(Please note that while there is
some comparisons between the Nintendo DS (DS) and the Sony Personal
PlayStation (PSP) my comments should not be construed as a judgment
on which unit has better games or is better for gaming. My comments
and ideas are limited to the DS' ability to be expanded past it's
current usage, which could possibly expand it's total customer base,
and not about corporately generated games. While I mention Python as
the interpreter of choice, Ruby should also be strongly considered.
BTW, I know the name sucks but I'm sure someone will come up with
something better.)
The "App-Yan"
I propose that Nintendo makes or allow someone else to make a device that fits into the DS game slot on the DS which allows users to run Python applications. Applications would be stored and loaded from a removable SD card.
The "App-Yan" parts:
Hardware:
External housing design and dimensions: the dimensions would very similar to the "Play-Yan", Nintendo's mp3/mpeg4 player that fits into the GBA slot on the DS.
SD or SDIO slot: Python scripts and/or related data files would be stored here. No propriety software should be required to copy files to and from the SD card. Open data standards should be used whenever possible. Also somewhat similar to the "Play-Yan".
>256M non removable internal flash memory: This would be used for the storage of the Python interpreter et al and, at the user's choice, Python scripts or related data.
A/D converter on the "professional" model: It's about expanding the DS and a "professional" version with multiple A/D converters would expand the DS' use, for example, for automated data collection.
Software:
Python interpreter: the Python interpreter, a signed Nintendo application, would be stored on the App-Yan's internal flash memory. It could be updated by Nintendo to address security flaws and bugs. Scripts could be run allowing for a text output or with a full GUI. GUI objects could be accessed from either the DS' internal GUI widgets or from standardized custom widgets accompanied with the interpreter.
Signed script validator: Some groups have the need to ensure their scripts arrive at the user's DS unmodified. A built in public key signature system could be used to insure scripts arrive as they were intended.
Why the DS?
The DS, like previous versions of the GB, is well designed and a nearly indestructible device. They have been successfully used in environments that normally would kill off similar electronic devices. The closest example of a device that can stand up to similar abuse would possible be a "hardened" PDA (either Palm of PocketPC OS based in a custom enclosure) costing at least four times the cost of the DS/AY (DS with an "App-Yan" device). The DS' low cost, durability and touch screens make it an ideal candidate for this project over other portable devices. The use of a GB for nongaming use is hardly new. The Singer Izek sewing machine (now out of production) used a GB as a stitch and pattern controller.
What's the benefit to Nintendo?
This project would expand the current customer base and places used. Many would say the "holy grail" of a portable gaming system is to allow for its use in a public school setting. This might be possible using the "dynamically generated exams" example sited below. While the DS performs well as a portable gaming system added uses would generate additional console sales which would generate added games sales. While Nintendo is still the king of the overall handheld gaming market, the Sony PSP has presented itself as extremely strong competition. With Sony's lead in the home console market the success of the DS could be critical to Nintendo's future.
What applications do you see
being created?
More than I can imagine. Python scripts have be used from embedded systems to enterprise size servers for countless applications. Here's a scratching of the surface:
Data collection for surveys. Imagine a scenario where a half dozen survey collectors need to interview people at a local mall. They need to ask a few questions and have follow up questions adapt to respondent's previous answers. The data then needs to be transferred to a single point where it is recorded, analyzed and the script possibly adjusted. In this scenario the survey collectors would use the DS' top screen to read questions and the bottom to record responses. Those answers would be wirelessly transferred to another DS where they would be collected and analyzed in real time. The collection point could also adjust the survey collector's script.
Dynamically generated static or progressive exams. A public school could use DS/AYs for class exams. A "wired" school would have a record of the MAC address of each student's DS. An instructor would send an exam to each of the student's DS. As an anti-cheating measure the exam question order would be pseudo-randomized for each student. Answers would be sent back to the instructor's DS or computer for correction. Results could be returned in real time if desired. This could also be used for overnight or "take home" exams. Besides tracking the correct answer, one could also track the amount of time taken to answer each question. Quick and correct responses might show a great proficiency than the same correct answers but answered at a slower rate.
Vertical market applications. Today many companies use PDAs or tablet PCs for their internal applications. While both offer larger screens this is sometimes not needed. The DS/AY system would be far less expensive. As many of these machines are assigned to people on an "as needed" basis they are sometimes treated rougher than devices that spend most of it's company life with one or two users. Most PDAs and tablet PCs were not designed for this kind of abuse. The DS on the other hand was designed for the use and abuse of children.
The other issue for vertical markets is application design costs. Python (and previously mentioned Ruby) have proven track records as stable RAD (rapid application development) platforms. Applications can be quickly built, tested and wirelessly deployed.
Electronic tour guides. Many museums have experimented with electronic devices as automated tour guides. While good software design has lead to successful use of such devices they have their limitations. Durability and cost per unit have restricted their widespread use. A DS console equipped with an App-Yan unit would allow institutions to quickly develop and distribute such guides. If students were equipped with DS/AY an instructor could create a custom tour guide suited for their students.
What about game piracy?
The App-Yan could only run Python scripts with a Python interpreter which would be a signed application from Nintendo. The interpreter would be able to access all parts of the DS except for the running Nintendo signed applications. Piracy IMO is a "make or break" issue for the App-Yan. If it can't be designed to protect against the unauthorized use of licensed games then I see little interest in Nintendo developing or supporting it. There must also be a social contract that programs using the App-Yan will not try to bypass copyright controls. This device is about expanding the uses of the DS, not a game backup device. One of the "sacred cows" of this project is that the App-Yan should never be able to play copies of commercial DS or GBA games. While to many this seems like a draconian move IMO it's the only way to keep a project like this alive. If it can be used to bypass Nintendo's copyright protections then IMO they will have little recourse other than to stop supporting the App-Yan.
How can you ensure against the App-Yan running game backups?
I have no idea. Someone, somewhere will somehow figure out a way around the propose ban. Software only mods have been created for most of the advanced game consoles and it would be foolish to think it couldn't be done for the App-Yan. It comes back to the social contract that would help in the slowing of the proliferation of such a program. The lifeblood of the DS is in the sale of officially licensed games and Nintendo has a responsibility to insure they protect against the illegal use of said games. Damage that revenue stream and IMO the App-Yan is dead.
Equifax's CEO Thomas Chapman gave the world these notable quotes while recently at the Commonwealth Club of California about the Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act, which provides consumers with a free copy of their credit report every 12 months to check for inaccuracies and fraudulent activity.
"Our company felt, and still does
... that it's unconstitutional to cause a public company who has a fiduciary responsibility to return profit to shareholders to give away the product," "Most of my shareholder group did not think that giving away our product was the American way."
"That's like turning on the smoke alarm once a year,"
Actually you're suppose to test your smoke detectors once a month.
Equifax, Experian and TransUnion are the true "axis of evil". BTW, here's some info about the Fair Credit Reporting Act and how to get your free credit report (not like those scam sites).
June 26, 2005
Guest Viewpoint: The party's over for betrayed Republican
By James Chaney
As of today, after 25 years, I am no longer a Republican.
