My analysis of the implications of Boot Camp are up in the Ramblings section.

Fans of Jeff Porten's Spending My Summer In Boot Camp will see distinct parallels, of course...

Hat tip to Jeff Porten: Yakov Smirnoff has earned a graduate degree in psychology from the University of Pennsylvania.

Coming soon, his new stand-up special: "What a University..."

(ED NOTE: Try it with a Russian accent, it'll come back to you, I promise).

All right, this is really, really cool.

Quick summary: The British judge that recently ruled that Dan Brown did not plagiarize "The Da Vinci Code" from another book, italicized seemingly random characters throughout his ruling. A lawyer made an off-hand comment to The London Times that it would be ironic if the italicized letters were some sort of secret, embedded message. At which point, he got an e-mail from the judge telling him to check out the first few paragraphs.

Turns out the italicized letters in the first few paragraphs spell "smithcode" (the judge's name is Peter Smith), suggesting that was exactly his intent. Here is the complete message:

smithcodeJaeiextostpsacgreamqwfkadpmqz

Anyone have a solution?

UPDATE: It's been solved by the laywer who found it. Something to do with the Fibonacci sequence...

I'm no expert here, but I smell political posturing here on both sides of the aisle.

Given: Gas prices are sky high
Given: People are pissed off that gas prices are sky high
Given: Gas comes from oil
Given: Oil companies are recording record profits lately

Conclusion: Oil companies should give back some of those profits and lower gas prices.

Here's my problem: Correlation is not causation. Are the oil companies' large profits the result of high gas prices? If you think about it for a second, it gets really murky.

First of all, we should distinguish between the different businesses oil companies are in:

There are the folks that drill for oil, find it, and then sell it on the open market. Since the cost of drilling for oil is relatively fixed, I would assume the profits in this business are driven almost entirely by the price of oil on the open market. Clearly, this is not set by the oil companies, but by commodity traders around the world. Just like people who play the stock market for a living, it seems clear to me that companies that sell oil will make higher profits when oil is trading at $70/barrel than when it's trading at $50/barrel. And good for them, too. They're taking the risk (what if oil dropped to $30/barrel?), and they deserve the reward. Asking them to sell their oil to anyone but the highest bidder would be as ridiculous as asking a farmer to sell his corn, sugar, or cotton for less than he can get for it.

Then there are the folks that sell gasoline for a living. Some of these folks are probably independent gas station owners and don't work for oil companies at all, but let's think about them for a second anyway. Oil is a key raw material in the production of gasoline, so if the price of a barrel of oil goes up, I'd suspect the price of a gallon of gas would go up. Higher prices at the pump don't necessarily mean higher profits for the gas station. They could simply be passing their higher costs along to you.

Where it gets tricky is when you consider companies like ExxonMobil, who both drill for oil and sell gasoline. As discussed previously, there's no reason to believe that the cost of getting the oil out of the ground has changed significantly (is there?). And since they don't have to buy the oil on the open market, their cost of producing gasoline shouldn't increase that much either. So why the high prices? My guess is it comes down to supply and demand. If they sold gasoline at $2/gallon instead of $3/gallon, people would buy a lot more of it, and they would eventually run out. Remember the gas lines in the 1970's? Opposite problem (supply was restricted by OPEC, as opposed to demand skyrocketing due to the industrialization of China and India), but the same result: if you price too far away from the equilibrium, you can create a shortage. This makes inherent sense to me, but I don't know enough about the mechanics of the oil industry to say for sure. Can anybody help out?

Oh, and while we're at it - does anyone know what percentage of oil produced in the world gets converted to gasoline? Many folks (including the president) are describing the long-term solution to this problem with ideas like hydrogen-powered cars. How much of the problem will we have solved if we have hydrogen powered cars built in factories that are heated by oil, powered by electricity that is produced with oil, and made out of petroleum-based plastics? I think there's more to breaking our "addiction to oil" than just getting rid of the SUV's. Thoughts?

Keith Hernandez, New York Mets broadcaster, upon spotting 33-year old Kelly Calabrese (the San Diego Padres' full-time massage therapist) in the San Diego dugout:

I won't say that women belong in the kitchen, but they don't belong in the dugout.

Ouch.

Later, during the same game:

You know I am only teasing. I love you gals out there -- always have.

Ouch again.

He was reprimanded by his employer, SportsNet New York, and apologized on the air during the following game.

