January 2002
Ultra Wide Band: is there anything it *can't* do?
· pretty much immune to eavesdropping · immune to interference or jamming · can be used easily in buildings and even underground · virtually no limit to the number of UWB signals that can share the same airwaves. · ultra-low power, often one ten thousandth as much as a cellphone · undetectable by conventional radios · A UWB phone uses so little power it can remain on for weeks · impossibly cheap:...
You got a problem with my bedside manner?
The Guardian’s Steve Bell, the UK’s most acerbic cartoonist, with his take on the Kandahar hospital siege. Can’t imagine this published in the US. Guardian: Cartoons
Rumsfeld's Rules of Life
I am a sucker for bullet point prescriptions, and these - written by the Secretary of Defense 20 years ago - are timeless, and astute. They’re written mainly for White House officials, but are relevant to managing any organization. Among the more resonant… · Control your time. If you’re working off your-inbox, you’re working off the priorities of others. · Look for...
Jews for whom?!
I’d heard of Jews for Jesus, but this is really something. An organization touting Islam as “the divine completion of Judaism”. Jews for Allah
Clarity
Press coverage of the Enron collapse, a post-mortem by the LA Times. Some journalists picked up on the warning signs. Bethany McLean of the Wall Street Journal asked: “How exactly does Enron make its money?” And essentially concluded that no one—not Wall Street analysts, not investors, not journalists—really knew because the company’s business practices were...
Andrew Grove aka Andras Grof
Andrew Grove, longtime head of Intel, grew up as Andras Grof, and Jewish, in Hungary, like my mother. His father, like hers, died in a labor camp on the Russian front during the war. He has been famously reluctant to talk about his family history, frustratingly reluctant. But his new book, Swimming Across, is a memoir. Refreshingly, it ends before Grove’s business career begins. · Intel...
What went wrong?
A review of the latest book from the veteran Arabist. With this admirable succinct summary of the Middle East problem. “Sometime around 1760, Britain, then France and America took off to another world, one that was increasingly secular, democratic, industrial and tolerant in ways that left many of the other regions gasping at the combined implications of such changes. Certain societies in...
Osama who?
I just remembered that neither Osama Bin-Laden nor Mullah Omar have been captured, nor their bodies identified, nor has Osama even been seen recently. And it’s been two months since the Taliban regime collapsed. This is not a criticism, just an observation. We’re forgetting. Osama Bin-Laden: wasn’t he the guy that knocked Gary Condit out of the headlines? You know, the one before...
Daddy's $14m speech
Matt Drudge is in full rant mode about Global Crossing, its bankruptcy, and the company’s connection to Democratic party fundraisers. As Enron is to Republicans, so Global Crossing is to Democrats? I don’t think so. Before Drudge, Andrew Sullivan et al get too worked up, they should remember that George W’s daddy made $14m from Global Crossing for a single *speech*. Puts Paul...
Exactly which bit of Western culture do you not...
   Another passage in the review of Bernard Lewis that jumped out at me. “As Lewis shrewdly points out, the works of Mozart and Shakespeare and Voltaire have traveled around the globe, as for that matter have Stravinsky, jazz and George Orwell. But they all pretty much stop at the frontiers of the Arab world, which has shown little interest in how others think, write,...
A really bad party
I had an enjoyable Saturday evening. At least a couple of arguments, without which one might as well stay home. One of the other guests, a fellow combatant, mentioned a great line from “Tender is the Night”, which I have now tracked down. “I want to give a really bad party. I mean it. I want to give a party where there’s a brawl and seductions and people going home with...
USA Patriot registration "As part
USA Patriot registration
“As part of the Bush Administration’s ongoing efforts to obliterate all traces of terrorism in the United States, the Department of Justice has commenced registration* of each and every American Patriot. By registering all non-terrorists within our borders, it is our intention to make use of the process of elimination to identify the evil ones who walk among...
