In 2008, however, things were different. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama took much longer than usual to sort out. By the time it was said and done, it turns out that Michigan’s delegates would have mattered, and might have affected the outcome. Of course, by then, nothing could be done because the candidates had skipped campaigning in the state with worthless delegates.

This year, it is the Republicans turn to be jackasses. The GOP apparently, isn’t tough enough to enforce its rules (or has learned from the Democrat’s mess less time) with any sort of penalties, so various states have taken it upon themselves to move up their primaries. This in turn makes the states that are “supposed” to have the early primaries move their elections up even further in order to stay in the front of the line.

The result of all this jockeying is that New Hampshire may end up having its primary in December, and thus, Iowa may end up having its in December, or even November, an entire year before the actual election, next fall.

Presidential Primary Reform

No politician is willing to talk about primary reform because there is always the chance that they may one day be running for President and there is no way quicker to lose Iowa or New Hampshire than to suggest that those states somehow are not entitled by God himself to be the first contests of any Presidential nominating process.

Of course, those claims are absurd. There is nothing special about Iowa or New Hampshire, or any other state, that makes them more entitled to being the first nominating contest.

It’s too late to do anything about it for this election season, but after the next Presidential election is over (well over a year away, mind you) it is time to go out and get real meaningful Presidential primary campaign reform.

A system where the first five slots are rotated among all 50 states would be the most fair. But, the most important thing is to get a drop dread, no nonsense start date. That start date should be no earlier than March of the same year the election is held. That is plenty of time for a real contest to occur and be settled before the general election.

The Democrat’s idea to strip states who start too soon of delegates seems like a good starting point. I’d go so far as to say that any member of the party in a state that moves its primary or caucus before the start date before the sanctioned start date will be barred until the next Presidential election from serving at the executive level of the national party. That might undercut the party votes that move these contests up.

In the meantime, some clever state (especially the bigger ones with more delegates) might want to consider the power lever that may exist near the end of the nominating contest. Imagine if in 2008, Michigan had moved its primary to the end of the nominating contest. The state would have been in the position of choosing the nominee, not just in position to “set the tone” as many of the earlier states are attempting to do.

Primary Election Stupidity is a post from Best Hubris. All content exclusively written by Freelance Writing Business of ArcticLlama, LLC

The "reform" in the weak patent legislation that limped out of Congress changes the system from a first-to-invent system to a first-to-file system. This essentially favors big corporations with a bunch of patent lawyers on staff.

Here is how the new patent system will work. If an inventor in Colorado invents a new kind of ski in January and submits a patent application in March, but another company submits a patent application for the same technology in February, the company wins, even if the other guy invented it first and can prove it. The only exception is if the first inventor can PROVE that the company copied his technology. Smaller companies or inventors who don’t race to the patent office could lose out.

On paper, this hurts small inventors, however, it also eliminates one bothersome aspect of the patent system where a company like IBM spends years developing a new technology and the files for a patent and then someone shows up out of the woodwork CLAIMING that they invented it first. Now, those companies won’t have to deal with those kinds of claims.

Failed Patent Reform

Of course, none of the real patent reforms necessary to fix the system were included. Patent trolls are still free to file their claims in the District of East Texas no matter how ridiculously tangential the connection to that area is. (Patent trolls keep a single, empty, office on record so that they can file a case where no one, not the defendant, not the plaintiff, and not the attorneys, actually has a real reason to file there.) For whatever reason, the courts in Eastern Texas have turned themselves into mindless lapdogs for patent troll attorneys, probably because it provides something interesting to do and a little bit of job security, even if it leads to a gross miscarriage of justice. The so-called reform does nothing to address this issue.

In addition, while Congress gleefully carved out exceptions in patent law for those industries willing to pay lobbyists and campaign contributions, they made no effort to fix the issue of overly broad patents of dubious value being used to force companies to pay up simply because it is cheaper and less hassle than to actually be correct.

