GM snatches defeat from the jaws of victory

Australia has a domestic car company. Holden. They are own by GM. In US terms, they are to Australia what Chevy is to the US.

Holden makes a sports car named the Monaro. It is an awesome machine, and very successful down here. It is a old-school muscle car. No room for kids, and fuel mileage be damned. They have big, powerful motor, rear wheel drive, and they don't cost a lot when compared the German and Japanese luxury cars.

It has been so successful that GM has brought it to the US and rebadged as the Pontiac GTO. Holden Australia is building left-hand-drive models for the US market.
And, it has flopped. Why?

Well, somehow GM managed to screw it up. There are have reports of serious quality problems with the GTO. Problems that the Monaro doesn't have. GM moved the fuel tank into the trunk for the GTO, leaving no trunk. They managed to cram in a bunch of other changes that frankly were not needed.

If you want to know more, read the automotive reviews for the GTO. They rip it for the quality defects. Car and Driver wasn't too nice about it. The Aussies are pissed off at GM for ruining what should have been a sure thing. They were hoping to be able to sell a bunch of these to the US market. Now it looks like it won't survive GM.

Compare the photos below of the Australian Monaro (top) and the American GTO (bottom). They don't even look like the same car!!! This is the same as if one day while you are at work, your wife takes your loyal hunting dog to vet, has his balls snipped off, give him a poodle style haircut, and puts a bow on head. It's not the same dog any more.

Holden Monaro

Pontiac GTO

The Monaro screams tetesterone. The GTO looks like something that a sorority girl would drive to the mall on a Saturday afternoon. Look at the GTO's dainty little "B" column. The bigger rear seat windows (so her girlfriend's can spot the shoe sales better). The more rounded nose and softer rear end... gotta take that edge off!.

To their credit, Pontiac has done something right for the 2005 GTO. It has more power. They put the new Gen III LS2 V8 under the hood. This is the new generation small block V8,6.0L, 299kW, OHV 16 valve, with Sequential multi-port electronic fuel injection. This is the same motor GM puts in the Corvette.

The GTO comes standard with a 4 speed automatic transmission with overdrive. An optional 6-speed manual is available for more money. What!?! An automatic? A 4-speed automatic? What a waste. Are there that many people out there who can't drive a stick? Why don't they just put a diaper on the car?

The Monaro has a Gen III LS1 V8, 5.7L, 260kW motor and a 6-speed manual transmission.

Still. What's the point of hiding that extra power in a car that looks like you bought for your wife?

The problem is that GM couldn't leave well enough alone. They have too many cooks in the kitchen. They had to tweak the chassie to put their Pontiac signature grill on it. Then they figured while they were at it, let's make other changes! All those executives have to justify their jobs. So they build cars that look like they were designed by a committee.

Life after Howard Stern

Howard Stern

Howard Stern fans, like me, know that last year he quit his job as the top morning radio program in the US. He is defecting to Sirus Satellite Radio, a subscription based digital radio broadcaster. This will allow Howard to get out from the jurisdiction of the FCC and be as raunchy as he wants to be. He has been working under contract for Infinity Radio, part of the media giant Viacom, for years.

Infinity has been trying to figure out what to replace Stern's morning slot with. He was their biggest star. His show is consistently the ratings winner in all the major US metropolitan markets. His defection has been a big blow to Infinity. To their credit, they are doing something smart, which is why I bring this up in my blog. It is not often that I see one of the US media giants doing something that I think is smart.

Rather than try to replace Howard Stern in all his previous markets. They have opted to tap multiple personalities to fill in for different markets around the country. They have given the two top markets, New York City and Los Angeles to David Lee Roth, former lead singer for the 70's-80's rock band Van Halen. This is smart because rather than trying to find a magic bullet to replace Howard, the are casting their net wide and letting new talent build an audience. They know that are going to take a beating. So they might as well use the farm teams to find the next Howard Stern somewhere out there in the US. They are spreading their bets, which will pay off in the long run. Just hope that they can recognize true talent when it shows up.

'Diamond' David Lee Roth

Personally, I don't think that David Lee Roth is going to cut the mustard. He is a has-been. A relic from the 80's. And a general all around asshole. He can't fill Howard's shoes because the appeal of Howard was that he was a nobody, looser that could never get the girl. Howard looks and act like a freak show. He is able to get strippers and porn stars on his show and flirt with them shamelessly. But he never got anywhere with them. At the end of the show, he would always go home to his wife. That was his gimmick.

Diamond Dave, on the other hand, was the hard partying lead man for one of the most successful rock bands in the 70's and 80's. He had everything. Girls, money, drugs, adoring fans. He doesn't have it any more. He is now working as an ambulance EMT in New York City.

