Why stockholder elections are as effective as regular elections

Somewhere or another, you figure that people would figure out the disconnect. In national elections in the United States (and probably in other countries), people complain to no end about the poor politicians that serve us. Yet it's a rare instance in which an incumbent politician does not get re-elected. Because of our willingness to continue to re-elect the same people time and time again, we've set up artificial ways to kick them out such as term limits. Yet despite all of the things we can dream up, we end up with the same crowd running the show.

Compare this to the corporate situation, in which we complain about how corporations are run and how boards of directors rubber-stamp what the officers want to do and give the officers huge bonuses. You have Congressmen and Senators who deride those who run corporations, and the reason that they do it is because the public agrees. In essence, people think that the people who run the corporations are as bad as the politicians who run our country.

But guess what? Even though the stockholders have the power to turn the rascals out, they rarely if ever do.

Last week, both BusinessWeek and the New York Times reported on William Ackman's unsuccessful attempt to install an alternate slate of directors at Target's annual meeting. Ackman, who owns over 7% of Target's stock, stated that Target's current board was unrepresentative of the shareholders at large, since board members own less than 0.3% of the stock. And Ackman argued that in today's environment, a fresh perspective was needed on the board. The New York Times:

Since beginning the proxy fight in March, Mr. Ackman has argued that Target’s current board lacked relevant experience in the real estate, retail and credit card business.

Regarding real estate, it should be noted that Ackman previously proposed that Target place its land into a real estate investment trust.

BusinessWeek:

Despite his pleadings, shareholders disagreed with Ackman's contention that the board was insular and required fresh perspectives that could be supplied only by his slate of five candidates, which included former Starbucks (SBUX) Chief Executive Jim Donald, who helped build Wal-Mart's (WMT) grocery business, and Richard Vague, former CEO of credit-card firm First USA.

And for his efforts to offer a fresh perspective, Ackman has been directly or indirectly criticized as a troublemaker. Just as an unsuccessful politician urges people to rally around the flag and stay the course, Damien J. Park (quoted by the Times) indirectly criticized Ackman by noting that his activities were disruptive:

“I guarantee you that every single Target board discussion over the last six months has been about this proxy fight and not about setting the business strategy of the company.”

So don't cause any trouble; we know what we're doing.

Even if we don't.

Lisa's folder and your folder, part two

Folders by Phil (Flawka) used under a Creative Commons License

In my previous post, I looked at the revolutionary introduction of the folder concept to computer user interfaces in 1983, noting that the concept has pretty much remained unchanged over the past quarter century. To illustrate this, it's helpful to compare the standard computer folder with a real folder that you and I might use in the physical world.

There are certainly some similarities between virtual and physical folders. You can use both types of folders to store documents, and you can even use them to store other folders.

But there are some differences. The one advantage of a virtual folder is that if you drop it and turn it upside down, the contents of the folder aren't scattered all over the place. Unfortunately, the reason for this "advantage" is simple - you can't drop a folder like you would in real life. Oh, you can "drag and drop" a folder, but it's not really the same.

For one thing, your interaction with a virtual folder is two-dimensional, if not one-dimensional. In most cases, you grab a folder by putting an oval object in your hand, sliding it around on a two-dimensional surface, and moving your finger in a special way to "select" the folder. Now I'm not minimizing the importance of the mouse in computer user interface history, but when I have to dive into files in my filing cabinet, I'm not restricted to two-dimensional space or doing weird things with my finger.

But what of a touchscreen? you may ask. Frankly, it's not much better. If you have a touchscreen, then you don't have to put the oval object in your hand, but you still have to place your finger on a two-dimensional surface, perhaps tapping your finger or performing some other action to "select" the folder.

I don't know about you, but I don't deal with my file cabinet that way. I open the file cabinet and just grab the folder I want. I may grab it with my left hand, or I may grab it with my right hand. If it's big, I may grab it with both hands. Or maybe I might grab it with two fingers, or if I'm feeling particularly creative, I may grab it with my mouth, or take my shoes off and grab it with my feet.

I could spend hours describing all the limitations of virtual folders, but let me cite another example. Let's say I've selected/grabbed the folder, opened it, and am ready to look at the contents. If I'm using a virtual folder, I may get presented with a screen like this:



In my example here, I can sort the contents of the folder (in this case, other folders) by name, date modified, type, or tags. (If there's a way to sort folders by size in Windows Vista, I don't know it.) Now certainly the smarter people among you can argue that you can customize your operating system to include other sort parameters, but even if you do so, you are limited to a finite number of sort methods that can be represented in computer language.

Now in the real world (and perhaps in some intelligent user interface that I don't know about), you can sort the contents of a folder by any criteria that you can make up in your head. Perhaps I want to sort by the Dewey Decimal System, which means that I'd put the Bible studies in the 200s. And yes, I know that Windows Vista could allow me to do this by putting the appropriate tags on the folders, but that's just it - I have to tell the computer something, then I have to do the sort. Why not do it all in one step, without having to bother with all this "typing stuff into the computer" insanity?

And that illustrates the entire problem. To get a computer to do something, you have to describe the action in a logical way that the computer can understand.

There's got to be a better way.

