Universities Again Abandon Fans/Mission to Increase Pay to Administrative Staff/Coaches

If a business wants to limit access in order to increase revenue that is their choice.  When a university wants to limit access to their sports teams to increase revenue that is their choice.  But what really happens with all the millions of increased revenue schools get from football and basketball?  Essentially it goes to pay coaches and staff more money.  And they can spend more on fancy weight rooms and the like.  That is it.  

The schools don't use the millions to lower the every increasing costs of students.  They don't tell donors to stop giving money because they have gotten so much by selling rights to athletics.  They don't lower the price of tickets to the games - in fact they mainly have raised them.

So the tradeoff for schools in deciding to remove March Madness games (including in the NCAA final four) and bowl games from broadcast television to massively overpriced cable TV is the tradeoff between fans and paying coaches and administrators even more than the extremely large salaries they get now (many universities football programs have many assistant coaches paid more than any professors at the school).

Blocking alumni and fans from watching on broadcast TV by limiting those who can watch to those paying massively inflated cable TV bill makes perfect sense for a business trying to maximize the income they can take from fans.  I have enjoyed college basketball and put up with the greedy behavior by the administrators and coaches of these programs but I think it is time to give up and focus on other sources of recreation.

I have given up on others who seek to maximize their income to such an extent it destroys the experience.  I think the level of greed from the coaches and staff that have gotten the schools to put huge payments to those people above alumni and fans has risen to such a level as to make even college basketball (which I really liked) not worth the time.  It is a sad state of affairs.

TBS will now air national semifinals in 2014, ’15

CBS and Turner announced Tuesday that the 2014 and 2015 national semifinals would be aired on TBS rather than CBS.
...
Cable subscription fees, which over-the-air networks don’t collect, are a driving factor in who can afford these rights and why prices for them keep climbing. As long as all cable viewers, regardless of interest in sports, continue to subsidize sports watchers, this is how things are going to work.

Related: Penn State Scandal is Horrendous and Points to the Very Deep Corruption of Our Leaders - Many schools continue on the ego driven spiraling costs - Harvard Steps Up Defense Against Abusive Journal Publishers

It is Refreshing to See Our Government Protecting Us

I have been very disappointed for at least 2 decades in how little interest our attorneys general and judges have in protecting citizens for abuse by those using fraud and abusing the legal system to harm people and society.

One judge has done a great job investigating abuse he suspected.  His suggestion that those responsible be tried criminally might get action due to the publicity involved.  But I wouldn't be amazed to see once again the abuse ignored by those who are tasked with protecting society from such abuse.  I hope my fears prove to be un-warrented.

Prenda hammered: Judge sends porn-trolling lawyers to criminal investigators

In today's order, Wright finds that:

• Prenda shell companies like AF Holdings and Ingenuity 13 were created "for the sole purpose of litigating copyright-infringement lawsuits." They have no assets other than the pornographic movies they sue over. And despite their legal trickery using offshore vehicles, "the Principals [Steele, Hansmeier, and Paul Duffy] are the de facto owners and officers."
• Their strategy of identifying IP numbers, issuing subpoenas to ISPs, and sending demand letters offering to settle for about $4,000 "was highly successful because of statutory-copyright damages, the pornographic subject matter, and the high cost of litigation." Steele, Hansmeier and Duffy got "proceeds of millions of dollars due to the numerosity of Defendants." And Wright added, "No taxes have been paid on this income."
• The Prenda lawyers engaged in "vexatious litigation designed to coerce settlement." They showed little desire to actually fight when a "determined defendant" showed up. "Instead of litigating, they dismiss the case," notes Wright. "When pressed for discovery, the Principals offer only disinformation—even to the Court."
...

• Wright concludes: "Plaintiffs’ representations about their operations, relationships, and financial interests have varied from feigned ignorance to misstatements to outright lies. But this deception was calculated so that the Court would grant Plaintiffs’ early-discovery requests, thereby allowing Plaintiffs to identify defendants and exact settlement proceeds from them. With these granted requests, Plaintiffs borrow the authority of the Court to pressure settlement."