In other words, things will only get worse as more patent lawyers use dirtier tricks and file broader patents just so that they can go to court and squeeze money from actual businesses. Patent law already has started to resemble the old Mafia extortion scam where a company is forced to pay, "or something bad might happen." Someday, years from now, when the patent system and all of lawsuits clogging the courts is even more of a laughing stock than it is today, Congress might get around to actually doing something meaningful for the U.S. economy and commerce, but until then, nothing substantial changes while Senators and Congressmen can pretend that they did something by pointing to this useless bill and saying, "I voted for patent reform."

Patent Reform Fails in Congress is a post from Best Hubris. All content exclusively written by Freelance Writing Business of ArcticLlama, LLC

The 1976 Winter Olympics were originally awarded to Denver. However, building everything to actually hold the Olympics in Denver required a citizen approved bond initiative that went down in flames. (One of the leaders of the campaign against the Olympics was Richard Lamm, who leveraged that notoriety into becoming Governor of Colorado.)

Denver remains the only city to ever give up the Olympics once having been formally awarded them by the International Olympic Committee.

Winter Olympics in Denver 2022

Every so often, some folks in Denver decide that it would be a good idea to have the Winter Olympics in Denver. This time, they are shooting to have the Winter Olympics in Denver in 2022.

On paper, having the Olympics in Denver sounds like a great idea. The reality, however, is a different story.

Colorado and Denver sound like wintery, snowy, places to the rest of the world. The reality is somewhat different. While it does get cold and it does snow, it doesn’t reliably do it all that often. Denver is a semi-arid climate, and that is true in the winter as well.

Denver gets big snow storms, that is true. Denver does not get snow every day. In fact, the Denver tourism office likes to tout that the city gets 300 days of sunshine per year. Do a little math and you’ll realize that means it isn’t sunny only 65 days each year. Throw in some cloudy days in Spring and Summer and you’ll see that it just isn’t actually snowing all that often in Denver. Storms come and go quickly.

Of course, none of that really matters because Denver isn’t in the mountains. The city’s well publicized moniker Mile High City is true. There are specially colored steps at the Capital Building showing exactly where one mile (5,280 ft.) above sea level is. Likewise, a row of purple seats at Coors Field, where the Colorado Rockies play, also denotes where one mile high is. But, the entire city of Denver and the surrounding metro area are relatively flat. No luge or skiing tracks are going to work around here.

The catch is that the slopes and snows in Colorado take place in the mountains. Weather forecasts regularly call for a chance of snow, but only above 7,000 feet or above 10,000 feet. The ski areas that Colorado is so famous for are well above that. In other words, fully half of the Winter Olympics won’t even take place in Denver, they’ll take place somewhere up in Summit County. The ski resorts in Utah, for example, are much closer to Salt Lake City.

In order for any of the Olympics to actually take place in Denver, you would have to have a split venue scenario where the indoor events, mainly those that take place on a skating rink, are in Denver, and all the outdoor events are up in the mountains somewhere.

Unfortunately, Colorado’s premier ski areas are more than two hours away from Denver, and that’s  in good traffic, which brings up the next catch.

The average winter weekend clogs I-70 with people heading up from Denver and Boulder for a ski weekend or day trip. Imagine adding the traffic of Olympic spectators and Olympic teams heading up for various events. And, I-70 isn’t the easiest highway to add lanes to. Another lane of traffic through the Eisenhower Tunnel would require another bore, a decade long project.

Again, in order to be even remotely practical, there would have to be two Olympic Villages, one in Denver and one up in the mountains.

Denver is a great city, and it is a wonderful place to live. Unfortunately, it just isn’t a very reasonable location for the Winter Olympics.

Denver Olympics – Where Bad Dreams Won’t Die is a post from Best Hubris. All content exclusively written by Freelance Writing Business of ArcticLlama, LLC

In March, Google only controlled 64.4 percent of search. While it is possible to have a monopoly with control over just 65 percent of a market, it isn’t likely to hold up in this case. First, the other 30 percent is controlled by a single competitor, so we aren’t talking about one company with a huge share and then 35 companies fighting over 1 percent scraps. In fact, a 65/30/5 split sounds like a lot of markets with a number one and a number two player.