Lisa's folder and your folder, part one

lisa-computer by Ballistik Coffee Boy (spaceageboy) used under a Creative Commons License

I previously ruminated on how the Project Natal advances that were announced earlier today might eventually find their way into business applications. In an effort to consider the need for some sprucing up in the business user interface category, I figured I'd drill down into something on our computers that is over a quarter century old - the folder.

You wouldn't have a folder without having a desktop metaphor. And the desktop metaphor is pretty old itself:

The desktop concept was invented in 70s by a group of researchers at Xerox’s high-end computer science lab in Palo Alto. Originally multiple windows used to compete for space on a screen that wasn’t much bigger than a sheet of paper. The breakthrough came when a researcher named Alan Kay began thinking of the screen as a desktop. "People in offices got around the same problem of too much paper and not enough room by piling pages on top of one another." Kay simply transferred this real world solution to the computer and overlapping windows were born. No-one looked back from there.

Optimal Usability, from which the above quote was taken, goes on to say

Part of the reason for the staying power of this particular interface metaphor was that it was extendible. It is not a huge mental leap to incorporate other familiar office concepts such as a trash can and files.

Fast-forward a few years, and you'll find that two guys named Dan Keller and Frank Ludolph are working on some new ideas for the desktop metaphor. Their employer was a company that was then known as Apple Computer. Their project was a project that would render the Apple II obsolete and revolutionize computing - the Lisa. When the Lisa computer debuted in 1983, Gregg Williams of BYTE Magazine explained some of the new concepts, including something called the folder:

When you turn on the Lisa system, the screen is empty except for the presence of several icons.

While you read this, I suggest that you carry yourself back to that time, a time in which screen resolutions were expressed in terms such as 80 x 24 (the number of characters that could fit on a line, multiplied by the number of lines). Words such as "icons" were strange to most of us - frankly, in early 1983, I had decided that perhaps I DIDN'T want to type my 100+ page undergraduate thesis on my typewriter, and perhaps I'd better learn some macros for nroff to make the process easier. So bear this in mind as you read BYTE's description of this strange new interface.

The Lisa computer depends on the metaphor that the video display is a desktop, while the icons are objects on the desktop. Each peripheral connected to the Lisa (floppy and hard disks, printers, and other peripherals connected by interface cards) is represented on the desktop by either an icon (if it is not in use) or a rectangular area called a window (if it is available for use).

Here's this other new idea - the window. Now people in certain areas had run across windows before, but I certainly hadn't run across the concept yet, and wouldn't encounter it for a couple of years until Lisa's successor, the Macintosh, came on the scene. Back to BYTE.

The Lisa computer normally replaces the conventional file directory with a collection of objects displayed in the window of the associated mass-storage device. Each file is represented by an object of some sort - usually a report, a tool, or a document - and objects can be grouped together in folders, which are also treated as objects....

The folder was the new concept introduced by the Lisa team - as far as I can tell, no one had put a folder on a user interface before. BYTE describes how the folder works, again introducing the relatively new concept of opening an object to see its contents:

An example of the Lisa file system will illustrate how useful this metaphor is. From a cleaned-up desktop with nothing but icons on the right of the screen, I use the mouse to point to the Profile (hard disk) icon and click the mouse button twice; this has the effect of “opening” the Profile and displaying its contents. The Profile icon changes to a white silhouette and its original black-on-white shape expands to a window named “Profile.”...To view and then work with the contents of the Tools folder, I put the cursor on the folder and click the mouse button twice. The icon expands, leaving a gray silhouette and a window named “Tools”....The symbols on the margin of each window are points from which the cursor can direct several operations on the window. For example, when the cursor points to the small folder icon in the upper left-hand corner of the Tools window and the mouse button is clicked twice, the folder “closes” and the video display reverts to the image it had before the folder was opened.

This whole idea of folders, which not only involved opening and closing folders, but putting items into folders (including other folders) and taking them out, obviously influenced user environments well beyond the Lisa, and well beyond Apple. Chances are you're using an operating system, or perhaps even a cellular phone, which supports the folder concept.

A concept which has remained pretty much unchanged for the last quarter century.

To be continued...

How the French go green - 3rd generation biofuels from household waste

In a never-ending attempt to find new ways to fuel our world - something that Steven Hodson has noted is necessary for our technological society to survive - we've been trying all sorts of "alternative" fuels. Ethanol was supposed to be our great savior, but unfortunately the increased demand for ethanol moves production away from other things that we need, like food. There aren't people competing for trash, unless you count reality TV show producers, so if we can produce energy from trash, this is a good thing. John Gaynard found a page, apparently machine-translated, that describes French efforts in this area.

In [France] was first inaugurated global platform for producing fuel from algae cross. Plants, grown in an artificial basin, are fed with carbon dioxide from the fermentation of household waste.

Séché Environnement Group inaugurated last week at Vigeant, common in southern region of the Vienne department of France Poitou-Charentes, the first global platform for production of biofuels based on algae....

I was able to find another English-language report on the project:

Located in Vigeant, the plant will produce fuel from micro algae. As a first step, it will produce 4 500 liters per hectare from 30 tonnes of dry biomass. Eventually, 20 000 liters of ethanol per hectare are expected....

This project, presented by the region as the first pilot site in industrial-size open "to" third-generation fuel "is a collaboration between Séché Environment, Renewable Carbon Valagro SEM and lecentre Studies and Utilization of Algae (CEVA).

