Ged Carroll

Category: online | 線上 | 온라인으로 | オンライン

The online field has been one of the mainstays since I started writing online in 2003. My act of writing online was partly to understand online as a medium.

Online has changed in nature. It was first a destination and plane of travel. Early netizens saw it as virgin frontier territory, rather like the early American pioneers viewed the open vistas of the western United States. Or later travellers moving west into the newly developing cities and towns from San Francisco to Los Angeles.

America might now be fenced in and the land claimed, but there was a new boundless electronic frontier out there. As the frontier grew more people dialled up to log into it. Then there was the metaphor of web surfing. Surfing the internet as a phrase was popularised by computer programmer Mark McCahill. He saw it as a clear analogue to ‘channel surfing’ changing from station to station on a television set because nothing grabs your attention.

Web surfing tapped into the line of travel and 1990s cool. Surfing like all extreme sport at the time was cool. And the internet grabbed your attention.

Broadband access, wi-fi and mobile data changed the nature of things. It altered what was consumed and where it was consumed. The sitting room TV was connected to the internet to receive content from download and streaming services. Online radio, podcasts and playlists supplanted the transistor radio in the kitchen.

Multi-screening became a thing, tweeting along real time opinions to reality TV and live current affairs programmes. Online became a wrapper that at its worst envelopes us in a media miasma of shrill voices, vacuous content and disinformation.

  • Electric car issues + more stuff

    Tesla Model 3 Survey: What Owners Think About the Electric Car – interesting read, Toyota and VW Group will eat them alive as their electric car programme take off. I am not going into the dumb nature of Li-ion versus hydrogen powered vehicles…

    Stacked Cars In City Junkyard Will Be Used For Scrap, August 1973

    ‘Caveat Emptor:’ State Dept. Mocks Russian, PRC Weapon Sales In ‘Buy American’ Pitch « Breaking Defense – four Chinese-made Harbin Z-9 helicopters purchased by Cameroon in 2015, one of which crashed soon after purchase. Similarly, Kenya bought a handful of Chinese-made Norinco VN4 armored personnel carriers, “vehicles that China’s own sales representative declined to sit inside during a test firing,” he claimed. “Since going ahead with the purchase regardless, sadly dozens of Kenyan personnel have been reportedly killed in those vehicles,” Cooper said, adding “caveat emptor!”  He also slammed Chinese CH-4 armed drones, which various countries in the Middle East have found “to be inoperable within months, and are now turning around to get rid of them… We have seen countries around the world leap at the chance to obtain high-tech, low-cost defensive capabilities only to see their significant investments crumble and rust in their hands” – buy China and pay twice, interesting to see this in the defence sector. Is the export quality worse than the products for the PLA? Or is China falling down on maintenance and services packages (customer service)? I think the Russian argument is harder to make given their decades of experience building simple, but effective defence products

    Ireland Inc.: The corporatization of affective life in post-Celtic Tiger Ireland – Diane Negra, Anthony P McIntyre, – how a post-Celtic Tiger Irish government aligned with elite interests has doubled down on its commitment to corporate citizenship. Despite the depredations of this era being directly attributable to the irrational exuberance of the Celtic Tiger period and lapses in financial regulation, Ireland post-2008 is marked by a radical forgetfulness and defined by ‘Shock Doctrine’ regulatory policies that have installed corporatism at the heart of everyday life. Key features of this landscape include ongoing governmental facilitation of tax avoidance by multinational corporations, the hollowing out of public services, the normalization of under-employment and a burgeoning housing crisis. We show here how the popular images and narratives of the period index a shift toward corporate impregnability and a public culture in which individuals absorb greater risk and take up positions of heightened precarity

    One firm, two countries, one workplace model? The case of Foxconn’s internationalisation – Rutvica Andrijasevic, Devi Sacchetto, Ngai Pun, – insight into the employment relations in China-based multinational companies internationalising to Europe, a still relatively unexplored topic. We investigate the transfer of work and employment practices from Foxconn’s manufacturing headquarters in mainland China to its subsidiaries in Czechia and the factors that influence the firm’s internationalisation of production – (PDF)

    M&S launches ‘buy now, pay later’ service | Business | The Guardian – sub prime retailing in the making

