GOP’ers don’t have to be, self.

For the last five years (see this post from 2006) I’ve been closely watching what’s going on in energy and, especially, the ONE, MOST WASTEFUL energy use WORLDWIDE: incandescent light bulbs. The US Department of Energy, the European Union energy ministers, and anyone with half-a-brain can do the 2nd grade arithmetic necessary to easily see the energy wasting nature of this lighting source.

This article (written in 2006!) from the Economist summed up the primary reason why we MUST get off incandescent lighting:

Worldwide about 20% of all electricity generated is used for lighting. Several studies reckon that LEDs could eventually cut that amount in half. That would not only save billions of dollars in electricity bills, but also significantly reduce energy demand, environmental pollution and greenhouse-gas emissions.

So is Michele Bachmann a terrorist who wants us to remain dependent on foreign oil? Is she concerned that big oil companies will have their revenues lowered if the U.S. moves toward efficient and energy saving lighting? Seriously, I can’t think of what the hell her motivation is here other than finding any reason to jump on an issue that gets people riled up one way or another.

What do you think?

Filed Under: Current Affairs, GreenTech

Serene Branson: The Dark Side of Social Media?

February 15, 2011 By Steve Borsch Leave a Comment

Serene Branson, CBS News

When you’re on Twitter, Facebook or using any other social media and you see everyone piling on some internet meme or buzzing about some news headline, think about NOT jumping to conclusions like I just did. There usually is more to the story.

Taking a peek at my Twitter feed today I noticed several discussions about a “Serene Branson” and an “epic fail” so I took a look at the video. Like many on Twitter, I instantly burst out laughing and found myself thinking, “Oh…reporter. Los Angeles. The Grammy Awards. Probably imbibed or snorted something backstage.“

Turns out there are several M.D.s that instantly were very concerned that it was highly likely there’d been a neurological event (e.g., a mini stroke) and not anything else.

I’m ashamed to admit that my initial suspicious reaction is likely wrong and I should’ve stopped myself from leaping to any conclusion. It took reading the comments (where others had said, “Hey! Wait a minute!” and pointed out the potential for a brain issue) to stop myself from jumping on the pile and it wiped the smile off my face pretty quickly.

Is the jury still out on whether this was “self medication” or a brain problem? Yes. The station released a statement yesterday afternoon saying, “Serene Branson was examined by paramedics on scene immediately after her broadcast. Her vital signs were normal. She was not hospitalized. As a precautionary measure, a colleague gave her a ride home and she says that she is feeling fine this morning.” While it’s possible she was blasted or high, shouldn’t we all take a page from the American justice system and consider someone innocent until proven guilty?

A friend of mine once had an episode on the phone where he couldn’t speak for 30 seconds. Shrugging it off, it happened again that evening. Turns out he had a brain tumor. You’d never know it by looking at him, and having him as a pal should’ve made me be instantly empathetic, but instead my instant reaction was coldly judgemental. Think about that the next time you see some “EPIC FAIL!” video that someone has tossed up on YouTube for we voyeurs to gawk at like a car wreck on the highway. I know I will in the future.

Good overview from the Today show:

Filed Under: Current Affairs

“Big technology companies down to, ah, Microsoft”

January 20, 2011 By Steve Borsch 2 Comments

With people like veteran analyst Mary-Jo Foley questioning Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer’s vision and ability to execute and others that the company has run out of ideas, there is obvious and growing concern about the company’s long-term viability. Coupled with that is my own overwhelming realization that there seems to be virtually zero buzz about the company among leading mobile or hosted web application developers (two of the hottest technology categories in the marketplace).

So should we be surprised that U.S. Commerce Secretary Gary Locke likely just ‘dissed’ Microsoft on national television without realizing it?

This week CEOs from Microsoft Corp. and Goldman Sachs were part of a group of corporate leaders which the Obama administration brought together for a meeting with Chinese President Hu Jintao. The intent was to discuss U.S. business interests in China and to be frank about intellectual property (I.P.) concerns. American companies have had I.P. pirated (especially in software) or had physical goods knocked off instantly by counterfeiting Chinese companies while that government has historically looked the other way.

