At the beginning of September 2007, I suffered the loss of my laptop and naturally I blogged about it. The time came to make a decision that I had been contemplating for a long time: Do I buy another HP (a high end configured HP Pavillion 9500 to be exact)? Or do I buy a MacBook Pro? At the time we knew that Leopard was coming soon. I made the decision that since the MacBook Pro was more expensive and a slightly weaker machine than what my HP Configuration would be, and since Leopard wasn’t out yet, I’d buy the HP. First, however, there was one stipulation! It had to have the ability to go back to XP in case my software wouldn’t run on Vista. I was equally fearful, because I know a number of people do not like Vista.

I called HP, went through the needed configuration that I would need, got the price, got a good discount ($500) because the last 4 laptops I bought were all HP. This made my HP almost $1,000 less expensive than a MacBrook Pro would have been. The clincher was when I asked the representative if I could replace Vista with XP if it doesn’t work out for me. The representative did not know and he had to ask his supervisor. The gist is that the answer I got was, and I quote:

“Sir, if you need to replace Vista with XP after receiving your laptop, please call us back and we will help you do that!

Fast forward a few days – my laptop arrives. I turn it on, set it up and promptly install my most critical business software As I feared, during installation, the installation crashed – it was not Vista compatible. (Before you ask, I also tried to run it in XP mode and that did not help). I talked to the makers of the software and they have no immediate plans to make a Vista compatible version. No worries though, I’ll just call HP and with their help install Windows XP.

After two hours on the phone, the same person who had promised help to install XP, had to admit that he had lied. I accused him of just saying what I wanted to hear to make the sale. Furthermore, HP informed me multiple times along the way, that if I install XP, I will void my warranty. If I don’t like that, I can certainly return the unit for a full refund.

I have solved my problem with virtualization because the laptop and I are now in Europe and I didn’t want to go through the procedure and I wanted to move on.

While Vista has many issues (some of mine are listed here), that is okay because so did previous versions of Windows when they were released. My biggest issue with Vista, though, is that Vista is being forced on the consumer! In a CNET Forum, The Buzz Out Loud Lounge, I’ve been involved with a discussion thread along this line. It started with a forum member ranting that people complain too much about Vista and that previous versions had problems too.

While I agree with the basic premise of his argument, I maintain that with previous versions of Windows consumers were able to purchase machines for a long time with the previous versions. Now, however, if I don’t want Vista, than the only other choice is to buy a Mac (Linux, while an excellent Operating System, is not an option the average consumer would consider right now). If someone wants a Microsoft box, they have to buy Vista and therefore has no choice. That is not right!

Microsoft has done the consumer and consequently itself a great disservice by forcing Vista on us.

To answer the question we started with: At Microsoft, technology is working against us – especially with Vista!

I am an avid Jaiku user. I love the platform and Jaiku was what finally got me into Blogging and Micro-blogging, because it was the perfect solution. It allowed Family and Friends to follow me and what I am doing, online and off line. But why does Google need that in its repertoire?!  I have a theory.

To answer that lets ask the question, what is it that Google does? I’ll give you a hint, it is not search. Its advertising!

For years the hype has been that mobile advertising is the next thing, and while there is a little of it here and there, there is nothing very major. According to an article in the October 6, 2007 issue of The Economist, titled, “The Next Big Thing”, $871m was spent on mobile advertising in 2006 compared with $24 billion on the Internet. That is minuscule, especially since those mobile ads weren’t very good and they weren’t seen much. That is not a lot of bang for those 871 million bucks.

Coming back to why Google needs Jaiku, Jaiku provides your presence to others, but consequently knows where you are, down to the neighborhood you are in within your city. With Jaiku, now Google will have a path to your mobile phone AND simultaneously they will know exactly where you are. Consequently, they can sell to advertisers location based advertising that goes directly to the mobile user.

Now, the question is, how does Google get Jaiku (or whatever its future name will be) onto your phone? Jaiku already has an excellent mobile client for advanced Nokia phones. It would not take Google much effort to make that client available on practically all mobile phones (which Jaiku was already developing, but now has access to far more resources!). Google did that already with their Gmail Mobile App. Google could even make more of that App, adding Gmail, search, Google Maps, and other mobile applications part of it. However, I suspect that while a large majority of Gmail users have mobile phones, only a small percentage of them bothered putting the Mobile Gmail App on their phones, even though it is easy. I, for instance, loved the Mobile Gmail App, but when I upgraded phones, it was months before I put the Gmail App back on my phone.