    Glossy 101: How fashion brands are rethinking influencer marketing – Glossy – when brands work with micro-influencers, they’re paying less to work with people who tend to have a more engaged audience. A report from The Wall Street Journal estimated the micro tier charges between $400 and $2,000 per post, while higher tiers will charge anywhere between $10,000 and $150,000. It should be a win-win. However, by adding more people to the mix, brands are setting themselves up for a lot more work

    The Boss on Board: Mafia Infiltrations, Firm Performance, and Local Economic Growth | naked capitalism – explains a lot

    Sprout Social its at IPO | Pitchbook – it will be interesting to see how they get on given the negative investor sentiment around the likes of Hootsuite

    China’s e-commerce giants are looking for gold in rural areas as growth in big cities slows down | South China Morning Post – over 26% of China’s online population are from rural areas

    BT unveils biggest brand campaign in 20 years – created by Saatchi & Saatchi, the ad begins with a schoolgirl reciting Charles Dickens’ classic opening from A Tale of Two Cities as she walks through the dreary British streets. Set to Blinded by Your Grace, Pt 2 by Stormzy, it goes on to showcase Britain’s technological advances over the past few decades, from CCTV and Tube advancements to the emergence of broadband – is it just me or this or is this exceptionally dark. CCTV!

    Cathay Pacific Calls On PR Firm Edelman To Help Plot Revival | Holmes Report – thankless task for Edelman, short of a takeover by Air China nothing is going to stop the China government pressure. It might slow it down but it won’t stop it. Swire needs to extract itself from China

    Measuring the effectiveness of creativity in marketing | Marketing Week – the ad industry will be forced to refocus on creativity. Yet marketers (and their counterparts in finance) have become used to the measurability of performance marketing. If the industry can’t prove the effectiveness of creativity, brands will continue to up spend on short-term sales activations rather than brand building. The majority of markets are trying to add some science to the art. An exclusive survey of more than 400 brand marketers conducted by Marketing Week finds 61.8% measure the effectiveness of their creative (compared to 76.5% who measure the effectiveness of media)

    Don’t Let Metrics Critics Undermine Your Business | MIT Sloan Review – those lucky employees who haven’t been automated into professional obsolescence instead find themselves enduring what economic historian Jerry Z. Muller calls the “tyranny of metrics.” Numbers rule their workplace lives, and there’s no escape. “The problem is not measurement,” Muller declares, “but excessive measurement and inappropriate measurement — not metrics, but metric fixation.” “Don’t Let Metrics Undermine Your Business,” warns Harvard Business Review’s September-October 2019 cover story: “Strategy is abstract by definition, but metrics give strategy form, allowing our minds to grasp it more readily. … The mental tendency to replace strategy with metrics can destroy company value.”

    Reliance on Louis Koo’s Box Office Power Highlights Challenges in Hong Kong Industry | JayneStars.com – to be honest this has been coming for years. There are few Hong Kong male stars below the age of 50. It saddens me having grown up on Hong Kong cinema and knowing the richness of creativity in the city

    Hey – it could’ve been Regina Ip! | Big Lychee, Various Sectors – it seems Hong Kong officials use Reuters as their preferred conduit for leaks (or ‘scoops’ as media folk call them), while their Mainland counterparts prefer the Financial Times. The latter today reveals (paywall, etc, possibly) that Beijing will eject Chief Executive Carrie Lam, maybe in March, after things have ‘stabilized’ ha ha

    New WeChat regulation on incentivized sharing and external links – new WeChat regulation on incentivized sharing and external links

    Six Chinese men jailed for a hit job that was subcontracted five times – Inkstone – Pi Yijun, a criminal justice professor at the China University of Political Science and Law in Beijing, said the case reflected strong distaste towards litigation in Chinese culture. “People are not willing to go through the legal channel,” Pi told Inkstone. “Whenever they encounter disputes, they try to solve it privately, mediating through personal connections or taking the law into their own hands.” – Caveat Emptor

    Steve Jobs’ speech that made Silicon Valley obsessed with pirates — Quartz – ‘machine for thinking’

    AI Weekly: In China, you can no longer buy a smartphone without a face scan | VentureBeat – there’ll be a good market in stolen phones then

    SpaceX submits paperwork for 30,000 more Starlink satellites – SpaceNews.com – Iridium 2?

