Entrepreneur Watch

Why did it take so long to find Osama bin Laden?

It's tough to fingure out what intelligence is worth paying to I guess.

John Dvorak posted a video clip from a three-year-old Jon Stewart program in which Christiane Amanpour,  the anchor of ABC's Sunday morning political affairs program, said:

"I just talked to someone very knowledgeable ... she thinks he's in a villa ... a nice comfortable villa in Pakistan, not a cave."

Jon Stewart and the other guests didn't pay much attention -- kept talking over her.

http://www.dvorak.org/blog/2011/05/04/video-three-years-ago-christiane-amanpour-said-bin-laden-was-living-in-a-villa-in-pakistan/

 

It's Hate Google Week

I have to declare this Hate Google Week, where people from all walks of crime declare their disdain of the 'What, me evil?'  company.

Who's on the agenda so far?

Stop the Google/Admob Deal!

Sen. Herb Kohl, chairman for the subcommittee on antitrust, competition policy and consumer rights, wants the Federal Trade Commission to scrutinize the proposed deal.

(EWeek article to give you the facts that the Wall Street Journal article hides behind its golden firewall.)

Concern about competition. Would give Google 24 percent of mobile ad market. But since all big companies are evil, we can't let it buy anything that would let it take an independent competitor off the market.  

What happened to the days when a monopoly was not illegal unless it leverages its monopoly illegally to keep competitors out of the market? What happened to scrutiny of the deal between Microsoft and Yahoo, which takes the #2 search engine out of the market? (Search Engine Land article.)

Oh, yeah, that's right. Microsoft would never try to leverage its monopoly unfairly.

Visual artists sue Google over Book scanning

(Reuters article)

Photographers, illustrators and others want to make sure nobody sees their work again. Google Books could provide them with free marketing by showing off talent that rotting away on library shelves and will never make those artists another dime. Hey, Google, you don't pay, you don't play. Maybe Google can just black out all the art work in the books it scans. Then the artists won't have to worry about it being seen again.

They want tens of thousands of dollars per infringement of each illustration, for which they were originally paid maybe $2,000, tops. Oh, now I see the motivation. Nice scam if you can get it.

Rupert Murdoch is again threatening to block Google from sending readers to his news sites

Mad-Eye Murdy tells the National Press club, "We're going to stop Google and others from taking our content!"

MarketWatch article

Taking it where, exactly? I thought Google took readers to the full article, not the other way around. Oh, well, we all know, as McMurdy says, that all news sites will charge subscriptions anyway. It's not like you can find the news anywhere else on the Internet.

More to come?

Come on, folks, we've barely scratched the Google logo here. I'm sure we could get another lawsuit or two going. 

I know! Google just updated its Maps applet for the Blackberry. (Info Week article) Let's sue Google to stop it from providing apps for mobile phone providers. That'll keep it from getting any more of a monopoly on the Internet mapping market. Then we can sue it again for damaging those smart device suppliers by making them less competitive with Android phones, thus increasing the chances of an Android monopoly.

No news sites were harmed in making this column. Except maybe the Wall Street Journal.

For further articles on Google controversies, please visit RichardLBrandt.com. You can even link to it. I won't sue.

Google violates Kansas copyrights

Once again, Google has shown its blatant disregard for international copyright standards.

Earlier today, Google CEO Eric "Oh aren't I smart with my Ph.D©" Schmidt announced that the Mountain View, California company was changing its name to Topeka. 

Why? Because the city of Topeka, Kansas had supposedly given up the rights to that name when it announced it was changing its name to Google.

This argument doesn't wash any better than my uncle Ernie after a night drinking with the hoboes in U.N Plaza in San Francisco.©  

Google, sorry, Topeka, knew that the people of Topeka, sorry, Google, were only planning on making the change temporary.

The Topekans, sorry, Googlans, simply wanted to call attention to the fact that children in that city of 122,000 have never had the luxury of Web-surfing faster than 122K baud, 1,000 times slower than that enjoyed by children in more developed parts of the world like Singapore. The good people of Topeka, sorry, Google, Kansas want to convince Google, sorry, Topeka, to install a Singapore-speed© broadband network in its fair city. 

Google, sorry, Topeka, has promised to do that for any U.S. city willing to change its name to Google, sorry, Topeka, wait, I'm confused now. So that city-that-must-not-be-renamed in Kansas obliged, but only for a month.

I know that Google knew this change was temporary because, in another blatant copyright violation in its attempt to destroy mainstream media, Google CEO Eric "Oh, aren't I smart with my Ph.D" Schmidt's announcement actually linked to a CNN article that described Topeka's, sorry, Google's sad attempt to gain Schmidt's attention so that the children of Kansas might catch up to the technology of the "Singapore Age"©. In that article, mayor Bill "No, I don't have a PH.D."© Bunten said it was only for a month.

