DailyDirt: Suicide Isn't Painless -- Neither Is The Death Penalty (Yet?)

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Regardless if you're for or against the death penalty, there's at least some agreement that the method of execution shouldn't be cruel and unusual. The drugs for lethal injections seem to be running into supply problems, resulting in some botched executions. One might think the methods for assisted suicide would step in, but doctors like Jack Kevorkian are pretty scarce.

• In Utah, Gov. Gary R. Herbert signed a bill into law that establishes a firing squad as a legal means of execution by the state if the drugs for lethal injection aren't available. In the US, 34 states enforce a death penalty and use lethal injection as the primary method of execution. Secondary methods include electrocution, gas chamber, hanging and firing squads. [url]
• You might think execution methods have been well-researched to be effective or that it should be easy to design a method that provides a painless death. Oklahoma is considering "nitrogen hypoxia" (suffocation that should be painless because it doesn't contribute carbon dioxide into the person's bloodstream), and nitrogen gas is cheap and easy to use. [url]
• Singapore executes by hanging -- the "long drop" method -- which allows for convicts to donate their organs afterwards. This is definitely not a painless method, but when it's done correctly, death is relatively swift. [url]

Filed Under: death, electrocution, execution, firing squad, gas chamber, hanging, lethal injection, nitrogen hypoxia, painless, penalty, punishment, suffocation, suicide

Donald Trump Thinks The Extradition Process Is Too Slow, Suggests Just Killing Edward Snowden

from the oh...-so-that-hairdo's-called-an-'asshat' dept

I'm not sure at which point Fox News' "Fox & Friends" decided Donald Trump held a valid opinion on anything beyond bankruptcy proceedings and divorce settlements, but the hosts went ahead and let the man talk (about current affairs, no less).

Trump has no time in his busy life for due process or anything else we Americans take for granted in our justice system. There's only one way to deal with a "spy" like Edward Snowden.

"You know, spies in the old days used to be executed," Trump said. "This guy is becoming a hero in some circles. Now, I will say, with the passage of time, even people that were sort of liking him and were trying to go on his side are maybe dropping out… We have to get him back and we have to get him back fast. It could take months or it could take years, and that would be pathetic."

At this point, we're still dealing with the rhetorical. Trump thinks swift justice is the best justice and allowing Snowden to roam the earth somewhat freely is "pathetic." The severely wounded pride of the Republic can't bear the weight of another leak. Trump goes back against his first statement with his followup.

"This guy's a bad guy and, you know, there's still a thing called execution," he went on. "You really have to take a strong… You have thousands of people with access to material like this. We're not going to have a country any longer."

It no longer sounds like Trump wants Snowden taken into custody. It sounds more like he'd prefer someone to put out a hit on him. Again, Trump's concern for this glorious nation of ours drives his soulful plea to kill an American citizen who's only been charged with embarrassing his betters espionage and "theft" of government property.

Of course, Trump doesn't have the power to see this action carried out. But, then again, neither does the government. Snowden isn't a "spy" and hasn't been charged with treason, one of the few federal crimes that includes execution as a punishment option. So, this is just Trump fantasizing about putting Snowden down because he doesn't like what he's done.

As for "not having a country any longer," does this mean Trump is happy with the status quo? The country we have currently is the country we want? Snowden's leaks exposed the government for what it is: a complicit entity that carries water for security agencies and g-men. This is a country whose citizens' rights are being sacrificed on the cross of safety. We hardly have a "country" as it is -- at least not one that would be easily recognized by the founding fathers. And this is what would be saved by the death of Edward Snowden? This is what would be preserved by spilling blood in order to stem the flow previously suppressed information?

If so, who wants it? I know I don't. But if Trump feels this sort of thing is necessary to "protect" the nation, then it's certainly the country he deserves.