The solution: instead of Google making a gPhone to compete with all of the phone manufactures out there, Google would merely need to (if they haven’t already) partner with the Mobile Phone Manufactures (ie Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Motorola, etc) and offer to subsidize UNLOCKED phones in exchange for having the Google/Jaiku Client locked and loaded on the manufactorers’ phones. Thus, Google completely bypasses the Wireless carriers and avoids the painful processes of making deals with hundreds and hundreds of wireless carriers around the world, no matter what band they are on or if it is CDMA or GSM.

It is Mobile! It is Web 2.0! It is Social Networking! It is Presence! It is also independent of whether Google wins the bid for the 700 MHz band in the U.S.. It is beautiful! All in one simple deal.

It is a win-win-win situation for everyone!

It is a win for consumers who get great mobile Application(s) on their phones, out of the box. They also get phones without bothersome hardware restrictions placed on them by the carrier. And consumers will be free to switch carriers at will, without the extra costs of an unlocked phone or the bothersome process of unlocking a phone.

It is a win for Google who gets on your mobile phone with location based ads, big win for Google.

It is a win for Mobile Phone Manufactures who get phones to the customers, cheaper without having to bother with the Carriers.

The only losers are the wireless carriers, but they had dug their own graves a long time ago, they just didn’t realize it.

To top it off, all of this without Google making a single phone. For that very reason Google stands to make far far more money from this in advertising, with a significantly smaller investment than Apple makes with the iPhone. It’s less investment and more revenue. Its brilliant is what it is!

Good-bye gPhone, hello Mobile gAds (I mean Mobile gApps)!

On your next mobile phone just might be a sticker that says, “Google Inside”!

“It is easy for someone to make a legislator look good or bad over a vote on any legislation depending upon which facts the writer chooses to include and chooses to omit. This is especially true with the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) bill which passed out of the U.S. House last week.”

Not only is this true for a legislator, but also for legislation. For that reason, Teddism aims to give brief information and more importantly the truth about the debate.

Fact
When children are the subject of a political debate, their bests interests are only secondary to winning.

Definition of ‘winning’ in this context: Scoring Political Points.

Background
SCHIP, is a bill that the United States Congress passed in 1997 and expired September 30, 2007. Quoting a September 27, 2007 blog post on Murth’s Truth:

“SCHIP in Washington-speak stands for “State Children’s Health Insurance Program. It’s a program originally created by Republicans in Congress designed to help provide health insurance for low-income children. But in typical Washington fashion, it turned out to be the proverbial camel’s nose under the tent.”

“SCHIP is up for renewal this year. And this year, the Democrats are in charge of Congress. So naturally instead of merely reauthorizing SCHIP, the House voted yesterday to greatly expand the government program, with the ultimate goal of using it as a backdoor means of ushering in Hillary’s national healthcare nightmare.”

The Democrats’ Brief Position on the Issue
All Children should have access to Insurance and expanding this Bill to include essentially all children.

The Republican’s Brief Position on the Issue (the Bush Administration’s) |
By expanding the law to include more children, it is the first step to socializing Medicine, meaning the Government would pay for it.

The TRUTH
Admittedly, that is an incredible generalization; however, the Bill itself is written, as they always are, in exceptionally complicated ways. See for yourself in the Senate version and the House version.

The Truth is that Democrats are trying to politicize Children and Republicans are not communicating their problems with the bill effectively. As such, the Democrats are winning the war for Public Opinion on the issue.

Related Links

- An Article in The New England Journal of Medicine, “Insuring All Children – The New Political Imperative”
- An Excellent summary including FAQs at The National Conferences of State Legislatures

Why is this interesting? To understand, there are three players one must be familiar with.