The harshest penalties are saved for last. First, Judge Wright suggests the Prenda lawyers should be disbarred, writing "there is little doubt that Steele, Hansmeier, Duffy, [and] Gibbs suffer from a form of moral turpitude unbecoming an officer of the court." In many states, including California, crimes reaching the standard of "moral turpitude" lead to automatic disbarment. Wright will be referring the four lawyers to every state bar in which they are admitted to practice.

Related: Police Failing to Enforce Law If Lawbreaker is a Police Officer - Watching the Watchmen - Capital One Bank Agrees to Refund $150 Million to 2 Million Customers and Pay $60 Million in Fines - Don't Excuse Immoral Looters - Disregard for Society by FedEX and UPS - Businesses Tell the IRS They Are Not American but Executives Stay in USA

Blind justice - Why have so few bankers gone to jail for their part in the crisis?, The Economist magazine

For better or worse, many people would love to see more bankers behind bars for their role in blowing up the West’s financial system. In Britain not one senior banker has faced criminal charges relating to the failure of his institution. A handful have faced the lesser sanction of being barred from running another bank or company, or agreeing in settlements with regulators not to do so.
The prosecutorial coyness of British and American authorities contrasts with the harder-charging approach taken by their predecessors and by authorities elsewhere. During America’s savings-and-loans (S&L) crisis in the 1980s more than 800 bankers were jailed. A decade later directors of Barings, a British bank that was felled by the rogue trader Nick Leeson, were barred from holding directorships despite having no direct connection to his wrongdoing. Other countries, such as Iceland and Germany, have taken a more muscular approach in this crisis.
...
But if locking people up for incompetence goes too far, regulators could still get a lot tougher. Summary justice isn’t desirable. Some justice is.

Like so many instances the connection between those giving large amounts of cash to politicians and favorable treatment seems to indicate the obvious - that people are buying favors for all the cash they give. Some times that amounts to favorable tax treatment, subsidizing mansions built in dangerous areas (flood plains or in the path of hurricanes). Sometimes that amounts to using the justice system as an arm of corporate policy. Sometimes that amounts to not prosecuting, or even seriously investigating, illegal acts committed by those that give lots of cash while prosecuting plenty of others (the USA has over 2 million people, .7% of the population, in prison and jail - far more than anywhere else - also nearly 5 million more are on probation or parole).

The last thing you want to do is increase the amount of hay you have to search through

Continually growing the "security-inustrial-complex" decreases safety. Bruce Schneier again explains the insecurity our leaders are creating with their poor understanding of how to make society safer.

Piling more data onto the mix makes it harder, not easier. The best way to think of it is a needle-in-a-haystack problem; the last thing you want to do is increase the amount of hay you have to search through. ... Before we start blaming agencies for failing to stop the Boston bombers, and before we push "intelligence reforms" that will shred civil liberties without making us any safer, we need to stop seeing the past as a bunch of obvious dots that need connecting.

Sadly it is not only security we sacrifice due to our leaders failures but also the core principles our nation supposedly stands for: "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."

It also wastes huge amounts of money to create security theatre that we don't have to waste. That we allow so many billions to be used to deny our liberty and decrease our safety is disastrous.

Related: The TSA doesn’t give a hoot about security - Society is being shaped for us while we are busy making other plans - Liberty Again Denied, I am Sad at How Little We Seem to Care - Anti Liberty Sentiment in Congress

Good Journalism Aids Society by Shining the Light on Corruption

Journalists do a great deal of good, even if much of what their employers publish is useless (or worse). In this example, Journalists at the Sun Sentinel wrote a 3 part series documenting

the shocking behavior of law enforcement officers behind the wheel. The reporters found nearly 800 officers who reached speeds of 90-130 mph, many of them while off duty. The accidents caused by officers driving at high speeds had caused at least 320 crashes since 2004, killing or maiming 21 people.