Filed Under: donald trump, ed snowden, edward snowden, execution

The Lesson Of 3D TV: For 4K TV, The Key Is The Implementation

from the style-and-substance dept

To describe the adoption and sales of 3D TVs as underwhelming would be an understatement. Sales may not be absolutely abysmal, depending on your definition, but this was supposed to be the next thing, and it turns out most consumers don't give two poops about 3D television. (We really love that TechDigest.tv paid us homage with their logo, btw). Despite awful gimmicks, 3D TVs have always felt like a product that was created for a market that manufacturers intended to produce, rather than encourage, through marketing.

Well, if you've been paying attention to the news coming out of CES, one of the new buzz words you may recognize is "4K TV", which offers picture resolutions up to 4 times what was previously available on big screen TVs. But, just as there was with 3D TVs, questions abound about whether or not a large enough market exists for these products.

The word 3D is barely being uttered at CES 2013, but just about all the major TV makers are talking about 4K or ultra-definition HDTV that has four times the resolution of those 1080p sets many of us now own. That's a lot of pixels, which means the picture will be sharper not just when you're sitting several feet away from the set but even if you get up close.

But most us don't get all that close to big screen TVs. The 4K sets being shown at CES are big. Samsung has an 85 inch set, Sony is already selling an 84 inch model. About the smallest set you'll find is 55 inches but even with that size screen, people tend to sit a bit from the screen. I have a 55 inch 1080p set perched several feet in front of my living room couch so I rarely get close enough to my TV to notice any gaps between pixels.

The idea here is that at some point, there are going to be diminishing returns on resolution. Whether 1080p represents that point remains to be seen, but it may be reasonable to think that we've reached a level where more needs to be done to generate interest in higher resolution TVs besides just announcing them and showing the normal demos. They tried that with 3D TVs, along with a few movies that lended themselves well to the 3D experience, and we know that wasn't enough. The real opportunity here is content, specifically good 4K TV content that really takes advantage of all that the technology has to offer. That means content shot with the higher resolutions in mind, including mind-blowing shots that will simply pop with the higher resolution. Sony is the big player here, so you can probably already guess the route they've decided to go.

Taking advantage of the fact that it owns its own movie studios, Sony is trying to jump start content by re-rendering some of its own films into 4K and encouraging short film makers to create content. But it will still be awhile before there is enough native 4K content out there to give viewers a lot of choice of programming.

Sorry, but rehashing old content isn't going to do the trick here, and a lack of early adoption and interest may doom 4K TV to 3D TV's fate. It's all about the implementation. Your new release should show us why we already want the product, not try to generate interest that wasn't natively there. Higher resolutions could be a selling point, were there content that took advantage of it. Given that Sony, as already mentioned, owns its own movie studios, I would have expected them to have timed the product release to something they'd created to take advantage of it. Sadly, it looks like the $20k+ 4K TV devices won't be off to a hot, or useful, start.

Filed Under: 4k, execution, hype, tvs

Guy Claims Pinterest Is A Ripoff Of His Failed, Unrelated Site

from the but-more-stupid dept

By now, everyone should be familiar with the crazy story of the Winklevoss twins, who claimed Mark Zuckerberg "stole" their idea to create Facebook. Over time, other companies have seen similar claims of "copying," usually after someone who was a total flop in the market gets jealous of someone who built a real company. The latest example is Pinterest, which has now been accused of "stealing" the idea through a path so convoluted it may take a map to work out the details.

Here's the short version, as far as I can tell, and unless there are more details, it seems likely that this is going to get laughed out of court (hopefully with sanctions for filing an obviously bogus lawsuit). Basically, a guy (Theodore Schroeder) started a site you never heard of (called RendezVoo) in which people could "share their locations" (sounds like they should be suing FourSquare, not Pinterest). That site wasn't getting much traction, but they planned a version two, where people could "share opinions, views, items and tastes on a variety of subjects" like, well, pretty much any other site on the internet. This site included "boards" that people could post stuff too and also had "infinite scrolling" when an alpha was released in August of 2006.

