Short Attention Span Friday by George Ziemann -- April 4, 2008 After spending the last couple of weeks on far too serious subjects, it seems like a good time to take a quick look at some of the other things which are going on that caught my eye but I haven't taken time to address. Cell phones could be worse for your health than smoking, we were told this week. This leads me to wonder whether ringtones cause brain damage, or is the willingness to pay more for a 10-second clip than the song is worth merely a symptom? Apple was the leading music retailer last week, edging out Wal-Mart by something like 2 percent. I find this rather amusing, considering how Doug Morris (Universal Music) and Edgar Bronfman (Warner Music) both seem to view Steve Jobs as the enemy. I think that no matter what you're selling, if the person selling the most of it for you is your enemy, you might need to rethink what the hell you're doing. I was really hoping that the RIAA would be done with their 2007 statistics by now. They're not. The less business they do, the longer it takes them to add it up. The New York Times is reporting that "MySpace will spin out its popular MySpace Music service as an independent joint venture in partnership with Universal Music, Sony BMG and Warner Music Group." The three largest record labels can create a business partnership together? Seems just a little anti-competitive to me, but what do I know? On the legal side, after a mere five years of lawsuits, we're finally getting some rulings on the basic concepts. District Judge Nancy Gertner has displayed a complete understanding of the entire peer-to-peer process in a Boston case, where she concludes that "making available" is not copyright infringement and an IP address does not identify a person, among other things. It's worth reading. Stevie Wonder took skiing lessons last week, but the Shakira sex tape story was an April Fool's joke. But to find professional-level foolishness, we've got to look at the Department of Homeland Security, which just released a list of 137 cities most "vulnerable to a terrorist attack." New Orleans is at the top of the list, which seems rather ludicrous at this point in time. Boise, Idaho is in the top 10, but I think that only takes Russian terrorists into account, who need the potatoes to make more vodka. As it turns out, the federally funded analysis did not measure "...whether a city would make an attractive target to a terrorist...," just whether or not they're "vulnerable." Your tax dollars at work.