Tim Oren's Due Diligence

The Roving Eye: Special Legacy Media July 4th Edition

(Occasionally my little tours of the web seem to develop a narrative thread all on their own. This is one of those days.)

Boob tubers not so nifty over fifty. (Sorry, but it's Variety, I had to try.)  The average TV viewer is now eligible for AARP.  The primo demographics have migrated elsewhere, and a lot of ad revenue will go with them.

Who are those graying gazers? Crooked Timber isn't my usual hangout, but one of its contributors has run a nifty study on blogging and political participation and alignment. Well worth reading the whole thing, but what caught my attention was this graphic of 'ideological scaling' by media outlet. Seems that NBC, ABC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC and PBS are all splitting the audience of aging liberals and lefties, while the sole outlet with the remaining right of center crowd is... guess who? Rupert Murdoch may have joined the AARP crowd long ago, but all of his brain cells are still working.

The inherent biases of the medium, rebuked. The ever valuable Strategy Page list came out with the following, embedded in an article that's otherwise about the progress in Iraq:

"Most people just take what the news gives them, but it’s becoming more popular to pursue other versions of events via the web. Checking the way [past] wars were reported at the time is one of them. But doing this makes you realize that you cannot trust the news to get it right for wars going on right now. That’s because the news has to report exciting “news” events in order to remain competitive (and profitable). Many people in the news business are constantly bitching about this, especially the entertainment techniques that often creep into the presentation of their reporting. But everyone realizes that the audience demands news that excites and entertains. News that simply informs, loses money and cannot survive, except on the web." (Emphasis mine.)

Given that the audience for that entertainment version of news is literally dying off, the survival and reinvention on the web is exactly what really counts for the long haul. I'm reminded of what has been one of my own touchstones for thinking about new media, Jerry Mander's 1970s work Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television. Mander was a McLuhen with actual experience in the medium, and you didn't have to share his politics to agree that it constrained and skewed its content, and was ultimately damaging to democratic discourse. (Reread that bit about news as entertainment.) It's a great pleasure to finally begin to see some of this harm remedied - by competition and not fiat. It's also high irony, considering Mander's leftism, that it's the liberal media that are the first butts of the joke. (Although Rupert might be well advised to sell high.)

The thousand cuts get deeper. Meanwhile, back in the dead tree media, the layoffs and cutbacks continue. Tribune is stripping itself of assets like its Chicago and Los Angeles real estate, Wrigley Field and the Cubs, to service the $13 billion debt it took on to go private. Apparently that's enough liquidation to cover it through 2008, but the scrapping will have to resume to survive in 2009. You've got to wonder: Real estate will bounce back eventually, and even the Cubbies might win the Series again, but it's hard to see how Tribune's core business survives in anything like its current shape and size. Meanwhile, loan covenant default may be approaching for smaller publishers such as Journal Register and MediaNews Group. I coincidentally picked up a copy of the Palo Alto Daily News freebie near my office yesterday, and found that it had eliminated its Monday edition and cut newsroom staff. (The PADN is a MediaNews Group pub.) Out of curiosity, I also grabbed another of the local freebies, and compared their coverage. Nearly every article was identical. No wonder, consider the following from the story above: "The paper's emphasis on local news changed. A recent edition contained only three locally bylined stories but more than two dozen wire service articles." If anyone's paying attention to Jeff Jarvis' ideas about 'hyperlocal' as the salvation of newspapers, they sure don't have influence at MediaNews. The PADN used to drive the big local San Jose Merc batty by stealing local advertisers. It didn't take MediaNews very long to destroy that.

The Blogfaddah - um - blogs. Glenn Reynolds comes out with an uncharacteristically lengthy post on the newspaper implosion, including some pithy reader interaction, wherein he's accused of displaying 'glee' about the industry's troubles. 'Glee' isn't really appropriate when an entire industry gets itself upside down. Anyone who grew up in the Midwest, as I did, has seen what that can do to ordinary people who have little control over the bad decisions and competitive landscape. The management and editorial staff responsible for turning their franchises into debilitated and biased mockeries are another matter. I find it pretty difficult to get worked up over the impending early retirement that awaits people like this. Mr. Saluto is welcome to have a 'humble' 4th of July; he's got a lot to be humble about. Myself, I plan on having one that's happy and free, and hope you do the same.

