SpeakerCraft president Jeremy Burkhardt has won the EHX Virtual Dunking Booth contest. If EHX were to have such a booth, it seems most people would pay to see him dunked than some other names in the industry.
I came in second, but I was hoping David Goldenberg would surge ahead of me. He is far more deserving of the honor.
Did I have an unfair advantage, being the only woman on the list?
I dunno. I'd love to see Will West in a wet T-shirt.
Our friend from Smart House Australia must think it isn't plagiarism if he copies -- verbatim -- a story from another publication, as long as he mentions in the story the title of the publication (no link, of course).
In this case, it wasn't CE Pro, but TWICE magazine that faux-writer David Richards plagiarized.
Bad phone troubles (again), so I called the Qwest 800 line.
Amazingly, I wasn't asked to press any buttons. Someone just answered the phone after about two rings.
The woman asked me a couple of questions, then sent me straight to tech support. Person #2 asked a few tech questions. Didn't make me try a bunch of troubleshooting things because I had gone through that process last time I had an issue.
Said a tech would be there TODAY between 11 a.m. and 3 p.m.
He just called to say he's just a few minutes away.
Same experience with my last Qwest service call. And then Qwest calls you afterward to make sure things are OK.
The guy last time couldn't have been more helpful. He even left his biz card for me so I could call directly if the problem came up again. (Sorry, I lost it).
Sorry, I just can't help myself. I love to torment this guy.
RE: the Lutron/Crestron story that David Richards borrowed from me, but it wasn't plagiarism because he did a "rewrite" of the story, and "It is NOT PLAGIARISM to rewrite a story that has appeared elsewhere "
Mine:
His:
I sure hope he didn't steal THIS bit from me!
And you know he didn't steal this one from me:
"It is NOT PLAGIARISM to rewrite a story that has appeared elsewhere. ..." - David Richards, "journalist"
I've never taken a journalism class but I'm pretty sure that David Richards is quite mistaken in this claim.
The faux journalist of Australia-based SmartHouse and ChannelNews used this line to justify stealing -- er, "rewriting" -- my story about Lutron's lawsuit against Crestron.
My sister Kerry was one of the few Syracuse travel-abroad students who couldn't make the doomed Pan Am flight. She arrived home from England two days earlier, while her classmates "got" to stay in London a couple of more days.
When the plane went down over Lockerbie, that was our JFK moment. I'll never forget it.
Scotland should be ashamed for letting the bastard go.
Regardless of how busy he is fighting the good digital rights cause, however, he always takes the time to respond to my amateurish questions on digital rights.
CEDIA 09 press releaseUPDATE: The facts and figures in this blog were presented by Daniel Hannan, a member of the European Parliament
In the U.S., the five-year relative survival rate for prostate cancer is 100%. In the U.K. it's 77%. That's what happens when you have to ration "free" health care.
There's no going back. Britain's National Health Service came out of WWII when everything was being rationed.
"I find it incredible that a free people living in a country dedicated and founded in the cause of independence and freedom can seriously be thinking about adopting such a system in peace time, and massively expanding the role of the state when there's no need," said Daniel Hannan, a member of European Parliament, on the Glenn Beck show yesterday.
The NHS is the single largest part of Britain's budget, "and the state doesn't generally do things as efficiently as the market, of course," Hannan reminded us.
England has 1.4 million people employed by the NHS – the third biggest employer in the world next to the Red Army and the Indian National Railways. The majority of NHS employees are administrators, outnumbering doctors and nurses.
"And that is the electoral bloc that makes it almost impossible to get rid of," Hannan noted. "If you do it [government-run health care], don't imagine that you can change your mind a couple of years from now."
So far this year, the No. 1 and 2 keywords that brought people to CEPro.com were "CE Pro" and "CEPro."
OK, perhaps that is somewhat forgiveable. As is the No. 7 search term "CE Pro Magazine."
What is most puzzling, though, is that the No. 6 and 8 keywords were "cepro.com" and "www.cepro.com."
Huh?
(Who wants to guess No. 3-5?)
Weaknees is a huge retailer of Tivo and related products. So it's not surprising that the company has seen its share of odd packaging for returned products.
We’ve seen some strange customer shipments in the past, but we haven’t seen anything quite like this one. In a nod to recycling zealots worldwide, we got, and then promptly recycled, the packaging material from this TiVo that arrived here at WeaKnees today.
The TiVo is under there, in the bubble-wrap. Below the Huggies box. And the Moist Supreme box. And the Tuna Helper box.
Today begins the big re-launch of RadioShack. The stale old corporate name will become The Shack.
To promote the new moniker, RadioShack is holding events in San Francisco and New York today through Aug. 8.
And then there's the Web site radioshack.com/theshack. You'd think the site would impart interesting information about the new concept for the old corner store.
Instead, however, the site is streaming live audio and video from The Shack events on both coasts.
No, it's not a discussion about electronics or RadioShack or anything interesting. It's a radio show (of all things) hosted by some obnoxious, vulgar personalities that would put Howard Stern to shame.
