The vast majority of products that are sold are treated as generic by just about everyone except the naive producer, who believes he has a brand of value.
A branded object or service has two components, one required, one desired:
1. Someone who isn't even using it can tell, from a distance, who made it. It appears that it could only be made by that producer (or it's an illegal knock off).
Ralph Lauren certainly got our attention when he started making his logo bigger and bigger, but we also see this in the shape of a Paloma Picasso pin, or the label on a pair of Tom's shoes, or the red soles of Louboutin or the sound of a Harley or the cadence of Sarah Kay or ...
If we (the user or the observer) can't tell who made it, then there's no brand. That's the distinction between generic and specific...
2. In the long haul, successfully branded items succeed because the user likes that the brand is noticed in daily use, either by others or even by themselves.
That's subtle but crucial. Does the very existence of the logo or the identifier or the distinction make the user happier?
Can you imagine how crestfallen the debutante would be if her date didn't even know what a Birkin bag was?
Time notes the FAA will not have anything to do with autonomous deliveries other than line-of-sight, but I expect regulations will be worked out soon enough.
Countries like Canada and the UK are ahead of the US in addressing regulations, and history suggests that such pressure and demand from consumers is all it will take to get the US to catch up.
Amazon has unveiled a new hybrid delivery drone that can fly both vertically, as a helicopter capable of landing in customers' backyards, and horizontally like a conventional plane. The drone can travel up to 15 miles at high speed.
The hybrid is conceived as the prototype workhorse for Amazon Prime, the futuristic delivery service that aspires to carry purchases to customers within 30 minutes of an order.
The retail giant hopes that safety features built into the vehicle, including "detect and avoid" sensors that Amazon says allow the drone to fly around obstacles, will overcome concerns from government regulators – some of whom have proven resistant to the idea of delivery drones – and customers.
Earlier this year, at an unidentified location in Canada, the Guardian witnessed versions of the hybrid being tested. As a result of reluctance at the US regulator the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to allow commercial drones to fly beyond line of sight, the drone delivery team, led by Gur Kimchi, had been forced to decamp across the border.
Other governments have been notably more receptive to the idea of semi-autonomous drones. The UK's equivalent of the FAA, the Civil Aviation Authority, has indicated it is open to the idea of delivery drones flying beyond line of sight.
Amazon's new hybrid bird has eight rotors, assembled in pairs, that provide the helicopter-style vertical thrust. In addition there is a larger blade situated at the back of the plane, giving forward horizontal movement.
The helicopter function would be used to take the vehicle up to elevation, and then down to a customer's doorstep or yard. Once the horizontal motor is engaged, the drone would fly at up to 60mph, allowing rapid delivery.
The hybrid aeroplane has long been an aspiration of flight engineers and it already exists in various large-scale vehicles, including the military Osprey. Amazon's prototype is believed to be the first effective hybrid achieved in a small unmanned drone of under 55lb.
David Vos, the leader for Google's Project Wing, said his company was in talks with the Federal Aviation Administration and other stakeholders about setting up an air traffic control system for drones that would use cellular and internet technology to co-ordinate unmanned aerial vehicle flights at altitudes under 500ft (152m).
"Our goal is to have commercial business up and running in 2017," he told an audience at an air traffic control convention near Washington.
Google and Amazon are among companies that have said they want to use drones for deliveries. The FAA is expected to publish final rules for commercial drone operations early next year.
Vos said a drone registry, which the Obama administration hopes to set in place by 20 December, would be a first step towards a system that could use wireless telecommunications and other technology including cellphone apps to identify drones and keep them clear of other aircraft and controlled airspace.
He said Google would like to see low altitude "Class G" airspace carved out for drones, saying it would keep UAV away from most manned aircraft aside from low-flying helicopters, while enabling drones to fly over highly populated areas.
"There's a lot that can be done in this market space," Vos said.
I side with Vos. Technology marches on. Demand from customers and country-to-country competition ensures the nay-sayers like Time are simply wrong.
Presidential candidate Lindsey Graham and warmonger-in-chief John McCain both seek more US ground troops in Syria and Iraq. They want 20,000 more to be precise. Half of them would be advisers.
Two senior senators called on Sunday for Washington to nearly triple military force levels in Iraq to 10,000 and send an equal number of troops to Syria as part of a multinational ground force to counter Islamic State in both countries.
McCain, chairman of the Senate armed services committee, recently proposed intervention in Syria by a European and Arab ground force backed by 10,000 US military advisers and trainers.
On Sunday, he and Graham told reporters during a visit to Baghdad that US personnel could provide logistical and intelligence support to a proposed 100,000-strong force from Sunni Arab countries like Egypt, Turkey and Saudi Arabia. Graham said special forces would also be included.