That police departments cover up abuse by there own to the public is pitiful. So many good police officers serve these systems that are failing to stop criminal behavior against the public. It shouldn't fall to journalist to protect the public, but when the police perpetrate such bad practices journalists are a potential protection to the public. If we don't support real journalism we risk great damage to our society. Related: Real Journalism Exposes Bail Bond Corruption - Tired of Incompetent Government Harassment - SWAT Raids are Failing Society Systemic - Watching the Watchmen - Society is being shaped for us while we are busy making other plans - USA Falls to 47th in Press Freedom Ranking

PageRank MozPageAuthority for Various Sites - February 2013

Google pagerank is a measure of the number and importance of pages that are linking to the page (with the public page rank lowered by Google if they don't like some things the site/page does). One measure obviously has huge limitations for capture the nature or value of any page (for more info see previous post).  But it does tell you something.  But I still find it fun to look at the pagerank values - except when they go down for my sites :-(  Now I also track the similar Moz Page Authority and can take some solace if the MozPA goes up :-)

I didn't pay much attention at first to the SEO Moz ranking details.  I tried to figure out what they were measuring then gave up because it wasn't clear and figured MozRank must be the equivalent of pagerank.  Well MozRank isn't (I still can't figure out what it is a measure of - maybe primarily just measuring links without factoring in the "authority" the links) but anyway Moz Page Authority is the measure that is equivalent to Google PageRank.  So in the chart below the MozRank is shown inside [ ] for October 2011, while Jan 2013 I updated to MozPA /10 (because SEO Moz also decided to scale MozPA up to 100 while Google PageRank caps out at ten).

Site	Feb 2013 [MozPA]	Oct 2011	April 2011	Dec 2010	Dec 2008	July 2008
PageRank 5 and MozPA > 5
Curious Cat Management Blog	5 [6.3]	5 [5.5]	5	4	3	3
Curious Cat Engineering and Science Blog	5 [6.1]	6 [5.3]	6	4	5	5
John Hunter	5 [5.3]	4 [5.4]	4	4	4	4
Management Dictionary*	5 [5.2]	5 [5.4]	5	4	3	3
PageRank 4 and MozPA > 5
Curious Cat Investing and Economics Blog	4 [5.9]	4 [5.3]	4	3	4	4
Curiouscat.com	4 [5.4]	4 [5.6]	5	4	3	3
Curious Cat Management Improvement Connections*	4 [5.4]	5 [5.5]	5	4	3	3
The W. Edwards Deming Institute Blog	4 [5.2]	-	-	-	-	-
Curious Cat Travel Photo Blog	4 [5.1]	3 [4.9]	3	-
Six Sigma Management Resources*	4 [4.9]	4 [5.0]	4
Public Sector Continuous Improvement Site*	4 [5.1]	5 [5.0]	5	4
Investment Dictionary*	4 [5.0]	4 [5.2]	4
PageRank 4 and MozPA > 5
CSS 4 Free	4 [4.9]	4 [5.4]	4	4	4	5
PDSA Improvement Cycle*	4 [4.9]	4 [4.9]	4
Lean Management Resources*	4 [4.9]	4 [5.0]	4	4
Mortgage Rate Article*	4 [4.7]	4 [3.8]	4
The Future is Engineering*	4 [4.6]	4 [4.7]
The Engineer That Made Your Cat a Photographer*	4 [4.4]	4 [4.7]	5	4	3
Curious Cat Code (programming)	4 [4.3]	4 [4.2]	0	0
Management Articles*	4 [4.3]
Curious Cat Gadgets	4 [4.3]	-	-
externs.com - internship directory	4 [4.4]	4 [5.2]	4	4	4	4
Living in Singapore	4 [4.3]	3 [4.0]	-
Architecture and home design inspiration	4 [4.2]	-	-
Life and Legacy of William Hunter (my father)	4 [4.1]	4 [4.5]	4	4	4
Living in Malaysia	4 [4.2]	3 [4.1]	-
Management and Leadership Quotes	4 [4.0]	2 [5.2]	2	2
Statistics for Experimenters	4 [3.9]	3 [4.5]	3	4	3	4
Curious Cat Web Directory	4 [3.6]	4 [4.7]	**	3	3	4
Management Matter (my book)*	4 [3.5]	-	-	-	-	-
Alumni Connections*	4 [2.6]	4 [5.0]	4	4	4	5
PageRank 3 and MozRank > 3
Deming's Management Method*	3 [5.0]	4 [4.5]	4	4
Credit Card Tips*	3 [4.8]	4 [4.6]	3
Curious Cat Management Comments	3 [4.5]
Rocky Mountain National Park photos*	3 [4.3]	4 [4.8]	4	3	-	2
Multi Site PageRank Checker	3 [4.1]	3 [4.7]	2	2	1	3
Good Process Improvement Practices*	3 [4.1]	3 [4.1]
Hexawise Software Testing Blog	3 [4.0]	-	-	-	-
Curious Cat Comments (this blog)	3 [4.0]	- [3.8]	-		3	3
Management Improvement Resources	3 [3.4]	3 [3.8]	3	3	3
Best Research University Rankings*	3 [3.4]	3 [3.8]	3	3	4
Curious Cat Travel Destinations	3 [3.2]	-	-	-	-	-
PageRank 2 and MozRank > 2
Parfrey's Glen, Wisconsin Photos	2 [3.6]	2 [3.8]	2	2	-
Johor Bahru Real Estate	2 [3.2]	-	-
Curious Cat Travel Destinations: Marina Bay Sands (Singapore)	2 [3.0]	-	-	-	-	-
Hexawise.tv	2 [2.9]	-	-	-	-	-
No PageRank
My Kiva page	u [6.2]	- [4.0]	-			3
Economic Strength Through Technology Leadership***	u [4.5]	4 [4.7]	5	4	4
CuriousCat Wordpress	u [3.6]	-	-	-	-	-
Justin Hunter (my brother)	u [3.4]	2 [2.9]	2	2	2
Curious Cat Travel Destinations: France	u [1.9]	-	-	-	-	-
Curious Cat Travel Destinations: Australia	u [1.8]	-	-	-	-	-

