The roller coaster markets continue on Wall Street. The definition of a recession according to mcwdn.org:

A time of less business activity, usually lasting at least three quarters of the year or nine months.

And according to Morgan Stanley, a full recession alert is here for the US economy:

Morgan Stanley is the first major Wall Street bank to warn that it is may now be too late to stop a recession, though most have shifted to an ultra-cautious stance in recent weeks.

The bank doesn’t think Asia and Europe will help this time around. Yesterday, the market tanked on news that only 25 basis points (.25%) were dropped in the interest rate instead of a hoped for 50 basis points (.50%), but today is rebounding a little bit on news that Federal Reserve plans to inject billions of dollars into the system.

What is worrisome to a layman in finances like me is how they’ve done this several times and it’s been little more than a temporary bandage. The market will come back a little bit and then plummet huge amounts. Then they do something, and there is a minor correction and things fall apart again. Being the holiday time of year, the best time for retail stores historically, shouldn’t the market be reflecting these times?

Or is the subprime loan mess putting coal in a lot of these businesses’ stockings? Whatever the case, the roller coaster ride continues. Investors seem at best uneasy about the current financial climate. The U.S dollar has rebounded a little bit and now is back to being worth (slightly) more than the Canadian dollar.

Sad news for Quiet Riot fans today: Kevin Dubrow was found in his Vegas home dead at age 52:

The cause of death has not been announced. The Clark County coroner will conduct an autopsy and toxicology tests this week, but the official results won’t be known for several weeks.

Quiet Riot’s original bassist Kelli Garni asked not to speculate on what the cause of death might be so I’ll respect the dead and not do that at this time in the post body. Among friends and in the comments feel free to speculate all you want. This is the second rocker to be lost this year under sudden circumstances, the other being Boston’s guitarist Brad Delp who had committed suicide.

Why Delp was so sad remains a mystery to me, but there seems to be a terrible price to be a rock and roll star on many of these folks psyche. I’m sitting here listening to an all Quiet Riot playlist. Need to go out and buy a few CDs to complete our QR CD collection. By far my favorite CD from QR is Metal Health, followed by Condition Critical and then all the other CDs are kind of just there. The QR CD with the Randy Rhoads Years is special if you enjoyed Randy’s incredible guitar play but the songs are kind of weak. Look in any Window sticks out as my rocker favorite on that CD.

I saw Quiet Riot with Kevin Dubrow on the Condition Critical tour in Green Bay, Wisconsin. Was a decent show where they played all the live hits expected. I can’t remember whether it was Kick Axe or King Kobra that opened for them. It’s kind of sad to see Quiet Riot meltdown the way they did after their first album and over the years I continued to follow them hoping for some of that original magic. There were a few bright B-side style moments.

Here’s a list of Quiet Riot songs I’d grade B or higher off each of their albums below along with my favorite from each:

Quiet Riot The Randy Rhoads Years (best of QR I 1977 and QR II 1978)
Afterglow - my favorite on the CD, outstanding acoustic guitar by Rhoads and shows Dubrow had a good range not often heard in later albums.
Look in any Window

Metal Health (1983)
Metal Health - my favorite on the CD
Cum on Feel The Noize (overplayed on the radio, but a solid Slade cover)
Don’t Wanna Let You Go - perhaps the best mellow guitar song in their catalog
Love’s A Bitch - catchy opening guitar riff, great lyrics
Breathless - the opening Dubrow scream might be his best ever recorded
Thunderbird - a tribute song to Randy Rhoads which now if you fit the lyrics to this news sounds fitting: “Fly on, thunderbird high …” The Cheers TV show theme piano sounds a bit like Thunderbird or vice versa. Didn’t check to see who came first.

(Notable, but not one of my personal favorites: Slick Black Cadillac - this song plays better live which if you buy the remaster version, there is a great live version there)

Condition Critical (1984)
Sign of the Times
Mama Weer All Crazee Now
Winners Take All - this was their featured ballad. Sounded great live.
Condition Critical - my favorite on this CD and also very good live. Dubrow’s scream before the solo is excellent.
Bad Boy

QR III (1986)
This album was wildly panned by critics because it had too much keyboards and synths and even some different backup (female?) singers on songs like Still of the Night. I didn’t think it was as bad an album as sales would indicate but it was the last album where I liked more than three songs. After this album the band fired Dubrow as the singer. Kind of odd because usually the singer is the one who leads the band.

