CSotD: Trust in Google, but back-up your hard drive

Comments ¹⁶

1. Lost in A**2

   NPR has already noted that the percentage of delayed packages was roughly the same this year as last. It’s just that more packages were sent. NPR parceled the blame out nicely, noting that the retailers failed to notify the shippers of the increased volume heading downstream.

2. Julia

   Google also had a perfectly workable on-line point of purchase. The couple of organizations I knew which were using it switched to Paypal when Google stopped supporting it (with the assumption, apparently, that everyone would switch to Google Wallet, whatever that is.) I dunno, my faith in Google’s omniscience has been shaken a bit.

3. Julia

   Oh, and Intuit is going the way of Adobe with QuickBooks, switching from yearly upgrades (which aren’t needed; one can upgrade every three years or so with no loss of functionality) to an Online monthly subscription version that is clunky and opaque. We hates it, we does (I have two clients who use it, so perforce I use it too, but anti-recommend it.)

4. Julia

   (Additional comments as I work my way through the column, of course…)

5. Dann

   Merry Christmas & Happy New Year, Mike.
   Another grade A piece of work.
   The only question I have is about how private enterprises pay for retirement benefits. We have been treated to decades worth of stories about corporate officers that underfund retiree benefits, bankrupt the company, and retire to the Bahamas. As a result, there is a fair amount of regulation requiring companies to pre-fund those benefits at a certain level.
   Is the USPS being asked to do something that private enterprises are not required to do? If so, then I’d agree that it is a problem.
   If not, then why shouldn’t we ask a quasi-private enterprise to act like a private enterprise instead of following the failed model of “we’ll tax ’em later to cover the unfunded benefits” routine?
   Regards,
   Dann

6. Lost in A**2

   http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-08-02/understanding-the-post-office-s-benefits-mess.html

7. Nickelshrink

   As well as keeping my backups up to date, and considering using cloud storage too, i’m – seriously – going to decorate my next macbook. I got the suggestion from the cops who responded to the theft of mine; personalize it, with hard to remove decals. Especially next to the keyboard. Every laptop offered locally on craigslist was pictured open and with lit screen, to show that it worked. Any distinguishing marks would show.

8. Mike Peterson

   Between the link in the story itself and that furnished by Lost in A**2, you’ve got an interesting balance of viewpoints on the USPS issue, Dann.
   I’m sort of in the “figures lie and liars figure” school, not as a Will-Rogers-style cynic but as someone who has done enough business writing that I’ve seen how it works.
   Most of the time, I can follow legislation back to a point where it becomes clear, but I’m enough of a mathephobe that I can be easily thrown off the trail with a scattering of numbers.
   But something pops up in Lost in A**2’s link that I saw the other day in a story about how public pension issues have been twisted to the benefit of privatizers, and that is that various governmental entities have failed to fund their benefit commitments and that there apparently is a game where, instead of casting blame on people who put it off in order to make the books balance, you blame it on the people who were promised the pensions.
   And so the Detroits and other feckless, poorly managed bankrupts move to blow off their pensions, because, gosh, if those people hadn’t asked for benefits, they wouldn’t have said yes.
   http://www.forbes.com/sites/edwardsiedle/2013/10/18/rhode-island-public-pension-reform-wall-streets-license-to-steal/
   I guess I wouldn’t mind this so much if the people who blame it all on the unions — as if cities (or postal services or schools or major automobile manufacturers) were not equipped with professional accountants — were not so frequently the same people who had no pity for people who, with no financial background or professional guidance, sign deceptive mortgage agreements.
   Bottom line is that if Congress wanted the USPS to succeed, they’d make it succeed. The free market true believers are in charge, however, and then we’re back to my saying that, hey, how’s that working for UPS and FedEx.
   With the disclaimer that I also thought the stories were probably pretty much BS. Which, according to the link furnished by Lost in A**2 at the top of the comments page, is the case.

9. Mike Peterson

   All of which gets back to my original point that I don’t trust any of these bastids.
   And that, as Julia notes, they’re all ripping us off right and left. They’re like the junk peddlers who are happy to give you a little taste for free, because they’ll get the money back later.

10. Mike Peterson

    As for stickers on laptops, I’m not sure Craigslist is as big a factor in petty theft in Ghana as it is here, but that’s not a bad tip for those more likely to be robbed here.
    For my part, I don’t worry about my laptop being stolen so much as I worry about it crashing or falling off a table or just generally entropizing into incoherence.
    There was a time when I worried about being mugged in a dark alley more than I worried about falling in the bath tub, but that was when I spent an equal amount of time in both places.
    It’s all about risk assessment.