Watching CNBC’s Squawk Box this morning, I was listening to this segment where the show’s main anchor, Becky Quick, was interviewing Commerce Secretary Locke. While paying half attention to what was being said, I did a double-take when Locke said at the end of his talking point that the CEOs had met with President Hu Jintao and President Obama and had “reinforced the message” about I.P. protection and stopping counterfeiting but then added these CEOs included those from…

“…our big technology companies down to, ah, Microsoft.”

Ouch. Here is the 40 second snippet from that segment:

USCommSec_MSFT.mp3

Filed Under: Current Affairs, Innovation, Technology

Experian’s Unethical & Misleading Marketing

December 31, 2010 By Steve Borsch 12 Comments

UPDATE 1/14/11: Probably since I tweeted to @ProtectMyID for a second time, someone stopped by and left a comment. I responded with my phone number via email and someone called…just to check to see if everything had been resolved.

Hmm…no apology. No explanation as to how this happened. Just a sort of collective shrug of the shoulders from these Experian folks. My post headline and post content stand.

When I had my wallet stolen on a family trip in 2004, I was pleased to have the big three credit companies be there for me to protect my credit. Experian was the one I used to put my account on a “hold” so that any company issuing credit to someone in my name would first have to call me. I’ve always thought Experian was trustworthy and a top notch company…until this week.

On Sunday December 26th I received an email from Experian’s “ProtectMyID” service. It started off with,

“Thank you for ordering ProtectMyID.com.

For your security, additional information was required to confirm your personal information and activate your account. At this time, please call us so that we may provide you with immediate access to your membership. You will be asked to answer a few questions to confirm your identity before you are provided with access.“

Being pretty savvy when it comes to phishing scams—and always double and triple checking to make certain anyone emailing me is legitimate—I checked them out thoroughly. ProtectMyID was, in fact, an Experian company and I decided I’d check up on them when I returned from our holiday trip.

Then today I received an official looking letter whihc made it clear that there was SOME sort of account activity. I launched a call to customer service and it turns out they were “fishing” (vs. “phishing”) for new customers since they were following up on my 2004 connection with them! The woman on customer service clearly positioned this as, “Well, you were a former customer” and that “you must’ve signed up at some point” both of which are complete bullshit.

This is the worst, most egregious unethical and misleading marketing I’ve EVER SEEN DONE BY A MAJOR COMPANY! Of course, it’s impossible to connect with someone by phone (like “Doug Sash, VP of Customer Care”) since they have no voicemail system that’s obvious. Experian ought to be embarrassed and this is precisely the sort of thing that a State Attorney General should take up and stop…immediately.

Here is the email and letter. Read them and you tell me if this isn’t misleading:

Filed Under: Current Affairs

TV Disruption and the Politics Wildcard

October 20, 2010 By Steve Borsch Leave a Comment

I love the idea of a free market, one “...in which there is no economic intervention and regulation by the state, except to enforce private contracts and the ownership of property.” Unfortunately only the childlike, uneducated or the naive (um, like the Simpsons) would believe that the current and coming war for the digital living room is one which won’t see enormous political machinations. Especially since corporations are now people and can spend whatever they please to get whomever they want elected and thus get the votes for legislation in their best interests.

Unfortunately those best interests are rarely in line with startups, entrepreneurs or innovators threatening incumbents.

A friend of mine just sent me a link to the VC Fred Wilson’s article, “TV and the Digital Living Room,” and I was going to respond by email but realized that this was a post that had to be written. Fred pointed to an article by Mark Suster wherein Suster discusses “The Future of Television and the Digital Living Room.” In it Suster starts off with this and then details his Top Ten list of issues that form his perspective:

Nobody can predict 100% what the future of television will be so I won’t pretend that I know the answers. But I do know that it will form a huge basis of the future of the Internet, how we consume media, how we communicate with friends, how we play games and how we shop. Video will be inextricably linked to the future of the Internet and consumption between PCs, mobile devices and TVs will merge. Note that I didn’t say there will be total “convergence” – but I believe the services will inter-operate.

