Michael Braun's Blog

With the release of Google Drive (Google’s online storage locker, similar to services Dropbox, Microsoft’s Skydrive, Apple’s iCloud, and others), terms of service (ToS), the agreements that govern the use of the service, have gotten increased scrutiny. Ars Technica and others note that Google’s ToS give Google broad power, including the right to display user content for the purposes of promotion of the service. Website The Verge, however, compares various cloud storage services and finds little difference in the ToS. But as of yet unexplored in the coverage of these often opaque legal documents is one key phrase. In Google’s ToS, it reads as follows: “Make sure you have the necessary rights to grant us this license for any content that you submit to our Services.” Dropbox includes a similar phrase: “it’s your responsibility to ensure that you have the rights or permission needed to comply with these Terms.”

This is actually the key legal statement in the use of these services, primarily because ToS change all the time. Companies are under no compulsion to stick with the Terms they originally ran by. Indeed, companies like Facebook and Google have come under intense scrutiny when their ToS changed to grant the company more power over users’ content. This means that users must consider carefully both the rights they are able to grant under the current ToS and any potential changes to the ToS that would nullify their ability to grant the new rights to the company.

For most consumers, this is likely not a big deal. First, most users do not depend on services like Dropbox to a degree that a change in ToS would require the user to disrupt her whole life because she is now forced to stop using the service. Second, most users are able to grant a wide variety of rights to the service provider; for example, a user can grant Google or Facebook the right to use her content for advertising, even if she would prefer it not be used in this way.

But for some users, this power to grant rights is actually a big deal. I am thinking of people in academics who use services like Dropbox for research purposes; that is, they store files being used for research projects, including data from research participants, on free cloud services. The benefits to doing so are obvious. The websites are easy to use, free, and allow for remote collaboration. But can the academic user grant the company the right to use their files for all the purposes required? In the case of Google’s ToS, the answer is absolutely not. Under no circumstances can the academic user allow research data, which the researcher has promised to store securely, be used for purposes of advertising. And thus, it is irresponsible, and even a violation of the Institutional Review Board agreement granting the user the right to perform the research, to use free services such as Google Drive (because of current ToS) and Dropbox (because of potential changes to ToS).

A reasonable researcher might respond that services like Dropbox do not currently mention anything about using the data for advertising, and furthermore, that he could remove the data in a timely fashion should the ToS change. To this well-reasoned point, I have four rejoinders. First, it is important to recognize that services like Dropbox are free only as a strategy to make money; companies offering free services are only hoping that by doing so, they are able to turn a profit faster. They can make a profit by offering premium services that cost extra, by selling data about their users, or both. If strategy one doesn’t work, and if strategy two requires a change in ToS, which is more likely: bankruptcy or a simple change to the legalese governing use of the site? Dropbox, as an example, is still a company hoping to become very profitable. Given all the competition, this is something that will require the company to find new sources of revenue; as such, a change in ToS is not out of the question.

Second, given the wide array of options that exist that do not require granting extensive rights to the service provider, why bother with the free service? Most academic departments should have some sort of networked storage option that functions similarly to Dropbox. Though perhaps accessing these networked drives is a bit more complicated than accessing Dropbox, it is still far less complicated than having to change an entire research workflow when ToS change.

Third, the ToS issue has less to do with what the company might or could do, and more to do with the understanding of what rights the researcher has to grant. In the case of sensitive data, the researcher’s hands are tied. No matter how much she promises to be careful and keep access to the files limited, the fact remains that she may not have the rights to grant; in these cases, her agreement to the ToS is fraudulent. That does not mean she will get in trouble with the content provider, but it does mean she has few legal rights should something happen to the data. The content provider may not be liable because the ToS protect them in cases where hackers gain access to the data (or other possibilities, including the use of the data for advertising purposes). The University is not liable because the researcher did not properly store the data and agreed to ToS that she had no right to do so. Instead, the only one liable is the irresponsible researcher who chose convenience over properly protecting the data.

Fourth, there is no guarantee that services like Dropbox will remain open and running in the future. The data storage site Megaupload was recently shut down, not because it was unprofitable but because it was raided by the Department of Justice for storing, among many legal files, some copyrighted material. Megaupload had 180 million registered users and was at one time the 13th most visited website in the world. If it can be shut down, then how can a service like Dropbox be guaranteed to avoid the same fate?

The issue in question here is a complicated one. Companies have no interest in radically altering their ToS to give them rights that would make it blatantly illegal for researchers to store their data with the service; such a change would make the service instantly unpopular and hence unprofitable. And companies, generally, have no interest in using user data in ways that would fit with the existing ToS but would be unpalatable to the user. And all servers networked to the world wide web can be hacked, whether university-hosted or run by a private company.

While these things may be true, it does not change the fact that there is risk involved in agreeing to ToS without having the necessary rights to do so. There is also risk in dependence upon a third-party, for-profit service to conduct research. I would urge all researchers currently using services like Dropbox and other private cloud storage providers to consider switching to safer services. These services may cost more money, but the protections they offer are truly invaluable.

Last week, online reading service Read It Later underwent a major rebranding. The company renamed its service ‘Pocket’. The service, for those of you unfamiliar with it, allows you to store the text of websites for archiving and later reading, including when offline. The company came out with a new website and apps for iOS and Android devices and launched a campaign to promote its new brand. The core functionality of the service didn’t change (though the app went from costing some money to free); only the name of the service and marketing strategy changed.

