Optimizing all the value out of your bottom line

Money.

I have a bunch of projects I could push forward if I had money. Last time I looked at Kickstarter, I would need a US credit card to try to get them funded there. I've looked at some of the other crowdfunding sites, and I don't really care for the models they use.

It's not just money I need. Publicity on Kickstarter or somewhere similar could help me reach people who might be interesting in working with me on those projects.

It's the connections I develop while getting the money the dull way that is the real value. The portfolio I develop is also useful, but it's the human relationships and the value that people have for each other, the value we generate when we work together that is the real value. Not money.

Money is cheap.

Money.

If money is what you want, I hear it's not hard to get. (And I think I have reason to believe it.) But when you go that way, you get money without meaning.

Money saves no one. I could suppose I could win a big lottery, but then I would have to spend a lot of time every day for several months just getting the money put away where the combination of US and Japanese taxes wouldn't have me owing more than I won.

Sure, that would eventually settle down, and I would be able to focus on my projects. And, for all that I could get to work, I still wouldn't have that network of like-minded people to help. Maybe I could get such a network if I had money. But there is the other possibility of just getting people who want the money clogging up my networks.

People who just want money also clog up companies, make them (appear to be) inefficient.

Companies big and small have focused on optimizing their processes, to build their bottom line. But what do they measure that bottom line in?

Money.

How often it is that a company gets a big hit on a product and then refocuses itself around the money the hit product brings in.

Focuses on the product, in theory, but more on the money. Gotta build that bottom line.

Then they optimize the company around the bottom line -- around the product, first, but around the money most of all.

And then the product begins to lose popularity. And the company finds it has money and no meaning. And no way to survive.

And then the company goes running to the government and cries,

SAVE US FROM OURSELVES!!!

Make a law that requires people to use our product!!!!

'Cause we were stupid and now we don't know anything but the product that people don't buy any more!!!

Copyright! Patent! Something has to work!!!!

We don't know how to make meaning any more!!!

If only companies could really see that this is what they are saying when the run crying to the government. Then they might not optimize all the meaning out of their operations so that they have to be saved from themselves.

Well, let's back up and look at the optimization process. How does that optimization work? How does it rob the company of meaning?

Well, there are two broad facets to the optimization. Two kinds of deadwood that companies like to optimize out of their organizations. Two kinds of employees that don't appear to contribute to the bottom line.

You know the one kind, no one remembers how he got hired. He never does anything. Every time you see him, he's surfing the web. Or talking at the water cooler. Or sleeping on company time.

He comes in late, leaves early. Ask him to do something, and it's a crap-shoot whether what he does, if anything, will be useful. In fact, sometimes when you involve him in your project, he does something that so much gets in the way that you'd have preferred that he had done nothing.

Clearly deadwood. Should be fired.

Well, you have to realize that, when you put that guy on the street, unless he finds something to motivate him, he goes on welfare. Then what the company is no longer paying out in wages, it is now paying in taxes.

(One problem with using inflation -- public debt -- as a way to hide future taxes, we don't see an immediate tax burden in putting such employees on the street.)

Then there's the other type. Faded stars. Still useful. Maybe they were involved in the hit product that is the company's (current) bread-and-butter. But they seem to have lost their way. Anyway, they are going a different direction from the rest of the company. They come in when they want, do what they want, what they contribute to projects is usually hard enough to work with that you wish they had done nothing.

Clearly deadwood. Should be given the opportunity to work elsewhere.

The problem is, intellectual property is a mirage. What the mirage hides is intellectual capital. Intellectual capital is in the brains of the faded stars. Maybe it's kinder to let them go elsewhere, but when you do so, a big chunk of the company's intellectual capital goes with them. And it's that intellectual capital that the company is going to need when the hit product begins to fail.

Let me tell you a secret: These two guys are one-and-the-same. You just didn't know enough about him when I described him to you the first time.

The problem is in your vision. In fact, you should go look in the mirror when you criticize the deadwood at your company, because one of these days, the deadwood is going to be you.

It's necessary to fire people or let them move on sometimes, but we should be careful about our reasons. It's even necessary to let go of entire companies.

But if our bottom line is money, the filter is going to be set to discard all meaning and all value. And it's no surprise when the company fails with its hit product. And no surprise when the surrounding society seems to have trouble maintaining enough value to survive as companies burn brightly and then burn out.

culpability for promoting bad tech

I've been wasting time on groklaw again.

