Fear everyone - or don't (Cellebrite or Hacker X never met the Bedford Police Department)

Every once in a while, I like to write a post in which I explain why I don't fear Big Brother (or, to put it another way, "don't worry about the government"). Over the years I've documented the demise of uGov, the cross purposes at UC Irvine, competing airline security systems, the poor security for nuclear missile launches, the lack of NSA-FBI security coordination, the lack of DHS-CIA coordination, and conflicts between the DHS, the FBI, and the NSA. These and many other episodes highlight the truth, expressed by Dave Barry, that any action by government will be met with an equal and opposite reaction from another part of government.

But right now I'm thinking about another post in this vein - Which do you fear more - business Big Brother, or government Big Brother? I want to quote from that 2011 post, which seems eerily relevant today.

Cellebrite manufactures a Universal Forensics Extraction Device. Now we're not talking about debate or biometrics here, but the examination of any item for purposes of law enforcement. In this particular case, we're talking about cell phones. If Malte Spitz had been unsuccessful in getting his location information from Deutsche Telekom, perhaps he could have bought the Cellebrite UFED and obtained the location information in that manner.

"Based on Cellebrite’s expertise in data extraction technology, the mobile forensics products perform both logical and physical data extraction, including recovery of deleted messages and content.

"With more than a decade of experience in mobile data technologies, Cellebrite provides the widest coverage available in the market today. The UFED family of products is able to extract and analyze data from more than 3000 phones, including smartphones and GPS devices."

I am writing this post mere weeks after the FBI ceased its attempts to have Apple unlock Syed Farook's iPhone. Why did the FBI stop? Because it got someone else to unlock it. The FBI didn't say who helped, but various sources claim that Cellebrite did the work, while other sources claim someone else did it.

So who looks good after this affair? Nobody. The FBI, who pleaded that they couldn't unlock the iPhone and that only Apple had the expertise to do so, apparently found someone to do it - possibly cheaply. Apple, who wanted to maintain its posture as a manufacturer of secure communications equipment, has had its security breached - possibly cheaply. And the people who actually unlocked the phone can't get any credit for the deed. Oh, and it's quite possible that the only information that was found on the iPhone in question was data about San Bernardino dining spots.

Now, who are you supposed to fear?

The FBI, who set the wheels in motion to allow this phone - or perhaps your phone - to be hacked?

Apple, who manufactured a phone - perhaps your phone - that could be hacked?

Or the mysterious people who actually performed the hack on this phone, and could do it to your phone?

"None of the above," you might say. "I have nothing to hide."

Well, if you have nothing to hide, then feel free to share your name, address, Social Security Number (remember Todd Davis?), and bank account passwords.

Oh, and leave your house and car unlocked.

Does wisdom require information?

You may recall my old post about data, information, knowledge, and wisdom, and its underlying assumption that these are ordered and one proceeds from another.

James Altucher feels differently.

I never read random articles on the Internet unless they are by people I know. Mostly I read books I love.

A friend asked me, when he heard all of this, “But aren’t you afraid you’re going to miss some information?”

I asked him, “What information?”

Are credit unions evil banks, or virtuous anti-banks?

As I was walking through a parking lot near a credit union office, I spotted a Bernie Sanders for President bumper sticker.

And it got me thinking.

As many of you know, the Bernie Sanders campaign can almost be characterized as a single issue campaign - namely, to ensure that land acquisition for the National Park Service is fully funded.

Whoops - I seem to have scrambled my notes. Actually, the Sanders issue that is getting a lot of attention can be summarized in four words: "Wall Street is evil."

From the Sanders website:

Wall Street cannot continue to be an island unto itself, gambling trillions in risky financial decisions while expecting the public to bail it out....

The six largest financial institutions in this country today hold assets equal to about 60% of the nation’s gross domestic product. These six banks issue more than two-thirds of all credit cards and over 35% of all mortgages. They control 95% of all derivatives and hold more than 40% of all bank deposits in the United States.

We must break up too-big-to-fail financial institutions. Those institutions received a $700 billion bailout from the US taxpayer, and more than $16 trillion in virtually zero interest loans from the Federal Reserve. Despite that, financial institutions made over $152 billion in profit in 2014 – the most profitable year on record, and three of the four largest financial institutions are 80% bigger today than they were before we bailed them out.

So why would a credit union employee support a guy like Sanders?

One possible reason might be the conclusion that when Sanders rails against financial institutions, he's not railing against credit unions. After all, credit unions are different - the government said so:

Credit unions are not-for-profit organizations that exist to serve their members. Like banks, credit unions accept deposits, make loans and provide a wide array of other financial services. But as member-owned and cooperative institutions, credit unions provide a safe place to save and borrow at reasonable rates.

So perhaps the bumper sticker owner believes that the problems on Wall Street are solely caused by for-profit (rather than not-for-profit) firms that are controlled by oligarchs (rather than individual credit union members just like you and me).

Or perhaps the bumper sticker owner realizes that money is money, but supports Sanders anyway. If so, he or she is not alone:

Meredith Burak is a third-generation Wall Street executive. At 32, she has worked in global wealth management for Bank of America and Merrill Lynch....

"Wall Street has been very good to my family," she said. "It has enabled myself and my cousins and people around me to go to college."

But at the same time, Burak said, Wall Street needs tougher regulation and rules. "People on Wall Street want the game to be fair," she said. "It is when people cheat that things get messed up for everyone. And to the extent that we can have rules and more enforcement to get people like [Ponzi schemer] Bernie Madoff out of the financial system, the better it is for the economy."

Burak said she left Merrill Lynch earlier this month and is traveling in Israel this week, focusing on charitable work on behalf of a cancer foundation in honor of her mother.

And after all, as an anonymous Sanders supporter points out:

"You've got Warren Buffett — one of the wealthiest people in the country — and he's out there supporting raising taxes and the things that Bernie talks about."

Coworking, where the new meets the old

Several years ago, coworking was a trend, part of the general trend of working away from an office. Perhaps you'd just park yourself in a coffee shop, or perhaps you'd rent time at a place such as Citizen Space. But people working in coffee shops initially created a backlash, and I just belatedly discovered that even the venerable Citizen Space is no more.

But companies are still entering the coworking market, such as Workbar. For those who aren't familiar with the coworking concept, Workbar has an explanation about the practice:

At Workbar we understand that people don’t always work the way they used to. Technology has made the workforce more mobile, yet has also increased the need for shared resources, human interaction, and fun at work. So we’ve created a network of coworking spaces where independent professionals, start-ups, small businesses, and remote employees of larger enterprises can enjoy a vibrant community and high quality office amenities at an affordable price.

Of course, if you're going to go out and create a coworking space for people, you need...space. And Workbar has, um, worked out a mutual win-win for itself and a much older company:

As consumer needs around commerce are changing, commerce hubs are reimagining and redesigning their physical locations to meet customers halfway, so to speak. Staples is joining in on that trend, and is thus converting some of its retail locations for office supplies into temporary office spaces for rent.

Staples, in conjunction with office-sharing startup Workbar, is looking to open three Boston-area communal workplaces. The hope is that the affiliation will draw more small business owners and mobile professionals into Staples locations. Staples needs the customers, as foot traffic has been on the decline since 2009.

This could be an interesting trend. As more people shop online, and brick and mortar establishments try to reinvent themselves, they're looking for all sorts of ways to use up their leased retail space. If this use brings in more customers for the establishment's primary business, all the better.

Amalgamate all the things - biometrics, geospatial, and the buffet

So, where will we be five years from now? Will we have a number of companies providing everything to everyone, or will we have a myriad of specialty firms?

(Me, in 2011)
There are several different ways to organize businesses, ranging from the Mita model (we only do one thing) to the Beatrice model (we do everything). While the tail end of my Motorola years certainly exposed me to a trend toward the Mita model, I've been seeing a lot more of the Beatrice model lately, where dissimilar businesses end up as part of one big happy business.

Take my industry, biometrics. When I joined this industry in the mid-1990s, Digital Biometrics, Identix, and Printrak were three separate companies. Now all three of them are just a very small part of Safran.