US counter-terrorism experts have warned that deploying ground troops risks backfiring by feeding Isis's apocalyptic narrative that it is defending Islam against an assault by the west and its authoritarian Arab allies.
McCain said it would be possible but not easy to rally Arab allies to contribute to the proposed ground force in Syria.
The senators said removing Assad, who is backed by Russia and Iran, was key to getting Arab Sunni states to back the proposed ground force.
Out of Their Minds
Both Senators are clearly out of their minds.
10,000 advisers out of 20,000 US troops? In a proposed 100,000 multinational force? Do we really need 1 adviser for every US soldier? Do we need 1 adviser for every 10 troops overall? Is it remotely possible for a coalition of the willing to agree to send 100,000 troops to Iraq and Syria?
And by what right does the US get to decide who or should not rule Syria? Didn't the US make a complete mess in Iraq and Libya with nation building?
And wouldn't taking out Assad risk a major confrontation with Russia? Or is that precisely what they hope?
These guys are among the worst the Republican party has to offer.
Via translation ... Bernd Raffelhüschen, director of the Research Center for Generational Contracts totals the cost of all government spending on refugees, including social insurance, over the life of a refugee.
At his Market Economy Foundation presentation, Raffelhüschen stated that "even with an integration of migrants into the labor market within six years, administrative fees in the long term will cost 900 billion euros."
The article did not say the number of migrants on which the number was based, or whether the influx would continue and at what pace.
If one assumes 4 million total refugees, then each refugee would cost €225,000. Spread out over 30 years, the cost would be €7,500 per year.
I am not sure I buy the notion the cost will be that much "even with an integration of migrants into the labor market within six years". Then again, I am quite confident a big percentage of the migrants will not be in the labor force within six years.
If Angela Merkel does not like Raffelhüschen's numbers, then she should publish her own. Of course politicians never want to put a realistic price tag on their pet projects.
At stake are the presidencies of the 18 Regions of France. 12 Regions are on continental France, plus Corsica and 5 more overseas.
The regions do not have legislative autonomy, but they do manage sizable budgets. And the regional elections are often taken as a mid-term opinion poll.
National Front Ahead in Polls
European polls are frequently inaccurate, but as it stands, the center is being squeezed by Marine Le Pen's Eurosceptic and anti-immigration National Front party (FN) on the right, and on the other side by the radical left.
According to an exclusive survey by Harris Interactive for 20 Minutes, less than one in two French (43%) claiming to vote in the 1st round believes that the attacks will play their choice. And only one in four surveyed believes this will play "a lot" (26%). "There is not today, when questioned French, immediate relationship between this situation of tension and electoral behavior," said Jean-Daniel Levy, director of the department "Politics and Opinion" Harris Interactive.
According to the survey, the National Front collects 27% of voting intentions ahead of the radical socialist Left Party-Party with (26%),and Republicans-UDI-MoDem (25%). Then come the lists of Europe-Ecology-The Greens (7%) left the Communist Party-Front (5%) tied with sovereignist party France Arise.
"At present, the situation appears favorable to the National Front and the left. The FN obtained the highest percentage of the vote in a poll for regional. As for the left, it is admittedly scattered, but it has a certain mobilization, "said Jean-Daniel Levy. For the united right in the center, the situation seems more complicated inversely. "It now seems squeezed between FN and formations of the left," says pollster.
Finally, the assumption that a regional council is directed by a majority FN is considered "least desirable" by the French. The situation seems paradoxical while the FN has the highest rate of voting intention.
Center-Right Squeezed
The center appears to be squeezed between the far left and the Eurosceptic National Front. But I don't understand the wording "only one in four surveyed believes terrorism will play a lot". 26% seems like a lot, especially in countries with a multitude of small parties.
The recovery in France appears to have stalled already, and this is from employment data before the terrorist attacks. Via translation from Les Echos ...
The number of Class A unemployed rose by 42,000 last month. This is the largest increase in nearly three years. Overseas included, France now has 3,810,000 unemployed, a new record.
The major disappointment is for the Government, which hoped that the sharp decline in September finally marked the beginning of the reversal "credible" and "sustainable" in the curve of unemployment to which Hollande has conditioned his candidacy for re-election in 2017.
"These figures are not satisfactory," euphemized Myriam El Khomri, the labor minister, while adding they "must still be interpreted with caution because the results of recent months experiencing strong variations."
Economists point out that the attacks in Paris strengthen the uncertainties about the pace of recovery in France. They fear a decline in activity in tourism and catering that would inevitably damage employment.
Nothing for experiencing a culture like getting a mouthful of their favorite snack food, so the next time you decide to go wandering around the world, be sure to check out the local cuisine with help from Expedia.
This is clearly and demonstrably true of mutual funds. It's easy to confirm.
And yet...
We are very uncomfortable with randomness. So the newspaper does a 12 page section of mutual funds, filled with articles and ads and charts, all touting past performance.