I listened for about 10 minutes, of which 90 percent of the discussion had to do with female body parts. The rest was mostly about the sexual escapades of the female shock jock. Oh, and there was a riff on enemas, including an interview with a passerby about coffee enemas.
"Give that man a RadioShack gift card," one of the hosts said.
So this is how RadioShack is reinventing itself? I'm no prude, but I wouldn't be too happy about this if I were a RadioShack share holder.
UPDATE: The radio show is Alice 97.3 in San Francisco. I caught the "Sarah and Vinnie Show."
For some reason, David Goldenberg reminds me of the serial plagiarist David Richards of 4Square Media, the Australian publisher of SmartHouse.com.au.
Richards has been ripping off stories from CE Pro for many years (and TWICE and others) -- printing them nearly verbatim, using his own byline and failing to attribute the articles to the appropriate source.
We believe that a former employee who had access to our content engine has changed bylines, dates on stories and posted stories without our knowledge in an effort to discredit us. We also believe that someone is then feeding you with information.
"There was nothing sophisticated about me getting into their e-mail. ... Honestly, I had no idea that it was illegal." - David Goldenberg, former AMX VP who infiltrated the email server of Crestron rep firm Sapphire Marketing
"He didn't go searching for this. ... It basically hit him in the face." - Goldenberg's attorney Dean Schneider, on the fact that an AMX employee who went to work for Sapphire left his laptop behind, along with information on user IDs and passwords
"I assumed that the ID ... and password ... were default passwords and that the person who's information I lucked upon would change it immediately." - A very "lucky" Goldenberg
"It was voyeuristic. ... That's why we recommended counseling." - Prosecutor Brian Lynch on the hours Goldenberg spent poring over Sapphire e-mails
Source: USA Today Dunk David Goldenberg (poll at top right of site)
It's a good thing that former AMX exec David Goldenberg was sentenced to psychological counselingalong with his three years probation for intercepting emails from a Crestron rep.
There is something seriously wrong with him.
In a blog titled Don't Believe Everything You Read, Goldenberg tells his side of the story because the press evidently got a few things wrong.
"Let me explain a few things that have been written about me, but are completely untrue or misleading," he says.
Then he goes on to re-publish two very unflattering AP stories written about his arrest and subsequent guilty plea for federal wiretapping, followed by this:
Let me first say that I am truly sorry for the things I did and never meant for things to transpire the way they did. That being said, let me set the record straight on a number of issues.
These are some of the things that shoddy journalists (like myself, presumably) got wrong, according to Goldenberg:
1. Marla Suttenberg, owner of Sapphire Marketing, the Crestron rep firm whose computers were hacked by Goldenberg, was never really a friend of the felon's. Those ballets they attended together were nothing more than business affairs. OK, now I get why he hacked into Sapphire's computers.
2. Goldenberg did in fact interview with Crestron before taking a job with archrival AMX, but the interview was arranged by Suttenberg herself, of all things!
3. When Goldenberg took the job at AMX, people at Sapphire bad-mouthed him! Worse, Sapphire hired one of his AMX employees without so much as a courtesy call to Goldenberg! Now if that doesn't warrant wiretapping, I don't know what does.
4. To call Goldenberg a hacker is "an insult to real hackers." (He actually says this.) The press reported that Goldenberg guessed Sapphire staffers' passwords. The press evidently got it all wrong. Goldenberg wants us to know that he didn't guess the passwords; he learned that the employees were using their default passwords (their first names).
"I don't have to tell anyone that you shouldn't have your first name as your password," he writes. That'll teach 'em.
(To this, Marla Suttenberg notes that Goldenberg only hacked four of 11 email accounts, so not all of the employees were using their default passwords.)
Justification #4 is just too priceless to gloss over. In Goldenberg's words:
I'm not a hacker. The idea that I used pets names or personal information to access Sapphire's email is an insult to real hackers. I happened across one individuals information on his computer when he left AMX. I assumed that the ID (first name@sapphiremarketing) and password (first name) were default passwords and that the person who's information I lucked upon would change it immediately. What I didn't realize was that all of the employees passwords were their first name. Every ID was their first name@sapphiremarketing and their passwords were their first name. I don't have to tell anyone that you shouldn't have your first name as your password.
5. "Competition between AMX and Crestron is always fierce," Goldenberg says. AMX policy was to discount Crestron bids by 20 percent anyway, so it wasn't like Goldenberg was just underbidding Sapphire.
6. And anyways, Crestron managed to see AMX bids, too. So there.
7. Crestron must not have suffered too badly from Goldenberg's espionage if they declared December 2008 was a record month. "How could Sapphire have lost $1M and Crestron $10M if AMX was down for the year and Crestron had it's [sic] best month ever?" he asks. Good detective work, Mr. Goldenberg.
8. Goldenberg writes, "During my sentencing hearing, Ms. Suttenberg claimed that I had done irreparable damage to her firm. That her salespeople had to be more aggressive to win business and that the publicity of this case made it harder for her to win projects. What she doesn't mention is all of the publicity was generated by her firm."
OK, I'll give him that one.
Dude, how about that you stole emails from regular people – personal emails? That's just gross.
Dunk David Goldenberg in the EHX virtual dunking tank (top right poll)
