Author: Shawn K. Quinn

#lebrondecision: a few thoughts

Okay, so normally I let out-of-market team and player news fly right over my head and pay no mind to it. But given the unique circumstances around this event, I couldn’t help but notice, and I decided to weigh in.

Cleveland Cavaliers majority owner Dan Gilbert recently posted this open letter on the team’s news page on NBA.com, regarding LeBron James (better known to some as “King James”) and his decision to sign with the Miami Heat instead of continuing to, as the saying goes, dance with the one that brought him. In that letter, Dan berates LeBron using some choice words:

As you now know, our former hero, who grew up in the very region that he deserted this evening, is no longer a Cleveland Cavalier.

This was announced with a several day, narcissistic, self-promotional build-up culminating with a national TV special of his “decision” unlike anything ever “witnessed” in the history of sports and probably the history of entertainment.

And Dan goes on to imply LeBron’s actions are a “cowardly betrayal” and states that Cavaliers fans “deserve much more.” Later in the letter, Dan refers to LeBron’s move as a “heartless and callous action” after already making an owner’s most audacious possible promise:

“I PERSONALLY GUARANTEE THAT THE CLEVELAND CAVALIERS WILL WIN AN NBA CHAMPIONSHIP BEFORE THE SELF-TITLED FORMER ‘KING’ WINS ONE”

I don’t particularly defend LeBron’s actions here nor do I necessarily condemn them. I have written about freedom many times in this blog, usually in the context of computer software, but this is about freedom, particularly that implied by the first word in “free agent.” In the free agent era, it is ultimately the player’s (LeBron’s, in this case) choice which offer to accept, or even whether or not to accept any team’s offer at all and retire as a free agent. Disloyal, cowardly, or otherwise, it is anyone’s right to pursue the best job offer and such decisions need not be based entirely on pay. It is easy for the casual sports fan to forget that this is an employment decision for the players, much the same as the average person chooses between two or more competing job offers from, say, different marketing/PR firms.

That said, having seen “LeBron James” as a promoted trending topic on Twitter, and not being able to avoid mentions of the situation without disconnecting from social media completely, I personally feel the publicity leading up to LeBron’s announcement was just a bit over-the-top. There’s promotion, and then there’s over-promotion. Yes, I’m known for my ego as well, and I’ve probably been guilty of over-promotion a couple of times myself. But that was not intentional.

It’s understandable, though, if it’s all LeBron and his PR team hyping his personal brand. I remember seeing at least one tweet implying the NBA was in on this as well; if so, that’s a tasteless and exploitative publicity move, and not something a sports league of the NBA’s caliber should partake of.

It remains to be seen just how much bad blood there will be between Cleveland and Miami and the fans of their respective teams. I may well comment on this again once the NBA season gets rolling. Hopefully, the Rockets will put on a show that’s much more interesting, though.

PayPal’s war on OpenCamp: a lesson in trust, business, and event planning

Until now, I’ve had no reason to write about Paypal. A couple of days ago, that changed. This is something every event planner should know about. Even if you are not an event planner by trade this could easily happen to you if you accept Paypal for payment on any kind of one-off event.

The OpenCamp blog posted today about how Paypal has repeatedly and continuously harassed those putting on the OpenCamp blogging/CMS conference in Dallas, TX, at the end of August.

John P. wrote this post, and states in part:

Over the past several weeks we’ve had 3-4 random calls from various people at PayPal, all of whom only identify themselves by their first name, none of whom have direct phone numbers or email addresses, and all of whom are asking the exact same questions over and over…

  • What is this OpenCamp thing?
  • How many people will be coming?
  • Why are you doing this?

Every time I go through the same speech with them. They are aware that we held WordCamp the past two years and have verified the previous registrations those years. They are aware that I personally have had a PayPal account for many years with them, and that I even have the Woopra account through them with far more volume than OpenCamp will ever have.

The article then goes on to explain this morning’s call from “Kathleen” in the “risk department.” As if that was not ominous enough (emphasis mine):

…they view events as being “extremely risky”. She told me that they would “rather close an account than have to eat a couple hundred dollars in disputed charges”. She went on to tell me that PayPal “doesn’t make much money off events”, and the bottom line was that they just don’t care about them.

Now, keep in mind the above: John is a long-time PayPal account holder and has helped host two WordCamps (WordPress-related convention). This is not just someone who signed up for Paypal this year and decided “okay, I’m going to run an event.” And they are still willing to come out and say in effect “we think events are extremely risky and don’t make us enough money.”