Months later, Schroeder met Ben Cohen, an investor in startups in NYC, who apparently told them he didn't understand what they were trying to do with RendezVoo, but brainstormed up a totally unrelated and different concept, whereby startups could "launch" new products via a sort of wire service. Schroeder and his other partners (who continued to work day jobs) completely dumped their RendezVoo plans and worked out something new, called Skoopwire (originally Scoopwire, until they realized someone else had the domain). With this plan in hand, they signed up Cohen to be a partner, taking on the role of Chairman (and promising to put in a little bit of money). Over the course of a few months, not much appeared to happen, and after Cohen (quite reasonably) pointed out that it was silly for the other partners in the project to still be working day jobs rather than focusing on the project, it went dormant.

Months later, Cohen apparently met the founders of Pinterest and became their first investor. At the time, they were still figuring out what their product would be. This is where Schroeder and his lawyers take a massive logic leap in claiming that Cohen "stole" all of Schroeder's ideas and gave them to Pinterest's founders. This is based on... almost nothing of substance. The claims are basically that Pinterest has "infinite scrolling," that it has "boards" and that they used a "pink and purple color scheme to attract female users." Of course, none of that is even remotely "protectable." Those are basic ideas that are found all over the place.

Hell, a quick Google search shows that "infinite scroll" first showed up well over a year earlier, and at nearly the same exact time as Schroeder launched the new version of RendezVoo with infinite scroll, Microsoft's Live.com image search had the feature. In other words, "infinite scroll" -- especially for images -- was already popping up in a variety of places. It's ridiculous to think that Cohen -- who, again, insisted he didn't understand RendezVoo and told the team to build an entirely different product -- "stole" the idea and sat on it for a year and a half to give to some other entrepreneurs who somehow failed to see a ton of other sites using infinite scroll by that point. Similarly the idea of organizing a web page as a "board" was hardly new at this time, and let's not even bother discussing the idea of making a site "pink and purple."

Also, like pretty much every similar claim we've seen in the past, it involves someone completely overvaluing the idea and ignoring that it's the execution, not the idea, that matters in innovation. Pinterest isn't a success because of "boards" or "infinite scrolling" or "purple and pink" but because it built a great service that people like -- something Schroeder didn't do. Also, note that tons of Pinterest clones have popped up in the wake of Pinterest's success, but you don't see Pinterest suing, rather continuing to build out their product.

The whole thing seems like sour grapes from a failed entrepreneur because someone else succeeded with a totally different idea, and he saw a weak connection to use as the basis of a lawsuit.

Randomly, the AllThingsD article above notes one other oddity: Schroeder's lawyers insist that he's a "self-taught computer genius," but there aren't any records of him online. ATD's Liz Gannes couldn't find any trace of him on the web, which seems odd for someone who claims to be an internet entrepreneur and knowledgeable about what's new in social networking.

Filed Under: ben cohen, copying, execution, ideas, theodore schroeder
Companies: pinterest, renedezvoo, skoopwire

Groupon... And The Difference Between Idea & Execution

from the all-about-the-execution dept

About a month ago, the folks at Planet Money did a nice podcast on the economics of Groupon. There's no doubt that there's a bit of a "coupon" bubble going on these days, with tons of companies crowding into the space, and (as the Podcast notes) a bunch of ex-Wall St. types jumping into the space with talk of creating derivatives on coupons/deals. At the same time, plenty of people have mocked Groupon and insisted that its model isn't sustainable and others can easily come in and kill Groupon. In fact, some of the Wall St. guys who stayed on Wall St. are saying that Groupon's value shouldn't be that high because anyone with a phone can copy them.

Lots of people are discussing Felix Salmon's excellent analysis of the economics of Groupon, which is really more about the fact that Groupon has dominated the space because it executes well. That is, it's not about the idea, it's about the execution. The fact that it has remained dominant despite so many copycats shows that just copying isn't enough. This doesn't mean that Groupon will always be the best at executing (in fact, I doubt it will be). But it's not so simple as just coming in and copying.

This is an issue that comes up all the time when we talk about business and intellectual property. People who haven't built up businesses like this assume that all you need is the idea -- and if an idea can be copied, then the company can't succeed. But that ignores just how important the execution element is. Salmon talks about how hard Groupon works to make sure its advertisers are happy with the results, to a level beyond most of its competitors. However, I think there's another element of Groupon's execution that hasn't received nearly enough attention: how enjoyable it makes the whole thing for consumers.