I just ran across another example in the geospatial industry. You'll recall that I recently noted that Pitney Bowes, more commonly known for postage stuff, acquired the geospatial company MapInfo several years ago. But I have also run across another example [DISCLOSURE: I have worked with CACI in the past]:

CACI International Inc. announced it has been awarded a $180 million contract to provide Joint Geospatial Analytic Support Services (JGASS) to US Special Operations Command (USSOCOM).

So how did CACI get into this business?

Through its acquisition of TechniGraphics, Inc. in 2010, CACI has more than 20 years of experience providing geospatial services to the federal government and has become an industry leader in the production, analysis, and dissemination of geospatial data. The company's highly trained and cleared professional staff possesses a deep understanding of geospatial analysis and geospatial imagery intelligence.

Of course, the greatest example of diversification can be found in Warren Buffett's (two t's) company, Berkshire Hathaway. If you look at its list of subsidiaries, you can see that Berkshire Hathaway offers a buffet (one t) of different products and services. I won't provide the entire list, but let me just cite three examples:

• Acme Brick Company (presumably a spinoff from Wile E. Coyote's supplier)
• Kraft Heinz (I didn't even know those companies have merged)
• Pampered Chef (chances are you know someone who works with Pampered Chef - but she can't sell you Acme Bricks)

But what if you don't want proprietary geospatial software?

In my various blogs, I've mentioned a couple of geospatial software vendors - many mentions of local company ESRI, and a recent mention of Pitney Bowes (and its product MapInfo). There are other vendors, including Smallworld (from General Electric, not Disney).

Ideally, these and other companies would want you to buy their proprietary geospatial software and use it.

But what if you want to go open source?

There are geospatial open source options, including the Open Source Geospatial Foundation (and GRASS GIS), ILWIS, and the QGIS project.

If you've used Red Hat Linux or other open source programs, you know that open source does not necessarily mean free. Open source software may include charges for support, as well as for consulting and other things - and, of course, you have to hire people to actually use the open source programs. And there are free packages (such as Google Earth) that are not open source, but proprietary.

So what's the difference?

Open source software is written by a community rather than a development team associated with a single software company. Participants from all over the world contribute via the Web. Some do this as part of their “day jobs,” while others volunteer.

A project steering committee or other group keeps order and manages contributions, bug lists and source control. Because the source is available, changes to a local implementation can be made immediately, though changes to the accepted current version may take time to be incorporated....

[O]pen source advocates suggest that programmers are more diligent if they know the world will be seeing their code.

And in certain cases, open source people can become really famous - well, almost as famous as a cartoon character.

Analyze all the things - Pitney Bowes, Mapinfo, and IoT

As you probably know, there are a number of organizations that give awards to a number of other organizations for various reasons. One of the award-givers is Forrester, and one of the award-getters is Pitney Bowes. But this award isn't for postage meters.

STAMFORD, Conn., March 14, 2016 - Pitney Bowes (NYSE:PBI), a global technology company that provides innovative products and solutions to power commerce, today announced that the company has been recognized as a Leader in The Forrester Wave™: Customer Analytics Solutions, Q1 2016. The closely watched market assessment notes that organizations consider the Spectrum Technology Platform and Portrait suite of analytical tools for their “customer centricity and smooth marketing integration.”

I don't know if analytics has jumped the shark yet, but it's certainly a popular buzzword these days. According to Forrester, Pitney Bowes has been positioning itself in the analytics arena for years.

“Pitney Bowes facilitates difficult analytical processes like data preparation for the less technically savvy marketer or customer insights,” writes Forrester Senior Analyst Brandon Purcell in the report. “With firm roots in location analytics (due to the acquisition of MapInfo in 2007), Pitney Bowes is well-positioned to leverage the growing volumes of contextual mobile and IoT [Internet of Things] data. It also offers a variety of industry-specific, demographic, and firmographic, data products for further data enrichment.”

At least in theory (I don't know if the actualities match up with the marketing), all of these Pitney Bowes applications work together to convert data into wisdom. As Pitney Bowes noted:

By running analytics on your collected customer data, you can predict customers’ behavior, in terms of what, when, how, where, and why they buy.

I've mentioned the "where" previously in my Inland Empire blog (because of a Pitney Bowes competitor, ESRI). But while I was visiting the Pitney Bowes website, the company showed its dedication to geospatial information, something I've never encountered at the ESRI website - yet.

The unboring board meeting (activist director slate directed at Yahoo)

You've probably read the textbooks about how businesses are governed. All public businesses are run by the shareholders, who have the power to elect a Board of Directors, who has the power to select the people who actually run the company.

The reality is often quite different. The starkest example occurred during Michael Eisner's years running Disney, when he populated Disney's board with his kids' schoolteacher, his maid, the guy who trimmed his meat at the deli, and Justin Bieber. Actually, that's a lie; Bieber probably wasn't even born yet. But you get the idea; insiders often secure control over the company's Board of Directors, ensuring that they can do whatever they want without being stopped. Since people like to vote for incumbents (bold prediction: at least some of the 435 members of the U.S. House of Representatives will be re-elected - again), shareholders tend to keep the company's preferred slate of directors on the board.

Not that activist shareholders don't stop trying. The latest salvo is over the Board of Directors at Yahoo. Starboard Value LP, which holds 1.7% of Yahoo's shares, has announced its intent to nominate a slate of directors to replace the ENTIRE board. Excerpt from Starboard Value's press release:

We believe that Yahoo is deeply undervalued and opportunities exist within the control of management and the Board of Directors (the "Board") to unlock significant value for the benefit of all shareholders. Unfortunately, as we have outlined in previous letters, we have been extremely disappointed with Yahoo's dismal financial performance, poor management execution, egregious compensation and hiring practices, and general lack of accountability and oversight by the Board. We believe the Board clearly lacks the leadership, objectivity, and perspective needed to make decisions that are in the best interests of shareholders.

To that end, we will be delivering to Yahoo today a formal nomination notice of our intention to seek the election of nine highly qualified director nominees at the 2016 Annual Meeting. These nominees have been carefully vetted and selected following a several-month long process that included the evaluation of over 100 qualified potential candidates.

The way that Yahoo has been battered over the last several years, both before and after Marissa Mayer arrived, it is quite likely that THIS effort will...

...fail like most other efforts to wrest control of a company away from the insiders.

That's my prediction - which, given my track record, means that Starboard Value is guaranteed to win this fight.

Revisiting LPTA in the context of national security

Even though I'm no longer in proposals, I still follow LPTA discussions. If you don't recognize the acronym, it stands for "Lowest Price, Technically Acceptable." In an LPTA procurement, each vendor has to meet a minimum set of technical criteria. It doesn't matter if you exceed it - you just have to meet it. As long as you meet that baseline, the bid is competed on price.

As you can imagine, LPTA procurements work great for things like toilet paper. They don't work so good for things like jet aircraft.

Back in 2013, I shared a Bob Lohfeld story about one LPTA procurement that went awry. A particular bid came up for a recompete, which was a good thing in the agency's eyes, since the incumbent wasn't doing so great. The incumbent submitted a bid, as did its competitors. But when it came time to evaluate the bids, the evaluators were forced to conclude that the incumbent's bid was technically acceptable, since the incumbent had (marginally) been doing the work. However, the incumbent still feared that it would lose, so it bid a much lower price than the price it bid originally. The net result, according to Lohfeld:

The incumbent contractor, fearing that they would lose on price, took a dive on price and bid lower wages—probably making a bad situation worse.

At the time, neither Lohfeld nor I went into the details of why reducing your labor costs on an existing contract could "make a bad situation worse." Fast forward to February 2016, when Erik Kleinsmith wrote the following:

[C]ontractors who have people working on a LPTA-bid program coming up for re-compete have to bid with real people while competitors can bid fiction. As long as competitors can prove that they will provide [people] who will meet the baseline qualifications, it is easier for them to bid much lower and worry about the costs of actually hiring qualified people later. Incumbents are therefore faced with three choices:
•Bid their current people (and most likely lose)
•Bid their current people but cut their salaries (often drastically) and risk losing them, or
•Replace their current people and risk losing the relationships they’ve built with the government.

Options 2 and 3 require a certain degree of cut-throat mentality, as they entail telling current employees that their past efforts have been so great that they’ve resulted in a severe pay cut or outright replacement.

