Category: Technology

Something happens to a man when he puts on a necktie.

From Chris Pirillo:

When Starbucks introduced for-pay Wi-Fi in 2002, it seemed like a great deal. But five years later, the model appears old and stale and ready for a complete overhaul.

According to my friend Mike Elgan at ComputerWorld.com, Starbucks will begin providing their customers with free Wi-Fi within the next year. This is an excellent development. I believe we shouldn’t have to pay for wireless access points, and I bet you don’t, either.

Who pays for the router (infrastructure) and ongoing connection (overhead)?

Delving into relevant specifics, how many people go into Starbucks looking for coffee, a sofa, and a wireless connection? How many people go in to Starbucks looking for a cup of coffee and a fast exit? Given that the cost of the initial investment and ongoing internet connection is not free¹, why should the latter subsidize the former?

If you want a service, pay for it. If you can find someone willing to provide it with the cost included in the primary product of the business, offer that establishment your business. But do not expect another group to pay for something it doesn’t value because you find the fringe benefit so neat-o that you refuse to pay for it.

For fun, change the subject from WiFi in coffee shops to any illegitimate product/service offered by the government, at full taxpayer expense, for a niche group of taxpayers (or non-taxpayers).

Title reference here.

¹ These will be minor on a per customer basis, and I’ll generously assume each Starbucks franchise would not reach its bandwidth capacity. That does not change the analysis. Also, include security to prevent customers from unintentionally (or intentionally) exposing Starbucks to civil and criminal liability.

The Internet is closed?

Is there a better way to jump back into blogging than to return with a rant?

Like most everyone these days, I pay my bills online. It’s convenient, it saves postage, and I don’t have to deal with humans. It’s the trifecta of incentives. I haven’t purchased new checks in nearly six years, as a result. I love the Internets. But apparently there are operating hours for the Internets. Encountered tonight while attempting to pay my health insurance:

The online self-service feature you have requested is unavailable at this time. Our regular system operating hours are Monday through Friday from 4:00 a.m. to 11:00 p.m., Saturday from 4:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m., and Sunday from 9:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.

I’m familiar enough with IT to base my livelihood on knowing it. I’m fairly certain that no computer system, regardless of the business’ size, needs 53 hours of maintenance per week. I suppose the gerbils behind the scenes are unionized, so anything more than a a 68.5% up-time would be abusive.

If it wasn’t such a hassle (and irrational), I’d change my insurance company. It’s not too much to ask to be able to submit a few bits representing money at 7:30 on a Sunday night.

Who dreams of being Rich Uncle Pennybags?

The National Association of Broadcasters issued a press release yesterday, quoting NAB Executive Vice President Dennis Wharton:

“XM and Sirius have spent upwards of $20 million trying to bamboozle the Beltway into believing that a monopoly is good for consumers. Yet when you cut through all the distortions displayed by XM and Sirius, you are left with one undisputable fact: Never in history has a monopoly served consumers better than competition.”

The NAB conveniently leaves out any facts to corroborate this bold statement. I’m not interested in challenging it directly, because the basic gist is fine if unrevealing. Competition is good. I believe that. I just wish the NAB believed it.

The existence of press releases and lobbying demonstrate that the NAB knows that it competes with satellite radio. If it didn’t, it wouldn’t spend millions to defeat this merger. It is not acting solely in the best interest of consumers. Incentives matter, and here the incentive is to reduce the strength of all providers of competing technology.

I rarely listen to terrestrial broadcast radio anymore. There is a sameness that is pre-packaged and unimaginative. It’s simply not interesting. I’d rather listen to the artists I enjoy and discover new artists through friends, blogs, and iTunes. Even the limited broadcast offerings I enjoy are available as podcasts, which demonstrates that terrestrial broadcasters agree with the Sirius-XM view of the radio industry’s competition model.

Satellite radio didn’t turn me away from NAB’s clients. Sirius and XM existed when I went looking for an alternative. To be fair, I don’t listen to the music channels on Sirius that often. The repetition of a limited playlist exists there, as well. Maybe it’ll cost Sirius my subscription in the future. Maybe they’ll change. But for now, it has Howard Stern, which is what I want.

The NAB’s press release includes a list of groups and lawmakers opposing the proposed merger, which is its only support for the validity of its position. It takes a little more than that, unfortunately. Instead of putting out pointless press releases calling for competition with a list of politicians, it could actually query those politicians and ask why they abhor the Constitution’s First Amendment, as just one action in the interest of consumers. Or does the NAB not actually care about consumers as much as it cares about remaining partnered with politicians to limit its need to compete?

Karl Marx is available on iTunes.

Of course:

Lawyers suing [Apple] said the new devices bolster their antitrust case accusing Apple of trying to monopolize the markets for digital music players and online music sales.

