Does Free Ever Mean Free Any More?

Here's the email subject line I got:

Make 2011 a Smarter Year and Get a Free Wireless Device at Alaska Communications!

But when you open the email it says:

Buy a Smart Phone and get any wireless device FREE*.

Oh, yes, you have to buy a smart phone, first AND there's an asterisk.  That leads to:

Purchase of a Smartphone and a new 2-year contract required to receive free device. Free device must be accompanied by a new 2-year contract. Discount taken on least expensive device if both devices are Smartphones.

TRANSLATION:  Nothing is free here.  The cost of the extra wireless device is built into the smart phone and two year subscription cost.   We're charging so much for the two year subscription that we're still making a fat profit if we don't charge you more for the second device.  You're paying for the extra device, just somewhere else.  And I think it says that you have to buy another 2-year contract for the free device. 


Here's another example:

TRANSLATION:  It's free if you spend $85 or more.  Our markup is high enough that we can absorb the shipping price and still make a good profit.   There may be a discount from what they normally charge, but it's not "free."

Even Skype's offer of 30 minutes of free calls to land line phones (normally a few cents a minute) isn't 'free.'  They were off the internet for hours and so Skype users (especially those who pay) already paid through their inconvenience.  But you don't have to buy anything to get this free 30 minutes, maybe worth $.60 - $.90 for most people who take them up on this. 

Language changes over time.  New words are created, old words are used in new ways.  But the erosion of the word 'free' has been pretty deliberate.  It's a way that public relations people trick the lazy into buying something - by getting them to believe they are getting something free. 

There are still things you get free.  Most of Skype's regular service is free. (Except perhaps for the information they collect about you.) When you get a food sample at a market, it's free for you. (Though it's part of the marketing budget and those costs are factored into the cost of the product.)

It used to be that swindlers had to hide the deception, but it seems Americans are so lazy, that marketers can put all the details out there  in black and white and still get people to go along.  And as long as people buy products that have 'free' offer gimmicks attached, marketers will plaster free all over everything. 

Girls Play Here and Other Bike Ride Shots

As you can see, the sky's blue again and the sun's back.  And it was T-shirt and shorts weather on the bike.  When I pass this sign I think of my friend Thomás in Spain.

I stopped at the Venice skate plaza briefly to watch the skaters.  Yes, it's one at a time now, and just one loop.

Here's the Gehry house in sunshine.  The placement of the light pole is unfortunate.

I wandered down to the breakwater again and through the Ballona Lagoon area.

And when I was almost home, I saw this poster at Penmar - a playground built when I was a kid here.

It's nice the poster is here, it's sad that it needs to be.









UPDATE:  Anon asked what this "Girls Play Here" sign meant.  My response was too long for the comment so I'll put it here:


Anon, reasonable question. I'm guessing it has to do with social and other barriers to girls participating in sports.

I found a sociology article about an LA program called Girls Play Los Angeles, that resulted from a discrimination lawsuit. Here's a bit from “GIRLS JUST AREN’T INTERESTED”: THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF INTEREST IN GIRLS’ SPORT by CHERYL COOKY, Purdue University

BACA V. CITY OF LOS ANGELES: CAN GIRLS PLAY IN L.A.?

In 1998, five years prior to the start of my fieldwork, the California Women’s Law Center worked with the American Civil Liberties Union to represent the West Valley Girls’ Softball League in a case against the City of Los Angeles, Baca v. City of Los Angeles. The plaintiffs sued the City of Los Angeles contending the city did not comply with California’s Equal Protection Clause and had violated the civil rights of girls by denying the team equal access to the city-owned ball fields, which were dominated by male teams. Baca v. City of Los Angeles was set- tled out of court in 1999. As part of this settlement, the Los Angeles Department of Recreation and Parks was required to implement a girls-only sports league. This league was called “Girls Play Los Angeles” (GPLA), a year-round, gender- specific sports league program for “at-risk” girls, ages thirteen to fifteen. Accord- ing to the Director of Gender Equity for the Los Angeles Department of Recreation and Parks (a position also required as part of the settlement), the department defined “at-risk” girls as those from low-income families who live in particular

“Girls Just aren’t Interested”: The Social Construction of Interest in Girls’ Sport 265
residential communities in the Los Angeles metropolitan area. Although it was never explicitly stated what girls were “at-risk” for, based on conversations with staff, coaches, and participants, girls were understood to be “at-risk” for teen sex, pregnancy, and gang involvement. Another factor girls were “at-risk” for was early drop-out from sport. While boys’ and girls’ sport and physical activity par- ticipation decreases once they reach adolescence (Dwyer et al. 2006), the drop-out rate for girls is almost six times that of boys (Garrett 2004). Girls in this age group (thirteen to fifteen), particularly Latina girls (Denner and Dunbar 2004; Jamieson 2005), struggle with the pressure to conform to dominant notions of femininity that often conflict with sport participation (Malcolm 2003). The GPLA program addressed these risk factors by targeting the program to girls transitioning into adolescence.

