What NBA players' union? The decertification effort - and a possible replacement effort

[12:30 PM - CORRECTIONS AND RETRACTIONS. IT'S NOT "DECERTIFICATION," BUT A "DISCLAIMER OF INTEREST."]

Hope you like college basketball. It looks more and more like that will be the major basketball entertainment in the United States this year. The NBA players' union is decertifying:

The union has abandoned its right to negotiate on behalf of the players in order to sue the NBA in antitrust court for massive damages within the next 48 hours, according to its revamped legal team. The players in attendance said the decision was unanimous — that the league had backed them into a corner with ultimatum after ultimatum, even after the players gave back the equivalent of nearly $3 billion over a 10-year deal by lowering their locked-in share of the league’s revenue. That move covered the league’s annual losses of $300 million, which union chief Billy Hunter again characterized as “exaggerated.”...

The move will shift the process from the bargaining room to the court system, endangering the season and infuriating Stern, who said on ESPN minutes after the union’s announcement that players had “been badly misled.” Stern dismissed the union’s move as a negotiating ploy that had been in the works since at least February 2010, when Kessler, in Stern’s telling, informed the commissioner that the union would go this route if talks broke down.

And while comparison was made to the NHL season, which was lost, comparison was also made to the NFL's legal wranglings in the courtroom earlier this year, which may not necessarily be a precedent for what will happen with the NBA.

Labor experts say the appellate ruling that reinstated the NFL’s lockout, after a lower court halted it, is a tricky opinion that did not provide the complete victory the NFL sought. Legal precedent for this kind of case is thin....

Speaking of precedent, what about the use of replacement players? If the NBA can't get these players to play, then how about grabbing some other ones who would presumably play for much lower salaries?

One would think that since this is a lockout (imposed by the owners) rather than a strike (instigated by the players), this option wouldn't work. But in this labor fight, anything is possible. The NFL action earlier this year was also a lockout, but the NFL owners were not willing to say that they COULDN'T use replacement players.

It would presumably take a good deal of lawyering to get this to happen, but if Michael Jordan and other new owners want to get some revenue coming in, and if they want to enforce a lower percentage, why not get some new players to do it?

One potential issue is that the NBA, more than any other league, is star-driven. But the use of replacement players could be very effective, if employed. It was certainly effective during the 1987 NFL dispute:

While the strikers lost an average of $15,000 per game (approximately $80 million in salaries altogether), the average owner's profit per game actually rose from $800,000 before the work stoppage to $921,000 during the strike....

Realizing they had no chance of winning concessions, the union's representatives voted to return to work on Thursday, October 15.

Now in this case I'm not sure what will happen with the TV revenue. If the NBA has to make up the lost games to the networks, there could be a loss in that department. But if the move results in the NBA's preferred 47-53 scenario, it could pay off in the end.

Of course, the NFL owners got to twist the knife one more time in that instance.

However, the owners refused to allow the last holdouts to play the following Sunday, costing them another paycheck.

And I wouldn't put it past the NBA owners to pull something like that again.

For the record, when Stern was recently asked about replacement players, he said that it was premature to talk about that. But it's probably being discussed behind closed doors.

And the meetings industry gets around and is connected...

But I'm not the only person sharing stuff on Google+. Shawn Rossi shared an item that discussed advances in meetings technology. Nor surprising, mobile technology was one of the twelve items discussed.

Recent data from MPI’s FutureWatch 2011 Survey and others indicate that more than 80% of meeting professionals use smartphones and other mobile devices in their jobs. Yet, relatively few planners (9%) have used mobile applications yet for their own meetings. This is about to change. There will be a very significant adoption of mobile apps for events in 2012 and 2013. If a meeting does not have a mobile app, the attendees will soon wonder why the meeting organizers are behind the times.

More here.

And the backup industry has redundancy...

Here's something that I initially shared on the Google+ page for the Empoprise-BI business blog. It's an item by Art Wittman that begins as follows:

Data deduplication repeats a pattern we've seen dozens of times.

Wittman was talking about business patterns in the market, but he might as well have been talking about the technology.

Evolution of the pages associated with the Empoprise-BI business blog

Ever since I started the Empoprises series of blogs, I have always thought about creating a conversation area, separate from each blog itself but somehow complimenting the blog in question.

My first foray into this was to use FriendFeed to create pages that were associated with the blogs. For the Empoprise-BI business blog, the associated FriendFeed page is at http://friendfeed.com/empoprise-bi. Since FriendFeed is an aggregation service, I attached various feeds to the page - not only the Empoprise-BI business blog itself, but also other business-related feeds that I thought would complement the blog content. All of these feed into the Empoprise-BI FriendFeed page automatically, requiring no effort on my part.

And perhaps that was the problem. With everything on auto-pilot, I wasn't necessarily motivated to manually add content to the page. I have to confess that I don't even visit the page much any more. I just looked at the four subscribers to the page, and I don't know that I've ever interacted with any of them.

Facebook appeared to be a more promising avenue, especially since there are many more people on Facebook than on FriendFeed. So I created the https://www.facebook.com/pages/Empoprise-BI/98783891478 page. Facebook does not allow an unlimited number of feeds per page, and perhaps that's a good thing. The only thing feeding automatically is the blog itself, both via a native Facebook feed and via NetworkedBlogs. And the subscriber, Greg Guitarbuster, is someone with whom I DO interact.

This Facebook page is clearly a promising avenue for interaction with blog readers, but I just need to commit to it more.

Which brings us to the most recent page associated with the blog - the Google+ page. The full stream is at https://plus.google.com/b/109749273915145133943/; this includes the feeds of the friends of the page. The items that I specifically posted to the Empoprise-BI page are at https://plus.google.com/b/109749273915145133943/109749273915145133943/posts.
At present, all of the content is entered manually - although if Google ever allows feeds to automatically populate business pages, I'll probably add the feed for the blog.

I'm interacting more with this page as of late, probably because of the "shiny new toy" syndrome (Facebook business pages were only introduced over the last few days). I can't definitively say that the Facebook page or the Google+ page is better - as far as I'm concerned, they both have possibilities - especially since some Facebook users will never join Google+, and some Google+ users will never join Facebook.

Of course, there are other ways to interact with the blog. The easiest way to do so is via the Disqus-provided comment functionality.

And Is hould remind you that if you just want to consume content, but don't necessarily want to interact, you don't necessarily have to come to the blog itself. You can subscribe to http://feeds.feedburner.com/empoprise-bi in your favorite feed reader or in your browser itself.

Mister Phone, meet Ms. Phone (Susan A. Kitchens on Samsung Alias cel fone pix transfer)

After posting tips for Motorola Q, LG env3, and iPhone 4 users, I ended up calling myself Mister Phone.

But I'm not the only one who shares helpful mobile phone tips.

Susan A. Kitchens was recently trying to transfer cell phone pictures from a Samsung Alias phone to her computer. She ran into problems, but when she finally figured out how to do it, she blogged her solution.

Now I'll grant that only a small percentage of online people blog, but these tips can invariably help other people who run into the same problem and find the blog posts via a search engine.

So more...um, power to Susan and others who share these tips that benefit others.

Stupid Windows command line tricks

Inspired by this post in Maybe Not Safe for Work. (That one is.)

Of course, this version of Windows came out after 2003.

Joe Gerrity has a different view on NCAA popularity during the NBA lockout

Yesterday, I published a post entitled NBA Basketball Veterans, Your Absence is Now Irrelevant. My argument was that as NCAA basketball kicks in, people are going to miss the NBA less and less. Loss of a basketball season? We'll worry about it after March Madness:

David Stern and Derek Fisher, you can take some time off now.

Come back to the fans at the end of March 2012.

If the fans are still there.

I also talked about the Quicken Loans Carrier Classic that took place last night, attended by President Barack Obama (a/k/a The First Hoopster). I didn't watch the game myself - I was listening to the USC game online - but apparently it was an event, even if the final score wasn't all that close.

Even on a night when he played the first outdoor college basketball game on an aircraft carrier and met the President of the United States, freshman guard Travis Trice wanted just a little bit more.

Trice and the MSU men’s basketball team took on No. 1 North Carolina in the Quicken Loans Carrier Classic on Friday aboard the USS Carl Vinson in San Diego. The Spartans battled to the end but lost, 67-55, and Trice said the only thing that could have made the night better was putting a mark in the win column.

“It was great,” Trice said. “You can’t make up a better first game, but I wish we could have came out and won. It still hurts that we lost tonight.”

Prior the game, President Barack Obama talked to both teams before addressing the crowd of 8,111 on the flight deck of the Carl Vinson. There was a flyover, and all the pageantry you’d expect out of such an event.

But in the early stages of the game, the play on the floor didn’t quite stack up. Both teams struggled to get in an offensive flow while adjusting to the unfamiliar surroundings.

