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.

• 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.

Please do not mistake me for a white apologist. I am not motivated by a sense of guilt or collaboration. There are reasons for making changes to characters in order to tell a story, much like the Magnificent Seven turned The Seven Samurai into a Western. Hiring an Anglo kid to play this role changes the story, but it does not add to it. It is a pathetic demographics game to try to appeal to a group to extract more money from it.

There is an almost reasonably defined process for network providers in how to respond to DMCA takedown notices from IP holders or their representatives, but its a watery, waffling thing at best. So you find something of yours stolen and posted to a forum or blog, and send one of these notices to the network provider. They take it down – and that’s it. The problem is that the damage is already done and yet the infringer is free to do it again and again.

The network provider isn’t agreeing with your reasoning behind sending a DMCA takedown notice; however responding with a takedown to a takedown notice should be an agreement as a first step in receiving safe harbor. By taking it down, they are agreeing after investigation that there is a reasonable evidence that the customer has illegally posted someone else’s intellectual property. But really, they don’t. By acknowledging a crime might be taking place, it might mean they have some obligation to act as if a crime is taking place,  much like observing an obvious crime occurring on your property.

Sending out blanket IP complaints to nameless receivers is ugly, but typical of almost any large corporation with in-house lawyers. Large corporations continuously send out cease-and-desist letters to anyone who remotely appears to infringe on their IP. Receiving one of these is like being threatened by the biggest bully on the play yard. There is an endless supply of legal creatures out there that will send out a threatening letter just because they can.

This goes back to weakness in the DMCA. A network provider may respond with a take down, but they are not under any obligation to share customer contact information with the sender. They can just blow it off, and their customer can come back the next day and post it again and again. A take down response should be an agreement of possible infringement, and empower and require the network provider to turn over contact information to the IP complainant as a next step. That wouldn’t entirely remove the network provider from the process, especially if the customer comes back with proof of non-infringement – but this would reduce the shotgun-in-the-dark sort of strategy.

Oregon allowed its minimum wage to increase by $.45 an hour on January 1, 2009 to $8.40, with automatic adjustments based on adjustments to the consumer price index.  Likewise, ballots 66 and 67 promise to pinch business in other ways.  The problem with both together is that the vast majority of businesses in the state of Oregon are small. As with many small businesses, you often have the owners as managers who work off the clock. Instead of hiring more people, the owners put in 80 hour weeks instead of their normal 60 hours. It isn’t that business owners want to work longer hours – it is that the cost to do business in the state of Oregon is not in scale with the economics of sales in the state of Oregon. Oregon is a great state for good intentions, but has a history of poor implementations.

Unfortunately, when the national economy improves, it tends to improve at a much slower rate in the State of Oregon. What few positive indicators Ive seen in the tech business in the last 2-3 months will hardly make a difference, at least in early 2010.

2009 has taught me a few lessons in personal, human kindness. I can’t say if the current economic climate is something we deserve or not, but in the absence of a pocket full of cash, one free gift we can give other human beings is to default to kindness, politeness and mercy. There are no cost ways to make difficult times easier for those around us for weathering these difficult times.