And of course the fun is just beginning during the bid process. It gets even more fun after the bid has been "won":

Unlike programs where turnover happens because of the government selecting better quality people, the normal chaos that results in contract turnover is not a one-time event for LPTAs. It continues throughout the life of the program. Many incumbent employees who do not have immediate job prospects elsewhere will stay on – but only as long as it takes for them to find a better paying job elsewhere. New analysts starting on the program soon learn that they are worth more working somewhere else and also tend to leave in fairly short order. If there is a certification, clearance, or some other skillset acquired on the new job, they will wait until they gain it and then take their more marketable resume somewhere else in the community.

Oh, and one thing that I neglected to mention - Kleinsmith was writing this in the context of intelligence analysts. Now I have no idea how many national security-type bids are issued as LPTA bids, but Kleinsmith does an effective job of painting a scary picture. Namely - if you're going to bid LPTA for intelligence work, then you might as well hand Snowden's documents, Clinton's email server, and everything else over to ISIS right now.

OK, he didn't go that far. But he did say this:

When considering an intelligence career, ask specific questions from your hiring managers and don’t take “It’s a best-value program” for an answer. Ask them about the average turnover rate and talk to other analysts currently on task if possible. Also ask them if there are specific resume submission or experience requirements for your position. If not, be warned. Eventually you will run into an LPTA-bid program, but hopefully from a third-person and not a first-person perspective.

#empoexpiire In which the FTC and universities look at password expiration policies

On the same day that I wrote my most recent post on password expiration policies, someone named Lorrie Cranor wrote a post on the same topic.

Now are you going to listen to Lorrie Cranor, or are you going to listen to me? I mean, who is Lorrie Cranor?

She's just the Chief Technologist of the U.S. Federal Trade Commission.

Oh.

There's no way that I can address all of the topics that Cranor raised, so I encourage you to read her entire post. Its title? "Time to rethink mandatory password changes."

At one point in her post, she describes the results of a University of North Carolina study that looked at password files and history for people who were required to change passwords regularly.

The researchers then developed password cracking approaches that formulated guesses based on the previous password selected by a user. They observed that users tended to create passwords that followed predictable patterns, called “transformations,” such as incrementing a number, changing a letter to similar-looking symbol (for example changing an S to a $), adding or deleting a special character (for example, going from three exclamation points at the end of a password to two), or switching the order of digits or special characters (for example moving the numbers to the beginning instead of the end)....

The researchers performed an experiment in which they used a subset of the passwords to train their cracking algorithm to apply the most likely transformations and then use it to crack the remaining passwords. The paper includes a lot of technical detail about what they did, but the bottom line results are striking. The UNC researchers found that for 17% of the accounts they studied, knowing a user’s previous password allowed them to guess their next password in fewer than 5 guesses. An attacker who knows the previous password and has access to the hashed password file (generally because they stole it) and can carry out an offline attack can guess the current password for 41% of accounts within 3 seconds per account (on a typical 2009 research computer). These results suggest that after a mandated password change, attackers who have previously learned a user’s password may be able to guess the user’s new password fairly easily.

Cranor further states:

There is also evidence from interview and survey studies...to suggest that users who know they will have to change their password do not choose strong passwords to begin with and are more likely to write their passwords down. In a study I worked on with colleagues and students at Carnegie Mellon University...we found that CMU students, faculty and staff who reported annoyance with the CMU password policy ended up choosing weaker passwords than those who did not report annoyance.

After reading Cranor's post (and there's a lot more there than what I cited), I only have one regret - I wish that she wasn't the chief technologist at the FTC, but at the government agency that I cited in my March 2 post.

Business in India - it looks different over there

I live in the United States of America, and as such I have a particular perspective on business in India. From the American perspective, India is a huge market that provides a number of services to the United States.

So a business paradise - right?

Well, it looks a little different from the Indian perspective.

Narendra Modi swept into power in May 2014 on the strength of a charismatic personality and a promise to eliminate India's legendary bureaucratic barriers to business. Today, India’s corporate leaders are losing faith that he can remove those obstacles....

India jumped 12 places on the World Bank’s ease of doing business index during Modi’s first year in office — from 142 to 130 — but many complex regulations and paperwork requirements have not been reduced.

The way the USA Today writer sees it, Modi's efforts are blocked by anti-business legislators in the upper house. And one writer speculates that there is an incentive for opposition parties to oppose business reforms:

If the Indian economy palpably (and not just in terms of numbers) improves over the next three years then more Indians will be convinced of Modi’s growth model. This may improve NDA’s vote share in the 2019 election, to the extent that even if its opposition forms a mega-alliance, NDA will retain the majority in the Lok Sabha. For this to happen, critical reforms must be enacted. While the actual economic impact of any reform will play out in the long term, in the short to medium term they improve certainty about the future and are thus, likely to support the stock market and along with it, the positive sentiment with respect to the government.

However, for the opposition parties, an adverse economic scenario will help them gain vote share against the incumbent ruling party and possibly win more seats. No matter how deplorable, it will be ‘rational’ for them to oppose reforms and dent sentiment, if not the actual economy.

Of course, that's silly. Politicians would never intentionally trash their own country to increase their own electoral prospects.

Would they?

#empoexpiire - Another example of how a 90 day password expiration policy discourages registrations

I haven't posted anything in my #empoexpiire series lately. Well, it's time to revisit the topic of 90 day password expiration.

You'll recall my June 15, 2015 post in which I returned to a service after several years, only to find out that if I reactivated the service, I'd have to change my password every 90 days.

I didn't reactivate the service. Too much hassle.

Some time last year, I also tried to re-access a separate service that listed government business opportunities. I ran into hassles and dropped the matter until now.

I knew my login name for the service, but could not recall the password. I tried a number of possible passwords, none of which worked. So I went to the service's reset password option, which would email me procedures to reset my password. I would receive that email within a few minutes.

I never received the email.

After some thought, I realized why I didn't receive the email. Over the last eight years, I have had four different work email addresses, and three of those addresses are no longer operational. (Note to those who are trying to email me at my old Motorola email address: I won't get your email.) It was extremely likely that the password email had been sent to one of those three email addresses.

So I went to the service's support website, which required me to set up a separate support account. (Did I mention that the first site listed government business opportunities?)

Once I had set up the support account, I contacted a person who was very helpful, and who confirmed that my account was linked to one of those three non-existent email addresses. The support person also noted that they were not authorized to modify email addresses on accounts, and that I would therefore have to set up a separate account with a new user name.

Frankly, I can understand this policy. After all, it is quite possible that I could have been an imposter, trying to gain access to John Bredehoft's account. An imposter could probably easily provide old email address information, along with a sob story about having no access to those email accounts any more. This could trick a support person into redirecting account emails to a fraudulent address.

So why haven't created a new account with a new user name for this particular service? Because of the sentence at the end of the support email.

Passwords must be changed every 90 days or your account will be disabled.

So if I set up the new account today, I'd have to change the password within 90 days anyway.

I might as well wait until I have to use the service on a regular basis before setting up the account.

P.S. You know that separate support account that I DID set up? Well, it has a 90 day password expiration policy also.

LAWA on the web, revisited

If you follow all things Inland Empire, you may have seen the post that appeared in my Empoprise-IE blog on Monday. Among other things, the post took an online publication to task for saying that Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) has five terminals. I then noted, with support from the LAX website, that LAX has eight terminals - Tom Bradley International Terminal, and numbered terminals 1-7.

I'm sure a few of you know where this is going.

After I wrote the post, but before I published it, I had to take someone to LAX. According to my FlightStats app, the flight was scheduled to leave from Terminal 8.

Thinking nothing of this, I went to Waze to plot a course for Terminal 8. (Aside: if you are meeting someone at the ARRIVAL level of LAX, be very careful when selecting your Waze destination.) But when I searched the Waze destinations for LAX, I couldn't find Terminal 8 - just Terminal 7. So I drove to Terminal 7 and dropped the person off there.

Is there a Terminal 8, or is there not? Another portion of the LAX website says that there is a Terminal 8.

And apparently the confusion has persisted for years. Here's a quote from a 1998 Los Angeles Times article:

Those figures include travelers passing through Terminal 7 and also the "Shuttle by United Terminal," which many travelers think of as Terminal 8, but which LAX considers a satellite of Terminal 7.

