Trust eHow? No how!

Whilst Googling the Internet for information about a problem faced by some folks I care about, I saw eHow's page on sealing divorce records in Texas.

There are two readily-identifiable problems with it.

The novice will not immediately notice that the References section, which contains but one reference, contains a link to Rule 76A of the Texas Rules of Civil Procedure (though the eHow link erroneously denotes the rule as "76(a)" rather than the correct "76a"). The first is that filing "a copy" of a notice with a couple of court clerks is not the same thing as filing "a verified copy" as required by Tex. R. Civ. Proc. Rule 76A, which is referenced in the article. Filing "a copy" of the notice won't satisfy the rule if it's not "a verified copy." The instructions will lead the ordinary reader to failure. The instructions get an F.

The next problem is that Rule 76a's definition of the "court records" that are subject to Rule 76a(2)(a)(3) expressly excludes "documents filed in an action originally arising under the Family Code" – including every divorce action filed in Texas. In other words, if you want information about sealing divorce records in Texas, you need some other rule to guide you than Rule 76a.

Like Indiana Jones said, "They're digging in the wrong place!"

Silly Wabbit, Overpriced Apps Are For Win9-Mobile

Kotaku.com joins a tradition of bad-mouthing Apple without a lot of serious justification by publishing an article with the highly suggestive title "Apple Bans Game, Days After Developer Publicly Trashes App Store." The Jaded Consumer calls this title "suggestive" because it tends to present to the reader the conclusion the article's author wants readers to draw: Apple banned a product to punish a developer for criticizing Apple. As disclosed in the article itself, however, the truth is much closer to that disclosed in the also-suggestively-titled article here at the Jaded Consumer, bearing the title "Apple Erases Booby Trap App."

You see, the developer described in the Kotaku article – Tommy Refenes, author of the zit-popping game "Zits and Giggles", which Kotaku describes as being developed as a "lark" – did in fact rant against the App Store about a week before his application was delisted. The rant included claims that, as a non-developer, the Jaded Consumer is at a disadvantage to evaluate – such as likening the App Store to the "Tiger handheld game of this generation[.]" (Googling the Tiger handleld shows it to be a piece of hardware supporting a number of third-party games.)

However, the author also steadily raised the price of his product into the hundreds of dollars, where (a) its description as a "dermatological simulator" could have mislead customers into believing it had features or realism it in fact did not, and (b) its price could be mistaken for a price a couple of orders of magnitude lower, causing anger in the face of the you-click-it-you-buy-it terms of the App Store. To prevent angry customers who feel cheated from hammering the blogosphere with vitriol against Apple, Apple rationally cut the useless and confusing product that wasn't helping anyone with anything anyway – so that, at worst, it suffered the vitriol of one prima donna developer and his small clique of sycophants.

The place to complain about Apple is not where it protects customers from unhappy surprises, but where it prevents customers from experiencing competition. Application non-approval on the ground Apple already ships competing functionality is just not cool. So not cool.

Let's see if Opera is allowed to compete.

All About Anticipation At Apple

Apple has announced iPad availability in the U.S. beginning April 3 for WiFi-only versions and late April for 3G versions. The rest of the world waits until the 3G version ships.

I think Apple's decision to ship beginning in early April after announcing late March (60 days from January 27) is not entirely an accident. When Jobs announces a product in "Spring" he's known to release it so late in the year that he shows a dictionary definition of "Spring" to prove it's still spring, despite that everyone in the auditorium feels it's summer. Pre-announcing the iPhone 3GS so far in advance that existing models' sales were clobbered by the Osborne Effect isn't a rookie mistake, either. I believe that carefully controlling information and disappointing expectations of immediate availability is a deliberate tactic to heighten anticipation and garner both first-day crowds and free press on product release. Apple is into the buzz.

With Gartner announcing in effect a doubling of touchscreen devices over the year, Apple's position as the company folks think of when they think of touch screens is important. Building buzz, staying in the news, and providing a carefully-crafted experience are all part of Apple's marketing and brand management effort.

New York Ballet Cribs From Old Apple Ads?

Apple's "real people" ads that conclude "my name is ____, and I ________" has apparently inspired the New York Ballet, which uses the same conclusion in an ad for its 2009 ballet season. The idea of pitching a product by delivering a narrative from the lips of someone who sounds like you can identify with them -- whether a computer user who wants to get work done and not run a tech help desk (and turns out to run the company), or a ballet fan who loves to see the dance and needs encouragement in performing swift footwork (and turns out to be a principal dancer with the New York Ballet) -- seems to have caught on.