I’m not sure who to blame here. I don’t blame OpenCamp, that’s for sure. The theme of this blog’s past postings predisposes me to blame PayPal. I’m sure there are less sincere, less experienced, and less scrupulous event planners out there who have been part of the problem for PayPal. However, in the grand scheme of things, that’s a pathetic excuse to declare war on all event planners that use PayPal to accept payments, particularly the ones that have more than adequately documented that they are for real.

I view PayPal’s unwarranted attack on OpenCamp as “extremely risky” myself. This is not the kind of mess that a PR department wants to be left cleaning up. Shame on you, PayPal. It’s time to do the right thing: unlock the OpenCamp PayPal account, apologize, and quit treating event planners like second-rate customers.

Walmart: A curse on the American dream

ABC News recently reported on an artifact of a meeting of city aldermen in Chicago. In the middle of a quest to get higher hourly wages for Walmart’s future employees, one of the aldermen, a man named Ed Smith, did the math on Walmart CEO Michael Duke’s salary, and found out that recalculated as an hourly wage and assuming a 40-hour week, it is more per hour than most rank-and-file Walmart employees make all year. That’s pretty much the definition of what I’ll refer to here as “[beep] you money.” (No, I still don’t swear in my blog posts.)

I do understand that a CEO should be compensated for his/her effort leading a company.  There comes a point, however, where a company’s performance and reputation should reflect back on the CEO. I think the alderman said it best:

“How can you go to bed at night and sleep knowing you make this kind of money and the people working for you can hardly buy a package of beans and rice?” [alderman Ed Smith] asked in an interview with ABCNews.com.

Indeed, Walmart is known for treating its employees terribly. A documentary about the retail behemoth, Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price (which for lack of a better abbreviation, I’ll simply refer to as “the movie” for the rest of this post), tells many stories of abuse by the company and its management. In particular at about 36:30 into the movie, a Walmart manager relates the story of another manager telling him how to cheat on payroll and deny workers of overtime. Later, at about 38:00 into the movie there’s an anonymous Walmart worker referring to only 19 hours per week, and saying “you can’t pay bills with that… it’s not right at all.”

In just about any other company, the union would be all over this and causing all kinds of hell for Walmart. However, Walmart is also known as one of the most egregious union-busting companies in the US, and its stores as crime magnets. In at least one case Walmart installed security cameras not to protect its shoppers or even for direct loss prevention, but for the surveillance of employees attempting to organize a union! At about 1:23:30 into the movie, former Walmart loss prevention manager Stan Fortune explains this as it relates to the surveillance footage related to the murder of Megan Holden.

But it gets even worse; about a minute later there’s a big long list of crimes occuring on or near Walmart property during the first half of 2005 (the year the movie was made). Of particular note are four that I noticed in the Houston area, including one in Sugar Land (a purse snatching), a suburb known for its low crime rate!

If you haven’t seen the movie yet, you should; DVDs are still for sale at the movie’s website.

This response from Walmart’s public relations guy to ABC News is quite chilling:

“I don’t think Mike Duke needs, as the CEO of a Fortune 1 company, needs me to defend his compensation package,” said Walmart director of community affairs Steven Restivo, referring to Walmart’s status as the largest company on the planet.

Not surprisingly, I disagree; there’s no way even the most skilled public relations practitioners could defend with any credibility this kind of obscene salary for a company with Walmart’s track record. As a public relations consultant myself, it’s certainly not a job I could ethically accept, nor is it one I would want.

My challenge to Walmart is this: first pay the rank-and-file workers a fair, living wage, and treat them like human beings, then worry about your CEO paying up all of his yacht club memberships and keeping his entire fleet of luxury cars and private jet fueled (or whatever the hell he does with such an obscene amount of money).

Another thing Walmart needs to fix: this pattern of flatly crushing local businesses and then on the eve of tax exemption expiration, moving just outside of city limits, leaving behind an empty store building that no other retailer is large enough to fill. (Also documented in the movie.) In general, Walmart is a nightmare for many local businesses, and plans to construct a new Walmart in the Houston Heights area sparked a petition against it, spread by many people including a group called SLGT (Support Local, Grow Together). I agree in principle with the mission of SLGT and hope their effort to keep Walmart out of the Houston Heights is successful.

(Some opponents of the Heights Walmart point to another Walmart store going up at Fulton and Crosstimbers, in the shadow of the Northline shopping center. Unfortunately I didn’t hear about that one until it had already been halfway built, especially since it’s much closer to me than the Heights store would be; we don’t need that Walmart, and we we certainly don’t need two Walmart stores that close to each other.)

Looking beyond the numbers: the worm in the Apple

This is a long overdue post about Apple and what exactly they mean for the future of computing freedom. I’ve touched on several of Apple’s dubious stances on computing freedom in the past, but this recent Fast Company article has provided new inspiration (and to be fair, it is not the only such article of its type).

