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The New York Times shines a light on Dell and its practice of knowingly selling defective computers between 2003-2005, according to unsealed court documents. It makes you wonder how the public interest was served by concealing this information revealed in court. I had a Dell laptop that had epic failures during this time – two hard drive replacements, graphics card and screen replacement – and still had performance issues that would occur inexplicably and made using several types of software impossible. Despite that Dell sent repair people twice to repair the laptop, they refused to do a complete replacement of an obviously defective system.

Dell pioneered the direct sales model when the norm was to purchase single units through retail or catalogs. The upside was that they could pass the savings on to customers because they could cut out the channel. People tend to forget that the channel does provide some value other than just speedy delivery and the option to spend more on in-store advertising – retailers and distributors hate returns more than customers do. Dell claims that its direct model gives it the ability to react sooner to quality issues, but it also removes channel Darwinism from the picture.

Some at TechDirt, a site I usually have no basis for agreement has a very interesting article on the Golan case and an appeals court that seems to have ruled that congress can, as they see fit, put public domain works back under private copyright if there is some governmental interest in doing so.

Following up on my post yesterday about Racebending and Avatar: The Last Airbender, even more spleen is being vented over the release of The Prince of Persia casting Anglo Jake Gyllenhaal as the prince. The sad fact is that those who make casting decisions in Hollywood are following a corporate playbook.  Just like any industry, they pick their customer. Just who did they pick? It is based on the lowest common denominator to bring in the most money:

• Want a popular name actor to play a title role that the largest group can relate to
• Authenticity doesn’t matter at all, because the audience doesn’t seem to care
• Reduce thinking challenges to a minimum; don’t challenge  any popular stereotypes that might make the audience think (and break suspension of disbelief)

These two films follow innumerable others that Hollywood has cranked out since the very beginning. It is very simple – remove anything that could be remotely objectionable or thought provoking (remove objections) and also provide features that people desire that close the sale. Since the sale begins with marketing, putting up a recognizable name allows the studios to tap into the fans of that actor who will go to see the movie just based on the name value of the actor (balanced against the cost of that actor).

Just these two example movies show just how stupid the Hollywood film industry thinks White Anglo Americans are.

A group called Racebending.com points a finger at the Avatar: The Last Airbender movie from M. Night Shyamalan – and they are right. This movie is based on a much loved cartoon that takes place in an Asian culture and populated by – Asian characters. This isn’t a re-imagining like the Magnificent Seven and The Seven Samurai, but a sad, cynical and racist Hollywood playing numbers games to arrive at a racist decision. There are plenty of excellent Asian kids out there available for this part – show your support by not attending this movie and not buying any merchandise associated with it, including any video games that use the license.  Talk about it through your social media networks. Besides, if your kids watched the original show they are probably more appalled than you are. Read the rest of this entry »

DSL Reports and Techdirt both report about a new company that attempts to automate the process of sending out notices to reconcile IP theft (ie demand payments) to suspected film pirates.  It is a sad tactic for dealing with the broken safe harbor provisions of DMCA. Read the rest of this entry »

The state of Oregon still has over 11% unemployment; not the highest rate any more. But that doesn’t really mean the state economy is looking up. Read the rest of this entry »

Suddenly and unexpectedly, I had a free Saturday and decided to spend it at the H P Lovecraft Film Festival 2009 held in Portland, Oregon October 2-4, 2009. I wrote a review of the film festival for Lovecraft 3D, a new site in a state of betaness.