unraveling
30.Apr.2002
One of my coworkers is climbing Mt. Everest. He's keeping
a
weblog with a few pictures that can make it over the satellite.
His description of stepping into a crevasse is thrilling. Accounts from
Everest are fascinating, often thrilling, and with each one I hear, I'm
ever more certain I don't care to go there. Jon Krakauer's
Into Thin Air is a good place to start, if you need one.
When Alan gets back from the mountain, the merger is likely to be well
underway, now that
Hewlett's case
has been dismissed.
Your tax dollars at work, in the courtroom:
Qwest
guy testifies that Microsoft crushing a potential competitor
"couldn't happen." It would be "nonsensical." And oh, by the way,
Qwest guy "knew little about Microsoft's past anticompetitive conduct
and had no experience with the kind of Web-based services at issue in
the case," and "had no specific knowledge about Microsoft's plans."
In the telecom business, we have that thing most like the
"always-on infrastructure" that captains of industry like to talk about.
Technologies work "seamlessly," and people have come to expect that.
Failing to meet "this expectation of ubiquitous connectivity" would
render a service with "little or no prospect of commercial viability."
Hello telecom? Meet 500-pound monopoly gorilla. This ain't your
daddy's AT&T, this is your worst nightmare.
What are your plans for the
national day and moment
of prayer, May 2nd, at high noon? (Is that noon UTC, noon EDT, noon
local...?) In our capital, and across our mighty nation, the plan is for
everyone to be praying together that G*d might grant supernatural powers
to our president and Congress. (What about the Supremes, one
wonders?)
For those of us who don't really feel it's government's place to tell us
what and how to pray, a possible alternative activity would be to
play the Doors'
Soft Parade on your boom box. Otherwise, I suppose a simple shake
of the head, chuckle, and moment of silence will suffice. Some
reflection on the rather frightening
religious
views of our current First Father might be warranted as well, as I
suspect that like Father, like Son in this case.
Some discussion of dissenting buttons came up, and one idea was
Matthew
6:5-6. Seems just right for the occasion.
28.Apr.2002
This morning's provocative sermon from Deb Smith was titled "Friends,
Romans, Consumers?" One of the suggested questions was to examine
state standards for
graduation and consider how many of them are in service
to capitalism, and how many to citizenship. Zilog's reposting of
an Idaho
Statesman piece from more than two years ago has this telling
q&a:
Why did Idaho decide to develop graduation standards for high school
students?
Idaho is one of the last states to develop standards. They grew out of a
concern from colleges and industry that high school students may have a
diploma, but they also have serious gaps in their knowledge of basics
like reading and math. Both colleges and businesses say they spend too
much time and money teaching employees the same material they should
have learned in public school.
No citizenship there.
Our citizen Legislators had to pare the education budget to fit between
post-bubble revenue declines and post-Clinton tax reduction.
Some
things came up short, but Sen. Darrel Deide from Caldwell tells us
that the only thing to fear is fear itself: attitude is everything when
it comes to the education budget. Funding for training teachers to
teach to the standards test -- we're looking at rolling them in for 2005
-- is one of the things that had to be trimmed.
Speaking of consuming... Boise's sprawl and housing boom continues
apace, although the
Statesman reports
that Harris Ranch is "scaling back." In our
growth-oriented
vernacular, that doesn't mean it's getting smaller, it only means it
might not get as big as it was once imagined. Instead of topping out
at 3,439 homes, now they think 3,282 should do it. They refer to the
not-yet-constructed East Park Center Bridge as "all-important." That
must be because "without the bridge, Wardle cannot build Harris Ranch
out beyond 419 homes...."
Ok, so it has fewer than 420 homes now, they don't have the go-ahead for
the bridge just yet, but (if and) when they do, they can "build it out"
to... 7 or 8 times as many homes.
The general topic of advertising (and sprawl, and cars... they seem to
go together somehow) made me think about what you don't see in
automobile advertising (excepting locally-produced, bad-suit car
dealer ads, since they don't have the production budget to escape
reality):
No traffic
No dust
No waiting at the service desk
No construction zones
No tar and gravel chipped windshields
No sprawl
No road rage
No parking lot
No car salesmen
No smog
No heavy metals runoff
No junkyards
No oil spots on the driveway
No driveways
No garages
No pumping gas
No drilling for oil
No stinky refinery
No dirty little war
26.Apr.2002
Mike Cassidy's color coverage of this week's trial of the century.
The post-trial briefs were due a few minutes ago, and I expect Judge
Chandler will give HP the high sign by Monday or Tuesday at the latest.
The plaintiffs simply did not produce evidence that would justify
throwing out the shareholder vote, imho.