I take this step with deep regret, and with a deep sense of betrayal.
I still believe in the vast power of markets to inspire ideas, motivate solutions and eliminate waste. I still believe in international vigilance and a strong defense, because this world will always be home to people who will avidly seek to take or destroy what we have built as a nation. I still believe in the protection of individuals and businesses from the influence and expense of an over-involved government. I still believe in the hand-in-hand concepts of separation of church and state and absolute freedom to worship, in the rights of the states to govern themselves without undo federal interference, and in the host of other things that defined me as a Republican.
My problem is this: I believe in principles and ideals which my party has systematically discarded in the last 10 years.
My Republican Party was the party of Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower, Barry Goldwater, and George H.W. Bush. It was a party of honesty and accountability. It was a party of tolerance, and practicality and honor. It was a party that faced facts and dealt with reality, and that crafted common-sense solutions to problems based on the facts as they were, not as we wished them to be, or even worse, as we made them up. It was a party that told the truth, even when the truth came hard. And now, it is none of those things.
Fifty years from now, the Republican Party of this era will be judged by how we provided for the nation's future on three core issues: how we led the world on the environment, how we minded the business of running our country in such a way that we didn't go bankrupt, and whether we gracefully accepted our place on the world's stage as its only superpower. Sadly, we have built the foundation for dismal failure on all three counts. And we've done it in such a way that we shouldn't be surprised if neither the American people nor the world ever trusts us again.
My party has repeatedly ignored, discarded and even invented science to suit its needs, most spectacularly as to global warming. We have an opportunity and the responsibility to lead the world on this issue, but instead we've chosen greed, shortsightedness and deliberate ignorance.
We have mortgaged the country's fiscal future in a way that no Democratic Congress or administration ever did, and to justify the tax cuts that brought us here, we've simply changed the rules. I matured as a Republican believing that uncontrolled deficit spending is harmful and irresponsible; I still do. But the party has yet to explain to me why it's a good thing now, other than to say "... because we say so."
Our greatest failure, though, has been in our role as superpower. This world needs justice, democracy and compassion, and as the keystone of those things, it needs one thing above all else: truth.
Republican decisions made in 2002 and 2003 have killed almost 2,000 of the most capable patriots our country has to offer - volunteers, every one. Support for those decisions was gathered through what appeared at the time to be spin and marketing, but which now turns out to have been deliberate planning and falsehood. The Blair government's internal documentation only confirms what has been suspected for years: Americans are dying every day for Republican lies first crafted in 2002, expanded and embellished upon in 2003, and which continue to this day. This calculated deception is now burned into the legacy of the party, every bit as much as Reagan's triumph in the Cold War, or Nixon's disgrace over Watergate.
I could go on and on - about how we have compromised our international integrity by sanctioning torture, about how we are systematically dismantling the civil liberties that it took us two centuries to define and preserve, and about how we have substituted bullying, brinksmanship and "staying on message" for real political discourse - but those three issues are enough.
We're poisoning our planet through gluttony and ignorance.
We're teetering on the brink of self-inflicted insolvency.
We're selfishly and needlessly sacrificing the best of a generation.
And we're lying about it.While it has compiled this record of failure and deception, the party which I'm leaving today has spent its time, energy and political capital trying to save Terri Schiavo, battling the threat of single-sex unions, fighting medical marijuana and physician-assisted suicide, manufacturing political crises over presidential nominees, and selling privatized Social Security to an America that isn't buying. We fiddle while Rome burns.
Enough is enough. I quit.
James Chaney is a Eugene attorney who has been in private practice for more than 20 years, and who has been a registered Republican since 1980.
From Iraqi students say arrested for wearing jeans
Iraqi students say arrested for wearing jeans
Fri Jun 24, 2005 12:52 PM ETBy Khaled Farhan
NAJAF, Iraq (Reuters) - Students in the Shi'ite Muslim religious Iraqi city of Najaf said that police recently arrested and beat several of them for wearing jeans and having long hair.
"They arrested us because of our hair and because we were wearing jeans," said student Mohammed Jasim, adding that the arrests took place two weeks ago in the city, the spiritual heart of Iraq's newly dominant Shi'ite majority.
"They beat us in front of the people. Then they took us to their headquarters, beat us again, shaved our heads and tore our clothes.
"When we asked what we had done, they said that we had no honor," he told Reuters this week.
Police in Najaf, a conservative city that some residents say has grown more so since Saddam Hussein was overthrown two years ago and religious Shi'ites gained greater power in Iraq, disputed the students' version of events.
"We didn't oppress any freedoms. We detained them for a while and after we knew that they were students, we released them after they pledged they wouldn't do it again," Colonel Najah Yasir told Reuters.
Yasir commands the Tho Alfakar Brigade, a unit whose name refers to Imam Ali, son-in-law of Islam's Prophet Mohammad, whose shrine is the centerpiece of Najaf.
Yasir said the brigade had received complaints from locals in the old part of Najaf that young men were gathering in the streets and acting "improperly."
He declined to elaborate on their "improper acts."
Earlier this week, Najaf's Youth Association delivered a statement to political parties denouncing the arrests and calling them a violation of rights.
Najaf, 160 km (100 miles) south of Baghdad, is holy to Shi'ites and home to many religious scholars, some of whom have a growing political role as spiritual leaders of the community that was oppressed under Saddam.
Throughout the Shi'ite south of Iraq over the past two years, alcohol salesmen and others deemed to trade in goods that violate Islam have been harassed by militants.
But it is not only in Shi'ite areas that religion plays an increasingly influential role in society.
In Falluja, a Sunni Muslim city west of Baghdad that was until recently a stronghold of insurgents, there were efforts last year to instill a strict religious code similar to that enforced by the Taliban in Afghanistan.
Several residents said they were beaten for violating it.
It's sounds like what Nixon and Hoover did in the late 60's. IMO not a sign of a "free and democratic society".
Also, any suggestions for a good networked game?
PlayStation turns web browser
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3053127.stm
* "By hook or by crook" was an expression used in New England 200 years ago describing how some land renters acquired firewood. It was common for land renters to be prohibited from cutting trees down on lands they rented. While cutting trees down benefited the renter by providing firewood and more land for agriculture it also could lower the value of the land for the owner. This was especially true if high value trees, such as fruit or very mature hardwoods, were removed. Improper removal of trees could also result in top soil erosion making the land virtually unusable and worthless. The exception to this contractual cause was that the renter was allowed to prune trees as needed to maintain their health, netting him with firewood. So the expression in modern terms could be properly construed as getting what one needs by legal or marginally improper means. I suspect the expression was used earlier in England.
It seems HST has decided to move on. Anything I could say about him would trite. To many the following article was HST's creation of "Gonzo" journalism. So read on and do some drugs in his honor. =)
(Lifted from http://www.derbypost.com/hunter.html)
The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved
by Hunter S. Thompson
Scanlan's Monthly, vol. 1, no. 4, June 1970.
I got off the plane around midnight and no one spoke as I crossed the dark runway to the terminal. The air was thick and hot, like wandering into a steam bath. Inside, people hugged each other and shook hands...big grins and a whoop here and there: "By God! You old bastard! Good to see you, boy! Damn good...and I mean it!"
