Time to find a playground, as shared by @BJLownie

Sometimes we have bad days. Mark Hurd probably isn't having all that good a day today. Since Hurd isn't a proposal writer, and since he probably doesn't read my Google Reader shares, he probably didn't see this post from The Proposal Guys. The Proposal Guys (and a panda) obviously address their comments to proposal writers, but some of them have more general applicability.

In this post, BJ Lownie quotes from the child of a friend of a friend. The child's father was stuck in traffic, and the child said:

Daddy, you need to calm down. Let’s take a few deep breaths together. Then we can find a playground, you can swing for a while, and we’ll all feel much better.

Well, maybe your Ruby on Rails blog has some equally inspiring item, but this was a good way to start the weekend.

(Picture source, license)

Mark Hurd resigns as head of HP

TechCrunch reports that Mark Hurd has resigned as Chairman, Chief Executive Officer, and President of Hewlett-Packard.

Reports that he has resigned to join Carly Fiorina's Senate campaign are stupid, unsubstantiated rumors that I started myself.

Sadly, the reason for his resignation (according to the press release) is not a joke:

Hurd's decision was made following an investigation by outside legal counsel and the General Counsel's Office, overseen by the Board, of the facts and circumstances surrounding a claim of sexual harassment against Hurd and HP by a former contractor to HP. The investigation determined there was no violation of HP's sexual harassment policy, but did find violations of HP's Standards of Business Conduct.

You might recall that when David Letterman's extra-marital affairs came to light, there was a possibility the Letterman could have lost his job at CBS because of possible violations of CBS business conduct standards. He didn't, but Mark Hurd did.

The press release notes that CFO/interim CEO Cathie Lesjak has taken herself out of consideration for the permanent CEO position.

Virtual Brisbane for neighborhood planning and other applications

Let's say that you're a builder and that you're going before your local city council to propose a new building. The city council members are obviously going to be concerned about what the building will look like in relation to other buildings in the area.

So you haul out a big picture, done in the finest colored pencils, showing what the building will look like.

Councilman Jones speaks up. "So what will it look like at night?"

Councilwoman Smith interjects. "Could we put some trees on the southeast corner?"

Now if you, Councilman Jones, and Councilwoman Smith happened to live in Brisbane, Australia, the council questions could be answered by use of a new tool.

AnyGeo has shared information about an effort launched by the Brisbane (Australia) City Council called Virtual Brisbane.

Virtual Brisbane is an interactive, computer-generated model of Brisbane’s CBD and inner-five kilometres. It is a spatially-accurate model and has been built from aerial laser scans and imagery to give a high-definition photo finish.

The 3D model will expand to cover the rest of the city.

The Virtual Brisbane model will help Brisbane City Council analyse proposed developments, improving the assessment process.

This video shows some examples of Virtual Brisbane in use, including ways to examine buildings by day or by night, or to modify the landscaping, or to make other changes.



Now the video doesn't show how easy, or how hard, it is to make the various changes. Hopefully day and night are pre-programmed, but how much effort does it take to add a few trees, or to remove a floor (do Australians say "storey"?) from a building.

But it does not that this will help planning decisions to be better communicated to citizens, so that after the council has gone over the plan, it can then show the virtualization to the citizens.

And the video briefly alludes to potential future applications:

Longer term, the model has potential uses for industry, educational institutions and government.

Another obvious use is tourism. Perhaps they could create a multi-player RPG in which people wander around Brisbane and get points for giving vegemite sandwiches to deserving people that they encounter. (Just don't play the flute while you do it.)

P.S. to Ffundercats fans - I found no evidence that Houston, Texas is doing anything similar to what Brisbane, Australia is doing, but Houston does have a facility (Peek a Baby) that not only offers 3-D ultrasounds of your baby-to-be, but also advertises 4-D ultrasounds. They offer several packages, including "The Ultimate Peek":

One 20-30+ min. 2D/3D/4D Ultrasound Session
One DVD of entire session set to music
4 Black & While photos
8 Color 3D photos
15-30 Images on CD with 2-3 video segments
Video files can be viewed on computer and sent to family via the Internet
Ultrasound Report
Gender Determination(if desired)

$225 ( Look on Home Page for Coupon )

However, I don't believe that Peek a Baby offers the ability to change the appearance of your baby. Thankfully.

100% of surveyed respondents loved this post - or, why statistics are meaningless

I guess I'm on a posting trend about hospital emergency room wait times, considering that I've posted about this on Wednesday and Thursday.

The Wednesday post displayed a screen shot from Placentia-Linda Hospital's website; the screen shot showed a current four-minute wait time at the hospital.

The Thursday post talked about the wait times at Scripps Mercy Chula Vista, and how they had decreased to 25 minutes.

So if I think I'm going to get sick, should I go to Placentia? After all, statistics show that I'll be seen 21 minutes more quickly than I would in Chula Vista. And statistics don't lie, do they?

Um, you'd better ask Samuel Clemens about that:

Figures often beguile me, particularly when I have the arranging of them myself; in which case the remark attributed to Disraeli would often apply with justice and force: "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics."

(Incidentally, it's uncertain that Disraeli actually said this, but Clemens was a damned liar, and a damned good one.)

When looking at a single statistic in isolation, such as emergency room wait times, there are a number of things that need to be examined. Here are a few examples:

• The two wait time statistics are measured differently. Although we don't know the details of Placentia's measure, it is a measure over a brief period of time. The quoted Chula Vista time was an average, possibly taken over a month, or several months. What would happen if I looked at Placentia's number right after a bunch of AYSO soccer games? Or at 11:00 pm on July 4?


• When you measure an elapsed time, you have to define the start and the end time. What are the start and end times for the Placentia and Chula Vista measurements? Does the time end when the clerk calls you up to the counter? Does it end when a nurse sees you? Does it end when a doctor sees you? Let's face it - if you want to, you could set a target emergency room wait time of 1 second and consistently meet it, provided that you define your start and end times properly.


• I know nothing about the hospital in Chula Vista, but I have gained significant knowledge about the Placentia hospital by driving up Rose Drive, and my extensive knowledge suggests to me that Placentia-Linda is a relatively small hospital.


• But even if two hospitals are of the same size, their locations could easily affect any statistics that are generated. Is one hospital next to an AYSO soccer field? Is one next to an urgent care clinic? Is one in a community where everyone has lost their jobs, and their health care coverage?

As it turned out, my Thursday post contained a supposedly off-topic reference to my alma mater.

I consulted the leading authority on hospital reputations, Yelp. (Hey, I'm a Reed College graduate; U.S. News and World Report is not an option.)

In fact, if you followed the link, you will see that Reed's concerns about U.S. News and World Report's annual college survey (or a similar survey from Money magazine) raise similar objections to the isolated use of numbers.

