50 Cent Accuses 'Empire' Creators of Copying His 'Power' Marketing Tactics

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Noam Galai, Getty Images

If you listen to 50 Cent‘s rhymes, he’s made it clear that he doesn’t tolerate snitches, but there’s also another thing the rapper-turned-mogul can’t stand: a copycat.

Fif, who is the executive producer behind the Starz original scripted drama ‘Power,’ took to Instagram to blast the creators of the Fox TV series ‘Empire’ for stealing his marketing tactics.

“POWER Season 2 is unbelievably good trust me,” 50 wrote in an Instragram post accompanied by video of a ‘Power’ spot. “I have the best writers and show runner. I like Terrence Howard and Taraji Henson. I don’t like that They would copy the Marketing.”

Both shows feature leading black male characters who struggle with balancing the street life and building their legacies the legit way via the entertainment industry. While Lucious Lyon, played by Howard, is handed a terminal death sentence and must decide which son to leave his record label to in ‘Empire,’ ‘Power’ focuses on the double life of a drug dealer-turned-nightclub owner who wants out of the drug game.

50 Cent could be on to something given the drug, music, money and sex aspects of both series, but he ultimately left it up to fans to judge.

Just minutes before calling out Howard and Henson, Fif posted a split image of Howard and Omari Hartwick of ‘Power,’ asking his female followers which show they preferred.

‘Power’ will return to Starz for season two in 2015, meanwhile ‘Empire’ will premiere on Fox on Jan. 7, 2015. Will you be #TeamPower or #TeamEmpire or tune into both? Watch the trailers for each below.

Watch the Trailer for ‘Empire’

Watch the Trailer for ‘Power’ Season 1

See 10 Rappers & Singers Promoting Unexpected Products

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Gadgetwise Blog: Q&A: Saving the Phone’s Battery Power

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Corner Office: Jon Oringer: Jon Oringer of Shutterstock, on the Power of the Hackathon

Q. Did you show an entrepreneurial streak at a young age?

A. In high school, I used to teach guitar and fix computers by the hour. I was looking for some way to make some cash, so I actually learned how to play guitar in order to try to teach it. It turned out to be a pretty good business for a 15-year-old who had to get dropped off to his job by his mom.

I actually liked playing the guitar, but I started to realize that I could charge more to fix people’s computers, so I moved on to that. It was kind of fun just to try to figure out how to make money. It was a good challenge. As I started college, I started to build software products that I could sell to people over the Web.

Q. And you’ve started how many companies?

A. It’s hard to say because they all kind of blend into one another, but it’s probably around 10, and a lot of them were just me, before I started Shutterstock.

Q. So your company now has about 250 employees. Tell me how you evolved as a manager.

A. It’s interesting, because I never had a boss before I started this company. I had never worked in an office. I didn’t know about politics and how to build culture. I didn’t know what culture was. So as I started to hire people, I was looking for the skills I knew I needed to build the product I wanted to build. I didn’t think about a lot of the rest of the stuff. I figured managing people was obvious — I’d tell someone what they needed to do and they’d do what I wanted. It turns out that’s not the case. It was frustrating at first.

Q. As the company grew, were there certain break points you noticed when the culture shifted?

A. At around 50 employees, you get to the point where you can’t see what’s going on all the time. So you start to have weekly check-ins, and you have days that go by without knowing exactly what’s going on. But you need to be sure that everyone is kind of moving in the right direction and thinking about things the right way.

Q. So what’s different or unusual about your culture today?

A. We have a bunch of agile teams that work on different components of the company. At the end of every two-week period, they show everyone else what’s been done. It’s a good way for the whole company to see how we’re progressing.

We also do daily stand-ups for each team. People quickly say what they’ve done and what they’re going to do next. And by keeping these teams small, they can also be self-starting and entrepreneurial.

The whole thing is designed so that meetings are minimized and people can get back to work and push stuff out quickly and then report back to the team. It’s like this daily heartbeat of updates to make sure everybody’s moving forward.

Q. What else do you do in terms of culture?

A. We have hackathons, which are pretty fun. A lot of people get really excited about them, and they can build whatever they want for the company — it could be crazy, practical, whatever. We actually wind up implementing a lot of those things throughout the year. It pushes a lot of thinking. It’s pretty amazing what people can get done in 24 hours. Sometimes we talk about a new product feature and it can take three months to build. Then someone will prototype it overnight.

Q. And why is that?

A. Sometimes as a company you tend to overthink things. If you just sit down and try to do it, it turns out to maybe be easier than setting up meeting after meeting to get it done. So it’s a good reset point for us every year to remind us, “Yeah, we can just get things done quickly.”

Q. How do you hire? What are you looking for?

A. We look for people who are entrepreneurial, who can think in ways that will extend the product in the right direction. We look for people who are “growth hackers.” I’m not sure who came up with that term, but it makes sense to us. It’s the kind of person who can build features and products that market themselves.

Q. So how do you find growth hackers?

A. It’s difficult. I’ll usually show them something that we’ve built and ask them what they can do to improve on it. I’m looking for what their thinking patterns are in terms of whether they can figure out a way to make a particular feature grow in a way that it perpetuates itself.

They also have to be able to mesh with others in the organization. You want people who will push the thinking but not cause trouble. It’s hard to explain, but it’s a feeling you get. It’s easy to find people who will be disruptive thinkers who are reckless, but it’s hard to find disruptive thinkers who are productive. We try every day to make each dollar we spend go one penny further than it did yesterday. That’s the kind of person I’m looking for.

Q. How do you tell if they’re going to fit in to the culture?

A. If you start to challenge them, what happens? Do they come back hard at you? They have to be open to having their thoughts challenged. They have to be open to the fact that maybe they’re not right.

Q. And if hiring were like speed dating and you only had like five minutes to ask one or two questions, what would they be?

A. In your day-to-day job functions, how will you take risk? Like I said before, we want to make that dollar go one penny further every day. I’m not looking for you to double the dollar. I don’t even want a 25 percent return because on a day-to-day basis that’s too much volatility. I want a 1 percent return daily. If the risks are small enough, they can kind of do them on their own without getting themselves into too much trouble. If they are taking fewer but bigger risks, that’s a problem. So I would be looking for how they do that.

Q. What else?

A. If you were going to start your own company right now, and you had to go make one dollar on the Web, what would you do?