For the record, I think what Hernandez said was unbelievably tone deaf, and he deserves the slap on the wrist he got. But the reaction itself is not all that surprising. The article doesn't mention if Ms. Calabrese is the first woman with a regular spot in a major league dugout, or if she's the only one in such a role right now. Having watched baseball for a very long time (although not as long as Keith Hernandez), I'm pretty confident in saying that if she's not the only one, she's a member of a very, very small group.

So yes - a surprised reaction is not entirely out of bounds. And once a broadcaster is surprised like that, what comes out of his mouth next is more than likely going to get him in some kind of trouble. But my sympathy ends as soon as he uses the phrase "belong in the kitchen" followed by a veiled sexual reference.

Apparently, a few teenagers in Kansas decided they would celebrate the anniversary of the Columbine shootings by killing a bunch of their classmates. The plot was foiled because one of them talked about it in a MySpace.com post. A fellow student read the post and notified the police, who arrested the would-be murderers, and found guns and knives in their bedrooms.

I heard about this yesterday in the waiting room of a doctor's office (they had CNN running on a TV in the room). An older couple was sitting behind me and when the story ran, she turned to her husband and said, "See? The Internet causes all sorts of trouble."

All she heard was "kids planning to kill classmates" and "Internet." Some folks will never learn...

Once again, the power of Google saves the day...

The other day, Windows automatically downloaded and installed a number of patches (as per my instructions - I used to look at each one, but I never, ever said "No," so I just changed it to automatic. Go figure...). For those who are finding this through a Google search, the patches were: KB915597, KB890830, KB911565, KB911562, KB912812, KB908531, KB911567, KB892130 and KB890830.

Anyway, after the patches were installed, my Microsoft Office 2003 Applications (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook) all began exhibiting a quirky problem: If you did File...Open or File...Save As, and tried to navigate around the folder tree, the program would freeze up, eventually giving a "Not Responding" error, and forcing you to close it.

I had visions of backing up all of my data, reinstalling MSOffice, reinstalling all the LiveOffice patches, and praying the problem went away. But before I did any such thing, I typed "MSOffice Save As Not Responding" into Google, and it led me to this Google Groups discussion on the problem. The last poster in the thread, a guy named Tom [Pepper] Willett, found and linked to the Microsoft Support Page that detailed the problem and provided the (2-minute) fix.

To summarize quickly: The problem is an incompatability between the recent Windows patches (specifically, patch #KB908531) and Hewlett-Packard's Share-to-Web software, which gets installed on your machine if you have HP PhotoSmart software, an HP DeskJet printer, an HP Scanner, some HP CD-DVD RWs, or an HP Camera. The Windows patch installed a program called VERCLSID.EXE, which "validates shell extensions before they are instantiated by the Windows Shell or Windows Explorer." I have no idea what that means, but basically, it makes MSOffice freeze up when you try to navigate the folder tree.

The Microsoft page gives you an 8-step process to correct the problem, which involves adding a line to the Windows registry (they even put the line in a textbox so you can cut & paste it without having to re-type it yourself). Basically, what you're doing is putting this HP software on a "white list," so the VERCLSID.EXE program doesn't trip over it. Problem solved - and I didn't even have to reboot the machine.

Now, here's the amazing part: the Windows update came down late Thursday, April 13th, or early Friday morning. The first post about the problem in the Google Groups thread was at 1:44AM on Friday morning. Within 48-hours, 12 people had weighed in, and the last person had posted the link to the Microsoft-authored solution (which was posted on April 15th - the site doesn't specify the time).

All hail Metcalfe's law: "The value of a network equals approximately the square of the number of users."

Flipping channels over the weekend and coming upon one of those infomercials, I was struck by this thought: What if one of these products was actually a real breakthrough?

I mean, what if the vaccum cleaner they're touting actually IS a thousand times better than any other vaccum cleaner out there? What if the diet pill they're going on about really DOES make you lose weight with no exercise or change in eating habits? We'd probably all ignore it, right? A really, really good idea might be lost forever in a sea of shlock.

Maybe we should nominate someone to buy one of everything, test it out, and report back to us. Any volunteers?

The latest survey of global broadband access ranks the US 12th in per capita broadband. Iceland took the prize with a whopping 26.7 broadband users per hundred.

Well, of course - what else is there to do in Iceland?!?

Remember Sniglets? Words that should be in the dictionary but aren't? Why did they ever go away?

Anyway, I need a new one: what should we call that feeling you get when you accidentally type your password in the UserID field, and it shows up as actual characters instead of asterisks? You know - that feeling that everyone can see it now, even though no one is looking at the screen but you?