The lead was traded between the teams, but North Carolina won in the end. And they'll move on, with Michigan State going to Madison Square Garden on Monday night.

So college basketball has begun, and women's college basketball is also beginning, and people - especially in cities with top-ranked teams - are probably starting to say "LeBron who?"

However, it's fair to say that my opinion is not universally shared, as Joe Gerrity notes.

As someone who was brought up watching professional sports, I just can’t get into lower levels of competition. Be it baseball, football, basketball, or even stuff like soccer, I just don’t care if it’s not the top level.

Gerrity then performs an apples-to-apples comparison, which I encourage you to read. His point? Some apples are really tasty; other apples may be good, but they don't compare to the best apple (in Gerrity's case, the Honeycrisp - or the NBA).

But the NBA apple is starting to get worms in it.

In a negotiation, you have your negotiators, and the people who are represented by the negotiators. The negotiators know that the people behind them will have to approve any deal that is proposed. And in both cases, it will be hard to get that approval.

On the owners' side, you have new owners such as Michael Jordan who have recently bought teams in small markets and don't want to lose any more money than they've alreday lost. What is their incentive to sign up for a mediocre deal?

On the players' side, you have a group of people who have already backtracked from their former 57% share of the proceeds. What is their incentive to sign up for a mediocre deal?

So now there's talk of the owners moving from a 50% player share to a 47% player share, This will not speed up the negotiations. There's also talk of the players filing for decertification of the union. This will not speed up the negotiations either.

And people are going to start looking at what happened on February 16, 2005. That was the day that the National Hockey League cancelled the remainder of the 2004-2005 season during that sport's lockout. Granted, the NHL is not as popular as the NBA in the United States, but it's more and more likely that we'll see something similar in the NBA come 2012.

There's business, and then there's business

From the junk mail folder of one of my accounts.

I'm not sure that I'd classify both the "You have been invited to hook up for sex" messages and the "Create a resume that will get you working" message under the same category, but I guess they both have their similarities.

And for the record, it appears (based upon this limited sample) that the sex purveyors are twice as determined as the resume writers.

Is Francis Gurry in an unwinnable war? (Copyrighting Azerbaijani heritage)

My analytics reported a sudden uptick in activity for a post that I wrote back on October 10. The post was entitled Was Francis Gurry Right? (Patenting the Internet). Gurry heads the World Intellectual Property Organization. In the post, I engaged in a "what if" scenario, wondering what would have happened if a company such as Xerox had patented some of the underlying technologies that support today's Internet. My conclusion - there wouldn't have been an Internet, because Xerox would have used those underlying technologies to connect photocopiers rather than people. Of course, tools are not always used for their intended purpose.

Howard Cosell: "I am perturbed by the juvenile antics of certain individuals at the National Broadcasting Corporation who continue to transmit electronic representations of their posteriors to yours truly"

However, I had the sneaking suspicion that the post was not receiving activity because of my witty prose. I concluded that Francis Gurry must have done something newsworthy again, and that people were therefore...um...stumbling upon my post while looking for the news that they really wanted to hear.

In the process of searching for the latest news on Gurry, I ran across this item, which begins as follows:

The Director General of the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) Francis Gurry responded to the Azerbaijani Copyright Agency's appeal made in connection with larceny and misappropriation of samples of Azerbaijani folklore, works of authors and other samples of the intangible heritage by the Armenians.

Oh boy. It looks like Francis Gurry has gotten himself entangled in an ethnic war. You know how Armenia hates Turkey? Well, Armenia itself is the recipient of the hatred of Azerbaijan - which made things pretty uncomfortable when both were part of the Soviet Union - and before that time.

The item that I cited didn't provide Gurry's response in detail, but said the following:

The WIPO Director General's letter addressed to the Azerbaijani side stresses that all the facts will be considered. The letter expresses hope for further good relations with the Azerbaijani Copyright Agency.

Spoken like a true bureaucrat.

For other views on this, see what folklore enthusiast Scott M had to say in response to the Copyright Agency of the Republic of Azerbaijan. The latter contains some disconcerting news for Trololo lovers:

The same problem occurred in connection with "Vokaliz" work, created on the basis of Azerbaijan folk music. As it has been stated in the letter, addressed to WIPO, as a result of illegal use of that song by Armenians requirements of the Law " About the legal protection of expressions of Azerbaijan folklore" (incorrect indication of origin) as well as respecting article of Bern Convention, provided for protection of unknown author's work, as well as folklore works, and also requirements of respecting articles stipulated for protection of arrangement and private non-property right were breached.

NBA Basketball Veterans, Your Absence is Now Irrelevant

As the NBA lockout has progressed, there have been various drop-dead dates. If we don't reach a deal by date X, then action Y is going to happen.

All of these dates have passed, and the world has not ended.

The latest one was the drop-dead date that was supposed to occur on Wednesday at 2:00 pm Eastern time. [8:00 AM - WHOOPS, I MEAN 2:00 PM PACIFIC TIME. BUT IN THE END, IT DIDN'T MATTER.] If the players didn't agree to a deal by that time, the owners would pull their offer and replace it with a worse one. So what happened? David Stern...um, stopped the clock.

But November 11 will truly be a drop-dead date. That day happens to be Veterans Day in the United States, and it also happens to be the day that the "veteran" players and owners of the National Basketball Association will find themselves in a world of hurt.

You see, until this date, NBA basketball really didn't face any big issues - other than those people who depended upon income from the games that were cancelled in November. But even then, all of the outside pressure was on both parties to conclude a deal so that we can have basketball back.

However, basketball will come back on November 11.

It just won't be under the auspices of the National Basketball Association.

Have you been missing basketball and want to see some people play? Well, there are a bunch of NCAA Mens' Division I games that are taking place on the 11th. (All times are Eastern.)

2:00 PM NW Missouri State at UMKC
3:00 PM Hartford vs. Sacred Heart*
4:30 PM Montana State at Arizona State
5:00 PM Northeastern at Boston University
5:00 PM Johnson and Wales (Den) at Brown
5:00 PM Eastern Illinois at Indiana State
5:30 PM Fairfield vs. Quinnipiac*
6:00 PM Montreat College at Presbyterian
6:30 PM Simpson University at Utah Valley
7:00 PM Maryland-Eastern Shore at George Washington
7:00 PM Jacksonville at Florida State
7:00 PM Stony Brook at Indiana
7:00 PM Anderson IND at IUPUI
7:00 PM MIT at Harvard
7:00 PM Milligan at East Carolina
7:00 PM North Carolina-Asheville at North Carolina State
7:00 PM Loyola (MD) at Wake Forest
7:00 PM Suffolk University at New Hampshire
7:00 PM Cornell at St. Bonaventure
7:00 PM Howard at Bowling Green
7:00 PM Monmouth at Villanova
7:00 PM Covenant at Coastal Carolina
7:00 PM Lees McRae at Appalachian State
7:00 PM St. Peter's at Buffalo
7:00 PM Lake Erie College at Detroit
7:00 PM Illinois-Chicago at Eastern Michigan
7:00 PM Long Island at Hofstra
7:00 PM Lafayette at La Salle
7:00 PM Randolph College at Liberty
7:00 PM Navy at Longwood
7:00 PM Tennessee Tech at Miami (FL)
7:00 PM Northern Illinois at Purdue
7:00 PM Delaware at Radford
7:00 PM Rider at Robert Morris
7:00 PM Western Carolina at South Carolina
7:00 PM UNC Greensboro at Tennessee
7:15 PM Bethune-Cookman at Stetson
7:30 PM Louisiana-Monroe at Ole Miss
7:30 PM Dartmouth at Rutgers
7:30 PM Roanoke at Furman
7:30 PM Holy Cross at Charleston
7:30 PM American University at Richmond
7:30 PM Alabama State at Marshall
7:30 PM Valparaiso at Georgia Southern
7:30 PM Southern Utah vs. UC Davis*
7:30 PM Houston Baptist at Campbell
7:30 PM Cheyney at Coppin State
7:30 PM Rhode Island at George Mason
7:30 PM Pennsylvania at UMBC
7:30 PM North Carolina Central at Charlotte
7:30 PM St. Francis (PA) at Virginia Commonwealth
8:00 PM McNeese State at Auburn
8:00 PM USC Upstate at Arkansas
8:00 PM Florida A&M at Georgia Tech
8:00 PM Wofford at Georgia
8:00 PM Saint Joseph's at Western Kentucky
8:00 PM Bucknell at Minnesota
8:00 PM South Dakota at Nebraska
8:00 PM Texas A&M-CC at Oklahoma State
8:00 PM Idaho State at Oklahoma
8:00 PM Arkansas-Little Rock at Tulsa
8:00 PM Gardner-Webb at Clemson
8:00 PM St Gregory's at North Texas
8:00 PM Yale vs. Central Connecticut State*
8:00 PM Guilford at Davidson
8:00 PM Chicago State at Iowa
8:00 PM Charleston Southern at Kansas State
8:00 PM Austin Peay at Middle Tennessee
8:00 PM Le Tourneau at Northwestern State
8:00 PM McMurry at Southern Methodist
8:00 PM Centenary at Stephen F. Austin
8:00 PM Florida Gulf Coast at TCU
8:00 PM University of Mary at Green Bay
8:05 PM North Carolina A&T at Creighton
8:15 PM Fort Valley State at Lipscomb
8:30 PM Harris Stowe at Murray State
8:30 PM Tennessee State at Saint Louis
8:30 PM Texas Lutheran at Texas State
8:30 PM Arkansas State at Lamar
8:30 PM Dillard at Southern University
9:00 PM Montana at Colorado State
9:00 PM Miles at Jacksonville State
9:00 PM Elon at Massachusetts
9:00 PM New Orleans at New Mexico
9:00 PM Oral Roberts at West Virginia
9:00 PM Texas-Pan American at DePaul
9:00 PM Loyola (IL) at Illinois
9:00 PM North Dakota State at San Francisco
9:00 PM Alabama A&M at Tulane
9:05 PM Brigham Young at Utah State
9:05 PM UT-San Antonio at UTEP
9:30 PM CO Christian at Boise State
9:30 PM Army at Air Force
9:30 PM Portland State at Denver
9:30 PM Claflin at South Carolina State
9:30 PM Troy at Texas Tech
10:00 PM Central Arkansas at Stanford
10:00 PM Cal Lutheran at UC Riverside
10:00 PM Ft. Lewis at Colorado
10:00 PM Illinois State at Fresno State
10:00 PM Grand Canyon at UNLV
10:00 PM Missouri State at Nevada
10:00 PM Chapman at UC Santa Barbara
10:00 PM Fresno Pacific at Saint Mary's
10:00 PM Northern New Mexico at Weber State
10:05 PM Redlands at Cal State Fullerton
10:30 PM Bryant University at San Diego State
10:30 PM California Merced at Santa Clara
10:35 PM Menlo College at Sacramento State
11:00 PM Cal State Northridge at USC
11:30 PM Northern Arizona vs. Louisiana-Lafayette*
11:59 PM Citadel vs. Virginia Military*

