Monthly Archives: October 2012

We the People

Posted on by The Old Wolf

I have long loved the music of Schooner Fare, and this song is one of my very favorites. I’ve been wanting to do this video for a long time, and now with just two weeks to go before the election, I have taken the time to put it together.

This is a non-partisan film. It espouses no ideology, save one:  R. Buckminster Fuller’s dream of making the world work, for 100% of humanity, in the shortest possible time, through spontaneous cooperation, without ecological offense or the disadvantage of anyone.

May it please you.

The Old Wolf has spoken.

Amazon and the Dark Side of DRM

Posted on by The Old Wolf

DRM: Digital Restrictions Management. Some people use the word “Rights,” but as the following incident shows, it has nothing at all to do with consumers’ rights, as it appears they have none.

Martin Bekkelund, a Norwegian IT director, planner and commentator, shares the story of Linn, whose Amazon account was blocked and her Kindle wiped with no warning and no explanation. When she inquired what was going on, she generated the following mail exchange:

Dear Linn [last name],

My name is Michael Murphy and I represent Executive Customer Relations within Amazon.co.uk. One of our mandates is to address the most acute account and order problems, and in this capacity your account and orders have been brought to my attention.

We have found your account is directly related to another which has been previously closed for abuse of our policies. As such, your Amazon.co.uk account has been closed and any open orders have been cancelled.

Per our Conditions of Use which state in part: Amazon.co.uk and its affiliates reserve the right to refuse service, terminate accounts, remove or edit content, or cancel orders at their sole discretion.

Please know that any attempt to open a new account will meet with the same action.

You may direct any questions to me at resolution-uk@amazon.co.uk.

Thank you for your attention to this email.

Regards

Michael Murphy
Executive Customer Relations
Amazon.co.uk

Linn responded thusly:

Dear Michael Murphy,

I am very surprised to read your email. What do you mean by “directly related to another which has been previously closed for abuse of our policies”. I can only remember ever having this one account, and I use it quite regularly to buy books for my Kindle, as you probably can see by my purchase history. How can there suddenly be a problem now? I use amazon.com and not co.uk for my Kindle, does that make any difference?

I sincerely hope you can help me solve this matter, because I would very much like to have my account reopened. And please let me know if there is any action I can take to help.

Best regards,
Linn [last name]
[Linn’s phone number]

All Linn got back was more corporate weasel-words:

Dear Linn [last name],

As previously advised, your Amazon.co.uk account has been closed, as it has come to our attention that this account is related to a previously blocked account. While we are unable to provide detailed information on how we link related accounts, please know that we have reviewed your account on the basis of the information provided and regret to inform you that it will not be reopened.

Please understand that the closure of an account is a permanent action. Any subsequent accounts that are opened will be closed as well. Thank you for your understanding with our decision.

I appreciate this is not the outcome you hoped for and apologise for any disappointment this may cause.

Regards,

Michael Murphy
Executive Customer Relations
Amazon.co.uk

Hoping for some clearer guidelines as to why her account was closed, Linn responded:

Dear Michael Murphy,

Is it correct that you cannot give me any information about
1. How my account is linked to the blocked account
2. The name/id of the related blocked account
3. What policy that was violated

I have no knowledge about any other account that could be related to mine, and cannot understand how I could have violated your policies in any way.

Br,
Linn [last name]

Murphy spouts the company line:

Dear Linn [last name],

We regret that we have not been able to address your concerns to your satisfaction. Unfortunately, we will not be able to offer any additional insight or action on these matters.

We wish you luck in locating a retailer better able to meet your needs and will not be able to offer any additional insight or action on these matters.

Thank you for your attention to this email.

Regards

Michael Murphy
Executive Customer Relations
Amazon.co.uk

So in the end, Amazon’s reasoned answer to a consumer who has bought their products and paid for them, and who now has had those products forcibly repossessed and her Kindle effectively bricked, is:

because, that’s why.

Nice, Amazon. I’ve had an account with your company for a long time. I’m thinking about whether I need to “locate another retailer better able to meet my needs,” and recommending to all my friends that they do the same. In the best-case scenario, Amazon will recognize that they cannot afford the firestorm of negative publicity they have unleashed with this  example of corporate douchebaggery and will either rectify the situation or give Linn a compelling reason for why her account was terminated.

Oh, and by the way – take note of that email address (resolution-uk@amazon.co.uk) and tell Michael what you think about all of this. I did.

The Old Wolf has spoken.

Vienna – The collapse of the Reichsbrücke

Posted on by The Old Wolf

The Reichsbrücke in Vienna, spanning the Danube between Mexicoplatz and Donaustadt, is one of Vienna’s most important bridges. On any given day it carries thousands of commuters back and forth, and links the city center with Kagran to the northeast.

