What do Martha Stewart and enemy combatant Ali Saleh Kahlah Al-Marri have in common? They were both indicted, under Title 18, United States Code, Section 1001, for lying to federal government agents. Ms. Stewart now stands convicted of intentionally misleading SEC and FBI officials who questioned her about insider trading. Mr. Al-Marri was one of several hundred immigrants who voluntarily submitted to FBI interviews in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks. He was later charged with lying, during his interview, about the timing of a previous trip to the United States. Here are two criminal defendants from widely divergent backgrounds. Yet both were ensnared by Section 1001, a perennial favorite of federal prosecutors.

Did you know that it is a crime to tell a lie to the federal government? Even if your lie is oral and not under oath? Even if you have received no warnings of any kind? Even if you are not trying to cheat the government out of money? Even if the government is not actually misled by your falsehood? Well it is.

How to Avoid Going to Jail under 18 U.S.C. Section 1001 for Lying to Government Agents

Now another market-leading technology company is under fire in Washington as well. An unlikely combination of onetime antitrust defendants like Microsoft and AT&T and liberal consumer groups that have been their traditional antagonists are taking aim at Google.

Interviews by CNET News.com last week show that Microsoft and its occasional allies have met separately with key congressional committees that deal with consumer protection and antitrust issues--both of which announced last week that they will hold hearings on Google's plan to spend $3.1 billion to buy DoubleClick.

The Federal Trade Commission, which must review the merger on antitrust grounds, has also been meeting with Google, Microsoft and those nonprofit consumer groups, according to sources familiar with the meetings. The European Union, egged on by American consumer groups like the Electronic Privacy Information Center and the pro-regulation Center for Digital Democracy, is reviewing the merger too.

All this amounts to the first serious political threat to a company that has grown to a market capitalization of $162 billion by worrying more about serving customers than catering to the whims of bureaucrats and politicians. Longtime Washington observers believe that even if the DoubleClick acquisition is eventually permitted, federal scrutiny will only increase.

For its part, Google says it's confident that the threat to its business can be contained. "We're finding that the more we meet with policymakers, the more they are realizing that Google and DoubleClick are different types of companies, that we take significant steps to protect users' privacy, and that this acquisition will benefit both consumers and advertisers," said spokesman Adam Kovacevich.

In addition to its full-time staff lobbyists, also involved in Google's efforts to fend off antitrust bureaucrats are four newly hired lobbyists in the Washington office of the law firm Brownstein Hyatt & Farber (including Makan Delrahim, a former top Justice Department antitrust official). Google's earlier hires include the now-renamed PodestaMattoon, which draws its name from longtime Democratic dealmaker Tony Podesta, and King and Spalding, home to former Republican Sens. Connie Mack and Dan Coats.

A Google representative said there had not, however, been any personal visits to Washington in support of the DoubleClick deal by top executives like CEO Eric Schmidt and co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, who famously showed up in blue jeans and sneakers when he arrived on Capitol Hill for meetings with politicians last summer.

Citing confidentiality concerns, an FTC representative declined to comment on anything beyond the fact that the investigation is continuing. AT&T, which has made public statements in opposition to the merger before, would not comment. Time Warner, which reportedly has voiced concerns about the deal, also would not comment.

Microsoft spok... [ Read More (0.2k in body) ]

On antitrust, is Google the next Microsoft?

Under their most recent contract, full-time, port clerical workers earned about $37.50 an hour, or $78,000 a year. They also receive a pension, health care benefits free of premiums, and 20 paid holidays a year.

Berry said Monday that employers' latest offer included raises that over the life of a three-year contract would bump the employees' hourly pay to $39.50; the union is seeking increases that would equal $53 per hour by the last year of the contract.

Go on strike? $37.50 an hour? Damn! I am in the wrong job...

Los Angeles ports facing strike threat

The major goal of the Five Day Weekend is simple: We want to reverse the U.S. workweek so that Americans clock in for two good days of work, followed by five well-earned days off.

Why? Because overwork has become a major problem for Americans, and it's getting worse by the year. The two-day weekend was created in 1930, and despite decades of unparalleled technology growth, our people are actually working more and more each year.