As
customers blast
Idaho Power, I can't help but be amazed that someone who
"said they bought their homes in the 1970s with the encouragement of
Idaho Power, which touted the all-electric homes as a low-cost option"
would think that the deal was forever. You had to keep your thermostat
below 62 day and night to keep from going into the 2,000 kWh rate tier?
I guess that economic incentive was working then. Imagine how they'll
complain when they find out that the supply of cheap gas for their SUVs
isn't inexhaustible, either.
Disclaimer: I own some Idacorp stock. And we barely use 300 kWh/mo.
25.Apr.2002
I went back to Fred Meyer today to return the annoyingly low-quality
metal pulley I'd bought the other day. Their selection was all of one
type, varying only in size. All the pulleys were inexpensive; I paid
$2.49 plus tax for the medium-sized one I bought. The old good news-bad
news thing: you will be able to buy an incredible array of consumer
goods at remarkably low prices. Most of them will be garbage.
The clerk at the second customer service counter was quite dimunitive,
just a head higher than the countertop, but she piped up in the usual
fashion, "I can help you over here!" I proffered my receipt and the
item in question with its torn packaging, said "I'd like to return
this." I was looking at this girl's cute freckled face and thinking she
just couldn't be 16, and don't you need to be at least 16 to
work in a place like this? As I was thinking that, she perused the
receipt, fingered the item in question, and asked "is this it?"
"Yes, it's the pulley." She pulled out the form for my signature and
phone number, asked me to sign it. I couldn't contain my curiosity any
longer.
"You seem to be a remarkably young employee..." I hinted, leaving her an
opening to respond.
"Oh, it's Take Your Daughters to Work day!" she said, smiling an
absurdly sweet 10-year-old smile. She carried out the rest of the
transaction, up to the point of disbursement, when she called the other
clerk, her mother, over to finish the deal. All the paperwork was in
order, and what was my complaint, again?
"It's of insufficient quality," I said.
"It it broken?"
"No, it works as well it was designed to do, but that's not adequate for
what I need."
"I hear that a lot," she said, ringing me up, and delivering the cash
refund.
The Boise Weekly (still working on getting their website going, alas; no
economic motivation I'm afraid) is running an interesting series of covers from
readers' submissions. This week's is titled "Ambulation of Succulent
Comestibles," an insouciant collage of produce photographs, forming a
happy trio out for a stroll. Look for one of those cheery red
newsstands and pick up your free copy of the paper and Molly McIntosh's
artwork.
Judge Chandler wrapped up the live drama portion of the
three-day trial of Walter Hewlett vs. Hewlett-Packard, finishing on
time with the expedient of taking post-trial briefs (due tomorrow)
rather than closing statements. The business looks possibly a bit
shady, but in the absence of any significant damning evidence -- and if
there was any, no one reported it -- it's on to the big merger.
Given the apparent weakness of
Hewlett's
case it's more than a little disconcerting that the company was put
through this circus. The numbers might not add up, but it was a battle
of projections, and when challenged about the vote-buying claim in
court, Hewlett admitted "he had no reason not to believe HP executives
when they said they had not bought Deutsche Bank's vote. They were
saying that before it went to court, why wasn't that good enough
then? He wanted to stop the merger, that much is clear, and it's also
clear why he wanted to stop it: he thinks it's a bad idea.
But we had the showdown of shareholder opinion, and the tally came out
against him. The last month of uncertainty has only done good for
the competition.
But soon, HP's M&A teams (including Deutsche Bank) will get their
$millions in bonuses, and Hewlett's teams will have to settle for their
time and expenses. The execs will get pumped-up salaries and bonuses
for their expanded responsibility, and the rank and file will get a shot
at the synergy lottery. That's business
for ya.
The
Workaround: 32 steps to frustration, from the Technology section of
the NY Times. We all know the frustration, and misery loves company, so
the article is satisfying, even if it doesn't really solve any of your
problems.
I'd never heard of the
"begin " bug in Outlook Express, so I had to try it out.
Sure enough, the mailer loses the "begin ," and turns the rest of the
line (or file?) into a file name for an empty file. (In their defense,
not too many email messages really need to begin with 'begin',
decapitalized, and followed by two spaces.)
23.Apr.2002
Spam can only get worse, much worse. It's not just the
low-life
plague anymore, the
big
corps are playing too.
"Online porn and gambling sites pay up to $50 per new sign-up."
I guess we'll just have to suffer until everyone who wants online
porn and gambling reaches saturation.
First person spammer testimonial, from the
King of Cajun
Spam. "What do ethics have to do with it? It's all about the law,
what you can and cannot do."
United States Patent 6,368,227
Olson April 9, 2002
Method of swinging on a swing
Abstract
A method of swing on a swing is disclosed, in which a user positioned on a
standard swing suspended by two chains from a substantially horizontal tree
branch induces side to side motion by pulling alternately on one chain and
then the other.