Bits Blog: Today’s Scuttlebot: Cyberwarlord for the U.S., and Power Strips on the Road

Here are some of the more interesting items that the tech reporters and editors of The New York Times found on the Web recently. More Scuttlebot can be found here.

Meet the Spy Chief Leading Us Into Cyberwar
Wired | For years, Gen. Keith Alexander has been building a secret army capable of launching devastating cyberattacks. — Ashwin Seshagiri

The Road of Tomorrow Is Electric
News.volvogroup.com |  Instead of just using batteries, Volvo is talking about building electric cars powered by strips in the road. — Quentin Hardy

Dictionary Allows New Definition of ‘Tweet’
Betabeat |  Finally, “tweet” is no longer jargony slang, but Oxford English Dictionary-approved English! — Amy O’Leary

Hell Freezes Over: Microsoft Office Arrives for iOS
Ars Technica |  After much speculation, Microsoft is now releasing a iPhone app for Office, available to Office 365 subscribers. — Amy O’Leary

A Smartphone Breath Sensor That Detects Serious Disease
Bigthink.com |  Yet another use for your smartphone: detecting diabetes, or lung cancer.  — Amy O’Leary

Gadgetwise Blog: Backup Power in the Palm of Your Hand

An array of BoostBloc 6600 portable chargers from Etón.

Demand for electronic devices seems to be growing faster than the number of outlets available to charge them. Hoping to provide power to those in need, Etón has introduced a series of portable backup batteries called BoostBloc.

The BoostBloc batteries come in three options, each offering greater power than the last, with internal lithium ion batteries that provide an electrical charge measured in ampere-hours. For instance, Eton’s most powerful block, the BoostBloc 6600, provides 6,600 milliampere-hours, enough to fully charge a smartphone three times.

The charging blocks in the BoostBloc series range in price from $40 to $100 and come in three colors: red, black and white. Each one includes a micro USB cable, which is used to charge the block, and at least one USB port for power output (the BoostBloc 6600 has two USB ports to charge two devices at once).

With a simple, sleek design, the lightweight blocks do not have any buttons, not that they need any. A quick shake activates LED indicators on the bottom of the blocks that reveal how much charge remains.

I decided over the weekend to tackle the annual spring cleaning of my storage unit, a job I knew would take all afternoon. Music always makes the task go faster, so I brought a BoostBloc as a backup in case my cellphone died. I chose the BoostBloc 2000 because it fit easily in my pants pocket. When the phone drained to 11 percent of its power, I connected it to the BoostBloc 2000, which allowed me to continue playing my music for a couple of more hours while still charging the phone back up to 92 percent.

With few bells and whistles, the BoostBloc backup batteries get the job done efficiently, providing power and peace of mind in situations where outlets are lacking.

For outdoor enthusiasts, Etón also offers the BoostTurbine 2000, a power charger with a hand-cranked generator, which provides juice with a few turns of the wrist. And a solar-powered charger is available.

Kenneth I. Appel, Mathematician Who Harnessed Computer Power, Is Dead at 80

The cause was esophageal cancer, which was diagnosed in October, his son Andrew said.

Since the time of Euclid and Pythagoras, proofs of mathematical theorems had consisted of long strings of equations or geometric notations that any mathematician could read and quibble with, all marching logically, step by step, toward a conclusion. But the proof that Dr. Appel and a colleague, Wolfgang Haken, established in 1976 was of a different order.

Their conclusion, that four colors would suffice for any map, depended on 1,200 hours of computer time — the equivalent of 50 days — and 10 billion logical decisions all made automatically and out of sight by the innards of an I.B.M. computer at the University of Illinois in Urbana.

Hailed in some circles, including this newspaper, as “a major intellectual feat,” the proof shepherded computers toward a greater role in higher math. But it made many mathematicians uneasy; they worried about computer bugs and wondered how they could check or understand a “proof” they could not see. And it ignited a long-running debate about what constitutes a mathematical proof.

“Like a landmark Supreme Court case, the proof’s legacy is still felt and hotly debated,” said Edward Frenkel, a mathematician at the University of California, Berkeley.

Kevin Short, a mathematician at the University of New Hampshire, where Dr. Appel spent his later years, called the feat “a watershed for modern mathematics.”

“It has spawned whole fields of study,” he said.

Kenneth Ira Appel (pronounced ah-PEL) was born on Oct. 8, 1932, in Brooklyn and grew up in Queens, where he graduated from Queens College with a degree in mathematics in 1953. His father, Irwin, was an electrical engineer, and his mother, the former Lillian Sender, had been an office worker.

After a short stint as an actuary and two years in the Army, Kenneth Appel enrolled at the University of Michigan, where he earned a Ph.D. in math in 1959. During the summers, he programmed computers for Douglas Aircraft.

Dr. Appel soon went to work for the Institute for Defense Analyses in Princeton, N.J., doing research in cryptography and number theory for the federal government. He joined the University of Illinois as a professor in 1961. Long interested in Democratic politics, he also served a term on the Urbana City Council.

Some of the thorniest problems in math are simple to state but hideously complex under the surface. Such is the case with the four-color theorem, first enunciated by an English mapmaker, Francis Guthrie, in 1852. He asserted that to create a map in which no adjacent countries are the same color, only four colors are needed. Although everyone believed it was true, proof had eluded a century of mathematicians until Dr. Appel attended a lecture in 1972 by Dr. Haken.

Because of the bewildering variety of map configurations, Dr. Haken was contemplating using computers to solve the problem, but as he related in his lecture that evening, experts had convinced him that it was not possible.

Dr. Appel, familiar with computers from his defense and government work, was more optimistic.

“I don’t know of anything involving computers that can’t be done; some things just take longer than others,” he said to Dr. Haken afterward, according to an account in the journal Social Studies of Science by Donald MacKenzie of the University of Edinburgh. “Why don’t we take a shot at it?”

The two started off by showing that the universe of all possible maps must contain what mathematicians call an “unavoidable set” of 1,936 different configurations. One configuration might be a country surrounded by four neighbors, for example.

Their task, then, was to prove that each of these configurations could be rendered on a map using only four colors in such a way that no two adjacent land areas were of the same color. That was where the heaviest computation would come in. To help, they recruited a computer science graduate student, John Koch, and Dr. Appel persuaded the university to let them use its I.B.M. 370-168 computer, newly acquired for administrative services.