Reed College has actively questioned the methodology and usefulness of college rankings ever since the magazine's best-colleges list first appeared in 1983, despite the fact that the issue ranked Reed among the top ten national liberal arts colleges. Reed's concern intensified with disclosures in 1994 by the Wall Street Journal about institutions flagrantly manipulating data in order to move up in the rankings in U.S. News and other popular college guides. This led Reed's then-president Steven Koblik to inform the editors of U.S. News that he didn't find their project credible, and that the college would not be returning any of their surveys.

A subsequent president, Colin Diver, provided additional thoughts:

Rankings, he says, are grounded in a "one-size-fits-all" mentality. "They are primarily measures of institutional wealth, reputation, influence, and pedigree. They do not attempt, nor claim, to measure the extent to which knowledge is valued and cultivated" on each campus. Reed doesn’t rank its students. "Why should we participate in a survey that ranks colleges?" he asks.

And anyone who agreed with Reed's approach seemed to have their concerns validated during the first year that Reed refused to participate:

The year the college refused to submit data, the magazine arbitrarily assigned Reed the lowest possible in several categories and relegated the college to the lowest tier in its category, the most precipitous decline in the history of its ratings.

And then:

The following year, responding to widespread criticism of its retribution, the magazine trumpeted Reed in its "best colleges" press release as being new to the "top tier" of national liberal arts schools.

For the record, Reed would prefer not to be in the survey at all, but then U.S. News' survey would be considered incomplete, so the magazine prefers to keep them in there.

And they perform other surveys, including surveys of hospitals and law schools. The latter has not endeared U.S. News and World Report to an American Bar Association committee:

A special committee of the American Bar Association has issued a report criticizing the impact of U.S. News & World Report rankings on law schools. The report says that the magazine's methodology "tends to increase the costs of legal education for students" because colleges are rewarded for spending more, that the rankings "discourage the award of financial aid based upon need" because law schools are rewarded for enrolling more students with high LSAT scores and so will award merit aid, and that for similar reasons "the current methodology tends to reduce incentives to enhance the diversity of the legal profession."

U.S. News and World Report raised objections:

Robert Morse, who leads the college rankings at U.S. News, said that the ABA never contacted the magazine to discuss the rankings, and he offered his own critique of the study. "I think the ABA report is one sided and does not tell the whole story," he said. "The ABA ignores that it's highly likely that there are other factors besides U.S. News behind rising tuitions at law schools, why law schools are offering more merit aid and that some law schools aren't accepting enough at-risk low-LSAT students. In other words, it's easy to blame U.S. News for many of the negative practices at law schools. Law schools and the ABA need to take far more direct responsibility for these trends."

Of course, not everyone agrees with Reed College and the ABA. Take Grace College in Winona Lake, Indiana:

It has historically been among the top schools of its size and listed in U.S. News & World Report as one of America’s Best Colleges.

But nearby Kosciusko Community Hospital in Warsaw doesn't display its emergency room wait times. Maybe that's why U.S. News and World Report characterizes the hospital as "average."

(empo-tuulsey) (empo-tymshft) @SuzanDelBene , @TeamReichert , and reaching new voters

I'm going to start this post by getting all of the FCC disclosures out of the way. First, I was a college classmate of Suzan DelBene at Reed College. (Incidentally, I'll have a little more to say about Reed in a future post.) Second, Dave Reichert's former employer (the King County Sheriff's Office) is a current customer of my employer.

If you haven't heard of either DelBene or Reichert, then you probably aren't interested in Windows Mobile products. Or you're not a cop. Or you don't live in western Washington, where they are the apparent front runners in the 8th U.S. Congressional District in the state of Washington's August 17 primary. (Incidentally, this is a "top 2" primary, so DelBene and Reichert are already competing against each other.)

What's interesting is how both of these candidates are using newer technologies to reach the voters.

Back when Dave and Suzan and I were born, the brand spanking new technology was television. The first 1960 U.S. Presidential debate was just one instance in which the power of the new technology became known. However, this raised troubling questions as more telegenic candidates began to emerge. Would some of our prior Presidents, such as FDR and Abraham Lincoln, been viable candidates in a television age?

Well, the Kennedy-Nixon debate occurred 50 years ago, and now DelBene and Reichart are battling it out online. DelBene advertises her presence on four services:

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Suzan-Delbene/136326264034?ref=ts
Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/40904663@N05/
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/SuzanDelBene
YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/delbeneforcongress

Reichert has staked his own claims to various parts of the tubes:

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Dave-Reichert/6699231655
Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/teamreichert/
Twitter: http://twitter.com/TeamReichert
YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/teamreichert

Now the candidates obviously engage in more traditional politicking - Reichert is talking a lot about lawn signs at the moment - but obviously these 21st century technologies are an important part of their communications arsenal.

And perhaps we may eventually find that these new technologies cause a shift in the candidates that we elect, possibly not for the better.

One thing in common between television and the newer technologies is that short is better. Back in the 19th century, politicians may entertain a crowd for hours. Television prefers the soundbite. Twitter and YouTube prefer the shorter conversation. (To my knowledge, neither of the candidates engage in 1-2 hour podcasts. Good.)

One of the previous politicians, even though he would have been a disaster on television, might be ideally suited for the Twitter age. Abraham Lincoln's most famous speech is extremely short - not as short as 140 characters, but certainly in marked contrast to other orations of the time. I could see him tweeting his way through a crisis, though it would be disconcerting to me to see "lol" appended to the end of a Lincoln joke.

After this election is over, we'll have to see how effective the candidates were at using these tools to get their messages out. I believe that both of them realize that these are only tools, and that you need to have a coherent message before you start tweeting or whatever. A tool is not a way of life, and a tool alone won't get you to Capitol Hill.

When reporting about a displayed statistic, look at the statistic!

Joel Garry happened to see my Wednesday post that discussed the Placentia-Linda Hospital website. If you missed this post, it mentioned (among other things) the fact that the hospital is displaying its emergency room wait time on the website (with the caveat, of course, that emergencies are always treated based upon "the magnitude of illness or injury").

Garry referred me to a recent article on emergency room wait times. Specifically, the article looks at ways in which wait times can be reduced, which is particularly difficult when the number of visits to emergency rooms are increasing at a rate of 5-10% per year.

Scripps Mercy Chula Vista decreased its average wait times from 87 to 25 minutes by changing its processes:


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The hospital has dropped the traditional triage nurse who takes medical information, assesses a patient’s situation and whisks critical cases inside while returning non-acute patients to the waiting room. Now, the Scripps Mercy waiting room has become a quick-stop lobby where patients are immediately taken to a “blue side” for true emergencies or to a non-acute “gold side.”