I hadn't run across references to third-generation fuel before, but Craig Rubens helpfully tried to define the generations:

First-generation biofuels rely on food crops as their feedstock. Corn, soy, palm and sugarcane all have readily accessible sugars, starches and oils....The problems with first-generation biofuels are numerous and well-documented in the media, ranging from net energy losses to greenhouse gas emissions to increased food prices....

Second-generation biofuels use lignocellulosic biomass as feedstock, among them dedicated biofuel crops like switchgrass and agricultural residue such as corn stalks. Using specially designed microorganisms, the feedstock’s tough cellulose is broken down into sugar and then fermented....

Rather than improving the fuel-making process, third-generation biofuels seek to improve the feedstock. Designing oilier crops, for example, could greatly boost yield. Scientists have designed poplar trees with lower lignin content to make them easier to process.

If you can't, or won't, go to France, you can see something kinda sorta similar in Henderson, Nevada. It doesn't produce energy, but it does produce something that we need even more than energy - water:

Another popular attraction on the grounds [of the Ethel M. Chocolate Factory is] the "Living Machine". This is where live bacteria, algae, protozoa, snails, and fish are used in a cutting-edge wastewater-treatment facility to recycle 100 percent of the water from the factory so that it can be reused in the manufacturing process at the factory. Don't forget: this is the desert and water is a rare and expensive commodity. This machine uses no chemicals and is able to recycle 32,000 gallons of water each day, which is then used in landscaping as well.

The business implications of Project Natal

As I previously mentioned, I've started a "natural user interface" group on FriendFeed, which you can find at http://friendfeed.com/natural-user-interface. Here's a peek into the group right (updated as things change).



While it's neat to see really kewl stuff here and there, the one thought that has been in the back of my mind has been, "Can these user interface advances be applied in a business context?"

Earlier today word spread across the tubes about a Microsoft announcement regarding "Project Natal," a new interface for the XBox 360 that should appear next year. Here's what the Seattle Times had to say about it:

Microsoft revealed a motion-sensing gadget for the Xbox 360 that it said will change the future of entertainment....

Code-named Project Natal, the device is a horizontal bar about nine inches wide and stuffed with cameras, depth sensors and array microphones.

It can detect the voices and motions of people nearby, so they can interact with an Xbox and games just by talking and moving their bodies.

James Games (no, not the place in Upland - by the way, I know the Upland James) links this to another Microsoft initiative:

(It is a bit like Microsoft’s Surface, but without the Surface).

Microsoft's announcement was made in advance of the Electronic Entertainment Expo over in Los Angeles. But I originally discovered this via a share by FriendFeed user digitalsoup (Alex), who shared this YouTube video.



As you can see from the video, Project Natal attempts to remove hardware devices that we normally use to communicate with computers, and instead allows us to use our hands, feet, and other parts of our bodies to communicate. If you think about it, a "control x" or even a mouse click is not a natural movement, and (at least theoretically) a Project Natal-like interface supports more natural movements.

But here's the question that interests me - how long will it take to transfer this technology from the game console to the corporate computer? Now this goes above and beyond Microsoft's announced plans to move the XBox 360 into movies, television and social networking. I'm talking about Microsoft server operating systems running on computers that don't need mice.

Your thoughts? How can a Project Natal-like interface help you to do your job better?

[9:50 PM - I SUBSEQUENTLY MUSED ON LISA'S FOLDER AND YOUR FOLDER.]

Testing if I installed AddThis correctly

This is a test.

A familiar face joins Conan tonight

In a few hours, Conan O'Brien will tape his first Tonight Show. And the New York Times notes that an old friend will join O'Brien:

His old friend Andy Richter will swing into the opening announcement, intoning for the first time the words “The Tonight Show With Conan O’Brien,” and the star will stand behind the curtains of his stylish new set feeling the thrill run up his (extra-long) spine.

Richter had been on Conan's original show for several years, but the Los Angeles Times describes what happened next:

After seven years of being on the show, I got itchy. I have a philosophy that if you enjoy good fortune, rather than sit there and say, "Oh, that's fine, this amount is good enough for me," you should try and push it. You should see how much you can stretch your good fortune. And I was curious.

Curious enough to try "Andy Richter Controls the Universe" and other projects, but now he's joined Conan in El-Lay. And his wife didn't need much convincing when Richter told her of the opportunity.

It's not a difficult thing to go to your wife and say, "Honey, I've just been presented with a way to get a regular paycheck."

The North American auto industry, North American governments, and ruminations on Franklin D. Roosevelt

I don't have any stunning insights on the latest auto news from the last 24 hours - Chrysler has cleared an apparent final hurdle to get OUT of bankruptcy, just as General Motors is preparing to go IN to bankruptcy, again with a relatively quick re-emergence. Apparently Rush Limbaugh will have something on his radio show later today in which he asks for a Supreme Court nominee who has "empathy" for the poor GM bondholders, but that's not surprising - Limbaugh probably wants the U.S. Olympic team to lose in 2010 because Obama is president.

But it does make you think about the unprecedented steps that Barack Obama, George W. Bush, the U.S. Congress, Stephen Harper, and the Canadian Parliament have taken over the last several months, in which the U.S. and Canadian governments now own/will own significant stakes in multi-billion dollar North American businesses. This is more commonplace in Europe, in which major companies are often partially owned by national governments, but it's a relatively new phenomenon here, at least at this scale.