1. The Pirate Bay is a Swedish based company that promotes the illicit sharing of files, over the Internet. They claim to be “the world’s largest BitTorrent tracker” Most people agree that this is a blatant disregard for International Copyright Laws. Nonetheless, any actions by the MPAA (see next player) has resulted in making The Pirate Bay even more popular!
2. The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and the Record Industry Association of America (RIAA) are charged with protecting the interests of copyright holders in the Record and Movie Industries.
3. Media Defender, who according to their own website are, “the leading provider of anti-piracy solutions in the emerging Internet-Piracy-Prevention (IPP) industry.”

The MPAA, RIAA, and Media Defender have been going after The Pirate Bay, and others like them in court for many years now, trying to shut down the illegal trading of media files on the Internet. The Pirate Bay has arguably been the most evasive and cocky company of them all.

Recently, a large amount of Media Defender’s emails were leaked to the public and told a revealing story of their business practices in going after file sharing companies. Based on information gleaned from those emails, The Pirate Bay feels they have enough ammunition to go after Media Organizations in the Courts.

Quoting from The Pirate Bay’s own Blog:

“Thanks to the email-leakage from MediaDefender-Defenders we now have proof of the things we’ve been suspecting for a long time; the big record and movie labels are paying professional hackers, saboteurs and ddosers to destroy our trackers.

While browsing through the email we identified the companies that are also active in Sweden and we have tonight reported these incidents to the police. The charges are infrastructural sabotage, denial of service attacks, hacking and spamming, all of these on a commercial level.”

Those companies can be found on The Pirate Bay’s Blog.

This creates a highly unusual situation, where a company that is breaking the law, but is trying to sue in the court of law over, arguably extreme actions, taken by ‘legitimate’ against the culprit.

These companies allegedly enlisted illegal means to go after illegal file sharing companies, but while this author is not familiar with Swedish laws, where these arguments will be heard, it seems to Teddism that two wrongs do not make a right.  One thing is for sure, many people, including us will have a lot of fun watching how this develops and many in the Internet community are surely hoping that The Pirate Bay can embarrass the large media companies even more.   There is a very good chance of that very thing happening, at the very least!

This is a goldmine for the Newspapers, Cable News Channels, and all News Organizations around the world. For months and months, they have been anxious for a story to pop up that pulls in viewers and ‘grips’ the Nation. They have been disappointed that coverage of the U.S. 2008 Election and Election Debates have not had larger viewership.

Now, however, with the arrest and impending trial of O.J. Simpson, the circus that America endured in 1995 will have to be relived again. The trial is not expected to start before 2008, but when it starts, it will be O.J. everywhere, all the time. Until then, there will be endless talking and analyzing of this arrest and the court case(s) to come.

Cannot America do any better?!

Mankind tends to chalk up Politicians’ misbehavior and mudslinging and ‘deal-making’ as POLITICS. We all too often say, “That’s just politics for ya’!” and then move on with a ‘there isn’t a darn thing I can do about it’ kind of attitude.

Does it have to be that way?! The simple and Utopian, naive answer is NO! The realistic and often assumed answer, however, is yes. So which is it?

That depends on your attitude and desire to make a change.

I make no secret that I am a registered Republican and I am generally conservative. Having said that, it is fair to say that politicians across the entire political spectrum pay more attention to the sources of money than the people themselves. This is not a left wing or right wing problem, but one of politics.

Lets look at the current American Political Scene. Both the right and the left are clearly going where they think they can get the most amount of money. For the Left, it is MoveOn.org. For the Right, it is mainly corporations and CEOs. Money talks and the politicians walk (and talk) where ever the money is.

What can be done?! The things that a concerned voter can do, is powerfully simple and not revolutionary in any way: stay informed!

A large number of voters stay relatively disconnected through the campaign process, especially in the primaries. When engaging, it is usually near the end of the primary or general races. There are two consequences of doing so.

One consequence is that is that voters will either vote mechanically for the person that is ahead in the polls, or their parties’ candidate. All the while, not really looking much at the candidate or his (or her) stances on the issues. In other words, an emotional vote and not one based on specific observations.

The second consequence is that the candidates have to spend more money to get your attention and that requires that they get more money and the more money they have to get, the more ‘debts’ they will incur. Not debts that have to be paid back in money, but in toeing a specific line or pushing a specific policy that the person giving the money dictates – not you the voter.

