With pragmatic, both sides win

by dwhartwig

Right versus pragmatic
[Via Marco.org]

At a previous job, the shared men’s bathroom for the floor was laid out like this:

(Please excuse my drawing skills.)

When we were done doing our business, this is the path we’d take:

Many people don’t like touching bathroom doorknobs after washing their hands. (Understandable.) But some of them dislike it so much that they’ll take their paper towel over to the door, turn the knob with it, and throw it on the floor while exiting.

By the end of the day, there would be paper towels all over the floor by the door.

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Telling people the right thing to do is to use the trash can does not solve the problem. Putting up notes telling them to do the right thing does not solve the problem.

The users believe they have their own ‘right’ reasons for doing what they do. This sets up the classic zero-sum game – for one side to be right and to win, the other side has to be shown to be wrong and to lose.

While, if they just moved the waste bin over by the door, everyone wins – a non-zero, positive sum solution.

One thing people need to do is to look at whether the situation is best resolved by making one group a winner and one group a loser, or whether both groups winning is better.

Perhaps the media companies might realize that calling their biggest fans pirates and loser may not be a winning strategy. Perhaps a more pragmatic solution would work better.

Unfortunately, these corporations act as pragmatically as Theodoric of York. Bleeding, leaches, boiled sheep’s urine and wormings. That sounds about their level of understanding.

Why do groups care more about workers in China than they do for workers in the US?

by Garments and Alterations

Miserable working conditions in ecommerce packing facilities
[Via Boing Boing]

Mother Jones‘s Mac McClelland goes underground at an unnamed ecommerce packing facility in a rural American town and reports on the terrible, back-breaking working conditions that are compounded by continuous verbal abuse, unsafe working conditions, mandatory overtime, and humiliating disciplinary procedures.

At lunch, the most common question, aside from “Which offensive dick-shaped product did you handle the most of today?” is “Why are you here?” like in prison. A guy in his mid-20s says he’s from Chicago, came to this state for a full-time job in the city an hour away from here because “Chicago’s going down.” His other job doesn’t pay especially well, so he’s here—pulling 10.5-hour shifts and commuting two hours a day—anytime he’s not there. One guy says he’s a writer; he applies for grants in his time off from the warehouse. A middle-aged lady near me used to be a bookkeeper. She’s a peak-season hire, worked here last year during Christmas, too. “What do you do the rest of the year?” I ask. “Collect unemployment!” she says, and laughs the sad laugh you laugh when you’re saying something really unfunny. All around us in the break room, mothers frantically call home. “Hi, baby!” you can hear them say; coos to children echo around the walls the moment lunch begins. It’s brave of these women to keep their phones in the break room, where theft is so high—they can’t keep them in their cars if they want to use them during the day, because we aren’t supposed to leave the premises without permission, and they can’t take them onto the warehouse floor, because “nothing but the clothes on your backs” is allowed on the warehouse floor (anything on your person that Amalgamated sells can be confiscated—”And what does Amalgamated sell?” they asked us in training. “Everything!”). I suppose that if I were responsible for a child, I would have no choice but to risk leaving my phone in here, too. But the mothers make it quick. “How are you doing?” “Is everything okay?” “Did you eat something?” “I love you!” and then they’re off the phone and eating as fast as the rest of us. Lunch is 29 minutes and 59 seconds—we’ve been reminded of this: “Lunch is not 30 minutes and 1 second”—that’s a penalty-point-earning offense—and that includes the time to get through the metal detectors and use the disgustingly overcrowded bathroom—the suggestion board hosts several pleas that someone do something about that smell—and time to stand in line to clock out and back in. So we chew quickly, and are often still chewing as we run back to our stations.

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All sorts of folderol about Foxconn and China but none of them seemed to be a poorly treated as these American workers.

A previous article talked about the inhumane conditions at another warehouse. THey work them as temps and the can them shortly before they can become full time. The workers have to pay for their own (required) badges. They had to work in enclosed spaces without air conditioning in over 90 degree weather. And no talking.

This latest report details even more the things done. Mandatory overtime with two 15  minute breaks. Given goal impossible to meet and then harassed for not meeting them. Desperate 60 year olds trying to hold on their job along with twenty-somethings. Making about $300 a week after taxes.

I bet if this warehouse was in China, there would be all sorts of group working to make things better. We’d be seeing petition drives and TV programs during sweeps.  But here, these modern day sweat shops are simply ignored.