11. Brent

    You’re putting the blame in the wrong area. It’s not hackers that are responsible for inflicting things like infinite scrolling on users… it is the brass. Or sales. Or sometimes the stupid things we end up having to do come from the fact that the users actually want the stupid things.
    For example, at one point I was running a website for a company (among other programming tasks). The CEO told me that the board members (who were also VCs) thought it unacceptable that there was no “Make this page your homepage” button on the site. Well, most hackers will tell you that’s getting to borderline evil, because if you want a page to be your homepage, you can just set it manually… there’s no need for javascript to do that because it leads to the potential of sites being able to set it without the user’s permission. Anyways, I pointed out that I had implemented the feature when it was requested, but since Netscape javascript at the time didn’t have that function, it wouldn’t appear if they were using that browser (yet another good reason to never use IE is what I was thinking). Anyways, it had to be there for Netscape (which was dominant at that time), so they made me add a link to an installer that installed a shortcut on the desktop to run Netscape pointed at the site. I did get into a bit of a yelling match about how stupid this was and how there’s no way I could see anyone wanting this done to their machine, but it wasn’t worth my job in the end. And that’s not one the really evil things they made me inflict on users… it’s just a stupid one.
    The thing is that hackers really USE computers. When it comes to crap interfaces that do things like screwing with the ability of the back button to do its job, we want them even less that the users. And so we hack around things as much as possible and avoid a lot of crap. So I’m betting that it wasn’t beyond the ability of IT to use those programs, they just see any value in it, because why would anyone want to use software that’s always freezing up. Faced with doing the same task a hacker can come up with dozens of ways to do it without resorting to bad software… to the point of doing things like writing scripts to write scripts to produce the output to automate a process, rather than use a piece of closed application software they can’t modify at all to update things manually as needed. Those methods are beyond users, though.

12. Mike Peterson

    Prob’ly no single reason for evil in the world.
    My experience was the opposite, or, perhaps, a more exaggerated version of yours: Brass ordering things they didn’t understand, but in a more fundamental sense.
    At my last paper, they announced that reporters should have blogs. Which works nicely at larger papers where people stay for more than a cuppa coffee, but is a horrible idea where you have constant turnover of wet-behind-the-ears rookies.
    The only reporter who blogged much wrote about how drunk she got on vacation and another entry about how the Bible was all bullshit. She got lots of clicks which I strongly suspect were self-administered but which pleased the brass no end, until someone actually read what she’d been posting.
    Fortunately, they had bought a plug-and-play interface that was such an impenetrable dog’s breakfast that my own mother couldn’t find her way through it. And by that I mean someone with average browsing skills and extremely high motivation.
    I suppose all industries have their share of upper level stupidity, but it really stands out in an industry that is flailing.

13. Dann

    Hrmmm….just about as expected.
    If I might be permitted an intemperate thought, the issue of government retiree benefits is loaded with gray.
    I think it is fair to note that elected officials bear a responsibility for properly funding those obligations so that future benefits are not a burden on future generations.
    I think it is equally fair to point out that in any negotiation with a public union, there is no one sitting at the table that effectively represents the people paying the bills.
    The unions want more bennys. Not hard to see why.
    Administrators like larger budgets because they can then point to those larger budgets to justify larger pay for themselves.
    As union members are frequently also voters, elected representatives really do not have much of an incentive to hold the line on benefits. Especially when they can just pass the costs down to future generations. Kick the can far enough, and you can get elected to the next higher office. They are effectively negotiating against the people that help elect them.
    That is the recipe that has hamstrung California, Illinois, and yes…Detroit. It doesn’t mean that the unions are evil or the source of the problem. It does mean that they are at the table when the problem is created.
    Regards,
    Dann

14. Lost in A**2

    I was going to point out that the Bloomberg link explicitly answers Dann’s question: No, private companies are NOT required to pre-fund retiree health benefits, and No, the majority of these companies, three-fourths to be precise, do not pre-fund these benefits. So yes, the USPS is being held to higher standard.
    However, Dann, your subsequent comment leaves me wondering, “Why bother?”

15. Dann

    Well A**2,
    I believe the operative difference is that UPS and FedEx are required by the basic laws of economics to make a profit over a long period of time. As a result, the people negotiating with the union have an incentive to negotiate in a pretty tough manner.
    If they don’t, then eventually the company will go bankrupt.
    Those basic economic forces are less prominent when negotiating with a public sector union.
    But I do appreciate the supplemental information. I did see it in the subsequent article. I think Mike’s take is pretty good. At some point, the USPS is going to have to be cut loose. The current regulations appear to hamper that necessary process.
    Regards,
    Dann

16. Mike Peterson

    The idea that labor negotiators in the public sector are any more willing to betray their employers than they are in the private sector is not backed up by anything but a dogmatic belief in an Ayn Rand fantasy world, Dann.
    And I say that as someone whose family had extensive management-side experience with both public and private sector unions.
    It’s not a matter of being “liberal” or “conservative.” Experience trumps political philosophy on this point.