* internal pages
** new url, old url forwarded
- didn't exist yet
u unranked
[blank] I don't know what the pagerank was, sometimes the site didn't exist yet.

***I have noticed my high pagerank blog posts can be at PR of 4 for years and then have no page rank at all. Meanwhile MozPA doesn't seem to disappear the authority of those page. The PageRank can often reappear in another update (I even think they may come back in between updates but I might be mistaken).

 Related: Google Page Rank Updates for November 2012 - Google and Links - Using Twitter Data to Improve Search Results

Living Abroad

One lesson that many people learn is that everywhere has idiots and jerks.  Everywhere has things some people like and those same people don't like.  While thinking of escaping, it is often easy to ignore (or be ignorant of) the things you won't like about the place you are going to.  It isn't as easy to ignore the things you don't like about where you are now.

Characteristics that has a huge bearing on whether someone enjoys being abroad or not is tolerance for what they don't enjoy and excitement at exploring new and different things.  Also it is helpful if you are not looking for someone that is missing annoyances and instead looking for somewhere to enjoy for a while.

A few people do find the perfect place for them, where all the common annoyances of that place happen to line up with stuff that person doesn't care about and all the things they most enjoy are present and abundant.  But most of the time you will find places that are possible to enjoy but that also have plenty of flaws.

I am living in Malaysia and it has many advantages for me but it is not perfect.  I find it a huge advantage to be in a new place.  I like a break from some of the annoyances of home.

I really like being able to travel around SE Asia (though I have been doing much too little of that - my plan is to do more in 2013).  Of course my plan was to do more traveling in 2012 than I did.  I think the prospects for 2013 are better, but we will see.


 Related: More tolerant not more considerate - Travel to Cambodia: Angkor Wat... - Travel to Indonesia: Borobudur... - Travel to Thailand: Khao Lak... - I Want Out subreddit

Decades of Failure by Those Responsible for USA Health Care System Needs to be Addressed

The reasons for the failures of the USA health care system are complex. Given decades of failure those with leadership positions (hospitals, doctors, politicians, insurers) all have failed. Drug companies I would put below those 4 (they mainly just take advantage of lots of weak politicians to buy bad policy, for the country, that favors drug companies). Exactly what percentage of the failure to put at each groups footstep is hard to judge, but the collective failure is obvious. It is something we couldn't afford in 1980 and the damage to us grows every year. The USA health care system costs twice as much as other rich countries and the results are mediocre. Big business has some responsibility but mainly they just have ignored the problem and not done anything to help (versus actually intentionally sustaining the broken system). Voters have a huge responsibility for decades of re-electing those that maintain the broken system. Related: International Health Care System Performance - Overview of 5 Nations Health Care Systems - USA Health Care System Remains Broken, Neglected