Eshin Direct

The Cost of Waging War

While one feels for the family of Kenneth Bigley and the reasons why the UK is in Iraq in the first place are questionable, the British government should not negotiate with terrorists. It has rarely done so in the past and it shouldn’t set a precedent where it makes it acceptable in the future. The latest video reportedly has Bigley claiming that “Tony Blair doesn’t care about me. I’m just only one.”

The sad fact is that it is true. He is only one and the Prime Minister has a duty to take decisions for the good of the nation over any one individual. This resolve was evidently in good ol’ Tony when he went into Iraq at the behest of his US buddies. Let’s hope he has the resolve now to protect the interests of the nation and making a stand when the call is harder.

Sure, my generation of peace lovers will probably vote you out of office if you let Bigley die without negotiating with the terrorists. But hey, that’s the price you pay for making the big decisions, Tony. Giving in to the demands of terrorists is unacceptable even once. Show some balls for once and send the message that the UK will not negotiate with those who use terror as their tool. Have we learned nothing from our years of dealing with the IRA?

Has Cathay Pacific Lost its Way?

The recent airing of the latest Cathay Pacific TVC seemed like a misguided attempt to leverage last year’s depression that was SARS. Although a year late, the airline still feels the need to drum up people’s spirits. One wonders what the rationale behind their “dreams” campaign can be.

Sure, it’s a nice idea. Look to the skies and achieve your dreams, realising your true potential. Oh, and while you are up there, you can find Cathay Pacific there too. Right, okay. And what exactly does this have to do with the airline? Business men, who represent Cathay’s core target segment, need little reminder of how to achieve their dreams being the go-getters that they are normally are, and it’s doubtful that they’ll credit any of their achieved dreams to an airline. Except maybe Richard Branson.

One suspects that this is a hangover from the SARS period and that Cathay Pacific, actually one of Hong Kong’s prominent benefactors both as Cathay and as Swire, is sounding the rallying call for a more positive outlook. Of course, any marketing folk worth their salt wouldn’t have ignored the post-SARS landscape completely and failed to notice that people had quite happily moved on to the next drama.

I know, it must have been to use that catchy soundtrack again. “I Can Fly” probably hasn’t irritated enough people yet over Asia and beyond. Even if you’ve heard it before, now you can hear the cacophony that is the jazzed up version. Oh joy. It’s only marginally better than the soundtrack that the Hong Kong Tourism Board has inflicted on us featuring the rather dubious English voice talent of George Lam.

Okay, it probably wasn’t the soundtrack. Could it have been to build brand equity in fostering the idea that an airline can really help you to achieve you dreams? Can the perception really be that despite all odds, you can do it and there is Cathay Pacific sitting there right behind you supporting you to realise them? Airline as cheerleader is probably gracing someone’s PowerPoint presentation.

Although one would wonder if that person knew how to use something as modern as PowerPoint given that the airline as an inspirational icon pretty much had its heyday in the fifties and sixties. The era of inspiration and awe from aviation is over. To quote a number of pilots I’ve talked with, commercial aviation is often a glamourous bus route. For passengers, it often remains a hassle and something they would rather avoid.

Of course, could we see a return to airline as inspirational icon for dreams, styles and fantasies? View from the Top certainly showed an airline seeking to return to the heady days of when airline travel was true to the reflections expressed in the book “Coffee, Tea or Me”. The point with Cathay is its strategic direction doesn’t seem to be found anywhere.

I guess the TVC’s are just symptomatic of an airline that has lost its way. From what I hear, the company is becoming more China-centric, in the hopes that Beijing opens up more routes for them. People I have had the chance to speak to over the last three years from the airline have said that one great thing about Cathay used to be its international complement of staff. It was truly an Asia-wide airline and it could claim to be more international than any other airline. Hell, it’s not even constrained by being a national carrier for Hong Kong. You’ve got Dragon Air for that.

Now there is an increasing requirement for all cabin staff to speak Mandarin. Sure, the emergence of China as a market surely dictates this but in your marketing vision are you seeking to become China’s national airline? One can only wonder…

Perhaps the TVC’s are designed to take the emotional leadership highground. A little pointless a year after SARS. Even during SARS, the airline’s own leadership had its faults. Spouses of cabin crew had to write in to demand why the company didn’t enforce a policy of mask wearing. Might not have protected against the disease scientifically, but we’re talking emotional leadership.