In the air-conditioned lounge I met a man from Houston who said his name was something or other--"but just call me Jimbo"--and he was here to get it on. "I'm ready for anything, by God! Anything at all. Yeah, what are you drinkin?" I ordered a Margarita with ice, but he wouldn't hear of it: "Naw, naw...what the hell kind of drink is that for Kentucky Derby time? What's wrong with you, boy?" He grinned and winked at the bartender. "Goddam, we gotta educate this boy. Get him some good whiskey..."
I shrugged. "Okay, a double Old Fitz on ice." Jimbo nodded his approval.
"Look." He tapped me on the arm to make sure I was listening. "I know this Derby crowd, I come here every year, and let me tell you one thing I've learned--this is no town to be giving people the impression you're some kind of faggot. Not in public, anyway. Shit, they'll roll you in a minute, knock you in the head and take every goddam cent you have."
I thanked him and fitted a Marlboro into my cigarette holder. "Say," he said, "you look like you might be in the horse business...am I right?"
"No," I said. "I'm a photographer."
"Oh yeah?" He eyed my ragged leather bag with new interest. "Is that what you got there--cameras? Who you work for?"
"Playboy," I said.
He laughed. "Well, goddam! What are you gonna take pictures of--nekkid horses? Haw! I guess you'll be workin' pretty hard when they run the Kentucky Oaks. That's a race just for fillies." He was laughing wildly. "Hell yes! And they'll all be nekkid too!"
I shook my head and said nothing; just stared at him for a moment, trying to look grim. "There's going to be trouble," I said. "My assignment is to take pictures of the riot."
"What riot?"
I hesitated, twirling the ice in my drink. "At the track. On Derby Day. The Black Panthers." I stared at him again. "Don't you read the newspapers?"
The grin on his face had collapsed. "What the hell are you talkin' about?
" "Well...maybe I shouldn't be telling you..." I shrugged. "But hell, everybody else seems to know. The cops and the National Guard have been getting ready for six weeks. They have 20,000 troops on alert at Fort Knox. They've warned us--all the press and photographers--to wear helmets and special vests like flak jackets. We were told to expect shooting..."
"No!" he shouted; his hands flew up and hovered momentarily between us, as if to ward off the words he was hearing. Then he whacked his fist on the bar. "Those sons of bitches! God Almighty! The Kentucky Derby!" He kept shaking his head. "No! Jesus! That's almost too bad to believe!" Now he seemed to be sagging on the stool, and when he looked up his eyes were misty. "Why? Why here? Don't they respect anything?"
I shrugged again. "It's not just the Panthers. The FBI says busloads of white crazies are coming in from all over the country--to mix with the crowd and attack all at once, from every direction. They'll be dressed like everybody else. You know--coats and ties and all that. But when the trouble starts...well, that's why the cops are so worried."
He sat for a moment, looking hurt and confused and not quite able to digest all this terrible news. Then he cried out: "Oh...Jesus! What in the name of God is happening in this country? Where can you get away from it?"
"Not here," I said, picking up my bag. "Thanks for the drink...and good luck."
He grabbed my arm, urging me to have another, but I said I was overdue at the Press Club and hustled off to get my act together for the awful spectacle. At the airport newsstand I picked up a Courier-Journal and scanned the front page headlines: "Nixon Sends GI's into Cambodia to Hit Reds"... "B-52's Raid, then 20,000 GI's Advance 20 Miles"..."4,000 U.S. Troops Deployed Near Yale as Tension Grows Over Panther Protest." At the bottom of the page was a photo of Diane Crump, soon to become the first woman jockey ever to ride in the Kentucky Derby. The photographer had snapped her "stopping in the barn area to fondle her mount, Fathom." The rest of the paper was spotted with ugly war news and stories of "student unrest." There was no mention of any trouble brewing at university in Ohio called Kent State.
I went to the Hertz desk to pick up my car, but the moon-faced young swinger in charge said they didn't have any. "You can't rent one anywhere," he assured me. "Our Derby reservations have been booked for six weeks." I explained that my agent had confirmed a white Chrysler convertible for me that very afternoon but he shook his head. "Maybe we'll have a cancellation. Where are you staying?"
I shrugged. "Where's the Texas crowd staying? I want to be with my people."
He sighed. "My friend, you're in trouble. This town is flat full. Always is, for the Derby."
I leaned closer to him, half-whispering: "Look, I'm from Playboy. How would you like a job?"
He backed off quickly. "What? Come on, now. What kind of a job?"
"Never mind," I said. "You just blew it." I swept my bag off the counter and went to find a cab. The bag is a valuable prop in this kind of work; mine has a lot of baggage tags on it--SF, LA, NY, Lima, Rome, Bangkok, that sort of thing--and the most prominent tag of all is a very official, plastic-coated thing that says "Photog. Playboy Mag." I bought it from a pimp in Vail, Colorado, and he told me how to use it. "Never mention Playboy until you're sure they've seen this thing first," he said. "Then, when you see them notice it, that's the time to strike. They'll go belly up ever time. This thing is magic, I tell you. Pure magic."
Well...maybe so. I'd used it on the poor geek in the bar, and now humming along in a Yellow Cab toward town, I felt a little guilty about jangling the poor bugger's brains with that evil fantasy. But what the hell? Anybody who wanders around the world saying, "Hell yes, I'm from Texas," deserves whatever happens to him. And he had, after all, come here once again to make a nineteenth-century ass of himself in the midst of some jaded, atavistic freakout with nothing to recommend it except a very saleable "tradition." Early in our chat, Jimbo had told me that he hadn't missed a Derby since 1954. "The little lady won't come anymore," he said. "She grits her teeth and turns me loose for this one. And when I say 'loose' I do mean loose! I toss ten-dollar bills around like they were goin' out of style! Horses, whiskey, women...shit, there's women in this town that'll do anything for money."
Why not? Money is a good thing to have in these twisted times. Even Richard Nixon is hungry for it. Only a few days before the Derby he said, "If I had any money I'd invest it in the stock market." And the market, meanwhile, continued its grim slide.
**********
The next day was heavy. With only thirty hours until post time I had no press credentials and--according to the sports editor of the Louisville Courier-Journal--no hope at all of getting any. Worse, I needed two sets: one for myself and another for Ralph Steadman, the English illustrator who was coming from London to do some Derby drawings. All I knew about him was that this was his first visit to the United States. And the more I pondered the fact, the more it gave me fear. How would he bear up under the heinous culture shock of being lifted out of London and plunged into the drunken mob scene at the Kentucky Derby? There was no way of knowing. Hopefully, he would arrive at least a day or so ahead, and give himself time to get acclimated. Maybe a few hours of peaceful sightseeing in the Bluegrass country around Lexington. My plan was to pick him up at the airport in the huge Pontiac Ballbuster I'd rented from a used-car salesman name Colonel Quick, then whisk him off to some peaceful setting that might remind him of England.
