Quotulatiousness

February 10, 2011

Some basic sense about mergers

Filed under: Economics, Media, Technology — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 00:08

Megan McArdle thinks back to the great fiasco that was the AOL/Time Warner merger:

Austan Goolsbee (now the head of the CEA) spent a class getting us to describe all the reasons that the deal was a good idea — and then systematically demolishing all of our rationalizations. Mergers are not a good idea merely because one company has an asset the other company can use (in the case of the AOL/Time Warner deal, the idea was that AOL’s content and Time Warner’s delivery mechanism were two great tastes that taste great together.) AOL had a perfectly good way to get access to Time Warner’s cable network: the companies could contract to share space. When you buy a company, the price the owners will want you to pay is going to be at least as much money as they could make by holding onto the stock, so there’s no way to generate profits by buying some company simply because it has assets you want to use. In order for the merger to make sense, there has to be something that you can’t do as a separate firm, but can do together.

And that thing has to be pretty profitable in order to make up for the costs of the merger. Acquiring firms usually pay a premium for the companies they buy, which means that the new entity needs to exceed the combined profits of the old just to break even. Beyond that, mergers are extremely costly to the organization. Integrating redundant departments takes up enormous managerial time, involves most of the company in vicious internicene battles to protect their turf, and often involves sacking some of your most talented people simply because there’s an equally talented person already doing their job. Unless it’s a really hands-off acquisition — in which case, why bother? — the conflict between corporate culture often saps morale.

The couple of times a former employer of mine got “merged”, the pattern just about exactly matched what Megan describes. In neither case did the merged entity reap the expected scale of benefit that must have motivated the acquisition in the first place.

February 9, 2011

Real usage-based billing might work, but not the current form

Filed under: Cancon, Economics, Media, Technology — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:25

Tim Wu contrasts the way the UBB issue is being presented and how it might actually be successful:

The issue of usage-based billing is a little tricky because such systems are not inherently evil. When you think about it, we usually pay for things on a usage basis. Gasoline, electricity and even doughnuts are generally billed based on how much you use. And the fact that usage-based billing sounds reasonable in theory is surely why the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission approved the new rules.

But take a closer look and something far more insidious is going on. If bandwidth were actually billed like electricity or water, that might be fine. But what the CRTC approved is something different. Claiming that its profit and consumer welfare are exactly the same thing, Bell wants to remake Internet billing. It wants to make use of the most lucrative tricks from the mobile and credit-card industries by preying on consumer error to make money. And this ought not be tolerated.

Any rule that asks the consumer to guess at usage, and punishes you if you’re wrong, is abusive. Imagine being asked to guess how much electric power you need every month, with a penalty for mistakes. Yes, that’s what cellphone companies do — or get away with — but that hardly makes it a model. It’s a system of profit premised on human error, and this begins to explain Bell’s deeper interest in usage-based billing. Bell wants to make the horrors of mobile billing part of the life of Internet users. And that’s a problem.

H/T to Michael O’Connor Clarke for the link.

I guess we’re all going to Hell

Filed under: Humour, Media, Religion — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 00:40


“Name Something You Pass Around” – Watch more Funny Videos

H/T to Jason “I’m still laughing” Ciastko for the link.

February 8, 2011

Smartphone data usage surging

Filed under: Media, Technology — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 07:46

In a development that will surprise nobody (unless you work in the planning department of a cell phone company, apparently), smartphone users are indulging in data faster than predicted:

With costs of maintaining their networks flying through the roof, the nation’s largest wireless carriers are attempting to limit the mobile Internet usage of their most download-happy customers through speed slowdowns, price tiering and by raising costs.

Yet Americans’ mobile Internet usage is growing exponentially. Video, multimedia-heavy apps and other data hogs have even casual users sucking down more data than they realize.

“As the mobile Web continues to get better, people are using it more,” said Todd Day, a wireless industry analyst with Frost & Sullivan.

[. . .]

In June 2010 — when it scrapped its unlimited data offering and moved to a capped system — AT&T (T, Fortune 500) said that 98% of its smartphone customers use less than 2 gigabytes per month of data, and 65% use less than 200 megabytes.

