Month: February 2016

Disruption – Part Three – Retail

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I have been considering “disruption”, including what is hype and what is real.  Here is one on the cab industry where it occurred and in the electric and gas utility industry which has proven resilient in its current business model.

While “retail” is a nebulous category, it is one that touches virtually everyone in the USA. Let’s start with the definition of retail:

the sale of goods to the public in relatively small quantities for use or consumption rather than for resale.

My experience with retail has been that of a consumer, although I live in an area near Michigan Avenue which features a huge variety of stores of all types, from mass market to high end “showcase” stores. I also have a long history with e-commerce, having been involved in a variety of businesses helping them to go “online” and “digital” from the earliest days of the web. Since the primary threat to modern retail today is from e-commerce, this experience is relevant.

This chart above is from a recent Business Insider article on retail. The graph clearly shows how shopping is moving from the physical retailer to the online retailer, and it is being accelerated by the adoption of mobile technologies (which enable you to shop and research while on the move, not just when you are in front of your computer at a desk).

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“Breaking the iPhone: Once again, conservative establishment is urgently, insistently wrong”

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J. E. Dyer:

But I don’t have any confidence that the Fox panel would have been smarter if its members understood the issue better. The real problem was that they didn’t come down in principle on the side of privacy. They could have at least expressed regret, or been reluctant about siding with the FBI.
 
But they were slavering urgently for whatever measure the FBI demanded to get into Syed Farook’s iPhone as if all our lives depended on giving law enforcement any privacy-busting capability it sees a need for.
 
Technology doesn’t change the fact that this perspective is the opposite of the perspective of the Fourth Amendment. If our highest priority should be opening the people’s lives up to law enforcement, in case there are terror links lurking in our coupon drawers, then we should throw the Fourth Amendment out and require the people to all give the police keys to our homes, so it will be less of a hassle for them to get in whenever they declare a need to.
 
Conservatives are supposed to be smarter than this. Let’s walk through it briefly to clarify why there is no need to bust the built-in security feature of the iPhone for the FBI’s general convenience.

Worth reading in full.

“re: Seth Barrett Tillman responding to President Adam Falk, Williams College: the Allure of Forbidden Fruit”

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Seth Barrett Tillman responds to the president of Williams College:

Dear President Falk,
 
I read your February 18, 2016 letter to the Williams Community. I do not understand it. You don’t quote, link to, point to, or even summarize anything Derbyshire said or wrote. So the reader has no way to understand precisely what he said or wrote that crossed any “line” or even, when he said or wrote you allege constitutes hate speech. How is the reader supposed to understand your letter?

Read the whole thing.

Jonathan adds:

1) President Falk’s statement that “Free speech is a value I hold in extremely high regard” sounds a lot like “Your call is very important to us”.

2) Hate speech is speech. The reason why no one who expresses concern about “hate speech” ever mentions such a thing as “love speech” is that it’s obvious that speech that no one objects to requires no protection. The term “hate speech” is verbal camouflage used to obfuscate anti-free-speech arguments.

Don’t you belong on a beach?

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In comment thread of another post, Grurray asked:

“I know the Marines are the best fighting force in the world, but haven’t you had enough of building nations in the middle of the desert? You’re called Marines for a reason. Shouldn’t the future should be closer to the shore?” (sic)

I’ll take the sentiment kindly. Marines usually do fine when compared to other forces. I hesitate to call ourselves the “best” or “finest.” But the Marines are probably as good as any force out there.

As for meat of the question: Marines are amphibious fighters, right? What are you doing in a landlocked country?

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