This is about weev's problem, which I blogged about several months ago.

It's not a little problem, and it's not just weev's problem.

AT&T put an open interface to their database of iPhone customers' e-mail addresses. The primary key was essentially the serial number of the phone's radio modem circuit. This was negligent, and, with the current privacy laws, it was criminally negligent. Comparing database interfaces to doors, this is like failing to put a door in the doorway. It must be expected that people will come and go at will.

They could have put a hash on the key in their interface. A simple one-to-one hash would be like a gate with a latch. In this case, the key in the database query (visible in the browser's URL bar) would not look like the modem's serial number, so they interested visitor would be required to think a bit to conclude that there might be a relationship between the key and the serial number.

A simple hash would still be subject to the problem with bumping the number and seeing someone else's e-mail address, but at least it would not be advertising the path in. Using the serial number directly was effectively advertising the path in. That's why it's like an entranceway without gate or door. (And no lock.)

A sparse hatch, where numbers before and after valid keys would be invalid keys, would be a latch with a cheap and easy combination lock. Simply incrementing the key would result in an invalid query instead of a customer's e-mail address. But a curious visitor might "check the doorknob" and even try a few combinations. In other words, might try a long enough sequence to determine that the key was sufficient to produce more valid addresses.

To avoid revealing addresses, AT&T would have to limit such tries from the same IP address.

A cryptologically strong hash, sufficiently sparse, would be like a stronger lock. It would take a lot more deliberate and sustained effort to find valid keys, and such a sustained effort would be a red flag in AT&T's logs. (If they bothered to look.)

AT&T failed to make any real technical measure to limit access.

weev's actions were discourteous. But the only criminal element to them is projected through a twisted interpretation of bad laws that were written without any reference to the technology involved.

AT&T is the criminal, and the prosecuting attorney are also culpable.

Now, in truth, what AT&T did with the database should not need to be considered a crime. Negligent, discourteous, inconsiderate, grounds for reconsidering whether we want to be their customer, yes. It should not be a crime.

Why is it a crime?

The "technology" behind e-mail is extremely simple. Simple, as in, without safety features. Simple, as in minimalistic controls. They were "best practices" in a context where most users were technically inclined and motivated to be courteous to fellow users. They are not even good practices in the current context, where users don't want to be bothered with technical details, where many want to depend on the computer like it's a substitute for God, and where some are all too willing to misuse the tech if they can make a profit thereby.

In some ways, it's simple like physical mail. It's easy to write any address you want on the envelope.

But it is not as good as physical mail because the envelope is basically see-through. Any admin on any server that the e-mail passes through can easily look inside.

And if you open the envelope and change the contents, there is no evidence of the change.

And, while there are words on the envelope and inside it, those words are not like handwritten words, or even like typewritten words. There is no evidence of who put those words there when.

If it says it's from your Aunt Sharon, it's hard to tell whether it really is unless you call her up and ask her.

You can recognize her voice on the phone. If you got a physical letter from her, you probably know what her handwriting looks like. You can sort of tell a little by the words and expressions used, but there are far fewer clues about identity in e-mail.

There is some external evidence in the form of records on servers, but that is pretty weak evidence, and not visible to the ordinary user.

If your mail service provider encrypts their storage, the envelope and the contents become opaque, but only as long as the message is stored. Once the message is transmitted, it is visible to anyone and everyone who bothers to look during transit.

There is also the problem of volume. e-mail is much easier and cheaper to generate in excessive volume than ordinary junk mail.

End user encryption can mitigate some of these disadvantages to a certain degree, but there are no current common ways to use encryption.

When Microsoft incorporated e-mail into MSWindows95's internet application suite, they were making technology for the technically inclined to people who are not interested in technical details. They put an easy user interface on it and allowed ordinary users to do themselves damage with the tech.

They have several times offered to half-fix the technology, but their offerings are woefully inadequate and invariably make critical use of technical measures that Microsoft can control through patents and other means. Their solutions are always going to cement their effective monopoly position, if we allow them to have their way.

AT&T is culpable for putting a bad database interface on the web for all their iPhone customers. Microsoft is culpable for selling us technology that is not really appropriate for ordinary users in ordinary use.

We are culpable for continuing to use it.

I have some ideas about ways to mitigate the problems with e-mail, but it's a lot easier for me to just dream about re-booting the computer industry with good basic technology. So I waste my time dreaming instead of contributing to the solution. Mea culpa.

Someday.

Someday.