This is the Jaded Consumer and I write a blog on the Internet.

MSFT Publishes On 'Apple Tax'

Microsoft's ad campaign targeting Apple (video linked here) now includes an "Apple Tax Return" depicting the additional cost for a family buying either PCs or Macs for the household.

The price comparison has some interesting features. The hypothetical Apple buyers are assumed to buy Microsoft Office at retail price as well as Intuit's Quicken and an upgrade of iWork, plus both Mobile Me and a one-to-one personal support agreement. Think about this for a moment. Do you actually buy this stuff when you buy a new machine?

Moreover, the hypothetical PC buyers are assumed to buy none of this. No online data synchronization tool or other service (storage, web hosting, etc.). No prepackaged accounting software. Instead of two office suites, zero. The "Other Software" budgeted for Mac users at $70? Nada. Maybe they aren't allowed, or can't afford software. Who knows?

Outside the computers themselves, Apple buyers and PC buyers are expected to buy entirely different wireless router/firewall appliances, at completely different prices. This, despite that I've used both the mentioned devices on Mac networks, and both work just fine with PCs. Some of the extras are priced similarly: an external hard drive and and 2GB RAM are shown at similar prices, for example, though I rather doubt all the vendors offer RAM at the same markup. (Maybe Microsoft expects RAM sticks as after-market add-ons?) However, when both buyers are assumed to buy a Blu-Ray player for the PC (on this point, I'm kinda mystified; why does my PC need a Blu-Ray player if I'm not recording data to it? maybe I'm outside the demographic MSFT is targeting), Microsoft charges the Mac buyers more for an external unit.

One interesting feature in the comparisons is the difference in price of the ATi Radeon HD 4870, which costs more from Apple than is reported from HP. Sometimes, these cards are clocked differently from different OEM vendors, but I don't have any information that Apple's part in this case delivers a different customer benefit. If you have info on this, leave comments :-) The fact that Apple's 3-year extended warranty costs $59 more than Dell's might be explained by the company's relative customer service rating, so I don't attribute much to it. I've talked to people who called Dell's support, and I wouldn't pay any price for that kind of "service".

The most belly-laugh garnering item on the list is the "Other Software" the Mac buyer is expected to pay for. The PC buyer is apparently not buying "Other Software". Not depicted for PC buyers are the likely relative costs of anti-virus, the relative time (or money) spent reinstalling (or having someone reinstall) an operating system atop infected installations for several years, or the like. The possibility that a Mac user might be happy with OpenOffice, or might not upgrade the still-working-just-fine but free-with-purchase iWork installation seems to escape Microsoft utterly. Why Dell or HP buyers won't spend money on software a Mac user would buy is sort of perplexing.

The hardware purchase price difference is listed at $1751, and that might be legit -- assuming you believe the computers listed are otherwise substitutes for one another. You are free to check out the supposed comparables and determine whether you believe one or the other is actually a better machine than its supposed equivalent. Personally, my experience with the longevity of Macs is that they work for eight years. That is, they remain useful years longer than most assume a computer will even run. I am not into modding hardware or buying upgrades, so this reflects what I get out of a single hardware purchase. Obviously, your mileage may vary; but I strongly suspect that the cost per year of the machines over their actual use -- and under actual software budgets as they occur in a real household -- will be rather substantially different than depicted by Microsoft in its anti-Apple ad.

The interesting thing is that Microsoft has felt it necessary to advertise against Apple as a competitor. I mean ... if Apple is no threat, why bother?

Polish iPhone Yawner

Finally, we may get to see an iPhone launch untroubled by demand-related service outages. In Poland, iPhone queues are manned not by crazed fans, but paid actors.

Who thought of that?

Crazy Ads

After posting about some poor rhetoric found in the anti-evolutionary debate, and admitting the view that ID offers little of value to the science curriculum as is offers to cloud rather than to encourage exploration of natural forces that might be discovered to govern the physical world (and thus may be subject to manipulation to advance quality of life), I started noticing Google posting some interesting adverts on this site.