10 Days in September Bob
10 Days in September
Bob Woodward, the investigative journalist, presents the most complete fly-on-the-wall story of September’s attacks, and the reaction of the US administration. The account reads like the first draft of a book. It probably is one. · You bet: Once airborne, Bush spoke again to Cheney, who said the combat air patrol needed rules of engagement if pilots encountered an...
The Bloggies
Finalists for the Bloggies, the awards for the weblog world, have been announced. You can vote for weblog of the year, and a host of other categories. Second Annual Weblog Awards
Bankruptcy of the buzz merchants
Andrew Sullivan, still kicking when the victim is down, turns his rhetoric on Tina Brown. I was rather impressed that Tina was still spinning as Talk closed. In every great career, she said, there’s at least one flameout. But Sullivan connects the superficiality of Tina’s magazines, the ephemeral nature of most internet startups, and the political and economic culture of the 1990s. And...
The San Francisco Chronicle, remixed
Matt Haughey recommends the Morning Fix, a daily email from the San Francisco Chronicle. The newspaper is famously awful, of course, and its reputation is justified. This email news roundup, stories selected and spun, just must be better. SF Gate: Newsletters UPDATE: just as bad as the San Francisco Chronicle, but in its own special way. And your email inbox has quite enough junk already. Matt:...
Blogger Pro?
Evan Williams has released the power version of Blogger. It’s been in the works for a while: I remember an early version about a year ago. But Blogger Pro is a really useful advance. Best feature: the ability to edit a date, which means one can pre-populate a new weblog, and give readers the illusion that the site has been around, and busy, for months. And I like the headline feature too....
Spotted
Aha, Meg and Jason - two bloggers whose relationship is often the subject of speculation - spotted on camera together. They’re just hiking buddies. Photos
The study of blogs Spent
The study of blogs
Spent the day at UC Berkeley’s School of Information Management and Systems, the place I would go to college if I was to do it all again. Some researchers are beginning to turn their attention to weblogs. Lots of other studies, on dynamic web navigation, among other things. But, of most interest, Rashmi Sinha’s experiment in constructive discussion, a group weblog...
My San Francisco afternoon, the
My San Francisco afternoon, the first in an occasional series of postcards from America’s favorite city · young guy, disturbed, white, weaving across a street in the Financial District, emptying piles of the Bay Guardian onto the street, throwing the newspapers violently into a puddle as if they’d done something to annoy him, then moving on to rummage in the nearest trashcan ·...
AlterSlash: the unofficial SlashDot digest
AlterSlash: the unofficial SlashDot digest Jeff Jarvis has pigeonholed himself as a warblogger, and can’t write about geeky stuff any more. So I’m passing on this tip about a Slashdot digest. Much needed. I’m embarrassed that I don’t read Slashdot. But I find the raw product indigestible.
Was Jerry Levin forced out
Was Jerry Levin forced out from AOL TimeWarner?
An interesting story in Fortune, speculating that the AOL TimeWarner CEO was pushed, or jumped only after being pushed. Fortune does not have confirmation, and relies more on AOL’s non-denial. But the story does make sense. All that guff from Levin about getting the poetry back into his life. I don’t buy it. My bet: Case wanted to get...
San Francisco I bitch about
San Francisco I bitch about the bland conversation, the human freak show, the unthinking political correctness, but… I have palm trees at the bottom of my garden.
Cyberwar Cybercafes as dens of
Cyberwar
Cybercafes as dens of iniquity. First, they were revealed as the communication system for Al-Qaeda: its agents have been sending instructions and information out from internet cafes in Peshawar. In Garden Grove, near Los Angeles, cybercafes are the haunt of mainly Asian gamers who play networked shoot-em-up video games. Innocent enough, till a killing at one of the cafes and other...
DVD ripping This is about
DVD ripping
This is about the best guide I’ve found for ripping DVDs. And it’s enough to make me give up. Here is a list of tasks, by no means
comprehensive: · insert the DVD disk into the computer, and capture the video files, using a program such as CladDVD · trim the edges to save space, and mess around with various other settings · to fit the movie onto a CD, convert the...