Those were the days when computers filled an entire room, although their memory capacities were minuscule compared with a modern smartphone. Dr. Short recounted an occasion, as described by Dr. Appel, when the computer gave an unexpected answer.

“Oh, that wire must have fallen out again,” Dr. Appel said.

Dr. Appel began to think of the computer as a partner, though with a different kind of brain, with almost “an artificial intelligence,” he told Dr. MacKenzie.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: April 30, 2013

An obituary on Monday about the mathematician Kenneth I. Appel contained several errors. The author of an article in the journal Social Studies of Science that discussed Dr. Appel’s work was Donald MacKenzie, not Douglas MacKenzie. The agency in Princeton, N.J., for which Dr. Appel worked is the Institute for Defense Analyses, not Analysis. And Dr. Appel’s wife is Carole S. Appel, not Carole S. Stein. (Stein was her surname before she married, but she took her husband’s name.)

Gadgetwise: A Big Swig of Extra Battery Power

There is not a lot that sets auxiliary batteries apart. A few more amps here, a few more USB plugs there, and that’s about it.

Digital Treasures, though, has taken the trouble to gussy up the basic battery, putting 13,000 mAh of lithium-ion power into what appears to be a flask.

Called the Power Flask, the case has a flask’s distinctive curve, for discreet pocket storage, and leather trim with red stitching. The end caps are chromelike polished aluminum.

The Power Flask, which retails for $90, has two USB ports, one supporting 1 amp charging for phones, and a second supporting 2.5 amp charging for tablets.

You can charge more low-demand devices at a time, though; two phones can be put into the 2.5-amp slot using an included Y cable, and another can be charged from the 1-amp slot for a total of three devices at once. The flask also comes with two 30-pin adapters. If you’re using a Lightning connector, you will have to supply your own.

The flask has blue LEDs to indicate the charge level and twin white LEDs on the top that work as a flashlight.

Is Google Abusing Its Market Power? Former Legal Allies Disagree

Exhibit A: In the spring of 1998, the federal government and 20 states filed a landmark antitrust suit against Microsoft. A few months later, Google was founded.

Now Google is the subject of major antitrust investigations in the United States and Europe.  In the United States, regulators are expected to announce a decision within days to sue or settle, and under what terms. The European decision will come soon as well.

Much has changed over the years, but two lawyers who helped build the case against Microsoft are playing important roles once again. But this time, Gary L. Reback and Susan A. Creighton are on opposite sides.

The two lawyers, and the positions they have taken, point to some striking similarities yet also significant differences between the two high-stakes investigations — and why the pursuit of Google has proved challenging for antitrust officials.

In 1996, Mr. Reback and Ms. Creighton were partners, representing Netscape, the pioneering Web browser company. They wrote a 222-page “white paper,” laying out Microsoft’s campaign to use its dominance of personal computer software to stifle competition from Netscape, the Internet insurgent. After Netscape sent their report to the Justice Department, the head of the antitrust division ordered an investigation.

Mr. Reback is now an attorney at Carr & Ferrell in Silicon Valley, where he represents several companies that have complained to the government about Google. He does not represent Microsoft, though that company is a born-again champion of antitrust action, against its rival Google.

In Google, Mr. Reback sees a familiar pattern — a giant company trying to hinder competition and attack new markets. Google, he says, is unfairly using its dominant search engine to favor the company’s offerings in online shopping, travel and local listings and thus stifle competition from Web sites that rely on Google search for traffic.

“From my perspective, it’s an instant replay of the Microsoft case,” Mr. Reback said in a recent interview, though he would not comment for this article. “It’s the same playbook.”

Not to Ms. Creighton, a partner in the Washington office of Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, who is in Google’s corner. She has testified before Congress on Google’s behalf and negotiated with the Federal Trade Commission, the agency conducting the antitrust investigation, and where she was a senior official during the Bush administration.

“Google’s conduct is pro-competitive,” Ms. Creighton declared in her Senate testimony last year. “Far from threatening competition, Google has consistently enhanced consumer welfare by increasing the services available to consumers.”

Ms. Creighton hits two main themes in Google’s defense. The first is the consumer benefit of all Google’s free services. The second is that the cost to consumers of switching to Internet alternatives like Microsoft’s Bing search engine, the Expedia travel site or Yelp local listings is “zero,” she said. Or, as Google repeatedly says, competition is “just a click away.”

In the late 1990s, Microsoft had its version of both arguments. Microsoft bundled a free Web browser into its Windows operating system — an added feature at no cost, surely a consumer benefit. In its trial testimony, Microsoft showed that millions of people had downloaded the competing Netscape browser onto Windows — a rival product just a double-click away.

But in the trial, the evidence taken as a whole portrayed a wide-ranging effort by Microsoft to crush Netscape. It is not an antitrust violation for a powerful company to gain a dominant share of one market and then expand into other markets. The legal issue is the tactics the dominant company employs to expand its empire.

Pogue's Posts: How to Keep Electronics Going With No Power

@pogue What creative solutions &/or gadgets are you using to get through the new issues #Sandy has left for you?

— Tucker Carlson (@Tucker_Carlson) October 31, 2012

The Hurricane Sandy storm damage here in my Connecticut town was fairly extensive — beautiful old trees are down everywhere, 85 percent of our homes are without power, and officials are saying it will take at least 10 days to restore electricity — but at least our homes are standing. I’ve seen the photos of New York and New Jersey; in our way, we were lucky.

Still, on Twitter, a number of people have suggested that it might be interesting to hear how a tech columnist muddles through a 10-day stretch without electricity and Internet (not to mention heat or hot water).

The short answer is: Pretty much like the other seven million people whose electricity blew out with the storm. You manage.

The Times’s technology columnist, David Pogue, keeps you on top of the industry in his free, weekly e-mail newsletter.
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Internet. Our town has made the public library and town hall available for charging gadgets. The library also offers free Wi-Fi, although I have yet to be able to get online there; the place is mobbed and the network is hopelessly overloaded.

For Internet, therefore, I’ve been using my phone’s tethering feature. My laptop can get online using my phone as a glorified Internet antenna, a service for which I pay Verizon $20 extra a month. And for which I’m very, very grateful right about now.

It’s a little flaky, I’ll admit. It often starts out with superspeed (says “LTE” on the menu bar); then, after five minutes, it drops down to “3G”; and after 10 minutes, it drops down to the little “o,” meaning an excruciating 1984-era, dial-up speed. If I shut down the phone and restart it, the speed comes back.