Check out the stats:

* Americans wasted more than 570 million vacation days in 2006(1)
* Unlike 96 other countries, the U.S. has no law governing vacations
* U.S. workers receive an average of 14 vacation days but only use 10 a year(1)
* By comparison, French workers receive 39 vacation days, and Germans get 27(1)
* Americans have increasingly worked more days a year since World War II(2)
* A nine-year university study recently found that not taking vacation can increase the chance of heart attack or coronary disease.(3)
* In 2006, members of the U.S. Congress clocked 104 days in session – which means they worked exactly two days a week.(4)

We want to stop this trend and begin to reverse it. So we're aiming high and going for a Five Day Weekend.

Oh wait... our government spends money like water and taxes the hell out of us.... so we work more for less....

Friends of the Five Day Weekend

A shock-wave went through the corporate world 25 years ago when a couple of bright young management consultants detailed organizational excellence in seven basic qualities.

In Search of Excellence… by Tom Peters and Bob Waterman became a world-wide best seller, a first and only for a book on management.

Peters and Waterman had significant scholarship behind them, coming from the Stanford business school, located in midst of what the world knows as Silicon Valley. They began with the premise that an excellent organization – company, charity, government – rises above the others by serving all its stakeholders – customers, shareholders, employees, civil society. What they attempted was a quantification of excellence.

What Peters and fellow McKinsey consultant Waterman learned from big organizations and small was success came more and more from knowing rather than simply making or doing. They wrote about customer satisfaction, nurturing the creative and managing by wandering around.

Management science – from the days of Edwards Deming – has long trained executives from two similar disciplines: engineering and finance. Peters and Waterman, both from engineering disciplines, foresaw the coming of knowledge organizations where solutions are found inside customers’ heads.

Media has always been in the knowledge trade, though not articulated until the dot com boom. Publishers viewed their success in the number of copies sold or amount of advertising sold. Broadcasters invented audience measurement to convert a quantifiable approximation of audience size into money from advertisers.

Statistical and survey methods perfected more than two generations ago founded the currency of media measurement still, mostly, in use today.

Product managers measure brand strength in many of the same terms Peters and Waterman used to quantify excellence.

In the two decades since Peters’ equally famous article “What gets measured, gets done”, managers have focused on the obvious: measure everything. Measure everything and we’ll figure out later whether or not it means anything. Companies like Oracle make fortunes facilitating the storage and manipulation of vast amounts of data. In the media business, nothing is more frightening than a junior media buyer with a PowerMac and version 12 of SPSS.

There is another side to this popular incitement to measurement: What we measure is what we do.

Holy Grails…hardly.

The long running discussion about passive media measurement provides a superb example of curing a problem by changing the patient.

Good read that rings true....

What Gets Measured, Changes Media

A former Dell kiosk manager writes us to share helpful tips about doing business with Dell. He has no particular problems with Dell, he just wanted to share some helpful tips for consumers looking to get the best deal. He includes info on getting the best deal from the website, different kinds of promotions the Dell offers, insider details on how the kiosk sales reps are compensated, what coupons and deals they have to offer you to close the deal, the email format for Dell in case you're thinking of launching an EECB, where to take your Dell credit card complaints, which extended warranties to avoid, how to get a domestic tech support rep... and more. It's very comprehensive. Enjoy!

Nice to see someone speaking out....

22 Confessions Of A Former Dell Sales Manager

Buoyed by the success of the DVD versions of shows such as Family Guy and The Simpsons, TV shows are repackaged for DVD release in increasing numbers these days, and the phenomenon of having entire seasons of our favorite shows available in a convenient format like a boxed set has been blamed in part for the decline in movie theater ticket sales this year. But it's not just a matter of slapping the masters onto a disc, designing some menus, and shipping out the finished product. The Hollywood Reporter reports, appropriately enough, on the impact that copyright considerations and license fees are having on DVD releases of content, new or old.

Thanks to the limitless generosity fiscal acuity of the record labels, coupled with copyright extension after copyright extension, the good folks who handle DVD releases are often faced with a tough choice in the face of demands from copyright holders on old songs: raise the product price to compensate for licensing fees, rescore parts or all of the release, or don't build a DVD at all. The outcomes, then, are American Dreams: Season 1, Extended Music Edition for US$89, or Crime Story without Del Shannon's Runaway in the intro, or no WKRP in Cincinnati boxed set at all.