Update: Eric Raymond, who is blogging again, posts along similar lines. He gives the media's malfeasance on Iraq a more central place in their decline that I did.

The Roving Eye: No Newspaper Trust, Let Our Genomes Go, A Mundane Singularity

A fundamental value problem. Jeff Nolan has a smart post on why creating an online consortium of newspapers won't solve their problems. RTWT. A newspaper is already a bundle of information of various types, a bundle whose value is breaking down. Putting together a bunch of these bundles into a super aggregation of some sort doesn't fix the fundamentally broken premise. Even creating new bundles sliced along topical lines may be problematic unless there's some fundamental rethinking: The Associated Press is such a topical bundle and it's not exactly covering itself in glory. As Jeff points out, some deeper rethinking about both the cost and product side is required.

Chocolate is love. and it's good for you, too. Put it on the healthy diet list right next to red wine. More proof that your favorite deity wants you to be happy.

Bio-nannies on the march. Our betters in the California Department of Health are taking it taking it upon themselves to send out 'cease and desist' notices to companies providing genomic marker scans direct to consumers. It's less than clear that the laws about 'diagnostic' tests apply to results intended for general information, given that there's no immediate therapeutic intent. It is clear that California state government continues to drive the innovation golden goose to other locales.

While we're discouraging investment. Ever time a US oil refinery goes down for maintenance or due to an accident, the price of gasoline and other products spikes. The refining process runs right at the edge of being a choke point in our energy supply, and any glitch affects the end supply and hence the price point. That might have something to do with the fact there have been no new refineries built here since 1976. Perhaps some fresh investment would be in order. But no, the House Democrats think we should nationalize them instead. What a fine move to send any potential expansion capital running the other way. The Democrats are economic illiterates, or just don't care.

Train travel is a luxury. Trying to turn long distance routes into an alternative to air travel is inherently flawed. Charlie Martin runs the numbers. Commuter rail can make money, if not run by politicians. The long haul routes are for those out for adventure, not for business people on a schedule. Repackage and reprice them accordingly.

alt.singularity A nice catalog of potential technology breakthroughs that could lead to a 'singularity', without requiring either human-equivalent AI or de novo molecular scale nano-engineering. While these two seem to be articles of faith for some singularists, they both have the problem of a very low observed learning rate. Regardless of theoretical possibility, capital requirements and technology path dependency suggest that nanotech will emerge from some combination of carbon chemistry and silicon processing. Human replication seems to be going nowhere fast; emphasizing complementary and symbiotic intelligences in the machine phase seems more the ticket. It's good to see so many other break-out possibilities, given my skepticism on these two.

The Roving Eye: Arrrrr Is For Robot, Following the Genomics Learning Curve, More Public Finance Follies

Talk like a pirate day for bots? Just as plenty of alternative uses have been found for formerly mil-only spy sats, so the applications for robots keep expanding. Here a report that a US Navy underwater droid trial resulted in finding new artifacts near a Revolutionary era ship wreck. Development budget hurting? Try turning your AUV loose in certain Caribbean and Florida waters, maybe.

Tick. Reports of an inaugural meeting of would-be hobbyist biological engineers. Today Cambridge, MA - tomorrow, ?

Tick. Biologist Richard Lenski at my alma mater, Michigan State has a long-running experiment to follow evolutionary trends in thousands of generations of fast-reproducing E. coli. Seems he's now made the first observation of a two-step mutational change that gave his bacteria the ability to utilize a different nutrient. If you don't know enough to engineer what you want, get nature to do it for you.