Power. The problem with using the phone as Internet, of course, is keeping it charged.

Longtime readers may recall that, two years ago, vicious windstorms knocked out our power for six days during a frigid March. When I blogged about it, many commenters expressed shock that I, Mr. Tech, did not own a generator.

Well, trust me, after that experience, I went and bought one — the Homelite HG5000 (it was about $600 at Home Depot). It’s a big, heavy, deafening, stinky, apparently dangerous contraption. (“Using a generator indoors or in your garage WILL KILL YOU IN MINUTES,” says a metal plaque on the top.)

You pour in gasoline, start it up like a lawnmower, and plug in up to six gadgets. It’s horribly designed. Just to turn it on, you have to unplug everything, turn on the fuel valve, pull out the choke loop, turn on the master switch, yank the starter, wait a few seconds, push the choke loop back in, and re-plug your appliances. And all of this seems to be explained in 4-point type on page 41,922 of the Owner’s Warnings Book; electron microscope sold separately.

But I run it for a few hours a day, in hopes of saving the food in the fridge and keeping laptops and phones charged.

The nPower PEG is “the world’s first kinetic energy charger for hand-held devices.”

As it happens, though, I have two charging devices on hand that are a good deal less stinky. One is the nPower PEG, “the world’s first kinetic energy charger for hand-held devices.” It looks like a plastic piston, about a foot long. Inside is a weight, an inductive coil and a battery. As you walk, your movements charge up the battery; from there, you can charge a USB gadget like a phone or iPad.

The company cautions that you need a lot of motion to do any real charging. You’d have to walk for 26 minutes to make a 1-minute call on the 3G cellular network. Think three-week wilderness treks, not your daily walk to work.

Still, I had a brilliant idea: I’d hang this thing from a tree during the overnight violence of the hurricane. Surely 12 hours of crazy swinging and bouncing would generate a little juice.

Unfortunately, the first step when you open the box is to charge the battery fully from a USB jack — and my power had already gone out at that point. I still did the tree-hanging thing, but it didn’t charge at all. I’ll give it a fairer test once the power comes back on.

I had better luck with the Revolve XeMini solar charger for USB gadgets ($65). It’s about the size of two decks of cards, and it’s exactly what it sounds like: a solar-chargeable backup battery with two USB jacks for recharging your gadgets. (You can also plug it straight into a power outlet or car dashboard to charge its battery.) The company says that one charge will give a smartphone about 6.5 hours of talk time.

All I know is that when our power went out, we were able to charge two phones simultaneously. The phones’ batteries were about 20 percent full and the XeMini powered them both back up to half in a couple of hours. The company points out that the XeMini is billed as a “light-assisted power,” not “solar charger,” because something this small can’t manage more than a topping off, a trickle charge. But I was glad to have it.

Showers. Our local Y usually opens its doors to the public during natural disasters like this one, but this time, it’s in 20 feet of water and is closed indefinitely. I learned that my son’s best friend’s house still has hot water, so yes, I’ve had a shower.

Heat. This is becoming the biggest inconvenience. Last night it was in the low 40s, and it’s supposed to get colder. We walk around in parkas and sleep under a mound of blankets. The schools have been closed all week, of course, so I’m trying to keep my kids occupied with games, DVDs on the laptop and day trips.

Tonight, I’m taking them for a weekend trip to Boston, where a dear friend has offered to supply a guest room and electricity, heat and hot water. We’re thrilled. Sometimes, the technologies a columnist and his family crave most are 100 years old.

I’m curious, what worked for you?

The Haggler: Radio Shack and the Power of the Crowd

Trying an end-around, the Haggler posted a direct request in the column to Dorvin Lively, the company’s interim C.E.O., asking him to get in touch. To ensure that Mr. Lively got the message, the Haggler included the company’s media relations e-mail address and urged readers to send notes, too.

Well, many did. Exactly how many is unclear, as the Haggler is guessing that the 200 people who copied him in e-mails to Radio Shack is some fraction of the total. Suffice to say, it was a deluge, and it started about three minutes after the column was posted on Saturday night, gained momentum on Sunday and Monday and continued, in tapered-off numbers, for days.

It was an outpouring that gave the Haggler the kind of brief head rush that must be commonplace for megalomaniacs. Fear the Haggler, all ye recalcitrant corporations! For the Haggler Hordes stand ready at their keyboards and, given the signal, they shall unleash a torrent of highly articulate and deeply empathic missives that ye do not want clogging up thine Internet server.

“If I were you, Radio Shack, I’d respond to the Haggler P.D.Q.,” wrote Deborah Lopez, capturing the tone of a typical letter. “In the meantime, I think I’ll keep walking past your store and not stop in. Good luck.”

“If you won’t even respond to The New York Times’s Haggler,” Len Coris asked, “why should I think you would respond to me about a problem or an issue?”

“Bad Radio Shack,” wrote another reader, addressing the company as if it were a wayward Chihuahua. “Bad!”

Needless to say, this pig pile of indignity put Radio Shack in a far chattier mood. A spokeswoman, Kally Masino, wrote the Haggler at 10:08 a.m. on the Sunday that the column was published. Then she wrote again about 20 minutes later. She didn’t actually say “uncle,” but it was sort of implied.

First, though, let’s back up and explain why the Haggler contacted Radio Shack in the first place. It started with a letter from Ronnie Hirsh of Manhattan. He had tried to pre-order an iPhone 5 from his local Radio Shack, and was told that he’d have it by Sept. 21 if he bought a $50 gift card. Well, because of a delivery glitch, it didn’t arrive by then. And, it turned out, that gift card was nonrefundable.

“Radio Shack figured out how to make money without actually selling a phone,” he wrote. “In my opinion, sleazy.”

When the Haggler wrote to Radio Shack, an unnamed person in the media relations department replied, saying the pre-order agreement made clear that gift cards were nonrefundable. This unnamed person also noted (as did Mr. Hirsh, in his original letter) that people who complained loudly enough were, in fact, given refunds. Mr. Hirsh, with his returned $50 in hand, bought his iPhone elsewhere.