But that was six months ago. At the rate mobile Internet traffic has been expanding, June was practically the stone age.

[. . .]

The heaviest data users tend to have Android devices, which run widgets that constantly update with data over the network. Android users download an average of 400 MB per month, and iPhone users are a close second with 375 MB per month, according to Frost & Sullivan. On the flip side, BlackBerry devices tend to download just 100 MB per month.

Update: “Brian X. Chen says “Verizon iPhone Shows You Can’t Win: Carriers Hold the Cards”:

The launch of the iPhone on Verizon adds to the mountain of evidence that you just can’t trust wireless carriers.

On the day that iPhone preorders began last week, Verizon quietly revised its policy on data management: Any smartphone customer who uses an “extraordinary amount of data” will see a slowdown in their data-transfer speeds for the remainder of the month and the next billing cycle.

It’s a bit of a bait-and-switch. One of Verizon’s selling points for its version of the iPhone is that it would come with an unlimited data plan — a marked contrast to AT&T, which eliminated its unlimited data plans last year.

Verizon incidentally announced a plan for “data optimization” for all customers, which may degrade the appearance of videos streamed on smartphones, for example.

Verizon didn’t send out press releases to alert the public of this nationwide change regarding data throttling and so-called “optimization.” The only reason this news hit the wire was because a blogger noticed a PDF explaining the policy on Verizon’s website, which Verizon later confirmed was official. Obviously it’s bad news, so Verizon wanted to keep a lid on it.

February 7, 2011

James May’s U-2 ride

Filed under: Media, Space — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 12:38

Not at all Top Gear-ish.

H/T to Jon for the link.

Blameshifting, subcontinental style

Filed under: Asia, India, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:37

Strategy Page talks about the common belief in Pakistan that suicide attacks are not really the fault of other Muslims:

While the Islamic terrorist attacks in Pakistan have created a lot of hatred against Islamic militants, many Pakistani government officials, and media executives, blame non-Moslem foreigners for all the Islamic violence. To Westerners, this is bizarre, but to more than half the population of Pakistan, blaming India and Israel (and the West in general), for Islamic suicide bombers killing Pakistanis, has some traction. The basic theme is that India, with the assistance of those clever and diabolical Israelis, are deceiving Moslems to become suicide bombers. In some cases, where there are no bodies left behind, the Indians or Israelis can be blamed for doing the deed themselves. This sort of thing is regularly reported in Pakistan.

Since India and Pakistan (literally, “the land of the pure.”) were created out of British India in 1947, Pakistan has seen India as preparing to invade and conquer them. There followed four wars with India, all of which [were] started by Pakistan. While many Pakistanis have figured out that India has never had any interest in taking over Pakistan, especially as Pakistan slid into a malaise of corruption and economic decline. But those who ran the Pakistani government (a very small group, be they politicians or generals) found it convenient to blame someone else, and India was always a convenient scapegoat. Israel was added when because Israel has long been considered the archenemy of Moslems, and especially since Israel became a close ally of India. The West is blamed because their economic success must have, somehow, come at the expense of the morally superior Islamic world.

On the national level, as at the personal level, having a shadowy “nemesis” to blame for your misfortune allows you to avoid looking for the actual root causes of your situation.

Update: A writer at The Economist reports on revisiting Pakistan after five years away:

Much of the news we read from Pakistan is a grisly catalogue of suicide-bombs, sectarian slaughter, political assassination, grinding insurgency and collateral damage from the war in Afghanistan.

So, on a first visit to Islamabad and Lahore in nearly five years, my initial response was to think how the relentless tide of such reporting obscures another truth about the country: how pleasant it can be; how helpful and hospitable the people; how many well-informed, articulate and enlightened cosmopolitans there are to talk to. In the past I have always argued that Pakistan has a tolerant, flexible core that is far more resilient than it is often given credit for. Surely, that remains true.

A second response, however, was to acknowledge how much worse things had got in those five years. Three sorts of decline stand out—the linked problems of worsening security and the spread of Islamist extremism, and the economy.

