Monthly Archives: September 2009

Apple v. Palm: Palm loses (big time)

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Palm released software that would connect to Apple’s iTunes software. Apple issued a software update that broke the connection.

So Palm went to the group that controls USB technology, USB-IF, arguing that Apple’s block of the Palm Pre’s access to iTunes violated their rules. And Palm went on to say they were planning to issue a software update that would identify Palm Pre’s to iTunes using Apple’s unique, registered USB ID. The reaction of the USB regulatory group: No way, Palm.

But the USB-IF finding goes further. Much further. “However,” the body writes to Palm, “your letter also states that: ‘Palm will shortly issue an update of its WebOS operating system that uses Apple’s Vendor ID number for the sole purpose of restoring the Palm media sync functionality.” In other words, Palm is telling the USB-IF, We’re putting you on notice that we are taking the technological steps to continue our questionable practice of technology trespassing anyway. Just lettin’ you know!

The USB-IF responds: “Under the Policy, Palm may only use the single Vendor ID issued to Palm for Palm’s usage. Usage of any other company’s Vendor ID is specifically precluded. Palm’s expressed intent to use Apple’s VID appears to violate the attached policy. Please clarify Palm’s intent and respond to this potential violation within seven days.”

This is the right result. Nothing stops Palm from developing a music management/player application like iTunes, one that Palm can ship or offer via download to Pre users. Apple has spent a large fortune developing iTunes and Apple has the right to control its use by competitors.

Fake Steve Jobs jumps on this with relish.

Disclosure: I am long in AAPL.

Healthcare quote of the day

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A physician takes an oath to put his patient’s interests ahead of his own. A corporation is legally bound to put its shareholders’ interests first. And this is part of the inherent conflict between health care as a business, part of our economy, and health care as a public good and part of our society. Health care has become a growth industry. That means higher health care bills. That means more and more middle class people cannot afford health care in this country.

- Maggie Mahar, author of the book Money-Driven Medicine, appearing in the documentary film of the same name (shown on the PBS television program Bill Moyers Journal, 2009-08-28). (via Quote of the Day mailing list)

Prove it (updated)

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The Kansas Supreme Court has ruled that a private corporation which registered and tracked mortgages, largely in connection with collateralized debt obligations, has no standing to sue to foreclose mortgages in default.

A landmark ruling in a recent Kansas Supreme Court case may have given millions of distressed homeowners the legal wedge they need to avoid foreclosure. In Landmark National Bank v. Kesler, 2009 Kan. LEXIS 834, the Kansas Supreme Court held that a nominee company called MERS has no right or standing to bring an action for foreclosure. MERS is an acronym for Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, a private company that registers mortgages electronically and tracks changes in ownership. The significance of the holding is that if MERS has no standing to foreclose, then nobody has standing to foreclose – on 60 million mortgages. That is the number of American mortgages currently reported to be held by MERS. Over half of all new U.S. residential mortgage loans are registered with MERS and recorded in its name. Holdings of the Kansas Supreme Court are not binding on the rest of the country, but they are dicta of which other courts take note; and the reasoning behind the decision is sound.

Matt Taibbi offers his take, with which I agree.

Coincidentally I’d been working on something related to this all day yesterday. All over the country, lawyers are contesting foreclosures because of similar chain-of-custody issues. I have some material about this coming out in my next Rolling Stone story, so I can’t get into this too much, but suffice to say the lenders and the banks were extremely sloppy about their paperwork (at best — there is a fraud angle as well) and jammed up the system with missing and/or mismarked mortgage notes. Since a sale isn’t legal unless there’s full transfer of the physical note, a lot of the sales of mortgage-backed securities were not entirely legal, since the actual notes were often not transferred.

More from the New York Times here.

The nadir of Western civilization

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We are about to reach the absolute low point of Western civilization. Or so says The Onion, and The Onion is never wrong.

“From the prehistoric Lascaux cave paintings to the stirring symphonies of Mozart to today’s hot-dog eating competitions and action films with comical gerbils, culture has descended into a festering pool of mass ignorance,” said Yale sociologist Paul Riordan, who has spent his career analyzing western civilization’s fall into the depths of depravity. “If our calculations are correct, this complete erosion of all that is enlightened and unique will reach absolute rock bottom on the afternoon of Sept. 25, 2009.”