On the blue side, a traditional approach is taken, with one nurse caring for no more than four patients, as required by state law.

The big change is on the gold side, where patients quickly meet with a nurse-and-doctor team to be evaluated. A treatment nurse coordinates any tests or procedures and a discharge nurse handles the final details before the patient heads out the door. Rather than one nurse caring for four patients, each nurse is [assigned] a specific task so patients rotate through more quickly....

And the hospital is doing other things, such as replacing gurneys with recliners. 40 recliners take up the same square footage as 29 gurneys, thus enabling the hospital to service more patients.

But do these changes truly work? I consulted the leading authority on hospital reputations, Yelp. (Hey, I'm a Reed College graduate; U.S. News and World Report is not an option.) Unfortunately, there are no 2010 reviews of Scripps Mercy Chula Vista, but the June 17, 2009 review indicated that something truly needed to be done.

I was here all day and because of a mixup with the nurses, I was here somewhere between 1-2 hours longer than needed. That's ridiculous, no, UNACCEPTABLE when you think about the consequences of a more serious mistake. We are all human but that doesn't make my experience any more unsettling.

Hopefully Scripps Mercy Chula Vista has addressed these issues, although we can't be sure; they don't display their wait times. (Although I question whether that statistic in isolation is truly meaningful; I should return to that topic later.)

Time for some South American psychology

In a previous post, I stated:

In the future, look for me to write a post on South American psychological centers.

Why? Because Yahoo Buzz told me to do so. Or something like that. Or perhaps it was something else.

This apparently is not that popular of a topic, since the one paper that I found on school psychologists in South America was written back in 1987. The abstract is here.

The literature discussing professional practices of school psychology in South America is very meager. This study attempted to identify demographic characteristics of school psychologists in four South American countries, their typical responsibilities, significant problems, and threats that jeopardize the delivery of psychological services within the schools. Questionnaires were completed by informed psychologists in Brazil, Chile, Colombia, and Venezuela. The results revealed that school psychologists were overwhelmingly female. Most were found to have undergraduate degrees; only in Venezuela did the proportion of school psychologists with graduate degrees exceed that of psychologists with undergraduate degrees. Important differences existed in the number of professional programs available in the countries. High percentages of school psychologists were members of national associations. Respondents from all four countries rated as very important knowledge and skill areas that focused on the academic areas of psychology emphasizing individual differences, intelligence, motivation, professional service, work with the visually and physically impaired, learning disabilities, and parent education. A significant area of stress in all countries was low salaries, and threats to service included lack of research and evaluation, conflicts with competing professional groups, and lack of proper funding. (Differences among the countries are discussed; references and data tables are included.) (NB)

I'm not sure if Wechsler and Oakland concluded that the topic required further study, and if so, whether they were able to get the funding. I hope they were. But it turns out that South American psychological services can often be provided by...non South Americans. For example:

The [Minnesota State University Mankato] Industrial/Organizational Psychology students and faculty will be traveling in mid- to late-May to Ecuador to take part in a service-learning opportunity with the Yachana Technical High School in the Amazon region of Ecuador.

And what psychological assistance will they be providing?

As a part of our service-learning, we are hoping to better the communication between staff members of the Yachana School by providing them with two-way radios.

Better to talk about their feelings, I guess...

When reporting about a website, name the website!

I was getting my hair cut when I picked up the Placentia News-Times, published by the folks that bring you the Orange County Register. Page 3 of the July 29 paper included a story about Placentia-Linda Hospital that began as follows:

A new feature on Placentia-Linda Hospital's website now shows the emergency room's wait time.

The story went on to describe the feature, the steps taken by the parent company (Tenet) to implement the feature, and future plans for the feature.

They just left one thing out of the article.

The article failed to mention the URL for the Placentia-Linda Hospital website.

I figured that this was just an issue with the print edition, so after my hair was cut (I'm looking pretty good now, by the way) I went to a computer and found the online version of the article.

The online version didn't give Placentia-Linda Hospital's website URL either.

That URL, by the way, is http://www.placentialinda.com/. And here's what the new website feature looks like.



However, I will confess that the Placentia News-Times article does have a nice file photo of the entrance to the hospital - something that this blog post has failed to provide.

I guess that's why they're professional journalists and I'm just a mere blogger.

P.S. Ironically, another story by the same writer did include a URL. So I'm not sure why no URL was provided in the Placentia-Linda Hospital article. Perhaps there's ill will between Tenet and the Register after this article. It's interesting that you can get to this article via this Google search:



Ouch.

Context sucks

Various online services provide status messages in a manner that sucks all of the context out of them - hence the title of this post, which is an example of the phenomenon. (Read "sucks" as a noun, not a verb, to get the meaning that I intended.)

Here's another example. Let's say that John Smith joins Facebook. John befriends some people, plays a little Starfleet Commander, and then eventually gets around to filling out his profile. After he does this, all of his friends get the following status update:

John Smith is married.

Now his friends have known about Smith's marriage for years - heck, some of them were probably at the wedding - but I guess the marriage isn't official until Facebook says it is.

Another service that posts confusing status updates is LinkedIn. Now John's wife Susan happens to be on LinkedIn, and she likes to join the various LinkedIn groups. So one day her LinkedIn associates see the following status update from her:

Susan Smith joined the group The Dell Workforce.

Because LinkedIn posts many different types of status updates, there's the possibility that this may be misread. Does this mean that Susan has quit her job at the accounting firm and is now working for Dell? While the status update technically includes the word "group," I know that there's been at least one occasion when I thought that someone had changed jobs, but in fact had only joined some LinkedIn group.

And I'm only talking about the status updates that are auto-generated by the service itself. When users write status updates, they often have to shoehorn the update into a pre-determined number of characters. Anything going to Twitter has to fit within 140 characters, or fewer if you want it to be retweeted.

Add to this the fact that many of these services are world-wide. Someone whose native language is French may misinterpret my English. Hey, someone who lives in Scotland may misinterpret my English.

How do we solve the issue of context-less abbreviated statements floating around in the wild, causing confusion wherever they go?

Oracle OpenWorld Unconference move for 2010?

In the past, whenever I have attended Oracle OpenWorld, there has been some acquisition or another that pours more and more people into Moscone Center and the adjoining hotels.