[. . .]

One of the commonplaces of analysis in Pakistan is that the roots of extremism lie not just in the war in Afghanistan and the “Islamisation” of public life introduced by General Zia ul-Haq a generation ago, but in economic hardship and lack of opportunity. The economy is lurching along on IMF-provided crutches, just a few months from the next crisis. Most people also agree about some of the basic reforms needed—in particular a broadening of the tax base. But the political parties want to make sure that it is the other parties whose voters’ pockets will suffer from the broadening. So reform is deadlocked.

Pakistan is indeed still not as bad as you might think from the newspaper headlines. And when Mr Hoodbhoy, for example, talks of an impending bloodbath it is still possible to think he exaggerates. But Pakistan is bloody enough already, and it is for now a depressing and frightening place. It is not just that the decline seems unimpeded by the end of Pervez Musharraf’s inept, corrupt military dictatorship and the advent of Asif Ali Zardari’s inept, corrupt and army-reliant civilian administration. It is that the arguments of those who claim the trend is remorseless and heading for disaster seem more persuasive than those I have deployed over the years to refute them.

Postmodern Monday

Filed under: Books, Humour, Media — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 08:21

A little postmodernism to lighten your Monday morning burdens:

Surrealism in the works of Rushdie

John N. Humphrey

Department of Sociolinguistics, University of Massachusetts, Amherst

1. Sontagist camp and capitalist theory

The main theme of the works of Rushdie is a self-justifying totality. The subject is interpolated into a capitalist theory that includes narrativity as a paradox.

It could be said that if Lyotardist narrative holds, we have to choose between Sontagist camp and the subcultural paradigm of narrative. Sontag suggests the use of surrealism to deconstruct class divisions.

Therefore, the subject is contextualised into a Sontagist camp that includes reality as a reality. Several sublimations concerning the role of the participant as observer may be discovered.

Thus, Porter[1] suggests that the works of Rushdie are postmodern. If constructive objectivism holds, we have to choose between capitalist theory and postdialectic narrative.

2. Rushdie and Sontagist camp

“Sexuality is part of the meaninglessness of language,” says Lacan. However, Sartre promotes the use of surrealism to analyse and read sexual identity. The subject is interpolated into a cultural rationalism that includes narrativity as a totality.

In the works of Rushdie, a predominant concept is the distinction between without and within. It could be said that Sontag uses the term ‘surrealism’ to denote a mythopoetical whole. Baudrillard suggests the use of neodeconstructivist desemioticism to challenge elitist perceptions of truth.

However, the subject is contextualised into a capitalist theory that includes art as a reality. A number of constructions concerning surrealism exist.

But the characteristic theme of Geoffrey’s[2] essay on materialist postcultural theory is the absurdity, and hence the paradigm, of capitalist class. The subject is interpolated into a capitalist theory that includes sexuality as a whole.

Thus, the example of surrealism prevalent in Rushdie’s Satanic Verses is also evident in Midnight’s Children, although in a more self-referential sense. Sontag promotes the use of Debordist image to analyse sexual identity.

However, the main theme of the works of Rushdie is not narrative, but subnarrative. Derrida uses the term ‘capitalist theory’ to denote the defining characteristic, and subsequent collapse, of neotextual art.

3. Consensuses of economy

If one examines the conceptualist paradigm of narrative, one is faced with a choice: either reject capitalist theory or conclude that consciousness is responsible for capitalism. Therefore, the characteristic theme of Parry’s[3] model of Lacanist obscurity is a posttextual paradox. Marx suggests the use of capitalist theory to deconstruct archaic perceptions of society.

However, Lacan uses the term ‘surrealism’ to denote not discourse, but subdiscourse. The primary theme of the works of Rushdie is the genre of capitalist class.

But Sartre uses the term ‘capitalist theory’ to denote a self-justifying totality. The subject is contextualised into a surrealism that includes truth as a reality.