A view of
our
natural heritage, coming from Idaho and our neighborhood, put
together by our eastern university. At first
I thought it was a bit basic, than a bit broad, but ultimately I was
entertained, and informed about some things I didn't know. The 3rd of 3
parts is on tomorrow night, locally.
21.Apr.2002
Reading
Dan
Popkey's column about Cecil Andrus' return to active participation
in state politics gives me hope for the state and its Democratic party.
After this year's dismal performance by the Republican government,
perhaps the majority will be prepared to try democracy again.
The way to get there is to fight for what you believe in. As Cece put
it, "You remember what I had to do? Sweet talk and roses and chocolates.
And if that didn't work, hit 'em in the mouth."
20.Apr.2002
Having the government dispense propaganda in the War on Some Drugs
is arguably a bad idea. Having the government
censor
physicians seems like a very bad idea.
Bill Keller offers up some provocative "Themes for an Opposition":
1. Take the moral high ground on capital punishment;
2. Simplify the tax system.
3. Kill Star Wars, and stop the Defense Department's slippery slide
toward user-friendly nuclear weapons. The clothing-challenged emperor's
interogative is: "ARE THEY OUT OF THEIR MINDS?!"
4. Lift the embargo on Cuba. (Psst: the Cold War is over. We
won.)
19.Apr.2002
Here's a slightly different angle on the Authors' Guild v. Amazon thing
that I wrote about earlier this week, from email to me, presented as the
"real deal," and reposted with permission:
The Guild asked Bezos and company to just tone done the marketing of
used books on the pages for new books. "New" meaning just published the
other day. Not out-of-print books. Not ten-year old dog-eared copies of
"The Shining." New. Not even current titles that are selling well.
Brand new. The Guild just wanted to give new books, often written by
people who don't make anything remotely like real money (I'm one of
them), a chance to get some traction in the market before used copies
started popping up on the same page as new copies. Bezo's got hysterical
and rather than just be polite about a really minor (to him) request,
told the people on whose backs he earns his living to shove it. In
turn, the Guild just suggested to its members that they link their
personal sites to another online bookstore. After that, Bezos geared up
his P.R. machinery to make it sound like the Guild is going to send
storm troopers into church thrift stores and incarcerate people for
reselling their copies of "Iacocca" and "Jonathan Livingston Seagul."
Which is as ridiculous as it sounds. Nobody buys more used books than
writers.
As far as library royalties go, that's not for real either. Fifteen
years ago congress passed a bill that funded study of the issue of
working out a reasonable system that might give authors five cents when
their books got checked out of the library. The Guild supported the
study. When the study completed, it was clear that it wasn't workable,
and the Guild dropped it.
Larry Ellison, CEO of Oracle, has always struck me as being a little
creepy. The too chi-chi suits, the Japanese wanna-be house, the
hair-do, the who's-got-the-most-billions pissing contest. After reading
Jeffrey Rosen's article in last Sunday's NY Times magazine, "Silicon
Valley's Spy Game," I get the impression that he's doing for software
what Edward Teller did for defense. For everyone at Oracle other than
the head man, policy questions are something for their customers to
worry about. For the head man, concerns about privacy are easily
dismissed. "No one has given me a substantive example of what will
happen that's bad" after the government implements his grand vision of
the Oracle über-database: "we're going to track everything."
We've been sending our supercomputers off to work on weapons systems.
The Japanese want to study global climate, and their latest
big
iron is faster than our top 20 combined. The CalTech guy's
response is amusing in that light: "These guys are blowing us out of the
water, and we need to sit up and take notice." So to speak.
Bill Gates to
testify.
Hope he does better than his last outing, that embarassing videotaped
deposition. If you're reading this, Bill (ha!), here's a tip for you:
even if you're really, really sure you're smarter than Judge
Kollar-Kotelly, don't let on.
18.Apr.2002
Cringely is no slouch, he's giving advice to IBM on how to pull out
of their funk. The more entertaining part is how visionary leaders all
have two tricks, and after they've used them, if something else is
needed, it's time for a new leader.
The Senate
"voted
by a wide margin to block oil and gas production in the Arctic
National Wildlife Refuge." (NYTimes)
Senator Murkowski of Alaska thinks this means we need more Republicans
in the Senate. Idaho's Senator Larry Craig thinks it means that gas
prices aren't high enough yet. Could they really be so stupid to
not consider that the American public disagrees with their position?
Microsoft's
latest numbers are in, and they were a little disappointing. $3.3
billion operating profit (but only $2.74B net) on revenue of $7.25
billion for the quarter. Only just over a third of the revenue they
took in went to the bottom line. Imagine how crestfallen you'd be!