The Haggler thinks that if a company makes it plain that a fee or service or a fill-in-the-blank is nonrefundable — which was the case here — it’s up to the consumer to read and understand that fact. Given that Radio Shack refunded Mr. Hirsh’s money despite clearly saying it was not obliged to — well, put this one in the win column for Radio Shack.

So, if this matter was resolved, why did the Haggler invite readers to carpet e-mail Radio Shack?

Well, whoever was interacting with the Haggler stopped doing so after he asked about another matter, soon after the gift-card issue was hashed over. A few months ago, the Haggler returned an item to Radio Shack for which he’d paid cash. At the register, a cashier asked for the Haggler’s phone number. Why would you need a phone number, the Haggler asked.

“The system” requires a phone number, the clerk explained.

Ah, the system. The Haggler managed to get his money back without divulging his phone number, but an online search suggested that others haven’t been as lucky. It was when the Haggler asked about this strange policy that Radio Shack went silent.

Fast-forward to that e-mail from Ms. Masino, the P.R. rep. Reached by phone a few days after her Sunday e-mail, she said she’d been the person corresponding with the Haggler. When asked why she had suddenly ceased all communication, she said she didn’t know. The Haggler asked her to take a guess. Well, she might have handed off the Haggler’s message to someone else on the P.R. team, she said, who might have assumed she’d already dealt with the matter. Or not. At one point, she used the word “dumbfounded,” though it’s not clear what she was dumbfounded about.

The conversation dumbfounded the Haggler.

Later, Ms. Masino e-mailed: “It’s become clear that we didn’t handle your questions as well as you should expect from a national retailer. We owe you an apology because one failed response has distracted from a broader discussion about taking care of customers.”

Apology accepted. Now, what’s with this phone-number demand for cash transactions? “We collect name, address and phone contacts for refunds,” she wrote, “even for small cash purchases, because it creates an audit trail that can be used to make certain each refund is delivered to a specific person and is not a fraudulent event.”

This makes sense only once you realize that the fraudulent events that worry Radio Shack, as Ms. Masino confirmed, are those that might be committed by employees, who could hand over cash they should not be handing over. Many retailers have an identical policy, she added. But the Haggler has encountered it only at Radio Shack. Regardless, the company’s suspicions about its staff members don’t seem a compelling reason to force customers to share personal information. Radio Shack needs either a better system or more employees that it trusts.

E-mail: haggler@nytimes.com. Keep it brief and family-friendly, include your hometown and go easy on the caps-lock key. Letters may be edited for clarity and length.

MEDIA + TECH: Debates and the Power of Live Event TV

October 15, 2012By Emily B. Hager, Fritzie Andrade, David Gillen, Joshua Brustein, Shayla Harris and Pedro Rosado

TimesCast Media + Tech: The debates’ influence on the broadcasters. | Cory Doctorow, digital activist and novelist. | Social media meets spoken word poetry.

Novelties: Computer Precision for Power Tools — Novelties

Now computers and their tireless calculations may bolster the skills of many people who want to create well-cut picture frames, inlays or furniture but lack the dexterity.

Alec Rivers, a Ph.D. student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and colleagues have created a prototype for a compact, computerized addition to power tools that automatically performs precision measuring and cutting.

The system, which has a tiny camera, motors and a video screen, takes part of the pain out of woodworking, by using what Mr. Rivers calls “tool GPS.”

You use the new device not by looking down at the wood you’re cutting, he said, but by watching a video screen mounted above the power tool. There, a dot shows the position of the tool bit — just as GPS on a dashboard or a smartphone shows the position of your car on Highway 88.

“As soon as you put the tool on the material, it knows where it is,” Mr. Rivers said. “The screen shows you the path you are on, as well as the pattern you’re going to cut.” When the bit comes within a quarter inch of the pattern, tiny motors in the device go to work, keeping the tool along its correct route.

Ilan E. Moyer, a graduate student in mechanical engineering at M.I.T., designed the hardware for the latest prototype of the device. “If you are straying from the path, going to the left,” failing to follow the exact design, he said, “the motors will shift the tool to the right to keep it on the path.”

Mr. Rivers said that “all you have to do is get within the ballpark freehand.” Then the “tool GPS” and small-scale computer adjustments guarantee a precise cut.

In an online video, Mr. Rivers demonstrates the system with a router that is carving a wooden map of the United States. Many other tools, including electric scissors and vinyl cutters, might also be controlled by a similar approach, he said.

He is putting the finishing touches on the software, though the device is still in prototype and far from the marketplace. Yet it’s not hard to imagine a day when the shelves of home-improvement stores are filled with such products.

“The next thing you know, this will be an automatic feature on power tools,” said Bre Pettis, chief executive of MakerBot Industries, which makes desktop 3-D printers.

Of course, computer-controlled equipment is already used widely in industry for machining. Throw the switch on an automatic milling machine, for example, and it cuts the same pattern repeatedly. But such machinery, which can cost thousands of dollars, may not be practical for many small businesses, not to mention do-it-yourselfers working in their garages.

Such installations may require not only the initial investment in equipment, but also extensive programming, said Thomas Klein, a co-founder of Equity Management Partners, a private equity firm in Cambridge, Mass., that acquires and operates precision-manufacturing companies. Mr. Klein heard of the invention through his work with M.I.T.’s Venture Mentoring Service, which advises aspiring companies. He has no investment or financial interest in the invention.

He said the M.I.T. technology, which is likely to cost far less than large computer-controlled industrial machines, might allow people in home workshops or in small businesses to take advantage of the benefits of precision machining.

“This technology is a game changer,” Mr. Klein said. “People think of manufacturing in terms of big factories, but there are a lot of manufacturing companies operating in niche markets.”

Patrick Hood-Daniel, owner of Build Your CNC, creates kits for machines that use what is known as computer numerical control, for small to midsize companies. He says he thinks the M.I.T. invention will offer many new possibilities, but mainly for hobbyists.

“This is a good product for artists and crafts people,” he said, predicting that it would find a home in many garages and workshops.

But the technology does have a drawback in comparison with fully automatic machines. “This device does require human attention at all times,” he said. Users cannot just put in a program, press a button and exit the room, leaving the machine to create a piece again and again.

BRIAN MATT, chief executive of Altitude, a product innovation firm in Somerville, Mass., agreed that the M.I.T. process was too slow and labor-intensive for making thousands of copies. “This is for small orders, or for doing one-of-a-kind” work, Mr. Matt said.