GOOG + Open Office = LUV? Should Google embrace Open Office? It's hard to see what they'd have to lose by doing so. My own experiments with Google Docs showed it can hit scaling limits due to bandwidth and/or server scheduling pretty quickly. Sometimes you just need a locally-hosted interface or computational engine. Microsoft has long been engaged in gilding the --- something nastier than a lily --- on Office. Each generation has a little more feature creep, cuts off more backward compatibility, and fails to address long-standing usability problems. Apple's shown there's a need for a light and usable alternative. Google could simply exploit this opportunity in a more mainstream fashion than Jobs & Co. ever will, and could create a smooth transition from/back to their SaaS offering. I'd say go for it!

The land of negative ROI. In what world does every dollar sunk into capex guarantee you will lose more operationally? That would be government-run mass transit in the US. Long viewed as a combination of make-work spoils program and welfare for the riders, every buck 'invested' means a larger system that can't cover its opex, let along depreciation and additional capex. Out here in the Bay Area, we have a heavy rail system running at near capacity due to the gas price rise, and it still can't cover its costs. Something smells rotten.

Fleecing NYC of a half billion bucks. That's apparently the amount of unfunded public pension liability covered up by an actuary who just happened to be an employee of the city, and therefore a beneficiary of the programs he was supposed to be vetting. Someone who did this in private industry would be in jail for fraud. Why isn't he? And people are running for office based on the idea of government controlling more of the economy.

The Roving Eye: Energy, Blackmail and Memorial Day

Freeman Dyson gives a take on global warming and energy policy, in the form of a book review of William Nordhaus' "A Question of Balance". Written in Dyson's usual clear and concise style, it spells out conclusions for the layman and policy maker. Being an old modeling wonk, I'd like to know more about Nordhaus' DICE simulation that underlies the comparisons, but the lessons are pretty clear: The only clear policy winner out there, other than getting lucky with technology fixes for cheap energy, is a carbon tax. Direct government regulation is an economic catastrophe, and the more arbitrary and heavy-handed the worse. Al Gore's prescription comes out as a tens of trillions disaster, no surprise from someone who doesn't seem to have grip on either economics or engineering. If we're to get lucky with technology fixes, the best way to improve our chances is a carbon tax that creates a reliable incentive for inventors and investors. The current ethanol subsidy/tariff fiasco stands as an example of the outcome when winners are picked by political fiat.

Meanwhile, what's happening with the price we currently paying for energy? We're handing a cool trillion dollars a year to OPEC, according to an article by Bob Zubrin, whose work I've reviewed here. Not only is that crippling to our economy, but a good fraction of the money goes to prop up regimes pursuing policies inimical to our welfare, such as promoting socialism and Islamism. So while we're talking about a carbon tax, we should be discussing an additional levy on imported petroleum and gas. Meanwhile, go full bore after tar sands, oil shale, and - yes - drill offshore and in ANWR. If the right can get around the need for carbon taxes, it's time for the left to quit whinging about doing what we need to survive a transitional period. Reduce impact, but drill and dig. Those who oppose are effectively voting for more tombstones in our military cemeteries. There's only so long that the citizenry are going to put up with blackmail by those who happen to live on top a pool of oil, but add little value and often seek our harm, a fact likely obscured by the political battles of the moment. We can fix the problem by sweat and innovation, starting now, or by force later.

As we start the summer holiday season, and remember those who sacrificed for our freedom, it's also good to recall how good Americans have it. We live in a style beyond the dreams of our ancestors, and are not - yet - in a mortal struggle for survival. We're in a season when politicians of every stripe are incented to convince us we have bad problems that only they can solve. That's a siren song well worth ignoring. When political interests give us an ethanol fiasco, or prove unable to face simple actuarial realities, it's fair to ask what confidence we should have that government can fix the energy (or any other) mess with regulation and prescription. The best Memorial Day gift the government and politicians could give the American people is to get out of the way.

The Roving Eye: The Disaggregation Generation, A Merger Of Inconvenience, Too Much Greenery?