Sport and physical activity have been, and continue to be, viewed as a pana- cea for girls’ physical and psychosocial problems. Research has found positive correlations between (some) girls’ sport participation and academic performance (Miller et al. 2005; Videon 2002), self-esteem (Tracy and Erkut 2002), and body image (Crissey and Honea 2006). Research has also found a negative correlation between sport participation and the risk of teen pregnancy (Miller et al. 1999). This body of research provided empirical support for women’s sport advocates, who vociferously fought for Title IX and for continued support of girls’ sport programs. During the 1990s, many school and recreation sport programs were developed to increase opportunities for girls to play sport, given the correlation between sport participation and pro-social outcomes.

From a 2004 women's sports foundation web article:

A bill prohibiting gender discrimination in youth athletics programs run by cities and counties passed the state legislature in late August, and Schwarzenegger has until September 30 to sign it. He has not taken a position on the bill, his spokesperson said.

Advocates for youth sports and fitness programs say that most local parks departments don't provide girls nearly as many activities as boys, and that boys are more likely to get better equipment and playing fields. .  .

I'm sure that's more than you wanted to know.

Who Owns Auto Black Box Data and Related Questions

Sunday's LA Times had an interesting article about a topic I didn't even know existed:  black boxes in cars.  That is, the auto equivalent of airplane black boxes that store data that can be used to figure out why an accident occurred.

It seems that

• Some car manufacturers do put black boxes in cars
• They don't record a lot of data
• The car companies claim they own the data and don't need to make it public

The article is about two men - Jim Hall, former chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board and Tom Kowalick, a college professor whose dad died in a car accident - who had both learned about these boxes in the early 1990's, met each other, and teamed up to develop a protocol (as co-chairs of an IEEE committee) for mandatory black boxes.

Hall and Kowalick did succeed in publishing a 171-page standard under IEEE sponsorship in 2005 that described how automakers should design an EDR. An update was approved in 2010.

Under their standard, automakers would record 86 different streams of data — including whether a motorist was using a turn signal before a crash, and the acceleration forces in every direction that affect a vehicle in a rollover. (LA Times online article p. 2)

As mentioned above, some companies do put black boxes in their cars, but they have very little information which they don't share.

Toyota was among the most aggressive automakers in claiming control of the encrypted EDR data in its vehicles, and refused to provide downloads to its customers. After catching national attention last year for sudden acceleration problems, the company agreed to provide 10 EDR readers to federal officials. But the tools are not yet available to accident investigators across the country.

The obstacles are listed in the article:

But their quest has led into a thicket of legal, constitutional and economic issues. They encountered arguments about

• who would own the data, 

• its impact on defect lawsuits, 

• whether computers would incriminate drivers, 

• the cost effect on manufacturers and 

• patent rights over the design of the systems.

[I've reformatted this into bullets so it's easier to read]

It seems that everyone agrees that black boxes in airplanes have yielded valuable information for making safety changes which have saved countless lives plus the costs of lost airplanes and all the collateral costs.

But what interested me most was the issue of ownership of the data.  You buy a car.  It has a little computer in it that records information about the vehicle which could be useful after a crash (for you individually and for all car drivers collectively).

But the automakers claim the information on the computer they sold with the car, belongs to them. 

That's problematic to me.  Clearly this is related to what you can do with with the content of movies and music you buy.  And your rights to your own medical data. 

I think the real answer is that people know about these things and have an opportunity to choose between vehicles that have black boxes with

•  just a little info, or
•  the Hall and Kowalick standards

And whether the data is

•  corporate owned, or
• purchaser owned

The auto companies have developed an alternative system, but it isn't mandatory.

In response to Hall and Kowalick, automakers developed their own standard under the authority of the Society of Automotive Engineers. It aimed mainly at standardizing existing practices.

