Erdos Had The Number First

The Post makes it sound like experts are in disagreement with the fact that TV a la Carte will bring increased costs to consumers in the near term. The fact of the matter is, the companies that support a la Carte pricing are doing it so they can 1) Raise prices and 2) shut out competitors.

The raising prices is a layup. Few of the cable companies have had pricing power since the competition in the TV market has gotten so hot. Not only do companies compete with land-based cable companies, they also compete with at least two satellite companies that can offer (in many cases) better programming cheaper since they’ve cost structure is different.

A la Cart pricing allows for price discrimination in EVERY market because, like airline prices, no one knows what their neighbor paid.

The competition argument is weaker, since IPTV companies will soon be able to offer wider services, and they will be helped out big-time by an a la cart option. There are, however, still a lot of markets that would need major tech upgrades and capital spending to allow for this. Some companies have said that their customers would just have to use more cable boxes, but I think they’re trying to bluff the FCC into not implementing this ruling.

But no matter what, the near term outlook is not good with regard to pricing. It is important to remember that better profits for these companies does not guarantee better content or service, no matter what the providers say. The Bells have been making this argument for years, and whenever their monopoly is strengthened, the consumer is hurt.

The bad news is that I believe the a la Cart ruling is something the FCC must do. I suspect that the Internet will intervene in this market and do what it has done in other areas, mainly disrupt it. Without the a la cart ruling, IPTV will be slowed and I think that will, long term, hurt consumers more than the short term regressive effects of more expensive TV.

The only wild card in the whole dispute is in what happens to the smaller channels? Channels that have, in the past, survived because of bundling will no longer have that protection and will have to survive on their own. I don’t know how many of these will survive. The upside is that, with IPTV (again) many of these kinds of channels will be able to run much more cheaply than they can now. Perhaps this ruling will be like an asteroid: short term die-off leaving an ecosystem that is ripe for the rise of new species.

At least, that’s what I’m hoping.

I googled my own name tonight. This is an exercise in angst that I don’t recommend anyone try. However, I realized as the 800 Quadrillion matching pages that came back: I must change my name. I figure I’ve got about two days to do it before my wife’s RSS feed of this blog catches up and she sees this, but by then, her husband Karl B’Klalat will be able to explain things to her.

It snowed here today. They put dirt on it.

Let me try to explain to you the horror (ok, well, horror is way to strong a word, but you get the idea. Maybe disbelief) when I stepped out onto the landing this morning and saw some guy (bundled up like a outdoor worker in Minsk) trying to shovel less than an inch of snow and then (wait for it) he put dirt on it.

Why? Why? Why? Why do these people insist on doing stupid things? It does snow here sometimes, they should know how to handle it. But they just don’t seem to. No, they would rather send a crew out with shovels and dirt than put out a little bit of salt. Given that they just discovered underground ice on Mars maybe this is the explanation? The martians didn’t know what to do about snow either, no wonder they died off.

SALT! I say. Not dirt.

The Easiest Commute Of All

A big marketing push will be made to coastal knowledge workers looking to cash out of their million-dollar split levels, move inland, and work remotely for their companies.

This paragraph is the catch. You see, only the people who are already highly successful will be able to do this. These people, since they are already successful, will be more productive in their new role. This will decrease the need for the number of employees required.
Things like this make me all excited and make me want to use words like “phase transition” to describe the fact the shift from industrial to post-industrial is still going on, but is about to enter the bad part.

Basically, what I’m saying, is that if you are not rich right now, you will never be.

The reason for this centers on the problem of productivity. Industrial output by its very nature has real limits on what any person can produce in any given time-period. Technological advantage can occur within this framework, but technological advantage normally provides incremental, rather than disruptive, effects.

Buisnessweek even talks about it, saying that

U.S. productivity is soaring while real wages decline. It’s a toxic relationship that, thanks to globalism, just might become the norm

in their article,titled Americans, Working Longer for Less, seems to refute what their other article talks about.

Looks like I should just head for the hills, and become a hermit. I suspect my wife would take issue with that choice, however…

There is a dangerous poem out there folks. It had to be removed from textbooks in Pakistan because it (as the Guardian reports) is a Veiled ode to George Bush .

The text of it is kinda funny, and notice that the first letter of each sentence spells “President Bush”.

Here is the text of the poem, written by an anonymous poet and entitled The Leader

Patient and steady with all he must bear,
Ready to accept every challenge with care,
Easy in manner, yet solid as steel,
Strong in his faith, refreshingly real,
Isn’t afraid to propose what is bold,
Doesn’t conform to the usual mold,
Eyes that have foresight, for hindsight wont do
Never back down when he sees what is true
Tells it all straight, and means it all too
Bracing for war, but praying for peace
Using his power so evil will cease:
So much a leader and worthy of trust,
Here stands a man who will do what he must

Besides being a really crappy poem, it is a very interesting thing for political reasons. Especially when you consider the White House has been accused (but I don’t think ever convicted) of propaganda mongering. This poem seems pretty innocuous as propaganda (though as poetry is dreadful). It reads like a campaign volunteer had some free time, wrote this, posted it on the internet and now, forever will it live in Infamy.

I’m writing my own President Bush poem too, though I think my President Clinton poem will be funnier. These structure poems are harder to write than they appear, and even though the first one is crappy I think the genre will flourish.