What a difference a rebrand makes! I was aware of the Read It Later service but used a different one called Instapaper. There’s nothing wrong with Instapaper, but I hadn’t used it in months. Something about the Read It Later/Pocket rebrand, including the free app, caught my attention. I replaced the Instapaper bookmarklet in my bookmarks bar with one for Pocket and downloaded the Pocket app on my phone and iPad.

Why did I do this? Aesthetics make a difference! Instapaper is dull looking – no color, no picture associated with each article, a generally static and staid layout. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it can’t compete with Pocket. Just compare the two websites (Instapaper and Pocket) to see the difference. Does being an aesthete in regards to these services make me shallow? Possibly, but there are more reasons that Pocket grabbed my attention.

Pocket also offers more features than Instapaper, including the ability to bookmark videos for later viewing. Online videos have become compulsory viewing in the past few years. Frequently, video content joins its text “must-read” brethren as “must-see”. But I seldom want to take time to view a video while at work, especially if it means having to get out my headphones. The ability to save this content for later viewing (even if an internet connection is required) is quite convenient.

Third, Pocket is a cooler name than Instapaper. (You’ll note I couldn’t stay away from the superficial for long.) It’s a lot more appealing to tell someone to use a service called Pocket (which, it’s worth saying again, is great branding) than to use Instapaper. And finally, the app is free. Previously, it cost money. Instapaper also costs money – $4.99 for an app that works on all iOS devices. “Check out this free, cool app” is an easier pitch to give than telling someone to pony up $5 for an app, even if it’s still cool and useful.

How will Pocket make money? I have no idea. Sending details about articles saved to subscribing content providers? Showing ads in app? Restricting features to those who pay a monthly fee? Offering additional content to subscribers? Whatever model they choose, it could totally change my opinion of the service and maybe send me back to Instapaper (whose app I already own). But for the time being, check out Pocket. It’s a great rebrand and a great service.

It appears that the police have not yet found the hit and run driver involved in the hit and run that I witnessed (well, the second half – the run) earlier today. Here are some more details from the Madison police department. Please contact the police if you know any more details.

Posted Tuesday, April 24, 2012 — 3:25 p.m.
Incident Report from the Madison Police Department:
Incident Type: Accident – Hit & Run
Incident Date: 04/24/2012 – 12:42 PM
Address: N. Park St. (crosswalk at pedestrian mall extending from State St.)

Suspect(s): Male, Asian, 20′s, wearing a baseball cap.

Victim: Male, age 21, Madison
Victim is a UW-Madison student.

Details: Madison Police are asking for your help in locating a car, and a driver involved in a hit-and-run crash that injured a UW-Madison student around 12:40 p.m. this afternoon. The victim was walking in the large crosswalk that goes across N. Park St. between Bascom Hill and the State St. mall.

He was struck by a grayish Toyota Camry with possible license plate number 468 ETG. The driver, a younger Asian male, thought to be in his 20′s, and wearing a baseball cap, had a passenger with him in the car.

After striking the pedestrian he continued toward Lake Mendota and exited onto the Lake Shore Path, which is a designated walking and biking area. At some point he drove from the path.

The exact point of departure was not immediately known. Anyone with information on the whereabouts of the driver or the car is asked to call 911. The student sustained facial cuts and bruises.

Today, I was walking south down Park Street, just south of the Historical Society, debating about where to cross the street, when I heard gasps behind me. I turned around and saw a pedestrian struggling to get up in the crosswalk, a car much too close. Once the pedestrian had gotten himself out of the way of the car’s path, the car took off to the north, toward Helen C. White Hall and the Union Theater. At the intersection of Langdon and Park, the car drove into the left lane to get around the two cars stopped at the stop sign. Then, rather than turn on Langdon or Observatory, it went straight, a dead end. I did not see the car return back out again. Perhaps it parked and then the driver returned to the scene of the crime, to avoid the terrible consequences of being a hit and run driver. Or perhaps the driver ditched the car and fled on foot. It’s also possible that the driver parked and sat, hoping to be able to leave once the heat died down. Only returning to the accident site would have helped the driver, as it appeared someone had captured the license plate of the car. If hitting someone in the middle of a busy street, with literally dozens of witnesses present, a word to the wise: it’s very unlikely you will get away without someone reading your license plate number. After ascertaining that someone knew the license plate number (thus relieving me of doing what I felt compelled to do – running down to the end of the block to see if I could spot the car), I headed off to class.

There are two generalizations that one could reasonably make from this incident, each opposed to the other. First, the negative one. What is with people these days? Driving distracted, hitting pedestrians in clearly marked crossing areas, and then speeding off like a felon. It wouldn’t be particularly surprising to learn that the driver was text messaging or talking on a cell phone (though, as I did not observe the driver, I can speak to neither). Perhaps this is a consequence of a society where people never seem to take responsibility for their own actions. Our leaders, be they in politics or business, pass of responsibility to others, and these reactions taint our citizens. Thus when a bad situation arises, people feel compelled to just get out of it, with no thought to blaming themselves. This driver perhaps convinced him- or herself that it was indeed the pedestrian’s fault for crossing the road without a stop sign to direct the flow of traffic.

This particular negative view can be completely counteracted by the reactions of the witnesses to the accident. Though no witness was able to stop the car from driving away, pedestrians helped the victim to take a seat on some steps. Even though the accident was very shocking, almost immediately people were asking, “Is anyone calling 911?”. One witness called out, “I’ll do it” and started dialing. Behind me, I heard two other 911 calls going on, reporting what they had seen. As the victim sat, bleeding from his face (with who knows what other lacerations, bruises, or broken bones), a witness was tending to him in a way that made it appear like he had medical training. Multiple people asked each other, “Did someone get the license plate number?”. It was soon revealed that someone had and was relaying it to 911. As I walked away (feeling I had nothing to add, given that I did not witness the accident), at least a dozen people stayed rooted in place. Likely several were still there to give a report to the police.