Sadly, these numbers won’t stop the anti-trust trolls from making a run at Google. For one thing, in the U.S. at least, anti-trust is often highly political, and in politics perception is reality. Right now, the perception is that Google is all mighty.

For another, anti-trust lawsuits are, by nature, historical in nature. In order to prove that a company has used its dominate market position in an anti-competitive nature, the company has to have already used its dominate market position in an anti-competitive way.

In other words, the anti-trust actions that come Google’s way would be talking about 2009 and 2010, not March 2011, although Google may be able to play those numbers — particularly if they continue — into lesser penalties should they lose and/or choose to settle.

After all, it doesn’t make any sense to go breaking up the number one company in an industry just so the number two company can become the number one company.

In the meantime, maybe the company has paid a price for Google’ broken search algorithm being allowed to run too long. Maybe other non-Microsoft companies like Blekko can gain traction. And, maybe, all of this is nothing but a lot of sound and fury signifying nothing.

Either way, the headlines for the technology writers out there virtually write themselves for anyone looking to get into a tizzy about the whole thing one way or another.

Microsoft Bing Now Controls 30 Percent of Search is a post from Best Hubris. All content exclusively written by Freelance Writing Business of ArcticLlama, LLC

However, Apple may have gone too far with its latest demands for apps that appear in the the App Store.  Any publisher that has an app in the Apple AppStore that offers a content subscription anywhere, including applications or services not available in the AppStore or even on iPhones or iPads, must also offer the same subscription at the same price from within the app. 

So far, so good.

However, any such subscription is subject to a 30 percent commission payable to Apple for the right to be included in the AppStore.

It seems that some publishers may be balking at this demand.

Here is how it works in Steve Jobs’ head.

A publisher might be able to sell 10,000 subscriptions on their own via their own website or through another device’s app store.  But, because of the popularity, ease of use, and integration of iPhone and iPads with Apple’s App Store, the same publisher could sell many more subscriptions, thereby justifying the charge made by Apple.

To some publishers, however, this is starting to sound like a ransom demand from Apple.  Their contention is that while Apple has made a great product and has been rewarded with high profits and sales of their electronics, the customer buying a subscription to a magazine or other publication is buying the value of the publisher, and Apple doesn’t have any right to those sales.

There is more at stake here than the math, not the least of which is the publishers’ ability to sell their product how and where they want. However, it is useful to break down the economics of selling subscriptions through the Apple Appstore.

If XYZ Publishing can sell 100,000 monthly subscriptions at a cost of $4 per month, that is $400,000 in revenue.

If XYZ Publishing sells all 100,000 subscriptions via the AppStore, then they lose $120,000 to Apple. That leaves just $280,000 in revenue. Over a year, that is a difference of nearly $1.5 million per year. That is a lot of salaries.

Is it worth it?

That depends entirely on how many subscriptions the publisher can sell without Apple versus how many they would sell with Apple.

If XYZ Publishing can sell just 70,000 subscriptions at $4 per month without using the AppStore, that is the same $280,000 in revenue that they would generate by selling 100,000 subs with the AppStore. But, if they can’t sell anywhere near that number without the AppStore, then Apple’s point is valid and the publishers have no choice but to play ball.

Apple Plays Chicken with Publishers

Here is where things get interesting.

Assume that publishers decide to not support iPhone or iPad apps and subscriptions. If just a handful of publishers go down this path, then there is no real impact on Apple or iPhone and iPad users.  Just like when the Beatles wouldn’t allow their music to be sold on iTunes.

However, if many publishers — or just a handful of the biggest ones — decide not to play ball with Apple and the AppStore, then iPhones and iPads become the devices that you can’t use to access everything. They’re great machines but they just do not have widespread support of all the features and functions that other devices do. Sound familiar Mac lovers?

Apple has already played this game once by declining to support Flash. However, that was a technical decision made to prevent Flash from causing sluggish performance and bad battery life on Apple devices. So far, Apple seems to have won that battle. (If we’re lucky it might finally cause a positive change in how Adobe supports and develops Flash.)