Passport Authentication Online

There is a popular TV show here in Australia called "Border Patrol". It is a reality TV style, behind-the-scenes, look at the job of Australian immigration and customs officers and their day-to-day dealings with the public. Think of "Cops", but at the Sydney international Airport. It is a good show. It amazes me how many people show up with proper visas, dodgy stories, drugs, and illegal or bizarre goods.

One of the tasks of the immigration officers is to determine the validity of each incoming passenger's passport and visa. On the program they have often pull suspicious passengers aside for further investigation. Something about the passenger’s documents, story, or behavior has tipped off the officer that something isn't right. Usually, the passenger is trying to get into Australia illegally with forged documents.

When the officer suspects that the passport is fake, they have a forgery export examine it under a microscope. The officer will also call an officer at the passenger’s consulate to verify the information. If there is no consulate, or it is off hours, the officers has to guess.

The techie side of me found this to be unacceptable. I find it amazing that here in 2005, with the Internet available to most anywhere on the planet, that a simple passport verification system has not been implemented.

How hard is it for a nation’s passport department to put the data from their passport files on a web server? Not hard at all. How hard is it for these same nations to put these servers on a private intranet, or VPN on the Internet? Again, not hard at all. They should be able to do the whole thing in a week.

Then all the Australian immigration officer has to do is log on to the passport holder’s national passport database website and enter the passport number. The web server will return a web page with the same information that should be on the passport the officer is holding.

Simple as that!

To make things ever more efficient, the airlines could forward a list of passports to the destination’s immigration department. They could pre-pull the records of the passengers and make decisions while the passengers are still in the air. They will have hours to review the list, compare them against warrants and other watch lists, and do their job right instead of making snap decisions after the passenger arrives.

Other Benefits:

• If someone arrives with a fake or altered passport, it will not match the information of the passport issuer's database. This will kill the fake passport market since the passport can be authenticated by the issuer, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, anywhere on the planet, within seconds.
• If you loose your passport while travelling, it will make it much easier to have a host nation issues a tempory passport based on the data provided. Just like American Express issues temporary replacement credit cards on the spot. They then issue a real replacement that arrives at your home address a couple of weeks later.
• The system can also be used by immigration services to analyze visa requests before travelling. This can eliminate the process of having to mail your passport off to an embassy and hope you get it back. The request should be able to be processed online.

How about this idea? If the server uses XML instead of HTML, the data served by the issuer's server can be easily digitally processed by the client nation. This data can then be easily be forwarded as searches against other databases that would effect the decisions of the immigration department.

The French have solved all the world's problems!

Shintaro Ishihara Governor of Tokyo

Saw this hilarious little news story about the governor of Tokyo Japan, Shintaro Ishihara. He is being sued by some French language students because they claim he insulted the French language. He is reported to have said "French is a failed international language because it cannot be used to count numbers."

In French, some numbers can be unwieldy to say, such as 90, which translates as "four-twenty-ten."

But English can be difficult too. But it is not has bad as other languages!

For example, where did Eleven and Twelve come from? Shouldn't eleven be "oneteen", and twelve be "twoteen". The rest of the teens are the single digit number and the syllable "teen" (for "and ten").

And what does the "ty" mean on twenty, thirty, forty, ..., ninety? Does that mean "times 10"?

Still... Those French lovers must have some mighty thin skin to have to resort to law suits when someone insults their precious language. The world's going to hell in a handbasket and they are worried that someone in Japan doesn't like French.

Well. I guess having solved all the world's problems, they can focus time and energy on stupid things like this.

Grand Theft Auto Video Game

The video game Grand Theft Auto - San Andres has burst into the news this week when it was discovered that a tiny little hack named "hot coffee" will unlock x-rated content that was embedded in the game. Hillary Clinton has decided to take the game's producer, Rock Star Games, to task over this.

Now I love video games. And love sex and meaningless violence as much as the next guy. But I do think that RSG crossed the line here. I have no problem with either them, or someone else, producing a mod for the game. In fact, this sounds like an awesome hack. Hell, some of the best games I've ever played where user produced mods for Doom and other FPS(*) games. But this was deliberately installed, and then hidden, in order to deceive the game rating system. That was uncool.

I also can't help but think that people are going to run out and grab the PC versions of GTA now before a "cleaner" version is released into the retail channel. The resale value of the x-rated GTA-SA should go up as they become scarce.

*FPS: First Person Shooter is a computer or video game where the player's on-screen view of the game world simulates that of the character, and there is a high percentage of combat. Example, Doom. (More...)