The common refrain - and in fact one that I've used at times - is that this is an undesirable outcome, but it's better than the other outcomes. Truthfully, does anyone see an alternative in which General Motors could have stayed away from liquidation without U.S./Canadian government participation? Even Bill Gates and Warren Buffett couldn't have saved the auto industry.

Which leads me to FDR. I'll probably dig into this a little more deeply later, but Roosevelt was known to argue that he was truly a conservative, and that the unprecedented steps that he took were taken in order to prevent an even more drastic alternative as envisioned by Norman Thomas and others.

Now I know it's common to paint FDR, Obama, and even (in some circles) Dubya as wild-eyed liberals, but perhaps they're more conservative than we think. And if anyone wonders whether Roosevelt is truly the ultimate liberal darling, just ask the Japanese Americans.

Perhaps I'll pursue these thoughts at a later time, but I wanted to stick a few thoughts out there now.

Comments?

Arguing over semantics as technology changes

Old TV and 15 inch monitor by Alpha (avlxyz) used under a Creative Commons License

When I bought my new home computer recently, I discovered that the monitor has HDTV connections. I'm not using them at the moment, but I could.

One night last week, I insisted on using our main TV in the family room so that I could watch a DVR'ed copy of the Champions League match between Barcelona and Manchester United. Because I was using that TV, my daughter went to the living room and watched TV. Or, to be more accurate, she watched a TV show. She was NOT watching TV; let's be very clear on that.

Now many of you realize that I'm making a ridiculous distinction. But that is the very distinction that is being made by Hulu, as Peter Kafka notes:

Note how [Hulu] describes [its Desktop application]: “A lean-back viewing experience for your personal computer” that will work on Macs and PCs with “standard Windows Media Center or Apple remote controls”....

Kafka notes that at the time he was writing this post, he was in a room with

gorgeous 22″ and 30″ Mac displays that are much nicer than anything that sits in my cramped Brooklyn apartment. Hulu is saying that they’d be a-ok with me watchin Tina Fey and crew, via their service, on those monitors. But they don’t want me trying to get that show on an actual television.

To understand these arcane semantic distinctions, all you have to do is follow the money. More here.

Empoprise-BI News - 31 May 2009

Empoprise-BI News

The news letter for Empoprise-BI - An Empoprises vertical information service for business news.

Welcome to Empoprise-BI News

OK, we're going to do this another time. As mentioned previously, you can read this newsletter on the blog, or read it via an RSS feed, or subscribe via email. To subscribe via RSS or email, go to http://empoprise-bi.blogspot.com/ and choose the appropriate item in the upper left corner.

Special Features

Did you know that this blog has its own FriendFeed group? I should note (and already have) that some FriendFeed groups are designed around starting conversations. The Empoprise-BI FriendFeed group is a different beast altogether. I often source my posts from items that I find in my Google Reader feeds. I've selected a few of those feeds and placed them in the room also, so that even if I decide to run away to Tahiti for a month and renounce all technology, you can still find a source of business news. I'll throw other items in there at times, and of course the Empoprise-BI blog is one of the items that feeds into the group. Pay a visit to http://friendfeed.com/empoprise-bi if you're so inclined.

Behind the Scenes

As long as I'm talking about groups, I might as well mention http://friendfeed.com/ffempogroups. This is kind of my catchall FriendFeed group to talk about five of my FriendFeed groups - four relating to the four Empoprises blogs, and my Natural User Interface group. As for how I was able to put such a long group description (with links) into this group, I'll confess that I got a tip via this question that I asked in the FriendFeed for Beginners group (which had a long description; I wanted to figure out how Kol Tregaskes did that).

Upcoming

All I can say at this point it that here's a piece entitled "Arguing over semantics as technology changes." And another piece that compares stockholder elections with regular elections. But obviously more stuff will appear over the week.

As always, you can address questions to me via the usual avenues, including the "empoprises" mail accoung that Gmail hosts for me.

-Your pal, John Bredehoft, Empoprises

Crikey - communicating to prevent the impression of single points of business failure (Alex is in Maui, Steve is at home)

don't speak by Aart van Bezooyen (materialboy) used under a Creative Commons License

One truism about small businesses is that they're...um...small. If something happens to one person in a small business, it can potentially have an inordinately huge effect on the business. Even if someone else can cover the tasks performed by that person, there's always the danger of an impression that things AREN'T being covered.

A prime example has come up with weekend. On Saturday morning, Alex Payne tweeted the following:

En route to Maui. Feels so good to be travelling without a laptop.

Now there are probably millions of people who travel to Maui without a laptop. In fact, I know someone who took a combined business/vacation trip to Hawaii last week, and when the business was over and the vacation began, the spouse confiscated the person's smartphone. (Smart spouse.)

But that person, while critical to that person's employer, is not Alex Payne. And Alex Payne is perceived, for better or worse, as the technical person who makes Twitter run. So, when Twitter encountered a problem this weekend and was not correctly reporting sources of tweets from third-party services (see Louis Gray's post), this prompted Jesse Stay to make the following comment in this FriendFeed thread:

And Alex is in Maui without a laptop - that's why there's no response from Twitter - they probably don't know about it.