Colonel Quick had solved the car problem, and money (four times the normal rate) had bought two rooms in a scumbox on the outskirts of town. The only other kink was the task of convincing the moguls at Churchill Downs that Scanlan's was such a prestigious sporting journal that common sense compelled them to give us two sets of the best press tickets. This was not easily done. My first call to the publicity office resulted in total failure. The press handler was shocked at the idea that anyone would be stupid enough to apply for press credentials two days before the Derby. "Hell, you can't be serious," he said. "The deadline was two months ago. The press box is full; there's no more room...and what the hell is Scanlan's Monthly anyway?"
I uttered a painful groan. "Didn't the London office call you? They're flying an artist over to do the paintings. Steadman. He's Irish. I think. Very famous over there. Yes. I just got in from the Coast. The San Francisco office told me we were all set."
He seemed interested, and even sympathetic, but there was nothing he could do. I flattered him with more gibberish, and finally he offered a compromise: he could get us two passes to the clubhouse grounds but the clubhouse itself and especially the press box were out of the question.
"That sounds a little weird," I said. "It's unacceptable. We must have access tp everything. All of it. The spectacle, the people, the pageantry and certainly the race. You don't think we came all this way to watch the damn thing on television, do you? One way or another we'll get inside. Maybe we'll have to bribe a guard--or even Mace somebody." (I had picked up a spray can of Mace in a downtown drugstore for $5.98 and suddenly, in the midst of that phone talk, I was struck by the hideous possibilities of using it out at the track. Macing ushers at the narrow gates to the clubhouse inner sanctum, then slipping quickly inside, firing a huge load of Mace into the governor's box, just as the race starts. Or Macing helpless drunks in the clubhouse restroom, for their own good...)
By noon on Friday I was still without press credentials and still unable to locate Steadman. For all I knew he'd changed his mind and gone back to London. Finally, after giving up on Steadman and trying unsuccessfully to reach my man in the press office, I decided my only hope for credentials was to go out to the track and confront the man in person, with no warning--demanding only one pass now, instead of two, and talking very fast with a strange lilt in my voice, like a man trying hard to control some inner frenzy. On the way out, I stopped at the motel desk to cash a check. Then, as a useless afterthought, I asked if by any wild chance a Mr. Steadman had checked in.
The lady on the desk was about fifty years old and very peculiar-looking; when I mentioned Steadman's name she nodded, without looking up from whatever she was writing, and said in a low voice, "You bet he did." Then she favored me with a big smile. "Yes, indeed. Mr. Steadman just left for the racetrack. Is he a friend of yours?"
I shook my head. "I'm supposed to be working with him, but I don't even know what he looks like. Now, goddammit, I'll have to find him in the mob at the track."
She chuckled. "You won't have any trouble finding him. You could pick that man out of any crowd."
"Why?" I asked. "What's wrong with him? What does he look like?"
"Well..." she said, still grinning, "he's the funniest looking thing I've seen in a long time. He has this...ah...this growth all over his face. As a matter of fact it's all over his head." She nodded. "You'll know him when you see him; don't worry about that."
Creeping Jesus, I thought. That screws the press credentials. I had a vision of some nerve-rattling geek all covered with matted hair and string-warts showing up in the press office and demanding Scanlan's press packet. Well...what the hell? We could always load up on acid and spend the day roaming around the clubhouse grounds with bit sketch pads, laughing hysterically at the natives and swilling mint juleps so the cops wouldn't think we're abnormal. Perhaps even make the act pay; set up an easel with a big sign saying, "Let a Foreign Artist Paint Your Portrait, $10 Each. Do It NOW!"
**********
I took the expressway out to the track, driving very fast and jumping the monster car back and forth between lanes, driving with a beer in one hand and my mind so muddled that I almost crushed a Volkswagen full of nuns when I swerved to catch the right exit. There was a slim chance, I thought, that I might be able to catch the ugly Britisher before he checked in.
But Steadman was already in the press box when I got there, a bearded young Englishman wearing a tweed coat and RAF sunglasses. There was nothing particularly odd about him. No facial veins or clumps of bristly warts. I told him about the motel woman's description and he seemed puzzled. "Don't let it bother you," I said. "Just keep in mind for the next few days that we're in Louisville, Kentucky. Not London. Not even New York. This is a weird place. You're lucky that mental defective at the motel didn't jerk a pistol out of the cash register and blow a big hole in you." I laughed, but he looked worried.
"Just pretend you're visiting a huge outdoor loony bin," I said. "If the inmates get out of control we'll soak them down with Mace." I showed him the can of "Chemical Billy," resisting the urge to fire it across the room at a rat-faced man typing diligently in the Associated Press section. We were standing at the bar, sipping the management's Scotch and congratulating each other on our sudden, unexplained luck in picking up two sets of fine press credentials. The lady at the desk had been very friendly to him, he said. "I just told her my name and she gave me the whole works."
By midafternoon we had everything under control. We had seats looking down on the finish line, color TV and a free bar in the press room, and a selection of passes that would take us anywhere from the clubhouse roof to the jockey room. The only thing we lacked was unlimited access to the clubhouse inner sanctum in sections "F&G"...and I felt we needed that, to see the whiskey gentry in action. The governor, a swinish neo-Nazi hack named Louis Nunn, would be in "G," along with Barry Goldwater and Colonel Sanders. I felt we'd be legal in a box in "G" where we could rest and sip juleps, soak up a bit of atmosphere and the Derby's special vibrations.
The bars and dining rooms are also in "F&G," and the clubhouse bars on Derby Day are a very special kind of scene. Along with the politicians, society belles and local captains of commerce, every half-mad dingbat who ever had any pretensions to anything at all within five hundred miles of Louisville will show up there to get strutting drunk and slap a lot of backs and generally make himself obvious. The Paddock bar is probably the best place in the track to sit and watch faces. Nobody minds being stared at; that's what they're in there for. Some people spend most of their time in the Paddock; they can hunker down at one of the many wooden tables, lean back in a comfortable chair and watch the ever-changing odds flash up and down on the big tote board outside the window. Black waiters in white serving jackets move through the crowd with trays of drinks, while the experts ponder their racing forms and the hunch bettors pick lucky numbers or scan the lineup for right-sounding names. There is a constant flow of traffic to and from the pari-mutuel windows outside in the wooden corridors. Then, as post time nears, the crowd thins out as people go back to their boxes.
Clearly, we were going to have to figure out some way to spend more time in the clubhouse tomorrow. But the "walkaround" press passes to F&G were only good for thirty minutes at a time, presumably to allow the newspaper types to rush in and out for photos or quick interviews, but to prevent drifters like Steadman and me from spending all day in the clubhouse, harassing the gentry and rifling the odd handbag or two while cruising around the boxes. Or Macing the governor. The time limit was no problem on Friday, but on Derby Day the walkaround passes would be in heavy demand. And since it took about ten minutes to get from the press box to the Paddock, and ten more minutes to get back, that didn't leave much time for serious people-watching. And unlike most of the others in the press box, we didn't give a hoot in hell what was happening on the track. We had come there to watch the real beasts perform.
