NJ's $400m 'Race to the Top' - adults misbehaving

Over the past two weeks, there's been much to do about how locally here in New Jersey, an (ahem) 'error' resulted in losing $400M worth of Federal Aid.

Naturally, the gears of Political Spin turned, to try to avoid responsibility and deflect blame on others: it is the classical "If its good, I get credit, but if its bad, it must be someone else's fault" - - with exactly the underlying message on ethics that that entails. As usual, our 'Leaders' actions in misbehavior sends the worst possible message to our children (and students), which is that its okay to lie and cheat.

And specifically for NJ Governor Chris Christie, we can see that he has conspicuously failed to issue a clear (and equally loud) public apology to those in the Federal Government that he had previously blamed for his own administration's error. Too late to do this now - the train has left the station and his credible opportunity window has passed, and Christie thus gets a failing grade in Ethics Class.

- - -

However, there is another interesting point that has been missed within all of the politically-generated spin-doctoring in regards to the Race to the Top. People have forgotten the very basics: this was a competition, and not all entries were going to win (receive funding).

As such, let's apply one more "What If", centered on Ohio (who just beat NJ out for the last winning spot):


WHAT IF ... Ohio's entry had done a few points better on their entry?

Answer: all of this teeth gnashing and caterwauling on NJ's 4 point mistake would be utterly moot.


In life, there are winners and losers...and it doesn't take long to learn that we won't always win. As such, we need to be honest with ourselves and accept losing graciously ... which includes accepting responsibility for our actions, win or lose. It doesn't matter how lofty one's life position is, or becomes: the buck always stops.


-hh

Customer Service in the Internet Age

The above links to an MSNBC article of the title:
"Complaining Couple Banned from Cruise Line".


Briefly, the article discusses how a cruise line (Royal Caribbean) chose to permanently decline the business from a particular customer (that sounds nicer than "ban"). Apparently, they had found reason to complain ... and apparently ask for meaningful financial compensation ... over 80% of the time (5 out of 6 cruises).


There's a few interesting points in this topic.

First, there are most definitely consumers (such as the Morans) who will frequently exploit any excuse to forcibly leverage a cost concession. In this regards, Royal Caribbean is better off without them and does have the right to decline their business.

However, there is the issue with 'freedom of opinion' on discussion groups. It is safe to say that literally no discussion group has been free of pressure from special interests to delete or amend existing comments, which frequently leads to censorship issues.

There is an old saying that the Internet interprets censorship as network damage and routes around it

In general, this potential problem rapidly becomes a slippery slope when the Message Board is being hosted by the company...a case of where Marketing trumps ethics and fear of "Brand Damage" is more important than hearing real consumer feedback (in order to improve the Brand): it is a manifestation where the corporation reveals a lack of confidence in the strength of their Brand.

A few years ago, I was a reader of just such a group that was hosted to benefit Divi Resorts (a Timeshare company) and there rapidly became a zero tolerance ... enforced through censorship ... for any and all possible criticism from their customers. As such, the group was a sham: nothing more than a marketing mouthpiece, not a source of honest, balanced information, or for frank consumer/supplier dialog... something that would be more expected when one has spent $10K+ for a timeshare. And what was the fate of property that Divi had rejected years worth of customer 'feedback' about? Its death spiral continued until it was shut down in 2006. Glad I'm not a big investor in Divi Resorts, as any company who clearly chooses to ignore repeated warnings about their product's shortcomings is not going to be particularly successful in the long run.

Thus, the general conclusion that I have come to is that the only discussion groups that can be functionally trusted are those upon which censorship is impossible, which is USENET, or a Message Board whose official published policy is that all discord will be discussed fully in the open for the public to witness firsthand (good luck finding one of these).

But there is good news for this for consumers in that the Internet - - despite its shortcomings - - has been a resource that has restored some power back to the consumer, for previously isolated individuals can now communicate, and it is common to compare the company's response. It used to be that a company could merely tell 50 customers, "Gosh, you're the first one that this has ever happened to!" to try to smooth things over and to minimize financial recompense, but today, that claim is far more likely to get caught and thus revealed as a lie.