The best feature of the new system, he said, is its portability. Unlike large, computer-controlled milling machines that are free-standing and stationary, the M.I.T. device is portable and can therefore be used to carve material already installed in a wall or floor. “You could cut a precise pattern into a wall panel,” he said, “or add architectural details to floor paneling after it is installed.”

To make sure the router can find its way even when the lumber, plastic or sheet metal has no natural markings for the camera to spot, the user puts standard tape with black-and-white markings on the wood or other surface to be cut. “Then you pass the tool back and forth over the material,” Mr. Rivers said, and the camera scans in the images, stitching them together to create a surface map. Users of the tool can load in their own designs or download digital plans from the Internet.

Mr. Pettis of MakerBot welcomed the invention, and the era of computer control it might bring to power tools. He likened the innovation to the push to develop self-driving cars.

“Here’s another activity where we can use technology,” he said, “to help us compensate for our shaky hands and blurry vision.”

E-mail: novelties@nytimes.com.

The Cloud Factories: Data Centers in Rural Washington State Gobble Power

The technology giant created a stir here in 2006 when it bought about 75 acres of bean fields to build a giant data center, a digital warehouse to support various Internet services. Its voracious appetite for electricity would be fed by hydroelectric generators that work off the flow of the nearby Columbia River, and Microsoft officials pledged to operate their new enterprise with a focus on energy efficiency and environmental sensitivity.

“You’re talking about one of the largest corporations,” said Tim Culbertson, who was the general manager of the local utility at the time. “You’re talking Microsoft and Bill Gates. Wow!”

But for some in Quincy, the gee-whiz factor of such a prominent high-tech neighbor wore off quickly. First, a citizens group initiated a legal challenge over pollution from some of nearly 40 giant diesel generators that Microsoft’s facility — near an elementary school — is allowed to use for backup power.

Then came a showdown late last year between the utility and Microsoft, whose hardball tactics shocked some local officials.

In an attempt to erase a $210,000 penalty the utility said the company owed for overestimating its power use, Microsoft proceeded to simply waste millions of watts of electricity, records show. Then it threatened to continue burning power in what it acknowledged was an “unnecessarily wasteful” way until the fine was substantially cut, according to documents obtained by The New York Times.

“For a company of that size and that nature, and with all the ‘green’ things they advertised to me, that was an insult,” said Randall Allred, a utility commissioner and local farmer.

A Microsoft spokeswoman said the episode was “a one-time event that was quickly resolved.”

Internet-based industries have honed a reputation for sleek, clean convenience based on the magic they deliver to screens everywhere. At the heart of every Internet enterprise are data centers, which have become more sprawling and ubiquitous as the amount of stored information explodes, sprouting in community after community.

But the Microsoft experience in Quincy shows that when these Internet factories come to town, they can feel a bit more like old-time manufacturing than modern magic.

In Santa Clara, Calif., a hub of technology facilities in Silicon Valley, diesel emissions from generators at a Microsoft data center caught the attention of regulators for potentially threatening the health of workers at nearby businesses. Microsoft, which was notified by state regulators last year, says it has reduced its emissions.

Over the last few years, Quincy has become an unlikely technology outpost, with five data centers and a sixth under construction. Far from the software meccas of Northern California or Seattle, Quincy has barely 6,900 residents, two hardware stores, two supermarkets, no movie theater and a main drag, State Route 28, whose largest buildings are mostly food packers and processors. Its tallest building is a grain elevator.

“A farming community in the middle of a desert,” said Warren Morgan, the president of Double Diamond Fruit.

The remarkable scale of the Quincy data centers, and their power demands, have made this town something of a test tube for studying the planet’s exploding need to house and process digital information.

The data centers, which include Yahoo and Dell facilities, wound up in Quincy by way of the Columbia. The river flows 1,200 miles from the mountains of British Columbia to the spectacular gorge between Oregon and Washington, where the water crashes into the Pacific Ocean.

Along the way, about a dozen large hydroelectric dams tame the river, providing irrigation for farms and the cheap, plentiful power that has become a magnet for large agricultural operations and heavy industries like aluminum, steel, paper and chemical plants.

When Microsoft was searching the country for a location for its new installation, the Grant County Public Utility District, which owns two of the dams, says it offered the company rates that would range from 2.5 cents to 3.8 cents per kilowatt-hour in its first five years — far below the national industrial average of 6 cents to 7 cents, according to analysis based on federal figures by the Electric Power Research Institute. The power from dams is also highly reliable, a critical factor for data centers, which can crash with the slightest interruption.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: September 24, 2012

A previous version of this article misstated why Microsoft wasted millions of watts of electricity, according to records. It was an attempt to erase a $210,000 penalty the utility said the company owed for overestimating its power use, not underestimating its power use.

The Magic of Epic Mickey: Power of Illusion

It’s been quite a few years since the glory days of Disney platformers. Aladdin, The Lion King, Disney's Magical Quest - these titles and many more enchanted gamers by capitalizing on the magical nature of various Disney franchises, while at the same time providing a fun world and memorable gameplay experiences. But in the many years since gaming went three-dimensional, it looked like the Disney side-scroller was doomed to become a thing of the past - a forgotten relic from Disney’s gaming vault.

Just the sort of thing you’d expect to show up in Wasteland, in other words.

Disney’s Epic Mickey franchise has resurrected many bits, pieces and even characters from Disney’s past, all given second life thanks to The Wasteland - basically, the rug under which all of the company’s past is swept according to the Epic universe. But while Epic Mickey 2: The Power of Two (the sequel to the 2010 Wii title) is just around the corner, the mouse-fueled game that has me most excited is easily Epic Mickey: Power of Illusion for 3DS.

Both games release the same day, November 18, but Power of Illusion has particularly piqued my interest with its retro style. Not just a mere port of Epic Mickey 2, Illusion offers a full, standalone adventure - one that continues the Epic story, while also acting as a sequel to the long-lost Genesis classic Castle of Illusion.

As you might have guessed, Illusion is a side-scrolling platformer, but one that spans countless Disney franchises and has some modern tricks up its sleeves - like dual-screen functionality and the paint/thinner mechanic from the core Epic games. During a recent demo I had the chance to further explore the castle, this time journeying into the second wing, and thereby the streets of Aladdin’s Agrabah.

