Dept. of Cold, Hard, Truth: Branding is bullshit.

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Nobody gives a rat’s ass about your brand.

So HP may or may not be getting a new logo. This is a complete waste of their time. What HP should do to make people care about them is simple: Return to making innovative products that people love, like they did in the 80s and early 90s. They chose not to be that company anymore at some point, and became an also-ran in a field of equally competent printer and PC vendors. Oh, and they do IT outsourcing, which goes about as well as you’d expect, and their fortunes are fading as a result.

So now they’re spending money on a new logo to fix it? That’s sure as shit going to do one thing: line the pockets of starry-eyed marketing and branding people only too happy to cash their checks. It’ll also be nice for the printing companies who do HP’s cards, and the signmakers who do the buildings, but it won’t make one fucking iota of difference to any actual customer, because brand equity is built on experience with the company, not a snazzy Illustrator file and new color palette.

This is very, very close to something people are noticing about magazine treatments on the iPad. Briefly, the Conde Nast or whomever marketers in charge of the interface for Newsstand placement or custom apps are all mad for fancy splash screens that show off the magazine’s logo. And no reader has ever cared about that. They want the content. Popping up a splash screen that eats 2 or 3 seconds every time the user wants to resume reading your magazine says “we care more about Branding than we do about you the customer,” and see above in the value of branding. In this case, aggressive logo displays are DEFINITELY having an effect on how people view the company, but it’s not the effect the crystalgazing marketdroids had in mind.

Branding is to corporate America as fad diets are to those of us fighting the battle of the bulge: a waste, ultimately. To lose weight and be healthy, all you really need to do is move your feet more than your fork. It’s a lifestyle change, not a thing you do once. You can dress it up (more veggies! less meat! more cardio! add yoga!), but that’s it at its most basic point. Switching to an all-lentils-and-spinach diet for six weeks isn’t going to create lasting value or change.

The corporate equivalent of “move your feet more than your fork” is almost as simple: Make good, reliable products that people like. Make sure that, when people have a problem with your product, you take care of them within reason.

That’s it. That’s who HP used to be, but are not anymore. That’s who Apple is now, obviously. That’s who Sony used to be, but aren’t anymore. It’s who Zappos and Amazon are, at least most of the time.

Just like weight loss, there is no silver bullet. You have to do the hard work of actually BEING a good company for people to view you as a good company. Paying a bunch of graphic designers and Flash programmers to rebrand your website is a waste of time if you’re not making real commitments to quality and customer satisfaction — and may still be a waste of time even if you are. Worse, fancy re-branding efforts come off as smoke and mirrors designed to distract customers and investors even if they’re not (and, let’s be honest, frequently they ARE). So skip them.

Do good work.

Make your customers happy.

The brand will follow.

Again, start yelling

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Go read this right now.

The current Defense Authorization bill includes some provisions that would make mincemeat of our most basic freedoms:

One provision would authorize the military to indefinitely detain without charge people suspected of involvement with terrorism, including United States citizens apprehended on American soil. Due process would be a thing of the past. Some claim that this provision would merely codify existing practice. Current law empowers the military to detain people caught on the battlefield, but this provision would expand the battlefield to include the United States — and hand Osama bin Laden an unearned victory long after his well-earned demise.

How many did YOU have?

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On this list of you-might-be-an-early-adopter-if-you-owned-these over at Wired, I find myself batting .500: I had:

  • a MiniDisc player;
  • A Sharp Wizard;
  • Three Newtons, unfairly maligned as they were;
  • An original Palm Pilot.

I missed both eyeglass displays, and all my modems were at least 1200 baud (and built-in, without acoustic couplers). I’m also pretty sure WebTV shouldn’t be on this list — it was a product for technophobes, not people who actually knew technology.

Followup on the Lowe’s vs. Muslims Funtime

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TPM has a rundown that also includes some great quotes from the Florida Family Association, aka the right wing nutjobs who badgered Lowe’s into pulling their ads from the program:

The show profiles only Muslims that appear to be ordinary folks while excluding many Islamic believers whose agenda poses a clear and present danger to liberties and traditional values that the majority of Americans cherish.

In other words: “Your show about Mooslims doesn’t show them to be insane freaks like we all know they are! Fix it!”

Wow.

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Urged on by the “Florida Family Association,” Lowe’s has pulled its ads from a TLC reality program about a Muslim family in Michigan because the show isn’t bigoted enough.

The FFA said:

“The show profiles only Muslims that appear to be ordinary folks while excluding many Islamic believers whose agenda poses a clear and present danger to liberties and traditional values that the majority of Americans cherish,” the group said about the show, a docu-soap chronicling everyday Muslim families in Dearborn, Michigan that debuted last month. “Clearly this program is attempting to manipulate Americans into ignoring the threat of jihad and to influence them to believe that being concerned about the jihad threat would somehow victimize these nice people in this show.”