CNN, of course, is owned by Rupert Murdoch©, who has complained about Google, sorry, oh to hell with it, Google stealing his intellectual property by linking to his news articles. Dr. so-smart Schmidt is just trying to goad Murdoch© into doing something stupid, like blocking his news articles from Google searches. 

When is Google going to learn that EVERY WORD any American ever writes down or steals from a native American tribe is automatically copyrighted and nobody else has ANY rights to it? Just because Topeka is temporarily relinquishing the name, Schmidt cannot violate the city's copyright©. The city has exclusive rights to that name for 123 years past the death of the city's last living resident.

Please, write to your Congressman and ask the Justice Department to crack down on Google before it becomes any more powerful. Before long, it will have a monopoly on every city name in America©.

Let's face it, if this doesn't prove that Google is evil, nothing will. ©

Google to announce Monday that it's leaving China April 10?

That's the plan, according to China Business News.

Here's part of the the computer-translated version of the Chinese story:

Google in April and China, said "goodbye"?

"We have received news that Google will be April 10 departure to China, but the news now Google has been no confirmation." Yesterday, a Google China authorized agent of "First Financial Daily" said that it was 4 inquire about Google's final decision on the Chinese market, but did not receive any real argument. If Google really had to leave China, and certainly with the aftermath, including the right agent to compensate.

Love those translation programs. More fun to read when you have t decipher as well.

If you want a more coherent version, try an article in Computer World. which picked up on the Chinese story.

The source is an "unidentified sales associate who works with the company."

Interesting if true. But Google doesn't really have any choice. Its reputation is more important than incremental revenues from China. Most companies (can I get a Bing! here?) wouldn't think so, but Sergey would.

When Google said it would end its self-censorship in China or leave, it backed itself into a corner with only two ways out. One it to stay and try to save face with some supposed concessions from China, which is as likely to compromise as a pit bull with its jaws locked on your foot. That out gives people reason to say "See? I told you Google was as evil and greedy as anyone else!" 

The other, to actually leave China, silences the critics and boosts Google's reputation. It will give up a very lucrative marketplace in order to stick to its principles.

I'm impressed if this happens. Steve Ballmer will be too. He's a shark that smells chum in Google-less Chinese waters.

Long term, I think Google's reputation is more important. Trust is critical when you have a company with such an intimate relationship with your Internet habits.

Google has a lot of other new revenue sources to pursue. And it can keep trying to infiltrate China from outside, although that's nearly impossible right now. I wonder if China can block mobile phone access to Google search?

Probably.

Shopping for cheaper health care

Ah, yes, disconnects in the health care market.

I've already talked about the fact that the rich get the best health care. Sometimes that means get rich or die.

But the rich get better everything. No news there.

Will the health care proposals now being considered help? Who knows? But maybe it will be a start.

Here's another disconnect in health care. Health care is provided by the health care industry, received by patients, and paid for by insurance companies. The seller and the receiver are one step apart.

So the receiver wants the best care available, no matter what the cost. Heath care providers want to provide every service it can, including unnecessary tests, "just in case," with the sick person assuming it is necessary and will be paid for by the insurers. And because an enormous amount of money is spent on creating new diagnostics and treatments and drugs, the health insurance companies keep raising rates. 

When it comes to health care, there is no capitalist feedback loop to keep things under control.

Gee, rising health care costs are as surprising as discovering that a starving pack of wolves will eat you if they get a chance.

We need better information. Take a look at this article by a cancer patient, a journalist, who is going broke despite having a good health insurance plan.

Her doctor ordered a medication on a "borderline call," but didn't happen to let her know how expensive it is. Two injections cost her $750. If she had no insurance, it would have cost her $17,522. Of course, her insurance agency gets a discount, so it paid only $6,850.

So why is it that the uninsured have to pay more than insurance companies? Something wrong there.

The act of getting each injection, which took all of five minutes, I'm sure, cost $93. That's about $1,116 per hour. Nothing to be done. That's the "industry standard" rate. No way to get it cheaper.

There's no control over any of this. No feedback loop to try to keep costs in line.

And we don't like it when the insurance company is the one to decide what treatments are necessary or should be cheaper. We don't trust the insurance company, and for good reason. The person trying to keep costs down has no stake in the outcome. That person is not the one who dies if necessary treatment is bypassed.

Can you say, "death panels"?

The only way I can see to really bring sanity to the system is not a happy solution for the patient. Forget health insurance altogether, and make patients pay for everything themselves. THAT will bring prices down. It will also make doctors less wealthy.

But, as I said, the broken system is too expensive for 99 percent of the population to pay for it on their own. Any the wealthy will order any test or treatment, no matter how expensive, if the alternative is dying.

Wouldn't you?

Health care: Get rich or die.

Look, something has to be done about health care costs in the U.S. We've probably got the best medical care in the world -- when we can pay for it.