Of course, all of LAWA's plans for 1998 were adversely affected by 9/11 - which, among other things, explains why LAWA-controlled Ontario International Airport still does not have a Terminal 3.

Is that a best of breed, out of the box ninja?

Perhaps I saw it on LinkedIn.

I don't recall the specific details, but the item talked about signs of a poor organization. One of those signs was referring to your employees as "ninjas."

Now perhaps it's worthwhile to review the actual definition of the term ninja:

a member of a feudal Japanese society of mercenary agents, highly trained in martial arts and stealth (ninjutsu) who were hired for covert purposes ranging from espionage to sabotage and assassination.

I would be willing to bet that most organizations are not feudal organizations, and that they don't want their employees to sneak up on people and kill them.

Well, at least I'd be willing to say that organizations don't endorse killing people. Feudalism might be wonderful from their perspective.

So one day, I thought I'd find a company that actually used the term ninja to see what it was really talking about, and found this - a blog post seeking a "go-to-market ninja."

Even the hiring company admitted that they probably couldn't get a real ninja, and therefore would settle for "people who were ninja-like." I guess that means that they won't kill their enemies; they'll just laugh at them or something.

Unfortunately, the company's love of cliches did not stop with the misuse of the term ninja.

This ninja’s goal? To manage the 4 members of the Outreach Team and level-up our sales and marketing presence in the community–swiftly and with monster-truck force.

Ninjas AND monster trucks? But wait - it gets better.

Imperfect is a mission-driven startup...

As opposed to a startup with no mission whatsoever. Or perhaps the founders are practicing Roman Catholics. Forgiveness certainly plays a theme in this mission:

Imperfect is on a mission to find a home for these misshapen fruits and veggies in people’s fridges by selling them for a 30-50% discount with a lovable, hip brand.

Hint from an old (over 25) geezer - if you have to say you're hip, you're not.

Even if you're a lovable, hip monster-truck ninja.

#page462 No, I am not smarter than Robert Scoble - or Matt

Way back in 2013, I wrote a post entitled "#page462 What will the company that replaces Walmart (and Amazon) look like?" In short, I proposed that such a store would have zero inventory costs and minimal employee costs - the store would essentially be a brand, and the product people would provide the inventory and the sales staff.

Kind of like Uber, when you think of it.

Of course, because the post is over two years old, some of the statements in the post are already woefully out of date.

What if we had a company that could do the business that Walmart did, but with a lot less employees and with no inventory - AND could do it by maintaining brick-and-mortar stores where people could walk in and IMMEDIATELY purchase products, unlike Amazon where you might have to wait a day (or longer) to get your stuff?

Apparently I hadn't considered same-day delivery.

Fast forward to the near-present. First, Matt recently provided a comment on my original post, which I am reproducing in full:

Um...that is already done in most grocery stores. The vendors pay for shelf space, salesmen come in and order the product, delivery guys bring it in and stick it in the back, some other people stock the shelves. Want an end cap? Thats gonna cost you. What your product on the head (rather than the tail) end of the aisle? Thats gonna cost you. Wanna drop a pallet in the center aisle for a big sale? Give us a better price and we'll keep the extra. I did that myself for a pop company. Granted, the store pays for the products, but the vendors stock it, and take it off the trucks. When I worked in the stores, there was pop/soda guys, pizza guys, chip guys, bread guys, cracker/cookie guys, magazine guys, greeting card guys, coffee guys, and even feminine products guys (though I rarely saw him...apparently he only comes around about this time of the month).

The only real difference between your example and what actually happens is:
1. the vendors are only in the store for a couple hours a day
2. the store is billed for the product, but it may actually sell before its paid for

Second, Robert Scoble posted something on Amazon Pulse. I won't reprint the whole thing, but here's a relevant excerpt:

This week I visited a retail store of the future in downtown Palo Alto called B8ta. Not only is it the first store where you can test bleeding edge products like the new Avegant Glyph, but it’s quite unusual in its open use of cameras to study customers in new ways, and its open adoption of “showrooming.”

What’s showrooming? That’s where customers come in, physically check out a product and then buy that product online for a cheaper price.

B8ta has turned that business model around. Manufacturers like Avegant pay a slotting fee of around $1,000 a month for a small display area. That way the store is pretty profitable even if it never sells a product, but of course, sales are great.

Note that B8ta has some differences from my "Empoprisorium" - in Scoble's world, you would actually leave the store (or go to your phone) to make the purchase - but it still includes the concept (described by Matt) of vendors paying for shelf space.

What's clear is that - at least at present - vertically aligned businesses are passé. A bunch of different companies get involved in the store - or in the car that picks you up and takes you somewhere.

P.S. Relevant to my day job, this part of Scoble's post caught my eye:

Each display also has a camera over it that’s studying customer behavior. Right now they’re most interested in dwell time, or how long each customer hangs out in front of specific products. They use that to understand how interesting each product is and what percentage of the time someone will transact.

I have no idea whether the technology used by B8ta is actually IDENTIFYING the individuals - or at least tracking to see if Unknown Customer A goes from Display A, pops up at Display B a couple of minutes later, and then pops up at Display C a few minutes after that.

Shoe'nuff - on the eighth day, God created (gift card) hell

For several weeks now, I have been struggling with a shoe vendor and a gift card vendor. I will not name either company, because similar things probably happen with other shoe and gift card vendors.

The shoe vendor is one who offers shoes in the $150-$200 range, via its own stores, its own outlet stores, third party stores, and online. I have been buying these shoes on and off for some time, and my current pair of shoes is in need of replacement.

So I decided to go to one of the shoe place's own stores - one that I had visited in the past with good results. Unfortunately, I was unable to find a shoe that I really liked, but did find one that I sort of liked. I told the salesperson my size, and mentioned that I wore a narrow width. The salesperson checked, found the shoe in a wide width, and really wanted me to try that shoe on because perhaps it might fit. I declined and left, surprised that this particular store would go to those lengths to try to make a sale, regardless of whether the product was actually best for the customer.

I subsequently visited the shoe vendor's website and found a style that I really liked (and which was less expensive than the one the salesperson tried to get me to buy). I called the store back and asked if it had that particular style. The store didn't.

There are other branches of the store, including an outlet branch, within driving distance of my home, so I called them up to see if they had my preferred style. They didn't.

Finally, on Sunday, February 7, I decided to do something that I had never done before - order shoes online. Ordinarily I wouldn't risk this, but I had been wearing these shoes for years.

So I took my gift card (a general gift card, not one that could only be used for the shoe vendor), entered my purchase information...and my purchase was declined because my shipping address didn't match the billing address for the gift card.

Did I mention that this was a gift card, so the billing address (I didn't know gift cards had billing addresses) normally WOULDN'T match the shipping address?

So I tried again, making a guess as to what the billing address should be - and then my purchase was declined because I didn't have sufficient balance on my gift card.

Huh?

What happened was something that often happens with gift, credit, or debit cards - a temporary hold was placed on the card for a particular amount, awaiting resolution of the transaction.

Unfortunately, in my case there was no transaction - the first attempt was declined, and I cancelled the second attempt. Yet I had about $400 tied up on my gift card until the hold was lifted.

On Tuesday, February 9 I called the shoe vendor, and it confirmed that no transaction was posted, and no transaction would be posted. I would need to talk to the gift card vendor, but these things usually take 3 business days.

The shoe vendor was wrong.

By Friday, February 12 when the balances still hadn't cleared up, I called the gift card vendor and was told that the transactions would take eight calendar days to clear, since the vendor had up to seven calendar days to post a transaction. And there was no way to speed that process up.

If I was depending upon that gift card alone, what this meant was that the shoes that I wanted to buy on the weekend of February 8-9 probably wouldn't have been purchased until the weekend of February 20-21.

Of course, by this time I had already Googled/Binged the question "Who are the primary competitors to this particular shoe vendor?" On Saturday, February 13, I visited one of those competitors - without the gift card - and bought some shoes.

I'm not sure what this means about future shoe purchases - I have to see how the competitor's shoes hold up over the next few months - but the next time that I consider buying a gift card for someone, I'll probably get cash instead.

