To sum it up: the bike system is operated by an advertiser, who is now using negative PR to strenghten his position in negociations with the city of Paris.
Why on earth is an advertiser operating bikes?
The city of Paris lets him use its outdoor displays for free. It seems the only advantage for the mayor is that he can claim the bike system works at no cost. This is probably the reason why he lets the advertiser keep secret the amount of his revenues from the displays. That barely honest financing scheme looks like the main problem.
Because it works (despite the advertiser's whining), and provides a service that otherwise wouldn't exist.
It's funny; I've lived in both Paris and Seattle, two cities which have the expensive and difficult-to-maintain electronic public toilets which automatically clean themselves after every use. The ones in Paris are run by JCDecaux (same company who is doing the bike rentals), and although they are dreadful to use, they work (and have worked) for years.
In Seattle, the city was approached by JCDecaux to build public toilets in exchange for putting advertising near them, but were refused. Seattle decided instead to use millions of taxpayer dollars to form their own ad-free version. The toilets rarely worked (and in any case were constantly occupied by crackheads). 2 or 3 years later, the city cut their losses and unsuccessfully tried to sell the toilets on eBay.
The company that runs the one in Paris is JCDecaux, basically the ClearChannel of Europe. They fought and won against CC to build/implement the system in Paris.
JCDecaux's losses from theft are explicitly limited by their contract with Paris, so their sudden change of heart is probably more of a PR move to aid in contract negotiations than a true sign of the viability of bike sharing schemes.
One more piece of evidence that it only takes a very small percentage of jerks to screw it up for the rest of us...
The same goes for the internet, nowadays if you design anything at all that has an end-user component you'll spend at least as much time at making it jerk-proof and doing all kinds of abuse analysis as you spend on doing features.
nowadays if you design anything at all that has an end-user component you'll spend at least as much time at making it jerk-proof and doing all kinds of abuse analysis
Customers of Kozmo.com who fondly remember getting single pints of ice cream delivered on a whim won't get off that easy this time. MaxDelivery has a $10 minimum order, and there's a $4.95 delivery charge for orders under $50. Siragusa said this is to keep customers from abusing the system, as they did with Kozmo, and he says MaxDelivery's average order size is much different than Kozmo's.
"Someone ordered a pack of Mentos. Then two hours later they'd order a pint of ice cream," said Siragusa. "People did this because there was no penalty. Kozmo had a number of orders that were unprofitable."
Kozmo's founders designed its system to reward customers for making frequent low-value orders. When the customer base responded in a way that should have been predicted by the Kozmo founders, instead of recognizing and fixing their error, those founders instead called it "abuse".
I'm perplexed by your implied comment that having to spend time making your product jerk-proof and performing abuse analysis is only done by poor workmen.
It seems to me that work must be done to create value, and work must be done to make the system idiot proof (despite the continuing ingenuity of idiots), and this is true regardless of the talent and abilities of those producing the service or product.
Work (value creation) can be more or less efficient. As stated, an inefficient workman blames his tools, instead of the way he is going about his work. In this case, and often in other cases, the customer base forms part of the toolset. The workman is saying that his tools are not doing what they are supposed to be doing, and that it is their fault.
Internals tend to attribute outcomes of events to their own control. Externals attribute outcomes of events to external circumstances.
In the present case, the customer base would be seen as uncontrollable (only susceptible to external control) by the inefficient workman, and controllable (susceptible to internal control) by the efficient workman.
work must be done to create value [...] regardless of [...] talent and abilities
I can't figure out if you're just a very clever troll or someone that has something to contribute, if the former, then congratulations, well played but it does not really help the conversation, if the latter then maybe you should try to make your point in smaller steps so that lesser minds like mine can make sense of what you are trying to communicate.
Reading again about "Locus of control" and putting that into the context that you have further provided, I think this is still a question of attitude, and your comments remain unhelpful at best, and at worst are actively misleading.
Viewing the customer as a part of my toolset does not make them internal. A defining feature of my toolset is that it is under my control. The customers I have are not under my control.
Viewing the way I generate my customer base from the collection of potential customers is largely under my control, but that is not the same thing. My customer base is more under my control, but is still not part of my toolset.