If there had been blogs way back then, I would probably have done what this poor bastard did and wrote about my feelings about professors and fellow students. I actually did write about some of my professors (in a very uncomplimentary way in some of my writing classes. I, however, never got suspended for it.

This guy did: JS Online: Marquette suspends dental student for blog comments

I think Marquette really need to make sure they want to deal with press like this, or that they want to go around suspending students for being petty.

So, I’m probably going to lose my Liberal Card for this (I know, you always knew we carried cards) but WHAT THE CRAP IS MoveON DOING?

The (venerable?) Chicago Tribune, reporting that it was planning some layoffs
Chicago Tribune | Tribune plans layoffs; fewer than 100 `likely’

is being petitioned by MoveOn

to not do this because

This means watered-down coverage of local, state and national news. Politicians and corporations who should be held accountable by vigilant watchdog journalism will instead be covered by a staff that is stretched too thin.

M’kay. I don’t think they’ve read the Tribune in a while. The Ol’Trib is not a vigilant watchdog of anything but their own profitability. Tribune Media is not whatever MoveOn thinks they are. They go on to say

“The key for us is to get people to recognize that the Tribune’s business model is at fundamental odds with a good journalism model,” he said. “We want to bring more public attention on these cuts and slow the trend, to bring them more in line with a good journalism model.”

Like Vicini in the Princess Bride, they keep using these words, but I do not think they mean what they think they mean.

The problem is that newspapers are not making money. If MoveOn really wants to save jobs, they should buy newspapers. Understand this: NO ONE CARES ABOUT NEWSPAPERS!

The worst part about this is that I happen to agree with MoveOn that a weakened press is a danger to democracy in this country. The fact that we, the citizenry, has weakened the press ourselves is a saddening fact. It is, however, a fact that petitions are not going to change. You cannot alter economic reality with this kind of speech. Buy ads, or Buy papers, don’t send petitions.

Introduction

This report is from 2003. It notes that one of the big reasons that the slavers do this is because they make a LOT of money.

Modern-day slavery also thrives because of its profitability. United Nations estimates indicate that trafficking in persons generates $7 to 10 billion annually for traffickers. Human cargo can often be moved across borders and past immigration officials easier than narcotics or weapons caches, which are often seized when found. Trafficking victims, even if caught, can be re-trafficked. Traffickers can make additional money off victims by re-selling them to another employer after their often-inflated debt is paid. Traffickers may earn a few hundred to thousands of dollars for a trafficked child laborer and brothel owners may make a few thousand to tens of thousands of dollars for each woman forced into prostitution.

Janes is reporting that Latvia is one of the big hubs for this crime and that the people are shipped into Europe too. This isn’t happening in some distanct, third-world country.

The Bush administration has given some lip service to helping to halt this problem but where are they now? Oh, yeah, that little Iraq thing.
This really pisses me off.

I think one of the main problems with bloging is the lack of context. You can read my posts, but often I will not really provide any context to what the discussion I’m having really is.

It’s more like reading peoples letters than reading someones journal. It is not like a journal largely because it is meant to be read by others. Journals are often not really meant to be read by others. While there are those who want their journals to be read, by and large a journaler is writing for themselves. Blogs, on the countrary, are to be read by others. In fact, not having your blog read is a sign that you are unpopular or unintersting.

But back to my original point: given that blogs are meant to be read by others there is a problem in that so many blogs lack context that allow them to be read by those who are really other. Sure, if you know me, you can read almost all of my blog entries and they will, within reason, make sense. If you don’t know me, however, some of the will most certainly not.

This lack of context is a real problem for me when the world has begun to view blogs in a more serious light. Bloggers are now journalists in some instances. I think I would prefer that the whole idea of blogging be removed from a special case of writing and treated more like traditional publishing. We are already (as Americans, at least) comfortable in using our feelings about publishers to color or desire to read a given work.

If we do this, then no-context blogs will be finally reduced to what they are: bad writing. Like this, for example.

Googling For Gold It’s funny how BizWeek forgets copmanies like DEC when it talks about Google. One of the biggest problems that DEC failed to deal with properly was the fact that its Techs drove the marketing of their products.

Now it’s true, Google has the internet. The barrier to entry for any given product that google has is so low as to be zero. DEC, on the other hand, risked the company with some of their product investments. Google never risks the company on any product. They don’t have to. They’ve got some of the best minds in the world, and they let them work a small part of their week on their own projects. They’ve got 3000 employees, and they only need a couple of new products (or refinements) each quarter. They’ll get it. And, because the risk is so low, they can afford to implement nearly everyones ideas and see which ones are actually good. You want to talk about using internal markets, man, Google has got one of the best.

But then, there’s the stock price.
Buisness Week, my favorite whipping boy, seems to think that the analysist are right about google. That maybe the 800 Quadrillion dollars the stock is at right now isn’t where it should be.

But who really cares about analysts? Google is at 418.00 as of COB today. S&P analysist say that it should be around 365. Even at that price, unless earning are high (like the more-than 8 bucks that are expected), its P/E ration is still above 40.

But again, who cares? Everyone knows that Google is going to kill Microsoft. And in knowing that, they know that if they buy now they won’t have to kick themselves in 20 years for NOT buying it.