"Everybody in the industry buys into how valuable more information about crashes can be," said Brian Everest, a General Motors manager who chairs the engineers society's committee for EDRs. But, he added, "They really haven't been around that long."

In 2006, the NHTSA issued its own regulation for EDRs that would take effect in 2012. It did not require automakers to install the devices; if an automaker voluntarily puts one in a vehicle, it would have to record only 15 data elements, not the 86 envisioned by Hall and Kowalick.

These devices are estimated at 50 cents per vehicle.  So cost isn't the issue. 

The whole article is here.

White Suit, Clouds, More Gehry at Venice Beach, Myrna Loy, Mark Twain, Fallen Tree

The Southern California Chamber of Commerce must have a deal with the Weather Service. For the Rose Bowl parade and game, the nationwide audience saw blue sky and sunshine. But the next day it was gray and threatening rain. So I biked before it rained.

This was the coolest dressed man I've seen here, so I asked if I could take a picture. I had to take it quick because the green walk sign had just come on. 

This section of Venice Beach is 'under construction.'  I couldn't find anything explaining what was being constructed, but it's fenced off in orange fencing and these seven life guard stations are sitting together.  

But while I was looking for info on the beach construction I found out that this house I shot was designed by Frank Gehry - the same architect who designed the Disney Concert Hall I posted yesterday.  There are more pictures at the link and information about the house - it was built in 1986.

This house was a few houses south of the Gehry house.

The bike trail gets funny south of Washington.  The other day I had to go out to the street because the trail along the beach ended before I got to the breakwater at the Marina.  But there's a bike rental place at the beach and Washington and he told me to take Washington to Mildred where the bike trail picked up.  I did that and got into the middle of the marina and then turned back to return home. 

Back on Washington I passed Yo San University.

Then by my alma mater Venice High school, where they have a newly made statue of Myrna Loy.  As it says in the plaque, the original statue was unveiled in 1922.  It doesn't mention the gossip when I went to school here - that Myrna was expelled for posing nude for the statue.  Here's more information on the statue and on Myrna Loy.

Then copying the route I used to walk home, I passed my junior high school, Mark Twain, now a "middle school."  This was my homeroom.

And further down I found that a tree had toppled over at my old elementary school - Walgrove Avenue. 














The real rain didn't begin until after I got home about an hour later.  

Year End LA Tour With The Future Machatunim

(Note:  Today is 1/1/11)

We met our future Machatunim* Thursday night for dinner. They're here from Detroit. Friday we took them on a quick tour of LA. OK, not everyone knows machatunim. From googlebooks, Secret of a Jewish Mother:

*MACHATUNIM (noun) The parents of your child's spouse.

Let me just say, we're getting along fine.  We started off at the observation deck of the Santa Monica airport.  M had already spotted a vintage airplane, so I decided to stop to see what else he might see.  Then off to downtown where we checked out the old Library from outside and I waited at the curb while they all went into the Biltmore Hotel.  Then we parked and wandered around the Disney Concert Hall designed by Frank Gehry.

The Gehry building is irresistible to someone with a camera.  It offers so many shapes and shadows.  I've posted pictures of it before.

It seemed that it all goes up like this.  

From behind.

 From across the street.

 

Then past the Dorothy Chandler to the  Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels down the block and to the right.

From the Cathedral website:

What historically took centuries to construct was accomplished in three years in the building of the 11-story Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels. This first Roman Catholic Cathedral to be erected in the western United States in 30 years began construction on May 1999 and was completed by the spring of 2002.

Spanish architect, Professor José Rafael Moneo has designed a dynamic, contemporary Cathedral with virtually no right angles. This geometry contributes to the Cathedral's feeling of mystery and its aura of majesty.

Tomás, see?  A Spanish architect, just like you.

A quick looksee at Union Station.

Then a late lunch at Philippe.  

We drove up to see Dodger Stadium from outside the locked parking lot gates. (M is a big baseball fan.)  It was too far away to get a good picture.  And then off to the Griffith Park Observatory.  It was fenced off and people were parked on the side of the road. 

And then down still schlocky Hollywood Blvd. to the Sunset Strip and then home.

All in all a very good end of the year.  Happy New Year to you all.