It's hard not to laugh at this:

Apple Computer's new software for installing Windows XP on an Intel Mac could leave the computer unable to boot back into OS X, users reported.

In installing Boot Camp, the hard drive is partitioned for OS X and XP. Installing the latter went without a hitch, but the machine would no longer boot back to the Mac operating system, according to users.

To be fair: they can get back by reformatting their hard drives and starting over. Also, this is a beta product, so we must expect such things. And, it should be said, the software is getting good reviews in lots cases - this is just a bug that some voluntary beta testers came across, and one that Apple is addressing right away.

Continuing on my thread from earlier posts, though, I'm more concerned about whether or not this dual boot machine is a "pure" XP machine and a "pure" OS X machine when it's all working properly. If it's native Windows within the hard drive partition, but not down to the hardware, it might start sputtering when it gets to things like corporate ESD (electronic software delivery) systems that push (Windows) software to desktops over the network.

If Apple's goal is to enter the PC hardware market (a big assumption, but one I've been making all along), then a couple of problems at the outset could leave network administrators wary, and kill the whole deal. They need to put out some technical white papers on what they've done to make the geeks comfortable...

I dont' spend a lot of time reading about, let alone blogging about Britney Spears, but this story bothered me when it first came out, and this seems to be its resolution. Basically, a paparazzi approached her car while she was sitting in it waiting for her bodyguard to get her some coffee with her son on her lap. She got scared, and drove away, without first taking the time to strap the baby in (and without giving the paparazzi a chance to do something sinister, like ram the car in order to make her get out, so he could take her picture). At the time, I thought they should just leave her alone, as there is a huge difference between driving around all day with your baby in your lap (BAD), and driving away from a potential threat & then putting your baby in the car seat (GOOD).

At any rate, it got into the press, so I assume the authorities had to investigate it or answer questions about why they didn't. Their conclusion?

The spokesman, Sgt. Ken Cheurn, declined to discuss what prompted the DCFS house call, saying, "It was their investigation." But he said the matter was settled at the time of the visit and called the incident "a big nothing."

Damn straight...

Red Envelope informs me that April 24-28 is Employee Appreciation Week.

First of all, I remember when this used to be called "Secretary's Day." My first year out of college, someone bought the office manager in our office a huge bouquet of flowers on Secretary's Day, and she got royally pissed off that he thought of her as a secretary. Now, not only do we appreciate all of our employees (not just the secretaries!), but it takes a week, not a day.

Here's the irony, though: The Thursday in Employee Appreciation Week Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work Day, which itself used to have a different name ("Take Our Daughters to Work Day"). For the employees with kids, this day can be a lot of fun. For everyone else, especially the secretaries quite frankly, we're basically telling them we appreciate them by making them take care of our kids all day.

Interesting thing, this Political Correctness, huh?

I'm hanging out in a hotel room in San Francisco, and I've got ESPN News on the TV in the background. I look up for a second, and the crawl on the bottom is about Penn Basketball! Go figure...

It seems Fran Dunphy has accepted an offer to coach at Temple University next year. The end of an era, I suppose.

Thanks for the memories, Fran. It's been fun...

A man was arrested today for jumping the White House fence. Check out this quote:

Secret Service spokesman Eric Zahren said agents took any breach seriously but that the suspect, who had climbed the White House fence three times before, made 'no spoken threats' against the president.

Zahren identified the man as Brian Lee Patterson, 40, and said he would be charged with unlawful entry and contempt of court, for violating a court order to stay away from the White House after he last intruded in February.

Who had climbed the WHite House fence three times before?!?!? Your third offense for that is a court order to stay away from the White House? What will they give him this time, a jay-walking ticket?

Obviously, the guy isn't exactly learning his lesson...

Check this out: Jeff Porten blogged about a product called DabbleDB on his blog, linking to a video demo of the product.

I watched the video and commented on it, and less than 48 hours later, someone from the company responded to my commment with more information. This means the company has folks trolling the blogosphere looking for comments about their products, and then actively engaging potential customers with direct responses. That makes them not only a cool technology company, but one that absolutely gets how to do business in the hi-tech world.

Bravo, guys. I'll definitely be keeping an eye out for you. And for others who are hearing about them here, definitely check out the video above...

GoDaddy, of risque superbowl commercial fame, has moved its Web Server farm to Microsoft technology, seriously messing with the market share data. The only sign as to why they made the change comes from the standard, double-speak from their COO:

"Microsoft provides an efficient and scalable operating platform, while also providing the performance needed to handle our extraordinary growth."

