Running Commentary

Running Commentary
What's going on and What I'm thinking about it.

Home

Politics

Howard

Tech Innovation

Tech Economics

Thursday, June 13, 2002

The Lemmings Sentiment Indicator

One key problem here is the issue of honesty. A lot of analysts have apparently decided that being negative is honest because being positive in 1999 turned out so badly. But chasing a bandwagon down is no different than chasing one up. Any "research" that masquerades as independent but actually just parrots the market consensus of the day is no better than chatroom clamor.

Another interesting insight from TeroKuittinen of realmoney.com.

4:57:48 PM

I don't think this is anecdotal

SAD SPRINT STORY from Brian: "Sprint's stock is down 25% this year, and Sprint PCS's stock is down 74%. You wouldn't think they'd be eager to turn away customers' money. Meanwhile, I just got this e-mail from my girlfriend, Carolyn, who called Sprint PCS today for the third time in an attempt to downsize to a less expensive plan with fewer minutes: 'I called Sprint and they wouldn't change my plan so I could pay less for fewer minutes. I said I thought I could get a better deal at Verizon and the woman said, "I bet you can." Then I said I wanted to cancel my service if she couldn't give me a better deal than 40 minutes for $20.00 a month. She said OK and I asked, "So you don't mind losing me as a customer?" and she said, "No. I'll transfer you to the department that can help you with your service." Then they transferred me to a supervisor and the guy asked me for the fifth time during the call what my phone number was. I told him. Then he offered me the same plan the woman had and again I said I thought Verizon could do better. He then tried to sell me MORE minutes, but I said again that I wanted FEWER. So I asked him to cancel my service and I asked him if he minded losing me as a customer. He said he didn't.'" Well Brian, I hope she got the message!

and this

AOL STORY #376: (Or, Companies Who Don't Want Your Money!) From Brian O'Keefe: "After 11 hours out at Belmont Park last Saturday (a beautiful afternoon, but a big bummer for Triple Crown fans) my friends and I decided to cap off the day by watching the spectacle of Tyson vs. Lewis in Memphis. As expected, the fight became the highest-grossing pay-per-view event in history with 1.8 million buys for a total of $103 million. Based on our experience, there was money left on the table in New York. We tried to order the fight on my friend's TV around 10 p.m., but the system denied us and offered a number to call. We called. It was busy -- constantly. So we tried a different number for Time Warner. The automated system that answered offered to let us buy the fight. We tried, and it denied us again. Then it put us on hold. For 25 minutes. Finally we reached a person who said she was turning it on and started to hang up until my friend protested that the fight wasn't on our TV like she said it should be. Then she said there was a "Hot Q" (Hot Queue?), something she couldn't explain, and switched us to a supervisor at my friend's request. His initial strategy was to blame my friend a) for not ordering earlier, and b) for not establishing a pre-order $100 line of credit. Of course it would have been nice if we had ordered earlier, but shouldn't they expect a flood of requests in the last hour or so before a big fight? And whoever heard of establishing a credit line for pay-per-view before the event? All we wanted to do was give the cable company $55 for 45 minutes of TV, and we found ourselves begging for the chance to do so. The supervisor said that they were flooded with thousands of requests and could not handle them, or as he said, they couldn't 'deliver the fight' to everyone -- as if it was a parcel, and not a signal to be switched on and off. By this time the fight had started, and he gave us a round of bad blow-by-blow description. But they never did figure out a way to take our $55." Thanks B! "Can't even watch the game or the Sugar Ray fight!" (AOL is the parent company of FORTUNE.)

From StreetLife.

I don't post this to beat up on Sprint or AOL. I post this to note the twin problems of the technology universe: Customer Service and Execution. Christopher's #1 rule of business, Make it easy for people to give you money, was violated in both instances here.

It just shouldn't be this hard. Really.

4:40:04 PM

Uh-oh

Microsoft' petition to have the state's case against it dismissed was, not surprisingly, denied yesterday. In the midst of the ruling, however, was an interesting clue about what may be to come fro the 3rd judge to look into this question:

Microsoft has argued that the states' remedies would mostly benefit a few competitors.
Kollar-Kotelly said that "claim is flatly contradicted" by an earlier district-court finding that "significant adverse effect on competition within the state is manifestly proven by the facts presented here" and that "millions of citizens of, and hundreds, if not thousands, of enterprises in each of the United States and District of Columbia utilize PCs running on Microsoft software."

Kollar-Kotelly said that finding was upheld by the Court of Appeals, so Microsoft cannot argue "this is a case where the 'primary thrust of an alleged wrong is injury to a narrowly limited class of individuals and the harm to the economy as a whole is insignificant by comparison.' "

Now that doesn't sound good. -- She accepts negative effect on competition and seems to extend that to enterprises and individuals using Microsoft software. Boy, the class action attorney's must be throwing their puffy white body's into somersaults.

But what I don't see is harm. Is adverse effect on competition harm?

I'm poking around the web and surprised to find that only the Seattle Times -- not usually your source of up to the minute aggro reporting -- has picked up this angle. Dan Gillmor, the spleenetic columnist and nouvo blogger from the SJ Merc gets it wrong wrong wrong and, oddly, bemoans how MS seems to be skating away from this. Anything but, I'd say.

Oh, that's right, he's a technology journalist. He can probably still phonically apprehending page 2 of the ruling.

4:17:16 PM

Again with the Units

Music to an MSFT-holder's ears:

PC unit sales up, but revenues down

One of the other nice things about the sale of low end machines is that they have a faster replacement cycle -- as when developments occur that require more clock-speed, these machines are going to look long in the tooth that much faster.

2:49:27 PM

Why America can't improve fuel economy

Great article in the NYTimes about Honda's "maverick" stance in the auto industry -- in favor of tougher fuel emission guidelines.

The automobile alliance, supported by the National Academy of Sciences, has argued that fuel economy standards spurred lighter-weight cars, making them less safe and leading to thousands of additional deaths.

Honda's research found that previous data was years out of date and did not reflect that many mileage gains are now achieved through improved technology as opposed to making cars lighter.

Let's be clear about what this means -- it means that the big three automakers were lying.

When fuel economy standards were introduced in the 70's, a category called light trucks, encompassing pickups, was set up for work vehicles used on farms and construction sites. Light trucks are permitted to burn 33 percent more gasoline, on average, than passenger cars.

But the light truck category includes the since highly popular sport utility vehicles and minivans. The change has led to a 7 percent increase in the consumption of oil used for gasoline, even after significant advances in fuel-saving technologies, according to an estimate by the Union of Concerned Scientists, an environmental advocacy group, among other things.

"The functional distinction between cars and trucks (cars for personal use and trucks for work cargo use) has broken down," the safety agency said in a statement.

The really distressing thing about this article is not the lies that underpin the big 3 automaker's position on emissions, but the sense of hopelessness -- the can't do attitude. How dare American companies say they can't come up with a better mousetrap, a technological solution for an environmental, financial (balance of payments) and geopolitical problem like oil consumption. For them to say that improving fuel economy would hurt them, for them to shirk the challenge of solving these huge, huge problems through their own inventivness seems downright unAmerican to me.....

8:31:15 AM