“The inability of the new line to play competing formats is part of the case,” said Gregory Weston, an attorney with one of the nation’s premier class-action firms, Coughlin Stoia Geller Rudman & Robbins of San Diego. “That is evidence that the company is acting like a monopolist and not competitive.”

Just ignore that there are competing formats, that they continue to exist, and that companies continue to release new products capable of playing those formats. None of that proves anything about competition and consumer choice. The iPod is really popular and Apple has a lot of money!

In court documents, Apple said demanding that the company work with competitors “may facilitate the supreme evil of antitrust: collusion.”

“Forcing Apple to deal with rivals may lessen the incentive for Apple or rivals to innovate and invest in economically beneficial facilities,” Apple wrote in court briefs. “It would require antitrust courts to act as central planners, identifying the proper price, quantity and other terms of dealing — a role for which they are ill-suited.”

Ill-suited? Absolutely. But central planning is exactly what anti-capitalists want, especially if they can steal money in the process of getting to centrally-planned, where they can steal more money for the “good” of consumers.

The [class-action status seeking antitrust] suit alleges Apple customers were economically harmed because, once they bought an iPod and purchased music at iTunes, they were locked forever into buying iPods.

Perhaps they should ask each individual iPod customer if he or she has been economically harmed. I don’t. I valued the iPod and all its alleged limitations more than the $400 I paid for it. The same was true of the second iPod I bought. It was going to be true of the third iPod I intended to buy, the iPod Touch, but I don’t like the limited size of both hard drive choices. I will be keeping my $400 and Apple will be keeping its iPod. Behold competition.

Did I mention that the iPod’s success is largely due to its superior design and user interface? Central planners have never concerned themselves with quality, of course. Quantity matters exclusively. Apple has sold the most mp3 players (to lemmings, apparently), so they’re monopolists. Ridiculous.

California bans force. Mostly?

California is addressing the possibility of forced RFID implantation:

California’s senate passed a bill last week that would protect people from having RFID tags forcibly implanted beneath their skin. All that’s left is for Governor Schwarzenegger to sign it, and then the state will become the third to pass such legislation (after Wisconsin and North Dakota).

The motivations for the bill were to prevent people from being forcibly tracked and to protect them from identity theft should someone electronically sniff data stored on the tag.

Kip already debunked the flaw in this plan:

It’s quite simple really: Only the government (or an armed thug) can “force” anyone to do anything. No employer can ever “force” an employee to accept any rule, policy or prerequisite.

I have nothing to add to that, but in light of what I wrote last week, there is another component. First, a word from the bill’s sponsor, Senator Joe Simitian:

“At the very least, we should be able to agree that the forced implanting of under-the-skin technology into human beings is just plain wrong,” he says.

I’ve read through the bill (pdf), and it clearly addresses what to do in the event a minor (or dependent adult) suffers a forced RFID chip implantation, but I can only find this for the possibility that it’s the parent forcing the child rather than an outside party:

This section shall not in any way modify existing statutory or case law regarding the rights of parents or guardians, the rights of children or minors, or the rights of dependent adults.

I’m not an attorney, so it’s possible, probable even, that I’m missing something in my analysis. But I doubt it. I have a strong suspicion that no one in the California legislature is much interested in the ethical issues posed by parents implanting an RFID chip into their children. Obviously it’s better to address a nearly impossible scenario with a new law, while leaving the entirely plausible scenario unprotected in order to guarantee parental “rights”.

Government-approved degrees, for free!

Via Hit & Run comes the news of a proposal from Sen. Max Baucus, a classic example of government’s perpetual ability to ignore incentives and consequences:

Montana Senator Max Baucus says he wants free college tuition to be offered for students majoring in math and science.

The Democrat says he plans to introduce legislation in the coming months that would give full scholarships to high school graduates majoring in math, engineering, sciences or technology.

Naturally, Sen. Baucus proposes this because the U.S. needs to be more competitive with students around the world. No doubt he has an idea of the perfect mix of math and science to non-math and science college degrees in the U.S. Central planners always do, since who could be silly enough to rely on something as outdated and obscure as salary to be an indicator of what’s in demand and what’s not. No, it’s much better to trust Congress. That way, everyone can be a rich scientist.

Sen. Baucus does have one hitch in his plan to prevent gaming the system for a free education. Students would have to “to work or teach in a related field for at least four years after graduation.” That should suffice to weed out the undesirables who want to use the system for personal gain. They’ll clearly just give of themselves for the greater good instead of getting a degree in math or science, working four years at a job they may or may not like, and then retreating to graduate school to retool with four years of salary and no debt. But the incentive to do that once they have a government-funded love of technology instilled in them is too low to contemplate.

And I bet no one would think to get a dual degree in science and . The extra classes would still be on the taxpayer dime since most schools don’t charge for extra classes beyond a certain threshold per term. But that would be absurd. No, we can expect the best and brightest to finally shake off their aversion to intellectually stimulating fields and choose to go into the already highest-paying fields because the benevolent government would now deem them worthy.