The big question is whether or not the game will play out the same with publishers who can’t really afford to be losing 30 percent off the top.

Consider a Sports Illustrated subscriber who learns that their subscription to the magazine allows them full, free access to all online SI content on any device EXCEPT an iPhone or iPad. Would that sway that user’s decision? What if there is a list as long as your arm of content that you can get anywhere except on an Apple device? Would that be enough to impact Apple sales?

This game was played before by the music industry and Apple’s iTunes store.  The music industry lost. Will the outcome be the same here?  The answer might determine whether iPhones and iPads are short-lived phenomenons or whether they change the world of publishing forever.

Will Apple Subscription Demand Destroy the iPhone is a post from Best Hubris. All content exclusively written by Freelance Writing Business of ArcticLlama, LLC

Is Chrome getting heavier, or is Firefox getting lighter?

It doesn’t seem like Google Chrome is any heavier than it used to be, but Firefox seems a lot lighter on its feet these days.  Maybe it’s the Vacuum Places add-on or maybe it’s the latest software updates.  Either way, I no longer start Chrome to be fast.

These days, Chrome is my JavaScript enabled, non-ad blocking browser (with cookies set to delete on browser close) and Firefox is my NoScript, ads blocked, fully customized and tricked out browser.

Oh, and Firefox is my business browser and serious browser mostly because although there is finally a PDF viewer in Chrome,  Google Chrome STILL does not have a Print Preview function.  I guess Googlers don’t believe in hard copy.  I copy and paste URLs from Chrome to Firefox all the time in order to get a look at how many pages I need to print in order to get just the article to print and not the 11 pages of comments with it.  Oh, and the percentage size print feature (fully integrated into the print preview functionality) is GOLD.  I love using print preview to see that a print out will be one page and two lines on the second page, then click 80% and get the whole thing on a very readable single page.

Have a nice Wednesday.

Firefox Feeling Lighter? is a post from Best Hubris. All content exclusively written by Freelance Writing Business of ArcticLlama, LLC

In other words, if your data is set to "public" then it is very likely that you are now a "member" of a dating website that you never heard of.

Facebook’s defense is that doing this is against its terms of service and that it will pursue legal action against anyone who steals Facebook profile information like this.

Of course, that is hardly the point because the real danger of Facebook privacy violations doesn’t come from pranksters putting up an "artistic" website as a way to publicly point out how much private information Facebook turns public, but rather from those who secretly steal personal information from Facebook.  Such users don’t care about the terms of service and the legal department will never find them, if it even knew about them in the first place.

Never set any of your status updates or contact information to Public on Facebook.  Set everything to Friends of Friends or tighter.  This won’t give you full security, but it will at least take you off of the easy target list.

Facebook User’s Identity Information Stolen Again is a post from Best Hubris. All content exclusively written by Freelance Writing Business of ArcticLlama, LLC

Traffic intersections with signal lights can be enforced using cameras that detect when a car runs a red light.  The automated camera takes a picture of the driver and the license plate and the traffic signal showing red and then mails a traffic ticket to the driver’s home address as listed on the vehicle registration.  The idea, of course, is that people will respect red lights more and not run them as often, thereby reducing crashes and increasing safety.

Does it work?

Traffic Statistics and Vested Interests

The unfortunate fact is that many Americans are woefully ignorant when it comes to math and statistics.  Most people can add and subtract, of course, and savvy shoppers can figure out percentages in their head, but when it comes to analyzing data, most adults just throw up their hands and say, "I was never any good at math."

Ignorance and misinformation are the most powerful tools available for controlling the thoughts and beliefs of others.  Statistics have long been a favorite business strategy to manipulate the public.

Statistics used to garner public opinion work in the same way that a magician does.  By distracting you with something showy and flashy over here, you look away from where something is really happening, allowing the illusionist to trick you into thinking that you have seen something that didn’t really happen.