And that's just the mens' Division I. That doesn't count the lower divisions, or the women.

All of those people who have been yearning for basketball will be able to find more than enough basketball to follow. And if television and radio stations start using these games to fill their gaps in NBA coverage, then people will be able to hear basketball whenever they want. To emphasize the point, Barack Obama is scheduled to attend the Quicken Loans Carrier Classic between the Michigan State Spartans and the University of North Carolina Tar Heels. If there are no Bulls, then the First Hoopster will attend college basketball. And people will be watching on ESPN (7:00 pm Eastern, 4:00 pm Pacific).

David Stern and Derek Fisher, you can take some time off now.

Come back to the fans at the end of March 2012.

If the fans are still there.

[SEE NOVEMBER 12 FOLLOW-UP.]

(empo-tuulwey) Do you want to read this blog post fifty years from now?

A lot of us are involved in the production of information. Maybe you're just planting crops on your farm, or perhaps you are writing the leading business blog of Ontario, California, but in either case you are creating information that will be stored somewhere.

Will you be able to retrieve that information the day after you created it? In many cases, you will be able to do so?

How about a year from now? Ten years from now? Fifty years from now?

The answer to that question partially depends upon how the data is stored.

Enter the microfilm folks. Take, for example, Heritage Microfilm, who has a particular mission:

Our Mission

It is the mission of Heritage Microfilm to be the world's leading provider of historical newspaper content, focusing on individual people and the events that impacted their lives. Through constant improvement, we are committed to providing a high volume of quality content via innovative and useful delivery methods. Heritage Microfilm will demonstrate this commitment by empowering creative employees who possess a high level of personal accountability and a dedication to excellence.

As can be ascertained by its company name, the company uses microfilm as its preferred preservation tool. Needless to say, Heritage Microfilm explains why they made this choice:

The life of digital images stored on magnetic media (hard disks or tapes) is about three to five years. After that the files begin to deteriorate. Systems that rely on tapes for long-term storage require a "refresh" by copying the data onto new tapes every 3 to 5 years. Most CD's have a media life of 5 to 10 years. Most CDs contain a layer of light reflective/reactive material that decays over time. These same LE's apply to DVD's. Microfilm, as created by Heritage Microfilm, has an LE of 500. (Film created prior to about 1980 was on a type of plastic [acetate] that gave the film an LE of 100 years.) Poor processing, poor handling, environmental contaminants, and especially humidity and heat will substantially shorten the LE of microfilm. Overall, microfilm has an LE of at least 25 times that of any other available media. ADVANTAGE: Microfilm.

Of course, it's always valuable to check multiple sources - especially when you consider that Heritage Microfilm might be a tiny bit biased regarding non-microfilm media. Especially when some of the claims violate common sense:

Dear Cecil:

In 1994 I read an article in the British music journal The Wire that claimed that compact discs have a life expectancy of ten years. I have seen references to an article in Scientific American making the same claim and heard that this has been confirmed many times by other studies. The only thing is, uh, I've had a few CDs for more than ten years, and they play fine. So what exactly is the deal? Does the speed of degradation have to do with how often the CD is played? I mean, most of the time, my CDs are sitting in their cases on my shelf. Please tell me whether I should be getting my Sonny Rollins fix from some other recording technology (like, say, vinyl).

— Michael R., Chicago

Cecil Adams provided a comprehensive answer to Michael's question, noting in passing that sometimes the true problem is not the preservation of the media, but the preservation of ways to access the media. (Can YOU play your eight-track tapes?) But in answer to Michael's specific question, Adams notes that the statistics quoted by Heritage Microfilm aren't quite as cut and dry as was implied:

The longevity of CDs and other optical storage media is controversial. CD manufacturers generally claim their products will last 100 years and possibly much longer, based on "accelerated aging" tests. (Typically these involve subjecting the media to heat.) Skeptics say five to ten years is more like it, but that seems alarmist where nonrewritable CDs are concerned. The "CD rot" stories that circulated years ago apparently sprang from substandard disks sold by a CD bootlegger in Italy, in which the aluminum oxidized after a short time. That won't or at least shouldn't happen with a properly made CD, nor will such a disk wear out with repeated use (although scratches and other abuse may cause it to fail).

Adam's conclusion:

The truth is, nobody knows.

But there's one medium that has stood the test of time. Jeff Rothenberg, author of the Scientific American article that Michael R. and Cecil Adams both referenced, subsequently expanded the article into a paper Rothenberg's 1999 paper includes a picture (on page 4 of 18) of various types of media storage, including paper tape, magnetic tape, 5 1/4" floppy disks, 8" floppy disks...and a replica of the Rosetta Stone. Rothenberg comments:

In addition to being quite legible after nearly 22 centuries, the Rosetta Stone’s preservation is directly attributable to the fact that its import (i.e., that it consisted of three versions of the same text, one of which, being Greek, might provide the key to deciphering the lost Egyptian scripts) was visually apparent to the French lieutenant (Pierre Francois Xavier Bouchard) who was in charge of the squad that discovered the stone. The digital storage media shown surrounding the replica have already failed to remain readable for 1/100th as long as the Rosetta Stone.

(It should be noted that Rothenberg defines "readable" to refer to both the physical preservation of the media and, as noted above, the preservation of ways to access the media.)

So if I really thought that this post merited preservation for future millennia, I would write it in stone (eHow explains how to do this) and translate it into other languages (using a facility such as translate.google.com).

I don't know that this post is really worth preserving.

أنا لا أعرف أن هذا المنصب هو حقا يستحق المحافظة عليه.

(Just in case I'm wrong.)

(empo-tuulwey) Social media protests - how ANOTHER book on Amazon (written by Mr. Sandusky) is getting a lot of negative attention

Amazon sells a lot of products, and provides the capability for people to review the products.

Google+ user ken mark has noted that people are suddenly paying a lot of attention to this ten-year old product, even though it's not currently available.

The book? An autobiography by a man who goes by the name of Jerry Sandusky.

The title? Touched.

It seems that a lot of people have recently chosen to review the book, although it appears that they haven't read the book. Perhaps they've read something else, such as a grand jury transcript.

Most of the reviews are negative - I only found four positive reviews of the book. One was written back in 2005, back when most of the population didn't know the full story. With what we now know, it's sad to read these words.

Whe you finish this book you wish it was longer. Like a good movie you do not want it to end. It describes a man who has done some great things to help others. How many college football coaches would turn down 3 head coaching opportunities at big-time schools to stay in "Happy Valley". A couple who could not have their own children. Then adopted 6. Not all in infancy. A man who took in foster children and at the same time ran the defense for one of college football's elite teams for 23 years. A kid who never grew up. Yet a person who is so selfless it defies human ego. Everyone reading this should do themselves a moral favor and contribute money to the Second Mile. (...).