The digital living room battle will take place over the next 5-10 years, not just the next 1-2. But with the introduction of Apple TV, Google TV, the Boxee Box & other initiatives it’s clear that this battle will heat up in 2011. The following is not meant to be a deep dive but rather a framework for understanding the issues. This is where the digital media puck is going.

Suster and Wilson both miss one, huge wildcard that might just be the biggest obstacle or the saving grace of TV as it is and as it could be. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Current Affairs, Innovation, Media Shift, Television

The Changemaster got Changed

October 18, 2010 By Steve Borsch 2 Comments

Today’s revelation that Ray Ozzie is leaving Microsoft comes as no surprise. I briefly met Ray in April of 2007 and wrote about that encounter here. I then saw him a year and a half later at the Web 2.0 Summit and wrote about the radically different Ray here. The second time it was as though he was somehow channeling a Microsoft entity and had shifted into “corporate speak mode” in a major (and not good) way. I was instantly turned off. The question I had then was: Will Ozzie change Microsoft…or will Microsoft change him?

Ray got changed.

Though he undoubtedly led many great initiatives at Microsoft, to the world of us outside of the company he was, for the most part, invisible. People I’ve talked to at Microsoft often discuss the factions and turf battles that are endemic to the Microsoft culture and questioned whether he could hope to fill the shoes of what many people at Microsoft have termed “the soul of the company”, Bill Gates.

I suspect he wasn’t able to do things big enough or fast enough within the confines of a culture that doesn’t seem all that innovation-friendly (for a company that spends billions a year on R&D…they seem to have little to show for it besides a few flipper-flappers and dweebezaarbs in the latest version of Office).

About 20 years ago I read a book by Rosabeth Moss Kanter, a professor at Harvard Business School, called The Change Masters which might give us some insight in to the challenges Ray faced with Microsoft culture. In it she discussed how, “Change is a threat when done to me, but an opportunity when done by me.” She says on her blog, “I coined this truth in my book which compared innovation-friendly and innovation-stifling corporate cultures, and then saw it in operation in personal relationships, too. Resistance is always greatest when change is inflicted on people without their involvement, making the change effort feel oppressive or constraining. If it is possible to tie change to things people already want, and give them a chance to act on their own goals and aspirations, then it is met with more enthusiasm and commitment. In fact, they then seek innovation on their own.”

I suspect Ray was challenged to completely shift the Microsoft culture away from one where the desktop OS is at the center of the universe to one where the internet, and most specifically cloud computing, most certainly is. Though it’s easy to see that fact outside the company, that’s the sort of change Microsoft people really don’t want and so the resistance to Ray and his initiatives must’ve been enormous.

CEO Steve Ballmer wrote this email to employees about Ray’s departure which certainly seems like he’s admitting “the cloud” is tangential to, “bringing the great innovations and great innovators he’s assembled into the groups driving our business.” Looks like it’s more business as usual at Microsoft…

….and why every developer I talk to, conference I attend and hot tech news article I read NEVER mentions Microsoft anymore, unless they’re discussing how irrelevant the company is in today’s cloud-centric world. If I were Ray, I’d be delighted to be getting the hell out of there.

Filed Under: Current Affairs, Innovation

When We Run Out of Oil…

May 3, 2010 By Steve Borsch Leave a Comment

If you pay attention to any of the relevant facts about oil production (i.e., supply), oil consumption, and why it’s likely we’re in the Middle East fighting a “war” (e.g., to deploy a strategic military position to ensure a steady flow of oil), then you probably do like I do: waver between complacency and sheer terror over the prospect of running out of oil.