Main Attraction
The Wild and The Young
Twilight Hotel - my favorite on this CD.
Still of the Night

Quiet Riot (1988 with Rough Cutt’s Paul Shortino on vocals instead of Dubrow)
Paul Shortino of Rough Cutt stepped in for one Quiet Riot album. I never got a chance to hear Shortino sing Dubrow’s songs, but his voice was very raspy and worked on a couple songs. I’d like to hear something live from this gig. The Shortino era had more of a bluesy feel than any previous QR effort.

Stay with me Tonight
Don’t Wanna Be Your Fool - my favorite on the CD

Terrified (1993)
There was at least one reunion attempt for the original QR and Terrified wasn’t a terrible effort, but not as good as Condition Critical. Definitely harder edged stuff.

Cold day in Hell
Itchycoo Park - good cover, my favorite on the CD
Terrified

Down to the Bone (1995)
Pretty Pack O’ Lies - I have to listen to this CD again, but this is the only song I remember from the track listing at Amazon. Had it on tape or CD at one time but don’t seem to any more. This is my least favorite album by them, at least from memory.

Alive and Well (1999)
Don’t Wanna Let You Go 1999 - I enjoyed the remakes of their first two albums better than any of the original songs. Sadly, it has been this way for Quiet Riot for awhile.

Guilty Pleasures (2001)
This album has a few songs that sound like they tried to borrow too heavily from Metal Health and Condition Critical. It didn’t sell very well, I reviewed on December 5, 2005 and gave it a B overall.

I Can’t Make You Love Me - my favorite on this CD
Let Me Be The One - this one feels like something from the Randy Rhoads years, but improved production value.

Rehab (2006)
The most recent Quiet Riot album received better reviews and I tried to get into it, but just couldn’t beyond two songs. I prefer the 80s Quiet Riot to the other directions Dubrow tried to take.

Beggars and Thieves - my favorite on this CD
Evil Woman - nice cover

What’s next for Quiet Riot?
With Dubrow gone, does this close the chapter on Quiet Riot? Something tells me that after a respectable amount of time the band might cobble together a tour in his honor, perhaps with Paul Shortino back on vocals again? It would make sense if Paul is still out there and available.

The 80s version of Guitar Hero [see Hmmcast #147] has a great line-up of songs including “What I Like About You” by the Romantics.

Some of the versions of songs in the game Rock Band and Guitar Hero are extremely good cover versions. The companies pay licensing fees, but it seems that doesn’t stop a lawsuit from happening if the cover is too similar.

Copyright isn’t the issue for the Romantics. The band’s attorneys said Activision properly secured permission to use the song What I Like About You, which allowed it to record a cover version. But by creating an imitation so much like the Romantics’ original, they said, the company has infringed the group’s right to its own image and likeness.

I’ve had this one bookmarked for a day and read the article several times. I still don’t completely understand what the Romantics are so upset about. What is the difference between the license Activision purchased and a Master Use License? Isn’t the whole point of a cover version to sound as close to the original? The Romantics seem to be upset because it’s too close? Huh?

The Harry Fox agency which handles music licensing doesn’t handle Master Use Licenses:

Master use rights are required for previously recorded material that you do not own or control. The Harry Fox Agency does not process licenses for master use rights. They can only be obtained from the owner of the master recording, usually a record company…

Where did Activision buy a license for Guitar Hero II?

With the sales of these games and the replay value I’d think every band would be clamoring to get their music into these games. On the Xbox Live they are selling these songs over $2 each. Surely there is something in there that can be shared with the bands? This seems to be the crux of the issue for the Romantics that they aren’t seeing the revenue directly? The licensing fee got sucked up whom? The RIAA?

The article indicates the Romantics also are seeking an injunction against the game, which means if successful it could have the title removed from store shelves this holiday season. Hint: buy it ASAP.

Maybe you can help me sort out the details on this one below. They bought a license, apparently not the right one. Is this like buying deer tags and shooting an elk instead?

