Newspeak - the movie industry masters its art

Written by John Spavin on July 21st, 2010

Twisting words is a fine art. For example, the noun, freedom, is generally believed  to mean the right to do or say what a person wants.

Hollywood wants to change that. It has developed a new way to cripple its digital products so that customers are trapped  and can’t make full use of the Hollywood products they buy. In dong so it claims to be offering consumers freedom.

Only, Hollywood, in reducing its customers’ rights, would be stupid enough to try to convince us all that we’ve always misunderstood the real meaning of freedom.

The software is called UltraViolet and the big names who have all failed to embrace the Internet age have signed up to it, with a couple of notable exceptions, more of which in a moment.

As the UltraViolet lie, er,  blurb would have it

UltraViolet is being designed so that UltraViolet-enabled content, devices and services can give consumers the freedom to experience movies and TV shows like never before.

Crippling digital entertainement and information with DRM was never intended to free customers, nor was it meant to make their lives easier. It is intended to treat all consumers as criminals (they actually mean copyright infringers)  and to prevent them from using the product as they wish. Without this paranoia, the Pirate Bay would not exist.

As for the exceptions, neither Apple nor Disney have signed up. Can UltraViolet be imposed without the biggest purveyor of digital entertainment and the biggest producer? Steve Jobs isn’t against crippling software, he did it with music and he continues to do it with movies and he does it with his operating systems and applications store. He does it both with DRM and oddball control but he’s Disney’s biggest, single shareholder and maybe Disney will stay aloof as long as Jobs does. It’s not that Disney’s against crippling its products, it’s just that it hasn’t agreed to Ultraviolet.

UltraViolet represents many things but freedom for consumers isn’t one of them. Pirated movies represent true digital freedom for those consumers who choose not to be treated like criminals or brain dead automatons by the good folks who produce content for them whilst wagging an accusatory finger.

Hat tip to Techdirt

Posted in WTF | No Responses »

Carrying the Apple weight

Written by John Spavin on July 20th, 2010

The unnamed Herald staff who think I’m hanging around, my life at a standstill and my dreams unfulfileld, wating for Apple’s iPad to arrived in New Zealand need to get out more.

They run a short piece in today’s Herald. The intro says

Finally, the wait is over. New Zealand will get Apple’s groundbreaking iPad tablet computer this week.

Well, chaps actually, most of us haven’t been waiting.

Forget for a moment the dreadful lead sentence, making ‘wait’ the subject instead of just telling me what’s happening

Further, they describe it as the ‘giant’ iPod device. Giant? I’ve had a play on one and giant is hardly apt. Enlarged, perhaps, not giant.

The report is written in breathless tone so don’t look to the Herald for any incisive observations on the iPad’s abilities or pricing, which, incidentally, is typically Apple- inflated. The price alone will guarantee that this will be a niche player, a place where Apple has been most comfortable.

A friend of mine bought a 32GB iPad in Sydney a few weeks back and paid a little under $NZ800. The fact that the Herald, without any attempt at context, blandly tells us that the same item in New Zealand will retail for $979, nearly $200 more, shows that it takes very little to impress the Herald’s tech writers these days.

I have the laptop, iPhone, iMac, several PCs, e-book reader and VOIP phone. No guys, I haven’t been strung out waiting for the latest bauble from Apple and certainly never, ever, version one of anything from that company.

Posted in Newspapers | 1 Response »

Jargon to the core

Written by John Spavin on July 19th, 2010

Apple makes expensive and (to some) desirable computers with great attention to packaging, marketing and spin. So why are the people who make money off Apple’s back so inarticulate?

Parallel importing aside, Apple has chosen to distribute its products through a single reseller, Renaissance,  in New Zealand. These guys should be kicking their heels at the boom in sales. They’ve achieved a 10 percent share of the computer market in New Zealand but all Richard Webb, their boss, can come up with is this piece of jargon-laden gobbledygook:

“We’ve restructured our business from one Apple-focused division to a number of customer-focused sales divisions in 2010. This has allowed us to leverage our sales resources right across the group to better expand Apple’s reach to our customers.