My calculator says that's 38% net revenue, quite a bit higher than the
22.7% that Yahoo!'s screen is showing this evening. Check out the
competition, in this
stock screen of companies with profit margin more than 20%, $5B or
more in sales, and at least $1B market cap. These are the big boys.
17.Apr.2002
More interesting weather today, wish I could've captured a picture of
how beautiful it was on the way home from work. Snow on the Boise
front, down to 4500 feet, or so. Big thunderstorms to the west,
with smaller clouds in front of the towering, dark gray masses.
Flowering trees in the afternoon sun... springtime in the Rockies.
Neo-Creationism makes another run at Darwinism, and, according to
Jim Holt, comes up short.
Uniting vim with KDE. I'm not on Linux yet, but I like the sound of
it, a lot. One editor to rule them all, and in the darkness bind
them.
The IEEE punts on the
DMCA.
The Authors Guild says
people should remove
their links to Amazon, because Amazon sells used books. Great idea.
We should close all those damn lending libraries, too!
Bezos said, in fact, that the AG "from time to time has advocated
charging public libraries royalties on books they loan out."
For real?!
A "researcher" funded by Microsoft finds that
monopolies are really good for consumers. There's a stunning
revelation. That's almost as good as the CEO of AMD ("can you do me a
favor?") saying that
penalizing Microsoft would be bad because Bill told him so.
16.Apr.2002
Kuna, Idaho, used to be best known for its caves, and the local
sports team, the Cavemen. Now it has Representative Bill Sali,
running for his 7th term in the state Legislature.
One the one hand, Sali's trying to collect on a lawsuit for injuries
from a car accident that he says have left him impaired. On the other,
he says he's still got enough oars in his boat to navigate the tranquil
waters of law-making in Idaho.
"How shall I say this? Much of the time in the Legislature critical
thinking skills are not necessarily needed. I donīt mean to malign
anyone, but after you've been around a while down there and you know the
rhythm of how the day goes, you just know what is coming next, and you
learn to ferret out what is important and what's not."
Reported in
Dan Popkey's
column in the Idaho Statesman, the story is more incredible than
fiction. It'll be interesting to see if Kuna sends Bill back to the
Statehouse, or if he has to "retire" to lawyering and drumming.
Is it the mark of the Beast? The ultimate in Big Brother technology?
A Gen Y fashion statement? Or a lifesaver? We shall see, as
implantable microchips turn into products for humans.
(Thanks to Jeff Harrow's
Technology Report
for that pointer.)
I seem to be collecting more things on my "I should read this" list than
on my "I have read this and
recommend it" list. So much to read, so
little time. For my own benefit, at least, here are some things I'd
like to read:
-
Into the Buzzsaw : Leading Journalists Expose the Myth of a Free
Press, by Kristina Borjesson (Editor), Gore Vidal. The sausage
factory that makes our news.
-
Stupid White Men ...and Other Sorry Excuses for the State of the
Nation!, by Michael Moore, at the top of the NYT bestseller list for a
couple weeks now. Will Moore be turning into a fat cat? He's unlikely
to lose his sense of humor whether or not he does. Amazon.com's review
says it's "as fulminating and crammed with infuriating facts as any
right-wing bestseller."
-
Cradle to Cradle : Remaking the Way We Make Things,
by William McDonough and Michael Braungart. Heard McDonough talk on the
radio the other night. He makes a lot of sense talking about the next
industrial revolution
A new entry in the weblog navel-gazing genre:
weblogs are super
hot! Get one today!
It's not just an oxymoron list, it's the
oxymoronlist domain.
"Microsoft Works" currently shown as number 1, reminding me of the
brilliant parody of their "Where do you want to go today?" campaign with
the slogan "Will it work today?" It didn't, for me today, because I
finally succumbed to the corporate momentum to upgrade to Office2000.
After 5 calls to the support desk (this is the intranet
support desk, where calls do get answered), and three install
attempts, it actually was working. Getting the remnants of Office97
scraped clean was apparently the big problem, with no valid source
installation to use for the uninstall program.
I discovered (while watching support agents run my machine remotely)
that not only is there a
Microsoft Installer Clean-up Utility, but
also a Microsoft Office Clean-up and a much improved
Regcleaner
tool for dealing with registry cruft.
After all that, I will still have to be distracted and annoyed another
dozen or two times to get all my settings back the way I like them, turn
off the new Clippy, turn off the Incredible Morphin' Menus, and so on.
Amazingly, the
reasons for avoiding O2k
that I wrote about almost 3 years ago are still true. Substitute
OfficeXP as needed. (Which is to say don't substitute OfficeXP,
as it's not needed.
I'm not sure which I like better, an advocacy lawfirm nicknamed
MoFo, or sending spammers
invoices for $50 a pop.