While the HR story is a good read, it fails to make a couple of important connections. First of all, the licensing fee won't go away, even if the DVD format does. In yet another example of how the entertainment industry is built on the concept of charging us for the same content over and over again, new fees will be waged and then passed on to consumers for the next-gen DVD version, and again when online delivery obsoletes all those discs. Will the final incarnation of the Around the Beatles show be stripped of all Beatles songs, or will I need to hock my spleen to afford it? And let's remember who really profits from the fees levied. Hint: it's rarely the artists and composers. At least one movie studio has itself to blame if their next DVD release is hampered by licensing issues. Have you noticed how copyright terms seem to get extended by a few years every time Mickey Mouse is close to going public domain?

When the aftermarket for music is enjoying such a drastic increase in value, it affects not only the re-release market. The numbers on the price tag tick up for other uses as well, since the providers now have to consider the possibility that their content might get reused in ways not even thought up yet. A license covering all possible uses will naturally be more expensive than one for a limited-run TV show plus syndication. It's bad enough that our precious entertainment is hamstrung by these issues, but some of the effects are more wide-ranging than that. We have already discussed how licensing problems and copyright are placing restraints on the educational system, public education, and even on the legacy we leave for our descendants to ponder. All in the name of making a buck off (mostly) old songs.... [ Read More (0.2k in body) ]

How TV shows on DVD suffer from music licensing

Verizon Communications Inc. executive yesterday accused Google Inc. of freeloading for gaining access to people's homes using a network of lines and cables the phone company spent billions of dollars to build.

The comments by John Thorne, a Verizon senior vice president and deputy general counsel, came as lawmakers prepared to debate legislation that could let phone and cable companies charge Internet firms additional fees for using their high-speed lines.

"The network builders are spending a fortune constructing and maintaining the networks that Google intends to ride on with nothing but cheap servers," Thorne told a conference marking the 10th anniversary of the Telecommunications Act of 1996. "It is enjoying a free lunch that should, by any rational account, be the lunch of the facilities providers."

Verizon is spending billions of dollars to construct a fiber-optic network around the country for delivering high-speed Internet and cable TV services. Executives at other telecom companies, such as AT&T Inc. chief executive Edward E. Whitacre Jr., have suggested that Google, Yahoo Inc. and other such Internet services should have to pay fees for preferred access to consumers over such lines.

Verizon Executive Calls for End to Google's 'Free Lunch'

pple Computer Inc. CEO Steve Jobs got a good laugh at the expense of rival Dell Inc., according to a report Monday.

In 1997, after Jobs returned to the company he helped start in 1976, Dell founder and CEO Michael Dell, was asked what could be done to fix Apple, in deep financial trouble at the time, the New York Times said.
Since returning to Apple, Jobs has revitalized the company's computer business and created its wildly successful iPod division.
Since returning to Apple, Jobs has revitalized the company's computer business and created its wildly successful iPod division.

"What would I do? I'd shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders," Dell said to an audience of information technology managers, according to the paper.

But Apple (Research) stock surged 12 percent last week, pushing the company's market capitalization to $72.13 billion, passing Dell's (Research) value of $71.97 billion.

According to the Times, Jobs sent an e-mail message Friday to employees that read: "Team, it turned out that Michael Dell wasn't perfect at predicting the future. Based on today's stock market close, Apple is worth more than Dell. Stocks go up and down, and things may be different tomorrow, but I thought it was worth a moment of reflection today. Steve."

In 2000, after helping the company out of financial trouble, Jobs was awarded a corporate jet and options to purchase 10 million shares, the paper said.

In 2003, Jobs' options were exchanged for a restricted stock grant of 10 million shares. At Apple's closing price on Friday of $85.59, his stake in the company is worth some $855.9 million, the paper said.

But Dell's personal wealth still exceeds that of Jobs. Last year Dell was ranked fourth on Forbes magazine's list of the 400 wealthiest people in the U.S. His personal wealth is estimated at $14.2 billion, according to the paper.

Apple's Jobs scoffs at Dell's prediction prowess

The Chicago Police Department is warning officers their cell phone records are available to anyone -- for a price. Dozens of online services are selling lists of cell phone calls, raising security concerns among law enforcement and privacy experts.

Your phone records are for sale