Again, this was written back in 2005 - something that people reading the review in 2011 should have realized. The sad thing about this is that unless you were among those few who knew that Happy Valley wasn't so happy, you'd be inclined to take the book at face value, and join in the praise of this wonderful man who cares about kids so much. That's the tragedy here - and, in a different way, it's the tragedy of why just-fired coach Joe Paterno is getting negative press from some people - for someone who reportedly stood for ethics and morality, the claim that he fulfilled the letter of the law rings rather hollow.

The other three positive reviews of Sandusky's book were all written recently - and all were sarcastic.

But this whole exercise goes to show that tools are sometimes used in ways other than originally planned. Amazon provided a facility for book reviews, and people are now using it to express their disgust at the person who wrote the book.

Stupid telnet tricks (a really old hope)

If you've been around online communities for a while, you know that there are a variety of different ways to communicate online. One of those methods is a service called telnet.

Telnet is a protocol that allows you to connect to remote computers (called hosts) over a TCP/IP network (such as the Internet). You use software called a telnet client on your computer to make a connection to a telnet server (i.e., the remote host). Once your telnet client establishes a connection to the remote host, your client becomes a virtual terminal, allowing you to communicate with the remote host from your computer.

If you're only used to 21st century operating systems, telnet may seem a little strange at first. But if you've ever seen the MS-DOS operating system, perhaps the best way to describe telnet is like MS-DOS over a network.

I recently learned that there is a built-in telnet client for Windows 7. You just have to turn it on. Fernando Fonseca describes how to do this:

1.Click Start, and then click Control Panel.

2. On the Control Panel Home page, click Programs.

3. In the Programs and Features section, click Turn Windows features on or off.

4. If the User Account Control dialog box appears, confirm that the action it displays is what you want, and then click Continue.

5. In the Windows Features list, select Telnet Client, and then click OK.

6. Go to start and type telnet

So once you get your telnet client up and running, what can you do with it?

One thing that you can do is log in to a BBS. There is a listing of telnet-accessible bulletin board systems.

And there's one more thing you can do. Fernando Fonseca suggests that you could watch an ASCII version of Star Wars.

To do so, type the following in your telnet client:

o towel.blinkenlights.nl

Yes, the entire Star Wars Episode 4 movie, done in ASCII art. ASCII art is so old that it predates telnet - I used to use a typewriter to create a simple version of ASCII art.

It doesn't appear that George Lucas has ever sued over this re-creation. Which is good.

Everyone's a dummy - my review of Jesse Stay's Google+ for Dummies, Portable Edition

I love it when I make detailed plans that go completely awry.

Even before I received my copy of Jesse Stay's Google+ for Dummies: Portable Edition, I was musing upon the nature of printed books about technical topics. (Actually, I started to muse about this when Shel Israel was talking about his progress in writing Twitterville - when it became clear that it would take months to write the book, I wondered if it would be out of date by the time Israel actually published it.) I really began thinking about this AFTER I ordered the book - you see, a few days after I ordered the book, Google announced the long-awaited availability of business pages. Unless Stay had advance notice of this and was not prevented from talking about it, I figured that Stay's book would be out of date before I even got it.

According to the U.S. Postal Service, I'd receive the book on Thursday. So I figured that I could spend Wednesday night musing upon the nature of book publishing in today's age, and get all of that out of the way BEFORE I read, and reviewed, Stay's book.

You can guess what happened. The book arrived today - Wednesday - before I got a chance to write my musings.

So rather than doing that, I'm launching straight into my review of the book. It's been years since I've read a Dummies book - not because of any intellectual superiority of my own, but just because I haven't read one. And, of course, I've been following Stay for years. And, of course, I have a deep interest in Google+ (I read somewhere - page 47 - that you should write about things you're passionate about). I was curious how the Dummies format in general and Stay's writing in particular could benefit me, a somewhat experienced user of Google+ and other tools.

I intentionally did something - as I read the book, I kept a running list of comments in a Google+ thread. This not only allowed me to remember my thoughts as I read the book, but also allowed for possible interaction with others as I read.

After reading good chunks of the book and thinking about it, here are my comments:

• Stay and the Dummies people answered my question about book updates right off the bat. Obviously Stay's book isn't the first book that had the potential to become outdated quickly. The last paragraph of the Introduction included a link to receive updates to the book, The printed link was www.dummies.com/go/googleplusfordummiesportableedition - this link redirected you to another page on the Dummies site, which included a link to https://plus.google.com/u/0/102328323939973097344/posts. Not only is this a page in Google+ itself, but it also happens to be one of the business pages that wasn't available until after the book was already published. So yes, you can get updates.
• Stay identified his target audience as people who were familiar with older social media services such as Facebook, but who weren't familiar with Google+. Stay therefore took the approach of comparing the way that Google+ works to the way that Facebook works - although sometimes even Facebook users might not be familiar with some Facebook features, such as lists. To accommodate these users, there is a Facebook page about the book - https://www.facebook.com/googleplusportable - and Stay spends some time talking about Facebook when warranted.
• A Dummies book - or any book, for that matter - is not going to answer every specific question that every person will ever have about a topic. Heck, this is explicitly described as a "Portable Edition" - and therefore the book isn't going to talk about topics that would be esoteric to most of the audience, such as FriendFeed or netbook limitations. One relevant omission that I did find - in Chapter 1, when Stay described the procedures to create and set up a Google+ account, Stay neglected to mention that Google+, unlike some other Google services, is only intended for people who are 18 years of age or older. (At least this week; this could change by next week.) This has been a big issue for some users, and probably should have been mentioned in the book. Stay does mention the whole "real names vs. pseudonyms" controversy, however.
• If you think that you already know everything that there is to know about Google+, think again. I found it very helpful to go through the steps in the book to see what I had missed. For example, I had never set up the "Bragging rights" section of my profile; my Google Voice number (which I advertise publicly) was only visible to myself; and my work information had not been entered, and therefore wasn't accessible to my "work" circle. And I got all that after reading pages 11-14. Experienced Google+ users will find similar helpful hints throughout the book - it's often good to review things that you already know, because you may not know what you think you know.
• As I read through the book, I discovered a lot of Google+ features that I had never used before. For example, even though the "Share" button is right there on the sandbar (and I didn't know that it was called a "sandbar" until I read Stay's book), I had never actually used that button. I tried it out - it works well. I also didn't realize that Google+ was available via a mobile web browser, so I tried that also. (For the record, it didn't work on my LG env3 phone - I got stuck in an endless loop when trying to accept the mobile terms of service.) The biggest thing that I tried? I had never exported any of my data from Google before, so I followed Stay's steps (on pages 119 and 120) to "liberate" all of my Google+ data, including related data such as Picasa pictures. Now I just have to do this for my Blogger data...
• As he wrote the book, Stay realized that Google+ was going to go through incremental updates, and the text often cautioned readers by noting that things were working one way at the time the book was written, but could be working entirely differently by the time the reader actually received the book. The availability of business pages is but one example. Stay mentioned that some features, such as the ability to list pseudonyms in your profile and the ability to +1 things, would probably be fleshed out in future iterations of Google+.
• The book also includes some advice about how to actually use Google+. Stay has been around the block a few times - remember, he also co-wrote a book about using Facebook - so he is able to provide helpful advice to readers, ranging from the best ways to engage your friends and family on the service, to how to deal with spammers. He shares his view on why Google+ doesn't have a "-1" button (and why Facebook doesn't allow "dislikes"). He provides a wise caution regarding what not to share - "Social networks are a lot like high school - after one rumor gets going, they're pretty hard to stop!"
• Other than the lack of a mention of the age restriction on Google+, I really didn't have any issues with the book. I shared a minor quibble or two in my thread on the book, but you have to remember that I'm a person who obsesses about minor things, such as improper use of ID3 tags on mp3 files and incorrect references to "standard time" during a daylight saving time period. 99.9% of the people who read the book aren't going to care about whether game notifications can be redirected.

In short, the book succeeds in its primary purpose - teaching users of services such as Facebook how to use Google+ - and also succeeds at providing tips for experienced Google+ users to use the service more effectively.

Doing it wrong vs. doing it right - Penn State vs. The Second Mile

Over the last few days, there has been a lot of criticism of Penn State University, an institution that at times seemed to go out of its way to protect its current and former staff at the expense of the victims of sexual abuse by one former member of that staff. Here's what Graham Spanier was saying just a few short days ago:

The allegations about a former coach are troubling, and it is appropriate that they be investigated thoroughly. Protecting children requires the utmost vigilance.

With regard to the other presentments, I wish to say that Tim Curley and Gary Schultz have my unconditional support. I have known and worked daily with Tim and Gary for more than 16 years. I have complete confidence in how they have handled the allegations about a former University employee.

