Dvorak News Blog

Will IBM NOT Buy Sun??

By John C Dvorak Monday March 23, 2009

7 Comments

Sony-Ericsson to stay in place.
Apple iPhone all over the news with weird stories and gossip. I reveal it here.
Microsoft IE8 flopping. People bailing out already!
Dell to Buy Palm? Why not?
Al Gore fuss over his speech. I suspect a publicity stunt.
IBM Sun deal seems to be fading.
Linux World to become Open Source World.
Gartner has dire prediction. You will not like what you hear.

click ► to listen:

Right click here and select ‘Save Link As…’ to download the mp3 file.

AIG will hide behind a different name

By McCullough Monday March 23, 2009

37 Comments

3-23-2009_5-02-39_pm

Gothamist has some photos of 175 Water Street in NYC — which until recently proudly displayed the name and logo of the American International Group. What happened?

Well, it seems that there’s a little rebranding going on. AIG told the NY Post that “the company had decided to replace the large AIG sign — outside the entrance to its property-casualty offices — as part of its plan to change that operation’s name to AIU Holdings Ltd”

From the NYPost:

A rebranding to distance the giant insurer’s sprawling operations across 130 countries away from the AIG name are likely to continue.

“I think the AIG name is so thoroughly wounded and disgraced that we’re probably going to have to change it,” Liddy told a U.S. House of Representatives subcommittee last Wednesday.

Any suggestions for him?

I would think that changing your corporate name has to be an enormous and unnecessary expense. But we don’t mind paying for this too….right guys?

Rhode Island Paper Predicts ‘Under-Ocean’ Global Warming Scenario by 2100

By John C Dvorak Monday March 23, 2009

25 Comments

Rhode Island Paper Predicts ‘Under-Ocean’ Global Warming Scenario by 2100

Here’s a scary newspaper headline: “Could global warming turn R.I. into the under-Ocean State?” The answer to that question could only be, “Yes.” And so it was in a one-sided report in a Rhode Island newspaper.

A news article in the March 22 Providence (R.I.) Journal by G. Wayne Miller details how a portion of the beautiful harbor town of Newport will be underwater due to the effects of anthropogenic global warming by the year 2100.

“The ocean covers the place where once-popular Perrotti Park used to be. The park benches that stood on dry land are gone. So are the water fountain and coin-operated binoculars through which visitors once observed the harbor,” Miller wrote. “Adjacent to the park site, America’s Cup Avenue is history, too, along with the harbormaster’s building and the salon, restaurant and stores that did business on nearby Long Wharf. It is 8:16 a.m. on Tuesday, Nov. 2, 2100.”

I think this is just wishful thinking.

Al Gore FINALLY Opens His CTIA Keynote to the Press After All

By John C Dvorak Monday March 23, 2009

15 Comments

Al Gore Opens His CTIA Keynote to the Press After All | Technologizer — Exactly why Al Gore banned the press from his upcoming CTIA keynote is somewhat mystifying, but he finally relented. Here is some commentary.

Last week, PCMag.com’s Sascha Segan pointed out something unusual about former Vice President Al Gore’s keynote speech at next week’s CTIA Wireless phone trade show in Las Vegas: It wasn’t going to be open to the press, apparently at the request of Gore or his staff. It was a truly jarring bit of news. I’ve been attending tech trade shows for a couple of decades, and can’t remember a single other keynote that the media wasn’t invited to attend.

But it’s not just as a courtesy that we press people are normally let into such speeches–media coverage is one of the primary reasons why they exist. It’s impossible, for instance, to imagine a scenario in which Steve Jobs keynotes at Macworld Expo or Bill Gates ones at CES were anything but publicity extravaganzas designed to attract as much media attention as possible.

Also, as Segan pointed out, the auditorium where Segan pointed out would have been bulging with folks who could have blogged the event with photos from their phones if they chose. In the era of citizen journalism, the only way to truly keep journalists away from a speech would be to bar citizens from attending. You’d Gore–the co-founder of citizen-journalism TV channel Current, not to mention a former newspaper reporter–would understand that.

What was he going to do that he did not want the press corps there?

Why does Fox News hate Canada and mock their dead soldiers?

By Eideard Monday March 23, 2009

87 Comments

A Fox News video clip posted on the Internet YouTube site suggesting Canadian soldiers are weak and effeminate has raised ire among Canadians.

The 5-minute clip was from a recent broadcast of the “Red Eye with Greg Gutfeld” panel show on the conservative U.S. network, Sun Media reported from Ottawa. It was in response to a Canadian general’s remark that his troops would need a year off after their combat role in the NATO mission in Afghanistan ends in 2011.

Gutfeld reported the plan with a sneer, the video shows.

“The Canadian military wants to take a breather to do some yoga, paint landscapes, run on the beach in gorgeous white capri pants,” Gutfeld said.

The segment was posted by an unidentified Canadian who titled it “How to Lose Friends and Alienate Countries,” while conservative Ottawa commentator Geoff Norquay called it “insulting and beneath contempt.” the Sun report said.

Monday, the bodies of four Canadians killed in Afghanistan Friday were flown home. Canada has lost 116 soldiers since the NATO mission began in 2002.

American nutballs think all other conservatives don’t come down to their lack of standards.

Will Palin return volcano watching money?