When communication is not only asynchronous, but also nonexistent

For the last several hundred years, there have been two basic ways for people to communicate with each other - synchronously, and asynchronously.

The specifics may have changed - for example, synchronous communication could not take place via video conference in the 1700s - but the types of communication are essentially the same. In synchronous communication, the two parties are engaged at the same time, and can immediately provide audio and/or visual feedback to each other. In asynchronous communication, one party sends the communication to the other, who responds at a later time - two seconds later, or two months later.

I am a huge fan of asynchronous communication via electronic mail. This allows me to respond on my schedule, starting with the highest priority items (my wife or my bosses) and eventually moving to the lowest priority items (you can save money on your electric bill!).

But there is a drawback to email, and to all asynchronous communication. These communications are founded upon an assumption that we are actually communicating with someone on the other end.

I know of two instances in which that was not the case.

I cannot share the details of the two instances, although there is one that I'd REALLY like to share if I could. But both boil down to the same thing. In each case, Person A sent an email to Person B at a particular company. Not receiving a response, or an out of office message, Person A sent a follow-up message to Person B. After increasing frustration, Person A finally asked other people, "Why isn't Person B responding to my emails?" In both cases, it turned out that Person B had left the company, and the person's email account was not disabled. Unfortunately for both Persons A, whoever was supposed to be monitoring the Person B account didn't do so, leading to a delay.

So people were communicating to other people who weren't there, and this fact was not known.

Of course, there are benefits to this. Have you ever wanted to send a nasty email, but then realized that it could do great damage to yourself? Well, if you ever discover one of these unattended email accounts, just send it there. President.Carly.Fiorina@whitehouse.gov is a good example of such an account.

Then again, perhaps your nasty email would be the one that WOULD be seen by someone...

Ellison's #oow13 no-show does matter...sort of

A little over two years ago, I wrote about a tempest in a teapot that disappeared rather quickly - the temporarily shocking fact that Larry Ellison skipped his second scheduled keynote at Oracle OpenWorld to hang out by the water. The reason? America's Cup.

Initially, the sky was falling. Larry doesn't care about his customers. This will permanently destroy Oracle.

A week later, it was forgotten. As I said at the time:

And if you're being honest, you'll admit that Ellison's no-show did NOT send a signal to the entire company. I don't think there's an Oracle sales rep who is now saying, "You know, I think I'll skip that meeting with the customer and go play golf instead."

And even in terms of corporate governance, Oracle wasn't impacted by Larry's "I'm on a boat" routine. I mean, the company has TWO presidents. Talk about built-in redundancy.

But now, over two years later, the real damage is appearing - not from Ellison's no-show, but from the fact that Oracle's name is associated with boating in the first place. You see, there was a recent case in court, and Oracle's corporate name featured prominently in the case.

The case, however, did not involve Oracle Corporation. It involved Oracle Racing, dba Oracle Team USA, a completely separate entity (which at one point had significant sponsorship from BMW).

It turns out that Matthew Charles Mitchell, a member of the team, believes that Oracle Racing's failure to fire Simeon Tienpoint for applying resin to the boat (which increased its weight) caused the America's Cup jury to unfairly target Mitchell. Or, as Mitchell's counsel argued:

Mitchell claimed "that the team's failure to suspend or fire Tienpont caused Mitchell to become a scapegoat in disciplinary proceedings before the America's Cup jury," (Judge) Chhabria wrote in his summary of the case. "In other words, Mitchell seems to believe that if the Oracle Team had suspended or fired Tienpont, the America's Cup jury would somehow have treated Mitchell differently during disciplinary proceedings. But according to the allegations in Mitchell's own complaint, as well as the exhibits he attaches to the complaint, the America's Cup jury was aware that Tienpont added resin to the kingpost. Therefore, the Oracle Team's alleged failure to suspend or fire Tienpont could not have caused Mitchell's alleged injury."

As it turns out, Judge Chhabria tossed the case out. But not before the name "Oracle" appeared in various publications, and creative headline writers got to write things such as "America's Cup Sailor's Suit Tossed Overboard."

And it's just as well the suit was tossed overboard. If Oracle Racing follows the color scheme of Oracle Corporation, those red sailor suits were probably painful to the eyes.

YIMBY in South Carolina Revisited, Now as a Budget Battle (and a Primary Battle?)

Nearly two years ago, I wrote a post that included the following text:

The U.S. Department of Energy is operating a nuclear facility near Aiken, South Carolina. The purpose of the facility is to turn weapons-grade plutonium into commercial nuclear reactor fuel. Obviously, such a facility requires plutonium, which means that there's a whole bunch of that deadly material floating around South Carolina....

Understandably, there are two sides in this battle. One side asserts that a plutonium conversion facility is extremely dangerous and costly. The other side asserts that the plutonium conversion facility is necessary to implement international agreements, and that it would be un-Constitutional to shut the facility down.

Oh, by the way, it's the STATE that wants to keep the facility open, and the FEDS who want to shut it down.

Fast forward to this week, when the Democratic President went through the exercise of submitting a budget for 2017 - a budget that will pretty much be ignored because Republicans run the House and Senate. But for what it's worth, the President's budget includes a change for a particular South Carolina facility:

On Tuesday, President Obama proposed a 2017 budget that called for terminating the project and called for a "change in plutonium disposition" that would appropriate $285 million for the Energy Department to complete a "preconceptual design" for downblending the radioactive material.

The change means that instead of turning the material into the nuclear fuel, the Savannah River Site would be tasked only with diluting the plutonium and then shipping it to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in Carlsbad, New Mexico.

Several people are not happy with this proposal, including the South Carolina Attorney General ("the federal government must be required to 'obey the law' and finish the MOX facility"), U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham ("reckless, ill-conceived and dangerous"), and U.S. Representative Joe Wilson ("counterproductive and shortsighted").

And all of this controversy comes at a critical time - not for President Obama, but for his successor. Because right now Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, and a host of other candidates are all headed to South Carolina, trying to convince the citizens that they would make a great President.

Take the case of Clinton, who was a former member of Obama's administration. Or take the case of Jeb Bush - the project was launched while his brother was President. Or take the case of Trump - who if he were to build a nuclear disposal facility, it would be the absolute best facility ever, and would be named Trump. Of course, even if a Trump facility released tons of nuclear waste and killed the fine citizens of South Carolina, he wouldn't lose voters.

So we'll see if this becomes an issue with the Presidential candidates in the next few weeks. Incidentally, South Carolina will be a bit of fun, because the Republican and Democratic primaries are a week apart.

Is a university a business? Mount St. Mary's efforts to keep its doors open may backfire

The phrase "ivory tower" has a particular connotation when applied to a university, or to some other type of academic research organization. It implies a loftiness of purpose, an unfettered pursuit of knowledge. In this idealistic phase, a true university - and I'm not talking about the money-grubbing greedy people who run the University of Phoenix - is dedicated to the pursuit of truth. Words such as "censorship" are incompatible with this lofty purpose.

Of course, some on the political right argue that universities censor those who love Murica. But I digress.

However, when you look at a university objectively, there are fetters. A university needs money to run. If you have ever graduated from a university, or even attended a university for a short time, you are probably subjected to repeated requests for donations, offers to help with estate planning (with the estate going to the university, of course), and many other reminders that the chief duty of a university president is not to consider the lofty goals of higher education, but to make sure that the university has enough money to keep its doors open.

So if a university is a business, doesn't it make sense to get a businessman to run a university?

Mr. Newman has almost 30 years of experience working as an executive with a strong background in private equity, strategy consulting, and operations. He is the former managing director of the private equity fund JP Capital Partners, as well as president and CEO of Cornerstone Management Group, founded in 1997.

During his career he has started or co-founded four different businesses, completed more than $33 billion in transactions, and raised more than $3 billion in equity funding for ventures and bids he originated. He has led several business turnarounds and delivered more than $200 million in profit improvements.

Mr. Newman is Simon Newman, who was brought in to become the president of Mount St. Mary's University in Maryland - presumably to make sure that the doors remained open.

What could go wrong?