What can we conclude about people these days based on these observations? Certainly nothing like the conclusions we can draw based on the driver’s actions. People seemed motivated to help, quick to call the authorities, and generally not acting like passive observers. Within a minute of the accident, the victim was receiving medical care (whether professional or not). And the quick action meant that two minutes after I left the scene, I heard sirens heading toward the accident. There’s a lot to be disappointed in the actions of the driver, but such displays of humanity by the witnesses demonstrated a steady current of goodwill in our populace, something that cannot and should not be overrun by curmudgeons who wish to only see the negative sides of our society.

In the end, I hope the driver is caught and charged, the victim is treated and released with no lasting harm, and no one permanently scarred by what happened or what they witnessed. Even if none of these things turn out alright, I’ll at least sleep easier at night knowing the heart and spirit of the students of UW-Madison (and, I fully believe, the citizens of Wisconsin, the United States, and the world) is fundamentally sound and pure and willing to help when something bad happens.

A free stump speech to any candidate who wants it:

Scott Walker took the easy way in his time as governor of Wisconsin. He took the easy way instead of taking the right way. And it’s time we get the state back on the right track.

In the 2010 race for governor, Wisconsin needed strong leadership to deal with a host of issues. Our economy collapsed in 2008, leaving millions of Wisconsin workers without jobs. Wisconsin faced a deep budget crisis and the need for a balanced budget that allowed the state’s economy to grow to put Wisconsinites back to work. Our state also had commitments that we needed to keep, to our children, to our seniors, to our veterans, and to our fellow citizens and workers. It would take strong leadership to accomplish all these goals, someone who would choose the right path, even if it was difficult.

Scott Walker didn’t choose the right path. Instead, he took the easy way. It started before he even took office. His hostility toward unions meant the state legislature did not renew contracts that the unions had negotiated with the state, contracts that reflected the economic realities of the state. Contracts that had been hard fought by the state to get deep concessions by workers. Scott Walker’s hostility toward unions meant his party took the easy way, refused to vote on the contracts. Scott Walker had a different plan, an easier way to get what he wanted.

When Scott Walker took office, he took that easy path. Rather than sit down and negotiate with unions, Scott Walker declared that he would fix Wisconsin’s problems the easy way. He would ban unions from organizing, from negotiating, from having the same rights as other workers. To solve the problem, he decided on the easy solution, govern like a king. Scott Walker took the easy way when negotiating with teachers and other state workers. As a result, Wisconsin has been divided ever since. The right way is to find a solution that everyone can accept. But Scott Walker wasn’t interested in the right way. He wanted to do things the easy way, the wrong way, his way.

When it came time to close Wisconsin’s budget deficit, Scott Walker again chose the easy way. Rather than a balanced approach of some tax increases, some tax cuts, and modest budget cuts, Scott Walker chose to cut funding to education and other state programs, the deepest cuts the state has ever seen and some of the deepest cuts in the nation. On top of that, he cut taxes for corporations, further reducing the amount of money the state had to pay for the services that matter most. Rather than make tough choices, Scott Walker took the easy way. He said, let’s cut it all.

In the end, what have those cuts gotten us? Wisconsin is leading the nation in job losses. More job losses in Wisconsin means even less revenue to restore funding for schools, for hospitals, for police offices and fire fighters, for road repair, for our state parks, and all those things that make Wisconsin the place we want to call home. That’s what the easy way has gotten us – less, not more; pain, not growth; anger, not cooperation; fighting, not friendship; and a budget deficit that keeps growing, requiring even more cuts. This is the result of the easy way, the wrong way, Scott Walker’s way.

Now Scott Walker faces a historic recall election. Wisconsin has never recalled a governor before. That’s because we’ve never had a governor like Scott Walker. We’ve never had a governor who so steadfastly refused to make tough decisions and instead took the easy way. We’ve never had a governor who has split this state right down the middle. Scott Walker is a governor who has pitted neighbor against neighbor, friend against friend, families against each other. Because instead of doing the right thing, and finding a path for Wisconsin to move forward that we can all support, Scott Walker chose to easy way, the wrong way, his way. He said it’s my way and if you don’t like it, oh well. Well, Mr. Walker, we’re here to say, we don’t like it. We don’t like the easy way, not when it’s the wrong way, not when it’s your way. We like the right way. It’s not always going to be the easiest course. But if it gets Wisconsin back to where we need to be, that’s the road I promise I will take. Enough of the easy way, the wrong way, Scott Walker’s way. Please, I need your vote for governor. Together, we can choose the right way for Wisconsin.

Environmental protection organization Greenpeace criticized companies involved in “cloud computing” this past week for the massive power consumption of their data centers and the heavy reliance that data centers have on polluting energy sources, namely coal. Given that coal provides a lot of energy across the United States, it is not surprising that many server farms that enable remote computing use this form of energy. Greenpeace’s argument, however, is that tech companies could do more simply by throwing their weight (and money) around. For example, companies looking to build a new set of servers could demand that the community where they will build provide a renewable form of energy. And because these companies could do something environmentally friendly, they should do so.

It is a reasonable argument, but it isn’t clear to me why the argument should be made for remote computing companies like Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Facebook, and Apple, while other companies are ignored. For example, car companies use massive amounts of energy to produce vehicles that do the same thing. Surely, they are just as deserving of protest.