Simply stated, because voters are generally apathetic to the political process, that in turn forces candidates to pay less attention to what is important to you as a voter.

By paying attention to the political process, the races that affect you, becoming as informed as possible, will allow you to be more influential in who wins any race and ensuring that things important to you get heard. Be loud, be proud – it isn’t politics as usual anymore!

This is exceptional on many different levels but one that hasn’t been reported much is that this endevour will help prove the conspiracy theorists wrong (or right for that matter) about the Appollo 11 Moon Landing of 1969.

For many years, conspiracy theorists have tried to prove that the Moon Landing did not actually happen, but rather was staged by NASA in a Studio. A Moon landing, by an independent, third party, can dispel those horrible theories by simply going to the site of the landing and show the flag and the foot print. Finally, putting this question to rest.

This is a wonderful project for many other reasons as well! Namely, that the private and business sector will be far more productive at getting us back to the Moon than any Government. To that end, one of the rules is that no team can receive more than 10% of its funding from Governments.

Google should be applauded for bankrolling this Project as we head back to the Moon!!

PS

While Google is going to the Moon, could they also help find the missing Moon Landing Tapes?!

Its all part of organizing the worlds information!

Related Links
A Great Blog Post on the Subject
The X Prize Foundation
Google’s Blog Post on the Contest
A Great CNet Article Reporting This

Having said that, I am fascinated by the Politicians’ take on issues. Every politician has an agenda. Sometimes those agendas are self-imposed and rooted in their core. They’ve arrived at these by a belief system, or from learning, or expierence, and it guides them in their work. However, this is rare. Unfortunately, the large elephant in the room that nobody seems to want to talk much about, only hitting on it occasionally, is that the Politicians’ and Candidates’ stances on issues are influenced mostly by lobbying from external people or groups. These are people and organizations that “invest” in campaigns or in politicians with expectations to be ‘paid’ in return for their “investments” in the politician. In other words, money drives politics today. If you have money, you can give it to a politician or a campaign in large amounts through a variety of means and expect that your issues will be addressed. That is the fact and there is no sign of this changing anytime soon.

So, what can the People do?! Is it our destiny to be subjected to whatever politician comes our way and allow them to do whatever is best for them?! Is it absolutely necessary that the People’s will be secondary?!

No! The People can bring about change!! Be it in the United States, a self-proclaimed champion of democracy, or Europe where many politicians are not even elected directly by the people. Even in many States around the world where elections are obviously not fair or not held at all. Admittedly, there are countries and societies around the world where the People clearly have no say and there is no hope in sight that it might change, but for large majority of the world’s countries and their populations, possibilities for change are possible.

Politics today is often not by the People nor for the People, but it can be!! It all begins with hope and actively doing something about it. We will explore this further in future postings. Stay tuned!

The European Union (EU) is a crucial player on the World political stage and exceptionally influential. The European Union currently represents 27 countries, but the question is, as the EU turns 50 years old, has it moved Europe forward, in a positive way? And is it beneficial to current and future EU citizens? From here, the simple answers to those questions are that the EU has and is still fulfilling its original mandate and aspirations; however, it is completely incapable of reaching its current goals. One could almost go as far as saying that the EU, as an institution today, is incompetent and a permanent lame duck – ouch that hurts!

This author, an American citizen, living in Europe, strongly believes that while the European Union concept is good and beneficial to member countries and citizens, the implementation is, as stated in the title, critically flawed!

To begin analyzing this, one can start by looking at what the EU is, where it came from, and where it is allegedly going.

II. The EU – Coming and Going

As previously mentioned, the EU is currently made up of 27 Countries, but the concept of the European Union, or a Common Community is not new. As far back as the 1800′s, philosophers and politicians maneuvered to form a unity among the countries of Europe. Those dreams were dramatically halted because of World Wars I and II. After World War II, however, the perceived need for a Common European Community was even greater and the movements toward forming such a group was renewed with fervor – reasoning was that it was needed to protect Europe against further internal strifes and external aggressions such as the ones that brought on two World Wars in the first place, both poignantly started in Europe. According to the EU’s own website, peace, stability, safety, and security were paramount reasons for establishing a common community, later known as the European Union.

