Silflay Hraka

I have to admit, I’m a traffic watcher. We use SiteMeter to analyze our site traffic and I check it several times a day because…well, because. It’s just something I do. I particularly like to check our referral log in order to find out how people are getting to the site. This evening, much of our traffic comes courtsey of Google searches about Homeland Security deputy press secretary and alleged child-luring pervert Brian Doyle.

Why do we show up in search results for Brian Doyle? Our own dear Bigwig has had dealings with Brian Doyle in the past.

A few years ago Nick Monahan’s wife had troubles with the Transportation Security Administration. Being the just and enterprising individual that he is, BigWig took it upon himself to express his righteous indignation to the appropriate authorities. Those authorities directed him to Brian Doyle, BigWig followed through and Doyle sent this email in response to BigWig.

(I also got in the act and contacted the Portland authorities, but didn’t follow through with emailing Doyle. What was the point? BigWig already did it.)

While emailing Doyle about the incident didn’t really accomplish anything the last time, it was at least vaguely reassuring that a government official took the time to respond. Maybe we should all email Doyle about his latest escapade. Something tells me he won’t be able to check his email for a while, and probably won’t respond if he does. Well, unless we all pretend to be 14 year-old girls.

Update: Holy crap. Welcome AmericaBlog readers. You’ve officially taken Google Search behind the woodshed and given it a severe beating. Come on in and stay awhile.

Well, although George Mason made it fun to watch after the ACC teams lost out, I though the NCAA tournament was less than spectacular. Perhaps, even average at best. I’m sure the fact that Duke was out early as well as the rest of the ACC had much to do with my “ho hum” attitudel. Just looking over at ESPN’s site and there a interactive poll asking readers to rate where Florida stacks up against the previous winners in the past 10 years. My pick was dead last, as in 10th! I don’t really have anything against the Gators and I actually pull for them in football (credit that to Steve Spurrier). So I went back and took a look at the brackets and followed Florida’s path to winning the title. So here’s the seeds of their opponents: 14, 11, 7, 1 (Villanova), 11, and finally UCLA @ a #2 seed. I’ll give them credit for the Nova win as well as handling #2 seed UCLA and all the things that goes with playing in a National Championship. But that’s a very favorable path to have to follow to get to a regional final. The more I think about it though, this tournament didn’t have any really big time match ups. Sure that’s becasue all the #1′s lost out prior to the final four or sooner. No Duke vs UCONN, UCONN vs NOVA #3 grudge match, etc…. Hey, I know that’s why they play the games but I could never really get into this year’s tournament. Hell, I more excited about the Duke -vs- MD match tonight. GO BLUE DEVILS!!!

Well, I think I have found the answer to our fishing problems. Here it is! So, if we can get 4 or 5 of us to pledge $200 we can send in a bid of $1000. If that is the highest bid then we’ve got us a huge 4X4 fire truck. Next step would then be to strip all the stuff off (of course leaving the flashing lights, sirens & Ocracoke FD lettering. Then re-fit the thing with some type of home made RV type shell plus enough rod holders for about 12 rods and maybe 3 coolers. Man, that would be cool to take down to the point with the lights flashing and sirens sounding off and a bunch of drunk FDS guys hanging on the side. We could park it @ Dawg’s house in Greenville as that would be a good place so any of us can stop and pick it up on the way down to the OBX. I imagine we could also use the lights and siren to clear traffic out of the way on the way down!! Who’s in w/me??

I’ve not played it yet. Nor do I plan to play it at all. I’m not going to play anything when the odds of winning are less than getting hit by lightning. I’ll save my money and take the free chance on the lightning strike! However, I also like the fact that NC was different by not having one as well. No moral or religious basis for my anti-lottery feelings except I liked it that way. My wife would call that “being difficult”. However, driving home from work the other day I saw something that really bothered me. It seems one can buy NC lottery tickets at pawn shops. At least the one I drove by on South Saunders St yesterday had a sign that indicated it was selling them. Now, I worked in a pawn shop on South Miami Blvd in Durham for about a year in the early 90′s so I have a good idea of a typical pawn shop customer. State lottery officials have said that the lottery would not target a specific “population”. However, when NC allows lottery tickets to be sold in pawn shops, it is targeting those who really cannot afford it as well as lending a hand to gambling addiction. That’s like putting an ABC store inside the alcoholic rehab center. Come on NC, we can do better than that!!

Recording labels, Apple divided over pricing.

I hate to do it, but I have to side with the record labels when it comes to their current dispute with Apple over the pricing of tracks in iTunes. Record labels want to charge more than the current $.99 cent ceiling for new releases and hot tracks while Apple wants to hold the line at $.99 cents.

Apple’s argument is that record labels already make more per song via iTunes than they do by selling a CD of the music. Because distributing music via iTunes reduces marketing and packaging costs, this is undoubtedly true. Apple and CEO Steve Jobs state that music executives are just being greedy by asking for the price increase.