I don’t know if the following PayPal story qualifies as news. I’m putting it in the news category, but reluctantly so. It all sounds very familiar with a slight twist to me. PayPal has been providing one off Mastercard numbers for quite some time, not to mention full fledged plastic cards.

The new software utility, called the PayPal Secure Card, recognizes when a user lands on an e-commerce checkout page and automatically helps the user fill out the payment form in a secure way that also offers stepped-up fraud protections.

From the promo screenshot it looks like this feature will be part of a required toolbar, rather than something that doesn’t eat up more browser space. If that’s the way it works, I don’t like it already. I don’t want to have to install some space hogging toolbar for one feature. If this feature can be shoehorned into the existing StumbleUpon toolbar, great. While on this and since eBay owns Skype let’s have one toolbar that does StumbleUpon, eBay/PayPal and Skype. Save space, don’t try to liberate more browser real estate.

Duncan Riley at TechCrunch writes:

On the security front it also provides an alternative to using your actual credit card online, a secure way of using your credit card (if linked to your Paypal account) without the risk of your real details being disclosed.

Security? Will it be easy and convenient to contest bogus charges? How long will the secure created credit card number live and what consumer protections will be in place?

In March a comment here by Nelson Hochberg pointed out how difficult and convoluted it was to contest charges for these virtual cards with PayPal (emphasis mine):

The Paypal literature states that a unique credit card number is generated for each transaction implying that the and is good for only one transaction. However each generated credit and is good for three months allowing unlimited transactions up to the total amount in all of the credit cards, debit cards and bank accounts listed with your Paypal account. I had two vendors charge my Paypal Virtual Debit Card for more than the one charge I authorized.

It took me one and one half hours on the phone with Paypal to find out I have to download a hard to find form, print it, fill it out and mail it to Paypal to contest a charge. All of my credit cards allow me to contest a charge over the phone. I am still waiting to find out if Paypal will refund the unauthorized transactions. (At the end of this post are the Paypal instructions for downloading and using the form to contest transactions)

It took me another hour on the phone to find out that I can cancel a virtual debit card through a supervisor. You have to call Paypal and request a supervisor to do this.

Hopefully PayPal has refined this process for the PayPal Secure Card because if vendors can charge more than authorized and it’s too unwieldy a process reversing these charges, customers will revolt. I’ve had nothing but positive experiences with my virtual PayPal Mastercard to date and I’ve used it a bunch. I don’t have any problem using the card at various websites, have not been victimized or scammed yet, and I earn 1% cashback (pictured) every time I use it. Will using this new PayPal Secure Card pay me 1% cash back? What are the benefits to me using the PayPal Secure Card instead?

Just as with the Amazon Kindle e-Reader in the last post, I have more questions than answers. Guess we’ll both learn more in the coming days.

Update 11/19/07 11:23am: You can now check out / buy the Kindle at Amazon (affiliate). There are 96 reviews and so far the Kindle is netting 2.5 out of 5 starts. Not stellar.

Here comes another attempt to challenge print books. This one from the internet’s (world’s?) largest bookseller.

Newsweek has an article spanning seven pages on Amazon’s new e-Book reader gadget called Kindle. Unless it’s Tuesday 11/20/07 Monday 11/19/2007, don’t expect to find it anywhere on the Amazon website yet, but the article goes into some depth about what Kindle will do. It also manages to stay away from providing some additional, important details.

Rafat Ali of Paid Content seems miffed over honoring a Kindle embargo that Newsweek seemed to have broken (with permission?) and outlines key features.

- price: $399
- weighs 10.3 ounces, about the size of a book with a 6″ screen and doesn’t get hot, according to Bezos
- e-books will cost $2-$10 with 88,000 at launch and the Kindle can hold 200 books
- comes with EVDO-style always-on network functionality (a service called Whispernet) and can function independent of the PC. You can shop directly from the device for new books. Pricing is not mentioned for Whispernet. Is it free?
- provides 30 hours of reading time and two hours to fully charge
- can also subscribe to some newspapers, magazines and “select” blogs at $0.99 - $1.99 a month
- can follow links on blogs, perform Wikipedia and Google searches which suggests there will be some type of handicapped (?) browser built-in (Opera?)