A more winning argument would be to suggest that cloud computing is anti-environment. Amazon has argued against that position; according to Cnet, an Amazon representative said: “Amazon Web Services believes that cloud computing is inherently more environmentally friendly than traditional computing. The cloud enables a combined smaller carbon footprint that significantly reduces overall consumption.”

Centralized computing may be more efficient, especially if the service can manage capacity use in a more careful way, shutting off servers that aren’t being used. Other companies who manage their own servers may not employ this kind of technology, should it be available. But cloud computing, especially cloud storage, may not be so environmentally friendly if one considers that the product being sold is a service. These companies promise access to data and computing power to their users every day, all day, year-round. That’s different from local computing, where employees can shut off their computers, thus conserving power.

Given that businesses are not reducing the numbers of computers in their companies, and given that they are adding cloud services, it seems likely that the overall amount of power being consumed is increasing. Cloud service providers may be providing a way to save energy, but the possibility does not mirror the actuality. The result is an overall increase in power consumption; in other words, big new server farms used to run the cloud are indeed darkening our skies. If Greenpeace used this argument, then they could be given a pass for not protesting car companies’ factories. After all, car companies have closed many old factories (because of lessened demand), have increased the fuel efficiency of their product (thanks to stricter government standards), and are making new factories more environmentally friendly. They are still huge power consumers and create a lot of pollution, but they are improving.

The same cannot be said about companies promoting cloud computing. And because cloud computing is increasing net energy consumption, the responsible thing to do is to find ways to power that consumption without increasing damage to the environment. Will these companies step up and do the right thing, including using their bargaining power to require cleaner forms of energy? Given their backlash against Greenpeace this week, it seems we’re more likely to see grey clouds in the sky just as long as cloud-computing keeps growing.

I’m a big fan of email. My email client is always up and running on my computer, checking my email automatically. When not at my computer, I check my email on my phone and my iPad. It’s a great way for me to communicate with friends, family, and co-workers – for professional and personal purposes. This means that, when I find someone who just doesn’t seem very good at email, I wonder what’s wrong with them. Do they not understand how email works? Are they too enamored with new technologies that they feel they don’t need email? I assumed the worst about people until I did a little more thinking and came to this question: how much is email use associated with internet use and types of technology one has access to?

In some ways, my thinking about email as an old technology may be backwards. What if, in fact, email actually does require a decently functioning computer? And what if, for most people, the expense of all these digital gadgets simply precludes them from purchasing such a device? Think about a person who makes less than $30,000 a year. After paying for rent, food, gas, loans, bills, etc., how much money does this person have left over to buy a nice computer? People in this situation may have to make due with an old computer, or a computer handed down from a family member, or no computer at all. In these cases, just getting the computer to turn on may be a challenge, greatly reducing the ability the person has to use email.

And what if other technologies have replaced the computer in the person’s life? If a person has a smartphone, it means that person can do a lot of things that a computer can do. If a smartphone does all the internet tasks the person needs, then why bother booting up the computer? And if the person doesn’t know how to set up the email client on his phone, and finds navigating to email on the tiny screen to be a real pain (which it definitely is), then email is simply too hard to use.

The reason I haven’t made this connection before is because I keep thinking that other people use the internet like I do. But that’s clearly wrong. If a person doesn’t care to read very much, perhaps because she finds reading difficult or slow, then the internet must often seem like a completely boring place. But if you like to read, the internet is a never-ending treasure trove. If a person has few interests, then what good is the internet as a place to explore new things? New things simply aren’t worth exploring. And even worse, if the internet is difficult to access, slow, or a place to find frustration, then goodness knows there will be little motivation to see what is out there in the first place. When that is a person’s internet use pattern, is it any wonder she doesn’t seem to check or respond to email?

This doesn’t represent everyone who is bad at email, nor everyone who has a slow internet connection yet still manages email just fine. But it may help explain, in part, a decline in email use among younger people. If a smartphone is the primary way the person accesses the internet, then email may be far down the list of desirable ways to communicate. It makes me sad to think that, but at least it makes me feel better when my email messages aren’t answered in a timely manner or at all.

The General Services Administration (GSA), an independent agency of the federal government that provides basic services to government agencies (like office supplies, phones, office space, transportation, etc.) is in hot water over an expensive conference it hosted in Las Vegas in 2010. The head of the agency, Martha Johnson, has resigned over the scandal, and in Congress this week, other agency employees are getting grilled over the lavish spending. (The conference in Las Vegas cost over $800,000.)

At the same time, and likely on the same day, many members of Congress will attend fundraisers, held at restaurants, country clubs, spas, and other places, in which they will drink free alcohol, eat free food, enjoy free services, and be given cash by their guests. Members of Congress must do this in order to raise enough money to be competitive in elections and to show fealty to their party.

So here’s the question: which is worse, parties thrown at taxpayers expense or parties thrown by lobbyists, in which money is used to buy access to a politician? And is there some amount of hypocrisy in politicians taking money while criticizing how a government agency spends its budget?

To answer this, let’s start with these assumptions; if you disagree with them, then our conversation should be about something far different from government agency spending. First, employees cannot work effectively under brutal conditions. Second, any conference being held must have features that make the conference enjoyable. Third, conferences are expensive by their very nature. Fourth, conferences are sometimes necessary and productive. Finally, government employees and functions are not very different from the private sector; indeed, given arguments about the inefficiency of government, we should expect government employees to be getting way more perks than the private sector – way more expensive conferences, etc. – yet this is not happening.