Tim Curley and Gary Schultz operate at the highest levels of honesty, integrity and compassion. I am confident the record will show that these charges are groundless and that they conducted themselves professionally and appropriately.

Graham Spanier

A few days later, Penn State tried to control the reaction to the case. First, the college said that Joe Paterno's press conference would only take questions regarding football and the Nebraska game - as if anyone wanted to ask about the Nebraska game at the time. When the media howled about the restrictions, the press conference was cancelled.

Perhaps both of these actions could be justified. After all, Curley and Schultz are innocent until proven guilty, and lawyers really wouldn't want Paterno to comment on an ongoing investigation. But at the same time, these actions just didn't fell right to anyone. They certainly didn't feel right to the mother of one of the victims.

When the arrests were announced Saturday, and the family learned that two Penn State officials had known about a prior incident and didn’t report it to police, she flipped out.

“I’m infuriated that people would not report something like that,” she said. “I still can’t believe it. I’m appalled. I’m shocked. I’m stunned. There’s so many words. I’m very mad. They could have prevented this from happening.”

Her son has accused Sandusky of four years of abuse, and it started not long after Curley and Schultz were notified of a abuse report in 2002.

The attorney general has said their inaction allowed Sandusky to molest this boy.

His mom said he knows that.

“He’s very angry,” she said. “I just can’t fathom how anybody could do that. When I read the indictment, I was very shocked that there was so many people that didn’t do anything ... and there had to be more people covering it up, I think, for him to get away with it for this long.”

Contrast this to the reaction of The Second Mile, the charity founded by Jerry Sandusky. On its web page, you can currently find these statements.

A Statement from The Second Mile 11.6.2011

The newly released details and the breadth of the allegations from the Attorney General’s office bring shock, sadness and concern from The Second Mile organization. Our prayers, care and compassion go out to all impacted.

The most recent reports we’ve read this past weekend state that Mr. Sandusky met the alleged victims through The Second Mile. To our knowledge, all the alleged incidents occurred outside of our programs and events. However, we are encouraging anyone with information regarding this investigation to contact investigators from the Office of Attorney General at 814-863-1053 or Pennsylvania State Police at 814-470-2238.

As The Second Mile’s CEO Jack Raykovitz testified to the Grand Jury, he was informed in 2002 by Pennsylvania State University Athletic Director Tim Curley that an individual had reported to Mr. Curley that he was uncomfortable about seeing Jerry Sandusky in the locker room shower with a youth. Mr. Curley also shared that the information had been internally reviewed and that there was no finding of wrongdoing. At no time was The Second Mile made aware of the very serious allegations contained in the Grand Jury report.

Subsequently, in November 2008, Mr. Sandusky informed The Second Mile that he had learned he was being investigated as a result of allegations made against him by an adolescent male in Clinton County, PA. Although he maintained there was no truth to the claims, we are an organization committed first and foremost to the safety and well-being of the children we serve. Consistent with that commitment and with The Second Mile policy, we immediately made the decision to separate him from all of our program activities involving children. Thus, from 2008 to present, Mr. Sandusky has had no involvement with Second Mile programs involving children.

The Second Mile was first contacted by the Attorney General’s office in early 2011. Since then, we have done everything in our power to cooperate with law-enforcement officials and will continue to do so.

Our highest priority always has been and will continue to be the safety and well-being of the children participating in our programs. We encourage program participants to report any allegations of abuse and/or inappropriate sexual activity wherever it has occurred, and we take any such reports directly to Child Protective Services. We have many policies and procedures designed to protect our participants, including employee and volunteer background checks, training and supervision of our activities.

The Second Mile has helped thousands of Pennsylvania’s children to lead better lives, and we remain committed to that mission. Our success is a result of the trust placed in us by the families and professionals with whom we partner, and we will take any steps needed to maintain their confidence in us.

And while Penn State is focused on its game with Nebraska on Saturday, the Second Mile has chosen to take a different tack.

Second Mile Reverse Drawing Scheduled for November 11, 2011 Postponed

We thank all of you who have purchased tickets for The Second Mile’s Reverse Drawing. The Second Mile has helped thousands of Pennsylvania’s children to lead better lives, and we thank you for your support of that mission.

That mission was in evidence as Second Mile Friend and Friend Fitness events took place at a number of locations across the Commonwealth this past weekend. We very much appreciate the continued trust placed in us by the families of all of our program participants. We remain committed to providing our programs and services to children as scheduled.

While we are providing our children’s programming as scheduled, The Second Mile has decided, out of respect and compassion for all impacted by the allegations from the Attorney General’s office, to postpone The Second Mile’s Reverse Drawing, which was to be held November 11, 2011. In past years, this has been a fun-filled and exciting evening, and we cannot imagine holding this event in the wake of the recent allegations, which have brought shock, sadness and concern to all associated with The Second Mile organization.

We thank you again for your support, and we look forward to seeing you at the re-scheduled event. We will be in contact with you about your Reverse Drawing support and our continuing to serve children together.

The Second Mile realizes that drastic action needs to be taken in this crisis, and is working as quickly as possible to regain the trust of its donors and beneficiaries.

The same cannot be said of Penn State.

Mister Phone with a solution to your iPhone 4 shut-off problem

I'm going to start calling myself Mister Phone.

Back on November 11, 2006, I provided a tip to Motorola Q smartphone users who suddenly lost the sound on their phones.

Just recently, on October 17, 2011, I provided a tip to LG env3 users who suddenly had their phones power off.

Today's tip is for iPhone 4 users. And I don't even own an iPhone.

And yes, I'm talking about the iPhone 4, not the iPhone 4s. I'm not an early adopter (well, not really), and I don't hang out with a lot of early adopters either. I know someone who bought an iPhone 4 a few months ago. No, the person didn't wait to get the iPhone 4s, and no, the person didn't immediately upgrade to the iPhone 4s when it came out. When I'm around, who needs Siri?

So anyways, the person was busily doing important stuff on the iPhone 4 - solitaire, most likely - when all of a sudden the iPhone 4 screen went black. Despite multiple tries, the iPhone 4 wouldn't come back on again.

Before planning an afternoon at our local Genius Bar, I figured I'd do a little reading to see if others were encountering this issue. And it turns out that others were encountering it, for a lot of different reasons. But the first article that I found provided some helpful tips.

As I was reading the issue (in this case, it had to do with a proximity sensor stuck in face mode, whatever that is), I saw this handy-dandy little diagnosis step.

[T]his morning I was told that a friend called and my iPhone rang 4-5 times before going to voicemail although my iPhone appeared dead. If it was turned off, it immediately went to voicemail.

So I tried calling the iPhone 4 in question - and the line did NOT immediately go to voicemail.

Whether we're talking about proximity sensors or not, that at least indicated to me that the phone was actually on, not off. For whatever reason (and we'll get to this later), it just had a black screen.

Now I don't know 21st century Apple products (the last Apple product that I owned personally was a Mac that I had in the 1990s), but this sounds like the Cupertino version of sleep mode or something. So all that I had to do now was wake the thing up.

So I continued to read, and ran across this.

Update: (08/16/10) I have found a way to power it back on easily. And lots and lots of readers in the comments are confirming that the following worked for them. So, don’t despair and try this.

1. Hold the Power and Home button together for 10-15 seconds. Let go of both.
2. Just hold the Power button for a few seconds to see the Apple logo.

Now I don't know which button is which on the iPhone, but I did find two buttons. So I held them both down for a few seconds...and got an Apple. I never even got to the "Let go of both" stage.

So the problem was solved, but why did it occur? Since I don't know what the proximity sensor face mode thingie is, I didn't think about that at first. But as I continued to read this article, I was directed to another article about memory issues on the iPhone 4. And that's where I read this:

As you might already know, iOS 4 introduced multitasking. The way way Apple has implemented is that every app you ever open are kept in the multitasking bar. As time goes on it starts to have an effect on iPhone memory. It uses it up.

Even though Apple has allowed only certain functions of the iPhone to be backgrounded (to help with battery life), the apps hanging around in the multitasking bar do take up memory.

And it seems when your iPhone memory gets completely used up, your iPhone could act like it is dead with no response to touches, button holds or even connecting to your computer.

After reading this, I went to the iPhone 4 owner and asked when the phone had last been turned off and on. The person couldn't remember.

So, while there are a number of possible causes for a phone turning off and on, a simple reboot may take care of the issue. And that applies to all phones - and all electronic devices. Heck, if duct tape had a "reboot" button, I'd reboot duct tape.

I don't know when the next installment of Mister Phone will occur - it's clearly not on a regular schedule - but now I'm wondering if I was working for the wrong part of Motorola.