By Eideard Monday March 23, 2009

23 Comments

Daylife/AP Photo

So far airline passengers are experiencing the biggest troubles thanks to Mount Redoubt’s eruption.

Although Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport remains open, Alaska Airlines had to re-route five flights inbound for Anchorage — two coming from Seattle, two from Hawaii and one from Nome.

Later Alaska canceled 19 flights “destined to Anchorage and flights out of Anchorage to Bethel, Deadhorse, Kodiak, Nome,
Kotzebue, and Barrow…”

Airline officials say they just aren’t going to take any chances.

Good thing they don’t listen to Sarah Palin or Bobby Jindal.

Thanks, Mr. Justin

Just right for storefront mortgage companies

By Eideard Monday March 23, 2009

17 Comments

Especially if they worked for Countrywide Mortgage Company!

Free Mortgage!

By Joe C Monday March 23, 2009

16 Comments

Two of the luckiest people in the world

A couple have seen their mortgage payments plunge £1,500 a month to just 1p thanks to the huge cuts in interest rates, it emerged today.

Ben and Nicola Cameron signed a two-year tracker deal at 1.01 per cent below the base rate when they bought their London home in 2007 for just over £400,000.

They only pay interest on the loan from Cheltenham & Gloucester so have been paying nothing since February when interest rates were slashed to one per cent.

The Bank of England has since cut them again, down to another historic low of 0.5 per cent.

It is only down to a computer glitch that the couple are paying anything at all, according to the London Evening Standard.

Could This Device, If Required Wearing, End Bad Cop Violence, Intimidation, Lying?

By Uncle Dave Monday March 23, 2009

21 Comments

Oh sure, technically COPS is still a current show, but seriously, the formula hasn’t changed in eons. TASER International’s AXON / EVIDENCE.com tandem is gearing up to change all that — so long as officers agree to strap the hardware on their person, that is. In short, AXON is an on-officer recording system that captures audio and video of arrests, and after the scuffle is complete, it sends the data (encrypted heavily, of course) to EVIDENCE.com servers that are managed far, far away from the potentially dubious grasp of police departments. There are built in sensors to see if any data has been tampered with, and if all goes to plan, the entire system should be ready for deployment in Q3 of this year. In other words, go ahead and get all your stupidity out before the summer ends.

While the public sees this as a way to stem illegal police activity, TASER is selling it with a different spin:

The AXON™ is a tactical computer that brings the power of incident video to every law enforcement officer. Law enforcement officers constantly face false allegations and complaints that question their integrity and honor. With AXON, you now have the ability to show administrators and even jurors exactly what you saw, from your visual perspective.

Caption This Picture

By Uncle Dave Monday March 23, 2009

48 Comments

Nigerian Scam Email Submitted To Court As Being From Madoff Victim

By Uncle Dave Monday March 23, 2009

3 Comments

As part of their efforts to make the scale and scope of Bernie Madoff’s crimes clear to Judge Denny Chin in deciding the terms of his plea, confinement and eventual sentencing, the folks at the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York submitted emails from Madoff’s victims describing the injury they had suffered and the punishment they believed Madoff deserved.

When you read through the emails, though, you do sort of wonder what level of vetting was applied to these emails or who some of those people even are. And when you get to the email on page 36 you get the sense that the quality control on which emails they threw on the pile maybe wasn’t all that high.

Here’s the text of that email …

From: [redacted]
Sent: Saturday, March 07, 2009 6:38 PM
Subject: REPLY ME

My Name is Mr. [redacted] but my origin is from Republic of Congo. I have an inherited fund I want to invest in a business in your country with a help of a local. I don’t know about what business but I found it wise to invest the funds in your country with your collaboration with me.

Haven’t Had Your Fill Of Doom And Gloom Today? Here’s A Heaping Bowlful!

By Uncle Dave Monday March 23, 2009

32 Comments

Doom and gloom has been an easy way to sell newspapers since before Hearst perfected it. Nothing may help papers anymore, but it sure keeps bloggers occupied.

Is this the end of America?

One test of whether we are witnessing the end of America is how many more times Americans put up with congressional show trials of individual business people and their employees, slandering and vilifying them for their actions and motives. And for how long will they tolerate a President who berates business and corporations as dens of crime and malfeasance? If the majority of Americans come to accept the caricatures of business as true, then America is closer to the end of its life as a global leader, as a champion of markets and individualism.

But America is at risk in other ways, especially in the technical business of setting and executing policy. The presidency of Barack Obama has set out on a course that has no precedent in U.S. history.
[…]
Reform of health care, environmental policy, education, energy, banking, regulation — every nook and cranny of the U.S. economy has been put on alert for major change. Expansion of government spending, plunging the U.S. into unprecedented deficits, is without parallel. In economic policy, through regulation and control of energy output, financial services and monetary expansion, the U.S. government has embarked on a fundamental reshaping of America. It is designed, in short, to bring on the end of America.
[…]
For the rest of the world, however, the worry is that America is at risk of becoming the fountainhead of a new inflationary outburst. The U.S. dollar is now in decline, gold is moving sharply higher, and new global currency turmoil is on the horizon.

As if this weren’t bad enough, did you forget now that oil prices are back down that the reasons for the rise last year are still there? And soon to get far worse? Aggghhhhh!