Perhaps if we started to take notice, things might change. Unless we care more about CHinese workers than our own.

We have seen this all before – graphically, if somewhat metaphorically, displayed in Fritz lang’s Classic, Metropolis.

Eighty years later and we are still learning the same lessons. Or, rather, not learning them. We still feed our young to Moloch, even while we complain about how awful China is.

It’s been 10 years

I started this blog 10 years ago. Time sure passes.

More Google evil as they abuse our privacy

by kevin dooley

Google reportedly ignoring Safari users’ privacy settings to better track its ads
[Via AppleInsider]

Google has joined other online advertisers in intentionally circumventing the privacy settings of desktop and iOS Safari users in an effort to better track their web browsing activity.

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Intentionally circumventing the user’s privacy settings is not the work of a company that holds its customers in high regard. This is not something that was a mistake or oversight.

They did this on purpose without wanting anyone to know. Read this article which details how Target knew a teenage girl was pregnant – before her father knew –  and you will learn just how important access to this sort of information is.

Target knows they can make lifetime changes in people’s buying habits if they get to new parents. So knowing when new parents are happening is important. But knowing before al the other companies is even more important.

How much would target pay Google to get analytic data regarding maternity clothes page view? Or basinet? Or Lamaze classes?

You know they are doing it. Because Google’s true customer are the advertisers, not us. So if we get screwed but they get paid, well, that is just the cost of doing business.

WHen Google tells us they have stopped, why are we supposed to believe them? They have incentives – billions in cash – to mislead us.

I try to corrupt their databases – probably won’t work – but doing random types of searches, etc. That is just noise and they have algorithms for that.

But I know that the fact I just bought new gym cloths and a swim suit that Google now knows I am working out more. If I get some ads about gym memberships, I’ll know it was Google.

Kickstarter changing everything

On Kickstarter Two Projects Pass The $1 Million Mark In A Single Day
[Via American Times]

Kickstarter is trailblazing the future of crowdsourcing.

The site makes it possible for investors of all shapes and financial backgrounds to connect with creative types and innovators by allowing users to help fund projects that sound promising, interesting, or worthwhile.

And this has been a really good month for the Kickstarter team, as not one but two projects hit the $1 million mark last week.

In fact, last week the crowdfunding site had a bunch of good news.

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$1 million in sales before a project is even completed. This turns on its head the standard method of making anything.

Instead of lining u all the design ideas, materials, and finance before a single product is made, Kickstarter allows all of that to be by passed in very direct ways. You only build the projects that are funded by your users. No need to worry about venture capital money at all.

After the first hit, the project leaders can think of selling their product to a larger company or keep doing it themselves. Allowing them to work on another project.

Bootstrapping allows people to create a sustainable income. Not everyone needs $1 million in revenue. Maybe only $100,000 would do.

we shall see how this type of app economy creates entire new economies, ones where some of the standard incentives found in capitalism are dispensed with.

Bypassing the media

NYT growing the wrong way
[Via Scripting News]

Henry Blodget and Kamelia Angelova wrote an inspiring piece in Business Insider about the “incredible shrinking New York Times.”

They inspired me to try to connect the dots for the Times management, once again. There is a solution to the puzzle, but it requires some radical redirection of attention.

Here are the dots.

Tumblr is hiring reporters to cover itself.

Reddit is doing a great interview of a NYT reporter who wrote a book about the Obama Administration. Brian Stelter, a reporter for the Times says it’s the best interview of her he’s seen. (She’s done a lot of interviews lately.)

Last weekend at a conference in NYC, Stelter said Sources Go Direct keeps him up at night.

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These represent ways that people are getting news directly in ways they cannot in the news media.

The interview in Reddit for example, The best questions and responses get voted up. So starting from the top gives the best informaiton.

Now go look at a press conference from the ‘professional’ media. Stupid, repetitive questions that do not inform.

One way reveals the humanness of people. The other the banality.

No wonder modern media is crashing and burning.

A bill that could change the face of research publications

New bill would make open access to federal research mandatory
[Via Ars Technica]

For the last several years, research funded by the National Institutes of Health has been subject to its public access policy, which ensures that resulting research publications are made open access within a year of their publication. For almost as long, some members of Congress have been trying to overturn that policy, which some publishers fear will cut into their revenues. The latest attempt, the Research Works Act, was introduced in January, and would allow any publisher to keep papers in its journals from being made open access.