Gizmodo has a picture of Kindle which looks like a white, thin version of See and Spell or a wafer-thin fax machine. Some are already calling it ugly, without benefit of holding it in hand, which caused the writer of Newsweek piece, Steven Levy to write that it’s not “beastly.”

Scoble has a post that starts with “I’m held by NDA until tomorrow” and then he goes onto talk about how Bill Gates wanted to do something like this badly with the Tablet PC and then adds:

All I’ll say until tomorrow is you gotta try this device. It’s not perfect, but for long-form reading it is a wonderful device. I am going to buy one of my own.

Rob Bushway wonders if anybody is going to try out the Kindle. I’m somewhat interested in the device, although I don’t like the price point or the fact that it’s yet another eBook DRM scheme. Haven’t they learned from the DRM in music that people don’t like DRM?

I asked the person in our family who reads the most, my wife, what she thought of Kindle? She said she wouldn’t use it. Why not? She likes books that she can hold. Perhaps she’d change her mind once she actually saw one?

Too many unanswered questions.

Cable television that has enjoyed being fairly regulation-free compared to over the air TV is in the crosshairs of the FCC regarding lowering the price of what they cable operators charge smaller television programmers for leasing space on spare cable channels. Also, the FCC wants a limit placed on overall ownership to no more than 30 percent of total cable subscribers.

Predictably the cable companies are crying foul, saying this will “cripple the industry” according the WSJ article below. The FCC points to history which says otherwise.

“In every other industry regulated by the FCC, there have been significant decreases in the price of services, such as in long-distance rates and wireless rates,” [FCC Chairman Kevin J.] Martin said in an interview last night. “But the one exception to that is cable rates, which have gone up almost 100 percent” over the past decade.

510 days ago, our family of five dropped TV, so I don’t have a dog in this fight, but that doesn’t stop me for rooting for the little guys. I’d rather the government wasn’t involved and the cable companies did this freely.

While we’re at it, let’s see a la carte pricing for channels. Instead of jamming hundreds of channels in packages at people, most of which have nothing worth watching, let people pick and choose the ones they want. Or has TV changed in the last 510 days that there is now a bunch of stuff worth watching on these package channels?

I don’t understand people who register to vote and then don’t. Ok, maybe it makes a little sense if mail-in ballots aren’t allowed, but that’s not the case in Washington state. Time is on the voters side.

And I can also understand, although I strongly disagree, with people like my wife who doesn’t register and doesn’t vote. At least these people are being consistent. I’ve been working on the voting thing with my wife to try and convince her of the importance of voting, how one vote can make a difference. It’s an uphill climb. You’d think it would be a lot harder convincing people who aren’t registered to vote to get registered and then start voting than to get the people already registered to vote.

You’d think.

And the day after the election I’m combing through the Washington state 2007 General Results and seeing that an abysmal 28.43% of the registered voters turned out to vote yesterday. That’s roughly 1 in 4 people who are registered to vote that aren’t doing it.

I don’t get it. Here’s a picture of the state’s results in case you didn’t follow the link above:

I’m starting to wonder what, if anything, I can do to encourage more of the registered voters in this state to vote? In our county alone there was less than the state average.

As readers following this blog closely know, I’m becoming more interested in politics in expectation of the 2008 Presidential election. I’m trying to become more educated about the issues and the candidates. At least in our area and state it appears voter turnout is another issue that needs focus. Should I be out with picket in hand on election day reminding folks to vote? I’ve never done any picketing, but wonder if that would work?

How was voter turnout in your area?

You know, I’ll probably never understand calling the lawyers out to go after fansites.

Prince is a great guitarist but he needs to remember who’s butts are in the seats and buying his albums if he’s sending the lawyers after his fans.

via Grooveshark:

Prince and an army of lawyers are working to disband several large web communities dedicated to the pop star. Several Web sites have received cease and desist notices to discontinue use of all photographs, images, lyrics, album covers and anything else Prince wants.

All images? Are you kidding me? Prince better get his lawyers over to Google — wait, no, Perfect 10 already tried that in court and lost.

What if you were a celebrity?
I’m certainly not a celebrity, but let’s assume for a moment I did something that made me one.