Groupon employs a bunch of writers who work hard to make sure all of the deals are compelling, enjoyable and fun. It always amazes me how much people underestimate the value of the quality of the writing in Groupon's offers. However, where it really struck me was a few months back, when I was researching some newer competitors to Groupon -- in particular, newspapers that were offering deals directly to compete with Groupon. In theory, newspapers should be able to absolutely destroy Groupon. If you're just standing on the mountain looking down, and seeing who has the advantages here, it's clearly the newspapers. Newspapers already rely on local advertising and deals, and have established long-term relationships in the market. On top of that, newspapers employ a ton of (mostly) high quality writers as well, so they should be able to create similarly compelling content.

And yet, when I was looking at various newspaper Groupon clones, what struck me was how boring and dull their offers were. Even if the deals themselves were comparable (and they often weren't), they just weren't that interesting or compelling to read. And that's because the newspapers -- like the Wall St. analyst above -- are engaging in cargo cult copying, where they think that all that matters is copying the superficial idea -- while missing the secret sauce that goes into the less obvious execution.

As a final aside, the quality of Groupon's content highlights another key point that we've raised many times before: how "infinite goods" like content make scarce goods more valuable. In this case, the "content" created by Groupon's writers (and, yes, this is also an example of how advertising is content) is valuable. But no one's selling the "content." What Groupon is doing is using that good content to make the scarcity of the deals more valuable, making more people willing to buy them.

In the end, I will admit that I have my doubts about the overall sustainability of Groupon itself, but it's not because "the idea" is easily copyable. I'm just not convinced that Groupon can continue to execute as well, and some aspects of what it's offering have some elements of a fad written all over them. But claiming that the company is overvalued because the "idea" is too easy makes little sense.

Filed Under: content, coupons, creation, deals, economics, execution, idea, innovation
Companies: groupon

Felix Dennis: Ideas Without Execution Are Nothing

from the a-great-idea dept

Well this is getting a little repetitive, but it's always nice to add another voice to the (growing) crowd of people, who recognize that execution is much more important than the idea. We've discussed this many times and have pointed out people, such as Scott Adams, who have made similar points. The latest such example comes to us courtesy of the Capitalist Lion Tamer, who highlights a brief excerpt from Maxim and The Week creator Felix Dennis' new book, in which he makes the identical point about ideas and execution. He notes that an idea is not enough. It may be important, but ideas are more "like Nike sports shoes," in that they can be a tool that can be used by someone to accomplish great things, but in the end it's the actual execution that matters:

I have lost count of the number of men and women who have approached me with their “great idea,” as if this, in and of itself, was their passport to instant wealth. The idea is not a passport. At most, it is the means of obtaining one. In some instances, a fixation on a great idea can prove hazardous, distracting your attention from the perils and pitfalls you will inevitably encounter on the narrow road.

If you never have a single great idea in your life, but become skilled in executing the great ideas of others, you can succeed beyond your wildest dreams. They do not have to be your ideas — execution is all. When confronted with a great idea, your reaction should be to scrupulously analyze its commercial potential in the context of your own ability to transform that potential into triumph.

Ideas don’t make you rich. The correct execution of ideas does.

Doesn't it seem odd that so many people (and very, very successful people at that) recognize this basic concept... and yet our entire public policy around innovation focuses solely on rewarding the idea, at the expense of the execution?

Filed Under: execution, felix dennis, ideas, innovation

Woman Who Claimed Ownership Of 'Biggest Loser' Idea Declared A Loser By The Courts

from the so-sorry dept

It seems that every time there's a really successful book, movie or TV show that comes along, someone else comes along and claims that it was really their idea, and demands cash for it. Of course, in almost every one of these cases, they don't seem to realize that lots of people had the same idea, and there's a huge difference between idea and execution. Instead, they assume that only they could have had the idea, and anything similar -- which involved actual successful execution -- must owe them money. Thankfully, the courts are generally pretty good about tossing these cases out. The latest involves someone who claims she came up with the idea for the reality TV show The Biggest Loser which she called Phat Farm. The legal process hasn't been kind to her. One court pointed out that she never actually registered for a copyright on the Phat Farm treatment, and now another court has noted that there really aren't that many similarities between the ideas. Another case dismissed.