Today, that reasoning has expanded to a far less lofty goal, but one that has, for better or worse, changed the world political and economic landscape. That goal being to provide more representation and offer more influence to each country. The thinking goes that each individual country would have a difficult time representing itself on the world stage alone and that most EU countries, being small, would globally pushed aside. The EU, however, offers each country that chance to be properly represented by joining forces and working together as one big group, rather than 27 small pieces. According to the EU’s own lessons on the European Union:

The European Union was created to achieve the political goal of peace, but its dynamism and success spring from its involvement in economics.

EU countries account for an ever smaller percentage of the world’s population. They must therefore continue pulling together if they are to ensure economic growth and be able to compete on the world stage with other major economies. No individual EU country is strong enough to go it alone in world trade. The European single market provides companies with a vital platform for competing effectively on world markets.

So, the EU was set up to encourage and support peace on the continent, and today part of its mantra is to increase European Countries’ influence in the world by joining together. The EU has been, and continues to be successful in this endevour! You might ask: where then is this critical failing spoken of?

III. What is Wrong With the EU, Exactly?

The failing comes not from the EU’s goals and aspirations, but rather from its implementation and institutional structure. The EU has 27 member countries, with a few more knocking on its door for admission. That is more than 30 languages, 100+ cultures, and traditions. That is not a failing in itself, but rather a monumental challenge. The EU feels that it is living up to that challenge. Specifically they say:

But these efforts [to increase standards of living] have not been made at the expense of compromising the separate cultural or linguistic characteristics of EU countries. On the contrary — many EU activities help to create new economic growth based on regional specialities and the rich diversity of traditions and cultures.

On the ground, Cultures and peoples with large populations in the EU would agree with that statement, others that are small, would severely disagree! The EU’s severe failings come in two distinct areas: One, insufficient and unequal representation of each segment of the EU Citizenry. Two, no direct representation of the Citizenry as a whole. The consequences of this is that large countries and cultures exert unbalanced influence, but no one person, interest, culture, or people is actually represented in the European Union. This is the critical flaw of which causes the EU to be far less than the dreamers of the 1880′s imagined to be. Far less effective, productive, and far less meaningful!

IV. The EU’s Structure – THIS is the EU’s Big Problem!

The EU is governed by a number of different bodies. There is a body that is directly elected by the people. This is where the EU gets its claim that there is direct representation, but that body wields practically no influence in the EU nor on its policies and direction. Lets break it down into what each body is and who is there and what the body does.

The European Council:
What the Body Is: The primary decision making body in the EU Governmental structure.
Who: These are heads of states or ministers from each EU Country. The President of the Council is the EU President and this post rotates every 6 months between members.
What the Body Does: Discusses and “agrees” on policy and legislation.

The European Parliament
What the Body is: The Legislative Branch of the European Union Government
Who: Democratically elected Parliament members. Currently over 700 member strong and each elected for a five year term.
What the Body Does: The European Parliament’s own website sums it up perfectly, “the Parliament organises its work, through a system of specialised committees”. Additionally, the Parliament scrutinises the activities of other EU institutions, passes the annual EU budget, and shapes and decides new legislation jointly with the Council of Ministers.

The European Commission
What the Body is: If the Parliament is the Legislative Branch, the Commission is the Executive Branch. Additionally, it is a quasi Administrative Branch.
Who: There is one Commissioner from each member state and are nominated by each National Government. Commissioners serve for five years. There is support staff in Brussels totaling over 20,000 people – all employed by the EU.
What the Body Does: These non-elected Officials, draft proposals for legislation and policy for consideration by the Council of Ministers and the European Parliament.

The European Court of Justice
What the Body is: The Judicial Branch.
Who: There are 25 judges and eight advocates-general, who are appointed by member states.
What the Body Does: Adjudicates on all legal issues and disputes involving Community law. Specifically, they give a preliminary ruling on each case before a final judgment. The Court deals with two main types of actions: those referred to it by national courts for rulings of interpretation of Community law; and those started by one of the other institutions.