Sunday, August 1, 1976 was different. At about 5:00 AM, according to an eyewitness, the entire bridge lifted up about half a meter, and simply collapsed along its entire length into the Danube. It didn’t take long for word to get around, and it was considered a miracle that it happened both on a Sunday and so early in the morning. Had the bridge failed during a rush hour, hundreds might have been killed – as it is, only five people in four vehicles were on the bridge, and of these, only one lost his life.

I was living in Vienna at the time, and after Church services, we wandered down to see the site for ourselves.

A lone bus sits in the middle of the span. The driver was rescued after a few hours, and the bus now sits in Vienna’s Tramway Museum.

A portion of the bridge’s bed at the juncture with the pylon sits collaped on the ground, with tram tracks and cobblestones visible.

The other side of the collapsed bridge/pylon junction.

Looking across the Danube to the opposite pylon, with the stranded bus visible in the middle.

The next day’s headline of the Neue Kronen Zeitung, one of Vienna’s two tabloid papers, screamed “Ursache Schlamperei!” (Cause: Sloppiness!) and proceeded to point the finger at poorly conducted or skipped-over inspections.

All of Austria is feeling the impact of the collapse of the Imperial Bridge. An unfathomable accident, so unbelieveable that it was first thought to be a terrorist attack. Soon, however, it was discovered that the oversight of this, the most important bridge in Austria, was not conducted according to international standards, and without the help of modern technical inspection instruments. Sloppiness was the shameful cause of the catastrophe.

Neue Kronen Zeitung, 2 August 1976, page 1

After the various commissions had finished their studies, however, it was determined that the causes were more mundane. Structural failure of the bearings had begun early because of poor-quality concrete casings, which – while not load bearing – had allowed water to penetrate down to the bearings themselves and begin the process of deterioration. The bearings were surrounded by massive granite boulders, and hence could not have been inspected in any event.

A replacement bridge was begun in 1978 and dedicated in 1980. In the interim, Vienna hastily constructed two temporary bridges to carry traffic across the Danube, which were in use for four years.

The new Reichsbrücke.

It was pretty wild to be so close to a disaster of this magnitude. We expect our big bridges and things to be pretty solid, and when they are not, it’s always a bit disconcerting. Fortunate it was that so few people were directly impacted.

The Old Wolf has spoken.

Raymond Loewy

Posted on by The Old Wolf

Thanks to the power of the internet (not the least of whose forces of awesomeness is Matt Inman of The Oatmeal), more and more people are becoming acquainted with Nikola Tesla, and realizing that he was one of the most gifted, visonary and unsung scientists to ever walk the earth.

Inman just ran an indiegogo campaign to raise $850,000 toward purchasing Tesla’s last lab im Shoreham, New York, and converting it into a Tesla museum; he actually raised $1,370,511.00.

Yeah, Tesla is awesome, and Edison, who boinked Tesla in the bung, laughed about it, and took all the credit for alternating current, is somewhere on the awesomeness scale right next to Christopher Columbus, who boinked an entire population into the grave (with due respect to all my Italian relatives who still love him.)

But there are other awesome people in the world whom we also haven’t heard much about unless we happen to be internet addicts, and Stumble across an interesting fact at 3:00 AM because we can’t sleep.

Raymond Loewy is just one such engineering wonder.

Loewy’s designs are everywhere, and when you see them, they’re unlike anything else in their field. In the 1930’s, he designed the PRR S1 steam locomotive that looks like it came out of the year 2155;

Found at Frog Blog

He designed pencil sharpeners that look like TOS Phasers:

CocaCola dispensing machines upon which 1960’s toys were modeled:

And more cool stuff than you could shake a stick at.

Although the 1953 Studebaker Starliner designed by Loewy’s firm (which was the inspiration for later Mustangs) was largely designed by Robert Bourke, Loewy was later called back to Studebaker to supervise and inspire the team that designed the 1963 Avanti.

This particular model was spotted at a Mobil station at 236 Route 15 in Sturbridge, MA on June 20, 2012. It caught my eye even before I even knew who Loewy was.

Read about him here; you can see more pictures of Loewy’s swooshy stuff at SuperRadNow.

The Old Wolf has spoken.

The World’s Largest Gold Ingot

Posted on by The Old Wolf

At today’s gold spot prices, 250 kg of gold would be worth $12,503,668.00. This bar, about 17″ long and manufactured by Mitsubishi Materials Corporation, is on display at the Toi gold mine. At 550 lbs, even without all the security measures that must be in place, they don’t have to worry about a single individual trying to haul this off.

In retrospect, this Lao Fu Zi cartoon makes a lot of sense, given the weights involved:

The large ingot must weigh over half a ton; in the days before the internet, I always wondered why wealth was represented by that strange hat-like object.

Shown above, an imperial gold sycee.

The internet is a massive time-sink for the undisciplined soul such as I, but it also feeds my thirst for knowledge. Trouble is, it’s like feeding from a fire hydrant.

The Old Wolf has spoken.