Second Order Effects. Growing up in a low-friction economy, taking networked media for granted, may have profound effects on society and its organization, observes Michael Malonein a great WSJ piece. I've often found it ironic that electronic media, conceived in part with the idea of 'augmenting' large hierarchical organizations, have at times had the effect of pouring acid on them instead. Another effect has been to shift attention to areas where friction still binds, such as the need to free healthcare risk pooling from ties to specific companies, without turning it into a government bureaucracy. Meanwhile, the regulatory and compliance burden on even small enterprises continues to grow, not shrink. At some point these two trends are going to impact head-on.

Now there's an investing theory. Let's have all the annoying companies buy each other. Comcast acquires Plaxo.

Why I'll be backing McCain. It's certainly not because he's my favorite politician. For one, he takes a too casual - if not arrogant - attitude towards the First Amendment. Nonetheless, he will have my vote and support. This guy says why.

Has Green hype gone over the top? Well, yes.

I Need Some Democrats!

Over at Winds of Change, I'm running a political survey that doesn't really fit in here. (It's also an experiment in using Google Docs for such a purpose, and that will be reported here.)

Anyway, my sample is coming in way short of Democrats, so if you're of that persuasion and have five minutes to spare, please give it a try. Or even if you're not.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming.

The Roving Eye: Trusting Wikipedia, Airportectomy, More Bad Debt

Wikipedia and Trust. When should you take Wikipedia's word on something? My own rule of thumb is that either the matter should be objectively checkable or the person or event in question should be long past and noncontroversial. Anything politically sensitive, either currently or as a plot point backstopping a current political narrative, should be regarded with deep suspicion. In spite of process changes at Wikipedia, you still get things like this, where a biased critic of an organization ends up editing its Wikipedia page. Community sourcing has its place, but this points out one of its hard limits: It cannot cope with politically charged matters. It either turns into yet another debating venue, or an echo chamber dominated by whichever side has the most time to kill. Update: another case in point.

LISP-head! So it turns out that Brad Feld is an old time parenthesis junky. I never got into the life-as-a-linked-list style. Back in the day a lot of my work was instrumentation, control and low level graphics, all necessarily real-time, so assembler and C were the weapons of choice. I still have this residual tic whenever I read about something that I know will be real-time implemented in an interpreted language: "What'll happen when the GC runs!!?" Oh yeah, incremental collection, twenty years of Moore's Law - guess it'll be OK. (Via Ole Eichhorn.)

A Successful Airportectomy. Or maybe I should say transplant. Over the weekend, I replaced my slowly dying Apple 'Snow' Airport with an Airport Extreme base station, and the wireless network situation has improved tremendously. Installation was mostly straightforward, but with a few security related glitches that invoked the cussing reflex. Just in case Google brings others performing the same operation here: As of 3/25/08, the interface and help documentation of the Airport Utility don't correspond in at least a couple of places. If you want to do MAC filtering, the doco say there's a separate menu entry. But it doesn't exist - instead use the Timed Access mode and set the times to Unlimited. When setting up a wireless distribution system (WDS), the doco says to use the 'add' button to authorize more wireless nodes, but that's actually on a separate tab in the interface. Also, if you reasonably decide to give the new network the same name as the old, and also decide to conscientiously change the network password at the same time, it will work great on your admin machine. But it will cause all the other client machines to be kicked off the network without any diagnostic, necessitating a bunch of spelunking in the obscure keychain interface. So don't do that. Once through these hazards, everything worked great, and I rounded off the install by hooking up my surround system and an old USB printer to the network via an Airport Express. Worked first time, and I've now got a stable 'four bars' throughout the house.

Go State! My wife and I are both alums of Michigan State University, and have been rooting for their men's basketball team in the NCAA tournament. They are through two rounds and into the Sweet Sixteen. If both State and Stanford win their next game, they will end up head-to-head, making for a real case of divided loyalty. Gotta go with the old school tie there.