Now perhaps Jesse is right, or perhaps he's wrong, but the fact that Twitter has not communicated anything about this issue can lead to all sorts of speculation.

Of course, this issue is not limited to small companies. The same problem can occur when a prominent person at a publicly traded company is unavailable for some reason. For proof, just follow all of the comments in the last year-plus regarding Apple and a certain individual named Steve Jobs.

While there are valid arguments AGAINST communicating prematurely when you don't have the facts, there are also strong arguments for at least saying something, rather than allowing speculation to run rampant.

Which is why I'm now following the @lastfm account on Twitter, which posted this tweet roughly an hour ago:

Crikey, one of our data centers has overheated! We're fixing it as fast as we can, but the site will be down for a bit.

According to Twitter, this was submitted from the web. And perhaps Twitter may be right in this case. Or not. Crikey.

Operation False Charity

The Federal Trade Commission, in cooperation of a number of attorneys general in various states, is conducting an exercise called "Operation False Charity" to shut down charities that aren't all that charitable. I'll be discussing one such charity in a post in my Empoprise-IE blog on Monday (it's a local charity based in the Inland Empire, and our state Attorney General, Jerry Brown, is going after the charity and several others).

However, this problem isn't just limited to California's Inland Empire, and the Federal Trade Commission has a web page called "Avoid Charity Fraud". Here are some excerpts from the page:

Many legitimate charities use telemarketing, direct mail, email and online ads to ask for contributions. Unfortunately, scam artists also use these techniques to pocket your money. If someone asks for a donation, take your time and familiarize yourself with the charity....

Simply having the words police, firefighter or veteran in an organization’s name doesn’t mean that these groups will benefit from the money raised. If you want to give to one of these causes, use a charity that has a good track record. Charities that pop up overnight can disappear just as quickly.

Read the rest here. And, as the whole Madoff case notes, scam artists will also try to use religion to extract money for fraudulent purposes. If someone claims to share your religious belief, you still need to check out the charity.

Oh, and if you want a sneak peek to know who I'll be writing about tomorrow, check this Daily Bulletin article by Joe Nelson that documents some of Jerry Brown's actions on Friday. Nelson also discusses Operation False Charity:

The lawsuits are intended to permanently stop the charities' "deceptive practices and require the repayment of all funds raised under false pretenses," according to a news release by Brown's office.

It is part of a nationwide sweep called "Operation False Charity" which also involves the Federal Trade Commission and 48 other states.

On the benefits of being socially slow

Kansas City BBQ in San Diego? by Marc Smith used under a Creative Commons License

I'll grant that when you have a Web 2.0 presence, you are surrounded by people that...um...have a Web 2.0 presence. It sounds obvious, but this obviously influences your perspective. As I noted previously in my contrarian post on FriendFeed, the number of users on FriendFeed is dwarfed by the number of users on Facebook. And the number of users on Facebook is less than the number of users on AOL. We need to bear this in mind when we're evangelizing people to get on the social media flavor of the moment. Those that don't jump in with both feet are not necessarily ignorant Luddites.

Lauren McKay was helping her business-owning aunt, Karen Adler, to establish a Facebook presence:

To my surprise, Adler knows a lot about social networking. She gets the basic premise and pointed me to companies that she thinks do a nice job of marketing themselves on the Web. She said it’s something she’s thought about for the past year or so — but just hasn’t gotten around to.

Why not? Because she has a business to run:

With a new cookbook out in bookstores and with BBQ season in full swing, it’s no wonder that she has gotten a little sidetracked. She’s busy putting out daily business fires — no pun intended.

Social media isn't a five-minute set up and then you're done. It takes commitment, carving out time, and the like. Adler also had another concern:

Adler also said she’s afraid of going about it the wrong way. She showed me her Facebook profile that she had set up one day, but hadn’t yet uploaded a photo or any profile information. She’s not sure where to start.

There's two basic issues here - how to do it, and (more importantly) how to do it right. Adler is wise enough to know that communities have conventions, and it's a good idea to understand the conventions before diving into the community. What if she were to establish a Twitter account and immediately follow the first 2,000 people she sees (hey, everyone has to eat!), issue hourly DMs to everyone, and in general engage in behavior that would earn her the enmity of the Twitter community?

Better to slowly do it the right way than to quickly do it the wrong way and leave a bad taste in everyone's mouth.

And it isn't like Adler is completely off the web. There are properties that have been set up in her name by others. Check out her biography at bbqqueens.com, and the video on YouTube, and the Pig Out Publications Store.

So whatever personal accounts that Adler sets up are icing on the cake...or sauce on the pork...or whatever. (I'm not a cook.)

Boards of directors and society at large

I've written about boards of directors before, but only to the extent to note that they shouldn't necessarily be a rubber stamp for everything that the company officers want to do. But, as BusinessWeek notes, Ira M. Millstein has loftier tasks for the boards:

I heard in Obama's acceptance speech what [columnist] David Brooks labeled the "politics of cohesion": a new personal and mutual responsibility and unity, supporting pragmatism. This will indeed accomplish our goal over time if, and only if, across the entire private sector institutions and individuals alike reset goals and values. For the private sector, specifically the corporates, it means fulfilling their responsibilities to society at large, as well as to their shareholders and stakeholders.