This year (the first time in several years that I probably won't make it up to San Francisco) it appears that the Sun acquisition, with all of the Java and MySQL folks, has continued this trend. And it looks like there is at least one ramification of this, if I'm reading and interpreting Richard Foote's July 22 blog post correctly. This is (part of) what he said:

Finally, I’ve decided to put my name down for the Oracle Unconference again this year. Partly because it was relatively successful last year when I attempted this in that it generated a number of interesting discussions, partly because it’s in the spirit of the Unconference where unstructured and interactive presentations are the go but mainly because it requires absolutely no preparation on my part whatsoever, I’ve decided to host another question and answer session on all things Oracle Indexes. This is your chance and opportunity to ask those questions on how Oracle indexes work, how they should be used, how they should be maintained, on indexing issues you want to share or solve or dispel or whatever, with a whole bunch of other Oracle professionals. As always, if the questions dry up, no worries, we can spend the rest of the time discussing which of David Bowie’s albums is the most influential ;) Details are:

“Oracle Indexing Q & A With Richard Foote” Tuesday 21 September, 10:00am Hotel Parc 55 Mason Room

The Oracle Unconference is always one those secret little highlights of the whole Oracle OpenWorld event where you often get the opportunity to listen, meet and speak with some great speakers in relatively quiet and intimate (for OOW) surroundings. Always worth checking out the agenda each day.

Now, as a former Oracle OpenWorld Unconference presenter, I immediately noticed that the unconference has apparently moved from Moscone West to the Hotel Parc 55, and that the unconference will apparently have real rooms, with walls up to the ceiling and stuff.

A week after Foote's post, John Hurley posted a link to Oracle OpenWorld 2010 Unconference information. Oddly enough, the page is on the sun.com domain - http://wikis.sun.com/display/JavaOne/Unconferences+at+JavaOne+and+Oracle+Develop+2010.

Hotel Parc 55 is in the Union Square area, a few blocks from the Moscone Center.


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In which I tell incomprehensible jokes (revisiting the "barriers to communication" discussion about jargon)

Last week, Trevor Carpenter tweeted:

God predestined me, before the foundations of the world, to be friends with you Arminians.

This prompted me to reply:

@trevorcarpenter And the Arminians have decided to work really really hard to be friends with you.

I would bet that a pretty high percentage of the people on Twitter who saw our tweets had no idea what we were talking about. If you're interested, there is a Wikipedia article that outlines some of the religious controversies that Trevor and I attempted to encapsulate in 280 characters.

Every discipline, whether it is religion, biometrics, or photowalking, or whatever, tends to develop its own terminology. There are good things and bad things about this. The good thing is that it allows the practitioners of the discipline in question to quickly communicate a concept to another practitioner. For example, if I say "ANSI/NIST" to one of my co-workers, the co-worker will immediately know that I am talking about ANSI/NIST-ITL 1-2007. Or perhaps ANSI/NIST-ITL 1-2007 and ANSI/NIST-ITL 2-2008.

This points out one of the problems with terminology. Sometimes we don't all agree on what the terms mean. To use a fairly obvious example, people who discuss religion do not all agree on what "God" is. In the example from the previous paragraph, it is sometimes unclear whether a reference to "ANSI/NIST" merely includes the traditional binary version of the interchange standard, or whether the XML standard is also meant to be included. And, of course, outside of the biometrics industry "ANSI/NIST" can mean something completely different.

Another problem with using these terms is that they tend to shut non-practitioners out. In fact, when I previously wrote about this topic in 2009 in my mrontemp blog, I cited an example of jargon which is completely comprehensible to me, but not to most of the billions of people on this planet.

BCA needs ESB support, and since we know this now, we don't need to CCB it in. We can start with FEC and write the appropriate STRQs and MRs to get us to M-11. Of course, we'll follow P_RGP in the SPP to do all this. And of course BCA will need all the ANSI/NIST and EFTS stuff we do - you know, WSQ and all that. But the ADS handles that with no problem, as does the DES, of course.

Now I could explain that entire paragraph, but it would take me a number of paragraphs to do so. In essence, an explanation would be much longer than the original statement, which has the virtue of compactness.

In fact, it's kind of like comparing an XML file to its much smaller binary representation.

That's an ANSI/NIST joke. (Using the broader definition which includes the 2008 definition. Obviously.)

Teens ON Tech - will the Ewee PT help the Segway?

When Louis Gray tweeted about a re-launch of Daniel Brusilovsky's Teens in Tech website, I figured I'd check it out. And I found an interesting post by Jeremy Gofman entitled "Mini Segways Ready For Pre-order In Germany." Technically, however, they aren't strictly Segways, as the article notes:

...you might be interested in the latest product from an underground German company called Ewee. They’ve basically made a poor man’s Segway. It’s “the Segway’s little sister”, and it’s brother was an Atari 2600, and it’s called the Ewee PT (personal transporter)

Gofman linked to the Ewee PT site, which describes the device as "a self balancing electro scooter" (obviously I was reading the English version of the site, not the German version). The Ewee has a 280x200mm footprint, weighs 25 kg, and has a height of 1200mm (or 47 inches on this side of the pond).

The Ewee is sold via Fun Components (which also has an English version of their site) at a cost of 799 Euros (or $1,058.28 when I was at the site). They're taking pre-orders now; the product is scheduled for availability on September 5. I don't know if a US-compatible charger is available for the device, and I have no idea if Fun Components will ship the product to the US, or how much it will cost.

But now I'm wondering if this announcement will give the original Segway a jolt of publicity, and potential sales. As of early 2010 (when the company was sold to a British individual), some segments of the Segway market were doing better than others:

With even the basic Segway i2 priced at $5,350, a Segway rarely could be characterized as an impulse buy. Not surprisingly, dealers said that they've seen sales to consumers drop significantly as the economy has dipped downwards. But commercial sales, mainly to police and private security forces, have helped offset the losses.

So what will happen when the Ewee PT faces off against the original Segway (at least in Germany)? Dvice, while noting that the Ewee PT was easier to get on and off because it is closer to the ground, wasn't sure:

Whether the Ewee is rugged enough for everyday use remains to be seen, and its small wheels will certainly suggest that it's better off indoors....

People may fall in love with the Ewee PT, or perhaps people might decide that they want the original Segway. I auspect that Justin Bieber fans will opt for the original:

and yes that was me riding out of the venue on a segway going thru the Burger King drive thru without security. what? I was hungry! haha

He followed up that tweet with another:

got in a little trouble for that move but had some fun with the fans and got me a whopper. Can u blame me? come on im a teenager. good times

Well, I certainly can't use the "I'm a teenager" line. And that concludes this report about Teens ON Tech.

I wonder if some of those phone transfers to @drainey1 got dropped

Jesse Stay alerted me to a July 30 post that originally appeared in VC in DC in February. The post, by Don Rainey, was entitled "Always, always, always talk to your angry customers." Rainey stated that when he ran companies, his policy was to have any angry customer calls transferred to HIM. Why?