Citizen response to the Hollings' abomination is running about
80,000 to 0
against. Will lawmakers get the message?
Ok, we got the Taliban out of power, and put the warlords back in
charge.
Now
what?
14.Apr.2002
We've had five kinds of weather before noon. Steady rain. Clearing,
and sunshine. Showers, thundershowers, downpour, and now back to
drizzle. A week ago (was that all?) the lawn was awakening from a
winter slumber, today it's sprung to junior jungle "must be cut as soon
as dry" height.
How can you have a shareholder revolt when the
election is rigged? Would you rather increase the number of shares
available for options grants enough to cover a 3 million share grant,
or not, and fork over half of that in "non-equity" cash? That's the
choice before the shareholders of Jones Apparel Company.
Let's see, when would you like to know your company's CEO is selling
stock? Today, or
6 weeks
after filing for bankruptcy? Let's count loans to executives,
canceled options, and hedges too, what the heck.
Business intelligence - no, it's not another oxymoron, but the nickname
for
making
sense of mountains of data. Cringely takes us on the 5 cent
tour.
13.Apr.2002
The Ides of April, not nearly as foreboding as last month's. Trees
are blooming, tulips are up again. It's
spring! S'posed to be in the 70s today, oh my.
gwbush.com
continues to be chuckle-filled. I like the bumper stickers. "Don't
Blame Me / I voted with the majority." Today's attraction, though,
was the radio ad about
Dick Cheney's company selling $23M worth of technology to one corner
of the Access of Evil, Iraq.
Global Crossing's lawyers
out
their takeover bidders with an email distribution list. D'OH!
No doubt 3 or 5 people must be shocked, shocked by the revelations of
"possible conflicts of interest between analysts and investment
bankers."
(
Financial Times)
In larger print, the
Washington Post reports on "thousands of e-mails and documents" in
which "Merrill Lynch analysts sometimes derided as 'junk' and 'crap'
the very stocks they were promoting with encouragement from
investment-banking colleagues."
'nother one of those "Nigerian" help-us-move-our-millions-of-dollars
scams in the inbox. I wonder what the hit rate is for that thing, it's
been around awhile. "You will assure me of your unquestionable
integrity and reputation to transact a business of such a great
volume of money perfectly." "You will receive 25% of the total sum for
your wholesome assistance." That's 25% of
fifty million bucks Mr. Songo Abubakar is offering me.
Woo-hoo!
A secret email correspondent tells me the "wavy gray dude," (a.k.a.
Louis Rukeyser, it took me a minute) has gone to CNBC, starting later
this month. I caught the end of this week's Wall Street Week Without
Louis Rukeyser, and I have to say the show's lost what magic it had.
It wasn't a lot, but it was something.
Hospitals getting into
alternative medicine leveraging the Deepak Chopra "brand."
"For 10 years, people have been saying that I must exploit the Chopra
brand, that I'm a brand," Dr. Chopra said. "I don't like that, so I've
resisted it. But the fact is, yes, I'm a brand."
I wonder what that feels like?
I have no doubt that the personal attention that comes with the stuff
they're calling alternative medicine -- massage, guided visualization,
etc. -- has a salutory effect, versus being doctored in the usual way.
And the hospitals like it because it's more they can bill for.
Is Computer Associates the next big
corporate accounting
scandal? (Xerox may be getting off for "only"
a $10M fine.) A billion dollars in stock granted to three
executives. Such a deal! The story said it was later pared to only
about a quarter of that; I guess the subsequent six quarters of losses
(and the shareholder suits) made 'em change their minds.
New data on the efficacy of prayer (perhaps):
Beliefnet.com going belly-up.
That nasty Hailstorm seems to be
clearing up. "They ran into the reality that many companies don't
want any company between them and their customers." Especially not
certain companies, one might imagine.
Meanwhile, the companies that already have databases full of customer (or at
least "user") information are hungry to
milk some profit out of them. Brace yourself for an onslaught of
spam. Login to your Yahoo account and check out how many ways they're
preparing to market to you (starting June 15th), and see if you might
want to say "No, no, no, no, (etc.)" rather than accept the the default
"Yes, yes, yes, yes, (etc.)"
11.Apr.2002
From a
Wharton piece (registration required) about the business of call centers:
"There also are examples of how the call center's Big Brother system can
backfire. Data from a foreign bank showed that some agents habitually hung
up on customers right after answering their calls, Brown said. These agents
apparently realized they were rated on the number of calls they
answered, not the quality of service they gave."
They call it
Planetary Photojournal
but Solar System Photojournal might be a better title. Either way, it's
full of stunning images of the planets in our neighborhood.
Next time I have a deep question about angiosperm phylogeny, I'll
spend some more time
here.
