There is a great summary article in Forbes of this book by Roger Martin. Having run a public company for several years, the thesis here resonated with me immediately. Executives spend way too much time managing the Expectations Market (i.e., the stock market) as opposed to building value in the Real Market (i.e., goods and services used by your customers). And, because the Expectations Market exists, hedge funds and activist investors have a platform. To change the focus back to the Real Market, Martin has several suggestions, including: Repeal safe harbor, thus eliminating earnings guidance and forward speculation. Eliminate stock-based compensation. Regulate hedge funds. I have had a related theory for a long time: that the tax system is unfairly structured to favor the Expectation Market. You pay lower taxes on Expectations Market gains (capital gains) than you do on Real Market gains (gains tied closely to the production of Real goods). The further a financial instrum
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It strikes me that the Republicrats (the Democrats and the Republicans) form an unfair monopoly. While antitrust law is typically associated with corporations, it could, conceivably also be applied to government (the FTC is an independent government body). Triggering the antitrust laws typically means that you have a monopoly (hard to argue against that for the Republicrats) and that you abuse that position. It has become abundantly clear over the last year that both parties are abusing their positions by focusing all of their energies on "win at any cost" as opposed to "do something for the country." This is also why they can be considered a single entity (for the purposes of a monopoly)...they are not really two parties; just one inward facing machine. Unfortunately, it appears that there will not be any real third party, yet again, in the next election....so there is no motivation for either party to change their behavior. It also appears that you can&
It was interesting, although not a surprise, to read that some Chinese students fake their applications in order to get into USA Universities. I expect that the second half of this story is that many Universities turn a blind eye to the practice (or, to be fair, don't have strong ways to identify cheaters) because foreign students pay premiums to attend, and this makes up an increasing amount of University revenue. The following was reported in September: California has reduced funding for the university system by $650 million this year .....most dramatic shifts have taken place at some of the UC system’s more popular campuses, such as UC-Berkeley, where out-of-state residents and international students make up 30 percent of this year’s freshman class, up from 23 percent last year. The negatives (beyond the moral aspects of cheating) are: 1) The overall quality of students decreases, as a higher percentage of unqualified students are accepted. 2) The education level in
Like everyone, I have an eye on Greece right now. If the media is to be believed, if Greece defaults there will be a domino effect that will ripple around the world, starting with the impact to European banks that hold a huge amount of Greek debt, and spreading to interconnected markets, including the US. Thus, I was encouraged, reading the Greek Prime Ministers speech to find the quote which is the title of this post. Here is a guy who is willing to do the right thing, even if it is unpopular. The US is "Greece in waiting." In USA Inc ., you will find lots of data on the dangers facing the US, including this note: "Less than 15 years from now... USA Inc....would have nothing left over to spend on defense, education, infrastructure, and R&D, which today account for only 32% of USA Inc. spending, down from 69% forty years ago. This critical juncture is getting ever closer." In just 15 years, at current course and speed, entitlement programs (pensions, e
Listening to the playground antics of the US government around the debt ceiling is very painful. I still expect there will be a "last minute deal," but I also hope that the pathetic posturing that is bringing the US to the brink causes people to rethink the process. On NPR this morning there were two interesting comments on the underlying psychology that is aiding and abetting the current process. Short term considerations overwhelmingly override long term ones. The example was that if I ask you to give up an ice-cream cone next year, it is easy to say "yes". If I swing by right now with the desert tray, you will have a hard time saying "no". The debate around the debt ceiling is really about long-term concerns....but the (somewhat artificial) deadline of August 2nd is making it into a negotiation about the short term. Men are hyper-competitive without women present to moderate things. Maybe not too surprising, but it leads to men acting in no