***

Experts predict that the penultimate catastrophe will occur at approximately 7:15 p.m. Thursday night, when the social networking tool Twitter will be used to communicate a series of ideas so banal they will instantaneously negate the three centuries of the Renaissance.

Cultural quote of the day

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I like this one. Having been a long-time LA resident this does capture a certain part of the zeitgeist of the place.

There’s only one problem with L.A.

It exists.

L.A. is what happens when a bunch of Lovecraftian elder gods and porn starlets spend a weekend locked up in the Chateau Marmont snorting lines of crank off Jim Morrison’s bones. If the Viagra and illegal Traci Lords videos don’t get you going, then the Japanese tentacle porn will…

L.A. is all assholes and angels, bloodsuckers and trust-fund satanists, black magic and movie moguls with more bodies buried under the house than John Wayne Gacy.

There are more surveillance camersa and razor wire here than around the pope. L.A. is one traffic jam from going completely Hiroshima.

God, I love this town.

- Richard Kadrey, in his novel “Sandman Slim” (via Quotation of the Day mailing list)

The Evolution of God

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I just finished reading The Evolution of God by Robert Wright. The book covers the development of religion, beginning with hunter-gatherers and ending with the Abrahamic religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. It is a very engaging read and has as a general thesis that religion has generally become more moral and more inclusive in situations where the believers can see a self-interest in getting along with others. Where no such self-interest can be identified, then monotheism seems to become quite belligerent and exclusive.

Here is Robert Wright discussing the book:

Highly recommended.

Am I wrong to see racist overtones in this video?

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Republican Representative Roy Blunt makes a joke about playing golf balls “where the monkeys throw them” at the Value Voters Conference.  Am I wrong to see this joke as having racist undertones?  And even if he didn’t intend that those undertones exist, doesn’t he have a responsibility to be careful given the current climate and the right wing’s behavior towards our President, especially the part about trying to eliminate them?

Orly Taitz legal smackdown, take 2

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In an earlier post, I excerpted a decision by a Federal judge in Georgia denying Orly Taitz’s claims on behalf of an Army captain seeking to avoid deployment to Iraq based on the argument that President Obama (have been born abroad, of course) is not a legitimate commander-in-chief.

Despite the smackdown, Taitz files again before the same judge is is threatened with a $10,000 fine for violating his earlier order. The latest order from the court is worth a full read.

By the way, the judge in the case was appointed by George W. Bush.

Apple v. Google

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iphoneIt’s on. A serious fight is on between Google and Apple. Google allowed the release of its answers to FCC inquiries about the Google Voice app for the iPhone.  Apple has previously said they never rejected the GV app, but are still studying it. Google revealed it’s statement that Apple did in fact reject the app, and that Phil Schiller (Senior VP for Worldwide Marketing) was the Apple employee who told Google the app was rejected.

So now we have a he said-Steve said situation.

Oh, and Apple yesterday reiterated that it had not rejected GV.

I guess it all depends on what the word “rejected” means.

CIA heads seek to stop torture inquiry

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Several former directors of the CIA have asked the Obama administration to drop the Department of Justice inquiry into detainee torture. Why?  They give three reasons: (1) charges should not be brought based on a change in administration, (2) continuing the investigation would help Al Qaeda, and (3) the results of the investigation may cause foreign intelligence agencies to distrust the US to keep secrets.

Each of these reasons is no reason at all. In terms of the new administration, it seems pretty clear to me that the prior administration’s basis for approving torture was incorrect and immoral. One reason administrations change in a democracy is to allow faulty policies to be changed. In this case, given the extreme secrecy of the Bush Administration, digging in to find the true story of what happened is central to helping the country avoid such vile actions in the future.

How it would help Al Qaeda to apply American justice to American citizens is beyond me. And even if prosecutions to help Al Qaeda, restoring the country to a sound moral footing is worth the cause. Any damage done can be laid at the feet of those who approved the American use of torture.

Finally, I am more interested in the US citizens being able to trust our government follows the law even if that means some disclosure clandestine interactions with foreign governments (who presumably have their own torture problems to worry about, at least if they are governments to whom we moved detainees for such purpose).

One approach that might help mitigate the issues raised by the former CIA directors would be to re-focus the investigation away from the front line interrogators and dig in to the real issues as to who devise, and ordered, the use of torture at the higher levels. In some respects, the front line operations are less important going forward that what sort of flawed decision-making allows the entire mess to happen.