    Ren Zhengfei: HongMeng is capable but will not replace Android | Gizchina – translation – we aspire to displace Android and become more profitable but our OS isn’t up to snuff for westerners

    Andy Kessler: WSJ: Tech Treadmill Wears Firms Out – Max Hopper’s “Rattling SABRE—New Ways to Compete on Information,” and finally in 2013 we got Rita Gunther McGrath’s “The End of Competitive Advantage.” Each of these takes describes a different stage in the life cycle of corporate tech. Hopper was, as Harvard professor James Cash noted, “the first person who really defined the marketing leverage that could come from using technology.” In the late 1950s Hopper helped build Sabre, an automated flight-reservation system, and in 1981 he helped design the first major frequent-flier program to give American Airlines a competitive “AAdvantage.” Yet by 1990 he worried that the game was over, suggesting that technology was “table stakes for competition.” Hopper noted that “SABRE’s real importance to American Airlines was that it prevented an erosion of market share.” That insight comes to mind watching the Streaming War of 2019. Netflix and Amazon have a huge lead in streaming video. But eventually everyone uses the same technology. Tim Cook wants in, so Apple TV+ launches Nov. 1 with (probably overpaid) Jennifer Aniston and Reese Witherspoon. Robert Iger wants in, and Disney paid (probably too much) for control of BAMTech, the streaming-video technology developed by Major League Baseball, which it is deploying for streaming services Disney+, ESPN+ and Hulu + Live TV. AT&T wants in and paid (again likely too much) for Time Warner to create HBO Max. NBCUniversal wants in too. See the trend? Google ought to rename its streaming service YouTube TV Max+

    Are Publicis’ problems reflective of a wider market malaise? | Advertising | Campaign Asia – By placing Publicis on top of Saatchi & Saatchi, Leo Burnett and Bartle Bogle Hegarty, they have destroyed those storied brands. By putting Publicis Sapient on top of LBi, Digitas, Rosetta and Razorfish, they have killed their digital brands too. As a result, now they are saying they have to transform the transformers – I agree that brands have been affected, but I’d also argue that the flight away from craft to disruption has also been probelmatic

    Martin Sorrell: Group M alone is worth as much as WPP’s stock market value | Campaign Asia – in the face of Facebook, Google and Amazon advertising in the west and Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent advertising in China is Group M really worth the whole of WPP alone? There is also the aspect that Group M has been crying disruption, disruption and screwing its own business

    Qatar, facing unbearable heat, has begun to air-condition the outdoors – Washington Post – this sounds mad

    Google discontinues Daydream View VR headset and drops Daydream support from Pixel 4 – The Verge – people don’t like wearing their phone

    Facebook opens search ads to all advertisers – Search Engine Land – this is going to make things interesting

    U.S. lawmakers urge Apple to restore HKMap app used in Hong Kong – Reuters – Apple and quisling Tim Cook getting squeezed by US politicians

    Louis Vuitton Has a Factory in Texas Now, Marking its Third in the U.S. — The Fashion Law – LVMH – which is trudging ahead and abroad and “increasingly letting industrial logic and geopolitics govern supply-chain decisions,” per Dalton, while competitors, “such as Gucci, Hermès and Chanel have kept most [of their] production in Italy and France” – this is just business. And considering that LVMH’s Fashion & Leather Goods division, alone, brought in $15.8 billion in sales in the first 9 months of the year– with the group as a whole reporting revenues of $42.14 billion for the same period

    Teaching Democrats to Speak Evangelical | The New Yorker – interesting how the Democratic Party are having to go back to basics on learning community relations in US politics

  • Paper phone experiment & things that made last week

    Google goes back to the future with its paper phone experiment. Its an interesting commentary on the questionable benefit provided by smartphones. Google seems to be partly convicted. The paper phone experiment goes back to device prototyping. Handsrping founders used to carry around a block of wood in the shape of the PDA that they wanted to build. I was also thinking about Dan Greer‘s views on complexity in technology and what he might have thought of the paper phone experiment.

    One-legged man’s Hallowe’en costume is the Pixar table lamp.

    General Magic was a much storied, but ultimately failed technology company. This documentary about it looks epic on the trailer. You can stream the full documentary here.

    Here is question and answer session from the Silicon Valley premiere of the documentary.

    General Magic came up a device that Sony manufactured for AT&T. It was a PDA like the Apple Newton, but designed around connectivity. It had a built in dial-up modem. It had vCard type functionality that allowed you build up your address book from your email contacts over time.

