Monthly Archives: April 2011

Protecting the powerful at the expense of the masses

This entry was posted in america ministry of truth politics technology and tagged an informed public gags politics power the powerful transparency unions on by (updated 4394 days ago)

Over the past decade in particular but for some time before that there has been an increasing movement to protect the powerful in our society at the expense of the common people. This movement has accelerated dramatically in the past year at least in part because of the Supreme Court ruling in the Citizens United case that essentially freed corporate interests to spend as much as they want on political campaigns while individuals remain shackled by campaign finance laws.

We can see the initial effects in places like Wisconsin, Indiana, Ohio and Michigan where newly elected republican governors and legislatures have moved rapidly to bring in legislation to strip public sector employees of collective bargaining rights and here in Michigan to dissolve local governments and school boards and replace them with private sector “emergency financial managers.”

However, the problem goes well beyond that into many other sectors of society. For example a company called Medical Justice that aims to protect doctors from frivolous malpractice suits sells them contracts that they can use with their patients. Doctors using these contracts force patients to sign them before providing treatment. These contracts are meant to provide a shield for the doctors from public reviews of their work. According to these “anti-defamation” contracts patients can either be prohibited from posting online reviews of their doctors or the doctors are given the right to edit or delete online postings from patients.

While bogus reviews from disgruntled employees or others with a grudge are always a potential problem, no such contract will do anything to stop it. Anyone can set up a blog or go on Facebook, Twitter or some other site and make negative comments. Doctors are ill-served by paying for such contracts and any patient presented with one should refuse to sign and go find another doctor.  If a doctor is truly providing bad service the public should know about it and the doctor should either improve or go out of business.  DoctoredReviews.com has an excellent response to this whole subject.

Another prime example of the powerful trying to gag the ordinary is pointed out by Seth Godin. In Iowa the legislature is moving forward with a law that would make it illegal to record activities at industrial farming operations without the owners consent. The reality is that many of these operations treat animals very poorly in the pursuit of higher profit margins. While there is nothing wrong in general with profit, the food produced by these farms is often of lower quality (taste and nutritional value) and more susceptible to contamination from pathogens like e-coli.

When public health is at risk, the idea of government banning anyone from showing what goes on these facilities is extremely troubling but unfortunately entirely consistent with politicians that have been funded by the wealthy and powerful.

Godin goes on to explain that public transparency is almost invariably better for business than gagging the public. Republicans like to go on and on about protecting free markets, but they really only care about one side of the equation.  A truly free market requires that both buyers and sellers be informed about the true value of a product and be aware the total supply and demand. Without this knowledge, one side can easily manipulate the other to their own benefit and that is never a good thing for the long-term health of a market or a society.

Regardless of whether the market is for medical services, chicken or labor, both sides of the supply demand equation must be educated and free to take their products/services or money elsewhere.

The apes are back!

This entry was posted in movies and tagged peter jackson planet of the apes rise of the planet of the apes weta on by (updated 4969 days ago)

The Planet of the Apes franchise is coming back yet again this summer for another go but this time it’s quite different from the previous six iterations. None of the previous tellings have really tried to explain how these apes came to have human-like speech and cognitive abilities.

This is where the prequel “Rise of the Planet of the Apes” comes in.  A researcher played by James Franco inadvertently “creates” the apes that will take over where humanity left off.

The other major difference this time around is the visuals. The last Apes movie, directed by Tim Burton was almost universally panned except for the look of the apes. Unlike the obvious rubber masks worn by Roddy McDowall and his cohorts in the late-1960s and early-1970s, Burton’s apes looked more like the real deal.

This time around there will be no makeup jobs on the actors. Instead the visual effects gurus at Peter Jackson’s WETA studio have rendered the apes digitally after doing motion capture the way they did Gollum in the Lord of the Rings movies.  In fact, Andy Serkis who provided the motions and voice of Gollum is back as Caeser, the prime ape that leads the uprising. From the trailer, it looks really good, although so did Burton’s take on the apes. We’ll just have to wait until August for the real deal.

Flawed TV ratings behind move to block TV streaming to tablets

This entry was posted in media technology and tagged broadcasters internet nielsen ratings streaming television time warner cable on by

Recently Time Warner Cable made a new iPad app available to its subscribers that allows them to stream live TV signals directly to the tablet and immediately a number of networks jumped on TWC and demanded that their channels be removed from the app. Now, you might be asking yourself why any TV broadcaster would want to reduce the size of its potential audience? While the networks make noise about licensing restrictions, the truth of the matter is something completely different and it poses a threat to the whole revenue stream of mainstream media.

The TWC app is actually quite restrictive in how it lets users stream content. In order to watch anything, users have to be at home on their local network, meaning that you can’t watch your shows when you are traveling or just standing in line somewhere. Time Warner’s argument is that this limitation means the iPad is just like any other TV in the house showing content.  The networks argue that their licenses with cable companies only allow feeding shows to TVs over the cable and not over WiFi.

The real problem however is not the type of device being used to view shows or how the signal gets there. It’s about the fundamentally flawed way in which traditional TV viewership is measured.  Broadcasters make their money by selling advertising during programming. The prices charged for ads are based on how many people watch a show.  For decades, AC Nielsen has provided the ratings numbers that everyone in TV uses to set ad rates. For nearly as long, everyone that uses Nielsen numbers has known that the survey results which are based on surveys of viewers are highly inaccurate. Unfortunately they tend to err on the high side which meant that advertisers were probably paying too much for advertising time.  However, since everyone was using the same numbers all broadcasters went and advertisers went along with it.

Now however, the advent of internet broadcasting turns the whole ratings game on its head. Unlike traditional broadcasts, internet streams can be counted precisely. A quick check of server logs can reveal exactly how many times a program was watched and for how long. The result is a far more accurate measure of ratings that is likely to be substantially lower than traditional measures. Rather than embracing the new technology, and finding ways to make money off it, broadcasters are shunning it in order to protect an old unsustainable measurement method.

Of course the old guard won’t be able to maintain this facade for long. Just as the music and publishing industries have had to evolve, it’s only a matter of time before traditional broadcast channels go away.  Viewers increasingly watch what they want, when they want and where they want. More accurate measurements of viewer engagement will mean allow some programming to flourish while other material fades away.