Such is the title of a great article in the Atlantic magazine. The article clearly articulates why the US political system is completely broken, and not even close to a "democracy". In my view, the system has devolved into a religious war - there is no room for compromise, intelligence, facts, or the good of the people. There is only room for bickering, hard stances, and 100% faith in your party. As many of the comments point out, while the article outlines some ideas for fixing the system...it gives no guidance as to "how." Obama's social media campaign in the last election was largely one-way: he broadcast his message to people through SMS and twitter. Perhaps two-way social media is now at a point where average people can have their voices heard. That said, Google Groups or Facebook Groups don't seem to be organized enough, or mature enough, to handle the task of synthesizing the voice of large groups of individuals into something cohesive and com
"Adjusted Consolidated Segment Operating Income" ( Acsoi ), is a measure of what a companies profits would be if they were not spending like crazy to acquire a space: in GroupOn's case, this would be retailers. To me, using Acsoi as a measure is really an admission that a company has no staying power beyond brand awareness. So, they need to grab and own as much mindshare as they can, as quickly as they can, to increase the barrier to entry for competitors. Without intellectual property to help protect them, and with the cost of switching (for a user) being effectively zero, building a global brand, and relying on brand stickiness, is the best way forward. Companies like Amazon that have been effective at this have also built in other "sticky" factors over time: recommendation engines, one-click purchasing, etc. This increases the cost for the user to switch, and allows the company to stop pouring money into marketing and acquisition costs. You also buil
@toddsimpson: I am a fairly recent twit, so I have not figured out how to get this into 160 chars or less. I have noticed that about 5% of twits create at least 75% of the traffic, which has been documented before . One minute I want to stop following that 5%, as it starts to approximate spam, and the next minute I am interested in what they have to say. So, the real problem is that they are peppered throughout my timeline, all the time. Here is my suggested fix. Modify the timeline so that I can easily control if I only see the most recent tweet from a person, or all of the tweets. This could be done with a simple "+" or "-" icon next to the persons image. If I switch a person to "-" then I will only see their most recent tweet. If they are on "+" they are interleaved into the timeline as per usual. #MostRecentTweetOnly
I had a great opportunity to participate with thec100.org over the past two days as they ran their fourth "48 hours in the Valley" program. We had a great showing of Canadian Facebook employees on a panel this morning, and covered topics from how to best engage with Facebook, to the culture of both Facebook and the Valley. One question from the audience was "what would it take for you to come back to Canada?" And the answer was uniformly "I won't." The reasons had nothing to do with Canada (someone mentioned that they would not go LA or anywhere else either), but had everything to do with the unique appeal, energy, and community in the Valley for anyone in tech. The bittersweet part of this was: I agree. I would love to head back to Canada - it is home. But, I won't. The advantages of being here in the Valley (much more obvious to me now that I am at Mozilla) are just too strong. Sigh.
This is one of the better books for laymen that I have read in a while. In large part, I think this is due to the fact that I knew very little about the recent developments in astronomy, and was surprised to find that Neutrino Telescopes are alive and well. The last time I had looked, it was so hard to detect a neutrino, that even thinking of a telescope was absurd. While the book follows many of the pioneers of the area, I was most intrigued with the storyline that exposed how neutrinos come in three flavors, which can change through interaction with mass and/or time. Thus, an electron-neutrino at birth, may be a tau-neutrino upon detection. This is visualized well by Close as neutrinos being like harmonics of several frequencies which interact in wavelike ways as the neutrino travels through space and time. It is interesting that this is the same visualization invoked by superstring theory. To explain the flavor-changing behavior, neutrinos (or at least certain flavors of ne
With Borders scaling back so many of their stores, I have ended up buying more books than I normally would. One I picked up is "What is Life?" by Ed Regis. It is a good short read, although it is now 2 years old, which is a long time given the rate that "artificial life" is moving at. Since the book came out, Craig Ventor claims to have created the first artificial life . One thing I did not know was that Schrodinger wrote a book with the same title in 1944 which predicted the existence of a DNA-like molecule; Crick actually credits Schrodinger with inspiring some of his early work. Ed Regis points out that Schrodinger's book never actually defines what life is; that is left hanging. Interestingly, I felt the same about Regis's book. While he argues that life is defined by having an "embedded metabolism" that argument still seems weak. Carl Sagan pointed out, many years ago, that cars have a metabolism, which is hard to argue against.
