A few minutes ago, I came across yet another AP news item about the current financial crisis in the US. The article reports that Barack Obama “said the final product must protect U.S. taxpayers and include a commitment to new regulatory reforms.” My first thought was “hell, yeah!” there has to be some [...]
Executive Summary: On November 28, 2007, I put in a request through CatalogChoice.org to stop receiving Pier 1’s catalogs. I visited Catalog Choice’s site on January 25th to find that Pier 1 refused my request. In effect, Pier 1 is refusing to collaborate with Catalog Choice. When I complained to Pier 1, the CSR told me that Pier 1 accepts requests to stop receiving their catalog only through the Direct Marketing Association (DMA) or if contacted directly but not through Catalog Choice. In my opinion, this clearly shows that Pier 1 has decided to adopt aggressive practices when it comes to advertising to potential customers.
Chris Anderson, editor at Wired, claims that print publishing does not emit more carbon than web publishing. I find his analysis extremely unconvincing. I am noting here some of the problems with his analysis and also with a Swedish study he claims supports his conclusions.
Paulo Coelho has shown that giving away intellectual content for free helps boost sales and in the end help boost profits. It is a matter of visibility: a product has to be visible before people will want to buy it. DRM and unreasonable pricing both are obstacles to visibility and ultimately hurt profits.
Dell is doing something great by helping people recycle computers.
Dell’s Da Vinci announcement still does not excite me. Dell is unable to design an online store that does not generate utter frustration so why should I think this Da Vinci deal will prove to be an amazing boon for customers?
Dell has recently announced a new partnership with the WPP marketing company. However, it appears that Dell’s PR people are putting a spin on a business decision that may make sense but is not as wonderful as Dell would want people to believe. This emphasis of hype over substance is reminiscent of Palm’s gradual devolution towards irrelevance.
A few days ago, I finally posted my belated reaction to the AAP’s position on a possible government mandate to make all articles published from publicly funded research freely available to the general public. I was not aware at the time but some reactions to the AAP’s position had already been published when I [...]
Just after posting yesterday about how the AAP uses dubious rhetoric to try to preserve its current power and revenue in the domain of scholarly publishing, I learned of a new alliance dedicated to corrupting public policy in favor of copyright holders called the Copyright Alliance. I examined their list of members. What [...]
The AAP is trying, like the RIAA and the MPAA, to force time to stand still with dubious logic and a general hijacking of public policy. In this post, I show how their attempt at protecting their obsolete business model is flawed. Specifically, I show the flaw in their objection against the proposal that publications from all governmentally funded research should be available at no cost.