    Really interesting things here:

    • Techno-optimism needs to be tempered but still hopeful as an outlook
    • Ease to get to market now compared to back then
    • Technology industry is at an inflection point in terms of it does for mankind. As an industry it needs to get a better understanding and course track to go for a more positive future
    • The relative infancy of UX allowed for more trial and experimentation of visual elements

    Here are some users talking about how they use the General Magic device.

    DuckDuckGo launched a ‘terminal styled interface which I quite liked. You can try it here

    duckduckgo

    It isn’t only retro cool but pretty useful, and works really well on a computer that is using a dark mode theme to its operating system.  

    Elena Botelho discusses how the characteristics of successful CEOs differ from the popular narrative

  • Tyler Cowen on digital economy

    Interesting session with Marginal Revolution’s Tyler Cowen at the OECD. Tyler Cowen is an economics professor at George Washington University, author, blogger and media commentator. In this discussion Cowen addresses the challenge of Huawei and big tech. Cowen is broadly pro big business, anti-small business and pro big tech in his outlook.

    In his discussion in terms of big technology Tyler Cowen has an interesting position, though not something I would agree with. As it doesn’t allow for startups coming through in a winner-takes-all environment. Working agency side for clients as the dot com boom took off, you could see the impact of ‘Microsoft fear’ as it was shed in Silicon Valley. For instance, Yahoo! went out of their way to call themselves a media company rather than a technology company. Supporting big tech means supporting ‘just good enough’ bundled services, rather than a better product. It also reflects a very American-centric viewpoint.

    Cowen is very concerned about biometric recognition (facial recognition, finger print analysis and gait analysis). He doesn’t realise that his concerns are at odds with his neo liberal pro-

    Tyler Cowen is also very concerned about the dominance of Huawei in 5G network rollout. Whilst I understand his position, it lacks a certain amount of nuance in understanding network rollout and Huawei’s place in the networks (at least in western countries). It is also at odds with his general pro big tech stance.

    An interesting nugget from interviews that Cowen has done (in promotion of his books) newspaper journalists were upset about Facebook, all radio journalists are anti-Amazon.

    Tyler Cowen’s comments on trust are interesting. The key thrust is that online has allowed elites and their faults to be more available online.

    It is well worth giving this a listen over a lunch hour (its 77 minutes long). More from Tyler here. More economics related content here.

  • Bumper issue of stuff from the web

    This is a bumper issue of my regular(ish) posts of interesting stuff around the web

    Apple’s Cook meets China regulator after pulling Hong Kong app – Reuters – Quisling Tim Cook takes more orders from China

    Daring Fireball: Apple Removes HKmap.live From App Store – I still haven’t seen which local laws it violates, other than the unwritten law of pissing off Beijing. This is a bad look for Apple, if you think capitulation is a bad look.

    The Nike of China Wants to Go Global and Has Xi in Its Corner – Bloomberg – Anta seems better positioned to challenge the Western sporting apparel giants because it’s building a family of brands with reach far beyond China. He says the company has been bolstered by its recent $5.2 billion acquisition of Finland’s Amer Sports Oyj, parent of ski brands Armada, Atomic, and Salomon, as well as high-end outdoor gear company Arc’teryx and equipment company Wilson. “Anta is heading towards the Winter Olympics in much better shape than Li-Ning was in 2008,” Martin says. “With the winter and outdoor sports brands, it’s very relevant. Anta’s already in a better position to leverage the sponsorship.” – (paywall) – interesting article. What isn’t discussed is that Salomon and Arcteryx are key providers to western militaries including special forces units. Arcteryx’s LEAF outfits have a lot of material and design innovations that have aided operators. This is a very real security risk that hasn’t been addressed at all. Buying Salomon and Arcteryx provides Anta with a bumper issue of technology and innovative design

    China Celebrities Help Fan New Generation of Nationalists – Bloomberg – mando pop idols used to push nationalist agenda. Also explains government restrictions on K-pop in China. North, south, east or west – the party is first is going to make for very dull content

    Terminus 2049 | NBA events and national madness – sane Chinese thoughts on the NBA debacle, fascinating read which provides insight into the conundrum of correlation between Chinese national fragility / sensitivity and Chinese power

    Chinese Values Are Changing America – The Atlantic – China is transforming the US rather than the other way around