Wisconsin - 28 to 21

I ran into these Badger fans at the Walt Disney Concert Hall in downtown LA the day before the Rose Bowl and I asked who was going to win and what the score would be:

Skype Apologizes for Outage With 30 Minute Free Land Line Call

I mentioned last week that Skype wasn't working.  Today they emailed an apology:

To our valued customers:

As 2010 draws to a close, I would like to take a moment to thank each of you for your patience, understanding, and support during Skype’s recent outage.

We know how important your Skype conversations are to you and we take any disruption to our service very seriously. We are pleased to confirm that Skype is back to normal allowing you to connect with friends, co-workers, family and loved ones.

As a valued customer of Skype, we would like to offer you a sincere apology and offer you our gratitude with a credit voucher worth a call of more than 30 minutes to a landline in some of our most popular countries, such as USA, UK, Germany, China, Japan. Or spend it however you like on Skype. . .

30 minutes on Skype to a landline phone wouldn't cost anyone too much, but still it's a nice gesture.  

More Beach, Sun, Snow, Canals, But It's Not Warm

I'm not complaining.  The sun's out, I'm in shorts, but I did wear a fleece jacket for my bike ride this morning.  I'm guessing it's in the 50s (F) with low for tonight around 41˚, but as you can see, it is beautiful.

Here's Santa Monica Bay with the Santa Monica Mountains in the background, Venice in the foreground.  I'm near the Marina Del Ray breakwater.

Here are three pictures glued together crudely with photoshop to show the whole bay and the edge of the breakwater on the far left. 

From the here I could see the mountains to the east of LA over the Marina Del Rey.  I think - but I'm not sure - the biggest one is Mt. Baldy.

And then I biked back past the Venice canals.  This one had pelicans and grebes and an egret.  I must say the grebes' winter plumage is pretty dull.  For the Southern California folks who said they'd never been to the old zoo, I have to admit that I don't remember when I was last at these canals.  I've always known they were here, and I know I've seen them, but they just are a little out of normal range, even though they are close.  And today was a spectacular day. 

Tonight we're off to dinner with our son and his fiancé and to meet her parents for the first time.

Venice Beach, Sun, Snow

Monday, in deference to my still (but not as) sore ribs, I biked instead of jogging to Venice Beach.  It was a clear day by LA standards - you can see Catalina off in the distance.  I know for you Anchorage readers, those vague outlines 26 miles away are a joke.  You see Denali 150 miles away more clearly.  But, this is LA.

I also passed the Kush doctor's place and was surprised to see it was now for lease.  I've been looking online to see what happened to it.  Here's the best I could find from Yelp last June:

Sara A.

Pomona, CA

6/17/2010

October 2009

I am SO GLAD this place got shut down.  I moved to Santa Monica and was looking into investment opportunities when I decided to get a job at one of the places to see how it works from the inside.  They wanted me to hold a sign and SCREAM at tourists to "get legal", except when the cops pass by and then we were to stand back.  What a terrible job!  The two men that run this joint (ran, I should say, I heard Sean was going to jail, where he belongs!) are the BIGGEST DOUCHE-BAGS ON VENICE BEACH!  Sean is the worst.  He screamed at me several times, in front of potential customers and made himself look more like an idiot than a businessman.  Needless to say, I got stiffed my last paycheck and my attempts to collect on a measly $50 (just to make a point) was unsuccessful.  I did manage to make friends there, the staff was really cool and in this economy they figured a job is a job. I got my wages back in medicine so I felt vindicated.  I hope Sean, the ugly tattooed short idiot is really going to jail.  That is where both of them, Andrew AND Sean belong!!

 Most of the other Yelp comments weren't too complimentary either.




I stopped by the skate plaza too.  They seem to have adopted some safety protocols since it opened in October 2009.  At least while I was there, only one person was going in the near run at a time.  Or at least they were trying to.  Note how clear the Santa Monica Mountains are in the background.

By Tuesday when we rode back down to catch some chilly rays, the Santa Monica Mountains were barely visible in the clouds and Catalina had evaporated completely.

















Back to Monday, you could see snow on the top of the San Gabriel Mountains in the distance.  They get up to 10,000 feet.

It was raining this morning (Wednesday), but by afternoon it had cleared up.

AIFF 2010: Features - My Favorites

This is Part 2 of a post started here comparing my favorite features at the Anchorage International Film Festival to those that won.

