Stewart Wolpin

I AM NOT A BLOGGER
March 22, 2008

This is not a blog. Oh, the tab on top of the HTML box that encloses these many musings is labeled "Blogs." Someone at TWICE uses a "blog tool" to post these musings (apparently I'm not trusted to post without someone first reviewing my rants).

But this is no more a blog than a bull is a cow just because someone stapled a latex glove filled with milk to its belly. A "blog" is a contraction of "Web log," a virtual version of Captain Kirk's captain's log, an ongoing continuous thread updated not once a week (sort of) but in short bursts several times a day, a stream of consciousness slowed by sans serif speed bumps.

No, this is an old-fashioned column, just like H.L. Mencken used to make, only without the acerbic erudition.

So it's not a blog. It's a column. BFD. Why is nomenclature relevant?

Directly following this post is a comments creation space. I get one, sometimes two responses. I've been torn about whether to respond to those of you kind enough to leave an observation to initiate an ongoing dialog with my readers. And if this were a blog, maybe I would.

But I'm unapologetically old school. To quote Franz Liebkind, the mad Nazi author of "Springtime For Hitler" in The Producers, "I am the author. You are the audience. I out-rank you!"

In other words, as a "columnist" I can't deign to respond. My work has to stand on its own, unimpeachable, unapproachable, monolithic, carved in marble for all eternity. Responding to comments from you, a mere reader, reduces my omnipotent presentation to a mere starting point. Feel free to engage others who have commented, but I can't play.

Having said that (and I leave it to you to discern the seriousness of my imperiousness from just plain laziness), I do want to respond to Time Will Tell.

Following my Feb. 12 posting, I tipped my cyber hat to Thomas Edison whose birthday was the day before. Mr. Tell commented:

A world without Tommy E would be very much the same. Edison didn't invent many of the things he is credited with, he just was at the forefront of labs that invented things. Edison was also a great self-promoter. He should be remembered, but so should those nameless individuals that worked for Edison but never received the credit.

Mr. Tell, this really flicked my Bic. So the New England Patriots would be the same team without Tom Brady because he has those big nameless linemen protecting him and nameless receivers catching his passes. Really?

While much of what you say is true, none of it supports your first sentence. I lived around the block from Edison's West Orange, N.J., lab for several years and visited it on numerous occasions. I've read several biographies of the man. I am a certified professional technology historian. And I can state in no uncertain terms that a world without Thomas Edison, who is singularly responsible for creating the environment that produced all that stuff (it's now called a research lab, another of Edison's inventions), would be RADICALLY different than the one we live in today, and our industry and our modern world would not exist without him.

I now re-ascend my editorial pedestal. Ooooph! Why don't they put rungs on these things?

The preceding 551 words would be plenty for a blog. But since this a column, I won't be adding a paragraph or two later today or tomorrow or the next day. Therefore, I feel obliged to give you a bit more to reward your clicking and to keep you sated until next week.

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THE LIMITED

Why am I still getting automated "I have limited access to email" responses? Seriously. In this age of broadband wireless connectivity and IMAP and BlackBerrys and iPhones and Microsoft Exchange, how is anyone's access to email "limited"? What, are you floating across the Pacific in a hot air balloon? In a log cabin in the Alabama backwoods studying evidence while your Spandex-encased fiancé counts down her biological clock? On the “Lost” island where mysteriously only emails containing 4 8 15 16 23 47 get through the time warp?

In today's connected world, especially if you work for a major company, there is absolutely no excuse for having "limited" access to email while traveling. Just be honest and tell me that after a day filled with bunion-pounding booth duty, boring meetings and sleep-inducing presentations you'd rather go out clubbing than sit in your hotel room and answer a hundred stupid emails. That I'll believe and completely understand.

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THE CASINO THAT CARES

Best Buy and Circuit City are offering recent buyers of HD DVD decks rebates or returns. Last year, Apple offered $100 rebates to purchasers of the iPhone after the company drastically lowered the price.

These are bad precedents (even though I did take advantage of Apple's rebate — I'm not a complete moron). I bought a Betamax — rebate please. I bought a laser disc player — rebate please. I bought a DCC player — rebate please. I bought a Motorola Razr when it was $300 – rebate please.

Please.

Buying consumer electronics has always been a casino game. You gambled and paid more as an early adopter to have first-on-the-block bragging rights. Now everyone has one at a fraction of the price? My poor sweet baboo. You're betting that what you bought will stand the test of time. It didn't? Tough noogies. Did Gary Marshall give Albert Brooks back his nest egg after Julie Hagerty lost it at the Desert Inn crap tables in "Lost in America"? No. You pays your money, you takes your chances.

Instead of coddling disgruntled HD DVD buyers who should have known better than to invest in one side in the middle of a format war (and, who by the way, ended up with a damned good up-converting DVD player for their money), Best Buy, Circuit City and other bleeding-heart retailers should instead try to make some dough and offer Obsolesce Insurance.

Available in one- , three- or five-year plans, if the gadget you bought drops dramatically in price or the format goes the way of the dodo, you get paid off.

I'd be willing to bet that'd be a greater profit center than extended warranties and a lot easier to sell to oft-burned consumers.

* * *

DANIEL SHAYS LIVES

Congress allocated $1.5 billion to the DTV converter-box rebate program.

Earlier this week, the government reported it had already made $19 billion auctioning off the soon-to-be deserted analog TV spectrum, with more likely to come.

That does not compute.

There is no way a consumer should have to shell out one rusty dime to pay for a transition that the market, not the government, should have dictated in the first place. But this is especially maddening since the government is hauling in such serious scratch.

Given this ExxonMobil-like black ink, the Feds should immediately increase the amount the converter-box coupons are worth so it costs no one nothin' to upgrade. In fact, given the current unemployment problem, they should use that $19 billion to hire an army of CCC-like workers to go door-to-door and make sure everyone who needs a box has a box and that it's hooked up and working correctly. Then send any analog TV owner earning a subsistence living a coupon to buy a digital TV.

The last I looked, WE are the government and that spectrum belongs to US. Which means that's our $19 billion. So cough it up, Congress.

Captain Kirk out.

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Posted by Stewart Wolpin on March 22, 2008 | Comments (0)