Most telling is this particular quote from the article (around the third page):

For Apple, the ideas of closed and free aren’t in conflict. “We’re just doing what we can to try and make [and preserve] the user experience we envision,” [Apple CEO Steve] Jobs emailed Gawker blogger Ryan Tate, who had baited the CEO in the wake of Apple’s decision to ban Flash from the iPhone and iPad. “You can disagree with us, but our motives are pure.” The App Store, Jobs wrote Tate, offers “freedom from programs that steal your private data. Freedom from programs that trash your battery. Freedom from porn. Yep, freedom.”

Let’s look at this closely, particularly the Steve Jobs quote, “We’re just doing what we can to try and make [and preserve] the user experience we envision.” Taken on its face it doesn’t seem evil. However, rephrasing and reading between the lines gives us something more like “We’re just trying to keep total control over what we (Apple) give the user, because we know what’s best for the user.” In other words, buy Apple’s gear, forget your freedom, because Apple hates it.

The next quote, “You can disagree with us, but our motives are pure” is pure ego food. And the evidence is within the next quote, “[The App Store offers] freedom from programs that steal your private data. Freedom from programs that trash your battery. Freedom from porn. Yep, freedom.” This abuse of the word “freedom” is something I object to vehemently, as it is a use of the word to mean what is in fact the exact opposite. “Freedom from programs that trash your battery” means “Apple will not let you run this program on your iPhone or iPad if Apple in its sole judgement feels the battery use is excessive.” “Freedom from porn” means “Apple does not care whether or not you want to view porn on your iPhone, Apple is going to step in like a big nanny and say you can’t have it there.” “Freedom from programs that steal your private data” means “Apple will never let you look at the source code for an iPhone or iPad app and will make it well-nigh impossible to release an app under the GPL or a free software license. Trust us, we’re Apple, we’re bigger than Microsoft now, and that means we’re smarter than you, even if you have an IQ high enough to get into Mensa.”

Mr. Jobs has no idea what true freedom is. Freedom means the user, not Apple, is in charge. Specifically, quoting from the FSF’s free software definition:

  • The freedom to run the program, for any purpose (freedom 0).
  • The freedom to study how the program works, and change it to make it do what you wish (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
  • The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor (freedom 2).
  • The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to others (freedom 3). By doing this you can give the whole community a chance to benefit from your changes. Access to the source code is a precondition for this.

Apple’s DRM on the iPhone and iPad squashes freedoms 2 and 3. Lack of access to source code means Apple’s customers don’t have freedom 1 either. Apple can step in and erase programs off your iPhone or iPad, so technically its customers don’t necessarily always have freedom 0, either. Indeed, Cory Doctorow sums it up nicely in this quote:

“If you want to live in the creative universe where anyone with a cool idea can make it and give it to you to run on your hardware, the iPad isn’t for you.”

But this is not the only evil of Apple. From further in the Fast Company article:

It’s not just Jobs’s consistent aversion to complexity that prompts him to say no. Apple thrives on high profit margins, and having the willpower to say no keeps production costs down. Eliminating features also helps build buzz. “The great thing about omitting a feature that people want is that then they start clamoring for it,” says [Glenn] Reid, the former Apple engineer. “When you give it to them in the next version, they’re even happier somehow.” Apple has pulled off this trick time and again, most recently with the iPhone OS 4. It includes multitasking, a feature that customers began asking for in 2007, intensifying their pleas after Palm debuted multitasking in its WebOS last year.

To be fair about it, this is similar to what other companies have done for years. It’s bad business to knowingly withhold functionality today, then release it years later under the guise of making it look “updated.” Indeed, this is why I’m glad we have companies like Palm around. Competition is a good thing, and despite the near ubiquity of the iPhone, it’s good to know choices still exist, otherwise Apple may well try to get away with evolution of phone features on its terms, not those of its customers.

Another tactic that definitely tests the boundaries, even if it isn’t outright over-the-top:

One example: Apple buys up all the bus-stop ad space near the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, the San Francisco venue where it has held its recent events. It then switches its posters while Jobs is speaking. So this past January 27, when I walked into Apple’s iPad debut, the street ads depicted something old; when I left, there’s the iPad everywhere you look.

Do I have a thing against aggressive marketing? No, not at all. But there comes a point where aggressive crosses the line. This smacks of something Apple can do because of their sheer size, especially in their hometown. It also makes me wonder, with this kind of brute-force aggressiveness in marketing, how much of the retail price of an iPhone, iPad, or iMac goes to marketing and advertising expenses. Or in other words, if Apple cut back marketing and advertising to a more reasonable level, how much would the price of their products drop?