With those assumptions in mind, which would be worse? A GSA conference thrown by lobbyists who wish to get business from the GSA or a GSA conference funded by taxpayers? Personally, I’d prefer to have the taxpayer pick up the tab. This allows for oversight (for example, some stories of what that money was spent on clearly reveal “perks” that were not necessary) and performance evaluations. And it still allows essential work to get done. But if the GSA is told that all conferences must be austere and drab, then it invites them to see what perks they can get from outside groups. If a party run by lobbyists is worse, then not adequately funding GSA conferences is more an invitation to corruption than the case under scrutiny in Congress right now.

Does Congress want federal agencies to switch to a model more akin to their own? Where agencies must raise money by granting lobbyists access to their rule-making procedures? Where this process, already opaque, is tainted even more by outside money? Where donors can buy favorable EPA rulings or pay a little extra to have a mining contract approved? This is the model Congress is pushing the GSA toward. Next year, perhaps the GSA won’t throw a conference but will instead attend a conference hosted by the Organization for Government Administrators, a lobbying group that aims to get their hands on GSA money.

Any wrongdoing by the GSA should be investigated fully and criminal charges, where warranted, should be filed. But beating up on the GSA for the conference price tag, as many news reports are doing, simply encourages more corruption in government, not less. If money buys favor, who do we want that favor going to? Though it’s more expensive, I’m siding with the taxpayer on this one.

The United States’ least valuable coin, the penny, costs more to make than it is worth because of its coating of shiny copper. But the coin is still produced and circulated, despite having a ridiculously low value. While governments like Canada have announced they will do away with the penny, the United States keeps its around. Rather than debate about whether to keep minting the coin, I think we should look to the free market for solutions to the penny problem. Let businesses take the lead in deciding to use the penny or not.

It could work like this. A business decides that trading in single cents no longer makes sense. It takes longer to make change, it makes math more difficult, and it leads people to fiddle around in their change purses trying to find just a few more cents. Instead, businesses can set their prices in units of $.05 and deal with no coin worth less than a nickel. In cases where a few cents are involved, businesses can round up or down. It’s a simple solution that offers benefits for everyone – consumers, businesses, and the government. With less demand for pennies, fewer need to be produced.

It does seem a bit radical to imagine businesses taking the lead on changes to currency, but many business decisions already determine what coins and bills are printed. Businesses could decide to give out dollar coins as change instead of dollar bills. It wouldn’t take much of a shift for the coins to take off. Similarly, businesses could start using $2 bills. Or $.50 coins (do they even still mint those?). These odd currencies stay unused, however, because of business decisions. Some are practical (how many different bill denominations do you really need?), but some are simple tradition (there’s little reason NOT to use dollar coins).

Waiting for Congress to give its blessing to eliminating the penny will simply mean watching the price of copper rise until each penny costs 3 or 4 cents to make. Coins themselves carry sentimental value, especially for those interested in seeing President Abraham Lincoln on a coin. But letting the free market decide what coins to use makes the decision much easier for everyone. Fewer pennies need to be made, Congress doesn’t have to make any tough decisions, and consumers no longer have to lug around change that is virtually worthless. Does that mean that I will ask businesses to round up when my bill is a couple cents short of a unit of five? I’ll get back to you on that one.

Think of an unsatisfying conversational partner. The person seems focused on something else, his attention wandering, always bringing the focus on the topic back to himself and the things he wants to talk about. When you mention a detail about yourself that you know he knows, he doesn’t remember and claims to have not heard that before even when you insist that you told him before. The person asks you questions that he has asked repeatedly before about things that you feel he should remember and that you know you talked about in your previous conversations. The person repeats details about himself that you already know. In short, it seems like every single previous conversation you’ve had with this person made absolutely no impression on him. It’s like the conversations matter so little to him that he can’t be bothered to encode them in memory.

It’s an unfortunate situation. For you, it’s annoying to have the same conversation repeatedly or to not feel like anything you say is making an impression. Does this person not care about me or my life at all, you might ask yourself. For the person, it may feel to him like conversations are never very satisfying. He might ask himself, why don’t I get more pleasure out of this? Why do other people seem to enjoy talking so much? If you had asked me a couple days ago why these types of interactions occur, I’d say it’s because the person is so narcissistic that he doesn’t care about anyone but himself. For example, I know a person who repeatedly thinks I am studying in a different department than my own, and persists with this belief despite multiple corrections. It makes me like the person very little because she can’t be bothered to remember anything about me.

The lack of a caring attitude is what I would have blamed before I read an article by Daly, Vangelisti, and Daughton, from 1988. In this article, the authors describe a trait of conversational sensitivity, or “the propensity of people to attend to and interpret what occurs during conversations”. Suddenly, all those bad conversations and poor conversational partners made a lot more sense. These are simply people with low conversational sensitivity. Maybe it is that they don’t care, but it is also that they are simply less attentive to the conversation at hand. And given all the negative associations with this trait, it’s quite freeing to declare that they don’t remember anything about us not because we are boring or don’t matter to them, but rather because they have something lacking.

Imagine going through life and never remembering things about people you talk to. Imagine having a conversation and not being able to infer how your conversation partner is feeling or what they are thinking. Imagine overhearing a conversation and not being able to recall what happened in it just a few moments prior. Imagine being asked “so, what did you talk about?” in regards to a conversation you had a hours ago, and not being able to remember anything but the most shallow details; and imagine being much more likely to get those details wrong! These are the things found by Daly and colleagues, and these facets are what makes up the life of someone with low conversational sensitivity.