The flashy noise statistics use is what newspapers like to print in their headlines.  In this case, "Study finds red light cameras cut fatal crashes."  No doubt, the study’s authors would have preferred, "Study finds red light cameras save lives," but it’s close enough.

The flash is the news that red light cameras are good.  The purpose of the study is to give politicians cover for installing highly unpopular red light cameras.  When people get angry and demand that the cameras be removed, or never installed in the first place, the politician can hold up this study as a shield and say that he is only thinking about the safety of people.

The "trick" occurs within the study.  This research in no way proves or even suggests that red light cameras reduce the overall number of accidents at intersections with traffic lights.  It also does not say that there are fewer injuries, nor does it say that photo enforcement of red lights makes intersections safer.  All of that gets inferred by people who are not paying attention.  The only thing the study says is that at intersections with red light cameras the number of FATAL crashes is reduced.

Does that make red light cameras a good traffic enforcement tool that make people safer?

That depends on all of the data that no one bothered to include.

If the number of fatal crashes is reduced slightly, but the number of crashes where someone is hospitalized increase dramatically, then red light cameras do not make intersections safer.  In fact, in that instance one could say that red light cameras actually make intersections more dangerous.

The key to understanding research and statistics is knowing who is behind them.  It doesn’t matter that people produce research that supports their point of view.  That is merely good science.  If you believe something, you should be able to produce facts to back it up.

The problem comes when there are two kinds of research studies and the only ones that support an idea are the ones that are paid for by the people who want to believe, while all of the other studies say something different.  Think about how the tobacco industry spent years producing research showing that nicotine was not addictive, or that the facts were inconclusive, while everyone else in the world was coming to a different conclusion.

In this case, the insurance industry is the only one who ever produces research showing traffic cameras are safer.  Everyone else, including government researchers and academic researchers either find inconclusive data or worse, that traffic light cameras actually increase the number of overall accidents at intersections.

To find out why, one need only look at the fact that all research about red light cameras agrees on.

Red light cameras substantially increase the number of traffic tickets generated at intersections with traffic signals.

Who gets to charge higher insurance rates whenever anyone gets a traffic ticket?

Image courtesy of Microsoft Office clipart.

Do Red Light Cameras Make Intersections Safer? is a post from Best Hubris. All content exclusively written by Freelance Writing Business of ArcticLlama, LLC

Although the case is being misinterpreted all over the Internet, it is true that police officers and other government law enforcement agencies can search your cell phone without first obtaining a warrant. The part that everyone is leaving out, is that they may search your mobile phone without a warrant after you have been arrested.

In other words, just like your coat pockets, and other personal affects, your cell phone may be looked at by police officers once you have been legally detained for probable cause (arrested). It’s not like a cop can just grab your iPhone and go through it for no reason. Also, police have no more access to calls you make and recieve on your cell phone than they do with your regular phone.

If you are waiting for this court decision to be overturned, don’t hold your breath. This case went 5-2 in California, one of the most liberal courts in the land, so chances are not good for this one to be thrown out higher up the legal food chain.

Legal to Search Cell Phone Without a Warrant is a post from Best Hubris. All content exclusively written by Freelance Writing Business of ArcticLlama, LLC

I finally stumbled across a mainstream journalist who refuses to buy into the hype around Facebook and call it like everyone who isn’t a techie blogger sees it. Facebook doesn’t make all that much money now (profit-wise) and its only hope for the future is to cash in while everyone seems ignorant of the fact that users are not the same thing as dollars.

Facebook’s valuation climbs with every investment, if and only if, you subscribe to the theory that the value of a company is what the last buyer paid for it. That doesn’t mean that it has figured out how to turn users into profits. And, it most certainly doensn’t mean that it has insulated itself from being the next AOL.

The only question is, will Facebook cash out before everyone sees the smoke and mirrors or will is sink slowly taking all of that temporary wealth with them? It looks as though Goldman Sachs’ clients will get a front row seat to that contest.

Truth About Facebook is a post from Best Hubris. All content exclusively written by Freelance Writing Business of ArcticLlama, LLC