I don't know if the health care reform bills will prove to offer decent solutions. But it seems to me it's obvious what some of the problems are.

There are huge disconnects in our health care system. 

Free markets work when consumers have a choice of providers and can shop for price and quality. If I can't afford a BMW, I might go for a Honda. It's up to the sellers to give us the best product or service they can for the lowest price they can.

Those are foreign concepts to the health care industry.

Here's the first disconnect: We're not talking about a new car or a new home or a better job. We're talking life or death. Our own life or death.

Everybody wants the best health care possible. When it's your own life at stake, you don't want to say, "Well, what's the best doctor I can get for my budget? Maybe I can stop getting those lattes at Starbucks every day and pay a little more." 

You want the best. Period. Whatever it takes. And you're really pissed when you can't get it.

Of course, most of us can't get the best. 

Eleven years ago, my sister got breast cancer. When she first found she had breast cancer, I brought her up from Santa Barbara to San Francisco to talk to a specialist at UCSF. I had absurd notions of paying for her care myself, or paying the difference between what was covered by her insurance (which was very good) and what the best treatment centers would charge. 

Yeah, right. There's no way anyone with a salary of less than $50 million a year can afford the best.

Several years ago, I also read Lance Armstrong's autobiography. He had cancer that almost nobody recovers from. Then he found that he had lost his health coverage. But, let's face it, he had already made millions of dollars and was famous. Doctors were willing to treat him just because he was famous.

They got mentioned in his autobiography. 

Lance went broke getting treatment-for a while-and had to fight to get his coverage back. But he got the best treatment in the world.

He lived. 

My sister died. 

Five years ago, the cancer we thought was gone metasticized and spread to her brain. The fourth anniversary of her death is June 29, the day after her 57th birthday.

Life just isn't fair. We just have to deal with it. Even in health care.

What's surprising to me is that most wealthy people don't get it. 

More than a decade ago, I did an interview with Oracle CEO Larry Ellison. He was talking to me about why he was trying to get some initiatives together to improve public education in the U.S. He said that President Clinton talked about the health care crisis, but if that was a crisis, education was a disaster of epic proportions.

Personally, I don't know which is worse in this country, the problem with health care or the problem with public education.

But Ellison's justification was this: If health care in this country was so bad, and Canada's socialized medical system was so good, then why did so many Canadians with life-threatening illnesses come to the U.S. for their treatment?

Yeah, well, maybe the folks who go to the same parties he does. But not the average Canadian. The ones coming to the U.S. for treatment are the ones who can afford the extraordinary treatment we're famous for. 

But the problem in the U.S. isn't just that the average person can't afford the best health care. It's that the average person can't afford average health care.

We may or may not have the best medical treatment in the world. But we certainly have the most expensive.

Here's some data from a Senate Finance Committee report from April 2009:

In 2008, the U.S. spent more than 17 percent of its gross domestic product on health care. That's more than any other industrialized country in the world, both in total cost and in cost per capita.

By 2017, the report estimates it will reach 20 percent of GDP. That's $4.3 trillion annually.

According to my calculations, at this rate, health care costs should reach 100 percent of GDP by about 2105.

I knew I should have gone to medical school.

Almost half of Americans can't pay their medical bills?

41 is the White House number for today.

Its Health Reform by the Numbers site says that 41% of Americans under age 65 accumulated medical debt or had trouble paying medical bills in one recent 12-month period.

That figure came from a 2008 study by the Commonwealth Fund and the year in question was 2007. the percentage was up from 34% in 2005. That's 72 million people. Add in another 7 million people over age 65 who also had problems and the number comes to 79 million.

The study also says that because of these medical bills, 28 million adults used up all their savings, 21 million racked up huge credit card debt, and another 21 million were unable to pay for basic necessities.

I can't wait to find what the numbers are for 2008 and 2009. 

The Commonwealth Fund is a private foundation that supports health care reform. So I'm open to info from groups with a different bias as well.

The Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index says 21% of Americans struggled to pay their medical bills in December 2008, up from 18% in January 2008. But half the people who were uninsured couldn't pay their medical bills. All this is described in a USA Today article.

So presumably the other 20 percent in the Commonwealth study fell into the category of "accumulating medical debt" but were not having trouble paying it?

Regardless of which numbers are right, the Gallup folks do say that this is an enormous problem. According to the USA Today article:

"The biggest problem that the country has is actually the cost of health care," says Jim Clifton, Gallup's CEO.

The American Heart Association says that 56% of people with a heart condition, stroke or high blood pressure can't pay their bills.

Let me know if you have any better numbers.

White House on health care reform: 8 denials/minute, 8 lobbyists/lawmaker

More stats from the White House. This one titled "8".