First off, you have to remember that universities are constantly rated - not only by U.S. News and World Report (which, ironically, was only the fourth best weekly newsmagazine), but by the U.S. Department of Education. Ratings mean money, so universities - whether they like it or not - have to pay attention to things such as retention rates. President Newman had an idea about this:

Is a valid strategy to improve a college's retention rate to encourage students at risk of dropping out to do so in the first few weeks, so they won't be counted in the total numbers reported to the U.S. Education Department and others?...

The president, Simon Newman, acknowledged to The Washington Post that he was pushing a plan to intervene early on with students who may be having difficulties. But he said that this was to help them, although he said that the help in some cases might be for them to see that they might be better off a less expensive public institution.

Unfortunately for President Newman, he chose some rather forceful words to impress on the faculty that they needed to take a businesslike approach to this:

The student newspaper also reported (and The Washington Post quoted a professor confirming) that Newman told some faculty members they needed to change the way they think of struggling students. He reportedly said, “This is hard for you because you think of the students as cuddly bunnies, but you can’t. You just have to drown the bunnies … put a Glock to their heads.”

In this process, Newman was not only opposed by the student newspaper, but also by a number of faculty members who disagreed with the idea.

In a university environment, this often means that the institution goes through a few semesters of soul-searching, debate, discussion, and the like. At a minimum, any decisions are reached in a joint effort by faculty and administration, in accordance with the concept of shared governance.

But that isn't what happens in a business (with a few notable exceptions). And Newman, with his business background, acted quickly:

The president of Mount St. Mary's University in Maryland on Monday fired two faculty members without any faculty review of his action or advance notice. One was a tenured professor who had recently criticized some of the president's policies. The other was the adviser to the student newspaper....

But wait...it gets better.

Newman's letter firing the tenured professor -- Thane M. Naberhaus of the philosophy department -- accused him of disloyalty.

"As an employee of Mount St. Mary's University, you owe a duty of loyalty to this university and to act in a manner consistent with that duty. However, your recent actions, in my opinion and that of others, have violated that duty and clearly justify your termination," said the letter.

Further, the letter said that Naberhaus's actions "have caused considerable damage" to the university and that the university might sue him. In addition, the letter told Naberhaus he was "designated persona non grata" and banned from the campus.

Now this is not completely unusual. Even colleges that are most dedicated to academic freedom sometimes demand loyalty from their faculty; my own alma mater, Reed College, famously dismissed Professor Stanley Moore during the McCarthy era.

But it certainly raises eyebrows.

How will this issue be resolved? Will dedicated faculty throughout the globe unite in an effort to champion academic freedom?

Perhaps...but it would have no effect.

The one way that Mount St. Mary's issues will be resolved will be by a method that President Newman clearly understands: money. If critical donors decide that the environment at Mount St. Mary's is so toxic that donations dry up, rest assured that President Newman will be asked to seek other employment.

In a businesslike manner.

Process exceptions - when a building evacuation occurs and you're not in the building

If you work for a small company, you've probably encountered some processes here and there. They may be simple processes (last person out the door on Friday turns on the alarm), but they are processes nonetheless. And if you work for a large company, you've definitely encountered processes.

Now formal processes don't cover everything; some behaviors are learned outside of process. Take the MorphoTrak Anaheim walking around the building activity. Whether we were at the old triangular building or at the new rectangular one, you can observe MorphoTrak Anaheim employees walking around the building during breaks. It's even been mentioned on Glassdoor, although I'm not linking to that particular Glassdoor review because it wasn't complimentary.

So last Friday, I took a quick mid-morning break and decided to walk around the building. Not that I truly walk around the building; for me, walking around the building is mind-numbing, and I prefer to walk around other buildings, such as the building of my good buddy Liz Wescom. But that morning I actually started my walk by my own building, crossing the front parking lot on the way.

I ran across a few people as I started my walk. They were carrying big bags that I knew were associated with our official building evacuation process. We had recently received an update to that process, which I had carefully studied. So when I passed the evacuation employees, I removed my headphones (I can't remember whether I was listening to Kim Komando, Darren Marlar, or Kevin Austin) and joked to the employees that since I was the only one in the gold group who was outside, my immediate coworkers must not have made it out of the building.

And I continued my walk - not around my own building, but out to Liz's parking lot and the truck that still hasn't handed out free money yet.

And I continued to listen to Kim, or Darren, or Kevin, or whoever on my headphones. Eventually I turned around and headed toward the back end of my own building, where I encountered another member of the building evacuation team who asked why I wasn't out front.

It turns out that the other members of the evacuation team were out front because they were preparing for an evacuation drill. (California employers look here.) And since I wasn't in the building, I was blissfully unaware that the evacuation drill had actually taken place, and that all of the MorphoTrak employees were standing out front. The two gold team captains were going over the roster of everyone on our team who was supposed to be there, and I wasn't there.

So I walked - quickly - from the back of our building to the front, checked in with the gold team (who did make it out of the building after all), and stood waiting for the all clear.

But the all clear was delayed a bit because there were other people who weren't standing in the parking lot.

"[REDACTED]? She works from home on Fridays."

"[REDACTED]? She's traveling."

Eventually everyone was accounted for, and I resumed my walk with Kim, or Darren, or Kevin, or whoever it was.

But this pointed out an interesting but unavoidable gap in the process. Most employees were in the building, and presumably knew to get out. If I had delayed my walk by five minutes, I would have been part of that group; instead, I was temporarily out of the building. Now some people like me were temporarily away for a few minutes; others were away for the entire day; and for all I know there may have been people who were out for weeks or months due to maternity leave, catastrophic illness, or whatever. And what if someone left the company the day before the drill, never to return, but his or her name was still on the rosters?

Now I'm pretty sure that our process has ways to handle this. As I mentioned, my gold team has two captains, so that can help account for people if Captain 1 didn't know that [REDACTED] was traveling.

But it's all an inexact science...which is true of any process, I guess.

Stolen credit card information? That's so last year.

Recent security service commercials are emphasizing the fact that stolen credit card information is a valuable commodity. If a thief skims information from a credit card, people are willing to buy it. A recent article notes that such information can be purchased at a rate of 22 cents per stolen credit card.

But if you really want to make money fraudulently, you'll steal other stuff:

They also found the following accounts for sale at these average prices per account; PayPal — with a guaranteed USD 500 balance — (USD 6.43), Facebook (USD 3.02), Google Voice (97 cents) and Netflix (76 cents).

Why are thieves getting such low payouts for credit cards? Because the banks that issue the cards are getting more sophisticated in catching fraud.

Other companies, including Uber (or, more accurately, the many completely independent contractors that jointly market themselves as Uber), are catching up in fraud detection, but the market prices for stolen credentials don't reflect this yet.

If your business gets smaller...your business gets smaller

"We're going to get leaner and meaner."

"We're going to rightsize."

There are times when cost-cutting measures actually work. You may remember that Starbucks closed approximately 600 stores in 2008 and 2009, including two in my area. Since then, Starbucks has opened a number of stores, including one just on the other side of the freeway from the south Upland store that they closed in 2008. The difference? The new stores have better locations and better facilities, such as drive through windows.

But there are other times when cost-cutting DOESN'T result in a dramatic improvement in fortunes. I was writing about the poor health of Sears (previously Sears plus KMart) two years ago, and last I checked, Sears had not suddenly become the dominant retailer. In fact, I wrote about a future store called "Spenacy's" - a theoretical merger of Sears/KMart, J.C. Penney, and Macy's. A few years ago, such a combination would sound outlandish. Today, it's quite possible.

And even when retailers aren't merging with each other, they are "rightsizing" by closing some of their locations. Part of this is dictated by the mergers themselves - when my local Montclair Plaza had Broadway and Macy's as anchors, and Broadway was acquired, Macy's didn't see fit to have two anchors. However, some of these store closures are dictated by other factors.

Presumably the stockholders (these are normally publicly traded companies) are ecstatic, because the company's costs go down. But a reduction in costs itself doesn't necessarily lead to better corporate health. PYMNTS.com:

CNBC...points out several examples of retailers — including Sears, Aeropostale and JCPenney — shutting down locations in an attempt to reduce sales losses, only to find their sales not improving as expected or even continuing to worsen.

The trend, the outlet attests, cannot be encouraging for Macy’s as it prepares to close 36 of its stores in the wake of a 4.7 percent sales drop during November and December.