San Francisco: it's not tolerance,
San Francisco: it’s not tolerance, it’s indifference
   I’m back in San Francisco. The sky is clear, there are palm trees at the back of my garden, the sushi five doors down is amazingly cheap and good, and there is still something going on here, even after the technology bust.
   But each day, at the Muddy Waters cafe, I count...
Revenge of the dotcoms
This could be the event that marks the rebound of the dotcoms. Amazon.com’s first profit, only a year or so behind the schedule that Jeff Bezos laid out when he started the company. Okay, there are questions about the extent of Amazon’s profitability, and even its creditworthiness. And I don’t think the rest of the technology sector is going to bounce back so quickly....
Somebody give Ken Layne a
Somebody give Ken Layne a proper job, please
   Now there must be some deadwood media guys, wandering through a maze of links, hoping some of that cool weblog magic rubs off, stumbling on this site. This post is for *you*. Would you please hire Ken Layne to write a column? He’s a friend, and doesn’t know I’m posting this, and would probably be mad if he...
Yahoo and Hotmail, terrorist communication
Yahoo and Hotmail, terrorist communication tools
An article on Robert Reid, the shoe-bomber, delves into the communication system used by his minders in Pakistan: web-based email. “NBC’s Robert Windrem, citing U.S. officials who spoke on condition of anonymity, said intelligence services have long identified Yahoo and Hotmail as the al-Qaida terrorist network’s preferred means to send...
MSNBC: Up from the
MSNBC: Up from the Ashes
Images from “A New World Trade Center: Design Proposals,” an exhibition at the Max Protetch Gallery in Manhattan.
Business 2.0: The Case Against
Business 2.0: The Case Against Knowledge Management
Thomas Stewart, author of Intellectual Capital, argues that corporations have more effective ways to communicate knowledge than fancy software systems. Two devices he cites: eavesdropping; and email lists.
Guardian: Why the Left should
Guardian: Why the Left should stop whining
Peter Hain, a British cabinet minister, writes badly, as do most left-wing politicians. But he’s at least making the internationalist case, from the left. God knows someone needs to. “Between the balaclava rock-throwers with their nihilist ideology on the one hand and Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, Drop the Debt on the other is the same...
On the third stroke, the
On the third stroke, the time will be…
Scribbled, in realtime. Very slick. Click it, you’ll see.
[Via onlineblog]
Which countries have you visited
Which countries have you visited in the last ten years, and when?
The war is touching me, finally. It used to be that the immigration officer would ask: what business are you in? I’d answer: internet. I’m not sure that’s actually a business, but whatever. That would be it. And now. First, I get grilled at JFK coming into the US. The officer was clearly trying to catch me out in...
TIm Cavanaugh ribs the warblogs
TIm Cavanaugh ribs the warblogs
“The weblog is not the most useless weapon in the War On Terrorism. That title is still held by the nuclear submarine. But it is precisely their unconventional methods that make the war bloggers enemies to be feared. Like Al-Qaeda, the war bloggers are a loosely structured network, a shadowy underground whose flexibility and compulsive log-rolling make them...
Washington Post: It May Finally
Washington Post: It May Finally Be Showtime For DVRs
   I don’t know why all the entertainment companies are getting so worked up about the new ReplayTV digital video recorder. Okay, so the device stores video digitally, and allows the user to email programs to other ReplayTV owners. But the recipients cannot forward the files further, and it’s not as if there...
An end to all the
An end to all the Talk
Matt Drudge reports Tina Brown’s Talk magazine is to fold, immediately. The magazine, which launched with a spectacular party under the Statue of Liberty in 1999, had lost $50m.
essay... Talent and managerial ability:
essay… Talent and managerial ability: a contradiction in terms
“I am coming round to the notion of a bifurcated promotion track, in which employees choose either a management or creative career path. Managers gain promotion as they take on more people and greater responsibility; but creatives gain in status and pay as they demonstrate brilliance, or gain in experience.”...
essay... Why I am a lousy sales manager
essay… Why I am a lousy sales manager
“I have discovered, painfully, that hardcore sales people are a breed apart, and I cannot easily related to them. ‘You have to understand,’ advised one of our investors, a lacrosse-playing Ivy League venture capitalist, ‘that sales guys are not like you and me.’”