Yeah, yeah, whatever. Sounds like code for "it works and its cheaper." In any case, here's an example where Microsoft is NOT the monopoly (or even the industry leader), competing in a well distributed market...

OK, so let me see if I get this straight:

Former Ambassador, Joe Wilson, criticizes the Bush administration over the Iraq war. In response, the administartion declassifies portions of a secret National Intelligence Estimate, which provides (or so they say, anyway) historical context for why we went into Iraq. The President, via the Vice President, authorizes Lewis "Scooter" Libby to release this newly declassified information to Judith Miller of the New York Times. This being the same Scooter Libby who is accused of leaking the name of a CIA agent, Valerie Plame, to the same Judith Miller of the (same) New York Times.

What a fantastic opportunity to news catalog: we can write about this story and attribute signifigance to it by mentioning it along side a story that's already been established as important (the Valerie Plame leak), and it will wind up on the front page of most major newspapers.

Here's how we do it: First, we describe the facts of the story. Then, we summarize the facts of the Valerie Plame story, pointing out that many of the same people are involved. Then, in paragraph SEVEN, we say this:

The court documents did not say that Bush or Cheney authorized Libby to disclose Plame's identity.

After that, we can quote a top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Jane Harman, who calls the president the "leaker in chief." Leaving press secretary Scott McClellan to point out that there's a huge difference between the President declassifying information and someone leaking classified information to the press (as was the case with Valerie Plame, and also, as McClellan points out, with the information about the NSA wiretapping program). McClellan says:

"Democrats who refuse to acknowledge that distinction are simply engaging in crass politics."

Which is absolutely right. Of course, he says it in the last paragrpah of the story.

Final result: a large percentage of the people who read this will walk away convinced that George W. Bush authorized Scooter Libby to leak Valerie Plame's name to the New York Times.

I've got to hand it to those folks over at Apple - they've always got a trick up their sleeves. The common zeitgeist was that Apple was going to let the hacker community solve the "run Windows on a Mac" problem, then judge its popularity, then respond with support for the idea only if it seemed viable. Well, the hackers did their part, but less than three weeks later, Apple released a beta version of the supported solution: Boot Camp. Obviously, they had this cooking while the hackers were doing their thing. In any case, Boot Camp, which is in beta now, but will be built into the next version of OS X (Leopard), allows users to select between the Mac OS and Windows XP at boot time - no emulation required. So, users who want/need a Windows environment, but prefer the Apple hardware will now be satisfied with just one machine.

As I mentioned earlier (WARNING: Link contains long, screed-like comments war between me and Jeff Porten), this is has the potential to be a huge financial win for Apple. Not only have studies predicted the potential sale of an additional one million machines (22% increase in sales, 80% increase in market share), but these studies don't even address the corporate market. If the architecture on these machines is pure (i.e,. the Windows environment is an exact duplicate of what you'd find on a Dell or Compaq machine), I believe Apple can expect to quickly capture some portion of the much larger, and more sustainable, corporate PC market. Wall Street seems to agree with me, sending Apple's stock up roughly 16% in just two days, increasing the company's market cap by more than $8 billion. Some analyst quotes:

"In short, we believe this news, more than any news in recent memory, provides a critical boost to Apple's ability to gain share in the PC market" - JPMorgan Chase

"By doing this, Apple has made a tacit acknowledgement of what many have already said, which basically is: If you're serious about home computing or small-enterprise computing, you need Windows. There's no way around it. . . . Apple machines are excellently manufactured, and the performance is far superior. Now you can go in, look at those gorgeous Mac Minis and MacBook (Pros) and view them as a normal PC. You can run XP and never touch OS X, if you don't want to." - Forrester Research

Ironically, the only sourpuss in all of this is Apple itself, who has taken a tack that lies somewhere between what I was saying and what Jeff was saying (big surprise there, huh?). They're positioning this as a way to "make the Mac even more appealing to Windows users considering making the switch," as opposed to a way for Windows users to buy & use higher quality hardware. They're also clearly backing away from any association with Windows or its very public security concerns (perhaps to protect their brand identity, as Jeff suggested). Their website warns:

Windows running on a Mac is like Windows running on a PC. That means it'll be subject to the same attacks that plague the Windows world. So be sure to keep it updated with the latest Microsoft Windows security fixes.

Ultimately, I think the marketing will follow the market. If the majority of Boot Camp users are Mac users that use Windows sparingly (i.e., only when necessary), then we'll see the "Switch" ads again. If, however, the majority are Windows users that like the improved graphics, bigger & nicer monitors, etc., and pop over to MacOS occasionally to try something new, then I think we'll see "Apple is better than Dell or Compaq" ads.

