IT’S SUNTORY TIME IN KENTUCKY

Yr Globalization M&A lede of the day:



I don’t particularly object to this. I will say it reminds me of all the anti-Japanese sentiment in the 80s when Japanese companies started dominating the automobile market and buying out American companies and baseball teams and everyone was frightened by all this “globalization” hoodoo.

I didn’t care then, and I don’t really care now. It just knocks me out to think that a product that makes a big deal of its Kentucky origins is now owned by a Japanese company.

I’m sure somewhere on the interwebs (or possibly Fox News) some people are dithering over this blatant attack on American booze sovereignty.

They should just follow Bill Murray’s advice and relax.

"1974 - Suntory Whisky, 'Sammy Davis Jr ad libs" (Watch on YouTube)

Relaxed,

This is dF

BIG BROTHER: WE PASS THE SAVINGS ON TO YOU

ITEM: A new study published in the Yale Law Journal has found that tracking a cell phone’s location costs somewhere between 1.9% and .015 % of the price of tailing someone the old fashioned way.

The number depends on the method yr talking about, but essentially it’s the difference between spending hundreds of dollars an hour and just pennies.

Andy Greenberg of Forbes reports:

A five-car “surveillance box” operation that has cars ready to inconspicuously tail a suspect in any direction–the standard procedure recommended in law enforcement manuals–costs $275 an hour, according to Soltani’s and Bankston’s estimate. Tracking the same suspect with a GPS device attached to his or her car costs as little as 36 cents an hour. The cost of tracking that individual’s cell phone varies depending on the phone’s cellular carrier–AT&T charges cops $5.21 an hour for short term tracking and $1.19 per hour for longer term operations, whereas T-Mobile charges $4.17 per hour and Sprint charges as little as 4 cents an hour.

You may also consult this handy chart.



Ironically, that’s potentially good news in terms of getting the courts to restrict digital surveillance. In U.S. v. Jones (2012), the Supreme Court rejected the argument that tracking a GPS on someone’s car is no different from putting a tail on him/her precisely because GPS tracking is far easier to do, and thus more subject to abuse, and therefore in need of stricter oversight. The same could very well be said of cell-phone tracking, and quite possibly the bulk of the NSA’s data-mining activities.

On the other hand, the US govt has apparently been careful to avoid any definitive rulings, according to Greenberg:

But the U.S. judicial system has yet to give a clear ruling on whether the same can be said of warrantlessly tracking cell phone locations. In fact, while lower courts have produced conflicting answers on that question, prosecutors seem to have carefully avoided taking the issue to higher courts. “The government has pretty assiduously avoided appealing any of its losses on cell phone tracking, such that we don’t have any clear binding precedents from a higher court on when it’s ok to track a phone’s location in real time,” says Bankston, policy director of the Open Technology Institute at the New America Foundation.

If nothing else, I guess the White House can always argue that mass digital surveillance is acceptable because look at how much money we’re saving, and you guys want the govt to spend less money, am I right? SMALL GOVT!

Cheaper by the dozen,

This is dF

DEÄTHMÜFFIN UPDATE: THE RAIN CAME DOWN!

It’s like that sometimes – you go for months without being able to spend much time in the studio, then suddenly you have a free afternoon and yr punching them out like cookies.

In other words, fans, there is new music from Banäna Deäthmüffins now available.

Starting with this one, which is about rain. Because how songs are there about weather? Not a lot, we figure. Or at least not about the weather’s general indifference to insane Facebook memes.

This is also our sorta-kinda tribute to Lou Reed (although we wrote it well before Reed passed on late last year), with a little Jeff Lynne thrown in. Because if there’s one thing we learned from listening to old ELO records, it’s that any good song about weather needs lots and lots of echo.

And sound effects!

( Sing with us! )

Like this song? Why not download it and other fine lo-fi tracks from the official Banäna Deäthmüffins page on Soundcloud?

Also, be the first to like us on Facebook.

Came down so hard,

This is dF