Why Sears is Dying

As I walked around the mall I realized Sears is an outlier.  In a world of experiential shopping of beautiful stores with cultivated and gamified shopper experience housed in MGM Casino like backdrops; Sears is ugly.  Tons of products crammed into a space, actively trying to sell products off the shelf.  It's like the internet doesn't exist.

Image from http://crazyadventuresinparenting.com/2013/05/free-summer-camps-in-san-antonio-microsoft-store.html

To succeed Sears needs to embrace shopping trends which are now both in-person and online.  Look at Sears compared to the Microsoft Store.  One is fun and beautiful the other looks dated.  Sears isn't embracing screens and it should.  One has properly and purposely spaced user experiences of products the other is the opposite.  One has modern lighting and shelving, the other looks like a 1980s MVA/DMV.

Image from http://www.deadanddyingretail.com/2011/12/midway-mall-dying-or-recovering.html

Online versus Physical Retail isn't an either/or proposition.  Choosing between going all online or all physical retail.  Sears should leverage it's impressive real estate to sell products online, particularly with focus of online sales while in the store. Using its physical space to beautifully display what their products can do in a gamified manner.  This beautiful appearance will attract and enable the first step to a completion of a sale likely online with modern "Amazon-like" delivery.

Picture this, you go into Sears you see some great air compressor with screens depicting what they can do for you.  You then think wow that is interesting, take an RFID or photo scanner out on the Sears app which allows you to connect to that product online and if you buy in the next five minutes you get your taxes paid for by Sears and free shipping.

Instead the experience is akin to seeing air compressors side-by-side in an old multi-purpose room replete with 1990s school lighting.  You really need to want that air compressor in this experience, and Sears makes you jump through several more hoops. You then have to look for a salesman to complete the transaction at a Point of Sale unit.  Why wouldn't that same consumer just buy one online and check out the Apple Store with their newfound time?

Sears isn't fun.  It isn't modern.  It is outdated and it needs to embrace 2017 retail which is about fun  (not necessity).

What's Chipotle's Problem?

I wrote a blog post a few years ago when a Chipotle employee boasted about running over a cat on Facebook.  This post received about 1,000,000 views.  While I am not a cat lover their response to the post revealed something systemic which is still rearing its ugly head.

Specifically Chipotle backed their employees 100% and showed almost no contrition nor discipline of their offending employee.  Forget Social Media flow charts, this was something that struck at the root of the entire corporate culture.  The customer was not always right.  The customer was not even sometimes right.  The customer was wrong.  The customer was on the outside of their circle of trust.  

This again happened when Chipotle employees were calling customer very insulting terms on social media.   Chipotle again defended their employees completely without contrition nor any visible discipline.

This manifested itself several times in the last several years which lead to loss of customers and worth.  All of the e-coli outbreaks could be contaminated food, or they could have been employees not properly washing their hands or following sanitary guidelines.  When the employee is right, it is hard to really see and correct what is causing issues.  

Then it is reported in several outlets that Chipotle gets their customer credit cards info stolen from almost every store.  Again it is a surface issue, like the lack of proper social media practices with the cat issue, but it is also something deeper.  The customer is not valued as highly as the employee.  The employee information wasn't stolen, or it wasn't reported that it was stolen; it was the customer's information that was stolen.  

The remedy for Chipotle is simple.  They forgot the cardinal rule of business, the customer keeps the lights on.  The customer is most important, the customer MUST come first. 

'Alien Megastructure' Should Not Be Discounted Due to Lack of 4th Dimensional RF

The Alien Megastructure which has caused anonymously darkening caused SETI to scan the area looking for RF.  There was no RF causing many to discount the possibility of Aliens.

However, it is very unlikely an advanced civilization would send RF signals via the 4th dimension.  The speed of light is quite limiting for a space going civilization to transmit signals through, more likely is that a dimensional rift is generated and communication signals are sent through a different dimension, or through distorted space.

How the Apple iWatch can win over the luxury watch market

When I heard the expected sale price of the iWatch I was not at all surprised.  After all what is $1,000 when Rolex' often fetch more than $10,000 and the iWatch is much more advanced, right?! 

Well it may not win over the Luxury watch market.  Its about more than transistors its a link to the past when things were handcrafted and made with love.  The iWatch will not carry the prestige or the same wrist presence as a vintage Top Time or a two tone GMT. In fact, there is a distinct dislike at this point of smart watches from the Luxury market.  You will need acceptance by that luxury market to be able to position at $1,000 pricing. 