That’s probably also true. But it’s their job to be greedy, or at least to seek the best return for their investors. If they can produce a better return, it’s their duty to try and do so. So I have no problem with that.

The other argument by opponents of the price increase is that it will drive people to stop buying music online and return to illegal downloading services. This is also undoubtedly true. Some people will find that they do not want to pay $1.49 or $1.99 for the latest release and those people will probably turn to file-sharing networks to get what they want.

But some people won’t. It’s already been shown that people will buy music online at a given price point. Obviously a lot of people feel comfortable with the $.99 cent price point. The $.99 cent threshold is an important psychological barrier and it has proven to be a price point that the market for online music downloads will bear. If the price for that market were to be raised $.50 cents across the board, the market would probably be damaged and overall demand would decrease.

That’s the thing about the online music download business, though. It’s not just one market. It’s a collection of a million little markets. There’s a market for each artist, each album and each track. Some tracks are going to be more popular than others and, on those tracks, it makes sense to raise the prices. Demand for that track might be slightly reduced, but if the track is popular enough, I suspect you’ll find that many people will still be willing to make the purchase. Prices for ringtones are at or above $2.00 dollars and people are still buying like crazy, even though they aren’t getting the entire song.

The point is that it’s up to the market to decide what price point the market will bear. All Apple is doing is creating an artificially regulated market. Those artificial regulations may keep demand high, but they also decrease the incentive for the record labels to embrace the new business model. Who is to say how big the total market might grow if the record labels were spurred to digitize their entire collections? Maybe we’d see a more rapid end to the CD and a more willing embrace of online distribution.

Of course, the one problem in this is competition, in that there isn’t any, at least not between the music labels. New York Attorney General Elliot Spitzer and the U.S. Department of Justice are conducting investigations into possible collusion between the music labels in regards to the pricing of music downloads. There is $.79 cents per track downloading to be had, but $.99 cents seems to be an awfullly widely accepted price per track. If the market is opened up to true competition, we could see that prices per track fall rather than rise, but I don’t think so.

For now, it seems that Apple is still in control of pricing. They may not be the only game in town, but they may as well be. I don’t know if you’ve shopped for MP3 players of late, but the iPod is far and away the best option. Other MP3 players may have similar feature sets, but no other MP3 player has the after-market accessories availble to the iPod. It’s the accessories that set the iPod apart from the rest. As long as the iPod is king of the hill in the digital music player world, iTunes will be top of the heap when it comes to digital music downloads. As long as that’s the case, Apple will have significant control of the pricing.

In the end, I think the market for some music could support higher prices without sending people screaming back to digital piracy. $.99 cents seems to be a sweet-spot price for most music, but it’s probably not the only sweet-spot. As a consumer, I am happy to see Apple toe-the-line over pricing, but I wonder if there aren’t benefits to letting the markets set the prices for digital music.

I experienced one of life’s little pleasures today. The amount of my mortgage payment dedicated to paying off the principal finally surpassed the amount dedicated to paying off the interest. Woohoo!

Of course, this just means that my tax refund for next year just got smaller. But I’ll worry about that next year.

Defense Tech: Russian Roots for Iran’s “Underwater Missile”.

I am a blogger. By this I mean that I keep a blog, not that I read the blogs of others on a regular basis. Sure, I make the occasional visit to BoingBoing or maybe to a blog aggregator like Technorati or, until its apparent demise, to an indexer like Blogdex, but I don’t have many blogs that I read faithfully.

It’s not that I don’t want to read other blogs. I’m grateful for everyone that reads this blog and I’d love to return the favor to others. I just can’t seem to find the time. I have about ten different news sources that I read regularly and have a difficult time squeezing in others. When I do read other blogs, I want to participate and respond and I really don’t have time for that. I mean, I do have the time. It’s just a matter of squeezing out other priorities like, say, work. And school. And friends and family. You get the picture, I’m sure.

I do have one particular favorite, however. I make it a point to visit DefenseTech at least once a week. For one, I have a fascination with technology, especially defense technology. For another, it’s uniformly informative and well-written. Thirdly, it generally gives more informative and balanced coverage about things you see in the news, like Iran’s recent torpedo tests.

For instance, you may not know that the Iranian torpedos use supercavitation technology in order to achieve high speeds. I didn’t find that out in the AP story, but did find out from DefenseTech. You may not know from other news sources that the Iranian torpedos are based on Russian technology. No surprise there, really. You also may not know that DARPA has it’s own supercavitation project aimed at creating high-speed torpedos. You wouldn’t know from the AP, but you’d know from DefenseTech. Lastly, after reading the AP article, you might be overly worried about a naval conflict with the Iranians. Until you read about the various anti-torpedo technologies being developed by the U.S. and it’s allies.

Anyway, I know of no better source this side of the Jane’s publications for information like that. I’m not even sure the Jane’s pubs highlight defense technology as well. At least not for free.

Update: DefenseTech dissects the latest Iranian weapons tests: the flying boat and missle technology.