9.Apr.2002
I flipped onto Wall Street Week last week, and didn't think too much of
Louis Ruckeyser's absence, or the fact that I didn't recognize any of
the pundits on it. I'm not terribly regular at watching it. I did
think a bit odd that after next week's host was announced, there wasn't
any mention of Louis, or the "with Louis Ruckeyser" tag to the name of
the show. Today, this
NY
Times article tells the rest of the story I hadn't heard:
Maryland Public Television gave him the bum's rush after he announced
his pending ouster.
Sorry, but it ain't "Wall Street Week" without the wavy gray dude,
as far as I'm concerned.
Iraq's decision to stop producing oil for a month might be really canny,
or it might be an invitation to war. Either way, the global political
and economic context of our petroleum-based economy is in for some
further adjustment.
Paul
Krugman comments. He doesn't think Iraq's contribution is big
enough by itself to cause a crisis. But add in Iran and Libya,
and we could be in trouble. Two-thirds of the Axis of Evil just happens
to be on the Axis of Oil.
7.Apr.2002
Andrew Ross Sorkin in the NY Times, on
Those Sweet Trips to the Merger Mall.
"Companies that have made such payments say it is only fair to 'award
C.E.O.'s willing to take the risk to make bet-your-company,
bet-your-career transactions,' said Claude E. Johnston, a managing
director at Pearl Meyer & Partners in New York."
The only problem is that it isn't their
company that's being bet. It's the stockholders'. One of those "heads
I win, tails you lose" kind of deals.
The Chancery Court had its Sunday session, but we'll have to
wait a few days to hear the decision.
Microsoft ("What do you want to patch today?") sends its programmers
off to
security school. Good idea! I notice the story talks about Nimda
in the past tense, even though my server's error logs continue to be
swamped by Nimda calls.
Never one to underestimate its own prowess, the closing quote from
MS' director of security assurance is telling: "I'd be astonished if the
open-source community has in total done as many man- years of computer
security code reviews as we have done in the last two months." The
argument from personal incredulity is never a strong one, but Mr. Lipner
should also be reminded not to confuse activity with progress.
Bruce Perens,
speaking for Open Source, begs to differ with Lipners
pre-astonishment position. (Thanks to
Doc for pointing to
ZDNet's opinion round-up.)
Something tells me that when Google comes up with
the business model to go IPO, it'll be a winner. Oh, and great
wannabe quote: "You have to be careful if you start to smoke your own
stuff and believe you are the only one who can build a great search
engine." Show us the search, Thornley.
From Jeremy Bowers via Doc and
the head
Lemur:
"A strict reading of the CBDTPA reveals that fax machines, as you know
them, will be illegal. It will be impossible for the fax machine to know
whether or not you have permission to make this copy of the document,
therefore the only safe thing to do legally is to ban you from sending
it at all."
Have you written your Congressmen and women yet to tell them how excited
you are about the Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Act?
The Register:
You've got
Blogs! I called that April Fool's hiatus without looking around
carefully enough, apparently.
6.Apr.2002
Beef: it's what's for dinner, maybe. Or maybe not, after you read
Michael
Pollan's piece in last Sunday's NY Times Magazine, "Power Steer."
He buys into the industry to track No. 534 from range to table (hmm, come
to think of it, he never mentioned how it tasted), although the part
behind the blue door was off limits. (You can try
My Year of Meats for that story.) Pollan is the author of
The Botany of Desire (out in paperback next month), which I see I
haven't yet added to my favorite reading
list.
"We have succeeded in industrializing the beef calf, transforming what
was once a solar-powered ruminant into the very last thing we need:
another fossil-fuel machine." Pollan estimates that bringing #534 to
meat took 284 gallons of oil.
A cheerful take on airport security by
Michael Bérubé,
"Search Me", in tomorrow's Magazine. "Air travel offers every kind
of frustration and revulsion and gnashing of teeth -- but the new
security apparatus is the least of it." On my one airplane trip since
9/11, I was only struck by the absurdity of it, especially when the
agent who awarded one of our party of two with a special search let
us choose which one it would be.
Of course Bérubé may not have had in mind
low-dose X-ray
body scanning that sees through your clothes as one of those new,
egalitarian, community-building activities at the airport.
The riot of violets is continuing, in unprecedented intensity.
We have everything from white to pink, lavender, blue and purple going,
in the thousands. This is a lot more fun than just grass!
What does a fish think of water? We're swimming in myths we don't even
recognize. Here's one: that the
Pleistocene ended
and we're living in the Holocene.
The author's most
Amazing Thing
I Read is pretty good, too. George W. as Superman, brought to you
by Tom DeLay.
5.Apr.2002
The Corps of Engineers figured out how to accommodate the early risers
at Lucky Peak, and will be opening the gate at 6am, rather than 8.