(empo-tuulwey) How to recognise different persons from very close to an espresso machine

Some items, such as dentures, are pretty much designed to be used by one person. Other items can be shared by multiple people. However, each person may have a preferred way of doing things.

Take espresso. Your high-end espresso machines can be pretty complex, with a lot of different settings. One person might want to have his or her espresso drink made one way, while another may prefer another group of settings. Each person could laboriously set everything each time, or (remember that these are high-end machines) the espresso machine could store the preferences for each user. Then, all that the user has to do is provide the espresso machine with the proper identity, and then the espresso machine will configure itself for that particular person.

So HOW do you tell the espresso machine who you are?

Remember the private biometrics mailing list to which I subscribe? (I mentioned it here.) Well, someone in the list referenced the Saeco Xelsis Digital ID One Touch Espresso Machine. And when they say "one touch," they mean it.

If the mere ability to store 6 individual users with a full drink menu for each weren't enough for you, the Saeco Xelsis Digital ID turns it up a notch with the home espresso industry's very first fingerprint reader. The Xelsis Digital ID will remember 6 unique fingerprints. Rather than scrolling through icons that represent each user, simply place your fingertip on the reader....The Saeco Xelsis Digital ID will automatically change to your user profile, which can be programmed with most any name of your choosing. The color touch panel allows each user to program their favorite drinks into each of the 6 one touch beverage buttons and then program a name for each user profile. That's a whopping 36 unique drinks in one compact appliance. If you've ever stumbled to your espresso machine, pushed your once-favorite button, and got some foreign drink, you are going to love having your own user profile.

In effect, the "one touch" serves two distinct purposes - it identifies the user, and (depending upon which of the six buttons you press) identifies a specific drink.

And JL Hufford sells this convenience for less than $2,500. Specifically, one dollar less than $2,500.

I'm waiting for the civil liberties folks to get up in arms about this intrusion into privacy. Hey, it could happen - what if a small six-person company installed one of these espresso machines, and then required you to register your print with the device if you wanted company coffee? Would the company's lawyers be asked to provide each employee with a complete statement regarding how employee personal data from the coffee machine would be used? If one person is making ten cups of coffee a day, I'm sure that the company's health plan would like to know about it.

P.S. Some of you make have ascertained that the title of this post is a play on a Monty Python's Flying Circus sketch entitled "How to recognise different types of trees from quite a long way away." This explains why I didn't use a Zed in the title.

P.P.S. The larch.

Today's example of why ads have a long way to go

I was conducting a web-based search for information on a person whose first name is Ed. I won't reveal the name of the search engine that I was using, but it rhymes with smoogle.

Guess which ads were presented to me?

Above my search results, there was a highlighted link to the official site for Cialis.

To the right of my search results, there were a number of similar ads for erectile dysfunction.

The actual search results (which were based upon the full name of the person, as well as an organization name) were much more relevant, but the ads...um...didn't deliver.

To see if other acronyms tripped up the search engine, I entered a search for "fab morvan" (the member of Milli Vanilli who is still alive). No ad was presented by the search engine.

Are socially connected people unable to think for themselves?

I recently saw an interesting take on connectedness on a post on GovLoop. Louise K described a hypothetical incident in which a girl went to purchase some shoes. Here's part of Louise's scenario:

A girl walks into a shoe shop with a friend. In the process of walking back out again with a pair of shoes she will: take pictures of the selection of shoes and ask her friends which one they like. Narrow it down to two pairs and ask her friends via text which one's she should pick after also sending photographs of herself wearing aforementioned shoes. Then, once she has crowdsourced the decision, she will buy the pair of shoes, and then tweet a picture of her leaving with them.

Louise described some other possible online interactions, and then assembled her conclusions. Some of them are not surprising - for example, that she is always reachable. Some of them have been discussed by security specialists - for example, that she has constantly revealed her exact location. But a couple of Louise's conclusions hit me out of the blue:

She has made no decisions on her own
She has not had a single moment 'to herself'

And again:

She has crowd sourced her taste in shoes and not made a decision for herself

I began to wonder - is our connectedness truly turning us into non-independent, unthinking animals?

Personally, I think not.

Here's how this same incident would have progressed thirty-five years ago. And no, I am not a girl, but I have known a lot of girls, so I think I'm right on this.

A girl walks into a shoe shope with a friend. Before she even gets to the cash register (back in those days, people paid with something called "cash"), the girl asks her friend what she thinks about the shoes. She also asks the friend whether Doug would like the shoes. They see Julia walking by in the mall, and they ask her to come over and look at the shoes. In the process of walking back out again with a pair of shoes she will take out her Polaroid camera and take a picture of her shoes. When she gets to school the next day, she'll slip the picture into Gretchen's locker.

In this example, the girl exhibits the same type of crowdsourcing that the modern, connected girl exhibited in Louise's example. Of course, the modern girl can connect to more people, but both girls are performing the same activity. Do we say that the 1976 girl makes no decisions on her own because she asked her physically present friends about the shoe purchase?

At the same time, just because you are connected doesn't mean that you will automatically crowdsource. Back on October 28 I purchased some music. I shared my purchases on Google+ - but only after I had made them. I could have crowdsourced the decision, but I chose not to do so.

And even when decisions are crowdsourced, does that mean that we are not making decisions? I think not. Whether you look at Louise's modern texting girl at the mall, my 1976 non-connected girl at the mall, or whether, at the end of the day the person who was asking others about the decision made the final decision herself. OK, she could have set up a poll and vowed to abide by the poll, but then what if some of her friends deviously cast votes for the combat boots?

While modern communication technologies can influence the amount of feedback that you can receive, and the speed at which the feedback is received, the technologies themselves do not change the way in which decisions are made.

Take the American Revolution, and the crowdsourcing that took place in the years before that event. The Committees of Correspondence spent a lot of time...well, they spent a lot of time corresponding. And while network speeds were pitifully slow by modern standards - transmissions would take days or weeks to reach their intended recipients - you had the same type of crowdsourcing behavior. Don't believe me?

A girl (Abigail Adams) walks into Boston Harbor with a friend. She sees a bunch of people dressed up as Indians throwing tea into the harbor. The girl's husband "texts" all of his friends and reports what the British did in response to this. The husband and all of his friends narrow down their choices of how to respond. They schedule a few meetups to talk about things some more, eventually meeting in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in the summer of 1776 to develop version 1.0 of a new standard. (Version 2.0 would be developed 11 years later.)

Alamo Drafthouse "Don't Talk" PSA (clean version)

This has been all over the place, and illustrates the point that you should not necessarily go after EVERY customer. Incidentally, this is the censored version of the video.



Basically, Alamo Drafthouse has a "no texting" policy, and a customer violated the policy, was thrown out, and subsequently left an angry voicemail message. After playing the ex-customer's voice mail message, that includes the words "I will never be coming back to your "Alamo Drafthouse" or whatever; I'd rather go to a regular theater, where people are actually polite," Alamo Drafthouse prints the words

Thanks for not coming back to the Alamo, texter!

Needless to say, movie-lovers who like to watch their movies without interruption are happy that this ex-customer was treated so badly by Alamo.

I wish that I had been in the Alamo Drafthouse when I watched the film "Short Circuit" years and years ago. Perhaps the guy in the theater wouldn't have given away the ending.

P.S. Allow me to pause for a moment and bask in a milestone - this is the 1500th post that I have written in the Empoprise-BI blog. I haven't ever totaled up the entire count of posts that I've written in all of my blogs (starting with the Ontario Empoblog), but there are thousands upon thousands of posts out there written by me under my own name or under the old Ontario Emperor pseudonym. It's enough to make me want to jump up in a theater and shout - but then I'd (deservedly) get in trouble.

What if you don't know that you're living in the cloud?

Over the decades, computing models have constantly alternated between two extremes. In one extreme, the device in front of you is merely a terminal that connects to a computer somewhere else. When the pendulum swings in the other direction, you have a computer that can do everything. Obviously there are some different options between these two extremes, but we still tend to gravitate toward one or the other. When the company then known as Apple Computer first started, for example, they specialized in providing something known as personal computers, or devices that could do everything for you without having to hook up to some big mainframe somewhere.

Times change.

Louis Gray, who recently became an employee of Google, wrote a blog post back in September that talked about living in the browser. A browser is the 21st century version of a dumb terminal - you use the browser to access a computer somewhere else to do stuff. For example, I'm using a browser right now to type these words, which (since I use Blogger) are being stored in some Google server somewhere.

Today's trendy term to refer to dumb terminals and mainframes is "the cloud." Companies like Amazon and Google do things in the cloud. Of course, there's always a danger in using the cloud, which I noted in a comment on Gray's post. This is (part of) what I said.

Call me a Luddite.

And Gray probably does call me a Luddite. But I digress.