Google picks ads on the basis of content, but also on the basis of what amounts to an auction.  Guess who turned up as the high-bidders for the post discussing evolution?  Have a look:

I'm naturally curious who would bankroll adverts soliciting requests for free booklets touting Creationism.  Anyone with an interest in the subject can have a look at Genesis, free of charge, without waiting for a pamphlet in the mail.  Indeed, those hoping for spiritual enlightenment are likely much better looking at the . . . well, admittedly not the original, but one of the numerous, different, but well-intended translations of copies accessible to would-be translators.  Such translations have at least a colorable claim to derivation from originals, whereas pamphlets published originally by mortals hoping to sell specific explanations of how holy works are meant to be interpreted in light of presently-accepted facts about the natural history of the planet are frankly as suspect as can possibly be.  

Those guys are just selling something.

The above advertisement is an even more transparent effort to harmonize current views of the evidence with religious thought in ways that appear to discourage serious effort to view the world about one.  The thesis that the observed facts are consistent with divine will and not with the happenstance of nature, and that scientific efforts to discover physical laws by examining Creation are somehow undermining the dignity of the Creator, requires one to accept a number of interesting axioms regarding the Creator, Creation, and their relationship.

Consider for a moment the position of Henry David Thoreau, who seemingly believed escaping nature to spend the Sabbath indoors an affront to the work placed before Man for his enjoyment and study.  If there is a manual set forth by the divine to instruct human beings in the way in which to live their lives, why should that manual not be the very universe itself?  Where Genesis recounts the first divine instructions given humans, it is interesting that these early requirements did not include a command that each should abase one's self as beneath the contempt of the Creator, and to hide one's eyes from the world as it it, too, were beneath notice, and to accept learning only by memorizing texts distributed by a priesthood.  Genesis 2:19 seems to suggest very strongly that it was an approved project of our species to inspect and name everything that can be found.  How shall we undertake such lofty work if we fail to investigate what's been laid before us?

Someone should examine these pamphlets to see what they contain.  Google's rules prevent me from clicking the links.  I have some doubts about the depth of their theological analysis, and I suspect strongly that they represent an effort to preach religion as contrary to the study of the world in which we live.  Such a strange idea, that we should not learn from the world the rules laid out to govern those within it.  

Whatever else ought one to do?

The folks who view science as opposite to their religion must have a very weak grasp of their religion, or little power to reason.  The scientific method is nothing more (or less) than a system of rigorously subjecting hypotheses about the world (its contents and the rules that govern them) to tests intended to reveal flaws in the hypotheses.  Without the method we'd have little confidence in things like the charge on an electron, the gravitational constant of the universe, or the speed of light through vacuum.  The scientific method has allowed its practitioners, over time, to develop a considerable heap of hypotheses that have survived substantial abuse, to the point that (regardless their poor initial reception) they are regarded as if unbreakable laws.

Consider ideas like the universal theory of gravitation, and the principles of conservation.  For millennia, humans continued to observe that objects (a) tended, when not otherwise supported, to fall down, except birds, which somehow pushed the air, and (b) tended to come to a halt when no longer pushed.  Far from representing obvious truths, these ideas needed some experimental validation.  Objects dropped outside a gravity well don't fall to Earth.  Objects released under zero-resistance conditions don't come to a halt.  Programs to study other planets would hardly be plausible without understanding like this.  Programs to provide energy and food to a planet of finite resources will depend on proven principles in which careful people will be able to risk huge sums with confidence.

People who believe religion is contrary to experimental discovery of the principles that govern the behavior of the things found in the universe where they live have developed a shocking religion indeed.  The idea that people would expend scarce resources advertising to convince people to turn their backs on science as a religious requirement is curious and disturbing, but given the range of people on this world, entirely unsurprising.

AdSenseless

The first post on this blog was a lengthy assault on the quality of Mercedes' modern products, including the suggestion that the superiority of Japanese product reliability ratings is understated, because Mercedes survey respondents' experiences are so bad that they are unwilling to catalog the whole nightmare for survey-takers.

So ... WHY DOES GOOGLE PUT MERCEDES ADS ON THIS BLOG??

Given that Google is now willing to accept auction bids on trademarked terms, I'd have thought that ads for Lexus would be appearing where articles discussed (and dissed) the Benz. It's not like Google gets paid by advertisers for impressions; it gets paid for clicks. If my post on the recent Mercedes products has had any impact, it'd be to reduce clicks on Mercedes ads.

Incidentally, I've personally stopped four Mercedes sales by answering questions truthfully about my own experience with the car-of-the-month club operated by Greenway Mercedez-Benz. The salesfolks there get kinda testy when I ask whether the things I hate about the car have been fixed, suggesting strongly that they haven't. Deep down, I love Mercedes, which is why I'm so hard on them. Until they shape up, don't reward them.

Effective discipline requires consistency!