What’s next, federal athletic scholarships for American high school athletes to enable us to better compete against foreigners? It’s not right that our professional leagues are being taken over by kids from the Dominican Republic and David Beckham.

The “do anything, as long as it’s something” mentality of politicians never ceases to make my brain hurt.

P.S. There is a stipulation in the funding based on merit, right? One not already met by merit scholarships provided by universities and private charities?

Web Design Annoyance

I know Rolling Doughnut could use a better layout and a few technological bells and whistles. Still, this site gets the basics right.

For example, a problem among websites that I’m starting to see more is a major annoyance with Search functionality. I appreciate the extra help provided by placing the word Search in the text box. It helps me locate it among the mess. Thank you.

But when I highlight the field, the word should disappear. Some sites get this correct and it disappears. Too many, though, don’t. Often I don’t discover this until I’ve already typed a word or two of my search. I then have to edit the text or empty the field and start over. Why? Do the majority of searches include the word search? I doubt it.

If your site is so crammed that you need to include Search to make it obvious, you should probably simplify the design. That’s work, which I don’t bother with myself. Fine. But make the word disappear.

Catching Up: Miscellaneous Edition

News flash: kids are creative at circumventing the rules. Some are using iPods to cheat on tests, and administrators are pissed enough to ban iPods for all. There’s no need to rehash the details because anyone with a third-grade intellect could’ve predicted as much. Instead, consider a student who’s just a little bit smarter than her leaders in the school system:

Kelsey Nelson, a 17-year-old senior at the school, said she used to listen to music after completing her tests — something she can no longer do since the ban. Still, she said, the ban has not stopped some students from using the devices.

“You can just thread the earbud up your sleeve and then hold it to your ear like you’re resting your head on your hand,” Nelson said. “I think you should still be able to use iPods. People who are going to cheat are still going to cheat, with or without them.“

I’m not advocating a policy open to cheating, merely stating the obvious. As we learned with prohibition, and we’re (not) learning with the drug war, people looking to do what’s prohibited won’t stop just because it’s prohibited. Mostly, prohibition just harms the innocent from going about their innocent ways. Duh.

In light of one Michigan legislator’s recent plan to use taxpayer funds to purchase an iPod for every student in the state (now defeated), what can we conclude?

Next, this story on the likelihood of regulatory approval for the proposed Sirius-XM merger provides an elementary but useful finance lesson.

“The merger faces a very tough road at the FCC, where the public interest test applied by the commission is inherently subjective,” [Craig Moffett, a senior analyst with Sanford C. Bernstein] said. “In Washington, ‘subjective’ is codeword for ‘political.'”

The decline of the companies’ stock, analysts say, has less to do with the merits of the merger than with its prospects. They cited the political climate in Washington, where lawmakers have grilled Sirius chief executive Mel Karmazin about antitrust concerns during four hearings on Capitol Hill, as the driving force behind Wall Street’s pessimism.

When the two companies announced the merger, both share prices inched up. As time has gone by, and the process rent-seeking kicks into gear, expectations of success declined. This has brought the share prices below the pre-merger levels. Pre-merger, the likelihood of an unannounced merger held prices at one level. The benefits of a merged company improved the analysis, providing better information in the process. Now, the prospects of two companies without any chance of merger takes that piece out of the shares.

As much as I hate what’s happening to the Sirius share price, markets are efficient.

Rent-seeking protectionism is ugly when you confront it.

More on the proposed Sirius-XM merger, this time recapping recent research studies:

One of the main arguments against the merger, according to the Carmel Group, is that consumers’ audio options, particularly in the car, are limited. While some technology firms promise great advances that could bring more choice — such as in-car, high-definition radio and built-in MP3 technology — regulators should consider only what’s available now, the group says.

“The FCC and DOJ aren’t in the business of looking into some crystal ball and predicting some technology in the future,” said Jimmy Shaeffler, Carmel Group senior analyst and author of the group’s report released last week. “Somewhere down the line, maybe 5 years, 7 years or more, XM and Sirius can come back to this argument and possibly prevail.”

I wrote about this study last week when it first appeared. I must say, it’s mighty gracious of Mr. Shaeffler to permit Sirius and XM to come back to regulators and the National Association of Broadcasters, presumably with hat in hand, and ask for permission. Assuming they’re both still around, of course. But it’s not competition they have to worry about. Nope, that’s not evolved, and it would certainly be irresponsible to predict changes that will no doubt be glacial in speed. Look at where we were 5 or 7 years ago. So little has happened, it would be irresponsible to assume anything.

Nothing to see here, folks. The Carmel Group’s study is independent and unbiased, despite being paid for by the National Association of Broadcasters.