I’ve been following oil geeks at The Oil Drum for some time, and while they clearly give solid and deep analysis of all the current data and conjecture in the oil industry, it’s this “Crash Course 17A-Peak Oil” video by Chris Martenson (from his Crash Course on economics) that I’ve embedded below and is one that will give you a very concise snapshot of where we are in the world with respect to peak oil.

Having learned more than I ever wanted to know about the looming fate of us all in a world soon hungry for energy, I gave up a 34mpg Mercedes diesel in favor of a Toyota Prius — one I routinely get 48mpg in as an average — since I can see strategically that the world’s dependence on a finite resource is accelerating while that resource is dwindling and getting more expensive to deliver. Not a pretty combination. It’s also why I’ll be buying a plug-in hybrid in the next year or two when I find one that fits my strategic and tactical needs for transportation. Gas prices in the next two years will only go one way….up.

Bottom line? If you’re not thinking about your business and personal life in a world with shrinking energy reserves, then you’re not paying attention and need to be….now.

httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwNgNyiXPLk

Filed Under: Current Affairs, Earth, GreenTech, Life, Liberty & the Pursuit of Happiness Tagged With: oil

Why Wikileaks Matters

March 26, 2010 By Steve Borsch 1 Comment

If you’re not paying attention to what is happening on the internet — warrantless wiretapping by the NSA, Google pulling out of China — then you should feel ashamed unless you’re an ultra-conservative who just loves to see autocratic or dictatorial governments in power doing whatever they deem necessary, regardless of the rule of law.

The reasons the framers of our US Constitution were so careful about ensuring there was a checks and balance in place with our three branches of government (executive, legislative, judicial) was to thwart attempts to seize or consolidate power. The problem? The internet is creating a cross-country, cross-cultural and cross-legal platform that is causing all sorts of angst among the intelligence agencies, militaries and governmental bodies throughout the world.

But if you believe (as I do) that sunlight is the best antiseptic, it’s an imperative that there are places like Wikileaks, Cryptome and groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) that are willing to stand up for transparency, freedom, justice and legality in the 21st century and be places where whistleblowers can be confident of help in bringing to light injustices, crimes against humanity or violations of our basic freedoms or privacy.

The video below is one of the best snippets I’ve seen yet on one of these organizations, Wikileaks, that is a repository for leaked information and, in my and other’s view, a key place to ensure information needing to be leaked is leaked.

These leaks are submitted by whistleblowers anywhere in the world, people that would usually be too fearful to come forward. If you don’t think leaks and whistleblowing are important, then just remember that one led Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein to break the Watergate story, ultimately bringing down President Nixon and forever changing the level of trust the citizenry has in the executive branch.

Apparently there is significant surveillance and covert activities focused on shutting down Wikileaks being done by the US intelligence apparatus because of a “…a film exposing a U.S. massacre we will release at the U.S. National Press Club on April 5th” and, most likely, because Wikileaks is a thorn under the saddle of several countries, not just the USA.

If you knew that I did this, you might ask why I just donated to Wikileaks or am a consistent donor to EFF. It’s because of my deep desire to ensure that liberty, freedom, democracy and justice prevails…no matter what the cost. For all I’ve received from living in a country for which my previous generation fought and died to keep these at the forefront, it’s the least I can do for them and for my children…

…let alone for oppressed people in other countries to whom we’re increasingly connected via the internet that is making a Wikileaks possible!

Watch this video about Wikileaks and decide for yourself:

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4o2ZGk1djTU

Filed Under: Current Affairs, Internet Tagged With: Wikileaks

White House Screening of “The Pacific”

March 14, 2010 By Steve Borsch Leave a Comment

My respect for Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks has never been higher and I’m looking forward to seeing their new project, The Pacific. It’s on HBO which I currently don’t subscribe to, but will just for this miniseries.

I follow the White House blog and came across this post. It seemed interesting enough to blog about since it gives Spielberg & Hanks’ motivation behind the making of this miniseries and is kind of a fun peek behind the scenes.

Filed Under: Current Affairs, Television