The Ones I Liked and Why



Fanny, Annie, and Danny

I've already written about this one and you can read about it there.  But the longer it's been, the more I think this is an almost perfect little film.   Just really good characters, really good acting, and a story that moves at just the right pace to bring all the characters together to the climax.  I was drawn right in and assumed I knew what happened when the screen went black.  It never occurred to me that the off-camera conclusion could have been different than the one I 'saw' until someone else was sure of a different conclusion.  This is a film whose characters were still in my head the day after I first saw it and wouldn't let go of my brain. 


The Temptation of St. Tony

Other reviewers had suggested the cinematic homages paid to various high brow film directors would be over the heads of most viewers.  While the film bleakly followed the excesses of Estonia's nouveau riche, often juxtaposing their excesses against the plight of the poor, I found it compelling throughout.  The images were stark and sometimes surreal.  The star of the movie, Taavi Eelsma, told me it was basically about whether it is possible today to be a good person.  Knowing that made it all work for me.  


Hello Lonesome

Hello Lonesome was, like Fanny, Annie, and Danny, about people and relationships.  We watched three lonesome people connecting with other people.  The move weaves in and out of each of the three stories - and all three stories are unexpected, yet very believable.  Excellent acting and all the other basics of good film making made this a poignant movie.  All the people, odd as some were, felt real.  This was simply a good movie.


Two more

22:43 - This Twilight Zone-like Austrian mystery had great characters and stories that moved along on several levels so the viewer had to pay close attention to keep track of them all.  It was an ambitious movie that was nicely done.  It isn't a great movie, but certainly better than much of the formula garbage that comes out of Hollywood.  And it's world premier was in Anchorage at the festival.  You can watch premier audience reactions.


The Red Machine - This movie fits into the category of hip outlaw films such as The Sting.  The lead character is one of those smart criminals who has a strong work ethic, a problem with authority, and a lip. He's hired to help steal, not the Japanese secret code machine - which would make knowing the code useless - but how the machine works in the mid 1930s. 

This film was invited to the festival and thus was not in competition for an award. It's Hollywood slick, but better than average Hollywood smart. Good characters and dialogue throughout, though I was left scratching my head over a couple of points in the film. For example, I didn't get the strong animosity over the guy who was brought back to the team to do the heist. His relationship with the Japanese ambassador was made clear, but not with the other Navy guys. They really didn't like him.

In an earlier post I lamented that the film was shown on Dec. 6 and Dec. 8, but would have been much more appropriately shown on Dec. 7, Pearl Harbor Day.  I also called the movie very slick and irreverent.  The directors left a comment that took me a second to catch.

Argy and Boehm said...

Oh...it would have been cool to have The Red Machine play on the Day That Shall Live in Infamy! Thank you for the thought...

Stephanie Argy (slick) and Alec Boehm (irreverent) Co-directors The Red Machine

That gives a hint of their quick wit throughout the film.


OK, I've got two more I want to at least mention.

Ashes  is in the 'infected' genre and I probably wouldn't have seen it at 10pm when it was playing against a well hyped local feature - Beekeepers.  But I'd met film maker Elias Matar  just after he arrived and he kept inviting me to the film.  I'm not a zombie movie fan.  I don't quite get the attraction.  And I learned from Matar that infected movies are NOT zombie movies.  Ashes was filmed in a real hospital and follows a pretty realistic emergency room doctor.  Matar (here's a video of him talking about the film) explained that his sister is an ER doctor and so many of her stories are meshed together in this film.  All this is to say that the film begins as a serious film about an infection in a hospital before people start going strange as they become infected.  It's possible that the film could attract what I would think would be two different audiences - the serious hospital crisis drama  audience and the infection/zombie audience. Or each might be turned off by the joining of these two different genres.  I would note that the film was marred by the fact that the Blue Ray version stopped about 20 minutes in and we had to first wait, then watch much of the beginning over again until the DVD copy caught up to where the first one ended.  This is something the festival has got to do better in the future if it is going to be more than a funky, way-off-in-Alaska festival.  And I don't recall any of the audience leaving during the interruption. 




Ticked Off Trannies With Knives gets my award for best title at the Festival.  The transvestite characters were spectacularly bigger than life, but we also got to see behind the make-up a bit.  And just listening to them and watching them is worth the price of admission.  The sadism and violence in the movie is not something I normally watch, but all the characters were real - which made it even more distressing.  And as I said in a short previous comment on this film, the very ending line asked the same question I was asking, saving the movie, because it was so self-aware.