Today, some members of Congress have introduced a bill that would not only support the NIH policy, but expand it. The Federal Research Public Access Act is being introduced in both the House and Senate, with a bipartisan group of sponsors in each body. The act would significantly shorten the waiting period between publication in a subscription journal and the point where a paper is made open access, dropping it from a year to six months. It would also expand the scope of the policy, applying it to any federal agency with a budget of $100 million or more.

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We are about to see a classic struggle between two different world views – one created in a world of information scarcity where acting as the gatekeeper permitted a billion dollar industry to grow and one created in a world of information surplus where the very idea of a paid gatekeeper is anathema.

The corporations and lobbyists will be one one side, trying to hold onto their old models and force research paid for by taxpayers to be hidden behind paywals (Papers I published 25 years ago are cost upwards of $30 to see. Crazy.)

But researchers are better served by the second approach. They want as many people as possible to see their work. They receive acclaim, reputation and tenure based on their work.

In the old days, some journals could survive because the number of pages printed a month by the premiere journals was limited. No more in the day of digital. If PLoS One – an Open Access journal –wants to publishh more papers, it just needs more server space.

Open access journals are where researchers will look to publish anyway. Let’s make it official.

Google continues to be evil, eviler even than Apple

Chutzpah: Google also wants 2.25% of every iPhone sale
[Via Brainstorm Tech: Technology blogs, news and analysis from Fortune Magazine » Apple 2.0]

It’s not enough that Google borrowed the phone’s look and feel to make Android?

From Google’s IEEE letter. Source: FOSS Patents. Click to enlarge.

It took a Techmeme news cycle for the import of Google’s (GOOG) letter to the IEEE — the nonprofit organization that sets technical standards for everything from AC/DC converters to Wi-Fi networks — to sink in.

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I am sure this is a negotiating position. Google asks for 2.5% to get back at Apple’s suits but eventually gets much less.

But I think they overreached here – not only legally but with respect to their brand.

This is a ridiculous amount and goes against the entire idea of FRAND patents. They are supposed to be fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory.

Yet here they are being used in sharp discriminatory – and predatory – fashion. The whole point of FRAND patents is to allow standards to coalesce around them. Then companies can pay a lump amount rather than have to negotiate with each patent holder.

If, after companies use these standards they are then sued in such a fashion for using the very patents they were told to use, the entire patent system falls apart. Google is only going after Apple with this rate.

Now, Apple has billions to fight this It now, thanks to Google’s overreach, has an entire industry behind it. Samsung tried the same thing and the EU is now investigating them. The same thing will happen to Google.

But, this really hits Google with its brand. A year ago it famously came out against the use of patents in this predatory way. It was hailed as a leader for this.

Now it is simply just like every other company. In combination with its continuing devolution of search, I think Google has lost its way and could be in real trouble.

Best crowdsourced movie of the summer – Nazis from the Moon

Is Crowdsourcing The Future Of Film?
[Via American Times]

Filmmakers for the indie science fiction film Iron Sky utilized crowdsourcing to create and fund the picture.

Alex Knapp captions the above trailer for the yet-to-be-released film Iron Sky:

What makes Iron Sky particularly cool, in my opinion, is that despite its goofy, B-movie premise, the production values look to be top notch. And tons of the ideas, visuals, and other aspects of the film were all crowdsourced. Internet fans also provided about $1 million of the funding for the movie.

More like this please.

I still think the best Superbowl commercial was the one that Chevy crowdsourced.

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I’ve written about the death of the movie industry because the barriers to entry are now so low. Here is a movie where crowdsourcing brought in a ton of financing.

And not only money but ideas and visuals. The actual creative content. Yeah, it is cheesy – great scriptwriters are worth a ton – but it is not meant to be great art.

Just a nice way to spend some time.

And at least this will be a movie not based on any sort of sequel or pre-sold book.

It does show how technology can now create great production values for much less money. The picture above is the movie poster. You can see how it was put together online also.

I wonder just how disruptive this movie will be. Considering it will get its world premiere in Berlin I expect to hear quite a bit about it. It has already sold out.

