From CNET: “The Dish Hopper with Sling was removed from consideration due to active litigation involving our parent company parent company CBS Corp. We will no longer be reviewing products manufactured by companies with which we are in litigation with respect to such product.”
CBS tells its tech focused site CNET to stop reviewing (and giving awards to) products made by companies that it has conflicts with. I guess CBS has never heard about newsroom independence. Can you trust a news outlet that censors a story about a company advertising on its network or targets an entity with negative coverage if they refuse to advertise? Is this situation all that different? Is there any reason to believe CBS nightly news or its weekly news show 60 Minutes has more journalistic integrity? After all, both media arms are owned by the same corporate culture, willing to trade the only currency a news organization has for short term gain.
AIG just started running TV ads to thank America for lending it $125 billion dollars when it was about to go under and take down many other financial companies with it. In its ad, it proudly announced that it paid all of that back, with another $23 billion dollar in profits for the taxpayers. Well, that should have rung some alarm bells. It might now be joining a lawsuit against the taxpayers. As “free market” now means “socialized losses, privatized profits” for these people, profits for taxpayers is proof positive that something went awry.
Burglars break into Microsoft campus, steal iPads, but ‘no Microsoft products were reported stolen’ (via 9to5 Mac)
Thieves have spoken… :)
Do you remember the good old days, when Republicans were against raising taxes even if it meant $10 of spending cut for each dollar of tax increase? Obviously raising income taxes for households earning over $250 thousand was out of the question. Then last month, a rumored 1 to 1 deal did not go through. I guess that made sense, it is a 10 times worse deal. Yet, after all that wrangling, taxes go up by about $600 billion (income taxes go up for households earning more than $450 thousand a year, along with a 2% point rise in Social Security contributions on almost everybody and a few other tax increases) in return for, wait for it, $77 billion of subsidies and loopholes, instead of any cuts. (Not 10:1 or 1:1, more like 10 to -1.2)
Either Republican members of the Congress are horrible at negotiating or most of them earn between $250 and $450 thousand dollars per year.
Is that state of the art at Amazon’s recommendation engine? Seriously, who looks through lens filters, buys one, does not return it and a few weeks later decides to buy a cheaper, but lower quality version of the same type of filter, an item rejected the first time around? In case you think this was a one off glitch, I’ve also been recommended a cheaper tripod than the one I bought a few weeks earlier. What are the chances of needing another tripod so soon? Do people break their tripods so easily? :) I also got a recommendation to buy the 3-pack version of the 6-pack US to European plug adapters that I purchased a few months ago.
Amazon is pushing ever so strongly into advertising, says Reuters. I suppose it makes sense. Google’s AdWords work well, as you are more likely to be in a buying mood if you are already searching for the name of a product. If you are searching for it on Amazon, you are not just more likely to be in the mood, you are almost definitely in the market for that product. If my recent “recommendations” experience is any guide though, Amazon has some ways to go in matching customers with products. If Amazon can earn half a billion dollars of annual revenue in this condition, how much can it earn when the system becomes a tad bit more clever?
“So what do I do with my money?” Everywhere else billboards induce you to play the lotto and leave it at that. In London, they put up an ad for financial advice next to it, just in case you win. :)
CNN is discussing why Democrats and Republicans could not agree on how to avoid the “fiscal cliff”.
“The ‘no-tax pledge’ people in the Republican Party yanked Boehner back and the ‘don’t you dare touch the middle class’ entitlement people in the president’s party pulled him back, and as a result those talks collapsed,” [Ohio Republican Rep. Steve] LaTourette said.
“Don’t you dare touch the middle class” entitlement people? :) Is that what we are calling the “99%” these days?
Next Nature writes:
Anheuser-Busch, parent company of the American beer brand Budweiser, has been canning water for victims of the disaster. The company temporarily converted one of its manufacturing facilities from churning out bland beer to life-giving water. The result is uncanny: A beer can with the familiar eagle logo of Budweiser, now filled with essential, non-alcoholic water. In a world where corporations often have more power than governments, it is not surprising that in times of crisis they respond faster than “official” organizations, and are better equipped to do so.
Big beverage companies have always-on logistical pipelines much better equipped to deliver water aide than ad-hoc government systems, and such efforts are a canny use of local marketing budgets.
One day I’ll write out some longer thoughts regarding relief marketing. It’s a tangled subject.
*No word on whether anyone noticed a taste difference. (Via NextNature.net)
This guy can’t catch a break.
(Source: BuzzFeedAndrew)
Spoiler Alert! They are giving away the end of the Lincoln movie.