V. Summary -

Each governing body of the EU is mindful of its purpose, but restricted by those very same purposes. The EU, this wonderful governmental body that accomplishes much good, is restricted by its own procedures and organization. The Parliament, the solely elected body has no real power, but essentially is the EU’s purse strings with no ability to make laws, only rubber stamp decisions made by the European Commission, which is not elected by the EU citizenry. Additionally, the parliament organizes its work by committees! How horrible and ineffective can they be?!

Coming back to the questions we started with:

Has the EU moved Europe forward, in a positive way?

Yes, it has moved Europe forward in a positive way, but not as much as could be possible. The European Union is conceptually a splendid institution and was an essential move in the post World War world. It has brought countries together and has successfully helped to promote peace throughout Europe. However, the EU, as it has evolved is now bureaucratic behemoth that is extremely slow and inefficient.

Is the EU beneficial to current and future EU citizens?

The EU is unable to become more effective without providing the citizens of the European Union the rights of direct representation. It provides increased representation in the world to each member country, but not to each citizen in the EU itself. A strange, paradoxical reality. This one fact, has sadly has put the power of the European Union in the hands of professional diplomats, mainly from large member countries, rather than in the hands of the people – a critical failing!

For 15 years now, when I purchase a computer, I always buy the absolute top of the line laptop and then I know that I will have the computing power that I’ll need for three years. After about three years, I usually have to buy a new laptop – give or take a few months. Consequently, I buy the 3-year extended warranty so that I know I’ll be covered. Five years ago, I dropped one of my laptops from two stories up (accidentally of course!!). I took it in to HP and a week later I had my computer back, with everything exchanged – all for free.

Three years and 15 days ago, I made my most recent laptop purchase and I knew that the time was coming to purchase a new laptop – in a few months. However, 5 days ago, without explanation or warning, my laptop gave up the ghost. When I turn it on, instead of seeing that poorly drawn Windows screen with the bar moving underneath, I immediately see a screen full of colons and a cursor blinking at the top. I hadn’t seen a cursor since 1987.

I was on a business trip in Cyprus and the first thing I did was call HP Support in the States. Naturally, I was concerned since the Extended Warranty had run out ten days earlier, but I thought that since my last 5 computers were all HPs that they would certainly give me a break on repairs and repair it for free – I mean we aren’t talking about a month or even half a month, but 10 days!

I spoke with some nice people living in India (the accent was a dead give away). As soon ad they had ascertained that my problem could not be fixed over the phone (duh), they said that they would send me up to a Manager to discuss what could be done.

The Manager, a man in the States, was very nice and immediately began speaking to me in a language used by Used Car Salesmen. Send in the laptop and no matter what is wrong, it wouldn’t cost more than $300 to repair, “but”, he said with that ‘here comes something really spectacular, in a used-car-salesman’ voice. “But, if you want I can do something really special for you! Would you like a new computer, one of HP’s best? I can do that for you right now and send you a brand new laptop”!

Sound too good to be true?! Sure it is! Because my laptop had died, HP was trying to sell me a new laptop. Granted, they were offering me a laptop that anywhere I look runs almost $2,000 for only $1,380. But the principal of the thing of how anxious they seemed to suddenly get me into a new laptop rather than solve my problem bothered me. But I’m a die hard HP Fanboy, so I told him I’d compose myself and call back later. All this happening on the morning of Apple’s Announcement and I was secretly hoping that a thinner, newer MacBook Pro would be announced with Leopard, early just for me. See, ever since Apple went Intel CoreDuo, I’ve been toying with going back to Macs (my last Mac was in 1985). Apple, however, made no such announcement. Apple, you almost had me there.

So, back to HP, do I fix or buy? What really bugged me is that it is time for a new laptop, but I hated HPs attitude. In the meanwhile, I’m on day-5 of being without a laptop. Sure, there is my wife’s and I have a loaner laptop, but they don’t have my files and emails on it that I need to get off my old laptop. In summary, this is a painful time, made worse by HP’s ‘sell as much as possible to the customer’ attitude, rather than pulling out the ‘we will do everything we can for you’ attitude.

What makes all of this worse, is that my computer is my work and I go nowhere without it. Needless to say, this is difficult times, all because 10 freakin’ days had passed. I expected more from HP! In my computer life, this is not one of the best times. Rather unjust I would say!