Quiet spaces

[Crossposted at SpreadingScience]

by ajari

Five Collaboration Tips from Introverts
[Via Greater Good]

In her new book Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking, attorney Susan Cain pits two starkly different work styles against each other. On one side, we have the pro-collaboration, open workspace plan camp. On the other, we have the solitude-is-good supporters clamoring to keep their offices. This debate on the best type of work style has important implications for workspace design and office environment. It also delves into fundamental questions about human nature. While we are social animals, drawn instinctively to work and cooperate with others, we are also territorial creatures who enjoy and guard our personal autonomy.

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It is important to realize that extraverts should not dominate collaborative processes and that introverts need their space. Classically, extraverts need to speak in order to think. Introverts need quiet and time in order to think.Either does very poorly if kept fully in the other’s environment.

A wonderfully brave breast cancer survivor does a video

Simply amazing that we live in a time when such a wonderful, courageous and articulate ordinary person can present herself to the world. And do it in such a straight ahead form.

This is over 4 minutes without a break and without any loss in focus. I was a little worried when she said it would not be pretty but her own comfort with her body made the point she was making incredibly effective.

As this post discusses, the Komen Foundation – which had one of the highest rated non-profit brand names – pretty much trashed it due to the action of its board. They actually changed their mission and the anger in this video is the result.

Komen made this decision over a month ago – and notified Planned Parenthood of the decision –  but had no communication strategy in place to explain to members why it had changed its mission. In fact, it was upset that Planned Parenthood went public. This lack of any sort of a communication strategy – they waited almost a day to respond on their webpage. The most recent post that was there was an announcement that Energizer was a new sponsor. So Energizer bore the brunt of the anger.

I’m sure that made them happy with their choice of sponsorship.

And this is not the first time the Komen board has made an idiot decision that affected its brand. This is just the biggest.

But all these debacles indicate one thing – the Komen Foundation simply does not understand the disruptive powers of the Internet. A decision it expected to defend over a normal 24 hour news cycle  was in flames in minutes.

We saw the same sort of thing happen with the MPAA and its legislative bills. These groups think they have the system gamed – they have their lobbyists lined up, the news media on the Rolodex and the politicians on a leash

And then the Internet happens, where regular people – like Linda in the above video – disrupt the nice little system.

This changes everything. But Komen had a similar disruptive event happen to them 2 years ago and they simply did not listen or change. They did not learn.

If a board is this stupid dealing with its core mission, it makes me wonder how well it is doing with its fiscal responsibilities. So we find out that the Komen Foundation usually spends more on administration and fundraising than it does on actually finding a cure. That it is perfectly fine selling pink guns. That is has also stopped funding stem cell research – $12 million worth out of about $70 million total– that it used to fund but still funds research at Penn State, which is actually being investigated for administrative malfeasance.

This is an example of how a board can become so out of touch with its membership that it essentially destroys 30 years of goodwill in 3 days. And that any organization that does not have an effective, INternet-ready communication strategy for itself is living dangerously.

Why you should be very careful of who you friend on Facebook

Researcher shows how to “friend” anyone on Facebook within 24 hours
[Via Ars Technica]

If there’s any doubt how social networks have presented hackers with a wealth of social engineering tools, a Brazilian security researcher recently demonstrated how he could “friend” even allegedly more wary Facebook users in less than 24 hours. At the Silver Bullet security conference in São Paulo, UOLDiveo chief security officer Nelson Novaes Neto showed how he leveraged LinkedIn, Amazon, and Facebook to convince a target—a Web security expert he called “SecGirl” using social engineering.

Novaes created a fraudulent Facebook account, “cloning” the identity of the manager of the target. He then sent friend requests to friends of friends of the manager from the cloned account—sending out 432 requests. In just one hour, 24 of those requests were accepted, even though 96 percent of them already had the legitimate account of the manager in their contact list. He moved on to 436 direct friends of the manager, using his connections from LinkedIn—getting acceptances from 14 of them in an hour. Seven hours into the experiment, his cloned account’s friend request was granted by SecGirl.

With the information obtained by friending someone, it’s possible, Neto said, to then take over a legitimate Facebook account using Facebook’s “Three Trusted Friends” password recovery feature. Through the password recovery tool, a hacker can change both the password and the contact e-mail address for an account. The hacker could then use that hacked account for social engineering attacks on other accounts.

In an interview with Brazil’s UOL Noticias, Neto said, “People have simply ignored the threat posed by adding a profile without checking if this profile is true. Social networks can be fantastic, but people make mistakes. Privacy is a matter of social responsibility.”

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Social engineering is the easiest way to break any security. Be careful who you friend in any online social system.