As far as gameplay is concerned, Agrabah is similar to Peter Pan’s London area. You can perform a spinning attack or throw paint globs with your brush for enemies at a distance. If you keep watch on the bottom screen, you’ll find areas where objects can be either erased or drawn in, manipulating the environment in such a way as to allow you to progress or even find a secret or two. But the world itself is what’s most impressive, harkening back to both the animated film and Al’s old Genesis title with startling accuracy.

The look of the game is superb - with excellent sprite work and some really incredible background design bringing these worlds to life. Developer DreamRift even went so far as to make use of original working files for the animated films, and that extra mile really paid off in terms of visuals. The number of different characters you’ll run into is also quite impressive - during my short demo, I ran into Genie, the Peddler, Cinderella, and Aladdin himself (hint: cool things happen if you rescue the titular hero).

Searching each area to find and rescue the various Disney characters is a great incentive to scour and revisit every level, as are the handful of collectible abilities. For instance, using the Scrooge ability summons a certain duck to jump around on his pogo stick and make havoc for enemies. Small touches like this are much-appreciated throwbacks to Disney’s grand past, and go a long way in making this game feel like a modern incarnation of those beloved titles.

What I’ve played of Epic Mickey: Power of Illusion has me really excited. Granted, it marks possibly the biggest waste of a magical carpet ever (why can’t I really fly the darn thing?!), but assuming it’s as fleshed out as I’m hoping it will be, this game could easily become one of the greatest new additions to the 3DS library in 2012.

The Cloud Factories: Data Centers in Rural Washington State Gobble Power

The technology giant created a stir here in 2006 when it bought about 75 acres of bean fields to build a giant data center, a digital warehouse to support various Internet services. Its voracious appetite for electricity would be fed by hydroelectric generators that work off the flow of the nearby Columbia River, and Microsoft officials pledged to operate their new enterprise with a focus on energy efficiency and environmental sensitivity.

“You’re talking about one of the largest corporations,” said Tim Culbertson, who was the general manager of the local utility at the time. “You’re talking Microsoft and Bill Gates. Wow!”

But for some in Quincy, the gee-whiz factor of such a prominent high-tech neighbor wore off quickly. First, a citizens group initiated a legal challenge over pollution from some of nearly 40 giant diesel generators that Microsoft’s facility — near an elementary school — is allowed to use for backup power.

Then came a showdown late last year between the utility and Microsoft, whose hardball tactics shocked some local officials.

In an attempt to erase a $210,000 penalty the utility said the company owed for overestimating its power use, Microsoft proceeded to simply waste millions of watts of electricity, records show. Then it threatened to continue burning power in what it acknowledged was an “unnecessarily wasteful” way until the fine was substantially cut, according to documents obtained by The New York Times.

“For a company of that size and that nature, and with all the ‘green’ things they advertised to me, that was an insult,” said Randall Allred, a utility commissioner and local farmer.

A Microsoft spokeswoman said the episode was “a one-time event that was quickly resolved.”

Internet-based industries have honed a reputation for sleek, clean convenience based on the magic they deliver to screens everywhere. At the heart of every Internet enterprise are data centers, which have become more sprawling and ubiquitous as the amount of stored information explodes, sprouting in community after community.

But the Microsoft experience in Quincy shows that when these Internet factories come to town, they can feel a bit more like old-time manufacturing than modern magic.

In Santa Clara, Calif., a hub of technology facilities in Silicon Valley, diesel emissions from generators at a Microsoft data center caught the attention of regulators for potentially threatening the health of workers at nearby businesses. Microsoft, which was notified by state regulators last year, says it has reduced its emissions.

Over the last few years, Quincy has become an unlikely technology outpost, with five data centers and a sixth under construction. Far from the software meccas of Northern California or Seattle, Quincy has barely 6,900 residents, two hardware stores, two supermarkets, no movie theater and a main drag, State Route 28, whose largest buildings are mostly food packers and processors. Its tallest building is a grain elevator.

“A farming community in the middle of a desert,” said Warren Morgan, the president of Double Diamond Fruit.

The remarkable scale of the Quincy data centers, and their power demands, have made this town something of a test tube for studying the planet’s exploding need to house and process digital information.

The data centers, which include Yahoo and Dell facilities, wound up in Quincy by way of the Columbia. The river flows 1,200 miles from the mountains of British Columbia to the spectacular gorge between Oregon and Washington, where the water crashes into the Pacific Ocean.

Along the way, about a dozen large hydroelectric dams tame the river, providing irrigation for farms and the cheap, plentiful power that has become a magnet for large agricultural operations and heavy industries like aluminum, steel, paper and chemical plants.

When Microsoft was searching the country for a location for its new installation, the Grant County Public Utility District, which owns two of the dams, says it offered the company rates that would range from 2.5 cents to 3.8 cents per kilowatt-hour in its first five years — far below the national industrial average of 6 cents to 7 cents, according to analysis based on federal figures by the Electric Power Research Institute. The power from dams is also highly reliable, a critical factor for data centers, which can crash with the slightest interruption.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: September 24, 2012

A previous version of this article misstated why Microsoft wasted millions of watts of electricity, according to records. It was an attempt to erase a $210,000 penalty the utility said the company owed for overestimating its power use, not underestimating its power use.

Novelties: Computer Precision for Power Tools — Novelties

Now computers and their tireless calculations may bolster the skills of many people who want to create well-cut picture frames, inlays or furniture but lack the dexterity.

Alec Rivers, a Ph.D. student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and colleagues have created a prototype for a compact, computerized addition to power tools that automatically performs precision measuring and cutting.

The system, which has a tiny camera, motors and a video screen, takes part of the pain out of woodworking, by using what Mr. Rivers calls “tool GPS.”

You use the new device not by looking down at the wood you’re cutting, he said, but by watching a video screen mounted above the power tool. There, a dot shows the position of the tool bit — just as GPS on a dashboard or a smartphone shows the position of your car on Highway 88.

“As soon as you put the tool on the material, it knows where it is,” Mr. Rivers said. “The screen shows you the path you are on, as well as the pattern you’re going to cut.” When the bit comes within a quarter inch of the pattern, tiny motors in the device go to work, keeping the tool along its correct route.

Ilan E. Moyer, a graduate student in mechanical engineering at M.I.T., designed the hardware for the latest prototype of the device. “If you are straying from the path, going to the left,” failing to follow the exact design, he said, “the motors will shift the tool to the right to keep it on the path.”