4. Rushdie and Sontagist camp

The main theme of de Selby’s[4] analysis of surrealism is the role of the writer as participant. Thus, an abundance of theories concerning the common ground between sexual identity and class may be found. Derrida uses the term ‘Batailleist `powerful communication” to denote the role of the observer as participant.

In the works of Rushdie, a predominant concept is the concept of capitalist language. But the premise of surrealism implies that society, surprisingly, has significance, but only if truth is equal to reality; otherwise, Marx’s model of presemioticist narrative is one of “the textual paradigm of context”, and therefore part of the meaninglessness of narrativity. The characteristic theme of the works of Rushdie is the bridge between culture and sexual identity.

Thus, several desituationisms concerning Sontagist camp exist. Lyotard’s essay on capitalist theory states that reality is a product of the masses.

Therefore, Geoffrey[5] holds that we have to choose between surrealism and semantic theory. In The Moor’s Last Sigh, Rushdie reiterates capitalist theory; in The Ground Beneath Her Feet, although, he analyses Sontagist camp.

In a sense, Marx promotes the use of the neodialectic paradigm of narrative to modify and challenge language. Lacan uses the term ‘surrealism’ to denote the role of the artist as poet.

1. Porter, Z. ed. (1998) The Failure of Discourse: Surrealism in the works of Fellini. And/Or Press

2. Geoffrey, J. W. I. (1986) Sontagist camp and surrealism. Loompanics

3. Parry, J. K. ed. (1994) Reassessing Modernism: Surrealism in the works of Mapplethorpe. Cambridge University Press

4. de Selby, A. (1989) Nihilism, surrealism and neotextual libertarianism. University of California Press

5. Geoffrey, O. R. ed. (1974) Poststructural Narratives: Surrealism and Sontagist camp. Yale University Press

H/T to Andrew C. Bulhak and Josh Larios for the link.

February 6, 2011

Lost recording of SuperBowl I turns up

Filed under: Football, Media — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 10:55

Given the ubiquity of video sites on the web today, it can be hard to believe that major TV networks only started systematically storing tapes of shows in the early 1970s. One of the “holy grail” recordings that historians were looking for was SuperBowl I:

Football fans know what happened in Super Bowl I. The game, which was played on January 15, 1967, was the first showdown between the NFL and AFL champions. It ended with the Green Bay Packers stomping the Kansas City Chiefs, 35-10.

Unless they were one of the 61,946 people at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum that day, or one of the fans who watched it live on NBC or CBS, there’s one thing that all football fans have in common: They’ve never actually seen the game.

In a bizarre confluence of events, neither network preserved a tape. All that survived of this broadcast is sideline footage shot by NFL Films and roughly 30 seconds of footage CBS included in a pre-game show for Super Bowl XXV. Somehow, an historic football game that was seen by 26.8 million people had, for all intents and purposes, vanished.

My favourite bit of information from the article is a lovely juxtaposition between the massive popularity (and wall-to-wall TV coverage) of modern SuperBowl games and this:

The recording also includes a shocking sight for a Super Bowl: empty seats. The game didn’t sell out, even with ticket prices that topped out at $12.

February 4, 2011

The Montreal Gazette‘s 1969 view of the year 2000

Filed under: Cancon, Media — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 09:26

Paleofuture‘s Matt Novak digs up a Montreal Gazette cartoon from 1969:


Click to view full size

The January 18, 1969 Montreal Gazette ran this most peculiar comic, chock full of hilarious expositional dialogue and dystopian delights.

We follow the futuristic misadventures of George Daedalus, also known as Daeda 928 502 467, in the year 2000 AD. George lives in Oshtoham, Canada’s second largest city — which I’m guessing is a combination of the cities Oshawa, Toronto and Markham — and works as a travel agent. George lives his life surrounded by technological wonders like robot servants, videophones, moving sidewalks and 3D hologram walls, but we come to find out that he’s really just not that happy. The last panel shows George taking drugs and using a computer to escape his reality. Boy am I glad I don’t live in that future!

H/T to Cory Doctorow for the link.

