I was browsing through the latest issue of Tekniikka & Talous (the name translated is “technology & economics”), which as a norm is a pretty much useless weekly paper. This time there were so many annoying as well as useless stories that I’m so canceling my free subscription. Stuff like Miettinen grossly misquoting Long Tail figures, Ruohonen trying rather lamely to debunk global warming stuff by comparing earth to Venus, copying content from MIT Technology Review, old news about biofuels and so on. Before the cancellation, though, I’ll comment on just a couple of last things:
E-Commerce not flying in Finland
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In addition to an article in T&T, last week there was some general discussion on how e-commerce has not really taken off in Finland. (The sad fact is that it hasn’t). Some reasons for this were presented in the T&T article, and one in particular that I can wholeheartedly support: people don’t trust the stores to deliver the goods in time. This is so true here in Finland. First of all, there’s a logistics problem. The courier companies like DHL, FedEx et al have priced themselves out of the consumer market in Finland, leaving the market to the post office (or Itella nowadays), which has only recently started to understand what things like home delivery mean.
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There are three problems with Finnish e-commerce that I personally can think of: 1) terrible selection, 2) horribly long delivery times and 3) expensive prices. There’s got to be something seriously wrong when on many occasions, foreign competition can easily trump the domestic players on all of these three areas even after the taxes and duties and, at best, intercontinental transport.
Surveillance the solution to terrorism?
Now this is stuff we’ve all heard before, but this time it’s coming from a surprising source. Joni Kämäräinen, a Finnish DoT from the Lappeenranta University of Technology, has been studying biometric 3D facial recognition systems and is quoted saying (english translation mine) the following, in reference to ubiquitous camera surveillance and biometric recognition systems:
Kysymys on siitä, halutaanko maailmassa muuttaa lainsäädäntöä vai elää terrorismin uhan alla.
The question is whether the world wants to change legislation or live under the threat of terrorism.
This is something we’ve heard from some government agencies bent setting up good security theater, but from a researcher? It’s precisely these kinds of utterly false and stupid juxtapositions that prevent us from tackling the real issues behind terrorism.. As long as we have automagic systems following our every move we’ll be safe, eh? Could we just perhaps stop chasing these Orwellian dreams and address the real issues?
On the positive side, the comic at the last page was good. But was it good enough to continue reading the paper? I don’t think so.
I could tell you some insider explanations why Itella is doing not that good, but maybe I will tell them later, in person. Suffice it to say that it looks that things are not going to get much better if it depends on Itella.