Mr. Rivers said that “all you have to do is get within the ballpark freehand.” Then the “tool GPS” and small-scale computer adjustments guarantee a precise cut.

In an online video, Mr. Rivers demonstrates the system with a router that is carving a wooden map of the United States. Many other tools, including electric scissors and vinyl cutters, might also be controlled by a similar approach, he said.

He is putting the finishing touches on the software, though the device is still in prototype and far from the marketplace. Yet it’s not hard to imagine a day when the shelves of home-improvement stores are filled with such products.

“The next thing you know, this will be an automatic feature on power tools,” said Bre Pettis, chief executive of MakerBot Industries, which makes desktop 3-D printers.

Of course, computer-controlled equipment is already used widely in industry for machining. Throw the switch on an automatic milling machine, for example, and it cuts the same pattern repeatedly. But such machinery, which can cost thousands of dollars, may not be practical for many small businesses, not to mention do-it-yourselfers working in their garages.

Such installations may require not only the initial investment in equipment, but also extensive programming, said Thomas Klein, a co-founder of Equity Management Partners, a private equity firm in Cambridge, Mass., that acquires and operates precision-manufacturing companies. Mr. Klein heard of the invention through his work with M.I.T.’s Venture Mentoring Service, which advises aspiring companies. He has no investment or financial interest in the invention.

He said the M.I.T. technology, which is likely to cost far less than large computer-controlled industrial machines, might allow people in home workshops or in small businesses to take advantage of the benefits of precision machining.

“This technology is a game changer,” Mr. Klein said. “People think of manufacturing in terms of big factories, but there are a lot of manufacturing companies operating in niche markets.”

Patrick Hood-Daniel, owner of Build Your CNC, creates kits for machines that use what is known as computer numerical control, for small to midsize companies. He says he thinks the M.I.T. invention will offer many new possibilities, but mainly for hobbyists.

“This is a good product for artists and crafts people,” he said, predicting that it would find a home in many garages and workshops.

But the technology does have a drawback in comparison with fully automatic machines. “This device does require human attention at all times,” he said. Users cannot just put in a program, press a button and exit the room, leaving the machine to create a piece again and again.

BRIAN MATT, chief executive of Altitude, a product innovation firm in Somerville, Mass., agreed that the M.I.T. process was too slow and labor-intensive for making thousands of copies. “This is for small orders, or for doing one-of-a-kind” work, Mr. Matt said.

The best feature of the new system, he said, is its portability. Unlike large, computer-controlled milling machines that are free-standing and stationary, the M.I.T. device is portable and can therefore be used to carve material already installed in a wall or floor. “You could cut a precise pattern into a wall panel,” he said, “or add architectural details to floor paneling after it is installed.”

To make sure the router can find its way even when the lumber, plastic or sheet metal has no natural markings for the camera to spot, the user puts standard tape with black-and-white markings on the wood or other surface to be cut. “Then you pass the tool back and forth over the material,” Mr. Rivers said, and the camera scans in the images, stitching them together to create a surface map. Users of the tool can load in their own designs or download digital plans from the Internet.

Mr. Pettis of MakerBot welcomed the invention, and the era of computer control it might bring to power tools. He likened the innovation to the push to develop self-driving cars.

“Here’s another activity where we can use technology,” he said, “to help us compensate for our shaky hands and blurry vision.”

E-mail: novelties@nytimes.com.

Drones and iPad Apps May Help in Power Failures

Facing more frequent storms that cripple electric distribution systems over big areas, utility companies are drafting iPads and military-style aerial surveillance robots to get the lights back on faster.

Much of their problem in restoring service quickly usually has to do with information and logistics. In the latest wave of power failures, on Thursday night and Friday morning, a line of extreme storms knocked out electricity to thousands in Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York and New Jersey. In some places, damage was so extensive, and so many roads were blocked, that utilities had not even finished assessing the problem by midday Friday.

After the powerful storm known as a derecho struck on June 29, East Coast utilities were forced to bring in help from as far away as Ontario and Oklahoma, and had to determine quickly where to put the borrowed crews to work, even before the roads were passable. Then they had to deliver poles, transformers, wires, crossbars and other parts to the precise locations where they were needed.

A prototype app for the iPad, developed by the Electric Power Research Institute, a nonprofit utility research consortium, is aimed at solving part of that problem. Here is how it works: The electric company preloads the iPad with data about the equipment in the field. With GPS, the device knows its location. A field worker can then point the device at a utility pole and quickly see an “augmented reality” view, showing precisely what kind of pole, crossbar, transformer and wire are present, and how the system is wired.

The technician selects the image of the parts that need replacing, and “click, click, it goes back to the loading dock,” where workers begin loading trucks with what is needed for that spot, said Clark Gellings, a senior researcher at the institute.

It even has a “Star Wars” name: Field Force Data Visualization. The Field Force, though, refers to the workers, not to the subliminal energy field sensed by the Jedi.

The industry is also testing remote-controlled drones to help it quickly count downed poles, wires and transformers on streets that are still impassable because of fallen trees.

The technology has helped the military find the enemy around a corner or over the next hill. Applying it to a broken distribution system is “a no-brainer,” said Matthew Olearczyk, a senior program manager at the Electric Power Research Institute.

His organization has been testing a drone at a test range operated by New Mexico State University, near Las Cruces. But it has been flying at 8,000 feet, probably much higher than needed; the solution is probably a much smaller drone that would fly at very low altitudes, Mr. Olearczyk said.

It is looking at the Hornet Maxi, a 25-pound helicopter that looks like a miniature of the real thing, sans pilot, or the Aeryon Scout, which has four rotor blades, one in each corner, and appears to have flown straight out of a science fiction movie. Other models look like toy airplanes and can be launched by a worker with a throw like a quarterback’s. Some drones have a wingspan of a mere 18 inches.

Simple optical cameras would probably do the trick, Mr. Olearczyk said, although other sensors might be added.

Southern Company will try the drones first, in Alabama, he said.

But one problem is getting approval from the Federal Aviation Administration, which has been slow to approve the use of drones over populated areas; for one thing, they cannot see other aircraft and thus are more collision-prone.

Mr. Olearczyk suggests that a governor could declare a state of emergency, giving the utility the ability to conduct a flight of two or three hours to gather information that would also be useful to road crews.

John Schwartz contributed reporting.