[Management Today]
essay... Foolhardy 2002 forecasts: please
essay… Foolhardy 2002 forecasts: please destroy after reading
“Revenge of the dotcoms: The real story in 2002 will be the resurgence of dot.coms. The survivors are still growing and internet usage is still increasing. And in 2002, the internet may actually have a revenue model. The spread of services like Paypal, which lets users email money, may allow internet companies to charge...
Amazon.com: Segway Human Transporter (also
Amazon.com: Segway Human Transporter (also known as “Ginger” or “IT”)
No, not on sale yet. But you can ask Amazon to alert you when this scooter-wheelchair becomes available. Amazon. Those guys never miss a trick.
essay... Downward mobility "Downward mobility:
essay… Downward mobility
“Downward mobility: I finally understood the meaning when I advertised for a personal assistant on an online San Francisco bulletin board and received an application from the CEO of a new media startup who said he was experiencing cashflow issues.”
[Management Today]
Afghanistan: it's all Greek to
Afghanistan: it’s all Greek to me
Did you know that the Pushtun Afghans are, in part, descended from Greeks? Soldiers who came with Alexander the Great, and settled in the region then known as Bactria. So much coverage of Afghanistan, and I’ve only just found out. You can tell I’m a sucker for the ethnic view of history. The fractiousness of the Pushtuns. Now it all makes sense.
The war, prolific Brits, and
The war, prolific Brits, and weblogs
   Ron Rosenbaum, in the New York Observer, brings together some of my favorite things: weblogs, and prolific Brits, and the potent combination of the two. So most of the piece is about Christopher Hitchens and Andrew Sullivan, their status as expat Brits in the US, their support for the war from left and right respectively, and the...
Business 2.0 - Google Hires
Business 2.0 - Google Hires a Grown-Up
An unusual hire at Google: a 32-year-old former management consultant and chief of staff for Larry Summers. Supremely bright, no doubt. But one would have thought Google would hire an ad sales or knowledge management veteran to expand its existing businesses. Particularly as the first grown-up hire since Eric Schmidt took over. Probably me just being dumb.
Business 2.0 - TV That
Business 2.0 - TV That Works Like the Web
An ambitious project. Matthew Karas and his colleagues at Dremedia, some of the most impressive people I know on the UK technology scene, are applying Autonomy’s information retrieval technology to video. And you thought searching text was hard. This article in Business 2.0 sets up Dremedia as a more sophisticated version of TiVo, the digital video...
White House defends use of
White House defends use of ‘Pakis’
Can someone get the foot out of Bush’s mouth. Paki is a term of abuse. Bush, who loves diminutives, no doubt meant the word affectionately. “I don’t believe the situation is defused yet, but I do believe there is a way to do so, and we are working hard to convince both the Indians and the Pakis there’s a way to deal with their...
Is that it? After weeks
Is that it?
After weeks of mounting speculation, Jobs annouces… a flat-panel display. Oh, and a hemispherical computer body. Do people still buy this hype. I’ll give you that Apple products are gorgeously designed. But to proclaim this launch represents the death of the CRT: that’s just silly. And the hemisphere. That sounds like a triumph of design over function. Okay, all you...
Afghan City, Free of Taliban,
Afghan City, Free of Taliban, Returns to Rule of the Thieves [NY Times]
   Let’s not congratulate ourselves too much on the change of regime in Afghanistan. It’s hard to be worse than the Taliban, but some of these Pushtun warlords are really trying.
   ”The scene today as a CNN team left for Pakistan was particularly menacing. As...
Geek's guide to music downloading
Geek’s guide to music downloading
I’ve always used Napster or Morpheus to download music, but my blogbuddy Olivier Travers tells me that old-fashioned internet relay chat (IRC) is the way to go. I defer to his obviously greater knowledge, though this all sounds a bit geeky. As Olivier says, “Irc is a little more “technical” to get into, so it effectively filters out...