Superbowl XLV storyline: sportscasters in the frigid cold

Filed under: Football, Humour, Media — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:03

The Two Scotts spend a bit of time talking about the teams, but most of their column talking about how the brave network sports guys are bearing up under the unexpectedly cold weather:

Reid: Top three undeniable facts about Super Bowl XLV:

1. Sports Reporters Are Pussies. So far the most reportable item from the 2011 Super Bowl appears to be that it’s very coldy woldy. We had to spend days listening to ESPN’s Mike and Mike wussy aloud about how cold it was broadcasting outside until they finally moved their show indoors. And it seems every other reporter in Dallas assumes what the football-loving public wants to learn first is how they’re all holding up in the frigid air of north Texas. Yo candy apples, it’s barely dropped below freezing. Grow a pair!

[. . .]

Feschuk: Reid is right — how can you people think about football at a time like the Super Bowl? Have you not read the stories of valour and bravery from north Texas? Are you not aware of the HARDSHIP and SUFFERING being endured by members of media, who have been subjected to horrible injustices such as wind and having their corporate golf junkets cancelled? Reading their harrowing dispatches from the front lines, it’s clear that these reporters are pretty much exactly like the pro-democracy protesters in Egypt, except even more courageous because some of them forgot to bring warm socks. WE STAND WITH YOU, HEROES!

Honestly, did the US networks hire all of their current crop of sportscasters from Toronto? It would explain the whining about the weather . . .

Then again, the reporters had to write about something, and there are only so many times you can go on about Aaron Rodgers’ talent or interview the family of gypsies that lives in Brett Keisel’s beard. One news outlet in New Hampshire was so desperate that it actually ran a story about a local man who has the same name as Packers coach Mike McCarthy. Think about that. Think about how hard-up for a remotely engaging Super Bowl story the editor must have been to say out loud, “There’s someone else on this planet with the name Mike McCarthy?? AND HE LIVES HERE IN NEW HAMPSHIRE???? To the newsmobile!!!“

Aside from the terrible, terrible burden of the weather, the next biggest problem (according to Reid) is this:

There are Not Enough Slutty Women in Texas. In what would constitute a crisis in any circumstance, an embarrassing shortage of prostitutes in the Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan area during the Super Bowl may irreparably damage the city’s reputation among hard-up pigs. It is estimated that 10,000 hookers are needed to satisfy the drunken demands of fat corporate slobs who, left to their own charms, couldn’t pick up a slice of pizza. Dallas currently has less than half this number of ladies of the evening (not mention ladies of the afternoon, the late morning, the early morning and the Warren Sapp). In response, the Dallas mayor has been forced to implement emergency measures: Free tickets for Charlie Sheen and ‘friends’.

As expected, BBC offers apology for Top Gear anti-Mexican remarks

Filed under: Americas, Britain, Media — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 08:26

It still won’t change anything:

The BBC has now obliged, with a statement which concedes that while the remarks were “rude” and “mischievous”, there was “no vindictiveness” behind them.

The Corporation continues: “Our own comedians make jokes about the British being terrible cooks and terrible romantics, and we in turn make jokes about the Italians being disorganised and over dramatic, the French being arrogant and the Germans being over-organised.”

It adds that “stereotype-based comedy was allowed within BBC guidelines in programmes where the audience knew they could expect it, as was the case with Top Gear“.

The apology concludes: “Whilst it may appear offensive to those who have not watched the programme or who are unfamiliar with its humour, the executive producer has made it clear to the ambassador that that was absolutely not the show’s intention.”

Indeed, said executive producer apologised personally to señor Medina-Mora Icaza, and we look forward to seeing that meeting on Top Gear in due course, complete with witty commentary from Clarkson, Hammond and May.

February 3, 2011

Middle East unrest spreads to Yemen

Filed under: Liberty, Media, Middle East, Politics — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 07:37

First Tunisia, then Egypt, now Yemen:

Tens of thousands of Yemenis squared off in street protests for and against the government on Thursday during an opposition-led “Day of Rage,” a day after President Ali Abdullah Saleh offered to step down in 2013.

Anti-government activists drew more than 20,000 in Sanaa, the biggest crowd since a wave of protests hit the Arabian Peninsula state two weeks ago, inspired by demonstrations that toppled Tunisia’s ruler and threaten Egypt’s president.