Since its only a fairly small percentages of consumer who have caught on to this information sharing, and that information is still dispersed across the 'Net, a businesses' tactics to use 20th Century spin-doctoring will still work 80% of the time. However, the downside risk is that when it doesn't fly, that business gets hit hard because their claims get destroyed by these collaborative power of 21st Century communications, and then they get nailed a second time ...even harder... for having flat-out lied to multiple customers.

This is not the case here with Royal Caribbean, but the amazing part is that a surprising number of companies still "Don't Get It". Here, RC was in a pattern of responding to individual complaints - - they didn't see the pattern until it was pointed out to them by other consumers.

And for the Morans? The Internet revealed their pattern of behavior, which in this case is now helping a business to avoid future complaints from them. Yes, its a two-way street: they made their bed, so now they have to lie in it.


-hh

Election Politics for the "bad-at-math" taxpayer (and Journalists)

In the news today is that our esteemed political leaders want to suspend the current Administration's practice of adding to the USA's Strategic Oil Reserve.

The argument being promoted is that those 70,000 barrels/day are part of the reason why gasoline is approaching $4/gallon.

Well, let's apply some classical "Supply & Demand" examination of this claim:

As per the US DOT (URL above), the amount of crude oil imported in 2006 (the 2007 numbers will be updated in June 2008) was...

10,118,000 barrels/day

And US Net Petroleum Imports were:
12,390,000 barrels/day

Plus there was also U.S. Crude Oil Production:
5,102,000 barrels/day

So we're asking about the significance of 70,000 barrels/day in the contect of (12.39 million + 5.1 million) used per day:

70,000 / (12,390,000 + 5,109,000) = 0.004 = 0.4%

Assuming that the difference results in a linear cost savings,
0.4% of $4 is a whopping 1.6 cents per gallon.

Why gosh! I'll only need to buy ~200 gallons of gas in order to save all of $3.

If $3 is going to make/break your life in 2008, drop me an email explaining how: I'll consider sending you $5 and you can name your children after me and make me your write-in candidate in November. At least McCain's and Hillery's "18 cent Fed Tax" moratorium was willing to spend all of $30 in their attempt to buy your vote.

So the conclusion is here that the math shows that the crude oil deposits into the Strategic Oil Reserve is a non-issue in the marketplace: the total change potential is for less than one half of one percent. Thus, this is simple election year wrangling in the form of a "Strategic Political Topic Reserve", which the Lawmakers will use to make themselves look like they're busy working hard for you, the common taxpayer.

But unfortunately, as the saying goes, don't confuse Activity with Progress.


And let's not forget our Journalists out there: how many of them are bad at math and won't think to run the numbers?

-hh

Adobe Photoshop Express, Copyrights and IP

The Big Media reviews of Adobe's Photoshop Express are out today on Google News.   

So far, it appears that most of them must have been written early last week, before the news of the actual contents of Adobe's EULA hit at ZDNET, Ars Techica, MacRumors and others...all because of individual readership (not professional journalists) of the "Fine Print".

Apple Computer had a far more humorous EULA error this path month too - their fine print in Safari 3.1 for Windows said that it could only be legally run on Apple hardware.

Here's the fine print from Adobe:

Use of Your Content. Adobe does not claim ownership of Your Content. However, with respect to Your Content that you submit or make available for inclusion on publicly accessible areas of the Services, you grant Adobe a worldwide, royalty-free, nonexclusive, perpetual, irrevocable, and fully sublicensable license to use, distribute, derive revenue or other remuneration from, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, publicly perform and publicly display such Content (in whole or in part) and to incorporate such Content into other Materials or works in any format or medium now known or later developed."