    On-Board ‘Mystery Boxes’ Threaten Global Shipping Vessels | Threatpost – Commercial shipping environments are rife with vulnerabilities, according to researchers – up to and including unpatched “mystery boxes” that no one knows anything about. “In every single [nautical pen] test to date we have unearthed a system or device, that of the few crew that were aware, no one could tell us what it is was for,” said Andrew Tierney, researcher with Pen Test Partners – given the importance of logistics in the global economy this should be frightening. That sounds like a bumper issue of security faults…

    Home Bargains delivers bigger profit than Harrods | Financial Times – there’s room at the bottom of the UK market as the middle class collapses. Instead the new poor will have a bumper issue of made in China products

    The Boycott Blizzard Movement Is Weighing on Activision Blizzard Stock – Barron’s – Boycott Blizzard responsible for an 18 – 23% drop in US revenue – multinational corporations alignment with the Chinese government is not starting to burn the businesses in markets outside China

    Redrawing the Map of Global Capital Flows: The Role of Cross-Border Financing and Tax Havens – We find that private capital flows from developed countries like the U.S. and Eurozone to firms in large emerging economies – including Brazil, China, India, and Russia – are substantially larger than previously thought. (PDF)

    Huawei’s 5G Tech Isn’t Worth the Risk – Huawei may assert that it has already taken an unbeatable lead in 5G infrastructure, judging who’s truly ahead in the field means looking at multiple criteria. Such indicators can include commercial contracts, deployed performance, integration with network infrastructure, and real technological innovation. For example, Huawei has claimed that it has more 5G patents than all U.S. companies combined, but quantity does not necessarily correlate with quality—especially in China, where patents are often of dubious value. – Interesting article, it burns Huawei in a different and probably more damaging way if it gained traction

    FE Investegate |Sports Direct Intl. Announcements | Sports Direct Intl.: Media Statement – interesting move by Sports Direct looking to counter Nike’s move to a direct to consumer only model over the next two years

    WSJ City | Congress Probes Bot E-Cigarette Messages – interesting how the US is a world away from the UK in terms of vaping regulation and marketing

    What can we tell from China’s reviving sales of instant noodles? | HKEJ Insight – inelastic spend / consumption patterns?

    China fact of the day | Marginal Revolution – Starting with the Opium Wars in the 19th century, foreign powers bullied a weak and backward China into turning Hong Kong and Macau into European colonies. Students must memorize the unequal treaties the Qing dynasty signed during that period. There’s even a name for it: “national humiliation education.”

    Flora ends Mumsnet partnership over spread of anti-trans sentiment | The Drum – proud of my old colleagues from my time contracting at Flora

    What luxury brands can learn from Golden Week 2019 | Marketing | Campaign Asia – the silver generation has gone on to become the driving force behind holiday consumption. According to data from Alibaba, this demographic is now tech-savvy and will order food delivery, book travel packages online, and purchase high-end skincare and health packages from their phones. As much as luxury brands focus on millennials and Gen-Z, they shouldn’t ignore Chinese seniors, many of whom are retirees willing to splurge on luxury goods and go on luxury holidays. According to a study by the China-Britain Business Council, Chinese seniors who are 60 or older have set aside an average of 15 percent of their annual income for travel.

    ADMAP | June 2019 | Tim Doherty on how China is finding its voice – YouTube – Chinese using voice interfaces for entertainment and surf the web, 77% use of voice on smartphones. I wonder how much of this is voice messages on WeChat rather than Siri type interactions? Interesting how strong government support has bolstered voice technology

    Handbag Market Dynamics Have Changed | NPD – Today’s consumer is looking for a solution, not just a bag. Consumers expect a lot from the products they are buying, from function and versatility to a brand’s engagement in the social and environmental issues that matter to them, and the luxury market is not immune to these pressures

    Here’s How the UK Avoided A “Vape Lung” Epidemic – “I think the difference between the U.K. and the U.S. are due to the American propensity to turn health issues into moral crusades,” University of Louisville doctor and tobacco addiction expert Brad Rodu told Vice. “It appears that policymakers in the U.S. are either completely ignorant of the history of tobacco, or completely ignore it.”