To me, it sounds quite awful. But Daly and his co-authors suggest that conversational sensitivity may vary depending on the context. In other words, there may be some instances where we all have low conversational sensitivity. For example, if you had a conversation with a store clerk or bank teller, you may be less able to recall what you discussed than if you had a conversation with a close friend. This suggests that there may still be a lack of caring when we have a conversation with a colleague who doesn’t seem to remember any details about it the next time we talk. For whatever reason, that person isn’t using her full brainpower; she’s not completely into the conversation.

I posit that conversational sensitivity may extend beyond face to face interactions and into other communication realms. Do you know someone who doesn’t ever seem to recall details sent to her by email? Perhaps she reads all her email (surprising, perhaps, given how little she seems to remember) but just has low sensitivity to the information in it. The same thing could be true for more passive communication (information transmitted without the knowledge that anyone is reading it, like blog posts or social networking website public messages, e.g., tweets); the person with low conversational sensitivity may read these things (“Oh, yes, I do read your blog”) but not attend to the information it contains (“Did you write about that? I must have missed that post.”).

So should we forgive these people? Knowing that there is a trait underlying their behavior may seem to offer some excuse. But I say no mercy! In all but a few extreme cases (say, autism), being mindful in a conversation is a choice. While some people may have to work harder at it than others, this is true in a wide variety of situations. We don’t give out medals in races based on how hard running is for people, and so we shouldn’t cut people some slack just because their minds are consistently elsewhere when engaged with other people. We also shouldn’t forgive because if we do, we may end up blaming ourselves. “I guess I just wasn’t that interesting” or “I must not have made my point clear enough” are precisely the wrong attitudes to have when we find a conversation with someone else was unsuccessful. We can all make our points more clear, but with a conversation partner who doesn’t seem at all sensitive to what is being said, the blame should be placed on them first and foremost. Let’s not let those with low conversational sensitivity make us think that we are the poor communicators.

Apple’s iCloud service works okay now, and I am certain that future improvements will be made. Though iCloud is primarily built into Apple applications right now, future iterations of iOS and Apple OS (and definitely once these two are merged) will put iCloud directly into the operating system. As such, I can’t make good predictions about what iCloud will look like in the future. But as of right now, iCloud does not include file management. In other words, you can’t open up a window that shows all your files as they are stored “in the cloud.” Instead, Apple has opted for a “seamless” approach, whereby items are synced automatically, like “magic,” Apple’s new favorite adjective. My question today is can iCloud ever be truly useful without some kind of file system that is accessible to users?

The problem solved with a file system is one of scale. When a user has only a couple thousand pictures, a few dozen music albums, and a hundred word processing documents, then keeping them in sync through a cloud-based system makes a lot of sense. People like services like Dropbox because, in general, they don’t have that many documents; 2 GB of free storage seems like an immense amount to most people.

Unfortunately, working for most people doesn’t work for all people, because of the significant number of outliers. For example, I have nearly 5,000 word processing documents on my computer, a number likely dwarfed by many others. Can those documents be used with iCloud? Can I ever have the ease of editing them at will on my iPad and having those changes be reflected on my computer? The answer is very likely no, simply because there are too many. Further, what is the value of having all those files synced between devices? I have no need to edit, for example, papers that I wrote in high school.

Instead, for people with many files, there needs to be a way to use some of them with iCloud and others not. For work on my dissertation, which I am undertaking now, the ability to edit seamlessly between computer and iPad sounds amazing. But how can I properly sync the two without some kind of file management system? There are lots of ways to do so, but they all involve setting up file sharing with my own hosting and hence little of the convenience promised by iCloud.

Should consumers have to make that choice? And does Apple really want people using iCloud as anything less than an all-inclusive system that “just works”? My answer is no. But iCloud needs to improve dramatically before that can happen.

Some humble suggestions:
1. Allow files to be flagged for syncing with iCloud. Users can tag a word processing document so that it is automatically uploaded to iCloud and synced between devices. When they no longer need to edit it everywhere, users can remove the flag.

2. Give users some way to easily see all files in iCloud, even if it’s only visible on their computers.

3. Improve the versioning system currently polluting files in Apple’s latest computer OS. The inability to easily make new versions of a document will only get messier over time. Sometimes changes are too complex for a document to simply store a record of changes made; a user may want to keep the changes made an hour ago but get rid of the changes made 30 minutes ago.

4. Stop constant syncing, which (in my judgment) slows down typing speed on the iPad. Give users the option to sync by clicking or at regular intervals. “Just works” is an awful philosophy when the goal isn’t met.

5. Don’t remake the OS around the cloud. I have yet to see a use of cloud file management (by Apple or anyone else) that lives up to Apple’s standards. Try to demonstrate the value of cloud-based storage to someone without an internet connection. After all, as the internet becomes more needed, more companies figure out how to charge for it – in the airport, on the airplane, in a hotel, through cellular networks, etc. More cloud connectivity means ease for consumers (when it works, anyway) but also more expense, as we find more and more of our daily tasks wrapped inextricably with internet connectivity.

I’ll reserve judgment on iCloud until it is fully expanded. But what I’ve seen so far has been disappointing. Yes, my calendars are all synced, but over a year ago I moved to a paper calendar. Somehow it has yet to let me down.

The New York Times reports today about the extensive push by groups like the National Rifle Association to expand legislation protecting individuals who use violence to protect their domain. These so-called “Stand Your Ground” laws are likely to be the defense of George Zimmerman, the man accused of murdering teenager Trayvon Martin, who was unarmed and walking back to the home of family he was visiting after purchasing candy at an area convenience store. Mr. Zimmerman is likely to claim he was acting in self-defense and, even though Mr. Martin was unarmed, that Mr. Zimmerman was acting in line with the law giving him the right to protect his domain, in this case his neighborhood.