The problem with Cathay’s marketing vision is that it has none. It wants to be so much yet fails to deliver on any one clear promise. This TVC told me I can achieve my dreams. Cathay’s role in that was less clear. The airline also recently told me what’s cool about New York and where Woody Allen hangs out. Cathay’s role was sort of clear there (it flies twice daily to JFK) but still so what? What’s cool about New York isn’t necessarily what’s cool about the airline.

Cathay boldly promises me that if I travel with Cathay Pacific, I will say to myself “Now I’m really flying”. It’s such a bold statement. Almost visionary like. It has potential to draw upon the tangibles that the airline and its frontline staff can deliver. Yet until now, I’m still waiting for someone to prove that when I pick Cathay over Singapore Airlines, British Airways, United, Virgin or any of the other carriers, why exactly, I’m now really flying. An airline as great as CX should be able to prove this to me and at the very least convince me.

The Privilege to Vote

I still subscribe to that bastion of right-wing conservatism called The Economist. It was part of a deal to get a whole bunch of Asia Miles.

Anyway, for the upcomign US elections, they run a column on some interesting quotes heard on the campaign trail, surprisingly enough called “On the trail”. The latest edition sports the following quote:

“I’m scared to death when the left, the hippies, the MTV parolees go, ‘Just get out and vote’. That’s not good enough. It’s like saying, ‘Well, there’s a child drowning in the river. Just do something. Here, I’ll throw him a cinder block.’ …I see this ‘Just vote” from Puffy, Daddy, or whatever he is, to be frightening, pipe-dream, fantasy-world, youth ignorance.” - Ted Nugent on P.Diddy’s “Citizen Change” get-out-the-vote initiative. US News and World Report, September 27th

I happen to agree with him on that. Sure, you have the right to vote but you also have the right to go out and educate yourself first so that you can make an informed decision about the future direction of your country. But it’s not just the left that can be acccused of “blind” voting. The right also seems quite capable of getting their uneducated masses out to vote.

I’m a little hazy on my Athenian democracy but I seem to recall that it was only folk that got to a certain education level that got to vote. Giving people the right to vote makes them lazy and keeps them ill-informed. Giving people the privilege to vote forces people to go forth and earn the right to vote. If you knew that your right to determine the course of your country’s future depended you having a minimal level of education, and you really wanted a say in that and make a difference, you would go out and get that education.

Fight the Good Fight

For those of you who are non-techie, or just plain unaware of it, there is a fight going on that you probably ought to be aware of. Of course, techie-types will be telling me this is old news but hey, better late than never. And it’s a worthwhile issue to draw attention to.

“On March 7, 2003 The SCO Group filed suit against IBM, claiming it improperly inserted proprietary Unix code in the Linux kernel. The suit has evolved into a full-blown controversy. SCO’s lawyers are threatening to make the case a test of the validity of the Free Software Foundation’s General Public License (GPL), under which the Linux kernel and the GNU programs that make up the Linux operating system are distributed. Were SCO to prevail, it might hinder development of Linux and make the general public’s ability to obtain it difficult. It could also have an adverse effect on other Open Source projects which are developed and distributed in ways that are similar to the Linux model. Since SCO is threatening to charge exorbitant licensing fees for Linux, this would be a serious blow to developing nations particularly. Their fledgling IT industries rely on Linux to a great extent in their efforts to overcome a technological lag which contributes to the cycle of poverty. Though most experts in the Linux, Open Source and Free Software communities believe SCO’s claims dubious, their evidence flimsy and their chances for success slim, the case has managed to divert the attention of the entire IT industry. It has many in these communities understandably worried.”

So for non-techie types, the short of it is that where once there was a community full of innovation and goodwill, someone else’s greed is threatening it. The counter-argument is that profits earned are put into R&D which in turn provides a better quality of service and product. This doesn’t necessarily hold true as it will help to exclude many competent companies and personnel from providing a significant contribution to a growing area of the IT field.