I took those calls for years, and even some many were decidedly uncomfortable, what often surprised me was how much I could learn by listening to angry customers. Over time I identified more employee problems as a result of those calls than I did by any other means.

Rainey gave an example:

An angry customer [was] on the phone with a support person....The customer said, “I spent a lot of money on this product… and it was delivered with a part missing. I need that resolved immediately!”

The employee said, “I understand the problem… but it will take a fair amount of time to resolve. It’s now 4:45 and I get off at 5:00. It will take more than fifteen minutes to resolve this issue; I think it’s best if you called us back tomorrow.”

What happened next?

Another employee overheard the call, stepped in, and had the call transferred to me.

The CEO got someone to ship the part to the customer overnight...and the employee who originally took the call in an unsatisfactory matter got the opportunity to re-enter the job market.

A good story, and Rainey clearly illustrates a point.

But what if the second employee hadn't overheard the conversation? What if the first employee swiftly hung up on the customer, or accidentally "lost" the connection when transferring the call to a supervisor?

While Rainey's "transfer angry callers to me" policy certainly engendered a lot of customer goodwill, no system is perfect. We are not perfect, and even the best employees had a bad day. Take this Regions Bank example, in which a call to a previously helpful person went sour. Sunni Hendrix called Regions Bank regarding an overdraft, and the representative hung up on her. She called back and asked to speak to a manager, and got the same representative. By this time even a call back from a real manager didn't help:

Later a manager by the name of Mary called me and I told her about the women hanging up on me and she couldv'e cared less...no apology or anything.

Eventually Mrs. Hendrix went to a local branch, where someone apologized to her and straightened the whole thing out. However, so much badwill had built up that Mrs. Hendrix still was not satisfied. First, she actually went to the site pissedconsumer.com and posted her complaint. Second, she closed her complaint by saying:

[The original representative] should not be in her current position if this is how she deals with customers. I will pursue this matter until I get an apology from her or someone at that branch.

Apparently no Don Rainey is taking calls from irate Regions Bank customers - and it shows. In a 2008 survey in the southeastern United States, Regions Bank ranked dead last in customer satisfaction.

Unfortunately, I can't really compare Regions Bank's customer service with the customer service at the organizations that employed Rainey, since most of the companies that employed Rainey (Attitude Network, DaVinci Systems, Novell) no longer exist as separate entities. (In fact, even some of the acquiring firms - TheGlobe.com and ON Technology - no longer exist either.) Now some parts of Rainey's firms survive as bits within IBM and Symantec, and even though I don't like Symantec's marketing practices, even I wouldn't characterize Symantec as "dead last," and IBM certainly doesn't deserve that designation.

I hope that there are a few people at those firms who are carrying on Rainey's tradition.

Size matters, or it doesn't - are the new Coke bottles too tall?

I was reading FriendFeed on Sunday when I found this thread started by Katy S. She said, in part:

The new diet coke 2-liter bottles are just enough taller than the old ones that I can't place them upright on the top shelf of my refrigerator.

She also noted that her grocery store moved the 2-liter Coca-Cola products to the top shelf. Perhaps they wouldn't fit on the other shelves?

Katy also noted that others are complaining about this. I found comments on Epinions, Consumerist, the Indian Consumer Complaints Forum, and Rockband.com. The Rock Band comment is from May 2009, so this has been around a while:

I usually store my 2-liters on the shelves in the door of my fridge, but they are too tall for that. They're also too tall for the regular shelves in my fridge if I don't adjust them (which would involve removing all the food in my fridge, taking out my dairy box, and being a general pain in the ass).

In a way this is surprising, because large corporations often engage in all sorts of consumer research before they introduce a product, and you would think that such an inconvenience, even if it only results in relatively few complaints, would stop the product design process dead in its tracks.

In addition, one would think that complaints would result in a Coca-Cola withdrawal of the product. After all, New Coke disappeared fairly quickly.

So why did Coca Coca introduce the "too tall" bottle? I poked around and found a 2008 press release that discussed Coca Cola's reasons:


COCA-COLA PILOTS TWO-LITER VERSION OF ICONIC CONTOUR BOTTLE IN BIRMINGHAM AND CHATTANOOGA

BIRMINGHAM, June 13, 2008 - Coca-Cola North America (CCNA) today announced the pilot of its signature contour bottle in a convenient two-liter size, beginning this week in Birmingham and Chattanooga. These cities were chosen to introduce the new version of the company's most enduring icon because of their longstanding loyalty to Coca-Cola and the strength of their local Coca-Cola bottler, Coca-Cola United.

The new two-liter form of Coca-Cola's iconic package was preferred over the straight wall two-liter bottle overwhelmingly in recent consumer tests* and offers a significant advantage for consumers beyond its classic good looks -- it is also easier to hold and easier to pour. The new Coca-Cola two-liter contour plastic bottle will be available in stores throughout the two cities beginning June 16.

And it turns out that the research people were involved:

Importantly for customers, research conducted by CCNA with consumers suggests that the two-liter contour package has the potential to re-energize sparkling beverage sales in their stores as well.

Because, you see, it appears that the real reason for the new bottle is looks:

"Along with Coca-Cola's one-of-a-kind real cola taste, the iconic shape of the contour bottle is what people love most about the brand. They are both a part of its timeless magic," said Hendrik Steckhan, president and general manager, Sparkling Beverages, Coca-Cola North America. "We want to offer our brands to consumers in a special way that fits their needs for all contemporary beverage occasions. When you enjoy your family meal together, sharing an ice-cold Coke from a contour bottle is just 'the real thing'."

As it turns out, I don't buy two liter Coca-Cola bottles, so I've never encountered this problem myself. Have you run across this issue? Are you working around it?

[Image courtesy The Coca-Cola Company]

Yet another North Korean post, with bad ad juxtaposition

The first of my two Friday night posts on North Korea was partially sourced from a link in a tweet shared by Shel Israel (the naked guy who lives in Twitterville). I tweeted Israel about the link, and he responded:

@empoprises If you want to understand how rotten the N. Korean regime really is Nothing to Envy by Barbara Demick.

Now Israel is no right-wing saber rattler - after all, he did visit Chinese bloggers in 2008 (as Ontario Emperor, I wrote about that visit here). So I wanted to see what the Demick book was about.

I found a Los Angeles Times article on the book, written by Art Winslow earlier this year. Even the brief article by Winslow suggests that this is not a simple story:

The country's 23 million inhabitants contend not only with extreme privation in a land of rusted train tracks, exceedingly sporadic electricity and chronic, life-threatening food shortages, but also do so under an information blackout in a police state apt to whisk inhabitants off to labor camps or worse at the slightest provocation.