The racial overtones in this particular case are striking, and they represent an important caveat to support of or opposition to these types of laws. In clear-cut cases, an individual should have the right to protect their property. If a person’s home is forcefully invaded by armed intruders, the property owner should have the right to use a weapon against them. For this point, there is likely to be little debate. Indeed, I would encourage supporters of the Stand Your Ground laws to name cases where the home owner has been prosecuted under these very rare circumstances.

The challenge for the laws comes when the situation is less clear. Wisconsin State Senator Jon Erpenbach raised this point when speaking with the New York Times: “If someone takes a late-night dip in your swimming pool, does that mean you should shoot them?”. In this example, there is an intruder, but only under the broadest definition of the term. More accurately, there is a trespasser who may or may not represent any threat to the home owners. Locking the doors and calling the police (or, heck, just asking the person to go away) is very likely a safe course of action. But the law makes it harder to prosecute a home owner who goes out and shoots the person.

In the case of Mr. Martin’s death, a case of trespass is not alleged. Mr. Zimmerman became suspicious of Mr. Martin as he walked on a public street, followed him, and after a confrontation, shot him to death. Mr. Zimmerman’s own story has notably changed, including details that Mr. Martin attacked Mr. Zimmerman. This becomes less an issue of an individual protecting their property and more an issue of unwarranted suspicion leading to terrible consequences.

With those terrible consequences in mind, and given the circumstances far below the threshold for protecting property, we must ask ourselves: do we trust the judgment of individuals enough to allow gun violence under the law? We could ask this question of Mr. Zimmerman, who admits to shooting Mr. Martin. Depending on his version of events (whether he still claims he was attacked), and if he knew then what he knows now, it is likely Mr. Zimmerman never would have followed Mr. Martin in the first place. After all, he was a harmless kid, visiting family, and returning back after purchasing candy. But because of the color of his skin, Mr. Zimmerman felt he might be a threat.

Ultimately, this confrontation was caused by Mr. Zimmerman because he felt empowered to carry a gun and respond to perceived danger in a reckless way. If Mr. Martin had been armed and dangerous, then Mr. Zimmerman may very well have been the victim in this case. And if Mr. Zimmerman was acting in the interest of himself and his neighbors, he would have simply called the police. Instead, Mr. Zimmerman, for reasons unknown, took the law into his own hands; he made the wrong call. In this way, the trial is not about whether Mr. Zimmerman was right to shoot Mr. Martin under the protections of Florida law; instead, the trial is about how Stand Your Ground legislation changes the interactions between property owners and everyone else.

Had Mr. Zimmerman not been empowered to act or had he been required to have extensive training on public safety (like police officers have), then Mr. Martin would still be alive and Mr. Zimmerman would not be facing life in prison. If Mr. Zimmerman’s defense is protection under Florida law (rather than saying he was brutally attacked by Mr. Martin), then I hope Mr. Zimmerman goes to jail and the law is changed. The latter is especially important for all the other Trayvon Martins in the world. Ultimately, Stand Your Ground laws may make people feel safer, but they make the world more dangerous for the rest of us.

Ars Technica reported yesterday that Twitter has signed a partnership with data-mining firm Dataminr (quite aptly named). The company received some attention after it claimed it had predicted the death of Osama Bin Laden before major news organizations announced it. The company predicted this with information from Twitter (19 messages, in total) and other sources, including President Barack Obama’s announced press conference (no subject was revealed). This lead time (about 30 minutes), Dataminr says, allows its clients time to react faster, something especially useful in the financial services industry, where the ability to buy or sell quickly can mean millions of dollars.

If Dataminr can live up to its claims and provide regular prediction of meaningful events, then the company can provide a very valuable service to its clients. Of course, not every event will register upon Twitter like the death of the world’s most wanted man. And not every event will be reliably triggered by Twitter activity. For example, had there been no presidential press conference announced, there would have been no corroborating evidence that a major event had taken place; thus those 19 tweets would have not looked much different from everyday traffic.

But how useful is it to have major events signaled before they are announced, especially outside the realm of stock trading? After all, if an event actually happens, everyone will know about it soon. The 30 minute edge is meaningless once all the dust settles. As Dataminr CEO Ted Bailey said, “Messages went from 19 in this 5 minute period where we caught it, up to 20,000 per minute in just half an hour.” How fast can Dataminr even inform clients, and how fast will they need to react to gain anything from this service? It’s hard to tell.

And an article in the New York Times today suggests that a more valuable service may not be predicting a big event that did happen but instead flagging events that did NOT happen but are reported as truth. The article reports on a blog post that suggested South Carolina governor Nikki Haley was going to be indicted. A link to the blog post was sent out on Twitter. From there, it was picked up by national news outlets who spread the story, which had no basis in fact. This occurred in literally just a few minutes.

Can Dataminr flag false reports on Twitter as well as it claims to detect truthful events that haven’t yet been reported? This is the more important service. Consider the damage done to national news organizations who are faced with competing goals: get the news out quickly and get the news out accurately. If a news organization could turn to a service like Dataminr to tell them the likelihood that the story is true, then they could save themselves a lot of embarrassment later. Erring on the side of speed, as the organizations did in this case, cost them credibility.