The theory is that if you close the store that is two miles away, customers will happily drive to the store that you didn't close that is ten miles away. Um...no. (Note to Albertson's: since you closed the store down the street from my house, you don't need to send advertisements to my door any more. I'm not going to drive several miles to buy milk and bread...especially when there is a Walmart just a quarter mile away from your previous location.)

But perhaps the biggest issue with rightsizing is this:

Anjee Solanki, national director of retail services at Colliers USA, shared with the outlet yet another reason why retail chains ought not rush to shut down stores to solve their problems: Doing so can signal to consumers that the business is in trouble.

“If you start closing stores very quickly, what does that do from a perception standpoint?” posited Solanki.

Two words: Radio Shack. But hey, things were sounding great after the holiday season and after the takeover by new owners:

Without providing figures, [Chief Marketing Officer Michael] Tatelman asserted that holiday sales had been “good.”

“We aggressively filled stores with inventory and staff, and we are happy with the results,” he said. “We are pleased where we are.”

Of course, the new owners have to overcome the perception of the company:

“People go in there, but it’s cheaper to buy things someplace else,” said Ashanti Harper, 23, who designs and makes children’s party clothes, including custom tutus. She noted that kiosks throughout La Gran Plaza offer cellphones, tablets and accessories, one just a few feet from RadioShack’s door.

“When I think of RadioShack, I think electronics, but I don’t think cheap,” Harper said. “ I think old-fashioned.”

At least the company has substantially cut its costs.

Benford's Law and fraud detection

I could have majored in mathematics, but it's probably just as well that I didn't. I've forgotten most of the calculus and matrix stuff that I once barely knew. But I still have a healthy respect for mathematicians, and it turns out that the science - while abstract - has true practical benefits.

Steven J. Miller of Williams College recently wrote an article about Benford's law. The law, which did not originate with a person named Benford but with a person named Newcomb, states (in simple terms) that "often the first digits of numbers in a data set are not distributed equally." Miller provides this example:

One particularly nice illustration is the example of a geometric process, say a stock that increases 4% a year. If we start with US$1, then after one year we have $1.04. After two years, we have $1.0816, and so on, finally reaching $2 after about 17.673 years. It would take approximately 58.708 years to reach $10. If we increase by a constant multiple each time, it’ll take more time to go from 1 to 2 than from 9 to 10 because the magnitude of the increase is larger at 9 than at 1 and the distance to cover is the same.

So if you visualize the first digits of all of these numbers from each year, there are a lot of 1's (17 of them), fewer 2's, fewer 3's, and so forth.

But Mark Nigrini of West Virginia University has a more practical example: detecting fraud in financial transactions. If you have a monthly credit card statement, Nigrini expected that the charges would exhibit Benford's Law: most of the numbers would start with a 1, some would start with a 2, etc.

Fraudsters don't follow Benford's Law when they enter fraudulent transactions. Miller describes how one such fraudster was discovered:

An investigation at one bank turned up many more stolen card totals starting with a 4 than Benford’s law would predict. Eventually they found that a large number were around $4,800 or $4,900, and attributable to one agent who was having friends run up debts just below the threshold before reporting the card stolen! Fraudsters discovered, thanks again to Benford’s law.

I can personally attest to this. One of my credit cards was compromised in the past, and the credit card company asked me to confirm whether certain purchases were truly made by me. Ignoring the fact that all of the purchases were made at one store chain in one geographic area, and all were made on the very same day, the pattern of the numbers probably gave the credit card company a clue. Here are some of the dollar values for the transactions that the credit card company questioned:

$1.52
$43.22
$49.20
$49.49
$49.99
$49.99
$49.99
$49.99
$49.99

This is not the complete number of transactions that were questioned, but I think you get the idea.

So if you were to graph these, you would see that one transaction begins with the number 1, none begin with 2, none begin with 3, a whole bunch begin with 4, and none begin with the digits 5 through 9.

Now that's an unusual pattern.

Anchors aweigh - will mall department stores be replaced?

A PYMNTS article linked to a Tampa Bay Times article that quoted retail analyst Jeff Green. Green was speaking about the diminishing relevance of department stores to shopping malls. Department stores such as Sears and Macys were traditionally known as "anchor stores" for malls, but as the department store chains have consolidated and Amazon takes over the world, there are a lot of empty spaces in malls these days.

Within his quote, Jeff Green said something that I didn't know:

[Anchor stores] don't pay rent, so they're costly to a center if they don't bring in shoppers.

Perhaps you already knew about the rent benefits to anchors, but I didn't.

Why would an anchor store pay no rent, or reduced rent? Because of the benefit of having the anchor store associated with your mall. Back in the day, Joe Mallman was building his mall out in Suburb City, and Montgomery Ward would come up to him and say, "Joe, if you want to get people to your new mall, then you have to have Montgomery Ward at your mall. And if you're really nice to us, then perhaps we'll place one of our stores in your mall."

Well, the landscape has changed now, and malls don't necessarily need the few remaining department store chains to survive. Who do they need? Ask Laura Northrup:

I only go to the mall when one of my Apple products breaks or I want to test makeup.

So guess who gets the rent breaks at malls these days?

The WSJ interviewed mall business insiders who explained that putting an Apple Store in a mall can raise total sales by as much as 10%, even though the store fits in only a tiny part of the mall’s retail space.

However, Northrup notes that this is a macro view of the mall - the numbers look really good to the people who operate the mall. However, the numbers may not make a lot of difference to other stores within the mall. Just because someone spends $1,500 on a new Apple Computer, that doesn't necessarily mean that the person will walk down the hall to the clothing store next door and buy stuff there also.

But perhaps the person will go to Ulta and test some makeup.

In which I leave the #apmp...again. Farewell, @APMPConnect

I am a secret - OK, not so secret - lover of spectacle, and have been known to attach Ultimate Importance to things that are, frankly, not all that important to many people.

The most recent example of this occurred on a couch in the family room of my home last Saturday evening, when I received an email from the Association of Proposal Management Professionals - and didn't act on it.

The title of the email? "Your APMP membership expires tomorrow. Don't delay, renew today!"

Actually, the moment of Ultimate Importance occurred several days before that, on the preceding Wednesday morning, when I sent an "FYI" email to two people informing them that I wouldn't be renewing my APMP membership. One of them, the head of marketing, is my boss. The other, the head of proposals, is NOT my boss.

While researching this post, I realized that the moment of Ultimate Importance occurred well before that - I don't even remember when, but I edited my LinkedIn profile to add a terminal date of 2015 to my APMP membership.

This of course ties in to other Moments of Ultimate Importance - my transfer from Proposals to Marketing earlier this year, my transfer from Product Management to Proposals in 2009, and my transfer from Proposals to Product Management in 2000. (No link for the oldest one; I wasn't blogging in 2000, so I didn't get the chance to write about my sitting in a cubicle on the opposite side of the building from Proposals, wondering what I had gotten myself into with this whole product managing thingie. Oh, the acronyms that I was about to discover...)

Obviously, my leaving the Association of Proposal Management Professionals is not a reflection on the group itself, which I have found to be extremely helpful during both of my membership stints - not only with proposal issues, but with issues that occur before a proposal is even conceived. (As any APMP member will tell you, much of the work on a proposal SHOULD occur BEFORE the Request for Proposals is released.)

So why didn't I renew? It was just that after my recent job change, the APMP membership, while helpful, was no longer EXTREMELY helpful.

So I've moved on.

Although the way my career has been going over the last quarter century, I wouldn't be surprised if I find myself sending an email to the APMP in 2022 asking, "Hey, can you reactivate that membership from 1999?"

If you are directly involved in proposals, capture management, or business development, I encourage you to visit http://www.apmp.org/, or follow the group on Twitter at https://twitter.com/apmpconnect.

XaaS

I have yet to formally publish the Empoprises Rule of Fair Food that I have previously mentioned, but I will reveal that part of the rule involves the universal use of the suffix "on a stick." (At this time I am not prepared to reveal the prefix that can be universally used - suffice it to say that it rhymes with "lied" and "died.")

Yet this universality is found in something else - another rule that I'll have to write that will probably be called the Empoprises Rule of Service.