My employer provides automated fingerprint identification systems, which have an entry step (scan the inked fingerprint card, capture the live-scanned prints, enter the crime scene latent print) which is followed by a processing step (compare the captured prints to the database of prints). Entry takes place on workstations with thick clients, the captured prints are then submitted to a central site, and all user access after submission (quality control, fingerprint match verification, database maintenance) takes place via a web browser-like model.

If you lose the network, you're mostly hosed. You can't submit prints, you can't perform quality control, you can't verify match comparisons, etc. However, you can still capture prints, and queue them for later submission when the network is restored. So while a police agency is somewhat crippled if the network goes down, they can still perform a limited amount of processing.

My question - if the Google cloud is inaccessible, does work stop?

I see two possible solutions: (1) have a backup mechanism (such as a thick client version of Google Docs) that allows you to continue work in a limited capacity, or (2) make sure that your network is high availability and is able to resist fire, flood, earthquake, hurricane, riot, and the Scoble Effect.

Now I'm sure that Google and other services put enough redundancy into their systems to minimize the occurrence of outages. But there is no "cloud" company - none - that can guarantee 100% availability to its users. It is literally impossible to do so.

This is an obvious drawback of cloud-based computing (or whatever term you use), but for many people, the benefits of cloud computing outweigh the costs. Gray can go anywhere in the world and access his documents, on any computer, at any time. He can collaborate with other Google employees all over the world. Let's face it, most of the services that we talk about - Google, Facebook, Twitter, and the like - use centralized servers to provide massive collaboration benefits.

Of course, most people who use Google, Facebook, and Twitter know that the application depends upon a network connection.

But what if you don't know this? What if you think you're using a stand-alone application, but in reality the application is completely dependent upon network connectivity?

Enter Siri, the new application on the iPhone 4s. Except that it actually isn't on the iPhone 4s, as many people found out when there were network problems. ComputerWorld explained:

Siri may be the most prominent feature on the iPhone 4S, but in truth it's only partly "on" your phone, as a network-related outage this past Thursday demonstrated. iPhone 4S users were cut off from their virtual assistant, their queries answered only by messages that Siri could not make a network connection....

While it's not surprising that a network problem would prevent Siri from making Internet-based searches, many users don't realize that the feature's voice-recognition depends entirely on network connectivity; an outage, therefore, means that Siri can't even perform tasks like making a calendar appointment, setting a timer or creating a reminder.

ComputerWorld explained that Siri takes advantage of huge server farms that provide much more processing power than a mobile phone ever could. This works fine - as long as the network connection is there. But many people didn't realize that a network connection was necessary.

Some time within the next few years, there will be a bit of a backlash against cloud computing. Leading techies will champion the benefits of having all of your computing capability locally, so that you're not adversely affected by poor network connections or sunspots or whatever. Someone will come up with a cute term to differentiate this from the "haphazard" world of cloud-based computing - maybe they'll call it rock computing or something.

And the pendulum will swing agin.

On Nigerian English, and my own English

Colleen Jolly should be thankful that she hasn't started a Nigerian branch of the 24 Hour Company yet.

I recently ran across a news article which included the following quote from a representative of the (Nigerian) National Union of Electricity Employees:

We are in receipt of a provocative memo sent to Chief Executive Officers of PHCN by Mr. H. Labo, citing biometric exercise for staff as a pre-condition for payment of the negotiated 50 per cent salary increase.

We are not surprised at this satanic verse. This confirms our earlier fears that some people within the system were bent on importing crisis into PHCN, where none exist. For the avoidance of doubt and contrary to Point ‘A’ of the memo ‘that all employees are expected to undergo biometric exercise, as agreed by Federal Government and PHCN Labour Unions,’ this assertion by Labo is the biggest lie of the millennium.

The language used in the quote resulted in mental images of Olivia Newton-John shaking her finger and contorting her face (biometric exercise), and of Salman Rushdie (satanic verse). I also mused on corporate organization; even Oracle does not have multiple chief executive officers. And if this dispute (which presumably involves biometric enrollment of employees) is truly the "biggest lie of the millennium," then I think we'll have a relatively peaceful millennium.

While the language provides chuckles to me, it presumably does not provide chuckles to the Nigerians who read it. In fact, those same Nigerians may question the language that I use, or that weird u-infused language that Steven Hodson, Johnny Worthington, and others use.

Because of my curiosity about the topic, I ended up reading a piece entitled Back-Formation and Affixation in Nigerian English. The piece describes eight phrases in Nigerian English which differ from American and British English. Here is one of them:

"Vacate." This is a popular word used in educational institutions in Nigeria to mean "take a long, formal break from school." It is a back-formation from "vacation," the American English word for what British speakers call holiday. (In British English, vacation is only used to indicate the formal, temporary closure of universities and courts of law, not primary or secondary schools).

Many native speakers of the English language will find the Nigerian semantic extension of "vacate" strange, even incomprehensible. In standard British and American English, vacate usually means one of three things: to leave a job, post, position, etc voluntarily, that is, to resign (as in: he vacated the job when he got a better offer elsewhere); to abandon, to leave behind empty, or to move (as in: "You must vacate this house by tomorrow"); to rescind, to reverse, to cancel officially (as in: "the president vacated the death sentence on the political prisoner").

Read the other seven here. (I wonder if I need to barb.)

However, before discussing these unique features of Nigerian English, the article points out how my own dialect of English has evolved. For example:

[B]ack-formation is said to occur when speakers of a language invent new words by removing what is wrongly thought to be a suffix (i.e., an element added to the end of a word) from an existing word....

The word "negate," which ... never existed until relatively recently, was formed from "negation." Other popular back-formations that have been fully integrated into the English lexicon are "reminisce" (from "reminiscence"), "televise" (from "television"), "baby-sit" (from "baby-sitter"), "sculpt" (from "sculptor"), "chain-smoke" (from "chain-smoker"), "edit" (from "editor"), "back-form" (from "back-formation")....

[B]ack-formations are often met with stiff resistance from grammarians and semantic purists of all shades when they first emerge. But because they fill a real semantic and lexical void, they often ultimately prevail. All the examples I've cited above were once considered egregious grammatical taboos.

I have used the words "negate," "televise," "baby-sit," "chain-smoke," and "edit" constantly over the last several decades, never realizing that they were controversial at one time. As a writer, I cannot imagine a language with the word "edit." However, if I were sitting in a room with John Adams and Thomas Jefferson discussing changes to the Declaration of Independence, I would not have asked Adams to edit the document; the term didn't exist until 1785-1795. (By the way, Jefferson didn't compose a rough draft; he composed a Rough draught.)

Why do I share this? Simply to illustrate that just because someone over yonder colours his or her words differently, it does not mean that the person is incorrect. My Californian-Virginia English is not a worldwide standard. (Thankfully.)

On low-cost computing (a discussion with Jason Suss)

Loren Feldman has this insane belief that social media is supposed to be social, so when he goes on Google+, he starts threads that get people to interact. Sometimes those threads can take interesting turns.

Take this thread, which was initially devoted to the readability of http://www.theverge.com/. I entered the discussion:

+Nuno Maia, I took up your challenge while on my netbook. I couldn't answer anything in 10 seconds, because it took much longer for www.TheVerge.com to load on my netbook. When it did, it was obvious that the most recent/important item was the BMW ad that filled my screen for a while. I did not have a seizure because I was too busy scrolling down to the bottom of the page, through a disorganized mass of differently colored articles. Plain text would have been more readable.

This prompted a response from Jason Suss, and some interaction between Jason and myself. Read the thread for all of it, but I'm going to reproduce Suss' second comment.

+John E. Bredehoft Latest and greatest isn't the question here. Netbooks are unnaturally gimped to meet the inordinately low price points in their market. Most netbooks likely have less computing power available and are on less optimized platforms then the 4s (and at least on my SGII theverge.com has a pretty nice mobile site of similar design that pops rather quickly).

My point is that the direction of design / development shouldn't be dictated by a user base who have chosen to provide themselves with a limited computing experience. Netbook hardware (processing power, graphics, etc) is intentionally generations behind in order to hold the line on costs. In my experience, most netbooks are also often limited to running XP and come chock full of bloatware that assumedly also help finance their price points. Combining weak innards with old operating systems and a bunch of garbage bloat apps constantly running in the background is a recipe for disaster.

Perhaps a better solution is to pre-equip netbooks with browser agent strings that identify them as cellphones in order to deliver a more appropriate computing experience.

Dont get me wrong, I just believe that an unfortunate side effect of the netbook fad has been to similarly cheapen the web experience that devs like me are asked to build.

Of course, the netbook is not the only low-priced computer out there. For entirely different reasons, a cheap computer is being produced in India - one that makes my netbook look like a powerhouse. From NPR:

India has unveiled what its government says is the world's cheapest tablet computer, along with a promise to make the device available to the country's college students, and possibly, to those in high school as well. The government says it's a major step toward bridging the country's gigantic digital divide.