Responsibilities to society? Milton Friedman would freak out.

More here.

Name the site with more traffic than Facebook that is getting jettisoned by its owner

Wet Spider Web by Swaminathan/Swami Stream used under a Creative Commons License

A few years ago, there was a web bubble that burst, and there's STILL fallout from THAT one. Saul Hansell of the New York Times chronicles a breakup:

Time Warner said on Thursday that it would file for divorce in one of the most ill-fated marriages in the history of the media and technology business, its 2001 merger with AOL. The companies hope the separation is complete at the end of the year.

AOL has long since lost the allure that prompted Time Warner to contribute two-thirds of its equity as a dowry.

And, lest we forget, as of April 2009 AOL was still the fourth most popular Web property (H/T Jake Kuramoto), beating out eBay, Wikimedia (including Wikipedia), Facebook, and Apple.

Yes, you read that right, AOL beats out Facebook. Consider that.

There are many people who could use this robot, including myself

Cup of Robots - On White by striatic used under a Creative Commons License

I was talking with my wife one day while I was at work, and she told me that she had worked on cleaning the living room that day. In the cleaning process, she collected stuff belonging to each member of the family and placed it in bags. So I knew that when I got home, I'd have a bag waiting for me. (Naturally, since she was the one doing the cleaning, she could remove the evidence of HER bag before we got home. But hey, that's the advantage of doing the cleaning in the first place.)

But wouldn't it be neat if my wife had a robot that could have done the work?

[R]esearchers at Carnegie Mellon University presented work on an object-recognition system that lets a robot sort through a pile of recyclables by hand.

Technology Review noted that this is difficult:

Being able to pick out items from a cluttered, disordered environment is no easy feat. And, while other robots are now dexterous enough to grasp an egg without breaking it damage or pick up unfamiliar objects, these systems generally only work if the object in question has been positioned carefully.

In addition to being able to pick things up, the robot needs to "know" what the objects are. This requires an object-recognition algorithm. And, being researchers, that requires a paper:

Object Recognition and Full Pose Registration from a Single Image for Robotic Manipulation

Alvaro Collet Romea, Dmitry Berenson, Siddhartha Srinivasa, and David Ferguson
IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA '09), May, 2009.

Abstract

Robust perception is a vital capability for robotic manipulation in unstructured scenes. In this context, full pose estimation of relevant objects in a scene is a critical step towards the introduction of robots into household environments. In this paper, we present an approach for building metric 3D models of objects using local descriptors from several images. Each model is optimized to fit a set of calibrated training images, thus obtaining the best possible alignment between the 3D model and the real object. Given a new test image, we match the local descriptors to our stored models online, using a novel combination of the RANSAC and Mean Shift algorithms to register multiple instances of each object. A robust initialization step allows for arbitrary rotation, translation and scaling of objects in the test images. The resulting system provides markerless 6-DOF pose estimation for complex objects in cluttered scenes. We provide experimental results demonstrating orientation and translation accuracy, as well a physical implementation of the pose output being used by an autonomous robot to perform grasping in highly cluttered scenes.

The paper itself can be found at the link. Look for the PDF item.

So, how much more time until the robot can identify the items, associate them with a person ("Sports Illustrated - that belongs to the husband"), and bag them accordingly?

When all else fails, bring in a casino

Have you ever noticed that when you go to a shopping mall, the mall always puts up signs to announce that new businesses are opening, but they never put up signs to announce that old businesses are leaving? Well, businesses ARE leaving malls, and shopping centers, and industrial areas all the time.

I tend to pay attention to closed grocery stores to see what ends up in this locations. Among the new businesses in old grocery stores are discount electronics retailers, drug stores, office supply stores, and health clubs.

It's probably safe to say that the larger a building, the tougher it is to find a new tenant. So what happens when an entire factory closes? If you're lucky, a casino may move in:

By the time [Bethlehem Steel] company declared bankruptcy in 2001, the blast furnaces had been cold for nine years, the 20,000-strong work force had largely been dispersed and the property tax base had plummeted, along with values of the homes of Ms. Corroda and her neighbors.

Yet on Friday, when the elegant $743 million Sands Casino Resort Bethlehem opened atop the site of the gigantic ore pit, Ms. Corroda was among the first in line with an ear-to-ear grin that exuded optimism for the area that has been lacking for some time....

The mayor said he expected the casino, the largest in Pennsylvania, to draw more than 4.5 million visitors a year and provide about $9 million to the city’s general fund, which this year stands at $55 million. Mr. Callahan sees this as the entertainment part of a redevelopment that also includes plans for an arts center and television station, a museum focused on American industrial history and condos to be built in a former steel plant building.

Of course, Sands was smart and made some design decisions to please the locals:

Here in Bethlehem, what delighted people like Ms. Corroda and Rich Fenstermacher, who worked for Bethlehem Steel for 34 years and is now a casino security officer here, were the homages to the company whose product helped build skyscrapers, railroads and military armament for a century. Exposed piping and a turreted ceiling were built to resemble the style of some of the buildings, and brick walls match the look of the structures that housed the factories.