After a number of calls, attempts to construct a mutually agreeable
solution, and a meeting at the overlook to consider access from "this
side" of the dam, the maintenance crew agreed to adjust their schedules
to accomplish the change.
Thanks to all the people who made the effort to call and meet with the
Corps to encourage them to do the right thing. For my own part, my
letter to the editor of the Statesman hasn't run yet (AFAICT), and I
emailed to say I'd prefer they didn't run it, given the change in
plans.
It wasn't unconstructive, but it didn't have quite the same
"how can we play this game by your rules?" approach that others took.
I questioned (and still question) the existence of any credible security
threat to Lucky Peak, and whether a fence or a few jersey barriers would
be real mitigation if there were one. My closing was: "Keeping (the
recreational facility) locked up almost half the time sends a message to
enemies of the United States: we are easily intimidated."
After watching Bill Moyer's NOW
tonight, I'm looking at the episode in a different light. It isn't that
the American people or their government have been intimidated. The
message to the enemies of the United States is from the government of
the United States and it is this: "we have the power to establish an
authoritarian government, and we are willing to do it. In fact, you've
given us an excuse for doing some of the things we've been wanting to do
for a long time."
You can judge the show's material for yourself: impressively, they have
summaries and transcripts up on the day of the broadcast:
Behind the
Freedom of Information Act and
Moyers'
commentary on the FOIA.
As one commentator noted, Bush "has included people in his
administration who have indicated in the past their predilection towards
secrecy and what I would characterize as their outright contempt for the
public right to know." These people include Dick Cheney and Donald
Rumsfeld, who were there in the Ford administration in 1974 when Gerald
Ford tried -- unsuccessfully -- to veto extensions to the FOIA. Bush
has effectively
gutted the Presidential Records Act,
extending "executive privilege" to vice-presidents (starting with Poppy,
conveniently), and his Attorney General, John Ashcroft, is on record
inviting government officials to do all they legally can to obstruct the
FOIA: withhold for any "sound legal basis," as opposed to the
decade-ago directive to comply unless "disclosure would be harmful."
A week ago, after the Administration had partially complied with the
court order to release records of the Energy Task Force's deliberations,
Moyers
reported on the government that the energy companies have been able
to buy. The extent to which the 11,000 pages were filtered has been
reported elsewhere, but it's hard to hide the obvious fact that special
interests have taken over. So much for a renewed sense of ethics in
government.
I see one of my favorite books
now has a second edition, and a generous sample on a website:
Life in Moving
Fluids.
The Motley Fool looks at
nanotech.
A partner in the VC firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers and the chief
executive of FedEx make a surprisingly lame plea
against
changing options accounting in the NY Times. They argue for them as
promoting employee ownership, and then in the next paragraph talk about
"when employees exercise and sell options" (sic). Employees get their
reward out of options by exercising them and selling the stock.
(They can hang onto the stock, of course - meaning they have to come up
with the money for the exercise, and the taxes on the gain, and they
have to take on the risk of holding the stock. Talk to someone who
tried that in 2000 or 2001 before you go for it.)
They say "there exists no remotely accurate way to calculate the
expense," selling the accounting profession rather short. I'm
certain that there's a way to calculate the expense, suitably
amortized, and suitably hedged against future variation of the stock
price. (Whether there's a way everybody can agree on is another
story, of course.)
Turns out the Chairman of the SEC is
not so
sanguine about options as Doerr and Smith, either.
4.4.2002
That Delaware Chancery Court knows what
time
is of the essence means: Sunday morning session on the 7th,
subpoenas satisfied by the 11th, depositions starting on the 16th.
Is it the "last-gasp attempt by the apparent loser of a proxy battle"
or the stake in the heart of the HP-Compaq merger? Stay tuned.
The bad news is that if you work for Steve Ballmer, you don't get to
run a
business and be a chief executive, even if your title is president
and chief operating officer. The good news is, you can quit your job
(5 months from now?! extends the definition of "lame duck"), and
not have anything lined up, and it doesn't matter much.
The color of the universe now has a name:
"Cosmic Latte",
according to the guys who identified it. The
top ten
vote getters didn't include my "eggshell," and seem to have a premium on
alliteration. I like "Univeige," and "Big Bang Buff."
In our Palo Alto salad says, I might have hopped up to Xerox PARC
to hear today's
forum
by John McCarthy, on the sustainability of human progress. In the
hinterlands, I'll have to settle for web sites
pro and
con to determine if this is optimism, or "optimism as unfounded to
the point of delusion."