The tablet is called "Aakash," the Hindi word for "sky," and boosters say it could give Internet access to billions of people....

The Aakash fits neatly into the span of his two hands as he demonstrates its features: a resistive touch screen, Wi-Fi and video conferencing capabilities. It has an SD card slot, two USB ports, a 600 MHz processor, 256MB RAM and runs Android 2.2.

Tuli says it has a battery life of about three hours, crucial in areas that don't have reliable electricity.

Now presumably an Indian high school student doesn't place a high priority on viewing the information at The Verge. But this does illustrate that in any market, there are a wide variety of computer users. Some have very powerful and capable machines, while others (for various reasons) have machines that have less power.

My netbook works fine for most of the things that I use it for, and its low weight and long battery life make it ideal for some situations. If (in the words of my comment on Feldman's thread) I treated computer purchases as short-term expenses rather than capital expenses, I'd go buy a newer computer in the same form factor that has 2 GB of RAM rather than the 1 GB that last year's netbook has. (Tablets or iPhones/iPods don't meet my needs; I like keyboards.)

P.S. I've previously addressed other obsolescence situations, such as my use of Internet Explorer 6 as late as March 2009. In that case, this was a company-imposed restriction. At the end of the day, I left the company (or, more accurately, the company left me).

P.P.S. Suss is the code monkey at Primal Stare Studios in New Jersey, a provider of "art & technology solutions" to companies such as Chili's, Kohler, and AARP. And no, I guess I shouldn't be using a netbook to buy Kohler products from http://www.josplumbing.com/. Nor should I be on a slow Internet connection - time to move to Finland.

North America is Behind (of Ahead of) the Times

My apologies to most of the world for this post, but it takes people in North America a little longer to get in gear.

You see, most of the Northern Hemisphere already transitioned from Daylight Saving Time to Standard Time back on October 30. Most of North America, however, will not transition until November 6.

A complete list of the Daylight Saving Time dates for 2011 can be found here.

There are a few outliers here and there. Cuba, just to be different, doesn't make the change until November 13. The Gaza Strip ended Daylight Saving Time back on August 1. The West Bank, however, ended Daylight Saving Time on September 30.

And, of course, the Southern Hemisphere ended Daylight Saving Time early in the year, and starts it again late in the year.

Note that a certain popular business website couldn't care less.

Incidentally, I was writing about daylight saving time a lot in early 2007. See two posts from February 14, for example.

The invisible hand packs a wallop

Maybe they teach things differently today, but when I took my first-year economics course back in 1980, the presentation began with the assumption of perfect markets, in which information is immediately available to all, there are no barriers to entry, and prices therefore fluctuate instantaneously. (One of the ramifications of this - the fact that no one makes a profit - is conveniently ignored by politicians who worship Adam Smith.)

As time goes on, you realize that there are imperfections in markets. Cartels, regulations, politics, and general business secrecy all play their role in creating a real market that is often stagnant.

But the classical model can be valuable, because there are times when free markets actually free up a little bit.

Take the labor markets of the U.S. vs. the third world. Because labor is relatively expensive in the U.S. vs. Mexico or China, we find that a lot of jobs formerly performed here are now performed elsewhere.

But sometimes things can change:

Manufacturing wages in China continue to increase at 15-20% per year on average, and have actually increased by a whopping 300% for Taphandles since it opened a Chinese factory in 2006. In contrast, manufacturing wages in the U.S. have remained relatively flat, or have even decreased in some industries that have adopted a two-tier wage structure.

For this and other economic reasons, Taphandles has shifted its manufacturing operations from China to the United States.

This may not become a huge trend, but as wages naturally increase in China as labor becomes more valued there, offshore exercises in China will become less attractive.

Now Bangladesh, on the other hand...

(H/T Jim Ulvog's Outrun Change.)

Ah, the good old misery index again

Differentiate Your Business has listed some misery indices from around the world. If you weren't around during the Carter administration, the misery index is a fake statistic in which you add the inflation rate with the unemployment rate. During the 1980 election, Ronald Reagan used the misery index to his advantage. And now Reagan admirer Barack Obama finds that people are talking about it again.

So while the U.S. has a "misery index" of 13, Switzerland has a much lower misery index (3.5), Japan's is only 4.8, Mexico's is 8.37, countries such as Spain and Greece have misery indices above 19 (Greece 19.23, Spain 23.99), and South Africa's misery index stands at 28.9.

The numbers really aren't comparable - you can't necessary say that South Africa is twice as bad as the U.S., and that Japan is almost three times better. But the numbers can be really potent in those countries, including my own, in which elections will soon occur.

More adverse effects on FriendFeed

This is a follow-up to my post How the Google Reader changes are adversely affecting FriendFeed.

In that post, I referenced a Jesse Stay Google+ item that predicted these adverse effects.

Well, when I shared my post on Google+, Stay offered this comment:

I mentioned earlier (on Friendfeed) that this could be the end of Friendfeed. That was the last thing that was populating the service for me.

So Stay said the same thing on both Google+ and FriendFeed. But I never saw his FriendFeed statement.

That says it all.

P.S. If you want to make sure that you continue to read posts from this blog, even if your Google Reader friends aren't sharing posts with you, go ahead and subscribe at http://feeds.feedburner.com/empoprise-bi.

How the Google Reader changes are adversely affecting FriendFeed

It's finally arrived.

Not too long ago, Google announced some changes its segment-leading feed consumption engine, Google Reader. Google Reader was going to get a brand spiffy new look that aligned with some of Google's other products, and Google Reader users were also going to get the capability to share things with their Google+ buddies.

Oh, and there was (quoting Google's arch-enemy) one more thing:

As a result of these changes, we also think it's important to clean things up a bit. Many of Reader's social features will soon be available via Google+, so in a week's time we'll be retiring things like friending, following and shared link blogs inside of Reader.

And some people are not pleased about this. Here's something that Jesse Stay wrote back on October 20:

Dear Google Reader team, as one of your most active Google Reader users, I will no longer use Google Reader if you remove friends from the service. It completely loses its purpose for me. To me, it was a way to get news from my friends and guarantee I got it. There is no equivalent service on Google right now. Please don't remove my friends from Google Reader!

Now I'm a long-time Google Reader user, and I get a lot of my blog post ideas from things that I see in Google Reader. But let me let you in on a little secret - when I have over 1,000+ unread items in my feed, the shared items from other Google Reader users are one of the first things that I mark as "read." So most of my actual reading in Google Reader is from feeds that I explicitly selected on my own. And I don't know that I share as much stuff as I used to - frankly, when I shared items, I usually received more comment on FriendFeed than I did on Google Reader itself.

So I wasn't quite sure how these Google Reader changes were going to affect me. Early this evening, however, I was able to take the new Google Reader for a spin. Other than the change in appearance, it's almost identical to the old Google Reader - with one exception: instead of having the "Share" or "Share with note" buttons, there is now a "+1" button. I plus-one'd a few things (including some things from my friends' shared feeds from before the change). That's when I noticed something.

But I wasn't the first person to notice it. Over a week before the new Google Reader was implemented, Jesse Stay saw something down the horizon. Here's one of the questions that Stay asked back on October 22nd:

What think ye? With Google Reader native sharing leaving the service, is this the end of Friendfeed as well? I know that's one of the last things populating Friendfeed for me.

This is what I observed today. The things that usually would have shown up in FriendFeed are now showing up in my Google+ feed.

So then I began looking at the other things that I send to my FriendFeed feed. Some of them, such as Google Reader shares and Twitter tweets, no longer work. Nothing comes from YouTube, because YouTube permanently disabled my account and won't let me talk to anyone about it. But posts from all of my blogs still show up on FriendFeed, and my Disqus comments show up on FriendFeed, and the songs that I like on last.fm and Pandora still show up on FriendFeed (well, when I log into Pandora, that is).

Now what are the chances that last.fm or Pandora would change their systems so that you would +1 songs rather than sending your likes to an RSS feed? As far as I can tell, those chances are pretty slim.

But there is YouTube - well, not for me, but for you. Perhaps YouTube will be the next Google property that turns off the RSS feed capability and only allows +1's instead.

While I as a user might not like it, I realize why Google is doing this. Google's customers are its advertisers, and Google therefore has a fiduciary duty to its shareholders to get as many eyeballs in front of ads as possible. And to do that, people need to be directed inward toward the Google silo. Competitors are trying to keep people within the Facebook silo, or the Twitter silo, or whatever.

And this certainly affects Google+, because someday there will be some form of advertising on Google+. Maybe it will be on the side of the feed, or maybe it will be "sponsored" posts within the feed. My feed already contains the occasional alert to the really popular item, so it's really simple to use that same functionality to bring you the latest sponsored post from someone.

So don't be surprised if Google's actions inadvertently kill off FriendFeed. (And it should be noted that Facebook is doing its part to kill off FriendFeed as well.)