I have control over what I produce, and viewing what I produce as a mechanism for selecting customers is useful. Realising, and explicitly using, the fact that what I produce will implicitly determine the customers I get is valuable.
This is not achieved by viewing customers as part of the toolset.
In this case ... the customer base forms part of the toolset.
I do not subscribe to this theory. Toolsets can be changed, improved or mastered. I can do none of these with my customers. I can only do it with the things I use to create my services. I use tools to create services to assist my customers. Calling my customers "tools" does not help me.
The workman is saying that his tools are not doing what they are supposed to be doing, and that it is their fault.
I disagree with this analysis. The workman is saying that there are (usually a small number of) customers who require that the services be more complex in their implementation than might otherwise be expected. This is not the same thing. I know that around 80% to 90% of my customers never provoke the inbuilt protection systems in my code. The protection systems account for about 50% of my code. I have measured these things because I work in the defense industry. I know that around half my code is there because up to 20% of my customers don't use the system the way it was intended to be used. Whether this is lack of training, lack of awarenes, or malice doesn't matter. I don't "blame" them, but I know that if my customers only did what they were shown in training, and didn't do what they are trained not to do, 50% of my code would be unnecessary.
But do you mean, as Marxists contend, that variance in ability plays little or no role in variance in the efficiency of the work?
Of course not. I mean that for every worker, some of their work is producing features and facilities, and some of their work is protecting against inappropriate actions. The balance between these two might change with the abilities of the workers, but I suspect not much. It's a pretty constant ratio across my programmers. To assume what you seem to have assumed from what I have said is, again, perplexing. Perhaps we constantly talk past each other, but I'm finding it difficult in general to understand your mindset.
> Toolsets can be changed, improved or mastered. I [cannot] do [this] with my customers.
You cannot provide any value to the world that would involve a different customer base? After Kozmo re-emerged as MaxDelivery, it changed its customer base (one of its tools in value creation) by starting out with only high-density neighborhoods of Manhattan (and it continues to change its customer base as it gradually expands its delivery areas). It has mastered its customer base (again, one of its tools in value creation) by learning how that tool reacts to various delivery deals, and by employing improved delivery deals. Please see the article linked above.
For at least many decades, bike-sharing advocates and politicians have been failing to efficiently employ the tools at their disposal, one of which is their customer base. That tool, the customer base, has been blamed over and over again as "the problem" as bike-sharing advocates and politicians have repeatedly employed essentially the same defectively-designed policies.
I don't think that you can compare a broken business model with abuse of a system by spammers and others hell bent on destroying some of the nicer sites that well meaning teams have developed.
By that analogy usenet was 'asking for it' because it was open, worked and actually contained great content. Of course that meant that it was ideal for the jerks of this world to try to peddle their wares, eventually resulting in the near destruction of usenet.
On the web the relationship between the number of people that you have to employ to look after abusers vs the number of people that are actually productive is a good way to measure your success....
the relationship between the number of people that you have to employ to look after abusers vs the number of people that are actually productive is a good way to measure your success.
Yes. That is what I said. The workman with internal-locus-of-control improves his value-creation system based on feedback, and is seen as more successful. The workman with external-locus-of-control blames parts of his value-creation system for acting (in his eyes) wrongly, and is seen as less successful.
Recognising that customers behave a certain way and taking that into account is valuable. Blaming the customer for behaving that way is of little use. You have conflated people recognising that people behave in ways that cause difficulty with blaming them for doing so. Not helpful.
Separation of concerns is as useful in customer identification as it is in writing software.
If I change my model to change my customers, I am changing my customers, not changing my toolset. You are deliberately confusing/conflating two fundamentall different concepts,and I believe that while you personally, and perhaps others, may derive some benefit from it, doing so inhibits effective communication.
I agree that blaming the customer base for the failure of the bike-sharing schemes is wrong, and I agree that it may be that changing the target customer base is the only effective solution, but do not agree that calling that "changing your toolset" is helpful.
True, but I think the bike theft issue is a much more easily solved problem than keeping jerks off the internet. If they could just cut the thefts in half, they'd be making a profit again. That could likely be accomplished with a minimal amount of clever thinking regarding security.
They should figure out a way where you rent them with a credit card, and if you don't return it and scan your credit card getting credit for returning it, they charge you to replace it.