The open source revolution is perhaps one of the quiet revolutions of the Internet. It’s sort of like tech transparency - where anyone can look under the bonnet (or hood) of the car and tweak the engine. While most of us won’t be able to, it’s nice to know that you can if you had the skills. The same goes with open source software. The relationship with those who profit from open-source was always a balanced one - we’ll provide you with software distributed like thus, and generally, if you break it your on your own. Okay, maybe not as extreme as that, but the point is that you were allowed to go and break it if you wanted to. Sort of like the warranty on that car. Tweak the engine and the car manufacturers will point to their warranty like the burning bush.

The other issue with this case is the free license (or as close to free as you can get) that a lot of open source code is distributed under. We are all familiar with the various software license agreements for the software that we use on our computers. (Well, you should be). If you’ve bought this software, the license will explain to you what you can and cannot do with the software, sliding more to the side of don’t do something. Essentially, it meant don’t develop anything until we develop something, release it and sell it to you. Obviously, companies would be worried that they would lose out on profits if people started developing on top of their own products and the brand value of their products will be diminished or damaged. Back to our car analogy, it would be like someone taking a Ford and reconfiguring it and selling it off again. Ford might not be comfortable with that since their name still stands on the car and they can be liable for that motor vehicle (they aren’t, given the number of warranty terms).

Most free licenses allow a great deal flexibility to the end-user to develop on top of the software they license. This has stemmed from reasons of good-will to a pragmatic realisation that anything you provide for free will be developed on regardless of whether you permit it or not. Afterall, you aren’t depriving anyone of the earnings if it’s free. Of course, there is the ideological reasoning of “power to the people” behind free license distributions. In most cases, free licenses are there to preserve the liberty of the software and to ensure that credit is given to the right parties.

Insert a paid-for license into the mix and in many jurisdictions, you have a contract of sorts. Inevitably, corporate interests will take precedence over “good-will”. You will most likely see a return to the don’t do this, do do this, and definitely don’t do this attitude over the license and the software.

As you can no doubt see, free license and open source software encourages development from a much wider community than any one company can provide. Along with the source code being freely open for inspection, Darwin’s theory of natural selection is often at play in the open source community with the chaff being separated from the wheat. The chances of being screwed over by one company looking to make a quick buck should be relatively minimal.

So what’s so chilling about the actions of the The SCO Group? If the SCO Group were to win, the current method by which Linux was distributed and worked on would be under threat. Costs would likely increase, and the community working on it would most likely decrease. Once the corporation had quite likely killed off the free incarnation, the offering would most likely be doomed to go through life as corporate zombie…resurrected for more selfish interests. Fantastical? Can anyone say Napster?

Of course, it should be noted that Apple makes quite a happy buck from a consumer base that is not only loyal but also a contributing one. So not all cases of corporate involvement are tales of woe.

But the SCO Group isn’t Apple. By sticking its corporate fingers into the pot, it threatens to unravel the upward growth of systems like Linux to threaten Microsoft’s near monopoly of the PC market. For a company that has posted a third quarter loss of US$7.4m, it is unlikely that the SCO is in good financial shape to push Linux further into the ring with Microsoft.

Why should you care? Well, you are all most likely to have been in contact with Linux at some form or another. If you are reading this right now, it is being served to you by Linux. Cost wise, I’m not sure you would be reading this without the availabilty of open-source software. And, as the article says, open source, Linux and freely distributed (and consequently developed) software brings IT to those who don’t have a lot of money whether they be government institutions, educational establishments or developing nations. Any move to exclude them based on economic considerations would certainly mean a less vibrant, less colourful offering on the Internet.

So despite the case enjoying a ceasefire of sorts, we should all be vigilant and concerned about this fight. Most courts would throw out a case where Ford planned to sue all the garages and mechanics that modified their cars. This isn’t the realm of state or legal control. Any involvement that the state has in it, says that cars so modified need to meet these standards to be road-worthy to satisfy concerns of safety. So too it should be with open source software and free licenses.

Read more about the SCO Controversy over at Linux.org.

The Folks Back at Home

Oh, the folks back at home will love this…

Netvigator, the bright sparks I use to provide me with my broadband connection, is hitting the shores of Blighty with www.netvigator.co.uk Of course, being the newcomer into the market, perhaps they will provide a better quality of service to steal market share away from the big boys.

Grudgingly, it does make sense with the number of Hong Kong Chinese coming over to the UK and returning British expats. Of course, these folks will already have been introduced to the joys of Netvigator in the HK market.