In any case, we won't see any of this for a while now (mass market appeal won't happen until the Leopard release, and then it will take some time for corporate America to vette the platform and agree that it's fully compatible with what they have today). Maybe when all the '07 budgets come in???

No time to blog on this in depth, but for now: here we go...

More later...

It seems H&R Block has restated its earning for the last two years, because it made mistakes on its income taxes.

Seriously.

H&R Block said on Friday that it was restating earnings for 2004 and 2005 to reflect previously reported mistakes on its income taxes.

In a series of regulatory filings, H&R Block said it underreported its state income tax liability by $30.5 million through April 30, 2005, requiring the company to lower per share earnings for that year by 3 cents, 2004 earnings by 4 cents and earnings before May 1, 2003, by 1 cent.

Heh...Only 10 days until April 15th. Probably a pretty busy time for them, huh? I guess this year , they'll be shooting for the "don't read the paper" crowd...

At 1:02:03AM tonight, the date and time will be:

01:02:03, 04/05/06

Of course, you know what that means....

That's right: Absolutely nothing.

Two fun facts from my business trip to Charlotte:

1) The area of town where all the businesses are, typically referred to as "downtown" in most cities, is conveniently referred to as "uptown" in Charlotte. Takes a little getting used to, but no big deal...

2) Most of the office buildings have this sign posted in the lobby:

No Firearms Permitted on the Premises

Yes, that's right - I said MOST buildings...

The University of Pennsylvania, Donald Trump's alma mater, is giving The Donald's major casino competitor, Steve Wynn, an honorary degree this year.

Can you get an honorary degree from a university where you've already earned an actual degree? Probably not when you've got billions of dollars and haven't donated much (if anything) to the school all these years...

For Seinfeld fans who might be wondering what ever happened to the (in)famous Soup Nazi (based on Mr. Al Yeganeh, located at 55th Street and 8th avenue in Manhattan, and on the web at http://www.originalsoupman.com), here's a press release announcing several of his planned 100 grand openings throughout Manhattan and around North America, which each include a $10,000 donation to City Harvest (a New York hunger relief group) from his charitable organization, known as Soup For Life.

The press release says he opened his first store in 1984, in order to fulfill his desire to "feed the world." It also gives a website and phone number for those interested in franchising opportunities.

I hope this man calls Jerry Seinfeld each and every day and thanks him.

And maybe brings him free soup.

Not that Seinfeld needs free soup.

Nevermind....

I'm in North Carolina on business. It's 11PM, and I turned on FOX to watch Seinfeld. Except in North Carolina, you don't get Seinfeld at 11PM, you get Jerry Falwell.

Now I'm not disparaging anyone's faith here, but I gotta tell you - this show is funnier than Seinfeld. The topic of tonight's show is "Disparaging the Da Vinci Code." I can't type fast enough to actually quote him, but here's a paraphrase of what he said:

Dan Brown has written a book called the Da Vince Code, which has sold 30 million copies, and Ron Howard has made a movie about it that will open on May 19th. The book claims that Jesus Christ was not God, that he didn't claim to be God, that he was human, that he married Mary Magdalene and had children with her, and that those children became the kings and queens of France. It claims that Jesus was human, and that Mary Magdalene was divine. This book is allegedly a novel, but we're wondering if it's really a mix of fact and fiction, presented in a way that makes one think all of it is true, when really, it's not true at all. That's why we're offering a DVD set for four easy installments of $29.99, that explains all of the things in The Da Vince Code that aren't true.

So to review: The book CLAIMS to be a novel. But this claim is deceiving, since what it really is is a book that merges facts and fiction in a way that sounds like fact, but really isn't true. In other words, it's A NOVEL. It's almost like they wish Dan Brown was claiming it were true so they could prove him wrong.

One problem: he's not claiming that. I've never read a single thing from Dan Brown or anyone connected to him claiming that the book is true. It was written as a novel and sold as a novel. The only claim that Brown makes is that the secret societies he mentions actually existed, as do all of the architecture, artwork, etc. that he references. None of this is inconsistent with the book being a fictional novel.

Meanwhile, in desperate attempts to counter these (admittedly) false claims, Falwell and friends keep plugging the book and the movie (all the while plugging their DVD set to debunk them).

Mark my words: this movie is going to be the next Titanic. It's going to make a billion dollars. And the irony is, a lot of its business is going to be driven by these paranoid religious folks who seem so desparate to prove to us what we already know - that it's just a story.

And what a story it is...