Filed Under: biggest loser, execution, ideas

Multiple Lawsuits From Multiple People Who All Say They Came Up With Kung Fu Panda

from the ideas-vs.-execution dept

We'd heard a while back a guy named Terence Dunn who had sued Dreamworks, claiming that he had come up with the concept of "Kung Fu Panda," which Dreamworks made into a massively successful film. We hadn't written about it at the time, because for pretty much every big successful film or book, someone comes out of the woodwork to claim some sort of ownership stake. However, now we've got a second such lawsuit. THREsq reports on a guy named Jayme Gordon, who actually seems to have a somewhat stronger claim, in that he actually created a project, registered with the US Copyright Office, called "Kung Fu Panda Power" whose characters have some similarities to the movie's characters. Assuming the drawings in that article are accurate, it would seem that he has a much stronger claim that the usual "that movie took my idea!" claim.

Still, there are two things to consider. Is the idea of a Panda that does Kung Fu really so original? After all, there seem to be multiple people who came up with it, and it seems like a pretty straightforward thought process. As a commenter on the linked article above notes:

Combining Kung Fu and a Panda is not a terribly difficult idea to come up with. You say you want a Kung Fu movie, but with animals? Okay, where does Kung Fu come from? China? Oh, okay. Well, what kinda animals live in China? Well, there's the Panda, of course. Bingo. Let's make it.

And, the second point is one we've pointed out before: there's a big difference between an idea and executing on the idea. Just having a general idea that many others might have as well shouldn't give you the right to step in and collect some of the profits from those who actually took the risk and executed successfully on the idea.

Filed Under: execution, idea, kung fu panda

Winklevoss Twins Still Trying To Get More Of Facebook

from the oh-come-on dept

There have been a whole series of claims from others that they had the "original idea" for Facebook, but as we've explained over and over again, the idea part was pretty meaningless. There were plenty of other, competing social networks at the time Facebook was founded. What made Facebook a success was not the original idea, but how the company executed and changed (quite a lot) over time, adapting to the market. And, yet, the lawsuits continue. The most famous, of course, was the one filed by the Winklevoss twins, which is at the heart of the recent fictionalized movie about Facebook. As we covered here, the twins sued, claiming that Zuckerberg took the idea from them and their company ConnectU. Over the years, more evidence has come out that suggests Zuckerberg may have been kind of slimey in dealing with the twins, but it still didn't suggest that the twins actually deserved any part of Facebook. Even so, in 2008 (as is covered in the movie), the company settled the lawsuit, and dumped stock worth tens of millions on the twins... for not doing anything.

Given all that, we were amazed later that year when the twins sought to back out of the settlement, in what appears to be a clear case of "settlers' remorse." Joe Mullin has the latest on the twins' attempt to go through this whole thing all over again, and notes how ridiculous the whole situation is:

What makes CU's drawn-out litigation all the more remarkable is that Facebook has to be one of the most patently "unstealable" ideas out there. Facebook wasn't the first internet social network and, at the time of the suit, wasn't profoundly different than those that came before it. Facebook's success isn't due to the idea of a social network, but the skillful execution of that idea--combined, of course, with some hard work and some very lucky timing.

As Mullin points out, however, these kinds of cases have increased in recent years, as the culture and legal framework we've created, that overvalues ideas and undervalues execution, leads people to think that just because they had an idea -- even if they had nothing to do with the execution -- they deserve a cut from those who did execute. While we've already posted this before, now seems like a perfect time to repost the recent recent xkcd comic on this concept:

Filed Under: execution, ideas, ownership, winklevoss
Companies: connectu, facebook