Moving on:

Apple disregards the entire concept of backward compatibility, which is both a blessing and a curse for rivals such as Microsoft. Over its history, Apple has adopted new operating systems and underlying chip architectures several times — decisions that rendered its installed base instantly obsolete. Jobs killed the floppy disk in the iMac, and he claimed that optical drives were on their way out with the MacBook Air. Now, with the company’s embrace of touch screens, Apple seems to be gunning for the mouse, a technology that it helped bring into wide use in the 1980s. Does this relentless eye toward the future always work? No. Jobs killed the arrow keys on the first Mac; Apple was forced to add them back in a later version, and it has kept them in all its Macs ever since.

While the 1.44 megabyte 3.5″ floppy disk has been doomed for years, with 2.88 megabyte floppies never really catching on, and even technologies like the 20 megabyte “floptical” or LS-120 failing to gain traction, it smacks of Apple playing nanny to decide to arbitrarily kill technologies. I don’t know what Apple was thinking when it got rid of arrow keys. (My original Atari did not have separate arrow keys, the cursor movements were on punctuation keys where one had to hold down Control to access cursor movement. Today, the arrow keys are a feature I could not live without on my PC.)

With regard to touch screens: while Apple may be in love with them, they are not for everyone. I can’t imagine playing a first-person shooter game with a touch screen, for example; the mouse has been firmly entrenched as a part of gaming ever since the original Quake in 1996, and almost a decade and a half later, it’s hard to imagine an FPS without it.

There are many parts of the original article I did not comment on in an attempt to keep this somewhat short. And this is far from the only article of its type. I am not distracted from the truth by Apple’s scant few contributions to free software projects; I am disturbed, not reassured, by the fact CUPS was taken over by Apple almost three years ago. I am grateful for the decision by Michael Sweet to license CUPS under the GNU GPL, a decision which protects user freedoms and, quite likely, annoys Apple to no end.

Apple is a liability, not an asset, to the future of computing and technology, even more so than Microsoft now. I’m not sure how to right the ship; all I know is it’s sinking further with every new Apple device (particularly iPhone and iPad) sold.

Tiebreaker or no tiebreaker? My take on Isner-Mahut at Wimbledon

ESPN reports on a tennis match at Wimbledon that will be remembered for ages. Not necessarily for its players, John Isner and Nicolas Mahut, and not necessarily for the eventual winner (the former). No, this match will probably be remembered for its length and final score: 6-4, 3-6, 6-7 (7), 7-6 (3), 70-68. No, that is not a misprint: the last set was 138 games and easily took longer than the first four sets combined, and was too much for the scoreboard to handle at one point.

The match may also be remembered for igniting a firestorm of controversy about tiebreaker games in tennis. For the unfamiliar: a tiebreaker game is played when the score in a set is tied 6-6, with the winner of that game winning the set 7-6. Wimbledon does use tiebreakers, just not in the final set of a match (the third in a best-of-three or fifth in a best-of-five).

The well-known tennis player John McEnroe said in a BBC interview (quoted in this article from Fox Sports):

This is the greatest advertisement for our sport. It makes me proud to be a part of it. We often don’t get the respect we deserve in tennis for the athletic demands it places on players but this should push that respect way up.

However, John McEnroe will be among the players calling for a deciding-set tiebreaker at Wimbledon in future years. Others are among the traditionalists that say something like this will never happen again. The latter group is more likely to be correct; the Fox news article mentions a 21-19 final set at the 2003 Aussie open between Andy Roddick and Younes El Ayanoui and a 25-23 set between John Newcombe and Marty Riessen at the 1969 US Open. Both of these seem short in comparison to the most recent set of length at Wimbledon.

I’ve been a moderate fan of tennis over the years; it’s not a sport I really get into that often, but I’ve never hated it either. Hearing about an epic match like this one, however, does get me much more interested in tennis and I might even tune in to watch some of the rest of this year’s Wimbledon. Anything that has the potential to make a hardcore tennis fan out of someone like me can’t be all bad.

And maybe this is a rather crazy idea, but I’m going to float it anyway. I think tennis would be a more exciting sport if we got rid of the tiebreaker games all around. Sure, you’d have the occasional 9-7, 10-8, 11-9, or maybe even 12-10 sets and a few more statistical anomalies like those mentioned above. But I think it would make tennis a much more exciting game, and the sport is due for a rise in popularity since its peak in the 1970s and 1980s.

(Sidenote: The residents’ association for the townhouse complex where my mom and I used to live had considered the idea of replacing the dilapidated tennis courts with a park area, an idea which was ultimately shot down in favor of refurbishing and keeping the tennis courts. The argument against refurbishing the tennis courts was that a majority of residents would probably never set foot on them. At the time, that made sense. Now, of course, it’s another story.)