**********
Later Friday afternoon, we went out on the balcony of the press box and I tried to describe the difference between what we were seeing today and what would be happening tomorrow. This was the first time I'd been to a Derby in ten years, but before that, when I lived in Louisville, I used to go every year. Now, looking down from the press box, I pointed to the huge grassy meadow enclosed by the track. "That whole thing," I said, "will be jammed with people; fifty thousand or so, and most of them staggering drunk. It's a fantastic scene--thousands of people fainting, crying, copulating, trampling each other and fighting with broken whiskey bottles. We'll have to spend some time out there, but it's hard to move around, too many bodies."
"Is it safe out there?" Will we ever come back?"
"Sure," I said. "We'll just have to be careful not to step on anybody's stomach and start a fight." I shrugged. "Hell, this clubhouse scene right below us will be almost as bad as the infield. Thousands of raving, stumbling drunks, getting angrier and angrier as they lose more and more money. By midafternoon they'll be guzzling mint juleps with both hands and vomitting on each other between races. The whole place will be jammed with bodies, shoulder to shoulder. It's hard to move around. The aisles will be slick with vomit; people falling down and grabbing at your legs to keep from being stomped. Drunks pissing on themselves in the betting lines. Dropping handfuls of money and fighting to stoop over and pick it up."
He looked so nervous that I laughed. "I'm just kidding," I said. "Don't worry. At the first hint of trouble I'll start pumping this 'Chemical Billy' into the crowd."
He had done a few good sketches, but so far we hadn't seen that special kind of face that I felt we would need for a lead drawing. It was a face I'd seen a thousand times at every Derby I'd ever been to. I saw it, in my head, as the mask of the whiskey gentry--a pretentious mix of booze, failed dreams and a terminal identity crisis; the inevitable result of too much inbreeding in a closed and ignorant culture. One of the key genetic rules in breeding dogs, horses or any other kind of thoroughbred is that close inbreeding tends to magnify the weak points in a bloodline as well as the strong points. In horse breeding, for instance, there is a definite risk in breeding two fast horses who are both a little crazy. The offspring will likely be very fast and also very crazy. So the trick in breeding thoroughbreds is to retain the good traits and filter out the bad. But the breeding of humans is not so wisely supervised, particularly in a narrow Southern society where the closest kind of inbreeding is not only stylish and acceptable, but far more convenient--to the parents--than setting their offspring free to find their own mates, for their own reasons and in their own ways. ("Goddam, did you hear about Smitty's daughter? She went crazy in Boston last week and married a nigger!")
So the face I was trying to find in Churchill Downs that weekend was a symbol, in my own mind, of the whole doomed atavistic culture that makes the Kentucky Derby what it is.
On our way back to the motel after Friday's races I warned Steadman about some of the other problems we'd have to cope with. Neither of us had brought any strange illegal drugs, so we would have to get by on booze. "You should keep in mind," I said, "that almost everybody you talk to from now on will be drunk. People who seem very pleasant at first might suddenly swing at you for no reason at all." He nodded, staring straight ahead. He seemed to be getting a little numb and I tried to cheer him up by inviting to dinner that night, with my brother.
Back at the motel we talked for awhile about America, the South, England--just relaxing a bit before dinner. There was no way either of us could have known, at the time, that it would be the last normal conversation we would have. From that point on, the weekend became a vicious, drunken nightmare. We both went completely to pieces. The main problem was my prior attachment to Louisville, which naturally led to meetings with old friends, relatives, etc., many of whom were in the process of falling apart, going mad, plotting divorces, cracking up under the strain of terrible debts or recovering from bad accidents. Right in the middle of the whole frenzied Derby action, a member of my own family had to be institutionalized. This added a certain amount of strain to the situation, and since poor Steadman had no choice but to take whatever came his way, he was subjected to shock after shock.
Another problem was his habit of sketching people he met in the various social situations I dragged him into--then giving them the sketches. The results were always unfortunate. I warned him several times about letting the subjects see his foul renderings, but for some perverse reason he kept doing it. Consequently, he was regarded with fear and loathing by nearly everyone who'd seen or even heard about his work. Ho couldn't understand it. "It's sort of a joke," he kept saying. "Why, in England it's quite normal. People don't take offense. They understand that I'm just putting them on a bit."
"Fuck England," I said. "This is Middle America. These people regard what you're doing to them as a brutal, bilious insult. Look what happened last night. I thought my brother was going to tear your head off."
Steadman shook his head sadly. "But I liked him. He struck me as a very decent, straightforward sort."
"Look, Ralph," I said. "Let's not kid ourselves. That was a very horrible drawing you gave him. It was the face of a monster. It got on his nerves very badly." I shrugged. "Why in hell do you think we left the restaurant so fast?"
"I thought it was because of the Mace," he said.
"What Mace?"
He grinned. "When you shot it at the headwaiter, don't you remember?" "Hell, that was nothing," I said. "I missed him...and we were leaving, anyway."
"But it got all over us," he said. "The room was full of that damn gas. Your brother was sneezing was and his wife was crying. My eyes hurt for two hours. I couldn't see to draw when we got back to the motel."
"That's right," I said. "The stuff got on her leg, didn't it?"
"She was angry," he said.
"Yeah...well, okay...Let's just figure we fucked up about equally on that one," I said. "But from now on let's try to be careful when we're around people I know. You won't sketch them and I won't Mace them. We'll just try to relax and get drunk." "Right," he said. "We'll go native."
**********
It was Saturday morning, the day of the Big Race, and we were having breakfast in a plastic hamburger palace called the Fish-Meat Village. Our rooms were just across the road in the Brown Suburban Hotel. They had a dining room, but the food was so bad that we couldn't handle it anymore. The waitresses seemed to be suffering from shin splints; they moved around very slowly, moaning and cursing the "darkies" in the kitchen.
Steadman liked the Fish-Meat place because it had fish and chips. I preferred the "French toast," which was really pancake batter, fried to the proper thickness and then chopped out with a sort of cookie cutter to resemble pieces of toast.
Beyond drink and lack of sleep, our only real problem at that point was the question of access to the clubhouse. Finally, we decided to go ahead and steal two passes, if necessary, rather than miss that part of the action. This was the last coherent decision we were able to make for the next forty-eight hours. From that point on--almost from the very moment we started out to the track--we lost all control of events and spent the rest of the weekend churning around in a sea of drunken horrors. My notes and recollections from Derby Day are somewhat scrambled.
But now, looking at the big red notebook I carried all through that scene, I see more or less what happened. The book itself is somewhat mangled and bent; some of the pages are torn, others are shriveled and stained by what appears to be whiskey, but taken as a whole, with sporadic memory flashes, the notes seem to tell the story. To wit:
**********
Rain all nite until dawn. No sleep. Christ, here we go, a nightmare of mud and madness...But no. By noon the sun burns through--perfect day, not even humid.
Steadman is now worried about fire. Somebody told him about the clubhouse catching on fire two years ago. Could it happen again? Horrible. Trapped in the press box. Holocaust. A hundred thousand people fighting to get out. Drunks screaming in the flames and the mud, crazed horses running wild. Blind in the smoke. Grandstand collapsing into the flames with us on the roof. Poor Ralph is about to crack. Drinking heavily, into the Haig & Haig.