Apple showed us the future in 1987 and pretty much hit it dead on

Why Microsoft’s Vision of the Future Is Dead on Arrival
[Via Daring Fireball]

John Pavlus:

What “future of” tech/design videos need is a little less Minority Report and a little more Alien. Director Ridley Scott famously told his production designers to make Alien’s spaceship and costumes look roughed-up, slightly messy, and above all, lived in. Otherwise, it just isn’t believable enough to see yourself in — which is a design problem that both horror movies and corporate promos need to solve. Microsoft’s film is probably going viral as we speak, but imagine how much more reach it would have if it dared to depict a guy stuck in a meeting that sucked, or using his smartphone in an airport that was full of noisy assholes and long lines, or searching his touchscreen-enabled smart refrigerator for a quick meal because his kids are bouncing off the walls and he’s bone-tired from a long day at work?

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Watch Microsoft’s vision or Blackberry’s vision. You see lots of manual interaction with screens of some sort in a very clean world of happy people. Living in all new spaces with new types of rooms that are all so spic and span.

And just nondescript shades of white and gray. No real living colors.

They are so wonderful that they simply do not looked lived in. There is no personality, just  clean lines and sharp edges. Everyone uses the same OS apparently with the same font and colors. There is little human interaction at all. The vast amount of time is spent interacting with the devices around them.

In fact, I do not think there is a single scene in which here is not some sort of digital interaction.

All these amazing things happen in a world that seems quite different than ours. It actually does not seem lived in. Ridley Scott was correct.

I’m not sure I want to live in such a world but if I did, it would require buying a huge number of new things, completely redesigning buildings and living structures. It would need a whole new us.

Now look at Apple’s vision of the future from 1987.

It has real humans doing really human things in an environment that is actually quite normal. It shows a room that is highly personalized and people with definite personalities. Not some sharp-edged simulacrum of a person but real people with real problems interacting with both real people and data.

It shows people actually talking with each other. It uses touch, speech, AI, video all to make slides and other media.

It shows a tool that makes their life easier, not a whole new ‘World of Tomorrow.’ That is the real problem I have with the other visions.

Its all about the dramatic. Little about the pragmatic. Their view is about the fiction. Apple’s was about the reality.

And note the dates. From the video, it is obvious that the time period is 2011. With the release of Siri – now with a female voice rather than an bow-tied man – Apple actually has all the pieces shown. Its view of the future was surprisingly accurate, even though this was done 10 years before Jobs returned to Apple.

Touch, speech recognition, Face Time, graphing, cloud based networking, etc. And the reality is that the real device is smaller than shown.

Pete Seegar on the banjo almost 70 years ago.

Pete Seeger: To Hear Your Banjo Play
[Via Boing Boing]

[Video Link] Mike Springer of Open Culture says:

This past weekend, Pete Seeger marched through the streets of Manhattan with the Occupy Wall Street movement. He was a spritely 92. It was the latest in a lifetime of political engagement by Seeger, dating all the way back to his youthful support of the Spanish Civil War. Today we bring you a film of Seeger when he was only 27 years old: To Hear Your Banjo Play. Released in 1946, To Hear Your Banjo Play is an engaging 16-minute introduction to American folk music, written and narrated by Alan Lomax and featuring rare performances by Woody Guthrie, Baldwin Hawes, Sonny Terry, Brownee McGhee, Texas Gladden and Margot Mayo’s American Square Dance Group. To Hear Your Banjo Play is included in our collection of Free Movies.

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Alan Lomax spent much of the Depression years collecting American roots music. His recordings are some of the first examining indigenous music created in America.

And today’s banjo is an American invention. So it made sense to show us both.

Here we get to listen to Pete Seegar introduce people to the banjo and its history. People singing ballads. People singing spirituals.

And Woody Guthrie singing John Henry. And square dancing.

Fun to watch.

The Royal Society makes my day

Royal Society opens archive, kills productivity
[Via Boing Boing]

60,000 peer-reviewed papers, including the first peer-reviewed scientific research journal in the world, are now available free online. The Royal Society has opened its historical archives to the public. Among the cool stuff you’ll find here: Issac Newton’s first published research paper and Ben Franklin’s write-up about that famous kite experiment. Good luck getting anything accomplished today. Or ever again.

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The Royal Society is one of the oldest science organizations and has been producing some of the best science articles for centuries.

Now we can all read any of these articles. This is what open access means.