The key part is what it allows - - not what the alleges was its intent .  To that end, this text essentially gives to Adobe a free and unlimited license that they can do anything with, including selling your works, creating derivatives, selling it as Stock Photography, "Derive Revenue" etc, etc. .. and all without ever being required to give even a penny back to the actual Copyright holder.

I'd read enough.  This has shades of "Photo Contest" all over it.  

Photo contest?  Yup - you should go read their Fine Print inclusions sometimes too:  what you find is that they similarly leave themselves highly unconstrained.  It wouldn't be at all surprising if the underlying intent of at least a few of them isn't really to have a good old fashioned contest, but to harvest images with which to build a Stock Collection for free.

Thus, I've pulled my test photos OFF of Photoshop Express, just like I've stopped  entering 'Contests'.  

Thus, if you see this image out there, you know its probably been stolen without permission from its Copyright Holder:

Mufindi Starry Night (Tanzania 2006).

In the meantime, there's one possible "Poison Pill" for businesses that try to (cough) borrow Intellectual Property (IP) in this fashion:  the Photography Model Release.  An identifiable individual who hasn't signed a Modeling Release can cause trouble, although its also likely that a lawyer would argue that this "Perpetual License" puts the responsibility back on the Copyright Holder.  Well, maybe the IP owner does have a Model Release - - but Adobe (and all the rest) didn't buy a copy of that document.

-hh

John Gilmore was right

I recently ran across what I thought would be an interesting blog from former Apple Executive  for Federal sales, David Sobotta.   After a fairly straightforward dialog exchange ... which by definition, must have included some elements of disagreement (else why bother to reply), Dave terminated the dialog.  The topic wasn't really all that important, or profound: we simply disagreed, based on our personal perspectives.  It didn't even bother me if Mr. Sobotta wanted to curtail the discussion because he tired of it, nor even using his Moderator responsibility to have done this...that would have merely been rude.  

Instead, what bothered me was that he cut things off so as to get the last word in, a childish way to "win" a disagreement.  FWIW, this isn't my interpretation of what happened, for in this blog posting  David made his motive and intentions explicitly clear that that was precisely what he chose to do. 

Were I willing to stoop to David's level, I could have listed each of my discussion points here, where David can't touch it, to childishly get in my own "last word".  But I loathe being a hypocrite, so that won't be happening here.

So why am I writing anything?  Because this is unfortunately yet another example of something that I'm finding disappointing ... no, make that downright disturbing ... which is yet another example of someone who proves himself incapable of recognizing that with the Information Genie out of the bottle, all liars invariably get caught.  

  

This is precisely what Gilmore was warning of a decade ago:  the nature of IT is that if one tries to squash something in one outlet, there's now hundreds of alternative venues, so the word still gets out.  

There's already been hundreds of corporations who have learned this lesson by getting burned over the past decade - they were applying their 20th Century belief that they can manipulate and selectively lie without getting caught - - but then got caught, courtesy of this unbottled IT Genie.  It is effectively the Pandora's Box of the 21st Century.  

Overall, it does seem that there's a segment of the population who are otherwise very very smart people who think that their intelligence lets them stay on top of the lies that they make and avoid self-contradiction.  Unfortunately for them (my online friends know that I'm probably thinking of a certain former Clemson University Professor too), archives have a 'perfect' memory that merely takes perseverance to search, which reveals the self-contradictory claims and other hyperbola that people try to employ to obscure reality to try to force it to conform to their biases.

Thus, as John Gilmore reportedly said:

"The Internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it".

And the latest example is in the news this week, namely the drama of the website "Wikileaks", which posted documents that revealed criminal banking activities in the Cayman Islands.  It is the apparent crook who is trying to get the website shut down, so as to squelch the dissemination of evidence of his criminal activity.   But in the meantime, the news of the event has probably caused a few thousand more copies to get spawned.   To try to suppress them all is an exercise in futility, so the next thing we know, the criminal will be claiming that he's a victim...of getting caught.  

-hh