Sands itself tells the story:

In December of 2006, Las Vegas Sands Corp. (LVSC) was awarded a Category 2 Slot Machine License by the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board. LVSC was thrilled and quickly started working on the site categorized as both the largest Brownfield redevelopment project in the nation and the largest casino development investment made to date in the Commonwealth. At a projected cost of $743 million, the historic Bethlehem Steel plant is now being transformed into a fully integrated resort consisting of 3,000 slot machines, over 300 luxury hotel rooms, 9 restaurants, 200,000 square feet of premium retail outlet shopping, and 46,000 square feet of flexible multi-purpose space. On May 22, 2009, Sands Casino Resort Bethlehem opened the first phase of the project, quickly becoming a major attraction in the region.

And, as can be expected, there is opposition to the presence of a casino in Bethlehem. But Tony Rhodin's problem isn't with the gambling - it's with the alcohol:

[M]y concern today is drunks. Unlike Atlantic City, where most folks take a bus or stay at a hotel in proximity to the gambling, Sands didn't finish building its hotel before the slots are to open. Yes, LANTA is going to run some buses -- but, in many cases, at some point they will lead to a car. The nearest hotel is a fairly long walk in what can be a fairly sketchy neighborhood. One hotel even promotes itself as just a short drive from the casino. I hope these hotels provide free shuttles on top of the LANTA service.

So, after pouring away money and pouring down drinks, celebrants will hit the road.

I'm hoping Bethlehem uses some of its casino money to stop these drunken drivers in that fairly remote part of South Bethlehem before they reach I-78 in one direction or Route 378 in the other. A permanent DUI roadblock in both directions would be great. A breath tester before getting out of the parking lot is another option.

Because we all know that DUI roadblocks nab DUI people, right? Here's what happened in Highland, California over Memorial Day weekend:

DUI Arrests — 8
Drug Possession Arrests — 1
Unlicensed Driver’s Arrested — 33
Warrant Arrests — 6
Other Citations — 8
Vehicles Towed — 19

HAL is trying to become a two-time champion!

Jeopardy set entrance at CES by Joseph Hunkins (joeduck) used under a Creative Commons License

Back in April, in my Empoprise-NTN blog, I discussed the "Watson" computer that IBM is designing to play Jeopardy. In that post I cited a Technology Review post, which noted that programming a computer to play Jeopardy is a much more complex task than programming a computer to play chess.

Well, over the last several hours, three mentions of Watson have crossed my Google Reader feeds. Two of them are, again, from Technology Review. The first post links to a video that begins by illustrating the issue. It begins with an answer from a guy named Alex Trebek, who (probably intentionally) illustrates the complex nature of the problem by noting that the question that goes with the answer is "elementary." The reference to the word "elementary" has nothing to do with IBM, but is based upon the fact that IBM's most famous leaders had a last name that was also used by a famous fictional doctor, and that the fictional doctor's friend liked to use the word "Elementary." How do you teach a computer to understand that a book/movie reference pertains to a business machine company?

In the second Technology Review post, David Ferrucci gives a high-level explanation of how Watson would solve a human problem:

Ferrucci describes how the technology would handle the following Jeopardy!-style question: "It's the opera mentioned in the lyrics of a 1970 number-one hit by Smokey Robinson and the Miracles."

The Watson engine uses natural-language processing techniques to break the question into structural components. In this case, the pieces include 1) an opera; 2) the opera is mentioned in a song; 3) the song was a hit in 1970; and 4) the hit was by Smokey Robinson and the Miracles.

In searching its databases for information that could be relevant to these segments, the system might find hundreds of passages. These could include the following three:

"Pagliacci,'' the opera about a clown who tries to keep his feelings "hid";

Smokey Robinson's Motown hit record of the '60s "Tears of a Clown";

"Tears of a Clown" by the Miracles hit #1 in the UK in 1970.

By analyzing these passages, Watson can identify "Pagliacci" as being "an opera," although this on its own would not be much help, since many other passages also identify opera names. The second result identifies a hit record, "The Tears of a Clown," by "Smokey Robinson," which the system judges to be probably the same thing as "Smokey Robinson and the Miracles." However, many other song titles would be generated in a similar manner. The probability that the result is accurate would also be judged low, because the song is associated with "the '60s" and not "1970." The third passage, however, reinforces the idea that "The Tears of a Clown" was a hit in 1970, provided the system determines that "The Miracles" refers to the same thing as "Smokey Robinson and the Miracles."

From the first of these three passages, the Watson engine would know that Pagliacci is an opera about a clown who hides his feelings. To make the connection to Smokey Robinson, the system has to recognize that "tears" are strongly related to "feelings," and since it knows that Pagliacci is about a clown that tries to keep its feelings hid, it guesses--correctly--that Pagliacci is the answer. Of course, the system might still make the wrong choice "depending on how the wrong answers may be supported by the available evidence," says Ferrucci.

And Alex Trebek goes "nyah nyah nyah" to all the chess players out there.

The third item that I read didn't come from MIT, but from a blogger who knows a thing or two about Jeopardy - Ken Jennings. He read the description above, and shared some thoughts of his own:

As I told Ed Toutant last week: I actually think you could get pretty good Jeopardy!-winning results with a computer using a very naive algorithm. To wit: programming the computer with the length and breadth of the J! Archive, and just doing some simple matching against key words in the clue. If, for example, the “this” clause (”this country”) and two other key nouns match (”Ayers Rock” or something), then the machine buzzes. I bet that’s a pretty short Perl script that could beat some human players. Maybe I shouldn’t be giving IBM tips, though.