It is gut-check time. Do I cheer for San Jose or Vancouver? I have two conflicting logic trees: I am Canadian Vancouver is in Canada Therefore, I should support Vancouver San Jose has 22 Canadians on their Roster Vancouver has 16 Canadians on their Roster I am Canadian Therefore, I should support San Jose So, I have turned to "How We Decide" which I just recently read to see if it has any answers. Jonah Lehrer would suggest that I check two aspects. My emotional brain, and my rational brain. My emotional brain screams "Vancouver"; obviously there is a stronger emotional link between location (Canada) than roster. My rational brain says "San Jose". In the last three years, I have never watched a Canucks game, or followed the team very closely. However, I have been to many Sharks games, enjoy watching there progress, and even listen to quite a few games on the radio. Lehrer suggests that typically your rational brain is the one to follow. I
A lot of the press today is claiming that Microsoft overpaid for Skype. I am not so sure. Here are some numbers for comparison. Skype has 560 million registered users, of which about 2% (say 11 million) are paying customers with an average ARPU of $8. Thus, Skype should be generating about $8*12*11M ~ $1B/year in revenue right now, with an EBITDA of about $250M. So, Microsoft is paying about 8X revenue, and 32X EBITDA. T-Mobile US has about 33M subs, with an ARPU of about $50. So, T-Mobile's revenue should be around $21B/year. AT&T is paying about 2X revenue, and 7X EBITDA. Thus, Microsoft is paying a 4-5X premium for Skype compared to what AT&T is paying for T-Mobile. The obvious question is : Can Microsoft leverage Skype 4X more effectively than a traditional mobile carrier? To that, I think the answer is yes: 1) Skype is not a major enterprise player, yet. Microsoft should be able to make this happen. That alone should be 4X in ARPU, and should lead t
Here is your guide to "sharking" a car. With Carshark, and a little creativity, you to can make your drive to work more interesting. In the paper they show you how to hook things up so that you can control a car through WiFi. You are sitting at a red light, and want to have a little fun. How about sending 07 AE 15 A2; this controls the horn frequency? Drive-by ringtones. Could be a $1B business.
This is an interesting project ( link ) and it is good to see that it is kickstarted. The opening video is quite well structured, starting from positive feedback and moving to negative. I have taken a snapshot of the video at a screen which presages the five areas that will be covered. There is no doubt that Facebook is (1) a valuable service, and (2) has raised some hackles due to their ownership of users data. The area from above that most interests me is the "society" sphere, and what a student at Stanford (from the mobisocial lab...sorry, I don't have an exact name) calls the "circle of like." Facebook provides great value today to users and to websites, and has created a virtuous circle where clicking "like" drives more traffic to Facebook, and more data / information / knowledge to websites. I highlight this as the circle reinforces two strong user bases, so displacing Facebook is probably harder than even Google imagines. The main ques
I have about a 20 minute commute to work, and like to simply relax and listen to the radio. Lately, however, I can't find a station that is worth listening to. It is not the innuendo that bothers me, it is the constant, lowest common denominator, one-track, childish innuendo that I find annoying. So, I switch from channel to channel trying to avoid the announcers. In the mornings this is almost impossible; every station (except pure classical music) is like talk radio for middle school boys. So, I listened to NPR today, and found it refreshing. A few of the segments actually caused me to think :-) I also did a little searching, for academic interest, at how close to the line some of the stations are today. I found this link , which outlines what is "indecent". The definition is actually quite interesting: "Because the Supreme Court has determined that obscene speech is not entitled to First Amendment protection, radio and television stations may not bro
I enjoy reading layman physics books. And, I enjoy the Science vs Religion debates, especially those that cast Science as a Religion. Superstring theory has always both intrigued and bothered me. Intrigued as, on the surface, it has a nice visual "ah ha" about it; the universe is comprised of tiny (zero dimension) vibrating strings, which can form chords and harmonies that result in manifestations that are available to the human senses. Bothered as, below the surface, it is a huge mess of mumbo-jumbo that has no intuitive sense to it. Relative to relativity (sic), this is a fairly easy statement to make; even a layman can get a grasp of relativity through Einstein's own writings. But, relative to quantum theory, can Superstring theory really have "no intuitive sense". What I really mean is that superstring theory has no science behind it - no way to test anything. Quantum theory, on the other hand, has been tested over and over again. [As an aside, it
I have both a Macbook Pro and a Gateway running Windows 7. I use both about the same amount. Scorecard for the last month: Windows reboots required: None Mac reboots required: Three FYI, I have a lot more software running on my Windows box than I do on the Mac.