Superstition is what we call the belief in causation due to a mistaken correlation of unrelated data. A broken mirror doesn't actually cause seven years of bad luck, and cheering in a certain way isn't going to help the Yankees, sorry.
Of course, we don't live in a completely random world. The scientific method and statistics make it more likely than ever that you can find trends that actually matter.
The hard part is accepting that the random things actually are unpredictable, and refusing to spend time or money guessing on what can't be reliably guessed. It frees up a lot of time and resources to focus on the things that are actually worth measuring.
Retailers, especially big-box retailers will be blue if light shopping carries over for the rest of the season. The Wall Street Journal reports Thinner Crowds on Black Friday.
Millions of Americans left their Thanksgiving meals to hit stores across the country in an annual shopping ritual, but the crowds on early Black Friday morning were thinner than years past at some malls and shopping districts.
Thinner crowds could spell problems for retailers, some of whom entered the holidays warning of uneven consumer demand and elevated levels of inventory. But the smaller crowds could also reflect deeper changes in how Americans shop: Increasingly, they are spending more online and making fewer visits to stores.
Driving up to a nearly empty parking lot at a Wal-Mart in Houston on Friday morning, Dora Rodriguez, 39 years old, stopped her silver hatchback in surprise and called out her window to another shopper: "Excuse me, the Black Friday sale—it's ended already?"
Thirty-six percent of consumers said they planned to shop online only during this year's holiday season, up from 19% who said so last year, according to the investment bank Jefferies. By comparison, just 18% of consumers said they planned to shop only in physical stores this year, down from 35% who said so a year ago.
"The competition is led by Amazon and that factors into how other retailers set their prices," said Paul Trussell, a Deutsche Bank analyst.
Crowds were thin at U.S. stores and shopping malls in the early hours of Black Friday and on Thanksgiving evening as shoppers responded to early holiday discounts with caution and bad weather hurt turnout.
"We believe Thanksgiving shopping was a bust," analysts at Suntrust Robinson Humphrey said in a research note. "Members of our team who went to the malls first had no problem finding parking or navigating stores."
Scott Tuhy, vice-president at Moody's who tracks companies like Macy's Inc (M.N), said crowds on Thursday evening in New Jersey were steady but not busy. He said some stores saw a fair amount of activity around orders that were placed online and picked up in stores.
In the wake of conflicting flight path information with Russian and Turkey differing on the flight path of the Russian aircraft that Turkey downed over Syria, comes the incredulous claim that Turkey did not recognize the aircraft as Russian when it shot the aircraft down.
The leaders of France and Russia held more than three hours of talks at the Kremlin focusing on the fate of the Syrian president and on which parts of the armed opposition should be protected from air strikes.
The summit was part of Mr Hollande's push for a broader coalition against Islamist radicals Isis after the attacks in Paris a week ago.
After the talks, Mr Hollande said he and Mr Putin had agreed on three basic points. "First, we will intensify the exchange of intelligence and any other information between our militaries. Second, the strikes on Isis will intensify and become part of a co-ordinated campaign in order to make them more efficient. Third — and Mr Putin also stressed this — we must focus our air strikes on Isis and other terrorist groups."
The gulf between the leaders on the future of Mr Assad remained as wide as ever. Mr Hollande reiterated his position that Mr Assad "cannot play a role in the future of this country" but Mr Putin rebuffed him, repeating his standard phrase that only the Syrian people could determine the future of their country.
The issue of widely diverging goals of the external actors in the Syrian war gained renewed urgency after Turkey shot down a Russian fighter jet on Tuesday which it said had violated its airspace. Ankara's move is believed to have been partly motivated by the fact that Russia's air force has been bombarding Turkmen villages in northern Syria, an ethnic group that Turkey views as an ally.
Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Thursday that Ankara had not recognised the aircraft as Russian when it shot it down. Following a slew of announcements of economic retaliation against Turkey, Mr Putin angrily dismissed this claim as "impossible" and said Russia had provided the US with information on the time and location of its sorties.
"Since Turkey is a member of Nato, they should have known. Did they think it was a US plane?" Mr Putin said. "All we hear is lame excuses. Well, that's their choice, it's not our choice."
Impossible
Putin's claim is correct. It is impossible to believe Turkey did not know who it was shooting at.
In fact, the claim is so absurd, and so much an obvious bald-faced lie, one has to question Turkey's claim that the Russian aircraft did indeed violate Turkey's air space.
Turkey claims it issued warnings. I do not believe those warning claims are in dispute. What is in dispute are conflicting flight path claims.
If Russia violated Turkish air space, it was for at most a few seconds. But here's the real question at this point: After Turkey's unbelievable lie that it did not know what it was shooting at, how can anyone possibly believe Turkey, on anything, related to this matter?
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