The corruption in North Korea makes Bell, California sound like a model city:

Defectors who claim firsthand knowledge report that Kim Jong-il skims from the profits to fund himself, his nuclear program and to ensure the loyalty of elites, and that "the military is also sending trucks to state farms to haul away as much as a quarter of the annual harvest for its soldiers," as well as posting guards there.

The solution to the problem is not simple, because so many issues are intertwined:

In its way, and graphically, this book demonstrates that global issues of nuclear proliferation, free expression and human rights are inextricably intertwined in North Korea....

But I think that I was just as disturbed with the advertisements that graced the article.

I forget who said it, but someone said that a good advertisement doesn't appear to be an advertisement, but appears to be information. When we perfect our algorithms, it is possible that the ads that we see will be so targeted to our very needs that we won't mind them. However, we obviously aren't there yet.



Google, you have GOT to get people to improve your advertising algorithms. A picture of a stylish shoe does not belong in an article that includes the material above plus stuff that I didn't quote about children starving to death. Even with my warped sense of perspective, the placement of that ad was just a little too much.

P.S. I subsequently found an entire website, http://nothingtoenvy.com/, devoted to the book and its topic. Recommended.

P.P.S. Amnesty International USA has a page on North Korea, which mentions, among other things, that prisoners may be punished for "forgetting the words of patriotic songs." Oh, and if you think that the migrations from Mexico to the United States are a major issue, consider the migrations from North Korea to China:

As the Chinese government considers all undocumented North Koreans in China as economic migrants, they live in fear of being caught and forcibly repatriated to North Korea. Virtually all those forcibly returned to North Korea have faced up to three years in a prison camp where they have been subjected to forced labor, torture and other ill-treatment. China continues to deny the UNHCR access to the North Koreans in their territory.

P.P.P.S. Off-topic, but not as off-topic as a fancy shoe advertisement: If you're looking for my July 2008 post on Israel, FastCompany.TV, Loren Feldman, Robert Scoble, and comment moderation, look here.

Let's just say that Chris Schauble registered on the Richter scale

My old mrontemp blog still gets significant traffic, despite the fact that I haven't written anything there in over a year. Recently, my 2008 post In Defense of Kent Shocknek, and why Chris Schauble, Jennifer Bjorklund, and Ana Garcia should be reprimanded became very popular. It concerned my hero, Kent Shocknek, and a video from 1987:

[The video] shows David Letterman's commentary on Kent Shocknek and Christopher Nance, a former KNBC newsman and weatherman respectively, diving under the news desks during the October 1, 1987 Whittier earthquake. Letterman's studio audience was guffawing at the sight of two men diving under a desk, and Letterman himself referred to the "little special hiding place" that the two used.

Never mind the fact that you're SUPPOSED to dive under a desk during an earthquake; apparently news anchors are supposed to be stupid.

Like Chris Schauble and his co-workers were in 2008:

The earthquake begins, and the newscasters remain at their desks. Bjorklund gazes up toward the ceiling, with a complete lack of concern on her face. The newscasters note that someone off-camera (Ana Garcia) ran into the newsroom, barefoot, then ran back out again. Schauble then notes that "it could have been handled differently, shall we say" - a direct slap at Shocknek's well-known coverage from twenty years earlier.

While people characterized their performance as professional, I have a different view:

I believe that KNBC's performance yesterday was the second most unprofessional performance ever in Los Angeles local news - number one still being the time that Harvey Levin stood in a rushing stream during flood stage "just to get the picture."...

During an earthquake, which of the following courses of action is the correct one?

1. Get under a desk and protect yourself.

2. Stay sitting at your desk, gazing at the ceiling.

3. Run around barefoot

You can check any earthquake preparedness manual that you like, and I don't think they're going to advise that you gaze at the ceiling or run around barefoot during an earthquake.

As I mentioned, my 2008 post became very popular recently, but it didn't have anything to do with Kent Shocknek, and everything to do with Chris Schauble. It turns out that Schauble set off a little earthquake of his own.

In Today’s Edition of “What Were They Smokin’?!”: An anchor with NBC’s Los Angeles affiliate clearly mouthed the F-bomb during a live broadcast on Thursday morning -– and video footage of the gaffe is quickly going viral.

Chris Schauble was reporting an update about Jaycee Dugard, the California woman who was kidnapped in 1991 and held for 18 years in the backyard of a convicted rapist. The video shown, however, was of Abby Sunderland — the 16-year-old girl who went missing for several days last month while trying to sail solo around the world.

The video mixup prompted Schauble to mouth the explicit phrase...to viewers.

I don't know if Ana Garcia is still working at KNBC, but if so, did she run barefoot to the studio to shut Schauble up?

Yes, Empoprise-BI (and every blog) is de facto banned in North Korea

After finishing my post which discussed the fate of the unsuccessful North Korean World Cup team - think REALLY BAD meeting - I was about to write another post that compared the similarly-clad beer supporters in South Africa to the similarly-clad North Korean soccer fans in South Africa (some of the fans being Chinese who knew nothing about soccer but were sent to cheer North Korea anyway).

But then I figured that if I wrote the post, the Empoprise-BI blog would clearly be banned in North Korea.

Not that this worried me - I'm sure Empoprise-BI is banned in several countries already - but I began to wonder what type of access North Koreans had. I suspected it wasn't all that great, and (according to this 2006 article) I was right.

At a time when much of the world takes for granted a fat and growing network of digitized human knowledge, art, history, thought and debate, it is easy to forget just how much is being denied the people who live under the veil of darkness....

While other restrictive regimes have sought to find ways to limit the Internet — through filters and blocks and threats — North Korea has chosen to stay wholly off the grid.

But, as with everything in North Korea, there's a two-tier society.

As far back as 2000, at the conclusion of a visit to Pyongyang, Madeleine K. Albright, then secretary of state, bid Mr. Kim to “pick up the telephone any time,” to which the North Korean leader replied, “Please give me your e-mail address.”

Regarding web sites, a 2010 article discusses the present state of North Korea's web presence.

Since 2007, North Korea has been allocated the ccTLD .kp by the IANA – a wasteful allocation as only four .kp domains exist thus far....

North Korea hosts all four of its .kp domains outside of its land; in servers in Germany.

These four .kp domains belonging to North Korea are:

* The Korea Computer Center (Europe) with a message that .kp domain registrations are available
* The official North Korean governmental portal Naenara
* The North Korean domain registry
* A web site about becoming a “friend” of North Korea!

I visited the final site on the list, at http://www.friend.com.kp/, figuring that I might be able to get an autographed soccer jersey for cheap.