Out to the track in a cab, avoid that terrible parking in people's front yards, $25 each, toothless old men on the street with big signs: PARK HERE, flagging cars in the yard. "That's fine, boy, never mind the tulips." Wild hair on his head, straight up like a clump of reeds.
Sidewalks full of people all moving in the same direction, towards Churchill Downs. Kids hauling coolers and blankets, teenyboppers in tight pink shorts, many blacks...black dudes in white felt hats with leopard-skin bands, cops waving traffic along.
The mob was thick for many blocks around the track; very slow going in the crowd, very hot. On the way to the press box elevator, just inside the clubhouse, we came on a row of soldiers all carrying long white riot sticks. About two platoons, with helmets. A man walking next to us said they were waiting for the governor and his party. Steadman eyed them nervously. "Why do they have those clubs?"
"Black Panthers," I said. Then I remembered good old "Jimbo" at the airport and I wondered what he was thinking right now. Probably very nervous; the place was teeming with cops and soldiers. We pressed on through the crowd, through many gates, past the paddock where the jockeys bring the horses out and parade around for a while before each race so the bettors can get a good look. Five million dollars will be bet today. Many winners, more losers. What the hell. The press gate was jammed up with people trying to get in, shouting at the guards, waving strange press badges: Chicago Sporting Times, Pittsburgh Police Athletic League...they were all turned away. "Move on, fella, make way for the working press." We shoved through the crowd and into the elevator, then quickly up to the free bar. Why not? Get it on. Very hot today, not feeling well, must be this rotten climate. The press box was cool and airy, plenty of room to walk around and balcony seats for watching the race or looking down at the crowd. We got a betting sheet and went outside.
**********
Pink faces with a stylish Southern sag, old Ivy styles, seersucker coats and buttondown collars. "Mayblossom Senility" (Steadman's phrase)...burnt out early or maybe just not much to burn in the first place. Not much energy in the faces, not much curiosity. Suffering in silence, nowhere to go after thirty in this life, just hang on and humor the children. Let the young enjoy themselves while they can.
Why not?
The grim reaper comes early in this league...banshees on the lawn at night, screaming out there beside that little iron nigger in jockey clothes. Maybe he's the one who's screaming. Bad DT's and too many snarls at the bridge club. Going down with the stock market. Oh Jesus, the kid has wrecked the new car, wrapped it around the big stone pillar at the bottom of the driveway. Broken leg? Twisted eye? Send him off to Yale, they can cure anything up there.
Yale? Did you see today's paper? New Haven is under siege. Yale is swarming with Black Panthers...I tell you, Colonel, the world has gone mad, stone mad. Why, they tell me a goddam woman jockey might ride in the Derby today.
I left Steadman sketching in the Paddock bar and went off to place our bets on the fourth race. When I came back he was staring intently at a group of young men around a table not far away. "Jesus, look at the corruption in that face!" he whispered. "Look at the madness, the fear, the greed!" I looked, then quickly turned my back on the table he was sketching. The face he'd picked out to draw was the face of an old friend of mine, a prep school football star in the good old days with a sleek red Chevy convertible and a very quick hand, it was said, with the snaps of a 32 B brassiere. They called him "Cat Man."
But now, a dozen years later, I wouldn't have recognized him anywhere but here, where I should have expected to find him, in the Paddock bar on Derby Day...fat slanted eyes and a pimp's smile, blue silk suit and his friends looking like crooked bank tellers on a binge...
Steadman wanted to see some Kentucky Colonels, but he wasn't sure what they looked like. I told him to go back to the clubhouse men's rooms and look for men in white linen suits vomitting in the urinals. "They'll usually have large brown whiskey stains on the front of their suits," I said. "But watch the shoes, that's the tip-off. Most of them manage to avoid vomitting on their own clothes, but they never miss their shoes."
In a box not far from ours was Colonel Anna Friedman Goldman, Chairman and Keeper of the Great Seal of the Honorable Order of Kentucky Colonels. Not all the 76 million or so Kentucky Colonels could make it to the Derby this year, but many had kept the faith, and several days prior to the Derby they gathered for their annual dinner at the Seelbach Hotel.
The Derby, the actual race, was scheduled for late afternoon, and as the magic hour approached I suggested to Steadman that we should probably spend some time in the infield, that boiling sea of people across the track from the clubhouse. He seemed a little nervous about it, but since none of the awful things I'd warned him about had happened so far--no race riots, firestorms or savage drunken attacks--he shrugged and said, "Right, let's do it."
To get there we had to pass through many gates, each one a step down in status, then through a tunnel under the track. Emerging from the tunnel was such a culture shock that it took us a while to adjust. "God almighty!" Steadman muttered. "This is a...Jesus!" He plunged ahead with his tiny camera, stepping over bodies, and I followed, trying to take notes.
**********
Total chaos, no way to see the race, not even the track...nobody cares. Big lines at the outdoor betting windows, then stand back to watch winning numbers flash on the big board, like a giant bingo game.
Old blacks arguing about bets; "Hold on there, I'll handle this" (waving pint of whiskey, fistful of dollar bills); girl riding piggyback, T-shirt says, "Stolen from Fort Lauderdale Jail." Thousands of teen-agers, group singing "Let the Sun Shine In," ten soldiers guarding the American flag and a huge fat drunk wearing a blue football jersey (No. 80) reeling around with quart of beer in hand.
No booze sold out here, too dangerous...no bathrooms either. Muscle Beach...Woodstock...many cops with riot sticks, but no sign of a riot. Far across the track the clubhouse looks like a postcard from the Kentucky Derby.
**********
We went back to the clubhouse to watch the big race. When the crowd stood to face the flag and sing "My Old Kentucky Home," Steadman faced the crowd and sketched frantically. Somewhere up in the boxes a voice screeched, "Turn around, you hairy freak!" The race itself was only two minutes long, and even from our super-status seats and using 12-power glasses, there was no way to see what really happened to our horses. Holy Land, Ralph's choice, stumbled and lost his jockey in the final turn. Mine, Silent Screen, had the lead coming into the stretch but faded to fifth at the finish. The winner was a 16-1 shot named Dust Commander.
Moments after the race was over, the crowd surged wildly for the exits, rushing for cabs and busses. The next day's Courier told of violence in the parking lot; people were punched and trampled, pockets were picked, children lost, bottles hurled. But we missed all this, having retired to the press box for a bit of post-race drinking. By this time we were both half-crazy from too much whiskey, sun fatigue, culture shock, lack of sleep and general dissolution. We hung around the press box long enough to watch a mass interview with the winning owner, a dapper little man named Lehmann who said he had just flown into Louisville that morning from Nepal, where he'd "bagged a record tiger." The sportswriters murmured their admiration and a waiter filled Lehmann's glass with Chivas Regal. He had just won $127,000 with a horse that cost him $6,500 two years ago. His occupation, he said, was "retired contractor." And then he added, with a big grin, "I just retired."