“The growth in our Apple business is a reflection of our improved execution.”

(The emphasis on the meaningless jargon and passive writing is mine)

I think (and this is only one of many interpretations, mind you) that he means that they  concentrate on niche markets more then they used to so they  sell more computers and stuff. Then again, well, who knows what he means.

Posted in Jargon | 1 Response »

A motel with Xtras

Written by John Spavin on June 24th, 2010

I was spammed today by a Hastings motel. Most of the time my spam invitations are to grow a third penis or shag someone I’ve never met who lives on Chicago’s Eastside or a Manilla slum and who is just waiting for me to call.

For a change, however, it was a discount offer for a stay in a Hastings motel.

I was about to delete it when I saw that the return email was an Xtra account! The intarweb is almost 20 years old and still there are New Zealand businesses who think an Xtra email account is an acceptable way to promote themselves. The equivalent in the US is an AOL email.

An Xtra email is for your grannie.

I checked the Internet domain registry and, sure enough, Town Lodge Motel in Hastings is wide open for a competitor to register the domain: townlodgemotel.co.nz and divert business away from them.

We don’t all need to be geeks to succeed in the Internet age but a little common sense surely is required.

Here’s their spam intro (my emphasis):

911 Heretaunga Street East Email: town.lodge.motel@xtra.co.nz
HASTINGS, NEW ZEALAND Hosts: Jon & Shelley Smith
Ph 00 64 6 870 8112
Fax 00 64 6 870 8116
Reservations Freephone: 0800 17 71 17

I responded saying they should really go and reserve that domain name. Wonder if the motel up the road has it already?

Just as an experiment, I’ve linked it. Will be interesting to see where it goes in the coming weeks.

Posted in Amused | No Responses »

In a tizzie over fizzie - and she still can’t win

Written by John Spavin on June 18th, 2010

Sometimes, if the media has your scent in their nostrils, you just can’t win. Poor old Judith Tizard. She splashed out on a bottle of Bolly at a nosh at some poncy Auckland feed shop.

The poor old chook buys Bollinger, an expensive (French) fizzy wine, to entertain some Aussie politicians she was hosting. One of the old Aussie dears had just announced her retirement so Tiz bought the fizz.

It seems to me to be a pretty ordinary thing to do. Should she have bought Speights?

But the Herald has the scent of blood up its nose. So now Tizard’s crime is not that she bought Bolly frivolously on a ministerial credit card (although that seemed to be her crime yesterday) - but that she didn’t buy Kiwi.

So which is it to be? She is profligate because she wasted monjey on Frog wine, or she is bad because she didn’t waste money on Kiwi plonk?

This expenses fallout made Chris Carter look like  a bit of an old queen, dancing  about the corridors of parliament, but much other spending seems to be routine stuff.

Posted in Amused | No Responses »

A new word appears on the endangered list

Written by John Spavin on February 25th, 2010

There’s a headline in the Herald. So what? There are lots of them every day. This one was written by an illiterate sub.

Govt looks to settle historic abuse cases

Does this mean that only those cases that were significant events in the development of New Zealand as a nation will be compensated or does it mean that the Herald subs still have no idea of what the word means?

The gummint isn’t much better. The Herald quotes a Crown Health Finance Agency employee as saying

“… we might look at offering a wellness payment…”

“There are a number of government agencies that have historic abuse claims, and we are dealing with them on a whole-of-government approach …”

Nope, historical and historic just melt into each other and another word appears on the endangered list.

And while we’re at it, here’s the bureaucrat’s sentence with the weasel words highlighted, just for good measure.

“… we might look at offering a wellness payment…”

“There are a number of government agencies that have historic abuse claims, and we are dealing with them on a whole-of-government approach …”

Posted in Jargon | No Responses »

Take an apple to the mentor?

Written by John Spavin on February 17th, 2010

ACT just trumpeted a report called Step Change: Success The Only Option. It advocates allowing parents to shuttle their kids around different schools to get the best education they can. How can these people inflict their ideas on all of us when, judging by their language, they can’t bloody well think straight? Their report and the accompanying speech at its release is mush, jargon, weasel words. If the idea’s so darned good, why is it wrapped in management-speak?