Excerpt:

8 -- that's the number of people every minute who are denied coverage, charged a higher rate or otherwise discriminated against because of a pre-existing condition. (HealthReform.gov, Coverage Denied: How the Current Health Insurance System Leaves Millions Behind)

8 is also the number of lobbyists hired by special interests to influence health reform for every member of Congress in 2009. (The Center for Public Integrity, Lobbyists Swarm Capitol To Influence Health Reform)

Link to White House site

Health Care in Socialist San Francisco

I live in San Francisco. A "socialistic" city. Very often too P.C. Too socialist at time. Good intentions, bad results. 

It offers a free program called Healthy San Francisco. As part of that, Healthy Kids is free. If you want to pay a little for the entire family (the amount depends on income), it offers a Healthy Families program.

As a freelance journalist, I cannot afford any health insurance program I investigated. So I signed up for Healthy San Francisco. My family of three pays $300 quarterly and $14 per month. Yes, a total of $114 per month, $1,368 per year. Co-pays are $10 per doctor visit and $5 per prescription.

It is not health insurance. It offers coverage at SF's facilities: SF General hospital and some clinics. Some private practitioners also offer services through the program. The state puts in some funding and employers who do not offer health insurance kick in some (much cheaper than buying actual coverage for employees.)

It really sucks. In many ways, it's an option that most people wouldn't like. 

It takes three months to get a doctor appointment if you're not really seriously ill. 

You end up at SF General along with the street people, the drug addicts and city prisoners. I was waiting for a physical therapy appointment once after I broke a finger and sat next to a guy in an orange jumpsuit and handcuffs in the waiting room. 

It has been hard for us to find a pediatrician that our daughter is comfortable with. We never could find a decent psychiatrist to help deal with possible ADHD issues she has. The one we found was the worst psychiatrist I have ever come into contact with.

However, it is SO astoundingly better than no insurance, which is what my family had for seven years, that it's hard to describe. 

My daughter has a severe fish allergy. She ended up exposed and started an anaphylactic reaction. We gave her two Benadryl and drove her to SF General emergency room. They took her immediately. No waiting. They checked her out, and it happened that the Benadryl was sufficient to stop the reaction and keep her from going into shock.

But they spent a considerable amount of time with her, asking her about her reactions to the fish. It was dangerous, enough that it's the kind of thing she could die from. They explained that it could get worse as she gets older, and could be a more serious reaction each time she is exposed. They gave us detailed info about the kinds of fish people with allergies tend to react to. They gave us prescriptions for two EpiPens, fast auto-injection devices to deliver epinephrine to prevent anaphylactic shock -- one to keep at school and one for home.

Cost: Zero dollars.

I woke up one morning with no feeling in my left hand and no ability to make a fist. We went to SF General emergency room. They took me immediately, fearing stroke or heart attack. Immediate EKG. Turned out to be minor, but they did significant tests to make sure.

Cost: Zero dollars.

My wife and I have some very expensive prescriptions to take every month. Before Healthy SF, we were spending over $300 per month, and sometimes simply could not afford to get them. Healthy SF now covers them.

Cost: $40 per month.

I went in for a routine checkup and blood test. The blood test came back with outrageously high triglyceride levels in my blood. Essentially, fat that the body uses to store energy. Despite what I thought was a pretty damn healthy diet (no fast food, very little junk food) I have 1,115 mg/decaliter levels. 150 mg/dl is considered normal. It seems to be genetic. Heart attack city.

My doctor immediately prescribed a triglyceride-reducing medication, and I re-started my running routine to burn up the excess fat I've accumulated around my waist.

Cost: $5 per month.

Let's face it, one of us could die without this coverage.

And here's the interesting part. The SF Chronicle wrote an article pointing to studies that conclude the program SAVES San Francisco money. Emergency room visits are down because poverty-level, mostly minority families, now get regular care instead of waiting until things are dire. And yes, that includes illegal immigrants.

Of course, due to the recession, funding for the program is being cut. How's that for saving money by ending socialistic programs?

Everybody, including taxpayers, could save money with a public option for health care.

Deconstructing the 'Operation Aurora' attack on Google in China

Brian Prince at eWeek.com has a slide show analyzing the anatomy the back door in Internet Explorer 6 that allowed the attack on services in China. He has some interesting facts:

* Microsoft apparently has known about the vulnerability since September. (Bad PR for Microsoft to wait until Google pointed it out before letting on about it.)

* A "memory corruption" in IE6 allows attacker to remotely execute code.

* The malware used in the attack is a Trojan Horse called Hydraq. It has also been used against some Adobe Systems products.

* Social Networks like Facebook can be used to trick people into giving up info that helps the attackers.

* Evidence that the attack originated in China is "relatively scant."

This whole episode shows that you shouldn't use old versions like IE6. IE8 is now the current version. Were people at Google using IE6, or was it just people using Google products that stuck with the old browser? Personally, I use Chrome.