    LinkedIn Adds Tools to Help Marketers Sharpen Their Campaign Targeting – Adweek – another Matt Muir zinger: The ability to create targets using Boolean parameters is quite a nice touch (if that sentence fragment meant nothing whatsoever to you then know that I am so, so jealous of your innocence), as is the live view of the exact demographic breakdown of your target audience as you set your ads up (so, for example, you can see what percentage of the overall X,000,000 people you could potentially reach are senior managers, what percentage janitors, etc). Really rather useful, although it doesn’t stop LinkedIn from being a miserable, awful place where joy goes to die

    Facebook’s Workplace hits 3M paying users, launches Portal app in a wider push for video | TechCrunch – I’ll leave you with Matt Muir’s critique: – 3million paying users is a lot for a product which, whenever I’ve seen it in use, doesn’t appear to actually fulfil any practical purpose whatsoever other than giving HR another channel through which to spout platitudes about cake-based fundraising initiatives and what’s on the canteen menu today. Still, some people obviously like it (ha! Joke! Noone ‘likes’ this stuff; at best, one tolerates it while one waits for the sweet release of death), and should you be one of said people then you will be THRILLED to hear of a few exciting updates to the service. “Workplace is announcing several steps of its own into video. It’s releasing a special app that can be used on the Portal, Facebook’s video screen; and alongside that, it’s announcing new video features: captioning at the bottom of videos; auto-translating starting with 14 languages; and a new P2P architecture that will speed up video transmission for those who might be watching videos on Workplace in places where bandwidth is constrained.” Oh, and there will be a bunch of new materials and tools available to help the aforementioned HR people to get people to actually use the service, as well as METRICS and ANALYTICS and OTHER STUFF. Lucky, lucky us.

    Daily chart – Exposure to air pollution is linked to an increase in violent crime | Graphic detail | The Economist – explains the rise of rabid Han nationalism in China

    How NBA crisis brings US-China tension into American living rooms – Inkstone – “What used to be the gap between the hard consensus on China in Washington and the ambivalence or bias toward a positive perspective on the street, that gap is closing,” said Jude Blanchette, chair in China studies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington

    LVMH’s Luxury Ventures Fund Invests in 2-Year Old Streetwear Brand Madhappy — The Fashion Law

    Facebook to Pay $40M in Proposed Settlement in Video Metrics Suit | Hollywood Reporter – According to a brief in support of the settlement, Facebook would pay $40 million to resolve claims. Much of that would go to those who purchased ad time in videos, though $12 million — or 30 percent of the settlement fund — is earmarked for plaintiffs’ attorneys. The suit accused Facebook of acknowledging miscalculations in metrics upon press reports, but still not taking responsibility for the breadth of the problem. “The average viewership metrics were not inflated by only 60%-80%; they were inflated by some 150 to 900%,” stated an amended complaint.

    That’s the end of this bumper issue of links. Watch out for the next bumper issue that is likely to be equally diverse in nature

  • Choi Hyun woo & things that made last week

    Choi Hyun woo

    TV shopping channels are huge in Korea. Asian Boss did this great interview with Choi Hyun woo, one of the most successful shopping TV pitchmen (pitchwoman) in Korea.

    Looking at data from home shopping company CJ ENM Commerce division, sales are starting to focus more on premium and luxury products from international brands like Karl Lagerfeld and Vera Wang. Overall TV viewship has been declining; but TV home shopping has been steadily growing.

    Good document on how consumer behaviour and technology will affect the future of retailing and e-commerce by Sparks & Honey. Its a book rather than a presentation.

    Amazing bit of creative work by Alzheimer’s Research UK.

    We’re in a golden age of TV drama and it looks like thins are only going to get more interesting with this trailer from HBO’s adaptation of The Watchmen universe. This seems to go in a very different direction to the original Watchman series. It is picks up from the end of the original book when a ‘trans-dimensional’ invasion fails. It doesn’t have the cold war orientation of the original series and is instead a show for our times. The HBO series focuses on issues of race and class. It looks as if it could be more entertaining than the original film adaptation that felt a bit flat.

    https://youtu.be/-33JCGEGzwU

    McDonalds have pushed these ads about trust and they play on human truths like the discomfort of formal restaurants or the tyranny of choice in grocery stores. A classic example of this tension is that many people I know refuse to eat on their own in a restaurant. I don’t have that hang up at all. McDonalds deserves credit for really listening to consumer insights and playing them back tot the audience for added brand resonance.