Two Must-Reads on the BCS

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First, there’s Pat Forde‘s screed, which is spot on.

Then there’s this extraordinarily delicious BCS takedown from an LSU fan blog. The author would prefer OSU in the title game, but that’s not the axe he’s grinding — he concedes that reasonable people disagree there. After making that point, though, he points out just how fucking broken the entire thing is, how silly some of the ranking decisions are, and how the system discourages any adventurous regular-season scheduling. Example: Stanford is ranked above Oregon in the final tally despite Oregon beating them on the field largely because Oregon has two losses to Stanford’s one. But the Ducks’ first loss was to LSU, the unanimous #1.

Key point: both authors consider this year’s Sugar Bowl lineup to be an abomination before God. And they’re right.

Here We Go

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The rematch is on. Check ESPN — it’s on TV, but not the site yet. Sucks to be the lost-to-Iowa State Cowpokes, but this is the right choice if you want the top 2 teams in the country to play for the title.

It’s Probably Time To Yell

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In the early days of the so-called War on Terror, Heathen was by no means the only place crying foul at the power grabs committed by our government supposedly in the name of keeping us safe. In particular, the idea that it was okay to kidnap people without trial or recourse troubled lots of folks, and still does. Equally troubling was something we all said then, too, which was once governments acquire power, they are loathe to give it up. The damage Bush and a complicit Congress did in this regard is very long lasting, and we see more of that today.

Congress is presently debating a bill that would expand the power of the military to kidnap civilians — even Americans, and even on US soil — in the name of preventing terrorism. The government is hooked on war, and will keep this up unless we make it clear we won’t stand for it. Under no circumstances is it acceptable for an American citizen to be held without trial, without counsel, and without due process of law. It wasn’t okay on September 10, 2001, and it didn’t magically become okay the next day. With OBL dead and Al Qaeda essentially decapitated, there’s certainly no argument to be made that suspension of such basic protections is in any way warranted.

(Did you notice that we assassinated an American citizen abroad a few months ago? Did you notice how the media called him “US-born” So-and-So and not “American citizen So-and-So”? Make no mistake about it; that guy was as American as I am, and could’ve voted absentee. If that doesn’t scare the shit out of you, it should. Consider not how a relatively benign conservative or liberal administration will act with such power. Consider instead how your least favorite candidate, your worst electoral nightmare, might use it.)

Go read more from Glenn Greenwald, who has some very astute analysis. Even the White House’s threatened veto isn’t all that reassuring, since their reasoning is that these choices are exclusively Executive in nature, and none of Congress’ business.

Our ideals are only our ideals if we fight for them. Our government is getting away with abrogating rights by crying “terrorist” every ten minutes. This should bother you. It sure bothers me.

Your phone is spying on you

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No, really. CarrierIQ is installed on most Android, Blackberry, and Nokia phones, and reports everything you do upstream to CIQ and, presumably, the carrier. You cannot turn it off, and there is no opt-out provision short of rooting the phone and installing a new OS.

Dept. of Menacing Cuteness

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Go check out this MeFi post; it’s video of a guy being sorta played with, sorta stalked by a coyote. Being Canadian, the videographer is unfailingly polite, which is kind of adorable.

It’s not 100% clear to me that this is predation behavior — a man is way bigger than a coyote, so a lone individual probably wouldn’t try to take him down — and the animal’s body language is very, very similar to domestic dog “play” behavior, but it’s still a neat nature encounter.

OOPS!

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Alabama is reportedly reconsidering its anti-immigrant law after it resulted in a white German manager for Mercedes getting the third degree instead of, you know, brown people.

Ah, Alabama.

On bullshit rules, and what that means for overall compliance

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We are all now quite used to turning off our gadgets during takeoff and landing on airplanes, and most people just plain comply. But it turns out nobody really knows the reason for this rule; it’s still a rule because it’s always been a rule, which is a pretty stupid reason for a rule to persist.

As the linked article points out, it’s completely laughable to think that, on board nearly every flight, there’s not someone who forgot or refused to turn off their Kindle or phone or iPod or tablet during take-off and landing. And yet, as the article also notes, there are ZERO reported incidents related to passenger electronics. None. Nada.

When we have rules that are widely ignored, or that can be ignored because of the essentially zero chance of being caught and suffering reprisals, we weaken the power of rules that actually matter to protect us. Rules need to have good reasons, and those good reasons need to be available for review. Rules without good reasons just breed noncompliance and contempt, which is what is happening with the rules surrounding onboard electronics during takeoff and landing.

What’s hilarious is that despite a growing number of folks pointing out that this rule is bullshit, the airlines are doubling down. In the last year or so, I’ve started hearing the stewardesses insist that the devices be turned ALL THE WAY OFF, as opposed to laptop hibernation or iPhone “airplane mode.” Seriously? Do they really think people will do this? I’ve never ONCE turned my laptop off to fly; sleep’s all they get. My phone and iPad go into airplane mode, not off. My Kindle? You’ve got to be joking. Why bother? Remember, these are the same airlines that have wifi onboard.