The rest of the day blurs into madness. The rest of that night too. And all the next day and night. Such horrible things occurred that I can't bring myself even to think about them now, much less put them down in print. I was lucky to get out at all. One of my clearest memories of that vicious time is Ralph being attacked by one of my old friends in the billiard room of the Pendennis Club in downtown Louisville on Saturday night. The man had ripped his own shirt open to the waist before deciding that Ralph was after his wife. No blows were struck, but the emotional effects were massive. Then, as a sort of final horror, Steadman put his fiendish pen to work and tried to patch things up by doing a little sketch of the girl he'd been accused of hustling. That finished us in the Pedennis.
**********
Sometime around ten-thirty Monday morning I was awakened by a scratching sound at my door. I leaned out of bed and pulled the curtain back just far enough to see Steadman outside. "What the fuck do you want?" I shouted.
"What about having breakfast?" he said.
I lunged out of bed and tried to open the door, but it caught on the night-chain and banged shut again. I couldn't cope with the chain! The thing wouldn't come out of the track--so I ripped it out of the wall with a vicious jerk on the door. Ralph didn't blink. "Bad luck," he muttered.
I could barely see him. My eyes were swollen almost shut and the sudden burst of sunlight through the door left me stunned and helpless like a sick mole. Steadman was mumbling about sickness and terrible heat; I fell back on the bed and tried to focus on him as he moved around the room in a very distracted way for a few moments, then suddenly darted over to the beer bucket and seized a Colt
He nodded and ripped the cap off, taking a long drink. "You know, this is really awful," he said finally. "I must get out of this place..." he shook his head nervously. "The plane leaves at three-thirty, but I don't know if I'll make it." I barely heard him. My eyes had finally opened enough for me to foucs on the mirror across the room and I was stunned at the shock of recognition. For a confused instant I thought that Ralph had brought somebody with him--a model for that one special face we'd been looking for. There he was, by God--a puffy, drink-ravaged, disease-ridden caricature...like an awful cartoon version of an old snapshot in some once-proud mother's family photo album. It was the face we'd been looking for--and it was, of course, my own. Horrible, horrible...
"Maybe I should sleep a while longer," I said. "Why don't you go on over to the Fish-Meat place and eat some of those rotten fish and chips? Then come back and get me around noon. I feel too near death to hit the streets at this hour."
He shook his head. "No...no...I think I'll go back upstairs and work on those drawings for a while." He leaned down to fetch two more cans out of the beer bucket. "I tried to work earlier," he said, "but my hands kept trembling...It's teddible, teddible."
"You've got to stop this drinking," I said.
He nodded. "I know. This is no good, no good at all. But for some reason it makes me feel better..."
"Not for long," I said. "You'll probably collapse into some kind of hysterical DT's tonight--probably just about the time you get off the plane at Kennedy. They'll zip you up in a straightjacket and drag you down to the Tombs, then beat you on the kidneys with big sticks until you straighten out."
He shrugged and wandered out, pulling the door shut behind him. I went back to bed for another hour or so, and later--after the daily grapefruit juice run to the Nite Owl Food Mart--we had our last meal at Fish-Meat Village: a fine lunch of dough and butcher's offal, fried in heavy grease.
By this time Ralph wouldn't order coffee; he kept asking for more water. "It's the only thing they have that's fit for human consumption," he explained. Then, with an hour or so to kill before he had to catch the plane, we spread his drawings out on the table and pondered them for a while, wondering if he'd caught the proper spirit of the thing...but we couldn't make up our minds. His hands were shaking so badly that he had trouble holding the paper, and my vision was so blurred that I could barely see what he'd drawn. "Shit," I said. "We both look worse than anything you've drawn here."
He smiled. "You know--I've been thinking about that," he said. "We came down here to see this teddible scene: people all pissed out of their minds and vomitting on themselves and all that...and now, you know what? It's us..."
**********
Huge Pontiac Ballbuster blowing through traffic on the expressway.
A radio news bulletin says the National Guard is massacring students at Kent State and Nixon is still bombing Cambodia. The journalist is driving, ignoring his passenger who is now nearly naked after taking off most of his clothing, which he holds out the window, trying to wind-wash the Mace out of it. His eyes are bright red and his face and chest are soaked with beer he's been using to rinse the awful chemical off his flesh. The front of his woolen trousers is soaked with vomit; his body is racked with fits of coughing and wild chocking sobs. The journalist rams the big car through traffic and into a spot in front of the terminal, then he reaches over to open the door on the passenger's side and shoves the Englishman out, snarling: "Bug off, you worthless faggot! You twisted pigfucker! [Crazed laughter.] If I weren't sick I'd kick your ass all the way to Bowling Green--you scumsucking foreign geek. Mace is too good for you...We can do without your kind in Kentucky."
Please consider buying the video if, for the only reason, to encourage such behavior.
BTW: google out "kartvader". Here's a story from the cbc.
(Hey, I use GNU/Linux as my main machine but still have an eMac for video and still work. While Gnome makes GNU/Linux quite usable, and in some ways better than MS Windows, as a workstation for the masses the Mac and it's GUI still beats everyone else hands down.)
From HP unveils iPod clone:
BTW: It's not a clone, it's made by Apple. The AP headline editor is an idiot.)
HP unveils iPod clone
By May Wong / AP Technology WriterSAN JOSE, Calif. -- Hewlett-Packard Co. unveiled its own version of the iPod portable music player Friday, showing the fruits of a groundbreaking partnership it had previously announced with Apple Computer Inc.
HP is now taking orders for the player, which it has dubbed the "Apple iPod from HP." The product is a replica of Apple's latest models of the popular white 20-gigabyte and 40-gigabyte iPods -- but carries the HP brand instead.
The licensing deal, which was announced this past January, is a break from Apple's usual isolationist stance and should help it capitalize on the broad retail reach of HP, the world's largest computer printer maker and second largest PC maker.
For HP, working with Apple, the leader in portable music players and online music store sales, gives it a quick foothold in the digital music space.
"Clearly Apple has done a great job of making the iPod popular, but we have a wide distribution globally, so it'll really help in driving up the volume," said Vyomesh Joshi, an HP executive vice president.
The price will be $299 for the 20-gigabyte model, or $399 for the 40-gigabyte model, matching Apple's current prices. The players will be available in early September -- the same month HP will release about two dozen other new consumer products, including a 42-inch plasma television and an all-in-one home theater projector, which were also announced Friday. The efforts are part of HP's expanding strategy to become a household, rather than just an office, name by capitalizing on what they say is a reputation for quality products.
The HP-branded iPod will not feature HP's signature blue color as initially planned because it found that the clean white look was important to iPod customers, Joshi said.
As part of the deal with Apple, HP has also begun bundling Apple's iTunes jukebox software and iTunes Music Store with all of its computers. HP's upcoming new digital entertainment center -- a hub that stores digital music, photos and videos and hooks up with a home television and stereo system -- will also feature the iTunes software.
Also, HP will sell photo labels in which users can choose and print their own art, or select cover art from artists HP has partnered with, such as Sting and Alicia Keys, and wrap the tattoo-like stickers around their iPods for a personal touch.