Labour’s Kelvin Davis picked up on this and prompted me to read ACT’s Heather Roy’s speech at the launch. I would never have read it otherwise. I wish I hadn’t.

Here’s a smattering:

Weasel word Translation
key driver motivation
student pupil, kid
Our mission Our job
best practice We decided what was best
passionate enthusiastic
better educational outcomes improved results
learning provider school
pedagogies methods
student performance outcomes pupils’ achievements
personalised learning pathway. course
arrived at a point of agreement agreed
life choices options
targeted support tailored course

And the actual report? It’s as bad. Example (junk English in bold - my emphasis):

Students become the client of a learning broker mentor. Learning broker mentors will be attached to specific institutions (providers, schools etc) or act as independent agents (possibly working with other learning broker mentors in a business or as part of a professional association).

Thanks goodness my kids are way past school age and beyond the reach of learning broker mentors and semi-literate ACT policy wonks.

Posted in Jargon | 1 Response »

Damn it, he’s learnt the formula

Written by John Spavin on January 29th, 2010

Examine the structure of a TV news item (from anywhere) and see that it’s written and produced to a formula. This guy is funny and accurate.

That is pretty much how I spent 20-odd years writing and producing it. But it’s all changed. Now the new kids on the block have caught on to doughnuts. That is, the reporter does a live stand-up  at the beginning of the item, rolls the tape and then returns at the end, usually to be quizzed by a clueless news reader who has been handed the questions but not the background.

It’s a hideous practice unless you like looking at Kens and Barbies instead of what the item should be telling and showing. How many times has a kid, with the life experience of a youngster with  newly earned BA, told me what to think before I’ve even viewed the item? “Behind me, blah blah blah…” is the standard intro.

Then get out of the bloody way and let me see it!

Posted in TV | No Responses »

Pass me a bucket, Apple

Written by John Spavin on January 28th, 2010

Apple released its latest techno-toy this morning and I can’t believe the bullshit line they’re using to describe it. On its web site, there’s a promotional video. The presenter has the de rigueur number 1 haircut, the darkish t-shirt, the untidy, stubbled face and the plaguerised line from Arthur C Clarke.

The unshaven presenter says “..when something exceeds your ability to understand how it works, it sort of becomes magical and that’s exactly what the iPad is.” Pass me a bloody bucket.

I don’t understand how sewage pumps work but I don’t ascribe magical qualities to them.

Clarke’s quote, that I read decades ago said something like, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

The iPad looks like a really useful gadget. But magic? Only the Mac fan boys will swallow that.

Posted in Jargon | 1 Response »

Print is dying

Written by John Spavin on January 28th, 2010

If Rupert Murdoch thinks that he’ll reap benefits by charging for access to his newspapers online, his advisers (who, you’d hope, unlike Murdoch, have actually used the Internet) should steer him in the direction of Newsday. It’s a Long Island newspaper that put up a paywall 3 months ago.

The owners bought the paper recently for around $NZ1 billion. They spent another $NZ5.5 million developing a web site with a pay wall and charged readers $NZ5.75 a week to gain access. In 3 months, according to US web site, Consumerist, 35 people signed up. 35 people! That’s fewer than 3 a week.

Newsday earns around $NZ200 each week, before tax, by charging for this site. Wow, in 528 years they’ll have paid for the web site.

The web’s only been around since 1991 so I guess newspapers don’t want to rush into anything new that might upset the comfortable ride they’ve enjoyed for a couple of hundred years. But the rules have changed. I can read the New York Times just as easily as I can read the Dominion or Sydney Morning Herald. For every newspaper that puts up a pay wall and cripples its on-line readership (and destroys its usefulness to advertisers), there’ll be 50 who don’t.

I don’t have an answer to the death of print but I’ll bet that pay walls will never feature in any on-line news organisation that retains popularity and profitability, unless it’s a niche player.

Posted in Newspapers | No Responses »

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