Here's my proposed gameplan for Apple to to win over the luxury watch market:

1. Do what existing luxury tech watches do well
1. Accurate Weather Reporting
2. Mapping and Memory location
3. Altimeter, Compass, GPS, 
4. Heart Rate Monitor 
5. Emergency Beacon 
6. Keep time ruggedly, dependably, and in a smart and substantial package 

There is no 2.  

Apple should target the successful luxury tech watches and out perform them.  If they try to win over the luxury market with calendars, mp3 players, Bluetooth, NFC, they will likely be shunned at the luxury level.

If String Theory is Right, our World View is Wrong

For the last 200 years or so the prevalent pragmatic theory presided casting aside mysticism, magic, and inductive logic.  However, inductive logic works if string theory is real and that's not the only thing. 

Just starting with the premise of needing 26 "critical" spacetime dimensions and perhaps no cap.  We are not only posed with the physical ramifications of this theory but also the philosophical.  Perhaps no time in history have we needed real philosophers (not the new versions who debate the whiteness of the crossing guy, but the theoretical physicists and mathematicians of yore in the model of Plato, Descartes, Aristotle, and Locke).

Since there seems to be a lack of these philosophers with a math and physics background to discuss the implications of 26 dimensions I'll take a stab at starting the conversation in this posts and others.

So I think the first thing we have to establish is that each additional dimension provides a space for infinite of the previous dimension.  Lines have infinite dots, planes have infinite lines, 3D has infinite planes, time has infinite 3D spaces, the fifth dimension has infinite timelines, the sixth dimension has infinite infinite timelines.  We can take this out to 26 dimensions. 

What we find when we really consider the implications goes beyond a galaxy where anything happens, a place where we are part of the creation process, a place where we jump from different timelines in what we perceive as free will.

It also means that the things we create may have interesting spill over into different dimensions.  Beyond just parallel universe phenomenon which would occur in the infinite timeline scenario of the 5 dimension.  I think we could even extrapolate some sort of ontological reality for abstract thoughts.  This is similar to Platonic Forms, discussed thousands of years ago.

It also suggests along with the finding of gravitational waves, that the big bang may have been an expansion of dimensions with gravitational waves constant throughout since it was expanded from an initially space compressed dimension.

Prayers and Reaction to Sandy Hook, Fairfeild County CT School Shooting

First of all my deepest prayers and heartfelt condolences for the victims of this evil act of terror, there are good people in the world who hold you in pure heartfelt ἀγάπη. 

I used the word evil because its more than mental illness at some point when you aim a gun at kindergarten kids, arguably at their most magical part of their life and most magical part of the year, its beyond sick, its demonic and evil.

Before we debate gun control, we need to take a hard look at our society that incubated recent terrorism.  Its time to recognize some people are not positive, they are negative -- they want to destroy things.  Perhaps instead of incarcerating people in a reactive fashion we should consider proactive measures that conform with the bill of rights.  Perhaps as a society we need to do better to identify people who are not satisfied and provide help and assistance to see if they can become for lack of a better term a positive influence; in practice the opposite of the Fairfield County shooter, purportedly a Mr. Lanza, in his 20s.

I think as a society we have to shed the labels of the old world while distilling their core meanings.  There are some people who do not want good things to happen, not in the name of competition but by their nature they desire destruction.  I also think there are influences and people who want a better America, a better world, and we should help these people succeed in their dreams, proactively and legally eliminating resistance from people who want to destroy positive progress, positivity, love.  The world is amazing these people want to make it horrendous.  We should identify things that aren't amazing in our world and try to change it for the better.   

This shooting is a statement, and the underlying statement (the shooter may have been too limited in mental capacity to identify or articulate) is fuck you to everything good we hold dear as humans.  I am not OK with that. I'm not sure gun control will stop one of these negative people from buying a truck and loading it with bombs, or identifying the next point of pain.  So it should only be part of the solution. 

Purely Technical Articles and Reviews -> mark tech review

I've been playing around with the idea for awhile of having a blog devoted to technical reviews and technical articles.  I've posted some videos on youtube including the launch day "iPhone Problems", and I've also posted to both Ninja Tickets and this blog. I now feel that the time has come where posting technical articles confuses web crawlers and humans about what my blogs are about and should also be arranged in a more compelling verticals. 

New technical reviews and articles will be posted here: http://mark-tech.blogspot.com/

UPDATE: Range Rover Information and Offroading tech will be posted here: http://range-rover-l405-l322-p38.blogspot.com/