Unfortunately, I don’t think this more important task (detecting falsities) is within the realm of data mining. And the ability to data mine must also come with plenty of caveats. Has Dataminr managed to detect any other unexpected events before the news media, all thanks to Twitter? Did it know that Rick Santorum was quitting the Republican presidential primary before his campaign announced it? Did it know that Syria shot protesters across the boarder in Turkey? Did it predict that Best Buy’s CEO Brian Dunn would resign? Most likely no in all these cases. Of course, the company could always go back into its data logs and find evidence post hoc, but that’s not much good to any clients. And when it comes to more complex things, like detecting lies, Dataminr has an even more difficult job.

These are the limits of mining streams of information like Twitter. They depend a lot on hindsight. They need extensive filtering mechanisms and careful scrutiny of sources. And finding truth is ultimately easier than finding lies. Dataminr likely has some successes that it can celebrate, but until it demonstrates real positive return and value (for example, stopping a false story before it spreads), there’s little reason to be impressed. Big data’s hindsight is 20/20, but such is the case for everyone.

Today, Facebook announced it would purchase photography sharing app Instagram for an outrageous $1 billion. Instagram is a semi-popular app for Apple and Android smartphones that allows users to apply “filters” to the photos to make them look “retro.” It has approximately 30 million users, according to the company. The app is free and simply cannot be profitable. Yet Facebook judged it worth a huge sum. What are they thinking?

At this point in time, answering that question is impossible. What we do know is that Facebook has cash on hand (which makes it easy to buy companies), is interested in acquiring talent through purchasing innovation, and is preparing to go public (meaning they will get another round of massive cash soon). In these circumstances, the company may very well be thinking, why NOT buy this company? After all, they don’t want their competitors (whoever that is) to buy the business first.

But even if we cannot answer the why for Facebook, we can still consider the value of the purchase. Instagram is not a competitor to Facebook, so Facebook isn’t acquiring a service that might one day replace Facebook. Instagram is not particularly popular (and most of its users are likely also Facebook users), so Facebook isn’t growing its user base. Instagram doesn’t do anything to photos that Facebook couldn’t easy program in a week of hard work. And Instagram doesn’t have massive talent on board; one report put the number of company employees at 12.

In other words, the company is in no way worth $1 billion. Investors beware: This is what happens when Facebook has cash. They buy garbage companies for no strategic reason and end up overflowing with products to support. Remember when eBay bought Skype for $4.1 billion? They ended up selling it off a few years later for less. (Who knows what will happen next with Skype, as Microsoft is its latest owner, having paid over $8 billion.) This is what happens when companies see opportunities for “synergy” but don’t consider just how that partnership will add to their bottom line. When will Facebook see $1 billion in increased profits because they purchased Instagram? Never is an excellent guess.

I bought my iPad a little over two years ago, standing in line at the Madison Apple Store to pick up my (pre-ordered) model. Two years later, it’s still a device I use every day. That’s possible because it still works like a dream – fast, responsive, plenty of storage space, and all the functionality that I need. That’s great for me, but is it great for Apple? The company has released two models since the first generation came out, and I’ve felt no compulsion to buy either one. Though the device fits snuggly between a laptop and a smart phone, and truly does create another category of useful device, which device does it follow in terms of replacement timing? Is it the every two years (or less) of a smart phone, or the every four or five like a laptop? And what can Apple do to make it more like the former, less like the latter?

What would make me buy a new iPad? If this one stopped working well or simply broke, I would march down to the Apple Store and buy a new one immediately. But nothing else could cause the same purchase. And given how simple the product is (and the excessive protection I give it), the future looks strong for my iPad. Even battery health isn’t an issue because I charge it just once per week on average; I can get at least a couple more years out of it before the battery starts losing capacity.

This has got to be bad news for Apple. The tablet market is still getting bigger, so Apple can sell to new customers. But they also need to keep drawing in Apple super fans (or at least iPad super fans) to replace their old products. That means Apple must release updated versions of the product that are significantly better than previous versions. But Apple’s own design philosophy limits the advances they can make. For example, some people would be thrilled if Apple released an iPad with an SD card slot, but Apple’s fervent belief that such features make products worse not better means the addition is all but impossible.

This sticks Apple with software updates as the only way to sell new hardware. Apple did exactly this with the iPhone 4S. Looks-wise, it is identical to the iPhone 4, but the 4S has Siri, a feature that will likely never make its way into the 4. Of course, the newest iPad did receive one significant hardware change, a high resolution display, but beyond this change, the iPad is now in the same position as the iPhone. Newer models’ features will mostly be software, not hardware.

How can software be used to drive new hardware sales? This is where things get tricky for Apple. The simple way is to stop supporting old devices. All updates to the operating system will no longer work on, say, my first generation iPad. Because many apps then update themselves to require the newer operating system, owners of older products are stuck without the latest software unless they buy the latest hardware.

While this approach is more palatable with phones (given that customers can purchase the iPhone at a discount thanks to carrier subsidies associated with signing a contract), it has yet to be tested with the iPad. So far, Apple has offered all software updates for all versions of the iPad. But there will come a day when my iPad is considered a legacy device.

Will that day prompt me to purchase a new iPad? The iPad as a device I will own for the foreseeable future. And if Apple made available software features I felt I couldn’t live without, then I might consider passing on my first generation iPad to a family member and going with a newer model. But that’s a big if. Apple’s software updates for iOS have been good, but not great, and nothing short of a major overhaul is likely to change that. So, for the time being, I’m happy and content with my iPad. It may not make Apple happy to know that I have no interest in upgrading, but it sure makes me glad. My iPad still has that same old magic, two years and counting.