However, I'd be willing to bet that when Watson shows up in the studio, they'll write some NEW questions. So much for a Jeopardy archive. Here's my vote for a new question:

This fruit took out a full-page ad that read, "Welcome, IBM. Seriously."

If Watson can answer the Smokey question, the fruit question should be a breeze. (Hint.)

A little more on that first lawsuit (Pfeffer v McNealy et al)

[SEE PREVIOUS POST.]

There's a little more detail on the April 20 class action lawsuit filed against Sun Microsystems and Oracle, courtesy the Santa Clara County, California Superior Court.

Case Information Associated Cases
Number: 1-09-CV-140424
Title: Pfeffer V. Sun Micro Systems, Inc., Et Al
Category: Securities Litigation - Unlimited
Filed: 4/20/2009 Disposed: None Status: Open

Plaintiff Barry Pfeffer
Attorney: Vahn Alexander
Faruqi & Faruqi, LLP , 1901 Avenue Of The Stars, Second Floor, Los Angeles, Ca 90067

The defendants are various people from Sun Microsystems (Scott G McNealy, James L Barksdale, etc.), as well as Sun itself, Oracle, and the Soda Acquisition Corporation (presumably the entity set up to make the acquisition). Interested parties include Oppenheim Asset Management Services S.A.R.L. and Murray Mandel.

If you want to see the original filing, go here. Excerpt:

The consideration offered in the Proposed Transaction, however, is unfair and grossly inadequate, because among other things, the intrinsic value of Sun common stock is materially in excess of the amount offered, given the Company's growth and anticipated operating results, net asset value and future profitability.

Other than Pfeffer being from New York, and being a Sun shareholder, no other details are given about him, or how he spontaneously contacted an attorney in Los Angeles to file this lawsuit.

When I last checked, the calendar includes a June 26 motion to consolidate, and a September 4 case management conference. The June 26 motion explains the presence of the two interested parties:

06/26/2009
09:00
Huber
8
Pfeffer v. Sun Micro Systems, Inc., et al.
140424
Motion by Plaintiff Oppenheim Asset Management Services SARL for Consolidation of Actions (Pfeffer-109CV140424, Oppenheim-109CV141421, Mandel-109CV141407), Appointment of Lead Plaintiff (Pfeffer) and Appointment of Co-Lead Counsel (Johnson Bottini LLP and Motley Rice LLC)

As for the Honorable Joseph Huber who has to listen to all this, he's done been commended.

What's new on the Oracle/Sun front?

I can tell you from personal experience that it takes a while for these mega-mergers to actually be finalized and get all the stockholder approvals and government approvals and the like. But I figured this was a good time to check on Oracle-Sun progress.

Speaking of stockholder approvals, I found this story from early May:

Sun [revealed] that three "putative shareholder class actions" against the proposed Oracle merger were filed by individual shareholders in late April in Santa Clara County Superior Court.

Here is the specific language from Sun's quarterly report:

13. SUBSEQUENT EVENT

Three putative shareholder class actions were filed by individual shareholders on April 20, 2009, April 30, 2009 and April 30, 2009, respectively, in Santa Clara County Superior Court naming Sun and certain of our officers and directors, as well as Oracle Corporation, as defendants. The complaints, which are similar, seek to enjoin the proposed acquisition of Sun by Oracle Corporation and allege claims for breach of fiduciary duty against the individual defendants and for aiding and abetting a breach of fiduciary duty against the corporate defendants. The complaints generally allege that the consideration offered in the proposed transaction is unfair and inadequate. Sun and the other defendants have not yet responded to the complaints.

After the filing of the first lawsuit, the Shareholder Rights Foundation stated the following:

On Monday, April 20, 2009 an investor in Sun Microsystems (NASDAQ: JAVA) has filed a proposed class action lawsuit on behalf of current investors of Sun Microsystems (NASDAQ: JAVA), who purchased their shares before Monday, April 20, 2009 and continue to hold their shares, in the Superior Court of California against Sun and its board of directors over the announced takeover of Sun by Oracle Corporation for $9.50 per JAVA share in cash.

According to the complaint the plaintiff alleges that Sun Microsystems and its board of directors breached their fiduciary duty when they attempt to sell Sun to Oracle under the present conditions. The stock of Sun Microsystems (NASDAQ: JAVA) was trading as high as $10.86 on August 15, 2008 and $16.32 on May 01, 2008.

And of course, it's entirely reasonable to believe that an August 15, 2008 stock valuation should still remain constant in April 2009. Yeah, right.

Moving on...

RedOrbit notes that now is the time to buy - or perhaps not:

Bargain-rate valuations and hopes of economic recovery are enticing cash-rich tech firms to seek acquisitions, with many expecting a string of such deals during the second half of the year.

Leading technology companies such as IBM, as well as boutique players such as NetSuite, have assessed the recession-caused damage to their balance sheets, and are looking towards new growth opportunities.

Oh, and in a nice little coincidence, Larry Ellison co-owns a yacht that is called "Rising Sun." His other yacht is called Dogzilla; does this mean that Ellison will buy a book publisher?

[7:30 - LAWSUIT FOLLOWUP.]