But an equally large pro-Saleh protest also picked up steam, and supporters of the president who has ruled Yemen for more than three decades drove around the capital urging Yemenis over loudspeakers to join their counter-demonstrations.

The protests in Sanaa fizzled out by midday, with demonstrators on both sides dispersing peacefully ahead of a traditional afternoon break to chew qat, a mild stimulant leaf widely consumed in Yemen.

CRTC head called to testify before Commons committee

Filed under: Cancon, Economics, Media, Politics, Technology — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 07:29

In what some are hailing as a victory for Canadian internet users, but might well be just another Conservative sop to public opinion, the head of the CRTC has been called before a Commons committee:

The chairman of the CRTC will appear before the Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology on Thursday, as the regulator’s decision on usage-based billing for Internet services continues to generate anger among consumers and businesses.

Konrad von Finckenstein, chairman of the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, will appear before the committee of federal MPs to explain the regulator’s decision, which allows large Internet providers like Bell Canada to charge smaller providers who lease space on their networks on a per-byte, or usage, basis.

On Tuesday, Prime Minister Stephen Harper vowed to review the decision, lending clout to Industry Minister Tony Clement’s announcement to examine the CRTC ruling a day earlier. Mr. Clement and Mr. Harper’s cabinet, of course, have overturned the CRTC before — most notably by striking down the regulator’s ruling that Globalive, which now operates Wind Mobile, couldn’t launch service in the regulated sector because of foreign financial backing.

The problem for the government is that they need to be seen to do something, but the best “something” would be to open up the Canadian market to foreign competition in order to drive prices down toward world levels. That would upset too many cosy arrangements for the current beneficiaries of licenses to print money government approval to operate.

Tools for protest marchers: anti-kettling app

Filed under: Law, Liberty, Media, Middle East, Technology — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 07:20

Patrick Kingsley talks to the developers of “Sukey”, a new mobile phone app intended to help protesters avoid being kettled by police:

Cairo, it wasn’t. But at about a quarter to four last Saturday afternoon, on a crowded backstreet in central London, something happened outside the Egyptian embassy that deserves at least a footnote in the annals of protest history. A crowd of students weren’t kettled.

In the context of recent British protests, this was a near-miracle. At each of the previous four major student protests in London since the Millbank riot on 10 November, police have kettled — or, in their terminology, “contained” — thousands of protesters, preventing them from leaving an area for several hours, and often from accessing basic amenities such as food, water and toilets.

Police kettle protesters supposedly to quell violence, but protesters arguably only turn to violence out of frustration at being kettled. Most notoriously, police trapped hundreds of teenage schoolchildren inside a tight grid on Whitehall on 24 November — and only subsequently did a few of them smash up a police van abandoned in their midst.

Saturday’s non-kettle, then, was a victory in itself. But the real excitement wasn’t that it didn’t happen — but how it didn’t happen. It is difficult to pinpoint exactly why police and protesters behave in a certain way at a certain time, but one explanation for the kettle’s failure to form lies with a new communications network, which launched that afternoon: Sukey.

February 2, 2011

Thousands are sailing flying

Filed under: Europe, History, Media — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 12:31

Patricia Treble reports on the new wave of Irish emigration:

With their economy in a tailspin and bad financial news piling up, the Irish people are voting with their feet—they’re leaving the Emerald Isle at the rate of 1,000 a week. Last Thursday, the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) published a grim forecast: net outward migration will reach 100,000 in the two years ending in April 2012.

Packing up and leaving in dire times is nothing new for Ireland. In the 1800s, millions fled the island’s famines and disease for the chance of a better life in countries such as Canada, the United States and Australia. Even recently, there have been waves of emigration. The last time the emigration numbers were as high as they are now was in 1989, when 44,000 fled the economically depressed nation. Soon after, Ireland cut taxes, attracted massive foreign investment and transformed itself into a Celtic Tiger. Property prices soared along with personal wealth.

It’s always a good time for some Pogues music:

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