If I ever publish this rule, the word "service" will be used in its technical sense. And the rule will discuss the universality of the phrase "as a service."

I'm not sure whether Software as a Service (SaaS) was the first use of this phrase, but it clearly wasn't the last. I myself claim to work in the Identity as a Service industry, and I'm sure that absolutely everyone - even people who produce physical products - are now referring to themselves in an XaaS way just to be trendy. Do you make cars? Then you can claim that you're in the Transportation as a Service (TaaS) industry, although technically that term may be more correctly applied to car leasing companies, or all of the individual private contractors who are associated with Uber BUT ARE CLEARLY NOT EMPLOYEES OF UBER WINK WINK.

I seem to have digressed.

In fact, the "as a Service" phrase is so widespread, people are coming up with new as a services to replace the old as a services. Combine this with an acronym-loving government agency - I won't reveal the name of the agency, but its acronym is DHS - and you have pandemonium.

The purpose of this procurement is to obtain funding for the transition of Information Technology Systems Management as a Service (ITSMaaS) previously referred to as Raas ( Remedy as a Service) support service...

Of course, since Information Technology is a service that facilitates other business operations, I'm sure that someone will eventually refer to this as Service as a Service. SaaS?

Why I don't fear Big Brother, December 2015 edition

Because so much of this affects my industry, I'm going to focus on just a single issue regarding the cybersecurity bills that are presently before Congress. The sticking point - if a business enterprise encounters a cybersecurity threat, which government agency or agencies should be informed? Representative Mike McCaul, who crafted the version of the bill that designates the Department of Homeland Security as the receiving agency, said the following:

"We want DHS to be the lead civilian agency — not the FBI, who can prosecute you; not the NSA, who can spy on you."

Erin Kelly of USA Today explained the distinction between the agencies:

Specifically, coalition members worry that the final bill will be stripped of the requirement that any cyber threat information from the private sector be sent to the Department of Homeland Security, a civilian agency that has stricter privacy regulations than the Pentagon's National Security Agency. The NSA has generated controversy for its mass surveillance of Americans' phone data.

As Kelly's article notes, there is no such thing as a unified Big Brother. In this instance, there's a fight between various factions of Congress to decide which U.S. government agency should get cyberthreat notifications. And presumably people within the agencies themselves are fighting with each other over that data.

Kelly schooled me on one thing - I had always thought that the NSA was an independent agency. It turns out that it IS part of the Department of Defense.

But that doesn't stop Pentagon-NSA fights. Take this one from 2012, which happened before the Snowden revelations:

In the midst of an ongoing turf battle over how big a role the National Security Agency should play in securing the nation’s critical infrastructure, a Defense Department official asserted on Wednesday that the military’s controversial intelligence agency should take a backseat to the Department of Homeland Security in this regard.

When even the Department of Defense is fighting with the Department of Defense over something, comparisons to a monolithic Orwellian supersecurity service fall flat.

Let's get personalized!

So how do you correct all of these "Dear Bredehoft" messages that I've been getting? By creating a personalized video:

Show your audience they’re not just one of the herd. With personalized video, they’re not just a number, and they’re certainly not a farm animal.
Connect with each person by weaving unique details into a video. Include text and images like their:

Name
Company name
Email address
Home page
Phone number
LinkedIn picture

I will confess - when I first read this, the first thing that came to my mind was those personalized childrens' stories that you used to be able to buy. You know, the ones that go something like this:

Who can save our town from the evil dragon? The only person that can do this is xxx BRIAN xxx!

But then I thought that it may be better than that. Vidyard itself points out:

This isn’t just some flashy trick to get noticed. It can have real impact on Empoprises' results.

As you can probably figure out, I entered the requested information at the top of the page. Unfortunately, when I went to play the video, I ran into the bane of all video existence - limited bandwidth.

Keurig 3.0?

Bad news travels faster than good news, and sometimes it prevents the good news from traveling at all.

Remember the Keurig 2.0 DRM brouhaha from 2014 and early 2015? This February article will remind you.

Late last year, Keurig announced a new machine, the 2.0, calling it the "future of brewing" and touting its ability to make both small cups and large carafes. But another, less-publicized feature has been getting most of the attention: the brewer’s advanced scanning system that locks out any coffee pods not bearing a special mark. It’s essentially a digital rights management system, but for coffee, and it’s proving to be the brewer’s downfall.

On an earnings call Wednesday the company announced that brewer sales fell 12 percent last quarter, the first full quarter for which the 2.0 was on sale. "Quite simply our 2.0 launch got off to a slower start than we planned," said CEO Brian Kelley.

The CEO was speaking euphemistically. A more honest statement would have been "Our customers hate our guts."

And frankly, my brain shut off any mention of Keurig after that, so I didn't even realize what Keurig did a few months later:

The one retaliation that seemed to effect change most efficiently, though, was financial. Keurig machine and accessory sales plummeted 23 percent in the first quarter, year over year, thanks in large part to unease over Keurig 2.0.

To help reverse course, Keurig CEO Brian Kelley this week announced the return of My K-Cup. It’s welcome news for those who dislike needlessly tossing hundreds of small plastic containers into the trash every year, but love freedom of choice and competitive business practices.

“Quite honestly, we were wrong,” explained Kelley on a call with analysts to discuss earnings this week. “We underestimated the passion that consumer had for this… We shouldn’t have taken it away.”

For those who are not familiar with all things Keurig, the My K-Cup allows you to use your own coffee with Keurig. However, Keurig didn't take away the DRM, and a number of people (such as myself) didn't even hear of Keurig's minor about-face. The damage had already been done.

And this was confirmed this week:

Keurig Green Mountain Inc. will be acquired by a JAB Holding Co.-led investor group for about $13.9 billion in cash.

This should please stockholders, since the premium on the purchase price should help make up for the money that the stock lost in the last year. But what does this mean, since JAB apparently plans to keep the existing management in place?

It probably means that JAB doesn't plan to keep the existing management - or structure - in place.

JAB owns a controlling stake of Jacobs Douwe Egberts, Peet’s Coffee & Tea, Caribou Coffee, Einstein Noah Restaurant Group, Espresso House and Baresso Coffee....JAB’s goal is to be the Budweiser of coffee, Pablo Zuanic, an analyst at Susquehanna International, said on Monday. The conglomerate may follow with other deals, such as a takeover of Dunkin’ Brands Group Inc., he said.

Perhaps Kelley will exit within a few months, and JAB will go for a rebranding. Your donut shop, your coffee shop, and your in-home system will be all under a single name. (Unless Starbucks and Tim Hortons merge and copy the idea first.)

So what will the new brand be? Not JAB - that name wouldn't play well here. Unfortunately, "Beatrice" is NOT available.

Let's get data!

I am occasionally the recipient of extremely personal emails that are addressed "Dear Bredehoft." In most if not all cases, the negative reaction to the email greeting is not repaired by the content of the actual email.

For example, I recently received a "Dear Bredehoft" email that was advertising an event entitled "Take Your Marketing Campaigns from Blah to Wow Using Data."

My reaction?

Blah.

Now I'll grant that, despite the fact that the emailer displayed personal knowledge of my last name, the emailer probably wasn't aware that I consider data to be the lowest form of stuff. Data is not information, data is not knowledge, and data is certainly not wisdom.

However, even if you don't subscribe to a data/information/knowledge/wisdom model or a similar model, you need a little more specifics before you start using "data" for a marketing campaign. Based upon the description of the event, it appears that the "data" in this case will be used to identify "new, targeted contacts similar to your best buyers."

Forget for the moment that I am selling to a very small market of thousands of entities, not millions of entities. How many of us have access to data that will precisely target similar potential customers who will actually buy?

Even Facebook, which does have access to lots and lots of data, seems to get it wrong more often than not. One of my Facebook friends is a graduate of Aalto University's school of business administration in Mikkeli, Finland. I have never been to Mikkeli. I have never been to Finland. The closest that I have ever been to Mikkeli is Paris, or perhaps Zurich. Yet Facebook, in its infinite wisdom, advertised "proud to be from Mikkeli" clothing to me at one point.

Occasionally I respond to these suggested posts with the words "Facebook, you're drunk." Of course, now Facebook will probably start advertising breathalyzers to me.