Now this whole idea of a technology and book fair sounded promising - after all, we know how North Korea is the movie capital of the world, so perhaps they're the technology capital of the world too. So I read the description:

7th Pyongyang International Science & Technology Book Fair

The 7th Pyongyang International Science & Technology Book Fair (PISTBF) will be held in Pyongyang, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, from the 13th to the 15th September in 2010

It is aimed at introducing and sharing the new scientific and technological successes achieved in the different countries of the world through the exchange of book and publication, thus strengthening relations of friendship and cooperation between the countries.

Thanks to the careful attention of the state and the government, the positive cooperation and efforts of the Organizing Committee of the PISTBF, Committee for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries, the State Academy of Science, Publishing Guidance Bureau, Grand People’s Study House, and the support of the universities, institutions of science and technology, and publishing houses from various countries, PISTBF has been held successfully for the last 9 years since its first inception in 2001 and made great contributions to the promotion of exchange and cooperation in science and technology, publishing industry and culture.

Strangely enough, the fair does not appear to be designed to promote the great advances in technology that have originated in North Korea. Instead, it appears that people from other countries will come to North Korea to share stuff.

The exhibitors will deal with copyright and make contract between the participants.

They can deliver lectures and have Seminars on science and technology during their stay. In that case papers should be presented to the Organizing Committee of PISTBF one month before the opening.

In fact, it seems that a lot of stuff has to be cleared in advance.

Exhibits Arrival Time: August 1 - 31, 2010

People who went to Reed College with me know that I appreciated this one:

Application deadline: June, 31, 2010

(For those of you who didn't attend Reed, suffice it to say that I put up posters on campus stating that subway construction would begin on the very-small campus on September 31, 1979. Geddit?)

Oh, and if you have ideas about going to the fair to engage in propaganda:

In accordance with the regulations of the PISTBF, materials not related to science and technology can not be displayed.

But that same restriction does not apply to your hosts.

The PISTBF Organizing Committee...will organize sightseeing to the scenic and historical places, performances, and provide 1st –aid, interpreter, room for lecture, seminar and interview, services in the Exhibition Hall free of charge.

Free first aid! Too bad that June 31st has already passed. But who is participating? A list of participants in the 7th conference has not yet been released, but there is a list of participants in the 1st through 6th conference - a who's who of technology, as it were.

* Korea Publications Export and Import Corporation
* Far Eastern National University, Russia
* Vladivostok National Medical University, Russia
* Far Eastern National University of Technology, Russia
* Amur State University of Humanities and Pedagogy, Russia
* Lenin National Library, Russia
* Library of Far Eastern Branch of Russia Academy of Sciences
* "Dalnauka" Publishing House, Far eastern Branch of Russia Academy of Sciences
* The State Public Scientific and Technical Library, Siberian Branch Russia Academy of Sciences
* Khavarovsk State University of Technology, Russia
* Pacific National University
* Russian Military Academy
* Siberian Institute of Law, Economics and Management, Russia
* Association for the promotion of the Cultural Development,China
* Books Import and Export Corporation, China
* Beijing Hongsanhua Trading Co.Ltd, China
* Liaoning National Publishing House, China
* Huayi Publishers, China
* Yantai University, China
* Dalian University, China
* Jilin University, China
* Jilin Province Yanji Xinhua Bookstore, China
* Jilin Province Songhuajiang Trade Co.Ltd, China
* Publishers's delegation in Jilin, China
* Jilin Newspaper Publishing House, China
* Samiun Trading Co.Ltd, China
* Sandong Hongye Group, China
* Academy of Social Science, Liaoning Province, China
* Yanbian Public Association for Foreign Relations, China
* Central Science Library, Ministry of Science and Education, Republic of Kazakhstan
* Springer Science and Business Media
* Springer-Verlag (HongKong) Ltd
* Organizing Committee, Frankfurt Book Fair
* German Academic and Technical Literature Agency
* Torun Publishing House, Poland
* EEMP, TVE International
* International Federation of Library Associations
* Pugwash Conference on Science and World Affairs
* Ankara University, Turkey
* State Central Library, Mongol
* Publishing Section, Division of Conference and Document Services, Management Dept. UN, Austria
* Swiss Agency of Development and Cooperation to DPRK
* Tokai University, Japan
* UNESCO
* Unicorn Foundation
* American Friends Service Committee
* Canadian Program Coordinator of English Education
* Office of the WHO in the DPRK
* Office of UNICEF in the DPRK
* Embassy of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland in the DPRK
* Embassy of the Sweden in the DPRK
* Embassy of the Republic of Poland in the DPRK
* Embassy of the Republic of India in the DPRK
* Embassy of the Islamic Republic of Iran in the DPRK
* Embassy of the Republic of Indonesia in the DPRK
* Association of Korean Compatriots for Book Donation, US

Well, I guess that it would be wishful thinking to expect Samsung to be a featured exhibitor, but you have to wonder about the quality of the technological conversations that the American Friends Service Committee were holding in the past. Although I'm sure that the Russian Military Academy could produce some interesting presentations, should they choose to do so.

But, based on past fairs, it appears that a major task of the participants is to compose a letter to Kim Jong Il. They did so at the third fair:

Pyongyang, August 21 (KCNA) -- Leader Kim Jong Il today received a letter from the participants in the third Pyongyang International Science and Technology Book Fair. The letter said during their stay in the DPRK, the participants were deeply admired to learn that Kim Jong Il singled out science and technology as one of the three pillars for building a great prosperous powerful nation and has led the drive for its development.

Expressing strong admiration for Kim Jong Il who has wisely steered the work to develop science in the DPRK, possessed of profound knowledge of ultra-modern science and technology, the letter expressed belief that the DPRK would proudly rank itself among the world's scientifically and technologically advanced nations before long under the leadership of Kim Jong Il.

The letter expressed their intention to actively cooperate in the efforts to make the fair expand and develop on the world's level.

I'm trying to imaging something like that happening over here. Will we see this article in a couple of months?

San Francisco, September 23 (OTN) -- Leader Larry Ellison today received a letter from the participants in Oracle OpenWorld 2010. The letter said during their stay in San Francisco, the participants were deeply admired to learn that Larry Ellison singled out expansion of Oracle's stack as one of the three pillars for building a great prosperous powerful company and has led the drive for its development.

OK, perhaps Ellison likes power, and he likes to show off his boat, but I can't picture him donning the Elton John sunglasses. And he's obviously not going to impose a communication barrier between his company and the rest of the world. And to my knowledge, Ellison has never sunk a submarine.

North Korean soccer players, the Business Software Alliance, and how to treat a boss

H/T Shel Israel for alerting me to this article:

[The players] from North Korea, who lost all three of their group games, have been subjected to a six-hour excoriation for "betraying" the communist nation's ideological struggle, according to reports.