The content of this blog, including the pictures unless otherwise noted are all copyrighted, but I wouldn’t try to prevent anybody from setting up a Hmm fan site and I’d find it reasonable that some portion of content was referenced and used. Nobody needs my permission for Fair Use and with a fansite especially I’d be willing to provide additional latitude, wouldn’t you?

I might politely and personally ask a site that was using too much of the content to be cool about it, but would I call up the lawyers and start sending C&Ds? No way. I know, I know, easy to say when you aren’t in the almighty shower of the great Purple Rain One, but let’s be real. It’s one thing to go after splogs which suck the life out of your content and make money from your efforts without giving anything back. It’s another thing to break out the lawyers on your freaking fans who are helping to promote and support you.

Didn’t Prince learn anything from Metallica? Is there another side to this that makes sense?

The Crunchies? Please tell me they aren’t going to do this.

I’d say no offense before launching into this rant, but I’m still laughing as I type. It’s so crazy, I can’t stop laughing. The Crunchies? The Crunchies!

Om Malik could be the nicest guy in Sillicon Valley for all I know, haven’t met him but will take Mark Evans word. I have met Richard MacManus and Michael Arrington who both seemed like pleasant chaps in person, but the idea of these three along with Venturebeat teaming up and comparing the small start-up world awards to the GRAMMYs is laughable. The combined readership of TechCrunch, Read/WriteWeb, Gigaom and Venturebeat barely dents the number of albums James Blunt’s first CD sold.

Gotta love the comment from cweeb: “Come on Om, don’t bend over to techcrunch everyday.”

Malik contends that “the community will have a lot to say here.” Now this is something I have to see. Voting on the internet can so easily be gamed that I’m extremely cynical of any web system ever being fair and I’m a programmer.

The real reason sites offer awards
I understand the giving out awards at a site — or in this case from multiple sites. This has been happening for many years on the web and they usually mean one thing: more exposure for the site running the awards.

A lot of award sites require or strongly encourage entrants to link back to them and promote to their audience — vote for me, vote for me. It’s a guaranteed proven way to manipulate traffic to the website(s) behind the award. On the eve of Google penalizing sites for selling text links, contributing to link farms and link schemes, The Crunchies team needs to be very careful about how they promote their awards.

And let’s not forget that even a worthless program can get a five star award out there. The Crunchies team has a lot of swashbuckling to do in those chilly awards infested waters, arrr!

Will the Crunchies be the Crappies? We’ll have to wait and see when the details of the awards system are published, but they’ll at least be worth a laugh. Imagine what the award will look like? A bowl of Captain Crunch, maybe? Priceless! Thanks for the morning laugh guys.

Some bad news for startups looking for VC financing and latching onto the uber trendy Web 2.0 label.

A partner at a leading Sillicon Valley firm has stopped investing in Web 2.0 startups, says Randy Komisar a partner with Kleiner Perkins:

He said he had recently told John Battelle, one of the organizers of the rapidly growing Web 2.0 Summit conference, that the term no longer had the same positive cachet it once had. In the VC community it clearly has a negative one.

It’s good to hear at least some VCs are burned out on gimmicks masquerading as businesses. I’ve not been a fan of the term Web 2.0, deriding it as web pooh point oh from the beginning. Startups who can’t be bothered to find a real business model for their projects and instead latch onto the latest, greatest trends don’t deserve financing.

I’m not saying that all startups that are being labeled as web 2.0 don’t deserve financing, so please don’t anybody put words in my mouth. I’m all for small businesses being able to grow and thrive in this country and beyond. Heck, I’ve been part of the small business culture since 1994. Only those who intentionally position and market themselves as web 2.0 and are dressing up ideas that were original years ago should be left empty-handed at the loan desk. “We’ll make money later” is not a realistic business plan.

This isn’t saying mashups aren’t fun. It’s all about perspective and realism, isn’t it? Most mashups are gimmicks, games and parlor tricks, not serious businesses. I’ve rolled a few mashups myself and am a huge gamer, so I’m there. More power to the mash generation! However, the whole notion that something as diverse as the web can be described with a version number is absurd. In case I’m wrong, I have the domain for web version 113 already reserved and running. Woot, 230 visits since November 16, 2006!

Onto web 3.0 now? Why not, I’ll iterate it right now: ++$version;