So, it is my first week at Mozilla Labs; I picked a great first week - the launch of Firefox 4 for both desktop and mobile. One of the big topics for Mozilla is Identity and Privacy. After all, "Firefox answers to no one but you." However, digging into identity (above the layer of authentication and authorization) is a tricky business. This book is a very interesting framework in which to think of identity. It is intuitive social science: we all have expectations about how our personal information should be used, based on the context of use; when our expectations are not met, we react poorly; when our expectations are stressed, but not broken, expectations may evolve, especially to encapsulate new technologies. Contextual Integrity is the catch phrase to encompass this idea...and the idea that identity/Privacy is not about hiding your information, but about its appropriate use. The difficulty is turning a social science into a computer science. There has been lo
Paul Starobin is a veteran international correspondent, who, as becomes apparent throughout the book, has an educated, experienced, and balanced opinion on the state of US. I picked up this book because of my sense of an undertone of pessimism about America that pervades a lot of discussions these days....and because ultimately I am hopeful that the US can recover from its current challenges. In summary, this book is an excellent read; it is precise, dense, comprehensive, and ultimately optimistic about the potential of the future. That said, it is also realistic, and highlights several of my personal opinions on why the US could be in trouble, namely: There is the aforementioned undercurrent of pessimism running through the country, based on the sustained issues with international policy, and the underlying causes of the financial meltdown. The US foreign policy of American Imperialism is seen as negative by large portions of the world; even portions that you would expect to
Nokia's CEO is courageous . It is one thing to know that a company is in trouble, and another to really do something about it. While it is almost certain that today's announcement will be a partnership with Microsoft, I wonder if that is the wrong choice. While Windows 7 seems fine, it has no "sex appeal". For $0 Nokia could have jumped to Android, and customized it as much as they wanted. Because it was derived from Android, Nokia could have basked in the glow of that product. Microsoft -- ho hum :-) Of course, maybe I am just wrong. Google Trends shows more searches for Windows 7 (blue)....but more news for Android (red).
What next? Here is a confessional application from the Catholic Church. It would be great if Google and the Church could work together. "I confess to amorous feelings" could be followed by a relevant ad ... especially now that Craigslist has been sanitized. I s ure hope we see so mething similar from The Flying Spaghetti Monster soon. I would not want th e Pastafarian's to miss out on something this important.
There is an interesting dynamic emerging with Verizon's stated intention to throttle their top 5% of users: Verizon Wireless strives to provide customers the best experience when using our network, a shared resource among tens of millions of customers. To help achieve this, if you use an extraordinary amount of data and fall within the top 5% of Verizon Wireless data users we may reduce your data throughput speeds periodically for the remainder of your then current and immediately following billing cycle to ensure high quality network performance for other users at locations and times of peak demand. Our proactive management of the Verizon Wireless network is designed to ensure that the remaining 95% of data customers aren't negatively affected by the inordinate data consumption of just a few users. I would expect some push-back on the fact that Verizon will throttle a user for up to two months, even though users are on a monthly plan. However, perhaps more interesting,
This is a great article on "everyday" statistics. You have to read through nearly to the end to get to the "math" around money laundering: $0.53 on the $1.00 is the basic return ratio, according to this article, which is not too bad a return, all things considered. More interesting are the statistical anomalies around multiple winners. I always try to think of the low tech angle, and it strikes me that there may be a simpler way to increase your return: simply buy known winning tickets (ones that are already scratched) from people at a premium that is better than the $0.53. Seems too obvious....but I wonder if the FBI has checked Craigslist for ads offering to "buy winning lottery tickets at more than face value". http://www.lotterypost.com/news/227079/1940460 I have to do some searching for why this "single instance" algorithm works; it is not immediately obvious.
Only 28% of teachers in the US teach evolution . It boggles the mind. I don't even know what to say :-(