On weekends with lots of amateur travelers, I’m sure compliance is high — but among serious road warriors, my guess is that these rules in general are widely ignored — or, if not ignored, then certainly not carefully followed. When it’s obvious there’s no point, why worry about whether or not your tablet is off? My guess is that essentially no frequent traveler bothers with the “completely off” variant at all despite the shrill insistance of the attendants.

Someday, I’ll tell my nieces about how air travel used to be an experience that folks enjoyed, and where the companies involved made everyone feel valued, and where the security measures made sense and had some chance of catching a motivated bad guy. And they, being intelligent young women, won’t believe a word of it.

And here we go

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BCS is out, and it is just as we predicted: LSU (1.000) and Alabama (0.9551) are comfortably at the top of the heap, followed by Okie State (0.8712). The Cowboys still have to play the Sooners, which will give them a chance at another statement win, but I’m still kinda looking for OU to win than one; they’re still #10 despite losses to Texas Tech and, hilariously, Baylor.

For their part, LSU still has to play Georgia in the SEC title game, but virtually no one thinks the Bulldogs will be as much of a threat as the Razorbacks were. LSU wins here, they’re in the game. Frankly, their lead is such that they could LOSE the SEC title game and still play for the title.

Alabama has no more games, so the Tide’s fate is in the hands of pollsters — but those pollsters have given them enough of a lead over OSU that even a commanding win over Oklahoma probably won’t be enough to push the Cowboys into the top two. Note that they only moved up this week because of LSU destroying Arkansas, the previous #3.

Bonus: There is a scenario where the SEC gets not only both title game slots but also the traditional Sugar Bowl slot. Sugar gets the SEC champ unless the conference winner is in the title game. If Georgia somehow beats LSU, they’ll go to the Sugar Bowl as the SEC champ — but LSU probably won’t drop below #2, behind (presumably) Alabama, and we’re right back where we started. Heh.

Finally, if all this DOES come to pass, it’ll be the SEC’s sixth straight BCS title, and seventh total:

  • 1998 Season: Tennessee over Florida State
  • 2003: LSU over Oklahoma
  • 2006: Florida over Ohio State
  • 2007: LSU over Ohio State
  • 2008: Florida over Oklahoma
  • 2009: Alabama over Texas
  • 2010: Auburn over Oregon

An LSU-Alabama title game will blow one SEC stat, though: heretofore, it’s been the only conference to never play in and lose the title game — every year it’s sent a contendor, it’s won. If you send both teams, well, them’s the breaks.

Matt Taibbi Explains UC Davis

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[…] the frenzied dissolution of due process and individual rights that took took place under George Bush’s watch, and continued uncorrected even when supposed liberal constitutional lawyer Barack Obama took office, has now come full circle and become an important element to the newer political controversy involving domestic/financial corruption and economic injustice.

[…] when we militarized our society in response to the global terrorist threat, we created a new psychological atmosphere in which the use of force and military technology became a favored method for dealing with dissent of any kind.

Glenn Greenwald wrote this week that “when we militarized our society in response to the global terrorist threat, we created a new psychological atmosphere in which the use of force and military technology became a favored method for dealing with dissent of any kind.” Taibbi continues:

Why did that step turn out to be so small? Because of the countless decisions we made in years past to undermine our own attitudes toward the rule of law and individual rights. Every time we looked the other way when the president asked for the right to detain people without trials, to engage in warrantless searches, to eavesdrop on private citizens without even a judge knowing about it, we made it harder to answer the question: What is it we’re actually defending?

In another time, maybe, we might have been able to argue that we were using force to defend the principles of modern Western civilization, that we were “spreading democracy.”

Instead, we completely shat upon every principle we ever stood for, stooping to torture and assassination and extrajudicial detention.

From the very start we unleashed those despotic practices on foreigners, whom large pluralities of the population agreed had no rights at all. But then as time went on we started to hear about rendition and extralegal detention cases involving American citizens, too, though a lot of those Americans turned out to be Muslims or Muslim-sympathizers, people with funny names.

And people mostly shrugged at that, of course, just as they shrugged for years at the insane erosion of due process in the world of drug enforcement. People yawned at the no-knock warrants and the devastating parade of new consequences for people with drug convictions (depending on the state, losing the right to vote, to receive educational aid, to live in public housing, to use food stamps, and so on).

They didn’t even care much about the too-innocuously-named new practice of “civil asset forfeiture,” in which the state can legally seize the property of anyone, guilty or innocent, who is implicated in a drug investigation – a law that permits the state to unilaterally deem property to be guilty of a crime.

Finally:

The UC Davis incident crystallized all of this in one horrifying image. Anyone who commits violence against a defenseless person is lost. And the powers that be in this country are lost. They’ve been going down this road for years now, and they no longer stand for anything.

Just go read the whole thing.