Nice Waste of Time

A few month back I ordered a Kindle.  It was a gift to someone so I had Amazon ship it direct to the recipient.  Amazon did add the expected import duty to the bill at the time.

Today I received the following email:

Now that is awfully nice of Amazon - really it is.  Not quite like Christmas but almost.

Pretty Pointless (or: Mad Marketing Hype)

Just noticed this electrical plug:

Excuse me - an "unbreakable fused" power plug!  Well - that's pretty damn pointless isn't it?  I thought the whole point of a fuse was that it would break the circuit in case of an over load.  Unbreakable fused - well - that basically means unfused - a basic plug in other words.

I couldn't help myself but take it apart and inside I found.....

Well, don't know about you - but that looks like a normal breakable fuse to me.  Not sure what is so unbreakable about it.  It's a fuse.  Put more current through it than it was designed for and it will break.  It's that simple and no marketing hype will change that.

Just Can't be Bothered (read: Make it Someone Else's Problem)

From the Malaysian news:

The fun part is when the Energy, Green Technology and Water Minister (that has got to be the most bizarre title in history - do they have a Brown Technology Minister too) say:

"Chin said it was not difficult for petroleum companies like Shell and Petronas to install charging stations into their existing branches around the country"

Hmmm, I guess he is somewhat correct, it wouln't be difficult to do that.  There is however a few problems clearly illustrating that Chin hasn't got a freaking clue about the things for which he is the Minister.  First of all - charging electrical cars isn't really the core business for petroleum companies (the clue is in the bloody name).  Most important though is the fact charging isn't exactly instant.  I am not sure how fast you can charge a car, but I reckon it'll take 4-8 hours at least.  According to this link:

Some types of batteries such as Lithium-titanate, LiFePO4 and even certain NiMH variants can be charged almost to their full capacity in 10–20 minutes. Fast charging requires very high currents often derived from a three-phase power supply.) .  

I guess it'll be just about impossible to buy petrol from those petrol stations, since there will be cars parked just about everywhere.

Extremely Limited Reach

The world is full of franchises and most are in my personal opinion utter rubbish.  There is a few though that I find agreeable and one of these has been "Au Bon Pain" that really have some quite descent sandwiches and market themselves as a casual bakery:

Pay close attention to "no request beyond our reach" from their web site.

On Phuket however they don't quite grasp this concept.  Yesterday I went there to have one of their smoked salmon sandwiches and - they were out of bread.  I am not kidding - a bakery that didn't have any bread.  That's a bit like a MacDonald that is out of hamburgers - in other words completely pointless.  It was 8 pm at the Jung Ceylon shopping center on Patong Beach and every other place was crowded with people.  Au Bon Pain was quite empty.  I guess I wasn't the only one who discovered that they didn't really have anything to sell.

See No Evil

From today's news:

What is interesting here is why on earth this is news worthy.  Just outside KFC on Bukit Bintang is a police truck parked just about 24 hours a day - just across the street from a shop selling loads of fake jerseys.  Go to Petaling Street or Central Market and they could shut down every single shop - they are ALL selling fake goods of various kinds.  Go to Sungai Wang (large shopping mall on Bukit Bintang) and you can't kick your way through the place for "Angry Birds" branded fake goods.

I am not complaining about the fake goods - I couldn't care less, but I do find it amusing when an article like this pop up in the local news.  What they are really saying here is that someone forgot to pay.

Priority Problems

From today's newspaper:

So let me get this straight.  Some village idiot is running around selling various kind of "medicine" and Malaysia is concerned that they got obscene pictures on them.  Someone need to get their fucking priorities straight.

Fair Use?

Yesterday I wrote a rather lengthy post about Michael Schumacher's reaction after having rammed his car into Bruno Senna.

A few hours later, I received the following in my Gmail inbox:

Dear lbthomsen01,

This is to notify you that we have removed access to your video,Schumacher the Idiot (Slow Motion), as a result of a notification byFormula One Management claiming that this material is infringing.

Please Note: Accounts determined to be repeat infringers may be terminated. To avoid this, please delete any videos to which you do not own the rights, and refrain from uploading infringing videos.
For more information, please visit our Copyright Tips guide.
If you believe this claim was made in error, or that you are otherwise authorized to use the content at issue, you may file a counter notice.Please note that under Section 512(f) of the Copyright Act, any person who knowingly materially misrepresents that material or activity was removed or disabled by mistake or misidentification may be liable for damages.

Sincerely,
- The YouTube Team

I actually received two emails both send at approximately the same time.  The other read:

Dear lbthomsen01:

We have disabled the following material as a result of a third-party notification from Formula One Management claiming that this material is infringing:

Schumacher the Idiot (Slow Motion)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kfls8VLYZr0

Please Note: Repeat incidents of copyright infringement will result in the deletion of your account and all videos uploaded to that account. In order to prevent this from happening, please delete any videos to which you do not own the rights, and refrain from uploading additional videos that infringe on the copyrights of others. For more information about YouTube's copyright policy, please read the Copyright Tips guide.

If one of your postings has been misidentified as infringing, you may submit a counter-notification. Information about this process is in our Help Center.

Please note that under Section 512(f) of the Copyright Act, any person who knowingly materially misrepresents that material was disabled due to mistake or misidentification may be liable for damages.

Sincerely,

— The YouTube Team

For some odd reason, the link to the video appear to still be working, so I'll try to link it here too:



So it would appear that the Formula One Management is seriously pissed that I used 4 seconds of their footage to prove a point (and does that footage actually belong to them since I lifted it of ESPN/Star Sport broadcast - which I paid for).

Let us examine what I have done here.  Out of a 1 1/2 race that was broadcast on ESPN/Star Sport, I have "borrowed" exactly 4 seconds of footage.  I have then removed the sound track (since having Steve Slater babble makes no difference whatsoever) and I have reduced the frame rate to 25 % of the original.  I also did blur the logo and in hindsight that might have been a mistake, but at the time I was editing the video it seemed like the right thing to do (just because I could).

Is this copyright infringement?