They could still get damaged and returned as such, but at least they couldn't get completely stolen, which is the most valuable thing for criminals to do since that actually gets them money.
That's exactly how it works (well, you can use a debit or credit card) and in fact, if you're not a subscriber, a hold of 150€ is placed on your card until you return the bike.
But I think they have to put an artifically low hold of 150€ on the bike (instead of the real cost of 400€) because far fewer could and/or would use it if that much money was held.
A lot of the bikes are stolen from people who rented them (and in this case, maybe the person doesn't have to pay the 150€ if he/she can prove it?). Some are stolen from the trucks that are used to regularly transfer bikes across the city to even the distribution. Some people figured out how to hack the kiosk to give them multiple bikes for one payment (that has since been patched). Also, people can of course get them with stolen credit cards and by breaking the lock. You can see how the thefts can add up.
I don't think the system is doomed though because people in Paris absolutley love the Velibs and want them to stay. I'm sure that they'll figure something out, whether it's higher rental costs, extra security or something else.
Agreed. If the bike doesn't get returned, simply charge the account for the cost of a new bike.
It would also be helpful (and maybe costly) to implement some RFID solution to keep track of the unique bikes and the user pairs. If a bike is damaged, the rider can fill out a form online and the company can charge-back the previous user if its not standard wear and tear. This would cut down on the vandalism of the bikes.
And the pedals could power the transmitter. It could work on a dual RFID solution, one in the bike, one in your rental card. Riding the bike without a renters card could then trigger the giant sky magnet to aim at that bike and suck up the thief.
Here's the thing I don't understand. You cannot rent the bike unless you use a debit card (credit cards are very rare in france) or a monthly/yearly metro subscription. So they actually must know who rented the bike when it disappeared.
Bank ('debit') cards in France kinda work like US credit cards. The bank will happily let your account balance go negative and then charge you fees+high interest rate.
I've been in the US 7 years and I haven't quite yet understood why credit cards companies and banks are separate entities. (regulation?)
French banks usually give a (small) credit line above which deposits must stay (interest-free). Below it you pay the full fledged interest rate + fee. The debit cards tend to debit your purchases at the end of the month too. So in the usual case, within the credit line, it is financed by fees rather than interests.
However credit cards do exist, even if they have been maligned for a long time in media:
Major credit card issuers in France are often linked to the retail sector (see http://www.pass.fr) .. others got consolidated into traditional banks (cetelem for example)
The traditionally French "no permanent credit" model for banks tend to raise fees and favour low deposits I guess.
In both cases anyway the banks pray on the poor / moderately poor people to "dress them up" with all sorts of products and credits they don't need. (And arguably, that society pays up after 30 years)
If I had to guess, I'd say it's probably just because that's how it always has been. Bank accounts where you put your money and loans have always been separate.
So when credit cards came around, it probably wasn't an existing bank saying "maybe we'll let people go negative and then charge them huge interest"; it was a separate entity offering people what essentially is a way to be conveniently loaned money.
They probably just never integrated into 1 entity.
There may be regulation as well, but none that I know.
This also has consequences for social networks, such as Hacker News. It's OK when everyone shares a common purpose and common interests, but get enough newbies and the culture won't propagate.
The various car share schemes that require significant buy-in and have penalties for non-compliance and that shifts the game theory into a configuration that works. Maybe something similar will eventually be required for social networks too.
Sorry, I should've been clearer. Yes, this is what's commonly known as the tragedy of the commons, but that is more-or-less a (large) multiple-player version of the Prisoners' Dilemma, which is easier to analyse and harder to condemn. There are differences, but the underlying principle is similar enough.
Too often these days people simply say "Tragedy of the Commons", wring their hands, and say that people are idiots. I was trying to make it clearer that game theory really does predict this behavior, that it's not irrational, that it is to be expected, and you have to change the rules to change the behavior.
Exactly how to change the rules is left as an exercise for the interested reader.
Isn't Tragedy of the commons a variant of the prisoner's dilemma ? It has a high number of prisoners, but the payoff matrix is the same. Similar to an arms race too.
Toulouse has a similar scheme... it's not the bikes that seemed to get stolen, it's the shopping baskets on the front that either get unscrewed or simply cut off.