At least one analyst was not impressed with HP's latest offerings, saying they lacked innovation and further muddle HP's overall strategy -- which so far encompasses endeavors in computers, servers, business services, printers, and now also consumer electronics.
"These rinky-dink tie-ins -- they beg the question of what's the strategy here," said Mark Stahlman, a technology analyst and managing director at Caris & Company. "You're just selling iPods, and you're not going to make any money printing these iPod covers. It exposes there's no meat on the table."
In trading Friday, HP shares closed up 7 cents at $18.26 on the New York Stock Exchange. Apple shares finished down 31 cents at $34.35 on the Nasdaq Stock Market.
For example say a small town of about 5k people has averaged about 150 [computer] seats for town departments and 150 seats for schools over the years. That's could in theory mean they have bought:
300 copies of: MS DOS, MS Windows 1.x through 3.x, MS Windows XP, MS Office x, MS Office 95, MS Office 97 and MS Office XP.
10 copies of: MS NT server 3.x, MS NT server 4.x and MS Windows 2000 server.
If they settle on a "refund" of $20 per copy of workstation software and $50 for server software that would be $22.5k . Add in $30k for legal fees and we're talking about roughly $50k for every small town. If only half the cities and towns sue MS and assuming they are all on the low end, like in my example, it would mean a $250m liability for MS. Remember, they're claims have already been proven with previous litigants, they just need to show a similar injury.
For a lawyer it could be a big, easy payday. While I dislike litigation like this I dislike MS every more.
From Calif. Cities, Counties Sue Microsoft:
Calif. Cities, Counties Sue Microsoft 08.28.2004, 05:55 AM
Several California cities and counties have sued Microsoft Corp., accusing the software giant of illegally charging inflated prices for its products because of monopoly control of the personal computer operating systems market.
The lawsuit, filed Friday in San Francisco Superior Court, is the latest in a string of similar actions brought against Microsoft across the country. The plaintiffs include San Francisco and Los Angeles.
The local governments are asking a judge to make the case a class action on behalf of all California cities and counties. If a judge approves the lawsuit as a class action and Microsoft is found liable, the Redmond, Wash., company could be liable for many millions of dollars, perhaps billions.
"It's anticompetitive, it's predatory, and it denies consumers, and in this case taxpayers, the benefits of innovation that a free marketplace should provide," said San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera.
Last month, a San Francisco Superior Court judge granted final approval to a $1.1 billion settlement between Microsoft and California consumers who accused the company of violating state antitrust and unfair competition laws - nearly the same accusation made in the suit filed Friday.
Similar class-action lawsuits were filed in at least 16 other states on behalf of consumers. The company has agreed to settle 12 of those cases, including a $104 million settlement in Arizona, and a $34 million settlement in Massachusetts.
They're separate from the antitrust case that Microsoft settled in 2002 with the Justice Department and several states.
Microsoft spokeswoman Stacy Drake said the company's lawyers hadn't fully reviewed the lawsuit, but she defended the company's prices.
"In fact," she said, "we've built our business on delivering innovative software at low prices, and have been the market leader in reducing prices while increasing the value contained in software."
Before:
"The employee must be compensated on a salary or fee basis at a rate not less than $1,150 per week or, if compensated on an hourly basis, at a rate not less than $27.63 an hour [to be ineligible for overtime pay]"
now the rule reads (emphasis the US Government's and not mine):
"The employee must be compensated either on a salary or fee basis at a rate not less than $455 per week or , if compensated on an hourly basis, at a rate not less than $27.63 an hour [to be ineligible for overtime pay]"
Now, I wonder what most employers will do: pay you per hour at $27.63 ($1,150 per 40 hour work week) or $455 per week (that's a maximum of $11.38 per hour, less per hour for everything over 40 hours) to avoid paying overtime?
What does this mean? That your employer can legally cut your pay to $23,660 and pay you nothing for overtime. Well, needless to say overtime is a way of life for most CRO people. 20 to 30 hours per month is very common. Say you're on the low end of the typical pay scale at $12.00 per hour and average 10 hours OT per week, here's the breakdown:
Before: pay for 50 hours per week = ($12*40) + ($18*10) = $480+$180 = $660 per week
Now: pay for 50 hours per week = ($12*40) + ($0*10) = $480+$0 = $480 per week
You've just lost $9,300 per year or about a third of your pay. Most US States are "right to work" (you can get canned for no stated reason) states. This means that an employer in one of these states can fire you for not working the "requested" overtime. The OT can be for any amount of time since the rules do not state a maximum. Before, they had to pay you OT which helped, in some ways, protected the employee from abuse. This protection is now pretty much gone. The only plus is that if you're paid the minimum $23.6k per year your pay shouldn't be docked for sick time.
Please feel free to thank the U.S. Department of Labor for your upcoming pay cut and, since they are part of the Executive branch and answer solely to the US President, Tipsy McStupid aka George W. Bush.
Minor Update (2004-08-23 1330 ET):
It seems a lot of other skilled people are in the same boat including:
Those in a medical field (i.e.: any nurses) but excludes MDs.
Those in a legal field except the lawyers themselves (big surprise).
See the rest at "FairPay Fact Sheets by Exemption - Professional Employees"
N.S. base will buy only Tim Hortons coffee for its sailors
HALIFAX -- Apparently, there's no coffee like it. The military is insisting it will buy only Tim Hortons coffee for the galleys at Canadian Forces Base Halifax, including galleys aboard the warships based there.
The military has issued a tender as it looks for someone to supply it with a two-year supply of about 300 cases of Tim Hortons coffee.
The tender says there can be "no substitute."
The justification, says a navy spokesperson, is Tims is what sailors want to drink.
"I guess we're just following the mainstream Canadian public with their choice of coffee," Lt.-Cmdr. Denise LaViolette said.
Sailors like the coffee so much that one HMCS Toronto crewman yearning for a Canuck caffeine jolt while patrolling the Persian Gulf was the subject of a Tim Hortons TV commercial.
A spokesperson for the U.S.-owned java giant wasn't surprised by the military's demands.
"Canadians love their Tim Hortons and I guess the troops are just the same," Diane Slopek-Weber said, adding the company regularly donates coffee to Canadian troops abroad.
"It's something that really reminds them of home."
Given the amount of coffee involved, the two-year contract would be worth about $16,000. But some local coffee merchants weren't so hot on the idea.
"It's sort of pathetic, really," said Debra Moore, manager of Just Us Coffee Roasters, a fair-trade co-operative based in Wolfville, N.S.
As someone that enjoys going to a local TH at 3am and someone that has have to suffer with bad coffee while underway this is a good thing. Sometimes the only joy in a sailor's day is his coffee and this might, in a small way, remind him of home. Besides, I suspect the quality should be pretty with their name on it.
Tim Horton's: the one thing Canadians and Québécois can agree upon. (It's a joke, relax). Please use the remainder of your time to share your favourite TH story. BTW, they claim there's one in Massachusetts (where I'm at) but I have yet to find it. If someone knows where it is please post some info.
Off topic but
The rule on staying alive as a program manager is to give 'em a number or give 'em a date, but never give 'em both at once.