I've never received an ad on a mobile phone, mostly because I've
only used a mobile phone about 4 times in my life. But I guess
"mobile advertising" is gonna be big. I took a look at the
mpulse
article to see what the buzz was about, and my first impression was
the illustrated sidebar with caption "Small banners and short message
service (SMS) advertising are proving the most popular formats." I
suppose that means "popular" with the senders.
The article mentions a Forrester Research forecast that
"worldwide mobile ad impressions (are) slated to reach 100 billion
people per year by 2005 (and) marketers are expected to spend nearly
$900 million on wireless advertising." I thought last time we checked,
the world population was 6 billion or so, certainly less than 10
billion by 2005.
But Doubleclick is saying (can you say "vested interest"?) that
click-through rates are from 4% to as high as 14% for these things,
so you can be certain that billions and billions will be served.
Get those eyeballs while they're young!
Well my earlier guess was right. It didn't take Microsoft long
to switch their (and Unisys') anti-unix website to a Windows
server. Just a coincidence that the
site when down the
same day?
3.Apr.2002
In case you were wondering, the West Wing clobbered Idaho geography
pretty badly tonight. We don't have any tunnels through the Seven
Devils mountains, nor any truck routes through the high mountain range
on the Idaho side of Hell's Canyon. We do have some twisty mountain
roads that could lead to a truck crash, of course. Elkhorn (singular)
is a resort near Sun Valley, not very likely to be on a shipping route
for any hazmats. There is a Glenn's Ferry; it's on the Snake River,
southeast of Boise, and a more plausible scene for a truckful of waste to
run into trouble, say between INEEL
and Yucca Mountain.
2.Apr.2002
Well the good news is that Corps is going to open up the road across
Lucky Peak dam on May 15th, more than 8 months after 9/11.
The bad news
is that their plan is to have it open only 8am to 10pm. Their
first plan was 8am - 8pm, but the evening boaters raised a stink.
Now it's the early morning boaters' (and windsurfers') turn: we like it
at 6am, and maybe even earlier in June and July. Word is they don't
have the staffing to cover both "early" and "late," and "late" got their
chit in first.
I suppose we need to be real polite about it, of course, this is the
Army we're talking to after all. The obvious problem is that there is
no credible security threat to our little dam, and if there were, a
chain link gate at one end of the dam would not begin to address it.
We've paid for some really nice facilities up there, and the Corps had
been doing a good job of managing it. Are we really prepared to wave
the white flag on this?
I would imagine that the stories about
Microsoft and Unisys using a unix server for their anti-unix
campaign would be at the top of the blog parade today. Oops, it's
datelined Mar 31, I'm behind the times. Maybe they've fired their ISP
by now and got another.
1.Apr.2002
I think I went the whole day without pulling an April Fool's gag on
anyone, and no one pulled one on me (that I know about).
Whaddayaknow.
Last night, I brushed up the perl script I use for combining "daily"
blog entries (source maintained on my home PC) into the monthly file
you see here, to add a few days from the previous month when the new
month starts and entries are sparse. It was a reasonably complicated
business, but I got it done in about an hour, and with no syntax errors
(but a couple logic errors, ironed out with a bit of testing).
It was the best coding experience I've had in a while, made me feel like
I'm starting to get the hang of this perl stuff.
So today, I started a Python course, of all things. The instructor is
the guy who wrote the O'Reilly
Programming Python book, which I'm not yet ready to recommend.
I'm a little skeptical after wading through too much "front matter," in
which Lutz seems to be evangelizing quite a bit more than is necessary,
and surprised me by writing that it was more tutorial than reference.
And it's a fat book. I'm not sure I want a fat tutorial; an
efficient reference seems more attractive.
Lutz' teaching style is amusingly similar to his writing style. I wish
I'd captured his diatribe against curly braces and how neatness is an
important part of "structured programming" better than just in a few
notes. Sort of the gnomish wizard look and feel with a high school
sensibility.
Something called "Teoma" is out to challenge the King of Search,
according to
this story in the NY Times. Well, we'll see, sometime after they
roll it out.
They got some industry analyst to pipe up that
"One of the beautiful things about Google is that it really is 'Search
for Dummies'." That whole "Dummies" thing is annoying to me. If
something's done with an elegant user interface and it works without a
lot of study and training, it's not for "dummies," it's for
everyone. The smarter people around figured out that Google was
It earlier than others.
Google is Search. Challengers
would be better off putting up before they pipe up, IMHO.
The idiots in the music industry are set to
kill internet radio before it hits its stride. Not because they're
afraid of it, understand, they just want to skim their share of the
revenue. Whether or not there are profits. (I guess they know that
scam of accounting away "profits" so that you don't have to share
any.)
raveling
Tom von Alten
tva_∂t_fortboise_⋅_org
ISSN 1534-0007
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Monday, 20-May-2002 15:10:58 MDT
http://fortboise.org/blog/200204.html