There are even fears for the safety of the team coach, Kim Jung-hun, who was accused of betraying the son and heir of the regime's "dear leader," Kim Jong-il.

Some specifics of the six-hour meeting were also reported.

The "grand debate" was reportedly witnessed by 400 athletes and sports students, and the country's sports minister. Ri Dong-kyu, a sports commentator for the North's state-run Korean Central TV, led the reprimands, pointing out the shortcomings of each player....

In true Stalinist style, the players were then "invited" to mount verbal attacks on their coach, Jung-hun.

However, the concept of ratting out your boss is not limited to the Communist world. In fact, it can be applied in a very capitalistic way:

The Business Software Alliance is upping the ante on payouts to those who rat out their boss for using pirated software. The BSA will now payout up to $1 million - up from the maximum $200,000 reward previously offered.

However, like in the Communist world, there was (at least in 2007) a difference between image and reality.

Since introducing the reward money to tipsters the BSA says the largest sum it has awarded is a whopping $7,500. In all the BSA has awarded $60,000 to all combined software piracy stoolies.

Now if the BSA threatened violators with a one-way trip to North Korea in a soccer uniform - now THAT would be effective.

About Gates Millennium Scholars

I recently wrote about David R. Guzman's views on Apple's lack of a social media presence. I discovered Guzman via LinkedIn (he had posted something in the LinkedIn Answers section on blogging), and I looked at his LinkedIn profile to learn more about him.

As implied previously, Guzman has a blog called Modern Communicator.

Guzman is also involved in an organization called Positive Footprint, which endeavors to influence youth in a positive way.

And, based on his LinkedIn profile, it appears that Guzman is a Gates Millennium Scholar alumnus.

I had never heard of this program, but guessed (correctly) that it resulted from the philanthropy of Bill and Melinda Gates. Here's what the program's all about:

The Gates Millennium Scholars Program (GMS), established in 1999, was initially funded by a $1 billion grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

The goal of GMS is to promote academic excellence and to provide an opportunity for outstanding minority students with significant financial need to reach their highest potential by:

* Reducing financial barriers for African American, American Indian/Alaska Native, Asian Pacific Islander American and Hispanic American students with high academic and leadership promise who have significant financial need;
* Increasing the representation of these target groups in the disciplines of computer science, education, engineering, library science, mathematics, public health and the sciences, where these groups are severely underrepresented;
* Developing a diversified cadre of future leaders for America by facilitating successful completion of bachelor's, master's and doctoral degrees; and
* Providing seamless support from undergraduate through doctoral programs, for students selected as Gates Millennium Scholars entering target disciplines.

The ironic part of all of this is that the program helps people get bachelors, masters, and doctoral degrees - degrees that Gates himself, the Harvard dropout, does not have. However, Gates had advantages growing up that many of the Gates Millennium Scholars did not have, and the program certainly helps those without these advantages to gain an education that helps them to succeed in life.

It's interesting to note that both Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg were college dropouts (from Harvard) who ended up starting wildly successful companies. Steve Jobs was also a dropout (from my alma mater of Reed), but he dropped out in part because he didn't want his parents to waste their money. (See my 2006 post on this.)

Will the cable/satellite model have to change?

Economics is dictated by supply and demand. In the cable and satellite industry, that means that the content providers have the pipe providers over a barrel. (Oddly enough, in the cellular industry it's the pipe providers that hold all the cards. Go figure.)

Specifically, let's pretend that Empoprises is a big media conglomerate, providing four channels of televised content that are extremely popular. (Allow me my fantasy here.) Now Empoprises gets a good chunk of change by selling commercials to Old Spice and other companies, but Empoprises is mandated to maximize its profit.

So when Empoprises approaches the Big Ol' Satellite Service (BOSS), Empoprises makes its demands very clear - "You can carry our four channels...if you pay us five dollars per subscriber per channel. Oh, and if you carry one channel, you have to carry all four, even the trivia channel. And they have to be in your basic tier of services."

Then the war begins. We at Empoprises fire the first shot:

On September 1, BOSS may stop carrying the Empoprises Business Channel! Let BOSS know that you value the wonderful news that the Empoprises Business Channel provides. Call BOSS at 800 867-5309 and let them know that you want them to keep the Empoprises Business Channel! Oh, and here are some alternative services that will continue to provide the Empoprises Business Channel.

For some reason, BOSS doesn't see the value of our well-researched arguments and launches this cruel attack on Empoprises:

Empoprises wants to force you to pay more for your satellite service, and we don't want to force you to do that because We Care About You. Call Empoprises at 800 555-1212 and tell them that you don't like cable rate gouging! Oh, and after September 1, we'll continue to carry the Louis Gray Business Channel, which is frankly a lot better than the Empoprises Business Channel anyway.

In the end, after a lot of volleys back and forth, the two parties reach a compromise, Empoprises gets a little more money, and the satellite subscribers get gouged.

Now I hate to leave my fantasy in which I'm a major television mogul, but perhaps we should take a step back and ask - why do the cable and satellite providers have to pay content providers to carry their channels? An equally valid point could be made that it should be the other way around. Namely that content companies, who get to charge rates to advertisers, can charge higher advertising rates if more people have access to their shows. So therefore, doesn't it make sense that the content providers actually pay the cable/satellite providers to get access to those additional markets?

Well, while the two industries are bickering over who should pay who, there's a danger from without that could threaten the gravy train upon which both of them rely.

What if people quit watching satellite and cable TV?

Let's face it, as these rates continue to get higher and higher, people will be moved to find cheaper alternatives. And a comment at a Michael Hanscom post provides anecdotal evidence that people are doing just that. Mike Johns, Roku user:

I spend 9 bucks for netflix, and 6 bucks on the kung-fu, cowoby classics and drive in movies - and that has replaced my $75 cable bill.

If enough people decide that cable/satellite service isn't worth it, the industry will be forced to adopt a more economical model that better serves the customer.

Ah, who am I kidding? The industry will instead buy out the competition and either shut it down or jack up its rates. Of course, as I noted back in 2009, buying up the competition doesn't always help:

...that analysis assumes that the cable industry is competing against the cable industry. It isn't. Cable providers are competing against satellite, people who still get their TV from antennas, and this here thing called the Internet. So it may be in the interest of the Feds to allow Comcast to bulk up to compete against Dish, Google, et al.

Let's face it, even when formerly competitive environments are reduced to a single company, the remaining company has trouble surviving. Remember that Sirius XM is still losing money.

Failing that, the movie industry will exact penalties on people who provide content via unapproved services such as Roku or swap meets...

P.S. Back in 2008, I wrote a three-part post series entitled "Economics of cable and satellite broadcasting." Here are parts one, two, and three. I'll try to revisit the thoughts in those posts at some point.