More On Bad Debt. I'm not the only one taking notice of the unfunded pension liabilities at the state and municipal level. The Weekly Standard features California public employee pensions follies, starting with the recent near-bankruptcy of Bay Area suburb Vallejo. A lot of this material is from the California Foundation for Fiscal Responsibility, which is backing a public pensions reform ballot initiative for the state. The politician's handouts to the public employees' unions are starting to come due, just as the boomers head into retirement. It's not going to be pretty.

The Roving Eye: Special Cluelessness Edition

Maybe it's Leap Year madness, maybe it's terminal election ennui, maybe it's the mind chilling effects of global warmening, but it sure seems like there's a spate of "what were they thinking" caliber cluelessness out there in the last week or so. Let me count the culprits:

The Associated Press sends its attorneys after a website that has highlighted their sad history of carrying 'fauxtography' - doctored images that amount to uncritical propaganda - often for terrorists. Yup, that'll make sure no one pays attention to the AP's issues.

The US Air Force tries to make sure our airmen can't see blogspot, or maybe even the blogosphere itself, 'cause something might happen. Never mind the blogosphere is a source of open source intelligence and a major IO theatre itself. La-la-la-la-la, I can't hear you! And these guys are supposed to be in charge of mounting the military's cyberdefense? I feel safer already.

Comcast, starring on this page for the nth time, can't just promise transparency on its broadband traffic policies, which seems to be all the FCC chairman really wants. No, they have to try to pack a public hearing at Harvard. Yeah, these guys look just like who I'd expect to see at a Cambridge Internet gathering. Heh. As far as I can tell, Comcast is where flaks and public affairs wonks end up when the USAF or AP finally fire them.

Publicity chasing AI professor Noel Sharkey says we're all in danger from kill-happy milbots with their virtual fingers on the trigger. (I don't usually link the Register, since much of their 'analysis' is unresearched snark, but ridicule is quite appropriate here.) While I've been following the military development thread in robotics for some time, it takes minimal research to find out that logistics and scouting are the designed uses and no-one's even close to having 'bots adjudicate rules of engagement. The history of academics forecasting commercial developments is a sad one, and it gets even worse when looking at military futures where their biases are engaged. Anyone else old enough to remember how we were told SDI was impossible by a bunch of CS profs? How'd that forecast work out?.

The Roving Eye: 2/19/08

Watch out for sneaky fish. They could be spy bots, working for the Navy.

From Rob Carlson, a deeper explanation of Craig Venter & team's synthesis of a complete bacterial genome, and the limits and implications of that achievement.

Don't Be Evil, and don't carry stories about UN corruption.

Politically Incorrect T.J. Rodgers' politically correct solar venture. The publicists for Rodgers and SunPower have been racking up the placements of late. I think the crowing about a "Moore's Law" for solar is premature, we don't have enough of a track record for market growth and reinvestment to go from a conventional cost vs. cumulative units experience curve to a Moore-like improvements vs. time formulation. It'd be nice, though!

Review: Robert Zubrin's 'Energy Victory'

Energy Victory: Winning the War on Terror by Breaking Free of Oil is about ending America's addiction to oil in the short run, and eliminating carbon-additive energy sources in the long run. As you might presume from the title, Zubrin's current motivation revolves around the West's indirect funding of terrorists who would be happy to destroy it. Even if this is not your motivation, I encourage you to check out this book, as the policy proposals are also appropriate for those with primarily environmental goals. And while you're at it, read the chapter that provides a mere gloss on the treachery of the petroleum parasites we are enabling. Those doubting the direct connection between energy policy and terror might take a look at just one recent example of Saudi perfidy.

Zubrin's prescription for the short run is simply stated: Require all passenger vehicles sold in the US to be capable of handling arbitrary mixtures of gasoline, ethanol and methanol, a design called flex-fuel. As he documents, these designs already exist, are reasonably priced, and are currently in mass production in Brazil. The effect would be to force the oil cartel into competition with alternative fuel sources ranging from sugar cane to agricultural and residential waste to cellulose sources to more exotic sources. While transportation is not the only use of petroleum products, it is the largest one which is currently not easily substitutable from other sources, and therefore the greatest driver of our dependence.