Hi, my name is Pop and I'm an addict

It all started yesterday when I read multiple reports that the iPhone was living up to the hype pretty much.

Then there were the pictures. iPhones being used everywhere, and the ultimate geek porn: iPhone dissection pictures!

How can one resist? Yet I did.

I thought it was safe to go up to the Apple store this morning. I thought they would be out of stock by now and that I would be able to safely handle a demonstration unit for a few minutes, being unable to buy one.

A quick fix, as we addicts refer to this sort of thing. Just some juice to get me going for a few more weeks.

No such luck. There were still some units in stock and I was in and out the store in 2 minutes, carrying with me a few ounces of the stuff.

So there you have it. I'm an addict.

They say admitting you have a problem is the first step towards a cure. I hope this keeps me from buying the 30 GB model as soon as it comes out.

Instant Karma

What I see when I go to instantkarma.org:

Instant Karma requires the Adobe Flash Player version 9.

Instant Karma indeed.

Phishing: companies don't care as much as they should

I got an e-mail pretending to be from Yahoo! security. It had a link to a page hosted overseas. In that page there's a link to a Windows executable (a virus, keylogger, or whatever it is). Doesn't bother me much because I'm on a Mac.

But I try to be a good guy so I forwarded that to Yahoo!, and I got this answer:

"Hello,

Thank you for writing to Yahoo! Customer Care.

Thank you for contacting us about your concerns regarding this
possible abuse of Yahoo! services.

Since the apparent instance of abuse is not hosted by Yahoo!, we are
not able to take direct action on this complaint. (...)"

Sounds reasonable, right? It's not. Here's one truth about phishers: they don't like to pay for bandwidth. And if they're using someone else's compromised system, they don't want the page to load slowly.

However, they still need to make their fake page look like the real thing, right? One thing they like to do is link (a lot) to the original website they are trying to forge. So Yahoo! may not host the page itself, but it does host many elements referenced in it. Images included.

So why doesn't Yahoo! replace this image file (which is linked directly in that forged page) with a phishing alert? That would tell users "Do not download the file. It's a virus!".

Of course it's not a perfect solution. For one, Yahoo! would have to stop using the image in their legitimate pages. And the phishers would get smart eventually. But it would save some people a lot of grief, and that makes it worth doing.

If you care, that is...

Huge piracy bust in Brazil. No help from DRM or DMCA.

See?

Brazilian police just busted a huge piracy operation in Sao Paulo.

Police in São Paolo, Brazil conducted a raid today on four locations used to manufacture counterfeit CDs and DVDs. According to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry and the MPAA, which supported the police action, over 30,000 pirated CDs and DVDs were seized, along with 200 burners.

Funny thing is: DRM didn't help prevent the widespread piracy at all. DRM is not made to stop criminals like those guys that got arrested in Sao Paulo today. It's made to stop honest people from making good use of something they own and enjoying it fully.

Also, notice that no new legislation was required to prosecute the pirates. Read: no need for the DMCA.

So if you can bust pirates (that DRM didn't stop in the first place) without help from the DMCA, then what's all that crap for?

Cheating the do-not-call registry

And the weasel oscar goes to... The Dove Foundation.

Yesterday I got a call from someone saying they were calling on behalf of the Dove Foundation, but the call was actually an advertising campaign for the for-profit company called "Feature Films for Families".

Here's why I'm upset: my number is in the do not call registry. "Feature Films for Families" couldn't lawfully call me, so they contracted the services of a tax-exempt charity to talk to me about them and get my permission to then continue to call me.

Here's how I interpret this: it is (or should be) unlawful for a non-profit to call me if it's just to advertise for a for-profit organization. I will report this to the FTC and I will post this information in the pertinent forums and send it to relevant lawmakers.

After reading the paragraphs above, I decided to search Google for "Dove Foundation Feature Films for Families". I shouldn't be surprised that the first link was this Wikipedia article.

Heh.

Doing some further searching I learned that they actually use a computer program to talk to you (there's a human operator selecting what the voice will say). You would think I'd admire the use of technology. I don't. When they call they expect to talk to a human being and when I answer I expect the same. It's outrageous.

Don't you hate self righteous people that think that anything they do is justifiable if it's for (as they see it) a good cause? It's not. No good can come out of offending and manipulating people or finding loopholes in law. Dove Foundation should stop this practice immediately.

Open letter to TiVo: I Want my Apple TV

Here's Robert Scoble's take on Apple TV: It rocks, he says. Why? Because he can watch his video podcasts in it.

TiVo had until February to provide the video podcast aggregation feature now available through iTunes and Apple TV. Instead, you wasted time with "TiVoCasts", with limited selection of questionable taste.

Here's what you guys need to understand: the trick to retain the living room is to provide enough features so that your customers won't seek new devices to fill their needs. In the case of videoblogs, you had until February to come up with that feature, because now we have Apple TV.

And now I want one. Once I have it, all bets are off. I may be tempted to buy videos from iTunes instead of from Amazon Unbox and I may even decide to get rid of my TiVo box as a result. You had me as a loyal customer, but by not providing the features I needed, you pushed me towards your competitors.

Smart.

And let me push this one point further: I have way too many media devices already. Soon I'll be looking at getting rid of one or more of them. By pushing me to buy an Apple TV through inaction and bad decisions such as "TiVoCasts", you increase my need to get rid of something and of TiVo being the box to be ditched.

Thrill seekers and Fear avoiders

Seth Godin makes a point that some people are thrill seekers and others avoid fear. True. And he also mentions that some people fall in between those two categories.

He then comments on how important thrill seekers are for the evolution of companies. They want more, they want growth, they want change, and when they succeed at that you have a story worth telling and we may all be better for it. Also true.

However, any healthy organism needs both components to function correctly. People like Bill Gates and Larry Ellison love to boast that they are college drop-outs, even recommending that people stop studying.

But here's a question for you: how many employees at Microsoft and Oracle (or Google, Yahoo!, etc) don't have a degree? How well would any large company survive if you can't rely on the boring people (like accountants and payroll clerks, for instance)?

Here's my counterpoint to Seth Godin's excellent article: your reliable heart needs your adventurous muscles as much as those need the heart. Your heart will keep you alive and provide the sustenance your muscles need to take you places where you can find food, shelter, etc.

Healthy organisms (or successful companies) need both elements to cooperate in order to achieve long-lasting success. The trick is in balancing those two types of elements.

Here's to the thrill seekers and to the fear avoiders!