I had no idea that Joe Francis was still in jail. I remember when the Florida thing was going down, and how he refused to go to jail, but I somehow missed the part where they locked him up in Reno on tax evasion. You might not agree with Joe’s morals or method of making money, but you have to respect him as an entrepreneur and marketer. He found a niche and slaughtered it. Sometimes I try to look at people for what they’ve been able to do. I don’t like Kanye much anymore, but he’s been able to market the hell out of himself and keep himself in the news by being so cocky. I actually like Paris Hilton, I don’t see how she’s ever done anything “wrong” other than be famous and use it to her advantage at every turn. The girl actually makes money by literally being herself, respect. Anyway I think its time for Joe Francis to cut and run. Calvin seems to think Antigua is pretty nice. Get bail, gas up the jet, and bounce dude. Maybe they’ll invite me down and I can show Calvin how to drive that Quattroporte.

This the best and only quality post on SEOmoz ever. Thank you Rebecca for saying what was already on my mind.

A while ago some of my SEO/SEM friends started asking for diggs. They started out IM conversations with the usual small talk and catching up. Then came the “can you digg this for me?”. Finally I told all these people: Look, I don’t care if you want me to use me to digg something. I can take it. I won’t even feel cheap afterwards. Just paste the digg URL to me, I’ll click on it and if it isn’t ridiculously lame I’ll digg it. Thats 2 clicks. If I have to make 5 minutes of small talk with you, its 5 minutes and an interruption in my work-flow (which is more critical than the 5 minutes, I’m not that bloody important).

Same goes for asking for favors or questions. Don’t hit me with the “are you there?” more often than not I am. But if I’m not, at least when I get back I can have your question on my screen and I can fire back an answer. If you just ask if I’m there, you probably won’t get an answer.

Now on to this Tuesdays and Thursdays are social days malarkey. Are you fucking kidding me? Are we that lonely in our home offices that we need virtual pep days?

Lastly, the new digg mutual-friend feature is so god damn annoying. Instead of dropping the email’s from digg with a procmail rule I am just de-friending all the people who I am mutual friends with. Sorry, but there is ABSOLUTELY no value to me in those emails.

Thanks Rebecca, for an awesome post as usual.

P.S. Don’t ask me for sphinns, I don’t even have an account.

Don’t forget to thank your favorite Italian for his/her ancestor, Christopher Columbus, discovering America.

Snail Mail is free, but e-delivery is $2.50? Go fuck yourselves Ticketmaster.

I spent about an hour today reading all 115 pages of the transcript of the September 13th WMSC hearing on the McLaren/Ferrari spy saga. I think the most abundantly clear thing is that McLaren have completely lost their minds.

One of the key arguments the McLaren lawyer tries to make is that the WMSC must hold the evidence to an extremely high criteria of lack of any reasonable doubt. He actually goes so far as to compare it to a capital crime such as murder. Except the difference is its not murder, its cheating in sport. The evidence provided makes it pretty clear something untoward was going on, and in my humble opinion is plenty to prove that there was cheating going on.

Ron Dennis’ comments are utterly nonsensical and ludicrous. If they don’t prove the case that McLaren management wasn’t aware of the cheating, his comments certainly prove that he has lost his mind along with his hair.

Paddy Lowe goes so far as to say that a dossier of data on a competitors car would be of little or no value to another team. This is in the same hearing that Paddy Lowe and Pedro de la Rosa both confirm that teams routinely analyze video footage for visual data and sound data. They also basically look at any angle they can get from TV or photos to analyze a competitors car. And a 800-page volume of data would be of little value? Are you guys fucking nuts? Or just lying cheats?

The lawyer and some of the McLaren engineers try to argue that no actual parts have been copied that can be identified on the McLaren chassis. There are a few problems with this line of argument:

1) The McLaren engineers themselves point out that its virtually impossible to directly copy a part from a competitor’s car. Since the cars are built with completely different design philosophies, you can’t just graft a part from another car onto yours. However, that doesn’t mean you can’t get an idea from another team and built a similar-acting component on your car. This happens ALL the time in Formula 1. This therefore shatters the “you can’t find an exactly copied part on our car, so we must be innocent” line of reasoning.

2) Who would actually be able to analyze the McLaren chassis and determine if anything had been copied? McLaren says they have offered to let the FIA come and inspect everything, but is the FIA really qualified to analyze the car and determine similarity to the Ferrari chassis? If the FIA isn’t qualified then the next most likely candidate would be Ferrari. However if Ferrari would go over the McLaren car with a fine-toothed comb to see if any unique parts had been copied directly, they would be then gaining intimate knowledge of the MP4-22 which would kindof render this whole process moot. So really, McLaren is full of shit here too.

Paddy (Patrick) Lowe actually tries to make the assertion that he is so intimately aware with the MP4-22 and the design process that no FOREIGN (ie: from another team or another team’s data) idea could have been introduced into the development of it without having risen a red flag with him. Yeah, right Paddy. So your engineers never come up with the off-the-wall ideas that get at least tried or tested?

Here are a few of my favorite quotes from the 115-page transcript:

Patrick LOWE: The value of the dossier is overstated. I have 780 better pages which I do not have the opportunity
to read. I don’t know why Mike Coughlan took position of the dossier, as is alleged. I can only
think that he had some sort of collector’s mentality. I have come across engineers who like
collecting things, like people collect stamps. It is of so little use, genuinely.

Patrick LOWE: I see what you are getting at. We do not know, ultimately, where we are going to stop. The
prediction is not precise. Teams want to save fuel wherever possible. That is why my first answer
still applies. Hypothetically, it would be useful, but practically speaking, it is never sufficiently
accurate to be useful.

Pedro DE LA ROSA: Yes, we are interested in all of our competitors, especially after qualifying, based on the delta in lap
time, between the Q2 and Q3. We deduce from this – as do all participants – the expected pit stop
strategy arrivals. We do this for everyone.

Pedro DE LA ROSA: Had it been an interesting figure, I might possibly have at least tested it. Unfortunately, at that moment, I did not think that it was interesting.

Ron DENNIS: Is that not a double-negative? How can we assume what someone did or did not do? Either it
exists or it does not. The forensic nature of those processes, as I understood, was not only very
detailed, but could reconstruct most of the material held in a computer. That is why they are
experts. They did reconstruct a great deal of material, as I understand it.

Huh?

Nigel TOZZI: It strikes me as odd that, to stop someone from contacting him, the best method was to fly to
Barcelona. What is wrong with sending a letter, making a telephone call or sending an e-mail?